The Dark Lady (30 page)

"I'm beginning to wonder if he didn't find the damsel as well."

"That's very charming of you, Mr. Clarkson. But if he did, he never knew it. He was bitter to the end."

"Yes, but he didn't see you as I do. Now."

"
Do
you see me? We've only just met. I'm the kind of person who continually looks as if she were going to be somebody's damsel. People are always putting their faith in me. And being disappointed."

"Not your constituents, I'm sure."

"Well, maybe not them. Maybe that's just the point. That I can fool
them!
" Elesina suddenly laughed. "By being what they expect! Anyway, I can try. For I have a bit of David's idealism in me, too. Just a bit, mind you. There are times when I, too, want a dragon. A small one anyway."

"Like Julius Schell?"

"Oh, he'll do. For those of us who weren't lucky enough to find a Hitler!"

"You'll gobble Schell up!"

But Eliot's expression changed now as his eyes took in something behind her. When he smiled, it was not an agreeable smile.

"Hello, Giles. Are you in politics now?"

Giles had appeared from the librarian's office with a handful of papers. As always, he seemed perfectly unsurprised.

"Hello, Eliot. You're looking very well. No, I'm not really in politics. I just help Elesina in any way I can. I guess that's what we all end up doing, isn't it?"

"Not I, thank you."

Here it was again, Elesina reflected with dry amusement. Clarkson had not been in the room two minutes, and he was repudiating her already! She smiled with deliberate artificiality.

"Why, Professor Clarkson, how ungallant of you! Now that you've been thrown into the issue, why not join me?"

"Because, my dear Mrs. Stein, if I have moved somewhat to the right of my former position, I am still many light-years away from even a liberal Republican. But in the McCarthy matter I will help you any way I can. The best way, no doubt, is for me to remove myself entirely." He turned now to go. "Giles will know where to reach me if there is anything I can sign."

"But surely we can meet sometime?"

"Oh, Eliot, say yes! You'll adore Elesina."

Eliot glanced coolly from Elesina to his former friend. "I assume you knew of my relationship with Giles?"

Elesina nodded, still smiling. "Ivy Trask took care of that. What does it matter?"

"It doesn't, of course," Eliot shrugged. "But let me depart on a Shakespearean note. The Steins always went out on that. We're in
Twelfth Night.
Only Olivia prevails over the Duke!"

Giles turned a bland countenance to Elesina. "Isn't he horrid?" he asked calmly. When he turned back, Eliot was gone.

Elesina won the nomination by a very small margin and the election by a larger one. The district was prevailingly Republican, and the Democratic candidate a political hack drafted to fight a losing battle that no abler party leader cared to take on. The only real issue had been that raised by Julius Schell about Elesina's supposed communist connections. What had brought her to national attention was not the accusation of this, which was easily rebutted, but her refusal to limit her denial to the simple fact that she had not known Eliot Clarkson. Instead, she had chosen to attack the whole McCarthy technique of character assassination. Her beauty and eloquence had created a sensation wherever she had spoken. People hissed and people applauded, but it did not make much difference which. They listened, that was the point; she was always stage center. She was at last a star. The tall dark-haired lady with the challenging eyes and the uplifted arm made the cover of
Life.

The week after the election, when Elesina had gone with her mother for a few days' needed vacation to Hobe Sound, Ivy received a visit from Ruth at Broadlawns. Elesina's daughter, now Mrs. Robert Pix, was like a piece of expensive pink stationery on which an obscene note had been written; those round fat cheeks and pale blue eyes had been made for cheer and not complaint. Her business with Ivy, as always, was financial. Elesina was perfectly willing to help her daughter whenever necessary, but not to listen to her lamentations. Ivy had brought Ruth quickly to the point with a promise of needed assistance, and now they had a moment to chat.

"What do you think of your mother's success?"

"What can I think? Triumph after triumph! She's way beyond us now." Ruth gave a little wave of her hand to indicate the sweep of Elesina's arc and at the same time slightly to denigrate it.

"And the victory is not just here below. I seem to hear the chorus of the angels on high in solemn
'Te Deum.'
"

Ruth smiled sourly. "You're always so sarcastic, Ivy. Do you admire nothing?"

"I echo your thoughts, honey. But, seriously, there's no stopping your mother now. Her timing is perfect. Politics is like surf bathing. You have only to watch the breakers. I had an uncle who used to tell me a warning story. He said that in the eighteen nineties every observing man could see that the future belonged to the automobile. So he bought shares in all the companies that were making them—there were seventeen, I believe. And do you know what? He lost his shirt! Because the big boys rode in on the second wave and knocked out the beginners."

"I take it you believe that we're in the second wave of anti-McCarthyism."

"Elesina has just proved it! Oh, it will take a while yet, but the signs are sure. People are getting tired of being ranted at. Your mother knows just how to hop about in that turbulent water, waving her lovely arms and giving an occasional shriek and knowing all the while she's as safe as a rubber ball."

Ruth's steady gaze intimated that even she did not want to annihilate the maternal image. "Are you saying that nobody's been really hurt by McCarthy?"

"No, dear, of course not. All those poor actors and radio people who had no savings and got blacklisted—they were ruined, I know. But people like Elesina have nothing to lose. The only trick is to get your licks in before the world knows it's a paper dragon. And, oh, the bliss of it, Ruth!" Ivy jumped to her feet and raised an arm in a brutal parody of Elesina's dramatic gesture. "Think of it! To stand before the howling crowd, a beautiful martyr, and receive only a little spray of slander on the cheek! And to know that that spray will soon turn to incense! Oh, if Joe McCarthy had never lived..."

"Mummie would have invented him, I suppose," Ruth finished for her dryly. "I think you go too far, Ivy. Do you have to hate being good to be good?"

Ivy looked at her bitterly. "She'll bring
you
over to her side easily enough. If she ever has five minutes to spare for it."

"Mummie's side? What makes you think I'm not on Mummie's side? Just because I criticize her..."

"Oh, skip it, skip it."

"Ivy, you're in such a funny mood! This ought to be your finest hour. Why should you be so jaundiced?"

"Because it's not my finest hour, even though it should be. I missed the boat, Ruth. I didn't think the time had come to attack McCarthy."

"What does that matter? So long as Mummie did?"

"Because she did it against my advice!" Ivy exclaimed fiercely. "She proved me wrong. Worse than that, she proved me useless!"

"Anyone can make a mistake."

"Not me. And it's more than that. Your mother has outgrown me. She doesn't want me around—to remind her."

"You don't mean she's dropping you?"

"I mean I'm not going to Washington." Ivy gave a little groan as the full effect of her own words struck her. She buried her face suddenly in her hands. "I'm to stay here and manage Broadlawns."

Even Ruth was capable, for once, of taking in a sorrow that was not her own. "Oh, Ivy," she murmured. "That
is
bitchy."

"No, no, Elesina is right. Elesina is my pupil, my star. I wouldn't want her to behave any differently. She's outgrown me, and she knows it. And
I
know it! She wouldn't be my pupil if she didn't keep growing. So let her keep on." Ivy slumped back in her chair. "Besides, she has Giles."

"Giles?"

"Giles Bennett. She's using him more and more. On her campaign, at Broadlawns. She's taken him off
Tone
altogether. He's perfect for her."

"But, Ivy, isn't he just a silly little pansy?"

"He's not a bit silly. And he learns fast. He's what your mother's always wanted."

"You mean as an assistant?"

"I mean as a lover!" Ivy cried brutally. "Oh, Ruth, you're such an ass. I'm sorry to say it, but you are. You put people in drawers. Young men like Giles are perfectly capable of making love to older women. He sees Elesina as the mother he's always wanted, and she pets him like a kitten, and they get cozier and cozier, and the first thing you know they're in the sack together, having really quite a lovely time!"

"Ivy!" Ruth's eyes shivered with disgust. "How can you? Mummie must be thirty years older than Giles!"

"Oh, go home, Ruth. You've never understood your mother. I tell you, she doesn't want a man. She wants a poodle! And she's got one. They're perfect for each other!"

"I think I
will
go home. And I assure you, I don't believe a word you've said!"

When Ruth had gone, Ivy sat for a long time without moving. She thought of the old family place in Auburn and of all the uncles and aunts. She thought of Washington and of Edouardo. She thought of the years with
Tone.
One had to judge life by the hand one was dealt; hers had had no quick tricks. What she had done she had done with nerve and grit, with spit and sealing wax. If in the end there was nobody to applaud but Ivy Trask, who else could there have been?

Nothing had to be put in order, for everything was in order. The photographs of her parents, looking absurdly young, she took from the desk and placed in a drawer. Then she straightened the objects on her blotter, placing the paper cutter which she had never used exactly parallel to the scissors which she had never used.

"Tell Alfred to be ready to take me to the station," she telephoned her secretary. "I'm going into New York."

"Can't he drive you in, Miss Trask?"

Ivy paused. Ordinarily she did not take the Broadlawns cars so far from their base. "Well, why not?"

Passing into the patio she paused to watch the visitors coming in and out of the rooms opened to the public. She noticed, standing before the marble bust of David Stein, an elderly woman of ample frame, evidently in the deepest meditation. The stillness of her erect, darkly garbed figure isolated her from the nervous females who poked about the patio making estimates of the costs of things. It was Clara Stein. Ivy went up to her. Clara's features had lost none of their high serenity.

"Are we still enemies, Clara?"

"I was hoping not to see you. But of course I knew I might. And I knew if I did, you'd ask me that. So I have my answer ready. Somebody asked Talleyrand the same question about himself and Lafayette. 'After seventy there are no enemies,' he replied, 'only survivors.'"

"Yes, we've survived a lot," Ivy said grimly.

"I came to see the bust of David."

"Do you like it?"

"Very much."

"I don't. It isn't David to me." Ivy shrugged as she saw the look of proprietary surprise in the eyes of the subject's mother. "I know. You think you own him. But nobody owns the dead. The sculptor who did it never saw him, you know. He worked from photographs. But what he did was the bust of a hero. He saw, quite correctly, that that was what Elesina wanted."

"But David
was
a hero!"

"Heroes are banal. To me, anyway. That was what you all wanted out of poor David, a blond, blue-eyed hero to convince you there was something in life worth living for besides your tawdry selves. Take Irving. David was going to justify his mishmash of compromises. And yourself. David was going to prove that your marriage had not been entirely futile. And for Elesina—he was the love she could never feel. And for Eliot—he was a man. There it is, all in that pretty bust, the young Apollo, ready to fly into the wild blue yonder!"

"You're very articulate."

"I've lived with that piece of statuary for five years now."

"And what was my son to
you,
Ivy Trask?"

"Oh, to me he was a cute little Jewish boy with an infectious laugh. But at least for me he lived, the poor darling. For the rest of you he just died."

Clara surveyed Ivy now with something like curiosity mingled with her disdain. "You take a very high tone to someone whose life you ruined."

"I didn't ruin your life, Clara. You were half dead, and I awakened you. You could still have lived. There was time."

"Lived? Like you, I suppose."

"No, not like me. I've failed."

"How have you failed? Aren't you mistress here, where I was? Haven't you got precisely what you were willing to rob and murder for?"

"Those are strong terms."

"I don't think so." There was a faint tremor in Clara's serenity now. "You've been very frank with me. I should be the same with you. If you had never come to Broadlawns neither Irving nor David would have died when they did. I repeat: how have you failed?"

"I've lost Elesina."

"Perhaps there is a God, then, after all."

Ivy threw back her head and cackled. "Oh, Clara, you can believe it! Your God is going to have some very good news for you!"

Ivy left her abruptly now and strode to the front hall. Alfred was already there. Instead of sitting in front with him and picking up useful bits of gossip about the help, as she usually did when traveling alone, she sat in the back of the limousine and closed the glass partition. Alfred made no comment about this, for nobody in Broadlawns ever questioned the actions of Ivy Trask. All the way to New York she looked out the window and wondered at the vividness of the landscape. She might have been seeing it for the first time.

At the Althorpe she told Alfred to return to Broadlawns.

"And, Alfred..."

"Yes, Madam?"

"Goodbye. I shan't be coming back."

She turned away from his astonished face and entered the building. The old elevator seemed slower than usual. In her apartment, which was hot and musty, she went to the big window and threw it open. Immediately the room was filled with a cold wind. Ivy felt her heart beating very fast, and she stood motionless until it had calmed down. Then she began to talk aloud to herself: