The Dark Lady Read online

  It seemed to him that everything about him was young. The older servants, except for the butler, Arthur, had gone with Clara, and Broadlawns was full of neophytes. And what was not young, the trees, the works of art, seemed to promise to live forever. Irving likened himself to another dying collector, Cardinal Mazarin, who used to paddle down the corridors of his gorgeous palace, in slippers and bathrobe, past rows of great statues and walls of peerless paintings, murmuring tremulously: "Le moyen de quitter tout ga?"

  Because he would never again be able to make love to Elesina, she had begun to take on some of the luster of a goddess in a dream. His thoughts about her seemed to defile her by their very helplessness. And when he considered with despondency the decay of his flesh, the approaching decomposition of the man Stein, it appeared to him that his reality was the dream, that the greater truth was in his vision of the new deity at Broadlawns. He seemed to have survived, in some curious fashion, his own extinction and was now witnessing the translation of his old domain to a female fashion. It was as if by the hubris of marrying a young woman he had brought about his own humiliation and at the same time the austere privilege of being audience to it.

  All, however, was not young at Broadlawns. Elesina's mother, who had soon reconciled herself to the marriage, had her regular room for weekends. Irving surmised that her other invitations must have been diminished by the death and illness of her contemporaries and that she found Broadlawns, where nothing was expected of her, a pleasant substitute for visits to ailing friends where she was under the increasing burden of being cheerful. He had no objection to her presence, for she was quiet and self-sufficient, entertaining herself with reading and solitary walks. The person whom he really minded was Ivy Trask. Elesina was trying to persuade Ivy to give up her job at Tone and become her full-time housekeeper-secretary. As Irving was no longer able to manage the household, his wife insisted that she needed this additional help, and he felt sadly sure that it was only a matter of time before the terrible Trask was mistress of all. Ivy was living in the house, although she still commuted to New York. She hired and fired the servants, and Arthur, the one old retainer who had remained loyal to Irving, had already made his peace with her.

  Social life, interrupted by Irving's illness, had now been resumed on a moderate scale, and Elesina had begun to put together little house parties. Nothing was asked of Irving but to have himself wheeled into the dining room for any meal that he chose, even at the very last moment, or to chat occasionally at cocktails in the patio. Nobody said a word if he suddenly beckoned his nurse and asked to be taken to his room or the library. Oh, yes, he had to admit that his confinement was beautifully handled, by Elesina, by Arthur, even by Ivy Trask—blast her!—but the trouble was that it was precisely a confinement, almost a captivity. He yearned for David, but dared not write him.

  On a Friday afternoon as he was sitting alone with his Wall Street Journal in the Fragonard room, he turned at the sound of Elesina's quick, light step. She was standing by the doorway, and a shaft of sunlight cut across the middle of her face, just failing to illuminate her smile and making it, he suddenly and quixotically thought, faintly sinister. But it wasn't sinister. It was friendly, very friendly. Elesina's equanimity of temper, after six months, never ceased to astonish him. He remembered with a shudder the tart answer to the question he had rashly put to his mother-in-law:

  "You ask me if Elesina can possibly be as contented as she looks? Don't you know there are two types of acquisitive women? Those, the great majority, who are still discontented after they get what they want, and those, the one percent, who are satisfied. You've had luck, my dear Irving!"

  Elesina sat down by the table and placed a small unframed canvas before him. It was a French seventeenth-century painting, perhaps a design for a ceiling or overdoor. A naked woman was holding up an oval portrait of the young Louis XIV. On either side of her cherubs were heaping up shields, spears, sheafs of wheat, emblems of peace and victory. In the rear of the picture two other cherubs were chasing away a horned figure, a satyr, a symbol of war. The curtain that another cherub was holding back to permit the satyr to escape was of the same deep purple as Elesina's velvet suit. Irving pointed this out.

  "Ah, but that isn't the reason I brought it to you," she replied. "No such vain thoughts occupy me now. I wanted you to see how I was progressing. That French dealer who was here last week told me it was a Le Brun. He based his opinion on the fact that the portrait of the King is a copy of a known Le Brun portrait. But if you will compare the lady with nudes by Watteau and Fragonard, you will see that she must be much later."

  Irving smiled patiently at her enthusiasm. "Why do you say so, my darling?"

  "Because she's sexy! Surely you can see that, Irving? You, of all men! A nymph or goddess in a Louis Quatorze painting would be a man in a woman's skin, an Amazon, a Michelangelo. This gal looks as if she'd been surprised in her bath."

  "Then how do you explain the Le Brun?"

  "Well, some noble in seventeen thirty or seventeen forty may have wanted a fresco to celebrate the military glory of a grandfather who fought under Louis Quatorze. We think of people in the past as being surrounded by things of their period. But they had pasts, too."

  "My dear, I think you're on to something. It's astonishing how you see it. Now, I look at that little picture, it seems clear that it's eighteenth-century!"

  Elesina was very pleased. There was no need for him to tell her that her deduction was obvious, and that the French dealer was an ass whom he tolerated only because of his connection with a museum in Marseilles which sometimes disposed of items in its collection. What was important was the speed with which Elesina was mastering a field that was new to her. She worked every day with his curator, Leon Feld, taking up the Stein possessions century by century, room by room. Irving had never forgotten the impression which she had made on him at their first meeting with her knowledge of Shakespeare's sonnets derived from a single role in a trashy play.

  "And the nymph, or whatever she may be," Elesina pointed out, "doesn't give a hoot about the emblems heaped up beside her. She'd much rather sport in the shade with that satyr they're kicking out of the house!"

  "Poor nymph," Irving sighed. "Perhaps I, too, find myself in the wrong century. I ought to be content with one of those marble Louis Quatorze heroines. We could talk of old wars and past glories. But you, my dear, are like the Fragonard nymph at whose feet the cherubs pile up unwanted treasures."

  "Treasures, on the contrary, which I want very much!" Elesina retorted with a peal of laughter. She jumped up to kiss him on the forehead. "And you know you're naughty to talk that way. Haven't we agreed that subject is taboo?"

  "You must forgive a bitter old man."

  "But I shan't! You've got to get it through your silly old head that you have a happy woman on your hands."

  "Ah, but for how long?" Suddenly he caught her hand and pressed it to his lips. "How long, my beautiful girl?"

  "Just as long as you keep away from that subject." She withdrew her hand firmly and gave him an admonishing tap on the shoulder. "Just as long as you try to keep it off your mind. I mean it, Irving. You can try."

  Was it possible? Did she mean it? He could suppose so, anyway. Did life have to be wretched? Was there any law that decreed misery? Was it not possible, at least conceivable, that she was one of those women—there were such, one knew, nuns, nurses, teachers—who could live in peace with their dormant senses? Irving closed his eyes in a sudden seizure of pain as another thought struck him: that she might have been actually relieved by his operation!

  "Elesina, dearest," he exclaimed hurriedly, in a frantic need to obliterate the idea, "let me tell you something. Something I've been thinking about recently. I've never been sure what to do with the collection. My will directs my executors to turn Broadlawns into a museum. But will they do it right? Will they really care? Lionel and Peter know nothing about art, and David will be off on some tangent of his own. Suppose you and I take
care of it? Why wait till I'm dead and gone? We could convert the place into an art center and open it in my lifetime."

  He noted the way her lips parted and the way her eyes fixed themselves again on the little picture. She was obviously struck. How long would it take to catalogue the collection, to set up the project? Two years? Three? It would see him out.

  "Irving, I think it might be a wonderful idea!"

  "What would?" a voice demanded.

  Irving turned with a half-suppressed snort of anger to face Ivy Trask, standing in the doorway. Behind her was Mrs. Dart.

  Elesina, very excited now, proceeded to tell them of the plan. Ivy clapped her hands with instant enthusiasm, but Mrs. Dart was denigrating.

  "Oh, come now, Irving. You've had your kicks putting it all together. Let other collectors have theirs."

  "You mean I should sell it all?"

  "Not you, your executors. Our body goes back to the eternal earth. Why shouldn't our things go back to the eternal market? To me a memorial museum is like a mummy."

  "But think of the Frick, Mrs. Dart!" Ivy protested. "Think of the Wallace Collection. The Freer Gallery!"

  "I do. To me they're simply smug tombs. I detest their air of complacency. All those fat-cat collectors putting themselves on a par with the beautiful things they've simply bought!"

  "You just don't believe in museums, Linda," Irving said flatly.

  "Oh, a few, yes. But we're going to have far too many of them. The only way to learn about art is to start with bad art. All those schoolchildren who are brought up on masterpieces—no wonder they never learn to discriminate!"

  "Mother, you're being ridiculous." Elesina got up to end the discussion. "Come on out now. I want to show you where I'm going to put the begonias."

  Ivy, left alone with Irving, bustled with plans. All she had to do was to hear an idea, and in two minutes she had made it her own.

  "It would be just the thing to start Elesina's new career with a bang. We could make the announcement a sensation. Elesina has been asked to take the chairmanship of the benefit ball for Saint Joseph's Hospital in Rye. Suppose you have it here? You could get the governor. We might have a fashion show in the patio. I could arrange that. We might get it underwritten by Saks or Bonwits. Oh, Irving, I begin to see it!"

  What was most galling of all to him was the assumption which seemed to underlie her officiousness that the old and impotent should make good their deficiency with full shovels of heavily minted coin.

  "I'm afraid, Ivy, there is a lot of hard work to be done before we can even think of bringing the public in. Still, I imagine you could help in the meantime. Your experience as a magazine editor might be valuable. My library has a collection of eighteenth-century Colonial newspapers, completely uncatalogued. Now if you..."

  "Oh, no you don't, Irving!" she interrupted. "I know you'd like to put me in a corner where I'd be silenced. But Ivy Trask was exploited for the last time in nineteen eighteen. She's been on her own since, and she's going to stay that way. But now let me spring a surprise on you. When you know who I've brought for the weekend, you'll forgive me for everything." She threw back her head and laughed. "You may even like me!"

  He stared. "Who have you brought?"

  "Guess."

  "I can't."

  "Who would you rather see come into this room right now than anyone in the whole world?"

  He looked a bit wildly at the empty doorway. "Not David? Oh, my God!"

  David, hearing his name, hurried into the room, and Irving rose, staggering, to throw his arms about him.

  "Oh, my darling boy!"

  Ivy beamed at both, and then, miraculously, had the tact to leave. Even in the hectic atmosphere of his excitement Irving was able to reflect that she was either more generous than he had expected or that there was an unknown price to be paid. David's expression was of shocked surprise.

  "You look so down, Dad. I had no idea you'd been that ill. I'd have come sooner. Believe me."

  "Oh, I do." Irving collapsed now in his chair and began suddenly, convulsively, to weep.

  "Dad! I'm sorry!"

  "It's all right, my boy. I'm so happy to see you, that's all."

  "But this isn't like you. Is something wrong? Is Elesina ... is she being difficult? I don't mean anything bad, but sometimes, with younger wives ... well..."

  "No, dear boy. Elesina is an angel." Irving pulled himself together with an effort. "She is wonderful to me. It's just that..." He sobbed again. "It's all so ... so strange. Don't leave me, David."

  David's hand gripped his shoulder until it hurt.

  5

  There were to be a dozen guests for dinner at Broadlawns that evening, and David understood that if he was to have any private talk with Elesina it would have to be before the cocktail hour. When his father had gone to his room and Arthur had informed him that Mrs. Stein was in the rose garden, he sought her there. He was mildly surprised to find her reading a volume of poetry. She closed it and looked up with a friendly smile.

  "Oh, David, I'm so glad you've come."

  "I hadn't any notion that he was that sick. Lionel and Peter told me it was a routine prostate. But it was a coronary!"

  "It was that, too. Your father didn't want anyone to know. I did as he told me."

  The haggard, haunting look that he had remembered from their first meeting was quite gone now. She seemed younger, more filled out. The black hair had a touch of bronze; the large dark eyes seemed amused. Her skin was a healthier white. If she was less mysterious, she was even more beautiful. But what astonished him most was the ease of her manner. She seemed to take it quite for granted that she should be welcoming him to Broadlawns.

  "Between us we'll bring him around, you'll see," she continued. "At the moment he's full of gloom and ideas of death. But that will pass. What we have to convince him of is that every minute of life is equally important, whether one's seven or seventy. It's living that counts, not one's age."

  "You should be able to convince him of that," he replied, with reluctant admiration. "You seem alive enough."

  "Oh, I've never been better. The country air agrees with me. I've spent too much of my life in town."

  David thought now that he could identify what was upsetting him: it was her healthiness. He had been mentally exaggerating her pallor, her air of lugubrious fascination, transforming her with his hostile spirit into the caricature of the vampire lady in a Charles Addams cartoon. He had not been prepared for her cheerfulness, her animation. God only knew why he had not been better prepared, with all the sexual fantasies which had raged in his angry head! He started to ask a question and realized that he had forgotten it.

  "What are we going to call each other?" he blurted out.

  "I've already called you David. What can you possibly call me but Elesina? 'Mrs. Stein' would be ridiculous, and I'm certainly not going to be 'aunt.'"

  "How about 'stepmother'? Or more familiarly, 'step-ma'?"

  "It sounds so hostile. The term has a bad reputation."

  "Undeserved, of course."

  "Undeserved so far."

  "Well, I shall be a docile stepson. I shall join the chorus of your admirers."

  Elesina looked at him suspiciously. "Your tone is bantering. You are playing with me. Tell me frankly what's on your mind. It's much better that way."

  "Well, try to put yourself in my shoes." David turned away from her and took a few steps. "I come back to Broadlawns to find everything yours. Not that I really object. Dad can certainly do as he likes with his own. But it takes a bit of getting used to. As Fred Pemberton would put it: 'Thou has it now: king, Cawdor, Glamis, all.'"

  "And you fear I played most foully for it?"

  He laughed in spite of himself at her quickness. "No, no, I don't mean that. You mustn't think I meant that. It was just a quotation. We've always gone in for too many of them."

  "Ah, but I do think you meant it. Let us be beautifully clear, David. You have come out here to see your father because you
consider it your duty, and so it is. But at the same time you want to square your conscience about your mother. So you chatter innuendoes. I don't care for that. Let it all come out. If you think I'm a hussy and a gold digger, say so!"

  David stared into the challenge of her direct gaze. He wondered if she would laugh or slap him if he took her up. "Very well. Why did you marry him?"

  "Because we needed each other. Because I thought we could do something for each other. And that is precisely how it is working out. If you think you're going to hear an apology, you're sadly mistaken. I'm proud of having married your father. Prouder than of anything I've done in my life!"

  He felt a sudden stab of anger. "I should have hoped it was more a question of love than of pride."

  "It is both. I needn't discuss that with you. But be assured that I have the temerity to anticipate that I shall continue to make your father an excellent wife."

  It was not merely that the mechanized divisions had now occupied the old kingdom. The civilian aides had penetrated to the heart of the citadel and donned the robes of the priests, assumed the headdresses of the old monarchs. The velvets and satins of David's past hung from the walls to celebrate the conquest. Elesina's very beauty repudiated him.

  "I suppose that's easier now."

  "What is?"

  "To be a good wife."

  "Why?"

  "Well, you see I know the effects of my father's operation."

  "You ought to have your mind washed out with soap, David Stein!" she exclaimed angrily. Then almost at once her indignation seemed to subside. "I hope at least you'll tell him I tried to be friendly."

  Her tone was unassuming but firm, and she turned away to her garden with the air of resolution of one who has too many duties to perform to dissipate her time in losses already taken into account. David went indoors, where he found Ivy Trask working at a card table covered with papers which she had placed near the fountain in the patio. He sat down by her and told her of his tactlessness.