“Mighty thoughts,” he allows at last.
Martha can’t think what to answer, and so affects a dismissive smile that Kelman either doesn’t notice or doesn’t understand.
“I’ve disturbed your studies,” he says. “I apologize.” He turns the volume over in his hands; it hasn’t occurred to him that she would be less than a thoughtful and well-read woman; his only surprise is that he has not had evidence of it before. He opens to the preface again.
“‘Nor will the view of a philosopher’s life be less instructive than his labors. If the latter teach us how great vices, accompanied by great abilities, may tend to the ruin of a state; if they inform us how Ambition, attended with magnanimity, how Avarice, directed by political sagacity, how Envy and Revenge, armed with personal valor and popular support, will destroy the most sacred establishments, and break through every barrier of human repose and safety …’” He ceases his recitation; he places the book squarely on the table. “Parallel lives,” he states. “Plutarch’s Parallel Lives.” Martha can see how deeply affected he is.
“You will stay for luncheon, Mr. Kelman. Mr. Simms is engaged in the city today. I am dining alone and would welcome—”
Kelman regards her; his eyes are bleak, the scar on his cheek as silverine as water in the sun. “I have come on business.”
Martha sinks back in her chair. “You have found my father’s … body … I should have intuited as much when the footman announced you. But I thought when we met by chance two days past that …” The words trail away.
Kelman frowns. “Miss Beale, my visit was not intended …” He leaves the phrase unfinished, although his expression grows fiercer. “I’ve been insensitive. It’s not usually my nature.” He looks at her with quick and lonesome candor, then all at once imagines himself accepting her invitation, picturing conversation and warmth, then a stroll in the chilly and bracing air. She might take his arm as they tramp the winter-dead lawns. He would feel her breath near his face, the heat of her shoulder and wrist and hand.
He shakes the thoughts from his mind. “Did your father suffer from brain fever or any psychic abnormality, Miss Beale?”
“Immediately prior to his disappearance, do you mean, Mr. Kelman?”
“Or at any previous time.”
Martha thinks. “He had no mental afflictions of which I was aware, Mr. Kelman. May I ask why you pose such a question?”
Again he hesitates. How to disclose his suspicions? How to broach the subject that Lemuel Beale might be alive? And that his drowning may have been meticulously plotted and staged? The effort of a deranged mind, or the careful conniving of a rational person with much to lose by remaining in his accepted persona but everything to gain by means of his deception.
Martha regards Kelman with her green-gray eyes. “You appear to have new information you are not revealing.”
“I have some reason to hope that your father may yet be living, Miss Beale.”
Martha starts in her chair. This is an extraordinary disclosure indeed. “Rescued unconscious from the river, do you mean? And recovering in some woodsman’s cottage, as I had originally …? Oh, Mr. Kelman—!”
“No, that’s not what I mean.” Again Kelman pauses, and it’s Martha who propels the conversation forward.
“Then, please, sir, do tell me what it is that you intend.”
Thomas Kelman weighs his words. “There have arisen reports that your father has been seen walking abroad—”
“Walking abroad! But you told me two days ago that … and Mr. Simms also assured me that you—”
Kelman interrupts her. “The reports may prove insubstantial, Miss Beale.”
“Reports?” Martha finally notices the plural form of the word. “There has been more than one?”
“Three, Miss Beale. One claims to place your father in Philadelphia—near the commercial wharves—one in Chester, and one in New Castle, Delaware.”
“And all since we last met?”
“It was only late yesterday that I was apprised of them … which is why I present myself to you now.”
Martha considers the information; incomprehension furrows her brow, although her posture remains outwardly composed and pragmatic. “Are you intimating that my father suffered some dire blow during his accident—one that has rendered him insensible of his own identity?”
Kelman avoids the question by posing another. “Is it possible your father had an enemy he wished to escape? Or creditors?”
“I’ve already mentioned that I know of no enemy, Mr. Kelman; and as to creditors, surely Mr. Simms would have revealed as much.”
“Is Owen Simms aware of every aspect of your father’s business activities?”
“I imagine so …” Again Martha’s brow creases in puzzlement. “But I cannot answer with certainty, as I was kept from full knowledge of my father’s affairs. However, wouldn’t creditors have applied to me—as Lemuel Beale’s only child?”
Thomas Kelman gazes down at her, and she looks up at him, hoping for but not anticipating a reasonable solution.
“As I stated, these reports may prove to be false, Miss Beale. When a person as well known as your father disappears, there are bound to be peculiar and unfortunate tales. There are lunatics who insist they are the sole surviving heirs of wealthy and upstanding men—”
“That’s a terrible consideration, Mr. Kelman … that someone could be cruel enough to either spread rumors or seek to resemble a vanished relation.”
“The world is not always a kind place, Miss Beale.”
She studies him. “So I have been discovering. But then, I think you are aware of my recent schooling.” She shifts her focus, letting her eyes slowly wander the room. “Why would my father visit the towns of Chester and New Castle? If this man is indeed my father? The communities are commercial ports only. Not so great as Philadelphia, of course, although nearer to the ocean …” Martha doesn’t finish her thought, and Kelman can supply no explanation.
Instead, he says, “It would give me great pleasure to dine with you, Miss Beale. If Mr. Simms will not object.”
Martha’s glance ceases its restless roving. She smiles. “Mr. Simms has left the countryside for the day. He’s overseeing certain transactions at Father’s offices on Third Street and will not be home until much later. Therefore, I believe he could not possibly object.”
While martha and Thomas Kelman dine on John Dory and ragout of lobster, on wild ducks and grilled mushrooms, on Nesselrode pudding and tartlets of greengage jam, while they talk of books and the weather, while they pause self-consciously or affix too much concentration to their plates, another scene is enacted in a very different location. The room here is small and sparsely furnished: a bed, a table, an overly large looking glass hung above it, a single chair. The sole extravagance is a pair of velvet draperies covering the window; the color of port wine, they balloon across the floor in a heavy cloud as if originally cut for a much grander opening. They are also dense with dust.
A young girl sits naked on the bed. Her little feet don’t reach the floorboards. Her toes, her male companion notices, are gray. He tells her to wash them; he doesn’t like dirt, he says. Of her hair, which is fair but is presently as dull and dusty as her feet, he says nothing.
The child stands and walks to the basin set atop the table. Gentlemen, she knows, are a peculiar lot. They want all sorts of strange things. But then, she realizes, ladies are often no better. Not the fine ones, anyway. Not the ones with the aigrette-trimmed hats and perfumes and silk-lined gloves.
She wrings out the cloth; the water is cold by now and cloudy; a film of grease from the lye soap shivers on the surface like fresh-forming ice. She’s glad she washed her body when the basin was steaming and hot. The man helped wash her, another curiosity.
“Mary,” he now says. “I must have purity at all times. You do understand the meaning of that word, do you not, my child?”
She opens her mouth to speak, but he raises his hand, the nails so perfectly
sculpted, the flesh so luminous and white it makes the fingers look like a statue on a grave marker. “Remember what I told you, Mary? You must not speak unless I give you leave. You must not utter the slightest sound.”
“Mary” shuts her mouth. She wants to tell him that isn’t her name, that she’s been called Ella ever since she can remember. Instead, she dries her toes.
“Now sit upon the bed again, my dear. And tell me again how old you are by holding up one finger for each year of your life.”
In silence, Ella holds up both hands. Ten fingers.
“A lovely age,” he says, and smiles.
Then he removes his shoes and stockings, and finally his trousers. The shirt and waistcoat and cravat and jacket, he leaves on. Ella braces herself; she knows this will hurt, and she doesn’t like pain. The madam always tells her she’s a baby to take on so, that a little discomfort is nothing when you have a full belly. But the reprimand doesn’t keep the ache and sting at bay. Sometimes she bleeds, but it’s not the natural monthly bleeding of the older girls. Without her being aware, Ella’s lips tighten into a grimace of despair; a weary sigh rises from her breastless chest.
That quick, the man’s hands are upon her throat. “No noise, I told you!” he hisses in her ear. “I must have silence! Utter silence!” Then the angry tone softens and the taut fingers relax. “Mary, my dearest, my chosen one. I didn’t mean to frighten you. Tell me I did not, dearest. Tell me I did not … No, later. You may say a few words later when we are done.”
But, foolishly, Ella again opens her mouth to speak, and again the man’s enraged fingers fly to her throat. His thumbs press against her windpipe; she chokes and squirms until she wriggles free.
“You are a useless creature,” he hisses in a ferocious whisper, and so Ella/“Mary” acquiesces again, curling silently back under him, terrified that the customer will refuse to pay, and that the madam will later beat her—and then perhaps send her hurtling into the streets forever. To comfort herself, she plays a “game of thoughts” that has become her recourse and consolation.
She imagines herself out the room and away from the horrible man who smells of too much soap and eau de cologne. Instead, she ensconces herself in a gold-washed chamber with a parquet floor and a tea table overflowing with confections and fruits. She once peeked in at the window of such a place and was astounded to see children inhabiting it: a girl of about her height in a dress of dark stuff and lace and a younger boy with long curled ringlets like his sister’s. At least, Ella endowed them with the status of siblings. And she was able to watch long enough to observe how they played, how the girl was mistress, how the boy subservient, how they laughed and how the girl read to the boy from a book with colored pictures, and how icing stuck to their lips when they nibbled the cakesSusie … But then the boy had spotted Ella and screamed, and his sister had followed his glance, staring unrelentingly through the glass as if willing their unwelcome observer to vanish—or perhaps to die. Then the girl had shouted something, and a man burst out the house doors with a broom as if he intended to sweep her, like trampled leaves, into the gutter.
Remembering this final piece of the scene, Ella inadvertently groans with sorrow, and the man rises up from her back, cursing. He slaps her buttocks; he hits her head, and when she draws herself into a protective ball and tries to roll away he pinches her calves and toes, spitting out a vengeful “You are useless! Useless!”
Ella leaps off the bed, naked and splotched with red handprints. “That I am not, sir! I’m a good girl. I do as I’m told.”
“You don’t know when to keep your mouth shut!” He follows this with loud oaths that roar into the hall.
The door to the room bangs open and the madam barges in. She simpers apologies to the man and turns a countenance on Ella that’s so fearsome it looks like the maw of a watchman’s dog. “Get out of this house!” she barks.
Ella grabs up the few clothes she can reach while the madam rains abuse and blows upon her, promising to procure a “quiet one for the gentleman” as she sends Ella tumbling down the stairs and out into the cold and inhospitable street.
A common man is walking by, a man with a crooked gait and clothes that remind Ella of a suit she saw on a boy doll in a shop window. “If you please, sir,” she whispers.
The man keeps walking. Ella notices that his one foot causes him pain, and she pursues him as much out of need as curiosity. “Please, sir. I am cheap … and I am clean.”
He makes no sign of noticing, and Ella plucks uncertainly at his sleeve. “I am—”
The man whirls around. “What do you want?” But the tone isn’t unkind. Ella sees him gaze at her hastily thrown-on dress, at her stockingless and weather-stained shoes. “Why have you no coat?”
“If you please, sir. I’m a good girl. I do what I’m told.”
“Susan?” the man murmurs after a moment.
“If you wish it, sir.” Susan, Ella thinks, Mary. When will a client wish to use her true name? “Susan, yes sir. I will be your Susan.”
The man stares through her. Ella waits, shivering. “No,” he says at length, “of course, you cannot be my little Susie …” Then his eyes refocus on the child standing before him, and his face grows perturbed and angry. “Where are your mother and father that they allow you to walk about without proper covering?”
Ella can’t think of an answer, and so she merely repeats a more importunate “Please, sir …”
“I will make you a coat,” the man states, “and I will feed you. Then we shall find your family.” And he takes her hand as though clasping the fingers of his own lost daughter.
Mary and Martha
UNAPPEASED BY THE MADAM, ELLA’S onetime customer hurtles out of the fancy house, stalking in coiled anger into the waning daylight. The gas streetlamps—where there are lamps—emit a sulfurous and sickly glow, sending a green-yellow tinge into the thickening air. The man drags the collar of his fur-lined cloak closer to his face and pulls the brim of his beaver hat lower on his brow until only the tip of his nose is visible. His eyes and mouth are hidden.
The new girl provided by the madam failed him, too. She was too old, her hips and breasts already womanly, her glance censorious and lewd. Remembering her hard, judgmental stare, he grinds his teeth, moans, and marches on, brushing furiously against unwary passersby as he strides north out of the squalid neighborhoods bordering Lombard Street toward the more decorous region abutting Washington Square. This residential district he also avoids, turning at length down Chestnut Street toward the Delaware River.
The rowdy excesses of oyster cellars spill onto the pavement; there’s the stink of decaying shells, seaweed, sawdust, and spilled malmsey wine, the screech of drunken laughter, the clatter of tin plates. From one oyster cellar an old dog bursts forth, scuttling up the steep stairs onto the street while open oyster shells, long-necked bottles, and several stones pelt after it. In his consuming rage, the man kicks at the animal but misses, and his foot, flailing at the empty air, brings him crashing and cursing down: a heap of heavy coat, a hat that dances away into the street.
A young Negro woman bends down to aid him. She wears a mantle of cheap fabric. Her legs are bare although she has shoes on her feet; and her act of compassion is unpremeditated. A human being falls; she reaches out her hand.
She steadies the man and helps him rise, then dodges through the carts and coaches and omnibuses to retrieve his beaver hat. She holds it out but doesn’t leave her palm upward in hopes of a reward.
The man takes the hat and studies her, weighing her age against his desires. “You will go with me,” he orders.
“No, sir. That, I will not do.” She lets her eyes rest on his face and frowns. “Have I seen you, sir? Before now?”
“I will call you Mary,” is the oblique response.
“If you mean to offer honest employ, sir, my name is Ruth, and I have skill as a maid-of-all-work.”
The man smiles, although to Ruth the smile is more that of a starving anima
l than a human creature. “‘Call me not Naomi,’” he recites,“‘call me Mara: for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me.’”
“I know naught of that. I am Ruth, and I—”
“Daughter-in-law to Naomi. In the Holy Book.”
“Yes, sir. That book I know, sir. A Quaker lady read it me—all about the story of the mighty king and the part the loyal Ruth played …”
The man graces Ruth with a gentler smile. His passionate wrath is finally beginning to dissipate. In its place he knows he will experience the calm and pleasure of purpose. The girl in the bawdy house was a mistake. Perhaps, however, her failure is leading him to a better place.
“… But I am no daughter, sir, nor daughter-in-law …”
The man’s eyes half close as though in prayer. “‘Mara’ is so very near to ‘Mary,’ isn’t it?” he murmurs while Ruth tilts her head, listening.
“I do believe I know your voice, sir—”
His fist rises in the air that quick, but Ruth leaps away from the blow. “You do not!” he spits out. “You do not!” Then he spins away, disappearing into the crowd.
Ruth trudges on. It feels to her that she has wandered the city ten times over since the three days of her release from prison, but there are still so many lanes and courts and alleyways to search. Finding her little Cai is her only desire. She can’t remember when she last ate, or where she slept the night before.
Her hunt began in the tenements and factories near to where the Sparks Shot Tower rises above the lesser buildings: the ropewalks and brickworks, the tanneries, the slaughterhouses, the fertilizer manufacturers that collect horse droppings and dog pure from the streets and dry the ill-smelling mixture for use in the curing of hides. She reasoned that if Cai were still living he’d be of an age to perform tasks in such places. She was disappointed.
She moved on to the Northern Liberties with its textile mills and dye works, the wheelwrights and coopers of Green Street and Poplar and Laurel and St. John. There, her quest also failed. She considered continuing north again to Fishtown and the Boiler Works on Palmer, the iron foundries nearby and the glasshouses and brass and bronze smelters, but what would be the use? None but the skilled enter those premises.
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