After Innocence

by Brenda Joyce

  “Mother, if only I could make you understand how important my studies are!” Sofie cried.

  “I do understand. I’ve understood ever since you were a withdrawn child who refused to attend birthday parties and other amusements, a child who could stare at a painting for hours and hours and who always had her hands in a pot of paint. I understand, Sofie.”

  “If you really understood,” Sofie said tersely, “we would not be having this discussion.”

  Suzanne flinched. She decided to change the subject, to another topic that was bothering her as much as anything else. “You did not look well at lunch today. Is something wrong?”

  Sofie looked at her mother, hesitating.

  Suzanne’s heart lurched. “It’s him, isn’t it? You know you can confide in me, dear.”

  Sofie trembled. “I find him terribly attractive. Mother,” she finally said, low.

  Very carefully, Suzanne returned, “All women find that type of man enticing, darling. You are one of hundreds, I promise you that.”

  “I realize that. It’s just—” she flushed “—I am a social disaster, and the only man who has ever been kind to me is Edward Delanza—and he was only that, kind.”

  Suzanne guided her to the sofa, where they sat down. She studied her for a moment. “He was toying with you, dear. I know his type. He is exactly like your father, ruled by whim and lust, so that nothing else matters, not even if it means destroying innocence.”

  “Mother!” Sofie gasped. “You are wrong about Mr. Delanza, for he does not find me attractive—and you are wrong about my father.”

  Suzanne’s face hardened. “Let me be blunt. Jake O’Neil was a rotten philanderer, and so is Edward Delanza.”

  Sofie’s shoulders squared. “Mother, please. That’s not fair. Jake is dead. He can’t defend himself.”

  Suzanne smiled bitterly. “Even were he still alive, he could not defend himself on that account.”

  Sofie hesitated, then slid closer to her mother, to put her arm around her. “He loved you. Mother, I know it.”

  But Suzanne slipped away and stood. “As if I care whether Jake O’Neil loved me or not.” But even as she spoke, she knew it was an absolute lie.

  “Sometimes people hurt one another without intending to,” Sofie said slowly.

  “He wanted to hurt me,” Suzanne said emphatically, facing her daughter. “That is why he left everything to you, and not a penny to me.”

  “No,” Sofie said, “you are wrong. That was a mistake, I am certain of it.” She smiled brightly. “Besides, it doesn’t matter. I don’t need those kinds of funds. There is plenty for the both of us.”

  Suzanne stared, feeling a stabbing of guilt. “That is not the point. Sofie. There is a principle here.”

  Sofie was silent, clearly sympathetic. Finally she said softly, “I’m sorry Jake hurt you.”

  “He didn’t hurt me.” Suzanne was cool and she shrugged. Appearances were everything—she had learned that the hard way when she was young and thought herself above social ostracism and reproach. How quickly she had learned that no one was immune from society’s cold, unforgiving shoulder. Long ago, at the age of twenty-five, she had finally grown up and married Benjamin, not for love, but to regain acceptance and respectability from the society that had both spawned and rejected her.

  Suzanne paced, wishing she could fling aside her memories. But she knew she needed to cling to them, needed them to remind her that once she had been a woman, one very much alive. “Enough of your damned father. What did Edward Delanza say, Sofie, when the two of you were alone on the veranda?”

  Sofie stared. “He was merely being kind. I explained about my limp—and he was unbelievably kind.”

  “His kindness is a disguise for one thing—his intention to seduce you and ruin you,” Suzanne snapped.

  “No,” Sofie said firmly. “No, you are wrong. Edward has no interest in seducing me. He was only being gallant. He was being a gentleman.”

  Suzanne stared. “Sofie—you sound dismayed! If he truly is not intent upon seduction, then you are very fortunate. I hope to God that you are right and you shall be spared the kind of grief a man like that leaves in his wake. And how gallant is it, my dear, to smuggle diamonds or carry on with Hilary Stewart out of wedlock? He is having an affair with Hilary Stewart. Why do you think I gave them adjoining rooms?”

  Sofie stood, her hands raised. “I realize that he is fond of Hilary,” she said hoarsely.

  Suzanne was staring at Sofie, comprehension searing her. Her daughter was enamored of Edward, she could see that, and distraught over his relationship with their neighbor. Suzanne was horrified. Tragedy flashed through her mind. Jake had nearly destroyed her, and she could envision Edward destroying her daughter. “Hilary was not in her room last night—you realize that.”

  Sofie blanched. “How would you know?”

  “Her bed wasn’t slept in. I saw that myself when I stopped by her room on my way to breakfast—and the maids do not get into the guest rooms that early, Sofie.” Seeing Sofie’s dismay, she said softly, “I make it my business to know what goes on in my own home, Sofie.”

  “I don’t want to hear any more.”

  “I’m sorry that you must learn about life so abruptly,” Suzanne said. “But it’s for your own good. If your paths should ever cross again, steer clear of him.”

  Sofie nodded stiffly. “I have learned my lesson, Mother,” she finally said. “I enjoyed flirting with him, but no more. Have no fear.” She took a deep breath. “If I do not return to the city, Mother, I will not be able to finish Miss Ames’s portrait in time for her birthday. Or have you forgotten despite your having arranged it, insisted upon it?”

  Suzanne studied her, hardly hearing what she said. If Sofie was so enamored of Edward Delanza, then she herself must change tactics immediately. Hilary had a summer home not far from the Ralstons’ beachfront retreat, and Suzanne imagined that Edward would be spending a lot of time in Newport Beach, warming Hilary’s bed. When he was not with Hilary, what if he was sniffing around Sofie? “I have changed my mind,” Suzanne said abruptly, perspiring. The very idea of Edward being so close to Sofie made her heart pound with fear. “You may leave Monday morning as we planned.”

  Sofie’s eyes widened. “Thank you. Mother.” She embraced her, but she looked at her queerly, and then she hurried from the room.

  Suzanne stared after her daughter, prickling with unease. Sofie had never been interested in a man before, Suzanne was certain of that, and now she was far more than interested, despite her denials to the contrary.

  Suzanne crossed the floor and watched from the doorway as Sofie hurried awkwardly up the stairs. She frowned. It did not make sense. Edward Delanza could have any woman he chose. Why had he pursued Sofie while at their beachfront home? Had his interest grown out of boredom, or perhaps out of some bizarre sense of empathy? Surely he would not extend himself to chase her, not now that it was hardly convenient. Not a man like that.

  Suzanne’s palms were sweating just the same. She decided that she would not take any chances. She made a mental note to send word to Mrs. Murdock to see that Sofie was chaperoned at all times. If for some incredible reason Edward Delanza chose to pursue Sofie in Manhattan, Suzanne would learn of it immediately.

  7

  New York City

  The roaring increased until it was deafening. The ground beneath Sofie’s feet actually vibrated, as did the wall of the brick building behind her, and its glass windowpanes. The canvas on her easel seemed to quiver beneath her hand. Sofie did not notice.

  Standing there on the sidewalk of Third Avenue, she worked with single-minded intensity, her strokes sure and short and swift. Finally the elevated train above the broad thoroughfare passed and the normal sounds of the streets came to the fore again—the competing cries of the strolling vendors, the animated Yiddish of the East European neighbors, the shouts and laughter of small children playing in the tenement-lined street below the El. Horses clip-clopped b
y on the cobblestones, carriages, carts, and lorries rumbled loudly, a trolley went clanging by. A policeman’s whistle blew in short warning spurts a few blocks away. Gangling boys played a game with a stick and ball there. Drovers and carters yelled at them for blocking the traffic. And a fat German grocer stood in the doorway of his shop, just across the street, watching the passersby and Sofie while guarding his stand of fruit from thieves. She had been coming to this spot to paint since June, and while at first, people had been curious, they now seemed to accept her presence readily. Sofie sighed, staring now at the heavily shadowed canvas, and finally she put her brush down.

  Sofie knew it was time to leave and that she was late. She checked the man’s pocket watch she had left open on a small folding table behind her back, where her other art supplies lay in apparent disorder. Miss Ames would be at the house at any moment to inspect and pick up her portrait. Still, Sofie was reluctant to leave.

  Sofie stared at the genre painting, scowling. Her impressions were exact; she’d captured the two heavyset women on the stoop of the tenement in front of her just as they were, tired yet animated, clothes worn but colorful. Mrs. Guttenberg wore a red dress, a brilliant splash of color in the otherwise dark painting. But despite her surprising use of red and the way the sunlight danced off the pavement at their feet, the work was missing something.

  Sofie knew what one of her problems was. She was not enamored of her subject anymore. The subject she was enamored of, she refused to paint. That subject was Edward Delanza.

  She was not going to paint him.

  Sofie sighed. She had returned to the city more than a week ago, and she had spent that entire time working on this canvas and finishing the portrait of Miss Ames, yet she could not shake him from her mind. Sofie estimated that the amount of time they had conversed that weekend at the beach did not even total fifteen full minutes. Nevertheless, he lurked about in her thoughts constantly.

  Sofie grimaced. Regardless of all else, Edward Delanza was the most splendid specimen of a man, and as a model, he would be glorious. Sofie put down her brush. How could she resist the temptation of painting him? How?

  Especially when the very idea made Sofie breathless with anticipation, with excitement.

  Sofie forced her attention back to her “genre” painting, which she was determined to complete before the end of the summer. It was a setting she had never done before and would most likely not do again for some time, at least, not until she reached twenty-one and was living on her own. Suzanne would never allow her to frequent this kind of neighborhood in order to paint real-life scenes of working-class people and immigrants; had she ever tried to gain permission for such an endeavor, she would be denied. Sofie did not have permission now. She did feel guilty, but her art came first.

  Sofie was doing the canvas on the sly. It was no coincidence that she had taken up this project in the summer while Suzanne was ensconced in Newport. With Suzanne away, the odds of getting caught were very low indeed.

  Of course, she was supposed to be at class at the Academy. But it was a class that was of little interest to Sofie; she was not interested in engraving, and she had been cutting it for the past six weeks in order to do this oil.

  The coachman stood some distance away. Sofie had convinced Billings that this was an assignment she must complete for one of her classes. She did not think he believed her, but he was so loyal that he had come, afraid she would go without him, afraid to let her out of his sight. The Ralston servants had known Sofie since she was nine years old, and everyone was well aware of Sofie’s passion for art.

  That passion had been evident from the very first day that Sofie had arrived at the Ralston mansion to take up residence there as Benjamin’s stepdaughter. Benjamin was a collector of art. Like many of his peers, his interest was primarily in American art, but like some of the more discerning American collectors, he had attained a dozen works of the early nineteenth-century French Barbizon artists, including some rural and peasant landscapes by Millet and Rousseau, as well as the flashier, more erotic works of the Salon artists Couture and Cabanel. More important, Benjamin had been favorably impressed by the first full-scale exhibition in New York in 1886 of the French artists labeled les impressionnistes by the press and critics alike. Immediately afterwards, he had acquired both a Pissarro and a Degas, and in the fours years since, he had bought another Degas and a still life by Manet. Sofie had been dazzled when she discovered his gallery. She had spent hours and hours there every day.

  Sofie had begun to dabble in art before coming to the Ralston mansion to live, as most young children do. At the Ralstons’, her education included art, and her first governess began to seriously encourage her sketches and water-colors. By the time Sofie was twelve, she had surpassed her teacher, and realizing this, Miss Holden had brought the matter to Suzanne’s attention. Suzanne had not been interested in the fact that her daughter possessed an unnatural aptitude for an and had no intention of finding Sofie a genuine art instructor.

  Sofie had begged, insisted, fought. She had been a quiet child ever since her father’s death, unassuming, uncomplaining, undemanding. But not now. In real annoyance, Suzanne had threatened to take away her paints and brushes, forbidding her to ever draw or paint again. Fortunately, due to the unusual uproar in his home, Benjamin Ralston was alerted to what was occurring, and he had intervened.

  Because Benjamin rarely interfered in matters affecting his wife’s daughter—or his own daughter, for that matter—Suzanne could not defy him. She found Sofie an instructor. Paul Verault taught at the Academy of Fine Arts and also gave private lessons on the side if he deemed the student worthy enough.

  And Verault instantly found Sofie worthy of his time and attention. Sofie began her studies with Verault at the age of thirteen and continued for three years. He was demanding and exacting, frequently given to criticism, all of it just, and very rarely given to praise. Verault insisted Sofie begin with the basics—with the study of linear shapes and form. That first year Sofie drew only with charcoal and she sketched some five hundred still lifes depicting almost every object imaginable, until a simple juxtaposition of fruit done in pencil had exploded with life.

  A year later Verault pronounced her done with studies of shape and form; it was time to move on to color and light. Sofie was jubilant—for she loved color, she always had. And Verault no longer minded teaching privately at all. He was wide-eyed when he realized that his young student was far from ordinary, that her feeling for color bordered on brilliant. Sofie wanted to use color and shading boldly, in an unorthodox manner, but Verault would not allow it. “One day you may be original, ma petite, but only after you have mastered what I must teach you,” he told her, and it was a refrain he often repeated in the next few years when Sofie grumbled about copying one master after another at the city’s different museums. Sofie wanted to create, but Verault demanded she re-create.

  Finally Sofie turned sixteen. She had already applied to and been accepted at the Academy, where she would soon continue to study with Verault as well as with many other teachers. But one day he came to her with tears glinting in his dark eyes. “I am going home, ma petite,” he said.

  Sofie was stunned. “Home? To France?”

  “Oui. To Paris. My family is there, and my wife is not well.”

  Sofie wrung her hands, trying not to cry. She had not even known that this moody, untalkative man had a family anywhere, much less in Paris. How she would miss her teacher, her mentor, her friend. “You must go, of course,” she whispered. “I pray that Madame Verault will regain her health.”

  “Do not look so crestfallen, little one.” Verault took her hand. “You have learned all that you can from me, ma chère” he said, kissing her hand. “Indeed, in my last letter home to my old friend André Vollard, I said as much.”

  Vollard was an art dealer in Paris whom Verault had mentioned to Sofie from time to time. “Now you must learn from the other fine teachers at the Academy,” Verault continued, “and
from those around you, and then from yourself—and from life.” He finally smiled. “But have patience, ma petite. Have patience. One day you will be free to use those oils as you long to do. You are young, there is time. Study hard with your new teachers. And when you are in Paris, come visit me.”

  After he had left, Sofie wept, feeling as if she had lost her dearest friend—her only real friend. For several days she had been unable to paint or even think of it, missing Verault terribly. He was the only one who had ever truly understood her in the years since her father’s death.

  When she returned to her studio, she disobeyed his last directive. She had been working on a pastoral scene, the canvas simply titled Central Park. Model boats sailed on a small lake, the little boys in knickers and the grown men in their shirtsleeves watching their toys, excited and laughing, cheering. She stared at the oil, angry her teacher was gone, feeling young, wild, and rebellious. In another week she would begin her first classes at the Academy. To Sofie, it felt as if time was not on her side—it felt as if it were now or never.

  Her heart began to pump more vigorously as she picked up a medium-sized brush, suddenly afraid. Then she dabbed it feverishly in bright yellow. Soon the placid water had become more blue and green than brown, flecked with yellow, and the once white sails billowed multihued. The pretty lake scene exploded with hot color and vibrant movement. Sofie had been thinking of Monet as she worked, whose works she often saw in the exclusive Gallery Durand-Ruel downtown.

  She had been so proud of her first foray into the modern, proud but doubtful and desperately needing encouragement and reassurance. Had she been crude and obvious where Monet was subtle and extraordinary? Shyly she told Lisa what she had done, daring to reveal her hopes that her art had taken a new direction and that she had discovered her true style. Lisa had been thrilled for her and had told Suzanne, who insisted upon seeing her work. Sofie had invited her mother and sister into her studio to view her art, trying to ignore her fear and anxiety. Sofie’s art had shocked them.