Free The Golden Calves by Louis Auchincloss Page A

chose to create a rival for herself by placing Anita in the compound of victims of the male, she might be building more dangerously than she knew. Mark was beginning to wonder if he could not make out the loss of a feminine role essential to what he considered the gracious society in Chessie’s increasing aggressiveness, and if he might not enjoy the idea of bringing out the woman behind the Vestal in Anita. Why should anyone have to assume that he would be as clumsy as the great Emily’s preceptor?
    Â 
    It was only a few days after the evening at
Siegfried
that Anita came to his office with a countenance of deep concern.
    â€œMiss Speddon wants to talk to you. She asks you to forgive her for not coming to the museum, but she has not been at all well.”
    "But of course!" he exclaimed, jumping up. “Shall I go to her now?”
    "Well, I wouldn't delay it too long. I think she wants to discuss her will." She paused and then, in what struck him as an overdramatic gesture, clasped her hands beseechingly. "Oh, Mark,
do
be careful! I know you have very definite ideas about how she should leave her things. But please, please remember, that collection has been her whole life!”
    He found that he was actually trembling with the sudden shock of his indignation. “And what do you think I plan to do with the collection? Hock it all and buy wrecked automobiles or old toilet seats or whatever modern art is featuring when she dies? Is
that
what you think of me?”
    She recoiled as if he had moved to strike her. “No, no. It’s not that at all. If
you
were the only judge, I’d have no worries. Believe me!”
    â€œAnd how do you ki\ow I won’t be?"
    â€œOh, Mark, if you only were.”
    Somewhat mollified, he settled back in his chair. “Trust me, Anita. Try to trust me.”
    "I will, I will. I want to so much.”
    After she had gone he reflected irritably that it must be a sense of guilt that had caused his fit of temper. Yet why should he feel guilty? Had he made any representation to Anita, either by word or implication, as to the state of his mind or affections that was not true? Had she not just admitted that she was aware of his belief that a museum should be the absolute owner of its own artifacts? And did she not know on just what terms he was with Chessie? Could a Puritan in the Massachusetts Bay Colony have been more open?
    Yet he was still flustered when he called that afternoon at 36th Street. The very fact that Anita was still at the museum and that Miss Speddon was to see him alone intensified a silly feeling of conspiracy. The old lady received him upstairs in her bedroom. She was fully dressed but sitting in a wheelchair, and she seemed gaunter beside the huge canopied bed draped in red damask. She made no secret of the state of her health.
    â€œA will seems more real when you think of your executors ‘executing’ it in a few months’ time. Then it’s more like a contract with an imminent closing date.”
    "That’s the way to look at it, of course. You should think of a will as operating now."
    "Very true, young man." There was a faint smile on those thick white lips. “But if ‘now’ is a time when you will be extinct, the idea can give you a turn.”
    "I am sure it must.”
    "You are trying to be sympathetic, and I should be grateful. But there’s a dreadful gulf between the young living and the old dying. We latter sometimes even feel a silly kind of superiority. I must avoid that. To work!” She moved as if to square her long sloping shoulders. “I’m beginning to see your point about the futility of rigid rules for governing my things.”
    She paused to look at him carefully.
    â€œOne has to put one’s trust in someone, I suppose," he offered, a bit weakly.
    "That’s well put," she replied judiciously. "I was afraid you'd say, ‘Oh, you can trust the museum!’ Which is of course