Collected Novels and Plays (29 page)

“Have another cookie,” said Xenia. “All this business of formulas has been disproved. Nothing takes the place of breast-feeding. I sound as if I knew all about it, but the fact is—” she gave an idiotic laugh; it was the irresistible topic—“I’m having a baby myself, and have had to read a hundred books.” A wave of her hand dismissed them all. “Each says something different, but what they
do
agree upon is that one must trust one’s natural instincts.” The hand came to rest on her bosom.

“You’re going to have a baby?”

“Isn’t it wonderful?”

“But you’re too old to have a baby!” the little girl pursued indignantly, seeking foothold on the glassy slopes of another’s behavior.

This had been Xenia’s own thought, that change of life was upon her; after all, she’d expected it for a number of years. Nevertheless she laughed, “How old do you think I am, Lily?”

“Forty?” guessed Lily, looking away.

“Enchanting angel!” cried Xenia. “I shall be forty-six next birthday—there! That’s not so old to have a child. Your mother must be close to forty, no?”

Lily turned crimson. “I don’t know. Besides,” she went on, freely displaying the narrowness of her upbringing, “you’re not married! People can’t
have
babies without being married!”

They heard a muffled sneeze from the balcony.

“Somebody’s up there!”

“Only the Pope,” said Xenia in a gay loud voice.

The doorbell rang.

“You see, it’s somebody at the door.” She rose gratefully. “The acoustics are very strange in this room. I’ve had that happen before. It’ll be Enid, come to admire your head.” And Xenia threw the door wide open.

“Hello, hello!” cried the newcomer, shedding packages and enfolding her in a kiss. “Am I too late? Has Lily left?”

It was Francis.

“I realize I wasn’t asked until nine o’clock,” he said as he flopped into a chair, “but I’ve been around the corner at Natalie’s—you knew she was your neighbor?—and I’m on my way to Fern’s, after which I must drink with some people,
thence
to a solitary dinner with my poor mother—we always open our presents Christmas Eve, it keeps the Day free for debauchery. Anyhow it occurred
to me I might give Lily her present now, as the shops are delivering the rest of her family’s things. At least they said they were. The only reliable messenger boy is, of course, oneself. Enid on the phone let fall that I’d find her here, so,” Francis got up and produced a small, carelessly wrapped box from the pocket of his Lodenmantel, “with love to my favorite niece—don’t spend it all at once!” Lily smiled shyly and held the box to
her ear.

Only now he removed his coat. He was wearing evening clothes, though it was not yet three. “I’ve found an apartment in the Village,” he told them, “miles from here. So I said to myself, ‘What’s the point of
dashing home to change? I’ll just wear my dinner jacket all day!”’ He laughed into their very eyes. Xenia waited in vain for any sign of illness. Francis was deeply tanned, with hair
bleached by sun, so that he suggested a photographic negative of his old self. Perhaps he had gained weight. He spoke, too, in a new way, at once more mannered and more assured, never pausing for a word unless purposely, as a means of holding his listener. His waistcoat was of black brocade shot through with purple violets. The pump dangling from his toe sported a lining of scarlet. For studs he had two black pearls, and he wore the wing collar that hadn’t been in vogue since
before the war.

“So tell me, tell me!” he said. “I feel I’ve been away forever. Tell me what’s new.” Then, while Xenia and Lily smiled helplessly at one another: “All right, don’t tell me. I know what you’d be saying, anyhow.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” replied Xenia, and winked at Lily. “I don’t think your uncle has any idea of
my
news.”

“Come off it, Mona Lisa,” said Francis blandly. “How naive can you get? There are no secrets in New York.” He fixed her with a slow appraising stare. “True, with that smock on, it’s rather hard to tell.”

Xenia threw up her hands. He knew! “But who could have told you?” she demanded, almost cross.

“And Lily’s news is: she has a baby brother, she’s going to Rome for Easter, and she’s fresh from a frantic success as Lady Macbeth.”

“I wasn’t Lady Macbeth! Who told you that?”

“Don’t be modest, child, it’s an extraordinary part. Actresses go through lives without a chance to play it.” Francis leapt to his feet and declaimed:

He spun about in a way neither understood, as if to catch a certain expression on their faces. “Or that bit about dashing out the brains of the
babe at her breast—it’s all so wild and up-to-date.” He sat down, this time on the sofa next to his father’s upturned bronze face. “Good heavens!” he cried, recognizing it.

It was wrong for him to happen on it like that. Xenia had planned to have it on a pedestal, with proper lighting, so that Francis’s first view would be of a serious, imposing piece. But there he sat, his hand brushing back and forth across the features, the way you tousle a child’s head or a dog’s. “Bring the head over here, Francis,” she told him. “You’ll see it in a better light.”

He obeyed, lifting it easily from the cushion where it lay, cradling it in the crook of his arm.
“Attention!
” warned Xenia, and only breathed when she saw the old man’s head placed where she had indicated. It stood now somewhat taller than Benjamin himself, while Francis continued his recitation:

“I
had
done it,” Lily interrupted. “You’ve got it wrong.”

Francis paused, suddenly perplexed. “Are you sure?”

“Yes—the King looks like her father and so she
doesn’t
do it, she makes Macbeth do it.”

“Of course,” said Francis. “Oh, it’s a fantastic scene, whichever way you look at it.
Give me the daggers!
” he cried, advancing upon Lily,

And
then
, scaring the audience out of its wits—the knocking!”

The doorbell rang.

Francis reacted with a stage shudder—“You see!”

“That’s only Mummy,” Lily said. She had watched his performance distrustfully. “I wasn’t Lady Macbeth either, I was only Fleance. I’m not old enough for one of the big parts.”

Up to then Xenia would never have thought it possible to be soothed by the presence of Enid Buchanan. “Hello, my pearls!” she sang out on the threshold, and it was like a cool hand upon her hostess’s brow. “Why, look who’s here! How are you, sweetie?” She kissed her brother on both cheeks. “Don’t you look well! How was the
tripolino?
Listen to me!” she giggled apologetically, letting Xenia take her
coat. “All the Buchannibals are learning Italian like things possessed!”

Enid looked lovely, svelte, pink, chic. She had almost a boy’s figure. She gave no evidence of having borne a child within the month. Bottle-feeding had its advantages. Whereas I, thought Xenia but with more pride than envy, will look like a pig for a year!

“I did,” Francis was saying, “but my poor mother came down with something local and had to fly home after a week.”

Enid clicked her tongue. “So I heard.”

“It was purely psychosomatic. I’d persuaded her to go on to Jamaica with me and in less than six hours she had a fever. She’s just not
ready
for a full life. I stayed right on. I lay in the sun and stared at the sea and read Shakespeare all day, as Lily can vouch. I’ve never felt better in my life. You must go there. The natives are so beautiful as not to be believed.”

“Where, Francis?” Xenia asked out of habit, forgetting that she was getting her fill of beauty right there in New York.

“Haiti, where I’ve been,” he replied, as though she ought to have known. “Wait till you hear my new French accent.”

“Don’t forget,” she let a hurt note sound in her voice, “I’ve had no word from you these many months.”

“Neither have I!” Enid sent Xenia a twinkle of sympathy. “And no word from Daddy—not even an acknowledgment of his first grandson—since the cable about Sir Edward. Poor Lady Good! Did you get to Jamaica, then?”

“Sir Edward?” Xenia tried to ask, but the talk swept by her.

“Did I not!” cried Francis. “My new English accent ought to have told you
that
.”

Enid hummed her high note. “I see we must have a
chattino
soon.”

A look of curiosity settled on her face like a mask. It showed how desperately Enid wanted to hear, yet how resolutely she would let the chance go by—would indeed force it to go by—should Francis start bringing them up to date on Mr. Tanning’s love life. What nonsense, thought Xenia; she’d hear all the dirt from Francis later, why not now? Enid’s way of turning aside, of murmuring to Lily, “And how’s my tiny
pearl?” brought back things both Francis and his father had said. The Buchanans were prudes. They lived in terror lest their offspring be corrupted by the old man’s sexual excess—by anyone’s, for that matter. Xenia wondered briefly whether Enid would thank her for having discussed her pregnancy with Lily. She had already seen Enid’s eye rest on the dressmaker’s form with the same look she might have cast a nude photograph of Xenia (there were
in fact several upstairs) had one been set out on the mantel. The artist tossed her head. These absurd Americans, what did she care? She simply couldn’t take them seriously.

They had gathered about Mr. Tanning’s head. It shone dimly in the weakening light, the patina at once rose and brown. How she had toiled over that! At Xenia’s insistence the old Italian at the foundry kept swabbing the raw bronze with acids, igniting them, quenching them, beginning again until the right effect had been secured. She took pains to tell these things to Enid and Francis; she wouldn’t have troubled herself for the ordinary client,
le
cochon de payant
who’d have been just as pleased, more so perhaps, by a surface of the brightest vulgarest green. Xenia knew as she spoke that she was falsifying her motives, that plain pride in her work, rather than love for the Tannings, was responsible for the fineness of the results. But the rich needed flattery even more than artists. Unhappily she gave them, at times such as this, so little credit for intelligence that she failed altogether to connect what she
said that afternoon
with the way Enid was henceforth to let it be known among her friends that Xenia had a wee touch of the sycophant about her and, in the last analysis, lacked professional pride.

As it was, Xenia waited in vain for any understanding of her effort to show on their faces. They made, after a bit, the agreeable, easy remarks characteristic of the pig who paid. Daddy looked young; Daddy looked spiritual; Grandpa looked tired. It was hopeless. They hadn’t felt the features shaping beneath their fingers, hadn’t seen flames dart—blue, amber, green—from the whole head, or heard the awful hiss as it was doused with water. These
experiences might have helped them distinguish the particular human face from the face made by art.

“Where will you put the head?” she asked Francis. “In your apartment?”

“Oh, heavens no,” he replied. “I’m giving it to
him
, so where it goes is his problem.”

Xenia drew herself up. “The only
problem
” she said, “is that it be properly displayed.”

“Ah, you can trust him to do that,” grinned Francis.

Lily’s head was no more successfully received. One drawback, Xenia tried to explain, lay in the color and texture of the wax, a glossy brown that, annihilating highlights and shadows alike, made the whole impossible to see except in profile. Besides, Lily had changed so, hadn’t she? Enid nodded, lips pursed. She then turned her lovely smile upon Xenia. “I’m at a loss for words,” she said. “It will be a lifelong joy.”

Xenia knew perfectly that Enid meant no word of this. How could she? The head did look dreadful in wax. It was mortifying to be so patronized. By tomorrow, of course, Xenia’s own self-deceptions would have done their work. She would be boasting over the telephone: “Ah! La Buchanan adored the head! She said it would be a lifelong joy. No, naturally she can’t appreciate the workmanship, still it’s good to have such a heartfelt response.”
For the present Xenia went behind a screen and swallowed a shot of rum. All her annoyance with the Buchanans and
their ways returned. She had expected, also,
some
support from Francis. Wiping her mouth, she peered out. “Who would like a drink? Enid? Francis?”

Enid refused. She and Lily would have to toddle along.

“I’ll have one,” said Francis from beside the dressmaker’s form, whose stump he was idly caressing. “Aren’t you going to open your present, Lily?”

“Now?”

“Of course. We always open our presents on Christmas Eve. It leaves the Day free—” he stopped himself.

When Xenia brought his drink they were bent over Lily’s gift.

“Goodness me!” cried Enid. “Somebody has a very nice uncle!”

“See if it fits,” Francis whispered.

“Oh, Uncle Francis!” breathed Lily, her eyes ashine. “I’ve never
had
a ring.”

Xenia saw that it was his little ring, with the gold owl.

“I wore it for a while myself,” said Francis as if none of them had seen him do so. “It’s really a thing of great beauty. I fancied I’d lost it, but my poor mother turned out to have been keeping it for me, ever since Boston.” A faint smile preceded the last word, allowing Xenia to identify it as a synonym for his mysterious illness.

Lily turned and turned the ring upon her finger. “Look,” she exclaimed all at once, “it bends!” and held it up for them to see. The ring did bend.

“Be careful,” Francis warned her.

“Pure gold will always bend,” said Xenia.

“Pure gold is very soft and fragile,” Enid added.

“I’d better not wear it,” the child murmured delicately, decisively.