Free The Dark Lady by Louis Auchincloss, Thomas Auchincloss Page A

nodded, his lips pursed, grave. "I'm glad you made the point. Of course, what I'm doing would bear that look to the world. But I promise you, Elesina, that I shall never expect anything that is not accorded of your own free will and inclination. I make no secret of the fact that I am attracted to you. How could that not be? You are young and beautiful, and I am still a man. But what of it? I was never one to buy love, nor do I esteem you so little as to suppose that you would sell it. Let there be an end to such talk between us. You and I are friends. The best of friends. Why not? If our relationship should ever change, it would be only because
you
wished it to. And as that is hardly likely, you can put the matter out of your mind. Why should we care what other people say?"
    "Well, I don't, certainly, but then I'm free."
    "And so am I, where my friends are concerned. Mrs. Stein does not trouble herself with such matters."
    Elesina hardly believed this, but then she hardly cared what Clara Stein thought of her husband's friendships. She suspected that Irving's seeming candor might be part of a scheme to seduce her through her gratitude on some night when she had drunk too much. But what if it were? Could she not handle herself? And so long as she purported to take him at his word, how could he possibly complain?
    "Well, then, it's a bargain," she agreed with a sealing smile. "I'll read the play this afternoon."

    During the rehearsal and short run of
The Vultures
Elesina was happier than she had ever been before. The play was too bleak to be popular, but the notices were good, and her performance as Marie Vigneron established her, in the eyes of professionals, as at least a contender for high rank. As one critic said:
Miss Dart puts one in mind of some abandoned princess on a reef about to be engulfed by a rising tide. There is nothing in the closing waters of which she has the least dread; they will simply free her from the scurrying, malignant crustacean life about her. She makes one feel that her real tragedy is not her abandonment, but her rescue.
    The role gave Elesina her first sense of creative accomplishment. Her Hedda Gabler she had modeled from Nazimova's, but she had never seen
The Vultures
performed. There she was, on the boards, Marie Vigneron, something independent of Elesina Dart, something that had not existed before, a tiny piece of reality, something "done." Oh, yes, she saw all the things of her own that she had put into it: her self-pity, her identification of her failures with Marie's plight, her half-bitter, half-amused dependence on Irving. And she never fooled herself that there was anything in common between the heroic Marie and the self-indulgent Elesina. But none of this made any difference. Was not everything grist to an artist's mill?
King Lear
could have been made up out of Shakespeare's vanity;
Hamlet,
out of his resentment. Art was a process of conversion, a machine that could turn even garbage into something clean and glistening. Had Irving seen this? Had he seen that Marie was the image of her own ego touched up?
    She lunched with him now twice a week. He was willing to leave his office at her least suggestion. Walking down the street to their rendezvous, she would enjoy a pleasant sense of power when she saw the big blue Isotta pull up beside the restaurant and Irving leaning forward to wave at her. She had learned to savor the sweep of his conversation and the breadth of his ideas. She was merely amused now by the persistent little vanity that provided a plaintive chorus to larger themes. She had become humbler with her own small success, humble enough, anyway, to recognize that the friendship of Irving Stein might turn out to be the most interesting thing that had ever happened to her.
    Sometimes they would spend an afternoon in galleries, for he maintained his relentless pursuit of beautiful objects. They would pass into the back chamber where the tactful proprietor would leave the great