by Anya Seton
The music and the Spanish dances were received with mild interest, but this urban audience was used to more sophisticated amusement. They even had an opera house where traveling companies had given them East Lynne and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Those who had come had been chiefly attracted by Terry’s promise of ‘miracles of clairvoyance and communication with the spirits who will positively, through the mediumship of my wife, a Spanish gypsy from across the seas, diagnose your every ailment!’
Fey stood at the back of the wagon as she had stood before at Fort Union, and when Terry mingling amongst the people paused by a woman and demanded to know what name was written on her gold bangle, Fey tried to still her mind and wait for that moment of calm receptivity which presaged the certainty of the name in Terry’s mind. And none of this happened. She could not still her mind, which kept darting and doubling like a small animal down panicky culs-de-sac. She heard the audience begin to murmur, and she made a small, helpless gesture.
Terry, quickly dropping the woman’s bracelet, said, ‘The spirits take a little time to come through, folks.’ He turned to an oafish-looking teamster, who stood breathing heavily through his mouth. ‘You don’t look like you felt good, brother,’ he said. ‘You been sick?’
The teamster nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he said solemnly, ‘I got the flux, night and day I got to trot to——’
‘What you need is my Extra Special Elixir,’ interrupted Terry, as those nearest guffawed. He rushed back to the wagon for a bottle.
‘What’s the matter?’ he hissed to Fey.
‘I can’t do it,’ she whispered back. ‘It’s gone.’ There was a finality about her that even Terry accepted. He made an exasperated noise, vaulted from the wagon, and strode back to the teamster, who docilely bought the Elixir.
Terry did what he could to placate the disappointed audience. He made the routine Elixir speech, he told jokes, he played for them again on the banjo, and sold a few more bottles. But the people drifted off. There were a few jeers and insults, but on the whole they were good-natured. After all, they had had some entertainment which had cost nothing.
Fey continued to stand under the shadow of the wagon curtain in her tawdry Spanish costume. She was unconscious of the dispersing crowd. Her eyes were lifted to the western horizon where a pink afterglow turned the distant plains to mauve.
It’s really gone, she thought, and a bleak emptiness ran over her like wind. She was no longer attuned to Terry’s mind, now that she had become so closely attuned to his body. And it was worse than the loss of that extra faculty which had always seemed so normal that it was hard to understand that others did not have it. Something else was gone, too. An awareness of deeper currents, a warmth and sense of inner sustenance; this had always been there, but she had not known it until now that it had left her.
Her hand went uncertainly to her bodice. She pulled out the turquoise pendant and stared down at it.
‘It’s a pretty good stone,’ said Terry, who had finished with the last reluctant customer. ‘But there’s no market for that Injun stuff here. Wouldn’t be worth trying to sell.’
Fey’s eyes turned to him in such blank astonishment that he was disconcerted. ‘You sure let me down tonight,’ he went on, but without rancor. His angers were always short, and besides, she had that faraway queer listening look in her big eyes. It made him uncomfortable, but it was attractive, too, mysterious and untouchable.
‘It’s gone, Terry,’ she said. ‘Gone.’
Terry looked down at the eleven paper dollars in his hand. Greenbacks instead of good reliable silver, but money, anyway. Enough to go down to one of the saloons and have a real binge. And high time, too, after weeks of desert dryness. ‘Well, if “it’s” gone, we’ll have to fake it for the next show. Work out some signals,’ he answered cheerfully. ‘Never did take much stock in “it,” anyway, whatever it was; maybe you just made a lot of lucky guesses.’
He knows that isn’t true, she thought, or has he really forgotten? But what difference did it make?
‘I’m tired,’ she said vaguely. ‘Very tired.’
Terry picked her up and carried her into the wagon, put her down on the cot. ‘You tuck in, honey, and get a nice rest. I’m going out for a while—see the town.’
Her arms fell into their accustomed place around his neck. He stayed with her awhile on the cot. Before he left the wagon, he said, ‘Now, don’t you worry about a thing. I’ve a hunch our luck’s about to turn.’
Fey did not answer. She lay flattened on the bed and watched his bright head disappear through the slit in the curtain.
It was noon of the next day before Terry came back. Fey’s hurt bewilderment at his desertion changed to amazement as she recognized him striding along the dusty road from town. When he had left her, he had been wearing buckskin pants, a wrinkled cream-colored shirt, and the old dusty sombrero. He was now transformed, by a tight pepper-and-salt suit, flowing four-in-hand tie, and pearl-gray hat into an approximation of the traveled gentlemen whom they had seen getting off the train. Terry also carried a large pink bandbox which he deposited on the ground at her feet.
‘Did I not tell thee, gentle maiden, that Lady Fortune would yield to my stalwart wooing?’ he cried thickly, striking an attitude. ‘ Cast, oh, cast those luminous optics upon this.’ He waved a thick roll of bills.
Fey stared at them blankly, then back at Terry. He was handsomer than ever in the new clothes, but she did not like them. She did not put into words the first instinctive recoil, but it was the realization that he now looked theatrical—glossy. And he’s still pretty drunk, she thought. There was no censure in this thought. All men drank when they felt like it, particularly Americanos. Women accepted that without question. Still, it made a difference. When one’s man had been drinking, one had to adjust and temporize for a while. Her eyes returned to the bank roll, and now at last its significance penetrated. Greenbacks did not look like money.
‘How?’ she said.
Terry scowled.
‘Faro,’ he answered sulkily. ‘I broke the bank. There’s near four hundred here. The outfit’ll fetch another couple of hundred. Enough to get—us to New York.’
There was a hesitation before the ‘us’ which struck fear into Fey, and awakened her to his annoyance.
‘That’s wonderful, Terry!’ she cried. ‘Wonderful! Such a great lot of money. I couldn’t believe it.’
He was mollified. ‘Put on the dress I got you.’
‘Do you think it will fit?’ she asked, as she untied the tapes.
‘Oh, yes—I took along a girl about——’ He stopped, gave her a quick look, and walking over to the mules began to whistle and tighten their bridles.
Fey’s fingers clenched on the pasteboard-box top. The rim tore off with a sharp crack. She said nothing. After a moment she shook the dress free from paper and held it against her. It was a garish red-and-blue plaid trimmed in cherry velvet, and it had a small crinoline. There was also a cheap wool shawl and a red plush bonnet.
‘Thank you,’ she said, in a choked voice. ‘They’re beautiful.’ ‘ No one will ever guess we came from the West,’ nodded Terry. ‘Hold our own anywhere.’ He resumed his whistling.
Fey went into the wagon and put on the clothes. There was, of course, no mirror, but she knew the dress fitted fairly well, even as she knew that it did not suit her. All her delicacy and air of breeding were eclipsed, the raw colors made her tanned skin sallow. The bonnet was too large and submerged her small, piquant face.
Terry, however, was pleased. She now looked right smart, something like the gay young lady who had helped him choose the dress. That Fey also looked like a fancy woman rather than a wife did not occur to him.
They stayed at Leavenworth for three more days at the Planters’ House—the city’s best hotel. Fey was left much alone and her initial interest in the elaborate walnut furniture, thick carpets, and washbowls that gushed running water quickly evaporated.
Harriet and Calvin were sold to a newly mar
ried couple who were soon to set out along the Trail for Colorado.
Terry had conferences with this young couple, and gave them much helpful advice. He was astonished that Fey did not wish to go with him on these visits. She gave no reason. Even to herself she did not admit the envy and the pain caused by thought of the young Boltons’ projected journey. She suppressed the memory of those starlit, passionate nights, the exhilarating days when they had been close together and alone. She was now as eager to board the train and get East as Terry was. In New York it would be different. They would be at journey’s end. They could settle into real marriage.
On the afternoon before their departure, Fey slipped out of the hotel alone and went to the barn where the mules were temporarily stabled. They recognized her by warm nuzzlings, and she kissed them both on their soft fur noses. Adios, amigos, she said to them silently. And then she spoke to them out loud in Spanish; it was easier for her to say foolish childish things in that language. ‘When you feel the buffalo wind again blowing across the prairie, think of me,’ she told them, ‘and when you hear the song of the lark, and when you see the mountains again—the first mountains, the Spanish Peaks guarding the high country beyond—ah, think of me.’
The mules whickered softly when at last she left them, hurrying along the crowded Main Street in her gaudy dress. Terry was in their room waiting for her. He had bought their railroad tickets and was in a very good humor. ‘We’re on our way, honey,’ he cried, pulling her down on the bed beside him. He yawned and stretched, easing his long body into the thick feather mattress of the walnut bed...
‘This is sure a lot better for love-making than the ground and an old buffalo robe,’ he said languidly.
Chapter Eight
FEY AND TERRY arrived in New York City in the middle of October. They crossed on the ferry from Jersey City to Chambers Street, and both of them were too hungry, dirty, exhausted by travel and sated with new sights to be much interested in Manhattan’s famous sky-line, still dominated as it had been for nearly a hundred years by the steeple of Trinity Church.
On the journey across the continent from Kansas, they had ridden on eleven different railroads, and had stopped perforce at many different towns while awaiting connections. Jefferson City, St. Louis, Vincennes, Cincinnati, Buffalo—each lost its individual characteristic for Fey, each was represented by a sooty station and increasingly drab accommodations. Neither of them had realized how many expenses the trip would necessitate besides the cost of tickets.
In the beginning there had been nights in the new sleepers invented by Mr. Pullman; these were the pleasantest nights despite the cars’ soot-grimed ornateness, the lack of privacy, the constant use of brass spittoons along the aisle, and the stench from the flickering oil lamps. But as far back as Missouri it had become evident that they could not afford sleepers, and since then they had either sat up in the uncomfortable coaches or hunted for cheap lodgings in the various towns.
Terry had been possessed of a desire to push on, no matter what—on to the sure haven of New York. Once there, he had convinced himself and Fey that, by some miraculous alchemy, all financial problems would be solved.
The actual arrival was a dismal anticlimax. They got off the ferry, Terry holding his carpetbag, Fey the bandbox in which were packed her few possessions. They stood uncertainly on the wharf, shoved and jostled by a hurrying throng who were in no doubt as to their own destinations. They stood expectant—and nothing happened.
‘We ought to go to the best hotel,’ said Terry at last. ‘The Fifth Avenue, or the Hoffman House, start off right.’
Fey put her bandbox on the dusty planks, straightened her tired back. ‘We can’t do that,’she answered quietly. ‘We have no money.’
This unpalatable truth focused Terry’s frustration and disappointment on her.
‘And you’ve no imagination!’ he shouted. ‘It’s no wonder we get here dead-beat. All you do is balk and make trouble. Man can’t get up in the world with a millstone around his neck.’
Hatred. He was looking at her with the flint eyes of hatred. The corners of her mouth trembled, and she turned away.
‘What would you do if I weren’t here?’ she asked, in the carefully controlled tone which always daunted him.
Spanish temperament, he thought, supposed to be hot and explosive. Give a man some satisfaction to fight with something that fought back. Cold as a cucumber she was, except in bed, and lately that hadn’t been so good either. And look at her, white and droopy, like a nincompoop in that bright plaid dress. I’d make my way all right without her.
He continued to glare at her, while his mind caressed many vague seductive plans. Go to the best hotel; they didn’t make you pay in advance if you had the brass to impress them. Get into the proper setting and something was bound to turn up. This was New York, at last.
The other ferry passengers had all vanished. A guard looked at them curiously and Terry reddened. He saw tears in Fey’s eyes, and his rage lessened, though not the underlying resentment.
He picked up his carpetbag. ‘ Can’t stay here all day. People will take us for hicks.’
Fey gave a fleeting bitter smile. They walked along Chambers Street to Broadway, where they turned north and wandered up the crowded, noisy thoroughfare. The fashionably dressed people, the great shop windows, the clanging stages and private carriages had for Fey the unreality of a rushing dream. Her attention was given to two sentences which repeated themselves like a litany in her head.
He didn’t mean it. I’m his wife.
Terry, excited as always by the lure of novelty, had already forgotten his tirade by the time they reached the Saint Nicholas Hotel. He left Fey in a far corner of the lobby while he tried to engage a room. The hotel, however, was full, it seemed, and the Metropolitan was, too. New York room clerks were not nearly as gullible or willing to take a chance as those in San Francisco. They had no difficulty in appraising Terry, and Celtic charm was a drug on the market in this immigrant haven.
So they continued to trudge up Broadway, and Terry was now as silent as Fey. They came at last to Bleecker Street. It had a raffish and Bohemian air. Twenty-five years ago its brownstone mansions had been fashionable residences of the élite, all of whom had now moved far uptown. The houses had suffered the incredibly rapid degeneration peculiar to New York. They were now a trifle better than the tenements around the Five-Points, but they were nearly as crowded and dingy. Almost every fly-specked parlor window exhibited a tattered sign, ‘ Roomers,’ and those which did not were middle-class brothels, patronized by counting-house clerks and petty city officials.
‘Maybe one of these places might take us,’ said Fey, wearily indicating the signs, and speaking for the first time since they had left the ferry house.
Terry shrugged, but he did not object. He was chastened and also very tired.
In the middle of the block between Lafayette Street and the Bowery, they finally found Mrs. Flynn and a vacancy. Mrs. Flynn had watery serpentine eyes and a mordant tongue. A wizened infant suckled from one pendulous breast while its mother shoved open a creaking door on a dark passageway. ‘Take it or leave it, folks,’ she said, hunching her shoulder toward the room inside. ‘ Two-fifty per and breakfasts if ye get up before nine. The w.c.’s on the lower landing.’
Fey looked at the room. It had once been papered in a sulphurous yellow as shown by rectangles on the wall left by long-removed pictures. There was a rickety three-quarter bed covered by a gray cotton blanket. The original Axminster carpet, never moved since the day it was placed on the floor thirty years ago, showed a threadbare path from the door to the bed. There was a straight broom chair, a cracked washbowl on a deal table, and a row of nails for clothing on the back of the walnut door. The high window had once looked out upon a garden which had now shrunk to an alley six feet wide, flanked by a four-story warehouse. The resultant perpetual gloom could be mitigated by a kerosene lamp which hung from a bracket.
‘We’ll take it,’ said Fey
slowly.
The landlady gave her an appraising glance, detached the baby and buttoned her bodice. ‘Foreigner, ain’t you, dearie?’ She cocked her head at Fey and emitted a faint smell of gin. She turned and examined Terry, the serpentine eyes disillusioned and knowing.
‘I’m an American,’ said Fey, but Mrs. Flynn was no longer interested in the girl.
‘Handsome gossoon ye are, my lad,’ she said, nudging Terry and chuckling. ‘Sure, and I think there’s a bit of Ould Erin some place abouts.’
Terry’s rigidity melted. ‘Sure, and ye’re a foine figger of a woman yourself, macushla,’ he said, smiling his brilliant smile, and pinching the skinny arm, ‘and I’d be stealing a kiss were it not my wife’d be jealous.’
Mrs. Flynn bridled, making a satirical but gratified sound.
‘That’ll hold the rent off awhile,’ remarked Terry when they were alone. ‘Maybe even good for a meal and a bottle of gin. She’s got that around somewhere, for certain.’
Fey took off her red plush bonnet. She dragged herself over to the bed and lay down. She lay flattened, rocking on long black surges of exhaustion, a tiny boat alone on the oily black waves.
Terry kicked the carpetbag into the corner, came over to the bed, and stood looking down at her. He leaned over the bed, and she opened her eyes.
‘No, Terry, please. Not now,’ she whispered, and she tried to smile at him.
‘Very well, my pet.’ He spoke after a moment’s silence. He kissed her once, quite gently. ‘I’ll wheedle that old harridan into bringing you up some food. Myself I’m going out to see the city.’
For a few minutes she heard him moving about the room and humming. He sluiced his face and neck in the washbowl. She heard the tiny crackling sound of the comb through his thick hair, the pause in his wordless song as he concentrated on the exact arrangement of his tie, finally the creak of the door shutting behind him.
Madre de Dios, she thought, help me. She stared up at the stained yellowish ceiling. The stain directly above the bed was sharp and irregular like a little mountain. She followed this outline slowly until it shimmered and grew green against a bright mauve distance. ‘Atalaya,’ she whispered. But the little peak vanished. There was nothing but a stain on the ceiling, and outside the muffled sounds of New York; street cries, the rattle of drays on cobblestones. Near-by from the next room, somebody hiccupped, somebody else giggled.
