The Lady of Situations (22 page)

I
T WAS IN
the late spring of 1939 that
I
took a week off from my school (the headmistress had allowed me to give my two classes a "reading period") to be Natica's guest in the luxurious but garish hotel just outside Reno where she was completing the sixth and last week of her required legal "residence." If her husband should decide to file an appearance by a Nevada attorney and not contest her suit she would be able to obtain a valid divorce in twenty-four hours and marry Stephen the same day, but they had decided to marry in any event, and she wanted, as she frankly put it, at least one "respectable" family member to be present at the ceremony. As her mother had flatly refused to go out, both on her own behalf and her father's, and as her brothers could not leave their jobs, there was no one available but the old maid aunt.

At any rate, I was glad to go. I had been much upset by Natica's seemingly brutal abandonment of the affectionate and good-natured Tommy and suspicious of her motives in pursuing a man about whom I knew nothing but that he was wealthy, but my niece has always appealed almost as much to my curiosity as to my heart. She was indubitably an interesting person, and I didn't want to miss any part of her development. And then, too, it was atheory of mine that Natica's hardness was to some extent the needed armor of a brilliant woman in a man's world. I did not then foresee how dramatically the doors of the professions were going to open to women, but I was under no illusion that the only ones so available in the 1930s which had room at the top were teaching and nursing, and the woman without interest in either of these had to put together her own career as best she could.

There was still another factor in my desire to be with Natica in her time of need. My sister's shrill denunciation of her daughter's conduct had been bound to create an almost indignant reaction in me.

"Really, Kitty, to hear you go on, one would think Natica had invented divorce. Do you know that almost a fifth of the girls in my classes—theoretically from the best families in town—come from split homes?"

"But their fathers aren't ministers. How can any decent woman divorce a minister? Doesn't Natica know she's ruining his career?"

"I will admit that makes it worse. But I don't see why the cloth should guarantee a man an unbroken marriage. Anyway, everyone will know it wasn't Tommy's fault. And if they don't, I'm sure Natica will be a good enough sport to enlighten them."

"How can you take it so lightly? I was telling Harry, Natica must have got her callousness from his side of the family. But now you make me wonder."

I had to remind myself as usual there was no point in arguing with my older sister.

Natica was at her best when she met me at the airport. She looked very trim and smart in a brown tweed suit (always her favorite color) and a yellow silk blouse; it was apparent that everything on her was brand new. She drove me out to the vast white gleaming hotel in a rented Lincoln Zephyr, and when I protested at the size of my suite she explained with a shrug:

"Stephen has directed his bank to keep the balance in my checking account at ten thousand bucks. It's like having a little magic well."

"I hope you're not thinking of the money too much," I said sternly.

"But I think of it all the time!" she exclaimed cheerfully. "Who wouldn't, I'd like to know, who's been as poor as I have? Oh, Aunt Ruth, don't look so shocked. I'll be a careful spender, I promise. Only I expect to get my money's worth. Very few of the rich do. They haven't had my long hard training!"

She was in the best possible mood that night at dinner in the hideous Spanish-Moorish dining hall where I, enchanted to be safely on the ground (I was still a nervous flyer in those days), allowed myself to join her in two rounds of cocktails and a bottle of wine. I was soon inclined to be a good deal franker than usual, but she seemed to welcome even my criticisms for the chance to rebut them.

"What will Stephen do now he can't teach at Averhill?"

"He might start a school of his own. If his father would back him to it. But Mr. and Mrs. Hill have been ominously silent on the whole subject of me. Stephen says his mother is bound to come around in the end, but I wonder. I
am
rather a dose to swallow."

"The baby should do the trick."

I caught at once her warning glance. She had told me of the baby but it was to be a secret as long as possible.

"Nobody can hear us," I apprised her. "You
are
sure about the baby, aren't you?"

"You mean about my condition? Of course I am. Did you think I might have made it up? To trap poor Stephen? Really, Aunt Ruth, what a fiend you must think me! I wonder if it isn't a sort of compliment, really."

"No, no, no, I only meant you could have been mistaken. Plenty of women have been."

"Well, there's no mistake about this. You're welcome to ask Dr. Whittaker, my Reno gynecologist."

I returned to my original inquiry. "Couldn't Stephen fund his own school?"

"Hardly. He can't touch his principal without the consent of his bank trustee, and the bank does what Daddy tells it. But in any event we shouldn't even think of that for a couple of years, until the scandal has died down. Parents aren't going to want to send their little darlings to an institution where the wicked Mrs. Barnes could corrupt them."

I questioned her tone. "You seem to find those parents unreasonable. But I suppose they may expect schools to teach morals."

"I don't judge them. They have their opinions and standards; I mine."

"Would you object if I probed that a bit?"

"Not in the least."

"How do you really feel about what you've done to Tommy?"

"I'm sorry about it. Very sorry, really. But in no way ashamed of it. And in no way regretful. It was a mistake that had to be rectified. Why throw one's life down the drain for a sacrament one doesn't even believe in?"

"You haven't thrown yours down any drain. I was thinking of Tommy's."

"I suppose you might put it that Tommy was a kind of war casualty."

"In what war? That of the sexes?"

"Yes! I like that. He had to have a wife if he was ever to get his own school. Bachelor headmasters went out with Freud. Parents and school boards are afraid that every unmarried teacher over thirty is either an active or repressed homosexual. And they so often are! As for myself, I had to have a husband to escape from my family's clutches. To get my head above the surface of my own little slough of despond. We both did what was expected of us. Everyone applauded. When I found I had plunged into a deeper slough, I had to struggle out, that was all. But don't think Tommy's case is hopeless. Stephen may one day be able to do something for him."

"You mean when his father dies? There's the money again."

"As you see, I never forget it."

"But would Tommy ever take money from Stephen? Hasn't he his pride?"

"There might be ways of helping him without his knowing it. Oh, Aunt Ruth, there's so much you can do with money and just a little imagination! And so few rich people have any."

"You seem pretty sure Stephen will give you a free hand with what he's got."

"It's an assumption, that's true. Perhaps a presumption. I could be quite wrong. He may turn out the most terrible miser."

"What would you do then? Leave him?"

"You really do think I'm horrid, don't you? But it's still wonderful to have you here. I've been
so
lonely."

"Why hasn't Stephen come?"

"Because he has this terror that if people think we were intimate before we were married, Tommy might get the idea that I became pregnant while I was still his wife and claim the child."

"That doesn't seem very likely to me," I commented in surprise.

"Hell hath no fury, you know. It goes for men as well as women."

I had the disagreeable impression that Natica was not in any particular hurry to have her beloved arrive in Reno. "Don't you
want
him to come?" I asked bluntly.

"Not really. He'd be so bored. Look, Aunt Ruth. You can't start building up my obligations to Stephen because I've failed in what you consider I owed Tommy. Oh, I know how your mind works. You're a great one for expiation. But please get one thing straight. Stephen is the one who does most of the owing in our situation. I was willing to have an abortion. I had actually arranged for it. All he had to do was pay a sum that meant nothing to him, and there he would have been, free as air, to go on with his life at Averhill as if nothing had happened. It was
his
decision that I should have the baby, even at the cost of my marriage to Tommy. He could hardly not offer me his hand after that, could he?"

I admit I was startled. I had no idea she had played so fair. I had thought of Stephen as even rather reluctantly trapped by the situation. But now it appeared that it had been he who had taken the ultimate responsibility. And mustn't a man have been very much in love to do that? Could any man have been pushed quite so strongly by a sense of
moral
responsibility?

"You do love Stephen?" I permitted myself to ask.

"Of course, I love him."

Her tone was hardly convincing. What was more, I didn't feel she was even trying to convince me. Love was something that Natica seemed to feel could be taken for granted in a marriage, that went along, at least initially, with a "Mr. and Mrs.," like a tin can attached to the rear bumper of the departing vehicle. I could only hope that if she had everything she wanted and if her young man was really as much in love as I supposed, the combination might suffice for a happy union. Natica, I suspected, might be that
rara avis
among egoists, the one who is capable of becoming permanently agreeable when she has attained her ambition.

Stephen arrived two days before the end of Natica's six-week residence and took a room ostentatiously distant from her suite, but he had all his meals at our table. I was much impressed with his romantic good looks. An unworthy side of me played with the idea that no one could too harshly blame the woman who had left Tommy Barnes for so rich an Adonis. But I sternly repressed the notion. He was full of small, conscientious attentions for Natica and even for myself, but he seemed tense and nervous, and the chatter over the dishes was largely between his future bride and her aunt.

"Has he any more news about his parents?" I asked the next morning at breakfast before he had appeared.

"Not a word."

"Hasn't he been with them?"

"No, he's been staying at the Yale Club. It's been a matter of pride. Which side will make the first gesture."

"So we'll just have to wait for the baby."

"And that is another reason for keeping Tommy entirely out of it."

"I still don't see why. If he
knows
it couldn't be his child."

"Oh, of course, he knows," she retorted with a slight show of exasperation. "I've told you there had been nothing between us for months. But I'm talking about what a man might do if he's crazed ... Hush, here's Stephen."

But it was a new Stephen who sat down at our table. He was waving a telegram and he was radiant. "It's from Joel!" he exclaimed. "Tommy will appear by attorney and he won't contest. In two days' time, Natica, you and I will be validly married in every state in the union!"

I watched Natica as she stared at him. At first she seemed hardly to take in the good news. Then a glow slowly covered her features, and her eyes actually shone. It was joy! I had never seen or even imagined Natica joyful before. But it was to me that she first spoke.

"Ah, dear Aunt Ruth, I promise you I shall make this up to Tommy. But the first thing we owe him is to be happy. If we are building on his sacrifice, we must build well." Now she turned to her husband-to-be. "We
must
be happy, Stephen! Promise me that you'll be happy!"

N
ATICA ON HER
honeymoon in France felt at times as if she had married a stranger. He was not, to be sure, in the least a disagreeable or sinister stranger. He was the same pale, beautiful and occasionally passionate young man who had so deeply intrigued her at Averhill, and he was a charming companion and guide to the historic sites which they visited, so well known to him, from his many trips to Europe with his family, and so deliriously new to her, who had never been. But there was a moodiness in his nature of which she had not been aware, except for a hint on his first arrival at Reno. He would have periods of silence, lasting as much as an hour at a time, when he would respond to her questions only in polite but reluctant monosyllables, and he would sometimes moan in his sleep as if he were having a nightmare, though he denied it when she inquired in the morning. She tried on two occasions to get him to "talk out" his guilt feelings about Tommy and Dr. Lockwood, but each time he firmly changed the subject, insisting that he had fully accepted his acts and their consequences and that now they must let the dead bury the dead. But she was left with the uncomfortable feeling that he was trying to protect her from the pain of sensing his own pain, or even perhaps to protect himself from the pain of sensing that she had none.

His best times were at dinner when he would wax lively again over gin cocktails and vintage wines and recount long and, at least to her, fascinating stories of his childhood, his schools and camps and trips abroad, his parents and sisters, even his many uncles and aunts. It was not that he was unduly self-centered or lacking in interest in her antecedents. It was she who abruptly turned the talk from any inquiry about her own childhood, which thoroughly bored her, and brought it firmly back to the saga of the Hills and Kips, as if she were learning the new language of the fascinating country that was to be her future abode.

"I keep thinking you're going to accuse me of being the most awful bore," he protested once. "The Kips were the dowdiest sort of poor white Hudson River
déclassés.
And Grandfather Hill simply had the luck of being a small-time creditor of the young John D. Rockefeller, whose debt was paid in oil stock. He wasn't even a robber baron!"