“Well, I am not superstitious,” said Mr. Lippincott, “and the view from your property is quite magnificent.” He hesitated. “I only hope that when you come to move into your house to live there, that Ellie will not hear too many of these stories that are going about.”
“I’ll keep everything from her that I can,” I said. “I don’t suppose anybody will say anything to her.”
“People in country villages are very fond of repeating stories of that kind,” said Mr. Lippincott. “And Ellie, remember, is not as tough as you are, Michael. She can be influenced easily. Only in some ways. Which brings me—” he stopped without going on to say what he had been going to. He tapped on the table with one finger. “I’m going to speak to you now on a matter of some difficulty. You said just now that you had not met this Greta Andersen.”
“No, as I said, I haven’t met her yet.”
“Odd. Very curious.”
“Well?” I looked at him inquiringly.
“I should have thought you’d have been almost sure to have met her,” he said slowly. “How much do you know about her?”
“I know that she’s been with Ellie some time.”
“She has been with Ellie since Ellie was seventeen. She has occupied a post of some responsibility and trust. She came first to the States in the capacity of secretary and companion. A kind of chaperone to Ellie when Mrs. van Stuyvesant, her stepmother, was away from home, which I may say was a quite frequent occurrence.” He spoke particularly dryly when he said this. “She is, I gather, a well-born girl with excellent references, half-Swedish half-German. Ellie became, quite naturally, very much attached to her.”
“So I gather,” I said.
“In some way Ellie was, I suppose, almost too much attached to her. You don’t mind my saying that?”
“No. Why should I mind? As a matter of fact I’ve—well, I’ve thought so myself once or twice. Greta this and Greta that. I got—well, I know I’ve no business to, but I used to get fed up sometimes.”
“And yet she expressed no wish for you to meet Greta?”
“Well,” I said, “it’s rather difficult to explain. But I think, yes, I think she probably did suggest it in a mild way once or twice but, well, we were too taken up with having met each other. Besides, oh well, I suppose I didn’t really want to meet Greta. I didn’t want to share Ellie with anyone.”
“I see. Yes, I see. And Ellie did not suggest Greta being present at your wedding?”
“She did suggest it,” I said.
“But—but you didn’t want her to come. Why?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know. I just felt that this Greta, this girl or woman I’d never met, she was always horning in on everything. You know, arranging Ellie’s life for her. Sending post-cards and letters and filling in for Ellie, arranging a whole itinerary and passing it on to the family. I felt that Ellie was dependent on Greta in a way, that she let Greta run her, that she wanted to do everything that Greta wanted. I—oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Lippincott, I oughtn’t to be saying all these things perhaps. Say I was just plain jealous. Anyway I blew up and I said I didn’t want Greta at the wedding, that the wedding was ours, that it was just our business and nobody else’s. And so we went along to the Registrar’s office and his clerk and the typist from his office were the two witnesses. I dare say it was mean of me to refuse to have Greta there, but I wanted to have Ellie to myself.”
“I see. Yes, I see, and I think, if I may say so, that you were wise, Michael.”
“You don’t like Greta either,” I said shrewdly.
“You can hardly use the word ‘either,’ Michael, if you have not even met her.”
“No, I know but, well, I mean if you hear a lot about a person you can form some sort of idea of them, some judgment of them. Oh well, call it plain jealousy. Why don’t you like Greta?”
“This is without prejudice,” said Mr. Lippincott, “but you are Ellie’s husband, Michael, and I have Ellie’s happiness very much at heart. I don’t think that the influence that Greta has over Ellie is a very desirable one. She takes too much upon herself.”
“Do you think she’ll try and make trouble between us?” I asked.
“I think,” said Mr. Lippincott, “that I have no right to say anything of that kind.”
He sat looking cautiously at me, and blinking like a wrinkled old tortoise.
I didn’t know quite what to say next. He spoke first, choosing his words with some care.
“There has been, then, no suggestion that Greta Andersen might take up her residence with you?”
“Not if I can help it,” I said.
“Ah. So that is what you feel? The idea has been mooted.”
“Ellie did say something of the kind. But we’re newly married, Mr. Lippincott. We want our house—our new home—to ourselves. Of course she’ll come and stay sometimes, I suppose. That’ll only be natural.”
“As you say, that would be only natural. But you realize, perhaps, that Greta is going to be in a somewhat difficult position as regards further employment. I mean, it is not a question of what Ellie thinks of her, but of what the people who engaged her and reposed trust in her feel.”
“You mean that you or Mrs. van What’s-her-name won’t recommend her for another post of the same kind?”
“They are hardly likely to do so except so far as to satisfy purely legal requirements.”
“And you think that she’ll want to come to England and live on Ellie.”
“I don’t want to prejudice you too much against her. After all, this is mostly in my mind. I dislike some of the things she has done and the way she has done them. I think that Ellie who has a very generous heart will be upset at having, shall we say, blighted Greta’s prospects in many ways. She might impulsively insist on her coming to live with you.”
“I don’t think Ellie will insist,” I said slowly. I sounded a little worried all the same, and I thought Lippincott noticed it. “But couldn’t we—Ellie, I mean—couldn’t Ellie pension her off?”
“We should not put it precisely like that,” said Mr. Lippincott. “There is a suggestion of age about pensioning anyone off and Greta is a young woman, and I may say a very handsome young woman. Beautiful, in fact,” he added in a deprecating, disapproving voice. “She’s very attractive to men, too.”
“Well, perhaps she’ll marry,” I said. “If she’s all that, why hasn’t she got married before this?”
“There have been people attracted, I believe, but she has not considered them. I think, however, that your suggestion is a very sound one. I think it might be carried out in a way that would not hurt anyone’s susceptibilities. It might seem quite a natural thing to do on Ellie’s having attained her majority and having had her marriage helped on by Greta’s good offices—settle a sum of money upon her in a fit of gratitude.” Mr. Lippincott made the last two words sound as sour as lemon juice.
“Well, then, that’s all right,” I said cheerfully.
“Again I see that you are an optimist. Let us hope that Greta will accept what is offered to her.”
“Why shouldn’t she? She’d be mad if she didn’t.”
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Lippincott. “I should say it would be extraordinary if she did not accept, and they will remain on terms of friendship, of course.”
“You think—what do you think?”
“I would like to see her influence over Ellie broken,” said Mr. Lippincott. He got up. “You will, I hope, assist me and do everything you can to further that end?”
“You bet I will,” I said. “The last thing I want is to have Greta in our pockets all the time.”
“You might change your mind when you see her,” said Mr. Lippincott.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I don’t like managing females, however efficient and even handsome they are.”
“Thank you, Michael, for listening to me so patiently. I hope you will give me the pleasure of dining with me, both of you. Possibly next Tuesday even
ing? Cora van Stuyvesant and Frank Barton will probably be in London by that time.”
“And I’ve got to meet them, I suppose?”
“Oh yes, that will be quite inevitable.” He smiled at me and this time his smile seemed more genuine than it had before. “You mustn’t mind too much,” he said. “Cora, I expect, will be very rude to you. Frank will be merely tactless. Reuben won’t be over just at present.”
I didn’t know who Reuben was—another relation I supposed.
I went across to the connecting doors and opened them. “Come on, Ellie,” I said, “the grilling is over.”
She came back in the room and looked quickly from Lippincott to myself, then she went across and kissed him.
“Dear Uncle Andrew,” she said. “I can see you’ve been nice to Michael.”
“Well, my dear, if I weren’t nice to your husband you wouldn’t have much use for me in the future, would you? I do reserve the right to give a few words of advice now and then. You’re very young you know, both of you.”
“All right,” said Ellie, “we’ll listen patiently.”
“Now, my dear, I’d like to have a word with you if I may.”
“My turn to be odd man out,” I said, and I too went into the bedroom.
I shut the two double doors ostentatiously but I opened the inner one again after I got inside. I hadn’t been as well brought up as Ellie so I felt a bit anxious to find out how double-faced Mr. Lippincott might turn out to be. But actually there was nothing I need have listened to. He gave Ellie one or two wise words of advice. He said she must realize that I might find it difficult to be a poor man married to a rich wife and then he went on to sound her about making a settlement on Greta. She agreed to it eagerly and said she’d been going to ask him that herself. He also suggested that she should make an additional settlement on Cora van Stuyvesant.
“There is no earthly need that you should do so,” he said. “She has been very well provided for in the matter of alimony from several husbands. And she is as you know paid an income, though not a very big one, from the trust fund left by your grandfather.”
“But you think I ought to give her more still?”
“I think there is no legal or moral obligation to do so. What I think is that you will find her far less tiresome and shall I say catty if you do so. I should make it in the form of an increased income, which you could revoke at any time. If you find that she has been spreading malicious rumours about Michael or yourself or your life together, the knowledge that you can do that will keep her tongue free of those more poisonous barbs that she so well knows how to plant.”
“Cora has always hated me,” said Ellie. “I’ve known that.” She added rather shyly, “You do like Mike, don’t you, Uncle Andrew?”
“I think he’s an extremely attractive young man,” said Mr. Lippincott. “And I can quite see how you came to marry him.”
That, I suppose, was as good as I could expect. I wasn’t really his type and I knew it. I eased the door gently to and in a minute or two Ellie came to fetch me.
We were both standing saying good-bye to Lippincott when there was a knock on the door and a page boy came in with a telegram. Ellie took it and opened it. She gave a little surprised cry of pleasure.
“It’s Greta,” she said, “she’s arriving in London tonight and she’ll be coming to see us tomorrow. How lovely.” She looked at us both. “Isn’t it?” she said.
She saw two sour faces and heard two polite voices saying, one: “Yes indeed, my dear,” the other one, “Of course.”
Eleven
I had been out shopping the next morning and I arrived back at the hotel rather later than I had meant. I found Ellie sitting in the central lounge and opposite her was a tall blonde young woman. In fact Greta. Both of them were talking nineteen to the dozen.
I’m never any hand at describing people but I’ll have a shot at describing Greta. To begin with one couldn’t deny that she was, as Ellie had said, very beautiful and also, as Mr. Lippincott had reluctantly admitted, very handsome. The two things are not exactly the same. If you say a woman is handsome it does not mean that actually you yourself admire her. Mr. Lippincott, I gathered, had not admired Greta. All the same when Greta walked across the lounge into a hotel or in a restaurant, men’s heads turned to look at her. She was a Nordic type of blonde with pure gold-corn-coloured hair. She wore it piled high on her head in the fashion of the time, not falling straight down on each side of her face in the Chelsea tradition. She looked what she was, Swedish or north German. In fact, pin on a pair of wings and she could have gone to a fancy dress ball as a Valkyrie. Her eyes were a bright clear blue and her contours were admirable. Let’s admit it. She was something!
I came along to where they were sitting and joined them, greeting them both in what I hope was a natural, friendly manner, though I couldn’t help feeling a bit awkward. I’m not always very good at acting a part. Ellie said immediately:
“At last, Mike, this is Greta.”
I said I guessed it might be, in a rather facetious, not very happy manner. I said:
“I’m very glad to meet you at last, Greta.”
Ellie said:
“As you know very well, if it hadn’t been for Greta we would never have been able to get married.”
“All the same we’d have managed it somehow,” I said.
“Not if the family had come down on us like a ton of coals. They’d have broken it up somehow. Tell me, Greta, have they been very awful?” Ellie asked. “You haven’t written or said anything to me about that.”
“I know better,” said Greta, “than to write to a happy couple when they’re on their honeymoon.”
“But were they very angry with you?”
“Of course! What do you imagine? But I was prepared for that, I can assure you.”
“What have they said or done?”
“Everything they could,” said Greta cheerfully. “Starting with the sack naturally.”
“Yes, I suppose that was inevitable. But—but what have you done? After all they can’t refuse to give you references.”
“Of course they can. And after all, from their point of view I was placed in a position of trust and abused it shamefully.” She added, “Enjoyed abusing it too.”
“But what are you going to do now?”
“Oh I’ve got a job ready to walk into.”
“In New York?”
“No. Here in London. Secretarial.”
“But are you all right?”
“Darling Ellie,” said Greta, “how can I not be all right with that lovely cheque you sent me in anticipation of what was going to happen when the balloon went up?”
Her English was very good with hardly any trace of accent though she used a lot of colloquial terms which sometimes didn’t run quite right.
“I’ve seen a bit of the world, fixed myself up in London and bought a good many things as well.”
“Mike and I have bought a lot of things too,” said Ellie, smiling at the recollection.
It was true. We’d done ourselves pretty well with our continental shopping. It was really wonderful that we had dollars to spend, no niggling Treasury restrictions. Brocades and fabrics in Italy for the house. And we’d bought pictures too, both in Italy and in Paris, paying what seemed fabulous sums for them. A whole world had opened up to me that I’d never dreamt would have come my way.
“You both look remarkably happy,” said Greta.
“You haven’t seen our house yet,” said Ellie. “It’s going to be wonderful. It’s going to be just like we dreamed it would be, isn’t it, Mike?”
“I have seen it,” said Greta. “The first day I got back to England I hired a car and drove down there.”
“Well?” said Ellie.
I said Well? too.
“Well,” said Greta consideringly. She shifted her head from side to side.
Ellie looked grief-stricken, horribly taken aback. But I wasn’t taken in. I saw at once that Greta was h
aving a bit of fun with us. If the thought of fun wasn’t very kind, it hardly had time to take root. Greta burst out laughing, a high musical laugh that made people turn their heads and look at us.
“You should have seen your faces,” she said, “especially yours, Ellie. I have to tease you just a little. It’s a wonderful house, lovely. That man’s a genius.”
“Yes,” I said, “he’s something out of the ordinary. Wait till you meet him.”
“I have met him,” said Greta. “He was down there the day I went. Yes, he’s an extraordinary person. Rather frightening, don’t you think?”
“Frightening?” I said, surprised. “In what way?”
“Oh I don’t know. It’s as though he looks through you and—well, sees right through to the other side. That’s always disconcerting.” Then she added, “He looks rather ill.”
“He is ill. Very ill,” I said.
“What a shame. What’s the matter with him, tuberculosis, something like that?”
“No,” I said, “I don’t think it’s tuberculosis. I think it’s something to do with—oh with blood.”
“Oh I see. Doctors can do almost anything nowadays, can’t they, unless they kill you first while they’re trying to cure you. But don’t let’s think of that. Let’s think of the house. When will it be finished?”
“Quite soon, I should think, by the look of it. I’d never imagined a house could go up so quickly,” I said.
“Oh,” said Greta carelessly, “that’s money. Double shifts and bonuses—all the rest of it. You don’t really know yourself, Ellie, how wonderful it is to have all the money you have.”
But I did know. I had been learning, learning a great deal in the last few weeks. I’d stepped as a result of marriage into an entirely different world and it wasn’t the sort of world I’d imagined it to be from the outside. So far in my life, a lucky double had been my highest knowledge of affluence. A whack of money coming in, and spending it as fast as I could on the biggest blowout I could find. Crude, of course. The crudeness of my class. But Ellie’s world was a different world. It wasn’t what I should have thought it to be. Just more and more super luxury. It wasn’t bigger bathrooms and larger houses and more electric light fittings and bigger meals and faster cars. It wasn’t just spending for spending’s sake and showing off to everyone in sight. Instead, it was curiously simple. The sort of simplicity that comes when you get beyond the point of splashing for splashing’s sake. You don’t want three yachts or four cars and you can’t eat more than three meals a day and if you buy a really top-price picture you don’t want more than perhaps one of them in a room. It’s as simple as that. Whatever you have is just the best of its kind, not so much because it is the best, but because there is no reason if you like or want any particular thing, why you shouldn’t have it. There is no moment when you say, “I’m afraid I can’t afford that one.” So in a strange way it makes sometimes for such a curious simplicity that I couldn’t understand it. We were considering a French Impressionist picture, a Cézanne, I think it was. I had to learn that name carefully. I always mixed it up with a tzigane which I gather is a gipsy orchestra. And then as we walked along the streets of Venice, Ellie stopped to look at some pavement artists. On the whole they were doing some terrible pictures for tourists which all looked the same. Portraits with great rows of shining teeth and usually blonde hair falling down their necks.