by Anya Seton
She turned and hid her head under the lumpy pillow, pressing it around her ears.
They lived together for a week in the back room on Bleecker Street. By the second day, Terry had money. When no longer encumbered by Fey, he had found little difficulty in following his established and so far successful pattern. After leaving Fey in Bleecker Street, he had spent an agreeable hour strolling up Fifth Avenue until he reached Delmonico’s at Fourteenth Street. Here he entered the cafe side, ordered a beer, and awaited developments. They came quickly. Three portly middle-aged men and four actresses sat down at a table near Terry. They ordered champagne and brandy.
Terry edged over and listened. The men were celebrating the successful outcome of the Erie Railroad’s stockholders’ meeting that day. Flushed and excited they bandied names. Terry, avidly listening, heard mention of Drew—‘smart as a whip, he’s pulled it off again’; Vanderbilt—‘his goose is cooked this time.’ The men ordered more brandy and, temporarily ignoring the girls, branched into speculation on the reaction of the stock market as a whole, making intimate use of other great financial names, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk.
Terry was quite shrewd enough to realize that these men were small fry—hangers-on, each trying to outshine the other by the possession of doubtful knowledge. But they were obviously prosperous and they were New Yorkers.
Terry spent his last quarter for another beer, and examined the extra girl, the one who had no partner. She was a pretty blonde in violet satin and ruffles. She had a bored, restless eye which Terry caught without difficulty. Terry, me lad, he thought, your luck is back again. This’ll be easy.
It was. He swiftly considered the best approach. Boldness, of course, and flattery, no need for subtlety at this point since the men were well liquored-up.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, smiling and addressing the oldest of the men, ‘ I couldn’t help but hear a bit you said. I’m a Westerner just got to town today, and to stand near men who actually know Vanderbilt and Drew and Fisk fair throws me off balance. Please pardon me for butting in.’
The men stared at him, while the lady in violet rustled appreciatively. Terry turned his warm smile from one to the other; there was in it just the proper touch of ingenuousness.
‘Well,’ said the oldest man at length, frowning a little, ‘I’d no notion we were talking so loud.’ He wiped his mustache methodically, easing himself on the gilt chair. ‘So you’re a stranger, are you?—Well——’ he hesitated again, but it was the era of treating and extravagant hospitality, and one lived up to the code. ‘Will you join us for a drink, sir?’
Terry would. They plied him with questions about the West, and gradually, as drink succeeded drink and Terry obliged the untraveled with ever more highly colored tales of his adventures, the men lost their patronizing amiability and became interested. As for the girls, they thought him romantic, a handsome heroic Westerner, and they vied with each other for his attention. He confined this, however, to Maude, the blonde. She was better dressed than the others; she had rings and a diamond brooch; she was sophisticated and knowing. No flies on her, thought Terry, and he felt for her a kinship.
By the time they left Delmonico’s, Terry was accepted as one of the party for the evening. They went to Fortuna’s. This was one of the most ornate and discreet of the city’s twenty-five hundred gambling houses. It was hidden on the upper floor of a marble mansion on Nineteenth Street.
It was Maude who arranged this move. She spoke quickly to Terry at the cafe entrance, her white kid glove exerting a subtle pressure on his arm. ‘ Flat broke, aren’t you? ’ she whispered. He nodded. ‘Ever tried faro or roulette?’
He nodded again, looking down at her appreciatively.
‘I’ll stake you,’ she said, and she slipped a twenty-dollar gold piece into his hand.
The others crowded around them, while Terry’s mouth sent her the outline of a kiss. They understood each other.
Terry won. Not spectacularly, but the twenty dollars grew to two hundred.
Then Maude stopped him. ‘That’s enough,’ she said. ‘It’s going to turn.’
Terry glanced at the suave banker, imperturbably dealing.
‘Crooked? ’ he asked, raising his eyebrows.
She shrugged her violet shoulders, gave him a half-smile. Terry accurately deduced that she had a connection with the salon. Smart girl who lived by her wits, and pretty, too. It occurred to him that she would have been an immense help with the medicine show. A girl like this, talk back to and amuse the crowd, work out a real act, one that depended on partnership instead of a crazy hit-or-miss guessing or whatever Fey had done.
He and Maude were strolling through the brilliantly lighted rooms looking for the rest of their party when Terry thought of Fey and his resolution about her crystallized. With the decision came an unexpected thrust of pain and guilt. It was so strong and so unexpected that he stopped walking. f 4
‘Whatever’s wrong?’ said Maude, looking up at him and laughing. ‘You look very black all of a sudden.’
‘Nothing wrong, my beauty,’ he smiled at her. ‘This is the happiest night of my life.’
‘I’m going to Chicago next week,’ said Maude, glancing at him through lowered lids. ‘Got a job there at the Variety Theater.’
Terry’s face showed real dismay.
Maude took a paper of rice powder from her reticule, patted her nose and cheeks delicately; the powder released a wave of heliotrope.
‘There’s lots of easy money in Chicago,’ she said. ‘Heaps more ways of laying hands on it than in New York, if a person’s smart. Real estate’s the thing there, like it used to be here. Somebody with a few hundreds could run it up in no time, if he knew where to buy and when to sell.’
Terry said nothing.
‘A person can have a lot of fun in Chicago,’ continued Maude, without special emphasis. ‘Free and easy, not stiff like New York.’
‘You don’t say,’ said Terry.
She tilted her blonde head and, looking up into his face, gave him her knowing little smile.
When Terry returned to the house on Bleecker Street at four that morning, he found Fey fast asleep. He did not waken her. He stared for a long time at the shadowy outline of her little face in the faint gray dawn light before he turned on his back on the lumpy bed and presently slept, too.
For the next six days he was exceedingly kind to her. He left her only for a few hours each evening, and the rest of the time he devoted himself to her. She told herself that all was well at last, and she clung to him with a frantic love, studying to please him in all things, forbearing to question him, since that always annoyed him.
On the Monday morning he awoke early and got up. Her dazed eyes watched him from the bed while he packed the carpetbag. He clicked it shut and, fully dressed, came over to her.
She sat up slowly, pulling the ruffled nightgown around her. She pushed back her long loose hair. ‘Where are you going, Terry?’ She exhaled her breath, waiting without motion, her eyes lambent and fixed.
‘I’m pulling out, for good.’ He did not look at her. His voice was high and offhand. ‘We never meant it to last, you know.’ He went on faster. ‘Way back in Santa Fe, it was just a business arrangement. We never meant it to go on and on. I got you East where you wanted to be, didn’t I? You’ll be all right. Here’s some money for you.’
He shoved a roll of bills at her and, as she did not move to take them, he put them carefully on the table. ‘You can find work easy enough. You dance and sing, real well. Or you might set up for a fortune-teller, especially if that mind-reading trick of yours’ll work. Lots of fortune-tellers in the city and I hear they do fine. There’s one on Broadway—Madame Astra—they say makes a mint out of the business; old Commodore Vanderbilt himself goes to her.’
He paused and looked at Fey for the first time directly. ‘Don’t take it like that, honey,’ he said. ‘We’ve had a grand time together and I’m fonder of you than anybody else, but——’
‘
We’re married,’ said Fey.
Terry’s lips thinned; he glanced at the twisted gold-plated ring on her finger. ‘Oh,’ he said, in a reasonable tone, ‘that wasn’t a real marriage, not for two Catholics or anybody else. More of a joke that was. Dozen words in a mountain shack spoke by an old Injun scout. That wasn’t any marriage and you know it.’
‘It was to me,’ said Fey. She reached her hands out, clenching them on a fold in the blanket.
‘It was marriage for me!’ she cried, in a strangled voice. ‘I love you.’
‘Oh, sure, so do I you. You’re a wonderful sweetheart, and a good kid, but you see——’ Sweat suddenly beaded his forehead.
This was worse than he had anticipated. He hadn’t actually previsioned this scene at all. He had during the last days managed to persuade himself that Fey felt as he did. That they were simply enjoying together a graceful rounding-off of a romantic episode.
Fey shut her eyes once, opened them, and looked straight at him; at the ruddy brightness of his hair where it sprang from the tanned skin on his forehead, the gold hairs on the lean plane of his cheeks, the cleft in his chin, and his mouth whose hungry warmth she knew so intimately. Last of all, she looked into his eyes. They were shuttered to her, and showed only the rueful resentment of the escaping male delayed against his will.
She got out of bed and stood leaning against the footboard, her nightgown fell to her bare feet, shrouding her.
‘Go, then,’ she said. Her voice was a shaft of cold light that struck across his startled face.
He pulled himself up, relief submerged by the usual baffled annoyance. One minute she claimed she loved him and the next this unwomanly coolness. If she had sobbed and thrown her arms around him, if she had begged him, perhaps——
‘Go,’ con Dios!’
The contempt, the bitterness she put into the Spanish farewell, exploded the anger he had hoped for earlier.
‘You needn’t put on airs with me!’ he shouted. ‘You’ve done yourself mighty well for a little greaser wench.’
He picked up the carpetbag and his hat. He hesitated one more moment at the door. Fey said nothing; she continued to stand holding on to the footboard. He stamped out of the room. His steps dwindled to silence on the bare stairs.
Fey’s hand dropped. She shut the creaking door. She walked slowly to the window and stared out at the warehouse wall, She stood at the window for a long time looking at the wall.
Toward noon Mrs. Flynn tapped perfunctorily on the door and, receiving no answer, pushed it open. She had noted Terry’s early departure with the bag, and curiosity had been nagging at her for some time. Curiosity and finally anxiety as no sound came from the back bedroom. Wouldn’t do to have any trouble. Never could tell what them girls mightn’t do, specially foreigners. Never would do to have anything happen would bring the perlice, she thought, with rising apprehension, and she knew a moment of real fear as she saw Fey lying on the bed in her nightgown.
But the girl was all right, leastways right enough, for her eyes were open, and she turned her head and looked at the landlady.
‘Come, there, dearie,’ said Mrs. Flynn, her gaze darting about the room and verifying her suspicions. ‘Your fancy man walk out on you? Well, don’t take on. There’s plenty more for a gel like you. You’re young and you’ve got style; you ain’t exactly purty, but sometimes your kind goes further with the men. I don’t say you’ll get yourself another as <ïood-lookin’, they don’t grow on every bush.’
‘He is my husband,’ said Fey.
Mrs. Flynn looked at her sharply. The girl sounded queer, desperate like, unpleasantly like a woman who’d been here last year and done a daft thing with scissors.
‘Sure, he was your husband,’ said Mrs. Flynn soothingly. ‘Get up, dearie, do, and get dressed. You’ll feel better.’
Fey gave a peculiar little laugh. ‘I’m alone, you see, all alone again. Just as the bells said.’
‘Here, now, none of that!’ cried Mrs. Flynn. ‘No hy-sterics, if you please.’ She thrust the comer of her apron into the water jug and forcibly washed Fey’s face. Fey lay inert under the rough handling.
‘Holy Saint Bridget,’ said Mrs. Flynn. ‘You’re in the family way, ain’t you!’
‘Yes.’
The same queer voice, like her mouth was muffled by a blanket.
Mrs. Flynn nodded. ‘ I c’n always tell by the look around the eyes. You got to do something quick. Did you tell him? ’
‘No,’ said Fey, ‘I didn’t tell him.’
Mrs. Flynn was exasperated, all the more so as she felt an unwilling pity. She had seen the roll of bills on the table, and she was itching to count them. The girl didn’t seem to be noticing anything, so it was possible to inch over to the money. A hundred and twenty dollars!
She abstracted a ten-dollar bill and put it in her bodice. This increased her pity for Fey and reduced the exasperation.
She turned around again. ‘No decent place’ll take you in and I can’t keep you after you begin to show, you’ll never get no place anyways with a brat around.’ She lowered her voice to a sibilant whisper. ‘You’ve got to get rid of it—like many another’s done.’
Fey raised her lids and looked at the woman. ‘Get rid of it?’
‘Sure,’ said Mrs. Flynn, still whispering. ‘Plenty of places’d do it, but they’re kind of risky, it don’t turn out so good. You got money enough to go to the best. Wait a bit, I’ll show you.’
She went out, and Fey heard her dragging stepsdescend thestairs.
After a while she came back and forced a newspaper clipping into the girl’s limp hand. ‘ Read it, dearie,’ she urged. ‘ Madame Restell’s! That’s the place for you. The great house on Fifth Avenue she’s got, and the foine ladies what go to her when they’ve had a bit of a slip, you might say. Thousands a day she makes, and perlice can’t touch her no more, though they’ve had many & whack at it. I’ll warrant she’d do you for fifty dollars, it being so early, and you looking almost like a lady and all.’
Fey’s eyes traveled vaguely down the cleverly written advertisement. It mentioned ‘medicine for distressed young wives’ and ‘procedures for curing unhealthful delay,’ and its meaning was plain enough.
There had been a woman like this in the Barrio Analco. Juana La Vieja, she was called. She knew a great many curious herbs and other things, too. Sometimes women went to her stealthily, padding at night along the dusty footpath, their faces completely hidden by the rebozo.
The clipping fluttered from her fingers and, caught by the draft, fell on the dirty carpet.
Mrs. Flynn was annoyed. Trying to help the fool gel out of her trouble, and not a word of gratitude or interest. Laying there like a dummy, gawking out the winder like she was alone in the room.
Mrs. Flynn thought of leaving, but she sat down on the bed instead. Anything was better than the heap of dirty dishes and sour diapers which awaited her attention in the basement kitchen, and the baby, praise be, was quiet in his cradle downstairs for the moment.
‘Wished I’d had someone’d give me a bit of smart advice twelve year back when I was first caught with Timmy,’ she said. ‘ I was a right purty gel then myself, could’ve gone places mebbe in the concert saloons. You gotta pull yourself together, dearie,’ she went on. ‘He’s left you alone like you said, and you gotta make your way alone. You don’t want no handicaps.’
‘You gotta make your way alone.’ The thin, sharp voice, spiraling through the room like a spring coil. And what is my way? There was love and Terry like a thicket of white mountain aspens with murmuring golden leaves, the trunks so close you couldn’t get out of the thicket. The leaves were gold, but not from the sun. The trees were too close together for the sun to shine through, or the turquoise sky.
Fey sat up; she glared at the startled Mrs. Flynn. ‘Let me be!’ she said violently. ‘He’s my husband, I tell you, and he’ll be back.’
‘Oh, no, he won’t!’ Mrs. Flynn tossed her head, nettled by Fey’s tone, bu
t gratified to have elicited some response. ‘ I know his kind like I know the back of me hand. He’s gone off with another gel. I seen him with her oncet last week coming out the Hoffman House.’
Fey made a sound.
‘Oh, yes, me dear,’ said Mrs. Flynn, with a blend of malice and contemptuous pity. ‘Big blonde, she was, and a su-perb bosom, though mebbe ’twas padded—they was a-holding hands all lovey-dovey. She’d a hot brassy look. She’s not the one to get herself into your fix, not her!’
Mrs. Flynn stood up, smoothed out her stained apron, and unbuttoned the top of her straining bodice. ‘Me milk’s coming in,’ she said, ‘and there’s that brat beginning to yell punctual like he knew. ’Tis the woman who pays, dearie, like they say in the theeayter, and I’m sorry for you. That’s why I’m a-telling you how to get out of your trouble.’
‘Go away! Leave me alone! ’
The landlady bridled again, her slack mouth set. Of all the thankless—and then she encountered Fey’s eyes. They were brilliant and fixed on the woman’s face; strength was behind them and command so powerful that Mrs. Flynn gasped. The little thing on the bed, a gel in trouble, speaking and looking like a countess. Mrs. Flynn had never seen a countess, but she accurately judged Fey’s expression.
It was the product of two ancestral lines equally accustomed to obedience, equally resentful of indignity, and though Mrs. Flynn’s own ancestry had never encountered either Spanish grandee or Highland chieftain, she responded quickly. She muttered, ‘Yes, mum/ which later annoyed her very much, and scuttled from the room.
Fey got off the bed, washed, carefully brushed and coiled her hair, then she put on the red plaid dress Terry had given her. She had no other. While she performed these mechanical tasks, a voice spoke in her head. It used neither the new English she had learned, nor the Spanish. It spoke in the language of her early childhood. Ah, there, Fey, it said, dinna fash yoursel’ because your man has left you. It has happened to many, my lass; did you think you were different? You were different, maybe, you had ‘ the sight,’ but ’tis gone too. There’s naught to help you in the whole wide world but yoursel’. 'Tis strong you must be, lassie, no longer soft and whimpering. Strong. Hard and strong as rock.