by Tom Murphy
While Susie worried about Pat, and Lily worried about Susie, grand doings were afoot in the Wallingford mansion.
Mr. Jack was coming home.
“Ah, Lily, he’s the wild one, is Master Jack, a real divil, just eighteen he is, and the fine young ladies can’t stay away from him, nor he from them.”
Susie was enthralled.
“Near onto a year he’s been away, and they say he damn near had to flee the country, for wasn’t he caught climbing up the wisteria vine on the way to a young lady’s bedroom, and that more than a year ago, and him not quite seventeen at the time!”
Lily reserved her judgment on Master Jack, but she couldn’t fail to be caught up in the bustle and excitement of the preparations for his return. His third-floor suite of three rooms was aired and polished and freshened, and Louise was filled with plans for the grand homecoming banquet, for Master Jack was the apple of her sharp French eye and nothing but the best would do for the young man. Mrs. Wallingford seethed with plans too, eager to make sure the banquet would be worthy of young Jack and of the Wallingfords’ ever-loftier position in New York society.
And what a stirring and clanging and whisking it made! For three days before the big event the kitchen bubbled and steamed and echoed with the clash and chime of spoon against pot, the thunder of oven doors opening and closing, of ice being crushed and berries squashed in the big tin strainer, flour sifted, cakes baked, eggs magically transformed into fluted swirls of meringues so light they could almost float. There would be eleven separate courses, each one with its own rare wine, and only Louise and God himself knew how many separate dishes made up each course. Nine desserts were created, from spun-sugar castles, frozen custard garnished with fresh peaches in brandy, to a simple old-fashioned rice pudding with raisins that Master Jack had loved as a child.
A hundred guests there would be for the supper, and more in for dancing afterward! Extra waiters would come from Delmonico’s on Twenty-sixth Street. The ballroom was turned into an enchanted forest: Lily’s eyes all but popped from her head when she spied the florist’s men struggling to haul tub after tub of live six-foot orange trees fat with real fruit up the marble stairs to the ballroom. These—and there were fifty of them, no less—were supplemented with living rosebushes and regiments of cut flowers for the small round tables that ringed the dance floor. Two orchestras they’d be having, the one to spell the other so there’d be continuous music through the night.
Lily couldn’t think what it all must cost, or who could be worth it except that he must be like a prince, this son of the house of Wallingford. Mrs. Wallingford kept daguerreotype portraits of both children on her dressing table, taken by the famous and fashionable Mr. Mathew Brady in his studio down on Broadway. They stood, Miss Marianne on the left and Master Jack on the right, framed in heavy silver and staring right at the viewer with faces that might have been made of marble. Two minutes they’d had to hold the pose, so Mrs. Wallingford told her, and no wonder, then, that they looked like statues. But handsome statues, there was no denying it, Marianne all pride and grace and the hint of deviltry in her great dark eyes. Master Jack looked solemn, but from Susie’s tales his actions belied his portrait.
Susie put Lily up to hiding behind one of the huge urns in the second-floor hallway on the day of Master Jack’s return, the better to get a peek at this young man of mystery, this conquering hero for whose pleasure such grand preparations had been made. But hiding proved not to be necessary, for all of the staff were summoned into the front hallway to greet Master Jack formally. This was Mrs. Wallingford’s idea. She had read about such a thing in one of the Walter Scott novels she devoured like candy, of how they behaved in some old British castle, and damned she’d be if the Wallingfords put on any less of a show for Master Jack.
They waited and waited in the echoing polished marble reception hall. Old Mr. Wallingford, as ever, was away at his business. But Mrs. W. stood like a fat expectant hen, her head twitching nervously from left to right, as she checked and rechecked on the smallest details of the hall’s decor. It’s as though she were on trial for some crime, thought Lily, and her not at all sure she’s going to get away with it.
A coach came clattering up to the door at full speed and Mr. Groome ceremoniously opened the great door. Jack Wallingford stood there for a moment, taking in the scene. Then he began roaring with laughter. Still laughing, he went to his mother and kissed her.
“Still the same informal little cottage, I see, nothing altered.”
He kissed his sister, smiled and nodded at the servants, shook Groome’s hand and kissed both Mrs. Groome and Louise, who shrieked with pleasure, and vanished up the stairs.
All this time Lily could not take her eyes off Jack Wallingford.
He was so exactly unlike anything she had expected. His sister, Marianne, whom Lily knew but little, was a proud, moody girl given to fits of temperament alternating with other fits of silliness, none of it mixed with any noticeable kindness or good manners.
Lily liked Jack for laughing so readily at his mother’s pretensions. He looked very grown-up for eighteen, two years her senior and just the same age as Patrick, but worlds removed from either of them in the ease with which he moved, the grace with which he wore his fine clothes, the careless good nature that seemed to flow from him naturally.
Susie had told her that there was another, darker side to Jack’s nature, but surely his arrival gave no hint of this.
“I’ve seen him with thunder in his eyes, make no mistake, Lil, it ain’t all beer and skittles for our Master Jack, not by a long shot. Three fine schools they’ve had him in, and him asked to leave—given the boot would be more like it. He seems almost desperate, like, sometimes, the way he’ll ride a horse till the poor beast’s near dropping, and then leaving the creature for Pat to clean up. And there’s his drinking. Now, mind you, I’ve nothing against a friendly drop or even two, but this lad-o can truly pour it down, and when that’s mixed with one of his black moods…beware.”
Lily took this in, but said nothing, for she felt it was not her place. On the night of the great ball she and Susie stood by to help the ladies in Mrs. Wallingford’s suite, and it was impossible to avoid hearing the impression Master Jack was making on the female guests. Opinions were mixed. The younger ladies, especially the single ones, were captivated by the mischief in him, and a sense of mystery. Their mothers were not so sure.
“There’s a wild look to him, Cornelia, you mark my words,” said one overstuffed dowager to another as they panted and fanned themselves and sipped lemonade from the tiny cups that Lily offered on a silver tray. “Breeding tells, my dear, and we know how little of that there is in this case.”
“He is rather common, my dear, but there’s nothing common about the Wallingford fortune.”
They think I’m deaf, or part of the furniture, Lily thought with mounting anger. If they think the Wallingfords are so common, then why do they come here? They’d be all smiles and graciousness if Jack courted one of their daughters, damn hypocrites!
Lily decided that when she was rich and had maids of her own she’d be very careful what she said in front of them. Rich, indeed! And then she smiled at her folly. Servants, indeed, and her with life savings of just under twenty-five dollars!
Lily saw little of Master Jack in the next few months. He came and went on mysterious timetables of his own devising, often out until dawn, often sleeping until noon. Then one day as Lily sat at a small deal table in a corner of the servants’ hall, mending a tablecloth, the door flew open and there stood Master Jack, red-faced and sleepy-eyed, though it was nearly noon, and shouting.
“Louise! Louise! Where the devil has she got to? You could starve around here!”
Lily blinked at this unexpected apparition. Who does he think he is, carrying on so? But she realized instantly that for Master Jack it was not a question of thinking he was this or that. Being Master Jack Wallingford was quite enough, and it should be enough for Lily, too. She put
down her sewing and stood up.
“Louise is marketing, sir. Can I help you?”
He looked at her, squinted, then smiled. Lily had the familiar feeling of being part of the furniture.
“Well, maybe you can, miss. I am starving, it’s as simple as that. Slept right through breakfast. I’ll eat anything. The table. Have you any coffee?”
“That we have, sir; I’ll get some.”
Lily got coffee, which was kept in its big enamel pot warming all afternoon on the back of the wood stove. She poured him a cup, then went to the larder. There was Louise’s orange pound cake, and some fruit, and a bit of leftover pie. Lily arranged these things on a plate with a knife and fork and a napkin, and brought them to Master Jack. He smiled again, a big wide grin it was, friendly.
“Thank you…I don’t know your name.”
“Lily, sir. Lily Malone.”
“Thank you, then, Lily Malone, for you have saved my life.”
“You’re welcome, I’m sure.”
Lily turned, to hide the blushing. A fine young man he was, and that’s for sure, no matter what Susie says, or Pat. Down from Yale for the Christmas holidays just now, although from what Lily could see, Master Jack spent more of his time in New York than New Haven, even when it wasn’t holiday time. And, indulgent as she was in all things, his mother seemed not to mind. And as for Mr. Wallingford Senior, he cared not a fig for education, not he!
“Ejjakashun!” That was how old turkey-faced Mr. John Wallingford described the process, hooting derisively all the while, for what was the profit in books? There had been little enough ejjakashun for Mr. John, and he had his Emporium and his millions to prove how little any of it mattered.
The debates among the servants regarding the future of Master Jack and his sister were long and lively, but Lily took no part in them. It was Susie’s opinion, firmly held, that Miss Marianne would end up miserable in a palace and Master Jack would find himself happy in a gutter.
“For many a heart has been broken by that boy-o, and him no more than eighteen, and more’s to come, and with that and the drinkin’ and the tempers, what’s to become of him?” Susie delivered her speculations with a merry giggle as the two girls prepared for bed. “Or,” she went on, “don’t you care, Miss Lily?”
“I would care more,” said Lily softly, “if there were anything I could do to help the matter, one way or the other.”
There were other things for Lily to think about these days more compelling than the fate of this proud young man she barely knew.
After she had turned fourteen, the physical changes that are part of becoming a woman had been of great concern to Lily, but now other, more important changes were happening in her mind. For the first time, she found herself contemplating herself, her life now, and her future.
It had been a year since the last of the dresses she’d made for herself from the sheets of St. Patrick’s orphanage had been consigned to the dust-rag bin. Lily was still a small creature, but there was more flesh on her now, and the legs that had been like sparrow’s legs, sticks almost, had curves to them now. There were other curves—a rounding of breast and a swelling of hip. Only her hair remained the same, red as polished copper, and her eyes, green as jade.
Lily had her friend Susie instead of a looking glass, and Susie was quick to mark every new development. There was one small glass, in fact, just big enough to do your hair in, hanging behind the door of the garret room they still shared.
They still laughed and dreamed and made mad plans. Susie had done with Patrick now, and thanked every star she had managed not to get pregnant by him, for that would surely be the end. And Pat went his merry way, casual as ever, treating Susie with the same half-friendly, half-mocking banter, making it clear that she had been no more to him than a cool glass of ale on a warm day, that easily taken, that easily forgotten.
The romance had aged Susie McGlynn, made her quiet, more thoughtful. Lily herself had always been a listener more than a talker, observing as much as doing, for all her dreams and all her planning. There was nearly thirty dollars in Lily’s treasure-trove by now, secure with Mrs. Groome. And Lily herself had risen in the household. She was Mrs. Wallingford’s personal maid now, a familiar of Madame Pompadour’s green salon and the apricot silk boudoir beyond. From Mrs. Groome Lily learned a sorcerer’s bag of tricks for keeping Mrs. Wallingford’s fine wardrobe looking its best. She learned how to make an unlikely paste from gin and honey and French soap and water to clean unwashable silks like new, and how to steam gossamer crepe over a teakettle, and the wonders that could be worked from fuller’s earth and rectified spirits on all the spots a fine lady’s gowns and table linens were heir to. Lily learned how to pack the flowing dresses in crisp tissue paper, how to dress her hair in the latest styles, which oils she preferred for her bath, how to iron the most elaborate pleats and ruffles.
And as her life grew busier and her duties in the Wallingford household more responsible, Lily found that she thought less about Fergy, although when she did think of her brother it was with a sharp and irresistible pang of sorrow. Her old friend Fran from the orphanage had receded into the dim past, even though their last fervent parting had been less than two years ago. Nor had Lily returned to see Sister Cathleen, or Father Gregory. St. Paddy’s was as distant from today as Ma’s dying had been, and if the pain of remembering those years was less now, so much the better. Tomorrow began to mean more for Lily now than it had ever done, and as she saw her small savings grow, the idea that she might actually have a future, that life was more than living just for the moment, began to take root in Lily’s mind and to grow.
Lily found Mrs. Wallingford to be a rather silly woman, vain and selfish, but kind for all that, in the way that one might be kind to a small and helpless pet In Lily, Mrs. Wallingford seemed to find a kind of instinctive good taste. She complimented Lily on the small details of arranging a hairstyle or a bouquet of flowers, and soon Lily found that her mistress relied upon her for more basic suggestions regarding wardrobe, colors, accessories, jewels. It was an education, and Lily absorbed all she could.
Groome was a dedicated reader of the daily newspapers, and Lily tried to improve her small skill at reading by borrowing these when he was done. In this way she became aware of the greater world, the world of wars and chicaneries, of great natural disasters, promises made and broken, of wondrous inventions and outright frauds. The papers were filled with Mr. Phineas T. Barnum and his wonderful museum, of the simmering politics of Spain and Cuba, of the legendary temptress Lola Montez and someone deemed half-mad who wore men’s trousers and kept giving speeches about the rights of women: Amelia Bloomer.
But mostly what the papers were filled with was Fergy’s old dream, and reading about it brought all her memories of Fergy tumbling back in a painful cascade.
For the gold was still flowing out of the mountains in California and the rush of people eager for it was still moving west. Young America! Fergy’s old battle cry was still echoing loudly in the land and Lily found herself less deaf to its siren appeal than she had been when first she heard Fergy’s schemes.
If only I were a man!
Lily felt vague stirrings, a restlessness. Big as they were, the marble walls of the Wallingford mansion sometimes seemed to be closing in on her, a trap. And yet there was such comfort here now, now that she had become Mrs. Wallingford’s own maid, with Susie as a friend, liked by the Groomes and Louise, warm and well-fed. Part of Lily wanted to fly, to seek adventure, a new life. The other, greater part remembered the treacherously insecure past all too vividly. Wait, then, bide your time, learn, save your money, get yourself ready…for what?
And still Lily was restless. She was almost seventeen. Girls were women at seventeen. Many were married and mothers by then. Lily hadn’t met a man she’d feel like wedding. Nor had she set up her shop, nor put half a hundred other fantasy schemes into effect. There were days now when Lily wished that more of Fergy’s blood flowed in her veins. She could thin
k of Fergy now and not be reduced to tears. What energy he’d had! What dreams, and the guts to go chase them. There had been fires in her brother that it had taken an entire ocean to put out. The heritage of Big Fergus Malone, that would be, and she must have at least a bit of it herself, or so it seemed.
But what fires lived in Lily had yet to be ignited.
The summer of 1854 was quiet in the Wallingford mansion, for Mrs. Wallingford took both children abroad with her, and only the old man remained behind. He seldom ate in, but for his breakfast, which Groome brought to him on a tray. Lily tended to Madame’s wardrobe, cleaning and brushing and making sure there was camphor out against the moths, ironing what needed to be ironed, straightening the six long closets and making room for the bundles of new gowns that would be arriving from Paris and London and Vienna. It was growing ever harder to keep ahead of fashion, and Lily knew that Madame would be spending more time with the dressmakers of Europe than in the museums.
The season grew hot, the pace grew slower. Peaches and pears ripened in the orchard behind the carriage house. Once Patrick tried to kiss her in the stables, and Lily gave him a great smack, half-playful but with force enough behind it to show him what-for. Let him not think of her as another of his playthings, to be toyed with and discarded and likely ruined, too, in the bargain!
“Get on with you, then, Pat!” Lily said, laughing. “For what manner of hussy do you fancy I am?”
“Fancy you is just what I’m doing, Lily, for sure you’re blossomin’ like the very roses in the garden.”
He reached out and caught her wrist then, and pulled her close. Lily could feel the warmth of him in the warm stable, and she smelled the man-smells of him, tobacco and sweat and something else, dark and compelling. He smiled the slow mocking smile and drew her closer still. Sweat gleamed on his broad smooth chest, seen beneath the coarse shirt unbuttoned against the heat.
