The Golden Vanity (11 page)

As for Charlotte, Sam had no serious scruples. If she would give him a break, he could save her five times what he would charge her. But she would, like most of the rich, Sam knew, value a service or possession at the price she paid for it. The size of a transaction is what counts, Sam thought cynically; if it's big enough, even if it's a bust—look at the Dawes Plan and the Young Plan— you're a big man.

Sam was so well satisfied with having got something on Julius—a sort of inverse snobbery—that he didn't commit any noticeable
gaffes
during the rest of the evening, and his wife was profoundly relieved. Only when Mrs. Perry said of Julius Dickerson: "What a wonderful mind, wonderful, and so natural and democratic, really a great man," Sam almost gave way, and his wife had an uneasy moment, marking the lunatic gleam in his eye.

Mysie was a trifle surprised at Gina's cordial manner to Jake, when they said good night. Jake had a diabolical intuition of the reason. In the cab, going home, Mysie said: "Have you really got a Great-aunt Eugenia? I nearly expired when the old lady accused you. And what about this Katryn Higgins?"

"I suppose this means one of your tantrums," said Jake. "The name is Wiggins. But she is nothing to me; all that is over, long ago. The truth is, I met my second cousin Katryn precisely once, when we were both about ten; and a more poisonous brat I trust I may never set eyes on. It was at my Great-aunt Eugenia's; all the most remote offshoots to the ninth and tenth generation used to be taken to call on Great-aunt Eugenia, in hope of being remembered with a slight legacy. Katryn and I were thrust into the back parlor together and told to make friends with your little cousin. She had curls and pink eyes. In a thoughtless moment I showed her my best chorus girl cigarette cards. She demanded them for keeps, and when I refused, she said she would tell her mother that I said something nasty to her. I am sure she was fully capable of inventing the suitable remark, too. Little girls are fiends in human form. That is why they grow up into what they do grow up into."

"Small boys," said Mysie judicially, "should be exterminated. You can't deny that everybody hates them; and there must be a reason. I was a very nice little girl—"

"I," said Jake, "was a perfect little gentleman. All that saved me from growing up like that young Mr. Dickerson was the livery stable. I used to sneak over and spend all my spare time there. My father of course never appeared on the premises; he didn't run the livery stable, he owned the building and it was rented to a liveryman. The stablemen never gave me away. It was a liberal education."

"Isn't young Mr. Dickerson the son of Julius?" Mysie enquired. "I should say off hand that he is a snit."

"You overstate," said Jake. "He is ectoplasm. And you nearly ruined everything by treating him as such. He is the son, and he is going to be Arthur's associate editor on that magazine. Don't ask me why. The fact remains that I have got to keep in with him."

"Your method," said Mysie, "is wrong. The way to do with him is to step on him promptly. But I still don't believe in your Great-aunt Eugenia."

"How could I have met Katryn at her house if I hadn't a Great-aunt Eugenia?" Jake enquired Socratically. "I admit I never fully believed in her myself. You could have knocked me down with a poker when Mrs. Siddall evoked her venerable shade. She died a dozen years ago, at the age of nine hundred and eighty-seven or thereabouts—not Mrs. Siddall, Great-aunt Eugenia. She left no legacies whatever; everything was mortgaged to the roof. She wore crape-bordered veils, and had a pug dog; and the last inch of space in her house on Murray Hill was infested with photographs in plush frames and china shepherdesses and snowstorm paperweights and silver filigree baskets. The woodwork was all carved, with a grille and portières in an archway; and there was a corner whatnot. And bracket shelves. I thought she had delusions of grandeur; she held as an article of faith that the Astors and Vanderbilts had paid her butler enormous sums for a copy of her calling list. Upstarts! As far as I know, her calling list consisted of half a dozen moth-eaten antiques of her own vintage, all widows; besides the expectant relatives. But Mrs. Siddall said she was on some reception committee to Prince Henry of Prussia. They were on it together. That must have been the last time Great-aunt Eugenia tottered out. She didn't even go to church in her later years; I gleaned that Grace Church wasn't what it used to be since the sexton, a person named Brown, passed away. I could never fathom how it was that a sexton named Brown was somehow an arbiter of New York society, but it seems he was. I guess he knew who to bury next to whom. Anyhow, Great-aunt Eugenia gave me a morbid horror of ever getting within a mile of society."

Remarkably, Jake had escaped the curse which usually falls upon the impoverished descendants of families once socially eminent. He had no vain regrets for vanished splendors. Except that he wished his proud progenitors had left him some money. He was grateful he had escaped. All he had ever heard from the aunts struck him as absolutely mildewed. ... It was rather an appalling suspicion to harbor, but Jake did suspect that father was what is known as a prominent clubman. All father ever did was to go to his club. He died when Jake was in his early teens. Jake recalled most clearly the way mother used to look at father, with a faint tolerant astonishment. . . . Mother was different. Jake had never known anyone quite like her. Except in books. She reminded him a little of an eighteenth century French
dame bourgeoise,
the sort who would have had minor Encyclopaedists to dinner. There were none available in New York, so mother made no social efforts; she read a great deal, kept house admirably, and wore a habitual air of placid amusement. She wasn't French, of course. Plain American. A little plump woman, with a bun of brown hair on the back of her head and a quizzical glance. Once when Jake was not more than six, he asked her: Mamma, where did I come from? She replied: My son, I have wondered about that myself.

Jake knew that Mrs. Siddall's recognition of him as a Van Buren had impressed Gina. Mysie said: "Gina invited you to call; I guess you'll have to. Don't you think she's pretty?"

"Yes," said Jake. "But she's a stopper."

"A what?"

"A stopper. Whatever remark you may offer to her drops dead on the spot. The matter ends there. You have to start all over again. Or keep going continuously."

"Mrs. Brant is more your style, isn't she? Shall you take her up?"

"No," said Jake, "she's a snatcher. Smart society. In her set, the women exist by grabbing one another's men. Not that they care for the men, but to score off." Imagining him certified by Mrs. Siddall and approved by Gina, Polly had acted automatically to annex him.

"How do you know?" Mysie demanded. "Have you mingled much with the smart set?"

"Enough," said Jake. "Listen, my child, you either know things or you don't. Those who don't never will. How about yourself? You went through that crowd to-night with the old spiked boots on. You learned all about the Four Hundred in a logging camp. And you're dead right."

"I didn't," Mysie protested. "I was a miracle of tact. Didn't I land the job for you, with Arthur?"

"Naturally," said Jake. "The unfortunate goof is in love with you. He is putty in your hands."

Mysie gurgled faintly and gave up. Jake could always win an argument, by an insanity of extravagance in his assertions, innocent of the remotest approximation of reality. In fact, he carefully avoided ever touching upon a home truth, as bad manners. He was the soul of discretion. Mysie knew less than nothing of his private life; and if he knew anything of hers—she reflected rather mournfully that there wasn't much to know for some time past—he never betrayed it by the most obscure allusion.

10

M
RS
. S
IDDALL
felt that the evening had gone very well. She had the special point of view of a veteran hostess, not unlike a commander-in-chief holding a review. The right names, the household guards, filed by, saluted, deployed, and presently moved off in good order. There had been no hitch. Mrs. Siddall thought that Mrs. Martin was ridiculous showing her thin legs in a Patou model at her age, and her hair brittle with dye. And Mrs. Jelliffe Pearson had gone to pieces noticeably, but what could one expect —at forty-five she had married a man of thirty, and the five years since had been disastrous. She was strained and haggard, keeping her husband practically on leash. Mrs. Siddall made these mental observations impartially and impersonally, without prejudice to her guests as such. Mrs. Martin and Mrs. Pearson were people one always invited. There was, of course, a human aspect to the routine, threads of genuine friendship and intimate association woven into it. George Martin, Mrs. Martin's husband, who died ten years ago had been best man at Mrs. Siddall's own wedding fifty years ago. Mrs. Siddall had shared her first box at the opera with Mrs. Pearson's mother. The Dickersons were comparatively new people; it was only twenty-five years since Julius Dickerson had attained a junior partnership in the old firm of Helder & Company; but in so doing he had attained an equivalent social rating, carrying on an established line by adoption. To Mrs. Siddall New York society was homogeneous and self-existent, perpetuating itself by natural laws of succession. Having married a Siddall, Gina thereby belonged. She took her place beautifully, Mrs. Siddall thought, gratified by her own perspicacity in having chosen so wisely for Arthur.

The last guest was gone. Mounting the stairs, Mrs. Siddall looked down benevolently at Gina and Arthur, who had seen her home, through the inner corridor between the two houses. Mrs. Siddall felt a closer tie, a warmer affection, for Arthur than ever she had for her son, Arthur's father. She hadn't seen so much of her son during his childhood; those were the years of her large social activity as Senator Siddall's political helpmeet in Washington, which she took very seriously; the boy had been in the nursery, and afterward naturally he went to boarding school. Before he was out of college he had made his runaway marriage; that was so unexpected, and his death four years later so appallingly sudden— vanishment rather than death, for his body was never recovered—there was a strangeness and astonishment in her sorrow. She had hovered over Arthur with a shade of remorse at first, until he became almost completely identified with the lost boy and doubly dear to her. She had kept him near her; his marriage with Gina made no break in the household. There they were under her wing, and the baby safe asleep, an assurance of the future, wisdom justified of her children.

Mrs. Siddall's velvet train spread two steps below her; she had the sensible egotism to dress her part. Against the black walnut paneling, under the crystal chandelier, she was exactly the right figure. Her diamond tiara, the solid bands of diamonds on her fat wrists, the diamond dog-collar supporting her double chin, took on their proper value. They did not glitter; the old-fashioned cut and massed setting subdued them just enough. She went on upstairs, the rich folds of maroon velvet trailing after, and all her period, her society, went with her.

Gina and Arthur returned through the corridor to the new house. The drawing-room was filled with a bright desolation. Arthur stopped to speak to the butler. Gina went up her own stairs, in her golden dress. Her stockings were of gold thread, her slippers were gold; her hair was waved and cut close to her pretty head, bringing out the bronze-gold lights in the bronze-black depths; her light brown eyes took on a golden reflection. The square diamond on her finger caught a ray of white light. She was slender and shining against the white wall, keyed to the background, part of it, but not the center. It had no center. It was a pattern, all surface.

The party had not been hers, and she knew it. She realized, as Mrs. Siddall could not, that Mrs. Siddall's society no longer existed. Polly Brant had come, out of sheer insolence, to prove that. To smile at the dowagers, and sneer at the dowdy earnest folks like the Dickersons, and snub Gina with allusions to the really smart people, who were not there. There were half a dozen smart groups, quite arbitrary in their composition; nobody could say how or why anyone was accepted; they were drawn from old families and new rich, they included a few recruits from the stage and other professions, with an occasional titled foreigner taken in capriciously. They met abroad, of course, at the recognized places and seasons. Polly was a leader of the polo and hunting set; but all the smart sets acknowledged the others, touched at the edges. And they still had a half-amused respect for the authentic leaders of the old guard, like Mrs. Siddall; but her authority did not suffice to open the inner circles to Gina.

Gina hurried the nightly beauty ritual, and let her maid go. Then she stood absently, tense with suppressed irritation, in front of her mirror, biting her lip. She hated Polly . . . "Come," she answered Arthur's tap mechanically. He looked sleepy and cheerful; he put his arm about her tentatively and kissed the back of her neck. Gina picked up a scent bottle and twisted the stopper in her fingers. It was impossible to unburden her secret bitterness to Arthur, because he could not understand it. He was not shut out as she was.

He did not specifically belong to any of the smart sets, not sharing their interests; but he could if he chose. He would be accepted anywhere. It just didn't matter to him. And even if he chose to go, though Gina would have been admitted as his wife, still she would have been outside. And he wouldn't know it.

He had that terrible simplicity; and he had never had anywhere to climb to.

Mrs. Siddall was so used to the part of a great hostess that it had become second nature to her; this gave her a certain self-sufficiency. She validated her own acquaintances in her own eyes. Arthur had been bred to that attitude unconsciously, but with a difference, because he happened to be incapable of snobbery, even the snobbery of the elect. In a way, everybody was alike to him. He was fond of Polly and embarrassed by Mrs. Perry's gush; but they were both in the family. Outside the family—if he met people he assumed they were the people one met; that was the nearest one could get to it. The peculiar effect of his special position was that he had no social discrimination. Gina couldn't analyze nor define his attitude, but it was so. It went deeper than she could understand; he didn't speak to the servants kindly; he spoke to them in the same tone he would use to anyone else. He had a gentle and grateful nature, and all that he had been taught as a child of courtesy and consideration to others, the obligation of his privilege, imposed upon his immediate position as a child among older and presumably wiser people, had given him a genuine and lasting humility. It was almost incredible; and it had taken Gina several years to begin to believe Arthur was just what he was—