He took the plate from my hands and set it down on a table. “Tell me,” he said, leaning close, “do you love Roger?”
“Passionately!” I retorted, hating him, hating his self-assurance, his mocking tone.
In the parlor, the company was speaking with some excitement about the new electric streetcars.
“The first in the world and we have them here in Richmond!” Mr. Bainbridge exclaimed, pride flushing his face. “They said Richmond died with the war, a moribund city that wasn’t good for anything but to be shoveled into the grave.”
“It’s because we are so forward-looking!” cried Mrs. Dooley, a gaunt woman with copper-colored hair. “The old aristocrats may still be moldering on their plantations, but their sons have come to Richmond and are making fortunes.” Mrs. Dooley, of course, had married one of those sons. “And you, Page,” Mr. Bainbridge asked, “do you plan to remain at Wildoak?”
“Yes, I do, sir. I want to go into breeding racehorses.”
“A gentleman farmer.”
“Not at all. If one works hard at it, racehorses can be very profitable.”
Mr. Dooley hooked his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets. “You’d make a peck more if you sold the plantation and invested in real estate or railroad stock.”
“Perhaps,” Page said with a disarming smile. “But it isn’t mine to sell.”
There was a silent flutter of fans, the clearing of throats, and then Jane jumped into the breach, saying, “Sabrina, dear, have you seen our Grand Exposition?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“But you must! The Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical Association—my, isn’t that a mouthful!—has sponsored it. And so many wonders!’’
“I’ve been back three times,’’ a Mr. Hardwick claimed. “There’s one exhibit that fascinates me—a high-speed internal combustion machine invented by a German named Daimler. It’s quite a device. He calls it a horseless carriage.’’
“Whatever is it for?’’ Mrs. Dooley asked.
“To transport people.’’
“Well! I never! What will they think of next?’’
A murmur of voices concurred. Roger went into a long description of a new type of mechanized loom he was trying out in his factory. Old Mrs. Stanard, a great hostess during the war, yawned behind her fan. Tansy Flood, young and freshly starched, passed around a plate of nougats.
Jane Bainbridge turned to me and said, “Sabrina, do you play? But what a question! I know you must. Your mother was accomplished at the piano. And she had a lovely voice.’’
“My musical talents are small, Aunt Jane. Certainly not good enough for company.’’
“Oh, fiddlesticks! We aren’t that grand. Let’s have a song or two.’’
The clapping of hands and cries of “Music! Sabrina, you must!’’ brought me reluctantly from my chair.
The piano was opened, the bench pulled out.
“What shall it be?’’ I asked, not looking at Page or Miss Baines, who sat in smug possession of his arm.
“ ‘Love’s Old Sweet Song’!’’
“I don’t know it,’’ I lied.
Not that one, I couldn’t. It brought back too many memories: Page leaning across the piano. Page gazing into my eyes, Page whistling the tune under his breath, Page . . .
“But everyone knows it!’’ some dowager cried. And then in a shrill, lisping falsetto she began to torture it.
So I played “Love’s Old Sweet Song’’ but did not sing. Even if I had wanted to, I would have found it impossible for the lump in my throat.
When the last bar died under my fingers, I turned from the piano with a smile, acknowledging the applause.
“More! More!’’ “Another!’’ “Oh, please do!’’
But I shook my head, opening my hand-painted Japanese fan and fluttering it to hide my tear-bright eyes.
On the way home, Roger said, “You and your cousin Page seem very close.”
“We’ve known each other since childhood.”
“I see.” In the dimness his profile seemed carved in stone. “You’re in love with him.”
“Why do you say that?” I replied a heartbeat later. “I’m fond of him, true. But I wouldn’t call it love.”
“I would.”
“You’re wrong,” I said. “Besides, he’s practically engaged to Deborah Baines.”
When I had been introduced she had given me a furtive once-over with catlike green eyes.
“Almost engaged,” Roger sneered. “Well, that doesn’t alter your attachment, does it?”
He turned to peer at me. “I would prefer you seeing him as little as possible. Of course, you can’t help meeting him in other people’s houses. But I don’t want him calling at ours.”
“I hadn’t intended to invite him, in any case. But surely, to put a ban on my own relatives ...”
“I can put a ban on whomever I like.”
My hand went to the collar of my cape, loosening it against the sudden flood of hot blood to my face. “You’re a tyrant, Roger Prescott! No, not a tyrant,” I corrected, remembering how he couldn’t face up to his father, “a bully!”
“Watch your tongue! You’re my wife, no matter how you feel about it. I won’t have people talking.”
“What of you?” I lashed out. “Is it all right for you to have your women?”
“If I’m discreet. A man is allowed such liberties. It is only natural.”
“Natural? What a quaint term, coming from you.”
He paid me for having the last word. He came to my room that night and used me violently, tearing me, going at me like a bull in rut, a forcible entrance, a brutal rape.
From the first moment of meeting my father-in-law I had suspected that he disliked Roger and that the feeling was mutual. But it was only after I had been in the house some weeks that I realized the depth of old Mr. Prescott’s disaffection.
Nothing his son did or said pleased him. He even found fault with Roger’s management of the mill, though how he could do this, I did not know, since he rarely left the study. Perhaps he had spies. A gray-whiskered man, neatly dressed in shabby serge, visited him on Thursday mornings. I never learned his name, but he looked as though he might be a clerk, an accountant—or an informer.
Mr. Prescott thought the building of a house an extravagant folly. The contractor that Roger had chosen was an idiot, he claimed, known to cheat his clients by providing shoddy materials at exorbitant prices. “Why you couldn’t stay here on Charles Street beats me,’’ he would grumble. “Perfectly good for my father and his father before him.”
The old man criticized Roger’s dress, the part in his hair, his choice of cigars, his “dandified fancy boots.” Nothing was too trivial to escape Mr. Prescott’s notice. Twitching his nostrils: “What’s that—a new scent? Shaving lotion, is it? Makes you smell like a damned pimp.”
Understandably, Roger avoided his father as much as possible. For this he was also condemned. The cranky curmudgeon could not stand the sight of his son but was piqued at his absence. “Where is he? What’s he up to?” he would demand of me. The occasional evening meal we shared was eaten under the lash of Mr. Prescott’s tongue. If I had not disliked Roger so, I would have felt sorry for him.
Strangely, except for that first meeting, the old man was not rude to me. He must have shrewdly divined that I would not buckle under, that beneath my outward show of meekness was a stubborn will. I might have had to concede to my husband, but no contract bound me to my father-in-law.
One afternoon he called me into the study, his inner sanctum, where the cleaning maid was allowed only once a month and then only under sufferance. It was an airless room that reeked of stale cigar smoke and the smell of dead ashes heaped high upon the cold fireplace.
“Sit down,” he ordered gruffly.
I sat, my glance wandering over the worn leather furniture, the walls lined with books, a bleary mezzotint reproduction of Washington crossing the Delaware. His desk was littered with
old newspapers and pamphlets, and an old-fashioned oil lamp with a blackened chimney acted as a prop for A Dictionary of the World and a morocco-bound volume of Textile Weaving in India.
Seated across this jumble of reading matter, Mr. Prescott observed me for a few moments before reaching for his pipe. “So . . . ! Are you in the family way yet?”
I might have expected such a question.
“If I remember correctly, sir,” I said, choosing my words with care, “I promised to inform you when and if such circumstances arise.”
“You did, but I’m anxious.”
“The answer is no, sir.”
He blinked, his pipe poised in midair.
“I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you,” I heard myself saying, for I hadn’t meant to apologize.
“What’s the matter with Roger?” he demanded.
Heat stained my face. Really—he was impossible! The horseless carriage may have been invented, but the old-fashioned amenities (at least in refined circles) were still adhered to. One did not discuss pregnancy, or matters remotely connected with sex, with men, except perhaps a husband, and then only circumspectly.
“I suppose it can’t be helped,” Mr. Prescott grumbled when I did not answer. Striking a match on the edge of the desk, he lit his pipe, his cheeks sucking in as he drew.
“Mr. Prescott, just why are you so impatient?”
“I’m an old man,” he said.
“But you are still hale and hearty.”
“So I am. Fit as a fiddle, contrary to what Dr. Blodgett says!”
“You’ve consulted a doctor?”
He puffed on his pipe. “I had a few pains in the chest. Thought it might be a touch of catarrh. But he says it’s my heart.”
“I didn’t know.” Was it his health that made him so cantankerous? Was the rude tongue and irritable grumbling hiding a fear of invalidism, of death?
“I want a grandson, Miss Sabrina,” he said earnestly. “I want to be sure the Prescott line goes on.”
“I’m doing my best.” Then emboldened, because he seemed less the despot, more human, I added, “Perhaps you will like the child more than you do its father.”
Setting the pipe carefully in the saucer, he got up from the desk. “I will if it bears the least resemblance to me.”
I said nothing, but he must have read my thoughts, for he added, “You must think me an egotistical old fool, eh? Well, admit it! Damn right I am, and with good reason.” He retrieved his pipe and lit it again. “You’ve probably noticed that Roger does not look a bit like me. There are times I wonder if he’s really mine.”
“Mr. Prescott!”
“It isn’t as farfetched as you think.” He paused, puffing furiously, his teeth clamping on the pipe stem. “You see, his mother isn’t dead, as he and most people suppose.”
“But I thought she was!”
Roger had told us that his mother had died when he was two while visiting relatives in Winchester.
“She isn’t dead. She ran off with a yeoman sheep farmer from the Shenandoah. They set out for the West, Oregon or Wyoming, it doesn’t matter which. Pioneers!” the word echoed with scorn. “So far as I know, she’s shoveling cow dung and scrubbing clothes on a rock near some dirty river, looking like Mrs. Methuselah.”
“But ... I don’t understand.”
He pointed his pipe at me, his fish eyes filled with hate. “He looks like her, every damned feature hers: the chin, the nose, the way his hair grows, so help me, the way he shrugs his shoulders. Nothing of me in him. Do you blame me for wondering? I want to live to see my grandson. Maybe in him I can find a bit of the Prescotts.”
He sat down again, staring glumly at the pipe in his hand. I knew now why old Mr. Prescott hated his son. Each time he looked at him he saw her, the wife who had run off with a yeoman farmer.
“Perhaps if you told Roger what you’ve told me, things might be easier between you,” I suggested.
"Tell him? Not while there is breath in my body. And as for you, Miss, don’t you dare say a word. I hold you to silence, do you hear?”
“Very well.” It was none of my affair. But I did wonder if his sour hatred of Roger hadn’t in some way been responsible for the warped man I’d had the misfortune to marry.
Mr. Prescott struck another match. The autumn wind sighed in the chimney and a little drift of gray ash blew on to the carpet. A board creaked, and a tree branch tapped at a window hidden behind the muffled folds of faded velvet.
“Well, Miss, that’s all I have to say. Except now that I know you. I’m curious as to why you ever married Roger.’’
“I—I thought I loved him,’’ I said, stumbling a little over the falsehood.
“Love,’’ he said with bitter sadness.
At that moment, moved by compassion, I actually liked the old man.
“I must admit,’’ he said, “I was dubious when Roger wrote and said he intended to marry you. Your lineage—not first rate, you know.’’
“No, I don’t know,’’ I said, insulted, reminding myself that this boor did not need my pity.
He stared at me from under his fierce brows, a debate apparently going on behind them. “You’ll do. There’s plenty of good blood in you. Well, now I’ve said my piece, you can run along.’’
After that talk I began to notice him more. His color was bad, and when he was angry—which seemed to be the case more and more often—his complexion would become mottled, reddish patches breaking out on his face, the lines around his mouth turning blue: At those times he would reach inside his pocket, extract a small vial, and pop a pill into his mouth.
The first time it happened Roger said, “One of Dr. Blodgett’s nostrums?’’
“I wouldn’t be taking pills on my own,’’ his father answered acidly.
One evening Roger came in late for supper, murmuring an apology as he eased himself into his place.
“It’s a wonder you bother joining us at all,” Mr. Prescott remarked, picking up knife and fork. “It’s past eight. Busy losing my money or running after some tart?”
Roger flushed and shot him a look of pure hatred.
“You ought to stay home and spare your ardor for your wife. She’s not in pup yet. What kind of a man are you?”
“Perhaps I take after you.”
There was an instant of stunned silence. I had never known Roger to answer back, not in this bold, sarcastic way.
“Well, well!” the old man exclaimed, recovering his speech. “So you think you take after me? What presumption! You’re a mollycoddle! A fop! Just look at that velvet collar, that baggy coat.”
“It’s a lounge coat. Fashionable. I don’t see why I should have to act the miser as you do, Father, and go about in a ragpicker’s trousers and stained waistcoat.”
Mr. Prescott’s face turned that mottled red. “Why—you— you—rotten ...” Spluttering, he fumbled with shaking hands in his watch pocket. “My pills!” he gasped. “Sabrina— on the desk—study ...”
I ran into the study and searched frantically through the welter of papers, books, pencils, and nibs, overturning a cut-glass inkpot in my haste. The vial was not there. I went through the drawers. No luck.
When I hurried back to the dining room, Mr. Prescott was slumped in his chair, his head lolling on his chest, the right side of his mouth twisted in a grimace.
“I can’t find them” I said breathlessly.
Roger, touching the edge of his mouth with his napkin, rose to his feet. “Perhaps I’d better fetch Dr. Blodgett.”
I had the butler and the gardener carry the old man to the sofa in the study. He appeared to have had a stroke and was just barely breathing. When the doctor arrived, panting a little, his coat glistening with rain, he put his ear to Mr. Prescott’s chest and pronounced him dead.
Roger gave his father an elaborate funeral suitable to the Prescott’s station in Richmond society. Since the old man had served in the Army of Northern Virginia during the war, his last rites were of a militar
y nature. Two drummers, their instruments muffled in black crepe, led the procession. The caisson carrying the coffin, draped with a Confederate flag, was drawn by a pair of ebony-plumed coal-black horses. Behind the caisson trotted Mr. Prescott’s restive horse (or one that represented his horse, for he had not ridden in many years), the empty symbolic boots slapping against its forelegs. Roger, I, and an elderly aunt in her dotage, swathed in mourning, rode in the first carriage, silently sunk in our separate thoughts. The funeral was well attended; some eight carriages had made up the cortege that rumbled through the streets to Hollywood Cemetery.
A week later flowers and letters of condolence continued to pour in, most of them from Mr. Prescott’s army cronies. My task was to answer the notes and acknowledge each wreath and funerary bouquet with thanks. Special cream vellum stationery bordered in black had been ordered and when it arrived I set to work. By the end of the second day, with a half dozen letters yet to be written, I ran out of notepaper. Thinking that Roger might have something suitable in his desk, I went into his room and began to look through the drawers. My search turned up assorted sheets of business paper and a ruled yellow tablet, but nothing I could use. When I reached for the last drawer, the bottom one on the right-hand side of the desk, I found it locked.
I did not think anything of it until later that evening as I sat alone in the dining room over a solitary meal. In the clockticking silence with the shadows crowding the lighted candelabrum, my fancy turned to that locked drawer upstairs. Why the lock? What did it hide: money, jewels, love letters?
Since his father’s death, Roger had not been home for dinner once. Most nights he did not come in until quite late, sometimes three or four in the morning. And there was that business about a handkerchief. The coachman had found it on the seat of the carriage and, thinking it was mine, had given it to the mulatto maid, Hazel, to hand over to me. It was a lacy piece of cambric redolent with patchouli. Neither I nor any of the women in our circle would use such a cheap scent.
I guessed that Roger visited prostitutes, but now I wondered if he had a mistress, one that he had set up in her own establishment and saw daily. Perhaps she was in love with him, and he with her, some woman a cut above the usual streetwalker who prowled Exchange Street or Blood Alley. I wondered what kind of woman, except a depraved one, would cater to his obscene appetites. The more I thought about it, the more curious I became.
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