“You must miss him . . . I’m disappointed myself. I love the brat.”
“Paul and I have finally decided to get a divorce . . . in a friendly way.”
“Eveline, I’m sorry.”
“Why?”
“I dunno. . . . It does seem silly. . . . But I always liked Paul.”
“It all got just too tiresome. . . . This way it’ll be much better for him.”
There was something coolly bitter about her as she sat beside him in her a little too frizzy afternoondress. He felt as if he was meeting her for the first time. He picked up her long blueveined hand and put it on the little table in front of them and patted it. “I like you better . . . anyway.” It sounded phony in his ears, like something he’d say to a client. He jumped to his feet. “Say, Eveline, suppose I call up Settignano and get some gin around? I’ve got to have a drink. . . . I can’t get the office out of my head.”
“If you go back to the icebox you’ll find some perfectly lovely cock tails all mixed. I just made them. There are some people coming in later.” “How much later?” “About seven o’clock . . . why?” Her eyes followed him teasingly as he went back through the glass doors.
In the pantry the colored girl was putting on her hat. “Cynthia, Mrs. Johnson alleges there are cocktails out here.” “Yes, Mr. Dick, I’ll get you some glasses.” “Is this your afternoon out?” “Yessir, I’m goin’ to church.” “On Saturday afternoon?” “Yessir, our church we have services every Saturday afternoon . . . lots of folks don’t get Sunday off nowadays.” “It’s gotten so I don’t get any day off at all.” “It shoa is too bad, Mr. Dick.”
He went back into the front room shakily, carrying the tray with the shaker jiggling on it. The two glasses clinked. “Oh, Dick, I’m going to have to reform you. Your hands are shaking like an old greybeard’s.” “Well, I am an old greybeard. I’m worrying myself to death about whether that bastardly patentmedicine king will sign on the dotted line Monday.”
“Don’t talk about it. . . . It sounds just too awful. I’ve been working hard myself . . . I’m trying to put on a play.”
“Eveline, that’s swell! Who’s it by?”
“Charles Edward Holden. . . . It’s a magnificent piece of work. I’m terribly excited about it. I think I know how to do it. . . . I don’t suppose you want to put a couple of thousand dollars in, do you, Dick?”
“Eveline, I’m flat broke. . . . They’ve got my salary garnisheed and Mother has to be supported in the style to which she is accustomed and then there’s Brother Henry’s ranch in Arizona . . . he’s all balled up with a mortgage. . . . I thought Charles Edward Holden was just a columnist.”
“This is a side of him that’s never come out. . . . I think he’s the real poet of modern New York . . . you wait and see.”
Dick poured himself another cocktail. “Let’s talk about just us for a minute. . . . I feel so frazzled. . . . Oh, Eveline, you know what I mean. . . . We’ve been pretty good friends.” She let him hold her hand but she did not return the squeeze he gave it. “You know we always said we were just physically attractive to each other . . . why isn’t that the swellest thing in the world?” He moved up close to her on the couch, gave her a little kiss on the cheek, tried to twist her face around. “Don’t you like this miserable sinner a little bit?”
“Dick, I can’t.” She got to her feet. Her lips were twitching and she looked as if she was going to burst into tears. “There’s somebody I like very much . . . very, very much. I’ve decided to make some sense out of my life.”
“Who? That damn columnist?”
“Never mind who.”
Dick buried his face in his hands. When he took his hands away he was laughing. “Well, if that isn’t just my luck. . . . Just Johnny on the spot and me full of speakeasy Saturday-afternoon amorosity.”
“Well, Dick, I’m sure you won’t lack for partners.”
“I do today. . . . I feel lonely and hellish. My life is a shambles.”
“What a literary phrase.”
“I thought it was pretty good myself but honestly I feel every whichway. . . . Something funny happened to me last night. I’ll tell you about it someday when you like me better.”
“Dick, why don’t you go to Eleanor’s? She’s giving a party for all the boyars.”
“Is she really going to marry that horrid little prince?” Eveline nodded with that same cold bitter look in her eyes. “I suppose a title is the last word in the decorating business. . . . Why won’t Eleanor put up some money?” “I don’t want to ask her. She’s filthy with money, though, she’s had a very successful fall. I guess we’re all getting grasping in our old age. . . . What does poor Moorehouse think about the prince?”
“I wish I knew what he thought about anything. I’ve been working for him for years now and I don’t know whether he’s a genius or a stuffed shirt. . . . I wonder if he’s going to beat Eleanor’s. I want to get hold of him this evening for a moment. . . . That’s a very good idea. . . . Eveline, you always do me good one way or another.”
“You’d better not go without phoning. . . . She’s perfectly capable of not letting you in if you come uninvited and particularly with a houseful of émigrée Russians in tiaras.”
Dick went to the phone and called up. He had to wait a long time for Eleanor to come. Her voice sounded shrill and rasping. At first she said why didn’t he come to dinner next week instead. Dick’s voice got very coaxing. “Please let me see the famous prince, Eleanor. . . . And I’ve got something very important to ask you about. . . . After all you’ve always been my guardian angel, Eleanor. If I can’t come to you when I’m in trouble, who can I come to?” At last she loosened up and said he could come but he mustn’t stay long. “You can talk to poor J. Ward . . . he looks a little forlorn.” Her voice ended in a screechy laugh that made the receiver jangle and hurt his ear.
When he went back to the sofa Eveline was lying back against the pillows soundlessly laughing. “Dick,” she said, “you’re a master of blarney.” Dick made a face at her, kissed her on the forehead and left the house.
Eleanor’s place was glittering with chandeliers and cutglass. When she met him at the drawingroom door her small narrow face looked smooth and breakable as a piece of porcelain under her carefully-curled hair and above a big rhinestone brooch that held a lace collar together. From behind her came the boom and the high piping of Russian men’s and women’s voices and a smell of tea and charcoal. “Well, Richard, here you are,” she said in a rapid hissing whisper. “Don’t forget to kiss the grandduchess’s hand . . . she’s had such a dreadful life. You’d like to do any little thing that would please her, wouldn’t you? . . . And, Richard, I’m worried about Ward . . . he looks so terribly tired . . . I hope he isn’t beginning to break up. He’s the type you know that goes off like that. . . . You know these big shortnecked blonds.”
There was a tall silver samovar on the Buhl table in front of the marble fireplace and beside it sat a large oldish woman in a tinsel shawl with her hair in a pompadour and the powder flaking off a tired blotchy face. She was very gracious and had quite a twinkle in her eye and she was piling caviar out of a heaped cutglass bowl onto a slice of blackbread and laughing with her mouth full. Around her were grouped Russians in all stages of age and decay, some in tunics and some in cheap business suits and some frowstylooking young women and a pair of young men with slick hair and choirboy faces. They were all drinking tea or little glasses of vodka. Everybody was ladling out caviar. Dick was introduced to the prince who was an olivefaced young man with black brows and a little pointed black mustache who wore a black tunic and black soft leather boots and had a prodigiously small waist. They were all merry as crickets chirping and roaring in Russian, French and English. Eleanor sure is putting out, Dick caught himself thinking as he dug into the mass of big greygrained caviar.
J.W. looking pale and fagged was standing in the corner of the room with his back to an icon that had three candles burning in front of it
. Dick distinctly remembered having seen the icon in Eleanor’s window some weeks before, against a piece of purple brocade. J.W. was talking to an ecclesiastic in a black cassock with purple trimmings who when Dick went up to them turned out to have a rich Irish brogue. “Meet the Archimandrite O’Donnell, Dick,” said J.W. “Did I get it right?” The Archimandrite grinned and nodded. “He’s been telling me about the monasteries in Greece.” “You mean where they haul you up in a basket?” said Dick. The Archimandrite jiggled his grinning, looselipped face up and down. “I’m goin’ to have the honorr and pleasurr of introducin’ dear Eleanor into the mysteries of the true church. I was tellin’ Mr. Moorehouse the story of my conversion.” Dick found an impudent rolling eye looking him over. “Perhaps you’d be carin’ to come someday, Mr. Savage, to hear our choir. Unbelief dissolves in music like a lump of sugar in a glass of hot tay.” “Yes, I like the Russian choir,” said J.W.
“Don’t you think that our dear Eleanor looks happier and younger for it?” The Archimandrite was beaming into the crowded room. J.W. nodded doubtfully. “Och, a lovely graceful little thing she is, clever too. . . . Perhaps, Mr. Moorehouse and Mr. Savage, you’d come to the service and to lunch with me afterwards. . . . I have some ideas about a little book on my experiences at Mount Athos. . . . We could make a little parrty of it.” Dick was amazed to find the Archimandrite’s fingers pinching him in the seat and hastily moved away a step, but not before he’d caught from the Archimandrite’s left eye a slow vigorous wink.
The big room was full of clinking and toasting, and there was the occasional crash of a broken glass. A group of younger Russians were singing in deep roaring voices that made the crystal chandelier tinkle over their heads. The caviar was all gone but two uniformed maids were bringing in a table set with horsdœuvres in the middle of which was a large boiled salmon.
J.W. nudged Dick. “I think we might go someplace where we can talk.” “I was just waiting for you, J.W. I think I’ve got a new slant. I think it’ll click this time.”
They’d just managed to make their way through the crush to the door when a Russian girl in black with fine black eyes and arched brows came running after them. “Oh, you mustn’t go. Leocadia Pavlovna likes you so much. She likes it here, it is informal . . . the bohème. That is what we like about Leonora Ivanovna. She is bohème and we are bohème. We luff her.” “I’m afraid we have a business appointment,” said J.W. solemnly. The Russian girl snapped her fingers with, “Oh, business it is disgusting. . . . America would be so nice without the business.”
When they got out on the street J.W. sighed. “Poor Eleanor, I’m afraid she’s in for something. . . . Those Russians will eat her out of house and home. Do you suppose she really will marry this Prince Mingraziali? I’ve made inquiries about him. . . . He’s all that he says he is. But heavens!” “With crowns and everything,” said Dick, “the date’s all set.” “After all, Eleanor knows her own business. She’s been very successful, you know.”
J.W.’s car was at the door. The chauffeur got out with a laprobe over his arm and was just about to close the door on J.W. when Dick said, “J.W., have you a few minutes to talk about this Bingham account?” “Of course, I was forgetting,” said J.W. in a tired voice. “Come on out to supper at Great Neck. . . . I’m alone out there except for the children.” Smiling, Dick jumped in and the chauffeur closed the door of the big black towncar behind him.
It was pretty lugubrious eating in the diningroom with its painted Italian panels at the Moorehouses’ with the butler and the second-man moving around silently in the dim light and only Dick and J.W. and Miss Simpson, the children’s so very refined longfaced governess, at the long candlelit table. Afterwards when they went into J.W.’s little white den to smoke and talk about the Bingham account, Dick thanked his stars when the old butler appeared with a bottle of scotch and ice and glasses. “Where did you find that, Thompson?” asked J.W. “Been in the cellar since before the war, sir . . . those cases Mrs. Moorehouse bought in Scotland. . . . I knew Mr. Savage liked a bit of a spot.”
Dick laughed. “That’s the advantage of having a bad name,” he said.
J.W. drawled solemnly, “It’s the best to be had, I know that. . . . Do you know I never could get much out of drinking, so I gave it up, even before prohibition.”
J.W. had lit himself a cigar. Suddenly he threw it in the fire. “I don’t think I’ll smoke tonight. The doctor says three cigars a day won’t hurt me . . . but I’ve been feeling seedy all week. . . . I ought to get out of the stockmarket. . . . I hope you keep out of it, Dick.”
“My creditors don’t leave me enough to buy a ticket to a raffle with.”
J.W. took a couple of steps across the small room lined with un-scratched sets of the leading authors in morocco, and then stood with his back to the Florentine fireplace with his hands behind him. “I feel chilly all the time. I don’t think my circulation’s very good. . . . Perhaps it was going to see Gertrude. . . . The doctors have finally admitted her case is hopeless. It was a great shock to me.”
Dick got to his feet and put down his glass. “I’m sorry, J.W. . . . Still, there have been surprising cures in brain troubles.”
J.W. was standing with his lips in a thin tight line, his big jowl trembling a little. “Not in schizophrenia. . . . I’ve managed to do pretty well in everything except that. . . . I’m a lonely man,” he said. “And to think once upon a time I was planning to be a songwriter.” He smiled. Dick smiled too and held out his hand. “Shake hands, J.W.,” he said, “with the ruins of a minor poet.”
“Anyway,” said J.W., “the children will have the advantages I never had. . . . Would it bore you, before we get down to business, to go up and say goodnight to them? I’d like to have you see them.”
“Of course not, I love kids,” said Dick. “In fact I’ve never yet quite managed to grow up myself.”
At the head of the stairs Miss Simpson met them with her finger to her lips. “Little Gertrude’s asleep.” They tiptoed down the allwhite hall. The children were in bed each in a small hospitallike room cold from an open window, on each pillow was a head of pale straw-colored hair. “Staple’s the oldest . . . he’s twelve,” whispered J.W. “Then Gertrude, then Johnny.” Staple said goodnight politely. Gertrude didn’t wake up when they turned the light on. Johnny sat up in a nightmare with his bright blue eyes open wide, crying, “No, no,” in a tiny frightened voice. J.W. sat on the edge of the bed petting him for a moment until he fell asleep again. “Goodnight, Miss Simpson,” and they were tiptoeing down the stairs. “What do you think of them?” J.W. turned beaming to Dick.
“They sure are a pretty sight. . . . I envy you,” said Dick.
“I’m glad I brought you out . . . I’d have been lonely without you . . . I must entertain more,” said J.W.
They settled back into their chairs by the fire and started to go over the layout to be presented to Bingham Products. When the clock struck ten J.W. began to yawn. Dick got to his feet. “J.W., do you want my honest opinion?”
“Go ahead, boy, you know you can say anything you like to me.”
“Well, here it is.” Dick tossed off the last warm weak remnant of his scotch. “I think we can’t see the woods for the trees . . . we’re balled up in a mass of petty detail. You say the old gentleman’s pretty pigheaded . . . one of these from newsboy to president characters. . . . Well, I don’t think that this stuff really sets in high enough relief the campaign you outlined to us a month ago. . . .”
“I’m not very well satisfied with it, to tell the truth.”
“Is there a typewriter in the house?”
“I guess Thompson or Morton can scrape one up somewhere.”
“Well, I think that I might be able to bring your fundamental idea out a little more. To my mind it’s one of the biggest ideas ever presented in the business world.”
“Of course it’s the work of the whole office.”
“Let me see if I can take this to pieces and put it toget
her again over the weekend. After all there’ll be nothing lost. . . . We’ve got to blow that old gent clean out of the water or else Halsey’ll get him.”
“They’re around him every minute like a pack of wolves,” said J.W., getting up yawning. “Well, I leave it in your hands.” When he got to the door J.W. paused and turned. “Of course those Russian aristocrats are socially the top. It’s a big thing for Eleanor that way. . . . But I wish she wouldn’t do it. . . . You know, Dick, Eleanor and I have had a very beautiful relationship. . . . That little woman’s advice and sympathy have meant a great deal to me. . . . I wish she wasn’t going to do it. . . . Well, I’m go ingto bed.”
Dick went up to the big bedroom hung with English hunting-scenes. Thompson brought him up a new noiseless typewriter and the bottle of whiskey. Dick sat there working all night in his pyjamas and bathrobe smoking and drinking the whiskey. He was still at it when the windows began to get blue with day and he began to make out between the heavy curtains black lacy masses of sleetladen trees grouped round a sodden lawn. His mouth was sour from too many cigarettes. He went into the bathroom frescoed with dolphins and began to whistle as he let the hot water pour into the tub. He felt bleary and dizzy but he had a new layout.
Next day at noon when J.W. came back from church with the children Dick was dressed and shaved and walking up and down the flagged terrace in the raw air. Dick’s eyes felt hollow and his head throbbed but J.W. was delighted with the work. “Of course selfservice, independence, individualism is the word I gave the boys in the beginning. This is going to be more than a publicity campaign, it’s going to be a campaign for Americanism. . . . After lunch I’ll send the car over for Miss Williams and get her to take some dictation. There’s more meat in this yet, Dick.” “Of course,” said Dick, reddening. “All I’ve done is restore your original conception, J.W.”
At lunch the children sat up at the table and Dick had a good time with them, making them talk to him and telling them stories about the bunnies he’d raised when he was a little boy in Jersey. J.W. was beaming. After lunch Dick played ping-pong in the billiardroom in the basement with Miss Simpson and Staple and little Gertrude while Johnny picked up the balls for them. J.W. retired to his den to take a nap.
Big Money Page 48
