The Golden Vanity (21 page)

"Bill says the worst is over now," Polly said resiliently. "He says it's wonderful how the bankers got together and supported the market. If we had any money now we could get in on the rise again; it's just our luck to be broke. And Bill will have to give up that Greenland expedition he was planning to join next summer."

"That is too bad," Mrs. Siddall agreed, overlooking the suggestion. "Though why anyone should want to go to Greenland— Wasn't it snowing this morning?" She looked toward the window. Even if her eyesight had been keen, it would have told her nothing. She was cut off from the weather. Her boudoir was ventilated by invisible hygienic flues. Between the heavy window draperies of amber satin the net glass-curtains softened the bleakness of the street with a delicate illusion that left no hard surfaces or sharp edges. A lively wood-fire burned beneath a mantel of yellow faïence tiles. On an Italian table of yellow marble pale bronze-pink roses unfurled in a cloud of white gypsophila from a cloisonné vase. In furniture as in clothes Mrs. Siddall was faithful to her own era, when money was expected to show. She found the
decor
of Polly's apartment incomprehensible: black velvet divans built against silver-painted walls, a silver-grey rug on a red-lacquered floor, a black marble mantel, and two pictures of angular nudes with dislocated hips. Polly had had it done over only a year ago, at preposterous expense. It wouldn't last, Mrs. Siddall thought firmly.

"Only a flurry," said Polly. "Spring snow."

"The winters used to be much more severe," Mrs. Siddall recalled. "After a snowstorm we drove out in cutters; you could hear the bells all along Fifth Avenue."

Yet she had a conviction that she had lived in a world of permanence, which had mistakenly changed, very much for the worse, only temporarily. It would have to go back. . .. Healthily incapable of introspection, she did not perceive that to herself she was simultaneously and miraculously the six-year-old child with red-tasseled shoes; and the dashing young woman in a sealskin coat, holding a sealskin muff to her face to shelter a bunch of violets from a spray of snow in the Park; and her immediate self, a repository of ripe wisdom and authority. The permanence she felt consisted in whatever secret and persistent filament of flesh or spirit preserved those continuous memories.

"That must have been fun," said Polly. "You'd have to go to Greenland now. Thank you, Aunt Charlotte, I'm sorry but I can't stay to lunch; I promised to go to a bridge luncheon for the Unemployed." She kissed her aunt, with moderate gratitude and affection, and departed.

The month's accounts were waiting; Mrs. Siddall checked them thoroughly. "We shall have to economize, Mrs. Enderby," she said. "Yes, madam," the housekeeper agreed. "I don't think I shall open the Bar Harbor cottage this summer," Mrs. Siddall said. She told her secretary to make a note about the greenhouses on the Long Island estate. Perhaps one could be shut down, dispensing with a couple of under-gardeners. There were so many calls for charity. To do her justice, Mrs. Siddall did not consider reducing her regular contributions; there was her favorite hospital, and St. Stephen's parish fund, and a settlement house, and an orphanage, to all of which she subscribed generously; they had long since become fixed charges. They were appealing urgently for larger benefactions; she decided to increase the various amounts, say ten per cent, this year. Unemployment relief—yes, that was a duty, in the present emergency. She paid a number of small private pensions—old servants, and remote poor relations to whom she was not inaccessible for extra sums when there were children to send to college, or in case of illness. None of them was nearer than second cousinship; several she had never seen; the law of averages had kept the total fairly constant for many years by death and birth and superannuation. Disaster seemed to be hereditary. Mr. Lützen had told her that young Mr. Fraser, in the estate office, had tuberculosis. Fraser was the grandson of one of Heber Crane's early associates who inexplicably ruined himself backing inventions which were afterward successful. Mrs. Siddall had employed the grandson out of sentiment. He had been doing well enough, was married and had a child; now he was stricken, with no resources. Mrs. Siddall gave instructions that he should be sent to Colorado on full pay, with his family, until he recovered. She was a genuinely kind woman, one of the limited percentage of the rich who give as a matter of course. If she had been a farmer's wife she would never have refused food to a tramp, and though she would have required him to chop wood in return, she wouldn't have been astonished if he had evaded the chore. Her sympathy was practical and unimaginative; she did not suffer vicariously over social injustice. Her comfortable benevolence was of the type which rouses the scorn of idealists and the fury of social revolutionaries. She would have driven either or both to apoplexy by listening to their arguments and then replying that if all the money in the world were divided, in six months there would once more be rich and poor. Neither she nor her opponents would have realized that both sides were assuming their own axioms. Few people do perceive that all logic proceeds from axioms.

After Polly had gone, Julius Dickerson arrived for lunch. Business was not discussed at the table, but later, in the library, Julius discussed the financing of the Siddall Building. His characteristic mode of conversation was soothing and encouraging; only a thoughtful listener would have observed that it was impossible to recollect subsequently exactly what he had said or not said. One was left with the general impression that all was for the best.

About half the bonds for the construction of the Siddall Building remained unsold. Some of those which had been sold were not fully paid. The building corporation was legally empowered to pledge the unsold bonds for seventy per cent of face value. Mrs. Siddall owned none of the bonds, and held no shares of the building corporation, to which she had leased the land. Money must be found if the work were to go forward. The depression made it practically a public duty to proceed, and since building costs were down, Mrs. Siddall could acquire a majority ownership in the building at a reduced price, by assuming the unsold bonds, and taking over at a discount some of the bonds which were not fully paid. She would thus protect herself on the lease also; an unfinished building couldn't pay ground rent, and bankruptcy of the building corporation would be prejudicial to the immediate enterprise and the Siddall name. Julius Dickerson forgot to stress the point that ultimate returns depended upon rentals when the building was completed. In fact, he never thought of that. Of course there would be tenants.

Mrs. Siddall remembered that her father had acquired his choicest bargains in New York real estate at the low mark of the Nineties.

She signed the necessary papers. Naturally, she did not keep millions in cash on hand, but that would be taken care of through her bank, by loans; the presumption was that ultimately the building would liquidate its costs. She could see no risk whatever; she was lending the money to herself. Nothing could be safer. It was impossible to contemplate the stopping of the work, letting the name of the Siddall Building stand for failure.

Julius mentioned that he must hurry away to a conference on a municipal loan issue. He was saving the city. With the other leading bankers, he had in the course of years sold—and taken his percentage—on so many city bonds, credit was exhausted. He would now demand economy. The taxpayers must be roused to protest against Tammany graft. He expected to be in Washington next week to urge a moratorium on international debts, also a necessity, he said. ... To sustain credit. This reasoning seemed luminously clear to him. His soft, greyish face, with its flat clerical upper lip, was irradiated with altruism. His private life was blameless, and he had a pious veneration for the aged Wyman Helder, who had saved the country during the panic of 1907, at a handsome profit; and was the leading vestryman of St. Stephen's until locomotor ataxia forced him to retire. Wyman Helder senior had given Julius his career.

Every afternoon, before tea, Mrs. Siddall was accustomed to visit the nursery next door. To-day Arthur forestalled her, bringing his son to call. Young Benjamin, named after his great-grandfather, was two years old, and just promoted to approximately masculine garments. Arthur carried Benjy on his shoulder, and the child squirmed and laughed, holding on with both hands.

"Do be careful," Mrs. Siddall warned him.

"I'd better be," Arthur agreed. "He's got me by the ear. Come down, Colonel." Set on his feet, the little boy ran to Mrs. Siddall.

"What have you been doing to-day, Benjy?"

"I bwoke my duck."

"Your duck?"

Arthur said: "One of those celluloid objects floating in his bath."

"We'll get you another duck," Mrs. Siddall promised.

Benjy struggled with the dawn of thought. It wouldn't be the same duck. He couldn't express the idea, and shook his head. He had Gina's dark hair and Arthur's blue eyes; his dark lashes were tipped with gold. His round face and dimpled knees retained the plumpness of babyhood; and he was as good as gold. Mrs. Siddall's fat white hands, with their burden of rings, held him competently. The superficial haughtiness of expression which had been fashion in her youth and habit in her middle years had almost vanished with age; her hair was now snow white; and tiny purple veins showed through the powder on her cheeks and nose; her double chin suggested amiable indulgence.

Benjy gazed solemnly at the roses. "Flowers," he said. Then he yawned, with the comical candor of infancy, and leaned against Mrs. Siddall's whaleboned bosom. He had been playing very hard with Arthur, and it was time for his nap.

"I'll take him back," Arthur said.

"He's such a lamb," Mrs. Siddall rejoined.

On the stairs in the other house Arthur met Gina coming down. For a second he did not recognize her. She was dressed for the street, going out to tea, tall and slender and elegant in a close-fitting jacket suit with a sable collar and a small hat that hid her hair completely. She was as smart and stylized as a fashion drawing. The fashions had changed suddenly, and women with them, flowing into longer skirts, curving lines, swaying movements. . . .

Arthur had not seen Gina since yesterday. That happened occasionally of late. Increasingly often.

She stopped, with a startled air, one hand on the baluster. "Oh," she said, "what—"

Arthur said: "He's asleep." They stood a moment, with an immense distance between them, not six feet in actual space. And yet there was the child in his arms. Gina had had a bad time when Benjy was born.

"You know the Wigginses and the Averys are coming to dinner," Gina said, "and the opera afterward."

Arthur said yes. He went on up to the nursery, and gave Benjy to the anxious stout nurse. Then he went down to his library, a new library built in the new house, and there were some recently purchased books to look over, before finding place for them on the shelves. Dinner and the opera meant a long evening; Katryn Wiggins would talk through it, but that was of no consequence; he didn't want to hear music, and spend a wakeful night. Sometimes he couldn't face the hours past midnight; and Gina never refused him. He almost wished she would. When he slept afterward, the distance between them increased. . . . Then what were all the books about? So much passion and beauty shut between dustproof covers, locked away and silenced by possession. In a great rich house full of beautiful dead things.
... A bracelet of bright hair about the bone.. ..

18

M
YSIE
went home, a flying visit, and stopped over a day to see Michael Busch. They wrote to each other at intervals, so he expected her and met her at the train.

"Does anyone know you're here?" he asked.

"No. I'd rather not."

"That's good. Would you like to come to my apartment and powder your nose before dinner?"

"It might be an improvement," she said. "You live in town now?" He had, or used to have, a country place out toward Bremerton.

"It's more convenient," he said. He meant since the death of his wife, three years ago. "I go over Sundays; my girls are living there. The youngsters are better off in the country." Two of his daughters were married, and his sons-in-law had gone broke, or as near as made no matter, in the general collapse of business. There were two grandchildren. Michael was very fond of them, but he disliked being a grandfather. As a visitor—though he paid for the upkeep of the place—he felt less definitely fixed in that status.

He had brought his car, and drove it himself. By the time they were out of the station, the clear June twilight had begun, and the lights were coming on. As they zig-zagged up the steep streets from the waterfront, Mysie felt inexplicably homesick. She had come back to her own country, and she was homesick as she had not been while away. The soft Pacific air carried familiar reminders of salt water and tide flats, the smell of the docks, of fish, timber, and the Orient odors of corded bales of tea-matting. The hills rose from the harbor in terraces; as they climbed, Mysie tried to place herself.

"The town has changed," she said. It was fourteen years since she had gone away, six since her last visit, a brief one. Eight years since she had spent six months here; yes, it was changing them, but she hadn't expected a clean sweep. "I don't remember this apartment house— I don't seem to remember anything."

"I guess it is new." Michael parked the car, and carried in her suitcase. The doorman took it and gave it to the elevator boy. Mysie suppressed a smile; she thought, Mike is doing that on purpose. It was characteristic of him. He was cautious up to the point of decision; then he didn't care, he was obstinate and dependable. Nobody could crowd him; he would or he wouldn't, and they could go to hell. He stood by whatever he did. Only if she had declined his suggestion, he would have let it go at that without comment; it was for her to say what
she
would do. He unlocked the apartment door.

"This is the spare bedroom," he put down her suitcase, "I'll be ready whenever you are."