The Parting Glass

by Gina Marie Guadagnino

  Charlotte’s intended made his opinions known less vocally. The week after the announcement ran in the Post, there arrived from Mr. Dawson twenty yards of the palest Columbia blue silk and four packets of seed pearls, the meaning of which could not be mistook. It was just the hue to complement Charlotte’s coloring: soft, fine-woven stuff that draped liked water running. Charlotte brushed a delicate finger over the material and sighed, “Blue again,” but made no other comment. It was decided that Grace and I both would convey the heavy parcel to Miss Marguerite’s, for the job could be entrusted to no one else. Claire rubbed the fabric between her thumb and forefinger with delight, exclaiming something to her employer in French, and we left the two women in raptures over the beautiful material. In the coming weeks, I escorted Charlotte to the boutique and watched as she was measured and draped while the hasty sketches Miss Marguerite had tacked about the walls of the shop began to take shape on Charlotte’s form.

  Prudence Graham was to be Charlotte’s only bridesmaid. Faithfully, she sat many hours in the Waldens’ parlor, playing melancholy airs on the pianoforte while Charlotte embroidered the handkerchiefs of her trousseau so thoroughly I didn’t doubt her nose would be chafed every time she blew it. Prudence spoke but little, sang not at all, and played too loudly and too intently to facilitate much conversation. Had Charlotte been a more eager bride, her selections might have been troubling. During the lengthy periods of silence between the two young ladies, she indulged herself expressively in her beloved Beethoven, hammering the keys to his Sonata Pathétique, or his Poco moto Bagatelle in A minor. When Charlotte seemed more intent on conversation, Prudence ran through any number of shorter, if doleful, hymns, sprinkled with sentimental parlor songs. But most often she played “Binnorie,” which made my blood run cold.

  O sister, reach me but your glove,

  Binnorie, O Binnorie

  And sweet William shall be your love.

  By the bonny mill-dams of Binnorie.

  Sink on, nor hope for hand or glove,

  Binnorie, O Binnorie

  And sweet William shall better be my love.

  By the bonny mill-dams of Binnorie.

  Looking at them, dark Prudence and fair Charlotte, I felt chilled, thinking of the lyrics that Prudence left unsung. Charlotte, who played and sang with proficiency and obligation but little emotion, seemed outwardly unmoved by her aunt’s displays of wordless and bitter passion, but later, as I was pressing and folding the fine linen that she had worked, I could see her agitation told in the unevenness of her stitches.

  Charlotte’s engagement secure, the Grahams began once again to appear at the Waldens’ table. More often than not, invitations were filled by Mr. Thaddeus and Mrs. Sabrina Graham, as any engagement at which Mr. Dawson would be present began suddenly to conflict with Prudence Graham’s musical obligations. She began accepting invitations for a great many salons, though she often complained afterwards that she found the playing uninspired and insipid. She became a permanent fixture in her family’s box at the symphony, often importuning her grandmama Clemons as a kindly but thoroughly deaf chaperone when she could find no one else to accompany her. When she could be persuaded to conversation, it was often to engage her half sister in increasingly acrimonious debates about the appropriateness of playing nocturnes at an afternoon salon. When she did consent to dine at Washington Square, she descended aggressively upon the pianoforte immediately after coffee was served, drowning out conversation.

  Charlotte bore her aunt’s behavior first with patience, then with weariness, and finally with annoyance. One evening, as Mrs. Sabrina Graham inquired as to whether Charlotte intended to wear the Walden family veil, Prudence launched into a Chopin ballade that was decidedly more forte than piano, prompting her niece to slam her teacup down in agitation, the amber liquid splashing onto the lemon-colored brocade of her frock. Later, as I sprinkled the stain with soda ash in preparation for blotting it out, Charlotte relayed to me the rancorous scene.

  With the clatter of the bone china cup, Prudence’s flying fingers faltered, and Charlotte clamped her hands over her ears at the resulting discords. “Will you have done?” she cried, and silence fell upon the room. “Your poor opinion of my engagement is duly noted, Prudence. For pity’s sake, have done!”

  “Opinion?” Prudence. “I have voiced no opinions, poor or otherwise.”

  “Yet you have made them plain enough without vocalizing,” Charlotte said, whilst her step-grandmama and mother interjected simultaneously with “My dear girls!” and “What can have come over the both of you?”

  “Then I shall have done,” Prudence said, rising from the pianoforte. “Mama? Papa? I find I am quite unwell and must retire.” And, bobbing to Augusta, she swept from the room, her baffled parents scrambling in her wake.

  Friendships, you should recollect also, are, for the most part, very frail . . . and sometimes broken without provocation.

  —The Duties of a Lady’s Maid

  Afew months before her niece’s wedding, Prudence Graham ran away. It was a sticky night in early July, and I tossed on my bed, a sheen of humid sweat plastering my night rail to my skin. Sleep, which, in the heat, had evaded me, was just beginning to take hold when the muffled sound of footfalls on the stair outside my door propelled me to wakefulness. I could hear a heavy breathing from the far side of my door, and I froze, paralyzed in sudden fear for a moment before a timid knock came. I bolted from my bed and cracked the door. Agnes stared back up at me, her eyes wide, her lower lip trembling.

  I glowered at her. “Well?” I hissed.

  She swallowed. “You told me never to come into your room again.”

  “And so I did.”

  “So I knocked.”

  “You did.”

  The girl stared back at me silently. I tried to recall that Agnes was an orphan, like myself. I tried to remember that she had great skill in starching pinafores, was an excellent baker of pastries, and that no one was kinder to Young Frank than she. I counted to ten and held my breath, and at last I let it out with a sigh and a resolution to be charitable to her.

  “Agnes,” I said, trying to adopt a gentle tone, but unable to keep the flint wholly from my voice. “Why? Why did you knock?”

  “She’s back. She gave me this. It’s not for you. It’s for her. Miss Walden, I mean.” She thrust an envelope into my hand. It bore the name “Charlotte” in a hand I recognized as Prudence Graham’s. I pursed my lips.

  “Agnes, listen to me. This is important.” I rested my hands on her shoulders. “Agnes, did you leave her at the bottom of the stairs again?” The girl shook her head. “Good girl, Agnes. Where is she now?”

  Agnes shrugged. “Gone. She didn’t wait around.”

  I took a deep breath. “Agnes, you are going to follow me back down the stairs to the kitchen, and then I am going out into the mews to look for Miss Graham. Did you see which way she went?” Agnes shook her head. “Very well. Stay by the door to let me back in, you hear?” She nodded, but I was already pushing past her and tripping lightly down the stairs.

  Prudence Graham was just reaching the east end of the mews as I dashed out the kitchen door. Barefoot, in only my night rail, I flew across the cobbles, the stones still radiating heat in the thick night air. Overhead, the sky rumbled, and a brief flash of light illuminated the retreating figure as I reached for her.

  “Ballard,” she said, smiling thinly as I overtook her. “My apologies for having woken you. I’d rather hoped my missive would be delivered in the morning.” She looked pointedly over my shoulder, as if expecting Charlotte to appear at the kitchen door, but I shook my head.

  “I will deliver your letter to my mistress when she rises, of course, Miss Graham. I wanted to see . . .” I trailed off, suddenly uncertain. “That is, I wanted to ensure that there was nothing . . . no service I might render you?”

  She let out a breath, smiling more naturally this time. “No indeed, Ballard. I thank you. You have always been most solicitous.”
She held out her hand, and I took it, tentatively. She squeezed my fingers. The first few fat drops began to fall. “Good-bye, Ballard. You’ll take care of her, won’t you?”

  “Of course, Miss Graham.” She released my hand and turned, striding off into the starless night. I was overcome by the sudden, rushing aroma of rain before the sky opened up and I was pelted with hard beads of warm summer shower.

  There is scarcely a family whose most secret affairs do not come to be known in their neighbourhood, though it be ever so improper that they should be so.

  —The Duties of a Lady’s Maid

  The ensuing riot was no more than I expected. Thaddeus and Sabrina Graham arrived early, their raised voices mingling with Augusta Walden’s from behind the parlor’s closed doors. Trays of tea, rung for and then left to cool untasted, were trundled up and down from the kitchen all morning. Mr. Buckley collected visiting cards on a silver salver, his courteous protestations that the Waldens were not at home belied by the bellowing down the hall.

  Charlotte sat pale and silent amidst the thundering around her, Prudence’s letter wedged tightly between the feather tick and the bed boards above stairs. I had delivered the letter when my mistress woke, watching her lips grow thin and white as she read her aunt’s parting words before folding the sheets of paper away and feigning ignorance of Prudence’s flight as the Grahams descended upon the house.

  Naturally, when the uproar became obvious, I retrieved the envelope from where Charlotte had secreted it. Inside was Prudence Graham’s card, the lower left corner neatly and deliberately bent inward, the letters “p.p.c.” scripted neatly in blue ink below and to the left of her engraved name. I raised my brows at the redundancy of these formal gestures—surely Prudence did not need to specify twice on her card that she was announcing her departure?—and turned to the letter the envelope also contained.

  My Dear Lottie,

  You will have ascertained that I am taking my leave—of yourself, of New York, and of our dear family—and I write you now to say farewell. Certainly, you must find this to be a most unsuitable manner in which to express such sentiments, and I do assure you that I should have preferred to bid you a more personal adieu face-to-face, however, as the contents of this missive will reveal, I could not take the risk that my reasons would be heard unchallenged, and that my plan might succeed had you stood before me, hearing all this.

  I will not burden you by detailing the rift that we have suffered between us of late, nor with a litany of those occasions wherein I could not secure your confidence, with which you were once so free with me. For since your affections have been engaged by an unknown admirer, you have become untowardly closed to your most bosom companion. I state this only as a matter of fact, and not in reproach, for I too have hidden my heart, and cannot fault you for my own sin.

  It is a simple matter—you are to marry the only man I have ever cared for, and I shall not, my dear Lottie, be able to bear it when you are wed. I have known my desires to be in vain, for even if he had not given me every proof of being most ardently in love with you, he has avowed it to me as well, and in such plain words that I could neither mistake his meaning nor continue to cherish even the faintest hope. It is therefore unthinkable to me that I should remain to see you unhappily married to one who loves you to distraction, the object of my own abortive affections.

  There will be such things that you might come to hear of me, and I pray that you will think well of my actions. My heart sunk, my affections thwarted, and my love blighted, I will find such solace as my music may offer me. Once, I might have told you all my hopes for the place where I am going, but I find now I have not the heart, nor the inclination, as I cannot but fear you will try to stop me. Therefore, Lottie, be contented to know that I am going away, far away, to become one with the pianoforte, and should you hear tell of where I have gone, it will only be because I have realized my dearest ambitions in music.

  But you, my Lottie, will have no such solace, for you have contracted to wed one man when it is plain you love another. I cannot think of what circumstances you are in to have brought you to such a pass, but I grieve for you. You have always been as a sister to me—more so than Augusta—and all my natural sympathies are yours. Our lives till now have been entwined, we have always been by for each other, and daily I will lament that I will not have you by my side. If, perhaps, one or the other of us might have had the courage to open her heart and mind to the other, perhaps an understanding of some sort might have been reached, but as I remain in ignorance of your tribulations, it is folly to conjecture.

  But now you have him. I commend him to your care, and pray that one day your heart might open to him, that you might find the worth in being beloved of such a man.

  With everlasting and deepest affection,

  Prue

  Frowning, I folded the letter away, two rather uncharitable thoughts warring at the forefront of my mind. The first was that I could hardly see what in the sedate, taciturn Mr. Dawson could possibly elicit such an outpouring of emotion, culminating in such an extravagant act. The second was that Prudence Graham, accustomed all her life to extravagance, would have been unlikely to behave in any other way.

  As I sat later in the kitchen, making a pretense of mending one of Charlotte’s lace collars, the uncharitable thoughts continued. I tried to pinpoint exactly why it was that Prudence’s flight so angered me, for, as the hours following her vanishment lengthened, I found myself becoming unreasonably enraged at the girl. My color mounting, I poked at the lace, fuming at Prudence’s foolish weakness. For had she any self-pride or moral character, she might have set her cap herself at Elijah Dawson, or made her feelings known to Charlotte. Certainly her niece, out of the great love the two ladies shared, would never have allowed the object of her aunt’s desire to pay her court. It was unreasonable of Prudence to suspect that Charlotte knew of her unspoken love, despite Prudence’s keen insight that Charlotte’s affections were elsewhere engaged. This flying into a rage at Charlotte without ever troubling to tell her niece of her feelings was ridiculous! It was worse than ridiculous, it was pathetic! It was . . . it was precisely what I had done with Seanin, a small voice whispered in my head.

  I shook my head. No. This was completely different. Two young women, born of good society, being paid court by an eligible gentleman was the natural order of things. It was commonplace. Expected. And candor between two such women—kinswomen, no less!—should be expected as well. To shrink from such candor was cowardly on Prudence’s part. And even had the circumstances been the same, it was cowardly and weak for her to flee. Had I not stayed and watched Seanin woo and bed the girl I loved? Had I not helped each of them in their clandestine meetings? Had I not raged and wept, and did I not bury my nails in Seanin’s face, in the end? the voice whispered.

  No. No.

  Perhaps, the voice said, very gently now, perhaps to leave one’s world behind is not weakness. I knew firsthand how much bravery was needed to wipe the slate clean and start anew. Hot, angry tears welled in my eyes, and I brushed them away hastily. My fury unabated, the tears multiplied, spilling over my lids, and I wept silently, my shoulders shaking.

  Grace Porter laid a hand on my back, and I looked up, startled to find tears staining the older woman’s cheeks as well.

  “There, there Miss Ballard,” she said, her mouth quavering. “They’ll find her. They’ll bring her home soon.”

  And I found myself sobbing quite openly on Grace Porter’s shoulder.

  Take care, therefore, never to brood over resentment which may, perhaps, be from the first ill-grounded, and which is always inflamed by reflecting upon an injury, real or supposed.

  —The Duties of a Lady’s Maid

  The Grahams’ agents in Calais had sent report of Prudence’s landing in mid-August, and she had been missed when she slipped through Paris. The last the family had heard, she had boarded a stage bound for Lyon, but she never arrived in Lyon and there the trail went cold.

  It
was impossible for the family to imagine where she might have gone. Mrs. Graham had been adamant in her faith that Prudence had returned to Paris, where the family had spent a happy season before her coming out, and was shaken when her daughter passed through that city without stopping. Augusta Walden, always critical of Prudence’s French, maintained that the stage to Lyon was a canard, and that a search should be conducted in London. Charlotte offered no opinions, silently holding her grandfather’s hand as they sat side by side on the sofa, her mother and step-grandmother a frenetic whirl of skirts and volley of conjectures. She had maintained the secrecy of the letter, tearfully repeating when asked that she had no notion of Prudence’s whereabouts.

  For myself, as I thought on it, combing out my hair before I climbed into bed, the best clue lay in her letter, that she was going to pursue her music and seek solace in the pianoforte—a nicety that, easily observed by a lady’s maid, would likely be overlooked by her family, Charlotte notwithstanding. Had I the charge of finding her, I would have sought her in Bonn or Vienna or any other city where Beethoven had ever set foot. I suspected that Charlotte, too late acquainted with the secrets of Prudence’s heart, might have thought similarly, but she kept confident the details she might have gleaned.

  The gentle tock of an acorn hitting my window broke my reverie, and in the dark of my room, I blinked, unsure if I had dreamed the noise. I lay there in the moonlight, still and listening, and, after a time, the noise, now unmistakable, came again.

  I went to the window and looked out onto the mews. The doorway of the carriage house was shadowed and silent. I strained my eyes, peering into the darkness, and, yes, peeking out from the gloom below the eaves, barely visible against the cobbles, was the toe of a man’s boot.