by John Jakes
She laughed. “You are a very forward man.”
“That too. Want to get inside so the poor fellow on top can find us a restaurant and get on home to Chester?”
ii
At the end of the Arch Street season, one week before Will’s wedding in Hartford, Eleanor Kent Goldman and Cornelius Raphael Martin were married in a small family ceremony in the house on Beacon Street.
In private, Gideon told his daughter he was pleased with the match. He found Martin a smart, strong-minded fellow, with the kind of independence on which Gideon prided himself and admired in others. He wasn’t the least put off by the fact that his daughter had fallen in love with a telegrapher.
“He’s got more character and substance than hundreds with fancier occupations.”
“I agree.” She beamed, kissing her father’s cheek.
His expression grew sober. “I’m also happy for another reason, Eleanor. You seem to be putting the past behind you successfully.”
He took her slight shrug and her small, quick smile as an assent. What she was thinking was far less positive.
Eleanor loved Rafe. She wanted to marry him. But she was terrified of failing again. How was it possible for a human being to be attracted and repelled by something at the same time?
But the attraction was stronger, and so they said their vows, and kissed, and outwardly no one suspected a thing— except perhaps the new bridegroom. Eleanor’s anxiety persisted up to the very moment he placed the plain ring on her left hand. And the instant he did, anxiety became fear.
iii
Like many American newlyweds, they wanted to see Niagara Falls, which Eleanor had never visited, even though she had played Buffalo several times. They didn’t plan to reach their destination the first night, however. One of Gideon’s carriages spirited them southward out of Boston, to a small country inn, where they would spend the night. In the morning, the carriage would call for them and deliver them to a suburban rail station, where they could catch a train for Albany.
The inn was small, quiet, and comfortable. There were only six rooms on the second floor. The largest had been reserved for the honeymooning couple. Rafe and Eleanor found a splendid old canopied bed, a fieldstone hearth with apple wood logs burning—the spring evening was cool— and a repast of champagne, caviar, cold salmon with capers, and other delicacies spread on big silver trays; an amenity arranged by the Kent family, they were sure. The innkeeper, cordial enough, didn’t seem the sort to appreciate or regularly serve caviar.
The day, for all its joy, had been long and tiring. Eleanor’s mental state wasn’t helped by her exhaustion. She tried to nibble a bit of dry toast with caviar and a dusting of golden egg yolk spooned over it, but she couldn’t get it down. Rafe popped the cork of one of the three champagne bottles crowded into a bucketful of ice; the cork went ricocheting around the walls and the beamed ceiling like an oversized bullet. She ducked as it missed her and landed at his feet. With the foaming bottle wrapped in a white towel, he stood studying her. His grin faded.
“Not feeling like any of this, are you?”
“Rafe—”
“Not feeling like anything but rest.”
He put the bottle back in the bucket and bent to kiss her forehead. “That’s perfectly all right. Everything in its own time. We’ll just curl up and sleep. I’m damn near worn-out myself.”
His kindness touched her, prodded her to do what she knew she must, though she feared it.
“No,” she said softly, opening her lips a little as she kissed him. “We’ll have a proper honeymoon. Just give me a few minutes.”
“Eleanor, believe me—you needn’t flog yourself. I know how hard this is for you.” They had several times discussed the problems in her relationship with Leo. Yet all that candor and all his reassurances did nothing to slow her heartbeat or banish the dry, sour feel of her mouth. She hated herself, hated what she was. She hated the fact that he knew—and was incapable of believing his assurance that it didn’t matter. Why had she consented to marry him? Why?
Panicked, she fled to the small dressing room. There, alone behind the closed door, she tried to compose herself. She unpinned her hair and changed from her traveling outfit to the fine Chantilly bed gown and matching robe Julia had given her. She wanted to be a good wife, but she’d wanted that with Leo, too, and she’d failed. Brushing her hair over and over, she told herself she would fail again tonight.
She delayed for twenty minutes, thirty. Then conscience temporarily won out over fear. She opened the door and walked back to the bedroom as if marching to her own execution.
Rafe had donned a smoking jacket of fine dark green crushed velvet. He looked monumentally uncomfortable in such finery. Barefoot, he sat with one ankle resting atop another on a hassock. He twirled a champagne glass nervously in his right hand. He’d extinguished the lamps; the only light came from the dancing flames.
“My,” he breathed. “Don’t you look ravishing, Mrs. Martin.”
She tried to smile. “I am Mrs. Martin, aren’t I?”
“You certainly are—and I couldn’t be happier.”
“But I’m afraid I’ll never make a perfect wife.”
“Only fools ask for perfection in themselves or others.”
“Oh, Rafe—you are an incredibly kind man.”
“The hell I am,” he replied with that smile that charmed her so. “I’m no saint. I’m just like those scientific fellows I’ve read about—the ones who go digging for old art treasures—”
“What on earth are you talking about?” she asked, diverted. He set his glass aside and walked to her.
“One of those fellows who digs around old Arabian ruins and turns up a beautiful, old lamp worth millions. You don’t find them throwing away such a treasure just because it has a few nicks and dents.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “We all have those, my love. Every man and woman God ever made.”
His voice was so gentle and reassuring, she almost forgot to be frightened. He leaned down and said, “I know what’s terrifying you. It needn’t. We’ll just sleep. That will be fine tonight—or any other night until you say otherwise. We’re going to heal you, Eleanor—”
“No!” she cried softly, one arm flung around his neck. She brought her mouth up against his, and lost herself in the kiss and the embrace that accompanied it.
He kissed and caressed her in a tender way. It was her urging that took them to the bed. Yet as she slipped out of her robe and gown, she felt the tension tightening her loins, then her whole body.
He felt it too. His caresses stopped. Their naked bodies etched by the flickering fire, they sat on the edge of the bed with their hips and shoulders touching. He poured a glass of champagne and handed it to her. “Drink a little of this. It might help.”
“Not as much as your kindness,” she murmured, bending to sip and wondering again whether she would fail him.
He put his left arm around her shoulder in a companionable way; he was, at that moment, as much her friend as her would-be lover. She finished the champagne and felt the tension lessen just a little. When he resumed his stroking and kissing, it was very slow, very gentle. He touched each part of her only after long minutes of careful preparation. Finally he lowered his body over hers—and the tension seized her again. Gazing down with concern and love, he quickly placed his right palm against her cheek.
“Don’t worry. Don’t worry—I’ll stop the moment you say. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t, darling,” she lied, drawing him to her. She couldn’t help a pained cry as he entered.
She closed her eyes, cursing herself. He remained absolutely motionless. Moments passed. Then: “Eleanor?”
Slowly the tension left her face. He was where he belonged—and she was enduring it. The first step had been taken.
She saw the imaginary door. One of its panels displayed a great raw opening, as if it had been chopped with an ax. She realized what the image meant. The door was breached, no longer capabl
e of containing secrets—
“Yes,” she answered very softly. “I’m all right. Love me, Rafe. Please do—”
And he did, with consuming passion and tenderness. It hurt her a little, and he knew it, so he was careful and deliberate until the end when, with wondrous realization overcoming her disbelief, she was aware of an absence of pain, and next just a faint stir of pleasure—gone so quickly she might have thought it hadn’t happened at all.
But it had. It had.
Afterward, reliving the moment as she lay drowsing beside him, she was filled with a conviction that she might have escaped her yesterdays at long last. It might be that she could look forward to a chance of becoming a whole woman.
He alone made it possible because he loved her, and because he knew and said it didn’t matter. Two could indeed bear a cross more easily than one.
Perhaps, she thought as his arm cradled her against his side, perhaps that was the secret of the survival of the Kents—and of all families that managed to withstand living in a world that was no better than its inhabitants: troubled, capricious, filled with error and contradiction.
Four hands lifting made a burden lighter. And the strength of those hands was love. She held that thought as she reached down to close her hand on his—
And cried.
She cried as she hadn’t for months, perhaps years.
Anxious, he questioned her. She reassured him that it was only happiness that made her weep. Happiness, and freedom, and the final destruction of a door.
CHAPTER XIX
THE BROKEN PROMISE
i
FROM SACRAMENTO, WILL TELEGRAPHED ahead to say that he and his new wife would be arriving via Pullman Palace Car. A note from Carter was waiting when they checked into an elegant suite at the Hope House, where they would be spending two weeks as guests of the owner. Carter’s note said he’d meet them for luncheon next day, in the Grill Room of the Palace Hotel on Market Street.
Will was nervous about the coming encounter with his stepbrother, though he tried not to show it. He and Jo arrived at the Palace half an hour early and were already seated at a choice table in the mirror-paneled Grill Room when Carter walked in. Jo recognized him immediately from Will’s descriptions.
Carter had stopped at the head waiter’s podium and was chatting with two of the formally attired members of the staff. He whispered something—a joke, to judge from his smirk—and then all three men laughed uproariously.
He spied Will and Jo, grinned and waved. Will had to admit his stepbrother looked splendid. He was wearing a dark gray hopsack suit, obviously expensive, and a contrasting emerald-colored waistcoat. He had a gold-headed stick tucked under his left arm. A heavy ring with a large white stone flashed on his right hand as he strolled toward them. Will was wearing a new suit and cravat, but he felt shabby by comparison.
Carter paused and bent over the gem-crusted hand of a double-chinned dowager, stopped again to exchange pleasantries with a couple of burly men who appeared to be both very wealthy and very coarse. He visited four other tables after that. There were no important-looking people in the room whom he didn’t know. As for the rest, he ignored them.
When he reached Will and Jo, Carter grinned and said, “Sorry to be late. Boss Buckley is encountering some trouble from a crowd of self-appointed reformers. It’s taking extra effort to keep the faithful in line—so this is Jo!”
The transition from one thought to another was almost as swift and smooth as his move around the table. He lifted Jo out of her chair and clasped her in a brotherly hug. She blushed. Will saw that she enjoyed being the center of attention—as did Carter.
“Marriage seems to be agreeing with you,” Carter said when he’d taken a chair. “And it’s Dr. Kent now, isn’t it?”
“That’s right. I managed to squeak through Harvard.”
Proudly, Jo said to Carter, “He won’t boast, but I will. He didn’t squeak through. He was fifth from the top of his class.”
“Congratulations!” Carter exclaimed, beaming. “Now all you have to do is sit back, peer at a few sore throats, and watch the gold roll in, eh?”
“Not quite,” Will answered with a guarded look. Even though his plans had been firm for more than a year, he hadn’t shared them with his stepbrother. Each time he’d written to him, he’d avoided any mention of Jo’s background and the practice waiting for him in the Bend. Even now, he was apprehensive about raising the subject of Drew and the Bend. But he wouldn’t have a clear conscience until he did.
It had to be done privately, though. Jo knew nothing about the promise Carter had extracted during that walk on the Common so long ago.
A waiter offered elaborately printed menus. “Thanks, Maurice,” Carter said without so much as a glance at the man. “There ought to be something here to please you two. Kirkpatrick, the food manager, tries to satisfy everybody from the gourmand to the silver millionaire who ate his own shoe leather while he was making his pile. What looks good? Grizzly steak? Local venison? I’m told the grilled sand dabs are fine—I’ve never had them—”
“So much to choose from!” Jo said with an appreciative sigh.
Will closed his menu and smiled at his stepbrother. “Looks like your work’s agreeing with you, too.”
“Absolutely. I love politics, and I love San Francisco. My old Harvard chum Willie Hearst is here. He publishes a morning paper.”
“Oh, yes, Hearst is very well known in the East,” Jo told him.
“Especially in the Kent household,” Will said. “Papa keeps track of all the stunts he pulls. Like sending a couple up in a balloon to be married, or having a man jump off a ferryboat to see how long it takes the crew to rescue a passenger who falls overboard. He disapproves of things like that. He’s getting pretty conservative in some ways. On the other hand, I think he’s taken with the idea of hiring women to write about sensational subjects. What do they call reporters like that?”
“Sob sisters.”
Carter removed the wrapping from a long green cigar. He clipped one end of the cigar with small gold scissors. He rolled the cigar between his, fingers, then clenched it between his teeth. “Willie’s sob sister is one of the best. Her name’s Winifred Sweet, but she uses the byline Annie Laurie. She was a chorus girl whose show got stranded here. Hearst hired her—thanks, Maurice,” he said again as a flaring match appeared from over his right shoulder.
He bent to the match. When the cigar was lit Maurice blew the match out and stepped back like a soldier at attention. Carter continued. “Willie comes in for a lot of criticism because of his stunts. On the other hand, he makes no secret of the reason for them. The news is often hellishly dull. And there’s one other problem with it. Rival papers can print it too. But manufactured material is exclusive. That’s why Willie likes it. Right now, for instance, he and Annie are trying to figure out how a woman can get committed to the Home for Inebriates. Willie thinks there’s a fine exposé lurking there.”
“You must see a lot of him,” Will said.
Carter’s smile and nod said that was correct. “Willie and I have a lot in common. Neither one of us could get through Harvard. He played one prank too many and they booted him out at the end of his junior year. He has a fine house over in Sausalito, and he found me one nearby. He keeps a jolly young lady named Tessie Powers, who—oh, forgive me, Jo,” he said, pretending to be conscience-stricken. “Shouldn’t be saying such things in front of a husband and wife.”
Will gazed at his stepbrother. “Sounds like you really admire Hearst.”
“I do. He already influences public opinion and government policy in this part of California, and he thinks he can do it nationally, too. He’s anxious to acquire a paper in New York. There’s no limit to his ambition.” Carter puffed his cigar a moment. “That’s one of the ways we’re alike. Shall we order?”
Carter opened his menu. For a moment he seemed a total stranger. In a sense he was. He was living in high style while working as a trusted aide of the c
ity’s Democratic boss—a man Gideon claimed was wholly corrupt. The paths and viewpoints of the stepbrothers had obviously diverged without either of them being fully aware of the changes brought about by time, circumstances, and differences in character.
Still, a bond remained—the bond of affection Will felt for the Carter Kent of yesterday: the Carter who’d given him confidence when he had none, and even fought his battles until he was old enough and clever enough to fight them for himself.
Carter chose a slab of venison with a side dish of salad that incorporated a generous portion of California artichokes. Will and Jo took the waiter’s suggestion and ordered a Grill Room specialty, Pacific coast oysters baked into a savory pie with a crackling light brown crust. Carter insisted on selecting the wine: Pouilly Fuissé for them, an expensive claret for himself. He finished a whole bottle while they were each drinking half of theirs.
As the meal progressed, Will grew increasingly ill at ease. The cause was partly what remained to be said; partly some things he was noticing which he’d overlooked in the first flush of the reunion. As always, Carter smiled a lot. But it struck Will that much of his spontaneity was gone, and that when he did smile, very little humor showed in his eyes. His behavior seemed studied, every detail pointed toward creating a carefully calculated impression.
After they’d eaten, Carter lit another cigar. “Jo, perhaps you’d like to refresh yourself while Will and I stroll off some of this food.”
“Fine,” Jo agreed, starting to rise. Carter leaped to pull her chair out. She smiled in appreciation.
“We’ll meet you on the promenade of the grand court,” he said. She nodded and left. He followed her with admiring eyes.
“I applaud your choice, Will. She’s a charming girl. Very bright, too.”
“A trifle overawed by you, I’m afraid,” Will said, folding his napkin.