The Eleventh Year (15 page)

But the latter didn't make sense. She'd only known Justin six, seven weeks. He and Thomas had evidently been associates for much longer than that….

“He's not dishonest,” she said aloud. “He can't be.” She was remembering everything they had talked about together, countless times.

For the first time in her life she was intensely grateful for being rich. Security was important, after all.

She took a small vial of Shalimar out of her handbag and applied the perfume on her temples and behind her ears. Then she resolutely left the bathroom.

In the sitting room, he was pacing the floor, and when she entered, he looked up, smiled. His smile transfixed her with its strength and power. She wanted to run to him then, had all but forgotten the scene in the garden. She smiled back hesitantly. “I'm glad you came,” he was saying, taking her hands in his and kissing each one in turn.

“I came,” she stated, looking down, “because you didn't.”

“Darling, my letter?”

“I never received one. Why a letter, and not you?” She hadn't meant to sound so clinging, but the words simply came of their own accord.

“I sent one over with Smithers—”

“It's not important. I'm sorry. What did the letter say?”

“That I'd come just as soon as I could. That I had a client here from France, and that he and his wife were taking up undue hours of my time.…And that I missed you, dreadfully.”

“Oh, Justin.” She laid her head on his shoulder, and there was peace. Then she raised it and asked: “You know we leave in four days?”

“So soon?”

“Yes.” There was a silence, long, uncomfortable. She said: “Justin, what about our future? Tell me, please.”

“Our future? Lesley, my dear, the world's at war. I can't continue to remain a gentleman without also becoming an officer. When I return from my first tour of duty, I shall formally propose, send a letter to your father to ask for your hand in marriage.”

“But Justin, tours of duty last at least a year, eighteen months!”

“We could win the war sooner than that.”

“Justin—I understand this is no moment to get married. But why couldn't we at least become engaged? You could speak to Mother and my grandfather. We have…four days.”

Her earnest green eyes searched out his dark ones, held them. She could feel the tension in the muscles of his jaw. “Justin, why not?”

He stood up abruptly, sighed, raised his shoulders, let them drop. “Lesley, what can I tell you? I'm about to embark on the most terrifying experience of my life, and you're pressing me for a commitment. I love you, you know that. Isn't it sufficient for the moment?”

His face was red, his nostrils moving like those of a stallion in anger. Was it so unreasonable to want to know that he loved her enough to make their union public knowledge? Suddenly she felt numb. A woman should not have to beg the man she loved for a commitment. It should be his choice too. Only a man inconsiderate of a young woman's feelings wouldn't care to make such a commitment, after the one she'd made, giving of herself freely.

“It isn't as if you were pregnant, darling, and couldn't wait,” he was saying, and the tone of his voice was placating, gentle but also patronizing. She began to feel anger.

“And if I were? You'd do what, then?”

“The honorable thing. Don't be silly, Lesley.”

“So it's honorable to marry a pregnant girl, even though you're going off to war, but you don't feel honor-bound to marry that same girl until two years later if she's been lucky? And you don't feel the least bit honor-bound to become engaged before your enlistment?”

“God damn it, Lesley! What if I died? You'd have wasted two years of your youth waiting for a man who'd never return!”

“That's ridiculous! You didn't think of that when you were making love to me, over and over again. You weren't thinking that you might die and leave me with a child, unmarried. Then what would my life be? You make no sense whatever, Justin. You seem to do only what pleases you on the moment. How many other girls have you deflowered with empty promises?”

They had spoken the unspeakable. She wanted to swallow back her words, yet knew she couldn't. She had meant what she'd said. He was staring at her with disbelief, and she still wanted him to tell her that she was right, that he would speak to her mother. What had his accomplice in the garden said? “You have an odd code of values.”

She repeated the sentence, slowly, measuring every word, looking at him with her wide green eyes without flinching: “You have an odd code of values.”

He drew in his breath, appeared to blanch.

He was holding himself at rigid attention, and all at once she knew that she was facing a stranger. She whispered: “There are so many truths you didn't, tell me, Justin, and so many lies you told…or implied.”

“Lesley—” He was reaching out to her, but she stepped aside and his hand fell back.

“I was very angry, Justin,” she said. “And since I thought you were my friend, I came to you today. I'll know better next time. I used to have a French governess in New York who used to say:
‘Les hommes, ce sont tous des pores.
Pigs. She should have known. She did know: That's why she never married.”

“Lesley, please…”

She was running out now, blinded by tears, running past the butler, Smithers, and past the young maid. Justin's steps sounded behind her, then abruptly stopped. She opened the door herself and dashed out into the slow drizzle of rain. “And how is Lady Adele, milady?” the chauffeur was asking politely, as she tried to hide her tears.

“She's very well, thank you. Please, Higby, tell my mother that I had high tea with the Reeves and shan't be wanting supper.” They drove home to the red brick mansion in the rain.

Four days later she sailed off for the shores of New York, and her mother asked her no questions. It was a rough voyage, and everyone was seasick, including Lesley and her mother. But never, never shall I be this sick again, she thought, remembering the bathroom on Upper Brook Street.

T
he return
to Vassar was anticlimactic for Jamie. Lesley wasn't at all herself. At the beginning Jamie had asked her about Justin; Lesley had shaken her head quickly, and tears had clouded her eyes. “It's over.”

“But…why? He seemed so ‘right' from your letters.” Jamie felt then the renewal of the fears she had experienced after receiving Lesley's letter about the abbeys. But she couldn't pry into her friend's suffering. All she could do was ask this single, tentative question.

“I didn't know him then, and I guess I didn't know much about myself either. Typical isn't it?” But the brave little smile banned further intrusion. Jamie felt a bit hurt by this rejection of her help. Lesley was barricaded in her own misery.

A war effort was being started at school, to raise money for an ambulance for the Allies and for the funding of a tuberculosis hospital in France. President Wilson, reelected, was showing every sign of wanting his country to take sides against the Germans. Lesley, discarding her peg-top skirts so that others would imitate her and save cloth and materials to supply the armed forces, had joined the publicity campaign to obtain more relief monies. Patriotism had become a fad at Vassar, and the rich girls looked to Lesley Aymes Richardson for guidance: She was half English, therefore already committed to the side of the Allies.

Lesley had also been gaining weight. For someone who ate as little as she did, and who was as nervous as she'd been, with dark, purplish circles under her eyes and hollow cheekbones, Jamie found the midriff bulge incongruous. But Lesley rarely dressed up these days, and never went to parties. She said: “Why bother? We have too much to do for this sort of nonsense.” But it wasn't like Les to turn herself overnight into a spinster, she who had loved life, had breathed in jokes and food and the wonders of the changes in seasons. There was no joy left in nineteen-year-old Lesley: only a grimness that repelled Jamie, that she couldn't understand at all.

And then, during exam week, in their room, she caught Lesley staring blankly at her desk, her hands clasped before her. Jamie looked up from her book, saw that she was about to cry. She rose, went to the back of Lesley's chair, put her hand on her roommate's shoulder, and said: “You've got to tell me now.
That.
And also why you keep refusing to go home to visit your family. Your sister called again, about the Christmas holidays. She wants you to go to a cotillion with one of George's friends—”

“Stop it, Jamie! I'm never going to go out with any man ever again!”

Her vehemence made Jamie draw back. “But Les…one love affair…”

Lesley wheeled about, her intense eyes drilled into her friend. She stated, barely above a whisper: “It wasn't just one love affair. Jamie, I'm pregnant. I'm into my fourth month.”

Jamie could feel prickles rising on her skin. She sat down, feeling out of breath, and said. “Why didn't you tell me earlier?”

“At first I didn't want to face it. And then…what could
you
have done about it? What could anyone have done? I was such a fool!”

“Les. Do you still want to marry Justin?”

Lesley didn't cry. But her chin began to tremble uncontrollably. For a moment she couldn't make a sound, and her white face seemed bruised around the eyes. Jamie said, very softly: “If you still love him, you know he'd marry you. He told you he would, didn't he?”

“What kind of person do you take me for, Jamie? To marry a man who didn't even want to get engaged.…To marry a man who makes his living selling fake art works….”

“I didn't know. I had no idea.”

“You know what that's like, Jamie! Look at Eva! Willy's still in love with
you,
but he married
her
and only because he ‘had to.' I'm never going to do that to myself or to any child of mine. What kind of marriage would exist for us? He'd never respect me, never feel he acted out of choice. I don't love him any more anyway, Jamie.”

“Do you want to have this baby?”

Lesley said, to the air as much as to her friend: “What are my options? I don't want to be a mother—I'm not even sure I'd ever want to be one, if I were
married!
But to have the child, in a family like mine….”

Jamie was thinking quietly. She declared: “Then you must get rid of it. There are ways.”

“But where? How? It costs a fortune! And if I asked my father for that much money, I'd have to give him an explanation! He'd insist on seeing me! It's a wonder everyone hasn't guessed by now—especially you!”

“It's this whole war craze. Vassar isn't the place to expect people to be aware of others. As for me—since you told me nothing…”

“I'm sorry, Jamie. I should have told you. But I was so ashamed—”

“Ashamed? But it's not as if I were some virgin, for heaven's sake! The same thing could have happened to me last year! Why on earth ashamed?”

“Because Willy was in love with you, he wanted you; you were the one who rejected
him.
With me it was so terrible—to be thrown away, abandoned.” Then she burst into tears, sobbing, and Jamie came to her and held her. Lesley stayed sobbing for several minutes, pouring out four months of misery, four months of shame and fear and abject loneliness. “Yes!” she finally announced, looking up at Jamie. “If I could somehow find the money, I'd have it taken care of. I don't want his child! I hate the man! He humiliated me and lied to me—And he's a thief!”

Jamie stood up, chewing on one of her fingernails. “Then we're going to have to work something out. Let me find out what I can.”

Lesley's eyes expressed such childlike hope that suddenly Jamie felt almost trapped. There was no way she could let her down now. There were girls who knew about these matters.…It wasn't the first time this had happened at Vassar. In every college town there were people—nurses, laymen—who helped girls out who were in trouble. Missy Brookhouse, one of the seniors in Main, knew everything. She'd go up to her room and talk to her tomorrow.

“Jamie,” Lesley whispered, “if you speak about this to anyone . . .”

In a flash Jamie pictured Missy's eyes widening: Lesley Richardson, pregnant! It would take maybe two days to spread like wildfire throughout the campus, and the following week everyone would know at Yale and Princeton and Harvard, at Williams and Haverford: All the young men who might one day be expected to propose to Lesley. In less than a fortnight the Richardsons and their Fifth Avenue friends would be informed of the unmentionable fact. Jamie pressed Lesley's hand. “It's all right. I know just how I'm going to handle it.”

For no one would care if Jamie Lynne Stewart were pregnant and then had it taken care of. Missy would be sympathetic for one minute, pretending to be shocked. “Just trust me, will you?” Jamie said.