by Tom Murphy
As far as Brooks Chaffee was concerned, this was the best afternoon of his sixteen-year-old life to date. Father’s gift of the horse for his birthday had been a true and glorious surprise, for he hadn’t known the Old Gentleman was aware that this was Brooks’s most urgent desire. Brooks was sure it must be all Neddy’s doing, for Neddy did know, but he’d die before admitting such a thing, which might penetrate his carefully built facade of worldly cynicism. Well, and to hell with all that! Here it was, the finest afternoon in October, an easy errand done for the Old Gentleman, and now off on a run with Neddy himself, rare treat that was. And even though Neddy was frankly using his younger brother to advance his own lecherous schemes, who cared? If the beautiful Sabrina van Vleck had a far less beautiful younger sister, and if Brooks must go for tea, it was little enough to do for Neddy. If only Neddy knew just how much more than this trifling thing I’m prepared to do for him…well, better not to think on it.
Brooks had named his new horse Wellington. Wellington had the happy knack of catching his master’s spirit, and this afternoon the beast was high-spirited enough to fairly fly. Neddy picked up the pace too, as they trotted, then cantered, then all but galloped up Mulberry Street. Brooks laughed from the sheer joy of it as they flew past the astonished vendors, some of whom smiled, while others shook their fists in helpless indignation. There was a chestnut vendor! Brooks loved chestnuts, but the day seemed too fine and the pace too deliriously fast to consider stopping. And Neddy, Brooks guessed, was far too inflamed with his ardor for the fair Sabrina van Vleck to pause for anything short of the Apocalypse. As Brooks flashed past the vendor, he noticed a tall young priest, and with him a frightened-looking little girl in the familiar uniform of the Catholic orphanage. Instinctively his strong young legs tightened around the prancing horse. The joy still vibrated in the crisp blue afternoon, and Wellington responded with fluency to his master’s urging, and gathered more speed. Brooks flashed by the priest and the orphan in a second, but that second was long enough for his golden mood to darken.
He wondered what it must be like to be an orphan. Then Neddy shouted for him to catch up, and Brooks gave the horse free rein and laughed out loud with the raw joy of being sixteen in the sunshine and on a true flying horse, galloping head-on into a world of infinite and infinitely delicious possibilities.
The boisterous riders left the street undamaged, and Father Gregory took Lily by the hand as they crossed.
They turned the corner of Prince Street again, and suddenly they were back at the orphanage. Lily’s day had melted like butter on a hot bun. She thanked Father Gregory, and promised him she’d think about the future. He left her on the walk, and stood watching her as she made her way along the path and up the stairs to the big front door.
When Lily reached the door, she paused for a moment, and sensed that he was still there. She turned, and saw him, and waved, smiling over the sea of black fears that churned inside her. He waved back, smiling, wondering what in the world would become of her.
Lily wondered the same thing herself as she opened the big oaken door.
Frances O’Farrelley could always be counted on for good cheer and distraction, and Lily was glad of her company as they sat on their neighboring cots in the dormitory, sewing and mending.
“Well,” said Frances with a finality that was all but papal, “I think it’s very romantic.”
“Criminal stupidity, Fran, that’s what it is.”
“Ah, just think of it, Lil: here we sit in our prison uniforms, sewing our poor fingers to the bone, and Fergus’ll be riding the bounding main, having the finest adventures, sporting with naked Injun maidens under the coconut trees, finding treasures maybe, digging for gold in California. Maybe he’ll come back to you rich, Lil, then you’ll eat your words, won’t you?” And she laughed and went on sewing.
Lily looked across the narrow space that separated her from her best friend. “Sure,” she said, giggling at last, “and isn’t it a wonder you didn’t run off with him, now? If I didn’t know you better, Fran, I’d say you were daft for the boy.”
“Get on with you, now! But I do feel for him, Lil, and isn’t it hard enough for a lad with his spirit, bein’ an orphan, bein’ here and all, and a sister forever naggin’ at you?”
“I should have nagged him more.”
“It’s off he is, then, and I wish him well.”
“Matron keeps telling me how God works in mysterious ways, but truly ’tis not such a mystery, for all his ways are the same, and they’re all aimed to torment me.”
“Lillian Malone, this’s blasphemy!”
“Oh, and don’t I know it, each new trial is a chance to earn more stars in my crown in heaven. Well, my crown has all the stars in it right now that I’ll ever want.”
Lily laughed as she said it, but her mind’s eye saw some celestial clerk, floating on high with a big ledger, and in it good marks and bad marks for all of them. How many stars for a father dying? A mother? For taking Fergy? For shaking her faith in the power of the Church and her unanswered prayers?
In a more somber voice, she continued: “I’d settle for less stars, Fran, and Fergy back, and that’s the truth.”
Fran sat quietly for a moment, wondering how to lighten her friend’s mood. “Shall I tell you a secret,” she asked with a dark and foreboding look, “if you swear to carry it to the very grave?”
“Oh, yes, do!”
“And do you swear, Lil, on penalty of eternal damnation and all the fires of hell?”
“Indeed, and heaven denied me, for all that.”
Frances stood up then and came very close to Lily and whispered in her ear, even though they were quite alone in the big dormitory. “’Tis Sister Claudia, Lil, she’s had an assignation!”
“No!”
“I swear it. The tall young man you met…”
“Gerald St. Clair!”
“It must be, him with a new cabriolet, very fine it was.”
“With two matched bays?”
“That’s it! Well, while you were out gallivantin’ with a certain handsome priest, up comes that cabriolet, gallopin’ like the divil himself was hard behind, and out jumps the tall young man and runs up the path, and before you know it he’s comin’ back down the path again with Sister Claudia, and her all in a flurry, and he hands her up and off they go at a gallop. Now, you know ’tis a rule of the sisters that they never go out but in pairs, if at all.”
Lily thought hard about her favorite nun, the harder because at this moment Lily herself felt like running away, escaping her doubts, outdistancing her fears for Fergy’s safety. If Sister Claudia broke a rule, she had good reason to. “Maybe they’re eloping!”
“That’s what I thought.” Fran was flushed with the shared thrill of it, and Lily too felt that in some unstated way they were both conspirators in the romance. If it was a romance.
“Well, there’s probably some simple explanation for it all, a family affair of some sort, sickness at home, maybe.”
“Or,” said Fran in the deep voice she used for her most outrageous comical stories, “it could be a forbidden love.”
Lily decided to humor her. Now that Fergy was gone, she felt closer to Fran than anyone except maybe Sister Claudia herself.
“He’ll go galloping away to some lonely place…”
“Where no one can hear her screams…”
“Plies her with whiskey!”
“No, champagne. They always use champagne. And then, when it makes her so dizzy she doesn’t know what’s happening, he works his evil will on her.”
Lily giggled and wondered where Fran got such detailed information on the world’s wickedness: the girl was a fountain of lurid tales.
“Still and all,” said Lily, “I think it’s a family illness.”
They sat with their sewing for a while, and Lily thought of all she knew about Sister Claudia and all the rumors she had heard, and it was hard to separate the facts from the speculations. They said she was rich, and
for sure there was no denying she was very lovely to see. They said she was one of four beautiful sisters—the Delaneys they were—all the toast of New York, or of Irish New York, for surely the Vanderbilts wouldn’t be having them, and that Claudia took the vow to escape from an unhappy love affair. And that had been before Lily or Fergy had come to St. Paddy’s. But the rumors had found fertile soil in the enclosed world of the orphanage, and there was never a shortage of romantically inclined little girls to dream about the beautiful young nun and to speculate on the forces that had caused her to give up a rich and worldly life for the Spartan disciplines of St. Patrick’s.
If it had occurred to anyone that Sister Claudia might simply have felt the calling, they never mentioned it. This simplest of explanations did not fit into the elaborate framework of romantic fantasy that surrounded Sister Claudia’s every move, and was therefore discarded.
It was while they were sitting, sewing busily and busily thinking about the latest episode, that they heard the sound of hooves trotting up Prince Street.
Like two shots from twin cannon, Lily and Fran were at the window.
“It’s them!”
Indeed it was. The now familiar cabriolet had stopped at the curb, and even as they watched, a tall, sober-looking Gerald St. Clair was helping Sister Claudia to climb down.
“Whatever they’ve been up to,” Lily whispered, glad that her trust in Sister Claudia’s integrity had not been betrayed, “it wasn’t champagne and making love!”
“Don’t be too sure.”
Sister Claudia and St. Clair were oblivious of the fact that their parting was being played out before at least two enthralled spectators whose small, intent faces were pressed hard against the dormitory window four stories above.
The nun and her escort stood for a moment beside the carriage, and Gerald held her hand as though he never intended to let it go.
No words passed between the lovers.
“I wish,” said Lily, “that we could hear them.”
“He’s swearing eternal love.”
“I don’t think they’re saying anything.”
“Then he is struck dumb with sorrow at losing her.”
“How do you know he’s lost her?”
“Just look at him, goose. Is that a happy man?”
“She’s not herself, either, that’s for sure.”
Finally Sister Claudia said something—something short and quick—and turned from Gerald St. Clair and walked up the path to the front steps, never once looking back, her head held high and on her face an expression that neither of the girls had ever seen there before. Sister Claudia looked as though she had seen a ghost, and that the sight of it had frozen her lovely face into an expression of astonishment and terror.
“Just look at her,” said Fran. “Surely her heart is breaking.”
“So’s his.”
Gerald St. Clair looked as though he had been struck a sudden and mortal blow. He stood beside his gleaming cabriolet and watched Sister Claudia as she made her way up the path and into the orphanage, and after she was inside he stayed there watching still, as if paralyzed, as if by waiting she might come back to him. Fran reached out and squeezed Lily’s hand. The girls looked at each other in silence, sure in their hearts that for once reality had caught up with their romantic games. For there could be no doubt about the sadness, the sense of impending loss and building despair that was gathering like so many storm clouds on the face of the tall, mysterious stranger. Without saying a word, they turned to the window again, and waited until, at last, he climbed into the cabriolet and drove dispiritedly away.
They went back to their sewing in silence, too, and sat there sewing for a long, delicious moment in which both girls tried to savor the unfamiliar, bittersweet delights of this glimpse into an adult world of high feelings and deep loss.
He looks, thought Lily, about the way I felt when Sister Cathleen showed me Fergy’s note.
Frances was the first to speak. “What,” she asked softly, “will we ever say if she comes up here, Lil?”
“We’ll say nothing. For we know nothing.” And Sister Claudia’s my friend, and you don’t betray friends, or do any other thing that might make them leave you.
“But we saw them.”
“And sure, don’t we see the moon, and which of us could be saying it’s made of green cheese or it isn’t? Get on with ye, Fran: it’s too much sewing you’ve had, is what I think, ’tis addling your head.”
“He’s the one what’s addled. Her lover.”
“A mortal, mortal sin that would be, and let’s not be the ones to say it first. Or ever. She is our friend, after all.”
“If you say so.”
They went back to their sewing and saw nothing more of Sister Claudia that day or the next. The routine of St. Patrick’s helped to smooth over this incident as it did all the other adventures in their emotional lives, great and small. The regular chiming of St. Patrick’s bells defined their life, woke them in the morning, marched them to prayers and to class and to their chores later on. The bells were soothing, constant and immutable, like the routine itself.
The routine helped Lily to think a little less about Fergy, and to think less about her future.
Still, there were times, often late at night, when the last whispers and giggles had died down in the dormitory, when Fergy would come to her more real than any dream, and then the fears would start up in Lily fresh and painful as though she’d never known them before.
Since Ma died, her most fundamental fear was to be abandoned, deserted, left alone in the world with all its dangers and temptations. Now Fergy had certified her fear by leaving St. Paddy’s, and even though Lily well knew why he’d left, she couldn’t reconcile herself to the fact of his being gone, and gone without telling her, warning her. It was as though the boy were halfway to dead already, and it was only a matter of time, and the waiting in this sure knowledge was part of the pain.
In her waiting, in her fear, and in the sureness of her fate, Lily had invented many a terrible end for her brother. She could summon up fatal storms at sea, attacks by wild savages with spears, dread plagues of the tropics, ambush in the goldfields—if God spared him till he got there—and dozens of other disasters of man and nature.
And although she was cheerful by nature, Lily could not simply be cheerful about this. In time her fears grew to the point where they might lie in wait for her even in the sunniest garden at high noon, or in church, or at a meal. Quite daft I am getting, she might tell herself, and did, but even mockery did not drive her fears away for long.
Even God himself must not know of her fears, for they could come sneaking up on her right in the middle of a prayer.
“Our Father who…Fergy just fell overboard…hallowed be…Fergy’s being eaten by a whale…thy kingdom come…it’s gold, Fergy, you were right…on earth as it is in heaven…those men have guns, watch out, Fergy…amen.”
If only I’d hated him.
Lily turned fourteen and saw the summer of 1851 turn into crisp blue autumn.
There was no news of Fergy, and there were no more romantic incidents involving Sister Claudia. The calm everyday routine of Lily’s life was vividly punctuated by her concern for Fergy, and slowly she learned to live even with this dreaded thing that was always near her, as though it had been a physical deformity like a humped back. She tried to think of herself, of Lily alone, and Lily’s future, and to evolve some sort of plan, for in her heart she knew she might never see Fergus again, be he dead or alive. That was Fergy, and that was life.
But every time Lily began to consider what her future might be, the specter of her runaway brother leaped up to stop her. There was always the enticing prospect of a golden Fergy with all his dreams come true, rich from the goldfields, sending a coach and seven footmen for her, even as he’d promised to do. And while Lily knew that was a fairy tale, the fairy tale had an insidious life of its own, alternating with other, more realistic, more frightening possibilities.
/>
There were plans in the air at St. Patrick’s, and they all concerned the grand new orphanage that was a-building even now, that would be ready by next year. Lily was a veteran now. She helped settle in the new arrivals with a sure hand and kind words, remembering vividly the terrors imposed on her by Bertha Dolan. Good old Dreadful herself was gone from St. Patrick’s now, gone into service as a cook’s assistant in a fine house on Murray Hill.
The rag doll, Hortense, lay almost forgotten in the wicker chest under Lily’s bed. She took Hortense out from time to time, not to play with but to help her remember her mother. Even Hortense was unreliable when it came to that. But Lily cherished the doll as a talisman, much as she valued the old linen-and-lace scarf rescued from Fat Bessie. One day, Lily told herself, I’ll have kids of my own, and they’ll play with old Hortense, and when my daughter gets married—to some fine gentleman like Gerald St. Clair—why, she’ll wear the scarf, and lovely she’ll look in it, too.
It was October when Fergy’s letter came.
Sister Claudia called Lily out of class, a sure sign of something most unusual.
The pretty young nun smiled, something that happened less often lately. She had a soiled envelope, and handed it to Lily.
“I know how you’ve been waiting for this, my dear,” said Sister Claudia, who then turned and went back to her duties.
Lily stood alone in the big hallway. Her knees trembled. She wanted to sit down. The only place to sit was the deep window ledge at the far end of the hall.
She held the envelope with two fingers, as though it might burn her, and walked gingerly to the window. It was late morning, a gold-and-crystal day with the sky blue and bright leaves dancing in a merry breeze. Lily sat on the edge of the window and looked at the envelope.
