But on this particular Thursday Jarvis spoke for everyone when he said, "If ever a fox went after sour grapes, it surely was that crybaby Dunraven."
The return trip from the last race was a desultory affair, with little cheering and lingering confusion among the spectator fleet; the sense of anticlimax was profound. Jarvis threatened to write a letter to the Cup Committee, and Landis predicted that diplomatic relations between the two countries would sink to an all-time low. Aaron sat a little to one side, scarcely allowing himself to look at Tess.
And Tess? Tess was still in shock. Her heart had sprung open like a suitcase fallen off a train, and all the feelings that had been packed carefully away lay scattered around her like jumbled clothes. She could not separate love from duty, passion from anger, hostility from hunger. One lone conviction stood out, like a bright red scarf among drab greys: Aaron has just lost faith in me.
She stole looks at her lover, who had struck a carelessly elegant pose in his wicker chair: legs crossed, stroking his goatee, apparently immersed in Jarvis's amiable babble. How would she convince him now that she loved him? Given the tumult of her feelings, how could she be sure now that she did?
"Miss Moran—I say, Miss Moran—you really do look under the weather. Perhaps you ought to lie down."
Everyone became solicitous, and Tess took herself below to escape their scrutiny. She flung herself into her berth sick with tension. Whether it was the nausea, or some inner mechanism designed for survival, Tess fell asleep immediately and did not wake until she heard the clamor of chain running free; they were anchoring somewhere. She opened her eyes, drugged with sleep. The pillow beneath her lashes was wet.
A few more minutes, she thought, and then I'll face it.
She did not know how much later it was when she awoke the second time, this time instantly. Through the open port came the call, "Ahoy Enchanta! Ahoy Enchanta!" There was no mistaking the voice: Edward Hillyard.
She sprang up to the brass-bound porthole in time to see Hillyard tie up a small skiff to the gangway and dash up it. Aaron was at the head. They exchanged a word or two, and then both men disappeared from her view.
"No, no," she whispered desperately. "I haven't worked it all out in my head yet!" It didn't surprise her that Hillyard had invited himself aboard; nothing surprised her any more. She ran to the stateroom door to listen. In a few seconds she heard them making their way to Enchanta's library. It was late afternoon; she had no idea whether Jarvis and the others were still on board.
Something—the instinct of an eighteen-year old girl, not of a millionaire's mistress—made her turn the key in her door. If only she could be spared the pain and trauma of the scene to follow. She began pacing the length of the small cabin. Seven steps forward: her feelings about Hillyard? Seven steps aft: were of a woman scorned. Seven steps forward: it wasn't love, it was simple heartbreak. Seven steps aft: the heartbreak that comes from a first betrayal. Seven steps forward: Aaron hadn't taken away her innocence. Seven steps aft: Edward Hillyard had.
She went to the door, turned the key, and tiptoed down the passageway to the closed door of the library cabin. Hillyard's voice was loud, furious; Aaron's, controlled but scathing.
"She's a girl, you bastard; a child!"
"It can't possibly be that you're jealous."
"That's far too noble an emotion to waste on you!"
"Then I confess: I'm at a loss as to your motive."
"Something you would never understand, Gould: to right a hideous wrong!"
"My dear young man, that's what I did. When first I laid eyes on Tess at the Servants' Ball, she was looking very wronged indeed."
There was a pause.
"That was unforgivable of me. I had some absurd idea of showing all of them up—"
"And instead you showed up only poor Tess."
"Not by choice, damn you! I ... I'd had a row with Mrs. Oelrichs at the Casino that afternoon. She got Henry to send a note uninviting me and threatening to call in a little loan if I had the temerity to show up at his place. You've never been financially embarrassed; your father handed you a career in finance and a fortune to go with it. All I got was a two-hundred-year-old name."
"—which you seem determined to make a laughing stock of. What did you expect to gain by trotting out Tess as one of them? If it was something as stupid as a slap at Cornelia, then you succeeded. But the Hillyard name has become the longest-running joke in Newport in the bargain."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Of course you do. You proposed to Cornelia on the night of the Breakers Ball, and she laughed in your face."
"Because that fool Baron Lewandowski polka'd onto the scene!
"Not because of the Baron, dear boy. Not even because you're penniless—after all, Cornelia is looking for an old name to graft her fortune to, and you have that. No, Cornelia spurned you for the same reason that every debutante in town will: because she has no great desire to catch you in bed with another man."
"That's a filthy lie!"
"Is it? How old are you, Hillyard? Near to thirty? Perhaps it's time you learned a trade. Perhaps it's time you put aside your boyhood loves—and your love of boys—and settled down. With someone like Tess, for instance."
"You're a pig. You've finished with her, haven't you?"
"I said, like Tess—"
"And now you're throwing her bones overboard to the sharks. You're an absolute pig—"
Tess heard a scuffle, and then the sound of someone being thrown against furniture, and glass smashing to the cabin sole.
"Stand away from me, Hillyard!" came Aaron's breathless voice. "I'll shoot without thinking twice about it!"
A gun ... the small gun from his desk.
The library door was unlocked. Tess threw it open and hurled herself toward Aaron, crying, "Don't shoot him, Aaron!"
"Get out of here, Tess!"
But her mind, like a train, was locked in a track: Get the gun, get the gun ... gun, gun, gun. With both hands she lunged for it, clutched warm flesh and cold steel, as an angry child grapples with a playmate over a coveted toy.
"Tess, stop it! Will you stop—"
The gun went off, a horrendous noise which frightened Tess more than the sensation that a knitting needle had been jabbed through her knee. A distressed sound almost of embarrassment escaped her, as if she'd committed some faux pas in Mrs. Astor's drawing room. And then the sense of self-destruction: searing, crippling. Her knee became a fireball, blinding her with bright pain, consuming her in itself.
And then black.
Chapter 16
To the north and east of the colonial section of Newport winds a road with a melancholy name: Farewell Street. Cemeteries, including the Common Burying Ground, line either side of it, and the casual traveler, finding himself surrounded on all sides by gravestones, inevitably drives a little more somberly in their midst. Sons and daughters of the Revolution are buried here, and witches, pirates, and privateers. Slaves who never got their freedom and dealers in the China trade are here. Ordinary citizens have stopped on here, and many servants, and a few masters.
Ball-boys are buried here.
Next to a mound of frozen brown earth, two young women set their backs to the raw northeast wind and prayed in silence for the soul of a skinny, cocky little boy who somehow slipped through the cracks of God's great design. One prayer, heartfelt and humble, was lifted straight to heaven on the wings of angels. The other, just as heartfelt but utterly defiant, hovered uncertainly over the grave and its mourners, like the smoke from Cain's sacrifice.
After a while the women moved on, the thinner one pinning her cape to her chest, trapping its heat to her thin frame; the more beautiful one, picking her way cautiously with a cane over the icy ground.
"Lean on me, Tess," begged the smaller, black-haired girl.
"And knock you clean over? Don't be daft, Mag. I'm getting quite used to hobbling over rock and ridge. I'd better," she added grimly.
A
cab was waiting for them on Farewell; the horses stamped impatiently, eager to get back to their barn. In December there is no twilight: only sun and no sun, and the horses were aware, even if Tess seemed not to be, that another long, cold night was at hand.
The cab driver, an obliging, industrious fellow, jumped down from his seat to help Tess mount the carriage.
"Thank you, no. I will manage it myself," she said. Very slowly but very surely she pulled herself up by her good leg and then, with a small and almost controlled gasp, took her place inside.
"Oh Tess, you do seem to be in pain," said Maggie.
"No. It's awkward is all. Stop fussing over me, Mag. It's unnatural and I don't like it. I'm far more concerned over you. In three months you've lost a stone of weight. Did Father not watch over you at all?"
"At first he was off fishing most days, and then after that fell apart and he couldn't find anything more—well, he was fair ashamed, I think, and didn't like to be around. Besides, he was always, always looking for work."
"In every pub on Thames Street, I expect."
"Because that's where his connections were—fishermen and day laborers and such."
"At least he never considered going back into service."
"Oh no, never that. He took to saying that he didn't want to set an example for another generation of Morans to go down into slavery."
"Well, he got his wish, didn't he! None of us will."
"Why do you blame Father for Will's death, Tess? It was so sudden—one minute he was playing stickball, and the next he was dead. The doctor said the clot from the hit with that stone was like a bomb, just waiting to go off. No one could have prevented it."
"I could have! If I'd been here, minding the family instead of off chasing rainbows, I would have!"
"You're very proud, Tess," Maggie murmured without looking at her sister. "But the good book says that pride goeth before a fall."
"I've fallen, Mag," Tess answered tiredly. "About as low as I can go. My pride is my crutch; it lets me walk away from despair."
"How can you despair? I don't understand it. Look at the good you've done already with your ... your settlement from Mr. Gould. You've been able to start Father along on his dream—"
"His latest dream!"
"—to prospect for gold. Why, anything could happen—look at Sutter's Mill, at the Comstock Lode. Someone had to be the first man to start digging in those places. That's what father says. He has a feeling about the Yukon; it's so lucky for him that he met someone who knows so much about prospecting."
"It's just another wild-goose chase, Mag. The song says there's gold in California. I never heard anyone singing there's gold in Canada."
Maggie shivered and pulled her cape closer. "I just hope the Klondike is not as cold as Newport is today."
Tess just shook her head, and the two sisters fell silent as the cab hurried along to the waterfront shack that had been Maggie's home since the day following the Servants' Ball.
"Tess?"
"Mmn?" Tess had been staring idly at the few passers-by on Thames Street, reliving it all.
"I met him. Mr. Gould. At Will's grave, a month ago."
Tess whipped her attention around to her sister, and Maggie recoiled from the intensity of it.
"He asked me not to mention it, but …."
Still Tess stared, fierce and silent. Maggie rambled nervously on. "He was just standing there—he didn't seem to be praying or anything. At first I didn't see him. Then I tried to move away, but I was curious who he was, so I hung around, I'm afraid. He saw me and said, 'Am I holding things up for you?' I didn't know what he meant—I wasn't going to plant flowers or anything, not in November—so I said, 'No, just go right ahead with what you're doing, and so will I.' So I said a prayer for Will, and he stood alongside for a bit, then said, 'You're Tess's sister Maggie, aren't you?"
"Which amazed me, Tess," Maggie continued. "How he could ever have known—you and I are nothing alike—but I nodded and somehow—I suppose from your description of him as older and kindly, because he did look both—somehow I knew it was Mr. Gould. Then he looked at me, really so kind and said, 'Tess loves you very much and she's coming back for you,' and I thought he was going to cry but he didn't, only saying not to tell, and he left."
Maggie looked at her agitated sister and added, "Did you want me to tell?"
"Yes. No. Oh, I don't know. God, I don't know." Tears, more tears, rolled steadily down Tess's cheeks. The information, told in such sweet good faith by Maggie, was devastating to hear. It meant that Aaron Gould had gone to Newport just before returning to New York for the last time; before taking his own life with the same gun that had shattered Tess's knee. He had seen the Morans, and he had been moved, and afterward he had left Tess even more generously provided for in his will. It broke her heart to know this new reason why.
Tess buried her face in her hands and said nothing until they reached the shack.
The driver let her descend on her own but came in to cart out Maggie's trunk and load it on the cab. Tess, under control now, took one last look around the cleaned up-hovel. There were pathetic little touches of the frail homemaker—a scrap of curtain, a little rag rug—but it was still a hovel. "How could you have stayed here, Mag?" she asked sadly.
"It wasn't so bad, not until Father left. After that I was a bit nervous on the rowdy Saturday nights, but I don't know what for—no one knew about the money you'd sent, and they couldn't have wanted my virtue," she said with a forlorn smile.
"Hush that talk, Mag! After we settle at Saranac Lake, and after I've dressed you and fattened you and fixed your hair—well, we'll see whose virtue won't need protection all around the clock."
Maggie laughed at the notion, which made her cough, and then said almost wistfully, "Will the food there really be as good as you say?"
"Absolutely. I have it on the best authority. You won't be able to resist a single meal."
"But … I'm afraid of doctors, Tess. And haven't I always been?"
"I know, I know. But these are no ordinary physicians. Some of them suffer from your own ailment, and yet they are able to go about their business with hardly a care. Just as you will be. And after that, we'll come back and show Newport who can win at their game. Just wait. Just see. If you knew the plans I have for us!"
"I want to hear them all," Maggie said, and she did sound eager, which heartened Tess.
Tess limped over to her sister and put her free arm around her. "Ah, Mag, now we need never part again. Come—let's run as fast as our battered bodies can take us, away from these sad memories."
****
The Priscilla, newest debutante of the Fall River Steamship Line, lay tied up to bustling Long Wharf at the head of Newport Harbor, taking in passengers bound for New York. The four-hundred-forty-foot sidewheeler was luxury itself, with enough electric light wires to stretch from Providence to Boston, a powerful new double-inclined engine capable of moving smartly at twenty-plus knots, steam-heated staterooms for those who could afford them, a vast quarter-deck floored with tile and trimmed in marble, and a lavishly appointed and brilliantly illuminated grand saloon carpeted in the trademark red and gold pattern of the Fall River Line.
The Priscilla cost a million and a half dollars to build, mere pocket money for some of the cottagers on Bellevue Avenue, but a wildly extravagant sum for a commercial vessel. Nothing was spared to transport the movers and shakers of Boston and New York in a style befitting their station. And if ordinary citizens could afford the fare, then they were welcome aboard as well.
Tess had reserved a stateroom for the trip to New York; Maggie was not in any shape to ride out December conditions on the ocean except in first-class comfort.
But Maggie objected to being tucked away in a cabin, no matter how luxurious, when there was so much to see and admire in their floating palace. And besides, she wanted to bid goodbye to Newport.
"Can I at least watch on deck as we leave the harbor?"
"No."
So they huddled together on deck as the Priscilla threw off her enormous hawsers and worked her way away from the dock. Around them lay Newport: cold, damp, snowless. The once great seaport had never looked sleepier. A crisscrossing pattern of gas lamps twinkled on the streets; not an Astor or a Vanderbilt was in sight. Those who catered to them were gone, too, either holed up like fat squirrels in warmer climates or scratching out an existence in town during these, the lean months.
The Priscilla's steam whistles bellowed an end to all of it for the two sisters.
"We were never really part of it, were we, Tess?" asked Maggie wistfully.
Tess shook her head. "Hardly anyone is. Newport is a waystation, a place to dance, a place to hustle. It's a town to take by storm. The slavers did it, and the British, and now the robber barons. Who will plunder it when you and I are gone, I wonder? It's too pretty to let live in peace, that I know. Poor, pretty little Newport."
The Priscilla had already steamed past the Navy's torpedo factory on Goat Island and past Fort Adams—ordered built by George Washington, though never a shot was fired there—and was heading toward the open water of Rhode Island Sound. Maggie shivered and huddled closer to her sister.
"Will you ever forgive him, Tess?" It was said so softly, so sadly, that Tess had no choice but to answer.
"There's nothing to forgive, Mag. He fulfilled his part of the bargain, and more. We can do anything we want with our lives now, thanks to him."
"Oh yes, the money. But Tess, he asked you to marry him ...."
"I never should have told you, I see that now. You will always wonder whether I held—hold—it against him that he changed his mind. Well, I don't. I am not the same person he asked to marry him," Tess said evenly.
"You are the—"
"I'm not, you silly child! You'll never understand. You look past the form, at the soul of things, Mag. But for Aaron—how can I explain this?—the form was the soul."
"You're right. I don't understand." Maggie slipped her arm around Tess's waist and leaned her head affectionately on her sister's breast. "Did he love you, do you think?"
By The Sea, Book One: Tess Page 15