by John Brunner
Escorting her employer to the Pilots’ Guild was less of an ordeal than Dorcas had feared, although it proved a strange experience. Not only was she publicly arm-in-arm with a man for the first time in her young life; despite the stick he carried in his free hand, he kept touching her in exploratory fashion, as though to establish in what manner she differed from his wife, and some of the touches were on areas more intimate than hand or arm.
At first she suffered him, thinking a sightless person no doubt needed such contact for reassurance. Then it dawned on her that he knew the route they were following and was giving her advice: watch for the kerbstone here; listen for streetcars at the next intersection; here is a favorite straight run for scorching cyclists… His memory seemed keener than her observation.
Therefore, when the sidewalk grew sufficiently crowded to justify his walking more behind than beside her, she pointedly placed his hand on her shoulder, having often seen him thus with his wife. He made no objection, and so continued the rest of the way.
But at the entrance to the Guild parlor he dismissed her with a brusque word of thanks, and that was when she started to feel truly apprehensive. She had no idea how to find Dr. Cherouen’s house. Naturally she had not dared inquire directions of the captain, and as for Mrs. Parbury, she had snappishly instructed her to look up the address in Gardner’s Directory.
But Dorcas had never seen a copy in the house, and Fibby assured her there had not been since the war. Small wonder. With the master blind and the mistress a near-cripple, what use were maps that showed the city entire?
As a child she had rarely been allowed out alone, and then only to visit places where she had been taken by her mother: her grandmother’s home, a cousin’s store, the nearby clapboard chapel. So far as her parents—and more to the point, her five aunts—were concerned, the need for her to be thus strictly controlled had been well proved…
With the consequence that she had never had to find her way across a busy city before, apart from the day of her arrival in New Orleans—and then she had been wandering haphazardly.
But she was older now, and more confident. On top of that she had been shown how strangers could be kind and generous. Though she had been half-unconscious, she treasured a vivid recollection of the young man who made haste to help her when she fell down, while Dr. Malone and the Ursulines had displayed true charity.
Therefore, not wishing to seem at a loss, she walked away from the Guild with affected briskness, assuring herself that having rounded a corner and got out of sight she would easily find someone to advise her.
But the weather, the noise, and the stench of the city were alike oppressive, and in a different sense so were the people. Their sheer numbers were overwhelming, to start with. On top of that, half of them seemed to be so busy, hurrying on mysterious errands, that they brushed past without registering her presence, while the other half were so much at leisure that they did notice her and made their reactions all too plain. The latter were the worse, whether they were neatly uniformed coachmen waiting for their employers to return, or loiterers not quite reduced to such ragged garb as would ensure their expulsion to a less prosperous quarter but keeping one eye lifted for the advent of a Metropolitan, or even—and this disturbed Dorcas greatly—women in tawdry finery, wearing blatant rouge on their cheeks and monstrous rings on most of their fingers. Where their gazes rested she felt as though flies were touching down on her body.
It made no difference whether their stares were real or imaginary, for already when she left home she had begun to feel conspicuous. Holding a man’s arm had something to do with it; very shortly, though, she had realized that many couples were doing the same, and a great proportion of them were neither related nor married but unashamed lovers. Twice she had found herself blushing: one girl had kissed her young man’s ear, tilting his hat brim to do so; another had brazenly urged a boy into a shadowed doorway…
Much had been said at the church her family attended concerning the wickedness of cities. She was perfectly aware that what she was witnessing must be what the preachers had in mind. But it was exciting. It stirred feelings she had striven to forget.
Besides, though Fibby had assured her that she looked “up to the minute,” she had grown aware that her dress and hat were behind the style. The notion struck her that she might look in a few store windows and find out the price of hats, and perhaps other things too, and next time the captain told her to bring him here…
Though if Dr. Cherouen were as smart as his advertising claimed, that might never happen.
By now she had gone farther than she had intended. Abrupt recollection of the reason why she was not returning straight home brought a chill to her spine.
She glanced around. Had it been from the left or the right that she entered this street? Was it at the last but one intersection or the last but two?
Suddenly she seemed to see everything around her with preternatural clarity: the fronts of the buildings, the huge sales slogans they bore, the professional names and titles of businesses that stood out in gilt letters on blue or green or red, the awnings and marquees that flapped lackadaisically in today’s halfhearted breeze. And none of it made sense! It was like being cast away in a foreign country!
For the space of a shuddering breath she was very frightened.
And then she did see clearly and was grateful. Like a beacon in a storm she recognized a name: Griswold’s.
There were occasions when Captain Parbury came home chuckling, escorted by a pilot’s cub who felt privileged to pay cab fare for the journey, and without exception it turned out that he had spent his evening at a place called Griswold’s. Games were played there that Dorcas had no knowledge of. But for certain the company was agreeable. Many were pilots, finely dressed, sporting ebony walking sticks with silver knobs, diamond breastpins thrust into silk cravats, gold finger rings, and high silk hats.
Hearing about them from the captain in expansive mood, Dorcas had been reluctant to credit such people’s existence, for they smacked too much of the prince in a fairy tale… especially since Parbury himself wore old clothes, shiny at knees and elbows, and boots with run-down heels. Possibly such heroes might be found in New York, or Paris, or other fine and distant cities. But the chance of meeting them in humdrum New Orleans, where life drifted on from day to day in an unchanging manner—although admittedly this district was different from the one she was accustomed to…
No matter! By the door to Griswold’s stood three gentlemen, one plump, one of middle build, and one quite thin, and two of them matched Captain Parbury’s description in every particular, while the third, the lean one, wore an old-fashioned long-skirted coat and had the general air of a minister on circuit. She mustered all her courage and approached them, drawing from her reticule (not hers, but loaned by her mistress) the letter she was to deliver to Cherouen.
Although they had tripped together many times, Ketch Tyburn had small love for Harry Whitworth. However, he was newly recovered from a fever that had enforced bed rest and a slow convalescence. Encountering Whitworth by chance, he had been so pleased to meet a fellow riverman that he had hailed him.
And was not wholly sorry to have done so, for it turned out that Whitworth had spent the summer in upper-river trades of which Tyburn had little recent knowledge, and any pilot was always interested in adding to his stock of information.
Better still, when Whitworth started complaining about the master he had been serving under, Tyburn realized he had a grudge against the same man, who was given to issuing orders in the firmest terms, then canceling them an hour later with equal vehemence. By the time they had swapped stories about his maddening behavior, they were conversing very affably.
“Ketch! I heard you were sick! Good to see you back on your legs!”
Tyburn started and glanced round. Advancing in full fig, swinging his cane and beaming, here came one of the other people he would rather not have met at this juncture. Cato Woodley, so the rumor ran, cared mo
re nowadays for the sporting life than the duties of a steamboat captain. As a result he had been unable to replace the Hezekiah Woodley at the stage when a prudent owner would have judged her uneconomic to repair. Now he was struggling both to keep up appearances and to make ends meet.
But with the rising challenge of the railroads it behooved a pilot who hoped to retire in his profession to be courteous to any owner of a working boat, even if he usurped a nickname you wanted to reserve to your best friends.
Some minutes elapsed, and threads of tension wove across the friendly gossip. Whitworth, plainly, was hoping that either the pilot or—better—the steamboat owner would invite him into Griswold’s; neither liked him enough to make the move. While each was groping for a phrase that would settle matters, Tyburn abruptly noticed that Woodley’s gaze was fixed behind his shoulder. He glanced around, and at the same moment Whitworth let go a shrill whistle.
Coming hesitantly toward them was a quadroon girl of heart-stopping loveliness: slender, graceful, with huge limpid dark eyes and a mouth that made one think instantly of ripe peaches, timidly proffering an envelope with an address on it as though herself unable to read.
“I saw her first,” Woodley murmured, and with a great flourish of his hat strode to greet her. Whitworth took a step in his wake, and with a sigh—because now he was the father of a grown family, and his daughters might well wander into a situation like this—Tyburn prepared to argue with them. One glance had informed him that this was no common streetwalker, and a second had indicated that telling the others so would be a waste of breath.
Briefly he was tempted to make himself scarce. Conscience pricked him into remaining. Unfortunately it did not also make plain what he could achieve by that.
He watched.
“Sir, if you please…”—addressing somewhat more the one with the long-skirted coat.
But the words Dorcas had rehearsed in her head failed her. There was little room for misunderstanding in the way these men looked at her.
“I please very much, and easily too,” said the younger one with the silk hat, and extracted Mrs. Parbury’s letter from her nervous fingers.
“I’m trying to find my way to that doctor’s house,” Dorcas said with what firmness she could muster. “An errand for my mistress!”
“Oh, we’ve heard of this doctor!” was the reply. “I bet most of his patients say they are bound to him in behalf of others. Whitworth, I guess the name Cherouen rings your bells?”
Drawing a thin black cigar from his pocket, Whitworth said, “It surely does. I reckon I heard of not a few young—ladies—who had to visit him kind of in a hurry.”
He smiled at Dorcas, exposing the gap in his teeth.
“But he was a lucky man who made your case so urgent!”
Uncomprehending, growing dizzy, Dorcas reached for the letter; Woodley withdrew it just beyond her reach.
“Please! Can’t you tell me how to get there?” Dorcas implored.
“I don’t have the least idea,” Whitworth said. “You, Mr. Woodley?”
Reading the superscription with exaggerated pantomime, Woodley shook his head. “But I guess it will be easy to find out. Come inside and take a refreshment, and I’ll locate someone to set you on the proper course.”
Beaming, he offered his arm but made no move to give back the letter.
She snatched at it; once again he was too quick for her.
Whitworth put his arm around Dorcas’s shoulders, muttering, “There, there, my dear!” And added more loudly, “Captain Woodley, I think you should restore this young lady’s property!”
Unruffled, Woodley said, “You wouldn’t have her going the rounds of Griswold’s, would you, as though she were on some improper mission? No, my dear, you just leave it all to me. Come along!”
There was a pause. Then Dorcas knocked aside Whitworth’s arm with all her force.
“Give back that letter,” she said between clenched teeth.
“My dear, as I keep saying—”
“Are you Captain Cato Woodley?”
“I—ah… I own that I am”—blinking with surprise.
“Then your manners are a disgrace to your profession and I shall so inform Captain Parbury, whom I just had the honor of leading to the Pilots’ Guild!”
“You know Parbury?” Woodley demanded incredulously. “How come?”
“My guess would be because she works for him. Am I correct, Miss Archer?”
Another voice cut in. Dorcas, sensing a savior, turned, expecting him to be the third man who had been conversing with Whitworth and Woodley. But the portly pilot was still hovering in the background. Instead, here came a much younger man of somewhat dusky complexion, neatly attired in a smart dark coat with velvet lapels, matching narrow pants, boots that glistened like mirrors, and a fine silk hat. He sported a moustache and an imperial beard and carried a black cane with a carved ivory handle.
“That letter,” he said to Woodley, “belongs to Miss Archer. Give it back!”
“I…”
But Woodley’s automatic defiance collapsed because of something he read in the newcomer’s eyes. Silently he surrendered the envelope.
“Next time you will remember that a lady of color is still a lady! For if you forget, then I swear on my father’s grave that I will drag you to the Oaks and fill your lousy hide as full of holes as a pepperpot! I thought you and Parbury were like that”—holding up two fingers tightly crossed. “How come you don’t recognize Miss Archer, hm?”
“Probably, Fernand, because Parbury never invites anyone to visit him at home,” Tyburn said, advancing at last to join the group. “I hear he’s ashamed of his house, compared with what he owned before the war.”
“I see.” During the previous exchange Fernand had held his cane ready for use as a weapon if need arose. Now he let its tip drop to the sidewalk with a rapping sound. “But he will know her in future, I’m sure. And I trust he will also know how to treat her. Miss”—turning to Dorcas—“I gather you need directions.”
This time she eagerly showed the envelope.
“Oh, yes, I know the district well. In fact I’m headed that way. If you would care to accompany me…?”
“Thank you, sir,” Dorcas said with a curtsey copied unconsciously from Fibby, and when Fernand offered his arm she had no least hesitation in taking it.
“Now how come you let a coon talk to you that way?” Whitworth demanded as Dorcas and Fernand moved away.
“Watch your mouth, Harry!” Tyburn snapped. “We all heard how Lamenthe put your nose out of joint! Zeke Barfoot told me, and I believe him! And some of us know—us pilots at any rate!—that he’s damn’ good at his work!”
Woodley flared, “He’s still a nigger when all’s said and done!”
“You look no deeper than a man’s skin,” said Tyburn in a tone that was suddenly grave, “you’re in the same trouble as a pilot who can’t look beyond the surface of the river. What am I saying? Nobody who can’t look past the surface could become a pilot!”
Taking a pace back, he gazed squarely at Woodley.
“Why do you pay your pilots more than you pay yourself, if it ain’t because they look deeper than what shows? Think about it, Captain!”
And, having contrived to make the title sound like a mortal insult, he stumped ponderously away.
As soon as they were out of sight, Fernand halted and seized both of Dorcas’s hands in both of his.
“My dear Miss Archer, I have hoped—I have prayed that we might meet again! I applied to Dr. Malone, and the nuns, and Mr. Hamel the druggist, and all refused point-blank to say what had become of you, save that you had found employment. The slightest clue would have brought me to Parbury’s house within the hour!”
As he spoke she could only stare at him, lips parted, eyes wide. Surely there was just one person in the world that this could be! But she remembered her rescuer as vastly tall and incredibly strong, while this man was of ordinary height and build. Of course, at the tim
e she had been weak from lack of food, and in childhood she had found out that hunger can play tricks on the mind…
Nonetheless she was on the point of responding with enthusiasm to match his, when she was struck by a fearful realization.
He knew—he must know—about her shame.
She had learned no other term to apply to her lost lovechild, or at any rate none that made the experience more tolerable even in the privacy of her head. Even Fibby, who spoke with incredible matter-of-factness on subjects that at home Dorcas would have been punished for thinking about, let alone discussing aloud, had no vocabulary to offer bar the crudest.
But memory certified that, however foul and agonizing her miscarriage might have been, what caused it had been precious.
On the other hand it was common knowledge—save among the lowest class of people, to whom shame was meaningless—that a gentleman would have nothing to do with a fallen woman. According to the precepts she had been raised to, according to the sensational novels that were among her few recreations, there must necessarily be a sinister motive in this man’s mind.
Yet meeting him again had been a dream so vivid for so long that—perhaps because minutes earlier she had been betrayed by a vision of another sort—she found the idea of it bursting, bubble fashion, more than she could stand.
Besides, his delight seemed so unfeigned!
In a trice she hit on a compromise. With an apologetic smile she murmured something about delay, to which he reacted at once.
“How selfish of me! Show me that address again… We could make it quicker by streetcar, I guess. Do you have to be there at some special time?”—drawing from his fob pocket a gold watch he had recently acquired, a repeater like Tyburn’s because he often needed to consult it in darkness.
“No, sir,” Dorcas said after the slightest possible pause. “And since I’m now in your debt twice over—”