Authors: Howard Fast
Yet there was a difference, and he sensed it almost immediately. The certainty was lacking, the almost unconscious arrogance, the built-in, magnificent confidence of the very rich and the very beautiful, as a gift of birth and never requiring cultivation. There was both fear and uncertainty—in the way she greeted him, in her petulant criticism of the place, the unlikely pretentiousness of the Biltmore.
"It's ridiculous in this wretched city. How can you live here, Dan?"
"You get used to it. Los Angeles has its points."
"I haven't noticed. I heard you're doing very well."
"Well enough. I build yachts for millionaire movie moguls."
"And what happened to all your vows of poverty?"
He looked at her thoughtfully. "That's a damn funny thing for you to say. Anyway, how did you know that I was doing well?"
"I had lunch with Sam Goldberg. You know, he's Barbara's lawyer, so we talk occasionally."
"You don't approve of him."
"He's old, Dan. He's past seventy."
"And he's also Jewish."
"That's not fair. You never forget, do you? You never forgive, either."
"I told you once that there was nothing to forgive." He grinned at her. "No fights, Jean. I'm glad to see you, I swear I am."
"When you smile like that—well, it's like long, long ago. All right, Danny. I'm worried about Barbara. I want her to come home. Europe is boiling and it's going to explode."
"Have you asked her to come back?"
"Pleaded with her in my letters."
"Well, she's coming back. We had a letter from her yesterday."
"When?"
"Soon. She said she had one more thing to do, and then she comes back."
"What thing?"
"She didn't say. You know, she's had a bad time of it. She was in love with a French boy. They were going to be married. He was wounded in the Spanish war, and he died. That was about a year ago."
"Oh, no. I never knew a thing about that. Why didn't she tell me?"
"Maybe she didn't want to upset you. Barbara's not the kind who likes to share grief. She locks it inside herself."
"Danny, I've lost her," Jean said, her voice full of anguish. "I love her so much, and I've lost her."
"We've neither of us lost her, Jean. Give it time. She'll be back."
"I've run out of time, Danny. How much time does anyone have? I lost you—and now my daughter."
"No, you never wanted me. Don't make a world of illusions now. It doesn't help."
"You're a damn fool, Danny."
"Thank you."
"Did it ever occur to you to wonder why I wouldn't give you a divorce all those years?"
"It occurred to me. You told me once that Seldons didn't divorce."
"What's the use?" Jean sighed. "I'm making a fool of myself, and I don't enjoy that. I came here to talk about Barbara. What shall we do?"
"She's a grown woman."
"I thought of going over there and talking to her."
"That's not smart. She has to make her own decisions. And Europe's no place to visit now. Jean," he said gently, "I think she'll be back soon. She had to get over what happened to her, and she chose to stay there until she got over it. I think she's over it now, and I think she'll come back."
"Who was the boy? She told you, not me. Do you know how that hurts?"
"A writer. He worked on the newspaper
Le Monde."
"What was he like?"
"She sent us a picture. I thought you'd like to see it." He took the picture out of his pocket and handed it to her, and he watched her as she stared at the smiling face in the photograph.
"It's a nice face," she said wanly. "Poor Barbara, how she must have suffered."
Dan reached across the table and took her hand. It was a new sensation for him. He had never pitied Jean before.
The following day's edition of the San Francisco
Examiner
carried the titillating tidbit that Jean Whittier had "flown to Los Angeles for a rendezvous with her ex-husband, Daniel Lavette, where they were seen lunching at the Hotel Biltmore." It said no more than that, but it was suggestive and sufficiently embarrassing to John Whittier for him to bring it up the first time he saw Jean, which was at dinner that day. Tom was at the table with them.
"I think we should discuss this at another time," Jean said coolly.
"This is a very appropriate time. At least you're here. I see little enough of you these days."
"I prefer our squabbles to be private."
"If Tom wants to leave, he can leave."
"I'm having my dinner," Tom said. "I'll take it elsewhere if you wish."
"No, you might as well remain," Jean said. And then to Whittier, "You want to know how it got into the papers? I can't tell you that. Someone must have recognized us at the Biltmore. Certainly I had nothing to do with that."
"This is the second time you've seen him—as far as I know."
"In five years! You're tiresome." Jean sighed. "I don't enjoy this. I see whom I please when I please."
"Yes, you can do as you damn well please, but don't involve me in any scandal."
"Do you ever listen to yourself?" Jean asked gently, and when Whittier stared at her, she added, "You tend to be pompous and quite boring. I saw Dan to discuss my daughter, Barbara. That's it. We'll drop the subject."
Flushed, Whittier rose, his cheeks puffed out, his face red. He swallowed, contained himself, and then said coldly, "I'll have my dinner elsewhere." He turned on his heel and left the room.
Jean and Tom sat in silence. The butler entered with the roast and looked at Whittier's place. "He won't be dining with us," Jean said. "He was called away." Tom remained silent. The butler served them and left.
Tom took a few bites of his food, then bit his lower lip and shook his head. "It gets worse."
"Yes, my dear," Jean said. "But it's my problem, not yours."
"If you felt this way, why the devil did you marry him?"
"Because, Thomas, I did not feel this way at the time."
Now in his twenty-seventh year, Thomas Lavette was tall, slender, and still unmarried. His face had fixed into a rather controlled, handsome mask. He had the refined, almost plastic good looks of a film star or a men's clothes model, light brown hair that he parted on the side and that fell gracefully over his brow, blue eyes, and a wide, slightly petulant mouth. As the years passed, he had retreated behind his face and figure, rarely permitting himself to exhibit either pleasure or disappointment. Women found him attractive, clever within limitations, and coldly closed to any specific designs on their part. He had remained as part of the Whittier household, showing no desire to move out or to establish a place of his own. He had joined Whittier's city club through the sponsorship of Whittier, he was a member of the San Francisco Golf Club, and he kept a small boat at the wharf, although he rarely sailed. He had moderated his drinking, and he smoked an occasional cigarette. He lit one now and said to his mother. "What do you intend to do?"
"Nothing. Anyway,
I
don
't
see that it concerns you, Tom."
"It does." "Might I ask how?"
"I like John."
"That's very nice."
"Do you intend to divorce him?"
"What is your sudden interest in my intentions?"
"I simply think that another divorce would do you no good. I think it would be a mistake."
Jean smiled coldly. "So now you advise me on my conduct."
"Someone has to."
"You're insolent and rather nasty. I have no desire to discuss this with you."
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be insolent. I just don't want you to leave John."
"Why?"
"Can I talk to you, mother?"
"You've been talking to me. Quite outrageously, I think."
"I apologized for that. Can I talk to you, straight off the cuff?"
"Go ahead."
"All right. In a few months, your trusteeship will expire. At that time, Barbara and I will have not only the ownership but the voting rights to our Seldon Bank stock, which will amount to about twenty million dollars apiece. John and I have discussed this at some length. I will control the bank. A combination with the Whittier interests would constitute the largest and most powerful financial block on the West Coast. John has been to Washington, and he has it from the best authority there that the arms embargo will be repealed before the year is out. You can see what that would mean to the Whittier shipping interests. I must say that the idea of a combine of interest came from John, and I think it's very decent of him. He doesn't need us as much as we need him."
For a long moment, Jean just stared at her son. "You amaze me," she said at last.
"Why?"
"Never mind why. That can wait. Tell me, why do we, as you put it, need John Whittier?"
"Because without him we are just a bank, a large bank, but still just a bank. With him—well, damnit, mother, you must see the power in such a combination."
"And that's what you want? The power?" "Frankly, yes."
"You're a strange boy, Tom," she said, thinking to herself that "stranger" would be a better word, a stranger who was her son and whom she knew so little.
"What else should I want?" he demanded. "Money? I've always had enough money. My job at the bank? It's piddling nonsense. I have my own dreams, mother. Is that so strange?"
"And if I were to divorce John, it would endanger all this?"
"It would make it very awkward."
"And what about Barbara? You've left her out of your plans. She gets half the stock."
"I think I can handle Barbara."
"Do you? That's interesting."
"I mean, why shouldn't she do what's best for the family?"
"Are you sure you know what's best for the family? Barbara might have other ideas—or she might decide to do what she feels is best for Barbara."
"I still think I can convince her. The first problem is to get her out of the hands of that Jew lawyer of hers."
"God help us both," Jean whispered.
"Just what do you mean by that?"
Jean did not reply, only looked at her son, feeling that she was going to scream, to burst out in rage, yet realizing that she was entitled to neither reaction.
"Don't tell me you're shocked, and don't accuse me of anti-Semitism," Tom said. "I had dinner last night at the club with Arthur Schwartz, and he's about as Jewish as you can get. It's just that Sam Goldberg is Dan's partner. You know that."
"I'm sure that some of your best friends are Jewish," Jean said.
"You're right."
"And Dan happens to be your father."
"He happens to be."
Jean sighed hopelessly.
"I'm sorry, mother," Tom said. "If I offended you in any way, I'm sorry."
"I don't deserve sympathy, my dear. I have a son who is enormously rich and has no sense of humor, and I deserve both. It took me half a century to grow up, and it's too late to weep over that."
"I think I have as much of a sense of humor as the next person. But damned if I see what's so funny about all this."
"No, I don't suppose you do," Jean said.
In mid-May of 1939, two weeks before Barbara planned to leave Paris for Cherbourg, where she would board the
Queen Mary
for the journey back to America, Marcel's old friend Claude Limoget telephoned her and asked whether he and his wife could drop by to see her. Barbara was working on her last "Letter from Paris," and she hoped that by late afternoon most of it would be out of the way. She was not particularly eager to see Claude and Camille, but they were friends of Marcel, and even didactic company was better than no company at all. And they were didactic. They were well-meaning enough; they had come by half a dozen times in the year since Marcel's death, and she had been to their home for dinner on two occasions, but one always paid a price of instruction. They lectured her on Spain, on fascism, on Nazism, on the new world that was being wrought in the Soviet Union, on the weakness of Chamberlain, on the wickedness of Deladier, on the spinelessness of the Czechs, on the betrayals—of Spain and Czechoslovakia—by Roosevelt, and on other kindred subjects.
Since Barbara disliked argument and had a deep-seated conviction that little was gained and no one really convinced by it, she was more inclined to listen and swallow her various disagreements than to attempt to prove her point. In her own way, very slowly and thoughtfully over a period of years, she was crystallizing her own point of view. She had possessed an almost instinctive repugnance for suffering inflicted on anyone, for cruelty, for the act of inflicting pain and for the ultimate act of killing. Five years ago, she had left Sarah Lawrence College possessed of a gentle and comprehensive innocence, which, as a very sophisticated student in a very sophisticated college, she would have denied completely. Since then, she had learned a great deal, coped with the situation of a young woman alone in a foreign country, found a job as a correspondent, and proved to herself and others that she could do her work in a professional manner. In a sense, she had formed herself in terms of ideas and beliefs, and she saw no need for inflicting these ideas and beliefs on others.