If my Appointment comes, I will be away.
Something was afoot. Franklin had come into the Ocean at the time appointed for the interview, had readied his smile and his conciliatory remarks, and had made his way down the wide hallway to the dining room only to find Ryckman seated at a table with another man. A man whose loud checked suit and whose bowler—which to Franklin’s astonishment he continued to wear, even while indoors, seated, and dining—a man, in short, who even the déclassé clientele of the Ocean must have looked at askance.
“I will beg your pardon, sir,” the man had said when Franklin was seated. He spoke in some accent, not quite Scottish, perhaps Yorkshire. He kept his knife aloft as he spoke and barely looked at Franklin. “But I’ve just had a long train ride and I do not much care for the fare they hawk on the platforms.”
And he went back to his beef-steak. Franklin attempted a smile at Ryckman, but Ryckman was having none of it. He sat with his hands clasped before him and with a sharp eye for Franklin. That he had neither introduced the man in the checked suit to Franklin nor Franklin to the man seemed not to bother him in the least.
“Will you take something?” Ryckman asked, making to signal for a waiter.
“Thank you, no,” said Franklin.
“As you wish,” said Ryckman; and then, still playing some part, though Franklin could not yet discern what: “You have, I believe, just returned from a spell in the city. Is that right? Did you enjoy yourself?”
“I had some business to attend to.”
At which Ryckman nodded. “Ah, business. Well, as you say . . .”
What the deuce! thought Franklin. The man in the checked suit took a drink of cider, went back to his dinner. He seemed barely aware of the other two.
“And Ellen tells me you went to visit your parents in Baltimore as well? How did you find them?”
“They are very well,” Franklin temporized. “I thank you.”
Had he been caught out? But it was impossible! He let his eyes roam over Ryckman’s face for some clue, vowed he would be silent, wait the old man out. The other—by god, he had all the marks of a tradesman!—kept at his meal. The room was but half full.
“You wished to see me?” Franklin finally couldn’t keep himself from saying.
“Indeed,” said Ryckman, “but . . .” And he indicated the man with the checked suit. The devil if Franklin wasn’t supposed to wait until he had finished! Aware he was holding things up, the man lifted a finger as if to signal he was nearly done.
“That’ll do. That’ll do,” he said finally, balling up his napkin and tossing it to the side of his plate. “That’s a good meal. None better!”
“Can I have them bring you a sweet?” Ryckman asked.
“Ah, no. Thank you, sir.”
“Very well, then.”
And they sat for a moment in silence. Something was up. Of course something was up, but what? Franklin gave a quick tug at his collars, crossed his legs at the knees, and gazed about the dining room at the ladies in their white dresses, the men in their sport clothes. He would have to wait, trust to his native resources. Surely he could handle Ryckman and this rube!
“Now to the matter before us,” Ryckman said after a time. He made a little preacher’s tent with his fingers. “Let us begin—” and he paused as if deliberating on just how to proceed, “—well, what d’you say we begin with the circumstances under which you withdrew from the college at Princeton.”
He felt brought up short. Was that it? To whom had they been speaking?
“How do you mean?” Franklin asked, inclining his head as if he didn’t understand.
“I mean,” said Ryckman, his voice growing a little more pointed, “the circumstances under which you withdrew—were asked to withdraw—from Princeton.”
Franklin made a gesture of innocence. “Why, I believe I’ve already told you all that,” he said; and then, patient, the soul of reason: “I had got it into my head to be trained as a painter, and unable to do that while following a course of study at—it was called the College of New Jersey in my day—I had determined, after my year abroad, not to return to Princeton but rather to enroll at the Pennsylvania Academy. But there was the Eakins scandal. As I say, I’ve already told you this. There was no asking me to withdraw,” he wound up with his own pointed tone.
“I don’t believe that is quite accurate, sir,” the man in the checked suit said to the remains of his beef-steak.
“I beg your pardon,” Franklin said, turning his face full to the man, “but we have not been introduced.”
“Ah! Apologies!” Ryckman exclaimed. “Mr. Crowder, this is Mr. Drexel. Mr. Drexel, this is my friend Mr. Crowder.” And then he added: “Mr. Crowder of the Crowder Detective Agency.”
Detective agency? Franklin thought. What the deuce was a detective agency?
“Well, Mr. Crowder of the Crowder Detective Agency,” he said with his smile, “it is customary, I believe, to remove one’s hat indoors.”
“Of course it is, sir,” the man said, reaching hurriedly and taking off his bowler, “of course it is. I’ll again beg your pardon.”
Was the man a half-wit? Or was this all part of some act the two had ginned up?
“As to this matter of your de-matriculating”—he enunciated the syllables as if he had practiced them—“from the college at Princeton, there was, I believe, an unfortunate incident with a Mr. Alewife. A Mr. Richard Alewife, who, as it turns out, de-matriculated at the same time, and is now of Charlottesville, Virginia. Your family wished, in the parlance, to hush the matter up by sending you—again, in the parlance—on the Grand Tour.”
“Did my family tell you that?” Franklin found himself asking. “In the parlance?” He could not help smiling.
“No, sir.”
“Who, then?”
Mr. Crowder removed from inside his coat a small notebook of the sort sold at a stationer’s, flipped through a few pages. But when he spoke, he said: “I’m afraid it is the policy of the Crowder Detective Agency, sir, not to reveal our sources. Unless it becomes necessary to do so,” he added with nothing like a threat, though it was threatening all the same.
“Well, your sources are evidently addled,” said Franklin. “You do well to keep them under wraps.”
And he turned a look on Ryckman as if to say that he would face the man down on this matter. That if that was all he had, then he had nothing. It was twelve years ago. A misunderstanding. He could turn it this way and that way, and Ellen would believe him.
“They seem to hold,” Mr. Crowder continued, “at the college—a certain housemother does—that something untoward occurred between you and Mr. Alewife.”
Franklin merely gazed at him, ungiving.
“Would you care to tell us what?”
Still, he did not speak.
“Ah, I suppose it was a long time ago,” the detective conceded.
“Indeed,” said Franklin icily.
The detective let a little disappointed look come over him—was the fellow an actor?—and went back to consulting his notebook.
“Was it, I wonder,” he said after some time had passed; he spoke tentatively, as if he were trying out a hypothesis, “was it—this incident, I mean—” the fellow flipped a page, then another—“was it of the nature of your activities this past week?”
Franklin could feel Ryckman’s eyes on him. Under the table he crossed and uncrossed his legs.
“This past week when you were pleased to return to New York?”
“To attend to some business?” Ryckman put in.
“Whatever are you talking about?” said Franklin with too loud a laugh. “This is absurd!”
And for the first time the man looked straight across at him. “I have only facts to report, sir. Whether those facts are to be characterized as absurd or something else, I leave to others.”
“Very well, sir.” And then—what the deuce!—the detective put aside his notebook and began reciting—evidently from memory—the itinerary of Franklin’s wanderings that first night. The Orchid, the Paresis, Little Bucks, his ending up at the Slide. He ticked them off, the street names, the time of the evening, whether Franklin had stepped in or not.
“And would you now, Mr. Crowder,” Ryckman said when the detective had come to the end of his recitation, “would you characterize for us the nature of these establishments? And of this last mentioned in particular?”
“They are outposts of what I believe the newspapers call the demimonde. I hope I have that word correct,” the detective said to Franklin, and he paused as if for confirmation. “They are places of licentiousness and depravity, known gathering spots for degenerates of all sorts. And by degenerates—please excuse my language, Mr. Ryckman—I mean to indicate sodomites, pederasts, drink mollies, nancies, fairies, and every other type of pervert. The Slide, which Mr. Drexel entered and where he spent a good deal of time, in particular is infamous as an establishment where one may see men dressed as women, rouged as women, where they call one another by women’s names, Princess This and Lady So-and-So, Michelle and Rebecca and Deborah. There is dancing, mincing, and the singing in falsetto of ditties. Mr. Drexel is himself, evidently, a great lover of dancing.”
Franklin laughed—what could he do? he had to brazen his way through—laughed and adopted a look of pity for the poor, benighted fellow. Did he not understand? Why, this was the new fad of slumming! he told them. Those men were his friends from uptown. Young men of good families—the best!—with whom he sometimes went into this demimonde, as Mr. Crowder called it. Why, it was better than the zoo! And the dancing? It was all part of the evening’s entertainment, part of the theater of the thing! He smiled his smile—surely they understood this! It was all just a fantastic romp!
“I see, sir,” the detective answered in his uninflected voice. “And the gentleman you later accompanied to the Sharon Hotel, where I believe they are pleased to rent rooms by the hour, was he too one of your friends from uptown?”
His smile felt as if it had dried on his face.
“And the following night, Mr. Paolo Costa of Mott Street—” he was again consulting his notebook—“is he too a friend from society?”
“Go to the devil!”
“And the following night, Mr. Walter Beamis come over from Brooklyn. A friend?”
“Let us halt this charade,” Ryckman said in a voice that made no attempt to hide its venom. He leaned into the table. “You and your fine clothes, Drexel. Your fine manner, your damned watercolors. What you are is a pervert, and the worst sort. An invert, a fairy, a nancy. In the parlance,” he added with a nasty smile. “And if you do not within twenty-four hours tell my daughter that you return to New York, and that you will never see her again, I will destroy you.”
“Destroy me?” Franklin found himself repeating. He could feel his chin quivering. The walls of the room were turning liquid.
“Nor do I mean to merely inform my daughter of your character and of your inclinations, but to publish it to the world. You are a favored subject of the society columns, I believe? What d’you suppose TOWN TOPICS and the other scandal rags would do with the information Mr. Crowder is ready to impart to them? And Mrs. Auld, and Mrs. Lydig, and your great friend Mrs. Belmont, what will they do when they learn who you are? Learn the name you go by down there? Eh?” And a look of exultation spread across his features. “Twenty-four hours, Mr. Drexel! Deborah!” he said.
~I have just experienced the most mortifying half-hour of my young life. William is having a great laugh over it, says I am conducting myself like a character in an opera buffa.
I was in my room reading when I heard the downstairs door-knocker rap, and then the door open. But with the seven of us, and the servants, comings and goings in the house are never-ending, and so I thought nothing of it. But some time later Mother came to my room and informed me, with something of the old worry on her face, that Father wished to see me in his library. Oh, the school-boy fears that raced through me at the summons! Had someone informed Father of what I had been obscurely fearing all summer long? That his bookish son had been hanging about the Newport hotels like a pickpocket?
I went down, knocked quietly at the door of the library, and upon entering found Father seated at his usual desk, but in the chair across from him, where usually William or I underwent the paternal examination, a man I did not recognize. He had turned at my entrance so that he observed me from the contrapposto posture with his great beard lying atop his shoulder. I wondered at him a moment, wondered indeed at what seemed a too appraising look he directed at me, and then in a horrible instant I knew who he was.
I went and stood before them. Father waited to introduce us as if he wished to see whether my reaction indicted or exonerated me. Or perhaps he wished, in his jolly way, in his assurance that no evil can come into the world if we do not ourselves invite it in, perhaps he wished just to enjoy my discomfiture.
“Mr. Taylor,” he said finally to the man, “I don’t believe you have quite—” he shaded the “quite” with his sense of humor—“quite met my son Harry.”
“I have not,” said the man.
“Harry, may I introduce Mr. Taylor of Waterbury, of the American Brass Works.”
“Mill,” the man corrected.
“The American Brass Mill,” repeated Father.
I bowed and—stupidly!—clicked my heels as we had learned at Geneva. Mr. Taylor in his turn inclined his head to me. He was a most massive man, with a most massive beard, and a broad forehead, and a monocle through which he viewed me as if he meant to dissect me. Whatever humor Father seemed to find in the situation he evidently did not share.
“Won’t you be seated, Harry?”
I lowered myself into a chair and waited. Father brought his fingertips together in that way he has when contemplating the angels perched among the cobwebs in the corner of a room. He then turned his face full to me.
“Mr. Taylor informs me you have been making love to his daughter.”
He said this kindly, with a small smile above his beard, as if he supposed it a mere matter of fact that yet needed to be agreed upon. There was a column of books on his desktop that looked perilously close to toppling.
“Do I have that right?” he said to Mr. Taylor.
“I have not used those words. But you have my sense, sir.”
Father bowed his head slightly, as if he appreciated this distinction between the rind of the words and the core of their meaning. Just in front of him, on its pewter plate, sat the canister ball that had nearly killed Wilky.
“Have you, Harry, been making love to Mr. Taylor’s daughter?” he asked when I did not speak. “Alice, I understand her name to be. Glorious apparent coincidence!” he thrilled, adding as an afterthought, for he has learned that people do not always follow him: “Apparent, I say, there being none such.” At which he smiled, sure we appreciated this nicety of the divine.
“I have had the pleasure,” I hazarded, and trying to get my stammer under control, “of making the acquaintance of Mr. Taylor’s daughter Alice, and of his wife, and their young son.” I crossed my hands in my lap. “His name is Harry,” I added so as not to be delinquent in this fact. Father’s eyes widened behind his spectacles and he gazed at Mr. Taylor as if upon a miracle.
“We discover gifts and correspondences all about us,” he said in his deep-throated way, “do we not?”
“I am not after gifts and correspondences,” Mr. Taylor said with a penetrating look. “I am after understanding what your son’s intentions be toward my daughter. We are not in the habit of our Alice going about with young men.”
Father looked as if he
meant to pose the great swoop of his forehead against Mr. Taylor’s own large brow. “And we in turn are not used to our Harry trifling with the hearts of young ladies. I’ll ask again. Harry, have you spoken of love to Miss Taylor?”
“I have not, sir,” I said.
“And should you have?”
I sat in silence for a minute, crossed and uncrossed my legs. I understood Father to be asking whether my behavior, in order for it to be honorable, needed to be followed by a declaration of love. I looked from one man to the other, and then threw myself into telling Mr. Taylor—oh, that I had to speak all of this in front of Father!—that I had a great admiration for his daughter and that I valued her friendship. That she seemed to me an altogether fine young lady. Intelligent, charming, with a finely developed moral sensibility. That I believed the portrait that Mr. Hunt was making of her caught with the sympathy and plenitude of art the luminescence of her character. That I accounted her a friend in the best sense of that relation. But that I believed I had never spoken to her in tones that might be construed as being those of the language of love. Did I understand that Miss Taylor had informed her father otherwise?
To this Mr. Taylor roused himself. “I have not spoken to my daughter on the subject, but her mother has apprised me of your conduct. I do not know how it is in Newport, but in Waterbury, when a young man goes about with a marriageable girl, it generally means one thing.”
“Ah!” I said, hoping the word would diffuse into the room other possibilities.
“You are not, I think, immune to the world’s expectations!”
“I had not,” I quietly said, “thought the world was paying much attention to me.”
“You had better think so, when the reputation of a young lady is at stake!”
At this Father leaned in with his elbows on his desk and fixed his sympathetic eyes on me. He said he was surprised to hear me speak so of a young lady. If she truly was as fine as I said, if her qualities so pleased me, and if I found her moral sense so commendable . . . after all, I was twenty years old, he said.
The Maze at Windermere Page 32