The Dark Lady

by Louis Auchincloss

  "Mother, you took me away on a cruise when I needed it once. You had better do it again. Tonight even! Except this time I'll take you."

  "Did you see something in that painting to make you change your mind?"

  "I was thinking of what Irving told me about beautiful things. That they might make up for beautiful people. Doesn't Adonis, there, remind you of David?"

  "Perhaps a bit."

  "Good. Anyway, I'll always have the Veronese. Oh, that you can be sure of! Please leave me now, Mother. I think I'm going to weep, and it's most unseemly. Go look up cruises. The first to leave is the best!"

  Alone, Elesina wrote one of the shortest but certainly one of the most important letters of her life.

  Dearest David:

  You're the only man I've ever loved. But for some persons love is not enough. I intend to accept your father's bequest, even at the cost of a lawsuit. You asked me if I was ever going to give up play-acting. I never am! I know now I'd be a fool to. Let there be peace between us.

  Elesina.

  13

  Eliot Clarkson's life had been sliced in two by his marriage to Ailsa Murphy. After that event the tense tranquillity of his first twenty-seven years was gone for good. He had decided at last to act; he had clambered up from the comfortable dark of the auditorium and plunged himself into the brightly lit commotion of the stage—only to find that, garbed for Hamlet, he was acting in The Merry Wives. Every way that he twisted and turned produced a new uproar of hilarity from the pit.

  For the mysterious Ailsa, the smiling Ailsa, the plucky little woman so admirably facing with amiable countenance a world determined to give her only knocks, was a hopeless drunk. At thirty-eight, this wide-eyed, wide-cheeked, pretty redhead had nothing left between herself and her need for alcohol but a habit of pert little sayings, expressive of her air of jaunty defiance against a large dark fate that was hardly a gentleman to have taken such advantage of a lady. This was the Andromeda that Perseus had come to rescue! Rescued and rescuer had ended up at a bar, treated by the genial sea monster who stood between them, his friendly claws encircling their shoulders.

  But what really did the permanent damage to Eliot's personality was the humiliation of his error, not its duration. Actually, the marriage lasted less than six months. It was David who went to the nursing home where Ailsa was drying out and obtained her consent to an annulment. Eliot was the one who resisted. He was grimly determined that his friend would not find him easy to handle. He had made his bed, and by God he would lie in it!

  "But it's the only way you can be saved," David protested.

  "Saved from what?"

  "From wasting your life trying to cure an incurable."

  "Not all alcoholics are incurable. I believe even your revered stepmother overcame a problem of that nature. If you could help her, why can't I help Ailsa?"

  It was his first overt reference to the affair, the existence of which he had long silently known. In the past trying months, he had hardly seen David at all, which had added to his bitterness. But now he was shocked by the green-whiteness of David's angry look.

  "I've got to save you first, Eliot, even if I kill you later. Elesina is not an alcoholic and never was. And if Ailsa really loved you, I wouldn't care so much about her drinking. But she can't love, you numbskull! It's not her fault. It's her illness. I told her it was no marriage, and she agreed. She was perfectly reasonable about it. She has no wish to make a victim of you. She only married you because you were so urgent. Give her your apartment and a year's rent, and she'll call it quits."

  "With what you've secretly offered in addition, I suppose."

  "I haven't offered her a cent. I swear it, Eliot. She's not mercenary. She's a generous, good woman with a problem she's got to face by herself. She doesn't want to ruin your life!"

  "Suppose I love her?"

  "You love a dream," David retorted.

  This made Eliot think of an actual dream he had had the night before. He had been in a police station, held on a charge of hit and run driving, of having injured a child, perhaps fatally, and even as he denied the charge, with a throbbing sense of injured innocence, a ghastly memory had assailed him of a crumpled bicycle wheel and the pressure of his own foot on the accelerator. And then in the sullen hopeless misery of his unaccountable guilt came the news that the child was dead, and that he had not been responsible, had not even been on the same street. And his ecstasy had been such that he had laughed in the face of the child's bereaved mother!

  "You don't seem to understand, David," he insisted tensely, "I'm married to Ailsa. Do you make nothing of the obligation I incurred?"

  "I suggest that you face, as she faces, the fact that life is giving you an unbelievable second chance."

  Eliot finally took his second chance; he really had no alternative. A failure to do so would have been a kind of suicide. But he was never sure that he had altogether obviated his bad luck. It seemed to him that the annulment, obtained on a trumpery ground of refusal of marital rights, had made him a different man and had placed him in a different world. The great law firm with which he was associated, the layers of Clarkson cousins, the clubs, the benefit balls, the methodical to and fro of weekends in Greenwich, in Westchester, all of which had previously seemed to him parts of a culture which if not high was at least decent now struck him as the arid pantomime of a dead bourgeois tradition. Before he had been cool but accepting, cynical but tolerant, independent but conservative. Now he began to consider that the basis of the society in which he lived might be false.

  Why should his own folly, his own inanity in failing to perceive the gravity of Ailsa's problem, have caused such a convulsion in his philosophy? Why should the poor world, so to speak, have to pay for his own mistake? He asked himself this often, trying to reason himself out of deepening depression. But what he kept coming back to was that somehow the case of Ailsa Murphy seemed the case of his world. If he had been wrong about one, how did he know that he had not been wrong about the other? If he had sat in a mental gallery all his life, treating his fellow men, with the exception of David, as if they were objets d'art in lighted glass cabinets and if, coming to life at last, he had seen the Tanagra figurine of Ailsa Murphy metamorphose into a blowsy drunk, what became of the rest of his little collection?

  But he was now to be brought into David's life as closely as David had been brought into his. Irving Stein died in the middle of August, and three weeks later Europe was at war. Eliot, having given his apartment to Ailsa, had moved back with his parents, and he was sitting in the black walnut library of their big Park Avenue flat, after they had gone to bed, late on a weekday night, when he heard the front doorbell. It was David, pale and grim.

  "I had to see you! I'm going to Montreal tomorrow to enlist in the British army."

  For most of the night they sat up in the library and drank whiskey. David showed Eliot Elesina's letter and explained the circumstances which had led to it. He insisted over and over that he was through with her forever. He roamed the room, glass in hand.

  "But, my God, Eliot, what a woman she was! You can't imagine. The sympathy, the warmth, the understanding ... it's horrible! That when it came right down to brass tacks, the very brassiest, tackiest tacks, she hardly hesitated between father's money and me!"

  "You were asking her to give up a lot."

  "A fortune?" David's tone soared into a sneer. "What's a fortune? I could have looked after her. She'd never have wanted. What's so fantastic about being rich?"

  "She hasn't been used to it, as you are."

  "Oh, she'll never be used to it!" David's bitterness seemed now to encompass even his friend. He might have been an angry prosecuting attorney as he struck the surface of a table. "They talk about Jews caring for money. God! We don't even know the first principles of it compared to Elesina. Think of it, Eliot! She married Dad for his money, and then amused herself with me while she worked herself into the will!"

  "Be fair, David. She would have shared it wi
th you."

  "If I married her! Oh, yes, she wanted me, too. The fortune, the collection, Broadlawns and little David—there was no limit to her greed. She wanted the moon! Love, money, art, sex, you name it, she wanted it."

  Suddenly, David sat down in the high-backed Italian chair to which he had been clinging and flung his arms along the surface of the table beside it, dropping his head between them. For several minutes, as Eliot sat silent, he sobbed. The grief seemed to emanate from an actually physical agony; he twisted his shoulders violently, and once again his fists pounded the table. When the fit had passed, he rose quietly enough and poured himself a drink.

  "I'm sorry, Eliot. What a baby I am."

  Eliot ignored this. "What are your family doing about the will?"

  "Oh, they're fighting it, of course. Lionel and Peter are up in arms. They were eating out of Elesina's hand only yesterday, and now she's the Whore of Babylon! They've retained Ephraim Bauer. If it's scandal they want, he should give them a feast!"

  "They're not going to bring out..." Eliot stopped.

  "My little matter? They don't know a thing about it. You're the only one who knows—besides Ivy Trask—and you only guessed. No, Lionel and Peter are furious with me for not joining their attack on the will. They think I'm an eccentric idealist."

  "What did you tell them?"

  "I told them the truth. That Dad's will may be inequitable, but that it was not obtained by undue influence. I am convinced that he knew what he was doing and that he had testamentary capacity. Therefore I cannot in good conscience contest the will. Mother's case is different."

  "She doesn't have to attack it. She simply asserts her right of election?"

  "Exactly. She never consented to the divorce, so she's entitled to a widow's third. So I advised her."

  "And will she claim it?"

  "She already has. And Schurman has already offered a compromise. We've even had a meeting."

  "Of everybody?"

  "Everybody!" David spread his arms wide as he laughed bitterly. "You should have seen us all, Eliot, in the big conference room of Schurman and Lister. Mother, looking very regal in dark gray—the black weeds of widowhood might have seemed an affectation. And beside her Bauer, as ugly and motionless as a great bulldog. And then Lionel and Peter with their wives, trying desperately to look unconcerned, faintly bored, with a couple of fussing attorneys from their own minor firms. Last and very much the least, David, in tweeds, having discarded his Hamlet role in favor of a more litigious costume. But where was Ophelia? Ophelia? Where was Cressida? Where was Lady Macbeth? In comes Jacob Schurman, rubbing his hands, apologizing for the delay, and at last, wonder of wonders, in she sweeps, the Queen of Tragedy herself, in black with a black beret and two long black ostrich plumes. Never have I seen her more beautiful!"

  "Did she speak to you?"

  "Oh, no. She knows her part too well. She spoke to none of us, but in scanning the long table she allowed her eyes to rest on mine for a moment, with the least hint of a smile. It was charming. She seemed to be saying: 'All right, if this is really the way you want it, David.'"

  "But you said nothing to her?"

  "Oh, nothing. What should I say? There is nothing more between us."

  Eliot, taking in the set jaw and the dry tone, began to wonder if it might not be true. "And then what happened?"

  "Jacob Schurman made his offer. He was very precise, very efficient. He said that he had advised his client that the will was incontestable. He described the circumstances of its preparation and execution. I must say, even Lionel and Peter were taken aback. He then spoke briefly on the facts of Dad's divorce and indicated the main arguments that could be used for and against it. He submitted memoranda, with a copy for each of us, showing what Dad had already settled on his family and what he had left. And then he came to the point. To avoid litigation and salvage the family name and reputation, the divine Elesina offered us twenty-five percent of the estate! She would not bargain, would not haggle. It was, strictly speaking, a take-it-or-leave-it proposition."

  Eliot shrugged. "I think I'd take it, if I were you."

  "Me? I have nothing to do with it. I just went because Mother asked me to. But I think very likely they will take it. That's not what concerns me. What concerns me is what I saw in the faces around that table. The moment Jacob began to talk, the moment they began to listen, there was no moral issue anymore. It was only a matter of figures. Elesina, Lionel, Peter, even Mother—all that mattered now was a division of the spoils. Was there so much as a mention of Dad's benevolent purposes? Did anyone care what the man who had put together that fortune and that collection really wanted?"

  "But he's dead, David! And besides, he did all he could to confuse them. And how do you know that Elesina won't fulfill his idea of an art center?"

  "Oh, she probably will. And do it in the way to give herself the most glory. And Lionel and Peter will make a point of becoming friends again to keep her money in the firm. They'll all end up thick as thieves!"

  "And what about you? Won't you be in it, too? Isn't your money there? Won't you share in the settlement?"

  "I don't know. I don't care. I shan't need it where I'm going."

  "You're really going to enlist?"

  "Certainly. It's all arranged. Harry Custis has organized a group."

  "Harry Custis? That playboy? What have you to do with the likes of Harry Custis?"

  "Well, war is a great equalizer, you know. Harry and his friends may be a bit too posh, a bit Racquet Club for a Stein, but they're willing to make an exception. If I fight well enough, maybe they'll even take me in, after the war. Like Swann in Proust, and the Jockey Club."

  Eliot assessed his friend's biting tone. "I suppose you might be elected to the Racquet Club without having your head blown off. I could put you up."

  "No. I want to be the first member elected with his head blown off! Brains have never been a qualification there."

  Eliot's heart was beating fast. He knew that if he did not speak now, he might never do so. The idea might not survive a night's contemplation. He had tried to live once in marrying Ailsa. Could he live again? "Would Harry Custis take me? Even if I'm not a social-climbing Hebrew?"

  "Eliot! Don't be crazy! You don't want to get into this war."

  "Do you think you're the only man who's lost his illusions through a woman?"

  David stared at him and then burst out laughing. "God, man, do you think that's my only motive?"

  "No. But I think it's your real one."

  "You don't believe I care about fighting for civilization?"

  "Oh, yes. That, too."

  "And you, Eliot? What do you care about?"

  "I care about caring. I care about your enthusiasm. It's a light at the end of the tunnel. Don't try to stop me, David. I'm going with you. How can Harry not want me? Food for powder, man, food for powder."

  "You're making me feel it's my duty to give the whole thing up!"

  "Give up civilization for Eliot Clarkson? Poor thing that it is, it must be worth more than that."

  David's face at this became very grave. Then abruptly he walked over to shake Eliot's hand. "I'll call you at eight tomorrow. If you feel the same way then, I'll speak to Harry."

  "Be sure to tell him I'm in the Racquet Club. He may be too grand to remember me."

  14

  David and Eliot were sent to England where they received their training on the Salisbury Plain and their commissions by January 1940. They were then separated, for Eliot, who spoke German, was assigned to an intelligence unit in London and David's infantry regiment became part of the British Expeditionary Force in France. Eliot was very bitter about their separation; he was convinced that they would never meet again. He felt a poor fool to have gone to war in order to be with a friend and to have lost him already. But. he conceded to himself that there was no reason why a world that had lost all sense and meaning should retain any logical sequence on his account.

  He and David exchanged l
etters regularly until the German invasion of the Lowlands. After that Eliot heard no more. He was so convinced that David had been killed that he was not even surprised when he learned that he had been. In his near suicidal despair he sought consolation in a parallel. What else could have happened to Rupert Brooke?

  David had been killed by strafing from a low-flying plane while attempting to board one of the flotilla of small craft sent out from England to evacuate the B.E.F. A few pages of a journal were found on his body on the beach at Dunkirk. These were ultimately sent by Clara Stein to Eliot:

  May 28. Thirty pale green planes with black crosses on their underwings have just roared down the beach. There is no effective shelter. I am sitting under a dune, faced away from the still, black sea. There are hours, perhaps days to wait. It is difficult to believe that the army can escape by water. Surely the Nazis can blow up everything in the Channel. But it's a chance. The only thing any of us seem to be afraid of is that Churchill might ask for an armistice to save the B.E.F. from annihilation. Don't let him do that, God!

  I may as well write. I have nothing to read, and nobody is talking much. I suppose these words will never be read, but what does that matter? What is read is soon enough forgotten, and many of the finest things ever written have perhaps been seen only by their authors.

  Not that what I have to write is so fine. But I feel clear, clear as I have not felt before. What I want to write down here is the simple fact that I have enjoyed myself. I have been exhilarated. I have been happy!

  There. It is said. It is recorded. Despite all the horror of the incredible mess, the crushing defeat, despite my own probable impending extinction, I have still been happy. I was even happy at the killing, the very little for which I was responsible: those three men who were rash enough to be sitting on top of their tank when they entered what they believed to be the deserted village of Neuville. It was not that I exulted in the deaths of three poor German boys who probably believed they were fighting for a good cause and may never have even heard of the Nazi concentration camps. No, it was not blood lust. It was simply that it was good at last to be shooting, to be doing something about evil.