The Golden Vanity

by Isabel Paterson

  After starting, Arthur observed that it was nearly one o'clock; they might stop somewhere for lunch.

  "I can't," said Mysie. "The rehearsal is at half past two."

  "Don't you ever eat?" Arthur enquired. "You hadn't had any dinner the other time."

  "Hardly ever," said Mysie gloomily, "If we pass a hot dog stand—but I suppose one couldn't eat hot dogs in this car?"

  "Why not?" A hot dog stand came into view as if ordered; Arthur commanded a halt and personally purchased two of those delicacies, one for himself. He supplied another handkerchief for Mysie to wipe her fingers. "Do you like hot dogs?" he enquired.

  "I hate them," said Mysie, still more morosely, having consumed hers. "I hate Bohemianism, and bath tub gin, and sitting on the floor, and kitchenettes, and speakeasies, and riding in subways. I like bourgeois comfort, only not the suburbs. I hate Broadway too."

  "Do you like acting?" Arthur ventured cautiously.

  "I would if there was any."

  She had never been stagestruck; the limited, vivid, self-engrossed world of the theater was too narrow. It was specifically acting which had interested her, as a mode of communication. Speech is the distinguishing mark of human beings; and every word we use is charged with the whole burden of experience. For this reason, apprehending a poetic truth too literally, men have believed in times past in words of power, secret incantations which even the blind inimical forces of nature must obey.

  "I saw you last winter in Marrying Susan," Arthur said. "You were charming."

  "It was just one of those things. All on the surface." She hadn't had a part since. But she was specially pleased by his adjective. Charming. She wished she were charming.

  "What are you rehearsing now?"

  "Didn't you know?" She had supposed he must, on the strength of Jake's connection with Arthur's magazine. "It's Jake Van Buren's play, Third String. He found an angel in Wall Street."

  "I'll get a box for the first night," Arthur said. "I hope it's an enormous success."

  "I hope so too," Mysie said truthfully. "Look, it's beginning to rain. I believe we're in for thunder and lightning, cats and dogs and pitchforks. It's all black ahead."

  12

  LARGE warm drops of rain splashed languidly in the dust, bringing the fresh smell of washed air. Presently the rain came faster, streaming straight down, with a look of weight; the windshield was sheeted with water and the road gleamed wetly black. Mysie took off her hat to feel the moisture on her face and hair.

  "I suppose I ought to shut the window," she said.

  "Do you want it shut?" Arthur leaned over to attend to it.

  "No, but the cushions will get wet."

  "That doesn't matter," he assured her.

  Well, he can buy another car, Mysie thought. "I like rain," she said.

  "I'm glad," Arthur replied.

  "You mean you're glad I like something?" Mysie caught him, and he looked guilty and laughed. "I like lots of things," she affirmed. "How can you really like anything if you don't know the difference? Those simpering sweet people who gush over everything and everybody indiscriminately don't care for anybody."

  Arthur had a moment of disquiet, on the verge of a thought he must not admit; if he did life would become intolerable. Mysie went on, unaware: "Out where I come from it rains all winter, and the grass is always green; only sometimes there is a rime of frost, and when you walk across it, you leave green plush tracks. New York is a tropical climate. Excessive and violent. It's rather exciting. The rain is coming down in solid chunks."

  "You're not violent, are you?"

  "Only within reason. You needn't be alarmed. I shriek and tear my hair, that's all."

  They had crossed the bridge and were driving slowly down town. The streets flowed ankle deep, and people stood in doorways, shrinking back from the spray. A girl ran through the deluge; her light dress was soaked and clung to her shoulders, fluttered about her knees, nymphlike. She was a pretty girl, and her face expressed mirth and dismay. That's fun, Mysie thought; that's the way we ought to take what happens, only we have to worry about hats and shoes; we can't afford adventure. Happiness must be unthinking. You mustn't stop to measure it by either the cost or use; the actual object one strives for is always subtly disappointing when achieved. Fame, fortune, perhaps even love—we stand awkwardly with our hands filled—now what?

  "Which theater?" Arthur asked.

  "Oh, don't bother; let me out where you're going and I'll get a taxi."

  Arthur insisted. "All right," Mysie agreed, "you'll be taken for a stagedoor Johnny, the last one. There really aren't any more; I'm sorry they became extinct before my time. An actress has a hard time getting talked about nowadays. ... Do you want to come in and watch the rehearsal?"

  Arthur did want to. He had never been backstage, nor given supper parties to chorus girls. That fashion had gone out among the gilded youth before he went to college; besides, his shyness and his upbringing and his bookish tastes would have prevented him. Yet, like all shy people who are not priggish, who are debarred from easy satisfactions by sensibility, he thought at times there must be something in that other way of living, reckless though crude. A reality that books couldn't give.... The fact that Mysie was an actress puzzled him. He had expected her to be different; he couldn't have said just how. Glamorous, perhaps, or dangerous, or loud. Not like this—her plain linen frock was limp and crumpled from the morning's wear; she had no make-up other than a dab of powder; but above all, she was preoccupied with the necessity of being on time for her work. He thought, she's like that girl running in the rain—He was trying to fit her to the legend of either the prima donna or the chorus girl, which she couldn't very well sustain, being neither. She had, simply, the character and manners of a woman who did work for her living....

  They didn't go in by the stage door, but the main entrance. Mysie led him down the side aisle.

  She stopped halfway, with a feeling that something had gone wrong. The half-lighted stage had the dusty aspect of any theater in the daytime. A dozen or fifteen people, the cast, stood grouped in the center. It was because they were all standing there, not dispersed casually, sitting by the wings waiting for their cues, for scenes which might or might not be rehearsed that day. Mysie guessed at trouble. The leading woman, Anne Fairfield, was speaking, tragically: "But only last week, Keller offered me—"

  The producer, Lew Morris, interrupted: "Well, I can't help it; good God, I'm the one that's left holding the sack. The guarantee won't even cover—"

  Miss Fairfield became shrill. "Do you mean to tell me—"

  "Oh, hell!" Morris flung out his hands. "Ain't I telling you? I should try to tell a woman anything—" They both talked at once, becoming incoherent.

  Having no clue to the meaning, Arthur did not hear the conversation very clearly. Mysie laid her hand on his arm and muttered: "Holy cats! Please wait here a minute, I'm afraid there isn't going to be any—" She hurried on and vanished beyond the boxes. Arthur saw her reappear on the stage. He lingered uncertainly, still unable to make sense of the argument in progress beyond the footlights. He supposed it must be dialogue from the play. Mysie spoke to Lew Morris, with a motion of her head toward Arthur in the shadowy orchestra. Arthur distinguished a few words: "I brought someone . . . No, nobody, just . . . I'll go and...."

  She came back to Arthur. "I'm awfully sorry," her tone was distrait. "The rehearsal is called off, but I have to stay awhile, I don't know how long. Thanks for driving me in."

  Arthur was sorry too. In the outer lobby of the theater, he stopped for a moment to observe that the rain was slackening, and debated with himself how he should fill the rest of the afternoon. He felt superfluous; it came to him occasionally, when he met people who worked because they had to. They seemed to be part of the scheme of life, while he was an onlooker.

  It occurred to him that he could go to the office of his magazine, The Candle.

  His car was still at the curb; Dominic threw away a cigarette uno
btrusively and opened the tonneau door. Arthur said: "No, thanks; will you please wait for Miss Brennan—the lady who came with us—and take her wherever she wants to go? Watch out for her; I'll take a taxi."

  Dominic said: "Yessir," and drew his own conclusions.

  On his way to the office, Arthur reflected that the editors might be absent, since it was Friday and the end of August. They took long week-ends and holidays. There was a managing editor and two associate editors, besides the literary editor and the art editor and nine or ten contributing editors, whatever that meant. They were all very earnest and high-minded, and had the peculiar and unanalyzable faculty of getting endowed for their opinions, a sacerdotal quality. And they held those opinions whole and undigested, so that it was hard to discover the person behind the formulas. They deplored the standardization of the machine age; and at a given time they all found a new gospel in psychoanalysis, or thought Charlie Chaplin tragic, or discovered a profound philosophy in Krazy Kat.

  Jake Van Buren was not an editor, though he was the dramatic critic. As he owed his job directly to Arthur, he was tolerated, but never invited to conferences. The moving picture critic, Ray Lynch, was an editor; he devoted most of his attention to Russian films, appraising them abstrusely in terms of rhythm and mass movement. The prodigious inanities of Hollywood filled him with moral indignation; he saw in them a "mechanism of escape." Nobody should escape if he could prevent it.

  The Russians got into everything at The Candle, Arthur thought. He wondered what made him think that; it wasn't the way he was used to thinking. Young Roger Dickerson was mainly responsible. Though Roger put up only a third of the financial backing, he had most to do with engaging the editorial board and thereby introducing the sociological and economic interest in what had originally been a very precious aesthetic publication. That is, Roger had engaged Miss Sarnoff, the managing editor, and she did the rest.

  Miss Sarnoff was married to a Russian. Her maiden name was Endicott; she was a New Englander of long descent. She compromised with her feministic principles by calling herself Miss with her husband's name. Arthur had never seen her husband. He existed in the distance. Though a Communist, he was mysteriously debarred from returning to Russia, for having known Trotsky or something. His main occupation seemed to be reviving The Cherry Orchard at Little Theaters.

  The outer portal of The Candle was guarded by a girl sitting behind a wicket with a telephone and a pad of paper on which callers were required to state their business. Arthur had never noticed her especially, except that she was a thin, black-eyed girl with a wide mouth needlessly emphasized by a liberal use of lipstick. As he entered he heard her talking over the telephone: "Oh, Lester is a big sap; you gotta schmoos him a bit...." She looked up and saw Arthur. "Who do you wish to—oh!" She was flustered into a spontaneous giggle. Arthur smiled back at her as he went by. He's kinda nice, she thought. She had got her job through an employment bureau, and her private opinion of the editors was that they were a bunch of nuts.

  Arthur's office could be reached only through that of Miss Sarnoff. She had a sound tactical sense. It happened she was in, and she received him almost as an equal; she was always patient with him. An athletic, handsome woman in the thirties, she had emerged from college a dozen years ago as one of the post-war revoltees, who acquired "sex experience" as a duty, whether they liked it or not. After marriage she committed adultery in the same conscientious fashion, because jealousy was anti-social and extra-marital episodes were necessary to a full life. She had a child because without maternity a woman is unfulfilled in her biological function.

  She daunted Arthur. He was aware of her obvious diplomacy with young Roger Dickerson; it was, indeed, obvious to everyone but Roger. She schmoosed Roger. Arthur recognized that she didn't consider it necessary to be diplomatic with himself. She was firm and proprietary about large questions such as birth control, disarmament, and the Treaty of Versailles.

  Arthur's flat-topped desk was bare except for a blotting pad, pen and ink. Miss Sarnoff fetched an advance copy of the next issue of The Candle. It contained the regular articles on the Russian experiment, handicraft culture in Mexico, the psychiatric treatment of criminals as victims of society, the cancellation of the war debts, Negro sculpture, James Joyce, and the art of Stanislas Prezmsyl, a Pole who modeled all his subjects in the likeness of eggs. There was also an article on the need of a literature of the proletariat.

  Arthur speculated vainly why Julius Dickerson—for of course Roger got the money from his father—should subsidize propaganda for cancellation of the war debts, when Julius had been adviser to one of the debt commissions which had fixed the terms of settlement a few years earlier, terms which cancellation must abrogate as unpractical and unethical. Arthur didn't connect this fact with the subsequent fact that Helder & Dickerson had participated in various European industrial concessions which were quietly arranged at the same time as the debt settlement, though with no visible connection. Immense issues of stocks and bonds had been sold to American investors on those industrials, with commissions to Helder & Dickerson, and other big bankers. What puzzled Arthur was the argument that payment of the war debts would ruin the United States because payment must be made in either money or goods, both fatal; also, if the war debts were paid, Europe would be unable to meet the industrial loans. It seemed to him they should have thought of that sooner. And he tried to figure out why payment of the industrial loans wouldn't be equally disastrous, unless some third method, neither money nor goods, could be invented. He gave it up, assuming that he didn't understand economics. He could see that it would be a vast relief to European statesmen not to have to pay for a very expensive war; and he had the humanly kindly impulse to be generous at no matter whose expense; in effect, he fell back on the roseate theory that nobody would have to pay.

  Arthur signed a check—that was what the pen and ink were for—to cover his share of the quarter's deficit on the magazine, and took his departure. The bareness of his desk depressed him subtly. In the adjoining offices girls were typing busily, or answering telephone calls about cuts and dummies and proofs, or explaining that the editor called for was out. All that, the actual work, went on regardless of Arthur. He had bought the magazine because he had a taste for letters and because he thought he ought to make some disinterested use of his money; but in the main with the unformulated hope that it would serve as an admission card to the working world. It wasn't that he was unable to understand the routine; only there was no place for him after all. He could have mailed the check; his presence or absence made no difference.

  In the street again, he decided that he might as well drop in at his nearest club for a belated lunch. Then he recalled, with a bad conscience, that he had stayed over, while Gina and Mrs. Siddall went back to Bar Harbor, on the pretext of attending a meeting of the building committee of that very club.

  So he really might as well go there.

  13

  MYSIE rejoined the group on the stage. There was nothing to be done. One word had informed her of the worst. But she was bound to lend the moral support and consolation of a listener to Jake. He was lurking in the wings, too stricken to take part in the futile debate.

  The backer of the play, the angel from Wall Street, had failed them. He had gone broke, or at least had lost so much on a turn of the market that he could not find money for the play. Quite as much of a gamble, Mysie reflected. It was a wonder where people got all the money they lost. The angel would have to cut his loss on whatever sum he had already advanced to cover the equity bond and expenses to date. Naturally enough he had not come to break the bad news in person; Lew Morris had been informed by telephone. Mysie was sorry for Morris, a shoestring producer with a record of one moderate success and three flops. Probably he had let himself in for bills that would mean bankruptcy, not daring to extract a safely large sum in advance from his angel. An inexperienced backer would put up four or five thousand dollars, and then keep on paying to see the thing through.
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  Morris had taken a chance on Third String because he could get Anne Fairfield for the lead. Anne's name ensured the attendance of the dramatic critics instead of their assistants; she was a recognized star. But she too had had several bad seasons, or she wouldn't have been available. In fact, she was greatly in need of a part and an immediate salary. There was the disadvantage of ranking as a star; you had to have leading parts or none, and a succession of failures, even though the fault might be in the plays, made managers shy off from an unlucky player. There were so many stars now, with so many theaters—sixty or seventy or eighty, was it? New stars every week, dimming the radiance of last week's luminaries.

  Anne Fairfield went into sobbing hysterics suddenly and Vida Winship, who played dowagers, led her to a dressing room. Vida disliked Anne, but forgot it in the facile kindness of theatrical folks. Lew Morris clasped his head in his hands and enquired at large: "Can I help it?" An anxious girl who had been cast for a maid's bit whispered to Mysie: "Do you think we'll get our week's pay?" They had been rehearsing for almost three weeks. "Oh, I guess so," Mysie replied rather mendaciously; she wasn't at all sure. "Lew, can't we adjourn this lodge of sorrow? Can't everybody come to your office in the morning, when you've had time to check up?"

  "You've got sense," Morris said gratefully.

  Mysie went over to Jake. "Well," she said, "that's that. Let's get out of here." Jake said nothing, but obeyed.

  The heat met them aggressively as they stepped onto the pavement. "This is awful," Mysie sighed. She didn't mean the collapse of the play; that had already mingled with the past. "I wish I could go to the country and never come back." Dominic presented himself respectfully. "Hasn't Arthur—Mr. Siddall—gone yet?" Mysie demanded in surprise.