Letty Fox (43 page)

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un grand bruit sec! Plan! Plon!

 

P.S. His name is just like him—it's Clays Manning! Isn't that terribly English and romantic. He is the only man in the world looks good in floor-sweepers, that's tails to you, and he looks as if he ought to be at least Sir Clays Manning, Bart. I am certain he will end up as an ambassador, although he is only a socializer of the land at present. I want you to meet him. You would get on like the Babes in the Wood. He told us all that juiciest latest about Mrs. S. and the King. When you said only a small minority has mass sympathy for the Spanish people, take for instance, Friday eve., Earl Browder in his weekly broadcast spoke on Spain and announced a meeting at Madison Sq. Garden with three Spanish envoys as main speakers? It was jammed, and $15,000 was collected—in one evening. But you're right, most people don't know the difference between a loyalist and a rebel.

That defeatist attitude among U.S. communists, which you condemned, and on which Clays agrees with you, is fast disappearing—the knowledge of the great task ahead of us, after election—the building of a farmer-labor party has stirred the radicals to enthusiasm. I suppose there are a few biases, but that's a remains of the twenties and is an accepted evil. My marks are not exceptional. I must tell you I have been missing school a bit to see Hilda—well, that means Clays and another friend of theirs, Amos, interested in the farmer-labor—I am sorry, Papa. Won't do so no more. Still my average is 85. I am concentrating at present on a report for English which is to be a monumental thing. We are supposed to hand in reports on the life and works of 5 modern poets (in itself quite a proposition!) but I am taking the whole imagist school, this is at the suggestion of—again, Clays. You must think I am goofy, and it includes: 1. Origin (symbolists of France, am using Mallarmé, Apollinaire) 2. Development and so on to 5. Interpreters, Ezra Pound, Richard Aldington, D. H. Lawrence. No more. Papa, when can I bring up this gentleman? It's serious, serious! For me. This farmer-labor man is called Amos. It's incredible, isn't it? I'll tell you what Hilda says about him, he's a beanstalk and he's a Casanova, but she calls him “Scrofulous Amos.”

Ta fillette

L
ETTY
-M
ARMALADE
.

Clays Manning was getting a divorce from his first wife, an American girl named Jean, who wrote crime stories. Clays was a journalist, at present working in New York but hoping for Washington. Hilda dogged his footsteps, and always stood at his elbow like a shadow. She was a conceited little thing, who could sometimes look very pretty, and that worried me. She had been educated near Paris and spoke French as well as I did, and she had run away from this elegant French school when she was fifteen. She was older than I, but only twenty, while he was twenty-four. I was more spirited than Hilda, and not so babyish and clinging; but she had him, and I couldn't bear it. The way she put her arm through his was simply an advertisement, He's mine. And I knew she expected to marry him, when he was divorced. The situation was that he was divorced already, but it hadn't taken, or wouldn't go in England and New York State, and a lot of other things. I hoped they never could get married. Hilda had got some job writing captions for comic strips, and made half a living. She got a little money from home, too. Still, in order to find out about them, and in order to get friendly with Clays, I went to see her.

Hilda wore Alice-blue dresses, and used to wind a lace scarf round her thin neck. She didn't seem to care at all about dress, but she had style. She was the opposite type from me. She gave me quite a setback. It seemed that there was the daughter of a Lord in London, who had the right to call herself “The Honourable,” whether married or not, and who was mad to marry Clays as soon as his divorce was clear.

“And even before, she'd probably take the chance,” said Hilda.

Of course, she knew by this, she had sniffed it out, that I wanted Clays too, and she knew I would be interested in The Honourable Fyshe in London. Then—worse—they had lived together. This was frightful. When I heard that, I simply went home and cried in a heartbroken way. What could I do against those callous, brittle, elegant brutes, who are quite immoral and will do anything for their own way? I knew all about them. This Honourable Fyshe was only twenty-three and very lovely, said Hilda. That was the reputation she had. She was quite a famous beauty, and she got herself up to look very girlish, though you could see her skin fading from debaucheries, and she had gray in her hair already. But she was the kind, unfortunately, who looks very elegant with gray hair, young; and, at the same time, the premature gray had made her cynical, bored, and wretched, all in a swanky way, so that she had the most devastating air you could imagine, of the corrupt, penniless aristocrat. Of course, she rode to hounds.

She had a higher social rank than had Clays, even with his relative who was Silver Stick in Waiting or Elementary Black Rode (I do
not
remember). Just how it was, Hilda explained to me, but I no longer remember. You could work it all out by looking up Burke's Peerage, she said.

It seems that not only was this Honourable Fyshe able to keep Clays on a string, but there was a really horrible creature that he had lived with at one time, Caroline by name. He didn't want to marry her, but she thought she'd give fate a shove by calling herself Mrs. Clays. I can hardly bear to think of it even now. She prided herself on knowing carpets, furniture, and all that, because she pretended they had very good rugs and stuff in their family mansion; so she made Clays go round with her to all the shops and galleries. She's the kind that's convinced it can pick up bargains, pitting herself against all the Armenians and Persians who've been in it for generations. It all went with her sense of importance and she thought the Duchess of Dumbcastel's niece (which she is, unfortunately) had a natural instinct for everything, and of course, “The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof, the Lady's.”

This Caroline used Clays in this way. She picked out a couple of rugs at a gallery near Victoria after having shown Clays as her husband; and had them sent to her flat as “Mrs. Clays,” but couldn't pay for them. She pretended she had a right to use them two months to see if they would wear, and said quarter-day was coming and by then she'd know if she had been cheated. Then, because she's the niece of this Duchess, she put on airs, and thought she had a right not to pay; that's the Curzon Street atmosphere. She just said, “Let him take the niece of the Duchess of Dumbcastel to court!” She thought he would be afraid.

The Armenian kept sending her bills, first to her parents' home, because she lived there and used her ex-husband's name there. In her flat in town, where she lived with Clays, she used “Mrs. Manning.” Presently the man found out about that and sent bills to Clays. Well, the man tried to scare her (as if the English aristocracy were ever afraid of bill collectors); she scolded him over the phone and called it a “try-on” and was insulted; but at the end the Armenian said he'd take back the carpets. Caroline refused to let him have them. He left them there a bit longer, to try to collect. It was a sale after all, and she is a connection of the Duchess of Dumbcastel.

Well, that's how this Caroline lived, and how she furnished a place to attract Clays. “Of course, it is awful,” said Hilda, “but what worries me more, is The Honourable Fyshe. She is so beastly corrupt, and doesn't give a damn for anyone, and Clays is mad about titles.”

“How can you say that?” I cried indignantly. “Such a man as that. Look how he wants to give up everything; abolish the king, abolish the nobility, and divide up the land.”

“Poor innocent,” said Hilda, “if you think that has anything to do with a man's preferences. Do you know how our chances are in getting men? Rank comes first, then money, then fame, then right at the bottom, looks. Of course, I'm talking only about eligible girls, about girls like us. The U.S.A. is jammed with lovelies—where do they get? There are so many in Hollywood, they can only get jobs in coffee pots; and so many here in New York that they're elbowing each other out of the model agencies; and you get used up there in two years because of the competition. Beauty is simply nothing. But if you're famous on the stage, or have a title or money, you can get on in Hollywood, or get married.”

I had to admit this was only common sense. “And so this Honourable Fyshe is going to marry Clays, you think?” I asked Hilda.

Hilda looked gloomy. “The only consolation is,” she said, “that The Honourable Fyshe can't bear to leave London, except for short forays to Como or Nice or Florida, or the Channel Isles, wherever she has a reputation for beauty.”

“Is she so pretty?”

“A reputation for beauty is a different story; beauties often don't have it. You are all right, Letty, but have no reputation for beauty; no one is attracted to you by common talk. The Honourable Fyshe is quite plain, but so taking, when she moves, it's like a wind, or water; your heart turns to water, so he says. And then, think of her money!”

All this talk made me feel miserable. I was a nobody. I was at home. I did not even have a basement flat to which to invite Clays. He never had a home. Girls with flats seemed to attract him. He simply couldn't afford to be always putting up hotel rent. Then he liked company. He could not live alone, and a warmhearted man cannot bring himself to make love in a hotel for transients. He prefers women with flats. Furthermore, Hilda said, “The most attractive thing in a girl is accessibility.”

This remark struck me with great force. I was not really accessible. If I had been—I believed, at any rate, that I would know what to do. In the meantime, as we were often a foursome, I was obliged to spend some hours almost every day with Amos.

Hilda could hardly bear to look at Amos. He admired Clays and aped him; he even tried to ape a British accent, and when Hilda was away visiting her parents, Clays would go out with Amos, and even stayed in his room, for the company. When Hilda returned, she removed Amos's things from her flat with a pair of tongs.

All this made me simply desperate. I went to my father's apartment one evening, after dinner, threw myself into a chair and told him I had to have some more of my grandmother's money. He must give it to me.

“Don't you ever intend to give it to me?” I asked. “This is just an excuse, saying you'll give it when I'm married. I don't know that Grandmother said this. If Grandmother were alive and saw that I needed it now—now, not when I'm married, she'd say to give it to me. I haven't even an evening wrap! Do you expect me to get an escort just in my school dress? You've no idea what the girls spend on dress nowadays. They have a decent home, their parents live in a regular way, and they have all they want. If their parents want to divorce, they don't; they think of what a young girl needs. Their parents give parties for them, and think of them a little. But if you can't do that, just give me the money. I've got to have it. Men won't visit me if they see Mother and my sisters waiting for an official engagement. They feel like steers huddled up in a compound and waiting for the brand.”

My father, very coldly, told me that I had never shown any ability to take care of money; that I threw it about like water and was like my mother, grandmother, and all the Morgans in that. I then told my father that I owed $362 already, and I had to have money to take care of that. One of the accounts was outstanding a year.

“I don't care about your debts. I didn't authorize them,” said he, without even asking who had, for I suppose he knew that, as usual, it was Grandmother Morgan, who had ruined her entire family by allowing them to run accounts in her name at the big midtown stores. It was really $262 that I owed. I hoped to get the extra one hundred dollars for myself. I needed this badly. I flashed out at my father, “I am obliged to get into debt because you give me nothing like the proper pocket money. I have no dress allowance; Jacky has nothing. Grandmother said nothing about your keeping it till my majority. If you want my idea, you haven't got it at all. You've spent it all. That's just what Grandma said—you'd lost all her money.”

I began to cry that I was broke, had spent everything on parties, taxis, and the like (but it was so little!), and that I loved this man and would do anything to attract him. Couldn't Father understand that, and couldn't Persia understand it? I went into the bedroom to powder my face, and heard Persia say, “Oh, heavens, I'd give it to her, and have done with it!”

I came back with a cheerful expression. He said, “Letty, I'll give you a little allowance. I suppose you'll only learn how to manage money by having some!”

I looked at my father with emotion.

“Papa, I'm a beast and a brute, but you've no idea—I can't always depend on men to pay my bills; I do the best I can—I do as well as anyone.”

“Gold-digger!” said Solander.

“But if you don't give me any pocket money, I have to gold-dig,” I said.

They laughed indulgently. I was softened. I immediately thought of all I had secretly gone in for—piano lessons from the young pianist now fashionable in the Village, subscription concerts, for which I had borrowed money; and then I thought, not of paying these debts, but of what I must take on.

My father set a date, two days later, when he would give me my first money. We met in a little French restaurant on Lexington Avenue. At the table he handed over the bills with a secret flourish, and at the same time I saw his face and his big eyes, rather drawn. He looked seedy. His shoes were dusty, the trouser cuffs were frayed. His hair was turning gray. I felt a twinge of pain, and dropped my eyes. But the first thing I did was to buy two heavy gold-washed bracelets, in quite poor taste, which I had seen in a little shop near Thirty-fourth Street and for which I paid too much.