by Tom Murphy
“Can you come to me tonight at nine?”
Lily closed her eyes for an instant. She could hear the angels weeping. Then she looked at him: “I can try.”
“I’ll be a desperate fellow if you don’t.”
“Your mother said you’d torn something.”
He got up, smiling still, and picked up the Chinese robe from where he’d let it slide to the floor. Then Jack took one of its fine shimmering silken sleeves and tore it half away from the shoulder. It was a fine robe, well-sewn, and it had him straining like a common bricklayer before it tore. Jack handed the damaged robe to Lily.
“If you deliver it in person, Lily, you will not regret it.”
She looked at him and thought how he’d described his own sister. He thinks we’re all alike, that we’re all for sale, hookers every one. Lily flushed with the insult of it. He thinks I’d sell myself.
“I ask for nothing, sir.”
“Well do I know that, Lily. It’s part of your charm.”
He laughed then, and she could not be angry with him. And he kissed her, and Lily could feel the passion stirring in him, and thought of Susie’s words: “in a passionate condition.” Sure and Mr. Jack was getting himself into a passionate condition, and the fact of it partly amused Lily and also frightened her, for here were forces at work which she little understood, forces she might never be able to control, that could easily destroy them both.
She turned from him and walked quickly to the door. Jack’s parting words rang in her head with the lasting resonance of a clarion: “You’re beautiful, Lily, my Lily.”
Lily delivered his robe, in person, a few minutes after nine that night.
12
Lily was surprised at how little she felt the excitement of Marianne Wallingford’s wedding day when at last it came. She went to the church with Susie, for all of the servants had been invited, and the church was so filled with flowers they could hardly see the bride and her bridegroom, except as tiny figures far away. And as she heard the lovely music and smelled the fine flowers, and as the muted echo of Marianne’s marriage vows came floating through the hallowed air to her ears, Lily found herself thinking of Jack, and his bitterness about the great event.
Yet, if you could believe the New York newspapers, this was the grandest thing to happen since who could say when. It seemed a public event, for Marianne’s wedding burst upon the New York social scene like all the fireworks of a dozen Fourths of July, sudden and spectacular and, Lily guessed, as quickly forgotten.
On the day after the wedding, Jack went back to Yale.
There was no way for him to write her, no way for her to visit him in New Haven, even had he asked her to, which he did not. Lily went about her normal duties in the normal way, joked with Susie, helped Miss Marianne pack for her wedding trip to Italy. The routine of the great house protected Lily, for it kept her busy, gave her less time to think.
When she did think of Jack, it was not with love or hatred. She thought of him as an event, an act of nature and unavoidable, like a great summer storm. She thought of Jack’s lovemaking, and recalled it warmly. And Lily thought of Brooks Chaffee, too, and in a way that was so laden with admiration and wonder that in the vision in her heart Brooks was on some exalted plane far above and beyond the everyday grappling and tumbling and the joys and juices of making love. Brooks was less a man to Lily than a golden and unapproachable deity, and the fact that she knew him not at all, but to look at, amplified her estimation of his virtues while concealing any human failings he might have.
The winter of 1855 was bitterly cold, and spring crept in tentatively. March arrived unobserved, for all the change it wrought in the icy cold: there was nary a warm breeze nor a crocus. The bitter winds of winter touched Lily whenever she left the house, and they seemed to have invaded her very soul too, for Jack Wallingford had slipped out of her life with the quickness and skill of a practiced thief. Sometimes Lily thought she had dreamed their few times together, that his touch and his kisses and the fine words he spoke were no more than the result of some fever on her brain.
Then one day at the end of March Jack Wallingford came home.
Lily was fixing Mrs. Wallingford’s hair, and she was just about to insert a diamond pin into the heaps of lacquered curls when the news dropped on her like a hurled stone, stunning and without warning: “Yes, he’ll be with us for a few weeks, dear boy. He’s all I have left, Lily, now that Marianne’s off and away.”
Lily smothered a gasp and nearly stabbed her mistress through the skull with the point of the big diamond brooch, a bouquet of diamond flowers in the French style, each stone set on springs, to quiver with any movement. Lily concentrated on the pin, in silence: the diamonds danced before her eyes, shimmering, coming into focus and then turning all blurred. Lily realized that she was blinking back tears, and could hardly explain why.
For her to weep over Jack Wallingford! Ma would be spinning in her grave.
She decided right then to make no move, to communicate not at all. Maybe he had forgotten her, and maybe that would be for the best. It had been a temporary madness, like a sudden fever, and she had been cautious and calm as any millpond ever since the lad had taken himself back to college, where, after all, he belonged. And with Brooks Chaffee.
Lily put Chaffee out of her mind and tried to imagine Jack’s life at New Haven. As if there’d be a serving wench or a girl of the town quick enough to escape his hot hands! But thinking of Jack made her think of his roommate, and to do that suddenly became unbearable.
Automatically, glad that she had been nearly finished with Mrs. W.’s hair when the news came, Lily completed the job and let her mistress admire the results in her triple-faced dressing-table mirror. To Lily’s eye she looked ridiculous, something between a Christmas tree and one of Louise’s French whipped-cream desserts, but it was the fashion, no one could say it was not, and Lily had grown skillful at copying the latest hairstyles from the illustrated Paris fashion papers that arrived by clipper ship every week.
Mrs. John Wallingford might be nearly as wide as she was high, she might move with a kind of swaying, waddling motion like a duck out of water, but when she swayed, a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of jewels swayed with her, signaling that here went Mrs. John Frederick Wallingford of the Fifth Avenue Wallingfords, mother of the Baroness West.
Mrs. Wallingford stood up, smiled at herself in the mirror, then turned and smiled at Lily. Her eyes were bright and hard as small black buttons, and no one would ever call her a beauty. Her son had as much as called her a procuress.
She reached for her maribou fan, which had been specially dyed in Paris to match the peacock blue of the heavily reembroidered brocade of her gown, a blue so violent Lily herself would have shied away from it, a blue that seemed to almost burn the eyes. Mrs. Wallingford waved the fan with something like a graceful motion, and turned to the enormous gilt-framed mirror that filled the wall at the foot of her bed, and struck a pose that reminded Lily of some of the posters she had seen outside the theaters where some grand tragedy might be playing: Mrs. Wallingford’s plump and powdered elbow angled up, a shallow angle, true, for she was so plump now that it was getting to be an effort to raise her arms at all. But up went the elbow, and the fan half-hid her face. What was left were cascades of sapphires on her neck, a tiara above, and the explosion of blue brocade that was the gown itself.
“Oh, Lily,” she said in the voice of a naughty little girl, “spring is in the air tonight, can’t you just feel it all around us?”
“Yes, madame, it does promise to be a fine night.”
“Whatever would I do without you, Lily?”
“I’m sure you’d find someone else, ma’am.”
“But not like my Lily.” She giggled.
Lily curtsied then, and turned, and left the room.
Brooks Chaffee stood still as a hunter stalking deer, sheltered by one of the huge potted palms that divided the dancing area of old Mrs. Vanderbilt’s ballroom from the
saloon, transfixed by the sound of a girl’s laughter.
Caroline Ledoux stood on the other side of the palm-tree forest, gaily juggling the earnest attentions of four young men.
Brooks was glad, after all, that he’d come tonight. There had been four invitations on his dressing table, all for this evening, and he’d chosen Mrs. Vanderbilt’s, not for the glitter of her name, for the Chaffees were sought after, not seekers, and not because Mrs. Vanderbilt was some sort of distant cousin on his mother’s side—Brooks could never remember the exact connection—and surely not for the food or the music, which were dubious at best. Brooks had come to the great Italian Gothic pile of a mansion on Fifth Avenue tonight simply because Jack Wallingford was coming too.
And Jack had introduced him to Caroline Ledoux.
And meeting Caroline was like taking a high dive into a sea of ice-cold champagne. Brooks knew in his bones that this astonishingly beautiful stranger would change his life permanently and unalterably.
Brooks knew girls, and loved them, and relished the adventure of being loved back, often to a degree that became irritating. He knew whores and heiresses, girls of great beauty and wit, and girls who were just plain fun to be with. But he’d never known anyone like Caroline. You’re twenty already, Chaffee, and face up to it, you have never truly been in love. Brooks had often reprimanded himself for that. It was fashionable to be in love. Most young men he knew were constantly traversing the heights—and depths—of romance, scampering gypsies of the heart, swearing eternal passion five times a month, always to a new girl, always for the last time. It was comical, to be sure, and all the more so because the lovers took themselves so seriously, quite lost their sense of humor on the subject, would look at Chaffee or Jack Wallingford with great tragic eyes and tell the laughing cynics they would never understand. Brooks had tried to fall in love, had learned to give a very convincing imitation of being in love, and elicited all the right responses from any number of desirable girls. But he never fooled himself. To be in love! To be totally, deeply, damn-all in love, in love with all the strings cut, dancing on a high wire without a net, riding the runaway horses of love, scaling heights of passion from which the view was rare and dazzling and visible to nobody else—all of these things had been denied Brooks Chaffee, and he wished for them as a child longs for Christmas in July. He wanted the dazzle and risk of it, the losing of self in someone else, the exhausting climb of it, the dizzying plunge. Brooks wanted sex at its most rhapsodic, gilt and certified and framed by love, a glory to cherish for all the world to see.
And tonight it had happened!
He was afraid to examine this sudden miracle for fear it would vanish, perfect and fragile as a snowflake on your fingertip, elusive, unforgettable, and gone as you gasp at the wonder of it.
Caroline had walked into the Vanderbilt drawing room alone, dressed all in white, her long raven-dark hair combed simply, unadorned, as a child might wear it. The white dress, modestly cut, white gloves, and her only jewels simple pearl studs at each ear.
The sound and rhythm of the great drawing room changed instantly: the girl had such power in her. There was a sudden pause in the chatter, then a ripple of whispered questions, comments, suppositions. Who in the world was she? Brooks himself had contributed to the effect. Jack, luckily, was at his elbow by the punch bowl. You could count on Jack to know everything about everybody, especially everybody feminine.
Jack laughed at his chum, and for the first time in months Brooks felt annoyed because of the ribbing. And even this was a new and welcome experience, for it was the girl who caused his anger, not Jack.
“That my dear simpleton, is the notorious Caroline Ledoux.”
“Why notorious? And who are the Ledouxes?”
Jack laughed again. “Notorious, sport, because New York is a tiny little small town whose old wives have not much better to do than sit around the fire gossiping. Caroline’s a perfectly respectable little piece—a right dazzler, my sainted brother-in-law might call her—and the Ledouxes are very, very rich and respectable New Orleans cotton brokers. Caroline is considered quite racy in certain circles because she has been known from time to time to go out in the afternoons unattended, quite often to the old man’s store, I’ve been told, and you know what a scarlet adventuress that makes a girl.”
Now Brooks shared his friend’s laughter. The standards of their parents’ generation were as restrictive as the whalebone cages that gripped their middles. You’d have to be dead in your box with a lily before you met their expectations.
Jack Wallingford brought his friend right across the room to her. Brooks took her hand, and even through the fine kid-skin glove he felt a shock of emotion. Her voice was like the look of her, dark and velvet soft and rippling with the distant music of someplace warmer, somewhere where it was always midnight, where gaiety and danger performed ancient dances in the moonlight, a place where a man could easily lose his heart, or his mind, or both.
“It’s a right pleasure, Mr. Chaffee.”
“Will you be in New York long, Miss Ledoux?”
“I’m not sure.”
Mrs. Vanderbilt came up to them then, and claimed Caroline, and took her away. Brooks could cheerfully have shot the old lady dead. It had been the most conventional of greetings. Simple to banality. Then why are you sweating, you dunce? What’s that roaring in your ears? Do we notice a certain commotion in the loins, Chaffee, or do you carry a mouse in your pocket? And in Mrs. Vanderbilt’s bloody drawing room, for shame! He turned, blushing still, and followed her with his eyes. As did half the room, the masculine half, while most of the ladies pretended to ignore the new arrival. Well they might try. Caroline made even the prettiest of them look cheap, overdressed, too fussy. Jack was right. New York was a small town. Brooks surveyed the big room with new awareness. He’d known most of the people here, or their families, all his life. He was related to half of them by blood, and to all of them by position. The girls and their mothers were look-alike editions who slavishly read the same Paris magazines, who copied the same elaborate gowns and hairstyles, who draped themselves in ropes of jewels like Christmas trees, whose main occupation was cementing the thick and unyielding walls of the social fortress they had built for themselves.
Like all fortresses, Brooks suddenly realized, it was also a prison for the people inside.
Only when Jack touched his arm did Brooks Chaffee drift back to reality.
“You’re making a spectacle of yourself, old chap,” said Jack quietly. “The Moral Rearmament Society would most decidedly not approve.”
Jack took his friend’s arm and led him to a quiet corner of the huge room. Finally Brooks was able to speak. He felt as though he’d been kicked by a horse, dazed, not sure of himself.
“Tell me about her.”
It was the plea of a dying man.
“In truth, there’s not a whole lot I know. She’s about our age—possibly a shade older. Only child. Staying with her aunt. Mrs. Farragut’s her name. It’s probably a fair guess that Caroline’s husband-hunting, but what girl isn’t?”
“How well do you know her?” Brooks asked this hesitantly, for well he knew that Jack would swive a snake if it would hold still for him, and if Caroline had indulged in any amours with Wallingford, Brooks wasn’t sure he wanted to know about it.
Again Jack laughed. “You really flatter me, Brooksie. As far as I know—and that’s pretty far—the lady is a pillar of virtue, more’s the pity. Why? Are you planning a spot of debauchery and defloration?”
Once again Brooks felt the anger rising in him. But he smiled; this was too childish, the girl probably hadn’t given him a second thought, there were dozens of young men in the room, including at least five Vanderbilts, who had far more to offer of money and charm than he.
“I think she’s splendid, that’s all.”
“Well, you’ve got good taste. Splendid’s just what she is. Makes you think a little Southern tour might not be altogether unrewarding, if Caroline’s a
sample of what they grow down among the magnolias and cotton blossoms.”
Brooks drifted through the remainder of the evening like a man drugged. He coasted on his charm and on the good manners that were bred into him so thoroughly they had long since become automatic. A stranger might never have noticed a difference in his behavior. Jack Wallingford noticed, and grinned, and immediately forgot about it. Brooks hoped Caroline might notice him, changed or not, but he had no way of knowing what effect, if any, their meeting had caused in her.
All through the evening, through supper and the dancing afterward, and the midnight buffet, Caroline was surrounded by men. There were other very attractive women in the house, other centers of attention, but Caroline had a magnetism that would not be denied. No wonder she likes to go out alone sometimes, Brooks thought; it’s probably the only chance the poor creature gets!
He stood now, behind the palm, lurking like a cutpurse, feeling an unaccustomed sense of guilt, as though he truly was up to some dark deed. There was nothing rational in this, no clever plan. He simply wanted to be near her, by any means, fair or foul. Eavesdropping from behind the shrubbery was definitely foul, by Brooks’s own private code of conduct, yet there he was shamelessly doing it, and for all the world to see!
And wasn’t this what he’d wanted, dreamed of, prayed for? This sweet pain, this happy dread, this unfamiliar sense of being quite ready to risk everything he owned or ever hoped to own on one toss of the dice with no markers? Brooks learned many things at Mrs. Vanderbilt’s ball that night. He learned that there is such a thing as happiness, that happiness is a solid physical thing, an accountable treasure that waits for anyone who has the key, and that the key, for him, was a girl in white with bottomless dark eyes and a laugh that flowed and rippled through the night like all the moon-gilt Southern rivers of a poet’s dreaming.
It had become a habit with Brooks Chaffee to do a thing expertly or not at all, and now that moment seemed ripe to fall in love, he expected nothing less than that the love would be total, true, and forever, and that it would be returned in the spirit that gave it wings.
