by Tom Murphy
“How do you do,” asked Lily softly.
“Ha! Right now perhaps not so well, but we do not worry, yes? Welcome, Lily. A pretty name, and a pretty child.”
Lily blushed. Compliments were not the style of St. Patrick’s orphanage.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
Mrs. Groome had left the kitchen, and now returned with a girl only slightly older than Lily, but much bigger.
“Lily, this is Tess Reilley, our parlormaid. Tess will help you with your trunk, and show you to your room—which you will share with our Susie. Wherever she is.”
Tess answered, a bit sharply Lily thought: “On another errand for Miss Marianne, more likely than not. Leavin’ her betters to do her own chores, or so she thinks.”
“Well, Tess,” said Mrs. Groome evenly, “let’s talk about that later. Why don’t you help Lily with her trunk, and get her settled in, and then, Lily, if you’ll come down to me, I will introduce you to Madame and show you the house.”
Lily and Tess took opposite ends of the wicker trunk and headed for the stairs.
There were so many new things for Lily to see in the Wallingford house that at first she thought she might go blind from the dazzle of it all. Even the back staircase was a revelation: all dark walnut and turned balusters and fine little carpets on the landings. There seemed to be a hundred of these as Tess and Lily climbed bumping up the four flights to the servants’ garret.
“Just wait,” said Tess, puffing, “till you see the grand staircase, all white stone it is, just like the outside walls, and with a fine iron railing that has a genuine gold-plated handrail on top, so’s it never needs polishing like all the damned brass does.”
Tess Reilley, like Mrs. Groome and Louise, was wearing an everyday dress with a white apron over it. Lily had expected uniforms, in fact looked forward to them, for she was unsure of the dresses she and Fran had stitched together in St. Paddy’s.
Finally they reached the top. There was a long hallway that ran all the way down the length of the mansion under the mansard roof, punctured at twenty-foot intervals by small round windows. A dozen doors opened off this hallway, and Lily learned that these were storerooms for linen and old furniture, and the sleeping quarters for all the female servants. Mr. and Mrs. Groome, as befitted their lofty stature in the servant hierarchy, had their own rooms on the ground floor and, Tess said, hardly ever ventured all the way to the garret. But Louise lived here, and Tess, in a room of her own, and here Lily would share a room with Susie McGlynn, the upstairs maid.
“Well,” said Tess flatly, “here it be.” She opened the door of a small room halfway down the hall. It might have been fifteen feet wide and a bit longer than its width, but to Lily it seemed like heaven itself after the big crowded dormitory at St. Paddy’s. There was one small round window at the back, two cots at opposite sides of the room, under the window a small night table and twin pinewood chests of drawers flanking the cots. On the night table stood an oil lamp. Clean sheets and blankets were neatly folded at the foot of one bed, and Lily assumed that this would be hers.
They set the wicker trunk at the foot of the unmade cot. Brass hooks had been screwed into the wooden wall for hanging clothes. Lily decided she could unpack later. She turned to find Tess staring at her, hands on hips, appraising.
“So it was St. Paddy’s they had you in, was it?”
“Nearly five years.”
“And tell me, then, is it true they tie you to the beds there and make you fornicate with the priests, and worse?”
Lily looked at Tess, stunned. She had heard coarse language, and plenty of it, as who could not, being about Fergy? And well she knew the stories people told about the nuns and priests, and hadn’t she heard the same about the Protestants? But the naked venom in Tess’s voice and the hateful look in her eyes were truly frightening. Lily didn’t know whether to laugh, or scream, or to strike out at her tormentor. Then it came to her: She’s Dolan, on the first day I came to St. Paddy’s. And Lily’s feeling of outrage changed to a kind of pity mixed with not a little scorn.
“No, Tess, that is nothing like the truth.”
“Yes, and that’s another thing we hear,” said Tess, rolling her small eyes toward heaven. “We hear that they also teach you lying from the cradle, and thievin’ too, isn’t that so, slut?”
Lily could think of only one thing in that moment, and the thought of poor Bertha Dolan was all that saved her from running down those dark stairs and out of the Wallingford house forever. For Tess Reilley, Lily saw at once, was Dreadful Dolan all over again, only possibly worse, more sad, more lost. There was a burning instant when Christian patience and charity warred in Lily’s brain with the quick impulse to smash the oil lamp over Tess’s thick skull, but Lily’s experiences with Dolan had long ago taught her that this was probably exactly what her tormentor would like most. So, instead, Lily smiled.
“The angels will be weeping for ye, Tess,” was all she said. “And right now I think Mrs. Groome wants to see me.”
Lily turned and walked out of her new room and down the hall. As she had mentioned the angels weeping, something had changed in Tess Reilley’s hate-filled eyes. Tess, then, was Catholic. Tess knew about how the angel bands wept for sinners. There might be hope for Tess, then. But Lily was very glad that Tess would not be sharing the room with her.
The dark stairs seemed to go on forever. If they were this dark in the middle of a bright afternoon, Lily could only guess how dark they might be at night. She had passed the third-floor landing when the singing reached her ears.
It was a deep voice, a man’s voice, and a pleasant one. And he was singing the popular song by Stephen Foster: “Wa-a-a-y down upon the Swan-e-e-e-e River…” Lily didn’t really know the music, although the song had caught on so, you could hear snatches of it sung in the streets any day, and it had even crept into the cloistered enclaves of St. Patrick’s. The voice went on, a little slurred, but pleasant anyway, growing louder as Lily made her way down past the second-floor landing: “…that’s where my heart is ye-e-e-e-a-a-rning e-e-e-ver…”
She turned the corner of the middle landing between the first floor and the kitchen level, and nearly stepped on him.
An enormously fat man sat on the top step, leaning back, resting on both elbows, a bottle of whiskey in one hand, singing plaintively. He was neatly dressed, obviously a man of some position in life, although not, Lily thought, a true gentleman. He was wearing very clean tan corduroy breeches, boots that might have been made for riding, a white shirt open at the neck, and a dark green linen jacket.
“…that’s where the o-o-ld folks stay.”
“Excuse me, sir, if you please,” said Lily, thinking that this was most definitely not the orphanage of the Sisters of Charity of St. Patrick’s Cathedral parish, nor anything like it.
“Wha? What have we here?” He turned, beaming cheerfully, not focusing. Then, casually, as if by a reflexive action rather than any malevolent intention, the fat man reached out and caught Lily by the ankle and held her tight. She very nearly fell headlong down the stairs, but luckily there was a railing, which she grabbed as if for dear life. And she wondered whether it was time to start screaming for help.
“Why, why, it’s a fine little minnow, a very little goldfish minnow, all golden hair, red-gold, if ye take my meaning. So, pray tell me, pretty Miss Minnow, what might be your name?”
Lily froze, unable to speak or to move, sure that she would be raped on the spot and murdered soon after, and who was there to hear her if she screamed, or care for her fate? But she was spared whatever fate might have been about to engulf her by the blessed sound of a now familiar voice.
Verity Groome was on the warpath. “I see, Lily,” she said, in tones that would put fear into the heart of a rampaging elephant, “that you’ve had the pleasure of making Mr. Groome’s acquaintance already. Mr. Groome, you are plainly obstructing traffic in your present recumbent posture. It would be vastly more suitable, not to say prudent, should
you remove yourself to your chambers. You will oblige me by doing that forthwith, Mr. Groome.”
Lily looked from one Groome to the other, and thought about what Pat had told her on the ride from St. Paddy’s. Groome smiled like any illustration of Father Christmas, corked the half-empty bottle, and rose with surprising agility to his feet.
“Of course, of course, my treasure,” he murmured, smiling in several directions as if at an unseen audience, “as ’twas ever the case, you are absolutely correct.” Then, nodding to Lily with all the noblesse of a hereditary monarch forced into temporary exile, he tiptoed down the stairs and vanished into the gloom.
Mrs. Groome wasted no time on explaining the obvious. “Come, my dear,” she said briskly, “for Mrs. Wallingford is waiting.” And she led Lily back up the stairs to the first-floor landing.
There had been a certain amount of gilding and glitter inside of old St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and statuary richly carved, and fine woven altarcloths, and sometimes the bishop wore his best surplice, which was splendid indeed, with its threads of gold—real gold, said Sister Mary Agnes, who had reason to know, for it was she who took care of the precious thing—and there were other, smaller splendors to be glimpsed. But nothing in Lily’s experience prepared her for the sights and smells that awaited her on the other side of the servants’ door to the family quarters in the Wallingford mansion.
Mrs. Groome led Lily up the stairs to the first-floor landing, then on past it to the second floor. She explained the house as she went, although it would be months before Lily completely understood the huge place. The ground floor, it seemed, was all reception rooms, four of them, each more splendid than the last, and the kitchen. The second floor contained the dining room, the library, the ballroom, the billiards room, and the suite of Mr. and Mrs. W. The Wallingford children, Jack Junior and Miss Marianne, had suites of their own, which, along with the guestrooms, filled the whole of the third floor.
By the time the housekeeper had finished this lecture, they had walked down a small, dark-paneled hallway and were faced with a large but in no way unusual door. Mrs. Groome opened it casually.
Lily gasped.
They stood upon an acre of colored marble inlaid in an intricate pattern that seemed to want to be stars and snowflakes all at the same time. They were in a huge hall that led off the main staircase. Lily could see the gold-topped railing glinting far away. The hall was long as a church and nearly that empty, polished like mirror glass, and guarded, or so it seemed, by huge porcelain jars—Chinese and priceless, she later learned—and in the jars, huge palm trees. Lily had never seen such marble, such jars, such trees, or so much space, and all of it unused. She stared at one of the jars in fascination. It frightened her, for clearly depicted on its side was an extremely formidable dragon in bright blue, with a yellow underbelly and enormously long sharp claws, and breathing fire. And no St. George to slay it. The ceiling was so far overhead that it was lost in deep shadows, although Lily caught a glint of gold up there, and colors. Then Mrs. Groome tugged at her arm, and they were off down the hall.
They’ll never accept me, Lily thought. I’ll never belong here, this is for kings and princesses, maybe for God Himself. And for the second time in this dizzying afternoon Lily thought of something Pat had told her: “Oh, they spend it,” he’d said, “they spend it, do the Wallingfords.”
Their shoes clicked like horses’ hooves on the cold marble. If they don’t have carpets, Lily told herself, it isn’t because they can’t afford ’em.
At the end of eternity was a door. The door was huge, a double door, with double handles that curved like snakes and looked like gold, and old gold at that. Mrs. Groome knocked briskly. Lily was learning that almost everything Mrs. Groome did, she did briskly. A faint voice bade them enter. Lily thought that a lion’s roar would probably sound faint through doors like that.
Mrs. Groome opened one of the double doors and ushered Lily in ahead of her. There was a small chamber, empty, completely lined in pale green silk. Flowered ribands were embroidered into the silk, all ivory and roses and blue cornflowers, and all done by hand, and by genius artisans who probably went blind doing it, Lily reckoned, staring at the delicate work in complete awe.
There was more to be awed about. All of the furniture in the green-walled antechamber was old, and ivory-painted, and just touched here and there with gilt. The carpet was woven too, and with greens and blues and roses almost identical to the patterns in the fabric that covered the walls. “French,” Mrs. Groome whispered, “said to belong to Madame de Pompadour herself!” Lily didn’t know who Madame de Pompadour was, but her taste in antechambers struck the girl as dazzling.
They came to another door, framed in antique ivory-painted wood, and this door stood open. The room beyond it was all done in pale shades of apricot, set off with ivory and a deep rust-colored carpet. There were many tall windows in the bedroom, all hung with apricot-colored silks. The bed was very large and covered in an ivory-and-apricot material that looked like—and was, on Lily’s closer examination—old lace re-embroidered with apricot ribbons. One ivory-paneled wall was all closets, and several of these stood open, revealing literally hundreds of gowns in more colors than Lily Malone had ever thought existed. At an ivory dressing table a lady sat, wearing a loose apricot-colored silk wrapper. She held up a rope of diamonds to the afternoon sunlight. Lily stood transfixed. Each of the diamonds was fully as fat as a grape, and there must have been a hundred of them. They caught the sunlight and threw rainbows into every corner of the enormous room. It was as though a star had exploded, silently, without hurting anyone. Mrs. Wallingford sighed, and sent the rope of diamonds clattering down to the table-top.
“Not very summery, are they, Groome?”
“What would you be wearing them with, ma’am?”
“The blue peau de soie, I believe, and my new blue Turkey shawl, you know, the one with the gold paillettes all over it.”
“The pearls might be refreshing, ma’am.”
“But everyone wears pearls.”
“The sapphires?”
“Of course! I’d completely forgotten about the sapphires.”
There was a large jewel case on the dressing table. Mrs. Wallingford leaped to her feet, inspired now, and ran to the closet, from whose topmost shelf she hauled down another, larger jewel case. She brought this to the dressing table, opened it, rattled through the invisible collection that seemed to fill the chest, and at last, with a small expression of glee, hauled up a sapphire-and-diamond dog collar with all the satisfaction of a fisherman who has just hooked a record-breaking trout.
“What,” Mrs. Wallingford asked her reflection in the dressing table’s mirror as she held the ten rows of shimmering blue stones, offset with even-more-shimmering diamonds, to her throat, “would I ever do without you, Groome?”
Lily fought to keep from smiling. Her new mistress looked almost precisely like Fat Bessie Sullivan, and all the diamonds in the world could not change that. But, unlike Fat Bessie, who was a bully and a sneak, Mrs. Wallingford had a kind face, a happy smile, and nice eyes. At last she put down the sapphires and turned to Mrs. Groome.
“I’d forgotten!” She stood up then, and Lily forgot about Fat Bessie, for only the plumpness and the shape of this lady’s face were similar. “You,” she said, coming very close and taking Lily’s small chin in one plump hand, “must be the new girl from St. Patrick’s. And I have forgotten your name.”
“Lily, ma’am. Lily Malone.”
“Lily. Lily. That’s very nice. And, you are an orphan, Lily?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, Lily, I hope you will consider this your home, and that you will be happy here. How old are you, Lily?”
“Fifteen, ma’am.”
“How lovely! Well, then, Lily, I’m sure Mrs. Groome, upon whom we rely for everything, will have many things to show you. Obey everything Mrs. Groome says, and all will go well for you, Lily.”
“Yes, ma’am. Th
ank you, ma’am.”
Inwardly, Lily all but collapsed with relief: She’s human, she doesn’t wear horns, she knows how to smile, she was nice to Mrs. Groome!
Mrs. Wallingford dismissed them with a vague smile, and Mrs. Groome guided Lily back through the green antechamber that had belonged to Madame de Pompadour, and down the shimmering marble hallway to the top of the grand staircase. All Lily could see was a dark-paneled wall, although she knew perfectly well that they had walked through that wall not half an hour before. Mrs. Groome walked casually up to the paneling and pressed a corner of it. On silent pivots the entire panel swung back, and once more they were in the sedate and somehow comforting gloom of the servants’ quarters. It was only then that Mrs. Groome spoke.
“And what did you think of your mistress, Lily?”
Lily remembered the jewels glinting in sunlight, and something she could not name made her think of the day her mother died in the hovel on Mulberry Street, dead these nearly five years now, and gone in poverty, with only Lily left to remember her. And Lily wondered if it was possible to be rich and be good, both at the same time.
“I think,” she said quietly, “that she has a nice face.”
This was greeted with silence, and Lily then wondered if somehow she had said the wrong thing, if, perhaps, she wasn’t supposed to like Mrs. Wallingford and her diamonds.
“Well, Lily, remember this when you have some hard chore set to you, child: it wasn’t all that long ago that Mrs. W. herself was clerking behind a counter, and not a very grand counter at that, in the first store that Mr. John set up, back in 1828.”
“Did she, truly?”
