Letty Fox (27 page)

“I suppose you think you have made a sacrifice? I don't think so.”

My father would say nothing to this. Mathilde would suddenly cry, “Oh, give me a little more time. I can't make up my mind. It'll be too late soon.”

“Perhaps that would be better.”

At other times she said that he owed her compensation because he had taken her out of the labor market as a young girl, and that now she was not only old and unacceptable, but knew nothing. She gave him a letter she had received from her sister Phyllis, marked
Alexandria
,
Egypt
, with a postscript for Solander, “How can you be so heartless, Sol, as to leave poor Tootsy and Jacky without a home, or even bread to eat? What is to be their future?”

Solander said, “What on earth are they doing in Alexandria? Do you know what that town is like? I am going to get Montrose to send them a cable at once,” and he sent off two cables, one to Egypt and one to Grandmother Morgan.

There was a lot of mail. My mother would read a page or two of these letters, all from women friends, and then throw them in the drawer of her dressing table. She had lost interest in life. She visited no one, sat for hours taking the sun on café terraces, and rarely visited Grandmother, who had retreated into a great silence of anxiety. Grandmother, for some reason, feared this new child.

To get the information they all withheld, I now read everything I could lay my hands on, and all my mother's mail. Dora Dunn, now Aunt Dora, had written from Corsica:

M
Y DEAR SISTER
M
ATHILDE,

… You must keep him up to the mark, and tell him so. My advice is, never to release him and make him pay you all he can. He won't like her so well when he has to pay through the nose for her, and as you know, it is mere carnal feeling and money with men, not as with us, where we have a social duty and our children. You see, my dear, she has been getting everything, his company, his money, and you sit here abandoned and lost, without any security. How do you know he will not desert you and go off to the ends of the earth with that woman, and leave you and the darling children starving? Do not let him think you will let him go without a struggle. Men have more pride when they see we value them. My dear, we must be practical, we women. Do you think Philip would have married me if I had not been firm? Now I have my family to think of and nothing would induce me to let him go. It would not be fair to him. Now, Mattie, don't be an idealist. Tell him you're pregnant. Sol is a great sentimentalist and has some sense of duty, and also of what is practical. He is not going to keep you and three children and that woman. If I were you I would say nothing about the woman. Let him have her! Men always do this. Make him live with you and let her be the one to suffer. Nothing is too good for you. You are a wife and a mother. You have given life. Nothing is too good for us, once we are doing our duty to the state. We are not girls! We are society! Men are nothing compared with us, when we are mothers. We must protect our young. Your husband is obliged to keep you, and if he will not, go to a lawyer, and the lawyer will see to it that he pays, and if he will not, don't be soft, Mathilde, clap him into jail! We have our children to think of. I have had my eyes opened. I found letters in Philip's pockets. I recommend you to go through Sol's pockets too, so that you can keep track of everything. We are always deceived. We must stop at nothing. We women must stand together. Would you believe it that while I was away having my baby in England, Philip was writing love letters to a wh—— of his in New York. He invited her over here to meet him—Eleanor Blackfield. I find he is still corresponding with this ——— and using such expressions! He intended to use her for his own satisfaction and then me and perhaps others. How do you know Sol isn't like that? Do not trust
anyone, any man
! They are all beneath contempt. There are no words for what they do. All we can do is to protect ourselves. So never divorce him, dear, you are doing him
no favor
and do not let him out of your sight. As soon as he is out of sight, be sure he goes to her! I would get a detective if I were you. You are entitled to do anything to protect your home. Marriage is sacred. It is a bond. A decent man does not go back on his bond. You are holding him to his word, that is all. Do not be a fool, Mathilde …

I read this letter to Jacky in one of the long, quiet evenings when Mathilde and Solander had gone to the movies. She listened to it in utter silence. At the end, she asked, trembling, “But if Papa stays with us, he need not go to jail?”

For a few days however, we shook the dust from the chandeliers with our shrieks of laughter.
Make him pay or clap him in jail!
we shouted apropos of everything.
Off with his head and clap him in jail!

“What's the matter with you giggling idiots?”

The frenzied pair skipped out of this room into that, with “Clap him in jail!”

Our cautionary tales ended with this punishment. I now systematically searched my mother's drawers for these conspiratorial letters, and read them with my sister. We lived in an agreeable fever of excitement. The adult world was more interesting than we had ever supposed, and as to marriage and babies, these things began to make sense to us at last. When my father next came, it was I who searched his pockets as Dora had suggested, and to my intense surprise found the following letter from that active young woman:

M
Y
D
EAREST
S
OLANDER
,

Please, dear, can you send me our month's money, 500 francs. I am supposed to get some from England from Mr. McRae, and Philip from New York, but dear Mother Morgan is coming over here so there will be an interval, and we have not received the last promised, as yet, so please, dear, send it to me as soon as you can. I really wish you could let me have 750 francs or 800 and then I could get us out of here, and we could get off to New York, for home is the best place. We can both work. I wrote to Joseph Montrose, whom I met in London and found very friendly, to write to you about this, and they are supposed to write to you from Green Acres, to help me out, in case we are in difficulties, but I do not know if they have. Anyway, send me the month's money AT ONCE, dear Sol. If you are not in Paris, then send from Antwerp as soon as possible, and send to me, as I am more reliable in money matters than Phil, who is wasteful. Hope you are well, also Persia, and please answer me soon, Sol, as I need the money. With lots of love and greetings and not forgetting Persia, and dear Mother Fox. Affectionately,

Y
OUR SISTER-IN-LAW
, D
ORA
.

P.S. Dear Mother Morgan is coming over here to take Phyllis back which is a good thing. She is running wild. Also she has a good husband for her, she says. Ten thousand a year.

I do not know whether my father sent this money. Presently the honeymooners returned from Corsica, very poor, and put up at our flat. Philip was a good cook. Dora said that soon she would have another dear little baby. Solander, quite distracted and tender, said his roof could cover one more, he supposed.

Grandmother Morgan arrived like a thunderbolt in Paris. Cables flashed between Paris and Alexandria. Money was sent to the enterprising cabaret team (which was admittedly penniless and living off men by this), and Pauline and Phyllis were soon back in Paris. Pauline looked a little rakish, but brighter than ever, while Phyllis, tranquil, radiant, was no longer a music student. She had the self-possession of a woman. She sat calmly in our dining room, saying little about her surprising adventures, except, “We met nice men everywhere. In Marseilles a rich man was very nice to me, but he was too old. I like the East very much, but it was not clean enough; every morning Pauline gave me a prairie oyster”; and she declared to her mother and sister, in our presence, “I must marry. I'm not a real singer, and I don't want to work hard. I can't hold out, Mamma. I'll go crazy.”

Grandmother had just the right man for her, a young, good-looking man, with business ability: “I guarantee him,” said Grandmother. She took her peachflower home on the next boat, and only a few weeks had passed when we received photographs of a lawn wedding, and Grandmother's ecstatic letter: “Phyllis, all in white satin, with her sweet innocent face, looked like a madonna at the altar. We all cried for joy—”

Phyllis, at the altar, had her head swathed in a turban of lace which would have ruined any but a beauty of the first order. But we pored over the face. “How pretty is Aunt Phyllis?”

Mother sounded tired, “Mr. Montrose says she is one of the prettiest women in the world, and I suppose he knows.”

“Oh! Oh!”

We spent days in dreams of her and our beauty. The inconsistencies, plots around us, were forgotten. If Clark Gable had seen Aunt Phyllis would he have married her? We pored over cosmetic advertisements. Finding myself too small, I sent for a brochure, “How to Have a Lovely Figure in 16 Days.”

T
hen down came the house that Jack built. There was a series of extraordinary events. We lived in mystery and doubt. We did not know from one day to the next whether we were to stay in the flat or leave it. Mathilde could not make up her mind, or did not know. For a week my father had been in Paris to settle affairs with my mother. Each night my mother said he could go, and then said he could not. He looked very ill. She cried; they stayed up all night; he hurried off to work. We went to school and came home, or went to Grandmother's when we were told. One night my father flung out of the house, and did not return.

“Is he in the river?” cried my mother. “I am a horrible woman, selfish; what will happen to us all? I made a terrible mistake.”

We cried. At daylight she put on her hat and went somewhere. She came back very somber. In the evening Solander came home and there was dull but agitated talking. “It is too late,” Mother repeated, “but I didn't mean it this way, Sol.” In agitated words she somehow explained her impression that life was a sordid intrigue into which she had been forced.

Looking out of the window of the salon, I saw a miracle. “Jacky, Jacky!” I called softly. There was Persia in the street. It was incredible. She walked into the house. Someone came to the door and rang. We put our heads into the broad passage and saw my mother opening the door, my father some paces behind her, and the girl there.

“Good evening!”

“Good evening! Come in,” said my mother. “I expected you.” We were shut into the salon.

“Perhaps we are all going to live together,” said Jacky. “It is against the law,” I explained to her.

I bit my nails, not understanding why Mother had not dressed up to meet her rival. Persia had on a pretty, blue-gray coat with a fur collar, wore white violets and new shoes. Her eyes seemed very clear and large. She was calm and radiant. My mother wore an old pinafore and blouse with canvas sandals, and her face had that washed-out look that you see in young actresses on the street in the daytime. The fatal three sat talking, and one heard nothing but a murmur. Soon Persia went. The door was unlocked, and we set the table for dinner. At dinner my mother suddenly said, “Your father is leaving us in a week; he does not love us.”

“That is not true. I love you all.” My father sighed.

“But you're a slave of this woman.”

“A slave? Perhaps I am.”

“I ought to drown myself and the children,” my mother cried, wringing her hands. “Or if you did, it would solve everything.”

After this, there was much noisy trouble in the night; my mother wanted to go to the river, “because she was like a girl who had got into trouble.”

“God damn it,” said my father; “you'd rather I took a street-girl, so you could be safe.”

“So I would,” wailed my mother. At the end of the week, my father walked out of the house at four in the afternoon, taking nothing with him, so that we were in doubt about his intention. He did not return. In the morning, he came back with a taxi, for his bag, and then went off after kissing us, with tears in his eyes, and taking my mother by the hand. His face was set, however; and he said, “There has to be an end to this.”

“You're in her power,” said my mother. “I'll kill her; we'll have a home.”

But Mathilde and we went to Mme. Gouraud's. My father, whose work in Antwerp was then over, returned to London, taking with him Grandmother Fox and, doubtless, Persia.

Grandmother Morgan, who had taken a great taste for Paris, once more returned, and took back with her her daughter Mathilde and Jacky.

We were thus separated; Pauline put me on the train and I came to London by myself. It was understood that I was to live with Grandmother Fox. There, however, I found my father living in a regular householding with Persia and Grandmother, who looked a little strange, but much younger. It was a fine apartment on the top floor of an American-style apartment house, with a long corridor like a gangway and as many windows as a yacht cabin. There were three bedrooms, the ceilings sloped; the flat looked out all over London. The kitchen was furnished with every conceivable thing, and Grandmother Fox, though whispering and wandering as usual, had this one happiness. She sat in the large, splendidly furnished kitchen all day, or visited the bath arrangements which were extensive and in separate quarters. Merely to tour this part of the house delighted her. We were all out most of the day and she had this undreamed-of place to herself.

I had a surprise in the shape of a letter from Jacky. She told me that although she missed me, she felt it was a good thing. “Do not write me in detail about all that is important, experiences with the other sex—your emotional life; I can understand you, for I also know about this now; and as you know my letters are supposed to be handed round to everyone. I feel well. I am pretty. (But they say I am not very well, it is my chest.) A boy sent me a
love letter
. Mother is going to write to Papa about sending me to Santa Fe. Of course, you know about the baby, our sister, Andrea. I cannot understand Papa. Now Andrea has no father. I no longer admire you know whom (D. of K.). I am getting to understand things. It is settled for me to be on my own; they speak to me as if I were grown up.” Grandmother Morgan might bring her to Paris in the summer. In the meantime, she was to go to a private school in New York, where children learned art and had special instruction; and later she might go on to the Music and Art.