I looked at the folded notepaper but did not take it. “I see,” I said, thinking I spoke neutrally, but some element in my voice must have upset him for he exclaimed irritably, “Why are we discussing this, anyway? Do you object to this completely trivial correspondence? If you do I’ll stop writing, but I really can’t see why—”
“It’s all right. But are you sure you should seek help from Elizabeth? That sounds like cheating to me!” I said lightly, and as I spoke I was thinking of Dinah Slade, smart, determined, ambitious Miss Slade far away in England, and I knew she wanted him back.
I also knew that Terence, gambling on the fact that I would refuse to read the letters, had exaggerated their importance in order to turn me against Paul. So much for Terence O’Reilly.
I was very angry, but at least I knew where I stood. Paul was mine and he was going to stay mine, and not even the most unscrupulous young woman on earth was going to take him away from me.
Anger made me passionate. Sensing that I was angry about the correspondence but not realizing my anger was directed only at Miss Slade, he stayed in his room when we went to bed that night, but I went to him and slid naked between the sheets and presently we began to make love. Usually I preferred to be in darkness or twilight, but I told him to turn on the lamp and later we left the bed and went to the long mirror. By that time I was too intent on seeking an emotional release to be plagued by reserve. The smallest details seemed extraordinarily exciting, the sweat on Paul’s back, the reflection of the light on his muscles, his hot steamy breath on my body, and most exciting of all was to see his suave mannered detachment dissolve beneath the barbarism of physical intimacy.
He kept saying how beautiful I was, as if he could not quite believe it, and when we went back to the bed he kissed every part of my body until I wanted him so much that I drew him back into me. He rolled over, pulling me with him, and I felt the excitement rush forward beyond my control. I cried out, but he did not let me go, only held me closer until we were still. When he moved at last I saw his body glisten in the light again. My thighs were wet.
Later he said with a laugh, “After thirteen years you’re still capable of surprising me!”
“And shocking you?”
“Yes, it was delicious,” he said, still smiling, and although he started to stroke my breasts I decided that this time it was my turn to initiate the kisses. I was surprised by the speed of his response. I had hardly expected him to make love to me a second time directly after such an exhausting experience, but evidently he was in one of his dazzling moods when all exhaustion was a mere irritation to be swept aside and his energy blazed from him with an electrical intensity. I have no idea what time it was when we finally fell asleep. Paul’s valet tried to wake him at six-thirty but abandoned the attempt. As he left the room I was aware of him turning off the lights we had left on.
At eight Paul reached for my hand. “I shall be thinking erotic thoughts about you all day at the office!” he murmured. “Lewis, Charley and Steve will be discussing business and I shall say ‘breasts’ when I mean debentures and ‘thighs’ when I mean common stock.” He kissed me. I felt his body move under my hand. “My God, if I don’t leave this bed now I’ll never get to the office!”
When he tried to sit up I pulled him back beside me and we kissed again.
“I love you, Paul.”
“My darling, how extraordinarily seductive you are! Have you been paying secret visits to the picture theater to study the notorious lady—whose name I forget—who purports to be something called a vamp?”
“It’s you who must have been paying secret visits if you know about Theda Bara!”
“Is there anyone alive today who doesn’t gloat over such actresses? Really, one of the most irritating aspects of the nineteen-twenties is that everyone behaves as if sex has only just been discovered!” He got out of bed and as he looked around for his robe his naked body twisted and turned, gracefully in the shafts of sunlight. He looked much younger than his years.
We had breakfast together in my room, but as he was late he did not stay long.
“My perfect wife!” he said smiling as he kissed me goodbye, and I knew that Dinah Slade’s memory meant nothing to him then just as the memory of Terence O’Reilly now meant nothing to me.
“Goodbye, darling,” I said, returning his kiss, and as I watched him go I wondered in almost unbearable excitement if I had once more managed to conceive.
III
I had not. At first I was bitterly disappointed, but then I remembered my earlier resolution to wait until we were in Maine and I made up my mind to be patient. Patience was far from easy, though, and those last few weeks in New York might well have seemed interminable if both Paul and I had not received an unexpected diversion.
Cornelius reentered our lives.
I had not seen him since his visit to New York in 1923, although Paul had called on Mildred when he had been in the Midwest on business the previous summer. I had often suggested, even pleaded with Paul that we should invite Cornelius to visit us again, but Paul always insisted that the next move must come from Cornelius.
“But I don’t understand!” I had exclaimed in despair, thinking Cornelius would be too shy to invite himself to stay, but Paul had only answered placidly, “Cornelius understands—or if he doesn’t I’m not interested in seeing him.”
We had waited. Nothing had happened. Paul had even begun to look annoyed whenever Cornelius’ name was mentioned, but at last in early June his confidence was rewarded. “A letter from Cornelius!” he said, smiling broadly at me across the breakfast table, and tossed the sheet of notepaper in my direction.
I picked up the letter. It was in Latin. “Paul!” I said staggered, and when he laughed I laughed too. It was plain to see he was in excellent spirits. “What does he say?”
“He says he’s been working hard at his Latin and Greek ever since he left New York. He’s been studying Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and he asks if it’s necessary to read beyond Attila the Hun’s death on his wedding night.”
“And is it?” I said, still dazed by this unlikely transformation of Cornelius into a classical scholar.
“No, but it’s certainly essential that he learn the difference between a gerund and a gerundive. Write to him immediately, Sylvia, and invite him to Bar Harbor for the summer.” No one could have been more delighted than I was by this revival of Paul’s interest in his great-nephew, but I was anxious when I discovered that the purpose of the invitation to Maine seemed to be to make Cornelius’ summer as arduous as possible. Before I could protest, a tutor had been hired from Harvard, the tennis coach had been engaged from the club and Paul was casting around for three other young men of seventeen who would give Cornelius competition and companionship.
“Remember his delicate health, Paul,” I said nervously. “Make sure there’s plenty of rest and relaxation in the schedule.”
“My dear, Cornelius is bored to tears with rest and relaxation—why do you suppose he wrote me that letter? He wants to live a tough busy life for a change, and I don’t intend to disappoint him.”
“But how will you ever find three other boys to endure it with him?”
“Easily. Boys of seventeen can stand anything except boredom—they like a challenge. The main problem will lie in choosing the right boys from among the crowd who’ll volunteer for the ride.”
I was still doubtful, but he was soon proved right. When he passed the word around among his friends he was swamped with applications from their offspring, but Paul was ruthless in selecting his protégés and only two boys met his exacting requirements.
“I’ll take young Jake Reischman,” he announced, for all the world as if he were concluding a shopping spree at some big store. “I don’t suppose Cornelius has ever met a Jew before, and I’ve always had my eye on that boy of Jacob’s—he’s much the most promising of the new Reischman generation. And I’ll take that boy Kevin Daly whose father’s making such a fool of himself in polit
ics at the moment. I liked the way Kevin compared the British presence in Ireland to the Roman presence in Europe and even quoted that Tacitus cliché about the Pax Romana. Now, let me see. Whom can I choose to complete the quartet?”
I suggested several names, but Paul merely said, “Insufficient intelligence” or “No ambition.” I had already told my housekeeper at Bar Harbor that only three boys would be staying with us that summer when Paul unexpectedly discovered his fourth new protégé.
The discovery took place on the night of our arrival when we were taking a stroll in the gardens after dinner. In the old days it had been considered unhealthy to build near the water, and so the cottages like ours which dated from the nineteenth century were separated from the water by as much garden as possible. On the terrace below the house Paul had his swimming pool and tennis court, and farther down the sloping hillside were terraced lawns surrounded by shrubs and ornamented only by weathered garden furniture. These rustic chairs were typical of Bar Harbor, as informal as the Indian-made wicker baskets which were traditionally kept for calling cards, and as unsophisticated as the popular Bar Harbor hobby of “rocking,” the search for rocks along the seashore. Even Paul abandoned his city tastes at Bar Harbor and indulged in sailing, walking on Mount Desert and picnicking among the landmarks of Ocean Drive.
It was sunset when we left the house. I hardly expected to find any of the gardeners still working, but on the second lawn below the house a young man in overalls was busily clipping a hedge.
“Hello, Sam!” I called.
He was the son of the head gardener who looked after the cottage in our absence and whose wife served as my housekeeper during the summer months. The Kellers were German immigrants. When we had first employed them Sam had been called Hans-Dieter, but in 1917 he had abandoned the name in response to anti-German sentiment at school and had rechristened himself Sam after the popular cowboy hero in a boys’ magazine. Paul had been entertained by this determination to be American. I could remember him saying to the Kellers, “Your son has chutzpah!” But the Kellers were Prussian Lutherans, not German Jews, and the compliment had been lost on them.
“Good evening, Mrs. Van Zale,” said young Sam Keller, straightening his back with a smile. “Good evening, sir. Welcome back to Bar Harbor!”
He had always had excellent manners. He was not a good-looking boy, but he was tall and broad-shouldered with a friendly smile.
I saw the acquisitive look flare in Paul’s eyes.
“Since when has your father been making you do all his work for him?”
“Since school let out, sir. This is by way of being a summer job. I’m mowing lawns at another cottage too. There’s always a lot of work to do when the visitors come back to Bar Harbor, and most of the estates use extra help.”
“Making money, are you? What are you going to do with it?”
“I’m saving for college, sir. I’m going to put myself through law school.”
“All lawyers are crooked!” said Paul, teasing him.
“Gee, do you think so, sir? Wouldn’t that be against the law of averages?”
They laughed, and when Paul asked more questions I almost saw the silken net being thrown around Sam Keller to draw him out of his humble background into a harsher, headier world.
“But how on earth will he get on with the others?” I said distracted to Paul. “Think of Jake Reischman—a Fifth Avenue aristocrat! And Cornelius, with his maternal ancestry going back to the Dutch patroons! Why, even Kevin is a millionaire’s son! How is Sam going to manage?”
“Excellently, I should think, since he’s got more self-assurance than the other three put together. Worry if you wish about Cornelius, who’s unaccustomed to mixing with boys his own age, but don’t worry about Sam Keller.”
But I worried about all of them and was convinced Paul had chosen a most ill-assorted quartet. I should have known better. Sam moved from the caretaker’s cottage by the gates into one of the guest rooms as if he had been mingling with Bar Harbor’s summer society all his life, and presently even Jake Reischman was asking for ketchup with his ground beef; Cornelius’ agonized shyness melted away, and soon even Kevin Daly’s ugly prep-school accent had mellowed into an imitation of Cornelius’ Midwestern inflections. All four boys ate enormously, and after their mornings spent in classical study with their tutor they would swarm into the dining room, pick every dish clean and race outside like a bunch of puppies liberated from a traveling basket. At two-thirty the tennis coach would arrive for an hour, but after his departure they would linger on the tennis court as they slammed the ball to and fro amidst shouts of laughter.
The days passed. The sun shone. All the boys became browner, and Cornelius and Jake became more blond. Cornelius was having no trouble with his health and I knew this pleased Paul, who was finding his new protégés very entertaining. After dinner he would draw them into debates, and whenever I stayed to listen I noticed how he guided their conversations and encouraged them to express themselves. I saw him watching them, sensed him keeping relentless score of their errors, but he never betrayed which boy he favored above the others, although naturally they all vied for his attention. Time and again I would see their eager young faces turned to his, and when I recognized the hero worship in their eyes I could not help but wonder if Paul was right to manipulate their lives for his amusement. It was as if he had enslaved them by the power of his personality so that forever afterward they would remain in his thrall. Seventeen is a very impressionable age.
There were times when Paul was absent. To my relief he left Terence behind in New York when he joined me at Bar Harbor, but at the end of July after a quick trip to New York he brought Terence back with him to Maine.
I was plunged into panic. I spent a sleepless night trying to plan what I should say to him, but when he cornered me the next day I still had not made up my mind how to defuse the situation. Terence’s fanaticism now only frightened me, and I was terrified that if I mishandled the inevitable confrontation he would abandon his iron self-control and make some disastrous mistake which would cost him his job and endanger my marriage.
“Can we talk?” he said, slipping into my little sitting room that afternoon when Paul was out playing tennis with the boys.
“It’s a little awkward …”
“Wait, I’ll close the windows.” Helplessly I watched as he shut out the sounds from the tennis court and turned to face me. “I’ve been thinking about you all the time since we last spoke. I’ve got to talk to you.”
“Yes, I’ve been thinking, too. Terence, I—”
“He’s going down to Boston next week for a session at Kidder, Peabody, but let me invent an excuse to stay behind for an extra day. I can arrange that, I think. Then when all those kids are tucked up in bed I can come to your room.”
“No.” His physical attraction was touching me again and I felt more frightened than ever. For some reason, perhaps because I had been so much involved with Paul’s recent recruits, Terence suddenly seemed to me to be the quintessential Van Zale protégé, tough, ruthless and brutally ambitious, and when I thought of those four boys who were now being so strongly influenced by Paul I trembled for them.
“Sylvia, don’t get upset.” He kissed me quickly before I could draw away. “There’s no need. If you could only face reality by accepting me you’d find it a lot less painful than these romantic illusions you’ve been clinging to all these years.”
My chin tilted up. My hands pushed hard against his chest. I was afraid no longer.
“Terence,” I said, “if you think I’m just a fragile flower drenched in romantic illusions and thoroughly out of touch with the cold hard facts of life, you couldn’t be more mistaken. No such woman could stay married more than one month to Paul Van Zale! You’re the one who’s clinging to your romantic illusions by believing I have to be swept off to some fairy-tale paradise where we can live happily ever after. Now shall we both try and face reality together? I find you very attractive—very
attractive, as you well know. But I’m not in love with you, I’m not going to bed with you, and I’m staying with Paul.”
“If you could give me just one sane logical reason—”
“I’m going to have his child.”
I couldn’t have shocked him more. There was a stunned bitter silence as his face closed, emptying itself of expression until he was once more just O’Reilly, Paul’s most trusted assistant, but then the effort was too much for him and the anger blazed into his eyes.
“So in the end you found you couldn’t resist the compulsion to compete with Dinah Slade!”
“This has nothing to do with Dinah Slade!” I said furiously. “And how dare you bring up her name again after you lied to me about her correspondence with Paul!”
“I didn’t lie!”
“You implied they were exchanging love letters and all the time it was just a harmless exchange of classical quizzes!”
“My God, is that what he told you? And you believed him?”
“Get out!” I cried in a trembling voice. “Leave me alone! I never want to speak to you again like this!”
He went white. Immediately I was racked with regret, and although I already knew I had mishandled the interview I was unable to stop myself from making matters worse by showing compassion. “Terence, I’m sorry. Forgive me—I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
“If you think I’m going to give up you couldn’t be more mistaken.”
“Oh, but—”
“Don’t worry. I’ll leave you alone while you’re pregnant I hope you stay in good health.”
The full enormity of my lie suddenly caught up with me and I was speechless.
“Excuse me, please,” he said, brushing my hand from his arm. “I won’t embarrass you further by prolonging the conversation.”
The door slammed. He was gone. I had bought myself a little time but had achieved nothing else, and sinking down on the sofa I saw to my despair that the situation was worse than ever. Terence remained determined to have what he wanted, all my doubts about the Dinah Slade correspondence had been reawakened, and I still, despite repeated efforts, showed no sign of conceiving Paul’s child.
The Rich Are Different Page 26
