The Golden Vanity (10 page)

Mrs. Siddall stood on fixed post, with the train of her maroon velvet gown disposed just so, sweeping to one side. She recognized Geraldine, and passed Leonard and Mysie with, "Very good of you." To Jake she said unexpectedly: "Van Buren? Any connection of Eugenia Van Buren?"

"Great-aunt Eugenia?" Jake sustained the charge with his most deceptive ingenuousness, becoming wholly a nephew.

Mysie got away safely, none too soon. She was bursting with a giggle. She edged Geraldine into a corner, and said sotto voce: "The old lady is simply mythical. Did you see me—honestly, I didn't know I was doing it, couldn't help it—I ducked her a curtsey!" An abrupt nursery bob, sliding back one foot. The funniest thing was that Mysie couldn't imagine where she had learned the gesture; it does not belong to the ritual of childhood among the poor; it came out of some book and her dramatic sense. She reflected that great wealth really had a stylizing effect; at least, it had on Mrs. Siddall. "She's like—like a whale in its native element. An ocean of money. And then I noticed there was a biscuit crumb on her bosom. On the plush upholstery. But look at Jake prattling at her knee. He's marvelous." Jake's long training with his numerous aunts, or some other occult influence, had perfected a natural talent for respectful dissimulation toward age and authority. He encountered bores with the same elaborate mendacity, a defense mechanism which sometimes defeated its own purpose, so that he spent much time evading invitations he had brought upon himself, to quiet home dinners, splinterish teas, and drunken parties, all of which bored him equally. Since the death of his mother, he occupied upper rooms in the old house on Eighteenth Street, held in life tenure by two of the aunts, whom Mysie had never seen and hoped never to see. Apparently he was seldom at home, and he kept his telephone plugged as a double precaution. He had a hide-out cottage in the country also. Mysie never tried to communicate with him; sooner or later he came around.

As the drawing-room filled, Geraldine appraised the other guests with the writer's eye. They were mostly elderly. "The old lady's friends," she commented, and owned herself a cat for the observation.

"I'm afraid there's going to be music," Mysie whispered sullenly. "The rich lead dreadful lives. They have to sit and sit and be shushed and entertained. . . ." She guessed right; there was music, an opera singer and a pianist.

During an interval, a stout woman with blued white hair and much diamante trimming informed Geraldine portentously: "I have read your book." Mysie basely deserted. Perhaps there was some obscure spot where she might smoke a cigarette and yawn. She bumped into Arthur. "Can I get you something—a glass of punch?" he asked cordially.

Through a half-open door Mysie caught a glimpse of a buffet supper waiting for the appointed hour. She exclaimed: "Oh, I'm starving, I had no dinner." Arthur acted promptly, leading her to the table. "Thousands of those pâté sandwiches," Mysie said. "Will anyone catch us? if I am discovered eating all the provisions, Gina won't ask me again." Arthur carried her plate into a small breakfast room adjoining, and sat on the arm of a chair opposite her.

This is just dumb luck, Mysie thought; I mustn't keep him long, but while the music goes on, he won't be missed. And I can diplomatically prepare him for Jake. "There would be no social unrest," she said, "if the poor were supplied with champagne and pâté de foie gras. Instead of being investigated and surveyed at great expense by a lot of ghastly sociologists and uplifters, who then inform them that they are poor. They know it. I'm glad I was a barefoot child in the backwoods."

"Aren't you from the same town as Gina?" Arthur looked amused but puzzled.

"It's a town, but all inland is wilderness, slashings. But Gina wasn't a barefoot child; she was always a little lady," Mysie qualified. He can't imagine being poor, she thought. Absolutely nothing to go by. A nursery, and estate grounds to play in, and always walls around everything. So when he thinks he comes to a wall in his mind. That's worse than being poor—even the slattern poverty Mysie had known and hated. She had really hated it, from her first consciousness, because of her stepfather. Her mother had to carry the burden, a tired woman with the weight of a large family in a small house on her slender shoulders. Mysie didn't exactly hate her stepfather; she despised him too thoroughly for that. An able-bodied shiftless man who wouldn't hold a steady job even when it could be had; he sat on a tipped chair on the rickety porch in fine weather, and by the kitchen stove in bad weather, whittling little wooden boats and complaining of lumbago, the government, and his luck in having been born too late for opportunity. He was simply useless. There is that fact which sentimental sociologists do not take into account; some people are useless. It doesn't matter whether they sit in club windows and turn purple over the insolence of workingmen demanding higher wages, or sit in the kitchen grumbling about the injustices of capitalism; they are a dead loss. What are you going to do with them? They are more useless in a job than out of it. They have to be carried. I don't mind you riding your end of the cross-cut saw, but will you kindly not let your feet drag. . . . Mysie used to wish disinterestedly that her stepfather would die. He wouldn't, of course. He would never die. His kind are notably long-lived, since they do not deplete their energies by excessive toil or mental exertion. Since for years Mysie had sent money to her mother, his lumbago had become chronic.

It was grimly humorous to be thinking of him here, opposite Arthur Siddall in this Louis XIV breakfast room, with a Wedgwood plate of pâté de foie gras and thin gold-etched wine-glasses on the table between them.

9

I
SUPPOSE
Arthur is useless too, Mysie thought, but at least he is ornamental. His white waistcoat alone is worth the upkeep. "There's something I want to ask you," she said. "A favor."

"What is it? I'd be delighted," Arthur said rashly.

When he turns his head, Mysie thought, you see pure light on it, like water flowing over a smooth surface. One hundred per cent blond. It's fascinating. She gazed at him with complete esthetic detachment; and Arthur thought she had lovely eyes. And the dent in her upper lip, her ear and the line of her cheek. . . . "Yes," she said mischievously, "we do. But we aren't."

"Do what?" he echoed, taken aback.

Mysie said: "Georgie—I mean Gina—and Geraldine and I do look a bit alike, a family resemblance. I can guess when anyone begins to notice it, sort of a haven't I seen you before expression. But we're completely different." Geraldine, she thought, has a surprising resistance under her quiet manner; Gina is as hard as nails, and I'm tough.

"Did you call her Georgie?"

"When she was a little girl. Don't tell her I told you; she never liked her name, Georgina." Not after she learned about her namesake, Mysie reflected. "It's better than mine. Girls hardly ever like their names."

"Mysie is a charming name," said Arthur. "I like it."

"Maybe you don't know the worst; my name is Artemisia! What parents will do to their helpless offspring— the name belonged to my grandmother, and they couldn't bear to throw it away."

"I don't like Arthur," he confessed.

"I do—now," said Mysie.

He said: "I always wanted to be called Bill or Jim or Joe."

"How would it be if I called you Spike or Butch?" Mysie offered.

"I'd be flattered," Arthur laughed with unexpected heartiness.

Mysie said: "How on earth do you manage to keep so clean? I mean, in New York—do you have to launder yourself every fifteen minutes, or doesn't a slight layer of coal smoke and miscellaneous show on your color scheme? I should think it would stand out prominently."

"It does," Arthur was still laughing. "Every fifteen minutes is the answer. Was that what you wanted to ask me?"

"No, but it was preying on my mind. I'm one of those pests who say whatever comes into their heads—if they think they can get away with it. What I was leading up to is, I hear you've bought a magazine."

"Why, I have, but how did you know? It isn't announced yet."

"Oh, I have to keep posted, in my business," said Mysie. "I expect you'll have a lot of fun, making it over. Why don't you get Jake Van Buren as dramatic critic? He has really new ideas about the theater." She grinned. But Jake could write. His occasional essays had a grave unearthly humor of logic pursued to its furthest limits that produced a sensation of a dislocated universe. "Of course you'd want to talk to him, judge for yourself." You poor dear, she thought, but I'm doing you a good turn.

"I'll be glad to discuss it with him," Arthur agreed. Mysie rose. Her diplomacy consisted in stopping at the right moment. She mustn't get into Gina's black books. They went back to the drawing-room.

The singer had ceased; and Jake was listening patiently to a very young man with a superior accent, who was discoursing on Russia. Mysie could imagine nothing Jake would rather hear less about. Mr. Dickerson, Gina introduced the very young man; he was tall and weedy, with a small head, the sapless collegiate type so frequently found among the sons of the well-to-do. They are sketchy, never filled out.

Gina's eyes still wandered abstractedly. She thought, Polly Brant isn't coming. It's a deliberate slight.

Young Mr. Dickerson was endorsing the class war and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Mysie said: "I wouldn't know about that; I belong to Local Number Ten of the Truckdriver's Union; we're aristocrats. Anyhow, why wait till dawn?" She managed to detach Jake, saying: "Arthur wants to talk to you about the big idea." Jake took the hint, with a glance of warning and reproach. Mysie remembered her promise to behave nicely, and thought sadly, I've crashed again. Arthur made an appointment with Jake for the next day; so that was as good as settled. It seemed safest for Mysie to find Geraldine and stick by her.

Geraldine was still in the clutches of the lady who had read her book, and who evidently meant to get her money's worth one way or another. Mysie intimated that she had some matter of urgency to impart, and the constant reader finally went away. Geraldine said expectantly: "Yes?" and Mysie explained: "Nothing; it was only to get rid of her. Those people have to be nipped in the bud. Who is that woman in green? I'm sure Gina hates her, she's being so cordial."

It was Polly Brant, making apologies for being late. A tiresome dinner had detained her, she said; and she had to go on immediately to a supper party. Polly's opulent beauty was undimmed; she was biscuit brown with the fashionable sun-tan, and her hair was brushed back severely, smooth as jet. She held herself as if she were walking through a public place. "So sorry," she repeated to Gina, and moved on to kiss Mrs. Siddall and speak to Arthur. "No, I can't stay. Prince Olaf insists upon seeing a speakeasy. And a Harlem cabaret." The supper was for an authentic scion of Scandinavian royalty. "Shall you be at the Helders' at Southampton this week-end? No?— you're sensible; it's simply deadly with the polo team in training; the men fall asleep in their chairs after dinner. Bill goes to bed at ten and gets up at five and is out all day; I might as well have married a stable boy. Oh, there are the Dickersons; I must do the civil to them, since our bread and butter depends on Julius. They're too weird, aren't they? Mrs. Dickerson is a dry, and she always has the most awful foreign guests, fourth-rate British authors and knighted British grocers, and they stay for months and talk about the League of Nations. Mr. Van Buren, do you know Katryn Wiggins; she was a Van Buren."

Jake said cautiously: "I think she is my second cousin; is she a friend of yours?"

"Are you hedging?" Polly enquired.

Jake replied ambiguously; "I haven't seen her since she was ten; I dare say she's changed considerably."

Polly had a rippling laugh, extremely effective. "Do come and see me, Mr. Van Buren; and I'll get Katryn. I'm at home every Friday after November first."

Jake bowed: "I shan't forget."

Polly progressed, with renewed aloofness, to the Dickersons, and then made her exit.

Gina missed nothing of the performance.

Sam Reynolds was an altogether unwelcome guest, but Gina had seen no way to avoid inviting him. Mrs. Siddall had an almost feudal regard for family ties, and her relatives were on all her party lists. Under the eye of his wife, Sam was behaving tolerably well; at least, so far as Gina was aware. He was talking about the Siddall Building to Julius Dickerson and Mrs. Siddall; and though it was bad form to drag in business on a social occasion, the Siddall Building outsoared its commercial aspects. It was to be the tallest building in the world. Every new skyscraper is. Mrs. Siddall had a growing pride in the project. It would be a landmark and a monument to the name. She acquired the merit of being public spirited at a profit. Half a block of long-term tenancies had recently expired, leaving the Siddall estate with obsolete buildings which wouldn't be easy to let again. Julius Dickerson had arranged to float thirty millions in bonds for a skyscraper, which would pay ground rent for the land on a fifty-year lease. Since Sam had heard of the project, he had been figuring how to get a cut on it. He said heartily to Julius Dickerson: "Why don't you sell me a few of those bonds? I've been giving 'em the once-over for a client. They look like a good thing—for somebody. The deferment and cancellation and pro-rating clauses especially. Copper riveted proposition. Safety first." He beamed at Julius. "I was thinking of dropping in on you next week, if you've got an hour to spare. Don't want to bother Charlotte about it."

"Certainly, certainly," Dickerson assented, his creased eyelids drooping. "By the way, who is your client?"

"Oh, nobody you'd remember; just one of the little fellows who take whatever securities their banks hand 'em," Sam assured him. "How about Tuesday at ten?"

"Tuesday at ten—drop me a note to remind me," Julius agreed.

Sam said: "O. K. You see, my client bought some Mexican bonds a few years ago, and it made him an investor for life. He's got 'em yet. Well, I'll be seein' you," for Dickerson was receding. . . . Sam thought, if the so-and-so doesn't declare me in on the syndicate commission, I'll tip off Jerry Delane, and we can get him on the building inspection laws, with the plans. Delane was the lad who'd been stuck with those Mexican bonds, put out by Helder & Dickerson; and he took it hard. Delane was influential in New York municipal politics, but Helder & Dickerson, one of the largest private banking houses in New York, were fairly well out of reach of local reprisals. Helder & Dickerson had weight in national and international finance; of late years they were openly called into consultation at Washington, and quoted as oracles of prosperity. Times had changed; Sam could remember, not so long ago, when an Administration was compromised beyond explanation if caught colloguing with Wall Street. The panic of 1907 marked the beginning of the change. When Teddy Roosevelt knuckled under . . . But Sam had a shrewd idea that Dickerson would shell out a little discreetly by way of legal fees or a small share in the flotation syndicate, carried on credit, rather than let Sam start Charlotte asking questions. Though the work was already begun on the foundations of the Siddall Building, Sam was reasonably certain that not more than half the bonds were sold. There were awkward possibilities in the situation. Dickerson, of course, had no concern with the actual construction work; he was a banker with a bond issue to dispose of; but he was also Charlotte's investment adviser, probably down as trustee in her will; his bank carried considerable sums of Charlotte's money, a discretionary account; and altogether he'd look silly, have difficulty in unloading the remainder of the bonds, if work stopped sensationally on the building. He might not even care to have Charlotte know the bonds weren't all sold and that the remainder might come back on her private estate corporation. There was a joker in the ground-lease which sounded like a precautionary provision on behalf of the estate, but could as easily work the other way.... Sam reckoned that watching Julius Dickerson pay out graft as if he were slipping a sealed envelope into the offertory at Saint Stephen's, was worth nearly as much as the money. Dickerson's unction was deeper than hypocrisy; whatever he made and by whatever means he made it, he felt it was sanctified to him, as a temple priest might feel about tithes.