The Legacy (3 page)

“I've felt that. Even in the north, you feel it.”

“I was born here. Doesn't that give it some tiny virtue in your eyes?”

“I don't believe you. Carson, you're a little boy.”

“If you see it that way.” He nodded. “So my mother's told me on occasion. But old enough to know my own mind. Would you marry me? No, no, let me make it more formal. Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife? I want that more than anything in the world.”

Barbara darted a sharp glance at him. Then for a while, she walked along in silence, staring at the wet sand and scuffing it with her toes.

“Some response is called for,” he said finally.

She was thinking of the first time they had gone to bed. It was their third date after their meeting. He had taken her to dinner in a little French restaurant on Sunset Boulevard, and afterwards, they had driven up through Laurel Canyon to Mulholland Drive. He had parked his car on an open shoulder of the road, where there was a wide, splendid view of the San Fernando Valley. A full moon lit the valley and the mighty ring of mountains that encircled it. They stood at the edge of the drop, breathing the cold night air, his arm around her, as much of an overt gesture of affection as he had yet made. They had never kissed, never embraced. His attitude toward her had been one of respectful yet affectionate formality. Now, on this night, no words at all passed between them as they stood there. A quality Barbara admired was his reluctance to chatter. He was not afraid of silence.

After about ten minutes, he turned back to the car. She followed him and they drove to her hotel and went up to her room. In the room, she said to him, simply and directly, “I'll use the bathroom. You can undress here.”

When she came out of the bathroom, wrapped in a dressing gown, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, naked, his beautifully formed body crouched over as if to hide his erection, the same quality of a small boy caught in wrongdoing that she had noticed before. Barbara opened her dressing gown and let it fall to the floor, standing naked, conscious of the fact that time had not cheated her of her beauty, her stomach still flat, her breasts high and firm, her long legs straight and well formed.

“Won't you look at me, Carson?” she asked gently.

He raised his head and stared at her.

She smiled, thinking to herself that she was finally going to bed with a younger man because she wanted it more desperately than she had ever wanted it before, so desperately that she could feel her whole body swollen with desire. When he took her in his arms, she clutched him with a strength that made him wince, pressed her lips to his, sought a passage between his lips with her tongue, and then when he entered her, she exploded with a passion that would not leave her, the waves of her orgasm coming again and again, until finally she lay in his arms, limp and exhausted, light-headed and wantonly happy.

And now, walking on the sand at Santa Monica, he was proposing marriage. The first time in bed with him had not been the last. For almost three months, she had been having an affair with Carson Devron, and aside from her work and her involvement in the making of a film, she had been very happy, happier than she had been in years — or at least a part of her had been happy.

“Are you serious?” she asked him finally.

“More serious than I've ever been.”

“You know it's impossible, Carson.”

“Why? Why is it impossible?”

“You know why it's impossible. I'm eight years older than you.”

“And if I were eight years older, would that make it impossible?”

“You're a man and I'm a woman. That's the way things are. We didn't make it that way, and we can't change it.”

“To hell with the way things are!” he said angrily. “The only thing that really counts is whether you love me. For my part, I know what I feel. I love you and I need you.”

His anger communicated itself. Barbara felt a growing, racking resentment, at the world, at herself, at the pressures that had brought her here to Los Angeles, at this tall, beautifully formed man walking beside her who for years had been the golden boy of this strange land of oranges, freeways, and wealth. She was not thrilled, not pleased or flattered, but full of a sense of being assaulted.

“Do you love me?” he insisted. “That's the only point at issue.”

“My son was born through a Caesarean section,” she said flatly. “I'm too old to want children — you know that. You've let drop what your father and mother think of you turning up all over town with the notorious Barbara Lavette who spent six months in a federal prison. Don't tell me you'll do what you want. You're a Devron. You've just been made publisher of the
Morning World,
and for two years you've been engaged to marry another woman.”

“That's over. I ended that. I told you I ended that.”

“And have you informed the Devron clan that you'd like to marry me?”

“I've informed you.”

Barbara stopped walking, turned to face him, grasping him by both arms. They stared at each other, and then she burst into laughter. “Carson, what a dumb quarrel this is. The first real fight we have, all because you ask me to marry you. You're a dear, sweet person. I don't know whether I'm in love with you. I've been through too much to just blithely fall in love like some starry-eyed kid. It's been so good being with you. It made my months here possible and even wonderful. Isn't that enough?”

“No. It's not enough. I can't drop it here and let you go back to San Francisco. I can't forget. I need you. I don't need children. You're the one thing in the world I need and want, and I won't let go of this. You go up north and I'll follow you there. I'll hound you. Don't be deceived by my boyish graces. If you know anything about the Devrons, you know that they get what they want. Now I'm going to put my arms around you. Don't pull away from me.”

“I wouldn't pull away from you, Kit Carson Devron. You know that.”

In 1847, when Kit Carson, the frontier scout, was thirty-eight years old, he took under his wing an orphan boy of sixteen years whose name was Angus Devron. Devron's parents, immigrants from the town of York in England, had died in a wagon train moving West. Angus continued the journey, arrived finally in the newly conquered village of San Francisco, and there, for want of better employment, joined a raggle-taggle group of volunteers who were traveling south to help “liberate” the village of Los Angeles from the Mexicans who lived there. When they arrived in Los Angeles, they found the handful of Americans who had begun the process of “liberation” outnumbered and under siege by the Mexicans. Kit Carson volunteered to go to San Diego, where General Kearny commanded a garrison of American troops, and to return with relief forces. For reasons unknown to posterity, he chose Angus Devron as one of his traveling companions. In due time, the relief column, led by Kit Carson, reached the beleaguered Americans, and the tiny village of Los Angeles was “liberated.” In the course of this liberation, young Angus Devron possessed himself of a diamond bracelet. Whether the bracelet was found in one of the empty houses, or was looted from the wife of some Spanish grandee, or was merely a part of spoils unaccounted for was never determined. In any case, the bracelet was sold, and with the proceeds, young Angus acquired eight hundred acres in what would one day be a part of the City of Los Angeles. Angus Devron emerged from this experience with a worship of two things — land and Kit Carson. His land acquisitions increased through his lifetime, and his son, born to him finally at age fifty-eight, was named Christopher Carson Devron. His grandson, born in 1922, the year that Angus died at age ninety-one, carried on the name, the Christopher shortened to Kit. The landholdings, meanwhile, had been added to with rail lines, utilities, office buildings, and finally, by Carson's father, the Los Angeles
Morning World.

All this, with various embellishments, Carson related to Barbara as they lay in bed that evening. “It was in the army that I dropped the ‘Kit,' “ he told her. “It's bad enough to go through life with the name of Carson Devron. I had all I could bear of Kit Carson. My mother was the last holdout. Now she's dropped it, thank heavens.”

“I might just call you Kit,” Barbara said.

“Oh, no. No.”

“I like it. I've been Bobby all my life. Kit's no worse.”

“All right, if you marry me.”

“We were off that subject. Let's sleep. No plans for tomorrow. Perhaps I'll go home, perhaps I won't. We'll see how I feel in the morning.”

He began, gently, to stroke her breast. “If you do that, Carson,” she whispered, “I'll have to turn you off, cruelly.”

“And how will you do that?”

“I'll begin by telling you what a rotten, reactionary newspaper the
Morning World
is. And if I start on that tack, I can't even be pleasant to the man who publishes it, much less make love with him.”

“It has a new publisher, namely myself. God Almighty, give me a chance. I've only been in there a few months.”

“Only if you go to sleep.”

He continued to stroke her breast, and she sighed and curled up to him.

Sometime during the night, Barbara was awakened by a siren from either a police car or a fire engine. The singsong screaming brought her sharply awake, and then as she listened to it fade into the distance, it made an image in her mind of a tortured cry of agony out of the whole city. She was unable to fall asleep again. She lay quietly beside Carson, trying vainly to rid herself of the memories that were evoked by the wailing cry of the siren. Tired and feeling alone, in spite of the man's warm body beside her, she asked herself why she was there, why she was anywhere, and what possible sense her presence on earth added up to. The fact that Carson had proposed marriage that same day only increased her consciousness of time and age. She felt old, dried up, withered. She would not be deceived by a boy who had conceived a passion for her. She was a fruit squeezed dry of juice, and all the good and beautiful moments were gone forever. The two men whom she had once loved so deeply were both dead — and the lovely, graceful young woman whom they had both loved was also dead. Self-pity was not a common indulgence by Barbara but now she sank into it, and then mercifully dozed off, not really sleeping yet not awake.

The darkness of the bedroom was softening to a pale gray when the telephone rang. Devron started up out of his sleep, but Barbara pushed him back gently. “It's all right, Carson. I'm not sleeping.” She picked up the telephone from the table beside the bed, and she heard the voice of her brother Joe:

“Barbara — is that you?”

“Yes. Yes, of course. Joe, it's six in the morning.”

“I know. Bobby, I have rotten news. Pop is dead. He died last night.”

It had happened at about two o'clock in the morning. Dan Lavette and his wife had been asleep in the bedroom of their house on Russian Hill in San Francisco, the same house he had built for his young bride more than forty years ago.

A low moan awakened Jean. She switched on the light. Dan was sitting up, his face contorted with pain. “It's all right, baby,” he managed to say. “I didn't mean to wake you. Go back to sleep.”

“I'm going to call the doctor.”

He grinned at her. The pain had eased. “What the hell for?” he said. “It's just gas. That's all it is. Nothing.”

“Are you sure?” she asked worriedly.

“Sure.” He took her hand and lay back. As she reached toward the light, his grip on her hand tightened and then relaxed. She looked at him. He lay on his back, his eyes open.

“Danny!”

He didn't move or respond.

“Oh, my God! Danny! Danny!”

She had heard somewhere of a thing called mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. She pressed her lips to his, trying to breathe life into his half-open mouth. Then, on her knees on the bed, she clawed her way over to the telephone, leafing through the pages of the bedside telephone pad for Dr. Kellman's number. She found the number and dialed it. Kellman answered the phone himself.

“Jean,” he said, “pull yourself together. I'll be there in ten minutes.”

“What shall I do? I think he's dead.”

“I'll be right over.”

Her hand had been steady enough when she dialed the doctor's number, but now it shook so that she could hardly get the telephone back in its cradle. On the bed, on her hands and knees, she turned to look at her husband. “Danny,” she cried, her voice a shrill wail of agony, “don't do this to me! Don't leave me! You promised me! You promised me you wouldn't leave me! Please, please, Danny!” Then she crawled over to him and kissed his cheek. “It's a game. One of your crazy games. To see what I'd do — to see what I'd do …” Her voice trailed away. So quick. His cheek was cold as ice. She put her arms around him, pressing her body close to his, her face against his face. “I'll warm you, Danny, I'll warm you. I could always keep you warm. I can. I can.”

She heard the doorbell ring. No servants slept in the house. The doorbell rang again. Jean let go of her husband, got out of the bed, took her robe from where it lay flung over a chair, and went downstairs to let Dr. Kellman in. He glanced at her, and then ran past her, taking the stairs two at a time. Jean followed him slowly. When she entered the bedroom, Dr. Kellman was bending over Dan, his stethoscope on Dan's bare chest. Then he dropped the stethoscope, took a tiny flashlight out of his pocket, and directed the light into Dan's open eyes. Then he closed Dan's eyelids. He was about to draw the sheet up over Dan's face when Jean stopped him.

“Don't cover him. Not yet,” Jean said hoarsely.

“It's no use, Jean. He's dead.”

“I know. I knew when I called you.”

With all his years of practice, Kellman had never discovered what one says at a moment like this. He muttered something about the ten years that had passed since Dan's first heart attack. “I'll give you something for your nerves.” That was what a doctor said.