These Golden Pleasures

by Valerie Sherwood

  It had begun to snow again, lazily flaking down on the already white sidewalks, and the gold of the streetlights picked out groups of cold, red-nosed carolers, their heads wrapped in stocking caps and shawls, singing “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” and “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.” Roxanne found herself blithely humming the ancient carols as she hurried along, the basket on her arm, looking into the brightly lit windows of the houses that displayed Christmas trees decked with popcorn and candy, and revealed happy children playing with newly received rocking horses and china-headed dolls.

  How different was this Christmas from the last, she mused. Last Christmas she had been snowbound on the Kansas prairies, trapped in a cheerless house with sharp-faced Aunt Ada, looking out through frosted panes at a white undulating wasteland, wishing vainly for spring to come. Now she was walking in a new blue suit and the heavy shawl she had purchased with her own money, down the snowy streets of a great eastern city, carrying a basket of Christmas goodies to a friend. She smiled and her heart lightened.

  It was with a brisk step that she arrived and knocked at the front door of the plain little brick row house.

  After a time the door was opened by Mrs. Kaunas, the tall Lithuanian woman, who looked scared. “Bad. . . very bad,” she whispered, and motioned upstairs.

  Roxanne flashed a look at her and flew up the steps where a grayhaired midwife answered her knock. “I don’t think there’s nothing I can do,” she whined. “The baby won’t come, it won’t.”

  Fearfully, Roxanne stared past her. On the bed lay Mary Bridey, looking pitifully small. Her face was wet with perspiration, her hair hung damply to her face, and there were dark circles etched by pain under her eyes. Bravely she smiled at Roxanne.

  “Mary Bridey.” Roxanne dropped her basket and hurried over to her friend. “When did the pains begin?”

  “I don’t know,” mumbled Mary Bridey. “Hours ago.”

  “Where is the doctor?” asked Roxanne impatiently.

  “She called me, miss. She didn’t call no doctor,” interposed the midwife. She sounded vaguely indignant.

  Mary Bridey’s light damp fingers touched her arm. “I was trying so to save money, Roxanne. Sure I’ll be needing it when the baby comes.” Her voice ended in an anguished screech as she writhed on the bed, her body arched in pain.

  Appalled, Roxanne watched as the agony subsided and Mary Bridey once again lay limp and perspiring and silent on the bed.

  “Her’s weakening,” observed the midwife knowingly, rolling her eyes. “The baby will have to be took, that it will, since it ain’t comin’ natural.”

  If the midwife was right and the baby was lodged, they'd break Mary Bridey's pelvis bone in the delivery. That meant she'd most certainly die.

  Galvanized into action, Roxanne cried, “I’ll get the doctor. Where’s the nearest one?”

  “Corner house,” mumbled the midwife. “That way.” She pointed.

  Roxanne sped from the room and downstairs to the snowy street. The plump little doctor in the house on the corner did not like to be wrested from his Christmas festivities with his family, but Roxanne’s white face and broken-voiced pleas to come quickly changed his mind. Snatching up his black bag, he puffed along beside her, snapping questions.

  From the street they could hear Mary Bridey’s screams. The screams had ceased as they went up the stairs.

  Hands twisted together, Roxanne stood back as the doctor examined Mary Bridey, who now lay exhausted and only half conscious. Roxanne wondered how anyone could be so cruel as to leave the little Irish girl to go through this alone.

  “She’s very weak,” he said over his shoulder to Roxanne. “The child is lodged. I’ll have to use instruments.”

  “Oh, no!” cried Roxanne.

  He turned to give her a fierce look. “If I don’t, this baby will surely die! It’s a choice between the mother and the child!”

  “Mary Bridey,” cried Roxanne. “Tell him—”

  From the bed the Irish girl raised a hand to quiet her. “Do . . . whatever you must, doctor,” she whispered. “I want my baby to live.”

  Roxanne closed her eyes.

  “Have you had any experience with this sort of thing?” asked the doctor.

  Roxanne opened her eyes and shook her head.

  “Then get out. Wait in the hall. Hester will help me.” He indicated the midwife. “Hester, you should have called me sooner,” he said grumpily.

  “I didn’t want to interrupt your Christmas,” muttered Hester. “Bad enough I was called away from my family on Christmas Day, without you bein’ called away too, Doctor.”

  Roxanne sat on the stairs while the thing was done. She pressed her hands to her ears to blot out Mary Bridey’s agonized screams, and sobbed in sympathy. Silence came and Roxanne blessed chloroform. Rocking back and forth in misery, she railed inwardly at fate for letting this terrible thing happen, at all the Coulters for their hard hearts, and most particularly at Gavin, who must be made of stone. She blamed herself for not coming sooner, she blamed the stupid midwife for not calling the doctor, she blamed the doctor for not finding some better way . . . some sure way to save both mother and child.

  Mrs. Kaunas offered her a cup of hot coffee, but Roxanne waved it away. Finally, the bedroom door opened and the midwife beckoned her inside. “No hope for either one,” she mouthed at Roxanne.

  Roxanne hurried past her. Limp and weak, Mary Bridey lay on the bed while the doctor tried vainly to staunch the bleeding. The Irish girl’s thin face was very white, and growing whiter as her life’s blood flowed away. “My . . . baby?” she whispered.

  Roxanne cast a look at the doctor. He frowned and shook his head. Her gaze fell on the sad little bundle on the table. She moved her body so Mary Bridey might not see it and clasped the Irish girl’s thin white hand in a firm reassuring grip. “Your baby’s fine,” she said sturdily. “You have a lovely son, Mary Bridey.”

  “You’ll . . . tell him about the baby?” Though Mary Bridey’s voice was a wisp, Roxanne had no doubt who was meant by him.

  “He sent you word, Mary Bridey,” she lied gently. “That’s why I came. He was called away, but he sent word he loves you and he’s coming for you.”

  “Oh, Roxanne . . .” Mary Bridey’s tired half-closed eyes opened wide for a moment and their expression was glorious. “Is it really true?”

  “Really true,” said Roxanne, who’d been taught all liars went to hell. There was no hell so deep she wouldn’t find some way to comfort Mary Bridey now. “He loves you, Mary Bridey. He always loved you.” The lashes fluttered down on Mary Bridey’s thin white cheeks, the soft mouth no longer moved. A few minutes later, the doctor came and held a mirror to her lips. Roxanne looked away.

  “She’s gone,” he said quietly, and disengaged Roxanne’s fingers that still clung to the dead girl’s hand as if to give her life. A little cry burst from Roxanne and she crumpled up.

  “I was called too late,” said the doctor severely, as if her cry was an implied criticism. “I should have been called weeks ago. There was nothing anyone could do. The baby was lodged—I had to break the pelvis bone.” He looked at Roxanne’s suffering white face and sighed. “Perhaps you could tell me where her family is, so they can be notified to make funeral arrangements. Hester tells me the woman downstairs won’t be much help.”

  “They’re somewhere in Ireland. I—I don’t know where.”

  He pondered that. “I understand she was unmarried and had no money.”

  “That’s true, but—I’ll pay for her burial,” said Roxanne staunchly.

  The old doctor gave her a kindly look, which took in the cheap shawl and ready-made suit. “And have you any money?” he inquired. '

  Roxanne bit her lip. “I’m employed,” she said stiffly. “I could make payments.”

  “No one will give you credit,” he said. “Better let me handle this.”

  So gentle Mary Bridey, with her flowerlike face, would now be buried with her stillborn chi
ld in a pauper’s grave. Roxanne felt sick. Through her tears, she cast a last look at that pale thin form and fled. On the way out she almost tripped over a chair on which were piled the bright patchwork quilt and the length of green calico Roxanne had given her. Roxanne swallowed. Those were the last bright colors Mary Bridey had ever seen. While the world made merry, she had died among strangers.

  On the stairs Roxanne paused. Her heartsick gaze took in, through the open door downstairs in which the Lithuanian woman was silhouetted, the Christmas tree, trimmed with little straw bird cages, and the big fireplace where a Yule log burned bright. Log Evening . . . poor Mary Bridey’s bright young life had burned out before the Yule log became an ember.

  Mrs. Kaunas awkwardly patted Roxanne’s shoulder and muttered something in her own tongue and then, eyes bright with tears, nodded upstairs and said in her thick accent “. . . like my own daughter.”

  At that Roxanne’s own tears spilled over.

  “Did he ever come to see her?” she choked.

  “Who?” Mrs. Kaunas asked, puzzled.

  “Gavin—Mr. Coulter.”

  “No one came. Only you.”

  Shaking her head, Roxanne turned away.

  Out in the snow she trudged along, her numbed arm still carrying the basket. Unseeing, she marched past houses with lighted windows and Christmas holly on the door. Past a raucous group of carolers drinking hot rum and loudly singing “Deck the halls with boughs of holly,” she hurried. On a downtown street she gave her basket of Christmas goodies away to a child who was selling paper flowers on a corner and looked hungry. The child eagerly pulled aside the napkin and sniffed. She gave Roxanne a blissful look and happily trotted home to share it with her family.

  Roxanne could not bring herself to return to the Mt. Vernon Place house—home of the Coulters, of Gavin. She walked the streets until she was exhausted, and if Gavin had been there, she would certainly have done him bodily harm.

  Grim-faced, staggering with fatigue, she reached the house as church bells were ringing. The servants were still up, making merry in the kitchen. Someone—Greaves, she guessed—had bought wine. Avoiding alike their proffers of wine and their questions, so as not to sadden the only party they were allowed all year, she hurried up the stairs, threw herself on her bed and wept for her sweet friend who had found death in Baltimore.

  Chapter 12

  The ice storm that sang and crackled and screamed after midnight, making cold creep in through the windowpanes, had left a frozen fairyland by morning. The trees were iced to miracles of crystal. Delicate icicles hung from the windows and fell to the glittering sheet of ice on the street below.

  Taking a pan of salt to sprinkle on the front steps, Roxanne hurried outside eager to see all this beauty, but she slipped on the top step and hurtled painfully to the bottom. She managed to get up and went down again on its glittering surface. It was like walking on oiled glass. On her third try she stayed on her feet, retrieved the pan and brushed the salt across the steps, finishing the job she had been sent to do.

  As she straightened up, listening to the musical tinkle as icicles snapped off in the bright sunlight and the icy coating of blowing branches cracked under the strain of the wind, she saw on a nearby bough a little frozen bird. For a moment, she stared at it and then, walking carefully, hurried inside, her happiness quenched.

  Life was like that, she told herself fiercely. A frozen world where you couldn’t keep your footing . . . where those you loved . . . died.

  Somehow she got through that numbing Christmas week, with everyone around her busy and jolly, with Rhodes coming in late filled with holiday toddies, bawling out Christmas carols, and Clarissa in velvets and furs and jewels off to her endless parties and balls. Gradually, Roxanne’s perspective was restored, the hurt partly healed. Mary Bridey’s death had made her realize how fleeting life was. In her grief, she yearned to be comforted in the arms of a lover, and she also realized with force that once missed opportunities were forever gone, that the eyes that smiled into yours today would smile into another’s tomorrow if ... if you were fool enough to let them go.

  She was thinking, of course, of Rhodes.

  Gavin returned around the middle of January, but she could not speak to him. Keeping her eyes averted she pretended not to see him much of the time. It was the only way to hold her job, she told herself grimly, for she could not have brought herself to be civil just yet.

  Ella’s hand worsened and became infected. Mrs. Hollister said she would have to replace her, but Ella cried and said all her seven brothers and sisters depended on her. So Mrs. Hollister sighed and kept her on. Roxanne was glad, even though it made double duty for her and Tillie, who surreptitiously helped Roxanne do most of the jobs that Ella, with her painful bandaged hand, could not do.

  February came and big Tillie announced that she was leaving soon to be married. Her husband-to-be, who worked on the docks, planned to leave the seashore and take her with him back to his father’s little cottage in southern Maryland’s tobacco country. As a wedding gift, Roxanne gave Tillie several rolls of wallpaper to brighten her bedroom there—they cost a nickel apiece, and Tillie was very grateful.

  Ella’s hand had mended at last, and she worked doubly hard to make Mrs. Hollister want to keep her. A big plodding immigrant girl who barely spoke English had applied for Tillie’s job. Her world was changing, Roxanne thought; only Clarissa remained constant.

  Rhodes was still readying the Virginia Lass for sea, and Gavin had gone to Boston again.

  On one of her many errands for Clarissa, Roxanne passed Barrington’s, and Denby ran out of the shop, evidently hoping to walk along with her. He was eager to see her again, but she put him off. Disappointed, he retreated, and she went on alone barely noticing either his presence or his absence. Her thoughts were only of Rhodes.

  It was hard holding Rhodes off these days, for she had begun to desire him with an earthshaking force. When their hands met, when their eyes locked, what passed between them was sweet and almost painful, and it rocked her to her very toes.

  She lived in constant fear that she would give in to him, that her insistent body would overpower her mind, and that she would become his mistress. And lose him finally, as Mary Bridey had lost Gavin? It was a thought not to be borne. She wanted Rhodes passionately, but she wanted him forever, held to her firmly by a narrow golden band, third finger, left hand.

  At night she dreamed of herself in a drifting bridal veil, her face gleaming pale through the lace, and beside her Rhodes—tall, proud and self-confident, firmly taking her to wife. . . . Always the dream broke and faded, and in its place came vague nightmares where cold winds pursued her, and sometimes she woke and felt that cold clutch around her heart.

  Casual, debonair and teasing, Rhodes seemed blithely unaware of the devastating effect he had on her, of the way he could rock the very earth beneath her feet just by the touch of his hand.

  Soberly, she regarded her face in the mirror in her room, one bright February morning. What mattered a pretty face if it did no more than attract a man only to lose him? What mattered a sweet body if it were never clasped in the arms of a chosen lover?

  Something fierce and elemental stirred in her. Love came before marriage, she told herself defiantly, just as justice came before law. And what were a few words spoken over her, after all? Rhodes was hers, hers by natural right—her chosen mate. And she would take him and hold him. Forever.

  How to do that, she asked that lovely face that brooded back at her from the mirror. The answer that came back to her was purely feminine, old as Eve:

  She would make him want her so much that he could not bear to lose her. She knew she had a beautiful body. She knew that Rhodes desired her. And she would use that beautiful passionate body of hers to fan the flame of his desire into a forest fire. He would hold her, caress her, savor her sweetness. His strong hands would cup her chin as his green eyes looked deep into hers finding love and affection there. His strong hands would cup
her delicately molded breasts as his head bent so his lips could tenderly nuzzle them. Oh, how she would respond to him! Her eyes gleamed with anticipation. He would find her not a cringing virgin, but a woman of storm-swept passions.

  He would find her . . . not a virgin at all.

  For a moment the thought shook her—but only for a moment. Rhodes did not seek virginity in a woman—he was off to the fleshpots of the town, hadn’t he said? For the moment she would push marriage from her mind. She was content to be his mistress, to share his life.

  With a sigh she leaned on her arms and smiled at that lovely face in the mirror. The face smiled back winsomely. Tonight, she told herself. Tonight, she would melt into his arms and the flame would burn so bright he would forget all other women and desire only her.

  She would bind him to her with passion.

  All day she thought of it, blundering through her work, dropping things, forgetting tasks. Clarissa was astonished and indignant when Roxanne actually stepped on the hem of her train, tearing it. She whirled about and screamed at Roxanne, but Roxanne hardly heard her. Her head was awhirl. Tonight she would be held in the arms of her lover and taste the golden pleasures of love, one by one. She could hardly wait. When at dinner she dropped the heavy soup tureen on the kitchen floor—fortunately it didn’t break—and all the staff stared at her aghast, she blithely ignored Mrs. Hollister’s scolding and Cook’s shouted curses. Tonight . . . tonight she would be his, her heart sang. And after tonight everything would be different. She would belong to Rhodes. She would go where he went. She would follow him to the ends of the earth. And what would soup tureens matter then?

  After dinner, she changed into her blue suit and the new ruffled blouse, brushed her hair till it gleamed. and pinned it up carefully. Rhodes had gone up to his room to dress, she guessed, for an evening on the town. A roistering evening, as it seemed all his evenings were these days. When she heard his light step descending the stair, she stepped quickly out of the shadows of the servants’ wing and confronted him on the landing.