It seemed like an impossible dream.
Three
I
THE TRAIN FROM CINCINNATI was on time, and as the doors opened I strained my eyes for a glimpse of Cornelius. Passengers streamed past. I was just thinking he must have missed the train when I saw him walking toward me.
Although I had not seen him for some years I had no trouble recognizing him, for his hair was still golden and his features had not greatly changed. He was small for his age but neat and compact. As I watched, someone bumped into him but his expression never altered. He merely adjusted the coat on his arm and walked on down the platform.
“Cornelius!” I raised my hand to attract his attention and when he saw me he smiled. It was a shy smile, very trusting. He looked angelic. If hearts could melt, mine would have dissolved instantly.
“Hello, Aunt Sylvia.” His voice had finished breaking, and the educated accent of the Midwest was pleasant to the ear. “Thanks for coming to meet me.”
I asked him about the journey and inquired after his family while Abrahams, the junior chauffeur, claimed the baggage and took it outside to the Cadillac.
“Paul was so sorry he couldn’t meet you,” I said to Cornelius as we left the terminal and began our journey home, “but he had some important conferences downtown. However, he should be home by six—he said he’d make a special effort to get home early.”
“Yes.” He was staring out of the window at New York City, and the light, slanting on the classically molded bones of his face, gave his black-lashed gray eyes a starry look. I suddenly realized with surprise that he had inherited the fine straight Van Zale mouth which looked so odd on the women of the family and so very attractive on the men. For a moment I envied Mildred her beautiful son, and then in a painful effort to divert myself I pondered on the appropriateness of the word “beautiful.” That was surely the wrong word to use, since in an adolescent boy it implied effeminacy, yet it was impossible for me to connect effeminacy with that familiar Van Zale mouth. I toyed with other adjectives. “Good-looking” implied someone rugged like Steve Sullivan, and Cornelius with his slight build hardly reminded me of Steve. Perhaps “handsome” was a better word, though to me that implied a maturity which a fifteen-year-old boy hardly possessed. The dubious word “beautiful” returned reluctantly to my mind, and as I gazed at Cornelius’ curling golden hair, his fair unblemished skin and his exquisitely chiseled features. I could understand why Mildred was so anxious to protect him from the corruption which Paul’s New York world represented to her.
When we arrived home I showed him to his room and left him to settle down. I had expected him to be shy with me and so I was surprised at lunch when he talked easily about his home and school. It occurred to me that his mother’s absence made it easier for him to behave with confidence. Mildred could be very overpowering.
After lunch he said he wanted to go out for a walk and I tactfully left him to amuse himself for the remainder of the afternoon.
Shortly before Paul was due home I found Cornelius loitering by the library and suggested we went up to the drawing room. “Would you like anything to drink?” I added. “Paul always has tomato juice and I always have sherry, but do have whatever you like.”
“Tomato juice would be just fine. How do you manage to have sherry, Aunt Sylvia?” he said with puzzled innocence, and wondering in alarm if he would report my answer to Mildred, an enthusiastic supporter of the Eighteenth Amendment, I avoided all mention of the lax New York attitude to Prohibition and said Paul obtained the sherry through influential foreign clients.
Mason had just brought our drinks when far away I heard the sound of voices and knew Paul had returned.
Opposite me on the couch Cornelius sat bolt upright and assumed a studiedly neutral expression.
“Paul’s so looking forward to seeing you!” I said encouragingly, aware that I was just as nervous as he was, but I believe he barely heard me. His eyes, dark with concentration, were focused on the door which Paul flung open a second later.
“Well!” Paul paused on the threshold. Both Cornelius and I rose to our feet as obediently as puppets in the hands of their manipulator, and for a moment the scene was a tableau taut with indefinable undercurrents of emotion. Then Paul smiled, said to me, “Good evening, my dear!” and gave me a kiss before turning to his great-nephew.
“Hello,” he said easily. “You’ve grown. How are you?”
Cornelius tried to speak but could not. As I watched in an agony of embarrassment he began to blush.
“What’s the matter?” said Paul with a brutality which made me want to retreat to some quiet corner and shrivel up in despair. “Did your mother never give you the chance to learn to talk?”
“Yes, sir,” said Cornelius, absolutely wooden.
They shook hands, and the family resemblance, slender and elusive, danced fleetingly before my eyes. To my relief the butler chose that moment to arrive with Paul’s tomato juice.
“Thank you, Mason,” said Paul. “Sit down, Cornelius. Now …”
The most dreadful ten minutes followed. Under ruthless cross-examination Cornelius revealed that he had hated his first semester at school so much that Mildred had decided to keep him at home again and a new tutor had been hired.
“That’s a bit feeble, isn’t it?” said his inquisitor. “Why don’t you make more effort to stick it out?”
“It seemed a waste of time, sir. Did you ever go to school?”
Surely, I thought, he knew that Paul too had suffered from asthma and had been kept at home! But then I saw that Cornelius had found the weak spot in Paul’s attack and was exposing it as politely as he knew how.
The amusement flared in Paul’s eyes. “No,” he said. “I never went to school.” There was a pause before he added, “Tell me more about it. What sort of things did they try to teach you?”
More agonizing minutes followed during which Cornelius was shown to be painfully ignorant in the fields of literature, history and the classics.
“My God, what a barbarian!” exclaimed Paul. “It’s plain to see you come from beyond the Allegheny Mountains! Don’t you have any interest in culture at all? What do you do with your spare time?”
“My spare time, sir?” said the unfortunate boy, looking inexplicably more nervous than ever.
“Do you swim? Play tennis?”
“The doctor doesn’t permit …”
“Then what do you do? Sit and look at the wall all day?”
Cornelius stole a glance at me and blushed again. By this time I was suffering such agonies for him that it was a relief, to seize the chance to escape.
“If you’d rather be alone with Paul—” I began, but Paul interrupted me.
“No, stay where you are, Sylvia, and don’t pretend you’re not just as intrigued as I am by this reticence! Now, Cornelius —my God, that’s a terrible name for an adolescent boy to endure! I’m going to shorten it to Neil. Now, Neil, speak up! We’re waiting! What do you do in your spare time?”
“I—I bet on the horses, sir.”
“You what!”
“Oh sir, please don’t tell Mama! It’s not real money anyway—I only bet on paper.”
Paul started to laugh. Cornelius looked as if he wanted to crawl under the couch and die. I was in such a state of anguish and astonishment that I merely gaped at both of them.
“Go on!” said Paul, still highly amused. “Tell me more! Do you go to the racetrack?”
“Oh no, sir, Mama wouldn’t permit that. But once a week I get the train into Cincinnati and I buy a sports magazine and a racing paper. I follow other sports too, not just the horses, and I make bets on football teams in winter and baseball in summer. I’ve got a system—it’s worked out in charts, with all the odds calculated. It really helps to pass the time.”
“And what does your mother think you’re doing while you’re locked in your room being a secret gambler?”
“She thinks I’m reading the classics. But there’s a very goo
d book I found in the library which gives the plots of all the world’s greatest novels—”
“Quite. How much money have you won on paper so far this-year?”
“Two hundred and seventy-three dollars, thirty-nine cents.”
“Good God!” To my enormous relief I saw that Paul was more entertained than ever. “And you enjoy it, of course?” he added casually as an afterthought.
“Oh yes, sir, it’s exciting—in fact, it’s really the only excitement I get. Cincinnati’s a fine city, but it’s kind of dull back there in Velletria,” said Cornelius, glancing wistfully out the window at New York, and when he looked back at his great-uncle I saw their glances meet and lock in one long moment of absolute recognition.
II
Cornelius arrived on a Friday, and on Saturday morning Paul took him downtown to show him the bank before leaving him to do some sightseeing. It was years since Cornelius had been in New York, and on previous visits he had had no chance to wander around on his own. Before we all went to the theater that evening to see The Devil’s Disciple he told me he had gone to the top of the tower of Metropolitan Life and had been very impressed with the electric elevators to the forty-fourth floor.
“And what did you think of the view?” I said, remembering that only the Woolworth Building offered a comparable view of the city.
“Pretty good,” said Cornelius, but I could tell that the highlight of his visit had been the journey up and down in the elevator.
“Pretty interesting,” was his comment on The Devil’s Disciple, but he proved quite unable to discuss it afterward with Paul.
On Sunday we went to church at St. George’s on Stuyvesant Square, where Paul’s mother had always worshiped, and afterward we paid a brief visit to the graveyard of Trinity, where there was an ancient Van Zale tomb.
“Kind of quaint,” said Cornelius politely. “I guess in those days New York must have been almost a one-horse town.”
“Just like Velletria!” said Paul laughing, apparently undisturbed by Cornelius’ lack of interest in the past, and later that afternoon he took him to tea with Elizabeth.
“And what would you most like to do while you’re in New York, Cornelius?” said Elizabeth, no doubt hoping for a response indicating interest in a museum or an art gallery.
“See Jack Dempsey fight Firpo on the fourteenth,” said Cornelius promptly, “but unfortunately that’s the day I’m due to leave town.”
“Stay on if you wish,” said Paul. “I’ll get you a ticket. Who’s going to win?”
“Dempsey, sir. I think he’ll knock Firpo out—probably in an early round.”
“Let’s have a bet,” said Paul while Elizabeth looked on with incredulous disapproval. “I’ll bet you five dollars Firpo will survive at least five rounds.”
“I’ll bet you ten he won’t,” said Cornelius, and he was right. Dempsey won in the second round.
“Well, Neil,” said Paul as he parted with ten dollars, “you’d better not tell your mother I’ve encouraged your gambling or she’ll never let you come here again.” And the next day when it was time for Cornelius to return home he said, “Make good use of your new tutor, start taking some proper exercise and try to open a book occasionally. When you’re a little less of a barbarian you can pay me another visit.”
“Oh, Paul!” I said, weak with relief as the train steamed out of the station. “Thank God you were pleased with him!”
Paul said nothing.
“I thought he was delightful,” I said as we walked back to the car. “He was so polite and well mannered—and self-assured too when he got over his shyness. I think he’s going to be very attractive in a few years’ time. He really does have the sweetest smile.”
Paul was still silent.
“What do you think?” I said, unable to resist pressing him for an opinion.
“I think he’s a very odd little boy,” said Paul. “I shall wait with interest to see if he develops a passion for Latin and Greek.”
My heart sank. “But in view of Cornelius’ natural inclinations, isn’t that a little unlikely?”
“The odds, as Cornelius himself would say, are certainly unfavorable. That’s why if he does develop a zest for the classics I shall know that his ambition knows no bounds.”
He said no more, and during the weeks that followed he never spoke of Cornelius unless I myself raised the subject— which I have to confess I often did. I felt bereft when Cornelius had gone, and with shame I realized how much I had been enjoying myself by pretending he was my son. It was only then that I wondered if in assuming Paul to have been intent on finding a substitute son that summer I had in fact only been assigning my feelings to him, and the dull nagging ache of my childlessness became a sharper, less bearable pain.
“I’m afraid I didn’t care for him at all,” said Elizabeth when I inevitably mentioned Cornelius to her. “Perhaps I was disappointed that he was so unlike Paul. I thought he was cold and withdrawn.”
“I expect he was shy of you, Elizabeth!” I protested. “You’re very imposing, you know, particularly to someone of his age.”
“Perhaps,” conceded Elizabeth graciously. “Anyway, I’m glad he won your heart even if he didn’t win mine.”
I suspected Elizabeth was too involved with her own son at that time to pay much attention to Cornelius. Bruce Clayton had just got engaged and planned to marry in the spring. At twenty-eight he was an associate professor of philosophy at Columbia University, and since his lectures brought him into contact with all manner of modern ideas Elizabeth had been terrified he would commit himself to some student “jazz-baby” with Marxist leanings. When he finally announced his intention of marrying a respectable girl from a well-known family, I knew at once that no one would greet the news with more enthusiasm than his mother.
“A Rochfort of Greenwich!” commented Paul ironically. “Trust Bruce to find a blue-blooded wife—these Marxists never practice what they preach!” But he was full of approval when we invited the couple to dinner. Grace was five years younger than Bruce, and I feared Paul might not like her bobbed hair and generous use of makeup, but when she proved herself both intelligent and well-read he was impressed. She had majored in French at Vassar and had just completed a traditional grand tour of Europe, but she was by no means wedded to tradition. Indeed, her main thesis, which she was only too ready to expound to us after dinner, was that women should be educated to the hilt so that they could be released from their bondage to men.
“But all women are different, Grace,” I said reasonably. “A lot of women don’t wish to be highly educated or given the chance to be self-supporting.”
“But surely, since it’s a question of freedom or slavery—”
“Shouldn’t it always be a question of women doing what they’re best suited to do, whatever that may be? I’m not well-educated and I don’t work for a living, but I certainly don’t consider myself enslaved.”
“I should tell you, Grace,” interposed Paul, “that Sylvia works harder than many women who have a salaried position. She’s no lily of the field.”
“Of course not,” said Grace Rochfort, trying not to look too pitying.
“I do so resent people who insist on inflicting their opinions on everyone else!” I exclaimed to Paul in our room after the guests had gone. “I’m not against emancipation—I quite understand that some women want to lead totally independent lives. But why must such women so often assume there’s only one road to heaven? Sometimes I think girls like Grace Rochfort are just as repressive as the traditional Victorian paterfamilias who kept all his women at home under lock and key!”
Paul laughed. “You took Grace too seriously. Wasn’t it obvious that her dedication to emancipation is only skin deep? She’s getting married. She intends to be dependent on her husband. Probably by the time she’s forty she’ll be thoroughly conservative and opposed even to votes for women, but meanwhile she’s young enough to enjoy supporting modern social trends. What do you suppose emancipat
ion really means to Grace Rochfort? Smoking incessantly in public, drinking appalling cocktails and pretending to be blasé about other people’s disordered private lives!”
“Hm.” I pondered over what he had said. Presently I put down my hairbrush, slipped out of my peignoir and moved toward the bed. “I guess very few women are truly emancipated,” I said. “Do you know anyone who is? I don’t think I do.”
Memory flickered in his eyes. I looked away at once, but when he realized I had seen his expression he said vaguely, “I have a client who’s launched her own cosmetics business. She’s doing quite well, I believe.”
“Like Elizabeth Arden? How exciting! Does she have a salon?”
“In London, not New York.”
“But is the product available here?” I said with genuine interest as I slipped into bed beside him. “What’s the name of your client’s company?”
“It’s not available here,” he said, reaching across me to snap off the light on my side of the bed, and the next moment his mouth closed on mine to terminate the conversation.
I thought no more about Paul’s mysterious female client. Obviously he had had a passing affair with her, and since he never discussed either his mistresses or his clients with me he had a double reason for not expounding further on the subject. But I was interested in cosmetics, particularly those which were discreet and tasteful, and when one day in the new year I met the wife of a British diplomat at a Lord and Taylor fashion show I could not help but notice that her lipstick was just the shade I wanted but had never been able to find. At the table where a group of us had coffee after the show, my interest increased when I noticed that the lipstick barely marked her cup.
The Rich Are Different Page 20
