Twilight Sleep (2 page)

All this Nona rejoiced in; but she ached at times with the
loneliness of the perfect establishment, now that Jim, its one
disturbing element, had left. Jim guessed her loneliness, she was
sure: it was he who encouraged the growing intimacy between his
wife and his half–sister, and tried to make the latter feel that
his house was another home to her.

Lita had always been amiably disposed toward Nona. The two, though
so fundamentally different, were nearly of an age, and united by
the prevailing passion for every form of sport. Lita, in spite of
her soft curled–up attitudes, was not only a tireless dancer but a
brilliant if uncertain tennis–player, and an adventurous rider to
hounds. Between her hours of lolling, and smoking amber–scented
cigarettes, every moment of her life was crammed with dancing,
riding or games. During the two or three months before the baby's
birth, when Lita had been reduced to partial inactivity, Nona had
rather feared that her perpetual craving for new "thrills" might
lead to some insidious form of time–killing—some of the drinking
or drugging that went on among the young women of their set; but
Lita had sunk into a state of smiling animal patience, as if the
mysterious work going on in her tender young body had a sacred
significance for her, and it was enough to lie still and let it
happen. All she asked was that nothing should "hurt" her: she had
the blind dread of physical pain common also to most of the young
women of her set. But all that was so easily managed nowadays:
Mrs. Manford (who took charge of the business, Lita being an
orphan) of course knew the most perfect "Twilight Sleep"
establishment in the country, installed Lita in its most luxurious
suite, and filled her rooms with spring flowers, hot–house fruits,
new novels and all the latest picture–papers—and Lita drifted into
motherhood as lightly and unperceivingly as if the wax doll which
suddenly appeared in the cradle at her bedside had been brought
there in one of the big bunches of hot–house roses that she found
every morning on her pillow.

"Of course there ought to be no Pain … nothing but Beauty…
It ought to be one of the loveliest, most poetic things in the
world to have a baby," Mrs. Manford declared, in that bright
efficient voice which made loveliness and poetry sound like the
attributes of an advanced industrialism, and babies something to be
turned out in series like Fords. And Jim's joy in his son had been
unbounded; and Lita really hadn't minded in the least.

The Marchesa was something which happened at irregular but
inevitable moments in Mrs. Manford's life.

Most people would have regarded the Marchesa as a disturbance; some
as a distinct inconvenience; the pessimistic as a misfortune. It
was a matter of conscious pride to Mrs. Manford that, while
recognizing these elements in the case, she had always contrived to
make out of it something not only showy but even enviable.

For, after all, if your husband (even an ex–husband) has a first
cousin called Amalasuntha degli Duchi di Lucera, who has married
the Marchese Venturino di San Fedele, of one of the great
Neapolitan families, it seems stupid and wasteful not to make some
use of such a conjunction of names and situations, and to remember
only (as the Wyants did) that when Amalasuntha came to New York it
was always to get money, or to get her dreadful son out of a new
scrape, or to consult the family lawyers as to some new way of
guarding the remains of her fortune against Venturino's systematic
depredations.

Mrs. Manford knew in advance the hopelessness of these quests—all
of them, that is, except that which consisted in borrowing money
from herself. She always lent Amalasuntha two or three thousand
dollars (and put it down to the profit–and–loss column of her
carefully–kept private accounts); she even gave the Marchesa her
own last year's clothes, cleverly retouched; and in return she
expected Amalasuntha to shed on the Manford entertainments that
exotic lustre which the near relative of a Duke who is also a
grandee of Spain and a great dignitary of the Papal Court trails
with her through the dustiest by–ways, even if her mother has been
a mere Mary Wyant of Albany.

Mrs. Manford had been successful. The Marchesa, without taking
thought, fell naturally into the part assigned to her. In her
stormy and uncertain life, New York, where her rich relations
lived, and from which she always came back with a few thousand
dollars, and clothes that could be made to last a year, and good
advice about putting the screws on Venturino, was like a foretaste
of heaven. "Live there? Carina, NO! It is too—too uneventful.
As heaven must be. But everybody is celestially kind … and
Venturino has learnt that there are certain things my American
relations will not tolerate…" Such was Amalasuntha's version
of her visits to New York, when she recounted them in the drawing–
rooms of Rome, Naples or St. Moritz; whereas in New York, quite
carelessly and unthinkingly—for no one was simpler at heart than
Amalasuntha—she pronounced names, and raised suggestions, which
cast a romantic glow of unreality over a world bounded by Wall
Street on the south and Long Island in most other directions; and
in this glow Pauline Manford was always eager to sun her other
guests.

"My husband's cousin" (become, since the divorce from Wyant "my
son's cousin") was still, after twenty–seven years, a useful social
card. The Marchesa di San Fedele, now a woman of fifty, was still,
in Pauline's set, a pretext for dinners, a means of paying off
social scores, a small but steady luminary in the uncertain New
York heavens. Pauline could never see her rather forlorn wisp of a
figure, always clothed in careless unnoticeable black (even when
she wore Mrs. Manford's old dresses), without a vision of echoing
Roman staircases, of the torchlit arrival of Cardinals at the
Lucera receptions, of a great fresco–like background of Popes,
princes, dilapidated palaces, cypress–guarded villas, scandals,
tragedies, and interminable feuds about inheritances.

"It's all so dreadful—the wicked lives those great Roman families
lead. After all, poor Amalasuntha has good American blood in her—
her mother was a Wyant; yes—Mary Wyant married Prince Ottaviano di
Lago Negro, the Duke of Lucera's son, who used to be at the Italian
Legation in Washington; but what is Amalasuntha to do, in a country
where there's no divorce, and a woman just has to put up with
EVERYTHING? The Pope has been most kind; he sides entirely with
Amalasuntha. But Venturino's people are very powerful too—a great
Neapolitan family—yes, Cardinal Ravello is Venturino's uncle …
so that altogether it's been dreadful for Amalasuntha … and
such an oasis to her, coming back to her own people…"

Pauline Manford was quite sincere in believing that it was dreadful
for Amalasuntha. Pauline herself could conceive of nothing more
shocking than a social organization which did not recognize
divorce, and let all kinds of domestic evils fester undisturbed,
instead of having people's lives disinfected and whitewashed at
regular intervals, like the cellar. But while Mrs. Manford thought
all this—in fact, in the very act of thinking it—she remembered
that Cardinal Ravello, Venturino's uncle, had been mentioned as one
of the probable delegates to the Roman Catholic Congress which was
to meet at Baltimore that winter, and wondered whether an evening
party for his Eminence could not be organized with Amalasuntha's
help; even got as far as considering the effect of torch–bearing
footmen (in silk stockings) lining the Manford staircase—which was
of marble, thank goodness!—and of Dexter Manford and Jim receiving
the Prince of the Church on the doorstep, and walking upstairs
backward carrying silver candelabra; though Pauline wasn't sure she
could persuade them to go as far as that.

Pauline felt no more inconsistency in this double train of thought
than she did in shuddering at the crimes of the Roman Church and
longing to receive one of its dignitaries with all the proper
ceremonial. She was used to such rapid adjustments, and proud of
the fact that whole categories of contradictory opinions lay down
together in her mind as peacefully as the Happy Families exhibited
by strolling circuses. And of course, if the Cardinal DID come to
her house, she would show her American independence by inviting
also the Bishop of New York—her own Episcopal Bishop—and possibly
the Chief Rabbi (also a friend of hers), and certainly that
wonderful much–slandered "Mahatma" in whom she still so thoroughly
believed…

But the word pulled her up short. Yes; certainly she believed in
the "Mahatma." She had every reason to. Standing before the tall
threefold mirror in her dressing–room, she glanced into the huge
bathroom beyond—which looked like a biological laboratory, with
its white tiles, polished pipes, weighing machines, mysterious
appliances for douches, gymnastics and "physical culture"—and
recalled with gratitude that it was certainly those eurythmic
exercises of the Mahatma's ("holy ecstasy," he called them) which
had reduced her hips after everything else had failed. And this
gratitude for the reduction of her hips was exactly on the same
plane, in her neat card–catalogued mind, with her enthusiastic
faith in his wonderful mystical teachings about Self–Annihilation,
Anterior Existence and Astral Affinities … all so
incomprehensible and so pure… Yes; she would certainly ask the
Mahatma. It would do the Cardinal good to have a talk with him.
She could almost hear his Eminence saying, in a voice shaken by
emotion: "Mrs. Manford, I want to thank you for making me know
that Wonderful Man. If it hadn't been for you—"

Ah, she did like people who said to her: "If it hadn't been for
you—!"

The telephone on her dressing–table rang. Miss Bruss had switched
on from the boudoir. Mrs. Manford, as she unhooked the receiver,
cast a nervous glance at the clock. She was already seven minutes
late for her Marcel–waving, and—

Ah: it was Dexter's voice! Automatically she composed her face to
a wifely smile, and her voice to a corresponding intonation. "Yes?
Pauline, dear. Oh—about dinner tonight? Why, you know,
Amalasuntha… You say you're going to the theatre with Jim and
Lita? But, Dexter, you can't! They're dining here—Jim and Lita
are. But OF COURSE… Yes, it must have been a mistake; Lita's
so flighty… I know…" (The smile grew a little pinched;
the voice echoed it. Then, patiently): "Yes; what else? …
OH…oh, Dexter…what do you mean? … The Mahatma?
WHAT? I don't understand!"

But she did. She was conscious of turning white under her discreet
cosmetics. Somewhere in the depths of her there had lurked for the
last weeks an unexpressed fear of this very thing: a fear that the
people who were opposed to the teaching of the Hindu sage—New
York's great "spiritual uplift" of the last two years—were gaining
power and beginning to be a menace. And here was Dexter Manford
actually saying something about having been asked to conduct an
investigation into the state of things at the Mahatma's "School of
Oriental Thought," in which all sorts of unpleasantness might be
involved. Of course Dexter never said much about professional
matters on the telephone; he did not, to his wife's thinking, say
enough about them when he got home. But what little she now
gathered made her feel positively ill.

"Oh, Dexter, but I must see you about this! At once! You couldn't
come back to lunch, I suppose? Not possibly? No—this evening
there'll be no chance. Why, the dinner for Amalasuntha—oh, please
don't forget it AGAIN!"

With one hand on the receiver, she reached with the other for her
engagement–list (the duplicate of Miss Bruss's), and ran a nervous
unseeing eye over it. A scandal—another scandal! It mustn't be.
She loathed scandals. And besides, she did believe in the Mahatma.
He had "vision." From the moment when she had picked up that word
in a magazine article she had felt she had a complete answer about
him…

"But I must see you before this evening, Dexter. Wait! I'm
looking over my engagements." She came to "4 p.m. See A. 4.30
Musical—Torfried Lobb." No; she couldn't give up Torfried Lobb:
she was one of the fifty or sixty ladies who had "discovered" him
the previous winter, and she knew he counted on her presence at his
recital. Well, then—for once "A" must be sacrificed.

"Listen, Dexter; if I were to come to the office at 4? Yes; sharp.
Is that right? And don't do anything till I see you—promise!"

She hung up with a sigh of relief. She would try to readjust
things so as to see "A" the next day; though readjusting her list
in the height of the season was as exhausting as a major operation.

In her momentary irritation she was almost inclined to feel as if
it were Arthur's fault for figuring on that day's list, and thus
unsettling all her arrangements. Poor Arthur—from the first he
had been one of her failures. She had a little cemetery of them—a
very small one—planted over with quick–growing things, so that you
might have walked all through her life and not noticed there were
any graves in it. To the inexperienced Pauline of thirty years
ago, fresh from the factory–smoke of Exploit, Arthur Wyant had
symbolized the tempting contrast between a city absorbed in making
money and a society bent on enjoying it. Such a brilliant figure—
and nothing to show for it! She didn't know exactly what she had
expected, her own ideal of manly achievement being at that time
solely based on the power of getting rich faster than your
neighbours—which Arthur would certainly never do. His father–in–
law at Exploit had seen at a glance that it was no use taking him
into the motor–business, and had remarked philosophically to
Pauline: "Better just regard him as a piece of jewellery: I guess
we can afford it."

But jewellery must at least be brilliant; and Arthur had somehow—
faded. At one time she had hoped he might play a part in state
politics—with Washington and its enticing diplomatic society at
the end of the vista—but he shrugged that away as contemptuously
as what he called "trade." At Cedarledge he farmed a little,
fussed over the accounts, and muddled away her money till she
replaced him by a trained superintendent; and in town he spent
hours playing bridge at his club, took an intermittent interest in
racing, and went and sat every afternoon with his mother, old Mrs.
Wyant, in the dreary house near Stuyvesant Square which had never
been "done over," and was still lit by Carcel lamps.

An obstacle and a disappointment; that was what he had always been.
Still, she would have borne with his inadequacy, his resultless
planning, dreaming and dawdling, even his growing tendency to
drink, as the wives of her generation were taught to bear with such
failings, had it not been for the discovery that he was also
"immoral." Immorality no high–minded woman could condone; and
when, on her return from a rest–cure in California, she found that
he had drifted into a furtive love affair with the dependent cousin
who lived with his mother, every law of self–respect known to
Pauline decreed his repudiation. Old Mrs. Wyant, horror–struck,
banished the cousin and pleaded for her son: Pauline was adamant.
She addressed herself to the rising divorce–lawyer, Dexter Manford,
and in his capable hands the affair was settled rapidly,
discreetly, without scandal, wrangling or recrimination. Wyant
withdrew to his mother's house, and Pauline went to Europe, a free
woman.

In the early days of the new century divorce had not become a
social institution in New York, and the blow to Wyant's pride was
deeper than Pauline had foreseen. He lived in complete retirement
at his mother's, saw his boy at the dates prescribed by the court,
and sank into a sort of premature old age which contrasted
painfully—even to Pauline herself—with her own recovered youth
and elasticity. The contrast caused her a retrospective pang, and
gradually, after her second marriage, and old Mrs. Wyant's death,
she came to regard poor Arthur not as a grievance but as a
responsibility. She prided herself on never neglecting her
responsibilities, and therefore felt a not unnatural vexation with
Arthur for having figured among her engagements that day, and thus
obliged her to postpone him.

Moving back to the dressing–table she caught her reflection in the
tall triple glass. Again those fine wrinkles about lids and lips,
those vertical lines between the eyes! She would not permit it;
no, not for a moment. She commanded herself: "Now, Pauline, STOP
WORRYING. You know perfectly well there's no such thing as worry;
it's only dyspepsia or want of exercise, and everything's really
all right—" in the insincere tone of a mother soothing a bruised
baby.