by Megan Chance
But I felt safer for the lie. I could not take the risk that William or Papa should find out. I felt a little guilty about it as well, but that feeling fled nearly the moment I got back into the carriage and went home.
My fingers itched to do as Dr. Seth had bade me, but it was too late in the afternoon. William would be home soon, and though I was tempted to draw only something small, I was glad I had not when he came home earlier than expected, bringing Papa with him for supper.
“I heard you were at Delmonico’s with some gentleman today,” Papa said as he applied himself to a saddle of mutton.
Papa’s tone was insinuating, and William looked up with a frown on his face, his fork poised in the air. “A gentleman?” he asked.
I felt a twinge of guilt that made me angry. I had done nothing wrong. I met my husband’s gaze steadily. “It was Dr. Seth, William. He said he wanted to observe me again in public, and it was time for luncheon.”
“I see.” William looked uncertain.
Papa frowned. “I’ve never heard of a doctor taking a patient out for luncheon.”
“I admit it’s unusual,” I said. “But William felt I should spend as much time with him as possible. You did think it would be beneficial, William.”
William seemed about to protest, but then he glanced at my father and said with false ease, “Yes, I did. Well. I certainly hope you introduced him to anyone who might not know who he is.”
“Thomas Crowe was there,” Papa said.
“Was he? I didn’t see him.”
“He said you looked right at him and looked away again as if you didn’t want to be seen.”
“Of course I didn’t do that,” I said, though I had, of course I had. To him and to several others. It had been the wrong thing to do, I saw that now. William was right. I should have introduced Dr. Seth. I should have made sure everyone saw how innocent it was. Why hadn’t I done that? “I don’t remember even seeing Thomas Crowe.”
“He said he was at the table next to yours. That you and Seth seemed to be quite involved in your conversation.”
I didn’t turn to William, but I felt the question in his gaze, and I flushed again, as though I were lying or trying to keep something secret. The store flashed through my mind, my surreptitious visit, the sketch pad and pencils that were hidden in a box beneath my bed, the doctor’s words, Don’t tell them, the way his hand had covered mine.
“It was merely lunch with my doctor.”
“No doubt it was. It was simply the way it looked.”
“And how was that?”
“You should have introduced him,” William said quietly. “It looks bad, darling, not to do so.”
I glared at him, and William had the grace to lower his gaze.
After dinner, when Papa had excused himself and retired to his room, I said to William, “You were the one who wished for Seth to be seen more in our circle.”
“I know that.”
“How am I to deflect gossip, then, if I’m to see him constantly and not let anyone know why I do so?”
“Introduce him as a friend,” William said calmly. “Let Victor find ways to deflect their suspicions. He’s promised to do so. Don’t act as if you’re ashamed to be seen with him.”
“You’re angry that I went there with him,” I said.
“Not angry,” he corrected. “Surprised. It was hardly a clever thing to do. And you said nothing of it to me.”
“There was no reason to,” I said. I fingered the gold-embroidered edge of the tablecloth. “It was only another appointment.”
“In a restaurant.”
“It was his suggestion.”
William was silent. I looked up at him again.
“What else has he suggested to you?” he asked.
I had to work to meet his gaze. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Well, the usual things. To control my fits. To be at peace.”
He nodded and picked up his glass of port, taking a deep sip before he said, “As long as it helps you, we’ll continue on as we’ve been. But try to remember your place, Lucy, when you’re in public.”
“Of course, William,” I said, so relieved I had to turn away to conceal my smile.
After William left for the ’Change the next morning, I breakfasted and dressed and gave instructions to Moira and the menu to the cook. Then I pulled the box from beneath my bed and took out the sketchbook and the pencils. As I held them, it seemed as if a spell had been cast upon me, for the feel of them in my hands was luxurious—almost sinful. It had been so long since such paper had touched my fingertips, since the point of a charcoal pencil had marked my skin. It was true that I felt guilty; if William or Papa knew of this, they would see it as a manifestation of my illness. They would take it away. And yet I felt as if I held myself, as if this empty sketchbook held my soul in a way my own mind and heart did not; as if I were nothing without this emptiness to hold on to, to fill.
I wrapped myself in warmth: a cloak, a hat, warm boots. I put on gloves, though I meant to take them off the moment I was outside.
I paused at the parlor door and told Moira, “I’ll be in the garden.” I’d startled her as she cursorily passed the feather duster over a table laden with tiny boxes—including the little cloisonné I’d bought yesterday—and she flushed as if I’d caught her in a lie, as she certainly should have, for the lackluster way she was cleaning. But just then I didn’t care.
“In the garden?” she sputtered. “But ma’am, it’s quite cold.”
I didn’t bother to answer her; I could hardly keep myself from running as I passed through the house and out the door into the back garden.
The garden was narrow but deep and beautiful in the summer. I loved to sit there, surrounded by leaves and flowers. I did not visit it often at other times, and never in the winter. The grape was a dead-looking brown, vines tangled about the rounded white trellises bordering the garden. The small cherry tree was little more than graying branches rising from a thin, icy layer of snow that was mostly melted but for in the hollows and the lee. The seat of the stone bench was covered with ice, and the border beds were filled with brown vines and crumpled leaves that had once been flowers. I remembered them as a profusion of color without knowing their names or even the shapes of their petals, despite the fact that as a girl, I had spent two months one summer pressing flowers and naming them in painstaking copperplate on waxed pages.
Just outside the door, I gripped the sketchbook, finding the bleakness of the garden more lovely than I could have imagined. I had not done this in so very long that I was uncertain how to start. Once it had seemed that my mind nearly swelled with ideas of what to draw—to look at a landscape was to pick out the one thing I wanted to show. But today it seemed there were too many choices, and I’d lost the habit of critical faculty. Should I draw the tree, or the grapevine on the trellis, or the way the clouded sun cast shadows on the weakening snow, or the dead flowers, or the shape of the border, the bench, the crushed stone beneath it? I could not decide; I sat on the bench and felt the cold of it seep through my cloak and my gown and my petticoats, and finally it was the cherry tree that caught me: the way its limbs set out from all directions, the way it struggled from the snow. I took off my gloves and opened the sketchbook to its first pristine white page, and I took the pencil between my fingers and began to draw.
To say I lost myself would be an understatement. I was drawn in by the first line, and though my fingers were stiff with disuse, and I retraced my steps a hundred times, trying to regain the ease with which I’d once done this, I was captivated by the pursuit. More than captivated: giddy, unfettered. There was a cold wind, but where I sat, I was protected, and though the cherry tree bowed this way and that, I was unmoved. I did not feel the cold, not in my bare fingers nor from the ice on the bench, now melting into my clothing. I lost track of time until I heard a faint call, and then a louder, more insistent “Mrs. Carelton?”—a name that suddenly wasn’t mine. I was a gi
rl again, I was Lucy Van Berckel, I had no idea who Mrs. Carelton was—perhaps a friend of my mother’s—and then I came to myself with a start to see Moira standing in the back doorway, hugging herself against the cold and saying, “Pardon me, ma’am, but Cook asks if you wanted tea?”
The one thing I did not do was think of the house slowly emerging on Fifth Avenue. William was immersed in every detail. He went almost daily to the work site to see how things were progressing, and one morning he told me in exasperation that he was worried—where was the enthusiasm I had shown that day he’d taken me to McKim’s office? Why had I not yet visited Goupil’s?
It was clear that he expected me to relish this new occupation—what woman wouldn’t love the opportunity to completely furnish and decorate a new home?—and I knew he was right. I hated that I could not manage excitement over the task. Millicent asked me at nearly every supper when I planned to start. So, in the hope that her enthusiasm would bolster mine, I asked her to accompany me to Goupil’s one afternoon. I convinced myself I would enjoy it.
She arrived promptly at one o’clock. “I knew you were feeling better when you told me how anxious you were to begin,” she said, smiling a bit too brightly when I met her in the entry.
“Yes,” I said, putting on my gloves and cloak. “I’m quite looking forward to it.”
She was visibly relieved. I realized with a start what a toll my friendship must take on her. I had never thought of it in those terms before. Impulsively, I squeezed her arm. “I appreciate all you’ve done for me, Millie, truly.”
She looked surprised and a little embarrassed. “Why, Lucy, please don’t speak of it. I am your friend.”
“Yes, you are,” I said.
We went to her waiting carriage. The sky was overcast and heavy, but it had warmed since yesterday so that the snow was melting and slushy on the edges of the walk, and the talk was of rain. There was a gray, foggy look about the streets, veiling the carriage windows so it was hard to see anything beyond muted colors and hazy shapes. The city felt closed in.
Jean-Baptiste Goupil was no longer the most fashionable importer in New York City, but my father had used him, as had many of the old Knickerbocker families I had grown up with, so I knew him well. His studios were small compared to some of the others, quite crowded with paintings and sculpture. The heavy curtains were closed against the sunlight, the room lit dimly by sputtering gas, and the ceilings were high and hung with paintings to the rafters. The smells of dust and canvas and oils were heavy as we came inside, the air close.
“Mrs. Carelton!” Jean-Claude, one of Goupil’s assistants, came hurrying over to greet us. He wore a brown suit that almost exactly matched the brown of his hair—like a wren, I thought, with the same kind of fluttering, nervous movements. He took my cloak and Millicent’s, handing them off to some faceless clerk while he ushered us deeper into the darkness. “Oh, Jean-Baptiste will be distraught to have missed you, but he is gone to see to a shipment today.”
He called for some tea and led us to a table surrounded by three chairs and a settee. While Millicent and I settled ourselves, he hurried off for his notebook.
“Such an impressive display,” Millicent murmured.
“Yes. Papa has always admired his taste.”
A woman came with tea. Jean-Claude was back in moments, smiling beneath his thin mustache as he took a seat beside us, pulling at his absurd little tie. “You must tell your father, Mrs. Carelton, that we have just received the most glorious bronzes. Jean-Baptiste has set one aside just for him. He believes it will be perfect for your father’s parlor.”
I could not think of a single spot in the parlor for another thing. I sighed, knowing already that Papa would buy whatever it was Goupil had set aside for him, as he always did.
“Now,” Jean-Claude said, settling back, “I understand you are building a new home, Mrs. Carelton. I do hope we can be of service to you.”
“I would not trust such a job to anyone else,” I said. “My husband wants old masters. He particularly likes landscapes.”
Jean-Claude scribbled in his notebook. “We shall look for some French portraits as well. I think Mr. Carelton will be suitably impressed, and they are increasing in value every day.”
“Yes, of course.”
“You must have some Chinese porcelains, Lucy,” Millicent put in. She leaned forward eagerly. “And a few sculptures in the entrance hall. I’ve always loved alabaster.”
“Yes, but just now it is the Pompeiian bronzes that are de rigueur.” Jean-Claude scribbled again.
“Then the bronze,” Millicent said. “But perhaps one or two marble pieces would not be out of place?”
“I think that would be delightful,” Jean-Claude said.
“And tapestries. They must be Gobelins. Last year Julia Breckenwood bought counterfeits.”
“I can assure you that would never happen here,” Jean-Claude said.
“Nevertheless, it’s worth mentioning,” Millicent said. “One never knows. What do you think, Lucy?”
“Do you mind if I walk around a bit?” I asked Jean-Claude. “To look at some things myself?”
“Indeed not,” he said. “Please do. There are some exquisite paintings just over there”—he waved to a far wall—“that I know you would find perfect.”
“Thank you.” I rose.
I ignored Millicent’s surprise and left them there. I walked farther into glowing semidarkness, past brown landscapes and mythical scenes, a Venus rising from the sea, a Cupid sending his arrow into a rounded, dimpled Venetian exquisite. Although these were all paintings my friends would buy to hang in their already crowded dining rooms, I was impatient with them. I wanted something else, though I could not imagine what.
Beyond me was a curtain that obviously concealed a small room. I was curious. I could not remember ever being in there before. I pulled aside the heavy velvet and plunged into an alcove lighted by a single sconce. It was a tiny room, every inch covered with paintings hanging on golden cords. The gaslight cast everything in a murky glow; the images were like a kaleidoscope—too many of them, all jangling together, and I turned again to leave, overwhelmed.
Then I saw the painting.
It hung beside the curtains, and the velvet of the drapes half covered it, but what I saw was arresting. A woman’s nude back, glowing white in the darkness like a ghost. She was not a woman, or at least not yet one. She was stone from the thighs down, but above that her flesh was pale and slightly tinted, obviously alive, and she was bending toward something. A strong, dark arm gripped her waist, and fingers cupped a breast. Despite myself, I was drawn to it. I pushed aside the draperies to see more, and I realized the arm belonged to a man: the sculptor, who was holding on to the woman with a desperate and hungry passion. She was bending to kiss him, an alabaster statue brought alive by the arrow of Cupid’s bow. Pygmalion and Galatea.
I touched the canvas, tracing down her calf to her foot, still encased in marble, and it seemed I felt the chill cold of the stone. I longed to pull her foot free, to finish the job Cupid had started. I felt how she strained; I felt her restlessness.
“Mrs. Carelton? Mrs. Carelton?”
I snatched back my hand. The curtains parted, and Jean-Claude was there, an anxious Millicent close behind him.
“Oh,” he said, smiling. “I see you have found Jean-Baptiste’s special room.”
“His special room?”
“I am surprised you haven’t seen it before,” Jean-Claude said. “This is where Jean-Baptiste keeps the things he has brought over for certain clients. Items he has chosen specially. Your father has been in this room many times.” He glanced at the picture. “Ah, Pygmalion and Galatea. A fine work. It’s a Gérôme. He’s a student of David, I believe. This is reserved for Robert Carr. He asked specifically for a mythical scene for his guest room.”
“I see.” The news brought a keen disappointment.
“If you like it, perhaps we can find something similar for you,” Jean-Clau
de went on. “This is the original. We could have it copied or perhaps find—”
“No,” I said forcefully. “I don’t want it copied. I want this one. I’ll pay double what Robert Carr commissioned for it.”
Jean-Claude looked dismayed. “Mrs. Carelton, I’m afraid I—”
“Has Mr. Carr even seen it?” I asked.
Reluctantly, Jean-Claude said, “I don’t believe so, but—”
“Find him another mythical scene,” I said.
Millicent broke in. “But Lucy, I thought you said William wanted landscapes.”
I hesitated. William had indeed wanted landscapes, but surely he would not mind this one choice. I would put it in the sitting room he planned for me if he truly hated it.
“Yes, he does,” I said slowly. “But I simply must have this Gérôme.”
I saw the faint worry puckering Millie’s brow, but I could not help myself. As I talked Jean-Claude into selling it to me, I felt the oddest sense of power, of strength—the same sense I’d had yesterday in the garden. As if there were some force directing my actions, something that was wholly myself, a freedom. . . .
What if you could be the woman you were meant to be?
It was only a painting, a single choice, but I felt a secret plea-sure in it, and that pleasure frightened me—it was like the feverish days of poetry and religion. Perhaps my father was right after all, and I should not indulge my passions.
But I made arrangements for the Gérôme and told Jean-Claude that I would be back in a few days to see what else they had found for me. Afterward Millie and I enjoyed a pleasant luncheon, during which we spoke of ordinary things. Yet all the while I felt a guilty kind of joy.
When I arrived home, Dr. Seth’s words haunted me. What if you could be the woman you were meant to be?