The boy opens his mouth, then pinches it shut again. It’s obvious that no amount of browbeating will elicit further information.
AS HE RETURNS TO THE sternwheel paddle steamer that will carry him and Easby back to the Schuylkill’s eastern shore, Kelman parts company with the constable, whose relief is all too apparent. “A female vagrant,” he speculates while his body gratefully uncoils itself and his gaze seeks out the welcome path toward home. “We get them out here now and then—even along the Darby Road. Escaping rough treatment at the hands of her family or masters. Likely, this one was turned out for immoral behavior and she was journeying into the city’s anonymous streets when her labor pains came upon her—”
“Ah, yes,” Easby concurs as he steps into the welcome shade of an elm growing beside Blockley’s chapel. “What you say makes perfect sense. And having given birth, the poor soul places her baby in the basket she was carrying when she fled her dwelling place. Then, in a fit of melancholy and terror at an unknown future, takes herself down into the river. It’s not uncharacteristic for new mothers to behave irrationally. Indeed, for some months following parturition their humors can be quite inconsistent.” Easby nods as though agreeing with another’s observation, then hurriedly shakes hands with the constable. Both men are now so anxious to be finished with the dilemma—and with Kelman—that their leave-taking has a disconcerting air of jocularity.
The Humane Society president carries this convivial humor through the rest of the almshouse’s spreading grounds, past the stables and kitchen gardens down to the river and the ferry.
Not Kelman, however. While the boat slips over the heat-flattened waves, he responds to Easby’s remarks with fewer and fewer words. Instead, he gives himself to brooding over the boy Stokes and his father, and the vanished and most probably drowned mother of the infant.
Then, eschewing an offer to ride in Easby’s waiting phaeton, Kelman begins retracing his steps into the city. As he walks he reflects on the changes time has wrought upon it. In ten or twenty years, he knows, little will remain of William Penn’s “greene countrie towne” or the peaceable waterways that border it. Instead, there will be additional wire suspension bridges like the one constructed the previous winter, more coal barges churning through the canal, more pleasure steamers spewing smoke above the falls at Fair Mount. From the banks of the Delaware to the rocky cliffs of the Schuylkill, the city will be nothing but hard, paved streets, brick and stone buildings lined cheek by jowl, abattoirs, woolen mills, match factories, tanneries—and the children of the poor.
For a moment he pauses, recalling the scenes of his youth. Was I any different than young Findal, he wonders, running barefoot through these vanishing fields? Wild and untamed, and filled with the same hard-won valor. True, my father was never relegated to an almshouse, but was that because he was a wiser man than Stokes senior—or merely more fortunate? For he was no saint. Nor any remote approximation of one, either.
Kelman marches on, his shoes chafing at the dust and weeds of the dirt road, his black jacket prickling with heat. By now the elegant homes of the wealthy are beginning to dot the streetscape: new mansions and walled gardens filling what was once open grazing land. It’s all he can do to prevent his path from turning in the direction of Martha Beale’s residence on Chestnut and Eleventh streets. He knows she was expected home the day before, but he has been purposely keeping his distance. Better for her that I remove myself from her acquaintance, he recites in bitter silence. Better that she has a clear choice in a husband and companion, someone of her own means and background. I only cloud the issue. She must forget me. She’ll be happier for it. Happier and more content, by far.
AS KELMAN TRUDGES EAST, MERRIER feet than his flutter through less gloomy air, passing down a set of freshly washed marble stairs that front a home on lower Pine Street. This is Theodora Crowther; and she, in the company of her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Harrison Crowther, is on her way to visit the newly established daguerreotypist on High Street. The city is abuzz with this marvel—freshly arrived from France, of course, while the man who owns the gallery boasts a name full of hyphenations and ducal-sounding associations: Monsieur Jean-François Baptiste-Gourand, who learned his craft from M. Daguerre himself.
Theodora, or Dora, for this is how her mother and father call her, is nineteen and affianced to Percy VanLennep, who like her is fair-haired and given to quick flushes of embarrassment and impetuous bursts of enthusiasm. Together, they are like fledgling chicks, bobbing up and down with hopeful hops; apart, they are more restrained. Dora, in her parents’ company, can seem no more assured than a girl of fourteen.
“Oh, do come, Mama,” she now trills, lifting her little heart-shaped face, which today is framed in a bonnet of pale pink satin. Like her walking dress, the hat is piped in violet satin and trimmed with silk flowers; and she fairly spins in pride at this new ensemble. Excitement shivers across Dora’s lilac-hued shawl, down her arms in their tight sleeves, and makes her lace gloves dance in the air. “Mama! Do come! Else we’ll be late!”
Georgine Crowther appears in the doorway at that moment. She precedes her husband, whose tall hat rises less than an inch above the top of her own bonnet. Mrs. Harrison Crowther is a commanding presence. Where her daughter dances along the brick walkway, she promenades in a measured gait, with a frame so much broader and higher that she looks as though she might be descended from another race of peoples altogether. Dressed head to toe in moss green, Georgine Crowther resembles a leafy tree moving toward the street.
“Mama, do come!”
But the party is called back again as Harrison Crowther’s elderly maiden aunt Lydia steps outside to stand on the topmost step. The aunt so perfectly resembles her great-niece as to appear a portrait of youth turned old—and at the age of eighty-two, she is indeed ancient. Where Dora’s hearing is sharp though, Lydia’s is failing. Despite repeated applications of Scarpa’s Acoustical Oil, she exists in a realm that encompasses both past and present, and where the remembered conversations of her youth often have more relevance than present ones.
Now Miss Lydia, as the Crowther servants refer to her, totters down the stairs in order to embrace her great-niece and to remind her—loudly—to “mind her manners when in the presence of the general.” Dora’s mother starts to protest the interruption, but Miss Lydia continues speaking as if the tall lady dressed in green were invisible.
“He admires a pretty face,” she states in a rapturous singsong tone, “but not a pert retort. Silence is advisable when in doubt, especially because he’s so often burdened by affairs of state.” The “general” is George Washington, dead for over forty years but alive in Lydia’s mind—as is her father, who served as the great man’s aide-de-camp. “I feel a plume in your hat might be better than those flowers,” she adds, but Dora’s mother interjects a domineering:
“Miss Crowther, we’re tardy in keeping our appointment. Perhaps you could discuss Theodora’s headdress upon our return.”
The old lady can scarcely wave good-bye before her great-niece is hustled away, trailing behind her mother like a small boat sucked into the billowing wake of a larger one. Harrison Crowther tips his hat, and his aunt graces him with an inconclusive smile. She can’t recall the short man with the square face and rectangular torso, but her aged fingers automatically stretch out on either side. If she weren’t suddenly aware of standing beside a busy city street, she would attempt a curtsy. A full révérence straight down to the ground—as the general always desired.
THE RECEPTION ROOM OF THE daguerreian’s gallery is so extravagantly furnished with damask-covered tête-à-têtes, with pier glasses and curio cabinetry, that Dora gasps in pleasure, hurrying into the already bustling space as though entering a thé dansant. Her mother, no less astonished but more circumspect, follows, bestowing haughty nods on several acquaintances while covertly examining the quality of fabrics and choice of color scheme. The crimson hues, vibrant greens, and splashes of gold meet her approval since they reflec
t an appropriately masculine taste. Given the fact that she considers the daguerreotypist’s art no more than a passing fancy, she finds the surroundings surprisingly to her liking.
“Ah … good … good … Mrs. Crowther,” her husband says, “what say you to the gallery? I trust that observing so many elegant folk has allayed your fears for our Dora.” He doffs his beaver hat but then is forced to hold it in his hands—there being no servant present to receive it.
“Oh, Papa, do come see! There’s a portrait of Becky Grey!”
Georgine Crowther stiffens, as any good mother would on hearing this disconcerting news. Becky Grey is an actress—or was until a foolhardy gentleman decided to make her his wife. As the gentleman is of the Crowthers’ social sphere, his rash undertaking is all the more galling.
“Mistress Grey, indeed” is Harrison’s jovial reply, but Georgine interjects a stentorian:
“How would you have possibly have recognized the woman, Theodora?”
“Oh, Papa took me—”
“Not to the theater, I trust!” Despite the turning of heads and tilting of curious bonnets, Georgine’s voice is nearly a bellow. “And the lady is known as Mrs. Taitt now, Theodora, and that is how you should refer to her. If you must refer to her at all—”
“Dora and I happened to stroll by the American Theater on Walnut Street,” Crowther tells his wife. “As you know, it’s my belief that young ladies should learn the works of the great dramatists, and since Mr. Booth was commencing the role of Hamlet, and Mistress Grey was to play Ophelia, I felt—”
“Surely you did not permit her to view the production, Mr. Crowther?”
The father glances at the daughter. He’s far from chastised; instead, he seems to be enjoying the public altercation. “Alas, the hours allotted for the tragedy weren’t convenient. Another play was running in repertory—the comedy A New Way to Pay Old Debts, which didn’t much interest either of us. And now, of course, it’s too late to see Becky Grey in any role other than dutiful wife and future mother—”
“Oh!” Georgine’s ruddy cheeks flush a deeper hue; her bosom, despite the creaking stays, heaves. She fans herself and stifles another noisy sigh. “Theodora, I will not have you attending theatrical productions.”
“But Papa felt—”
“Your father does not appreciate the impropriety of young unmarried ladies witnessing—”
“Mistress Grey was also an unwed lady at the time,” Harrison interposes; his boxy face beams complacency and bonhomie.
“If you please, sir, I know whereof I speak.” Georgine turns her back on her husband. “Theodora, if your father proposed taking you to the Masonic Hall to witness the trickery and prestidigitations of the Fakir of Ava, surely it would not occur to you—?”
“Oh, Papa, might you?” Dora has completely misunderstood her mother’s meaning; she pirouettes on her dainty heels as she gives her father a loving smile. “Hindoo Miracles, and costumes imported from Hindoostan. I read about the exhibition in your copy of the Philadelphia Gazette. The mysterious young lady who assists the Fakir, and a boy sorcerer with another foreign-sounding name. The card printed in the Gazette was most explicit in describing their acts of wizardry. I noticed it when I was reading a serialized tale entitled The Fortune-Teller’s Ring—”
“Theodora!”
Too late, Dora understands her mother’s meaning. She sends a frightened glance toward her father, who returns a conspiratorial wink, then strolls away on the pretext of admiring the likenesses framed upon the gallery walls. Womenfolk and their foibles, his stance attests, mothers and daughters, aunts and nieces: What a good deal of fuss the distaff side fabricates. When he spots a portrait of Becky Grey he pauses, fully aware of his wife’s reproachful gaze. He settles his shoulders as though relishing her disregard.
WHEN THE CROWTHERS ARE CONDUCTED at length into the daguerreian’s operating room, it’s husband rather than wife who experiences misgivings. A slanting skylight smudged with dirt and ash blocks the sun, making the place appear somber and forbidding; the artist’s backdrops drape the walls, their colors tomb-like and eerie: bluish gray, dark Roman ocher, moleskin. Then there are the cruel-looking iron headrests and armrests that hold a body immobile for the long moments each exposure requires. The entire scene seems suggestive of death. “A trick of the light. It’s no more than a trick of color and light,” Crowther mutters as an assistant to M. Baptiste-Gourand escorts Dora to her place, leaning her delicate neck against a headrest, then pressing her temple against the cold metal and moving one hand to trail a nearby Corinthian column.
Dora’s eyes, so habitually lively, grow dim with discomfort. She affixes a smile on her face, but the expression appears wan and tortured.
“The portrait lens is designed by Josef Petzval of Vienna,” the parents are informed by another assistant, this one with an ingratiating and murmuring manner. “The Voigtländer lens is more famous, but is often counterfeited, having a forged facsimile of the Vbigtländer signature engraved on the tubes. Naturally the forgery is of little consequence …”
Crowther doesn’t reply; instead, he watches a stranger’s hands manipulate his daughter’s body. “Iodide of silver in order to coat the plate,” the second assistant continues, “then vapor of mercury to develop the latent image, and immersion in a solution of sodium hyposulphite, which fixes the features. It is intended as a keepsake for Miss Crowther’s fiancé, is it not?”
Harrison begins to answer but finds he’s standing beside a series of horrifying pictures he hadn’t noticed previously. They’re quarter-plate memorial portraits of dead infants and children, set in ghostly white frames of mother-of-pearl. The daguerreotypes so upset him that he jerks backward in alarm.
“Oh, Papa, must you startle me?” Dora complains. “One would think you didn’t want Percy to have his lovely gift. Please do keep still, or Mama and I will be forced to banish you from the room.”
THE LOST PARASOL
THE DAY AFTER DORA’S VISIT to the daguerreian’s studio, the neighborhood in which she dwells is visited by a force of nature unprecedented in the city. In an instant the afternoon sky above St. Peter’s churchyard turns tarry black while the sun’s gold rays are transformed into a spidery and threatening yellow. The pedestrians strolling along Pine or Fourth Street look upward in alarm, expecting an onslaught of thunderclouds and rain—or hail, as has been reported in the countryside. But not one drop of moisture falls. Instead, the air begins to crackle as though desiccated and sere; and a windspout springs to life on Lombard Street, whipping at the elms and the streetlamps as if trying to pluck them from the earth. The monstrous whirling thing grows in height and breadth until it’s half as tall as a house and as wide as a heavyset man, then veers northward on Third, where it leaps over the brick wall encircling the church’s memorial garden and begins playing havoc among the graves and Osage oranges and shaded brick paths.
Tree limbs as thick as human torsos are snapped in pieces, then hurled to the ground, toppling ancient marble headstones as they plummet. The noise of the spout is like the communal moan of a hundred voices; householders on the facing streets either hurry to their windows in order to witness the extraordinary event or scurry down toward their cellars, shooing their children before them.
Those who watch see three people huddling in terrified positions within the lee of the southern wall. They’re an odd grouping: a woman who is obviously pregnant and whose elegant ensemble bespeaks wealth and a position in society, an older Negro man whom most recognize as the church’s sexton, and another gentleman, shabbily clothed but bearing, despite the awkwardness of his pose, a proud and defiant bravado. The tall hat on his head may have seen better days, but it’s clamped down tight as if the possessing of such an article were a mark of royalty. This unlikely trio touch hands with one another, then clasp their fingers together as though praying that the joined weight of three bodies will be enough to withstand the blast. Remarkably, the beaver hat remains in place.
Then
the vicious gust hops away to torture other sections of the city, and the sun reappears, smiling down indifferently.
BECKY GREY—FOR SHE IS THE lady—finds she’s weeping as she creeps away from the wall and stands. One side of her face is sore and scratched from the rough brick and mortar; the sleeve of her gown is rent; her parasol has been wrenched from her hand and tossed high into a tree; her bonnet is battered; the lace trimming her skirt hangs in strips as if the fingers that knotted it had forgotten the pattern. It’s not from her ruined clothing or abraded skin that she cries, though, but from terror. She straightens her body and cannot stem her tears while the Negro man offers to bring her water and then hurries away, and the other man—after some shambling hesitation—supplies a threadbare handkerchief.
In former times, such ministrations would have brought her solace. Now, the efforts only make matters worse, and she continues to sniffle and cry as though she were a lost child rather than a woman six months pregnant. A woman who, by the strict rules of Philadelphia society, should not be venturing abroad without a serving maid or footman to await her wishes.
Becky doesn’t care, for lost and frightened is precisely how she feels. Fearful for her physical safety, so recently threatened; and lost because the freak storm has proven once again how much she misses her homeland and all that was familiar and beloved. Why did I settle in this provincial place? her thoughts rail. What did I imagine my life would be within the confines of such a narrow world? This is not London or Paris, after all. Why, oh why was I blinded by William Taitt’s handsome face and his honeyed words! “‘Nought’s had, all’s spent, where our desire is got without content,’” she mutters aloud. If she were alone, she would certainly add an oath.
Conjurer Page 30