The Golden Vanity

by Isabel Paterson

  The stock market plunged and paused and plunged again; and every day some prominent banker or politician assured her that to-morrow, or next week, or next month, all would be as it had been.

  Their assurances were shocking. They are fools, Geraldine thought, with sick dismay. Telling us it isn't so, when it is before our eyes. These are the men we depend upon. . . . Sometimes their pictures were printed. Foolish fat faces. . . . What has happened to men? Every loss can be made good except that. They are not grown up; they are pretending. They won't admit anything.

  But she had her own work to do. After all, she had lived through the war, the dollar-a-year men and Victory loans and Liberty cabbage. Probably the sum total of fools was constant; only under stress it became visible, finding a common denominator. They were funny, too, in a desperate way, like the comedy which invariably creeps in at a funeral. Possibly her apprehensions were exaggerated by the measure of Leonard's personal bad luck. . .. She remembered her father and mother telling about the hard times of the Nineties, which had passed. . .. Fear was the worst thing; all that imbecile optimism was the meanest kind of fear.

  Six weeks later Mysie sent tickets for the first night of Jake's play. Geraldine thought, things do go on just the same. She was amused to find herself mildly thrilled by the occasion; she had never been to a first night. She might have easily enough; tickets could be bought. Living in New York, one never did anything that the name of the city connoted.

  Dressing for the evening, Geraldine found that her evening frock, two years old, had grown perilously tight, strained at the seams. I'm matronly, she thought; can such things be? Thirteen years of matrimony had had an opposite effect on Leonard; he was rather thinner. As she straightened the bow of his tie, she had a fleeting recollection of going to the theater with him before they became engaged, herself in a high-waisted blue frock with a ruffle at the neck and her hair done in a top-knot like Billie Burke. And she had been pleased by his recklessness in getting the best seats and taking a taxi.

  The children came in to be kissed good night and to admire her loyally. Judy promised to be a real beauty, with her straight fine limbs and "moth eyebrows." Dina's round roguish face and curled lashes would serve her as well as beauty. Whenever they were in the room, Geraldine thought, being matronly became natural and almost painless.

  It was a very smart first night; all the regular first-nighters were there, and recognized one another in the lobby, and felt prominent. Geraldine didn't know anyone, and stayed in her seat between acts, assembling her impressions of the play. There was a twist to it, an almost imperceptible burlesque of conventional situations—Jake had taken a subtle revenge on his collaborator. Its chance of success was fine-drawn; reckoning in terms of her own métier, Geraldine decided it was like a novel which is a cut above the popular level, but which may reach the best-seller list if the public is mysteriously seized with the conviction that it is the current book one must be able to talk about, must keep on the library table.

  As leading lady Anne Fairfield was professionally competent; one could take her for granted. Geraldine gave most of her attention to Mysie. When she realized suddenly that for minutes she had forgotten Mysie in the part, Geraldine knew she had seen good work. There and there, when Mysie was merely listening, when she said nothing but Yes, she caught it, what it's all about. The flash . . . That time I went to the theater with Leonard, Geraldine thought, and we drove back through the park, and I had a gardenia pinned to my coat, I wasn't in love with Leonard but with life, and it seemed as if I had it all in my hands...

  At the memory, Geraldine felt treacherous. It was nobody's fault if those moments were only moments, and must be reckoned against years and years of the commonplace. Besides, we couldn't endure such delight always; we should die of its intensity. But it's queer how it can be brought back like a ghost by such simple devices as a dab of greasepaint, the cadence of a phrase, a gesture . . . Geraldine could see why a man might fall in love with an actress across the footlights, unable to separate her from the illusion she created. Mysie had somehow resolved herself into another creature, slender and delicate, with great soft black eyes. The effect was achieved by a material irony, by laying it on with a trowel, rouge and mascara and a theatrically simple gown of pale yellow crêpe cut an inch in advance of the fashion, nothing but crossed straps to the waist in the back, the skirt showing her ankles but emphasized by an artless train.

  Gina and Arthur were in one of the boxes. Geraldine didn't notice them till the second intermission, and stopped on the verge of pointing them out to Leonard. She didn't want to meet Gina to-night. Gina wore a narrow band of diamonds in her hair, and was applauding at the correct moments, with her set smile. Geraldine thought, Arthur does see the quality of the play, and what Mysie is doing. He has taste. Why under heaven he married Gina—only if one regards her as an objet d'art, yes, one might collect her for her points, her hands and feet and the curve of her neck and the texture of her complexion. There's the curse of being rich, God help you, you can have what you want. . . . Meow, Geraldine accused herself.

  They couldn't avoid Gina. Mysie had invited them to come to her dressing room after the play if they wished; Gina and Arthur were there. And Jake, and two or three others unknown to Geraldine. Everyone talked at once, asserting enthusiasm and conviction of a hit.

  "I'm sure it will be a great success," Gina said. Geraldine thought, why does she always make a visible effort to utter even the most banal remark. Like a child "speaking a piece," learned by rote. Afraid of everybody—but what should she have to fear? Gina addresed Jake: "How you think of all those clever things I can't imagine."

  To his own immediate horror, Jake heard himself answer: "Brain work."

  Gina said: "It must be. Mysie, could you come to dinner next Thursday—and you, Mr. Van Buren?"

  "I have to be here every night at seven-thirty," Mysie explained. Arthur caught her eye and smiled, silently reminding her of his question: Don't you ever eat?

  "Oh, yes, of course—but you're free Sundays, aren't you? Next Sunday, or the next?" Gina said. "And Geraldine too," a palpable afterthought. Geraldine said hastily that on Sundays she went to the country, which was a lie and rather flagrant considering the season and the absence of any other inducement.

  Mysie reflected that perhaps she had better accept, for Jake's benefit. She said: "All right, next Sunday." It would be completely boring. No, she didn't mind much, she liked Arthur.

  Mysie asked Geraldine: "Do you think it went over?" She meant the play.

  Geraldine answered: "Certain. Don't you?" They both glanced sideways at Gina; Geraldine's look said: She thinks so; it's worth a dinner. Mysie's unspoken retort was: Sure she thinks so, but how would she know?

  "Maybe ten or fifteen weeks' run—about long enough to pay out," Mysie guessed cautiously. "By the pricking of my thumbs."

  "All winter," Geraldine affirmed. "What a lot of flowers."

  Mysie was put in mind of her manners. "Thank you," she said to Arthur. He had sent enough roses to fill a bathtub. One couldn't say anything more in that crowded cubicle, with its bleak painted walls, unshaded lights glaring above a merciless mirror on the crudity of rouge-pots, rabbit's foot, canister of face cream and crumpled face cloths. "Sticky stuff," she made an impatient gesture before her face. "Like a mask. I can't speak through it except my lines."

  "It really is a mask, isn't it?" Arthur agreed. "But I'd know you by your eyes. You were charming. . . . Can we drive you home?"

  "I'd be glad to, only I can't leave right away, the first night."

  Gina was drawing on her gloves. "Then we shall see you Sunday, at eight?" She departed, taking Arthur. Geraldine lingered, to say once more: "Honestly, Mysie, you were splendid."

  "Oh, gosh," said Mysie. "This is all there is to it, and then you start over again. Eleven telegrams and a bushel of roses." What could one keep? A babble of compliments from people hurrying away, leaving a litter to be cleared up by the dresser. "I never cou
ld figure what percentage there is in telegrams; I don't own the Western Union. But roses are something. You'll have to carry them for me, Jake. And if you'll please get out I'll change; go and tell Anne Fairfield she's your dream girl. . . . Not you, Geraldine; it's mean of you to dodge that dinner."

  "I couldn't," said Geraldine.

  She had refused the dinner instinctively, on Leonard's account. For herself, she might have found it diverting, even useful. The worst of being a writer was that one needed all experience, all knowledge. And one did not even know how the janitor lives, where the maid goes in her off time, what a policeman thinks. ... Or what was behind Gina's brittle unfocused smile, Arthur's unfailing gentle courtesy. . . .

  In the taxi going home, Leonard said: "If a play does make a hit, I suppose the royalties run up to forty or fifty thousand dollars?"

  "I suppose so," Geraldine agreed, with the liberality of Americans when imagining profits. "Well, that would have to be a big hit, a very long run," she remembered the popular belief that all writers make forty or fifty thousand dollars. "Most plays fail, more than half; oh, I guess nine-tenths. And lose a lot." I hear that your brother-in-law Abe Schultz in Chicago made twenty-five thousand dollars last week. That's right, except that his name is Schwartz and he lives in St. Louis and he didn't make it, he lost it.

  It occurred to Geraldine that she had never been able to believe in large sums of money. Her last year's earnings, seven thousand dollars, would have seemed a fortune, in a lump. When it came at intervals, and was spent, one had no sense of the whole sum.

  Leonard said no more until they reached the apartment. Geraldine wriggled out of her tight gown into a kimono. With her bobbed hair ruffled and her pretty red mouth stretched in a yawn, she became girlish again. She went to peep in at the children, to make sure they had not thrown off the blankets. Naturally they had, and lay in fantastic attitudes in their white pajamas. Judy, the scamp, had been reading in bed, a forbidden indulgence, and had fallen asleep with the book on the pillow and the light still burning. Dina slept with her doubled fist under her chin. The napes of their necks, their bare feet, were enchanting. Geraldine drew up the covers and turned off the light. One dared not look too long. That untouched and unsuspicious quality in children made one's heart come up in one's throat.

  Geraldine returned to her bedroom. Leonard stood by the dresser in his shirtsleeves, with his head bent. His dark hair was brushed very smooth. He had told her years ago that in high-school he and the other boys wore stocking caps at night to ensure that indispensable uniformity.

  He said: "I'm sorry, Geraldine, I'm rather short this month. If you could make out... I got caught when the market broke."

  He too looked very young. Not boyish, but like an untried young man, slight and diffident. Precisely the same as when they were engaged, only then he had been eager and hopeful.

  "Why, certainly, it doesn't make a bit of difference," she said quickly. "I sold a story this week."

  "Your money," Leonard said, "is tied up too." What money, Geraldine almost asked, but recalled that he had "invested" a couple of thousand dollars for her some time ago. Besides the last thousand. "It's safe enough," Leonard continued, staring at his keys and small change on the dresser. "But this is a bad time to sell." He had to insist to himself that Geraldine's money was safe, it would "come back." His speculative account had been wiped out; he had used the thousand dollars in hope of recouping and seen that go too. What he intended now was to assign to her the stock allotted to him by his company as an employee. He had not put that up with his brokers; it would not have been acceptable, as he had paid only twenty per cent of the issue price, and it was quoted thirty per cent off now. The company held the stock until it should be fully paid by deductions from his salary. It would take four years.. . And his brokerage account had closed with a small debit. The avalanche had crashed through stop-loss orders. . . . When he had been thirty thousand dollars ahead, last summer, he could easily have paid for his company stock. It had seemed foolish to draw out money from marginal deals that might double any day. He would have sold and taken his profits when they touched a hundred thousand. He would have, he told himself.

  "Yes, of course," Geraldine said. "I'd just as soon leave the money there. Don't bother." She hung up Leonard's dress coat. "It's too bad the—the stock market went wrong, but it doesn't matter, does it, as long as—" She floundered in the fatuousness of mere words against facts, and laid her hand on his shoulder. "We were just as happy at first, when we were so poor."

  "Yes," he said. He felt the worse for the reminder. Because while they were poor he had supported his family. When he went to the chemical company, at seventy-five dollars a week, the first week's pay was riches. Now the future was blank. ... As a boy he had worried about whether he could ever make a living. His father was chief clerk in a large law firm, one of those steady low-salaried men who do the detail work with no expectation of a partnership. They were a small family, four children, and they lived in a careful way in Brooklyn. The world appeared to be arranged on that plan, everything fitted together and all the places filled. Leonard studied hard in school, because he wanted to go to college, having read that one made useful friendships. In fact, he had been rather lonely in college. He specialized in chemistry not because of any unusual aptitude, but the head of the department wanted a reliable assistant, not a rival. An instructorship was secure, once you got it. Leonard had let Geraldine believe he was keen on research; it gave his poorly paid position dignity. When he went to the chemical company he knew he was doing the best he could with his moderate ability; he would never rise above routine work. Like his father, he was steady.

  His stock-market winnings were the realization of an impossible dream. Temporarily he had been transformed into one of those nonchalant young men he had envied in college—with cars and expensive clothes and cash in his pocket. He was proud of his talented wife, his pretty daughters. He wanted nothing more. How could the structure of his happiness have vanished overnight?

  Geraldine said: "Don't let's worry about it; your luck will turn again; you're tired." He could not refuse the comfort of her kindness.

  Geraldine lay awake for a long time. She thought about her childhood. Her mother did not worry about money; there were a great many things they could not afford and therefore did not expect. They were, it seemed, in about the same circumstances as everybody else. Within that limitation, they had no misgivings. Father would take care of them. Perhaps their confidence was delusive; when father died, it went with him. But as long as he was alive, they had it. Mother was middle-aged at thirty. By no stretch of fancy could Geraldine picture her father as a young man. He was heavy and taciturn, with a drooping greyish mustache and a bald spot on the crown of his head. His clothes were unpressed and a substantial gold watchchain reposed in a crease across his waistcoat. When he came home of an evening, he planted himself in his special armchair and smoked and read the paper. . . . It was as if father and mother had given up youth as a pledge in exchange for peace in their time. They married and settled down.

  Geraldine saw she had never depended on Leonard. In marrying, having children, she had counted upon herself. That was why his winnings and losses were of no consequence. She had never believed in them anyhow. The knowledge was darkened by remorse, as if she had wronged him. She had an equable affection for him; she was inseparably attached to him by the years they had spent together, by the children, even by their lack of other common interests. And he had supported her while the children were babies, literally borne in her arms. Nothing could change that. So he must not ever know—

  In the morning, at breakfast, though Leonard was quiet, she fancied he was more cheerful. They read the reviews of Jake's play, which were highly favorable. Geraldine was glad. If somebody could still be lucky, then anybody might. Leonard might again . . . She refrained from following the thought to its conclusion; he could succeed only by luck . . . After he was gone to work, Geraldine made telephone enquir
ies and went downtown herself, to insure her life for the benefit of the children. She must take care of them.

  17

  MRS. SIDDALL was not altogether surprised when Polly Brant came to her for financial assistance. She guessed the object when Polly telephoned. She also knew that Polly was still abed, at ten in the morning. Mrs. Siddall had risen at eight, her regular hour, and breakfasted in the morning room, armored for the day in unyielding corsets and a garnet velvet gown of majestic amplitude which made no concession to either fashion or informality. Her hair was firmly coiffed; and she sat upright in a straight armchair, before a damask-spread table loaded with heavily embossed Georgian silver. Mrs. Siddall's tradition did not permit a lady to be seen in déshabille except by her personal maid; and breakfast in bed, unless in case of illness, suggested other, more reprehensible laxities. She tolerated the custom for guests; but as mistress of the household she felt bound to set an example to the servants. Mrs. Siddall was an admirable example of good conscience and a good appetite. She had disposed of two hours' work with her correspondence before Polly arrived.

  Polly's explanation of her situation struck the older woman as fantastic, like viewing a familiar object through a refracting medium.

  "You mortgaged your house to speculate in the stock market?"

  "No," said Polly, reciprocally astonished, "we bought it on mortgage."

  "But that was nine or ten years ago," Mrs. Siddall reminded her, "when your father-in-law's estate was settled; I thought Bill's share paid for the house. You said it was a great bargain."

  "So it was," said Polly. "Real estate went up like mad around Southampton afterward; we could have sold last year for twice what we paid. Of course you can't sell anything now. Bill only got fifty thousand from the estate. We paid half down on the house and left the rest on mortgage, only twenty-five thousand. Now it has to be renewed, and the mortgage company insists we should reduce it at least five thousand. Everyone said it was better to have a mortgage."