Twilight Sleep (3 page)

She looked again, and fancied the wrinkles were really fainter, the
vertical lines less deep. Once more she saw before her an erect
athletic woman, with all her hair and all her teeth, and just a
hint of rouge (because "people did it") brightening a still fresh
complexion; saw her small symmetrical features, the black brows
drawn with a light stroke over handsome directly–gazing gray eyes,
the abundant whitening hair which still responded so crisply to the
waver's wand, the firmly planted feet with arched insteps rising to
slim ankles.

How absurd, how unlike herself, to be upset by that foolish news!
She would look in on Dexter and settle the Mahatma business in five
minutes. If there was to be a scandal she wasn't going to have
Dexter mixed up in it—above all not against the Mahatma. She
could never forget that it was the Mahatma who had first told her
she was psychic.

The maid opened an inner door an inch or two to say rebukingly:
"Madam, the hair–dresser; and Miss Bruss asked me to remind you—"

"Yes, yes, yes," Mrs. Manford responded hastily; repeating below
her breath, as she flung herself into her kimono and settled down
before her toilet–table: "Now, I forbid you to let yourself feel
hurried! You KNOW there's no such thing as hurry."

But her eye again turned anxiously to the little clock among her
scent–bottles, and she wondered if she might not save time by
dictating to Maisie Bruss while she was being waved and manicured.
She envied women who had no sense of responsibility—like Jim's
little Lita. As for herself, the only world she knew rested on her
shoulders.

At a quarter past one, when Nona arrived at her half–brother's
house, she was told that Mrs. Wyant was not yet down.

"And Mr. Wyant not yet up, I suppose? From his office, I mean,"
she added, as the young butler looked his surprise.

Pauline Manford had been very generous at the time of her son's
marriage. She was relieved at his settling down, and at his
seeming to understand that marriage connoted the choice of a
profession, and the adoption of what people called regular habits.
Not that Jim's irregularities had ever been such as the phrase
habitually suggests. They had chiefly consisted in his not being
able to make up his mind what to do with his life (so like his poor
father, that!), in his always forgetting what time it was, or what
engagements his mother had made for him, in his wanting a chemical
laboratory fitted up for him at Cedarledge, and then, when it was
all done, using it first as a kennel for breeding fox–terriers and
then as a quiet place to practise the violin.

Nona knew how sorely these vacillations had tried her mother, and
how reassured Mrs. Manford had been when the young man, in the heat
of his infatuation for Lita, had vowed that if she would have him
he would turn to and grind in an office like all the other
husbands.

LITA HAVE HIM! Lita Cliffe, a portionless orphan, with no one to
guide her in the world but a harum–scarum and somewhat blown–upon
aunt, the "impossible" Mrs. Percy Landish! Mrs. Manford smiled at
her son's modesty while she applauded his good resolutions. "This
experience has made a man of dear Jim," she said, mildly triumphing
in the latest confirmation of her optimism. "If only it lasts—!"
she added, relapsing into human uncertainty.

"Oh, it will, mother; you'll see; as long as Lita doesn't get tired
of him," Nona had assured her.

"As long—? But, my dear child, why should Lita ever get tired of
him? You seem to forget what a miracle it was that a girl like
Lita, with no one but poor Kitty Landish to look after her, should
ever have got such a husband!"

Nona held her ground. "Well—just look about you, mother! Don't
they almost all get tired of each other? And when they do, will
anything ever stop their having another try? Think of your big
dinners! Doesn't Maisie always have to make out a list of previous
marriages as long as a cross–word puzzle, to prevent your calling
people by the wrong names?"

Mrs. Manford waved away the challenge. "Jim and Lita are not like
that; and I don't like your way of speaking of divorce, Nona," she
had added, rather weakly for her—since, as Nona might have
reminded her, her own way of speaking of divorce varied
disconcertingly with the time, the place and the divorce.

The young girl had leisure to recall this discussion while she sat
and waited for her brother and his wife. In the freshly decorated
and studiously empty house there seemed to be no one to welcome
her. The baby (whom she had first enquired for) was asleep, his
mother hardly awake, and the head of the house still "at the
office." Nona looked about the drawing–room and wondered—the
habit was growing on her.

The drawing–room (it suddenly occurred to her) was very expressive
of the modern marriage state. It looked, for all its studied
effects, its rather nervous attention to "values," complementary
colours, and the things the modern decorator lies awake over, more
like the waiting–room of a glorified railway station than the
setting of an established way of life. Nothing in it seemed at
home or at ease—from the early kakemono of a bearded sage, on
walls of pale buff silk, to the three mourning irises isolated in a
white Sung vase in the desert of an otherwise empty table. The
only life in the room was contributed by the agitations of the
exotic goldfish in a huge spherical aquarium; and they too were but
transients, since Lita insisted on having the aquarium illuminated
night and day with electric bulbs, and the sleepless fish were
always dying off and having to be replaced.

Mrs. Manford had paid for the house and its decoration. It was not
what she would have wished for herself—she had not yet quite
caught up with the new bareness and selectiveness. But neither
would she have wished the young couple to live in the opulent
setting of tapestries and "period" furniture which she herself
preferred. Above all she wanted them to keep up; to do what the
other young couples were doing; she had even digested—in one huge
terrified gulp—Lita's black boudoir, with its welter of ebony
velvet cushions overlooked by a statue as to which Mrs. Manford
could only minimize the indecency by saying that she understood it
was Cubist. But she did think it unkind—after all she had done—
to have Nona suggest that Lita might get tired of Jim!

The idea had never really troubled Nona—at least not till lately.
Even now she had nothing definite in her mind. Nothing beyond the
vague question: what would a woman like Lita be likely to do if she
suddenly grew tired of the life she was leading? But that question
kept coming back so often that she had really wanted, that morning,
to consult her mother about it; for who else was there to consult?
Arthur Wyant? Why, poor Arthur had never been able to manage his
own poor little concerns with any sort of common sense or
consistency; and at the suggestion that any one might tire of Jim
he would be as indignant as Mrs. Manford, and without her power of
controlling her emotions.

Dexter Manford? Well—Dexter Manford's daughter had to admit that
it really wasn't his business if his step–son's marriage threatened
to be a failure; and besides, Nona knew how overwhelmed with work
her father always was, and hesitated to lay this extra burden on
him. For it would be a burden. Manford was very fond of Jim (as
indeed they all were), and had been extremely kind to him. It was
entirely owing to Manford's influence that Jim, who was regarded as
vague and unreliable, had got such a good berth in the Amalgamated
Trust Co.; and Manford had been much pleased at the way in which
the boy had stuck to his job. Just like Jim, Nona thought tenderly—
if ever you could induce him to do anything at all, he always did
it with such marvellous neatness and persistency. And the
incentive of working for Lita and the boy was enough to anchor him
to his task for life.

A new scent—unrecognizable but exquisite. In its wake came Lita
Wyant, half–dancing, half–drifting, fastening a necklace, humming a
tune, her little round head, with the goldfish–coloured hair, the
mother–of–pearl complexion and screwed–up auburn eyes, turning
sideways like a bird's on her long throat. She was astonished but
delighted to see Nona, indifferent to her husband's non–arrival,
and utterly unaware that lunch had been waiting for half an hour.

"I had a sandwich and a cocktail after my exercises. I don't
suppose it's time for me to be hungry again," she conjectured.
"But perhaps you are, you poor child. Have you been waiting long?"

"Not much! I know you too well to be punctual," Nona laughed.

Lita widened her eyes. "Are you suggesting that I'm not? Well,
then, how about your ideal brother?"

"He's down town working to keep a roof over your head and your
son's."

Lita shrugged. "Oh, a roof—I don't care much for roofs, do you—
or is it ROOVES? Not this one, at any rate." She caught Nona by
the shoulders, held her at arm's–length, and with tilted head and
persuasively narrowed eyes, demanded: "This room is AWFUL, isn't
it? Now acknowledge that it is! And Jim won't give me the money
to do it over."

"Do it over? But, Lita, you did it exactly as you pleased two
years ago!"

"Two years ago? Do you mean to say you like anything that you
liked two years ago?"

"Yes—you!" Nona retorted: adding rather helplessly: "And,
besides, everybody admires the room so much—." She stopped,
feeling that she was talking exactly like her mother.

Lita's little hands dropped in a gesture of despair. "That's just
it! EVERYBODY admires it. Even Mrs. Manford does. And when you
think what sort of things EVERYBODY admires! What's the use of
pretending, Nona? It's the typical cliché drawing–room. Every one
of the couples who were married the year we were has one like it.
The first time Tommy Ardwin saw it—you know he's the new decorator—
he said: 'Gracious, how familiar all this seems!' and began to
whistle 'Home, Sweet Home'!"

"But of course he would, you simpleton! When what he wants is to
be asked to do it over!"

Lita heaved a sigh. "If he only could! Perhaps he might reconcile
me to this house. But I don't believe anybody could do that." She
glanced about her with an air of ineffable disgust. "I'd like to
throw everything in it into the street. I've been so bored here."

Nona laughed. "You'd be bored anywhere. I wish another Tommy
Ardwin would come along and tell you what an old cliché being bored
is."

"An old cliché? Why shouldn't it be? When life itself is such a
bore? You can't redecorate life!"

"If you could, what would you begin by throwing into the street?
The baby?"

Lita's eyes woke to fire. "Don't be an idiot! You know I adore my
baby."

"Well—then Jim?"

"You know I adore my Jim!" echoed the young wife, mimicking her own
emotion.

"Hullo—that sounds ominous!" Jim Wyant came in, clearing the air
with his fresh good–humoured presence. "I fear my bride when she
says she adores me," he said, taking Nona into a brotherly embrace.

As he stood there, sturdy and tawny, a trifle undersized, with his
bright blue eyes and short blunt–nosed face, in which everything
was so handsomely modelled and yet so safe and sober, Nona fell
again to her dangerous wondering. Something had gone out of his
face—all the wild uncertain things, the violin, model–making,
inventing, dreaming, vacillating—everything she had best loved
except the twinkle in his sobered eyes. Whatever else was left now
was all plain utility. Well, better so, no doubt—when one looked
at Lita! Her glance caught her sister–in–law's face in a mirror
between two panels, and the reflection of her own beside it; she
winced a little at the contrast. At her best she had none of that
milky translucence, or of the long lines which made Lita seem in
perpetual motion, as a tremor of air lives in certain trees.
Though Nona was as tall and nearly as slim, she seemed to herself
to be built, while Lita was spun of spray and sunlight. Perhaps it
was Nona's general brownness—she had Dexter Manford's brown
crinkled hair, his strong black lashes setting her rather usual–
looking gray eyes; and the texture of her dusky healthy skin,
compared to Lita's, seemed rough and opaque. The comparison added
to her general vague sense of discouragement. "It's not one of my
beauty days," she thought.

Jim was drawing her arm through his. "Come along, my girl. Is
there going to be any lunch?" he queried, turning toward the dining–
room.

"Oh, probably. In this house the same things always happen every
day," Lita averred with a slight grimace.

"Well, I'm glad lunch does—on the days when I can make a dash up–
town for it."

"On others Lita eats goldfish food," Nona laughed.

"Luncheon is served, madam," the butler announced.

The meal, as usual under Lita's roof, was one in which delicacies
alternated with delays. Mrs. Manford would have been driven out of
her mind by the uncertainties of the service and the incoherence of
the menu; but she would have admitted that no one did a pilaff
better than Lita's cook. Gastronomic refinements were wasted on
Jim, whose indifference to the possession of the Wyant madeira was
one of his father's severest trials. ("I shouldn't have been
surprised if YOU hadn't cared, Nona; after all, you're a Manford;
but that a Wyant shouldn't have a respect for old wine!" Arthur
Wyant often lamented to her.) As for Lita, she either nibbled
languidly at new health foods, or made ravenous inroads into the
most indigestible dish presented to her. To–day she leaned back,
dumb and indifferent, while Jim devoured what was put before him as
if unaware that it was anything but canned beef; and Nona watched
the two under guarded lids.

The telephone tinkled, and the butler announced: "Mr. Manford,
madam."

Nona Manford looked up. "For me?"

"No, miss; Mrs. Wyant."

Lita was on her feet, suddenly animated. "Oh, all right…
Don't wait for me," she flung over her shoulder as she made for the
door.

"Have the receiver brought in here," Jim suggested; but she brushed
by without heeding.

"That's something new—Lita sprinting for the telephone!" Jim
laughed.

"And to talk to father!" For the life of her, Nona could not have
told why she stopped short with a vague sense of embarrassment.
Dexter Manford had always been very kind to his stepson's wife; but
then everybody was kind to Lita.

Jim's head was bent over the pilaff; he took it down in quick
undiscerning mouthfuls.

"Well, I hope he's saying something that will amuse her: nothing
seems to, nowadays."

It was on the tip of Nona's tongue to rejoin: "Oh, yes; it amuses
her to say that nothing amuses her." But she looked at her
brother's face, faintly troubled under its surface serenity, and
refrained.

Instead, she remarked on the beauty of the two yellow arums in a
bronze jar reflected in the mahogany of the dining–table. "Lita
has a genius for flowers."

"And for everything else—when she chooses!"

The door opened and Lita sauntered back and dropped into her seat.
She shook her head disdainfully at the proffered pilaff. There was
a pause.

"Well—what's the news?" Jim asked.

His wife arched her exquisite brows. "News? I expect you to
provide that. I'm only just awake."