“Are you bent on a life of misery and loneliness?”
“Of course not,” she said. “I’m determined to be happy, I’ve always said so—ask anyone. But I can’t live by turning away. By . . . separating myself.”
“Separating yourself?” He looked startled and faintly amused. “Separating yourself from what?”
“From life! From my own fate. From the usual chances and dangers, what other people know and suffer.”
“My dear Libby, I’m not the emperor of China!” he exclaimed. “I’m not offering you protection from every vicissitude—I wish I could. I’m just offering a comfortable sort of life together.”
“But I distrust comfort,” she said, standing at one end of the bench. She could not take her eyes from the blossom she had tossed down on the ground. Warburton looked at it too, but only glancingly.
“I could do my best to make you uncomfortable,” he said, trying to smile.
“You’re doing a fair job now.” She tried to soften the blow. “I know you’ll live to marry a far better woman than I.”
“Please don’t say that. It’s not fair to either of us. I think you are the most beautiful soul I’ve ever met. I’m not easily touched,” said Lord Warburton slowly, “and I can’t explain it when I am. . . . But when I am touched, it’s for life, Miss Archer. . . . It’s for life.”
She looked into his blue eyes. One eye was slightly different from the other in size and shape, which added to his look of shyness or evasiveness, but he was trying, she realized, to answer her gaze head-on, as best he could. She knew just enough to feel the loss. There was more to him, she realized, than she would ever deserve to know.
Chapter Eight
“I don’t see why we have to run away,” complained Henrietta. She was rolling up her clothing into neat little cylinders and stowing them in her one compact and elegant bag. Henrietta always traveled light.
“We aren’t running,” answered Libby. “We’re just going.” She stifled her guilt at not confiding more fully in her closest friend. But if she mentioned Warburton’s proposal, Henry would have teased her to death with a hundred questions, and she wasn’t ready for that, not yet.
Henry plunked down on the bed. “Then why are we going?” she demanded. “Why now?”
“Because my aunt misses her house in Rome.”
“She ought to miss her home in America!”
“Perhaps you think she ought to,” answered Libby evenly, “but she doesn’t. And I am her guest—and so, for the moment, are you.”
“I suppose you’re saying I’ve not been a good one.”
“Well, aside from taking snapshots of people when they don’t like it, and scribbling down everything everybody says, and arguing with my aunt every time she opens her mouth—”
“Are you pretending this sudden flight has nothing to do with the fact that Cap Lockwood is flying over here? And the poor man will find you gone! I’m surprised at you, Libby. I never thought you were heartless.”
“I am not heartless,” said Libby. “Give me some time, however . . .”
“Why Paris, anyway? I thought your aunt lived in Rome.”
“She wants to visit some shops first,” said Libby. She held up two blouses to compare them and ended up putting both into her suitcase. “She thinks I should try the new telescope-shaped dress. My aunt has very definite ideas about fashion.”
Henry moved to block Libby’s path from closet to suitcase. “And you, Libby? What are your definite ideas?”
Libby gestured: she wore a boatneck striped T-shirt, short, fitted pants, and black sandals. “Mine apparently are hopelessly out of date.”
“Will you really let that poor man fly across the ocean without even catching sight of you?”
Libby put her head in both her hands. “I didn’t ask him to come.”
“You didn’t tell him not to.”
“I did—in a manner of speaking.”
“That was not the manner I ever saw.”
“Are you trying to say I encouraged him?” The two friends looked at each other for a moment, without speaking. Libby dropped her gaze first. “I hardly know what I am doing when I am around that man,” said Libby. She stood again, with a sudden renewal of energy. “And that is exactly why I can’t be around him. . . . I don’t trust myself.”
Henry considered Libby’s words over the next few hours, moving around Gardencourt as quietly as a cat, and then finally she sought out her young host. Henry had struggled with her conscience but her sense of justice, even of destiny, won out. She found Lazarus Sachs drooping in a lemon-yellow upholstered chair by a large window, gazing out at a broad expanse of lawn. She tapped a silver pen against her teeth.
“I cannot describe this shade of green,” she said, glancing over his shoulder.
“No one said you had to,” Lazarus replied. He tried to smile, but his eyes were weary.
“You look sick,” said Henry bluntly.
“I am sick,” he answered, pleasantly enough.
“I would like you to do me a great favor nonetheless,” said Henry, sitting in a chair across from him. “Will you say yes?”
“Are you proposing to me?” asked Lazarus.
Henry cocked her head at him. She regarded him with one bright eye, much like a bird. “Why do you always talk about marriage?” she said. “It is not a topic that especially interests me.”
“Won’t you change your mind if I ask you to be mine?” said Lazarus.
Henry frowned. “That was rude. You have no intention of asking, and I have no intention of considering such a proposal. Do you harp on it to remind me that I am a woman, and alone? I know it very well. Nonetheless I have my own thoughts and feelings, and believe I am entitled to them.”
Lazarus inclined his head. “Indeed,” he said humbly. “Tell me the favor, and I will do it if it is within my poor power.”
“It lies in your power to make sure that your cousin marries the right man,” she answered. “And that she doesn’t marry the wrong one.”
Lazarus could not hide his surprise. “Has Warburton got you meddling on his behalf?”
“Who?” said Henry. “The tall English gentleman?”
“Never mind,” said Lazarus. “Go on.”
“Lord Warburton?” said Henry. “The one with the long legs? You think I want Libby to marry him?”
“He’s a fine fellow,” said Lazarus.
Henry jumped to her feet and paced, swiveling quickly each time she turned. She tugged at a strand of her own curly hair. “I was afraid of this!”
“You needn’t be afraid,” said Lazarus soothingly. “She’s already turned him down.”
Henry stopped in her tracks. Her cheeks were flushed. “Has she?” she exclaimed. “Then there is hope!” She went on as if speaking to herself. “Good! She’s turned down British royalty. Think of that, Mr. Lockwood!”
“Who is Mr. Lockwood?” asked Lazarus, bewildered.
“He is a fine American man,” said Henry, resuming her seat across from her host. “A businessman, a forward thinker, and an inventor.”
“You ought to write his biography,” Lazarus observed.
“Perhaps one day I will,” retorted Henry. “He might make history someday. I could believe it.”
“American history, you mean,” said Lazarus, with a gleam in his formerly listless eye. He was never more himself and alive than when he was teasing.
“Is there anything wrong with American history?” Henrietta said doggedly.
“It has a few blotches on it,” said Lazarus. “Like every place else.”
“Name two,” said Henry defiantly.
“Slavery, and the treatment of your native Indians,” retorted Lazarus. He held up two fingers, then closed them into a fist and banged on his knee, a habit he had when worked up. “Nothing worse than most countries, Miss Capone. Humankind is a blighted race. We should be wiped off the face of the earth. My own adopted country, Ireland, has a history of senseless murder, going
on for centuries. America at least was built on a few beautiful ideas.”
“Spoken like a true patriot,” Henry said warmly, but Lazarus glowered.
“Patriotism,” he said. “Another vile notion. I think your Senator Joe McCarthy is considered a patriot, isn’t he?”
She flushed. “My country has been in its own dark ages lately. It’s not accidental that I’ve left just now.” She tilted back the chair she sat in till it balanced precariously on its two rear legs, the top of the chair leaning against the wall. Lazarus could not tell her that it was a precious antique, nor that she was probably ruining the wallpaper, though both were true. He merely sat admiring her lovely profile as she sat ruminating. “But it never lasts, that’s one comfort,” she said. “Terrible though it may be. All tyrannies, all the worst moments in history, they don’t go on forever. ‘Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?’”
“A great many lives were destroyed before those words were spoken,” noted Lazarus. “And others continue to be ruined.”
“Yes, too many.” He wondered if she knew how beautiful she looked when she smiled ruefully like that, with her lovely mouth pulling down, readying itself to frown. “Granted. I may have to remove the word patriot from my vocabulary.”
“It would be no loss if you did,” Lazarus answered. “And you would still have so many words left!”
“Yes,” she said. “And so, may I say just a few on behalf of Mr. Lockwood?”
His eyes glinted. “I wish you would. I’m extremely interested.”
“He is a man of ideas . . . of action. He is working on a host of interesting inventions at the moment. One of them has to do with improving phonographs. One has to do with computers—making them smaller, he says.”
“That’s an idea,” said Lazarus, sitting up straighter. “People could have them right in their own homes.”
“I’m glad you agree.” She brought the chair back down on four legs, much to Lazarus’s relief. “More to the point, he is head over heels in love with Libby and I believe she is in love with him, though she won’t admit it. They belong together. You’ve never seen a homely man look more handsome than when he looks at her. She certainly encouraged him at one point, and it’s not like her to go back on a promise. He has flown to Ireland to see what good it might do. I hope it will do some good. I am no romantic, as you’ve no doubt guessed, but those two people were made for each other. I am concerned for both their happiness—and he’s come a long way to see her.”
“Does my cousin know he’s here?”
Henry glowered at him defiantly. “She does. But we are about to leave for Paris. To buy dresses with telescoped waists, and the proper heels. And she stands to lose her best chance at happiness.”
“I see,” said Lazarus.
“I’d like your permission to invite Mr. Lockwood here, to Gardencourt.”
“You don’t need my permission,” he protested, waving her off with one hand.
“Nonetheless I’d like to have it.”
“When?” he asked.
She took a breath. “We leave tomorrow. I’d like you to invite him to tea, or whatever you call it, today.”
“Oh, Lord,” he groaned. “You want to make me your accomplice. Libby will be furious at both of us.” He turned his head sideways and stole a glance at her, stalling for time. “You honestly believe she’s in love with him?”
“I do,” she said.
“And you think he’s worthy of her?”
“I’m sure of it,” she said. “I’ve never met anyone like him. He would move heaven and earth for her—and I think he could do it too! He has the courage of ten other men.”
“Are you sure you’re not in love with him yourself?” asked Lazarus.
“Very sure,” she said, without resentment. “I love him like a brother.”
“That dooms him then.”
“Maybe as far as I am concerned,” she said. “However, I am not the one he’s just flown thousands of miles to see.”
“Can’t we tell her? Have her invite him herself?”
Henry shook her head vehemently. “She’d run. Trust me, she would bolt. But she would be running away from the best part of herself—from her own happiness. She might not realize it now, but she’d know it someday, when it was too late. She seems to think she doesn’t deserve to be happy. And I can’t bear to sit idly by and watch that happen.”
“I can’t imagine you ever doing that, Miss Capone.” Lazarus leaned forward and extended one long, thin arm. “All right,” he said. “I’m in.”
They shook on it.
Gardencourt was strangely empty, Libby observed. Her aunt had taken her uncle to see one of her own doctors—one of her quacks, he called it—a woman near Derry who practiced homeopathy. Mr. Pye had come to call on Henry and introduce her around to his friends, and Lazarus had simply—disappeared.
Already packed for the next day’s travel abroad, Libby felt inside herself that curious vacancy that occurs before a journey. Gardencourt just now reminded her of her own Rochester house in mourning, after her father had died. All that was missing, she thought, was the black crepe looped around the doorknobs and the cards and sympathy notes of friends. She wandered aimlessly into the portrait gallery and found herself face-to-face with the painted young woman holding the dog. When she leaned in to study the brush strokes, a yapping sound seemed to come from the painting itself. Instead she looked down and laughed to see her cousin’s small white dog stepping on her feet. She scooped him up and gazed into the painting as if into a mirror—unconsciously echoing the pose of the woman within.
Then she turned resolutely and set off for the library. Gardencourt had an impressive collection of books, and Libby had promised herself to read at least two books a week while in Ireland. Mr. Lockwood’s scornful words about her reading habits still stung. She had not lived up to her own lofty ideals. She had thumbed to the middle of one or two volumes and never gotten any farther.
With renewed vigor—and a slight sense of futility, since she would be traveling with her aunt and Henry for the next month or two at least—she marched into the library, still carrying the small dog, and pulled out the heaviest, most serious-looking volume she could find. Something on Roman history.
She selected an apple out of a large gilded bowl in the center of the table. She sat down with the dog in her lap, pulled the heavy volume toward her, and began to read. The introduction was distressingly dense. She checked the back of the book—yes, it really was more than eight hundred pages long—and began again, this time at the first chapter, which gave her the pleasant sensation of already having made a good beginning. She crunched into the apple and was immediately distracted by the play of light at the windows. The side panes were made of leaded glass and cast bright oblongs of rainbows along the wooden table. She reached out and touched one rainbow, letting it alight on the end of her finger. She stood, grabbing both dog and apple, and abandoned the book in the middle of the table. She hoisted herself up onto the window seat, sitting directly in the late afternoon sunlight, angled sideways, free to admire both the library itself and the green view stretching outside. The dog curled up at her feet.
“I will never,” she said softly to herself, “get used to all this green.” Albany would be gold-and-red ombré by now, but early fall had not dimmed Ireland’s palette. Roses still bloomed by the window—huge dark-pink roses, as big as her hand, and chrysanthemums climbed their stakes toward a blue sky streaked with opal clouds. Everywhere else as far as her eye could see were swaths of brilliant green reaching almost to the edge of the sea, dotted here and there with the distant white backs of sheep. Libby sat with her knees pulled up to her chest, and her arms around her knees.
Just then she heard muffled voices outside the door. One of them, the bass voice, made her leap from the window seat as if catapulted.
“Really, sir,” protested the young maid outside, in a thick Irish brogue, “. . . must be a
nnounced. You’ll lose both my job and head, at that. Thank you, sir, but there’s no need to . . . but you’re generous, sir.”
It wasn’t Margaret, Libby thought in a panic. Margaret would have protected her. Libby made one wild pull at the handle of the large picture window and gave up that escape route as impossible. Instead she grabbed the nearest volume off a library shelf at random, clutching it to her like a shield. She should have dressed more carefully. She wished, at least, that she had brushed and set her hair.
The maid was still protesting and thanking the man, and the man’s voice broke in brusquely. “Will you let me get by?” There was a sharp rapping at the door. “Libby? Are you there?”
She didn’t answer—she could not answer. The door flung open, with the young maid jabbering apologies and laughing explanations, but there he was, his face as hatched and dark as a dime-store Indian’s, Caspar Lockwood striding across the room toward her while the little dog danced up and down along the window seat, barking madly.
“I always seem to find you in libraries,” Cap said, looking around. “I didn’t realize you were such a reader.”
“How did you find me?” she demanded, when she could recover her voice.
“What do you mean?” He stopped a few feet short of her, though he’d been about to . . . do what? She wasn’t sure, but felt as if she’d been saved, snatched from the jaws of some breathtaking danger. “I was invited here. Your cousin invited me.”
“My cousin?” she said blankly. Her voice shook. She bit her lips as if that might keep her voice steady.
“A biblical name. Ezekiel? I’ve been waiting for some word. It didn’t sound like a prank call. He didn’t ask if my refrigerator was running.”
“My cousin,” Libby said again. “Lazarus.”
“Invited me to tea, yes. Lazarus. Four o’clock.” Cap checked his watch and tapped it with his forefinger. “I was prompt.”
“You always are,” she said in a faint voice.
“You make my virtues sound like faults,” he said.
“Well, fair enough.” She tried to smile. “You make my faults out to be virtues.”
Beauty and Attention: A Novel Page 8
