Many Mansions

by Isabel Bolton

  She had told the story of her life and, she must admit it, it had moved her profoundly—left her as novels frequently did with a residue of emotion that she often carried in her heart for some time after she had finished them. But oddly enough she was irritated that this was so. If her book should fall into the hands of others addicted as she was to the habitual reading of novels, what exactly would their feeling be? Doubtless they would regard her history as a very tragic one indeed. Poor girl, or more likely poor unfortunate woman, they’d think, what a sad time she’d had of it, and would they not be liable to carry away from the perusal of her book something of the same soft and not unpleasant ache of love and sympathy that she felt herself for her poor heroine?

  Well, well, she reflected, peering at the young moon and the incredible citadels of light as though in the face of such a spectacle it was something of an impertinence to indulge oneself in personal tragedy at all. New York had been her home for over fifty years, nearly three-quarters of her life. Think of the changes, think of the events! Why, on her first arrival she had lived only a few blocks north on Fifth Avenue. All these neighboring streets had looked considerably like the Back Bay—low three-story houses with high stoops, maids at windows pulling down the blinds, front doors opening to let in children and nursemaids, ladies in long skirts alighting from carriages, gentlemen with canes and top hats walking down the stoops. Very decorous and stable, more or less rooted in tradition, no intimation of this neon-lighted metropolis hung crazily in air, people inhabiting a few cubic feet of sky and regarding it a valid piece of real estate.

  Taking up the manuscript and holding it as though she weighed it in her hands, the old woman reseated herself. Book One, she said aloud, Book Two. Yes, that had been, she thought, an excellent device—skipping all those years, giving but short shrift to that anguish, that complete death of the heart (the year in Europe with Cecilia, her return to Brookline, her final severance from family ties), and placing her heroine, after nearly two decades of residence in New York, there on Fifth Avenue in that memorable parade. And she’d achieved it admirably, looping up into a single chapter the thoughts and resolutions with their backward and their forward glances, and setting her novel in motion again on that tide of faith in human nature and the future of the race. That had seemed to her on that May afternoon to have reached its highest flood, loosed as it had been from the hearts of all those men and women walking up the avenue. With Mary Morton at her side and that group of Italian working women she had browbeaten into taking their part in the great demonstration forming a small battalion, she had asked herself if it was possible in a world where there was so much human misery, so many wrongs to right, for one woman to cling tenaciously to her own particular griefs. Today I turn my back upon the sorrows I have known, I shall forget my past. Those were the words to which she’d set her feet to marching and, with the band only a few sections ahead of her playing almost exclusively as she recalls it “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,” getting the rhythms of her body somehow or other swung into the rhythms, not of the familiar words, but of her own brave resolutions, she had been borne buoyantly on and up the avenue.

  Ah, thought the old woman, we are inclined to laugh whenever we see the pictures of those old processions. What funny hats we wore, those high collars, the long skirts that swept the ankles, the stance of all those standard bearers, the resolution in those faces, all that seriousness, that dedication. But if the world could recapture it again, that buoyancy and hope, all that faith and optimism, the protest against injustice, inhumanity, the comradeship, the pledging and resolving, the banding together in unity and friendliness which somehow or other on that particular afternoon had joined and gathered to a tide. It spread along the line of march, it communicated itself from heart to heart, that sense one had that the world was getting better, that new visions and concepts were abroad. She remembers what joy she had experienced thinking of the splendid women marching with her in the same procession, of the distinguished men who had laid themselves open to the jeers and insults of the crowd to march along with them in this demonstration of their strength. Everyone, she’d thought, with vision and with courage is out today rejoicing in a common faith—a belief in the future of the world. There was a spirit in the air she could not well define, participation, comradeship—joy at being alive and able to consider oneself a useful member of society. So on and up the avenue behind the bands and banners she had marched, making her own brave resolutions, embarking as it seemed to her upon a new life, a good life.

  In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea. Today I turn my back upon the sorrows I have known, I shall forget my past. As though one could forget one’s past, exclaimed the old woman, looking up to see that there rested on the Metropolitan Tower and on those citadels of life insurance at the foot of the avenue the cool bright glow of winter twilight. You might as well tell a river to stop flowing as to say to anybody, now forget your past. Your past was contained within you, a part of this moment or the next; the scent of a flower, the song of a bird, music as you entered a room, some sight on which your eyes were resting, and back it rushed into the mind again—as though she had not been all the way up Fifth Avenue, even while she was saying those brave words, swinging her body into the rhythms of that glorious hymn, remembering her past, passing this landmark or that, and finally halting with her little band of working girls directly in front of the house that had actually been her first home in New York. Somewhat washed up it had looked to her, with the shops to the right and left of it, and offering quite a different appearance to its aspect in 1895 when, just one of many similar mansions presenting their high stoops and brownstone fronts to the avenue, it had offered her shelter and refuge from her misery. There she’d waited, standing first on one foot and then on the other, telling herself so gallantly that she was on this day to turn a leaf in her book of life, and the associations rushing over her, mixing and mingling with the memories of those early days in New York, the distressful remembrance of the two years that had followed her return from Europe.

  Awful had been that return to Brookline, not indeed as she had imagined it with Lucien in the picture and having to pretend that nothing had happened between them, none of that anticipated agony which she had told herself a hundred times a day she could not face, never a sight of Lucien. She had passed him on the ocean. He and Eleanor were off on an extended trip. And all this dropped casually into the conversation a few hours after her arrival and just as though it held but little interest for her. They would not return for several years. “Your uncle has developed an extraordinary interest in Chinese pottery (or is it temples, Horace?)” her grandmother had elucidated. “Your Uncle Lucien is,” she’d continued, “a very cultivated man.” And with this to make him as inaccessible as possible she changed the subject quite abruptly. Life went on. Lucien never again made an appearance, driving out from Boston as in the old days to make those sudden calls that had always furnished her with so much joy. He never appeared on Sundays for the usual midday dinners. No sight or sound of him. And when the time came finally to go to The Towers that was what she had not been able to endure. Why, she’d almost died of it. The less she thought about it now the better, being there where every scent and sound and sight had brought the memories back so swiftly, lying awake at night and listening to the waves and always trying to stop the words from coming (they were a portion of the very breath she drew), “You are part of all things great and quiet, my beloved.” She hadn’t cared what happened to her, and returning for her second Brookline winter she’d simply allowed life to be taken out of her own hands altogether. She’d become the victim not only of nervous prostration but of a romantic and disastrous love affair which it was presumed she had sustained while traveling in Europe. Toted about from doctor to doctor, listening with complete apathy to that astonishing array of lies and allusions, and finding her life embellished by a romance quite different fro
m the sorrow which consumed her, she had paid no attention to the advice of the doctors or the stern admonitions of her grandmother. She must take an interest in life, she must go out into society, she must find some kind of a hobby, she must stop reading so much. She had made it her deliberate business to pine away, cherishing a vague hope that, like the heroine of the romance trumped up around her, she might presently die of a broken heart.

  And then suddenly when life was at its very lowest ebb her grandmother had in her desperation brought out of the unknown and the unsuspected into the very forefront of those plans and decisions as to what in the world to do with her next that neglected and forgotten, that impoverished relative, Miss Leonie Lejohn, who had turned her pleasant home on Fifth Avenue into a very select and suitable board-inghouse. Leonie should chaperon her. There could be no better place to send her than to New York. It developed too that she was to take up singing. She had had a father who had played the flute, her voice was very pleasing, she had an excellent ear, it was not unlikely that she could develop a genuine talent for music. And so, subscribing as apathetically to the scheme as to any of the other prescriptions for the condition of her soul, almost before she knew what it was all about she had found herself at Cousin Leonie’s.

  For once, she’d said to herself, getting into line and step and casting a backward glance at the high stoop, the brownstone façade still standing there amid the shops and restaurants, her grandmother had struck it right, she’d made the perfect choice. There’d been something about it, something, and breathing again the smell of asphalt, that smell of the Avenue in the nineties, hearing again the vast rumble of vehicles, carriage wheels, cart wheels, and the descent of horses’ hooves, plunk, plunk in the asphalt, she’d lived through it all again, stepping out of a morning with the large impersonal roar of the great city in her ears and that sense within her, though she wouldn’t for the world allow herself to acknowledge that she felt it, that she was still young, that life had an interest, a positive fascination for her. And how extraordinary it is, she thought, keeping step, keeping step, He is trampling out the vineyards where the grapes of wrath are stored, the vitality, the recuperative power of youth, just being there in New York with her talent flowering and blossoming, how exciting it had seemed, with Eva Winters (yes, there had been poor Eva, what a part she’d played in all of it), Eva, whose passion for music equaled her own and whose voice had been not much better or maybe not much worse than hers, and who, if she cared to take a backward glance, had probably put into the head of Cousin Leonie in her correspondence with her grandmother the idea that singing lessons might be the best anodyne to apply to a heart that was almost at the point of breaking. She and Eva had had at any rate the same singing master, Signor Vittorio Locatelli, who raved with almost equal fervor about the voices of both talentless pupils. Under the inspiration of the fiery-eyed little maestro what a passionate enthusiasm for music they’d each of them worked up. Music-crazed they’d been, starting off together in the earliest hours of daylight to procure for themselves if possible seats in the very front row of that topmost, neck-breaking, back-breaking gallery of the Metropolitan. What Wagnerians they became. To hear “The Ring” again and still again as many times as it was given, that had been their idea of bliss, sitting there imagining themselves impersonating those famous heroines, Isolde, Brünnehilde. Strange, exotic had been those agonies, intensities, resting her chin upon the rail of that uncomfortable “nigger heaven,” while the music pouring from the lighted pit and the stage so far below became not so much the score of Wagner as the inexhaustible stream of emotion welling from her agitated heart. She’d swooned, she’d swayed, she’d practically melted away in an ecstasy of remembrance and delectable indulgence in her grief, and, let her admit it now, even while she’d thrown herself with complete abandon into the splendid agonies of those majestic heroines, she’d been quite well aware that Eva, who she knew to have heard the legend of that fictitious heart-breaking European love affair, was watching with the keenest awe and interest the spectacle of her abandonment to grief. For there had been, she must confess it, much sweetness in holding in her gift and even while she kept her secret locked within her breast the sympathy which at that period everyone was so ready to bestow upon her, and although she knew, with that habit of silence long built up in her, that her story would not be whispered to a soul on earth, she had felt enormous satisfaction in being pointed out and noticed as a creature so young and so afflicted.

  Fantasy, catharsis, call it what you would, a necessary phase perhaps, a way in which she’d learned to find her grief endurable. Glamorous, exciting it had been walking among the crowds on those enchanted New York pavements, living in her cloud of dreams. And so, swinging along in time with the brave resolutions (today I turn my back upon the sorrows I have known), continuing in step with her beloved Mary, she’d rehearsed it marching up the avenue.

  TWO

  Well, if she had to say it, thought the old woman, that had been quite a tour de force. She’d done it very well indeed getting her heroine all the way to the Plaza and trailing the memories along with her, the story so clearly told and the scenes so vividly rendered. None the less there had been something omitted. Suddenly she began to beat her breast with the familiar emphasis. Something felt, here in the heart and along the channels of the blood, a sweetness, a quickness, some suppressed excitement, why those early years in New York had had a pulse-beat entirely their own and, she’d have to acknowledge some surprise in the realization of this, they had been thoroughly pleasurable, delightful. The flow and rhythm of one’s life could not be communicated. It was carried here. Again she pounded her breast, here in the heart.

  How could she possibly describe that house of Leonie’s—it was all in entering the front door, walking up the long flight of stairs to her room, passing that bronze statue of the Venus de Milo in the niche at the curve of the stairs, getting that sniff of escaping gas, old carpets and ancient plumbing in the hall, stopping as she entered her big sepulchral room and before turning on the gas to listen to the roar and rumble outside. Nothing so exciting as that had ever met her ears, the loud, the assertive voice of New York, whispering to herself that she was here on her own, leading her own life. Something about it, that extraordinary domicile, that had from the beginning spelled adventure, the front rooms looking out upon the avenue and that endless procession of vehicles, the horses’ feet descending, prancing up and down the pavement plunk, plunk, plunk.

  There was the faded shabby elegance of the long drawing room and, at the back, the other side of the folding doors, the long dark dining room which constituted the stage and center of that fascinating drama—life as it was led at Cousin Leonie’s. The long table always covered with a white cloth, changed each Sunday and stained with many grease spots towards the end of every week. Cousin Leonie dispensing coffee from a large old-fashioned urn at breakfast and soup from a large china tureen at dinner, toying delicately with the teacups at the luncheon hour (“One lump, Mr. Langley?” “A dash of cream, Miss Playfair?”), doing her level best to keep up the tone of her establishment and Mr. Langley on her right doing more than his best to support her endeavor—a funny eccentric little man with a waxed mustache and very shiny trousers. Interested in genealogy, he spent most of his time at the public libraries investigating family trees. Cousin Leonie had a perfect genius for knowing without having to study it up exactly who of any importance was connected with whom, so that conversation, if the two of them had their way, consisted entirely in enumerating and recapitulating names. Then there was Miss Playfair who, they used to intimate, was a mere parvenue. She kept her own little brougham and inhabited the largest room in the house. She tried to make it out that Miss Leonie’s was her own residence, and was driven to the oddest expedients in explaining to her visitors the intrusion upon her private scene of such a queer assortment of characters. Last and least of all was Mrs. Canfield. Supported by a small group of friends and relatives whose monthly subscriptions made
it possible for her to inhabit a tiny hall bedroom on the top floor and to enjoy three meals a day, she regarded it a privilege to breathe the air surrounding her, and was always saying “Dear me,” or “Yes,” or “No” at what seemed to her the appropriate moment. Offsetting, spellbinding, disconcerting and generally discombobulating all these odd had-beens and would-be’s were Mary Morrison and her queer friend Morty (Mr. Martin Morton, as Miss Leonie never failed to call him).

  Ah how vividly she could see dear Mary now, that face, the cloud of dark hair around it, and the black eyes that seemed to give off a kind of sulphurous smoke, the nose broken at the bridge, and that glow of health and vitality, as though somehow or other her love of life and her interest in it had been gathered right up into her countenance, where it gave off its warmth and glow like a hearth at which the sick and the self-centered could come to warm themselves. How passionately Mary loved the fullness and variety of life, how passionately she loved the world, and with what eagerness she dedicated herself to reforming it, for making it better, as she used to say, for the next generation to live in. She could not sit down at that table without knocking the proprieties and absurdities and conventions into a cocked hat. She discarded conventions, she discarded all the rules and orders of her day. She’d been, she had to acknowledge it, pretty appalled by Mary at first, and though fascinated, fascinated, had tried to stand out against her. All her recklessness and daring, all her scholarship and seriousness, with none of her warmth and humor and humanity impaired. And what a mind she had. A woman with a mind like that!—taking all those courses, reading all those books, a freak, a wonder, a phenomenon. And with the eager, the factual, the estimable Morty so head over heels in love with her that the rooms the two of them inhabited together positively rocked and shook with what, they made no bones about it, appeared to be going on between them. What commotion her very presence in their midst incurred.