Answer as a Man

by Taylor Caldwell

  Jason, standing alone and almost unbearably desolate in the little cemetery, recalled his grandfather’s real horror and grief at his marriage to Patricia. He had mentioned Molly; Jason had been repelled. Was it then that he had begun to think of Molly, and had obliterated the thought because of his old illusions concerning Patricia? God help me, he thought, I don’t know. But he felt these emotions had existed for a long time, working like diligent moles in the very center of his ordered essence, his tidy lawn that he had cultivated. Had that cultivation contained a little frantic desperation?

  It seemed to him, as his desolation increased, that he had always loved Molly, even while fighting against that love. The recognition had not been an abrupt holocaust. The meeting in Patrick’s office had been a volcanic explosion of truth that could no longer be denied.

  But at least, he thought, I am now free of the fantasy of what I thought a woman should be. There was some sadness in this thought; one does not relinquish dreams that easily, but he knew now that Molly loved him, too, and probably always had.

  He felt no betrayal of his marriage. In reality, he had never really been wedded to Patricia. He had married a lie, but the deception was his, not Patricia’s. She was only herself, which, he thought grimly, is not true of me. Molly was also married. Why? Why had Molly married Daniel, if she had loved him, Jason? Stop it, he thought. Am I trying to condemn her again? What right have I to criticize? What right have I to feel doubly betrayed? I betrayed Molly from the very beginning. I betrayed both myself and Patricia.

  All at once the sun became brilliant as it had never been brilliant before. He was suddenly filled with an ecstatic trembling. What did it matter if conditions were impossible? He was in love for the first time in his life. Everything took on meaning, excitement and promise.

  He did not ask himself, as yet, what the promise was which so illuminated everything around him. He only knew that life had become infinitely richer, more significant. The world had become a joyous place, a gorgeously painful place, where pain was only part of rapture and enhanced it. He felt reborn.

  He called his children to him. Sebastian and Nicole, side by side, walked sedately, a middle-aged couple. Nicholas came running and jumping. Again, in the very midst of his happiness, Jason felt uneasy and watched the little boy racing toward him. “Lively, alive,” Patricia had said of him.

  But Nicholas did not fit these easy phrases. There was something wrong.

  When the family returned home, Jason was informed that his wife wished to see him in her bedroom. Jason frowned. He had no desire to see Patricia now. But he had no right to destroy her. He went upstairs to her rooms, and she was lying on her chaise longue in a mannered posture of melancholy abandonment which Jason now recognized as one of her many affectations. But he was patient. After all, what had happened was not her fault; the fault lay with him.

  “Yes, Patricia?” he said. He felt nothing at all for her except a faint compassion and a faint guilt. He stood near the door. He did not rush to her as he always had in the past, full of anxious concern and solicitude.

  Patricia half sat up, peering at him, startled, as at an intruding stranger. “It’s late,” she said, and he noticed the shrill whining note in her voice. “Have you forgotten we go to the Clarks’ for dinner tonight?”

  He looked at his watch. “Not for three hours.”

  She stared at him, frowning. He was different. He was not the abject slave she had known from childhood, always wanting to appease her.

  “Why take children to a cemetery, Jason? They should be spared the knowledge of death.”

  “Why?”

  She was taken aback. “Why? It isn’t healthy.”

  “Death is as natural as life. It’s part of living, Patricia. Kids can’t be taught that early enough. Why fill their lives with bogeymen?”

  “My father never used to take me to my mother’s grave.”

  “He was wrong.”

  She became angrily animated. “I don’t think so! How can a child live with the thought of death?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake! They see it every day in the world around them. Do you think they are stupid? To deny death is to make a liar of a parent, Patricia. And kids always see through lies, and then they begin to despise their parents for telling them.”

  “You’ve changed,” she said.

  “Have I?” He did not know that his usually impassive face was glowing like a youth’s.

  “Yes. And I don’t like it.”

  He turned away. He said involuntarily, “You’ll have to get used to it.” He left the room.

  Patricia fell back on her cushions. He was not the man she had known only yesterday. He had escaped her. She felt powerless. This enraged her. She got to her feet, went to her locked dressing table, and took out a bottle of whiskey. She did not wait to get a glass. She lifted the bottle to her lips and drank avidly.

  “I’ll show him!” she said aloud, and drank again. “He’ll find out!”

  She thought of her father, and smiled vindictively. Her father always listened to her, even if sometimes he frustrated and denied her. It was time he got over his infatuation for Jason.

  “I’ll see to it!” she said, and triumphantly raised the bottle like an avenging sword. Then all at once it became a toast to Lionel, and her face was alive and happy.

  22

  It was Jason’s habit, and duty, to make a tour of Ipswich House every morning. He consulted the housekeeper, a very diligent and intelligent widow, who ruled the maids with a stern hand. She never smiled, except at Jason. He called her “Sergeant,” to which she didn’t object. Her name was Mrs. Gruber, and she was spare and gray and convinced of the evil of humanity, and was never tolerant of foibles. She knew what often happened in the hotel, and while she disapproved, much of the time she accepted it as part of the “sinfulness” of mankind. God would judge—one of these days! She lived for that.

  In the meantime, she had a shrewd eye for trickery and lies. Especially if they involved money and the cost of insurance to the hotel. In many ways she regarded the hotel not only as her responsibility and domain, but as her very own. She deeply respected Jason, even if she did believe he was a little careless at times about the “goings-on.” Men!

  She met him this morning when he was on his rounds, her arms folded over her flat breast, her face forbidding. Seeing this, he said, “Now what, Sergeant?”

  “It’s Mrs. Bristol—again, sir.” Mrs. Gruber’s face, the texture and color of wood, became darker than ever. Her hair was gray and thin, though, incongruously, the tiny knot on the back of her head was set off by an elaborate Spanish comb crowded with glass jewels of various colors. It had a jauntiness at odds with her character, which was uncompromising and humorless. She wore a gray calico dress over her slatlike body, and a stiff white apron with another incongruity—an embroidered frill of pink.

  “What’s her complaint this time?”

  Mrs. Gruber looked justified. “I’m sure it’s not my business, sir, but I always had my doubts about Mrs. Bristol.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Bristol were from New York, and the most elaborate suite in Ipswich House was usually occupied by them from June first until long after Labor Day, and they often returned then for the Christmas holidays. Mr. Bristol was a financier, treated by several New York banks with awe. He was a handsome and impressive man, about sixty years old, with white hair and what people called a “fine figure.” He was a considerable athlete, and had a courtly manner and rich voice. “Fruity,” Jason described it. He also had a way of touching one when he was speaking, which was somewhat patronizing.

  Mrs. Bristol was almost young enough to be his granddaughter, and indeed he had a granddaughter her age, about twenty-one. She was his third wife, and had been a chorus girl with Ziegfeld’s Follies. She was very beautiful and svelte, with pale gilt hair that shone even in faint light, a square exquisitely tinted complexion, widely spaced large blue eyes, a tiny nose, and a voluptuous pink mouth. She possessed a quant
ity of jewelry which an empress would not have despised, and a wardrobe that screamed of Worth and was very daring. In short, she was distracting, the envy of all the ladies and the dazzlement of every gentleman. She was almost illiterate, and her grammar and syntax made the less enchanted wince, including Jason. Her voice was almost a screech, and her laughter raucous.

  In ten years, Lionel once said, she would look like a haggard whore, for even now her manners were coarse and cheap for all her finery and furs and gems. She was flirtatious and had a habit of tapping gentlemen archly on the cheek with a distressingly big-knuckled hand. She had originated in Hoboken and it was whispered that her father was a “gandy dancer,” one who worked on the beds of railroads. However, Mrs. Bristol boasted that her paternal parent had been a “fame-us” physician, and her mother a familiar of Lillian Russell.

  She was often alone, for Mr. James Bristol was absent a great deal on business in New York, leaving his young wife for considerable periods. She was never seen during the day, during which she slept luxuriously in her silken bed, and appeared only at night in one of her magnificent gowns that revealed half her full breasts. The gentlemen did not mind; the ladies said uncharitable things. Mrs. Bristol was accompanied by her maid, a shrewd-faced little woman with a French accent that occasionally slipped into the cadence of pure Brooklynese. Her name was Elise. Mrs. Bristol’s name was Flora, and she was always asking bewitched gentlemen to call her that, though she never requested it of ladies. With the latter she was very haughty and supercilious.

  Lionel was amused by her airs and said she hardly added “tone” to Ipswich House. But the suite cost a fortune by the week, and so no one, except Mrs. Gruber, objected. Flora Bristol, however, was a trial to the hotel help, for she alleged to have a very sensitive stomach—like Patricia, Jason often reflected. She was never served a dish which did not have to go back to the kitchen in exchange for another, and she was critical of the wines. Her husband adored her, it was most obvious, and never returned from New York without a costly gift. When she wished, she was most ingratiating and made what the waiters called “eyes.” She also danced like a sylph and was much in demand in the ballroom.

  “What seems to be the trouble, Mrs. Gruber?” Jason asked this morning.

  “She’s howling. She says someone stole her diamond lavaliere and earrings and her diamond bracelet. Worth, she says, one hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Good God!” said Jason, aghast. It was the first theft ever reported at Ipswich House. “When did she miss them?”

  “Just an hour ago. She suspects Hattie, the chambermaid, and the waiter who brought her her breakfast two hours ago—in bed.” Mrs. Gruber emphasized the last two words as if they were more reprehensible than the claimed theft. She drew a heavy breath. “I don’t believe a word of it.”

  Jason, still shaken, scrutinized the little woman, whose intelligence he never underrated. “Why not?”

  “I think it was her … brother, Mr. Carstairs, if that’s his name.”

  “Her brother?”

  “Yes, sir. He came four days ago. Mr. Bristol’s away, as usual. Mr. Carstairs checked in after Mr. Bristol left. He’s a businessman, she says. He left early this morning. He occupied Mr. Bristol’s bedroom.” Mrs. Gruber sniffed roughly. “She says.”

  “I never saw him,” said Jason. “He checked in? That can be verified, of course.”

  “I checked. He did, sir.”

  “Good. What sort of a man is he?”

  “Very elegant. Very handsome. Looks like Francis X. Bushman. Of the moving pictures, sir. Him who plays with Beverly Baine in all those love stories. Scandalous. People ain’t got any shame these days, sir, and the moving pictures are all to blame. People kissing in them and huggin’ and whatnot. Police should stop ’em. Bad for children to see.”

  But Jason was perturbed. While he was considering, Mrs. Gruber added, “Don’t look the least like Mrs. Bristol. Her brother. Got black hair and brown eyes and dark skin.”

  “You don’t think he is really her brother?”

  Mrs. Gruber hesitated. “Well. No. I got two daughters; one’s fair, like … her, and the other’s darker, but there’s a family resemblance. Nothing like that with Mrs. Bristol and her … brother.”

  “He’s never been here before?”

  “No, sir. And he don’t talk like Mrs. Bristol, who’s got that funny New York accent. He talks almost like a gentleman.”

  “Like Mr. Bristol? Mr. Bristol is also from New York.” Jason could not help smiling.

  Mrs. Gruber tossed her head. “Mr. Bristol is a cultured gentleman, and this man sounds a little like that, only like a stage actor. Like he’s pretending, or imitating. Like Mrs. Bristol’s maid, who pretends she’s French, when half the time she forgets and sounds like Mrs. Bristol.”

  The suite consisted of two large bedrooms, finely and distinctively furnished, an even more royal sitting room, and a huge marble bathroom with gilt fittings. The maid, Elise, occupied a small bedroom on the fourth floor, where other live-in servants slept, those from other towns.

  “I think I’d better talk to Mrs. Bristol at once,” said Jason.

  “Knock hard on the door, sir. She don’t often wear clothes when she’s in there. Chambermaid told me.”

  Jason had a fleeting vision of the delectable Flora Bristol in the nude, and for an instant had the hope he could surprise her. He went up the marble stairs to the second floor and knocked on the carved and ornate door of the suite. He heard a loud sob, a woman’s consoling voice; then the door opened, to show the wizened face of Elise and her scowling little black eyes. She dropped a curtsy and said, “Entrez, s’il vous plaît, m’sieu.”

  Flora was in bed, in a froth of silk and lace and, alas a satin bed jacket. Her pale gilt hair was loose down her back and over the pillows, though her lovely breast was far from being entirely concealed. She looked delicious, for all her tears. The great bedroom was filled with wafts of perfume; very expensive. Though there was moisture on her roselike cheeks, her blue eyes were oddly without redness. She smiled wanly at Jason, whom she considered to be very attractive, though obdurate to her charms. She held out a languid hand to him. He noticed, as he had before, that her hands were very large for all they were smooth, and that the nails were flat and broad.

  “I’m sorry to hear about your jewelry, Mrs. Bristol,” said Jason, sitting down near the bed while Elise kept an alert distance. “Tell me about it. I understand your brother was here for a few days. Did you notice the loss before or after he left?”

  “Theo. It was before. Wasn’t it, Elise?”

  “Oui, madame.”

  “And he didn’t report it to the desk?”

  “I … I don’t know. I don’t think so. He was in a hurry for his train. He has big business in New York. He’s a broker. I just told him I’d report it myself.” Her voice was husky, in considerable contrast with her dainty appearance. “So I told Mrs. Gruber, the housekeeper. I just know who took it! Hattie, the chambermaid! She’s always staring around, looking for something. Or it could be the breakfast waiter, that Herman. Has a sneaky look on him; and he can’t talk English, either. Just German, I think.”

  Hattie Eisen was a middle-aged farmwoman of great integrity, and had worked for years in the Inn-Tavern. Her husband’s farm was poor, and she “helped out,” as she called it. Patrick also “helped out,” by buying almost all the hotel’s fresh fruit from the little farm, and sweet butter for the guests who preferred it. Herman Heinz, the waiter, was quite old, a silent and earnest bachelor, also a longtime employee of Patrick’s, and of honorable Mennonite stock.

  “That Hattie was fiddling around my dressing table this morning with her duster,” said Flora Bristol, raising her voice indignantly. “She took a long time, longer than usual. And Herman loitered around there, too. That was just a minute after Elise came in. Wasn’t it, Elise?”

  Elise moistened thin purplish lips and said, “Oui, madame.” She looked at Jason with cunning cruel eyes. T
hen she said, without an accent, “I wondered what they both were doing there, right at that dressing table, together. Now we know. They were in it together.”

  Jason said sternly, “That’s a dangerous accusation, Elise. You didn’t really see anything, did you?”

  “I saw them moving their hands, side by side. The jewelry was laid out, where Madame left it last night before she went to bed.”

  “You saw her lay it there?”

  The eyes shifted. Then the woman said, “Well, m’sieu, she always lays it there, for me or Mr. Bristol to put it in their little safe. Sometimes at night, sometimes in the morning.”

  Jason pounced. “Isn’t it your duty to help Mrs. Bristol get to bed?”

  Again the eyes shifted, and this time nervously. The woman darted a look at her mistress. “Well, not last night, sir. It was late, and Mrs. Bristol said I needn’t stay up after eleven, waiting for her, and I could go to bed, as she’d be dancing most of the night.”

  “So you don’t know if the jewelry was there last night, as usual?”

  Jason’s voice had become hard.

  “What’re you trying to insinuate, Mr. Garrity?” cried Flora, sitting straight up in bed.

  “I’m not insinuating anything, Mrs. Bristol. I’m just trying to get a clear picture of when the jewelry was last seen. You saw it last?”

  “Yes, I did! What do you mean?”

  Jason shrugged. “Elise, you don’t know if the jewelry was there last night?”

  Flora screeched.

  Elise said, “If it hadn’t been, Mrs. Bristol’d have noticed it. She had to take it off herself, didn’t she?” Her tone was challenging and impudent. “If it had been gone before she went to bed, she’d have noticed, wouldn’t she?”

  “I don’t know. I’m the one asking questions, if you please.” Jason turned to Flora, whose great blue eyes reflected anger and … Was it fear, too? He wondered. “Have you notified your husband, Mrs. Bristol?”