Libby came to see him at intervals. She had never really known what to say to a truly sick person, believing she had been a poor nurse for her own father. Libby had a terrible, secret fear that she had made matters worse. She carried that worry into the present. Once, as she sat beside her uncle, he slept so quietly that she thought he had died on her watch, and she felt a terror and an excitement that were equally unacceptable to her sense of herself. If anything could have damaged Libby’s own high regard for herself, it would have been at moments like this, when she viewed herself and her weaknesses all too clearly.
Her uncle’s gaze was always gentle, yet she felt him watching her keenly—looking for signs of she didn’t know quite what. He had dark-brown eyes, and they were clever and kind, studying her. She brought in trays of tea and biscuits, and issues of LIFE and Look magazine, and she amused him with some of the women’s magazines she liked best—McCall’s, Woman’s Own. The articles, which she studied in secret with a certain degree of interest, made him roar with laughter.
“And is a wife always supposed to greet her husband with a smile at the door?” he asked incredulously. “Is that how they do it these days? What if the pipes break? What if there’s been an earthquake—still ‘with her lipstick and heels on, and a welcoming smile?’ Apparently no one told my wife any of that,” he mused. “I knew we were doing something wrong.” He put one thin hand on the magazine, which forced Libby to look up again, to meet those bright eyes of his. “Forgive me if I’m nosy.” He cleared his throat. “I heard you turned Lord Warburton down. Is it because you were afraid you wouldn’t always be grinning at him?”
“I was afraid we wouldn’t suit. Do you think I did wrong, Uncle?” she asked.
He had shut his eyes and he was smiling, patting the magazine page as if it were her hand. “No,” he said. “No . . . I think you did just right.”
Libby provided her best service for her uncle without ever recognizing she was doing it. She gave him something to consider. She gave him something like hope, almost amounting to a plan. But none of this would he have ever discussed with her directly. Instead he talked to his son, Lazarus, about it, close to the end.
The old man was having a good week, though he felt an increasing tiredness, like someone sinking toward sleep. He had not had the energy even to sit upright. He simply lay on his back and drifted. It was not an altogether unpleasant sensation—neither was it altogether pleasant. Dying, he thought, might be just a matter of exhaustion in the end.
When he mentioned this to his son, Lazarus said, “Oh, we’ll have you sitting up again soon.”
“Not unless you intend to bury me upright, like one of the Pharaohs,” said his father.
“Oh no,” argued Lazarus. “You’ll soon be well again.”
“It’s not so bad,” said his father, touching his son’s long, thin arm where it lay near him on the bed. “But we have never lied to each other. Why should we do so now, at the end? I’d like to talk to you about what’s really on my mind.”
“Won’t it tire you?” asked Lazarus.
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll soon have all the rest I need.” The old man moved his head on the pillow to see his son better. “I want to talk about you.”
Lazarus shuffled his pack of cards. He poured them from one hand to the other. “Can’t we pick a brighter topic?”
“I’ve always been proud of how bright you are,” said Mr. Sachs. “I wanted so much to see you truly happy. Happy and in your own element. I don’t mind anything, really, except leaving you without first seeing that.”
“If you leave, I won’t do anything but miss you,” said Lazarus.
“That’s what I’m afraid of. That’s what I want to talk about.” He moved his eyes to a crystal water glass with a straw sticking out of it, and Lazarus, understanding at once, brought it to his father’s lips and held it while his father drank. His father nodded and released the straw when he was done. “You will need something new.”
“You mean like a hobby? I have many.” Lazarus shuffled the cards again, to demonstrate.
“No. I have been a placeholder for you too long. I mean something real. . . . What about marriage?”
“What about it?”
Mr. Sachs barely smiled. “What about . . . your cousin Libby? She’s no blood relation, you know.”
“What about her?” Lazarus held his face very still.
“You’ll be very well off,” said the father. “You’ll be a wealthy man.”
“We talked about money a year ago,” said Lazarus. “You know I don’t want much. There are far better causes than mine.”
Then the old man did smile, thinly. “Yes, I remember. We’ve made some charities happy. And I’ve left your mother the portion a good wife should get—just as if she’d actually been a good wife. But you’ll still have more than enough for one—plenty for two.”
“That’s more than ample then. I’m only one.”
“It’s not good to live alone. I’ve been alone too much, and I am married. I don’t want you to think that it’s always like this, a marriage. I’ve probably failed you there. Setting a poor example all these years.”
“You have in no way failed me,” said Lazarus.
“What do you think of your cousin?”
“Do you mean . . . as a person?”
Mr. Sachs raised one hand and let it drop back down onto the bed. “I mean as a wife.”
Lazarus scooted his own chair in closer. “Dearest Daddy.” He was silent a minute, struggling for what tone to take. “Are you proposing that I should buy Libby as a bride? I don’t think she’s for sale.”
“Are you in love with her?”
Lazarus did not answer. He kept his head down, studying the floor.
“She’s very fond of you, you know,” the old man went on. His voice sounded querulous, as if he’d been having an ongoing argument with himself over this. “She turned down Lord Warburton. I think that’s a good sign.”
“It may be a sign that she doesn’t wish to marry Lord Warburton. It may mean she doesn’t want to marry anyone at all. She turned down some suitor from America as well. Someone she’s known a long time. An industrialist.”
“Even better,” said the father. “It means the field is still open.”
“Not to me!” Lazarus exclaimed. He tried to control his voice. “For me, the field is never open. I can’t think of it. I can’t allow myself to think of it.”
“Are you in love with her?” the father asked again.
“What difference does it make?” asked Lazarus. “What good could come of it even if I were? I have nothing to offer a woman, Daddy . . . an early widowhood. A brief life with an invalid, and then a long period of mourning. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy, much less someone I care about.” He kept his head down, staring at his feet rather than meeting his father’s bright eyes. “Please don’t. It’s not like you to push me where my mind can’t bear to go. I swallow it, that’s all; I learned to swallow it long ago. I closed the door on all that. . . . But if you would really like to help my cousin, I have an idea. Will you listen to it, at least?”
The father folded his hands over the coverlet, as he had once folded them at business meetings when he needed to pay close attention. “I am listening,” he said cautiously.
“I would like to put a little wind in her sails.”
“What do you mean?” asked Mr. Sachs. “Exactly?”
“I’d like to give her more choices than women generally have open to them. More freedom. Libby wants to learn. She wants to see the world. I’d like her to have the money to do all that.”
“You’re a good boy,” said Mr. Sachs. “I’m glad you thought of her. But I thought of it too. I’ve left her five thousand pounds.”
“That’s very generous, Daddy. But I’d like to do . . . a bit more. Quite a bit more. I’d like to kick the door open wide.”
Something in his son’s tone struck the old man, as it had sometimes at a bargaining table wh
en negotiations turned unexpectedly difficult. Mr. Sachs kept a neutral voice now, as he always had then. “Go on,” he said, refolding his hands.
“Libby is poor,” said Lazarus. “She doesn’t realize how poor. Mother made her show some bank papers and things. Her father spent nearly everything and died in debt. I don’t want her to have to become a clerk in a store—or something else equally unsuitable. We’ve seen she wouldn’t make much of a nurse.”
Both men smiled.
“And I don’t want her to have to marry in order to survive. I don’t want her to struggle in that way. I’d like to make her rich.”
“So you do love her!” exclaimed Mr. Sachs.
Lazarus looked pained. “Daddy, please.”
“What do you mean by rich?”
“I’d say someone is rich when they can do as they like. Broadly speaking. When they can live, not just by filling a need but by feeding their imagination. Libby has a great deal of imagination.”
“So do you, apparently,” said the father. He had begun to feel almost dizzy. He wondered if he might be dreaming the whole conversation. But no, his son was still sitting there, very close, a hungry expression on his face.
“Think of it as an interest I will have when—when—”
“But people are not hobbies,” said the father. “Have you thought this out? Aren’t you afraid you might be putting Libby in harm’s way? If I give her . . .” he hesitated.
“Half. I would like her to have half of my share.”
The old man shook his head. He allowed himself to look and feel pained, just a moment. “Half will be more than two hundred thousand pounds. That’s as much as some Astors and Rockefellers make.”
“Libby is worth any number of Astors and Rockefellers,” Lazarus declared.
“It’s enough to get the attention of some scoundrel. There are people in this world as determined to be bad as others are to be good. Right now her poverty protects her, in a manner of speaking.”
“It also limits her. Her choices are frighteningly narrow.”
“But the risks for a young heiress are frighteningly real. And she wasn’t raised to be wary of them. I half think she wasn’t raised at all. She’s like one of those wild children raised by wolves. She could fall prey to any number of ugly schemes.”
Lazarus crossed his legs and rested his long hands on top of his knees. “That is a risk I am prepared to take,” he said.
Mr. Sachs closed his eyes. “You frighten me when you say that.”
“Why?” When Mr. Sachs didn’t answer, the young man leaned forward and spoke gently. “Why, Father?”
Mr. Sachs kept his eyes closed. It was clear that this conversation had tired him out very much; it was drawing to an end, as it must. “Because it isn’t your risk to take. . . . I wonder what my sister would want me to do, if she were alive.”
“You told me your sister cherished her freedom,” argued Lazarus.
“Yes, and look where it got her. A bad marriage. Dead at an early age . . .”
“Would she have sacrificed her freedom to choose?” asked Lazarus.
“You are too clever,” said Mr. Sachs. “You could always out-argue me. You would have made a fine lawyer. A politician. So many possibilities.” He held out one trembling hand, and Lazarus took it and brought it up to his cheek. Both men would have been horrified had anyone witnessed this display of emotion. But they were alone together, as they had very often been. “I could leave you all the money and let you divide it with her.”
“Daddy,” said Lazarus. “Be sensible. I can’t give Libby my own money. Think how it would look.”
“It’s yours in any event,” said Mr. Sachs.
“But she won’t know that. She mustn’t ever find out.”
“She may guess it.” He shrugged. “As you wish,” said Mr. Sachs. “I’ll call my lawyer, Smallman. I should probably call in a psychiatrist instead. This is the second time you’ve had me revise the will to cheat yourself. Are you very sure about all this?”
“As sure as I’ve ever been of anything.”
The old man smiled at his son’s eager expression. “That’s something, at least. That degree of certainty.”
Lazarus kissed his father’s hand. “Thank you,” he said simply.
“You know . . . you yourself may not always be around to protect her. From the chances, as you say. And the consequences.”
“All the more reason,” said Lazarus. “To do our best for her while we can.”
Over the next few days, Libby and Clara Merle were thrown much into each other’s company. Their affection and friendship increased. Mrs. Sachs was busy consulting with doctors who came in an endless stream to Gardencourt. None of them had anything hopeful to offer. The house was so quiet you could hear the ticking of its clocks, like so many heartbeats. Lazarus stayed away from the two women entirely.
“My poor cousin,” said Libby. “He must be beside himself.”
“He would avoid me in any case,” said Madame Merle. “He doesn’t care for my company.”
“Then he must not know you. Not well.”
Clara’s smile quirked up to the right side in the odd, lopsided way it had. In a strange way, her smile aged her, Libby thought. It almost made her look like the victim of a stroke.
“Or perhaps he knows me too well.” Madame Merle smoked a pack a day, and she lit another cigarette now and fit it into a long tortoise-shell cigarette holder. “In any event, it’s lucky Lazarus is as ill as he is. It gives him something to do, or an excuse to do nothing. . . . It’s always been his calling card.”
Libby, dismayed, said nothing. Now and then her new friend, who could be so tender and thoughtful, seemed callous. Clara Merle read her expression. “That sounded hard . . . I only meant,” said the older woman, “your American men seem to lose themselves when they come abroad—even if, like your cousin, they are brought here at an early age, through no fault of their own. But they end up stuck here, in Europe, with too little to sustain them. No work, no title, no cause, no identity to speak of . . .”
“You sound like my friend Henrietta,” said Libby, half smiling. “But I’m sure my cousin would never have chosen his illness as his profession—much less his identity.”
“I’m sure not,” agreed Madame Merle. “Surely he had ambitions once. God knows I did! I was very ambitious once upon a time. You can’t imagine my dreams of grandeur. It’s embarrassing to think of it now.”
Libby studied her new friend, her gold hair illuminated around her head like a halo in the soft Irish air, under lamplight, her neck firm and white. She suddenly pictured her with a crown on that fine head. What had she wished to be? Libby wondered.
“I know a brilliant man in Rome,” Clara went on. “A sad case. He has nothing that he should have liked—nothing, nothing. Yet he was capable of anything. He has the most discerning mind I’ve ever known. His name is Gilbert Osmond. He is a marvel. I wish you could meet him. But he lives in seclusion, and the world knows nothing of him—though he knows all there is to be known about the world.”
“Does he live by himself?” asked Libby, interested.
“Well,” said Madame Merle, looking down. “He has a young daughter, whom he adores.”
“Then he does have at least one thing that he likes,” said Libby.
“The daughter, you mean. Yes,” said Clara Merle slowly. “But I’m not sure it’s what he would have chosen—even the exquisite girl. He could have accomplished so much in his life. He paints a little, creates watercolors and so on. But—I’ll give him credit for that—he never does talk about his watercolors. Whereas I am always flaunting my little accomplishments.”
“No, you don’t,” said Libby. “I can barely get you to say two words about yourself. And your accomplishments so far as I can tell are immense.”
Madame Merle clapped her hands together. This was a habit with her, to move a conversation along. “Never mind that. I didn’t mean for our talk to turn dreary. You must have your
own plans. At least I hope you do! It’s so important, in this day and age, to have a scheme, or you will find yourself with an apron tied around your waist, a Pontiac in the garage, and two-point-five children fastened around your feet.”
“I would love to have children someday.”
Madame Merle’s sky-blue eyes were bright. “But not yet.”
“No, not yet,” admitted Libby.
“Good. You must first have your opportunities!”
Libby moved closer to the fire, reaching out to the small white dog. The animal’s warm body gave her comfort. Madame Merle made her feel both brave and frightened. She wondered where Lazarus had disappeared to. He showed himself only late at night, after Clara Merle had turned in for the evening. Perhaps he really did dislike her aunt’s friend. But why? She spoke hesitantly. “I have had—a few opportunities already,” she admitted.
“I take it you mean suitors,” said Clara Merle. “Were they clever? Were they rich?”
“I wouldn’t care about either,” said Libby. “They are both very kind.”
“By which I suppose you mean they were nonentities,” said Clara, with her crooked smile.
“Not at all,” flashed Libby. “One was an English lord.” She couldn’t help but register a certain pleasure at the surprise on Clara Merle’s passive face. “And the other is the best man I know. He’s capable of anything. He is the most interesting man too, if I think about it. But I try not to think about it, because I still have so much to learn. So much to see of life itself—not to be attached to any one person. Women rush into love, and then there’s no backing out again.”
Clara removed a small bit of tobacco from her lips with two firm white fingers. “Just don’t wait too long,” said Clara. “That was not my problem. I did rush in—and lived to regret it. . . . But one can regret the opposite just as easily. Oh, not the way they say it in the ladies’ magazines. ‘Beyond the age of twenty-two, a woman’s charms significantly diminish,’ and so on. Life is not something you can map out. If it were, I’d be a great deal further along. I would have made an excellent general in a war campaign, if planning and strategizing were all there was to it. Or courage, even. I’ve always had courage. But you can say no once too often, Libby. You can live past your buy-by date, and find yourself sitting damply on some back shelf, wondering where you took the wrong turn. You mustn’t wait too long.”
Beauty and Attention: A Novel Page 11
