by John Jakes
She spoke of her longtime friend Miss Clara Barton, who had founded and still headed the American Red Cross. Six years ago, Willis had rushed to the flooded coast of South Carolina in the wake of a killer hurricane, there joining Miss Barton’s relief contingent. She’d worked for days on skimpy rations and little sleep, until fever overcame her.
“If there’s a Cuban war, Clara swears she’ll go,” Willis told her niece. “The woman is seventy-six years old, I’ve never seen such grit and stamina. She said she’ll take volunteers. ‘Well, here I am,’ I said to her. Cuba libre!” Willis whacked the table so forcefully, the maître d’ rushed to see if one of his waiters had dropped something.
Willis examined her niece critically. “You’re peaked, Juliette.”
“I suppose I stay indoors too much.”
“No taste for the beach out there?”
“Not really. I walk a lot, but mostly on dark days.”
“Dark days. I see.”
At Julie’s suggestion they ordered a house specialty, Long Island duckling. The waiter brought a silver stand and opened a green bottle of Riesling that Willis had selected. From her reticule Willis drew a small package wrapped in silver foil. “Mr. Kipling’s latest. Captains Courageous. You must read it.”
“Thank you, I will, I have plenty of time. Bill’s playing cards and betting on horses at Saratoga for a few weeks.”
Her aunt squinted through smoke rising from her little cheroot. “You’re not getting on with him, are you?”
Julie’s impulse was to deny it and spare herself a long, probably pointless discussion. Then she recalled the silent vow she’d made at the lighthouse. She’d never be able to resolve her problem if she hid it forever.
“No, I’m not. I think there’s another woman.” She described finding the note signed R.
Willis sighed. “Dear me.” She reached across to clasp Julie’s hand. “I know the discovery must have hurt you terribly. Are you absolutely sure about it?”
“When I confronted Bill with the note, he refused to tell me her name, but he didn’t bother with a denial. He said men and women live by different standards, and I had to accept it.”
“Oh, that old cant. Please pay attention to what I’m going to say. You are not required to suffer simply because he gave you that huge diamond and dragged you in front of a parson to repeat a few trite words. I recommend that you find the evidence against him. Hire a good lawyer. One who will know detectives to put on the case. That’s the best advice I can give you. No matter what it costs, in cash or stress on your nerves, divorce the cheating bastard. He doesn’t deserve a fine person like you.”
Julie toyed with her salad fork. “It’s easy to talk about it. People do divorce, but it’s always a scandal and a disgrace.”
“It would be much more of a scandal and disgrace for my sister than for you. And you’d get your freedom. Besides, people soon forget.”
Julie was silent. Willis squeezed her hand again. “You have perfect justification, child. And you have the courage, if you’ll only use it.”
Julie’s face clouded with an odd look, very much like that of a child contemplating something both appealing and frightening. “That’s what Paul said.”
“Paul. He’s the boy you loved?”
“Paul Crown. Yes. I still love him.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” she repeated with a forlorn shrug. The dark mood was lowering. Julie wondered whether it was a condition one of those new alienists could treat and cure. How she wished it were. How she wished for so many things …
“Will you be staying long in New York?” she asked.
“I’m sailing back to England Tuesday. I have met this young musician. A cellist. Half my age, but he gives the most incredible performances with his instrument.”
Julie looked at her aunt to see if she’d made a lewd joke. Aunt Willis’s face might have been cast out of concrete.
“In the concert hall, child. The concert hall. Whatever did you think I meant?”
Then she winked.
The next time Julie played rummy with Uncle Ike, she said, “Do you know any lawyers here in the city?”
“I know the usual weasels, vultures, and bloodsuckers, you bet. Why?”
“Could you put me in touch with one who handles divorce?”
“Divorce? Honey, that’s dirty business. You have to catch the other party with his suspenders down, right while he—”
“Yes, I know that. I need a lawyer who won’t object to soiling his hands.”
After a long silence and a keen look, I.W. said, “See what I can do.”
At her next visit, he had a name for her. Rubin Silverjack, Esquire; office on lower Fifth Avenue. She was seated in Silverjack’s consultation chair by the end of the week.
Rubin Silverjack, Esquire, resembled a sincere and pious priest. He was in his forties, conservatively dressed. Julie felt Uncle Ike had made a terrible mistake until she looked closely at Silverjack’s fiery black eyes.
Silverjack leaned back in a well-oiled swivel chair and tented the tips of his fingers together. “Please relax, Mrs. Elstree. This discussion will be entirely confidential.”
“Thank you.” Julie’s mouth was dry as sand.
“You say you believe your husband is committing adultery with another woman.”
“I have good reason to believe that, yes. He—” Shame put scarlet in her cheeks. She forced herself to go on. “He also hurt me physically on one occasion.”
“Please describe that. If it isn’t too trying.”
Haltingly, she did. Silverjack reached into a waistcoat pocket. A gold toothpick gleamed. He hid his mouth with his left hand while he worked the toothpick. When she finished, he said, “Were you badly hurt?”
“Yes. I was frightened for my life.”
Silverjack meditated a moment. “I’m afraid that will do you no good, except to give you the determination to go ahead. The divorce law in New York State, as in practically every other state, is narrow and explicit. Outrageously one-sided, in the husband’s favor, I might add. Only if there’s a provable adulterous relationship with another woman do you have grounds. Were you aware of all this?”
“No.” She could barely be heard.
“You will need to catch your husband in a compromising situation. That’s often a costly and very time-consuming procedure, though I have excellent connections for arranging surveillance.”
“How long do you estimate it would take?”
“It might take a week, or a year.” Julie was stricken. She didn’t want to wait so much as a day. She feared her husband. She covered her eyes. Just as her hope was vanishing, Silverjack said, “There is, however, a second way.”
He reached to a lower drawer and handed her a clean white handkerchief. He must have a supply for distraught clients. The gold toothpick reappeared while she blew her nose and dabbed her cheeks dry. The twisting motion of Silverjack’s right wrist was snaky, vaguely indecent.
“You may keep the handkerchief, Mrs. Elstree. I know this is trying, I’ll be as brief as I can. There are certain females willing to accept money for going on the witness stand and enacting the role of the other woman. They’re willing to perjure themselves and testify that they have slept with the husband. They are expert at giving particulars. The judge knows it’s a charade but it permits him to favor the wife. The husband knows it’s a charade but it’s his word against that of the witness, who is well coached to withstand badgering during cross-examination. There are two women in particular whom I employ. Both are actresses with—shall we say troubled histories? Each can convey injury, wrath, whatever the scenario demands. I beg you not to look so shocked, Mrs. Elstree. The strategy is used again and again to rescue wives from intolerable marriages. It works. Until the statutes are reformed, nothing else will.”
Again he leaned back, fingertips together. “I also know
a few judges. That helps.”
“Mr. Silverjack, are you saying that in order to be free—”
Hand upraised, he stopped her. “To be free in the quickest and most expeditious way.”
“But you’re saying I have to break the law.”
“Become an accessory to fraud. Yes.”
“No, I can’t possibly, I—”
And then she thought again of that night, her wedding night, riding the Pride of Petoskey to New York. She remembered Bill’s striking her repeatedly. Holding her in a grip that left bruises on her body for weeks. The longer she delayed, the greater her risk … and her suffering.
“All right, Mr. Silverjack,” she whispered. “Do whatever’s necessary. I put the case in your hands.”
“Thank you for your confidence, Mrs. Elstree.” Rubin Silverjack’s eyes were alight with excitement. He no longer looked like a gentle priest. He looked like some eager and gloating prelate from the Spanish Inquisition.
She rushed back to Uncle Ike’s townhouse in a hansom cab. She was feeling jubilant. “He took the case!” She flung an arm around I.W.’s neck and kissed him. “Thank you.”
“Want to play some cards to celebrate?”
“I would love that.”
In the middle of their last game, the telephone in the next room gave its loud ring, something like a combination of a fire bell and a ratchet. Uncle Ike jumped up. “Be right back.”
Five minutes later he returned, obviously shaken. “That was the long-distance wire. Your mother. The way I get it, your pa was riding that stair elevator up to his room to take a nap. The mechanism jammed and threw him off the seat. He fell down twenty steps. He’s in a coma. He may not live.”
At seven-ten in the morning on the fifteenth day after his accident, Mason Putnam Vanderhoff III died. He had never regained consciousness.
The long death watch had been a time of anguish for Julie. She sat at her father’s bedside every day. He never woke; never recognized her. Even prepared for his death, she was overcome with grief when Dr. Woodrow pulled the bed sheet over Pork’s face. She and Nell were standing at the foot of the bed. “I’m so sorry,” the doctor said. Nell began screaming and pounding the footboard with her fists.
Julie mourned for her father even as she rehearsed the initial steps of her escape from her husband. Before she left for Chicago, she’d telephoned Silverjack to explain what had happened and to tell him to go ahead with any arrangements he needed to make.
“Shall I file the complaint?”
“I want to tell my husband first.”
“That isn’t your responsibility, Mrs. Elstree. Considering what you said about him, I’d advise you against it.”
“Mr. Silverjack, it’s something I must do myself.”
“As you wish.”
Nell was inconsolable and barely coherent whenever Julie tried to speak with her. In its way, her mother’s distraught state was a blessing. It was as if an extra obstacle big as a boulder had been rolled out of Julie’s path.
Alone in her bedroom in the Chicago townhouse, she slept fitfully the night before the burial. And at St. James Church she scarcely heard the Episcopal priest deliver a forty-five minute eulogy to her father. Over four hundred had gathered to listen. The Palmers and the Armours, the Swifts and the Pullmans, the Fields and the McCormicks, and all the lesser kings of Chicago commerce.
It rained all the way out to Graceland, a prestigious cemetery stretching north from Irving Park Road to Montrose; here Chicago’s notables could be buried among their peers. Julie rode with her husband in his clarence, the largest and most expensive of his four vehicles. It had cost almost four thousand dollars. He’d chosen it for the funeral because it was finished entirely in black lacquer, except for a delicate horizontal stripe of dark gray.
Elstree kept his arm around Julie, murmuring condolences she hardly heard. Her stomach ached. Her head hurt. She vowed not to weaken. She had set today as the day to speak, and she meant to be free.
The cortege entered Graceland Cemetery from North Clark Street. At the grave Nell sobbed uncontrollably as the priest prayed over the ostentatious coffin. With its silver finish and rose bosses, the coffin struck Julie as feminine. It had been selected by her mother in a moment of semi-lucidity. Pork would have hated it.
Julie wondered what Nell would do when she learned of her decision. Fall ill again? Disown her, probably. No matter; she didn’t want a penny of her father’s fortune. Or Bill’s. Only freedom, and Paul.
Uncle Ike put his arm around her as the coffin disappeared into the grave. He smelled of gin. He stepped over to Nell, leading her away like a father comforting a shattered child. Elstree touched Julie’s sleeve. “Come,” he said softly.
Julie’s stomach throbbed and burned. Her face was pale as eggshell behind her black veil. The coachman held a black umbrella over them as they went up a slippery path to the line of hearses and carriages.
The door of the clarence closed with a firm, solid sound. Julie leaned back and shut her eyes a moment. Elstree began, “You bore up splendidly, dear. I know how trying—”
“Bill. Bill,” she repeated, in a whisper. She flung herself around to face him. If she waited, hesitated, she was lost.
“Bill, I’m leaving you. I want a divorce.”
He stared at her. Stared long and hard. Her hands started to tremble.
The traces jingled; the clarence lurched forward on the graveled cemetery road. Elstree laid his black topper on his knee and peeled off his black gloves. “Have you discussed this with a lawyer?”
“Yes. In New York. Rubin Silverjack is his name. He specializes in cases like mine. I mean to be free, Bill.”
“I’ll reply to that with one word. Never. Whatever your reasons, your objections to this marriage—never.”
“Please, Bill, have the decency to be honest. You consort with other women, that’s no secret.”
“I don’t deny it,” he said agreeably.
“Then think of how you’ve treated me, since the very day we were married.”
“Treated you very handsomely, I should say.”
He reached out to grasp both her hands in his large, strong left hand. Somehow, clamped around her black gloves, his hand reminded her of a white spider. She wanted to hit it. Hit him …
“Divorce is something I simply won’t contemplate. In our circle it ruins a man’s reputation. When a wife files, it insults and demeans the husband, because it brands him an adulterer. Publicly. You don’t understand the way society works. One can do anything so long as it’s private. I’ll block you at every step, Julie.”
“There are ways around it. I’ll use them, I swear.”
“Julie, Julie,” he said. “How old are you?”
“I was twenty in May, you know that.”
“And I’m twice that, and more.”
“You remind me of it often enough.”
“To remind you of my greater experience. The wisdom that comes with years. Let me call on that now, to forestall this crisis. Let me advise you. Forget this scummy attorney. Forget you ever uttered the word ‘divorce.’ ”
“But I don’t love you, Bill.”
“Whatever does that have to do with it?” His smile was puzzled, almost boyish. “If you persist with this behavior, I’ll commit you to an institution. All it takes is my word. My signature on a few papers drawn up by my attorneys and certified by cooperative physicians. I can do it in a day if you force me. Mental institutions are hell holes, even the finest of them. I’d be sad if you made me send you away. But I’ll do it.”
The clarence creaked through the rain, falling harder now; the world outside was hidden. “Bill, that’s horrible. Cruel. You smile and say things like that—what kind of man are you?”
“Why, a concerned man. A husband. Until such time, if any, that I decide otherwise.”
“So you can be free anytime you want, but I can’t?”
“You understand perfectly,” he said with a benign smile.
She fell back against the maroon plush cushion, sick with defeat. Elstree slipped his arm around her, held her tighter than necessary, letting her feel the dangerous power in his arm.
“Really, now, it’s best that you collect yourself. You must be composed for the reception at home, your poor mother can’t handle the many callers without your help. We’ll say no more about this. We’ll forget it completely. I’m sure you didn’t mean a word of it. It’s been a trying, trying day.”
81
Shadow
THE BRIEF AND POLITE letter from the Edison Manufacturing Company of West Orange, New Jersey, asked Colonel Shadow to call on the inventor at his estate, Glenmont, within sixty days. There was a promise of “business news you will find highly important,” but no explanation. The signature was that of Mrs. M. Edison. Shadow had read that the inventor and his second wife worked closely together, supervising Edison’s various enterprises and sub-corporations.
Shadow didn’t make the trip until the deadline had almost expired. The reason for his procrastination was fear. Thomas Edison was a worldwide legend, worshiped by schoolchildren and virtually awarded sainthood by the press. He was the “Wizard,” the self-taught genius who had lit America with his incandescent lamp, his power systems to deliver that light over wide areas, and his manufacturing techniques to make the light bulb cheap and easy to produce. In 1877 his astounding phonograph had brought all manner of sounds from a revolving cylinder. He had dozens of patents on communications devices ranging from telegraph instruments to stock tickers. He belittled his own amazing creativity with a saying of his own devising. “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.”
He was, in short, a man to make the spine weaken, the knees quiver, and the brain reduce itself to something resembling fruit preserves. Shadow delayed as long as he dared. Then he brushed up his best clothes, packed a valise, put on his sombrero, and kissed Mary goodbye as if for the last time.
Two days later he arrived at the front door of Glenmont, a mansion with a great stone veranda, innumerable chimneys and roof gables. It was situated on ten or twelve gorgeously wooded acres in the Llewellyn Park section of West Orange, allowing Edison easy travel back and forth to his plant. Shadow guessed the house must have twenty or thirty rooms.