10
Arrival of the fast liners from Europe always had impact on the social, political and artistic life of New York. The Olympic-700 feet long, gorgeous inside with carved mahogany, marble and gold leaf, 'the Hotel Cecil afloat'-arrived at Pier 92 in the sparkling sunshine of early October. She was the pride of the White Star Line, who could boast in their sailing notices LARGEST LINERS IN THE WORLD BUILDING, because of her even bigger sister-ship on the stocks at Harland amp; Wolff in Belfast, the unsinkable Titanic. As the passenger-list had no actors or authors, statesmen or sportsmen, the newspapers concentrated on the pair of Grange sisters, one of whom was dead.
The world relishes tragedies in wealthy families, who deserve to pay for being rich. _The Evening Sun_ and _Evening Mail_ described Nancy coming ashore grief-stricken, though the eyes behind her motor-veil were long ago dry in the headwinds of her journey.
Crossing the grey, misty face of Europe from the poplar-spiked fields of northern France she felt like a worm crawling through a dank garden. By the perversity of human mind, her uppermost concern was her inability to buy mourning. She would return to Campette shockingly disregardful in attire to the tragedy. The red cross flag outside the sanatorium was stiff in a cold wind, winter beginning repossession of its rightful land. The first person she saw was Monsieur Mittot, the undertaker.
As the grey-uniformed coachman helped Nancy from the carriage with customary sweep of hat, Monsieur Mittot came briskly through the double doors in his black overcoat. He stopped short on the step. Their eyes met. They had a new relationship, joined in grisly intimacy. Nancy felt shocked this man had laid hands on Baby, seen her naked. She stared at him, frightened at what he represented. The fat undertaker for once looked abashed. He raised his bowler hat an inch, nervously wiped his moustache with his finger-tips and hurried towards the village path, muttering chillingly. _'A vфtre service, mademoiselle.'_
Dr. Pasquier recounted, as solemnly as a priest's prayers, Baby's final illness. The rise of temperature was not thought alarming. Patients might take a chill in the clinic as in their own homes, a little catarrh need not flash urgent messages across the breadth of Europe. Headache was a common enough symptom in young ladies, surely? The bacillus had suddenly switched its attack from besieging the lung to overrunning the whole body. When Dr Pasquier himself was summoned, Baby was already in coma, her temperature had soared to 41 degrees, her breathing was snatched, the tache cйrйbrale red streak on her skin proclaimed involvement of the brain.
A silently-formed tubercule in the meningeal envelope of the brain, Dr Pasquier explained, had caused internal haemorrhage by eating through an artery. They had applied ice-bags. They had performed the operation of lumbar puncture, to inspect the blood-tinged spinal fluid. Within the hour, she had succumbed. Nothing could have been done.
'Were Dr Beckett still here, might he have saved her?'
'Dr McCorquodale is a practitioner of excellent qualifications, who enjoys my complete confidence.'
He took her to the basement to view Baby's body, covered by a sheet, in a room like a butcher's refrigerator. Nancy was amazed how small she looked. Dr Pasquier withdrew the covering from her face. She was a dusky colour, her chin held up with a bandage, her eyes open the fraction of an inch, unevenly.
'Her hair,' murmured Nancy. 'It still keeps it's colour.'
The man with the scarred neck was hovering in the lobby. He made a deep bow and presented a long white envelope. It was her sister's bill.
The Olympic first class was full of Americans, lively, flirtatious, drunken, lustful, home from an extravagant summer in Europe. The word went about that she had a corpse down below, and people avoided her as though she was a witch. She was met at the pier by Mr Franklyn, a red, round man in gleaming top hat and astrakhan collar, one of her father's lawyers. She embraced her father in his first-floor study at Fifth Avenue. He was with Mr Bryan, his middle-aged private secretary who wore a pince-nez.
'What happened?'
John Grange was small and white-haired, with the birdlike quickness which Baby had inherited. He did deals in everything. For a meat-packer with no cash to pay a wage-bill in Buenos Aires, John Grange could raise a loan on a cargo of whale-oil in Amsterdam. If a German wanted to build a railway in Turkey, John Grange could funnel him the savings of America's Middle West. He could sink a gold mine in Canada by bankrupting a hundred farmers in South Africa, if Baltimore was sitting out a steel strike he knew how to snap up the markets for Sheffield. He neither smoked nor drank, and lived off mint tea, meat broth and raw vegetables. He was terrified of open spaces, travelled in an automobile with drawn curtains and lived in shuttered rooms with the electric light at noon.
'The funeral's on Thursday,' he announced, when Nancy had repeated everything transmitted in long, anguished cables. 'Tomorrow's for folk to pay their respects. There'll be a book to sign, with velum pages.' The coffin would be displayed in the blackhung ballroom where Baby had last danced. 'What do you intend to do, now you're home?' he asked later, when he could direct his thoughts from his dead daughter to his living one. 'When you can decently appear out of mourning, that is.'
'What I did before I left, I guess.'
'You don't sound very enthusiastic.' Nancy said nothing. 'A million women in New York would give an arm to lead your life. Now Baby's gone, you mean twice as much to me. Baby was a great credit. She shone in company. She was sought in society. The boys were proud to know her, the girls fought for invitations to her parties. Baby went everywhere she should be seen, met everyone she had to know. She'd have made a fine marriage.'
'I don't care to play the social game.'
'For a woman in your position, it's a matter of duty.'
'For a woman in any position, it's a matter of taste. I don't care to play bridge.'
'You will play it, even if you don't care for it. I've got to have my daughter prominent in society. I've got to have her marry with position, money, family. That's as worthwhile achievement for a woman as making a million dollars is in a man.'
'But papa! Do you need me as a decoration? A doll created by dressmakers and milliners and dancing-teachers? When everyone in New York knows and respects John Grange?'
'That's what I want.'
There was another silence. 'Very well, papa,' Nancy said obediently.
'Did you see that fellow Crippen?'
'He's nothing but a quack.'
'But he's a real doctor. I had it from Professor Munyon himself.'
'He's a quack, and so is Professor Munyon.'
'Pretty free with your accusations, aren't you? How can you tell who's a quack and who isn't? That takes a doctor to know.'
'It was a doctor who told me.'
'Doctors have a lot of professional jealousy.'
'This was a doctor whose opinion I'd trust utterly.'
'Who was he?'
'He's English. He was at the clinic, looking after Baby. She must have written about Dr Beckett?'
'How'd he know Crippen?'
'We met him together. Dr Beckett had returned to London.'
'You'd corresponded with him?' her father asked suspiciously.
'I had become friendly with him.'
'Don't go wasting yourself on doctors. I can hire any doctor in the world I like, and fire him the moment I feel like it.'
'Very well, papa,' Nancy said again.
Baby's prominence in New York society was increased as the centre of its most fashionable funeral that fall. For the rest of October, the compass of Nancy's mind swung too violently to plot a steady course through life. The isolated monotony of Switzerland seemed a more natural existence than the gay gregariousness of New York because it had been endured for a purpose, like monasticism or a prison sentence. To have mixed as a social equal with the unmannered and pretentious Crippens now disgusted her. Mr Ruston and Mr Wince made her tremble at a brush with evil. But she knew that Eliot was right-'The upper classes have a far leaner time of it than a costermonger, who can revel in the unstinted enjoyment of his bodily functions.' Now Eliot must be as dead as Baby.