Linda Condon Part 1

Linda Condon.

by Joseph Hergesheimer.

I

A black bang was, but not ultimately, the most notable feature of her uncommon personality--straight and severe and dense across her clear pale brow and eyes. Her eyes were the last thing to remember and wonder about; in shade blue, they had a velvet richness, a poignant intensity of lovely color, that surprised the heart. Aside from that she was slim, perhaps ten years old, and graver than gay.

Her mother was gay for them both, and, therefore, for the entire family.

No father was in evidence; he was dead and never spoken of, and Linda was the only child. Linda's dresses, those significant trivialities, plainly showed two tendencies--the gaiety of her mother and her own always formal gravity. If Linda appeared at dinner, in the ma.s.sive Renaissance materialism of the hotel dining-room, with a preposterous magenta hair-ribbon on her shapely head, her mother had succeeded in expressing her sense of the appropriately decorative; while if Linda wore an unornamented but equally "unsuitable" frock of dark velvet, she, in her turn, had been vindicated.

Again, but far more rarely, the child's selection was evident on the woman. As a rule Mrs. Condon garbed her flamboyant body in large and expensive patterns or extremely tailored suits; and of the two, the evening satins and powdered arms barely retaining an admissible line, and the suits, the latter were the most, well--spectacular.

She was not dark in color but brightly golden; a gold, it must be said in all honesty, her own, a metallic gold crisply and solidly marcelled; with hazel-brown eyes, and a mouth which, set against her daughter's deep-blue gaze, was her particular attraction. It was rouged to a nicety, the under lip a little full and never quite against the upper.

If Linda's effect was cool and remote, Mrs. Condon, thanks to her mouth, was rea.s.suringly imminent. She was, too, friendly; she talked to women--in her not overfrequent opportunities--in a rapid warm inaccurate confession of almost everything they desired to hear. The women, of course, were continually hampered by the unfortunate fact that the questions nearest their hearts, or curiosity, were entirely inadmissible.

Viewed objectively, they all, with the exception of Linda, seemed alike; but that might have been due to their common impressive setting. The Bos...o...b.., in its way, was as lavish as Mrs. Condon's dresses. The main place of congregation, for instance, was a great s.p.a.ce of white marble columns, Turkey-red carpet and growing palms. It was lighted at night indirectly by alabaster bowls hanging on gilded chains--a soft bright flood of radiance falling on the seated or slowly promenading women with bare shoulders.

Usually they were going with a restrained sharp eagerness toward the dining-room or leaving it in a more languid flushed repletion. There were, among them, men; but somehow the men never seemed to be of the least account. It was a women's paradise. The glow from above always emphasized the gowns, the gowns like orchids and tea-roses and the leaves of magnolias. It sparkled in the red and green and crystal jewels like exotic dew scattered over the exotic human flowers. Very occasionally there was a complacent or irritable masculine utterance, and then it was immediately lost in the dominant feminine sibilance.

Other children than Linda sped in the manner of brilliant fretful tops literally on the elaborate outskirts of the throng; but they were as different from her as she was from the elders. Indeed Linda resembled the latter, rather than her proper age, remarkably. She had an air of responsibility, sometimes expressed in a troubled frown, and again by the way she hurried sedately through drifting figures toward a definite purpose and end.

Usually it was in the service of one of her mother's small innumerable requests or necessities; if the latter were sitting with a gentleman on the open hotel promenade that overlooked the sea and needed a heavier wrap, Linda returned immediately with a furred cloak on her arm; if the elder, going out after dinner, had brought down the wrong gloves, Linda knew the exact wanted pair in the long perfumed box; while countless trifles were needed from the convenient drug-store.

The latter was a place of white mosaic floor and glittering gla.s.s, with a marble counter heaped with vivid fruit and silver-covered bowls of sirups and creams with chopped nuts. Linda often found time to stop here for a delectable gla.s.s of a.s.sorted sweet compounds. She was on terms of intimacy with the colored man in a crisp linen coat who presided over the refreshments, and he invariably gave her an extra spoonful of the marron paste she preferred. When at lunch, it might be, she cared for very little, her mother would complain absently:

"You must stop eating those sickening mixtures. They'd ruin any skin."

At this she invariably found the diminutive mirror in the bag on her lap and glanced at her own slightly improved color. The burden of the feminine conversations in which Mrs. Condon was privileged to join, Linda discovered, was directed toward these overwhelming considerations of appearance. And their importance, communicated to her, resulted in a struggle between the desire to preserve her skin from ruin and the seductions of marron paste and maple chocolates.

Now, with an uncomfortable sense of impending disaster, she would hastily consume one or the other; again, supported by a beginning self-imposed inflexibility, she would turn steadily away from temptation. In the end the latter triumphed; and her normal appet.i.te, always moderate, was unimpaired.

This spirit of resolution, it sometimes happened, was a cause of humorous dismay to her mother. "I declare, Linda," she would observe with an air of helplessness, "you make me feel like the giddy one and as if you were mama. It's the way you look, so disapproving. I have to remind myself you're only--just how old are you? I keep forgetting."

Linda would inform her exactly and the other sigh:

"The years slip around disgustingly. It seems only yesterday I was at my first party." Usually, in spite of Linda's eagerness to hear of that time when her mother was a girl, the elder would stop abruptly. On rare occasions solitary facts emerged from the recalled existence of a small town in the country. There were such details as buggy-riding and prayer-meetings and excursions to a Boiling Springs where the dancing-floor, open among the trees, was splendid. At these memories Mrs. Condon had been known to cry.

But she would recover shortly. Her emotions were like that--easily roused, highly colored and soon forgotten. She forgot, Linda realized leniently, a great deal. It wasn't safe to rely on her promises.

However, if she neglected a particular desire of Linda's, she continually brought back unexpected gifts of candy, boxes of silk stockings, or lovely half-wilted flowers.

The flowers, they discovered, although they stayed fresh for a long while pinned to Linda's slim waist, died almost at once if worn by her mother. "It's my warm nature, I am certain," the latter proclaimed to her daughter; "while you are a little refrigerator. I must say it's wonderful how you keep your clothes the same. Neat as a pin." Somehow, with this commendation, she managed to include a slight uncomplimentary impatience. Linda didn't specially want to resemble a pin, a disagreeable object with a sharp point. She considered this in the long periods when, partly by preference, she was alone.

Seated, perhaps, in the elaborate marble and deep red of the Bos...o...b..'s reception-rooms, isolated in the brilliant expensive throng, she would speculate over what pa.s.sed in the light of her own special problems. But nothing, really, came out to her satisfaction. There was, notably, no one she might ask. Her mother, approached seriously, declared that Linda gave her the creeps; while others made it plain that it was their duty to repress the forwardness inevitable from the scandalous neglect of her upbringing.

They, the women of the Bos...o...b.., glancing at their finger-nails stained and buffed to a s.h.i.+ning pale vermilion, lightly rubbing their rings on the dry palm of a hand, wondered pessimistically within Linda's hearing what could come out of such an a.s.sociation. That term, she vaguely gathered, referred to her mother. The latter evidently interested them tremendously; because, she explained, they had no affairs of their own to attend to. This was perfectly clear to Linda until Mrs. Condon further characterized them as "busy."

The women, stopped by conventions from really satisfactory investigation at the source, drew her on occasion into a laboriously light inquisition. How long would Linda and her mama stay at the Bos...o...b..? Had they closed their apartment? Where was it? Hadn't Mrs. Condon mentioned Cleveland? Wasn't Linda lonely with her mama out so much--they even said late--in rolling chairs? Had she ever seen Mr. Jasper before his arrival last week?

No, of course she hadn't.

Here they exchanged skeptical glances beneath relentlessly pulled eyebrows. He was really very nice, Mr. Jasper. Linda in a matter-of-fact voice replied that he had given her a twenty-dollar gold piece. Mr.

Jasper was very generous. But perhaps he had rewarded her for being a good little girl and not--not bothering or hanging about. "Why should he?" was Linda's just perceptibly impatient response. Then they told her to be quiet because they wanted to listen to the music.

This consisted in studying, through suspended gla.s.ses in chased platinum, a discreet programme. At the end of a selection they either applauded condescendingly or told each other that they hadn't cared for that last--really too peculiar. Whichever happened, the leader of the small orchestra, an extravagant Italian with a supple waist, turned and bowed repeatedly with a grimacing smile. The music, usually Viennese, was muted and emotional; its strains blended perfectly with the floating scents of the women and the faintly perceptible pungent odors of dinner.

Every little while a specially insinuating melody became, apparently, tangled in the women's breathing, and their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, cunningly traced and caressed in tulle, would be disturbed.

Mrs. Condon applauded more vigorously than was sanctioned by the others'

necessity for elegance; the frank clapping of her pink palms never failed to betray a battery of affected and significant surprise in eyes like--polished cold agates. Linda, seated beside her parent, could be seen to lay a hand, narrow and blanched and marked by an emerald, on the elder's knee. Her pale fine lips moved rapidly with the shadow of trouble beneath the intense black bang.

"I wish you wouldn't do it so loudly, mother," was what she whispered.

II

The jealously guarded truth was that, by her daughter at least, Mrs.

Condon was adored. Linda observed that she was not like an ordinary mother, but more nearly resembled a youthful companion. Mrs. Condon's gaiety was as genuine as her fair hair. Not kept for formal occasion, it got out of bed with her, remained through the considerable difficulties of dressing with no maid but Linda, and if the other were not asleep called a cheerful or funny good night.

Their rooms were separated by a bath, but Linda was scarcely ever in her own--her mother's lovely things, acting like a magnet, constantly drew her to their arrangement in the drawers. When the laundry came up, crisp and fragile webs heaped on the bed, Linda laid it away in a sort of ritual. Even with these publicly invisible garments a difference of choice existed between the two: Mrs. Condon's preference was for insertions, and Linda's for shadow embroidery and fine sh.e.l.l edges. Mrs.

Condon, shaking into position a foam of ribbon and lace, would say with her gurgle of amus.e.m.e.nt, "I want to be ready when I fall down; if I followed your advice they'd take me for a nun."

This brought out Linda's low clear laugh, the expression of her extreme happiness. It sounded, for an instant, like a chime of small silver bells; then died away, leaving the faintest perceptible flush on her healthy pallor. At other times her mother's humor made her vaguely uncomfortable, usually after wine or other drinks that left the elder's breath thick and oppressive. Linda failed completely to grasp the allusions of this wit but a sharp uneasiness always responded like the lingering stale memory of a bad dream.

Once, at the Bos...o...b.., her mother had been too silly for words: she had giggled and embraced her sweet little girl, torn an expensive veil to shreds and dropped a French model hat into the tub. After a distressing sickness she had gone to sleep fully dressed, and Linda, unable to move or wake her, had sat long beyond dinner into the night, fearful of the entrance of the chambermaid.

The next day Mrs. Condon had been humble with remorse. Men, she said, were too beastly for description. This was not an unusual opinion. Linda observed that she was always condemning men in general and dressing for them in particular. She offered Linda endless advice in an abstracted manner:

"They're all liars, Lin, and stingy about everything but their pleasure.

Women are different but men are all alike. You get sick to death of them! Never bother them when they are smoking a cigar; cigarettes don't matter. Leave the cigarette-smokers alone, anyhow; they're not as dependable as the others. A man with a good cigar--you must know the good from the bad--is usually discreet. I ought to bring you up different, but, Lord, life's too short. Besides, you will learn more useful things right with mama, whose eyes are open, than anywhere else.

"Powder my back, darling; I can't reach. If I'm a little late to-night go to sleep like a duck. You think Mr. Jasper's nice, don't you? So does mother. But you mustn't let him give you any more money. It'll make him conceited."

Linda wondered what she meant by the last phrase. How could it make Mr.

Jasper conceited to give her a gold piece? However, she decided that she had better not ask.

It was like that with a great many of her mother's mysterious remarks--Linda had an instinctive feeling of drawing away. The other kissed her warmly and left a print of vivid red on her cheek.

She examined the mark in the mirror when her mother had gone; it was, she decided, the kiss made visible. Then she laid away the things scattered about the room by Mrs. Condon's hasty dressing. Her own belongings were always in precise order.

A sudden hesitation seized her at the thought of going down to the crowd at the music. The women made her uncomfortable. It wasn't what they said, but the way they said it; and the endless questions wearied her.

She was, as well, continually bothered by her inability to impress upon them how splendid her mother was. Some of them she was certain did not appreciate her. Mrs. Condon at once admitted and was entertained by this, but it disturbed Linda. However, she understood the reason--when any nice men came along they always liked her mother best. This made the women mad.

The world, she gathered, was a place where women played a game of men with each other. It was very difficult, she couldn't comprehend the rules or reason; and Linda was afraid that she would be unsuccessful and never have the perfect time her mother wanted for her. In the first place, she was too thin, and then she knew that she could never talk like her dearest. Perhaps when she had had some wine it would be different.

She decided, after all, to go down to the a.s.semblage; and, by one of the white marble pillars, Mrs. Randall captured her. "Why, here's Linda-all-alone," Mrs. Randall said. "Mama out again?" Linda replied stoutly, "She has a dreadful lot of invitations."

Mrs. Randall, who wore much brighter clothes than her mother, was called by the latter an old buzzard. She was very old, Linda could see, with perfectly useless staring patches of paint on her wrinkled cheeks, and eyes that look as though they might come right out of her head. Her frizzled hair supported a dead false twist with a glittering diamond pin, and her soft cold hands were loaded with jewels. She frightened Linda, really, although she could not say why. Mrs. Randall was a great deal like the witch in a fairy-story, but that wasn't it. Linda hadn't the belief in witches necessary for dread. It might be her scratching voice; or the way she turned her head, without any chin at all, like a turtle; or her dresses, which led you to expect a person very different from an old buzzard.

"Of course she does," said Mrs. Randall, "any number of invitations, and why shouldn't she? Your mother is very pleasant, to be sure." She nodded wisely to the woman beside her, Miss Skillern.