by Tom Murphy
“Ah, and don’t I know it? I wish it too, Fran, more than anything. And it may happen still. We’ll pray for it, and hard.”
You are saying a thing you don’t believe in your heart, Lily, for how many of your prayers have gone unanswered? Still, you never know when the right saint might be listening, or even Himself.
Fran brightened.
“I’ll start this very afternoon, at vespers.”
“And me, too.” Fran paused then, and gathered her courage. “Just when will you be going, Lil?”
“Oh, not for weeks. There’s dresses to make, for they don’t abide by uniforms there. We’ll have plenty of fun before then, Fran, just the two of us.”
“I’ll help. And you will be the most elegant servant girl in all New York.”
“In a pig’s eye I will. But we must think hard on it. What will I need, truly? Matron had no list.”
“Well, dresses, of course. And a winter coat for going to church and your afternoon off, and the like. A shawl, I’m thinking. Underthings. You will need at least three dresses, Lil. And maybe one for best, for grand occasions.”
“And when, I’d like to know, would I be having grand occasions? Emptying the slops will be the likes of a grand occasion for me, you goose!”
Fran laughed then. “Ah, you never know. Could it be your fairy godmother comes and gets you invited to the ball, where the charming prince falls passionately in love with you?”
“Sure, and I’d hate to be hanging until that happens, Fran. If I get to Barnum’s Museum once in six months, it’ll be a grand occasion enough.”
“Still, you can take walks and things.”
“With who?”
“Who knows? Maybe with me, if I’m there or nearby. Or some other girl. If they have eight in help, they’ll have other girls.”
“They won’t be the same as you.”
Fran smiled a small wan smile. “Well,” she said, “you never know, do you?”
“No. You never do.”
The new wardrobe took the full two weeks Matron had predicted. It was a communal enterprise. Sister Mary Agnes had the biggest sewing bag of all, with the most interesting scraps in it, and this treasury was made available to Lily and Fran. They dyed old sheets, one to a soft green, and another to a pale russet, and these became the basis of two simple summer dresses with a “Basque” bodice and separate skirt after the new fashion. Trimmings of plain ribbon appeared from sewing bags, a bolt of flowered calico was unearthed from the storeroom to make a third dress for every day, and one of the dark brown orphanage blankets was cut into a surprisingly becoming winter cape.
“If only,” said Fran one afternoon, “you had a bonnet.”
Indeed, as Lily well knew, it was virtually unheard of to venture into the streets without some sort of head covering. A shawl might do in an emergency, or even a lace kerchief, but style and expediency called for a close-fitting, ear-covering straw or beaver-felt bonnet trimmed with ribbons and often a veil, and sometimes flowers or feathers too. But there was no such item in St. Paddy’s, and no means of making one. At last Sister Mary Agnes came to the rescue with a fringe of old lace edging from an altarcloth that was beyond repair. This, cut into overlapping layers in a ruffled effect, and mounted upon a wide band of stiff muslin and simply trimmed with green ribbon, made a perfectly suitable cap for a young girl. The bonnet—if it ever came—would simply have to wait Lily could hardly imagine where she’d be wearing such a thing, excepting always to church. Still, she tied on the lace cap with its green ribbon bowed under her small chin and stood on tiptoe to look at herself in the one small mirror in the girls’ lavatory.
“I look foolish, and that’s a fact.”
“You look fine.” Frances adjusted the cap.
“It’s far and away too fancy.”
Lily was unused to seeing her reflection. She looked in the mirror—and casually at that—only when fixing her hair, which took little fixing, since she wore it in braids, and the braids coiled back on her head by Fran. Lily thought the elegant little cap looked incongruous on her young head, but she didn’t say so out of consideration for Fran, who obviously considered the thing a work of art.
“You’ll see. A proper young lady of fashion you are, Lil, if I do say so.”
“Sure, and won’t it be lovely as I’m scrubbin’ the stable floors, or whatever they’ll be having me do.”
And they laughed then as they had so often laughed together in the past, and both girls tried to pretend it wasn’t almost the last time for shared laughter, that the inevitable time of parting would soon be on them and that there was no predicting when they’d see each other again.
The fatal day was a Saturday late in June.
9
The day of her leaving St. Paddy’s dawned early and hot, and stayed hot.
All the windows in the orphanage were opened, but not a breeze stirred the muggy air. Sister Cathleen had told Lily she might take with her the wicker trunk that had always lived underneath her bed. The new clothes were packed in the trunk now, safe beside her old doll, Hortense, and Ma’s dowry scarf of old lace and linen. And Sister Claudia’s thimble was there too, all unused, and the fine embroidered hair ribbon Fran had given her.
How Lily had wished for this day, and how she wished now that it had never come!
For St. Patrick’s orphanage had become so much a part of Lily Malone that she wasn’t at all sure how she’d get along on the outside. Well, damned if there’s not a bit of Fergy in me too, she thought, and smiled at herself for thinking it, for hadn’t Fergy always been crazy to see tomorrow instead of today, and always thinkin’ that what’s on the other side of a fence just has to be better than the side you can see?
And though she had known for weeks it was coming, this last day had a special magic for Lily, and a special danger, filled as it was with both lasts and firsts. The last night she would ever sleep in her narrow cot in the big dormitory under the eaves. Her last Mass, perhaps, in old St. Patrick’s Cathedral, for surely the Wallingfords would go to St. Joseph’s over on Washington Square. And if it wouldn’t truly be the last time she saw Matron or Father Gregory or—God forbid!—Fran, surely it would be the last time for a while.
Hard on the heels of the lasts came the firsts. Her first real job of work! And, with that, her first real wages. Fifty cents a week was a fortune to Lily, who had never seen so much as a penny to call her own in all the years she’d been in the orphanage. Oh, and wouldn’t she save every bit of it, to go for the shop she and Fran would have one day. Why, if they both saved their wages each month, they might have their shop in three or four years! And in the meantime, she’d be learning about people of quality, for the Wallingfords would be that, beyond any doubt. Fine people, Matron had said, and in a fine mansion, too.
The gray-blue light was slowly gaining an apricot tinge, and Lily could feel the little world of St. Paddy’s slowly coming to life around her as she lay in her cot in the dormitory. A rooster crowed in Mott Street, and hundreds of songbirds answered him with their music. Lily could hear the heavy clip-clop of a tired dray horse moving over the cobbles, probably a farm wagon getting an early start to market.
Lily opened her eyes then, and raised herself on one elbow, and looked down the length of the dormitory where she had spent these last several years. And she realized that with the one exception of Frances O’Farrelley, there was nothing and no one left in St. Paddy’s that she truly cared for. It was time to move on, to whatever her future might hold. She yawned, and stretched luxuriously in the narrow bed, and smiled.
The wagon came after lunch.
Lily and Fran sat together in the big reception hall. The wicker trunk was waiting by the door. Both girls were unusually quiet, Fran from sadness and Lily from a mixture of melancholy and anticipation so rich her head fairly swam with it. The long-established ease between the two friends seemed to seep away into the darkness of the reception hall. At every sound of hoofbeats Lily would run to the window and pull
back the heavy red draperies, only to see the horses pass by.
When the Wallingfords’ wagon finally came, they didn’t hear it at all. Matron appeared in the doorway, tiny and bird-like as ever. “The wagon is here now, Lily.”
Lily looked quickly at Fran and saw a fear come into her friend’s eyes that met and matched a sudden fear that Lily felt for herself. She bent and kissed Fran on the cheek.
“Pray for me, Fran?”
“And what else would I be doing? Get on with ye now, Lil, before ye have me in tears again.”
“I’ll write…we can visit.”
“Sure. Get on with ye now.”
“Good-bye, Fran.”
“God go with you, Lil.”
And Lily ran from the room, for she felt if she hesitated one second, she might never leave St. Patrick’s at all. Matron was standing with a tall, bony, handsome lad with sleepy dark eyes. He looked very bored.
“Lily,” said Matron formally, “this is Patrick, from Mrs. Groome, come to fetch you.”
“How do you do?”
Patrick favored her with a glance and then winked a large, bawdy wink. “Fine, and yourself, miss?”
Lily blushed. Sister Cathleen took her hand, and Lily turned to the matron.
“Well, Lily, I won’t say good-bye, for I expect you’ll be coming to visit us. At least, I do hope you will.”
“Oh, yes, Sister, sure and I will!”
“Then go with God, Lily, and know that our prayers will go with you all your days.”
“Thank you, Sister.”
The matron was only a bit taller than Lily. She hardly had to bend to kiss the girl, which she did, and then squeezed Lily’s hand for luck, then turned and was gone. And for all her kind words, Lily felt a door close.
“This is your trunk?” Patrick’s voice could barely conceal his amusement at the scene he had just witnessed. Lily could guess he was not of a religious persuasion.
“It is.”
“I’ll be helpin’ ye with it, then.” Patrick bent and in one smooth movement had the trunk balanced on his shoulder. Standing that way, he bowed low, and ushered Lily out of the door and down the steps. The wagon was waiting at the end of the walk, a utility trap meant for hauling goods and groceries, but clean and with good leather and shiny brasses on the horses. Lily looked at it and realized that she had been secretly expecting some gilded fairy-tale coach to bring her flying into her future. No coach this, and no gallant footman was Patrick. Lily smiled at her folly and climbed up next to Patrick on the bench that served as the driver’s seat and the only passenger seat in the trap.
Patrick gave the reins an expert flip, and the two silk-smooth horses started up at a brisk clip. He turned them left at the corner of Mott Street, and as they passed the deserted front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Lily wondered how long it might be before she’d see the flat, familiar brownstone facade again. The trap turned left again on Houston Street, where the going was slower because of the Saturday throngs. For a few moments they rode in silence. Finally Patrick spoke up.
“So you’ll be our new tweeny, then, Lily? Old lady Groome will put the fear of God in you, my girl, you can be sure of that.”
Lily felt her stomach drop, as though the wagon had hit a hole, for this was a basic fear: God help me, from the frying pan to the fire it is!
“And is she so terrible, then?”
“Ah, she’s not a bad sort, really, but only rough, like, you know, rough-spoken. It’s her old man, if you ask me, with all his drinkin’ and chasin’ after the ladies. Not,” he went on with a wicked grin for one so young, “that I’m averse to the company of ladies meself, you understand.”
Lily understood.
“Tell me, Patrick, about the house.”
“Pat it is, what they calls me. Oh, ’tis a fine house. I’m not allowed in it much, not beyond the kitchens, and the servants’ hall, that is, so ye can tell how very fine it may be. I live over the stables, with old Williams, the coachman, and even the stables are highly elegant, if you get my meaning. It’s all for show at the Wallingfords’, Lily, you may be sure of that.”
“What are they like—the Wallingfords?”
“Rich as rich, Lily. Mrs. W. can hardly think of ways to spend it fast enough—try as she may. Mr. W. owns the Wallingford Emporium, as you might have guessed, and it simply rolls in. Opened a branch in Californy, and that’s coining it too. Oh, they’re rich, all right. Now, the old rich, the Dutchrich in particular, look down their noses at our Wallingfords, you can bet, what with the W.’s bein’ fish-eaters and all, instead of proper Episcopalians or Congregationalists. But they’re not all bad. Mr. W., you’ll hardly ever see, he is that busy. Mrs. W. is everywhere, in and out of the house. Young Miss Marianne, well, she comes and goes, and young Jack’s away at school most of the time. It’s a rum situation come holidays, though, when they’re all there and everything’s hoppin’ and us runnin’ every which way, what with balls an’ tea parties and who knows what all. Oh, they spend it, do the Wallingfords.”
In the course of this illuminating lecture, Pat had turned the trap north on Broadway. They passed the delicate Gothic spires of Grace Church at Tenth Street, passed the booming stores and restaurants, came into Union Square and rode right around it and down Sixteenth Street toward Fifth Avenue.
And suddenly, well before they reached Fifth, Pat was pointing. “And there it is, my lady, your new home.”
The Wallingford mansion rose from the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and Sixteenth Street like a fortress of kings, shimmering in the heat. It soared, four stories of white limestone excess, a bastard mixture of three styles that somehow managed to incorporate Italianate arches with French Gothic spires and French Baroque mansard roof style. The house faced on the avenue, and seemed to push outward, crowding the sidewalk, too eager for grandeur to spare so much as a strip of green, much less a tree or a bush. On the Sixteenth Street side, the white limestone wall of the house extended itself into a white limestone courtyard wall topped with fierce-looking black iron spearheads and pierced with pointed, grilled Gothic windows and a huge double gate of strangely wrought black iron. These gates stood open in the afternoon sun, revealing a paved courtyard that led to the service entrances of the house, and the Wallingford stables and the Wallingford gardens.
It was a self-contained world, separate as any island or any walled medieval town, and as the smart trap pulled in through the immense arch of the courtyard gates, Lily imagined herself being held prisoner here, never to be seen again.
Pat pulled the trap up to a big service porch at the back of the house. Lily could hear kitchen noises, and a wonderful smell of baking bread rode on the hot afternoon air. Pat jumped down from his seat and came around to Lily’s side, where he offered her his hand in a gesture of unexpected gallantry. As she stepped down, her hand in his, Lily could feel the strength of that arm.
“Thank you, Pat. It was a fine ride.”
He grinned, and at once Lily knew why she instinctively liked that grin: it was Fergy’s grin all over again, reckless, filled with mischief, a cheeky grin to be sure, but never unkind. He swept up her trunk and deposited it on the porch.
“’Twas nothing, my lady,” he said, grinning still, “and I wish you joy of our humble home.”
In a twinkling Pat was back on the driver’s seat of the trap and moving off to the stables. Lily found herself alone at the back door of paradise.
The first words she heard were very loud and in French. There was a clanging and banging from within, as if someone had thrown down a large metal pot.
“Non, non, non, non! C’est impossible! I-m-p-o-s-s-i-b-l-e!”
A familiar voice responded to this outburst, but the tone of Mrs. Groome’s speaking was far different from what Lily remembered. Now she was soothing, cajoling.
“Ah, but Louise, my dear, if anyone can do it, it must be you. Thirty to dinner is a lot, I agree, but surely—”
“With not so much as one day’s notice
! She is a madwoman. Mad! And in summer, and with everything to be spoiled.”
“It is something of an emergency, isn’t it? Of course…” And Lily heard the voice of Mrs. Groome take on a new and perhaps slightly threatening tone: “Of course, we can always ask Delmonico’s to cater for us, if you truly think it is too much for you, Louise.”
“Delmonico’s? Mais non! To stoop to such degradations? For Louise Dulac nothing is impossible. However mad. It will be done. C’est ça. Sole duglère, salade de homard, poitrine de veau avec champignons, sorbet des fraises de bois, les fromages, mousse au chocolat.”
“That sounds lovely, dear. I knew you could do it.”
“But she is crazeee. Mad.”
“Just impulsive, Louise, and so hospitable.”
“And so mad!”
There was another crash, then silence. Lily decided it was safe to knock.
The door opened to reveal Mrs. Groome, slightly red-faced, wiping her forehead with a dish towel. “Oh, goodness! It’s Lily. Come right in, girl.”
She smiled, and Lily smiled too, half-faint with relief that it was possible for the formidable housekeeper to do such a thing. Mrs. Groome touched Lily lightly on the shoulder and guided her into the huge kitchen.
“Louise, this is our new tweeny. Lily Malone, meet Mrs. Louise Dulac.”
Lily had never seen such a room, nor such a woman as Louise.
The kitchen was fifty feet long by thirty feet wide, and completely covered in shiny white tiles: floors and walls gleamed with them, and only the high ceiling was untiled. Against one long wall were three immense wood-burning stoves all in a row, black and shining and holding an arsenal of huge copper pots and pans and skillets. Against another wall were the sinks, two gigantic ones, with drying racks and faucets for—wonder of wonders—both hot and cold running water. There were ice chests, and these were perhaps the biggest wonderment of all: Lily had never heard of indoor ice, and in summer, and in a private house at that. But even more imposing than her domain was Louise herself. Tall, taller than most men, thin, and broad of shoulder, Louise had a long, angular face that could hardly be called beautiful. Yet it was a strong face, and her eyes were kind, and when Louise Dulac smiled, her whole face smiled too. Lily liked her at once, formidable or not.