Gilded Needles

by Michael McDowell

  “The children want exercise, ma’am,” said Katie Cooley, “and if you’ll excuse my saying so, there’ll be more opportunity of showing ’em off. . . .”

  “Yes of course,” said Marian, well satisfied, “I’m going that way myself, and if you have given them their breakfasts already I’ll be happy to walk with you.”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am,” replied Katie Cooley, “I know Edwin and Edith would relish their mother’s company this morning, wouldn’t you?”

  Both children nodded eagerly. “Thank you, Mama,” whispered Edwin politely, and Edith murmured incomprehensibly and with downcast eyes—both children saw that their mother was agitated, and thought it best to remain with their nurse in the doorway.

  “Well then, Katie,” said Marian, “we shall leave the house immediately. I’m going to Twenty-fifth Street to pay a little visit to my brother.”

  Marian’s visit to the manse was a wasted journey. Edward Stallworth heard patiently his sister’s excoriations of Helen’s conduct, then refused flatly to have anything more to do with the young woman. “Helen, as she writes in her letter, is her own mistress. I have no more real control over her movements than I do over her fortune. They are both her own. Father forbade her to return again to the Black Triangle. If she will disobey him, why do you hope that she will listen either to you or to me?”

  “I have no intention of allowing my niece to reside with that . . . that deranged widow!” cried Marian. “Be waited on by mangled servants, spend her time keeping company with thieves and fallen women and diseased children. You may say that you give her over, but the fact is, Edward, her position reflects on us all!”

  Edward did not reply to this speech, but when he was seeing his sister to the door, he said, “When you see Helen, ask her if she knows where Benjamin might be found. . . .”

  Marian shook her head in exasperation. “Edward, if I thought that Edwin and Edith would turn into such troublesome beings as Benjamin and Helen have been to you, I might wish them both at the ends of the earth! Please send word to Gramercy Park as soon as Benjamin has returned; I have no wish to worry myself into an early grave with the difficulties raised by your offspring!”

  Marian took exasperated leave of her brother. A few minutes later in Madison Square she found Katie Cooley, who proudly pointed to Edwin and Edith who were playing a complicated and demure round game with several other well-dressed children a little way off. “I’m proud to have ’em by me,” sighed Katie, “so proud!”

  Marian nodded distractedly at the compliment to her children. “Katie, an important matter requires my expedition. In a while, you may return to Gramercy Park alone. I don’t want Edith too long exposed to the sun. Her skin is delicate—”

  “Beautiful skin! Such beautiful skin! Oh, ma’am!”

  Marian did not see her niece at the home of Mrs. General Taunton. The widow politely but firmly refused that interview. “Helen is ill,” said Mrs. General Taunton gravely. “The doctor was sent for this morning and has recommended that she have uninterrupted rest and quiet. Helen is suffering from an exhaustion of her faculties. She entrusted herself to my care, and I will not see her out of her bed.”

  Even a threat of legal action did not deter Mrs. General Taunton’s resolution, and Marian Phair hurried away from that house in anger and frustration. She cursed the woman in widow’s weeds for Helen’s plight. Passing a telegraph office, she stopped in and sent a message to her father at the Criminal Courts Building, asking him to meet her that evening on Gramercy Park, “to discuss the matter of H and Mrs T.” Another was sent to the Madison Square Presbyterian Church and read: “Mrs T claims H is ill. Not to be credited. Come to Gramercy Park, six o’clock.”

  Then, to calm herself, Marian stopped at an ice cream parlor on Fifth Avenue and vindictively consumed a strawberry ice. Afterward, she took a cab to the home of the woman who had served second on the Committee for the Suppression of Urban Vice. At the end of half an hour’s conversation concerning the views and works of various members of the committee, including her niece, Marian was satisfied that her companion knew nothing of Helen’s innumerable journeys to the Triangle.

  Yet when she had taken her leave, Marian again fell prey to doubt. She considered that this good friend might out of courtesy and respect have avoided what she would have known to be a painful subject. Accordingly, Marian took a cab to the home of a woman with whom she shared neither affection nor sympathy, who had been admitted to the committee only because of her husband’s important position as superintendent of public works of the city. This second lady was no friend to Marian, and Marian was sure that if she knew anything of Helen’s unchaperoned visits to the Black Triangle she would not fail to commiserate with Marian on the unfortunate adventures to which Helen must have fallen victim.

  Although suspicious of Marian’s unannounced calling, this second lady was very polite. Only her observation that, “In such changeable weather as we are experiencing at this time, it is inexpressibly difficult for a lady to maintain the freshness of her appearance for two hours together, do you not agree?” might have been interpreted as surreptitiously malicious.

  Marian plucked nervously at the perspiration-stained wristbands of her dress and nodded grimly. “Oh yes, I entirely concur.”

  Slowly, Marian walked back to Gramercy Park from West Fifteenth Street at Fifth Avenue, and several passing acquaintances were offended when friendly nods and soft words to Marian were unreturned.

  Marian was thinking with a concentration that came only with difficulty to her, thinking what she must do in order to return Helen to the manse. It would be terrible if it became commonly bruited about that her niece had left her father’s side and joined the establishment of a second-rate widow of marked eccentricity—this, even if the world never heard of her visits to the Black Triangle.

  During the three-quarters of an hour that Marian had spent with the lady who was not her friend, great storm clouds had been flung over the city from the west. Had her mind not so occupied itself with thoughts of Helen’s disgrace, Marian surely would have hailed a cab, but the walking soothed her some. She was caught by surprise in a deluge of rain that began without warning but with quite awful intensity. Even after she ran the last square to her house, she arrived at the door sodden and bedraggled.

  Peter Wish immediately opened the door to her when she precipitously knocked. Marian stepped into the hallway, with water pouring from her ruined dress.

  “Peter, is Mr. Phair in? Has he come in yet?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” replied Peter Wish hesitantly as Marian in the hallway before the mirror unpinned her hat and untied her veil. The running of the dye in them had left her visage a pale streaked blue.

  “Is he in his bedroom?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” replied Peter, still with hesitation.

  “What is it, Peter?” demanded Marian, turning her blue face on him full.

  Amy Amyst peeped out of the drawing room door. “Are you alone, ma’am?” she asked, in a distressed whisper.

  “Of course, who should be with me? Amy, I want you upstairs this moment to help me out of these clothes!”

  Peter Wish clasped his white-knuckled hands tightly before his waistcoat.

  “The children, ma’am,” said Amy Amyst. “And Katie Cooley. It’s almost five o’clock, and they not been home since eleven this morning. We had hoped they’d be with you!”

  Chapter 39

  Lena Shanks sat in her scarlet wicker chair beside the mirror set in the window frame, and only now and then cast a cursory eye over the crowds in King Street below. Since their return from New Jersey, she and her family had remained undetected, their presence known only to such women as could be trusted absolutely. Pet Margery Porter had not even told her father that it was Lena Shanks who had set up the young forlorn-looking gentleman to be cheated and robbed, and the gaunt old man—since he had received his gambling-table money again—asked no questions of his daughter.

  Still, Lena considered
, a woman could not be too careful, and not many hours of the day found her away from her position by the window. Gradually she came to know, by appearance and occupation and habit, those who frequented King Street, came to know them almost intimately, though they had no idea that an observer existed in the second-floor room.

  Louisa kept constant company with Charlotta Kegoe downstairs, and only now and then, in ample disguise, ventured out to do business at the banks. Gradually, Louisa had converted the family’s financial holdings into negotiable securities. Half of these papers were kept locked in a box that rested beneath Lena Shanks’s chair, and the other half were sewn into the lining of Louisa’s petticoats. After Daisy’s sudden, unforeseeable death had demonstrated the frailty of Lena and Louisa both, the mother and surviving daughter had thought it best that access to their wealth ought not be dependent upon Louisa’s abilities at forgery.

  The twins were as watchful as their aunt and their grandmother. Because they were small, because no one took notice of them—at least when they were not together—they were the ideal messengers and errand runners; and there was no end to the trust that Lena and Louisa Shanks placed in Rob and Ella. The children always performed their parts with expedition and glad hearts. They were equally content to run miles to a distant part of the city simply to copy down a name from a brass plate on the side of a building, or to while away hours late in the night attending Pet Margery on her rounds of the gambling saloons, allowing themselves to be punched and knocked about by the bullying newsboys, to be shooed away by the police, to be lectured by the unctuous. And when not wanted, they sat in their grandmother’s dim chamber, cross-legged on the bed, playing at écarté and pinochle. Each had a little chipped red china cup—gifts from Maggie Kizer in a happier time—and pennies that they bet against one another now filled Ella’s cup, only a few days later all to be lost to Rob again.

  On this Monday afternoon the children had laid aside their cards and crept up to the attic of the house. Through a hole in the roof they could see the North River and the hundred ships that sailed there. A great storm had come up over the Jersey Palisades and whipped down across the gray water. Boats were blown crazily about, and several appeared actually in danger of capsizing. The clouds grew darker and dropped lower and almost at once the rain began falling torrentially. It drenched the children’s surprised upturned faces, doused their clothes, and formed shallow pools on the straw-strewn floor of the attic.

  Ella drew back quickly, removed her new spectacles and wiped them dry on the hem of her skirt.

  Rob and Ella descended to their grandmother’s room. The door was locked, but a brief characteristic knock admitted them.

  The rain beat so heavily against the glass on the room’s two windows that for a moment nothing else could be heard. Before they had stepped far into the room, however, Rob and Ella could distinguish a tiny voice that cried, “Mama! Oh, Mama!”

  In a large chair brought up from Charlotta Kegoe’s apartments and set directly across from Lena Shanks, two small children were tied with a thick leather strap. The elder child, a boy, wriggled and wept piteously and cried for his mother. The smaller, a girl, stared intently at Lena Shanks. They were dressed in rain-drenched blue pinafores.

  Weeping Mary, lately known as Katie Cooley, nodded friendlily to Rob and Ella.

  “Piece of cake,” she sighed, “piece of cake. Could have stayed for the jewels, but didn’t want to hurt Lena’s plans. Wouldn’t harm Lena’s plans for the world. Their mother had beautiful jewels, I tell you, no end of beautiful jewels. Her two beautifullest jewels are sitting right here though,” she said mournfully, knocking her head in the direction of the two children strapped into the chair. “I got ’em here, but I tell you what, I tell you they almost drowned, those jewels almost washed away!”

  “Go down, Mary,” said Lena, “and tell Louisa to bring us tea.”

  “Oh sure!” cried Weeping Mary, and shook Rob and Ella by the shoulders as she went out.

  Lena Shanks briefly broke her attention from the two small children and motioned Rob and Ella over. “Come,” she said.

  Rob and Ella slowly approached. Ella went around and stood between Lena and the rain-pounded window. Rob placed himself on the other side of his grandmother.

  Edwin and Edith Phair regarded Rob and Ella Shanks dismally. They knew that their mother would never allow them to consort with children who were so poorly clothed.

  “Mama!” cried Edwin. “Mama wants us home!”

  “No, she don’t,” said Ella with a smile. “You’re to live here with us now.”

  “Here?” said Edith, looking around and wondering at the dim poor chamber.

  “No!” cried Edwin. “Mama wants us home! We live on the park, we live—”

  “Your mama has sold you to us,” said Rob, and Lena Shanks laid a coarse hand atop her grandson’s fine slender fingers. “So now you’re ours, both of you, that’s all. From now on, you’ll live here with us.”

  “No!” cried Edwin and burst into loud tears.

  Ella leaned forward, quickly twisted around several of the rings on her fingers, and slapped Edwin hard across the mouth. He broke off suddenly in surprise, and then began to whimper from the pain. He touched his hand to his cheek, and wonderingly gazed at the blood that he brought away on his fingers.

  Thoughtfully, Ella licked the child’s blood from her rings.

  “Now you have to behave,” said Rob with a smile, “or we’ll have to sell you again. We’ll sell you to a pudding maker, and he’ll throw you in a great hot vat and melt you down till there’s nothing left but your bones and your hair, and we’ll sell your bones to a man who’ll carve little soldiers out of them for me to play with, and we’ll make your hair into a wig to put on my sister’s head.”

  Edwin sat back terrified, and plucked at the leather strap that cut so tightly into his belly.

  “My name is Edith,” said his sister politely, “and I’m very, very wet.”

  Edwin and Edith Phair slept that night on a cot placed by the side of Lena Shanks’s bed. Edith, despite the unaccustomed coarseness of the shift that Rob had dropped over her head in exchange for her wet clothing, fell asleep immediately, and seemed not to stir the night through. Edwin, however, with a little gleam in his sullen eye, had sought to lengthen the evening, with the confused conviction that he and his sister were more likely to be discovered by their mother if he remained awake. He insisted on displaying for the twins and their grandmother all his nimble tumbling tricks: the way that he could walk upon his hands, and dance around the furniture in a series of graceful flips, and whirl about with a lighted candle balanced upon his nose. Rob and Ella gleefully applauded this performance, and even Lena Shanks smiled a crooked little smile; but at nine o’clock the light clapping subsided, the smile faded in the wrinkled face, and Edwin Phair was strapped into the bed beside his sister. Though he attempted to remain awake behind his closed lids, the strangeness of the day and his predicament had wearied him so that he soon fell unconscious, with his hot weepy eyes pressed into his sister’s tangled hair.

  Next morning, the children tasted coffee for the first time in their lives, and devoured less than their fill of the sweet rolls that were delivered to the door of the room by a tall, fearful-looking woman, whose jewelry, painted onto her skin, mesmerized Edwin and Edith.

  This woman held whispering conference with the great fat woman, and all the while glanced coldly on Marian Phair’s unfortunate offspring. After a little, the twins were brought over, and shortly instructed.

  “Edith,” said Rob then, turning to the little girl with a bright smile, “you’re to go out with me today.”

  “Home?” cried Edith. “The park!?”

  “This is your home,” smiled Rob. “Your clothes are here, let me help to dress you. Let me show you how.”

  While Edwin looked on, horrified—for a year older than his sister, his understanding of their situation was infinitely greater than hers—Rob dressed Edith in a th
in layer of dun dirty rags, chalked out the roses in her skin with wood ash, and then smudged her all over with soot. Edith laughed, and confusedly told what her mother had once done and said when she had returned from the park looking much the same as now.

  When Rob had completed the transformation of the child, Lena Shanks said, “Come,” and motioned Edith over. Edith went forward bashfully.

  “Turn,” said Lena, but Edith stood stiff. She glanced back to Rob—not her brother—for guidance.

  He indicated with his fingers that she ought to turn around, and smiled comfortingly. Edith obeyed.

  “Good, good,” said Lena Shanks, and waved the child away.

  “What about me?” cried Edwin timorously.

  No one answered him, and Edith giggled.

  Rob, who had effected a similar costume for himself, took Edith’s hand and led her from the room. “Good-bye Edwin,” she called from the hallway. “Good-bye Edwin!”

  Edwin bolted for the door, but Rob slammed it in his face, and he collapsed crying onto the bare floor of the room.

  A few minutes later, Ella came over to his cot and the way of the door, and the woman whose jewelry was painted onto her skin slipped a key into the lock and let herself out of the room. “There’ll be someone coming for you later,” she whispered to Edwin malignantly.

  Edwin turned piteously to Ella and Lena Shanks. “The man with the vat?” he cried. “Is she bringing back the man with the vat?”

  “Come here,” said Ella, and motioned Edwin over to the window. “Quick,” she said, when he hesitated.

  Edwin flew to the window, and Ella pointed down into the street.

  “What?” cried Edwin. “What should I see?”

  “There!” said Ella. “Your sister, with Rob.”

  Two little beggars skipped happily along the street, dodging carts and goat wagons. As Edwin watched, his sister fell headlong onto the muddy pavement of King Street, and he gasped. Rob dragged the child out of the mire and held her hands at her side when she instinctively tried to brush the filth from her. She struggled for a moment, then submitted, and they proceeded on, out of Edwin’s sight.