The Golden Vanity (34 page)

"Was that you?" He had touched his hat to her, and she had nodded. "But how could you keep track of me?"

"Clara Carson writes to me sometimes. When I was back, she read me one of your letters. Of course I've seen your picture too. Once I was in Caracas, and I found a New York Sunday paper in the Consul's office, with your photograph in it."

How can you manage your life, Mysie thought, when you can't possibly guess who is thinking of you in Caracas or sailing from China maybe to crash in on you in New Orleans? At a loss for a comment, she reached for a match. Leaning back, she encountered his arm and avoided it. He said: "I beg your pardon." Mysie laughed. "It was a reflex action," she said. "I was afraid of injuring your fragile arm."

"That's how you used to be," he said. "You never knew I was alive. Maybe I wasn't."

"How not?" He had at last secured her attention.

He said: "You used to look at me with those big brown eyes and never really see me. I knew I wasn't in the running."

"Why weren't you, as much as anyone?"

He hesitated before saying: "I thought you were Michael Busch's girl."

"Then why did you keep track of me?"

"Oh, I was going to make a million dollars."

"Did you?" she asked, mildly malicious. If he thought that. . . .

"No. Nor likely to, the way business has gone."

She regretted the jeer. "But aren't you married?" she asked.

"No. Clara told me about your divorce."

Mysie started. "Clara?—she broke her promise."

"So did I," he said. "I shouldn't have mentioned it."

"Did you think that would make a difference?"

"No. But I thought I'd see you once more. You have got lovely eyes."

"And are you satisfied?"

"No. I didn't expect to be. I guess nothing would have made any difference. Anyhow, I'm sailing for Rio next week, so you needn't mind."

She didn't know whether it was silly or tragic. Why must there always be one who kisses and one who turns the cheek? And why must he wander in now, when she did not want to think at all. Not of anyone. Hadn't she enough—

Apparently not. At that moment the telephone rang again. She was glad of the interruption, until she had listened a minute. It was Jake, but she thought at first he must be joking, and she couldn't see the point.

"What?" she demanded inelegantly. "Yes, I
heard
you; but what's the catch?" He said it again. Mysie exclaimed: "With
Gina?
Are you crazy or am I?"

Jake replied, taking pains with his enunciation: "The propositions are not mutually exclusive. Now listen—I've only got a minute—I'm in a pay booth, at a gas station— and she's waiting in the car." He repeated for the third time the statement which had stunned Mysie, and added: "Can I count on you?"

"You're delirious," said Mysie. "I'll be there."

"Good girl." The pay phone clicked off. Mysie clutched her hair with both hands. Jake had informed her that he was eloping, reluctantly, with Gina. They were driving down to his beach bungalow. Even if he was merely out of his head, Mysie was obliged to investigate. She looked about for her hat and coat and saw Dick Chisholm. "You'd better come along," she said. It would be a wearisome drive, and perhaps not altogether safe for a lone female.

Chisholm did not ask where to. After she had snatched up a suitcase and run downstairs and started the car, she explained that she was going out home, and had to call on a friend en route.

Gina had run off with Jake.

That was flatly incredible; but Jake had said it three times.

With luck, it was a run of an hour and a half, or two hours in heavy traffic. Fortunately, this was the slack hour, between nine and ten o'clock, and a mild October night. After crossing the bridge, she apologized to Chisholm. "I'm afraid I can't be very sociable." The one and only time she had been to Jake's place, Thea drove.

After an hour, she had to diverge from the main road, and pray for guidance, watching the signs. The flying darkness on either side of the headlight made her sleepy. She identified the last village thankfully; beyond that she must follow the beach for several miles, till she came to a dozen cottages in a row. Jake's bungalow was not directly on the beach, but a few hundred yards apart, inshore. It stood on a low hill, and there was a windswept tree by the porch, so she was reasonably certain when she saw it.

I don't believe any of this, Mysie thought. Probably I'm dreaming. ... It did not seem advisable to drive immediately to Jake's door. She said to Chisholm: "Do you mind waiting in the car? I won't be long." She hoped not.

A path led to the porch; the window was dimly alight, and a car stood parked in front. Mysie peered under the blind. Jake and Gina were there.

Jake had had a bad half hour since arriving. The key stuck in the lock; then he had to find and light an oil lamp. The interior of the cottage was damply chill. He begged Gina to rest while he kindled a fire on the hearth.

She was silent, an elegant incongruous figure, sitting on the edge of the convertible couch.

On several previous occasions his fatal facility had led him on to an undesired success, from which he could extricate himself only by ingenious lies or ignominious flight. The most awkward affair was with that girl—what was her name?—who was just out of college and theoretically an advocate of "free unions." In a fit of innocent idiocy he proposed marriage to her, to see how she would "react." She reacted with the instant precision of a steel trap. He broke off with her finally by telling her that insanity ran in his family; that his mother was insane. Later he confessed the subterfuge to his mother. No one else could so well appreciate it. She said: "There must be. Who will get you out of your scrapes when I'm gone? I don't blame Mysie for declining the job."

He had played up to Gina one step too far. When she said: "Take me away with you—now," what else could he do? Here they were. He certainly couldn't leave her stranded in his own house. To-morrow it would be even more impossible. If Mysie didn't come. . . .

Gina took in her surroundings with bleak dismay. She had little appreciation of beauty or harmony, but she had grown used to luxury. It was years since she had been inside a house so small, cold and shabby. The cheap rug was worn and needed a cleaning; there was a stain on the wallpaper where the rain had beaten in the window. The limp dotted Swiss curtains were the worst. The same kind of curtains they used to have at Grandfather Brennan's house, when she was a child. Twice a year they were taken down and washed. Those curtains were the trailing banners of defeat.

She had been so terror-stricken by Arthur's defection, by the collapse of the Siddall fortune, that she had clung to Jake blindly. In the last four years she had seen and heard of such incalculable reverses, people who had been enormously rich actually penniless, men lately in control of vast wealth broken, disgraced, under indictment; women who had been reared in affluence looking for any kind of employment. It was like an earthquake. . . . And she had no one to turn to. Certainly no other man, since she had been absolutely circumspect in her conduct. . . . Jake was a successful playwright, a rising genius.

And he had a light touch. Arthur's youthful, untaught ardor repelled her, perhaps her body protested and would not forgive the compulsion she had put upon it in the beginning.

But Jake's house too wakened unwelcome memories of her girlhood. Jake saw tears trembling on her lashes. He succumbed again and sat down beside her, coaxing her with endearments.

He thought, with a detached corner of his mind, this is getting worse and worse. He wasn't immune to the natural impulses of a man holding a beautiful woman in his arms. Her hair was fragrant, with a dry, delicate odor. A little more and he would be sunk. He'd better talk, spin out the time somehow. . . .

"Darling, don't cry; if you hate it here, shall we—" he couldn't think of an alternative; certainly not a hotel. . . .

Gina said, in a small voice: "You don't really live here?"

This was his opportunity. "I couldn't write anywhere else." He had to have isolation, simple things. "You must realize, darling, that I am poor, I have to earn my living. This is all I can afford."

She said timidly: "But your plays—"

Second plays, he explained, practically always failed. His first play had brought him next to nothing. As he had backed it himself, the production ate up his presumed profits. And he had family obligations—the upkeep of the house Aunt Susan still occupied, and various other indigent relatives. . . . Besides, he did not wish to become a popular playwright, nor to make money. "Money runs through my fingers," he said. "No matter how much I made, I'd be broke; if I haven't got it, I can't spend it. I'm better off without it." He almost convinced himself.

Gina said: "But I shall have—something." Her upbringing, on the inadequate annuity from her father's insurance, had taught her to loathe the mean economies of genteel poverty. ... Arthur had said he would do the best he could for her. If there was anything left—He hadn't said how much, but the law. . . . No, it wouldn't, if she put herself outside the law. She had only Arthur's provisional promise to count on. He mightn't keep it; lawyers would give him more prudent counsel.

"I can hardly," said Jake, with stern nobility, "live on your husband's money, after stealing his wife. How am I ever to repay your sacrifice? Darling, I've been a selfish brute; thank God it's not too late." He kissed her hands, a gesture of resignation.

For a similar attitude, Mysie had once slapped him. She then burst into laughter and exclaimed: You priceless imbecile—thus laying the foundations of a durable friendship. No hope of Gina taking it that way.

It
was
too late. She could go neither forward nor back. Self-pity flooded her; she began to cry again.

Jake had tried his whole repertory. He began over again. "Darling sweet, listen, we'll find a way; don't spoil your beautiful eyes. Do you know you've got the prettiest ears in the world too?"

The screen door clicked. Mysie's voice interrupted: "The family ears." Jake and Gina sprang to their feet; Jake was taken by surprise as completely as if he had not invoked the visitation. He had been so nearly gone. Gina backed against the wall by the mantel, rigid with anger.

"It used to be my ears," said Mysie. "We seem to have a good deal in common. Don't mind me, Gina; I'll be going right away."

"How did you get here?" Jake achieved this inanity.

"I was motoring home, and I had a message for you from Corrigan; that's what you get for not having a telephone. I looked in and was going to back away till I saw who it was. Of course you'd like to kill me, Gina; I would, in your place. But I've known Jake longer than you have. I introduced you. I feel bound to tell you; you can't depend on Jake. He doesn't mean any harm, but he's a born bachelor. You can take my word for it."

Gina said: "Do you mean that he is your lover?"

"Worse than that," Mysie said. "He was my husband once. Not for very long, of course; and not much of a husband, but the best he knew how."

"Your husband?" Gina clutched the mantel.

"Well, a justice of the peace said so. It's eleven years ago. Maybe you remember the first time you met Jake, at my apartment? He was there to talk over a divorce. We'd been married about six months before. We met in Providence. I was playing in stock, and he was trying to write a play as usual. We used to sit on the beach for hours and talk about our ambitions. When the stock company closed, Jake saw me to the train, and then he decided to see me to New York; and so on. We went straight to City Hall and got the license and were married the same day, and we took a boat to Norfolk for our honeymoon; I can't think why. Jake was seasick. Before we got back, we discovered we really didn't want to be married. We had one grand row and several good laughs. Jake hadn't told anyone but his mother. It was so silly; we just liked to talk to each other, and I guess he had a brainstorm when he saw me going away on the train from Providence. His mother asked us to think it over, but after six months she saw it was no go. So I went back West and got a divorce. I stayed with Clara Carson, and nobody in Sequitlam knew about the divorce. It wasn't in the papers, an undefended suit." Artemisia Van Buren vs. Jakobus Van Buren, both utterly unknown to fame.

That was a long speech, Mysie reflected, almost two "sides."

Gina swayed and slipped toward the floor. "Look out —catch her, Jake," Mysie exclaimed. Gina did not hear her. Everything else she had heard, but remotely, as if it were of no importance. Mysie and Jake had been divorced. ... In the middle of a sentence Mysie's voice stopped, the last words sounded loud and strange, echoing like the note of a gong; the meaning was lost in the sound. . . . This has happened before, Gina thought. . . .

She was mortally cold; Jake was lifting her to the couch; and Mysie appeared out of nothingness, holding a glass of water.

Gina protested: "Don't. . . ." Her head was heavy, and her forehead dewed with cold sweat. If they dashed water in her face she would be sick. She couldn't bear it, before Mysie and Jake. . . . She knew when this had happened before, knew what it meant, with absolute physical certainty. ... If she had .. . why, she could never have been sure whose . . . "Go away. Let me alone," she said violently.

Mysie seconded her. "Get out, Jake; I'll call you." He effaced himself with grateful alacrity. Leaving was one of the best things he did, Mysie thought. "Take it easy," she said to Gina. "You look nice anyhow, fainting." Gina certainly was not the swooning type of female, Mysie cogitated; then why did she now? Why do women faint? There was one possible sound reason. If true, it wasn't funny to Gina. One of those appalling jokes on women—

Mysie suppressed her unseemly curiosity, casting about for a way of letting Gina know this evening would remain a secret forever.

"Gina, will you promise not to mention that Jake and I were married and divorced? Especially since I'm in Jake's play—it would be a tabloid news story. We'd be utterly ridiculous."

Gina understood. "Of course I won't."