Collected Novels and Plays (12 page)

Nor did Mr. Tanning appear to mind. He was like a Moses who, white-haired and wise, had nonetheless never shaken off some early magic, half memory, half myth, of women glimmering down upon the gently rocking raft of reeds; and whose happiest moments, all his life
long, were those in which he relived a part of that bliss. “Ah yes,” Francis repeated under his breath, “he needs a woman in the house. But not you, or you, or you
…”

Who then? Wasn’t it one of the poor man’s—that is, the rich man’s—peculiar troubles, the unlikeliness of his meeting agreeable strangers? How many years had Mr. Tanning
not
frequented those places where, often enough, friendships begin?—in galleries, at concerts, alone at neighboring tables in modest restaurants such as the one in Rome where Jane and—

Xenia!

Xenia as his father’s chatelaine! What it would do for both of them!

Francis wouldn’t risk taking even Lady Good into his confidence. He poured a drink and lit a cigarette. He frowned in mock disapproval of Matilda Gresham, who, sprawled underfoot, was still fighting the battle of
Hernani
—“It speaks to our time!” He did his honest best to hesitate, to reflect, but the vision was too demanding. Before long he had settled himself, with a bright blank smile, on a little stool at Mr. Tanning’s
knee.

“Orson, this is one of your stockholders,” his father said.

Bishop Bishop was cordial, but cold sober.

“I haven’t wanted to interrupt,” began Francis.

“Go right ahead, young man. I’d say that Mr. Tanning and I have got through just about all—”

“I merely thought the time had come,” Francis told his father, “to describe what I found for you in Europe.”

“Now this sounds interesting,” said Mr. Biship civilly.

“It is!” Francis rewarded him with a look. “The trouble, of course, is that he’s the most hopeless person to give presents to. He has everything! Or
will
have,” he counted it out on his fingers, “ten days or so from now.”

“I see. You didn’t bring the—ah—gift with you?”

“No. But she sails from Naples, the day after tomorrow, for New York.”

“God damn,” Mr. Tanning laughed, shaking his head, “you young rascal!”

From then on Francis had only to paint Xenia as a woman of the world, charming, handsome, who happened also to be a gifted artist.
was
she gifted? It didn’t matter, he stressed the point anyhow; it was ostensibly in the role of sculptor that he meant to bring her on the scene. All
she
had to do was accept his commission for a head of his father. The rest would follow naturally.

“God damn,” Mr. Tanning kept chuckling. It seemed to appeal from all points of view, not least that of the brazen image itself, moving through posterity with perhaps something sly and humorous about the mouth, as if an attractive woman were still being looked at, coming and going in a room filled with the noise of the sea.

“How about it?” Francis wound up. “I could send a cable to the ship, then meet her in New York. There’d surely be room for her in the guest cottage, with me.”

“Ah,
now
we understand!” grinned Mr. Tanning with a nudge and a wink that Mr. Bishop let pass.

“That’s not at all the point!” exclaimed Francis, flustered. Irene drew near; evidently the business talk was over. “I’d just been saying to Irene,” he appealed to her, “that you needed a woman in the house!”

“What’s all this about?” she asked.

Mr. Tanning had started to laugh afresh.

Irene turned lightly to Mr. Bishop. “What’s the joke, Orson?”

“Yes, what’s amusing Benjamin so?” inquired Mrs. Sturdevant. “Did you catch it, Boopsie?”

Francis said it was just a family joke.

“Well, while we’re at it,” Irene began, deciding that it had been at her expense, “let’s clear up this matter of my bridge debt. Didn’t I understand you, Benji,” she raised her voice to make sure the others heard, “to have called it off, yesterday after your nap?” A meaning, not implicit in her words, shimmered upon them like a film of oil.

Mr. Tanning wiped his eyes. “I don’t remember, Irene. If you say so—”

“Well, fine! It’s just Francis,” she added musically, “who thought you were upset over the twenty-two dollars.”

“To tell the God’s truth, Irene,” said Mr. Tanning, “I don’t remember and I don’t give a damn. Maybe I was upset. I’m not now. You’re perfectly welcome to the twenty-two dollars.”

“Thanks, Benji, but listen, I wouldn’t accept it,” their hostess chattered on, “if it weren’t for the old business of those yard men of ours, down in Jamaica. I paid their wages the four days they helped put your garden in shape. After that freak storm, remember? We never settled that.”

“You never spoke of it before this minute.”

“Oh I did, Benji! You just don’t remember.”

“I happen to remember very well,” said Mr. Tanning in a muffled voice. “I took it as a generous gesture on your part—”

“Well, we’re quits now. It was about that time,” Irene told the others, “my favorite fella came down with jaundice. I had to cart him back to the States, to nurse him.”

“Oh dear,” Mr. Tanning sighed. He rose laboriously out of a swamp of chintz.

Francis, who blamed himself for the whole scene, exhaled.

Lady Good had said that morning, “It’s idiotic of Irene to be so possessive. Benjamin can’t stand it when she tries to claim him. She’s ruining her chances—doesn’t she see that she is?” Shrewd and just as these observations were, Francis had a further sense, watching his father shuffle to the door, of the queerest failure of spontaneity. Irene, of course, had already vented her first annoyance; what Mr. Tanning
encountered was its pale reconstruction. How much I’m able to spare him, thought Francis, pleased. The queerness, though, lay more in the old man’s indifference. He seemed not to care what was said; the ground, his tone implied, had been covered many times. It was the simple pretense of intimacy that mattered.

Francis could see easily why it mattered to Irene. Scorned as she was
for being poor, so long as people supposed she could wrap Cousin Benji round her little finger, her credit, socially speaking—economically too, no doubt—was established. (You didn’t have to reckon with the decreasing minority that would have known Mrs. Cheek under no circumstances whatever, not even if she had revealed herself editor of the
Social
Register.
) Yet Francis was convinced that Irene meant nothing to his father. Why then did he lend himself to her plot, tolerate her scenes to the point of taking public part in them? “Why does he put up with her?” The question was to be echoed the following morning by Lady Good. “How should I know, Francis dear? I expect he’s left so guilty each time he gets angry with her that, for his own peace of mind, he has to make amends. Besides, he has no
resistance.”

It was possible, after all, that Irene would have her way.

But Francis plumped for Xenia. “How about it?” he asked again, walking his father down the little path towards the car. Lady Good and Natalie had gone ahead, vague in the dusk, while from the porch, unnoticed, Irene and her cronies waved and called. “How about Xenia?”

Mr. Tanning laughed and took his son’s arm. “I think it’s a fine idea,” he said gruffly. “Bring her on!” At that moment he was feeling particularly well.

Somebody else was feeling even better.

With a bellowing cry of “So long, Ben! So long, Lady Good!”—at which they turned round obediently—Charlie Cheek lunged out of the house, a beagle underfoot, and went toppling down four ramshackle steps to lie at last in the overgrown path, flat on his face and dead drunk.

7.
Twelve days later, a Thursday, Francis took the early train to New York. In the noon heat he made his way on foot from the station to the river. He had assumed that Xenia’s ship, being Italian, wouldn’t dock on time—with the result that, strolling onto the cavernous pier and (thanks to a card secured in advance by his father’s office) past a fenced-in crowd of welcomers, he found the
inspection of baggage already under way. He caught sight of Xenia at once. Flanked by two friends, she stood clucking over boxes and suitcases. Her voice reached him from far off: “You’ll find only lotions in that one!”—with eyes raised to heaven when the inspector decided to see for himself. She was brown and buoyant and bursting out of a pink beach dress. According to the cable Francis had had in answer to his own, he’d saved Xenia’s life,
and, “You have saved my life!” she promptly cried on seeing him, then threw her arms about him where he stood grinning like a fool. Up and down the stifling customs shed her same gesture was being resorted to, but with no such bravura.

Xenia then turned to her friends. “This is Francis, who has saved my life, as I just finished telling you.” She put an adoring hand on his shoulder. “I was coming back with
no
prospects,
no
place to stay,
no
money in the bank. Those Durdees, insufferable pair! canceled their order for the big abstract torso. I had to telephone three times to Paris. I’m not used to being treated that way. I’m an artist, not a
fournisseur de tapis.
It was the wife of course—she hated me from the first minute we met.
Une femme jalouse et tout à fait
neurotic. So you can imagine how blue I was feeling that first day out, before your cable came.
Then
I bought champagne for everybody at my table. I tell you, it was a Godsend!”

Even the customs inspector looked impressed. Xenia’s two friends peered at Francis as at some studded dish, which might be used for cigarettes, in a pinch. One was a woman, Adrienne de Something, plump, orange-haired, talking with Xenia alternately in Russian and French. At her side, apparently belonging to her, towered a good-looking inarticulate
young man from Milwaukee, a composer of genius. “Just you wait,” Xenia told Francis,
“Tommy’s opera is getting produced in the spring. We’ll have a box for the
premiere.”
Adrienne, she whispered a moment later, turning aside to unlock another suitcase, had once been the mistress of R—, the celebrated impresario.

They were giving Xenia a party the following evening, to which it went without saying Francis was invited—“but from Saturday morning, or whenever you were planning to take me to your father, I’m at your disposal. My baggage stays at Adrienne’s—you’ll tell me what clothes to pack. Oh,” elated, she patted his cheek, “how I was going to scold you for running off, leaving Jane and me to console ourselves ten days
en pleine mer!
But if
this
is what you’ve accomplished for me—!”

Francis had almost forgotten Jane. Had they made out well together?

“Ah, she’s sweet, poor thing …” Xenia crooned, disturbingly, before going on to explain. Jane had written her fiancé a letter from Rome. She hoped he would want to get married right away, set up housekeeping wherever it was—in Boston, yes—and live happily ever after. She even had the ship’s doctor give her a blood-test.

“Why such haste?” wondered Francis.

“Between ourselves, it was a pure case of pique.”

“Over what?”

“Over you!—But listen!” Nothing, continued Xenia, stood in the way of the poor thing’s bliss, except a stretch of brilliant ocean and—her receiving no further word from Roger. Every day Jane looked for a cable, “growing,” as Xenia put it, “more insecure by leaps and bounds. ‘Have I scared him off?’ she kept saying. Can you imagine? Any man who treated
me
that way—! No,” she
addressed the inspector, “I’ll unwrap that.”

Francis could have wept. He wanted to see Jane.

Xenia understood. She gave him Adrienne’s address—“Bring Jane if you like, tomorrow night”—kissed him once more, then waved him off into the swarming distance.

Leaving her, Francis realized that he had counted on spiriting Xenia back to the Cottage that very afternoon. Now he would have to call his mother. And buy a summer suit, a shirt, a toothbrush. And stay in a hotel. Luckily he had pocketed his straight razor at the last moment, just in case.

“She can’t have meant that Jane was seriously in love with me,” Francis muttered once, to hear how it sounded, while keeping a sharp eye out. He tried not to recall or understand her silences, that final hour in Rome. The thought of Jane’s really getting married, after so much talk, changed her for him; all at once she was grown-up, dependable, poised—qualities that till then he’d never have looked for in her. Roger’s
defection, on the other hand, helped Francis imagine a tear-stained Jane, a Jane at loose ends, turning perhaps to
him
for support. Either way, it wouldn’t be his love she principally needed. His face wore the glazed smile of a child as he strained to see her.

It happened that Jane saw him first, and called. His heart quickened. She
did
look like a poor thing, drooping tanned and tense beneath the huge initial W which stood—whoever let her head rest briefly against his shoulder could believe it—for Waiting and Wondering and Woman’s Woes. Nobody’d met her. Roger hadn’t cabled. A suitcase was still missing. On lighting a cigarette (here Jane fell into a kind of laughter) she had been
reprimanded—
was
this America?—by a person in uniform. What had she done with her life? Oh Francis! Could he guess how much it meant, that he should have come to meet her?

“I know you came to meet Xenia,” she said in a more sensible tone, “but just let me pretend a little while longer.” He squeezed her hand. Jane had a real talent for gratitude; she’d never made him ashamed of not having given more.

“Nonsense. Xenia’s got other friends here. I’ve already said goodbye to her. She wants us at a party tomorrow night, unless—Oh, isn’t it,” Francis broke in on himself, “a relief to be back where one’s
wanted!
One knows absolutely where one stands!”

“I don’t know.” Jane sank wearily onto a suitcase. “Do you like my new shoes?”

“Very much,” he said to cheer her, although they were of red lizard.

She fixed him with big eyes. She
was
at loose ends. “Should I think about trains to Council Bluffs? No, I don’t want to go home. I can’t afford it anyhow. Thank God,” she kept on in her funny flat voice, “I never wrote the family I was getting married.”