Chatterton was trying to be matter-of-fact, trying too hard, the General thought, and his curiosity was but the more whetted. He leaned toward his host. “Does he belong to anyone I know?”
Chatterton was not amused. “He’s what you might call social provender, Ransom. An acquaintance of Laura’s, and several others of tonight’s guests.”
No declared occupation, the General thought, and in a town where every man needed a title as much as he needed the job it came with. He did not, however, pursue the subject with his host. He could tell by the squint of Chatterton’s eye and a shadowy nervous twitching at its corner that something was aggravating an old disorder. “A bit off tonight, Ed? The old ulcer?”
Chatterton laughed, but without mirth. “To tell the God’s truth, Ransom, I can’t tell the old one from the new one these days.”
“Bad, bad,” the General murmured solicitously.
“No foundation all the way down the line,” Chatterton said in something like a confidential whisper.
The General could not remember what he was quoting, but he understood from its present context. There was no one in Chatterton’s branch of service with genuine authority who would stand firm, and everybody was swinging at the State Department, especially Senator Fagan.
“There’s a man, Fagan,” the General said, “who goes looking for the cracked bricks under a house. Pulls them out for all he’s worth. I hope he finds out that most of us have a little crack in us somewhere, and still manage to hold up our end. I hope he finds it out before he pulls the whole place down on top of us.”
Chatterton stood with the polite air of a man waiting for him to be done. Then he said, “I rang you up at the club today. Understand you’re living at home now.”
“It’s where they’ve got to take you in whether or not you’ve got the cash,” the General said. “Introduce me to Madam Jennings, will you, Ed?”
“Good God, forgive me. I hadn’t known you were not acquainted.”
“We met once, but it’s a long time ago and I don’t want to risk her not remembering.”
In truth, what the General wanted was to observe his host and the young fop together, to measure the depth of their familiarity if he could. He did not think of himself as a snob, but on the whole he thought this a bottom-drawer assortment of people to gather in this house. Secretary Jennings was the exception, and he supposed Senator Chisholm, although she was a bit wholesome for his tastes; and by God, he was an exception himself!
He was not to have the chance now to observe Montaigne and his host. The young man, seeing them approach, managed to wind up his talk with Secretary Jennings and spin off at precisely the instant before introductions would have been necessary.
Chatterton said, “Madam Secretary, may I present an old friend, Ransom Jarvis, major general, United States Army?”
“I believe we’ve met, General Jarvis.” She gave his hand a firm grasp. There was foundation there all the way down the line.
“You were a little girl in Newport when we first met. I was a West Point plebe, I think.”
“I didn’t know my memory was that long,” she said, and there was something rather sad in the way she said it that set the General to speculating on what he might have interrupted. His memory of her dated more recently than he had said: to some wartime mission in London when he had met her briefly—and in the company of many military men of several countries—and had thought her then a woman of enormous attractiveness. Ah, but circumstances were different now, and so was Elizabeth Jennings. She had grown plump and plain as a suet pudding.
“I hope I didn’t frighten the young man off,” the General said, looking round as though he expected him to be standing nearby.
“I doubt it,” Madam Jennings said.
“I seem to have that way about me lately—people run from me as from an old bull terrier for all that he may be nodding and toothless.”
“Do you know him?” The woman’s gaze was trailing after Montaigne as he crossed the room. She had not heard a word the General had said about himself.
“Certainly not.”
Madam Secretary lifted her head, a show of pride perhaps, and looked him straight in the eye. She was a woman of considerable social poise and long political experience, but, the General thought she could not hide her regret at his having interrupted the attentions of the younger man, and she refused to be ashamed of it. It made him feel sad himself, lugubrious, in fact.
“I wonder if we both couldn’t do with a drink? May I bring you something, Madam Secretary?”
“You’re very kind. I would like a sherry.” She smiled on him with the sudden joy of one reprieved.
His humour was restored, along with his confidence in himself as a judge of women. He found his best prospect of the evening so far to be the company of his own thoughts, a vigilant contemplation of the relationship between a young sport and a fifty-year-old spinster.
On the way to the bar he purposely brushed against the man. It forced them to introduce themselves. Looking into his eyes, the expression in which seemed deliberately covert, like a lascivious cleric’s, and further judging him by the deliberate droop of his shape, the languid pose, the General would now call him a young decadent. He hadn’t seen anything quite like him since European society just before World War I, and perhaps the American imitation of it after that war. He gave his name as Leo Montaigne. The General wondered out of what novel he had taken it.
“Sorry to have cut in on your conversation with Secretary Jennings,” the General said. “Didn’t mean to, you know. Just wanted to meet the lady.”
“And understandable that you should.” Montaigne raised his voice a little. The woman in question was approaching. “All men seem to, and she is lovable, don’t you agree, sir?”
“Adorable,” the General replied, and it could have been as handily said of a Sherman tank. The insolent pup, to have so involved him. He bulled his neck and charged on toward the bar.
Chatterton once more intercepted him. “Oh, come, Ransom, surely it’s not that bad?”
“If rotten is bad, it’s that bad,” the General said. “Where the hell did you get him? I’m surprised at Laura. And I’ll tell her so, myself.”
Chatterton straightened himself up, and it seemed to give him pain to do it. “Is it any of your business, Ransom?”
“No, I suppose it’s not.” He got hold of himself. “I’m being ridiculous, eh?”
“Let me say this, he has many friends for whom he does many favours.”
This time the General truly did not understand and said so.
“Neither do I, Ransom, but I have a feeling he would make a deadly enemy.”
In that the General concurred. “All right, old man. I promise—no fuss.”
Chatterton was again completely affable. “Here’s Dr. d’Inde, one of the great art curators. You know him, don’t you?”
The General stared for an instant at the tall, good looking man then bending low over the hand of his hostess. “No. Don’t know him.”
“Come along and I’ll introduce you, a splendid fellow. He’ll be more to your liking. I understand he’s fathered seven children.”
“I’d rather meet the mother,” the General growled.
He started to follow his host, but at that moment another feminine guest was announced, and this one, by the heavens, was really feminine. Every man in the room added an inch to his stature the instant she came into view. The General forgot the introduction to d’Inde, the drink he had promised Madam Secretary and himself; he even forgot his ill humour and considered it a good omen that he was mobile and able, thus, to arrive at the side of the latest guest before any other man could disengage himself.
“How do you do?” the General said.
“Oh, I know you,” she said in a voice that had a pleasant sort of rattle to it. Flat and somewhat nasal, it had nonetheless a warm, gay quality.
“That, then, is but one of the many advantages you have over me,” he said, and
bent low over her spangled fingertips.
She gave his hand a little squeeze in delightful contrast to the pumpings he’d been having by the hands of women lately. “I’m Virginia Allan,” she said. “It’s an assumed name, of course. I mean I assumed it myself—honourably.” Her smile was sudden, and the twinkle went on in her blue eyes at the same time.
“I’m sure nothing you do could be less than honourable for your doing it, Miss Allan.” He cleared his throat. Something there was a bit thick.
“General Jarvis, you dear!”
With that, she flitted away from him. She was blonde—something else assumed honourably he thought, looking after her. Her walk reminded him of a mermaid, not altogether ridiculously, for her dress was sequined and snug to the toes. She was neatly put together entirely he thought, and long enough ago that he need not coddle his conscience should the opportunity for other coddling present itself. Realizing that his eyes were trailing across the room after her, he pulled himself up and glanced about in time to catch a look of austere disapproval from—of all people—the young pup, Leo. The disconcerting thought then occurred to him: she might just possibly be Leo’s mother.
At that moment the Latin American ambassador came out of the study, and across the room he and Montaigne discovered one another, and with loud acclaims broke up everybody else’s conversation. They met and embraced, and immediately fell to reminiscences about Paris, the Riviera and Capri. There was something mesmeric about it all the same, something of an old enchantment that drew almost everyone in the room to them. Even Katz the musician, lounging at the study door, was caught up in it, his pouched eyes dreamy, his mouth as slack as it was sometimes said his musicianship had gone of late. “ … And the night,” Montaigne was saying, “I couldn’t find a stitch to put on when somebody turned in the fire alarm … You see the dilemma, of course …” (This remark was an aside to Mrs. Chatterton. The General got the feeling that some people there had heard it before and were encouraging its retelling.) “ … The question was whether to go down on or in the bed sheets.”
“And what did you do?”
“Well, as a matter of fact, I took a pillowcase, and tore two holes in the seam for my legs, ran the service bellcord through the hem at my waist, and went down on the sheets in that. The costume had a certain charm—with me in it. It became quite a fashion that season. You couldn’t buy a pillowcase in all Nice.”
“Ah, Nice,” said the opera singer. “I know a lovely ballad—in French (this to the host), so don’t be alarmed. If Joshua would bring me a drink I might sing it.” She cast her eyes on the violinist. “Dear Josh.”
If he had a drink himself, the General thought, he might listen. Going in quest of it, however, he found Miss Allan.
“I’ll just bet you’ve had some wonderful experiences yourself, General.”
“A few more, I dare say, than that young man,” he said, with as much modesty as he could manage.
“Are you what they call a field general?”
“I beg pardon?”
“What I mean is, were you in real danger—I mean from the enemy?”
“And occasionally from my friends,” the General said. “Will you have a drink with me, Miss Allan?”
“I’d love to, General. I’ve never known a real military man of rank. My last army friend turned out to be a corporal when he put his uniform on.”
“They’re the most dangerous of all.”
“Corporals, you mean?”
The General nodded. “Napoleon and Hitler.”
“I never think of them as corporals.”
“Most people don’t,” the General said, “but I’ve got a feeling they never got over thinking of it themselves.”
Virginia giggled. “I know somebody just like that—going round acting like a general. I don’t mean you, honey, you don’t act like a general at all.”
“Perhaps because I was never a corporal,” he said. “What will you drink, my dear?”
A few minutes later dinner was announced.
6
GENERAL JARVIS SAT AT his hostess’ left, the ambassador at her right. To the ambassador’s right sat Senator Chisholm. It occurred to the General she was a ranking member of the Armed Services Committee. In his own best interests, a man in his position should curry favour with the old girl this night; he would never have a better opportunity. But on the General’s left was Virginia Allan, and he was unlikely to have a better opportunity to curry her favour either.
It was remarkable the career so attractive a woman could have behind her, a try at so many occupations; a new one showed up at every turn in the conversation. There was something almost kittenish about her—not in the disgusting, coy manner, but in the sudden ingratiating twists she gave things, dipping daintily into one provocative bit of talk after another. The General was hard put to give their hostess any part of his attention.
But she needed it, he realized, sending her a sidelong glance. She was working as hard tonight as Ed was, and she ordinarily throve on such doings. Her whole mind turned to it, like a morning glory stretching for sun. Now he could see her stretch her lips to make a smile. He complimented her on the dinner, and then ran dry. The best he could do was include her addressing himself to the ambassador.
“When were you on the Riviera last, Excellency?”
“Such a long time ago,” Cru said. “Was it 1928? Laura, do you remember?”
Mrs. Chatterton said hastily, “It must have been.” Hastily, to avoid particulars? the General wondered. “I saw a ring around the moon last night. I hope it won’t rain tonight. It would ruin the ball.” She rattled on. “Do you remember the play, Dark of the Moon?”
“Are you having superstitions, Laura?” the ambassador asked.
“Oh, no.”
But she was having something, the General thought, something she was unlikely to confide in him. Thank God. He turned back to Virginia Allan as soon as he could. “Curious,” he said, “there are some women with whom it is absolutely impossible for me to strike up a conversation.”
“You are kind of forbidding, General.”
“I have never forbidden a woman anything in my life, to my sorrow,” he said. “And couldn’t you manage to call me ‘Ransom’, Miss Allan … Virginia, if I may?”
“I think Ransom is just a lovely name … Ransom. It’s so—southern.”
“Old family attachment,” he murmured.
“Really?” she said brightly. “Were they pirates?”
The General cleared his throat. So charmingly naïve. “Horse thieves,” he said. “That’s how I came to start in the cavalry.”
“Ransom, you’re pulling my leg,” she said.
The General thought the better of what he was about to say, and merely sounded a rumble deep in his throat.
“What you were saying about women and conversation,” Virginia said, laying down her fish fork, “you know, Ransom, some women can’t talk to anybody unless they’re telling secrets.”
“But I love secrets,” the General protested.
“You love women, too, don’t you?”
“Especially women with secrets.”
Virginia laughed. She might even be blushing, he thought, but that was hard to tell. It was not very long thereafter—during the fowl course, after the first sip of a fine Rhone wine—that he proposed they go on to the ball together. “Unless you’d prefer not to go to the ball?”
“Oh,” she said, “what a naughty idea!”
“My dear, I am a patron of the arts, but that does not compel me to fraternize with the artists. That boor next to you—once a pretty good violinist …”
“Monsieur Katz?”
“What did you say?”
She repeated, a lovely light whisper to her French.
He leaned close to her ear and said, “I thought you were calling me ‘pussy cat’.”
She found the impulse to laugh irresistible, and he found her laughter contagious so that he joined it, although to be sure, behind
his napkin. An embarrassed silence hung round the table in the wake of their mirth.
“You had better take care, General,” the ambassador volunteered his advice. “There are times it is not good to laugh.”
“Oh, now, go on, Your Excellency,” Miss Allan joshed. “Laughter’s good for anybody any time.”
“There are times,” Cru said, again ponderous, “when a man can die of it.”
The General had got coldly sober. “I think I shall escape that fate for the present,” he said, “or at least in the present company.” He looked down the table from under his brows. “I beg your pardons.” For a few moments he gave the bird on his plate his complete attention. Virginia was talking softly to M. Katz and Laura and the ambassador were apparently recalling a number of asphyxiations among their acquaintanceship.
There was something very strange about this party, and now and then he got the feeling of almost understanding it, of its breaking through to him. He thought about his hostess: Virginia’s remark about women who could really talk only in secrets had validity. Laura might very well be one of them; what she was now saying to Cru seemed in the nature of a confidence. Confidences was a better word than secrets. He fell to musing on where she might have met Ed … and Cru, whom she seemed to have known in France. There! He almost had that elusive thing about the party, the peculiarity.
But at that instant Senator Chisholm said, “Cheese.” She represented a dairy state.
The General put down his silver with a clatter. Few things offended him more than talk of one food while he was eating another. There was also some sort of fuss in the making at the other end of the table. The art man, d’Inde, had blown up a temper.
Across the table from him was Montaigne, sitting next to Secretary Jennings, a social elevation the General was at a loss to understand.
“I meant nothing personal, I assure you, doctor,” Montaigne said. The General was pleased to see him, too, hoisted now on the silence. “I was merely thinking how necessary geographic expansion becomes with the steady increase of population. Mind you, I’m all for increasing population. I should even approve some sort of bounty on every child.”
Old Sinners Never Die (The Mrs. Norris Mysteries Book 3) Page 3