The Golden Vanity

by Isabel Paterson

"No. I didn't expect to be. I guess nothing would have made any difference. Anyhow, I'm sailing for Rio next week, so you needn't mind."

  She didn't know whether it was silly or tragic. Why must there always be one who kisses and one who turns the cheek? And why must he wander in now, when she did not want to think at all. Not of anyone. Hadn't she enough—

  Apparently not. At that moment the telephone rang again. She was glad of the interruption, until she had listened a minute. It was Jake, but she thought at first he must be joking, and she couldn't see the point.

  "What?" she demanded inelegantly. "Yes, I heard you; but what's the catch?" He said it again. Mysie exclaimed: "With Gina? Are you crazy or am I?"

  Jake replied, taking pains with his enunciation: "The propositions are not mutually exclusive. Now listen—I've only got a minute—I'm in a pay booth, at a gas station— and she's waiting in the car." He repeated for the third time the statement which had stunned Mysie, and added: "Can I count on you?"

  "You're delirious," said Mysie. "I'll be there."

  "Good girl." The pay phone clicked off. Mysie clutched her hair with both hands. Jake had informed her that he was eloping, reluctantly, with Gina. They were driving down to his beach bungalow. Even if he was merely out of his head, Mysie was obliged to investigate. She looked about for her hat and coat and saw Dick Chisholm. "You'd better come along," she said. It would be a wearisome drive, and perhaps not altogether safe for a lone female.

  Chisholm did not ask where to. After she had snatched up a suitcase and run downstairs and started the car, she explained that she was going out home, and had to call on a friend en route.

  Gina had run off with Jake.

  That was flatly incredible; but Jake had said it three times.

  With luck, it was a run of an hour and a half, or two hours in heavy traffic. Fortunately, this was the slack hour, between nine and ten o'clock, and a mild October night. After crossing the bridge, she apologized to Chisholm. "I'm afraid I can't be very sociable." The one and only time she had been to Jake's place, Thea drove.

  After an hour, she had to diverge from the main road, and pray for guidance, watching the signs. The flying darkness on either side of the headlight made her sleepy. She identified the last village thankfully; beyond that she must follow the beach for several miles, till she came to a dozen cottages in a row. Jake's bungalow was not directly on the beach, but a few hundred yards apart, inshore. It stood on a low hill, and there was a windswept tree by the porch, so she was reasonably certain when she saw it.

  I don't believe any of this, Mysie thought. Probably I'm dreaming. ... It did not seem advisable to drive immediately to Jake's door. She said to Chisholm: "Do you mind waiting in the car? I won't be long." She hoped not.

  A path led to the porch; the window was dimly alight, and a car stood parked in front. Mysie peered under the blind. Jake and Gina were there.

  Jake had had a bad half hour since arriving. The key stuck in the lock; then he had to find and light an oil lamp. The interior of the cottage was damply chill. He begged Gina to rest while he kindled a fire on the hearth.

  She was silent, an elegant incongruous figure, sitting on the edge of the convertible couch.

  On several previous occasions his fatal facility had led him on to an undesired success, from which he could extricate himself only by ingenious lies or ignominious flight. The most awkward affair was with that girl—what was her name?—who was just out of college and theoretically an advocate of "free unions." In a fit of innocent idiocy he proposed marriage to her, to see how she would "react." She reacted with the instant precision of a steel trap. He broke off with her finally by telling her that insanity ran in his family; that his mother was insane. Later he confessed the subterfuge to his mother. No one else could so well appreciate it. She said: "There must be. Who will get you out of your scrapes when I'm gone? I don't blame Mysie for declining the job."

  He had played up to Gina one step too far. When she said: "Take me away with you—now," what else could he do? Here they were. He certainly couldn't leave her stranded in his own house. To-morrow it would be even more impossible. If Mysie didn't come. . . .

  Gina took in her surroundings with bleak dismay. She had little appreciation of beauty or harmony, but she had grown used to luxury. It was years since she had been inside a house so small, cold and shabby. The cheap rug was worn and needed a cleaning; there was a stain on the wallpaper where the rain had beaten in the window. The limp dotted Swiss curtains were the worst. The same kind of curtains they used to have at Grandfather Brennan's house, when she was a child. Twice a year they were taken down and washed. Those curtains were the trailing banners of defeat.

  She had been so terror-stricken by Arthur's defection, by the collapse of the Siddall fortune, that she had clung to Jake blindly. In the last four years she had seen and heard of such incalculable reverses, people who had been enormously rich actually penniless, men lately in control of vast wealth broken, disgraced, under indictment; women who had been reared in affluence looking for any kind of employment. It was like an earthquake. . . . And she had no one to turn to. Certainly no other man, since she had been absolutely circumspect in her conduct. . . . Jake was a successful playwright, a rising genius.

  And he had a light touch. Arthur's youthful, untaught ardor repelled her, perhaps her body protested and would not forgive the compulsion she had put upon it in the beginning.

  But Jake's house too wakened unwelcome memories of her girlhood. Jake saw tears trembling on her lashes. He succumbed again and sat down beside her, coaxing her with endearments.

  He thought, with a detached corner of his mind, this is getting worse and worse. He wasn't immune to the natural impulses of a man holding a beautiful woman in his arms. Her hair was fragrant, with a dry, delicate odor. A little more and he would be sunk. He'd better talk, spin out the time somehow. . . .

  "Darling, don't cry; if you hate it here, shall we—" he couldn't think of an alternative; certainly not a hotel. . . .

  Gina said, in a small voice: "You don't really live here?"

  This was his opportunity. "I couldn't write anywhere else." He had to have isolation, simple things. "You must realize, darling, that I am poor, I have to earn my living. This is all I can afford."

  She said timidly: "But your plays—"

  Second plays, he explained, practically always failed. His first play had brought him next to nothing. As he had backed it himself, the production ate up his presumed profits. And he had family obligations—the upkeep of the house Aunt Susan still occupied, and various other indigent relatives. . . . Besides, he did not wish to become a popular playwright, nor to make money. "Money runs through my fingers," he said. "No matter how much I made, I'd be broke; if I haven't got it, I can't spend it. I'm better off without it." He almost convinced himself.

  Gina said: "But I shall have—something." Her upbringing, on the inadequate annuity from her father's insurance, had taught her to loathe the mean economies of genteel poverty. ... Arthur had said he would do the best he could for her. If there was anything left—He hadn't said how much, but the law. . . . No, it wouldn't, if she put herself outside the law. She had only Arthur's provisional promise to count on. He mightn't keep it; lawyers would give him more prudent counsel.

  "I can hardly," said Jake, with stern nobility, "live on your husband's money, after stealing his wife. How am I ever to repay your sacrifice? Darling, I've been a selfish brute; thank God it's not too late." He kissed her hands, a gesture of resignation.

  For a similar attitude, Mysie had once slapped him. She then burst into laughter and exclaimed: You priceless imbecile—thus laying the foundations of a durable friendship. No hope of Gina taking it that way.

  It was too late. She could go neither forward nor back. Self-pity flooded her; she began to cry again.

  Jake had tried his whole repertory. He began over again. "Darling sweet, listen, we'll find a way; don't spoil your beautiful eyes. Do you know you've g
ot the prettiest ears in the world too?"

  The screen door clicked. Mysie's voice interrupted: "The family ears." Jake and Gina sprang to their feet; Jake was taken by surprise as completely as if he had not invoked the visitation. He had been so nearly gone. Gina backed against the wall by the mantel, rigid with anger.

  "It used to be my ears," said Mysie. "We seem to have a good deal in common. Don't mind me, Gina; I'll be going right away."

  "How did you get here?" Jake achieved this inanity.

  "I was motoring home, and I had a message for you from Corrigan; that's what you get for not having a telephone. I looked in and was going to back away till I saw who it was. Of course you'd like to kill me, Gina; I would, in your place. But I've known Jake longer than you have. I introduced you. I feel bound to tell you; you can't depend on Jake. He doesn't mean any harm, but he's a born bachelor. You can take my word for it."

  Gina said: "Do you mean that he is your lover?"

  "Worse than that," Mysie said. "He was my husband once. Not for very long, of course; and not much of a husband, but the best he knew how."

  "Your husband?" Gina clutched the mantel.

  "Well, a justice of the peace said so. It's eleven years ago. Maybe you remember the first time you met Jake, at my apartment? He was there to talk over a divorce. We'd been married about six months before. We met in Providence. I was playing in stock, and he was trying to write a play as usual. We used to sit on the beach for hours and talk about our ambitions. When the stock company closed, Jake saw me to the train, and then he decided to see me to New York; and so on. We went straight to City Hall and got the license and were married the same day, and we took a boat to Norfolk for our honeymoon; I can't think why. Jake was seasick. Before we got back, we discovered we really didn't want to be married. We had one grand row and several good laughs. Jake hadn't told anyone but his mother. It was so silly; we just liked to talk to each other, and I guess he had a brainstorm when he saw me going away on the train from Providence. His mother asked us to think it over, but after six months she saw it was no go. So I went back West and got a divorce. I stayed with Clara Carson, and nobody in Sequitlam knew about the divorce. It wasn't in the papers, an undefended suit." Artemisia Van Buren vs. Jakobus Van Buren, both utterly unknown to fame.

  That was a long speech, Mysie reflected, almost two "sides."

  Gina swayed and slipped toward the floor. "Look out —catch her, Jake," Mysie exclaimed. Gina did not hear her. Everything else she had heard, but remotely, as if it were of no importance. Mysie and Jake had been divorced. ... In the middle of a sentence Mysie's voice stopped, the last words sounded loud and strange, echoing like the note of a gong; the meaning was lost in the sound. . . . This has happened before, Gina thought. . . .

  She was mortally cold; Jake was lifting her to the couch; and Mysie appeared out of nothingness, holding a glass of water.

  Gina protested: "Don't. . . ." Her head was heavy, and her forehead dewed with cold sweat. If they dashed water in her face she would be sick. She couldn't bear it, before Mysie and Jake. . . . She knew when this had happened before, knew what it meant, with absolute physical certainty. ... If she had .. . why, she could never have been sure whose . . . "Go away. Let me alone," she said violently.

  Mysie seconded her. "Get out, Jake; I'll call you." He effaced himself with grateful alacrity. Leaving was one of the best things he did, Mysie thought. "Take it easy," she said to Gina. "You look nice anyhow, fainting." Gina certainly was not the swooning type of female, Mysie cogitated; then why did she now? Why do women faint? There was one possible sound reason. If true, it wasn't funny to Gina. One of those appalling jokes on women—

  Mysie suppressed her unseemly curiosity, casting about for a way of letting Gina know this evening would remain a secret forever.

  "Gina, will you promise not to mention that Jake and I were married and divorced? Especially since I'm in Jake's play—it would be a tabloid news story. We'd be utterly ridiculous."

  Gina understood. "Of course I won't."

  I'll bet she won't, Mysie thought. "How do you feel now? What you need is to go straight home and rest. I'd take you myself, but if I don't show up after telephoning Thea two hours ago that I'd be along soon, she'll be worried. Can you manage it?" "Of course I can," Gina said angrily. Jake was lurking in the kitchen; Mysie summoned him: "Gina's ready; she's going home; please drive carefully. Where's your hat, idjit?"

  Jake whispered imploringly: "Couldn't you?"

  Mysie whispered back: "I could not. It will be a lesson to you." She went with Gina to the car and said good night in a casual tone, as if nothing had happened. Well, it hadn't. She could tell. . . .

  Gina sat back in the corner of the car rigidly withdrawn—She thought: Arthur can't leave me now. He can't. . . .

  When they were out of sight, Mysie walked down the path to her own car, where Dick Chisholm waited patiently.

  "Will you drive?" she said. "I'll get on the road first." She backed the car; there was a short cut at the last turning. After ten minutes she found it, and drew over to one side, stopping so they could change. It was a byway; no other cars were in sight.

  "You can't imagine what I was doing," she said.

  "No."

  "I was stopping an elopement."

  "Did you succeed?"

  She nodded. They could see each other plainly. The yellow glow of the headlights picked out a clump of grass and fern by the roadside, drawn in sepia and gold. The moon too was pale gold, large and warm.

  "But it really seems too bad," she said. "On such a night. Someone ought to."

  "I've always been in love with you," he said.

  "No, you haven't," she said. She had represented the unattainable to him. Most men have an element of snobbery in their attitude toward women; there was that in his long remembrance of her. He would make a fortune, and then he would be as good a man as Michael Busch. But Mike hadn't been like that; he backed his own choice. Dick Chisholm wasn't a bad sort, but the fault, the shortcoming, was in himself. He wouldn't take the odds. It takes generosity to love, to be happy. . . . She didn't want Dick to be in love with her. But he would do for a barrier. She wouldn't mind having someone to talk to, at two o'clock in the morning, so she couldn't think of anyone else. And why shouldn't Dick have his desire? He could then go away and maybe find some woman for himself. "It doesn't matter," she said, "let's go."

  "Straight ahead?" he asked, spinning the wheel. The sound of the motor almost muffled her reply.

  "Whichever way you like. I've got two days."

  27

  "I WISH," said Thea, "that you two would agree on a selection before you begin. It's rather distracting to have you singing and playing two different songs at once."

  Jake was on the piano bench and Mysie leaning over his shoulder turning the music. Thea was adding up her accounts methodically and grimly. The livingroom of the cottage had to serve as study and music-room also. Even for week-ends in the country Thea could not dispense with a piano, though for lack of space it had to be an upright. Thea said that the installation of a cozy corner would make the room a complete period exhibit, American middle class of 1900. There was a Morris chair, occupied at the moment by Geraldine reading the Saturday Evening Post. Geraldine and Leonard were week-end guests, which meant that Mysie had to sleep on the convertible davenport sofa. Jake was there only for the day. If necessary, they could have made him up a cot in the diningroom. The accommodation of a large house is fixed, but a small house will shelter almost any number of people.

  "What bothers you," said Mysie, "is not merely that Jake is determined to soothe his savage breast with the strains of the Bird in a Gilded Cage while I prefer the works of Thomas Haynes Bailey; but if Jake had a voice it would be a tenor and if I had one it would be a contralto; and no song is written for exactly that arrangement. Did you ever notice, Thea, that all songs are in the wrong key for whoever is asked to sing them?"

  "I've noticed something of the sort," said
Thea. "It is a great comfort to me that I have lost practically all my savings on the very best advice." The abrupt change of subject did not disconcert her auditors. It was their customary mode of conversation, each resolutely following his or her own line, with amiable acknowledgments of the separate interests of the others. The transitions were made as by the quantum theory, with no intermediate process.

  Mysie said: "It's no use worrying; they've got us whip-sawed. I tried to figure out lately what I should have done to hold onto my miserable savings. There wasn't any way. New York real estate, or mortgages, or stocks, or bonds; I'd have had to leap from one to another like Eliza crossing the ice. And if I'd got across, there would be the tax-eaters waiting with open jaws; besides, nobody knows how much a bank account will be worth to-morrow in German marks. Maybe it doesn't matter; God didn't mean people like us to have incomes. You know Mr. Gates McGarrah said we weren't to be trusted with real money. Never give a sucker an even break. We were born to earn our livings from day to day. We can't be anything but what we are."

  Nobody was observing Geraldine. There was no reason to do so. She merely sat very still, conscious of her own heartbeats, hearing the echo of a voice she'd never hear again.... For two months after her return from Havana, she had not known whether Matt was living or dead. Then one morning she answered the telephone . . . Mrs. Wiekes? The warm deep note vibrated through the insensate wire—Yes, she said ... It's you? Matt said. You know who this is?... Yes, she said again .. . You alone? he asked . . . No, she said, the children are here ... He said: I get you. I suppose I couldn't see you? ... She said: I can't ... He said: I've thought of you a good deal . . . She repeated: I just can't. How are you? . . . He said: Oh, I'm O. K. I guess my number wasn't up yet.... They were both silent for a moment, still aware of each other by some mysterious mode of communication of which the telephone was only a materialized form. That which divided them was equally imponderable and immeasurable, not steel or stone or space. She felt that her respectability was as dangerous to him as his outlawry was to her. Respectable people were bad medicine to him. All the presumptions were on their side. ... He said: I guess you can't. Well, good-by, girlie—good luck—She said: Good-by. . . .