The Americans

by John Jakes

  Now that the man and his family had gotten out of the way, Marcus was in no hurry to drive on. Edmonds noticed that, and glowered.

  Marcus ignored him. “How was the trip from Wickford?”

  “Smooth. I spent most of it reading Town Topics.”

  “God almighty. What’d you do with it?”

  “I threw it away.”

  “Good. That rag isn’t allowed in our house any longer.”

  “Why not? Your family used to read it. Laura said so.”

  “We still read it, old boy. We just aren’t permitted to let it lie about the cottage as if we approve of it. Father skims Saunterings once a week at a men’s club I’ll show you on the way home. He skims it nervously, I might add. A year ago I got involved with a Chinese girl down in the city. Never told you about that, did I?”

  Will shook his head.

  “Somehow Mann discovered I was buggering the wench. He presented Father with the galley of an item on the subject. No names, of course. But the piece was written so everyone would know I was the fellow trying to erase the natural color barriers between the American and Asian races, as Mann so delicately put it—”

  Marcus shuddered, his smile gone. “It was horrible. Naturally, Father paid Mann to suppress the story. But the language of their discussion got pretty heated. The very next week, to retaliate, Mann condensed the story to half its original length and published it anyway. I couldn’t show my face for weeks.”

  Will was aghast. “How could Mann pull a trick like that?”

  “How could he? Because he’s a damned crook. Of course he kept the letter of his bargain. He’d been paid to kill the copy he showed father, and he did. Nothing was said about other versions. He joked about it afterward. I tell you, Will, everybody on the island is terrified of the son of a bitch.

  “There isn’t a first-rank household that isn’t fearful of harboring at least one of the Colonel’s informants on its staff. We think we have two or three. Trouble is, we don’t know who they are and we can’t find out. Mann pays them too well.”

  “You mean servants actually spy on their employers?”

  The naiveté of the question made Marcus snicker. “How else do you suppose the Colonel digs up all that dirt? Someone else on the island acts as a clearing house for the information and a conduit for the money. We can’t find out who it is, either. Another of our footstools, I suspect.”

  “Footstools?”

  “Those of us who come up for the summer call the townies our footstools. I’m told the term originated with King Louis the Fourteenth. I like it.”

  Will said nothing. He was appalled by the remark, and by all he’d heard in the past few minutes. He’d seen little of Marcus Pennel during the past year, and he realized something had changed. Perhaps it was his own viewpoint. How had he ever been able to consider this callous young man his friend?

  The truth was, he hadn’t. As he looked back, he realized Marcus had impressed him because of his family name, nothing else. And after he’d met Laura, he had tended to overlook Marcus’ faults because he was her brother.

  The presence of the victoria in the center of the pier was an inconvenience to pedestrians and cart traffic. Marcus knew that; it was the reason he’d prolonged the conversation instead of driving on. No one had had the nerve to ask him to move.

  Now, however, a number of rough-looking fishermen were gathering and gesturing toward the coach, scowls on their faces. Marcus sensed that the appropriate moment for departure had come. He picked up the reins and quickly separated them.

  “Here we go.”

  He whipped up the horses and started them into a wide hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. He whipped them a second time as the carriage rumbled toward the head of the wharf, picking up speed. He was grinning again. He clearly assumed that any sailors, fishermen, or townspeople would remove themselves from his path before he ran them down.

  Remarkably, they did.

  CHAPTER IV

  THE SHACKER

  i

  THE HIGH-STEPPING SORRELS DREW the victoria north along Thames Street. Occasionally Marcus flicked one of the leaders with the whip. He was an expert driver, Will observed as Marcus guided the carriage around a corner and up a sloping brick street.

  “How long are you going to be here, Will?”

  “A week or a little more. Till Laura gets bored with my presence.”

  “Oh, my dear sister has many a devious method of combating boredom,” Marcus replied with a sly smile. Will found himself disliking that smile, though he couldn’t say why.

  Marcus realized he’d annoyed his friend. With a straight face, he added, “She’s awfully anxious to see you again. I think you two would make a capital match.”

  Redness showed in Will’s cheeks. “How does she feel about that?”

  “I haven’t quizzed her, but I have a feeling she agrees. I was expressing the opinion of some of the rest of us—”

  He pointed the whip at a small gray-painted colonial building on their left. “That’s the Touro Synagogue. Oldest Jew church in America. Established a good ten years before the Revolution.”

  Will held on to his straw hat and turned to look at the building. Marcus guided the horses down the middle of the street. A delivery wagon coming from the other direction was forced to give way.

  Sparks shot from the hooves of the sorrels as they pulled hard toward the summit of the hill. Over the noise of iron shoes and wheel rims, Will shouted, “What do you do for entertainment here?”

  “I’ll show you when you can tear yourself away from Laura. The family dinghy’s berthed at the local yacht club. I like sailing even more than driving, I think. Pierpont Morgan said you can do business with anyone, but you can only go sailing with a gentleman. Managing Father’s real estate, I meet a lot of low-class people. You can’t imagine what illiterate grafters I’m forced to deal with. Some of them come right out of the foulest sl— Well, never mind that,” he amended, keeping his eye on the horses.

  He turned into another tree-shaded street. This one headed roughly southeast along the crest of the hill. “We were discussing recreation. You have your choice of the yacht, polo ponies, this and several other carriages—you enjoy coaching, as I recall—”

  Will nodded.

  “Then you’ll be right at home in Newport. You can also play tennis, swim, or visit Blanche’s and get royal treatment for your cock.”

  “What’s Blanche’s, a whorehouse?”

  “A very fine and discreet one. The girls would object to the use of such a crude term. All our crowd goes there. Keep it in mind if Laura’s busy.” He chuckled and watched the road a moment. “Seriously, old fellow, she’s working very hard on your behalf these days.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ward McAllister summers here, up at Bayside Farm. He puts on picnics that are all the rage. Earlier this month Laura attended one. She flattered and wheedled McAllister until he was in a good mood and she could bring you into the conversation. I’m afraid Wardie hasn’t forgotten what your father did. But Laura reminded him your name is Will Kent, not Gideon. He admitted that was true. Before she was finished with him, he’d virtually promised to get you an invitation to Mrs. Astor’s ball next January.”

  It was incredibly good news. Why, then, did Will have trouble summoning any excitement? He tried. “That’s wonderful, Marcus.”

  “A little more enthusiasm, if you please. Once you attend Mrs. Astor’s winter ball, your membership in Society is forever certified. You’re recognized as crème de la crème, as Wardie likes to put it—”

  Promise me you’ll be somebody.

  And promise me you’ll make sure everybody knows it.

  “I appreciate Laura’s effort,” he said with greater animation. “I didn’t mean to act as if I don’t. Something else had crossed my mind—”

  “What?”

  “That servant whose leg I set the first time I visited Pennel House.”

  The victoria turned down anoth
er broad street. Through dust raised by the horses, Will saw a marker identifying the street as Bellevue Avenue. Marcus looked blank for a moment, then said, “Jameson—wasn’t that the fellow’s name?”

  “Jackson. Is he still with you?”

  “No. I think he married one of our house girls and went west. Why do you ask?”

  “I’d like to know whether the leg healed properly.”

  “Afraid I can’t say. To tell you the truth, I never inquired. Does it matter?”

  “No. It was just my first fling at—well, call it horse doctoring.”

  ii

  The carriage continued up the street toward a frame building with a shaded front porch. On the porch sat several old gentlemen with sizable paunches. One of them nodded—the only greeting Marcus received. The rest regarded the victoria and its driver with disapproval. Will had the feeling the old gentlemen would have regarded any source of noise or motion with disapproval.

  “Those are some of the august members of the Reading Room,” Marcus told him. “That private club I mentioned.”

  “Private?”

  “Very. But the membership roster includes damn few readers. Mostly it’s a bunch of old rips who drink and reminisce about chorus girls they’ve fucked in private booths in some New York lobster palace. The club used to be Commodore Bennett’s hangout.”

  “Gordon Bennett, Junior? The publisher of the Herald!”

  “The same. I always admired his style, but he was too much for some. A few years ago, he had a British officer up here as his guest. Chap named Captain Candy. Bennett challenged Candy to ride a pony across the Reading Room porch and straight on inside. Damned if the limey didn’t do it. The stunt didn’t set well with some of the old farts in the club. They slapped the Commodore’s wrist. Sent him an official reprimand. Made him so mad, he dropped his membership and built the place just ahead. The Commodore’s long gone but that’s his memorial—the Newport Casino.”

  Marcus pointed his whip at the sprawling structure on the east side of Bellevue Avenue. The victoria jolted over shiny tracks in the center of Bath Road. Down the hill on Bath, Will saw a trolley climbing from the waterfront. He noticed overhead wires.

  “You really have electric trolleys here? It’s a pretty small island for that—”

  “The trolley line’s new this year. Some like it. I don’t. Isn’t good for anything but hauling tourists from the ferry to the beaches—here, I’ll stop so you can get a better look at the Casino. Stanford White designed it.”

  He pulled to the right side of the road, at the edge of a field in which more than twenty vehicles were parked— everything from a Demi-Daumont to a dog cart. The drivers and postilions were tending to the horses or lounging in the shade of nearby trees.

  The Casino across the street was a low, rambling building painted green and heavily decorated with the wooden scrollwork so popular these days. From where he sat, Will could look straight through the entrance arch. On a grass court, two men and two women wearing white were languidly batting at a tennis ball. Fashionably dressed couples watched from parasol-shaded seats at the sidelines.

  “The Casino’s damned popular,” Marcus told him. “It’s always packed at eleven o’clock every morning. That’s when Conrad’s Orchestra gives its daily concert. And unless your family owns permanent seats in the grandstand, you positively can’t get through the turnstile during Tennis Week in Aug—”

  “Pennel. Hey—Pennel!”

  A stocky, dark-haired young man stepped out from the shadows of the Casino’s entrance arch. In one hand he held a smoldering cigarette.

  He stared at Will and Marcus with a derisive expression. He was about Marcus’ age and wore patched trousers, a sweat-marked red jersey, and a dirty cap with a broken visor. The shabby clothes did nothing to detract from his swarthy good looks. Behind him, two other boys leaned on a railing beside a turnstile, watching. Both were dressed like their companion.

  Marcus whipped up the horses, but not so quickly that Will missed what the swarthy young man yelled next. “Tell your sister that when she gets another itch, we’re all ready to take her on again.”

  iii

  “Bastards.” Marcus brought the whip down so hard on the left leader, the animal whinnied.

  The victoria veered toward the center of the avenue, the lead horses on a collision course with those of a second victoria coming from the opposite direction. The other driver shouted and swore. His passenger, a man of about sixty with a Vandyke and a Napoleon III mustache, recognized Marcus and glared.

  By expert driving, Marcus narrowly avoided a crash. When he’d gotten his victoria back on the right side of the street, he groaned, “This isn’t my day. That was Wardie.”

  “McAllister?”

  “Right. Jesus! As for that loudmouth—I hope you didn’t pay any attention to what he said.”

  “I didn’t take it seriously, if that’s what you mean. Turn the carriage around.”

  “Why?”

  Will’s dust-covered face had a hard look. “I’ll give him a chance to take back his remark and apologize. If he won’t, I’ll call him out.”

  “Bare knuckle?”

  “Anything he chooses!”

  Marcus kept driving. He was unenthusiastic about a fight. “Listen, that shacker was just spouting hot air. You don’t want to get mixed up with his kind.”

  “Why’d you call him a shacker? What’s that mean?”

  “It’s the name for ball boys at the Casino. Townies, every one of them. They delight in harassing the summer crowd. Every so often the complaints get too numerous, and the Casino managers fire one or two. But two more are hired to replace them, so it’s a losing battle.”

  Marcus turned to look earnestly at his companion through the dust blowing up behind the horses. Here Bellevue Avenue ran in virtually open country, treeless except for obvious new plantings which screened a few large houses on either side of the road. To the left, a break in shrubbery afforded glimpses of a turreted mansion against a glinting expanse of the Atlantic.

  “Shackers will say the worst possible things about anyone,” Marcus went on. “Tell the crudest and most outrageous lies. They delight in it. In a brawl they stick together. Always win. And Muldoo—” Marcus caught himself. “The one you just saw is the worst of the lot. That’s why I wouldn’t go back and start anything if I were you.”

  Marcus’ cowardice sickened Will. How much easier and safer it was for Laura’s brother to demonstrate his bravery by threatening a miserable, middle-aged drunk like that Edmonds. And obviously he didn’t want Will to know the shacker’s name, in case Will went back looking for the boy.

  What ingratitude, he thought a moment later. Marcus Pennel was his host and one day might be his brother-in-law. He should be on Marcus’ side, not on that of a bunch of illiterate oafs who didn’t know how to behave toward their betters.

  “Laura’s never spoken a friendly word to any of those wretches,” Marcus assured him. “Never. Count on it.”

  “I do. I recognize dirty talk for what it is.”

  Marcus looked relieved. “I’m glad. Ah—here we are.”

  iv

  He swung the leaders into a left-hand turn. The victoria passed through an immense wrought-iron gate onto a long, broad driveway of crushed marble. The drive was flanked by closely planted, neatly trimmed hydrangeas.

  Ahead, a magnificent house rose. Will hardly noticed. Marcus had been upset about the shacker’s remark, yet unwilling to do anything about it. To Will it was puzzling behavior. No, more than that: upsetting. Marcus should be interested in defending his own sister’s reputation. Why wasn’t he?

  Will began to think his earlier explanation was wrong. He wasn’t absolutely convinced Marcus was a coward. But if not, what kept him from fighting? Again Will had no idea.

  He didn’t dignify the shacker’s taunt by wondering whether it might be true. He knew it wasn’t. Laura might lose her self-control with someone she loved, but she’d never sully herself
by being promiscuous. Yet the incident continued to trouble him. He decided the problem was Marcus. Reluctantly, he realized he didn’t like Laura’s brother very much.

  A bad way to begin a visit, he thought as the victoria rolled up in front of the awesome three-story mansion looming against a backdrop of cliff, ocean, and summer sky. But Laura would help. By her mere presence, she’d settle his doubts and put everything right again. He was sure of that much, at least.

  CHAPTER V

  MAISON DU SOLEIL

  i

  SERVANTS MET THE VICTORIA outside the huge front doors of carved oak. One man whisked Will’s valise away, a second relieved Marcus of his top hat, two more held the horses while grooms came running from the stable. At a touch of Marcus’ index finger, one of the tall, perfectly counterbalanced doors swung open without a sound.

  Delighting in Will’s amazed expression, Marcus led him into the marble-floored entrance hall. “Come along, now. There’s more to see than a doorway that cost a mere fifty thousand.”

  So there was—and Mrs. Pennel, small and polite yet exuding that aura of steely strength, was determined that Will see it immediately. Laura was still at the beach. “And Thurman is in New York attending to business.” It had the sound of an afterthought.

  Maison du Soleil had been built by a combination of local and imported European labor, she said as they began the tour. The plan of the house devoted the first floor to rooms for entertaining, the second to nine family and guest bedrooms, and the third to much smaller rooms for the servants. The mansion’s focal point was a central hall whose walls rose two floors to a fresco so realistically painted, Will had to look closely to be sure he wasn’t staring at the summer sky.