by Anya Seton
‘I know who the man must be,’ she said rapidly. ‘But I’m sorry to say I think him most undesirable. I don’t blame you, of course. I quite understand——’
Miss Pringle’s nostrils dilated, she primmed her mouth.
‘I trust I am qualified to judge of the desirability or undesirability of a given individual, certainly her Grace the Duchess of——’
‘Yes. Yes. I know,’cut in Fey. ‘Kindly tell me exactly what happened.’
Speaking to me like that, like a servant, thought Miss Pringle, breathing hard. But she couldn’t bully Fey and knew it. Too, in this matter of the gentleman in the park, she had some guilt. Quite flattering he had been, and she had enjoyed herself, obviously cause for guilt.
‘He walked along with us to the lake, and then he took Lucy skating for a while,’ she said resentfully.
‘He was alone with Lucita?’
‘Never out of my sight, naturally. They seemed to have a very good time. I never saw the child laugh so much, too much for a little lady, as I told her later. She gave as excuse that he had told her a great secret.’
Secret. Fey had the dream sensation of bottomless falling. But even Terry couldn’t do that. He was heedless, mischievous; he had wanted to see his child again, perhaps had met her by accident. ’
‘This must never happen again,’ said Fey, and as the governess looked both angry and startled, realized she was being too dramatic. She forced a smile. ‘I mean, I think you had better take Lucita to Madison Square or keep her in the garden for a while. The man is quite a gentleman, it’s true, but a ne’er-do-well relation. We prefer to forget about him. I’m sure,’ she added, descending to diplomacy, ‘you understand these situations, Miss Pringle. You have had so much experience.’
The horsey face relaxed a trifle. ‘As long as I am in your employ, madam,’ she said darkly, ‘I shall, of course, do as you say.’ And she stalked out.
Fey threw herself on the sofa, pressing her fingers to her temples. I must see Terry again! I must! Find out what he told Lucita. I can’t question my poor baby. She must forget it. Tell him he’s got to go away. I demand it.
Like the tinkle of a far-off music-box, she heard the song which had so moved her in the drawing-room. All that surge of feeling was gone, even the memory of it was thinned and vague. ‘ Flee as a bird to your mountain—Flee as a bird——’ Silly words, draggy sentimental music in which to read illumination.
I must see Terry again. Have it out with him. This is intolerable.
She ran to her writing-desk, picked up her carved malachite pen.
Chapter Eighteen
THE NEXT MORNING, Terry was awakened at ten by a bellboy bearing Fey’s note. ‘Three o’clock,’ it said. ‘Same place. F.’
Terry beamed at it, admiring the clear feminine writing and the thick creamy paper emblazoned with a small crest. This latter was Simeon’s idea. An accommodating genealogist had traced back, through the arrival of John Tower at Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1637, to the concoction of an impressive crest, a plumed turret complete with Norman motto. Simeon had come to believe it himself most of the time, his descent from an obscure branch of the Hingham Towers. He quite often alluded to it casually when mentioning Fey’s Scottish ancestry. But he never did it in Fey’s hearing after once seeing an amused indulgence in her eyes.
Terry was impressed by the crest and delighted with the note. He kissed it gallantly and then—following the traditional chivalrous rule in affairs like this—he tore it up and threw it in the fire.
Conditions for the rendezvous were scarcely ideal today, since it was snowing, but, as Terry’s plans included only the briefest possible stay in Central Park, it didn’t much matter. He breakfasted quickly, and then, hiring one of the new hansom cabs, set out for Schultz’s Hotel way uptown on the East River at York-ville to make arrangements. These satisfactorily completed, his spirits rose so high that they included the cabdriver.
He poked open the little door in the roof. ‘A fine town this—Paddy,’ he called up. ‘I like New York, don’t you?’
‘Yez wouldn’t be likin’ it so foine if you was hacking in all weathers like me,’ answered the man morosely. ‘And it ain’t Paddy, it’s Cadwallader.’
‘Holy Saint Mary!’ breathed Terry, ‘that’s beautiful. Come on, Cadwallader, let’s have a drink. I’m celebrating.’
‘I ain’t celebrating nothing,’ said the cabby, but he stopped the horse in front of a saloon.
When they came out again, they were arm in arm. The snow had stopped and Cadwallader had mellowed. He drove down the sparsely settled First Avenue, and sticking his face close to the trap accompanied Terry’s exuberant songs in a diffident tenor. They sang ‘ The Man on the Flying Trapeze,’ and ‘ Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines,’ to the appreciation of the slaughterhouses’ employees and a few hockey-playing urchins. They turned west on Houston, heading back for Terry’s hotel, but paused instead at Duffy’s Chop House, and, after a fortifying round, Terry invited Cadwallader to lunch with him there.
Over oysters, mutton chops, and beer, Terry grew confiding and a trifle sentimental. ‘Going to meet the most wonderful woman in the world this afternoon, Cadwallader,’ he said earnestly. ‘I can hardly wait. Eager as a boy with his first sweetheart, that’s what I am.’
‘Indade, sir,’ said the cabby, gnawing on the chop bone and grinning. ‘And the grand upstanding gentleman that yez are, I’ll be bound she’s as eager as you.’ He would have said this, anyway, being grateful for Terry’s drinks and fine lunch, but he was sincere. Without you counted Denis Shane, the ladies’ delight at Wallack’s Theater, this was the handsomest gentleman he’d seen in many a day, and the warm Irish grin of him, too, the democratic manner.
‘I’ll be bound she is eager,’ said Terry complacently, ‘but she won’t show it at first. Ladies don’t, you know.’
Cadwallader nodded. ‘O’ course not. Even my old woman, she comes all over coy at times. ’Tis a virtue of the sex.’ He raised his beer mug. ‘ It’s luck I’m wishing you, sir. Not that ye need it.’
The mugs clinked as the chop-house clock struck the half-hour. ‘Half past two!’ cried Terry, startled. ‘I must hurry. Tell you what, you’re a discreet man, aren’t you, Cadwallader? You drive me up to the park, we’ll pick up the lady, and then back to Schultz’s Hotel where we just were.’
‘Oh,’ said the cabby. He wiped his mouth thoughtfully. ‘ It’s like that, is it? I mean to say, sir, I thought when ye said “lady,” I was thinking ye meant a genteel young female wot yez had honorable intentions toward. But I’m game for a bit of fun.’ He winked at Terry, who frowned.
‘It’s not a bit of fun,’ he said coldly. ‘It’s just a question of awkward circumstances. Damn it, I tell you, I’m in love with her. I wouldn’t hurt her for the world.’ And that’s true, he thought. Little Fey, lovely little Fey. My wife once, the mother of my child. Never been a woman meant so much to me. His eyes moistened, and he stared accusingly at the apologetic cabby, who said, ‘Sorry, sir. I don’t know nothing about the ways of gentry. Hadn’t we better be goin’, sir? ’
Terry flung a gold quarter eagle down on the table and they went back to the cab. It was snowing again, and there was no singing as Cadwallader hurried the horse up Fifth Avenue to the park. Terry, by no means drunk, yet was enjoying a nostalgic and sentimental haze. Lovely little Fey, he repeated to himself, so brave, so winning—and his thoughts molded themselves as they often did inta the theatrical speeches of his California days. Villain that I am, how could I have deserted the best, the truest of wives! I will make amends. She shall know love again, the tenderness, the forgotten ecstasy——
He saw her from the carriage drive hurrying along the path toward the Arch. He jumped from the cab and ran through the falling snow to catch up with her. ‘Darling——’ and he pulled her back the few steps to the waiting hansom. ‘We can’t stand out in the snow——’ but she did not object. She said nothing at all. He pushed up the trap, nodded to
Cadwallader, who flicked the horse, and nodded back. Terry closed the flaps in front of them, fastened the extra leather storm curtain, encircled Fey with his arm, and tucked the rug snugly around them both.
‘How beautiful you are!’ he breathed, looking at her averted profile. Her body had curved against his and he could feel the beating of her heart, but her head was turned and she seemed to be looking out of the side window with a curious effect of stillness. She had worn her sable wrap and little sable toque; on the rich dark fur and her darker hair there was a spangling of snowflakes. These and the color in her cheeks gave her a fairylike delicacy, though from the furs there rose the heavy perfume of frangipani.
His arm tightened. ‘I was so happy, Fey, to get your note.’ He bent his head, and his lips touched her cheek.
She did not move. It begins again, she thought, it begins again. She spoke without turning, her voice thick.
‘You had no right to speak to Lucita. You promised and I trusted you. That’s the only reason I’ve met you today.’
Terry laughed. ‘You’re a sweet hypocrite. You used to be honest with yourself, Feyita, mi amor.’
She moved her head, the wide gray eyes stared at him helplessly. She appeared drugged—scarcely conscious of him or the hastening cab. He put his hand behind her head, and began to kiss her.
On Seventy-Ninth Street, Cadwallader peeped quietly through the trap, chuckled, and pulled the horse down to a walk. Ten minutes later they passed the old Gracie Mansion still standing in its park full of beautiful trees, continued four blocks up the frozen dirt road to the northern curve of Horn’s Hook and Schultz’s Hotel. This had once been an honest clapboard farmhouse with a beautiful view up the river toward Hell Gate. The view remained if one stood outside, but the Schultzes had embellished their purchase with so many porches and gables and scrollwork shutters and three pairs of shielding curtains to all the windows that the river was no longer visible from the interior. The patrons of Schultz’s were not interested in the view.
The cabby drew up under the peeling yellowish portico. ‘Here y’are, sir,’ he called hoarsely through the trap.
Fey started, pushing against Terry. ‘Where?’ she whispered. ‘Where are we?’
‘Way uptown, miles from anywhere,’ he said reassuringly. ‘I’ve ordered tea for us.’
‘I can’t. You know I can’t. Take me back, Terry.’
‘Nobody’ll see you at all. There’s no harm in a cup of tea after a long ride.’ He could not help laughing as he said this, amused that even Fey should demand the conventional appearance of innocence.
‘Come on! ’ he said, for he was impatient, and women at this point preferred to be commanded.
She got down slowly, drawing her sable cape tight around her and shivering on the wooden step. She gave the hotel’s door a dazed, uncertain look. She was breathing rapidly and she had grown very pale.
‘Here, my friend,’ said Terry, tossing a fifty-cent piece up to Cadwallader. ‘ Buy yourself a drink and then wait over there in the livery stable until we call you.’
The cabby gave him a fraternal salute and drove off. Terry pulled the bell-knob and the door opened. A fat German in a soiled apron bowed them inside.
‘Just a cup of tea, that’s all. A cup of tea before the ride back,’ said Fey faintly to both men.
Schultz bowed again without speaking. The women often made some silly remark like this when they first came in. He looked neither at Fey nor Terry, but led the way upstairs to the end of a short hallway.
‘I haf give you Turkish Room,’ he said in a low voice to Terry. ‘Is nice, is gemütlich.’
He bowed them inside and shut the door. The Turkish Room was Schultz’s conception of Oriental voluptuousness. A divan upholstered in red satin had been built in one comer, and an arrangement of curtains transformed it into an alcove. Round stuffed hassocks dotted the gaudy Turkish rug—made in Birmingham; on the walls were crossed scimitars, crescents, and pictures of extremely fat and naked houris gazing at pashas. Rose incense—from Chinatown—burned in a small brass brazier, hot air blasted from an ornamental register in the floor, and on a mother-of-pearl tabouret, carefully arranged, lay all the usual adjuncts to seduction—a decanter of whiskey, a bottle of champagne, Turkish cigarettes, even a little dish of aromatic cachous for the breath.
Terry hung his hat and coat on a brass clothes-tree, divested Fey of her cape and toque without help from her. She continued to stand on the center of the Turkey rug, staring at the room.
‘Quite a place,’ said Terry. ‘Cozy. Come, Fey, sit down.’ He propelled her over to the divan, poured her a glass of champagne and himself a shot of whiskey. She accepted the champagne glass, balanced it carefully in her fingers.
‘Drink,’ he said. ‘Drink to our old love transformed into a new and better love.’
‘Do you believe that, Terry?’ She put her glass, untasted, down on the tabouret.
‘Of course I do.’ Terry checked irritation. Damn women, damn their eternal demand for the romantic approach! We’d passed this point. However——And he knew very well the note to strike.
‘Darling——’ he said very softly, moving a little away from her. He went on in Spanish. ‘Don’t you remember, Feyita, the old days on the Trail? Was there ever happiness like that? The nights when we lay in each other’s arms under the stars and our hearts spoke to each other as our bodies did? It’s there for us now—waiting. You know it—you can’t deny it, my little chula.’
Her immobility shattered. She put her hands to her throat, giving him a blind, frightened look. ‘I can’t see clearly. I can’t think. Let me alone, Terry——’
He reached up to the chain which dangled above the divan and pulled off the light.
There was a discreet tap on the door at five o’clock, and a murmur outside. ‘It’s the time you asked to be called, sir.’ Then vanishing steps. Fey was sitting at the foot of the divan, her hair recoiled, and she completely dressed.
‘So you thought of that, too, Terry,’ she said.
He roused himself. ‘ Didn’t want you to take a chance of being late, honey. Old boy might get suspicious."
‘Fortunately, Simeon trusts me.’
Still sunk in an amorous drowsiness, he missed the intonation of her voice. ‘Sure, the old boy’s an easy mark.’
‘Why do you say that?’ She pulled the light chain and the gas flared up, while she contemplated Terry with steady, narrowed eyes.
‘No particular reason, darling.’ He was startled. He had never seen that expression on anybody’s face before, certainly on no woman’s.
He sat up and reached for her hand. ‘You were wonderful, Fey, you’re a wonderful girl.’
She looked down at the big brown hand with its fine gold hairs.
‘You mean, that I am a satisfactory mistress, no doubt?’
‘Really, Fey, what is the matter with you! It was perfect, you know it was. Why, I feel—I feel——’
‘Yes—?’ she said, with a small inclination of the head. She rose with precision, walked across the room toward the clothes-tree.
‘Fey, listen. You’re being silly. It isn’t even like a real—uh—a real infidelity. Why, you were my wife once—I never thought you’d act this way—under all that coyness you were as——’
Again she gave a polite inclination of the head. ‘ Certainly. I was as lustful as you.’ She pulled the sable cape around her shoulders and adjusted the little hat before one of the fly-specked scrollwork mirrors. ‘ Good-bye,’ she said.
‘Wait, Fey. You can’t leave like that. I don’t understand. It isn’t fair,’ he cried passionately.
She turned to face him, one hand on the doorknob. ‘Listen then, Terry. It is finished at last, and I feel for myself a loathing. I was always a—an incident to you, as I have been now. I knew this. I even told myself this over and over, but I——Oh, what’s the use! Perhaps it was necessary that by yielding to my body I might become free of it, and you.’
Terry la
ughed, for this type of rationalization was familiar to him. To be sure, it was usually he and not the woman who suffered a backwash of boredom and revulsion after the event; still, Fey had always been different, and as he well knew, these moods were temporary.
So he spoke with a caressing assurance. ‘You may feel like this now, but you won’t in a day or so. You know where to find me. I’ll be waiting and eager.’
‘I tell you,’ she said, spacing her words, ‘that it is finished. I cannot in fairness blame you for not believing me, but it is finished, at last and forever.’
And this time he did believe her, for he identified her expression with that of a man in New Orleans. A man who had caught him cheating at faro, but whose contempt for his own stupidity had prevented him from exposing Terry. The man’s eyes had held this same pitiless finality before he had shrugged his shoulders, tossed a bagful of coins on the baize, and walked out of the gambling house.
‘Yes,’ said Fey. ‘I see that you understand.’
Terry flung back his head and spoke through his teeth. ‘And you have the audacity to pretend that, after going this far, after leading me on, after just now allowing me so signal a mark of affection as you have just conferred, you dare to think that——’
‘I think, my dear Terry, that this very fine speech was written once by someone else. Can we perhaps simply say good-bye? ’
He lowered his head, closed his mouth slowly. She twisted the knob and opened the door, giving him a small remote nod. ‘I ask you to leave town. But whether you do or not, I shall see to it that you never meet me or Lucita again.’
She shut the door behind her, and he heard her light footsteps dwindle on the hall carpet. He went to the shrouded window, pushed the massed red curtains aside, and peered between the slats of the blind.
He saw a boy summon the hansom cab from the stable, saw the cab disappear under the porte-cochere and then drive off through the softly falling snow. He let the curtains drop, and they gave off a reek of stale incense. He walked to the divan and poured half a tumblerful of whiskey. He drank it down and looked at the frayed rose-silk pillows which still showed two indentations. ‘You’ll find it’s not as simple as all that, my dear,’ he said. ‘Love goes, but money stays. Maybe that was written once by someone else, too. Little bitch!’ But he was surprised to find that he wasn’t particularly angry at Fey; he even felt for her a certain respect, and when he had finished the bottle, the sentimental mood returned. He thought with tenderness about Lucita. Pretty child, nice little girl. Certainly don’t want to stand in her way. No, that wouldn’t be right, he thought, shaking his head. Guess I’ll pull out of town after the old coot kicks in with the cash tomorrow.