Treasures (51 page)

Preston fixed drinks, carried them back to the main room, and shoved a dog off a sofa to make room for Connie and himself. From somewhere again, music played, very low.

“Cozy, isn’t it?” he inquired.

“Very.” She raised her eyes to a portrait opposite; two women, one gray haired with a sweet face, the other barely out of her teens, sat on a rustic garden bench in the shade of a stone house wall. “That’s very lovely. Eighteenth century, isn’t it? By anybody I ought to know?”

“No, some itinerant painter did it in Yorkshire one day just before the younger woman married and emigrated to America.”

“Oh, you actually know the provenance? How exciting!”

“I ought to. They’re my great-grandmothers, five and six times removed.”

Connie felt a flush of embarrassment. “And all those others on the walls? The man over the fireplace?”

“He’s only my grandfather. Yes, all the others. The DeWitt side were Huguenots; we don’t have every one of them because some were too poor to have their portraits done. I don’t like putting up phony ancestors,” Preston added.

“Do you mind if I look some more?”

“Go ahead.”

On each painting a small brass plaque gave names and dates: Amelia Ann Cornwallis, 1767; James Todd Cornwallis, 1880; Marie Laure DeWitt, 1814. These were the real thing, a jumble of the family’s generations. No doubt the furniture was too. No decorator would have juxtaposed this Elizabethan chest with those Victorian Gothic chairs, that was sure. And yet, beside the “cozy” feeling that Preston had pointed out, the whole possessed a certain elegance. Strange. And those huge dogs with their dirty paws on the furniture! Martin would have had a fit, Connie thought, and so would she.

“It’s a lovely house,” she told Preston. “It looks—well,
real
I can’t think of a better word.”

“It’s lived in, anyway. And meant to be lived in, not to impress people with.”

Had that been, possibly, an oblique rebuke? She looked up quickly, to find that there was nothing in his expression that could indicate anything but an honest statement.

“I wonder,” he said suddenly, “whether you will do a favor for me?”

“Why, you know I will. What is it?”

“A little great-niece of mine is being presented in Charleston at the St. Cecilia Ball, and I’d like to send an appropriate gift. Will you do the shopping? I thought perhaps a strand of pearls, suitable for a girl of eighteen, would be the best unless you have another suggestion.”

“Pearls are always good. And if she should already have some or should receive some, they can be worn
wound together. You’ll need to tell me how much to spend, though. Whether you want a diamond clasp and—”

“No, Arabella’s too young for diamonds. Her parents wouldn’t like that. They’re very quiet, conservative people. My niece married into one of the oldest South Carolina families.”

“Oh,” said Connie, who had just bought pearls with a huge diamond clasp for Melissa’s birthday. “I suppose the St. Cecilia Ball is a formal charity affair?”

“Formal, and by invitation only. It’s a local tradition. One can’t buy tickets for it. It’s not a New York charity bash.”

Connie was feeling that she had walked into yet another world. Worlds beyond worlds, barely and only touching here and there when necessary, as Martin’s had touched Preston’s. She had not even been aware that there were people who thought a diamond clasp wasn’t proper.

Back home that night she kept thinking about those people who could live secure in their shabby grandeur and drive an old Buick, while their millions piled up in the bank. “Curiouser and curiouser.” So said Alice in Thérèse’s favorite story, as she explored the rabbit hole.

One stage followed another. Full summer came, Connie moved to Cresthill, Preston stayed full-time at Stonycroft, and the cars traveled back and forth between the two houses. Both had pools and tennis courts. Both had chairs and tables at which, after strenuous sport, a hot afternoon could be whiled away in the
shade. They talked. Connie spoke freely about herself and her background. It pleased her that Preston DeWitt would find her so interesting, pleased her to be turned, in his eyes, into someone charmingly unfamiliar and exotic. On her part his casual mention of places to which she could never have gone with Martin, to which even first-generation corporate executives like Bitsy Maxwell’s family had no access, was tantalizing. Mount Desert was where one summered, not Southampton; Hobe Sound was where one wintered, not Palm Beach.

“Of course,” he said, laughing a little at himself, “it all began in America with the Gilded Age after the Givil War. The unspeakable vulgarity of Newport’s so-called cottages! It takes two or three generations to learn how not to show off.”

Damn decorators, Connie was thinking. Telling me that the best houses had to be French! And she wondered what Preston really thought of Cresthill.

One evening in late July he gave a dinner at Stonycroft. Having been at one of his dinners before, she knew this time what to expect: tall men in perfect dinner jackets and tall women in plain, expensive dresses three or four years old. Here were seen no fads like Lacroix’s pouf skirts. So she dressed accordingly in the kind of white silk that Pam had always worn, with a pair of barrettes in her hair, and was rewarded by Preston’s praise.

“Very becoming. Very well chosen. You’ve matured, Connie.”

She understood that he meant, and was too clever to
tell her outright, that she was learning to look as if she had been born in a house like his.

After the dinner, when the other guests had gone, he asked her to remain.

“Sit there a minute. I’ll be right back.”

In a curious way, while wondering just what the request portended, she felt that it portended some sort of important change. A few minutes later he returned with a leather box in hand, apologizing for the delay.

“I had to take down a picture to get at the wall safe. Anyway, here it is.”

And on the coffee table he displayed a ruby necklace, an elaborate arabesque of splendid stones set in platinum and diamonds; long pendant earrings matched.

“Caroline’s parure,” he explained. “But it came from my grandmother.”

Nothing in Connie’s possession, no matter how costly, could equal this. These were museum pieces. Royalty could wear them; royalty had perhaps done so. She could only gasp.

“I’d like you to have it, Connie.”

She looked at him, disbelieving. “I don’t understand. It makes no sense.”

“Yes, it does. I have no daughters and no granddaughters. I don’t need money, so I’m not going to sell it. It lies in a dark vault. Why shouldn’t such jewels see the light of day? Or I should say ‘night,’ shouldn’t I? But don’t wear them in the country, you do know that, don’t you? They belong in a parterre box at the opera on opening night.”

She was bewildered. “Preston, I can’t. I shouldn’t. It isn’t right.”

“At least let me see how you look in them. Try them on.”

Before the mirror she watched him clasp the necklace, his handsome face concentrated. Then she put on the earrings and turned to him, saying in a kind of self-conscious, awkward tension the first thing that came into her mind.

“This dress is too high necked. You can see it’s wrong.”

“Pull it down so the jewels rest on your skin.”

When she did so, he smiled. “That’s better. Actually, do you know how it should be worn? Wasn’t it under one of the Louises in France that women exposed their breasts? I don’t remember. Anyway, that would be sensational.”

Connie laughed. “It’s against the law.”

He laughed too. “Not here and now in this room.”

And saying so, putting both hands on her shoulders, he stretched the white silk down past her breasts, exposed the lace brassiere, and unfastened it. Now at the cleavage lay the largest of the rubies, blood-red, rose-red, hot and glittering. For a moment she stared at it, then slowly turned her eyes toward Preston, who was examining her with questioning curiosity. She had long ago perfected a quiet, steady gaze into which a man might read whatever degree of meaning he wished.

“We’ll go upstairs,” he said.

She followed. It was as if she were watching another woman mount the great curving flight of steps beside
him, as if she were clinically analyzing that woman’s emotions, her triumph at having conquered so desirable a man—and at the same time her total absence of desire. To tell the truth, it had been a long evening, and that woman really would have preferred sleep to what was coming. But she also knew what was expected of her and was prepared to perform well.

The room into which he led her contained a high old bed with carved mahogany hung in dark green damask. Sir Walter Raleigh might have bedded Queen Elizabeth in it. Or had he ever slept with Elizabeth? No, not Raleigh. Essex.

From far away then, she seemed to hear Preston’s voice ringing with delight. “This is the number-one guest room for VIPs.”

She heard the slither of silk as the coverlet was removed; from the open window felt the rush of cool air on her skin as he removed the rest of her clothes and carried her, naked except for the rubies, onto the bed.

“On second thought, I seem to remember it was in Napoleon’s time that women bared their breasts,” Preston said as they rested together.

“I don’t remember.”

“Well, no matter. But if it was Josephine I’m thinking of, I can tell you Napoleon would never have gotten rid of her if she’d known some of your tricks.”

Twinkling—Preston DeWitt actually twinkling!—he regarded Connie. A sudden vision of him in bed with his late wife Caroline, that
prune
, brought a tremble of a smile to Connie.

“What are you smiling at?”

“I’m remembering something. The very first time I met you, before I married Martin, I thought you were the handsomest man I had ever seen.”

“I remember. You wore a beige suit, and your eyes sparkled. I’ve wanted to do this for a long time, Connie.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Good Lord, I wouldn’t poach on my partner’s territory!”

Playing the coquette, she said, “I wouldn’t have let you.”

“Don’t you think I know that? But it’s different now, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Different now.”

In the morning, for some absurd reason against which, because it seemed so childish, she fought and lost, she felt a need to speak to Lara.

What she said was, “Lara, don’t be shocked, but I do believe Preston DeWitt will ask me to marry him. I had to tell you.”

There was no answer.

“Lara? Are you there?”

“I’m here.”

“You’re shocked. I know you are.”

“I don’t know what to say. It just seems—it’s not nearly a year yet.”

“I know. I didn’t say I would actually do it now. I meant that I see it coming, that’s all I meant.”

“That’s better.” There was a long pause. Then Lara
said, “I barely remember him. Is he white haired and quite tall?”

“Yes. Distinguished. And very sweet. You’ll like him, Lara. Really.”

“Never mind me. It’s you who matter. You can’t really be in love again so soon, can you?”

“Well, as you say, it’s so soon. But one can tell.… You know how it is.”

“Maybe I don’t know.”

This conversation had not been entirely satisfactory, Connie thought when she hung up the telephone. It was rash to have spoken out now, after all. She couldn’t be sure of what was in Preston’s mind, could she? Yet after last night, could she not?

And she allowed a little drama to unroll. When the year was well past, perhaps next spring, there could be a very small private ceremony at Cresthill, after which the place would be sold, for he certainly wouldn’t sell Stonycroft with all his grandfather’s trees. It was actually his great-grandfather who had bought it. Thank goodness he was a widower; there’d be no exasperating divorce to delay things as there had been with Martin.… So Connie reflected.

Her prediction was fulfilled. About a month after the night of the rubies, Preston outlined a plan exactly like the one Connie had imagined.

“Of course, we have to wait until next spring,” he said, complaining, “but it’s damned hard. Can’t sleep together at my place except on maids’ nights out, and can’t ever sleep at yours on account of the child. However, it will pass. Patience, patience. Damn,” he said
again, “I may have to go abroad for a month. We’re expanding our facility in Tokyo. In fact, it’s not ‘may have to,’ it’s ‘must.’ Since we lost Berg, there’s been nobody to take his place. I’d love it if you’d come along.”

“I can’t leave Thérèse, Preston. She’s starting school again at the end of the month, and I need to be here.”

He nodded. “I understand, of course. But I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you too.”

Yet, when he vanished through the departure gate at Japan Airlines, she turned away with no feeling at all, except perhaps the pleasant anticipation of a quiet evening at home with the telephone shut off, a long bath, a book, and bed. For some reason she had been feeling depressed during the last week or two. I’m getting tired, she thought suddenly, of simulating emotion; it takes all one’s energy to be passionate and vivacious when one isn’t feeling either way. For now that Preston was ‘caught,’ and was an accomplished fact in her life, the first miraculous excitement had just seemed to drain away. Where could it have gone? Perhaps she was simply getting older.…

Then she thought: No. I’m only thirty-five. This has got to be a delayed reaction from last December’s shock. That’s all it can be.

One day Connie happened to drive past the hospital where Peggy had been cared for. Quite naturally, then, that whole experience raced like a motion picture through her memory: the arriving airplane, the uncon
scious child on the stretcher, the room on the second floor, Lara’s shrunken face, the day of the miracle when the child’s eyes opened, and in the corridor the nurses’ and the doctors’ running steps.

He was a nice man, that Jonathan Bayer. I remember thinking, she said to herself, that I’d like to know him. I can’t say why exactly, but he just seemed interesting. At our picnic that Fourth of July I had the feeling that he liked me.

And driving on with the top down and a fresh breeze blowing, she felt a sudden heat rise to her cheeks. Absurd, Connie. Where do you think you are? In junior high school?