by Tom Murphy
Fool, and all you’ve done is shake her by the hand, and once, for a minute!
Her voice curled around him, the laughter spiced with unspoken promises, the way good claret reminded him of any number of fruits and flowers more desirable than the homely grape. You could bait traps with that laugh, he thought, and catch some very big game.
It now seemed to Brooks that he’d wasted all of his twenty years. They had been spent without Caroline Ledoux and were therefore empty, worthless, to be discarded and forgotten. He sighed. The ball would soon be over, he’d be obliged to go out into the cold and inhospitable night, a night that surely would be darker because it contained no glimpse of Caroline.
He had never thought of himself as having any special fate, any all-consuming hopes or fears or urgent destiny. And she had changed this part of him too, had Caroline, and with one gaze from those eyes, one hint of a smile. Chaffee had a destiny now, and its name was Caroline. Brooks, knew, every atom of his mind and body told him, commanded him, compelled him to dedicate his entire being, from this moment and forever, to the pursuit and capture of Caroline Ledoux.
Once again Jack’s voice came to him as a shock, interrupting the dream. “Damn shame I’m not a pickpocket, Brooksie my lad, because you are prime material tonight. Is it the wine, or the lady, or have you just gone off your head altogether?”
“Hello. You’re perfectly right, Jack. I’ve taken leave of my moorings. And I think you’re to blame.”
“For introducing you to the fair Ledoux? A pleasure, old chap, I’d do it anytime.”
“Once was quite enough, thanks.”
“I do believe she’s got you.”
“The question is, how do I get her?”
“I truly might be able to help you there, sport. My old gentleman is acquainted with her old gentleman, in trade, don’t you know, terribly vulgar and all that, but I have heard Dad mention Mr. Ledoux. I’m fairly sure an introduction could be fixed up, if you’re really going to be serious about it.”
“Serious is the word for it. You’d do that? You are a friend, Jack. That would be splendid.”
“It’s as nothing, sport. Hell, and haven’t I performed the introductions at Madame Duveen’s? It’s only fair an innocent lad like you should meet some of the gentry too, from time to time, so long as it doesn’t go to your head, and that sort of thing.”
Brooks laughed. Jack could always make him laugh, even when the object of the joke was Jack himself. Jack often blasted his family’s social pretensions, and Brooks found that refreshing in this sea of social climbers who seemed to do nothing all day and all night but elbow each other aside in an eternal struggle to crowd into the right drawing rooms, like so many salmon fighting their way upstream to spawn and die.
They left Mrs. Vanderbilt’s together, but this night Brooks turned down his friend’s invitation to further adventures. Meeting Caroline had been adventure enough for Brooks, for that night and forever. Jack went rattling off in a cab, but Brooks walked the fifteen blocks down Fifth Avenue to Washington Square. It was after midnight, and the night was just as he’d feared: dark and inhospitable and empty of Caroline. As his bed would be empty of Caroline, and his breakfast table, and possibly even his life. But that was a prospect too terrible to contemplate, he mustn’t think that way, for that way would be fatal to his dream, and maybe even to his life, for surely no life would be conceivable if it lacked her warmth, her beauty, and her laughter.
Brooks walked with long strides, his gloved hands thrust deep into the pockets of his greatcoat, looking neither right nor left, dreaming the dreams that only an untried heart can know, painting a future in shades that were richer and brighter and more sensuously alive than any pigment that ever touched palette or canvas.
Washington Square was a black hole in the night, ringed by gas lanterns whose points of yellow light only emphasized the greater darkness in the park, a darkness that Brooks knew would be echoed in his heart forever if he didn’t win the affections of Caroline Ledoux, and quickly.
The Chaffee town house was usually a reassuring sight to Brooks, the soft brick of its walls and the simple white Grecian pillars of the portico quietly mocking the vulgarity of the nouveau-riche châteaux and palazzi and schlossen that were sprouting up the avenue like bloated mushrooms after a particularly long rain.
The house had a dignity all its own, and Brooks liked that, respected it, savored the understatement of the building and the family who lived there, who never felt they had to shout who they were or what they owned because everyone who mattered already knew these things, and everybody who didn’t matter was best forgotten.
It was a small, snug, smug world, and Brooks had always found it very comfortable. Until tonight, when every part of his world had been shaken to its foundations and below. And the arriviste Wallingfords might be the means to his meeting the girl on a more familiar basis! How that would scandalize his mother. How that would delight him. He smiled then, climbing the nine white limestone steps to the white front door.
The gas light still glowed in the foyer. That meant Neddy must still be out. His older brother hadn’t been at the Vanderbilts’ tonight: vaguely, and only for a moment, Brooks wondered where Ned Chaffee had been. Now that Ned was graduated from New Haven, they hadn’t been seeing each other as often as Brooks would have liked, for he fairly worshiped the older boy. Two years wasn’t so much of a difference now that they were grown up, but as boys it had been vast, and Neddy had always been the hero, bigger and bolder and quicker and the apple of everyone’s eye, for good reason. Brooks had always felt that he lived in Ned’s shadow, but there was no tinge of jealousy in this; he accepted it as part of the natural order of things, and the boys had a special kind of friendship.
Maybe Neddy would know how to approach the courtship of Caroline. Brooks turned the key in the big brass lock. Tomorrow the campaign would begin in earnest. Tomorrow would be the start of a new life, a new Brooks Chaffee. Tomorrow! And Caroline. Caroline. Caroline. He rolled the word on his tongue like some fine confection. The name sang to him. Caroline! Everything that was rare, perfect, eternal, was Caroline. Love was Caroline. Dawn washing a Venetian canal with gold was Caroline, and the songs of birds and the music wind makes dancing through groves of spring blossoms. Caroline was light itself, and hope, and love. And Caroline would be his, or he’d die trying.
Brooks opened the door, locked it behind him, and climbed the familiar stairs to his room on the third floor. There he lit a candle and undressed, washed, and climbed into his bed. The last thing he thought of before sleep came, the first thing he’d know on waking, was the name, the look, the sound and the hope of her. Caroline!
Fate was named Caroline, and now he’d found her.
13
Lily looked at Jack Wallingford and wondered how to end it. Nearly a year had passed since that first night, just before Miss Marianne’s wedding. And for all the charm in him, and the passion too, and the need he had for her, the affair had brought Lily nothing more than doubts and fears, for hadn’t she refused all his gifts, and offers of money, and other, less specific hints of greater, more dangerous generosities to come? Lily hated the sly parts of it, the sneaking up back stairs at odd hours, the invented errands, the stolen moments, the grave risk to her position in the household.
And now he had invited her here! To this little suite of rooms in the small, comfortable hotel on West Sixteenth Street. At a glance, Lily knew what the rooms were for. Here’s where he takes his fancy women, and here am I, no better than they are, maybe worse!
It was obviously more than a transient apartment well-furnished with things Lily recognized from the Fifth Avenue mansion, and with small personal touches to make the hotel’s furniture more homelike. A coal fire hissed and crackled in the little black marble hearth. There was a tray set with cut-crystal decanters and glasses. Jack wore the familiar Chinese silk dressing gown. He smiled a smile that could melt ice.
“And how do you like it, Lily?”
“It’s very fine, I’m sure.”
“Are you frightened, dear? I did it for you, Lily, to spare you creeping about the house.”
“For me?”
“You don’t want to be a servant all your life, do you, Lily?”
“No, but I don’t want to be a fancy woman, either!”
He laughed softly and took her hand. “Why must we put labels on such things? Isn’t it enough that I love you?”
She looked into his dark eyes and wondered how much brandy he’d drunk this afternoon. Lily thought long before she spoke.
“The world loves its labels for better or for worse, and I must make my way in the world.”
He stood up and walked to the window. “I had hoped you might consider…”
“Living here? Oh, never! Never!” And give up my place in the world, small though it be? And sit here, a sinner, waiting for the time when I begin to bore him, when he leaves me, as all the others have left me?
“I mean that little to you, then?”
“You mean a great deal, Jack, but not so much as my reputation, my place in the world, for that is all I have, and little enough it is.”
“You are incredible, Lily, and that may be why I love you. Any other girl in your situation would jump at the chance.”
“Then you must find one of them.”
Again he laughed, but it was different from his earlier laughter; this was short and edged with bitterness. “And haven’t I? Oh, my, but have I not! And not a one of them is a patch on you, Lily Malone.”
“I must go.”
“But you’ll come on Thursday? Don’t break my heart so cruelly, Lily. At the least, give me a chance.”
“I…I’ll come.”
She walked out of the suite, down the red-carpeted stairs, and out into the cold, cold February afternoon. She turned up the collar of her coat and pulled down the deep brim of the hat she’d bought, more from shame than fashion, because it hid all her hair and most of her face. The weather matched her mood: cold and bleak. The new year had come sulking in, creeping behind a veil of snowflakes and sleet, howling in the courtyards, painting the gutters with ice; 1856 looked to be a cheerless year for Lily, for she felt trapped by Jack’s affection, and knew no sure way to get herself out of that trap.
Not that he wasn’t in earnest, or as earnest as he could make himself be. Why doesn’t he go away again, across the sea or somewhere! Lily clung to her dream of setting up a shop, and she watched her small savings grow with an almost miserly affection. Jack, she knew, would set her up in a shop in a trice, for the asking, but then it would not be her shop, and Lily would have none of it, nor his other gifts either. Just last week he had thrust a jeweler’s box at her, only to have it handed back unopened.
“Lily, Lily, when will you learn? Why, ’tis you who have made me a priceless gift. You gave me your virginity, after all.”
“It was all I had to give, and it was not for sale.”
He set the box down then, and kissed her, and that was the end of all their discussion. She was used to his lovemaking now, used to all of Jack’s tempestuous ways. He was a mystery, was Jack Wallingford, now all flash and surface and gaiety, now roaring drunk, now in moods of despair so black that even Lily could not pull him out of them.
“You see before you,” he’d said once, swirling some cognac in a big balloon glass, sprawling naked, but for his Chinese robe, before the fire, “a rare creature, Lily. The true cynic is often talked about but seldom captured. Rather like the unicorn.”
“What is a unicorn?”
He laughed without humor. “A mythological creature, very beautiful, all white, like a fine white horse, but with one long corkscrew horn rising from the middle of his forehead. It was said that the only way to capture a unicorn was to set a snare and have the bait be a pure and virginal maiden. Needless to say, there are very few unicorns captured these days.”
“And is it a true story?”
He smiled into his glass, sipped the amber liquid, then sipped again. “It is a true myth, Lily. The best kind.”
“You mock me.”
“No, no, Lily, not you. Perhaps it is the world I mock, but not my fair Lily.”
“But what has the world done to you, Mr. Jack, that you should mock it?”
“What has it not done! It’s ruined me, girl. It has given me eyes to see with, and set me loose exploring this garbage dump that is New York society, given me a chance to see my own dear parents sell my sister into an unspeakable kind of prostitution with that limey pervert Clarence—yes, I’ve seen the fair Marianne Wallingford sell herself more eagerly than any Five Points hooker, seen half the fine young maidens of the town putting themselves up for auction, shameless as any nigger slave was ever sold on the block, seen knaves and crooks and even killers deified because they got themselves some money, bought themselves some respectability, which is also for sale in this lovely marketplace, like the girls, and the titles, and the rest. That’s what I’ve seen, Lily, and that has made me cynical.”
“And you never see the good things?”
“Ah, the good things. Well, I am told that they exist, like the unicorn, and I am willing to accept that as theory. In practice, it waits the proving.”
Lily turned away from him, disturbed. She could understand why he might feel this way, or parts of it, but the depths of Jack’s scorn yawned deep and terrifying before her. Lily was doubly afraid then, afraid for Jack, afraid that she might be drawn into his ways of thinking.
“’Tis a sad thing, then.”
“Sad? For me? Why do you say that?”
She took a deep breath. Lily had never challenged him on his own ground before. “It is sad because what you talk of is no more than death. If all there is in life is rotten as you say, what’s the point of it?”
“A good question, Lily, you’re learning fast. It is a question I have asked myself over and over, and never found the answer. What, indeed, is the point?”
Suddenly Lily was back at St. Patrick’s orphanage, and the words of Sister Cathleen came floating back to her across the years.
“The angels will weep for you if you think such things.”
“Ah, Lily, my sweet Lily! The angels have long since shed their last tear in my direction. Did you not know that we, all of us, even the angels, have just so many tears to shed, and that once they’re gone, there is no more weeping left to us, not ever?”
“You’re joking!”
“’Tis God’s own truth!” And again he laughed, but it was black laughter, the laugh of a doomed man.
Lily looked at him and saw not Jack Wallingford, but her mother, dying. “Save your tears, child, for one day you may truly need them.” Then maybe it was true! Lily had trained herself not to be a weeper. Tears she had shed for Fergus, when the ship went down, and once or twice on other occasions. But for a girl her age, she knew she had scarcely tapped her allotment of tears. And it suddenly came upon her in a rush of dread that maybe she would, indeed, have need of them.
She looked at Jack, whose glass was nearly empty now. Lily hated to see him drink, and one of the good things about her affair with him was that he seemed to drink much less when they were together. But these last few months the drinking had been getting worse. Jack had been spending less and less time in New Haven, more and more time in New York, and not all of it, Lily was sure, with her. “Hell-bent for ruination!” That was how Patrick the stable lad described Master Jack, and Lily was half-inclined to agree. Still and all, there was a dark fascination to him, and to her relationship with him. Jack did need her, Lily was sure of that. He needed her, and admitted it, because she, at least, was honest. There were no schemes in Lily Malone. She steadfastly refused even the smallest trinkets from him, for to accept them would be to become a paid, kept, dishonored girl. She was dishonored, naturally, in any case, but there was a difference, and Lily clung to that difference as a drowning person might grasp at a straw.
And what would become of her when t
his adventure was over, as most certainly it must be over, and maybe soon?
Lily couldn’t make herself think about such a time. Instead she thought of the moment, of her work, of her next meeting with Jack. If it ended, then it ended, and she’d worry about that when the time came.
And in the meantime, her nest egg was growing, more than sixty dollars now, safe with Mrs. Groome, waiting. There was some hope in that.
Still, Lily felt clouds gathering. Maybe it was a reflection of Jack’s darkening moods, or her own uncertainty about the future.
The year 1856 had dawned ominously, although for the life of her Lily couldn’t have named one concrete reason why it was different from any other year. Oh, to be sure, the air was filled with the ever-angrier politics of slavery, and men had endless debates pro and con, and tempers flared. The word “secession” had been hinted at, although it was only a hint. The new territories, Kansas and Nebraska, were alive with the conflict, for their laws were just being formed and partisans of both slavery and abolition pulled mightily in the direction that best suited their ideals.
To Lily it all seemed remote and slightly absurd, for surely slavery was against the law of God, and therefore why should there be any question at all? But the dissension was in the air, poisoning the air, and the general mood was a dark one. Publicly and privately, in the great world and in the small private world of Lily Malone.
Jack finally let himself be talked into going back to Yale College at the end of the month. Lily heard him mention his friend Brooks Chaffee from time to time, but her fear of her own emotions was too deep to let her even try to draw him out on that subject.
Brooks would remain what he had always been for Lily, a mythical creature, like Jack’s unicorn. It was a fine thing to think on, to dream of Brooks Chaffee in the way you might dream of some tropical paradise where there was always sunshine and plenty to eat and everyone went about with smiles on their faces. The truth of the matter, she knew too well, was that the Lily Malones of the world had no business dreaming of the Chaffees. They were lucky enough to take what they got, if it was a slightly tarnished affair with someone like Jack, or less, much less.
