The Darts of Cupid: Stories (10 page)

When Emma folded up her crochet-work, remarking that it was time for us to leave, he implored me to give him my hand.

"I wouldn’t dream of it," I said haughtily, adopting one of my mother’s phrases and her tone of voice.

"Just to please me," he said.

"I don’t want to please you," I said.

"You are so beautiful and yet so cruel," he said sadly, and looked delighted. "When will you be less cruel? Will you bestow a kind glance on me tomorrow?"

"I don’t know," I said.

"Then there is still hope for me, isn’t there? I may go on hoping?"

My mother would not have tolerated my amazing rudeness, but Emma stood by in silence, contemplating her furled crochet lace with an ironic smile. When we left him, passing between the railings that bridged the way to the shore, Emma said, "You are a proper scream, Miss Edith. You make me laugh, you do," and she gave her short, affected laugh, which held no merriment.

"I’d have curtsied," I said, "and I would have given him my hand, as I do with everybody else, but he put me off."

"Clear," said Emma, "seeing he asked you for it special, as a favor, and a wonder he didn’t go on his knees to you. And he such a gentleman, too—quite the perfect gent, wearing a gray pearl stuck in his tie, discreet-like, and in the winter pale-gray spats over his boots."

"How do you know?" I asked. "You’ve seen him before?"

"That I have not, Miss Edith," said Emma, "but that’s what he goes in for, mark my word. When he gets to his office—seeing the likes of him always have offices—he stops at the door, and there’s his doctor’s diploma on the wall, under glass—notary or suchlike, I shouldn’t wonder— and he moves it a tiny bit to one side, steps back, looks, goes at it again and tips it the other way, ever so slightly. ‘Where’s everybody’s eyes?’ he says. ‘Can’t you see the blessed thing was crooked? And if I hadn’t put it straight it would have stayed hung crooked for the next hundred years. What’s the matter with all you people? And how will you do without me, if I go off and die?’ And they stand round him, making sad and sweet snouts, saying, ‘Heaven forbid, sir,’ and he ups and says, ‘If you won’t tell me, I will. You’d dance with joy.’ And out and slams the door. That’s the kind of awkward customer he is, as full of quirks as a dog is full of fleas."

"Really, Emma!" I cried. "You have been cheating. You’ve known him all along and you’ve been gossiping with his servant."

"That I haven’t, Miss Edith. Just been reading what was written all over him, for all the world to see."

We saw my strange admirer every day after that, but neither of us mentioned anything about him to my mother. We did not see much of her during this time, and at dinner I had to sit with Emma at a separate table in the dining room of our hotel. Yet on the fourth or fifth day, as we were going down the stairs for the midday meal, Emma said, "It’s no use, Miss Edith. We’ve got to come across with it to madam your mother, seeing the gentleman has given you two presents already and has entertained us at tea in the Schlosshotel, fit for an archduchess, and it’s a marvel anyhow someone hasn’t yet gone and shot her mouth to madam your mother. Better for us, open and sincere-like. I wouldn’t enjoy madam your mother coming down on me like a ton of bricks, though she’s gone in for slimming lately."

"She will be very pleased," I said.

"Or very to the contrary," said Emma. "Main thing, Miss Edith, you keep that rosebud mouth of yours silent like the grave and let me do the explaining."

My mother was neither pleased nor displeased. She glanced thoughtfully at the calling card that Emma had handed her, together with the gifts. "Utterly and perfectly ridiculous," she remarked.

I was furious with disappointment. Not only had the gifts seemed quite lovely to me but they were doubly lovely because they could have been given to a grown-up person. They were not toys.

I was greatly relieved when my mother added, "Much too valuable. This set of antique peasant buttons in gold filigree. And the Venetian necklace. Most embarrassing. I only hope you thanked him nicely, Edith."

"Gracious, madam," said Emma, sweeping me with a quick look of pretended outrage. "As though anybody in their senses wouldn’t say thank you a hundred times over for this kind of presents."

I was breathless with admiration at the smoothness with which Emma had misled my mother without telling a lie. I had accepted the presents haughtily, without a word of gratitude.

"I don’t know if we can keep them," said my mother. "Lock them away, Emma, for the time being."

"To be sure, madam, and always at your service," said Emma.

On the following day, my mother said, "I’ve made inquiries about Edith’s friend. She may keep the stuff. I see no harm in it."

During the next few days, my mother repeatedly expressed the hope that I was making myself thoroughly pleasant to my well-wisher, and asked what we were talking about. I did not reply. I pouted and tossed my head. I could not tell her that most of our exchanges consisted of his begging for foolish favors, such as "Will you smile at me once, just once? How can you be so cruel? You know you are the queen of my heart," to which I listened delightedly and with a pretense of contempt. But as time went on, my mother’s interest became more outspoken. "Hasn’t your friend ever said he would like to meet me?" she would ask.

I shook my head. This time I did not have to dissemble. "I think you should invite him here, to tea," she persisted. "It is not right to accept his many kindnesses without giving anything in return."

"I won’t," I said.

"You are being ridiculous," said my mother. "Besides, I’ve never seen such ingratitude."

"I don’t want to," I said.

"Even so," said my mother, "do it for me. Do it for my sake."

"I don’t think you’d like him, Mama," I said. "He’s got too many freckles."

"He has good points apart from the freckles," said my mother, "and Emma tells me you are very standoffish with him. I want you to be nice to him, so that when he comes here he is in a good mood."

"I won’t," I said.

"But don’t you understand?" cried my mother. "He’s a most important and influential person. He’s a
Börsenrat
—a councillor from the stock exchange in Vienna. It’d be a marvelous connection for me."

I knew all about the stock exchange. It was the page in the daily paper that looked to be composed of dead ants. Men could study it openly, in public, but there was something shameful about women being interested in it, which was why my mother used to read it furtively, in the seclusion of her bedroom. I was not interested in the stock exchange, and I was not going to surrender the only man I had enslaved to my mother, who was never without one or two admirers.

"You are perfectly maddening," my mother said. "All I want is to get a few tips. Or just one tip. One good one would be enough. I should have thought you’d be more helpful."

"I won’t," I said.

"Get out of my sight," said my mother. "Take her away, Emma, and don’t let her speak to me for the next twentyfive years."

AS I GREW OLDER, my unwillingness to be friendly toward men for my mother’s sake kept recurring, in different circumstances, and though it exasperated her, it never again roused her to violent anger. Never again was I the source of attraction. It was always a case of me against one of my mother’s admirers. These men, when confronted with my presence, tried to ingratiate themselves with me, and invariably I resented their efforts. I knew they did not care for me, and it hurt me to realize that whatever gifts and attentions they offered were not meant for me but were obliquely aimed at her. I hated their clumsiness, their way of flattering my mother at my expense. Did they think it conceivable that I would be put in a good mood by being told, "You must be very proud to have such a charming mother. Of course, you do take after her, but you’ll never be a patch on her. There’s nobody like her in the whole world"? Or, "I never thought you were mother and daughter. I thought you were sisters. Astonishing, isn’t it? It must be glorious for you to have such a young mother"?

With some, my long-sustained, sullen stares produced a laming of their conversational powers, which forced them to utter the same phrases at each of our meetings. When I was nine, we stayed in Montreux in the summer, and there was a Mr. MacDonald who stayed at the same hotel as we did. Every morning as I passed him in the lobby, on my way to the garden, he said, "Which are you going to be today—a good girl or a naughty girl?"

"A naughty girl," I replied wearily.

"Oh, I’m so disappointed to hear it. Will you be a good girl tomorrow?"

"I can’t tell yet," I said.

"Oh. And, by the way, how is your mother this morning?" he would ask.

I kept silent and gave him a disdainful look. I was convinced that he was my mother’s lover and that he had spent at least part of the night with her, and I felt this question to be too idle to deserve an answer.

By this time I had become infallible in my discernment. During receptions at home, when I was required to go into the drawing rooms for half an hour, to curtsy and to answer the questions any guest wished to ask, I could pick out the lover of the moment from among fifty men, all strangers, merely by the way he behaved toward me. There was always the same forced jollity and embarrassment, broken by gleams of a fatuous pride, and a mixture of unwarranted familiarity and possessiveness. Some of them went in for a bold and hearty approach. They raised me on their shoulders or took me by the waist and swung me about, or lifted me to their faces and tried to kiss me. Then I wriggled, kicked, and scratched, as I had seen cats behave when I lifted them onto my lap and wanted to stroke them. Once, I knocked Mr. Ponsonby’s glasses off his face and regretted they did not break. Another time, I smashed Mr. Bertram’s fountain pen. They pretended to be amused, but I could see my mother biting her lips and tugging at her string of pearls. She said I was as bristly as a wire brush and did not know the meaning of friendliness, and it was a mystery. Why couldn’t I be sunny and full of fun, like other children?

Tussles of this kind were no more than a passing irritation, but there was one occasion that I found deeply disturbing. One year, when I was about ten, a Hungarian baron became a frequent guest in our home. To my protestations of "What, the Hungarian again?" my mother would reply, "Such a blessing for parties! A good name, unattached, and an ornament in any drawing room." The baron’s ornamental value escaped me. He was of middling height, thin, pale and fair, with a flat triangular face that showed no emotions, and the motif of the triangle was repeated in his eyebrows, which were pointed and strawy, like the gables of a tiny thatched cottage.

Though reticent about his activities in Prague, he was outspoken about other matters. According to him, the use of napkin rings was a vulgar habit; one should have fresh napkins for every meal. He refused the customary strip of lemon rind when taking a glass of vermouth, because he said that servants never washed lemons, only wiped them clean, and it was a fruit that passed through many dirty hands. The baron did not like me any better than the others before him, but he grasped my feelings at once. Accordingly, he did not hide his complete indifference toward me. In his presence, I was quiet and obedient. My mother was bewildered. "I can’t make you out, Edith," she said. "Whenever someone goes out of his way to be nice to you, you turn nasty. And here, with the baron, who loathes children, you are a model of perfection."

My quiet dislike for the baron was shared by Emma. Just as he never brought me a present, he gave her no tips. Yet he was exceedingly exacting. He would ring for her to bring him the ashtray from the sofa table when he was leaning at the window seat. "He’s bitter because he’s hard up," said Emma, "but that’s not why he’s stingy. If he was rich, he’d be just as mean. It’s like a built-in cupboard—you can’t move it."

It was the baron’s exactingness that made Emma commit several small acts of wanton malice toward him, which she performed with the cold-bloodedness that only highly trained servants can achieve. Once, she laid out his topcoat on the cane-backed settee in the inner hall in such a way as to display conspicuously a tear in the lining. She also knew of his fastidiousness in regard to contagious diseases, and thus she brought about the incident that I found impossible to forget.

That night, when the baron called to accompany my mother to the opera, I was in bed. I had been laid up for two days with a feverish cold and cough. Emma, opening the door, told him that my mother was still getting dressed, and added, as though it were a message from my mother, "And if you’d be so good, sir, as to look in on Miss Edith and say good night to her? Seeing she is always so disappointed when madam her mother goes out and she has to dine on her own. As a treat and a consolation, as it were."

I was astonished to see the baron entering my room. "Golly," I said, "I’ve never seen you in tails before. Mama is going to wear a new yellow velours chiffon with ospreys, and she had awful trouble getting them just in the right shade."

Emma remained in the door while the baron advanced and drew up a chair to my bed and sat down. Only then did she approach and gather up a half-filled glass of water with a spoon in it and a bottle with syrup from my bedside table. "That’s more presentable-like," she murmured. Then she turned to the baron. "And if you’d be so good as to bear in mind, sir, not to stop too many minutes, seeing that Miss Edith’s got a bit of a temperature and is still due for her medicine and must settle down for the night."

"What’s the matter with Edith?" asked the baron, half rising from his seat and then sitting down again. This was the only sign he gave of his anger at being trapped.

"Just a cold in the chest, sir, and nothing to worry about," said Emma in a perfidiously soothing voice. "There’s a lot of it about now, it being infectious, but no real harm in it, though the doctor says one’s got to watch it, considering that scarlet fever and suchlike can start the same way."

"The longer I stay in Prague, the more I am impressed," said the baron. "It’s got everything, even scarlet fever."