Twilight Sleep (6 page)

"I don't; it's you. You will, that is, if you take this case. Bee
and Nona have been intimate since they were babies, and Bee is
always at Lita's. Don't you suppose the Mahatma's lawyers will
make use of that if you OBLIGE him to fight? You may say you're
prepared for it; and I admire your courage—but I can't share it.
The idea that our children may be involved simply sickens me."

"Neither Nona nor Lita has ever had anything to do with this
charlatan and his humbug, as far as I know," said Manford
irritably.

"Nona has attended his eurythmic classes at our house, and gone to
his lectures with me: at one time they interested her intensely."
Pauline paused. "About Lita I don't know: I know so little about
Lita's life before her marriage."

"It was presumably that of any of Nona's other girl friends."

"Presumably. Kitty Landish might enlighten us. But of course, if
it WAS—" he noted her faintly sceptical emphasis—"I don't admit
that that would preclude Lita's having known the Mahatma, or
believed in him. And you must remember, Dexter, that I should be
the most deeply involved of all! I mean to take a rest–cure at
Dawnside in March." She gave the little playful laugh with which
she had been used, in old times, to ridicule the naughtiness of her
children.

Manford drummed on his blotting–pad. "Look here, suppose we drop
this for the present—"

She glanced at her wrist–watch. "If you can spare the time—"

"Spare the time?"

She answered softly: "I'm not going away till you've promised."

Manford could remember the day when that tone—so feminine under
its firmness—would have had the power to shake him. Pauline, in
her wifely dealings, so seldom invoked the prerogative of her
grace, her competence, her persuasiveness, that when she did he had
once found it hard to resist. But that day was past. Under his
admiration for her brains, and his esteem for her character, he had
felt, of late, a stealing boredom. She was too clever, too
efficient, too uniformly sagacious and serene. Perhaps his own
growing sense of power—professional and social—had secretly
undermined his awe of hers, made him feel himself first her equal,
then ever so little her superior. He began to detect something
obtuse in that unfaltering competence. And as his professional
authority grew he had become more jealous of interference with it.
His wife ought at least to have understood that! If her famous
tact were going to fail her, what would be left, he asked himself?

"Look here, Pauline, you know all this is useless. In professional
matters no one else can judge for me. I'm busy this afternoon; I'm
sure you are too—"

She settled more deeply into her armchair. "Never too busy for
you, Dexter."

"Thank you, dear. But the time I ask you to give me is outside of
business hours," he rejoined with a slight smile.

"Then I'm dismissed?" She smiled back. "I understand; you needn't
ring!" She rose with recovered serenity and laid a light hand on
his shoulder. "Sorry to have bothered you; I don't often, do I?
All I ask is that you should think over—"

He lifted the hand to his lips. "Of course, of course." Now that
she was going he could say it.

"I'm forgiven?"

He smiled: "You're forgiven;" and from the threshold she called,
almost gaily: "Don't forget tonight—Amalasuntha!"

His brow clouded as he returned to his chair; and oddly enough—he
was aware of the oddness—it was clouded not by the tiresome scene
he had been through, but by his wife's reminder. "Damn that
dinner," he swore to himself.

He turned to the telephone, unhooked it for the third time, and
called for the same number.

That evening, as he slipped the key into his front–door, Dexter
Manford felt the oppression of all that lay behind it. He never
entered his house without a slight consciousness of the importance
of the act—never completely took for granted the resounding
vestibule, the big hall with its marble staircase ascending to all
the light and warmth and luxury which skill could devise, money
buy, and Pauline's ingenuity combine in a harmonious whole. He had
not yet forgotten the day when, after one of his first legal
successes, he had installed a bathroom in his mother's house at
Delos, and all the neighbours had driven in from miles around to
see it.

But luxury, and above all comfort, had never weighed on him; he was
too busy to think much about them, and sure enough of himself and
his powers to accept them as his right. It was not the splendour
of his house that oppressed him but the sense of the corporative
bonds it imposed. It seemed part of an elaborate social and
domestic structure, put together with the baffling ingenuity of
certain bird's–nests of which he had seen the pictures. His own
career, Pauline's multiple activities, the problem of poor Arthur
Wyant, Nona, Jim, Lita Wyant, the Mahatma, the tiresome Grant
Lindons, the perennial and inevitable Amalasuntha, for whom the
house was being illuminated tonight—all were strands woven into
the very pile of the carpet he trod on his way up the stairs. As
he passed the dining–room he saw, through half–open doors, the
glitter of glass and silver, a shirt–sleeved man placing bowls of
roses down the long table, and Maisie Bruss, wan but undaunted,
dealing out dinner cards to Powder, the English butler.

Pauline Manford sent a satisfied glance down the table.

It was on such occasions that she visibly reaped her reward. No
one else in New York had so accomplished a cook, such smoothly
running service, a dinner–table so softly yet brightly lit, or such
skill in grouping about it persons not only eminent in wealth or
fashion, but likely to find pleasure in each other's society.

The intimate reunion, of the not–more–than–the–Muses kind, was not
Pauline's affair. She was aware of this, and seldom made the
attempt—though, when she did, she was never able to discover why
it was not a success. But in the organizing and administering of a
big dinner she was conscious of mastery. Not the stupid big dinner
of old days, when the "crowned heads" used to be treated like a
caste apart, and everlastingly invited to meet each other through a
whole monotonous season: Pauline was too modern for that. She
excelled in a judicious blending of Wall Street and Bohemia, and
her particular art lay in her selection of the latter element. Of
course there were Bohemians and Bohemians; as she had once remarked
to Nona, people weren't always amusing just because they were
clever, or dull just because they were rich—though at the last
clause Nona had screwed up her nose incredulously… Well, even
Nona would be satisfied tonight, Pauline thought. It wasn't
everybody who would have been bold enough to ask a social reformer
like Parker Greg with the very people least disposed to encourage
social reform, nor a young composer like Torfried Lobb (a disciple
of "The Six") with all those stolid opera–goers, nor that
disturbing Tommy Ardwin, the Cubist decorator, with the owners of
the most expensive "period houses" in Fifth Avenue.

Pauline was not a bit afraid of such combinations. She knew in
advance that at one of her dinners everything would "go"—it always
did. And her success amused and exhilarated her so much that, even
tonight, though she had come down oppressed with problems, they
slipped from her before she even had time to remind herself that
they were nonexistent. She had only to look at the faces gathered
about that subdued radiance of old silver and scattered flowers to
be sure of it. There, at the other end of the table, was her
husband's dark head, comely and resolute in its vigorous middle–
age; on his right the Marchesa di San Fedele, the famous San Fedele
pearls illuminating her inconspicuous black; on his left the
handsome Mrs. Herman Toy, magnanimously placed there by Pauline
because she knew that Manford was said to be "taken" by her, and
she wanted him to be in good–humour that evening. To measure her
own competence she had only to take in this group, already settling
down to an evening's enjoyment, and then let her glance travel on
to the others, the young and handsome women, the well–dressed
confident–looking men. Nona, grave yet eager, was talking to
Manford's legal rival, the brilliant Alfred Cosby, who was known to
have said she was the cleverest girl in New York. Lita, cool and
aloof, drooped her head slightly to listen to Torfried Lobb, the
composer; Jim gazed across the table at Lita as if his adoration
made every intervening obstacle transparent; Aggie Heuston, whose
coldness certainly made her look distinguished, though people
complained that she was dull, dispensed occasional monosyllables to
the ponderous Herman Toy; and Stanley Heuston, leaning back with
that faint dry smile which Pauline found irritating because it was
so inscrutable, kept his eyes discreetly but steadily on Nona.
Dear good Stan, always like a brother to Nona! People who knew him
well said he wasn't as sardonic as he looked.

It was a world after Pauline's heart—a world such as she believed
its Maker meant it to be. She turned to the Bishop on her right,
wondering if he shared her satisfaction, and encountered a glance
of understanding.

"So refreshing to be among old friends… This is one of the few
houses left… Always such a pleasure to meet the dear Marchesa;
I hope she has better reports of her son? Wretched business, I'm
afraid. My dear Mrs. Manford, I wonder if you know how blessed you
are in your children? That wise little Nona, who is going to make
some man so happy one of these days—not Cosby, no? Too much
difference in age? And your steady Jim and his idol … yes, I
know it doesn't become my cloth to speak indulgently of idolatry.
But happy marriages are so rare nowadays: where else could one find
such examples as there are about this table? Your Jim and his
Lita, and my good friend Heuston with that saint of a wife—"
The Bishop paused, as if, even on so privileged an occasion, he
was put to it to prolong the list. "Well, you've given them the
example…" He stopped again, probably remembering that his
hostess's matrimonial bliss was built on the ruins of her first
husband's. But in divorcing she had invoked a cause which even
the Church recognizes; and the Bishop proceeded serenely: "Her
children shall rise up and call her blessed—yes, dear friend, you
must let me say it."

The words were balm to Pauline. Every syllable carried conviction:
all was right with her world and the Bishop's! Why did she ever
need any other spiritual guidance than that of her own creed? She
felt a twinge of regret at having so involved herself with the
Mahatma. Yet what did Episcopal Bishops know of "holy ecstasy"?
And could any number of Church services have reduced her hips?
After all, there was room for all the creeds in her easy rosy
world. And the thought led her straight to her other preoccupation:
the reception for the Cardinal. She resolved to secure the Bishop's
approval at once. After that, of course the Chief Rabbi would have
to come. And what a lesson in tolerance and good–will to the
discordant world she was trying to reform!

Nona, half–way down the table, viewed its guests from another
angle. She had come back depressed rather than fortified from her
flying visit to her father. There were days when Manford liked to
be "surprised" at the office; when he and his daughter had their
little jokes together over these clandestine visits. But this one
had not come off in that spirit. She had found Manford tired and
slightly irritable; Nona, before he had time to tell her of her
mother's visit, caught a lingering whiff of Pauline's cool hygienic
scent, and wondered nervously what could have happened to make Mrs.
Manford break through her tightly packed engagements, and dash down
to her husband's office. It was of course to that emergency that
she had sacrificed poor Exhibit A—little guessing his relief at
the postponement. But what could have obliged her to see Manford
so suddenly, when they were to meet at dinner that evening?

The girl had asked no questions: she knew that Manford, true to his
profession, preferred putting them. And her chief object, of
course, had been to get him to help her about Arthur Wyant. That,
she perceived, at first added to his irritation: was he Wyant's
keeper, he wanted to know? But he broke off before the next
question: "Why the devil can't his own son look after him?" She
had seen that question on his very lips; but they shut down on it,
and he rose from his chair with a shrug. "Poor devil—if you think
I can be of any use? All right, then—I'll drop in on him
tomorrow." He and Wyant, ever since the divorce, had met whenever
Jim's fate was to be discussed; Wyant felt a sort of humiliated
gratitude for Manford's generosity to his son. "Not the money, you
know, Nona—damn the money! But taking such an interest in him;
helping him to find himself: appreciating him, hang it! He
understands Jim a hundred times better than your mother ever
did…" On this basis the two men came together now and then
in a spirit of tolerant understanding…

Nona recalled her father's face as it had been when she left him:
worried, fagged, yet with that twinkle of gaiety his eyes always
had when he looked at her. Now, smoothed out, smiling, slightly
replete, it was hard as stone. "Like his own death–mask," the girl
thought; "as if he'd done with everything, once for all.—And the
way those two women bore him! Mummy put Gladys Toy next to him as
a reward—for what?" She smiled at her mother's simplicity in
imagining that he was having what Pauline called a "harmless
flirtation" with Mrs. Herman Toy. That lady's obvious charms were
no more to him, Nona suspected, than those of the florid Bathsheba
in the tapestry behind his chair. But Pauline had evidently had
some special reason—over and above her usual diffused benevolence—
for wanting to put Manford in a good humour. "The Mahatma,
probably." Nona knew how her mother hated a fuss: how vulgar and
unchristian she always thought it. And it would certainly be
inconvenient to give up the rest–cure at Dawnside she had planned
for March, when Manford was to go off tarpon–fishing.

Nona's glance, in the intervals of talk with her neighbours,
travelled farther, lit on Jim's good–humoured wistful face—Jim was
always wistful at his mother's banquets—and flitted on to Aggie
Heuston's precise little mask, where everything was narrow and
perpendicular, like the head of a saint squeezed into a cathedral
niche. But the girl's eyes did not linger, for as they rested on
Aggie they abruptly met the latter's gaze. Aggie had been
furtively scrutinizing her, and the discovery gave Nona a faint
shock. In another instant Mrs. Heuston turned to Parker Greg, the
interesting young social reformer whom Pauline had thoughtfully
placed next to her, with the optimistic idea that all persons
interested in improving the world must therefore be in the fullest
sympathy. Nona, knowing Parker Greg's views, smiled at that too.
Aggie, she was sure, would feel much safer with her other
neighbour, Mr. Herman Toy, who thought, on all subjects, just what
all his fellow capitalists did.

Nona caught Stan Heuston's smile, and knew he had read her thought;
but from him too she turned. The last thing she wanted was that he
should guess her real opinion of his wife. Something deep down and
dogged in Nona always, when it came to the touch, made her avert
her feet from the line of least resistance.

Manford lent an absent ear first to one neighbour, then the other.
Mrs. Toy was saying, in her flat uncadenced voice, like tepid water
running into a bath: "I don't see how people can LIVE without
lifts in their houses, do you? But perhaps it's because I've never
had to. Father's house had the first electric lift at Climax.
Once, in England, we went to stay with the Duke of Humber, at
Humber Castle—one of those huge parties, royalties and everything—
golf and polo all day, and a ball every night; and, will you
believe it, WE HAD TO WALK UP AND DOWN STAIRS! I don't know what
English people are made of. I suppose they've never been used to
what we call comfort. The second day I told Herman I couldn't
stand those awful slippery stairs after two rounds of golf, and
dancing till four in the morning. It was simply destroying my
heart—the doctor has warned me so often! I wanted to leave right
away—but Herman said it would offend the Duke. The Duke's such a
sweet old man. But, any way, I made Herman promise me a sapphire
and emerald plaque from Carrier's before I'd agree to stick it
out…"

The Marchesa's little ferret face with sharp impassioned eyes
darted conversationally forward. "The Duke of Humber? I know him
so WELL. Dear old man! Ah, you also stayed at Humber? So often
he invites me. We are related … yes, through his first wife,
whose mother was a Venturini of the Calabrian branch: Donna
Ottaviana. Yes. Another sister, Donna Rosmunda, the beauty of the
family, married the Duke of Lepanto … a mediatized prince…"

She stopped, and Manford read in her eyes the hasty inward
interrogation: "Will they think that expression queer? I'm not
sure myself just what 'mediatized' means. And these Americans!
They stick at nothing, but they're shocked at everything." Aloud
she continued: "A mediatized prince—but a man of the VERY HIGHEST
character."

"Oh—" murmured Mrs. Toy, puzzled but obviously relieved.

Manford's attention, tugging at its moorings, had broken loose
again and was off and away.

The how–many–eth dinner did that make this winter? And no end in
sight! How could Pauline stand it? Why did she want to stand it?
All those rest–cures, massages, rhythmic exercises, devised to
restore the health of people who would have been as sound as bells
if only they had led normal lives! Like that fool of a woman
spreading her blond splendours so uselessly at his side, who
couldn't walk upstairs because she had danced all night! Pauline
was just like that—never walked upstairs, and then had to do
gymnastics, and have osteopathy, and call in Hindu sages, to
prevent her muscles from getting atrophied… He had a vision of
his mother, out on the Minnesota farm, before they moved into Delos—
saw her sowing, digging potatoes, feeding chickens; saw her
kneading, baking, cooking, washing, mending, catching and
harnessing the half–broken colt to drive twelve miles in the snow
for the doctor, one day when all the men were away, and his little
sister had been so badly scalded… And there the old lady sat
at Delos, in her nice little brick house, in her hale and hearty
old age, built to outlive them all.—Wasn't that perhaps the kind
of life Manford himself had been meant for? Farming on a big
scale, with all the modern appliances his forbears had lacked,
outdoing everybody in the county, marketing his goods at the big
centres, and cutting a swathe in state politics like his elder
brother? Using his brains, muscles, the whole of him, body and
soul, to do real things, bring about real results in the world,
instead of all this artificial activity, this spinning around
faster and faster in the void, and having to be continually rested
and doctored to make up for exertions that led to nothing, nothing,
nothing…