The Dark Lady Read online

  Was she a hypocrite? She put the question to herself occasionally. Where had her new sense of virtue come from? Was it not possible that it had come from her own admiration of her own portrait: that of the noble matron on the podium, the tall lady in black with one arm raised to assert her faith in the better life? Well, what of it?

  Certainly her daughter considered her a hypocrite. Ruth had passed from Mummie-worship to Mummie-envy. In reaction to the splendors of Broadlawns she had married a tedious, radical journalist, and, unhappy with him, seemed to live to find fault with her increasingly successful mother. Elesina's only cruelty was to be sweet to her. Poor Ruth, who had not lost her childhood weight or looks, was not worth a quarrel. If Elesina read the resentment of a whole world in her daughter's eyes, she knew that it was only one world in many. But it was unfortunately the world that contained the two persons closest to her.

  That Ivy, for all her refusal to discuss the issue between them, was well aware of it, became evident on the morning when she entered the library in Broadlawns to deposit a typescript triumphantly on Elesina's desk. Before she stamped out of the room, she grunted:

  "Read Julius' speech to the Rotary and then tell me that old Ivy is unscrupulous!"

  Alone, Elesina read the following:

  "Some of my listeners tonight may have heard of a touching little volume entitled The War Letters of David Stein. The letter writer was a young resident of this very electoral district who enlisted in the British army in nineteen thirty-nine and, unhappily, was killed in the Allied evacuation of Dunkirk. His letters have been edited by his good friend and cousin, Eliot Clarkson. In them the reader will find many references to a certain married lady with whom David Stein was romantically involved. This married lady is given the alias: Clarissa.

  "Now why am I telling you this tonight? Is it because I am in a position to prove that the mysterious Clarissa is none other than my worthy opponent? And stepmother of the late David Stein? No. I have no wish to pry into family scandals or long-past romances. I have no wish to have others pry into mine! In revealing this fact, then, do I not seem a hypocrite? Perhaps so. But, racking my brain, I have not been able to think of any other way to bring before you certain other facts which are of vital importance to every voter in this district. To do this I am duty bound to unveil Clarissa.

  "My other facts are these. David Stein could not await his own country's decision to go to war. He was the kind of impetuous young man who lets his enthusiasm outrun his discretion. Idealistic and confused, he dreamed fuzzily of a better world for all. In his hurry to achieve it, he was inclined to disdain the means. Young men of hot blood and careless thinking have always been an easy prey for their radical friends, and David found his carnivore in a seemingly quiet and scholarly cousin, Eliot Clarkson. But this same Clarkson, my friends, was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party! Read these letters if you can bear it! Read David's juvenile onslaughts on our American free-enterprise system! And remember when you do so that the third musketeer of this tight little trio was the lady now seeking the Republican nomination for Congress, Elesina Stein!"

  Elesina sat in silent contemplation of the typescript for several minutes. Then her telephone buzzed.

  "You'll never believe who's here, Mrs. Stein!" the cheerful volunteer operator's voice communicated. "It's your honorable opponent himself!"

  "He has his nerve. What does he want?"

  "To speak with you on a matter of the greatest urgency, he says."

  "Send him in."

  Julius Schell, standing in the doorway of the great library, glanced at the high shelves of the Stein collection with his usual contained smile. It was the smile of the extreme Tory. It seemed to profess that the wearer, who had seen all, knew all, was now beyond passion, beyond anger, almost beyond disgust. It purported to accept at last the sorry fact that men were blind beasts and seemed to say: "Well, let us not tear our hair about it, let us see what little can be done."

  "Good morning, Julius. I am surprised that you expose yourself to this communist den."

  "I am impregnably armored in my virtue," Julius replied in his mocking tone. "I take it that my remarks at the Rotary Club have not altogether escaped your notice?"

  "Have you come to gloat?"

  "No. I have come because I believe, despite what my campaign managers assert to the contrary, that you are a person who fundamentally believes in telling the truth."

  Elesina stared at the strange, soft, fanatical brown eyes of her opponent. "And I'm the one who hasn't been telling it?"

  "Perhaps it has not been altogether your fault. Perhaps advantage has been taken of your confidence. It happens in politics. But are you aware of the filthy slander the woman Trask is spreading about me?"

  "What slander?"

  "She is saying that Giles Bennett and I are lovers,"

  Again Elesina stared with astonishment into those glinting eyes. "And that's a lie? You needn't get so excited, Julius. In the theater we used to take those things very lightly."

  "Damn the theater! I've never touched Giles. I've never touched any man that way!"

  "Or boy?"

  "Or boy!"

  "Well, Julius, suppose I believe you? What earthly difference is there between Ivy calling you a homosexual and you calling me a communist?"

  "I didn't call you a communist! I said you had a communist association. And you had! Can you deny it?"

  "Certainly I deny it."

  "Do you deny that you were a lover of David Stein's, whose best friend is—or at least was—a communist?"

  Elesina's indignation began to subside a bit before her now awakened interest in his evident sincerity. "I think I begin to see your point. It doesn't matter that I wasn't a communist. It only matters that I had a communist association, is that it? Like a game of hearts? So many points off if I hold the Queen of Spades? No matter how hard I've tried to get rid of her?"

  "The point is that in such dangerous times the voters must be told of all affiliations with Moscow. They can then judge which are innocent and which are guilty."

  "Well, then, isn't it my duty to bring before those same voters your association with Giles Bennett?"

  "Because of his reputation for inversion?"

  "No! Because of his affiliation with Eliot Clarkson."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "It was considerably more intimate than any that existed between Eliot and poor David."

  Julius' air of utter amazement could hardly have been faked. "You mean...?"

  "Simply that Giles was kept by Eliot for a year."

  "It's not true!"

  "I suggest you ask him. He can hardly deny it."

  "Ask him? I'll never see him again!"

  "But the communist association has already been established. According to you, isn't that enough? Aren't you as contaminated as I? Isn't it my duty to illuminate the electorate?"

  "There is the difference, of course, that I never knew of the connection with Clarkson."

  "Shouldn't you have known? Shouldn't you have inquired? Isn't that the duty of every aspirant for public office in these troubled days?"

  "I admit my negligence." Julius seemed at last to be genuinely humbled. "I shall even admit it publicly." As the idea became clearer to him, he raised his head with renewed assurance. "I shall repudiate Giles!"

  "Another person to fling in the fire. What a pity you weren't born in Toledo in the reign of Philip the Second. How you'd have loved it!"

  "But you, Elesina. What will you do about Ivy Trask? Will you muzzle her?"

  "Oh, Julius, get out. You bore me. You bore me inexpressibly."

  "You will continue, then, I gather, your sewer campaign?"

  "What I shall do or not do you will learn from my actions. Just remember that Pandoras shouldn't go around opening boxes."

  But as soon as the door was closed behind him, she rang for Ivy. When the latter appeared she cried out angrily:

  "What have you been saying about Julius
and Giles?"

  "Don't ask about things you're not supposed to know."

  "I think, if you don't mind, Ivy, I'd like to know everything about my own campaign." Elesina paused to let the authority in her tone have its effect. Ivy, approaching the desk, began nervously to play with a paperweight. "Is it true that you've been spreading the word that they're lovers?"

  Ivy sniffed. "Some news!"

  "Have you?"

  "Little-known facts about well-known people!" Here Ivy gave vent to one of her jeering laughs.

  "Do you believe that a candidate's sexual taste is relevant to his qualification? I had thought you more tolerant."

  Ivy shrugged. "I suppose there's always the danger of blackmail."

  "If Julius' homosexuality is as well known as you imply, where is the danger of blackmail?"

  "If it's that well known, where is the harm in saying it?"

  "Because I suggest it's not true!"

  "Not true? That Julius has hot pants for little boys? Be your age, Elesina!"

  "I intend to be. And I still have reason to believe that Julius is a virgin. With both sexes."

  "The more fool he! Am I to blame for his inhibitions? I know what I'm doing. Trust old Ivy. If Julius wants to sue me, I can prove enough about his posing for art classes to convince any jury in the land he's a bugger!"

  "Posing for art classes?"

  Ivy explained.

  "But that doesn't prove anything," Elesina retorted. "A man can do those things without being a practicing homosexual. Indeed, the mere fact that he does them suggests to me that he isn't."

  "Well, what does it matter?" Ivy exploded. "If he did do anything, you know what it would be. He wants to prove you a Red by association. Well, I'm proving him a faggot the same way!"

  "I've noticed, Ivy, that when you like a homosexual, he's a free soul. When you don't, he's a faggot."

  "What's wrong with that? If I don't like him, you can be sure he's a son of a bitch. So anything goes."

  "Not with me. And certainly not in my campaign. I am going to answer with the truth. I shall tell the story of me and David."

  Ivy looked aghast. "Elesina! There's not only Eliot Clarkson and all those radical letters. My God, there's incest! Have you never heard of a senator called Joseph McCarthy?"

  "I wonder if people aren't getting a little tired of McCarthy. Can he last forever?"

  "No. He's a loudmouth, a lush and a faggot, too. And when he slips, it'll be just as dangerous to be for him as it is now to be against him. But the first ones to resist a demagogue always get clobbered. Wait for the second wave. The timing in these things is everything."

  "Ivy, do you believe in nothing?"

  "I believe in you, baby. My faith there never wavers. I'll bring you through, never fear. Sometimes I think I have a kind of second sight where you're concerned."

  Elesina shook her head firmly. "It's not enough, my friend. It won't do. I must run my own campaign my own way. Let me therefore give you an explicit order. There is to be no further use of sex smears. Shouted or whispered. Is that entirely clear?"

  Ivy leaned over the desk and began now to rummage desperately with paper clips, with pencils, with anything. "I hear you," she said hoarsely.

  But Elesina was inexorable. "Is it entirely clear?"

  "Haven't you made it so?"

  "Very well. And I warn you, Ivy, if you fail me, I shall replace you in the campaign."

  "Elesina!"

  "I mean it. I am determined to do things my own way. The fact that in the past I have used methods that I now dislike does not mean I must always do so."

  "Oh, darling, don't turn Christer on me."

  "One can change, Ivy, without being a Christer. And now, if you will forgive me, I want to write my speech for the Veterans on Saturday night."

  "I've already written it!"

  "Save it for the League of Women Voters. I am going to write this one myself."

  "May I see it before you deliver it?"

  "No, Ivy, you may not."

  In the town hall of Chester, four days later, Elesina rose to address an audience of five hundred veterans and their wives. Never had she more looked forward to a speech. But as she had listened to the colonel who was introducing her, she had had a shock. "Why do you think you're enjoying yourself?" an inner voice, like Ivy's, had sneered. "Do you imagine you are brave? Do you have the effrontery to surmise that you have more guts than all the poor slandered fools who tremble before Joe McCarthy and his ilk? Don't you know it's just because you have nothing to lose, nothing, that is, that you really care about? Can McCarthy touch your money? Hell, no! So go ahead, be Hedda Gabler, be Portia! Have the time of your life, kid!"

  Elesina found that she was shaking her head angrily. Quickly she stopped and rose to bow to the applause. She looked out over the upturned faces and smiled as radiantly as she knew how.

  "My opponent has thrown the name of David Stein into the campaign. I am not sorry that he has done so, because it gives me the chance to talk about David, and that is something I am always eager to do.

  "David, I am afraid, was a hero. But he was the kind of hero you would all have liked. He was a friendly, modest, companionable hero. He was a hero for weekdays—not just for Sunday wear. David was a young man who had everything to live for. He had a charming personality, a first-class mind, exuberant health, good looks, lots of friends, a loving family and—wealth! What more could a young man ask on this beleaguered planet? He was indeed among the blessed.

  "But a wicked fairy godmother had tossed a rather horrid little bundle on the glittering pile of his christening gifts. She gave David a conscience. Oh, yes, my friends, David Stein never faced the world with the freedom of Julius Schell! David cared about the poor. He cared about the sick. He cared about the oppressed. And more than anything else he cared about the victims of the Nazi terror.

  "You all remember how many there were in our community back in nineteen thirty-eight and nineteen thirty-nine who cried out shrilly that Germany was not our problem, that we had no duty but to ourselves. David did not seek to answer them. He did not raise his voice. He did not criticize others for turning their backs on the problem any more than he praised himself for facing it. He believed that each man must make up his own mind for himself and act accordingly. One day those who loved him, of whom I was one, found that he had quietly departed. He knew what he had to do, and he did it. He reached for his gun and was gone. A year later he was dead.

  "Eliot Clarkson, his dearest friend and cousin, went with him. Eliot Clarkson survived. My opponent says that Eliot Clarkson was a communist. I know nothing about that. I do not even know Eliot Clarkson, despite what Mr. Schell alleges. But what I do know is this. When it comes to presumptions, mine are for the brave men who crossed the sea to fight the bloody tyrant and against the spoiled darlings like Julius Schell, who stayed at home to wave the Stars and Stripes.

  "But let me state the case even more broadly. I think the time has come in the history of our great nation when we should cease to tremble before every communist bogy. We have now reached the sorry point where the greatest of our national names, that of General George Marshall himself, can be dragged in the mire by any Tom, Dick or Harry who has the impudence to allege a Red affiliation. Why do we put up with it? My friends, we are still free! We can choose our associates. And I choose to be associated with a hero like David Stein who gave all that he had gladly for a great cause rather than with Julius Schell, the unctuous squid who hides behind his own black cloud of venom and falsehood!"

  She could proceed no further, for the hall was filled with uproar. Some people were standing to applaud and cheer; others were booing and shouting imprecations. The room had begun to seethe with Elesina's mention of General Marshall, and the tumult exploded altogether with that of Julius Schell. Elesina remained standing, with a half smile, occasionally waving her arms for silence. When she saw that it was no use she turned to the orchestra and signaled for them to play. They struck up
"God Bless America," and half the audience joined in singing while the others continued to shout and gesticulate. At the end of the stanza Elesina bowed deeply to the assembly and strode from the podium.

  In the limousine going home her assistant silently handed her a cartoon depicting Julius Schell and a young man, hand in hand, walking down toward a landscape where the dome of the Capitol appeared. Elesina, overwrought, burst into tears.

  At Broadlawns she went straight to Ivy's office. "They telephoned me about the commotion!" Ivy cried, jumping up in alarm as she took in the grim expression on her friend's face. "Are you all right, dear?"

  "Half that commotion was applause," Elesina retorted. "But never mind that." She flung the cartoon down on Ivy's desk. "Shirley Lester said you gave her five hundred of these this afternoon."

  Ivy stared glumly at the cartoon. "Somebody's got to save your bacon. You seem determined to throw away the nomination. It's not fair to the people who've worked for you, Elesina."

  "I'll be the judge of that!"

  "Very well, we'll do it your way." Something in Elesina's tone had cowed Ivy. "I promise, dear. In the future I'll be good."

  "I'm afraid it's too late for that, Ivy. As of now you are relieved of all further duties in my campaign. You will continue, of course, as manager of Broadlawns."

  Ivy said nothing. She seemed to huddle, to shrink into something even smaller than she was. There was a dull, sullen, brutish pain in her green eyes.

  "I'm sorry, Ivy. I warned you!"

  But Ivy remained silent, and Elesina, unable to bear the sight of her discomfort, hurried from the room. Why should Ivy always put her in the wrong? She was like a death's-head. In the library Elesina pressed her back against the door which she had slammed as if to keep her friend out. Why, if she had a vision of a new Elesina, an Elesina who had at last found the right role, the right costume and cue, should she not adapt her soul to the part? A conscience to go with a hat? Well, why not?