Letty Fox (18 page)

Grandmother Morgan shook her head over this and said, “You'll never keep him if you don't have new feathers, Mattie,” and even little Grandmother Fox, in these days black, withered, trembling, looked anxious and, putting her stubby claws on my mother's arm (so that Mathilde could scarcely help drawing away), she muttered, “Think of yourself a little, my dear, and my Tootsy and my Jacky. They'll have money when I die, but waiting is a long time, and they ought to have something new now.”

She looked dismally at our traveling wardrobe, but bought nothing herself. To her, Grandmother Morgan was a walking Klondike, and she could not see why Cissie Morgan did not dress us as well as Phyllis. She knew nothing of finances nor of business, and saw only in the feeblest and silliest way what a fine investment Phyllis's clothes might turn out to be.

Grandmother Morgan, who had it in the back of her mind that she might, after all, have to pay the money back to Joseph Montrose, tried to reduce expense, however, and this was where she felt that Mother was useful. She wanted Mother to act as her sister's chaperone, so that Solander, in fact, would pay back the chaperone's expenses to Joseph Montrose and Phyllis's friend Pauline need not go.

She had become very fond of this Pauline, a handsome Little Theater actress who took her on parties; she did not like to suggest it directly. Pauline had already pointed out to my mother that she was in no mood to act as Phyllis's chaperone and look after two children, especially if it turned out to be a bad sea-trip. Who would look after the children if things were black in London and Solander were really living with the woman Persia? Did Mathilde wish to live with Phyllis, receive her men friends, go out with her to restaurants, wait up for her at night? Moreover, since old Mrs. Morgan was a little tight, and, though it was a shame, had given Mathilde neither money nor clothes, would Mathilde really enjoy going about with Phyllis who was going to be a bird of paradise?

Phyllis would walk into all of these discussions aloof, preoccupied, but she asked no questions. She saw nothing strange in the arrangements that were made for her. So it had been since she was born. She believed tranquilly now, almost without vanity, that she would learn a little singing and dancing and would at once sweep fashionable Europe up into her arms. She would marry well, live abroad, do nothing but shine her life through.

She did nothing. Others bought her clothes, took her to shops, measured her, cut into cloth. Others packed her trunks, got her passports, and wrote her labels. She stood in a dream and waited for it to accomplish itself.

Mathilde, who had seemed dull to mankind during the moment of her possible reconciliation, now herself called out the activity of many different schemers; even those who were fantastics and not practical schemers began to murmur and plot.

Joseph Montrose sailed before the women. He had bought Phyllis and her companion Pauline first-class tickets for the
Samaria
. My father had sent the money for second-class tickets for the same boat. Five of us were going at the same time, though not precisely together.

Grandmother Morgan became more light-hearted as sailing date approached and thought that she, too, should visit Europe if only for a few days, before her new season opened and before she undertook this new hotel in the Adirondacks.

Grandmother Fox, who had no hope of sailing and uttered many bizarre condemnations of the Europeans, their food, dress, and other habits, nevertheless was unhappy, pattered overmuch round the house, kept Lily up half the night with her confidences. She said she was dying and would never see any of us again, and sent Lily, who was still laid off, to see us and all the others on the family circuit, to find out all she could, and to spread the news that Grandmother Fox was really very weak and might never see her boy nor her darling girls any more. The unrest spread.

Uncle Philip came to see us often, wringing his hands over his divorce from Amabel which was coming through; and saying that for a short time he had been safe, but that now the girls would be after him again; and that he only wished he had the chance to go to Europe where no one knew him. He said that he would even go on the
Samaria
steerage, to be with us, and eat the bread of humility in London, until Joseph Montrose or Solander could get him a job. He would be good. He would never meddle with girls again if only he could get a fresh start in life; or he would go away with one of the dear creatures, but only one, and start all over again where old memories, streets, dives, names, bookshops, schools, would not start up in him the endless desire, the irremediable act.

“And I would be company for you, too, Mathilde,” said he, “if you felt lonesome, and while you are making your peace with Solander. For Sol's a nice boy, always was a pal of mine and you can't jolt him; you've got to let him ease her out of this, and besides, who knows, she's an awful attra—I mean, perhaps I could do something about it—take her away and see that she got another man or job or something. You know, if she had a friend, probably she would be quite willing to give him up since he's married and you're not going to divorce him—well, I mean I could be helpful in so many ways, I could even cook and look after the house. I often did it for Amabel.”

Dora Dunn, making her visits two or three times a week in her well-cut linen and silk suits, would laugh, shake her fat, and say, “I could do with a trip to Europe myself, with the whole world going. I want to see what's new, for I have plans for a shop on Madison Avenue, up in the Fifties or beyond, and for that section of town I need the latest things, with modernistic designs. These Villagers down here are satisfied with rubbish, but those people have the money and have traveled; and how can I supply them if I have no contacts?” Mrs. Morgan admiringly told her to go.

It spread and spread, a happy hunger which flattered us. I think this was the first time that I saw my sister Jacky was different from me. I knew long ago that she was more attractive though not prettier than I. When she was two and a half, I was three and a half. She pressed her nose to the fence and called, “Dickie! Dickie!”

Dickie came, fat, blond, small, blue-eyed, and smiling, and pressed his nose to the fence. Their noses looked the same. No doubt mine did too. When I called, “Dickie! Dickie!” expecting to wipe out Jacky in one word, nothing happened. Dickie's face grew serious, he gave me a grave look and went on trying to reach Jacky's nose with his nose through the fence. We still divide and conquer. I have a white-skinned, oval face, with long lashes, oval eyes, and a Japanese look; a short neck, a white pouter breast, a small waist, and a long pear-shaped back. Painters have painted my face, my waist, and the rest; but Jacky's parts, quite different, also find admirers. There is the first shock a pretty girl gets, that things in all women are alluring. I know by experience, and even I can see it. I can't help looking over every woman to see what she is peddling. I am not a fool. I know strange things attract, and when a woman is plain and unfortunate, she will get some Galahad, but unfortunately I cannot couple in my imagination; to me every woman is plain, indeed unattractive. I am not really bad-hearted; women are my blind spot. On the other hand, I can see the good points in any young man.

Jacky is ambitious, even more than I am, but with such a wild, unaccountable ambition, you might call it a young, fiery, unreasonable ambition, the kind of emotion and urge that bring people's hearts into their throats; they feel regret for what they think they have lost.

Perhaps Jacky could have been an actress, for she has this strange power to communicate to people feelings that they have never had and she never had either, and which makes them think they understand her. She becomes their ideal. I understand her very well. She was not bright in school, but that was because she was distracted. She only thought of her ambition. She did not know what her ambition was, but she longed for it like the Holy Grail. I am sure there was a time in the world when looking for the Holy Grail became popular, and I am sure there are always certain people who look for the Holy Grail, although now it is not the rage. There were always people who looked for money, I am sure, and now is the time when everyone does, but naturally, it will pass, like all periods of popular feeling.

There never was a time when everyone was a Romeo and Juliet; but now girls and boys earning their own money and with five cents to put in a juke box, warble “I love you” and press their thighs together. Yet most of them never feel love; it is just the fashion now.

Well, I cannot say that Jacky was born for her age—perhaps I was, rather—but I know that she and I ambled along until this age, when she was seven and I eight before any strong personal differences stood out; and then the thought of going to Europe excited her as much as it did Aunt Phyllis. She didn't see platforms covered with flowers, but—wonderful success in some way she did not understand, and new things: “perhaps glory,” she said, “I don't want to come back just nobody. I am now.”

Jacky was more interested in Persia, my father's young woman, than I was, and Jacky had never seen her. She made me tell what she wore, how she looked, how old she was, whether she was sad or gay, and she often said, “I hope I can be a man's mistress and that he will love me madly and write me mad love letters.”

I began to look round for someone to write me mad love letters. We moved, in our private thoughts, thus from the Torquemada stage to the stage of mad love, but while I was the one to suggest the schemes for creeping out of the house at night, it was Jacky who thought up the love letters. Jacky was anxious to go to England only to see Persia and the Prince of Wales, and I am sure that she wanted my father to stay with Persia so that this romantic imbroglio could go on.

We were to sail at three in the afternoon. The morning we were to sail, four girls came to my mother's flat in Bleecker Street, one after the other, with valises in each hand, not to mention smaller packages—four girls, eight valises, and several packages which made a large addition to our own hand luggage which stood about waiting for taxi time.

The first girl was a friend of Philip's, Berenice, a slender, smart girl, with a straight, boyish bob. She just said she had an appointment with Phil, and would wait if we didn't mind. She scarcely seemed to know that it was our apartment. She had been waiting about half an hour and was talking casually and all good breeding with my mother, when another girl came in, a vulgar, smart, rich Greenwich Village girl, with a cigarette in a long holder, a cap and a veil, and long legs in black silk stockings. She looked surprised, and when she saw Mathilde, said, “Aren't you Mattie, Phil's sister?”

“Yes,” said Mother, “do you want to see him? He must be coming, although I don't know of it, because this girl's waiting for him, too. Won't you sit down?”

My mother, irritably, went off to open and shut drawers, to sprawl on the floor and peer under tallboys. The first girl knew the second girl. We were sitting in our best clothes, with large eyes and beating hearts, waiting with the luggage for the taxi, and we heard everything.

Jacky, in whom there had sprung up this desire to be a fascinating creature, a thing of fatal charm, moved nearer to these two dashing women and drank in every word. They had not been long seated, sparring with each other in a hard, clever way, in which I have, unfortunately, long ago become expert, when a third ring at the doorbell brought in a third girl, a plain but well-fed blonde of more than middle height, in a schoolteacher's dress and straw hat, her long hair drawn into a knot on her neck. She wore a brown silk dress, carved ivory necklace, silver hammered belt, and brown flat-heeled shoes. She had blue eyes and a slender mouth which she had reddened clumsily.

She smiled confidently and asked for “Mr. Philip Morgan?”

Mathilde, now very puzzled, came out, gave the newcoming woman an armchair, and showed her where to put her bags, for she had two.

“My name is Elsie Trenton,” said the woman, who seemed to be about thirty. “You are, I think, Mrs. Fox, Philip's sister, aren't you?”

Her accent was pleasant, but like school. The other girls looked at her, all the false charm fading out of their faces, so that one could look straight at them.

The first was a plain girl, with a Bourbon jaw and clever eyes, dangerous, slick, elegant, and no virgin. The second was just a Village sleeper, who yessed men, talked smut, drank and smoked too much, but felt that she was clever, sensitive and all pure rebellion, indeed (I didn't know that then, but now I know these girls so well); and the third was unlike either of them. Her simple style was something they could not classify.

My mother calmed down now, and asked the women if they would like to finish up some coffee she had left, “Only I am too nervous to perk it, one of you must make it yourself,” she said.

The elegant-ugly and the schoolteacher at once came in to the kitchen to make it. They waited more than an hour and had become uneasy, when the schoolteacher said in her musical, mincing voice, “But Philip told me to meet him here and he would come with the tickets. I cannot be mistaken, for I see you are going away today, Mrs. Fox, to England.”

“Yes, I am,” said my mother.

“Then, that's all right,” and she explained to the others, “You see, I am going with Mr. Morgan, Philip Morgan; we are not traveling together,” and she flushed slightly, “but he is to bring the tickets.”

Great confusion followed. For some reason, the other two girls thought also they were to get tickets from Mr. Philip Morgan to sail on the
Samaria
and all of them had their passports. But two had never sailed before and thought it could all be arranged in a minute, while the ugly one shook her straight brown bob, blew smoke from her cigarette and said, “I simply came to check up. I was abroad so often, so that I thought there was some mistake, of course; and what does it matter, I can go to Virginia or any damn place tomorrow, but I was willing to take a fling. I don't mind admitting I was a darn fool, because it was only in a bar last week he told me, but I've done it before and I'd do it again—the fugue, I mean. Why, I married my first husband when I didn't know him; we were both pickled, but he said, ‘Come on, let's fly to Buenos Aires,' and we did and got married. We never slept together” (but the enterprising bride used another word) “and so we got a five-minute divorce. But what the hell, I thought it would be some fun. I think if you girls don't mind, I'll wait around anyhow until Casanova shows up.”