Pride's Folly

by Fiona Harrowe

  “Is this the only copy?” I asked.

  “No. A copy has been registered at the courthouse,” Gibbs said. “You may confirm that, if you doubt my word.”

  “I doubt it. And yours also, Agnes. I don’t put you above chicanery.”

  “You are one to talk, Deirdre. But I won’t go into that now. The will was Papa’s wish, just as you see.”

  “It was not your father’s wish. He told me more than once, ‘Should I go before you, Deirdre, you will be taken care of.’ Does that sound like a man who cuts his wife off from an inheritance?”

  “He changed his mind.”

  I said nothing but stared coldly at her.

  “He changed his mind,” she went on maliciously, “when he discovered you and Ian Montgomery were lovers.”

  I felt the color drain from my face. If she expected me to rush in with “But that was before Judah and I were married,” she would have to be disappointed.

  “That’s a lie,” I heard myself say.

  “Is it?” She opened her reticule and drew out an envelope. “I never would have brought Ian’s name up to my father, Deirdre, if you hadn’t spoiled my marriage to André. But I wanted to get even, and by a stroke of luck a certain letter written to Hart Benson fell into my hands.

  I remember Ian casually mentioning that he had met Hart Benton. The scion of an impoverished aristocratic family who hung on the fringes of good society, Hart was chiefly noted for his drunken sprees and his single-minded pursuit of loose women.

  “Hart corresponded with Ian after he left Richmond and in a moment of drunken weakness told me that the Englishman who had once squired me was not as frigid as he seemed. He had a letter in which Ian confessed to a conquest of a "prominent young lady of good name,’ whom he then promptly named. You.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “I’ll be frank. I paid Benton for that letter. Then I showed it to Papa. It’s here.” She withdrew the pages of notepaper, rattling them under my nose. “Read it,” she urged.

  I glanced down at the letter. I had seen Ian’s writing only once, when he had accepted Lavinia’s invitation to visit Wildoak, a bold, slanting script, the same script I was looking at now.

  “It’s a forgery,” I said.

  “How can you tell, if you haven’t even read it?”

  I took the letter and opened it, my eyes falling on an underlined phrase. “. . . I know Deirdre Falconer Morse better than most men. . . .” I couldn’t go on. Those were the very words Ian had once flung to me. And what had he said the last time? He bought you—I could have done the same without a wedding ring. Oh, Ian, how could you? To throw that at me in anger was one thing, but to write such a letter to a degenerate sot, how could you?

  “It’s a forgery,” I repeated through wooden lips.

  Had Judah taken me to Ian’s wedding to test me? But he’d claimed not to know the groom’s identity until the day before the ceremony. “You’ll never guess . . he’d said at the Palmer House. Had he watched Ian and me covertly at the reception, seen us together on the verandah?

  “Think what you wish,” Agnes said, taking the letter from me.

  “It’s a forgery and so is the will.” I rose from the chair, spine straight, head held high. “I have nothing further to discuss. My lawyers will contact you at their earliest convenience.”

  I had no lawyers, and no money to hire them. Judah’s signet ring, my gold wedding band, and $25 in cash were the only assets I now possessed. The rest of my jewels were at home in Richmond (no longer mine, as I had been reminded) or had disappeared when my reticule was snatched from me during the fire. I did not even know if I had the wherewithal to pay my fare back to Richmond. But I’d be damned before I’d beg for a penny.

  “Please go.”

  “Where is Papa?” Agnes asked.

  For a moment I thought of refusing to tell her, but it seemed small and I felt no rancor toward Judah.

  “Mr. Hibbens’s Mortuary, on Jackson Street.”

  At that moment all my anger was directed toward Ian Ramsey Montgomery. That he could pretend to call himself a gentleman! Only a cad of the worst sort would stoop to such vulgar boasting. How could I have ever imagined myself in love with him? I went hot all over when I thought of my stupid sentimentality. I’d been taken in by fine manners, good looks, a seductive smile—and a treacherous heart.

  That night I wrote to Lavinia and Alfred about the fire and Judah—and asked them for a loan. But I did not tell them about the will. I couldn’t. That document might very well be authentic, and if it stood up under legal scrutiny it would shame me, not Judah. We lived in a world where the husband was master, and if he chose to leave a wife out of his last testament, that was his prerogative. The general belief was that when such an omission occurred it was because the wife had seriously failed her husband. Adultery was most often suspected. Though there was no way Ian and I could have met after my marriage (as Judah must surely have known), gossips would invent one. (And then there was my brief encounter with Wade Gamble, a shameful lapse of which I was not proud, but thankfully unsuspected, else Agnes would have brought that up, too.)

  I also sent a letter to Uncle Miles. To him I revealed the contents of the will and my feelings about it, asking for advice, not money. Pride again. He had refused to sign Wildoak over to Page, and I had no intention of humbling myself again.

  In the meantime I gave my situation a great deal of thought. My absence at Judah’s funeral would be noted. I wondered what Agnes would say to my friends. Would she show them Benton’s letter, tell them I had been disinherited because of past sins? I didn’t think so. Agnes was more subtle than that. It would be more her style to drop a hint, a caustic remark, or an enigmatic clue that would have people clamoring for full answers. Not that it mattered. The Bainbridges (and Alfred Gan) were the only ones I cared about, and they knew Agnes too well to take seriously any rumors she chose to spread.

  Those rumors, to my surprise, did not concern Ian. A fairly lengthy description of my transgressions came from Lavinia. Shocked, unbelieving, she asked if it was true that I had become enamored by one of Judah’s business associates and so preferred to stay on in Chicago? “You can’t believe what an uproar it has caused here,’’ she wrote. “Some will give credence to the worst, but I must say it does look bad to stay away from your own husband’s funeral. . . .’’ Et cetera, et cetera. I tore the letter up in a thousand fragments and tossed them into the stove. There had been no money.

  Jane Bainbridge wrote, “My dear, I take no stock in the current gossip. I’ve been telling everyone you are still recuperating from your ordeal. Are you? It’s not like you to behave in such a manner.”

  I debated for a long time, drafting and redrafting a letter to her, finally saying, yes, she was right. I still suffered from shock and exhaustion. I knew if I told her I was without funds she would get up a subscription among my friends, some of whom were none too affluent themselves, others who would welcome the chance to patronize me, proud, sinful Deirdre brought to a pauper’s knees.

  I would have gone to work. Chicago had begun to rebuild, and though thousands had been left jobless, their unemployment was considered temporary. The difficulty was that although I had been perfectly trained for the role of a well-to-do planter’s wife, I was ill-equipped for the mundane breadwinning world. I knew how to order a household, how to instruct the cook, the maid, the butler, the coachman. I could sew, play the piano, sing passably, paint on china or velvet, arrange flowers, write a fine hand, and in a pinch bake a cake or roast a ham. There should have been one of these attributes that could be put to use to earn money, but I could think of none. If I’d had the means I might have started a shop— objets d’art, china, silver services, tapestry chairs, that sort of thing. But one needed cash or good credit to stock such an establishment, and I had neither.

  It wasn’t long before my purse had shrunk to a few dollars. One afternoon as I was going through the last of my meager possessions, I came u
pon Ward Gamble’s revolver and calling card, forgotten and shoved to the back of a drawer. For a few minutes I considered pawning the Colt but rejected the idea. I didn’t think I could get enough to make the attempt worthwhile. Instead I decided to return it. I no longer felt threatened by Ward Gamble, not here in Chicago, since I remembered his once mentioning a wife waiting for him at home.

  Gamble’s address, Bay Front Road and Fullerton Avenue, was located beyond Lincoln Park, an area untouched by the fire and some distance from the boarding house. It meant hiring a hack. Again I debated, finally deciding that the expense hardly warranted my anxiety. A dollar more or less would make no real difference.

  Once under way, leaving familiar streets behind and coming in sight of the fire’s aftermath, my own difficulties receded. Until then I hadn’t realized the true enormity of Chicago’s disaster. Skirting the outer fringes of the burned-out business section, we passed scene after scene of utter devastation. It was as if total war or a whirling cyclone had swept over the city, ravaging, leveling, destroying everything in its path. Horizon to horizon, one looked out on a panorama of calamitous ruin. The scorched earth was covered with piles of rubble, heaps of broken brick and congealed mortar, drifts of gray ashes and black cinder. Only an occasional naked, windowless wall or a charred skeletal spire gave any sign that buildings and homes had once stood in this wretched landscape.

  As we drove on, however, I saw a wooden structure rising out of the ashes under the cheerful tap-tap of a hammer. A placard had been nailed to a beam, its bold black letters announcing, ALL GONE BUT WIFE, CHILDREN, AND ENERGY!

  The evidence of such optimistic endeavor lifted my spirits, but it was a difficult mood to sustain. We were near the river now. Seeking a way across, we passed fallen bridges, twisted iron frames sloping into the dark waters below. The river itself was choked by the debris of blackened ships hulks floating boxes, and articles of clothing flung away by fugitives fleeing over the burning bridges. The mute havoc, combined with a gray overcast day and the smell of the gutted city, plunged me into an abyss of gloom. I too had lost everything in the fire. (And Ian—not a casualty of the fire but of the heart. Oh, damn him! Why had I ever allowed myself to love him?)

  But I had never been one to brood over what could not be helped, and when I remembered that happy placard I had just recently passed I felt ashamed of my self-pity. I had my health, my youth—and Page. And like the man with the cheerful hammer I should count myself lucky.

  Ward Gamble’s house, when it finally came into view, was not what I’d expected. I don’t know why, but I had pictured a modest frame dwelling, one of those two-story prairie clapboards flanked by a minuscule garden, a few clumps of tired marigolds, and a stone walk. But this was a twenty-room mansion with a mansard roof and triple windows set in recessed arches. In order to take advantage of the lake view, the house had its back to the street, and the portico entrance was reached by way of a hedge-lined gravel drive curving around to the right. When we drew up to the door, I got out and told the driver to wait.

  A butler answered my ring, an ancient man, impeccably dressed in tails and white gloves. I tried not to be disconcerted by the grandeur of the glimpsed staircase beyond nor the servitor’s finery.

  “I am Mrs. Harrison,” I said imperiously. “Is Colonel Gamble or his wife at home?”

  The old man’s eyes sized me up in a very professional manner. “If you’ll wait ...”

  But at that moment Gamble himself appeared in the entryway. “Why, it’s Mrs. Harrison!”

  “Good afternoon. Colonel. I wished to return your gun and to—

  “Please, please, do come in.”

  The butler stepped aside and the colonel indicated a door at the left of the entry way. It led to a library furnished in leather and smelling of tobacco. Shelved books lined two walls, while a third was given over to a display of pistols and rifles encased in glass under a pair of silver-hilted crossed swords. Several walking sticks, one knobbed with ivory, were displayed-in an ebony stand.

  “I’m sorry I was unable to come sooner,” I said, taking the Colt from my reticule.

  “There was no hurry. Please, sit. Some sherry?”

  “Thank you. That would be nice.”

  He was wearing his uniform, a dark-blue tunic gilt-buttoned to a high collar, and light-blue trousers tucked into cavalry boots. The black arm band was gone.

  I placed the gun on the table beside me.

  “I’m glad to see you came out of the fire without apparent injury,” he said, handing me the sherry. “But the mourning?”

  “My husband,” I said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Apart from a gray wing of hair at each temple, he had not aged a day since I’d seen him in Richmond. If anything he looked younger. His face, tanned by the sun, was unlined except for tiny crow’s-feet at the edge of the eyes. His manner was polite, almost to the point of disinterest.

  “I must thank you for the loan of the revolver,” I said. “I discharged one bullet, as you will see, to ward off a pair of ruffians.”

  ‘‘Then our chance meeting was fortunate. I only wish more of our citizens could have been armed against the looting— and worse.”

  He meant rape. But, of course, such a word was not spoken in polite society.

  ‘‘I’ve been told General Sheridan was called upon to supply army troops to restore order,” I said. ‘‘Are you involved?” ‘‘Yes. Although I’m not in the infantry, my superior granted my request to be of help in whatever capacity the general deemed necessary.”

  ‘‘I see.”

  He rested incurious eyes on me. They were a mummer’s eyes, an actor’s. But as before, I sensed the man’s rampant masculinity behind them, a magnetic assessment that told me I had a woman’s body, that under the black bombazine were white silken breasts, nipples to kiss and tease.

  ‘‘I was hoping to meet your wife,” I said.

  ‘‘She’s ill.”

  ‘‘I trust it is—”

  ‘‘Incurable. She’s in an institution.”

  ‘‘How sad.”

  ‘‘Yes. Unfortunate.” He twisted the glass in his hand, looking down into the amber liquid. I wondered how long his wife had been ill. A year? Ten? He seemed unaffected.

  ‘‘When I saw you last you were wearing a black arm band,” I said. ‘‘Was it someone close who died?”

  “My father.”

  It was my turn to offer, “I’m sorry.”

  “You needn’t be,” he said. “The old man drank himself to death. Couldn’t accept the changing times. He hated what was happening to Chicago, worship of the Golden Calf he called it. The fire and its devastation would have delighted him. This house”—he looked around—“was left to me be default. Both my older brothers were killed in the war. “But,” he said, shrugging, “it’s a common enough story among military families. Another sherry?”

  I sensed a slight embarrassment. He was the sort of man who rarely, if ever, unburdened himself. Not that those few sentences could be counted as a confession. But I had never heard him speak in personal terms before.

  “No more sherry, thank you. Colonel. I really ought to be going.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  I told him.

  “I know the place. Rather dreary, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but I had little choice.”

  “Hmmm. How is it you haven’t returned to Virginia? I take it your husband was buried there.”

  “I . . . wasn’t up to travel at the time.”

  He nodded. But I don’t think he believed me.

  It began to rain, pelting against the windows in windy gusts. “My hackney,” I said, rising.

  He, too, got to his feet. “It’s a pity you have to hurry off, Mrs. Harrison. I was wondering if you’d stay to dinner? I can have my coachman drive you back at a decent hour.”

  I would be alone in the house with him and the servants. Why had he asked me? Lonely, perhaps?

  “I don’t thi
nk so . . .”

  “It will be very proper, I assure you. I have an excellent cook.”

  I thought of the boarding house, the stained tablecloth, the stewed chicken and boiled cabbage, the shrill and booming voices asking to pass the potatoes, the bread, and I hesitated.

  He was waiting. If he had smiled or shown the slightest liint of seductiveness in his eyes, I would have refused him. But his look was sober, courteous—the hospitable acquaintance inviting me to share his evening repast.

  “Very well, thank you.”

  It was a marvelous meal: stuffed whitefish, beef tournedos, small new potatoes in red jackets, parsleyed carrots baked in honey, and an excellent Burgundy. I had forgotten how good food could taste.

  “My compliments to the cook,” I said.

  “Mrs. Sprockett will be pleased. Are you staying long in Chicago?”

  “I don’t know. It depends . . .”

  He waited with raised brows for me to continue, but I couldn’t tell him the truth. “Mr. Harrison had unfinished business, which I feel obliged to attend to.”

  “Ah.”

  Again I sensed his disbelief.

  “Shall we have our coffee in the drawing room?” He got to his feet, came around to my side of the table, and leaned over to draw back my chair.

  He was behind me as I rose. Though he did not touch me (as he had done in a similar situation, at our dinner party on Clay Street), his nearness was like an embrace. I stood for a moment with his breath on my rigid cheek, trembling inwardly.

  Then he put his hand on my elbow. “Shall we?”

  We walked across the foyer to another door. “The thing I admire about you southern women is the way you walk,” he said.

  “How is that?” I asked.

  “It invites familiarity while at the same time discouraging it.”

  “Really? I think you are making it up.”

  “I never make things up.”

  He opened the door on a darkened room.

  “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I’ll light a lamp.”