Read Online The Dark Lady by Louis Auchincloss, Thomas Auchincloss - Free Book Online

in himself and his imagined grievances, but Elesina did not know this until after they had gone down to that lavender chamber in City Hall and exchanged their vows. The very next morning Ted made a terrible scene because the newspaper item about their union described Elesina as a rising actress and himself as merely the son of Lawson Everett.
    The marriage, like Ted's acting career, seemed to draw its principal support from paternal disapproval. Mr. Everett, a Southern Baptist who did not recognize divorce and would not countenance actresses, refused even to meet Elesina, which gave Ted a saturnine satisfaction. But what little chance of happiness the young couple might have had was eliminated by Ted's failure, when the run of their play was over, to find another part. He expected that Elesina would share his idleness so long as their bit of money lasted, but she was offered a role in a new comedy and accepted it. Only then did she discover the full depths of her husband's egotism. For ten days he did not address a single word to her. Then she received a telephone call from his father asking her to come downtown to lunch.
    "Everything that my son Theodore does is designed to thwart me," this large bland disciplined man of money explained to her over an omelette and a glass of claret. "His marriage to a divorced actress is merely the most recent example of this. Don't take offense, my dear. You're too intelligent. Face the fact that you've married a weakling, and leave him to me. When he is finally convinced that he cannot anger me, he will become manageable, and I may be able to make something at least respectable of him. But while he is married to you and fooling about theaters, I can't do a thing. Give him up. I cannot believe that your emotions are deeply involved. Give him up, and I'll make it worth your while."
    "Why do you assume he'll come back to you if I give him up?"
    "Because he has no place else to go. After all, you're paying the rent now. You see, I'm well informed."
    "But do you really want him to come back?"
    "I want to do my duty. There's nothing you can do for him. There's something I might."
    "Poor Ted." Elesina reflected for a moment. "The trouble is that I'm pregnant. I'm afraid we'll have to go on with what we've started."
    It was like Elesina to be able to take in the little scene as it was being enacted. She saw just what would have been wrong with it on the stage: none of the three persons involved really cared about either of the others. It wouldn't play. Nor did it, in the ensuing two years. Little Ruth was born; Ted took minor jobs in advertising, in publishing, in radio; he and Elesina gave periodic drinking parties for a motley group of actors, writers and publicists whose common denominator was a disposition to failure. For Ted had an instinct which always recognized in others his own particular weakness. Only Elesina, of all his group, seemed bound for better things, and even her career seemed to have reached its top when she joined the Columbus Circle Repertory, an institution as applauded by the liberal press as it was neglected by the general public.
    Nor had life been kind to the Darts. Amos Dart was dead, and Elesina's brother, Billy, had become an interior decorator in partnership with the man who was his lover. Linda Dart's passion for her son did not survive his choice of a career and mate. She passed through what was to her a tunnel of the blackest humiliation and emerged as contained and uncomplaining as before, but colder and even more reserved. She lunched with her two children now at regular intervals, and she was always civil, amusing, interested, but both knew that they had disappointed her beyond the possibility of redemption. Linda now devoted all of her time to her rich friends, and she found herself in greater demand than ever. Her arrival in a drawing room, erect, cheerful, crisply neat, with the right greeting for everyone and the latest gossip strained through a sieve of