The Golden Vanity (31 page)

It was Benjy's nurse. "Excuse me, perhaps I shouldn't disturb you; I expect it's only that he was so active this afternoon. Benjy has been restless, and he has a slight temperature."

"You should have told me at once," Gina exclaimed. She hurried to the nursery, while the nurse protested that there had been no delay. Benjy had waked and asked for a drink of water, saying that he was hot.

The dim glow of a shaded night-light showed Benjy lying flat on his stomach, in blue pyjamas, with one knee drawn up, and a calico doll on the pillow beside him, his favorite toy. "He's asleep again," the nurse whispered, with relief. "I daresay it's only the heat."

Benjy waked, instantaneously and completely, as a child does. "Hello, daddy, is it morning? Can I go and see my pony?"

"No, dear, it isn't morning yet." Gina stroked his head. His forehead was cool, and the tender hollow of his neck slightly moist with perspiration. "You shut your eyes," Arthur said, "and it will be morning in a wink." "I didn't fall off, did I?" Benjy asked. He had dreamed he had fallen off, and was not quite old enough to distinguish between dream and reality. "No chance," Arthur said. "You rode like a trooper." "Lucy can have a ride tomorrow," Benjy said. Lucy was the rag doll.

"Certainly," Arthur stooped for a kiss; and Benjy flung his arms about Arthur's neck and hugged him tight.

The nurse returned to say she had telephoned to the doctor, as a precaution, though Gina agreed the child did not seem feverish . . . Dr. Haines was out. The nurse had left word for him to call in the morning.

"I think I'll go down and get the air," Arthur said. "It's the hottest night...."

He paced the terrace for an indefinite time. He had read books explaining how marriage and divorce should be made easy and painless. When love ceased, there should be an amicable parting. Presumably, under some unspecified anaesthetic, one dissected out from the intricate living tissue of nerves and cells whatever held the imprint of the years spent together. What could be simpler?

A flicker of summer lightning picked out the night watchman making his round. Arthur leaned on the terrace balustrade. Down there was the lily pool, smothered in darkness. Carp swam in it, sluggish creatures with gasping mouths and dull goggling eyes. They ate and swam about in the circle of their marble tank. Patches of moss or fungus grew on them as they aged. They lived to be very old. They were imported. Generations of them had been fed by hand; when a shadow fell on the water they thrust their snouts to the surface, anticipating food. Arthur disliked them. The sight of them made him queasy. They were invisible now, but they were there, in the dark.

It was past midnight when he went upstairs again. He might look into the nursery—or perhaps he'd better not; it might rouse Benjy. As he glanced down the hall, Gina was standing at the nursery door. She had her hand on the knob; then she drew back and went away. They had had the same thought.

She cares about Benjy, Arthur thought. It is more decent to feel kindly toward a woman you once loved. The heat deadened all feeling. He sat by his window until a gust of rain brought coolness from seaward; and sleep took him stealthily. His valet woke him at eight o'clock, to say that Dr. Haines had come to see Benjy.

Dr. Haines had a good bedside manner, serious and encouraging in just the right measure to indicate to wealthy women that their ailments were important but curable. His lucrative practice had been acquired by social connections as much as professional skill; he had married a rich widow and lived on an impressive scale, with a house near Sutton Place and a summer residence on Long Island.

As a young man he had worn a Van Dyck beard; at fifty he was clean shaven, with a golfing tan, keeping up with the current model for fashionable physicians.

The nurse had kept Benjy in bed; he sat up, drowsy and bright-eyed, submitting to the examination with sweet docility. A slight temperature—yes. He had better stay in bed for the day. Children ran a temperature very easily, the doctor reflected; but prognosis was difficult, because they could not describe incipient symptoms. Dr. Haines began to write a prescription for a mild febrifuge, and hesitated. Had Benjy complained of any pain? The nurse said no, he was not a complaining child. He must have bruised his foot yesterday, but he said it didn't hurt. Ah, said Dr. Haines thoughtfully, and got Gina and Arthur out of the room. He remained about ten minutes, having implied that he wished to give the nurse instructions.

Dr. Haines's gravity was genuine when he left. He did not want to believe the dreadful possibility, but he dared not put it aside. The symptoms were irregular, especially the lameness before any other manifestation. But it was a disease so little understood, and cases varied greatly.

Dr. Haines said he would return before noon. He did so, and suggested that Benjy should be removed to a hospital. He was so tactful that Gina and Arthur did not immediately apprehend his meaning.

Poliomyelitis. Dr. Haines was obliged to repeat the word. He would be glad to call a consultant. He would be very glad to find himself mistaken.

"How could Benjy have got it?" Arthur asked numbly.

"Nobody knows. The mode of infection, or contagion, has not yet been discovered." A grimly indiscriminating disease, striking the most tenderly nurtured children as readily as the neglected offspring of the slums.

The discussion was renewed when the consultant arrived; then Mrs. Siddall had to be told. The same phrases were repeated over and over. Quarantine. The resources of science .. . All the time Arthur knew what must be. The worst was when he saw the nurse carrying Benjy down to the ambulance. They wouldn't let him say good-by; it was better not to excite him.

Dr. Haines offered an encouraging remark. Arthur winced and said: "But even if he lives, he'll be—lame"

"By no means necessarily. In many cases there is complete recovery."

You've got to believe that, Arthur thought. As long as possible.

For the remainder of the day Mrs. Siddall and Arthur and Gina stayed together. They told one another what the doctors had said; Mrs. Siddall played solitaire; and at intervals they telephoned to the hospital. There was no new developments; Benjy was no worse. The evening passed in the same manner, till Mrs. Siddall nodded over her cards. She was flushed and spoke slowly: "We had better not wait for the Senator." Hearing herself, she started from her doze; for a moment she had fancied herself giving a dinner, in Washington, and that her husband was delayed by a debate in the Senate. On Free Silver. Why, that was forty years ago. . . . Arthur persuaded her to go and rest.

"Are you—going down again?" Gina asked Arthur. She dreaded being alone. "You must try to sleep," he said. "I can't," her eyes were dry, and she twisted her hands together. After awhile he coaxed her to try; he held her hand, and before morning they both slept.

They went to the hospital mornings and afternoons, but regulations were strict; they weren't allowed in the room with Benjy. The nurse was human and occasionally managed to let them have a glimpse through the door, when Benjy was asleep. They could see the round of his dark head on the pillow. The rest of the time they sat waiting in a separate room. Arthur thought that was an ingenious kind of hell, waiting, with only a wall between. Dr. Haines expressed increasing hope of a wholly favorable outcome; the child had not developed acute symptoms, no delirium or unconsciousness. Some weeks must elapse before the disease ran its course, but he was doing remarkably well. The nurse said Benjy had asked when he could go home. He was a good patient.

Gina broke down and cried on Arthur's shoulder. He was kind, without bitterness or desire. Presently she said: "You don't love me any more."

"Of course I love you," he said. She clung to him and he kissed her; his resolution vanished.

But he did not love her any more. He knew it most certainly after the brief oblivion of pleasure. He thought, perhaps that is of no consequence in marriage. The experience of the race has never found it to be sufficient; it will not endure. It was children made marriage permanent. The rest is habit and the occasional urgency of the blood.

On the sixth day Benjy died.

24

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misunderstanding, it was Mrs. Siddall who received the message over the telephone, instead of Arthur. She said: "What? I can't hear you ... I don't believe it!" She had heard clearly enough; but how could Benjy be dead? Though she could not continue to deny it, she would not speak of it afterward; and her silence was respected as an evidence of grief. It was, in fact, a wall built up obstinately to shore her tottering world.

In his decline, Napoleon continued to give orders for the disposition of regiments which had ceased to exist, because he regarded himself as the image of victory. Deprived of that derivative mode of being, he was nothing. He could not contemplate his own nothingness; that was a logical impossibility. The alternative was to see himself as a little sick fat man, a cuckold, a broken adventurer. His ego preferred the illusion, and strove to maintain it by the most puerile devices. This is the weakness of temporal ambition, the seed of ruin ripening in the fruit of success. The man whose achievement is measured by externals must never entertain a doubt that he commands events; else what is he? Too rudely forced to a reckoning, he may die of chagrin.

Mrs. Siddall, being unimaginative, had no specific image of herself; but she had functioned through her wealth. So great a fortune required an heir. If any part of the scheme failed, all might fail; the event she was denying actually occurred before Benjy's death. She had been able to postpone acknowledgment so far; but she was impatient of Julius Dickerson's evasions because she had already exhausted that recourse herself.

She delayed the interview for another month, and came to it at the end of her patience. Listening to him was like fumbling along a blank wall in a fog. "But, my dear Mrs. Siddall, what would have happened if—"

The wrath so long smoldering under her fears rose, bringing the blood to her head. "What did happen?" she retorted. "Can you suggest anything more that might have happened and didn't?" Julius said: "Of course we have all had losses—" "Have you?" She couldn't see that it was any recommendation of a financial adviser that he had had losses. An incidental suspicion sprang from the question. Julius said deprecatingly: "We could not foresee—" "Why couldn't you foresee?" Mrs. Siddall demanded. "If you can't foresee, what are you paid for?" She marched out, an angry old woman, more formidable in that native character than in her customary complacency of privilege. Even if it wasn't any use to speak her mind, it was a satisfaction; and it gave her the impetus to face the worst. She ordered her chauffeur to drive to her estate office.

Mr. Lützen, her manager, braced himself as he caught the tone and import of her request. The information she desired should be obtained; it would take only a few days.

"Weren't those bonds registered?" she demanded. "Yes, Mrs. Siddall, but to examine the records—" "An hour should be time enough," she said. "Meantime, please call Mr. Reynolds for me."

An hour was time enough; Mr. Lützen knew it had better be. And Sam Reynolds obeyed her summons with slightly malicious alacrity.

Mrs. Siddall had never before let Sam look over her investments to such an extent. With an effort, he refrained at first from unsolicited comment, but it was rather staggering. He admired the variety of ways in which Charlotte had been stuck. At that rate, the Siddall fortune was terribly depleted; and if you figured in the building, which wasn't even paying its upkeep—whew! Finally she handed him several memorandum slips. Julius Dickerson had taken some of the Siddall Building bonds, on their first issue, as a private investment for himself. These bonds originally registered as his purchase had been resold to her. They had gone through an intermediate ownership, but if there was no sale for the remainder of the bond issue, how had Julius found a purchaser for his lot? Obviously he had used a dummy to work them back on Mrs. Siddall, while urging her to complete the building. He had taken pains not to show the transaction directly. "Isn't that the record?" Mrs. Siddall asked.

"Absolutely," said Sam. "Is it legal?" she asked. "Perfectly legal," Sam assured her. "You authorized such purchases under your own signature. I don't think you'll catch that sanctimonious son-of-a-bitch outside the law." "But Mr. Dickerson was morally in a position of trust." "Oh, morally—I guess you must be talking about two other fellows. Fact is, the same dodge was worked on quite a few corporations, with promotion stock. After the market blew up, the insiders turned back their stock for cash, cleaned out the last nickel."

"Then there is nothing I can do?"

"I see by the papers that the King of Siam is over here on a visit. You might call him up and make a deal. He specializes in white elephants."

Mrs. Siddall swept the papers together. "Yes, I called you in," she said enigmatically.

"You said a mouthful, Charlotte," Sam agreed. "What the hell—it's rather late in the day. All your life you've had fifty million dollars, and anyone like me who hadn't was a poor sap. Julius handed you thirty million dollars' worth of soft soap, and he was a big man. You didn't get any from me and I didn't get any of the thirty millions, so I don't owe you anything on account. You don't suppose anyone is going to sympathize with a busted millionaire? All there is to being rich is holding onto your money. It gives me a hearty laugh to see Julius and his friends sawing off the limb they're sitting on. Those rotten bonds they sold—what did they care as long as they got their commission? It didn't occur to them that they weren't leaving themselves any safe place to salt down their profits. Now they're in favor of unredeemable paper currency because they think it will prevent any chance of another showdown; and it inflates their book values so they can make their ledgers balance—on paper. Damned if they don't seem determined to cut their own throats by every means that dumbness can devise. They kept passing the buck till there was no one to take it. I'd like to point out that the prime condition of owning anything is that you can lose it. You either own it or you don't. You needn't expect anyone else to wipe your nose for you. Look at Mr. Astor offering to hand over to Uncle Sam his slum properties that are running in the red—he's willing to accept long-term bonds in payment. Ain't that nice of him? Of course he expects to hang onto his good stuff. Who does he think is going to pay the bonds? And what with? Every government bond is a mortgage on whatever you've got left. These birds think they are going to save their incomes—by mortgaging their capital. It's all to be paid out of thin air. They'll find the air getting thinner and thinner. If you want to know what's happened to you, it's simply that they got you on a short circuit. It will come around to Julius in good time. And you and Julius running a Communist magazine; now that's a fancy touch. Honestly, you don't need to do that. Just let nature take her course. God help the rich, the poor can beg."