My Heart Laid Bare (36 page)

Strolling one Sunday afternoon in elegant Rittenhouse Square, where they are bound to encounter a familiar face, and to be taken up by persons of consequence, Albert St. Goar says causally to his striking daughter Matilde, whose arm is linked through his, “You wouldn't be upset, dear, if I asked Eva to marry me? For it's time, you know, for your father to remarry. In truth,” he says, sighing, “—it's more than time.” And Matilde, in a smart slope-brimmed hat of black straw, with a patterned blue ribbon tied beneath her chin and a dotted swiss veil hiding her eyes, doesn't miss a beat in her languid gait; saying in a low amused voice, “Provided Eva is
as wealthy as everyone says, dear Father, why should
I
object? Who am
I
to object? As you know very well.”

Albert St. Goar says, in a hurt, offended voice, “Why Matilde, it isn't for her money that I want to marry Eva, but for Eva herself; for love.” “Ah, ‘love,' is it, this time,” Matilde says gaily. “And ‘marry,' is it, this time!—the first time, I believe, in your career, Father?” And St. Goar says stiffly, keeping his voice low, “But you know I'm a widower, dear. You know I haven't wished to marry since your mother's death . . . in the south of France in July of '05.” “Ah yes, I had almost forgotten poor Mother,” says Matilde, with a downward twist to her mouth, “ . . . murdered in her bed, was she not, by an ‘unknown assailant'? Poor Mother! And so much a presence in our lives!” “Your mother died of consumption, Matilde,” says St. Goar, reddening, “as you well know.” “Yes, of consumption, yes surely, consumption,” Matilde says hurriedly. “I had forgotten. For, you know, there are so many deaths these days, it is difficult to keep track of them.” St. Goar says, “I don't care at all for your tone, Matilde, if I understand it correctly. You're behaving in a way to deliberately provoke your father.” “I am not ‘behaving' in any way at all,” says Matilde, “—but only as your ‘Matilde,' who's indeed your daughter; for she is no one else's.” “You've been behaving in a childish way for weeks now—for months,” St. Goar says. “Since our arrival in Philadelphia. Since your return from the Fitzmaurices', in fact. I hate the role of a scolding parent for it isn't Albert St. Goar's style at all—yet it might be said, my dear, that it has rarely been
your
role to provoke such scolding. You must adapt yourself to our new life; you must forget the old; indeed, I'm surprised you haven't forgotten—” “Ah but I
have
forgotten!” Matilde interrupts, lightly touching St. Goar's chin with her gloved fingers, “—I have forgotten, Father, far more than I have ever remembered.” “In any case,” St. Goar says stiffly, drawing away from his daughter, “—I don't like your tone. I don't like your arch mocking ‘Matilde' manner. For it is not
my
‘Matilde' but a parody. For
my
‘Matilde' is sweet, and gracious, and always smiling, and quick to sympathize . . . yet shrewd beneath, and hardly
anyone's fool. And surely that
is
‘Matilde,' and you
are
she, so why this harlequinade?—for it's done, I know, solely to provoke. I have no doubt that it shocked and displeased the Fitzmaurices, no less than it shocks and displeases me, and I do not countenance it; I do not
wish
it.” “Yes Father,” Matilde says meekly. “In Mrs. Clement-Stoddard's presence you're quiet to the point of rudeness, and in private, of late, you chatter like a magpie,” St. Goar accuses.
“I do not wish it.”
“Yes Father,” Matilde says meekly—though a strange little smile hovers about her lips. “There's no reason for you to feel jealous of Eva, surely,” St. Goar says. “You are an exceptionally beautiful young woman who will soon have her own life, I am certain, once things get settled. You don't, of course, dwell upon the past?—for that isn't productive.” “Certainly not, Father,” Matilde says. “Didn't I tell you?—I've forgotten more than I've ever remembered.” “You don't, for instance, think of . . .
him
?” St. Goar asks. “Of ‘him'? What do you mean, Father?” Matilde asks, lifting her head at a quizzical angle. “Assuredly not; I don't think at all.” “You have admirers already in Philadelphia, dear—or would have, if you encouraged them,” St. Goar says. “You need hardly concern yourself with the older generation.” “Yes Father,” says Matilde. “I'm a man in the prime of life, lonely after so many years for female companionship and domesticity,” St. Goar says. “Eva won't be easily won and perhaps can't be won, for she's very different from—other women. She's a woman set apart from women even of her class and station.” To this, Matilde makes no reply. “Naturally it pleases me she's wealthy—I wouldn't deny
that
—but it pleases me that she's the very age she is, that her face is as it is, her eyes, her mouth, her hair, her superb wit—When one is in love, everything about the beloved pleases; for that
is
love.” “Is it, Father?” Matilde murmurs. “Your mother cheated me of the happiness of domestic life,” St. Goar says, “—she, and the others. But I will not remain cheated.
I will claim my love before it is too late.
” “Yes Father,” says Matilde. “And I hope you will be happy for me, when you see that
I
am happy,” St. Goar says, “—and will not continue to displease, as you have been.” “It is only ‘Matilde,'” Matilde
says, tying more securely the pretty blue ribbon beneath her chin, “—and what is she to you, after all? She too might be handily forgotten.” “What are you saying?” St. Goar asks. “You know I'm devoted to you, dear. And I'm convinced that, out of my happiness, yours will spring.” “Will it, indeed?” says Matilde. “In any case, you know, I hardly need apply to you for permission to marry,” says St. Goar, “—any more than for permission to love.” “Indeed
not
,” says Matilde, laughing. “Therefore I wish you and Mrs. Clement-Stoddard well. Therefore I wish the wedding might be next week. For the more wealth to you, Father, as to our ‘Roland,' the less obligation to ‘Matilde,' to marry at all.”

At this, St. Goar draws sharply away from his daughter; for he
is
offended.

“You must never speak of him in such a context, Millie,” he whispers, staring at her. “What are you thinking of!—
you!
”

“‘What am I thinking of'?—‘
I
'?” says Matilde, smiling innocently, “—why, I scarcely know. Will you tell me?”

“Does she love me as I love her?—
she does.
And will she refuse me a third time?—
she cannot.
”

Approaching eight o'clock on the evening of 30 March 1916. He must delay no longer; he
must
leave; for he is due very soon at Mrs. Clement-Stoddard's house, to dine (alone) with her; and to press upon her his final proposal of marriage. (For if pride won't allow the widow to acquiesce, this time, pride won't allow the widower St. Goar to humble himself and ask again.)

He finishes his glass of English sherry, and, frowning, turns his head from side to side: three-quarters profile, seen from the left, is his strongest suit.

“Can she refuse me a third time?” he whispers, “—she
cannot
!”

He first proposed to Eva Clement-Stoddard in November 1915, scarcely two months after they were introduced: a tactical error. Naturally
the lady was taken by surprise; stared at her admirer with an expression of genuine alarm. And
no
was her reply, thank you Mr. St. Goar but
no
, murmured in so low and rapid a voice, he had barely heard.

The second proposal, however, made in January 1916, had surely been expected; for during the intervening weeks Eva had given her suitor ample reason to believe that she was coming to admire
him.
She paid him a flattering amount of attention in company; laughed happily at his remarks; casually slipped her arm through his as they walked together; invited him frequently to her house, for small parties as well as large; and didn't seem to mind that they were beginning to be whispered of as a couple. When St. Goar told her that he loved her and wanted to marry her, she blushed painfully, and turned away, and said, stammering, that she was probably “too old and too settled” to think of such things; that, surely,
he
could not want
her
; and that she dared not deceive herself, that he did. St. Goar protested that he spoke the truth: he did love her: he
did
want to marry her: but Eva was too distraught to hear him out. “I must say
no
, Albert,” she whispered, drawing away, “—for I cannot allow myself to say
yes.
”

And now, tonight—what will be her answer, tonight?

“She dares not refuse me,” St. Goar says, unconsciously lifting the empty sherry glass to his lips. “For other women have betrayed me, and cheated me of the happiness of domesticity that is my due; and now it is time for Venus Aphrodite to reward me—as the goddess well knows.”

HIS NEW BLACK
sateen top hat—his fine white gloves—his ebony cane with the smart gold-and-ivory handle; a quick glance at his pocket watch (ah, the hour
is
late!); and St. Goar is on his way.

Ever the considerate father, he calls out a hearty good night to his daughter Matilde; but sulky Matilde has locked herself away in her quarters, having refused her own invitations for the evening (one of them to the Grand Ball at the Philadelphia Academy of Music, for the benefit of the
Children's Charity Hospital), that she might bathe, and lie about
en déshabillé
, smoking her forbidden cigarettes and reading her forbidden newspapers: for the defiant young miss insists upon being knowledgeable in the follies of her time, profitless as such knowledge is.

Will you want a carriage, sir, asks the liveried doorman, on so cold and blustery an evening, sir?—but no: St. Goar prefers to walk: for there are grievances in his heart he would air, before meeting his beloved Eva.

“Aphrodite, hear me—it
is
time!”

For he's been cruelly used in his life; aroused to passion, deceived by love, betrayed by the very women to whom he'd given his soul.

There was Arabella Jenkins—that sharp-eyed, sharp-witted beauty; the mother of two strapping boys, and what pride in her gift to him . . . except, in the end, there's a bitter vagueness about the end, she'd abandoned him and run off with another man as in the lowest of stage comedies; there was Morna Hirshfield, the daughter of a man of God, and quite a demon in bed until madness overcame her . . . Millie's fated mother. And there was poor sweet Sophie, the mother of Darian and Esther, whom he can't allow himself to recall except as a name chiselled upon a granite grave marker in the cemetery that belongs to Abraham Licht.
A fitting fate, to lie in “my” cemetery. Would they all were buried there, who've trampled my heart.

Strange how, once Venus Aphrodite departs from a woman, she becomes merely . . . a woman. You might glance at her in the street and look right through her, where once, inhabited by the radiant goddess, her face and being were a summons to your leaping, exalting heart; and the mere sound of her voice a provocation to joy.

And now, Eva.

Eva Clement-Stoddard, soon to become Eva Licht.

Yet—it seems that Venus Aphrodite is toying with him another time, to St. Goar's dismay and displeasure.

Can
it be, the woman intends to refuse him a third, final time?

Near-midnight. The end of their evening. They've dined in the most intimate of Eva's several dining rooms and they've attended a performance of
The Mikado
both have found “spirited, but mediocre” and now they're uneasily alone together in Eva's drawing room, which is dominated by a new purchase of hers: a landscape (quaint windmill, river, cloud-ribbed sky) by a seventeenth-century Dutch artist Jan Steen of whom St. Goar hasn't heard except to know that, of late, in New York art-collecting circles, he's become fashionable. Eva, like numerous other widowed wealthy ladies, follows the advice of the Manhattan art dealer Joseph Duveen, who reaps an enviable commission with each sale he makes; St. Goar hears of the man's maneuvers with clenched jaws, and, even as he admires the painting—“Surpassingly beautiful, one of Steen's very finest”—he vows inwardly that once they're wed he, and not the wily Duveen, will supervise each of Eva's art purchases. Indeed, he's looking forward to a confrontation with the renowned Duveen, who dares to suggest to his wealthy, ignorant clients that they must prove themselves worthy of the art they purchase through him; they must work their way up to the Old Masters, for instance, by way of the Barbizon school, or the minor Flemish painters! The wealthy widow Mrs. Anna Emery Shrikesdale was allegedly told she might purchase a painting by Giorgione (which Duveen happened to have on hand), but not a Titian; Pierpont Morgan was told that he might buy, if he wished, a half dozen lesser works of Rembrandt, but was “not yet ready” for one of the monumental paintings; Henry Ford and Horace Dodge, residents of Detroit, Michigan (a city unworthy of great art), were not allowed, for years, to buy any of Duveen's stock at all. (“Duveen must be a genius—for who, including even Abraham Licht, would have thought of
that?
” St. Goar sighs.) It's a fact, that Henry Frick, the Pittsburgh millionaire, had to leave Pittsburgh for New York City, and build a mansion on Fifth Avenue, before Duveen would consent to sell him important paintings; and, not least, though Eva Clement-Stoddard is hardly a fool, she
believes in Duveen unstintingly, and doesn't doubt that, in his hands, her money is perfectly safe.

Finally Eva turns from the paintings, self-consciously, as if anticipating—with dread? with delight?—her admirer's intention; and sits very still, as, in a voice that falters with emotion, Albert St. Goar tells her yet again that which she already knows—he loves her—adores her—respects her above all women—and wants to marry her as quickly as possible.