Against the Day (30 page)

Despite having gone in with a
determination to cut the place some slack, Kit had seen Yale almost immediately
for what it was. The booklearning part of it, two or three good companions not
yet quite crippled into the reflexive and humorless caution which leading the
nation would require—that was all just swell, and almost made up for the
rest of it. Kit was presently cranked up, brighteyed and zealous, accosting
asyetunintroduced Saturdaynight shopgirls out on Chapel Street to lecture to on
the subject of Vectorism—Gibbsian, Hamiltonian, and beyond—for this
most miraculous of systems seemed to him bound to improve the lives of anybody
he could acquaint with it—even if the girls were not always so sure.

“You chase them away, Kit.
”
 
’
Fax,
about to go meet a “date,” was inspecting his turnout in the mirror of the
rooms they shared. “My cousin knows any number of girls who wouldn’t mind
playing a little parcheesi with you now and then, except you’re too
intimidating with all this arithmetic business.”

“It isn’t ‘arithmetic.
’ ”

“There. Just what I’m talking about.
Girls don’t know the difference and, more important, don’t care.”

“As usual, ’Fax, I defer to your
wisdom in all matters of sport.”

No sarcasm intended here, or even
possible. By the age of eighteen, Colfax Vibe had already developed into a
classic “Corinthian” of the day, recognized as an expert—occasionally
champion—skier, polo player, distance runner, pistol and rifle shot, huntsman,
aeronaut—the list ran on to a length quite depressing indeed to any
observer with merely everyday skills. When at last he did make his first
appearance on an Ivy League gridiron, in the waning minutes of the
YalePrinceton game, ’Fax took the ball from deep in his own end zone and ran it
back for a winning touchdown against and through the best defen

sive efforts of the opposition, not
to mention a certain amount of unwitting interference from his own team. Walter
Camp was to call it “the most splendid display of brokenfield running in Yale
football history,” and Negro folks who lived in Princeton slept a little easier
that Saturday night, knowing they’d been spared at least a week free of
Princetonboy posses come hollering down Witherspoon Street to rip porches off
the houses for the victory bonfire. “Oh, hell, I’d been feeling cooped up,”
’Fax would explain. “Just needed a good run.”

As ’Fax’s ideas about leisuretime,
not surprisingly, tended to converge in the more lifethreatening areas, he and
Kit over this first year of their acquaintance would find themselves well
matched, Kit grasping at any piece of the outer and solid world as to flotsam
in a furious turbulence of symbols, operations, and abstractions, and ’Fax,
chirping daily hymns to Rooseveltian strenuosity, finding in Kit’s
semireligious attachment to Vectorism a gravity and, for all ’Fax knew, even a
chance at deliverance from what he might have feared to be an idling and
shallow life, in which the motif of failure was all too apt to break in.

It had been often commented upon that
Vibe offspring tended to be crazy as bedbugs. ’Fax’s brother Cragmont had run
away with a trapeze girl, then brought her back to New York to get married, the
wedding being actually performed
on trapezes,
groom and best man, dressed
in tails and silk opera hats held on with elastic, swinging upside down by
their knees in perfect synchrony across the perilous æther to meet the bride
and her father, a carnival “jointee” or concessionaire, in matched excursion
from their own side of the ring, bridesmaids observed at every hand up twirling
by their chins in billows of spangling, forty feet above the faces of the
guests, feathers dyed a deep acid green sweeping and stirring the cigar smoke
rising from the crowd. Cragmont Vibe was but thirteen that circus summer he
became a husband and began what would become, even for the day, an enormous
family.

The third brother, Fleetwood, best
man at this ceremony, had also got out of the house early, fasttalking his way
onto an expedition heading for Africa. He kept as clear of political games as
of any real scientific inquiry, preferring to take the title of “Explorer”
literally, and do nothing but explore. It did not hurt Fleetwood’s chances that
a hefty Vibe trust fund was there to pick up the bills for bespoke pith helmets
and meat lozenges and so forth. Kit met him one spring weekend out at the Vibe
manor on Long Island.

“Say, but you’ve never seen our
cottage,” ’Fax said one day after classes. “What are you doing this weekend?
Unless there’s another factory girl or pizza princess or something in the
works.”

“Do I use that tone of voice about
the Seven Sisters material you specialize in?”

“I’ve nothing against the newer
races,” ’Fax protested. “But you might like to meet Cousin Dittany anyway.”

“The one at Smith.”

“Mount Holyoke, actually.”

“Can’t wait.”

They arrived under a dourly overcast
sky. Even in cheerier illumination, the Vibe mansion would have registered as a
place best kept clear of—four stories tall, square, unadorned, dark stone
facing looking much older than the known date of construction. Despite its
aspect of abandonment, an uneasy tenancy was still pursued within, perhaps by
some collateral branch of Vibes
. . .
it
was unclear. There was the matter of the second floor. Only the servants were
allowed there. It “belonged,” in some way nobody was eager to specify, to
previous occupants.

“Someone’s living there?”

“Someone’s there.”

. . . from time to time, a door
swinging shut on a glimpse of back stairway, a muffled footfall
. . .
an ambiguous movement across a
distant doorframe
. . .
a threat of
somehow being obliged to perform a daily search through the forbidden level,
just at dusk, so detailed that contact with the unseen occupants, in some form,
at some unannounced moment, would be inevitable
. . .
all dustless and tidy, shadows in permanent possession,
windowdrapes and upholstery in deep hues of green, claret, and indigo, servants
who did not speak, who would or could not meet one’s gaze
. . .
and in the next room, the next
instant, waiting . . .

“Real nice of you to have me here,
folks,” chirped Kit at breakfast. “Fellow sleeps like a top. Well, except. . .”

Pause in the orderly gobbling and
scarfing. Interest from all around the table.

“I mean, who came in the room in the
middle of the night like that?”

“You’re sure,” said Scarsdale, “it
wasn’t just the wind, or the place settling.”

“They were walking around, like they
were looking for something.”

Glances were exchanged, failed to be
exchanged, were sent out but not returned. “Kit, you haven’t seen the stables
yet,” Cousin Dittany offered at last. “Wouldn’t you like to go riding?”

Before Kit could reply, there was a
great commotion outside the entrance to the breakfast room. Later he would
swear he had heard a symphonic brass section play a lengthy fanfare. “Mother!”
cried ’Fax. “Aunt Eddie!” exclaimed Cousin Dittany. And in, making a rare
appearance, swept Mrs. Vibe, the former Edwarda Beef of Indianapolis. She sang
mezzosoprano and had mar

ried almost shockingly young, the
boys coming along in close order, “the way certain comedians make their
entrances in variety acts,” it seemed to her, and about the time Colfax shot
his first brace of pheasant, she had abruptly one day packed a scant six
trunksful of clothes and with her maid, Vaseline, reinstalled herself in
Greenwich Village in a town house floridly faced in terracotta imported from
far away, designed inside by Elsie de Wolfe, adjoining that of her husband’s
younger brother, R. Wilshire Vibe, who for some years had been living in his
own snug spherelet of folly and decadence, squandering his share of the family
money on ballet girls and the companies they performed for, especially those
that could be induced to mount productions of the horrible “musical dramas” he
kept composing, fake, or as he preferred,
faux,
European operettas on
American subjects—
Roscoe Conkling, Princess of the Badlands, Mischief
in Mexico,
and so many others. The town was briefly amused by Edwarda’s
change of domicile but refocused soon enough upon varieties of scandal having
more to do with money than with passion, a subject more fit for opera in
languages they did not speak. As Scarsdale had by then grown adept at covering
his financial tracks, and as Edwarda was perfectly content not only to get
laced in and decked out to appear at functions as his titular wife but also, as
her fame in the theatrical world grew, to sit on boards of a cultural nature
and serve as hostess to any number of memorable gatherings, Scarsdale actually
began to look on her more as an asset than any possible source of marital
distress.

Her brotherinlaw, R. Wilshire Vibe,
delighted to have her for a neighbor—for “Eddie” was nothing if not a
handsome length of goods—soon found amusement in fixing her up with the
artists, musicians, actors, writers, and other specimens of lowlife to be found
in his milieu in such plentiful supply. By force of what were her undoubted
dramatic gifts, she soon managed to convince the impresario that, as it was in
the nature of a great personal favor to
him
for
her even to be seen with these unsuitable wretches,
she wished no recompense other than to
. . .
well not
star
perhaps, not at first anyway, but at least to have
a go at some secondsoubrette part, for example the lively
bandida
Consuelo
in
Mischief in Mexico,
then in rehearsal—though this did require
considerable and often quite frankly disgusting interaction with a trained pig,
Tubby, for whom more often than not she found she was there to act as stooge or
straight person, “laying pipe,” as the actors said, so that it would always be
the illbehaved porker who got the laughs. By the end of the run, however, she
and Tubby were “closest friends,” as she confided to the theatrical gazettes,
which were taking by then a keen interest in her career.

Bigger parts followed, presently with
Edwarda’s arias or “numbers” so

expanded as to require earlier
curtain times to accommodate them. “Spellbindingly incomparable!” proclaimed
the reviewers, “transcendently splendiferous!” too, and soon she was christened
in Champagne “The Diva of Delmonico’s.” The adjoining town houses, ever a scene
of license and drollery, shimmered within a permanent and agreeable fog of
smoke from recreational sources, including hemp and opium, as well as the mists
arising from seltzer bottles discharged sometimes into drinking vessels but
more usually at companions in what seemed eternal play. Young women attired
often in nothing more than ostrichfeather aigrettes dyed in colors of doubtful
taste ran nubilely up and down the marble staircases, chased by young men in
razortoed ball shoes of patentleather. In the middle of the bacchanalian
goingson night after night was evermerry Edwarda, drinking Sillery from the
bottle and exclaiming “Ha, ha, ha!”—not always at anyone in particular.

Thus Edwarda and Scarsdale found
themselves together every day and yet leading almost entirely unsynchronized
lives, inhabiting each his and her own defective city, like partial overlays in
some new colorprinting process, Scarsdale’s in gray tones, Edwarda’s in mauve. Puce
sometimes.

Kit had wandered
down to the stables,
where he was presently joined by Dittany Vibe, her eyes sparkling from beneath
the brim of an allbutirresistible hat. In the tackroom she pretended to inspect
a sizable inventory of harness, halters, bridles, collars, traces, quirts,
crops, buggy whips, and so on. “I do love the way it smells in here,” she
whispered. She took down a braided stallion whip and snapped it once or twice.
“You must have used these in Colorado, Kit.”

“Few choice words is all we need
usually,” Kit said. “Our horses behave themselves pretty good, I guess.”

“Not at all like eastern horses,” she
murmured. “You see how many whips and things there are here. Our horses are
very, very naughty.” She handed him the whip. “I imagine this one must sting
just terribly.” Before he knew it, she had turned, and lifted the skirt of her
riding habit, and presented herself, gazing back over her shoulder with what
you’d have to call a mischievous expectancy.

He looked at the whip. It was about
four feet long, maybe a finger’s thickness. “Seems kind of
professionalweight—sure you wouldn’t be happier with something lighter?”

“We could leave my drawers on.”

“Hmm, let’s see
. . .
if I remember right, it’s how you
plant your feet—”

“On second thought,” said Cousin
Dittany, “your gloved hand should do quite nicely.”

“My pleasure,” beamed Kit, and, as it
turned out, Dittany’s as well, though things got noisy after a while, and they
decided to move to an adjoining hayloft.

He tried for the rest of the day to find
a moment with ’Fax to have a word about this matter of his cousin, but, as if
the others were conspiring to prevent it, there were always unexpected
visitors, calls on the telephone, impromptu lawntennis games. Kit began to feel
fretful, the way that working on a vector problem for too long could bring him
to a state much like drunkenness, whereupon his other or coconscious mind would
emerge at last to see what it could do.