Lily Cigar

by Tom Murphy

  “What’s wrong, then?”

  “Ah. The rub. What…is…wrong?” He stood up quite suddenly and looked about the room as though he’d never seen it before. “The first thing that’s wrong is that Jack’s got nothing to drink. Could you, pray, obtain for me a tot of brandy, fair lady, angel of mercy, balm of my soul?”

  Lily poured him a small amount of brandy, for surely he’d had more than his share, and filled the rest of the glass with water. She handed it to him.

  “You are kindness itself, Lily, and ever have been. Thank you, my dear. What’s wrong, you ask, as well you might, seeing me in this wretched condition, and in the afternoon, too, more’s the shame. What’s wrong, Lily, is that I’ve lost my best friend.”

  He stopped then, and sipped the brandy and water. Lily felt the world come shuddering to a stop. Brooks Chaffee, dead! That had to be it. Surely Brooks was Jack’s best friend. To be lost surely must mean he’s dead. And Jack doesn’t even know I’ve seen him, or loved the sight of that golden head, that smile, that gentle manner. She stood absolutely still and wished the earth would open up and swallow her right then and there, wondered what to do, what to say, how to keep from weeping, or worse. Lily said nothing, but only paused, and soon enough Jack filled the silence between them.

  “I guess you don’t know poor Chaffee. He was a fine lad, Lily, believe me, the best. They don’t make them like Brooks Chaffee. And now…”

  “What happened? Is he ill?” Maybe it’s that. He’s ill. Not dead.

  “Sick in the head, he is, gone right off his senses. Fallen in love, has Chaffee, and for a strumpet out of hell, the devil’s own little ambassadress on earth, Lily, a real bad ’un, and take it from me I know a bad ’un when I see her.”

  “Who is she?” You know who she is, fool: she’s the girl from the Wallingford Emporium, the girl who had him so curled around her little finger he couldn’t see to the right nor the left of him, and glad you were of it at the time.

  “The hussy is called Miss Caroline Ledoux, and she will poison Brooks Chaffee and probably ruin his life for him, and laugh all the time she’s doing it. Whom the gods would destroy, Lily, they first make mad. And Brooksie’s mad as a hatter, blind-mad, bewitched, and by an authentic witch at that. She’s got him all tied up and stowed away in her little perfumed reticule, and not all his armies of old Dutch aunties nor his chaste Calvinist soul can save him from her. He’s doomed, my girl, just as surely as if he’d done bloody murder on Fifth Avenue in broad daylight. The gates of hell yawn open before him, and there is not one damned thing I can do to stop it, and that’s what’s wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong-o-wrong.”

  “How do you know she’s as bad as you think?”

  “Fair question. Because it takes a thief. Because we’re two of a kind, and bad to the core, mischief-makers, nose-thumbers in the face of all that’s good and cherishable, mockers and scorners. Only, in my own wicked way, at the least I am honest about it. I make no bones about my attitudes, and to hell with anyone who takes exception. They may look at me and sneer, but even while they’re curling their well-bred lips, they are also thinking: ‘There goes the Wallingford heir, surely he can’t be as bad as all that.’ If I were poor tomorrow morning, Lily, there’d hardly be a drawing room in New York that would welcome me for myself. They welcome me, surely, but only because I come to them perfumed with the delicious aroma of the old gent’s millions. Can’t bear to face the idea that their daughters might miss a chance at all that pelf. The fact that I would make any decent girl the most miserable husband on earth fails to deter them one inch, even as it failed to deter my sainted mother. It’s a hunting expedition, don’t you know, and whoever comes back with the biggest trophies is immediately superior to everyone who doesn’t fare so well.”

  To Lily, for whom one dollar was a sum to be reckoned with. Jack’s attitude was shocking. “Is she rich, this girl?”

  “Oh, yes indeedy. Bags of it. Not that old Brooksie is particularly in need. Fortune hunting is not Caroline’s game. She plays for different stakes, more dangerous ones.”

  “And what may those be?”

  “She plays a desperate game, Lily. She plays a gambler’s game, always close to the edge, always pushing her luck, never afraid to take enormous chances, even when by doing that she might break the heart of a man like my friend, for Brooks Chaffee—even though he may not know it—has a heart that is so very good and so lacking in even the perception of evil that it is a terribly fragile commodity. Caroline will smash his heart and not even hear the crash, much less stoop to pick up the fragments later on.”

  “You make her sound dangerous.”

  Lily looked at Jack, and her heart warmed to him, for it was good of him to be so concerned about his friend. And a sad, sad thing it would be if what Jack said were true. Yet how could he know, for sure? Jack’s estimate of himself was so very low that it dragged others down with it, and surely Brooks Chaffee was not stupid, to be so taken in by a girl of bad character.

  Jack drank off his brandy in one long draft and rose to make himself another. This new drink was darker than tea, nearly straight cognac. Jack sat down again, sprawling, his long legs stretched out in front of him, warming at the fire. Lily remained as she had been, standing.

  “She’s as dangerous as any viper that a Cleopatra ever dreamed of. She’s dangerous as a lightning bolt’s dangerous, because it is her nature to be that way, she can’t help it, and there is no such thing in her as a conscience, nor a regret, nor a thought for someone else’s happiness.”

  “You know her very well, then.”

  “Hardly at all, as I said. Like recognizing like. Naturally, Caroline hates me, and Brooks wants us to be friends, and she knows I know what her dirty game is. It’s a bad show, Lily. A very bad show. If I try—even mildly—to warn Chaffee off, I lose a friend. If I don’t, I also lose a friend, and the friend loses his soul, maybe his mind, maybe the entire remainder of his life.

  Jack held the brandy to his lips and merely sipped it. He stared into the glass as though he hoped to find some message of hope written there. Lily felt helpless. She looked at her baggage and once again felt an enormous sense of relief that tomorrow she’d be leaving all this behind her. Let Brooks Chaffee marry whom he would. Much she could do about that! Lily knew she had no more influence on that situation than she had on the wind in the trees. Still, a warning came to her lips, and she decided there was nothing to lose in saying it out loud.

  “I think,” she began quietly, “that you should not say anything against the girl. For if you do, he will remember it forever. If you say nothing, and he later finds out that she is…as you say, he cannot blame you for having been fooled also. And you might end up with his friendship where otherwise Mr. Chaffee might have lost both his fondness for the girl and for you, poor man.”

  “Ah, you’re right, as ever, Lily. I’ll say not a word.”

  Lily looked at him, and in her heart was a strange, sad mixture of gratitude and pity. He isn’t half so bad as he paints himself. If only there could be a way of showing him that, he might yet be saved. The time of their parting was on them, and Lily could not find the right words.

  “I’ll be taking a cab to the docks, then?”

  “I think it’s best. Patrick could come, but you don’t want that, do you?”

  “No. If it’s to be a new beginning, I’d sooner have it completely new. Right from the start.”

  “Will you think of me sometimes?”

  “What do you take me for? Think of you? And me carrying your baby! I will think of you. Jack, every time the baby moves inside me, and every time he cries or smiles—he or she!—I will think of you and be grateful for your kindness.”

  “It is a small kindness, Lily.”

  “Not to me, it isn’t, for couldn’t you have flung me into the gutter without a penny, and there’d be little I could do about it.”

  “I may be a cynic, Lily, but I’d never do that.”

  “No, and yet there�
��s gentlemen who would, and do, and ’tis the poor girl who gets blamed for their wickedness.”

  “Well, wickedness is a two-way street, Lily, and I shall probably know every mile of it, and all its gutters, too, before I die. But now I think it’s time I should be going home, and trying to sober up, and change for the ball tonight where the engagement will be announced between Mr. Brooks Chaffee and the fair Caroline Ledoux.”

  Jack came to her and took her hands in his. He kissed her lightly on the cheek, a brotherly kiss.

  “Good-bye, then, my Lily. I wish that things had been different, that…”

  “Good-bye,” she said quickly, not wanting to prolong the moment. “Good-bye, and wish me luck.”

  “I wish you all the luck there is, and more.”

  “Then good-bye, and thanks.”

  “You haunt me already.”

  “Good-bye, Jack.”

  He turned quickly and left her. Lily stood by the door for a moment, listening to his footsteps upon the stairs until the footsteps faded away and mingled with the muffled sounds from Sixteenth Street outside. Then she turned back to the little parlor that she’d be leaving, tomorrow, forever. Then Lily walked to the mantelpiece and picked up her teacup, untouched since Jack’s arrival. Good. The tea was still warm enough to drink.

  You will be calm. You won’t cry or do anything silly. Save your tears, Lily, for one day you may truly need them. Lily sat on the love seat in the silent aftermath of Jack’s leaving and thought: Of course, it would be just that way with a man as fine and good and beautiful as Brooks Chaffee. But maybe Jack was wrong. The girl might not be as black as he’d painted her. Jack tended to be overcynical, to despise himself and anyone he thought was like himself. Lily found herself hoping the girl was good, that she would make a fine happy life for the boy.

  Wednesday dawned gray. There was plenty of time, for the Eurydice sailed on the afternoon tide. Still and all, Lily was eager to be off, to begin this strange and thrilling new life. She drank some tea and rang for the porter.

  This in itself was momentous: the first time in her life that Lily had summoned a servant for her own use. Having rung, she watched the door anxiously, wondering what she’d do if the man refused to help her, if he saw through her flimsy disguise into all the secrets of her heart. For what right do you have to be in this hotel, with these new trunks, to be sailing on a fine new clipper?

  It burned in her heart with the intensity of live coals that her new life must be launched with a lie.

  You are Mrs. Fergus Malone, wife of a decent striving young man, sailing to join him in San Francisco, where he is a clerk in the Wallingford Emporium.

  Lily looked into the mirror and said these things out loud, as if by saying them they might become true. Her lie might be a small one, compared to all of the lies that had ever been told in the history of the world, but to Lily on this April morning of 1856 it loomed bigger and darker and more threatening than any storm cloud. She was sure that the eyes of God and all his angels were upon her, knowing, disapproving, and planning for her punishment.

  A knock sounded at the door, discreet but clearly audible. The porter! Facing up to him was the first test of her new incarnation as Mrs. Fergus Malone, and Lily faced it with a martyr’s courage.

  “You rang, madame?

  He was a big man, neither young nor old, with a face expressionless as unrisen dough. He meant her no harm and his eyes held no doubt or malice.

  Lily smiled from sheer relief. “Yes. Can you bring down my trunks and fetch me a cab? I’m going to the docks.”

  “Surely, madame.”

  He immediately lifted her biggest trunk, wafting it to his burly shoulder with a sudden grace, as if it were no heavier than a flower. Trumpets sounded in Lily’s heart, and a feeling of unlimited power flowed through her with the intoxicating warmth of good brandy. It had worked! He hadn’t laughed, or scorned her, hadn’t refused! The porter came and went, and soon all of her luggage was waiting at the curb and he vanished to find a cab.

  He would never know, this silent lumbering man, that in Lily’s eyes he was more glorious than all the shining knights in the old fairy stories, that he had been her escort into a magical place where dreams came true and the future beckoned with a generous hand. A hand that pointed west.

  The porter came back with a cab and helped the cab man load it. Lily tipped him then, and thanked him, and he wished her a good trip.

  Then Lily climbed into the passenger’s compartment like a queen, and smiled through the polished glass window. The whip cracked and the cab rumbled off toward the docks. Lily had never ridden by herself in a cab before. Down the familiar street they drove, turned right on Fifth Avenue, moving briskly on the fine spring morning. Lily felt her past slipping by and scarcely looked at it.

  For the cab was heading into tomorrow, and all the rest of her tomorrows, and it couldn’t get there soon enough to suit Mrs. Fergus Malone, of San Francisco, California, USA.

  17

  South Street was teeming, quivering, pulsing with all the life of the busiest port in the New World.

  Lily’s cab rattled over the wet cobblestones, threaded its way in and out among lorries and hand barrows and pushcarts and stevedores bent double under heavy burdens. Here was the nesting place of the great clippers. Their arrogant bowsprits thrust into the low brick houses of the waterfront, sleek pointed lances of New England’s crusade against an implacable sea. The huge bowsprits made a dark arbor under which the cab moved, slower now for all the waterfront activity. There was the famous clipper Hurricane, and the old Half Moon, and the Niobe and the Sea Witch, and now, just ahead, at Pier Nine, the Eurydice!

  Eurydice! Strange name. A girl in the old Greek tales, Jack had told her, a lovely romantic girl, a girl who’d gone to hell itself, and her lover came right after her to bring her back. Something like that. And who, Lily wondered, who would be coming to bring her back from whatever unknown hells or heavens she might be getting into? Surely not Jack! The cab jolted to a halt and Lily put aside all her doubts and hesitations. The sun had managed to break through the scurrying clouds, and now its clear light bounced off the fresh-painted flanks of the clipper Eurydice. White she was, with touches of gilt, a fine sleek vessel, a speed-maker, you could tell that in every line of her hull and the raked-back masts, three of them, and huge they were; Lily had never seen a tree so tall as the trees that had been cut to make those masts. Eurydice. New and beckoning and eager to be off again. Maybe as eager as Lily herself.

  They were loading her, had been loading her for days, day and night, for every hour’s delay was money lost to her owners. The driver set Lily’s trunks on the wet cobbles near the Eurydice’s gangway. She paid the man and tipped him, and he, too, smiled and was gone. It is a small thing to draw courage from, my girl, but it’s the only thing you have, so don’t be putting up your nose at it. Another test passed. Another question not asked. Lily looked around her and wondered where Captain Endicott might be.

  Everyone on the dock and on the ship itself seemed to have an assigned task and to be busily carrying it forth. Sailormen swarmed over the ship, scampered through its rigging like fleas in an old dog’s coat, dashed up and down the trembling gangway, swung a huge cargo net from a tall wooden crane that looked like construction equipment Lily had seen in the city. They yelled and chattered in many tongues, and some of them sang. The five sailors in charge of the great cargo net sang as they rolled enormous barrels into it, then hoisted the bulging hempen web into the sky:

  In eighteen hundred and forty-six,

  I found myself in the hell of a fix,

  A-working on the railway, the railway, the railway,

  Oh, poor Paddy works on the railway.

  Poor Paddy, indeed. Lily smiled at their song, but she wondered if the hatred would sail with her to California. Poor Paddy sounded all fine and jolly as the sailors sang it, no harm in the ditty, but there was harm enough in the fact that the poor Paddies of New York were a race ap
art, mocked and reviled for it, for their poverty and their ignorance and their willingness to do the dirty jobs: Paddies and bog-hoppers and Micks they were. Dirt they were, and lower than dirt.

  In eighteen hundred and forty-seven,

  When Dan O’Connolly went to heaven,

  He worked upon the railway, the railway, the railway,

  Poor Paddy works on the railway, the railway.

  Yes, she thought, on the railway and in the scullery and in the ditches: you’d have to think a piece before you could think of a job too dirty or too mean for the Irish.

  In eighteen hundred and forty-eight,

  I found myself bound for the Golden Gate…

  Their singing trailed off now, for the men had finished with the net. Lily gathered her courage and asked one of them where the captain might be. She wondered if all the rest of her life would be a series of such tests, and decided, a little grimly, that it probably would be.

  “He’ll be below, ma’am,” said an enormous seaman in a filthy jersey striped with red. “The gent you’ll be wanting is Mr. Parker, the first mate. And here he be.”

  Parker was a tiny man, built like a seagull, with a soft plump chest and narrow pipestem legs and a nervous tendency to hop about. He was pale for a seagoing man, and wore small steel-rimmed spectacles. Parker looked as though he would be far more at home in a clerk’s office than on a clipper as dashing as the Eurydice. But Lily soon learned that Parker’s stock in trade was efficiency. He smiled and shook her hand and had her trunks moving in seconds. Then Mr. Parker gently took Lily’s elbow and escorted her on board the clipper. His manner was calm, polite, precise, and orderly. The man looked anything but a hero, but still and all he inspired confidence in her. And any amount of confidence was very welcome to Lily Malone at this crucial moment.

  The deck was surprisingly neat, considering all the hustle of loading. The Eurydice was less than a year old, with only two Cape Horn voyages behind her, and there was still an aura of freshness about her. Lily knew nothing of ships, but she did understand housekeeping, and one glance was enough to tell that here was an extremely well-kept vessel. The brass glowed. The deck railings were polished, and even the oaken planks of the deck itself seemed to have been scrubbed recently. Ropes not in use were neatly coiled, sails furled tight as an Englishman’s umbrella, and even the glass in the small round porthole in Lily’s cabin looked lately shined. Captain Endicott, Lily decided, knew his job very well.