There was now no politeness lost between us; and I had the less
reluctance to intrude upon whatever conversation they purposed having.
I took a chair removed from theirs, and resigned myself to a laceration
of the sensibilities that I hoped to conceal under glacial composure.
The Van Suydams had the gift of their imposing silence. It seemed a
long time before she remarked that it was a pleasant day. She dropped
this into the well of silence as if Eva had been a chance acquaintance.
It would not have mattered whether Eva found the day pleasant or the
reverse, as it would not have altered conditions in the drawing-room if
all storms had raged outside.
By contrast to the glazed surface of Mrs. Van Suydam’s fine
indifference, Eva’s brusqueness amounted to bravado. “I’m going to
Hollywood.”
Mrs. Van Suydam murmured: “Indeed?”
Eva must push against the erection of her mother-in-law’s
impersonality; she was not to be helped: this much was certain. She
said bluntly that she had arrived at a stalemate in her work.
“I don’t think I understand,” advanced the elder woman. “Naturally, I
know little about it.”
Eva’s resentment flared. “You’ve never let me tell you about it.”
“I took it for granted,” rejoined Mrs. Van Suydam, “that you fancied I
couldn’t understand.” She paused, and added, her face buttoned up: “I
understand much.”
Thus brought to a pause, floundering helplessly in the hugger-mugger
brought about by her mother-in-law’s will, Eva sat mute. Until this
bulwark of Nicholas’ rights presented a weak joint, there was nothing
she could do or say. And weakness of any kind, even, at the moment,
the weakness of advancing age, was hard to credit to the list of Mrs.
Van Suydam’s possibilities. She sat upright--she never lolled--gazing
blandly at her son’s wife; and if there was anything to talk over, any
loose ends left between them, it seemed a remote contingency from the
standpoint of Mrs. Van Suydam’s own understanding of the situation.
Eva, it was clear, felt a singular reluctance to speak. The elder
woman had--although one began to wonder if even this ignorance could
be accurately attributed to her--a technical ignorance of the craft of
writing; but in her choice of words when engaged in an encounter she
found no difficulty in making her shades of meaning plain. She put,
now, only the faintest accent on her “And what does my son say to this
scheme of yours?” By an inflexion she had repudiated, for all those
born of the Van Suydam blood, any knowledge whatsoever of Hollywood.
Eva’s restless glance passed from object to object in the room. The
stony eyes of the elderly lady remained fixed on her. What, she must
have asked herself with natural irritation, would be accomplished by
meeting an eye of stone? She said: “He doesn’t say.” She looked as if
she might scream: I knew that she would scream, if Mrs. Van Suydam
emitted her equivocal “Humph! Indeed!” To obviate this, I imagined,
she rushed along with “I wished to--I thought it wise to talk it over
with you.” She must have seen that Mrs. Van Suydam was making it
impossible to talk over anything; but she must also, and immediately,
have realized that she had come here because above all things she
wished to break through the crust of this old lady’s resistance, to win
from her one word of understanding, one softened glance of sympathy.
Her desire was futile; and I saw that, in order to avert tears of
weakness, of dashed hopes that only this minute she had possibly
clearly acknowledged to herself, she began talking frantically. “You
are a woman! You are a woman, too! And you’ve been married! You must
have married a man like Nick! You could understand, if you would!”
“And what, pray, am I to understand? I trust that it isn’t a question
of a divorce?” But in her eyes, which for a second blazed straight at
her daughter-in-law, there was every question between man and woman and
her revulsion to the majority of them; and by her swift advancing of
her assurance that no such thing could be in the wind she proved its
presence in her mind.
Eva’s repudiation of this contingency, while springing from selfishness
which was on the other side of the fence from that of Mrs. Van Suydam,
was of a like strength of purpose. “I assure you that there has never
been a question of such a thing coming about. This is a matter of
business solely.”
“Business? Well, that,” asserted Mrs. Van Suydam untruthfully, “is
beyond my province. I don’t--really--grasp what you mean to infer, by
mentioning business in connection with my son’s wife going to a place
like Hollywood.”
“It is purely a question of money,” Eva explained earnestly. She leaned
forward, eagerly searching the face of the elder woman.
“Yes?” Mrs. Van Suydam injected into the monosyllable her inbred
distaste for social mention of finances. She turned to me. “Mrs. Avery,
I cannot express my regret that you should have been brought--against
your will, I am sure!--into a discussion of this sort.”
“If you will let me explain----” the young woman began.
Mrs. Van Suydam made a careless gesture of repudiation. “Not called
for.”
Once more leaning forward eagerly, Eva said on a rush of desire to be
friends: “You mean that you do understand--you do really understand?”
“My dear Eva,” Mrs. Van Suydam suddenly attacked her, “why do you
always explain? Is it because you suspect that you are--usually--wrong?”
Eva was fast becoming diverted from her object in coming here. She
stirred restlessly. It must have popped into her head that she might
better take her leave without more fumbling. But she made a valiant
attempt to have her say. “It means, simply, that I must--I intend--to
tell you why I’ve made up my mind to go to Hollywood to make some
money.” And her tone, and the sparkle of her eye, said “So there!” She
knew that she was being held off; she must have felt sure that the
older woman would not listen to what she had to say; and she came back
with a counter-attack: “Why is it that you refuse to listen to me?” It
seemed to have occurred to her that if she stared hard enough she could
compel not only the old lady but herself to go through with it.
If Mrs. Van Suydam felt the force of Eva’s will, she gave no evidence
of it. She said: “I can give you no advice about schemes for making
quick money, as I believe it is called.” The faint lines of her
distaste engraved themselves around her mouth. “I can give you no
advice because I can conceive of no situation in which a wife should
not defer to the advice of her husband; and this I imagine you haven’t
done.” She smiled shrewdly. “Besides, it’s quite evident to me that
you’ve already made up your mind.”
Eva brooded drearily over the fire which crackled so genially and with
such a warmth of home. Something within her intelligence must have
said: “There’s nothing here for you.” And something else, deeper than
her intelligence, saddened her, while instinct warned her: “Get out
of this, now you know that this old woman has the power to shake you.
Preserve your future, at any cost.” This, I was sure, she considered
her integrity of purpose. She sprang to her feet and stood firmly; and
in her kindling eye I saw her thankfulness that her feet were able to
uphold her so steadily. She began her charge against this old woman. “I
see no difference,” she said with scorn, “between you and my friends.
You hold me off, and it’s for the identical reason that they hold me
off.”
Mrs. Van Suydam, who had at once revealed that she was not unprepared
for this change of mood, now raised her eyebrows in delicate detached
amusement. “I had never dreamed,” she murmured, “that the day would
come when I should be compared to ‘artists’.”
Eva was, however, in the full fling of her resentment. “You belittle me
in order to aggrandize Nick’s puny little talent! That’s what it comes
down to! You know it’s true: I can see in your eyes,” she wound up on
a high note of triumph that rang through the room, “that you know it’s
true!”
They had now reached a point over which I had vainly speculated. Did
his family appreciate Nicholas’ career as an architect? I sat more
alertly in my distant chair.
For a moment Mrs. Van Suydam was speechless. Her difficulty in
accepting this from Eva was plainly to be read on her face; but
whatever inner unsurmountable difficulty scarred her soul I could only
guess at: it might have been that of taking from Eva her own estimate
of her son. She sat with her lips implacably sealed and her lids
drooping over eyes that might be tell-tale, and had it not been for the
spots of red on her cheekbones Eva would not have been sure that she
had drawn blood; for during a period which became unbearable she said
nothing. She looked straight ahead. She might have been alone in the
room. When Eva, rushing to throw herself at her knees, cried: “Forgive
me? Forgive me?” she still did not look at her. She might not have seen
her, for all her nearness, and for all of the fact that the young woman
was weeping.
Eva laid her hand over her heart. She had got slowly to her feet and
stood hesitating near the old lady. “I’m truly sorry I said it,” she
began again to apologize. “I wish I could make you see? I don’t think
that I intend doing these things. I’m impelled by some force within
me. My life seems driven on by some force within me----” Because she
saw that Mrs. Van Suydam’s ears were closed against her, she ceased. I
realized that she wondered what to do next. But upon Mrs. Van Suydam’s
lips was now a smile of polite boredom; so she might have smiled at
simple-minded strangers who had forced their uninvited way to her
fireside and who had not there felt at home. Eva must have acknowledged
this look while she wondered at it: for how could she have bored? She
began drawing away, irresolute and looking down at the small figure in
the straight-backed chair.
At last Mrs. Van Suydam spoke. Her tone was charged with excessive
courtesy. “My dear Eva, I must ask you to leave me now. I am not
so young as I once was, and tire easily. I must lie down before I
go for my drive.” She held out her hand with a definite dismissal.
And instantly I knew that when the door of the Van Suydam mansion
should today close behind Eva it would close on all hope of a mutual
comprehension.
Eva must have so decided herself. “That’s that,” she concluded, during
the space of time that it took us to walk around the corner and along
Fifth Avenue and around another corner to the little house. “I’ve done
all I can. She’s impossible.” She enumerated the many lines along which
Mrs. Van Suydam was impossible.
As we came in sight of the little house in Eleventh Street, she made
her final effort to throw off the effects of her encounter with her
mother-in-law. “I’ll go to Hollywood, for all that,” she told me,
impressing upon her own spirit her invincible determination. She
recalled to me a recent experience: she had told Nicholas that she had
felt the rush of wings through the little house. She had said: “If I
don’t listen to those wings, what’s to become of me?” Nicholas, she
said, had merely raised one eyebrow.
She halted on the pavement and looked at the façade of her house. Her
gaze lingered. “I shall go to Hollywood,” she bolstered her courage.