The Friend of Women and Other Stories

by Louis Auchincloss

  ELIDA (Surprised): Me?

  WINTHROP: Oh, you’re tremendously real, my dear. Don’t you know that? There’s all sorts of emotion in you simmering below the surface. They can smell it. Like blood.

  ELIDA (After a pause): I’d like to think that’s a compliment.

  WINTHROP: Of course it is. The greatest they could give you.

  ELIDA (Getting up): Oh. I meant a compliment from you.

  WINTHROP: From me? But you know my good opinion of you.

  ELIDA: Do I? (Walks about for a moment) Well, the point is, what do I do about them. Now?

  WINTHROP: I know what I’d do.

  ELIDA: What?

  WINTHROP (Rather grimly): They want a drama. I’d give them a drama. I’d give it to them until they begged me to stop. Until they went right down on their knees and begged me.

  ELIDA: But how?

  WINTHROP: Can you act?

  ELIDA: Good heavens, no. (Reflecting) At least I’ve never tried.

  WINTHROP: I bet you can. With all you have inside.

  ELIDA: What would you have me act?

  WINTHROP (Serious): The lover. The tremendous lover. You and Alexander are Anthony and Cleopatra! The world’s your stage. You must tell your aunt. You must tell Caroline. You must lead him to them and blurt out your news. This thing is too big to be secret! This thing is for everyone!

  ELIDA: Winthrop! You’re making fun of me!

  WINTHROP (Shaking his head): I’ve never been more serious. You could do it. I know you could. And can’t you see what it would do for them? Caroline with her peeking jealousy, and Aunt Nellie with her scatological assumptions, and Alexander with his furtive pinching. Why it would cleanse them! It would dignify them!

  ELIDA (Spellbound): And then what would happen?

  WINTHROP: Oh, nothing would happen. That’s the point. They’d simply be scared to death.

  ELIDA: By me?

  WINTHROP: Who else? They’d run like mice.

  ELIDA: All of them? Even Alexander? After what I’ve just told you? You’re not very complimentary to my charms.

  WINTHROP: Oh, he’s hot enough for a backstairs affair, sure. But the prospect of an open break with the wife who supports him would send him scampering off as fast as his little feet could carry him. Back to both his mothers.

  ELIDA (Pensive): I see. It’s really a perfect plan, isn’t it? Except where does it leave the poor country cousin who’s just declared her great passion? I get packed off to Maine, I guess. I’d be the cause of too much embarrassment, wouldn’t I? My little act might have given me ideas above my station.

  WINTHROP (Shocked): Oh, Elida, come now. I never meant anything like that.

  ELIDA: But you’re so detached, Winthrop. You sit in your arena box like a Roman senator and watch us poor gladiators fighting below. Every now and then you may devise a new form of combat for us to engage in.

  WINTHROP (Really upset now): Elida, I’ve hurt your feelings, and I’m very sorry. Please forget my whole silly idea. It was just a joke anyway. A bad one.

  ELIDA (Relenting): Oh, it’s not your fault. How could you know I was so steeped in… what’s it called? The inertly sentimental condition? Who knows what I expected? Maybe I even dreamed you would sweep down on a great black charger and rescue me from Alexander.

  (Noise in the hall. Enter CAROLINE followed by a meeker ALEXANDER door C.)

  CAROLINE (Casually): Hi, Elida. Good evening, Winthrop. You’re dining here? What a glutton you are for punishment.

  WINTHROP (Mildly reproving): But I enjoy dining here, Caroline.

  CAROLINE (Sitting): You do? Well, chacun a son gout, as I always say. It’s perfectly extraordinary how many bachelors one sees in the houses of mothers-in-law. It must be a kind of penance they pay for their freedom.

  ELIDA (Nervous): Would you like a cocktail, Caroline?

  CAROLINE: No, dear, don’t bother. I had one before I left.

  ELIDA: It’s no bother.

  CAROLINE: You think I don’t know? Fume and fuss, fume and fuss, and finally that ancient Alice emerges with one rather vermouthy martini on a silver tray. With a cherry in it.

  ALEXANDER: Darling, that’s not quite fair.

  CAROLINE: Well, who wants to be fair? Tell me what we’re in for, Elida. Who else is coming?

  ELIDA: The Misses Harcrosse.

  CAROLINE: I could have guessed that. Anyone else?

  ELIDA: That’s all.

  CAROLINE (Brightly): Good. We shall be five women to two men. What Mrs. Hone would call a balanced party.

  ELIDA: Well, Aunt Nellie did try to get Colonel Sturtevant, but he said he was too deaf for the opera now.

  CAROLINE (Sniffing): As if that were an excuse. He could have had my place. But it makes no matter. After all, Miss Harriet Harcrosse can pass for a man. Did you tell her black tie?

  ALEXANDER: Really, darling. Your tongue is very sharp tonight.

  CAROLINE: But you know it’s perfectly true, isn’t it, Winthrop? The Harcrosses are like a married couple. Everyone knows that.

  WINTHROP (Ironically polite): Do they indeed? Miss Emily, I take it, is the wife?

  CAROLINE: Of course, you know (she mimics her subject with gestures), charming, irresponsible, ethereal, the mad soul. While Miss Harriet plays the gruff husband, the faithful watchdog, lovingly critical. Oh, keep your eye on them, Winthrop.

  ELIDA (Warningly): Caroline, I heard the front door.

  CAROLINE (Her hand to her mouth): Oops.

  (MISS EMILY and MISS HARRIET HARCROSSE appear at door C. in red and black velvet, respectively, their feet in pumps. Stout and elderly, they resemble each other in squareness of feature and grayness of hair, yet MISS EMILY, the effusive one, is characterized by her sweeping gestures, her habit of playing with her necklace of large pearls, while MISS HARRIET peers at the room through the severe detachment of her sole adornment, a pince-nez. As they come in, the others rise. MRS. HONE makes her belated appearance at door L. and approaches to meet them.)

  MRS. HONE: I’m sorry, all. I’m late. Emily, how are you? Harriet? Good evening, Winthrop. Caroline. And my own boy, my good one. (She kisses ALEXANDER. There is a general shaking of hands before all sit.)

  MISS EMILY: And dear Caroline, what luck to catch you and Alexander free for a family evening. We hear from our nieces how sought after the Alexander Hones are. (She raises her hands.) Quite the popular couple, they say.

  CAROLINE (Glancing at her husband): Yes, I’ve an idea Alexander has been rather sought after recently.

  MRS. HONE (Defensively, to Caroline): I don’t see how anyone could be very sought after working as hard as he has to work for your father, Caroline.

  MISS EMILY (Nervous, covering up the pause that ensues): Oh, the way the young people have to work these days! I don’t see how they stand it. Why, when Papa was in the railway he used to come home for lunch every day. And drink Madeira. It was a more civilized, a more gracious New York.

  MISS HARRIET: That was Grandpapa, Emily, and well before we were born. Papa always lunched at the Downtown.

  MISS EMILY: Did he? Did he really? Dear me. (Looking around the room for another subject) Well, goodness me, does poor Winthrop have to escort four ladies tonight? I’ll bet he’s dying, right now.

  WINTHROP: I’m bearing up, Miss Emily.

  MISS EMILY (With a little scream): Bearing up? Is that modern-day gallantry? It wasn’t that way when we were girls, was it, Harriet?

  MISS HARRIET: Personally, I’ve always found the gallantry of the so-called stronger sex a much overrated thing.

  MISS EMILY: Oh, Harriet. You devil. (Turning to MRS. HONE) You know what she was telling me tonight, Nellie? She keeps records of everything. This will be our fortieth Tristan.

  MISS HARRIET: My fortieth, Emily. Your thirty-ninth. You remember, you missed one that winter you had the milk leg.

  MISS EMILY (Shocked): Harriet, please. (To MRS. HONE) Who’s singing tonight, Nellie?

  MRS. HONE: Gluckin.

  M
ISS EMILY (With a shrug): Oh, Gluckin. All very well, I suppose, but hardly Flagstad.

  MRS. HONE (Firmly, reverently): But there’s never been anyone to touch Flagstad.

  MISS EMILY: Why, Nellie, have you forgotten Ternina? Ternina who was pure magic!

  MISS HARRIET: Fremstad was your favorite, Emily. I remember distinctly.

  MISS EMILY (With authority, as if to close the subject): Of course, Papa used to say that if you hadn’t heard Lily Lehmann, you hadn’t heard Isolde.

  CAROLINE (Bored): I wonder what his papa used to say. Jenny Lind?

  (MISS HARRIET and MRS. HONE glare at CAROLINE, and MISS EMILY, still the peacemaker, again tries to fill the gap.)

  MISS EMILY (With a coy glance at ELIDA): Did you know, Nellie, that Elida and I share a taste for a different kind of music?

  MRS. HONE (Gruffly): What kind?

  MISS EMILY: A lighter kind. Oh, it’s not that we aren’t loyal Wagnerians, Nellie. You don’t have to look at me that way. We’re tried and true. But we still have a sneaking nostalgia for the music hall. Don’t we, Elida?

  ELIDA (Confused): The music hall?

  MISS EMILY: I was referring to my glimpse of you last summer at what I believe is called a “folly.”

  (ELIDA gives a little gasp, and CAROLINE looks up.)

  MRS. HONE: Do you go to the follies, Emily? Harriet, I’m surprised you let her.

  MISS EMILY (Delighted to be considered daring): Oh, Harriet went, too. We’d come into town for poor Daisy Livermore’s funeral, and it was a scorching night. They told us at the Colony Club that the theater was air-cooled, so I gave Harriet a look and said (Coyly), “Why not?”

  MRS. HONE: And what was it called, this folly?

  MISS EMILY (Turning to her sister): What was it called, Harriet?

  MISS HARRIET: The Ballad Girl.

  (ELIDA looks down quickly, and CAROLINE and MRS. HONE stare at each other.)

  CAROLINE (In a dry, sarcastic tone, to MISS EMILY): You’ve told us who lured Miss Harriet on this radical evening. Could you by any chance tell us who lured your fellow Wagnerian, Elida?

  MISS EMILY (Surprised at her tone): No, I didn’t see who she was with. It was just a glimpse through the crowd. Was it you, Caroline?

  CAROLINE: No. It was not I. (To ELIDA) Was it by any chance that fellow Wagnerian, my husband?

  ALEXANDER: Now wait a second, Caroline, I can explain all that.

  CAROLINE (Sharp): I’m asking Elida!

  ELIDA (Nervous): Why, yes. I don’t know who else would have taken me.

  MRS. HONE (Coming heavily to the rescue): And why not, Caroline? Wasn’t it a good cousinly act on my boy’s part?

  CAROLINE (Ominously bright): Certainly. It’s just that I’m envious, that’s all. The Ballad Girl happens to be something that I particularly wanted to see myself. As I believe I told you both this afternoon. In my naivete.

  ALEXANDER (Anxious): But you were away, Caroline. Anyway, I’d love to go again. It’s well worth seeing twice.

  CAROLINE (Coldly): Perhaps. Except, of course, I wouldn’t dream of asking you to take me now.

  MRS. HONE (Angrily): You go to everything in the season, Caroline. Poor Elida has no fun at all, cooped up with an old woman like myself. Must you begrudge her one musical?

  CAROLINE (Rising): It doesn’t sound to me, Mrs. Hone, as though Elida is so terribly cooped up. And when she is, I’m sure she likes it. With my husband coming in every day on the excuse of seeing you! Good god, it’s too degrading to contemplate!

  ELIDA: Caroline, what are you saying?

  ALEXANDER: You can’t speak that way to Mother!

  (MRS. HONE suddenly leans forward, clutching her chest.)

  MRS. HONE: My heart! It’s my heart again!

  (General consternation)

  WINTHROP (Hurrying to MRS. HONE’s side): Cousin Nellie, can I help you? (To ELIDA) Will you call the doctor?

  ELIDA (Pulling herself together, taking charge): Wait. It’s only one of her spells. I know what to do. (Going over to MRS. HONE, she takes a pill quickly from the silver box at the table by her side and gives it to her. To the others) Please, she’ll be all right. Go into the dining room and start dinner, will you all? Winthrop, please take them in.

  ALEXANDER: Are you sure she’s all right?

  ELIDA: Quite sure. Please go in now. She likes to be alone when this happens.

  (The others move slowly out door R., glancing nervously at MRS. HONE as they do so.)

  ELIDA (Alone with MRS. HONE, feels her pulse): Aunt Nellie, are you feeling better? How is it now?

  MRS. HONE (Lifting her head slowly and looking at ELIDA hard for a moment): Go with him. Go off with him.

  ELIDA (Shocked): With Alexander?

  MRS. HONE: You see how she treats us. You see what she thinks of us. She hates us. Free him, Elida! Take him away! Don’t let her win.

  ELIDA: You seem to forget that he’s not mine to go off with. He has two children. He has responsibilities.

  MRS. HONE (Grunting): Love. It wasn’t that way when I was a girl. My aunt Augusta gave up everything for Prince Mantowski. It was the world well lost. Or can’t you young people understand that? (Sneering) And you pretend to understand Tristan.

  ELIDA (Trying to make light of it): But I haven’t had a love potion. I believe Isolde behaved quite respectably before she had hers.

  MRS. HONE (Snorting): Respectably. That’s all any of you care about. Can you eat respectability?

  ELIDA: Don’t you think you’d better go to bed now? I can bring you something on a tray.

  MRS. HONE: A tray? And have Caroline sit at the head of my table? Not likely. I’m going in.

  ELIDA: Oh, Aunt Nellie. Please! I can’t bear it.

  MRS. HONE: If I can bear it, you can. What are you young for, anyway?

  (She gets up very slowly, and ELIDA helps her toward door R. Just as they reach it, it opens and CAROLINE appears.)

  CAROLINE (Surprised): Oh. Are you feeling better?

  MRS. HONE (Snorting): I’ll live. Small thanks to your manners tonight, Caroline.

  CAROLINE: I came out to speak to Elida.

  MRS. HONE (Crossly): We’re all going to dine now. It can wait.

  CAROLINE: I’m sorry, Mrs. Hone. It can’t wait. I’ll keep her only a few minutes.

  MRS. HONE (TO ELIDA): Shall I leave you with her, child?

  ELIDA: If she wants. Are you all right?

  MRS. HONE (Shrugging): Oh, I’m indestructible. It’ll take more than Caroline to do me in.

  (Exit MRS. HONE door R. CAROLINE closes the door after her.)

  CAROLINE (After a pause): I suppose we may as well sit down.

  ELIDA: Yes.

  (They sit. CAROLINE lights a cigarette and puffs at it. ELIDA, absolutely still, looks at the floor.)

  CAROLINE: I don’t so much mind your borrowing my husband, Elida Rodman. As long as it’s quite understood between us that I shall be wanting him back.

  (Pause as ELIDA, now looking down at her hands, says nothing.)

  There are a lot of things I could say that I won’t. I think it might be sufficient if I pointed out that you were hired to be his mother’s companion. (With a wry smile) Not his. (ELIDA still says nothing.)

  Do you hear me? (Sharply) I’m speaking to you, Elida!

  ELIDA (Looking up): Do you really deduce all this, Caroline, from the fact that Alexander was once kind enough to take me to the theater?

  CAROLINE (Sniffing): You may have heard of archaeologists who are able to reconstruct the skeleton of a dinosaur from a single bone of its toe. There you are. Except my discovery turns out not to be a dinosaur at all. It’s only a rather small mouse.

  (ELIDA looks away. She appears to be concentrating on something else.)

  A mouse, I said. (Angrily) Don’t keep pretending you haven’t heard me, Elida!

  ELIDA (Turning back to her, with the calm of one who has just made a final decision): All right, Caroline. I have heard you. I was only wondering if you
were capable of discussing such a delicate matter as a civilized and sophisticated woman should.

  CAROLINE (Her eyes widen at this impudence.): Oh? And have you decided?

  ELIDA: Yes. (Nodding) I think, on the whole, you are.

  CAROLINE: Thank you!

  ELIDA (In a new tone, tense, but with increased assurance as she goes ahead): What has happened to Alexander and me is not, I suppose, unusual. But to the individuals involved it must always seem like a minor miracle.

  CAROLINE (Staring): What do you mean?

  ELIDA: Simply that we’re in love, Caroline. Sublimely, even ridiculously in love.

  CAROLINE (Sitting up): Are you mad?

  ELIDA (Shaking her head, as if in half-regretful assent): Oh, yes. Quite mad, I’m afraid. We both are.

  CAROLINE: No, no, you don’t see what I mean. I mean you may have some feeling, yes, I suppose that would be only natural, but Alexander, well, after all… (She trails off with an elaborate shrug.)

  ELIDA (Clearly): After all what, Caroline?

  CAROLINE (Now condescending): Well, after all, my poor Elida, I don’t deny he may have paid you some little attention—I know how he is—but to construct a grande passion out of a few winks and passes, well, really, my dear, you don’t want to make an utter fool of yourself, do you?

  ELIDA (Noble, dignified): There were no winks or passes, Caroline. Alexander and I understood each other from the first. It was love, just like that. Very pure and very simple.

  CAROLINE (Snorting): That’s what you say.

  ELIDA (Unyielding): That’s what he says.

  CAROLINE (Startled): Alexander? He said that?

  ELIDA: Of course he said it, Caroline. Do you think I’m making this up? He’s said it dozens of times, he to me and I to him, whispered it, shouted it—

  CAROLINE: Shouted it!

  ELIDA (Nodding): Even shouted it.

  CAROLINE (Scared now, shifting her method of attack): Look, my dear, let’s be practical. Just for a moment. Assuming that you and Alexander have had… well, some sort of a thing about each other, even assuming you’ve been lovers—I don’t know, the Hones are queer people—what sort of future do you think there could possibly be in it?