The Young Apollo and Other Stories

by Louis Auchincloss

  On the maternal side, baby Evalina was even grander. Her mother, Eliane, had been born a Bourbon-Brassard, a family that claimed seniority to the House of France, insisting that only the unreasonable refusal of Louis XI to recognize the marriage of an ancestor had robbed them of the crown which Henri IV had deemed worth a mass. Indeed, Schuyler Lane may have been subject to a similar impulse when he had easily (and some said cynically) acquiesced to the demand of his proposed in-laws that he change to the older faith in wedding their daughter. He had even gone further and agreed, for a time anyway, to adopt his wife's native land, sumptuously re-modeling the lovely but dilapidated family hôtel in the rue de Grenelle as well as the ancestral chateau in Normandy.

  Gathered in the church for the christening were some of the greatest names of ancient France, the most respectable of the American expatriate community, several ambassadors and statesmen, and a sprinkling of the father's intellectual French friends. The infant would have several worlds to choose from.

  But if there was no wicked godmother present, there were a few skeptical observers who clung to the very private opinion that the child's own mother might do for one. Eliane de Bourbon-Brassard had been born in Frohsdorf, the cold and lonely Austrian chateau where the exiled Comte de Chambord, the uncrowned Henri V of France, had presided over the gloomy little court of nobles, who loyally took their turns "in waiting," leaving their fine Gallic homes for a bleak season of dull and pointless etiquette. When Eliane's poor mother had died there of lung disease and her grief-stricken father had at last brought the child back to Paris, he was determined to fill her life with all the cheer it had so far lacked, and he satisfied her every material want at whatever cost to the sad remnant of his always diminishing capital.

  Beautiful, clever, and vivacious, Eliane grew up the prey of moods of frenetic exuberance from which she could plunge into the blackest despair. She was convinced in her high periods that she had everything a woman could possibly want or need: no blood was bluer, no wit sharper, no features more winning, no mind acuter, no soul more imaginative. But at other times she would be convinced that the slightest symptoms of physical malaise were ominous and that she was doomed to an early demise. Only one thing was sure: she had to have her cake while she was still young and gobble down every last crumb of it. She shared at least that resolution with the Lanes.

  The Bourbon-Brassards had too little capital to attract the dower-hungry sons of their peers in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and rather than choose among the eagerly proffered ones of the haute bourgeoisie, they cast their net for a rich American. These had the advantage of belonging to no recognized class in the French hierarchy, so it was possible to squeeze them into even the société la plus fermée. Schuyler Lane, a first secretary at the American Embassy, with a supposedly brilliant future ahead of him, fitted their every requirement, except for his religion, and that he proved reasonable about. It was true that his mother hurried across the Atlantic to make a noisy fuss about this, but what could she accomplish against the will of a son so in love?

  That son was not unaware that his betrothed was subject to violent changes of mood, but he had the male vanity to believe that the deep mutual love which he assumed bound them together would stabilize her and permit what he had no doubt was the noble side of her character to predominate. And to some extent this at first had seemed to be the case. But when he began to differ with her in her fixed notions of where they should live, what people they should see, and what kind of career he should carve for himself, he encountered a resistance the force of which he had certainly never anticipated. The storm which finally crashed in his ears erupted when he announced that he was resigning his post at the embassy. He had been corresponding with friends at home who wanted him to seek election to the New York State Assembly.

  "You mean I'd have to live in America?" she cried.

  "For some part of the year, anyway. We'd keep a base here, of course."

  "And you'd be a politician? You want to be president?"

  Schuyler smiled. "I might have to start a bit lower. But it is essential for me first to establish a definite residence in New York. Later on we might move to a western state. If I'm ever to aim at Congress, it would be more feasible to live in a less populated area."

  "But you never told me all this!"

  "I haven't been clear about it in my own mind. Until quite recently. But I never planned to give up my country. I've always had a political career in the back of my mind. Did you really expect I'd spend my whole life dawdling in Paris?"

  "Dawdling, you call it! And you want me to live with cowboys and be scalped by Indians? When we're privileged to live in the most brilliant city in the world! And belong to the most brilliant society! Darling, have you gone mad? Look at the success you've been here! Why, Tante Marielle was telling me just the other day that you spoke better French than she did. She said no one would take you for an American!"

  "Is that the ultimate compliment? I guess it is indeed time I went home."

  "No, no, mon cher, it's out of the question. You don't know what you're asking. There's no limit to the things you can achieve here. Uncle Pierre tells me he's even going to put you up for the Jockey. Now, let's not talk about it anymore. And it's time, anyway, that I dressed. We're due at the Rothschilds' at eight."

  He let the subject drop, assuming that this had been only the first round. Given time, he had little doubt that she would view the prospect more favorably, that she might even come to see it as an exciting challenge, a new world for her to conquer and enchant. But he soon found that he was making no headway. Eliane for a time refused to discuss the subject at all, and when he finally forced her to hear him, she declared her firm resolution never to cross the Atlantic except for what she would have to be promised would be only a family visit.

  At last he announced that he would go without her. This brought on a fit of hysterics so violent that she had to be confined to a nursing home.

  Her doctor warned Schuyler that she might be suicidal. He suspected that this was an exaggeration, but did he dare take the risk? When she came home from the institution, he greeted her with the assurance that any idea of moving to America should be indefinitely postponed.

  Never had she been lovelier or gender than when she put her arms around his neck and gazed soulfully into his eyes.

  "Oh, my love," she murmured, "you are too good. Maybe I should think over America."

  "We'll talk about that later. Much later. The thing for you to do now is to get well."

  He was lost.

  Eliane could be a very pleasant person to live with when she got her way. She knew that her husband had given up his dream of a good life in order, as he pathetically believed, to preserve her own health and life, but she never doubted that his illusion had been the best thing for him or that she had saved him from the folly of a sordid American political career. She applauded his purchase of a literary quarterly, which he ably edited, and she assisted him in the establishment of a significant cultural salon, nor did she object, so long as he bought her the many things she thought she needed, to his disbursal of large sums to American institutions in Paris, such as the library and hospital. The French years passed smoothly enough for Schuyler, but he never lost sight of what he had sacrificed for them. He was too fair-minded to place all the blame on his wife; he knew how large a role his own weakness had played in his surrender, and he was determined at least to make the dignified best of a life that he had fatally marred.

  He would not, however, accept Eliane's rule for their only child. His adored Evalina must certainly become the mistress of her own life. No matter what his social engagements were, a part of every day was reserved for the child: he rode with her in the Bois; he read aloud to her from imaginatively chosen children's books; he tutored her in English, French, and Italian; he introduced her to American history and American legends. He took her on summer visits across the Atlantic to stay with her grandmother Lane and meet children of her own nationalit
y. The brilliant and serious little girl bloomed under the care of this worshipped father; to her he was a god as well as a parent. Her mother, who was affectionate without being at all cloyingly maternal, was not in the least jealous of the situation; she regarded it as a quaint but harmless American obsession that took a lot of boring duties off her hands. She exacted, however, from time to time her full rights as a mother. Evalina had to learn the docile manners of a jeune fille of the old faubourg; she had to be strictly comme il faut. But Evalina was too wise and too well coached by Papa to give any trouble in this respect.

  Did she love her mother? Yes and no. She was sometimes dazzled by her; she liked to watch her from the top of the stairs when Eliane, arrayed in grand gala de soir, received her distinguished guests. But she also knew that her mother could be dangerous. Her bark might be more lethal than her bite, but the bite was still sharp enough. And the child noted that though her father was inclined to be afraid of her, or at least to be cautious with her, the maternal relatives were not in the least of that mind. Evalina recalled a ladies' family lunch where the engagement of a Bourbon-Brassard cousin to a young man of respectable but little-known origin was discussed. Her mother let it be known that in her opinion the family was lowering itself.

  Evalina's maternal grandmother, the old comtesse, who had been born a Mortemart, had coldly reproved her daughter. "That comment, chère Eliane, would have been silly enough coming from me. But coming from one whose family had to reach across the Atlantic to find her a spouse, it is simply ridiculous."

  "But Mama, the Lanes are an ancient clan."

  "No doubt, my dear. And of course we all love Schuyler."

  Which gave to the table notice that the subject was closed. And Evalina noted that her mother had accepted the reproof meekly enough. There had been no such explosion as followed any criticism by her father.

  By her fourteenth year, Evalina was still small and grave, with black hair and large brown eyes, but a keen observer could have seen that with a little more animation she might turn almost pretty. She had become aware that her wonderful father was at heart a deeply disappointed man and had guessed that his occasional low spirits had something to do with his expatriatism. She was also aware of her mother's distaste for any reference to his American origins—Eliane had not accompanied her husband and daughter on their visits to New York—but she certainly in no way shared it. Evalina got on perfectly well with both the American and the French girls at her fashionable private international school, but she always made it clear that she was more a Lane than a Bourbon-Brassard. And she had deeply loved her dear old grandmother Lane, whose silence on their New York visits with respect to her mother had been noted, if not commented on.

  Evalina one day decided to plumb her father on a subject he seemed never to discuss.

  "We are still American citizens, are we not, Papa?"

  "Oh, yes, my darling, always."

  "Then why don't we ever think of living there?"

  "Because your mother, sweetheart, would hate it."

  "Couldn't she learn to like it?"

  "I don't really think so. Let's put it that the climate over there doesn't agree with her."

  "But it's a huge country, Papa. Couldn't we find a state with air that would suit her? What about the West? Isn't the atmosphere there dry and clear? I've read about it in geography class."

  "Oh, yes, I've had that in mind," her father replied, talking suddenly as if to himself. "I even thought of moving to New Mexico or Arizona. A magnificent ranch near Phoenix was once offered to me for almost nothing."

  "Could you still get it?"

  "Oh no. But of course there are others."

  "Oh, Papa! Do let's go!"

  Evalina was never in her life to forget the look her father now gave her. The eyes that met hers in that long loving stare were not those of a man to a little girl but those of one understanding adult to another. When he answered her at last, it was in a somewhat choked tone.

  "Well, darling, we might. We just might."

  "Oh, Papa, how wonderful!"

  But nothing was to come of it. Their little chat was in the spring of 1914, and summer brought Armageddon. Schuyler, who had had some early military training at home in the National Guard, felt impelled to apply successfully for a commission in the French army and fight for the country in which he had lived for a decade and a half and whose benefits he had taken. He was soon sent to the front and was killed in the first battle of Champagne.

  Perhaps it was a relief to him.

  Eliane had been so keyed up by the excitement of the war, so almost hysterically patriotic, that she tended to regard her husband's death as a sacrifice on her own part that crowned her with a halo of glory. She converted a life of pleasure into one of rather frenzied service and volunteered for hospital work of the utmost drudgery, drawing on a rich supply of energy long hidden from herself as well as the world. Her poor little grieving daughter seemed irrelevant to a Paris in arms, and she decided to send the girl to the safety of her paternal grandmother in New York.

  Evalina was glad enough to go. Crossing to England with her governess, she sailed on what was to be the next-to-last voyage of the ill-fated Lusitania. Sitting in a deck chair beside the apprehensive Mademoiselle, huddled in a blanket and gazing at the bleak, gray, restless ocean, she contemplated without fear the possibility of drowning in a submarine attack. Might it not unite her with her beloved father? But something like hope revived in her at the vision, bursting unexpected from under suddenly lifting clouds, of the towers of New York. It was an inspiring sight; it had been his birthplace and early home. And in another couple of hours she was being hugged and comforted in the warm embrace of her tear-stained lovely old grandmother. Evalina knew at once how tightly her grief was shared.

  She was to stay with her grandmother for the remaining three years of the war. The time passed quietly and uneventfully in the old lady's serenely ordered brownstone existence. Fanny Lane was the breed of gentle and kindly dowager who mitigated the reputation of hauteur that social newcomers were apt to attribute to "Old New York." She made the rounds of the tenements owned by the Lane trustees and insisted on improvements, even at the expense of income, and she taught classes in poetry to stenographers attending night school. Yet she shared the discipline of many ladies of her class: her rooms were spotlessly neat, her maidservants silently efficient and trimly clad, her Rolls-Royce town car a brightly shining maroon. However humble her heart, her appearances were impeccable.

  Evalina was enrolled in Miss Chapin's School for Girls, where she soon equaled her Paris record for high marks. She got on well enough with her classmates, though they were inclined to find her too serious and too averse to giggly confidences about boys and sex. She made one true friend, Ella Pratt, the daughter of a Presbyterian pastor, who hoped to become a poetess. Evalina remained a nominal Catholic, but she suspected that her father had been at heart an agnostic, and she supposed that she would be one as well. Her grandmother suspected this but said nothing about it, hoping that such a state of doubt might be the prelude to a return to the Protestant faith.

  Mrs. Lane lived alone, her two married daughters having moved to their husbands' cities, and she and Evalina passed most of their evenings together in the big, dark, cool, leathery library, she at her needlepoint and the girl at her homework. Before retiring they would have a half-hour's chat. Evalina learned from her grandmother all the details of the family fortune.

  "Ordinarily it would be the duty of your parents to explain these things, my darling child. But unhappily, you have no father to do it, and your mother is across the sea and besides, her lovely head was not made for business. So it is up to your poor old gran to prepare you for your future. As you know, neither of your aunts has been blessed with babes, and one day all the Lane trusts, for me and for both of them, will break and pour their contents into your little lap. That, in addition to what your father has already left you, will make you a remarkably rich young lady. Money,
of course, can bring pleasure, but it can also bring problems. It will sometimes be difficult for you to distinguish between people who are genuinely your friends and those who merely want to stick their hands in your pocket. Unfortunately, the latter are often gifted with a deceiving charm. But it won't do to be always suspecting people. The great remedy is to distract yourself with the duty of disposing of the money for the ultimate benefit of your fellow men. You will find it no easy task. And you must not forget to benefit yourself as well as others. You must always look well and live well. I want you to be worthy of the Lane inheritance. That is what your father would have wanted. And I haven't a doubt but that you will be! Hug me, my child!"

  Evalina threw her arms around the old lady's shoulders. "I shall do my best to be like you, Gran!" she exclaimed with an earnestness that she fully felt.

  Nineteen-eighteen brought the armistice to Europe and graduation from school to Evalina. She was eighteen and ready now to return to her mother, whom she had not seen in three years and whose letters, brief and gushing, had given little information about life in Paris and shown little curiosity about life in New York. The New World, of course, had never really existed for Eliane. Evalina discussed her future with her friend Ella Pratt.