The Golden Vanity

by Isabel Paterson

  Gina flushed with a familiar annoyance. Incomprehensible that Geraldine should care to recall an interlude as a nursery governess, her employment with the Thompsons.

  Geraldine pursued: "Isn't there a son and heir?"

  "A grandson," Gina said. "I mean, I don't know if there are any more. . . ."

  "That's right," said Geraldine, "there aren't any more —his father and mother, I've forgotten what but I mean they both died. He used to be in the Sunday papers, with dollar marks. Like The Interests. The Millionaire Kid. Is he married?"

  "No." Gina corrected herself again. "I don't know. My trunk is in the basement, isn't it? Please don't bother; I'll find the janitor." She couldn't get away quickly enough. Poverty was contagious.... And the way Geraldine talked baffled her. Mysie was even worse. You couldn't get hold of anything they said. As if you reached for something, and it wasn't there, or it was something else . . .

  When Gina was gone, Geraldine returned to her desk. But the thread of the story was broken. She said aloud: "Why did I ask if he was married?" And burst out laughing. The little girl laughed too; Geraldine stooped and kissed her. "Time for your nap, Judy darling." . . . She thought, a man needs to believe that he could make as much money as other men if he chose. . . .

  2

  MRS. SIDDALL emerged briskly from her bedroom, snapping on a pair of inch-wide diamond manacles, and followed by a yard of plum-colored velvet and her German maid, like a tugboat with a tow. A diamond collar indicated her neck; a tiara perched upon her sausage-roll coiffure. The state parure was in honor of Arthur's birthday. Her increasing infirmity of vision restricted her to a small dinner, only thirty people; about a hundred would come in after for dancing, not enough to make it a ball. "Where is the table plan, Janet?" Her secretary, Janet Kirkland, advanced with flatfooted alertness. Gina remained discreetly in the background. A tall sheaf of daisies, porcelain white, made a ruinous contrast to Miss Kirkland's swarthy cheek. She was younger than Gina, but with that complexion and two chins, what chance had she? Gina could afford to pity her. After six weeks, she no longer feared Miss Kirkland's veiled hostility. "Have the florist's men finished? My gloves, Trudi— thank you." Mrs. Siddall liked giving numerous orders at once; a tide of activity could be felt all through the house, setting toward her. This was what she enjoyed about a party; so did the servants. It gave them a sense of importance. They did not resent her brusquerie; it was personal, like a box on the ear. Mrs. Siddall assumed that they were devoted to her; that was what she paid them for. And in fact her service was not difficult, since the commands she gave were practical and definite. "What did you say, Janet?"

  Miss Kirkland said it again nervously: "A message from Mrs. Dabney—she's so sorry but she's got a black eye— I mean, she had an accident motoring, and can't come."

  Mrs. Siddall made an unconscious gesture of annoyance. "Not serious? Remind me to enquire to-morrow." Too late to invite a substitute. "Go down and tell Arkright to remove—no, wait. Wasn't the Dean to take in Mrs. Dabney?" They studied the table plan with intense gravity. Mrs. Siddall said: "Gina, would you mind filling in?"

  Would she mind? ... It was the first time Mrs. Siddall had called her Gina. Miss Kirkland's features took on a bluish tinge, the effect of strong suppressed emotion. Mrs. Siddall added: "I'm sure the Dean will be delighted."

  He was. His gentle burblings helped Gina to composure, twenty minutes later. At first, the agitation of her nerves communicated itself to her surroundings; the lights and colors, the processional movement and hum of banalities between drawing-room and dining-room, blended into one indescribable general sensation. Like being waked suddenly, by a shaft of sunlight, in a strange room: a bright blankness. Then the scene resolved itself decorously: Gina stole a glance around the table.

  The little man with the bulging shirt-front, on Mrs. Siddall's right, was an ex-ambassador. The man on her left, Julius Dickerson, was an international banker; he had a soft, bleached, greyish face, suggestive of a smalltown preacher. Next him was Mrs. Avery, a survivor of the Four Hundred, exhibiting like Mrs. Siddall the rigid chin and glazed stare which were the hallmarks of their period. Her Roman nose and robust arms made her gold-sequined bodice into a coat of mail. The thin woman in black satin with dry henna hair, a rope of pearls, and her face obviously "lifted," was Mrs. Martin. Divorced, with enormous alimony, she represented the next generation from Mrs. Siddall. Except Arthur, Gina saw that she herself was the youngest person present. The thought daunted her; looking down, she found herself eating from a golden plate. The knife scratches on the dull yellow disk startled her again. She hadn't done that! No, how silly; they used such things! Yellow orchids in gold and crystal vases dotted the Venice lace cloth.

  At the foot of the table, Arthur looked stranded. He had been talking to Polly Brant; when she turned to the man on her other side, he sat smiling shyly at nothing, and caught Gina's glance. All he saw was a young face, a contemporary; his sympathy went out to her unconsciously. Of course he had met all the others, knew who they were, in detail; but not much more. Except Polly.

  Polly was his second cousin, a gypsy beauty, black-browed and red-lipped, immensely smart in the simplest of black frocks with a red flower on her shoulder. He had fallen in love with her when he was six and she sixteen; he could have recalled the exact occasion. She had swung him up to the saddle before her for a ride. When he was sixteen and she twenty-six he fell in love with her again. Unfortunately, it was her wedding day. He had never ventured to acknowledge to her, in the seven years since, that he was in love with her; he would have been shocked to learn that she was aware of it. She was still in love with her husband, but she felt possessively protective toward Arthur. She turned to him suddenly, intercepting his glance toward Gina. "Who is she?"

  Arthur answered: "Miss F-fuller. She—she reads to grandmother."

  "Reads what? Oh, I forgot. Though it's fairly obvious that Aunt Charlotte's sight is failing. Very pretty girl." Arthur's obvious lack of understanding of her meaning convicted her of vulgarity. Polly was no more of a snob than circumstances had made her. She amended: "I daresay Miss Fuller is quite charming."

  Arthur muttered: "I suppose so; I've never talked to her."

  "How long has she been here?"

  Arthur reflected. "Must be a couple of months."

  Polly laughed. Arthur really was a lamb. . . . Later, to placate her conscience, she went out of her way to "be nice to little Miss Fuller." The diminutive was an unconscious patronizing note; Gina was as tall as Polly.

  The dinner had begun late and lasted long; Mrs. Siddall kept old-fashioned hours for large occasions. After dinner, Gina lingered unobtrusively, intending to slip away when the dance began. Nobody would notice her.

  She attached herself to Mrs. Perry, who was grateful for a listener.

  The house was enormous, with a ballroom occupying one side of the ground floor. An old-fashioned conservatory projected from it, a blob of glass. Potted palms had sprung up in tropical luxuriance all over the place, and masses of flowers. Gina watched Mrs. Siddall receiving, before a lattice of red roses, with Arthur beside her. The dancing contingent arrived by eights and tens and dozens from other dinner parties; the young men mostly rather weedy but nonchalant or nothing; the girls in straight scanty frocks, their shingled heads neat and sweet. . . . Arthur was slightly, unmistakably different. He had a rather engaging formality, the anxious hospitality of a child, as if he did not know the young people very well either. In fact, he didn't. ... He wasn't dancing yet. The others drifted onto the floor. A girl stopped near Gina and used her lipstick with the unconcern of a cat washing its face. Her partner said: "Come on, beautiful" . . . Those girls had the glamor of an intimate group as seen by an outsider; the dance translated it into physical terms; they seemed to move lightly through another medium than common air. To be one of them would be happiness. Gina had never belonged to any group; her ambition had reached toward this always, even before she had seen it. She could not yet know that whe
n an objective is attained, the illusion vanishes, to renew itself at a further distance. But only to the limit of one's vision.

  Mrs. Perry was talking about Arthur. A faded widow of fifty, with crumpled eyelids and a band of black velvet around her neck, Mrs. Perry was a poor relation, a visitor in the house for indeterminate periods, not quite the same status as a guest. Aware that Mrs. Perry was negligible in her own right, nevertheless Gina cultivated her, acquiring bits of information which might help her to find her bearings. Mrs. Perry had a rule of never speaking ill of anyone, which produced in more realistic minds an extraordinary counteraction of blasphemy and uncharitableness. But not from Gina, who, in pursuit of her ends, was incapable of boredom. She had already learned from Mrs. Perry the story of Arthur's parents. They were drowned by the sinking of a great ocean liner. Twenty years ago. One of those senseless, sensational tragedies, which seem to have no other purpose than to furnish front page headlines.

  "He looks like his mother," Mrs. Perry said mournfully of Arthur. "She was the belle of the season. In Washington—it was very gay that winter. An old Southern family, no money of course. John, that was Arthur's father, fell in love with her at first sight. They were married at a country parsonage; most romantic." The implication stirred Gina with some other emotion below her astonishment. An elopement! And with a poor girl... She'd never heard that . . . Mrs. Perry rambled on: "Dear Charlotte forgave them at once, insisted they should live with her. That was how it happened Arthur was left in her care when they sailed. Lucia, Arthur's mother, was to be presented at Court. Dear Charlotte has never been abroad since. Such a frightful shock. She sold her yacht. She has devoted herself to Arthur." Mrs. Perry's total lack of a sense of proportion sometimes made her narrative difficult to follow. "Of course, Arthur was too young to understand—"

  "What is Arthur too young to understand?" Polly interrupted gaily. "Please introduce me, Aunt Annabel." She smiled graciously at Gina.

  "Me too," Sam Reynolds put in. He actually resembled a hard-boiled egg, being bald and smooth-featured and curvilinear, with barely perceptible eyebrows and a slightly malicious grin. He was Mrs. Perry's brother-in-law. "Is Arthur up to anything, the young hellion? Then why isn't he? Ought to be ashamed of himself, mooching over a lot of old books, and the world full of women."

  "I'm sure," Mrs. Perry exclaimed, "Arthur never thinks of women."

  Sam found an unholy entertainment in the answers he provoked from Annabel. "He's not blind, deaf, dumb and paralyzed, is he? What ails Arthur, he's one of those bashful boys, waiting for some wild woman to drag him off screaming. I'm like that myself."

  "You!" Polly said.

  "Sure," Sam maintained. "I'm waiting right now for Mrs. Fuller to drag me off for this dance."

  "Don't," Polly warned Gina. "It's enough to blast any woman's reputation to be seen speaking to him."

  "I—I'm not dancing," Gina protested. But with his arm about her waist, she was obliged to accede. He danced well, and she cast about vainly for a pretext to stop. When the music ceased, they were by the conservatory. He said: "Let's see if the best rubber plants are taken. All this necking I hear about has got to be investigated." She tried to disengage herself. "Are you one of those bigoted married women?" he asked reproachfully.

  "I'm not married," she retorted, furious to the verge of absurdity.

  "I'm sorry; I thought Polly said Mrs. Fuller." He remembered; she must be Charlotte's new lady-in-waiting. "It's just my way of making myself agreeable. So many women get mad if you don't insult 'em. . . . Where do you want to go?"

  She walked blindly through the nearest door, refusing to speak or look at him again. The exit led to the hall -and stairway. "The library?" Sam said. "Good idea. Mind what I told you; it's the truth; the first determined woman that goes after him will get him."

  What a horrible man! She hated Mrs. Brant too. Since he had mentioned it, she certainly would not go to the library. It was at the head of the stairs. The house was so large, she didn't know it thoroughly yet . . . She had not been in this room before. It was quiet, a cloistral atmosphere. Tall pointed windows, and a round green-shaded lamp on a long table. She sat down in a carved high-backed chair to get her breath. Not till then did she observe that the walls were lined with glazed bookshelves. It was Arthur's study, which held his collection of rare books. It opened off the library, at the back. The intervening door was slightly ajar. . . . Men's voices were audible, muted, through the narrow aperture. . . .

  The ex-ambassador was saying that our prestige abroad suffered enormously from the lack of proper embassy quarters. The government should buy suitable buildings. Julius Dickerson's unctuous tones affirmed that Europe looked to America for leadership. Another voice regretted that the best people, young men of education and family, with independent means, did not enter politics. . .. Coolidge was a safe executive. A business administration meant prosperity ...

  This intellectual exchange soothed and impressed Gina. This was how people should talk. The voices had a padded, luxurious sound. Each remark was offered with the measured gravity of a butler presenting a letter on a silver tray. None called for any specific reply. They were like clearing house certificates, balancing accounts. They depended for their validity on the name attached. . . .

  She mustn't stay here. Nobody used this room except Arthur. But he couldn't come now; nobody would come. ... He had paid twenty thousand dollars for one book. Which was it? There were rows of small shabby volumes with dim titles behind the glass cases. More likely the manuscript lying open on the table: The Legend of Good Women. An initial was illumined with an aureoled angel, delicately drawn in its minute proportions, with grave rapt features and clear eyelids. Gina could hear the dance music, flowing through the talk in the next room.

  She did not hear Arthur enter; he moved quietly, because he did not wish to be heard.

  He had stolen five minutes. Long enough to smoke a cigarette in peace. A birthday party, he thought, was ridiculous at twenty-three, but he couldn't object if it pleased his grandmother. His world revolved around her; he accepted this as the natural order. He was strongly attached to her, being of an affectionate nature, with no one else belonging to him. . . . He did not know what to say to girls. He had no "line," and he danced badly. He respected girls. His mother was only a girl when she died; he thought he remembered her, and he owned a miniature of her. Very fair, with a gay proud flyaway expression. In college, he had been incautious enough to admit he'd never had a woman; it was turned into a joke against him. Some of the other fellows had got him tight. And took him somewhere, a drunken party; he didn't back out because he was ashamed of being ashamed. The liquor was bad and they mixed his drinks too. There had been several such occasions. Then he quit; he couldn't stand the next day. The girls had been drunk too; that was somehow the worst. . . .

  He crossed over cautiously and closed the door to the library. In his whole life, he had never been really alone. Not without someone in the next room at furthest, aware of him, waiting for him. So he had never been really near anyone, on the intimate terms of equality.

  Gina heard the shutting of the door. She stood up; they were both startled. Arthur said: "Oh, please don't let me disturb you." She answered at random: "I only came in to hide for a minute."

  "So did I." They both glanced about as if for pursuers; the absurd shared impulse mysteriously put them at ease. "Don't go," he said.

  "I must," confusion had reduced her to naturalness. "I didn't touch anything," she looked down at the manuscript. "I suppose this is medieval?"

  "Not exactly," his collector's enthusiasm gave him confidence. "Fifteenth century." Stupid, she told herself, of course Chaucer couldn't be earlier than the fourteenth. Arthur was opening a cabinet drawer eagerly. "Some of the finest manuscripts were produced just after printing was invented," he explained. "The scriveners tried to compete. But the earlier ones have more character. Here is the Ancren Riwle, thirteenth century; this copy is thought to be nuns' work, rather ra
re—it's a discipline for convents, you know."

  "I don't, I wish I did. How bright the colors are, those tiny bluets and daisies." She pored over the thick black lettering, and murmured: "It says the anchoress mustn't wear rings or brooches or keep cows or any kind of beast, except only a cat. I'm glad she could have a cat. No, I must go now," she walked to the farther door, with a wistful and flattering air of regret. ... He thought, her face is shaped like the angel's, when she looks down. . . .

  "I'll show you some other time," he offered.

  "Will you? I'd like to. Good night—I'm not going down again."

  While he smoked his cigarette, he retained the image of her, in a white gown, bending over the manuscript, with those clear eyelids lowered. And when he had returned to his duty, he looked for her in the ballroom unconsciously, because she was not there.

  3

  GINA had the afternoon off. Mrs. Siddall was closeted with her lawyers and business advisers. Her surgeon would have been greatly annoyed if he had known; the operation was set for next day, and he had ordered twenty-four hours of absolute quiet. He did not know.

  In the atmosphere of secrecy proper to the discussion of large sums of money or other sacred subjects, Julius Dickerson explained that a holding corporation sometimes simplified the—ah—transfer tax. He avoided saying death duties. Mrs. Siddall was not discomposed. She had no intention of dying. The idea of trust funds gratified her by its implication of permanence, order and security. All obligations taken care of in advance, family, friends, good works. She gave a great deal to charity, in a fixed but handsome measure. She liked giving—as we should all like to give, out of an immense surplus.

  Going out, Gina passed Janet Kirkland, hovering with a notebook in case Mrs. Siddall should call her. Janet's nose was glossy pink from weeping. She had the slightly imbecile expression of a loyal populace, on the route of royalty.