The Countess, making the most of my imaginary calling, directed our conversation, during coffee, into literary channels and I sometimes found myself being posed a staggering question about French poetry, for example, on which I was said by our hostess to be an expert.
I was genuinely fond of the Countess and suffered considerable remorse after I had joined in Hopestill’s laughter at her expense, just as I did when I listened, without protest, to trenchant comments on her aunt and on Philip McAllister. Nor had I any reason to suppose that I was not myself the object of that merciless judge of her peers, but on the contrary could fairly hear her say of me to Amy Brooks (as she had said of Amy Brooks to me), “She’s such a deliberate fright.” It was perhaps because of this sharp tongue that Hopestill did not get on well with other girls, like those, for instance, who came to the Countess’. She was not well liked and never had been. At school, she had broken rules, had been slovenly and disrespectful, and so lazy a student that she had failed to be graduated. At her début, one of the most lavish ever held at the Country Club (her grandfather had left twenty thousand dollars for this specific purpose), she had drunk so much champagne that she could remember no one’s name, could barely dance in time to the music, and had been insufferably rude to several older people. She was, moreover, thought something of a slacker, because she had never sacrificed any of her time to “good works” and long after all the other girls, who had come out in the same season that she had, had dedicated themselves to nursing or visiting the poor or reading to blind old women, Hopestill continued to fritter away her time with all the indolent pleasures of the débutante. It had particularly annoyed her friends that she had steadfastly refused to take any part in canvassing for the Community Chest Fund but instead had “done her bit” by contributing a large check to the drive and putting the whole thing out of her mind.
Declaring that she found me a “relief” (I would have preferred to be a little more stimulating), she included me in most of her plans over the week-ends and shortly after our first meeting she proposed that she teach me how to ride. I had hesitated, fearful of the ludicrous figure I would cut on a horse, but she had been persistent and Miss Pride had welcomed the project with enthusiasm, for, as she said, “Anyone with your constitutional aversion to exercise must be made to exercise.” And consequently we went to Concord each Saturday afternoon where I was slightly more competent than I had hoped. Philip had been as ardent a promoter of the lessons as Miss Pride to my slight resentment for I thought he regarded them as a therapeutic measure to distract me from thinking of my mother, something which I rarely did save on Sunday when I paid her my weekly visit. As a result of his interest, he arranged to have us change into our riding clothes at his grandmother’s house and to have tea there when we came back from the stables. He nearly always joined us and drove us back to town.
The young man’s gallantry was impartial even in Hopestill’s presence and while I knew by the heightening of his color as he first caught sight of her that he was in love, he was no more attentive to her than he was to me. And I, having just come back from an expedition in which my performance had been at best tolerable and in which hers had been brilliant, was more nettled than if he had ignored me entirely. It was as if, on these occasions, he looked on me as an appendage to her. Curiously enough, I was conscious of being in love with him only when Hopestill came back to Boston. So long as she was in New York, I could hear his name spoken or even see him on the street or at tea without the slightest discomfort, but the moment Hopestill stepped into the house late Friday afernoon I was ignited with jealousy, made the more obstreperous because I knew she was not in the least in love with him. Particularly excruciating to me were some evenings when, Hopestill being otherwise engaged, he was asked to take me to the Countess’ “Saturday” and while I had spent the whole afternoon in a state of tremulous anticipation, my pleasure ended as soon as he called for me. He was either too absent-minded to hear my answers to his questions or he assumed an avuncular manner, offering me the most banal and unwanted advice on how to converse with my mother. In either rôle, I sensed his dissatisfaction at not being with Hopestill.
On one clear February day, Hopestill persuaded the riding master to let us go alone. “I’ll pay you double,” she said. The man looked dubiously at me, one of his least accomplished customers, but Hopestill snapped, “What difference would it make if that wreck you foist off on my friend did break a leg? Besides, she doesn’t go in for jumping.” He reluctantly agreed and we set off. Ducking our heads, we cantered through the brushy bridle paths and then came out into the open russet fields. Hopestill ran her sorrel mare over a rise and down and out of sight; presently, far off, I saw her hair, sharp as a scream and sudden as a flame, fling up along the ridge and for a space it flew, bodiless and horseless like a burning bird. I sat on a flat rock under a wine-glass elm tree watching her, while my horse stood near-by with a languidly drooping head, as disinclined for exercise as I. This was the first time we had ridden since early in December for it had been too cold. Today there was sun and air as gentle as spring. It was like the day the year before when Miss Pride had come to take me in to Boston. There was little essential difference, I thought, between that version of myself who, shabby and with grimy fingernails, had sat bewildered in the gloomy library and this one, pranked out in costly jodhpurs, waiting in a cramped and uncomfortable position for my skillful friend to ride back. There was a gross and disquieting discrepancy between my expensive clothes and my luxurious pastime and my little brother’s unmarked grave.
As I thought of Ivan, there returned to me the mood that had followed immediately on his death. It was a recollection, rather than a memory, a poetic farsight, a distillation of a feeling which was not watered down by physical details but was the dense experience of comprehending death. I did not envisage myself standing beside his cot nor did I, as I usually did when I thought of the scene, redeem the odor of the benzoin. It can be said that memory is a sort of entrepôt serving the busy traffic of the unreflective mind, and that its stores, behind an unlocked door, may be rummaged through and plundered at any time; thus I had found the footsteps of the old ladies walking in the sand at Chichester to match the lameness of Philip’s grandmother in Miss Pride’s drawing-room, and thus, also, confused by the music and by the stranger in the Countess’ lobby, had brushed off the dust from a forgotten incident and by a misapplication of the styles of sensation, compared the music to the sunlight of that past day, and remembered Regenpfeifer because I had been addressed in German. But recollection, on the other hand, is in more formal custody, can be seen only at certain hours and those being far apart, the time of day or month or season being rarely, or not at all, repeated. Thus we say of people who were once in love that they cannot “recapture” their joy and the words “I was in love with that person” are an historical statement which may be attended by illustrations: a café visited by the lovers when they were in love, a railway carriage where they sat with arms entwined, a shop where they met one day by chance. So also, when one says, “I was ill at that time,” memory shows him the mercury of the thermometer at 104 degrees, but neither the rapture nor the fever is revived. The essential has been extirpated, whereas it is the essential and only the essential that recollection values. Severe in its gleanings, it seeks to preserve our continuity: the old man recollects though his memory, we say, has failed.
With useless greed I tried to detain this temporary wisdom, this growing pain even when I heard the rush of Hopestill’s horse’s feet returning. But the sense of death was instantly annihilated by the sound. At the same time, the power that had generated the intense and total knowledge had not been all used up, and being unable, because the thing was finished, to repeat the process that had transported me to the past, I directed the residue towards an envious hatred of the girl who had now ridden into sight. It had occurred to me that if I were not obliged each week to compare myself to her, to my disadvantage in every particul
ar, I would be appreciably more urbane than the chambermaid from the Barstow who had not known what to say when she was asked if she were an Anglophile. I could tell myself that Hopestill and I belonged to different species and should not, therefore, be judged by the same standards. But this was cold comfort. As she dismounted, I indulged myself in a feast of torment, taking in her green suède waistcoat under a silvery gabardine jacket, her slender legs in black breeches, her eloquent hair disordered by her ride to its benefit. I hated her the more for her good manners when she said, “I don’t blame you for not coming. That bag of bones would drop dead of the shock if you made him run,” because she perfectly well knew that I was afraid. We sat in silence for a few minutes. Hopestill lighted a cigarette and meditated the smoke.
“Are you going to Berthe’s tonight?”
“Yes. Are you?”
She shook her head. “I’m going dancing.”
I did not look forward to the evening. At the bottom of the Countess’ invitation, a square of mellow vellum headed by a coat of arms instead of an address, the calligraphy of which was so elegant that the only decipherable symbols were the date and the hour (one could not possibly tell whether the guest of honor was to be a Belgian brain surgeon, an Italian poet, a Danish architect, or a Canadian bishop), she had written—this in a legible hand—“Nicholas Doman, charming, from Budapest, will call for you.” I was tired of the young foreigners she “dug up” for me. Their difficulty with the language discouraged and then annoyed me as did the Weltschmerz that was a property common to all their eyes. Or, if they could speak well, I was irritated by another quality in them, one which I could not properly define: it was a staleness or a frustrated sensuality or a womanly tenderness, or perhaps all three that sounded in their voices, as if they were visiting an invalid surrounded by flowers that had withered but had not yet lost their fragrance. In the cushiony cocktail lounge of the Lincolnshire, over the yellow, arid popcorn and the dubonnet, rich, beautiful Gerhardt Preis, whom I had met by chance in the Public Gardens, confided one afternoon in me that his ambitions were to live forever as a celibate (because he could not have Berthe von Happel) in a hotel in Paris and to write a book (he would give up music, inseparable from her) which would be the modern counter-part of Amiel’s Journal. From his homeless, continental Jewish face emanated the odor of pomade. In the vestibule of Miss Pride’s house, he kissed my hand and then withdrew into the dusk, stealing on his suave feet past Louisburg Square under the spiritless rain that had begun to fall. I was certain that Nicholas Doman from Budapest would not be as charming as the Countess testified. He would very likely be addicted, as most of her hangers-on were, to telling anecdotes in French.
I told Hopestill my dilemma. “Oh, well,” she said, “you won’t have to be stuck with him the whole evening. That’s the beautiful thing about Berthe’s parties, you can take your pick after dinner. Anyhow Philip will be there.”
“Will he? After dinner you mean?” I said.
“Yes. Why, Sonie, you’re blushing!”
I was not blushing. I had been too taken up with a plan to escape the Hungarian to care whether Philip came, but her accusation immediately elevated the temperature of my skin and my eyes began to smart.
“If you say so, I suppose I am,” I said.
She laughed. “Why don’t you skip dinner and go afterwards with him and avoid the Hungarian altogether?”
“I couldn’t do that. But I’m very glad he’s coming. At least he speaks English.”
“And he’s very fond of you, too.” It was a serious statement and I could detect no ridicule in her voice. She put out her cigarette on the trunk of the tree. “You know, somebody like you would be good for Philip McAllister. He’s a monkish bloke.”
“Well, I’m not,” I replied testily.
“Of course you are. If you weren’t, would you have chosen to be buried alive in my Aunt Lucy’s house?” And after a moment, as if to herself, “Jesus Christ! How you could do it I shall never know!”
“I’m satisfied,” I told her.
“Oh, I know. And so is my aunt. Poor creature, she deserves someone like you after me. Have you noticed, by the way, how much we would like to murder each other these days?”
I had, indeed, noticed that the girl and her aunt had found it difficult to be anything more than civil. Arguments arose at the dinner table over such trifling matters as the advisability of giving the Countess a set of artichoke plates for her birthday which Miss Pride thought would be welcome, or an onyx deer that had caught Hopestill’s eye. Or they railed at each other over the season of some cousin’s marriage or another’s début. Or Hopestill would contend that her aunt’s salad dressing was unpalatable because it was made with lemon instead of wine vinegar. Often I was called upon to settle a dispute. Invariably I agreed with Miss Pride out of cowardice, and while she readily used me as a court of appeal, she sometimes forgot, in her periodic scoldings, that I had settled an argument which otherwise might have gone on indefinitely, and she told me that she was by no means flattered at my constant agreement with her opinions. “I am an old woman,” she said once, “and it has taken me many years to develop my prejudices and my affinities. It is nothing short of impertinence in you to adopt them without doing any of the work.” Now on the other hand, Hopestill frequently expressed her gratitude: “If you hadn’t settled on the artichoke plates, we would have gone on quibbling for weeks.”
“We’ve disliked each other more since you came,” continued Hopestill. “But I suppose that’s reasonable. Do you know what is making my aunt’s blood boil now? She’s afraid Philip is interested in you and she’s perfectly wild that I’m not doing anything about it.”
“Oh, drop it,” I cried and got to my feet.
“As you say,” she agreed, shrugging her shoulders. But she was not content to remain silent long and when we had got back to the bridle path, she said, “Really, I was quite serious when I said some one like you would be good for McAllister.” Her use of his surname unaccountably put me at my ease and I asked her why. “Well, I’m sure I don’t know if you’re religious in the least, but you have a nice sort of tranquillity about you that might turn into piety. Philip’s bound to get religion sooner or later and I’d be the worst kind of wet blanket. I’m like Aunt Lucy: I think of God as a great big man.”
I laughed aloud for what she said was so absurdly precise. It was quite true that Miss Pride thought of God as a big man who had, in misty times, drawn up the Ten Commandments, and about Whom it was in bad taste as well as half sacrilegious to talk. She had towards Him the same attitude as she had towards the figures of literature, save those who had died in her lifetime. They wore the same antediluvian halo which, if seen in the cold light of Boston, would have struck one as pretentious. And so, although it was fitting for one to have an acquaintance with God and with Milton, it was not proper to display more than the merest courtesy towards them. It was acceptable to discuss a literary person (or a religious one) to whose name could be affixed the title “Mr.” Thus, Miss Pride spoke of “Mr. James” whom she had met several times and of “Mr. Emerson” and “Mr. Lowell” (she had caught a glimpse of these latter two when she was seven years old); but as no one knew anything about “Mr. Dryden” or “Mr. Goldsmith” it was best not to speak too cordially of them. God was no more adaptable. With no intention of disparaging her, I presented this observation to Hopestill and she agreed with an amiable laugh.
“Yes, God and Shakespeare frighten her half to death. I think that’s why she’s so bent on making you out a literary person. She can’t ignore literature but wants it homemade and by someone she can eat dinner with. She tried very hard once to know Amy Lowell, but she never succeeded.”
My disappointment at this statement was less than my surprise, for I had conceived Boston society as so closely knit that it was as strange that two members of it were not acquainted as it would have been if La Grande Mademoiselle had
not known Madame de Maintenon.
By the time we had reached the elder Mrs. McAllister’s house, I had recovered from my choleric attack and could look on Hopestill with equanamity. Fortified also with the knowledge that I could not possibly fare too ill at the Countess’ that evening since Philip would be there by himself, I was almost buoyant.
Boston Adventure Page 39
