Read the book: «Gramercy Park»
GRAMERCY PARK
PAULA COHEN
Dedication
For my mother,
EDNA RAE GOLDMAN;
always loving, always loved, always with me
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Book I: Mario
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Book II: Clara
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Book III: Chadwick
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Book
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
BOOK I
Mario
Prologue
DEATH IS A GOOD TOPIC for conversation. The fascination with it seems ingrained in human beings, and there are few acts performed during the lives of most people that are so endlessly discussed, so lovingly dissected, as the act of leaving it. A natural modesty seals the lips of even the most talkative when procreation or birth are mentioned, and the intimate details of marriage, child-rearing, and family life are, at best, confided to one’s closest friends.
But death is different. The last, lingering illness and all of its symptoms are picked over with morbid glee; and the greater the suffering, the longer the illness, the uglier the end, the more the head-wagging preoccupation with it.
The passing, therefore, of an elderly gentleman, dying quietly in his bed, would normally elicit little discussion. It is a fact, however, that there is one topic upon which people love to dwell even more than death. That topic is money. Should the elderly gentleman have been rich, therefore, the heads would wag with no less vigor, but the solemn preoccupation would be with the size of the fortune, the way in which it was amassed, and (most important of all) how—and to whom—it would be bequeathed.
Such was the case in the passing of Henry Ogden Slade—financier, philanthropist, pillar of the community—in the late winter of 1894. Sixty-six at the time of his death, Slade had been known in many circles of New York society as an upright and God-fearing, though slightly
peculiar, man. That he was upright was proved by the exemplary lack of scandal surrounding his business dealings, all of which were large, lucrative, and accomplished with unusual ease and goodwill. That he was God-fearing was proved by his success. That he was peculiar was attested to by the presence in his house of a ward—a young woman taken in by Slade at the age of fifteen, and reared and educated, for the four years until his death, as his own daughter.
What made this rather ordinary situation unusual enough to earn Slade a reputation for peculiarity were three facts. Fact one: Henry Ogden Slade was a bachelor who had lived alone for more than forty years. Fact two: Clara (for that was the young ward’s name) was neither related to Slade nor the orphaned, penniless child of friends of his youth. Fact three: her father, reputedly still living and quite prosperous, was a German immigrant who was, also reputedly, of the Hebrew faith.
All this, of course, was enough to fuel sporadic fires of conversation for years within New York society, for yet another example of the man’s eccentricity was the extreme secrecy with which he shrouded his domestic affairs. Few people had ever actually met Clara, as Slade kept her carefully cloistered within his house at Gramercy Park; and those who had, mainly elderly men like himself, come to discuss weighty matters of business over dinner, were frankly unable to say much about the girl, other than that she was tiny, pretty (in a rather Semitic way—dark, and all eyes, with an air of melancholy), and had a positive genius for vanishing silently at the tread of strangers’ feet, and the sound of strangers’ voices.
Slade’s reasons for taking her in, therefore, remained a mystery. All that was definitely known was that he and the girl’s father, one Reuben Adler, had had financial dealings, and that in the summer of eighty-nine they had met at Adler’s home on the south Jersey shore, to discuss business away from the stupefying city heat. There he had been introduced to Clara. Three months later, shortly after her fifteenth birthday, Clara had moved permanently into Slade’s home.
Perhaps it was felt that the young Miss Adler would benefit from being in the great metropolis, where she could regularly attend the opera, ballet, concerts, and the theatre, and where she would have the opportunity to meet people from a wide spectrum of acceptable society. Perhaps Slade, who should have known better, neglected to tell both the girl and her family the brutal fact that her ancestry would bar her from the company of that acceptable society, regardless of the identity of her sponsor. Or perhaps he did tell her, at some later date, for society was never once disturbed by having to refuse the discreetly dropped suggestion that Slade’s ward desired an invitation to tea, or wished to pay a call. Instead, Clara had spent the four years with Slade in nearly total seclusion, and her appearances at the ballet or opera were memorable simply because they were so rare.
Like Halley’s comet, vast stretches of time seemed to pass between her being seen; unlike that heavenly apparition, however, Clara’s appearances followed no fixed schedule. It was their very unpredictability, in fact—and her forever downcast eyes, and the way she would cling to Slade’s arm as if terrified of being swept away and drowned in the glittering crowds—that caused the performances on the stage to be all but forgotten in the endless, whispered speculation about her.
“Out of sight, out of mind,” however, has become a proverb precisely because it is true. During those long stretches in which Slade’s box at the opera house sat empty, New York turned its collective mind to other, more immediate—if less exotic—matters, and the mystery of Miss Adler, and her reasons for being where she was, lay dormant.
Until that terrible night in February of 1894.
According to the information gleaned from the servants, Miss Adler had been awakened, in the small hours of the morning, by cries from the dying Slade’s room. She had rushed across the passageway and arrived just in time to see his eyes glaze over. Her screams had awakened the rest of the household, and a footman had been dispatched to summon the doctor.
One horror had followed another. The worst blizzard of a bad winter had delayed the doctor; and when he finally arrived, breathless and soaking wet, Slade had already been dead for close to an hour. There
was nothing to be done for the deceased but to close his eyes, fold his arms, and pull the sheet up over his face. The girl, however, had not left the dead man’s side since entering his room, but had sat holding his hand in her own. That hand had been warm when she had taken it; by the time the doctor pried it from her frantic fingers, it was growing cold and beginning to stiffen.
The combined strength of the doctor and the girl’s maid were needed to get her back to her own room. She had fought them wildly in her efforts to stay with her guardian, seemingly unwilling, or unable, to believe that he was truly dead. Even after they forced her to he down, and a sedative had been administered, she continued to cry. What had been most terrible, however, and a sure sign that her mind had become unbalanced, were the fits of laughter that had alternated with her tears. The doctor, being a prudent man, had stayed with her until she fell asleep, and had kept her heavily sedated for the next few days. He had also refused to allow her to attend the funeral.
Thus was New York cheated of seeing, up close and lacking the shield of her guardian’s protective arm, the little Jewess who was expected to inherit all of her guardian’s very great fortune.
So affected was she, in fact, by Slade’s passing, that the reading of the will had to be postponed for a full month, there being genuine concern about her health. It was not until late March, therefore, on a gray and chilly morning, that the lawyers, led by one Thaddeus Chadwick, Esq., the late Mr. Slade’s personal attorney and oldest friend, had appeared in Mr. Slade’s library to unseal and read his final intentions, and to announce to the waiting ears of New York the advent of an heiress—the city’s newest, and possibly one of the richest, if rumors about the size of the Slade estate were to be believed.
Clara entered the room last of all. Still six months shy of her twentieth birthday, she was not yet fully recovered from the shock of her guardian’s death, and her skin had an unhealthy, chalk-white pallor made even whiter by the severity of her black dress and dark hair. That within minutes she might be one of the world’s wealthiest women seemed incongruous, at best; there was simply nothing about her that could serve to explain Slade’s interest in her. Certainly, there was nothing
evident that morning, as she slipped quietly into her chair. She looked as plain and as ordinary as a shop girl, with her small, pinched face and nervous, nail-bitten hands. Only her enormous eyes, bright with unshed tears, lifted her from the realm of the commonplace.
Immediately after her arrival, the library doors were closed, shutting off the proceedings from the eyes of the servants who lingered nearby, finding more to do in the vicinity than could possibly be accounted for by their usual round of morning duties. For twenty minutes the only sound to reach their ears was the dry hum of Chadwick’s voice from behind the huge ebony doors. Then, suddenly, in the expectant hush there was another sound; a sound so out of place, so inappropriate in that house of mourning, that the hovering servants stared at one another, shocked, and one Irish housemaid, more devout than the rest, made the sign of the cross.
Laughter. Girlish laughter, which did not remain girlish long. Low at first, and musical, it rose swiftly, becoming high and strident: peal after sobbing peal of mirthless, helpless, hysterical laughter.
The heavy doors banged back; Chadwick and his colleagues, ashen-faced, hurried from the room. Within the library, tiny, shy, quiet Clara Adler sat and rocked, tears streaming down her face, laughing the laugh of a demented thing.
Once more a servant was sent flying for the doctor; once more the sedatives were administered. The lawyers went away shaking their heads, and the servants scattered to their separate duties, to whisper what they had seen and heard into the ears of fellow servants in other houses. By the next day all of New York knew that Slade’s ward had been struck down, and knew, too, what had caused it.
What many could not understand, however, was the laughter. Tears, perhaps, but never laughter. Clara Adler, taken in by Henry Ogden Slade at the tender age of fifteen, and reared and educated as his daughter for the four years until his death, had been dispossessed, utterly and completely. Her name had not even been mentioned in his will. It was as if she had never existed.
Still, there was nothing funny—nothing funny at all—about losing thirty million dollars.
DEATH IS A GOOD TOPIC for conversation, and never better than when money is involved. The last, lingering illness, and all of it torments, are picked over with morbid glee; and the greater the suffering—the younger the victim—the more the head-wagging preoccupation with it.
The passing, therefore, of a young and innocent girl would elicit much discussion, in voices hushed and solemn, about life’s vicissitudes and the sudden, inexplicable workings of Fate. Should the girl be one about whom hung an air of mystery, and who had not even the consolation of the Christian faith to sustain her in her final hours, the pious platitudes would rain thick and fast, reminding all that even in the midst of life we are in death.
So New York listened for word of the end of Clara Adler, struck down by brain fever at the age of nineteen, in the spring of 1894, the fever brought on by the twin shocks of the loss of her guardian and his estate. The hysteria with which she had greeted the news of the latter had been the onset of her illness. She was not expected to recover.
It was all very sad—and very satisfactory—and the city settled in, with melancholy anticipation, to await her passing. It was no more than what any truly well bred young woman would have done in her place; and certainly there was nothing else for her, with propriety, to do. The only problem, as the days became weeks and the weeks became months, was that she did not do it …
Chapter One
FROM FIFTH AVENUE, with its gleaming carriages and fine, new mansions, and its smell of money only lately won and not yet fully grasped by the minds of its makers, it is merely a healthy stretch of the leg to Gramercy Park.
There, enclosed on four sides by a high, iron fence, a small oasis beckons the passerby: a graceful green rectangle of shady paths and wide, low benches scattered beneath trees thick with years. It is an odd sight: nature penned in amid a forest of brick and stone, and the innocent stranger might be tempted to pass through the black-barred gate, to spend a quiet hour in contemplation of such a wonder. But the gate is locked, and only the privileged few who live on the borders of the little park possess the key that will open it.
Life appears to be sweet for these keepers of the keys of this tiny Eden, and drudgery is evidently not their daily portion. On warm summer afternoons, one can see nursemaids wheeling the infant lords and ladies of the great Republic along the dappled paths, and spy daintily clad children at play beneath the gaze of vigilant nannies.
But the vulgarly obvious wealth of Fifth Avenue is missing here; these houses, for the most part, are vestiges of an earlier day. Red brick and white stone, they stand side by side with not even a handbreadth of space between them, forming a solid square of dignity, and those who dwell within them have no need of pomp to proclaim their worth to casual passersby. Like their houses, their wealth and power were built in bygone days, and possessing them has become a part of the natural order of things, occasioning no more thought than, say, breathing or sleeping. They know what they have, and that is all that matters.
Near the southeastern corner of this demiparadise stands one house different from the rest. Built of drab red brick in a dull, square shape, its front door is the only one which does not face the park, but opens, instead, onto one of the small, cobbled streets that radiate from the green like the spokes of an angular wheel, as if to declare itself even less guilty of ostentation than its neighbors by virtue of its refusal to acknowledge the center of their common universe.
Somber and self-contained, with windows too narrow for the expanse of wall between them, it is a house which does not welcome: a massive, reclusive, indifferent pile of stone, which holds what it has within it, and takes no notice of anything else.
Of the two men approaching it from the direction of Fifth Avenue on this particular afternoon in late May, the house is wholly oblivious, although the many people enjoying the brilliant spring sunshine in and about the little park do not share this disregard.
The men present an interesting contrast in types, for one of them, a pale man of medium build and middle age, is outstanding only in that he is so very ordinary. His companion, however, seems to be the focus of every eye as he passes—women, particularly, seem to find him of uncommon interest—and this fascination could be laid to his height, which is well over six feet, or the exceptional breadth of his chest and shoulders, or even to the cut of his impeccable clothing. About forty years of age, black-eyed and swarthy, he is clean-shaven and well made, and he draws eyes like a magnet, seeming not so much unaware of the glances cast his way as accustomed to receiving them; a man very much at ease beneath the gaze of others.
“I am grateful for your time, Signor Alfieri,” the nondescript man says to his dark companion as they draw near to their destination. “I will waste none of it, for I know that you must have a great deal to do.”
“On the contrary, Mr. Upton”—Signor Alfieri’s heavily accented English fully corroborates his foreign looks and name—“for the first time in years I am completely free and have absolutely nothing to do, at least until the middle of July. Until then, my time is my own.”
“And will you be in New York until then?”
“Until then and after then. I must be in Philadelphia from mid-July to early October. After that I will return here.”
“For the opera season.”
“For the opera season,” the signore agrees, smiling.
“And you have been staying at the Fifth Avenue Hotel since your arrival?”
“A week ago, yes. Originally, I had thought to make the hotel my home while in New York.”
“A year is a long time to live in a hotel, signore.”
“Ah, you see, Mr. Upton? Mr. Grau agrees with you, which is why he sent you to me. And because it would not be right for me to refuse the kind suggestion of the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera House, I am here with you. Also, both Mr. Grau and I feel that my continued presence at the hotel might disturb the other guests—”
“Your consideration does you credit, signore.”
“—and I am absolutely confident that before long the other guests certainly would disturb me.” His smile is amiable. “That has a miserably ungrateful sound, does it not? Nevertheless, you can have no idea of what it is to be pursued everywhere by admirers who have heard you perform. I am afraid, Mr. Upton, that privacy has become a necessity for me.”
Being a house agent, Mr. Upton is both sympathetic and quick to take professional advantage of this opening. “You needn’t fear being disturbed here, sir, I assure you,” he says. “And as for disturbing others, such a thing would be quite impossible. The late Mr. Slade’s house is admirably well built and wonderfully spacious, with absolutely everything Mr. Grau said you would require. Most important, of course, is the music room, which contains a superb grand piano, and even a small eighteenth-century pipe organ, which Mr. Slade had brought over from Germany and built into the walls.
“In addition,” he says, counting on his gloved fingers, “there are a reception room, two drawing rooms, a library, a picture gallery, a ballroom, a conservatory, and a billiards room. The dining room seats twenty comfortably. And, of course, there are the ten bedrooms. The late Mr. Slade lived on quite a lavish scale in his younger days.”
Alfieri smiles. “So I see, Mr. Upton. But,” he says, gazing up at the long rows of curtained windows, “perhaps this house is somewhat … too spacious for my needs? Along with everything else Mr. Grau told you, he must also have told you that I am only an unmarried man, after all, traveling with only one servant. What on earth am I to do with two drawing rooms, a dining room that seats twenty—comfortably or not—and a ballroom?”
“Ah, but you must remember, signore, it was Mr. Grau who suggested that I show you this house. He feels that the music room will appeal to you particularly. And as for its being too spacious, the late Mr. Slade was unmarried too … although, quite frankly,” he adds confidentially, “I cannot ever recall hearing that he made much use of the public rooms in his later years.”
“Or of the ten bedrooms.”
“Or of the ten bedrooms,” Upton agrees. “Much of the house was shut up a great deal of the time,” he says, fitting the key into the lock and struggling with the stiff mechanism, “which accounts for the marvelous condition in which everything has been left.”
“Indeed. Was Mr. Slade a recluse, Mr. Upton?”
“I’m sure I couldn’t say, signore. I never had the honor of meeting him. It is known, however, that he kept more and more to himself as he grew older.”
“Indeed,” Alfieri says again. “Perhaps he, too, found people disturbing.”
“Perhaps, sir. Anything is possible.” Upton pulls the key from the lock, reads the paper label pasted on it, smiles apologetically, returns it to the lock and continues his efforts.
“And just when did Mr. Slade die, Mr. Upton?”
“Just this past winter, signore, very suddenly.”
“Had he no heirs? Was there no one to inherit this admirable house?”
The house agent is momentarily silent as he searches for the right words. “Mr. Slade died a bachelor, signore, and left no heirs.” He hesitates slightly. “He grew somewhat eccentric in his last years. There were a number of bequests, of course, most of them to charitable organizations, but the great bulk of his personal fortune, and this house, were left to his estate. His attorneys wish to keep the house intact and furnished as it was during his occupancy until such time as they see fit to sell it, which they are in no hurry do to. That is why it is available for lease. According to the executors, to keep a staff on to maintain an empty house would be a drain on Mr. Slade’s estate.”
“Really? Did he die impoverished?”
“Oh, very far from it, signore. But the executors, who have retained me to show the house, feel that it is not their place to spend Mr. Slade’s money if it can be avoided, even if it is for the upkeep of his own house. However, if they lease the house, the rental income will defray the cost of keeping it up.”
“That is very sensible, Mr. Upton. Now if only we can get in, so that I may see with my own eyes this house with ten bedrooms that one man inhabited.” The signore smiles. “You know, Mr. Upton, I fear you will never make a successful burglar.”
As if in answer to his words, there is a sudden click, and the key turns in the house agent’s hand. “Ah! That does it! Not a burglar!” he laughs. “That’s very good! Come in, Signor Alfieri, come in.”
The two men step through a vestibule into a cavernous entrance hall. Upton shuts the door behind them, leaving them momentarily blinded. What light there is comes from distant rooms, and is filtered through drawn curtains. Yet, even to eyes not adjusted to the sudden dark, the floor, walls, and ceiling, marble all, glisten in the dimness. Huge archways, flanked by onyx pillars, lead off left and right, and on the far side of a gleaming expanse of floor an alabaster staircase soars palely up, to disappear into the twilight.
Upton slides his hand along the wall until his fingers come into contact with a recessed button, which he pushes. The sound of a click in the darkness is the only response.
“Mr. Slade was one of the first to install an electrical system in his house,” he says, “but it has evidently been turned off for safety’s sake. Shall we move on? We can open the curtains in the other rooms.”
The house agent’s voice is low, out of respect for whatever lurks just beyond the borders of hearing in silent, shut-up houses, but even so it fills the air with rustling echoes. Alfieri follows him through the doorway on the left, into the first of the house’s two drawing rooms, a chamber so vast that its far end is barely visible in the half-light. The furniture, in muslin shrouds, looks humped and unnatural; what can be seen of it is in a style current twenty years ago. Upton pulls aside the heavy drapery, and colors—ivory woodwork limned in gold, dadoes and friezes of Pompeian red—leap from the walls, only to retreat again into shades of gray as the curtain falls back into place.
Two massive sliding doors lead from there into the library and the adjacent picture gallery. Upton pulls aside a crimson plush curtain, revealing walls covered in gold and green silk above ebony bookcases filled with rare volumes. A pair of slender marble columns frames the entrance to the picture gallery. The works of art are gone from their places; they rest, instead, on the floor, carefully swathed in muslin and ranged against the sides of the chamber. Lighter patches on the silk walls show where they were accustomed to hang.
“Would you care to see more, signore?”
The signore does not answer. He stands in the center of the darkened room, a vaguely distracted expression on his face, as if trying to recall something that remains just out of reach of his memory.
“Signore?”
Alfieri rouses. “Yes, I would care to see more, Mr. Upton, but some light to see it by would be most welcome.”
“Then allow me to leave you for a few moments to find the footman—I know he must be around somewhere. There is a private generator, and if he can turn it on we shall have the whole place as bright as day. Don’t wait for me, signore. Feel free to explore more of the house while I’m gone, if you’d like. I’ll find you, never fear.”
But fear is not what Alfieri feels. The great house holds no terrors for him, despite the darkness; there is a sense, instead, of something almost remembered, like an old, familiar melody, just beyond hearing, that he cannot place.
With Upton gone in search of the generator, Alfieri retraces his steps to the front hall. The music room has been on his mind since Upton’s first mention of it, and he is understandably eager to see it. Florentine by birth, the son of a physician, his great gift had become evident at the age of four, when, seating himself at the piano, he had played, flawlessly, three exercises from The Well-tempered Clavier, learned solely from listening to the efforts of his mother, a talented amateur who was accustomed to practice the piano while her little son amused himself with his toys in the corner of the parlor. His lessons had begun immediately, and, when he was old enough, singing in his church choir had augmented his other musical studies.
When he was fourteen his voice changed.
For no reason which, in later years, he is ever able to explain, except that this is the right way, he climbs the alabaster stairs to the floor above. The darkness here is almost total, for the walls are no longer pale marble, reflecting whatever faint light may exist, but smooth wood, or so his fingers tell him; and all the doors on either side of the broad landing are shut.
He has never been in this house before today. For that matter, until one week ago he has never been in this city, or on this continent. And yet he gropes his way directly to the second door on the left, and enters. This room, too, is enormous and very dim, its drapes drawn against the glory of the spring noon. But after the oppressive darkness he has just left, his eyes easily take in his surroundings.
The music room.
Here, again, the ubiquitous muslin shrouds the furniture, and the many-armed and -globed chandelier, swathed in netting, blooms downward from the high, coved ceiling like a monstrous wasps’ nest. The pale Aubusson carpet, however, still covers the floor, and deadens his footsteps as he crosses to the grand piano between the windows, dropping his hat on a table as he goes. He seats himself at the instrument, raises the cover of the keyboard, and plays a few exploratory chords. The piano’s keys are stiff, at first, and the sound tentative, as a voice would be that had not been used in a great while, but it mellows and grows full and sonorous as he continues to play.
After a few minutes, he begins to sing. “Una furtiva lagrima negl’occhi suoi spuntò …” Sweet and beautiful: Donizetti’s Nemorino, telling of his beloved, and the secret tear that spills from her eye …
Downstairs, at the back of the house, Upton stands by the generator, listening to the distant music, and he gapes, just a little. He is a house agent, not a poet, and not particularly gifted with words. He would not be able to describe the sound of the voice he is hearing if someone were to ask him. But others have described it for him.
It is honey, and cream, and gold. It is dark velvet and sunlight. It is incomparable. For as long as it lasts, Upton stands immobile, forgetting time, forgetting his work, forgetting everything but the sound of that voice. When it stops, finally, he stands dazed, and sighs as the everyday world settles around him once more; and as he bends to help the footman, there are tears in his eyes.
Chapter Two
ALFIERI KNOWS NOTHING of Upton’s tears, nor would he care greatly if he did. Twenty years of singing before audiences all across Europe have accustomed him to that phenomenon, and left him largely indifferent to the power he has to make men weep. Audiences themselves are of negligible importance; they provide an excuse for him to sing, and enable him to spend his life doing what he desires by rewarding him prodigiously well for it, but they are not the reason he sings.
They are, however, the reason he is here. Paris has named him “Le Rossignol,” the nightingale; London knows him as “the Lord of Song”; to all of Italy he is “Maestro Orfeo.” His fame has become such that walking unmolested in the street—any street, in any city in Europe which boasts an opera house, and in many which do not—has become a near impossibility for him. He has left Europe to regain, for a while at least, his own soul; and Upton’s tears, did he but know of them, would be of infinitely less moment to him than what he will have for dinner.
Rising at last from the piano, more satisfied with the sound of his voice than he has been in months, he flings the curtains wide, noting with approval that the room faces onto Gramercy Park itself. The trees dance in the May wind, beckoning and abundantly green, and he unfastens the latch on one of the tall French windows and pushes the double panes outward. The fresh air, rushing into the long shut-up room, smells the color of the leaves, and all but sparkles in its clarity.
He breathes it in deeply, hands resting on either side of the window, idly watching a couple walk arm in arm in the park while two small girls chase each other in and out of the trees, and he suddenly realizes that he is happy—truly happy—with the sheer, effervescent happiness of youth; happier, in this house, than he has been in years. The very walls seem to greet him kindly, and to embrace him, as if they have been waiting for him for a long, long time.
No one lies in wait for him here, just outside the door. No one clamors for him, clutches at him, prays to him, leaves gifts for him, or flowers, or notes. If he must be lonely—God!—then let him be alone. He has not known such relief as this, such lightness of heart, for twenty years. He can be solitary in this house, and happy, the vast walls around him forming an impenetrable shell. Until he returns to Europe, he will revel in this solitude, wallow in it, free of hangers-on, of the endless crush of people that surrounds him always: smiling, weeping, fawning; ready to sell themselves at a moment’s notice, to trade their husbands or wives, sons or daughters for the slightest hint of stature, power, influence, fame … eager to suck the very breath from his lungs, or the soul from his body if he will only let them …
The breeze blows, cooling his face again, carrying music with it from the other side of the park … the raucous, lighthearted sound of a hurdy-gurdy, drifting on the air. He listens … “Libiam’,” it pulses, “ne’ dolci fremiti, che suscita l’amore …” the brilliant brindisi in waltz time from La Traviata. “Let’s drink to love’s sweet tremors,” it says, “to those eyes that pierce the heart …”
Verdi, wafting in from a New York street … the melody a reply to his own music at the piano. He is not one to ignore omens: the welcoming house and its grateful solitude, the sense of remembering what he cannot possibly know, his discovery of the music room, the arias, statement and answer: it all means a successful stay in America. He needs to see no more … he and the house have clearly chosen each other, and his possession of it will begin, appropriately, here. With both hands he seizes the sheet which drapes the piano, snatches it off and tosses it to the floor, then moves on, stripping the cover from each chair and table in his progress around the room.
The open window does not illumine the farthest corners, which remain lost in shadow, but Alfieri does not even notice; his mind is too full of his newfound elation, and his own momentum carries him along with no slackening of pace until, turning to wrest the cover from an armchair backed against a distant wall, he stops with a quick intake of breath.
Something—someone—is curled within it.
Except for Upton, somewhere in the bowels of the house, he should be completely alone, and so for several heartbeats he only stares in disbelieving silence. The figure does not vanish from beneath his gaze; it merely huddles deeper into the cushions, moving Alfieri to confirm the evidence of his eyes. As he stretches out his hand to touch what he knows cannot be there, the figure puts its hand out to ward off his, and Alfieri finds himself grasping the fingers of …
A child. A little, pale, sad-eyed child clothed in black, more like the ghost of a child than a living one … except that its fingers are real, small and very cold, and the nails are ragged and bitten. The child raises its head—her head—and meets his eyes for one moment only, then looks away.
It is long enough.
Her face glimmers white in the gloom, and he can see the marks of illness plain upon it. A hint of freckles once dusted her cheeks; they have faded now, with the rest of her, and the blue hollows beneath her eyes look like old, old bruises. The eyes themselves, gray-green and very clear, are even older: windows onto some ancient, bottomless grief; haunting, in the face of a child.
His own joy of a moment ago is dwarfed by the magnitude of this pain. He covers her hand with his own, speechless in the presence of such sorrow, and raises it to his lips.
The shadowy room, the silent house, the young girl with her old eyes: there is a dreamlike quality to them all, as if Alfieri has stepped out of the stream of time into a moment which has been there always, waiting for him, and which he has always known would come. He will never entirely leave it again; for the rest of his life a part of him will be there still, in the dusky room, at the instant she raises her eyes, with his lips against her hand.
The moment passes; the child lowers her eyes, her hand slips from his; the spell is broken. Time takes up where it had left off: the wind stirs the curtains, the sound of a passing carriage rises from the street below. Nothing has happened at all, except that Alfieri’s life has changed forever, and that he knows it.
“Who are you?” he says, when he can speak again. “How did you come here?”
“I live here.” She speaks with her head down, and directs her words to the fingers clenched in her lap.
“Here? But this is an empty house.”
“It’s not empty. I live here.”
“With the furniture all covered over and no light? How do you live in this place? Are you alone?”
“Two of the servants have stayed on. There are candles for the evening.” Her words, almost inaudible, are disjointed and utterly incomprehensible to him. “Don’t look at me, please. Just let me go away again. This is the closed part of the house, and I mustn’t be found here. I was walking for my exercise, but I became tired and fell asleep. The music woke me.”
“You are not one of the servants. That is not possible.”
The wan cheeks flush an imperceptible pink as she draws herself up in the depths of the chair and lifts her chin for the first time. “This is my guardian’s house.”
“Truly? I was told that the owner of this house had died.”
The momentary bravado fades; she droops again and her small voice falters. “He did. But he was still my guardian.”
He looks at her bowed head. “My dear, I am so sorry. I was not thinking …” She does not move.
“What is your name?” he says gently.
“Clara. Clara Adler,” is the whispered reply.
“Then, Miss Adler, as there is no one to introduce us properly, please allow me to introduce myself. I am Mario Alfieri.”
“How do you do, Mr. Alfieri.”
“Well, thank you. Very well. And how do you do, Miss Adler?”
“Better,” she says. “I am better, now. I have been ill.” Her own words suddenly recall her to herself. “Oh, but you mustn’t look at me,” she says, shrinking further into her chair.
“Why?”
“My hair …” At her words he realizes, with a small jolt, that it has been cut pitifully close, like a boy’s. Unable to hide the disgrace of her shorn head with her hands, she covers her face, instead. “Please don’t look at me.”
“And if I told you,” he says, “that until this very minute, when you brought it to my attention, I had not noticed your hair, would you believe me?” He touches her sleeve. “I promise you it is true.”
“How can that be?” she says through her hands. “I am so ugly.”
“Not ugly. Never ugly. Only recovering from an illness. Your hair will grow back.”
“Not for years.”
He laughs. “Do you wish to know why I did not notice your hair? I was looking too much at your lovely eyes.”
She lowers her hands. Those eyes are spilling slow tears, which she wipes with the handkerchief he offers her. “I am sorry,” she says. “Please don’t think badly of me.”
“Badly? Of you?” He shakes his head. “You are still weak and you have had a shock, which is my fault. I do not wonder at those tears. Are you strong enough to return to … where do you live in this great house?”
“My rooms are on the next floor. I will be all right. I am stronger than I look.”
“The stairs will not be too much for you? Let me help you.”
He takes her hand again and helps her to rise. Her head, with its ragged, dark curls, reaches no higher than the middle of his chest.
“You needn’t,” she says. “I can get there by myself.”
“No gentleman,” he replies, “would ever permit a lady of his acquaintance to return home unescorted. Now that we have been introduced, I must see you safely home.”
They climb the stairs together, stopping every four or five steps to allow her to catch her breath and rest.
“You are so kind,” she says. “I hope it didn’t frighten you too much to find me there.”
“Oh, after the initial shock I bore up quite well. I must admit that, at the very first instant, I did think that I had stumbled upon a ghost—which would have been most interesting, for I do not believe in them—and for a few moments I thought that I would have to rethink all my most deeply held philosophies. But it is you who are truly brave. To wake and find a total stranger in your house, tearing the covers from the furniture? How I must have frightened you!”
“No,” she says. “I heard you singing. I knew you wouldn’t hurt me.”
When they reach their destination, Alfieri opens the door for her and stands aside to let her pass.
She hesitates, not knowing what etiquette might demand in such a situation. To remain alone with a stranger cannot be proper; but he has been so kind that, surely, it would be terribly rude simply to send him away. “Would you like to come in?” she says shyly. “Perhaps you would like a cup of tea?”
Alfieri loathes tea. A true son of his country, his beverage is coffee: thick, strong, and taken black.
“I would love a cup of tea,” he says.
HOME” CONSISTS of two rooms, a bedroom and a sitting room, facing south and east over the garden at the back of the huge house. The sitting room is a pleasant, airy chamber, with sunlight falling like water through curtains of lace, and its bright comforts seem touched with some kindly magic, permitting it alone to escape the dark spell which has plunged the rest of the house into profound sleep. Adding to the feeling of enchantment is a table before one window, set with covered dishes, a cup and saucer, a round blue teapot, and a small kettle which steams cheerfully above a spirit lamp, as if invisible hands had been there only moments before. While Clara busies herself with the tea things, taking for her own use a glass tumbler fetched from the table beside her bed, Alfieri examines his surroundings.
His eyes travel from the soft rugs on the floor to the books piled on the tables, to the hoop of half-finished embroidery lying on the window seat, to the mantelpiece, which is white marble carved with swags of roses. Upon it sits a vase filled with tulips and anemones, a fountain of bright reds, blues, and yellows; on the wall above hangs a portrait of a girl with long chestnut hair tumbling about her shoulders, looking like a flower herself in a pale blue gown. The artist, with masterly hand and eye, had captured his subject at a magical time—no longer a child, not quite a woman—and Alfieri stares at it, once more feeling something that he cannot explain … the tilt of the head, the slant of the eyes, the oddly knowing expression, smiling and infinitely sad … all achingly familiar—and then he is back, and realizing that the wan little creature now pouring out tea is the faded shadow of the portrait’s original.
“My guardian had me sit for it, two years ago,” Clara says, following his gaze. “I was very young then.”
“So I see. How young, if I might be permitted to ask?”
“Seventeen.”
“Why then you are very old now,” he says gravely, and is rewarded by one of her rare smiles.
“Sometimes I feel very old. I tire so quickly.”
“You must give it time.”
“It’s taking so long.”
“I know. But you will grow well and strong. If you do not believe me, I will show you.” He takes the teacup she has handed him and quickly drinks off its contents, leaving a small amount in the bottom. Swirling the remaining liquid around, he pours it out into his saucer and holds the empty cup out for her inspection.
She peers into it. “Do you read tea leaves?”
“I am famous for it. In my family I am the only one permitted to read them. It is a rule.”
“Whom do you read them for?”
“My brothers and sisters and their children.”
“Does what you read always come true?”
“Always.”
“What do you see there?”
He holds the cup to the light and rotates it between his hands. “I see a very beautiful young lady—radiant with health, and with long, chestnut hair—in a park. Not a little park, like the one outside here, but a big one, like the Bois de Boulogne, in Paris. See this?” He points to a smudge of tea leaves inside the cup.
“What is it?”
“A ship. And here are waves and seabirds.”
“What does it mean?”
“It means that you will grow well and strong, and travel across the sea.”
“You are very kind,” she says, looking away. “But I think not. Not I.”
“Miss Adler, do you doubt me? You do me an injustice. I have predicted it, and, as my family will tell you, my predictions are never wrong.”
“But …” She stops, puzzled by a new thought. “Mr. Alfieri, forgive me, but I fear you’ve made a mistake.”
“Never. Not with tea leaves. It cannot be done.”
“But that is your teacup. You would need to read my glass to tell my fortune, wouldn’t you? That was your own fortune you just read.”
Alfieri smiles gently and puts down the cup.
Chapter Three
LIKE JUNO ON MOUNT OLYMPUS, Mrs. William Backhouse Astor stands at the pinnacle of New York society. From her exalted vantage point, with its commanding views, Mrs. Astor single-handedly metes out the fate of those would-be immortals who everlastingly strive for a place on the holy mount. The self-appointed arbiter of worth in her rarefied universe, Mrs. Astor admits only the most deserving to the ranks of the blessed. In all such matters her power is absolute, and her word, law.
In consequence of such toilsome efforts to organize society into a finely measured hierarchy, and to elevate it to ever new levels of distinction, Mrs. Astor’s life had been measured not in days or weeks or months, but in cotillions and balls and levées. For twenty years, newcomers worthy of a foothold on the lower rungs of the celestial ladder might have been invited to an afternoon reception, one of the lesser observances in Mrs. Astor’s ritual; only for those in the preeminent ranks of the pantheon would there have been an invitation to one of her weekly dinner parties.
But alas for New York! The goddess’s consort is two years dead. While Mr. Astor lived, Mrs. Astor’s year would begin in the autumn, when the elite, after the summer’s diaspora, were gathered once more in the city; would build momentum through the fall and early winter with patriarchs’ balls, assembly balls, family circle dancing classes, Monday nights at the opera, and a hundred exquisite suppers at Delmonico’s; would whirl past Christmas and the New Year; and would achieve its culmination at her annual ball, held on the third Monday of each January—the single most sacred occasion of the social year. Since Mr. Astor’s translation to an even higher sphere, however, his widow has ceased to entertain. For two years, no events have breathed life into the great crimson and gold ballroom in Mrs. Astor’s Fifth Avenue mansion.
Until tonight.
Tonight is a supreme occasion, in every respect worthy of bringing society’s queen out of mourning: not merely an amusement, but a portent of glories to come … a ball to welcome Maestro Mario Alfieri, primo tenore assoluto, to New York. Moreover, it is a radical departure for the fastidious Mrs. Astor, an anomaly that in itself would be enough to bring society snapping to attention. Mrs. Astor has long held that artists of any ilk—painters, authors, actors, and the like—merit no recognition unless safely dead, and that meeting them risks both needless mental fatigue and the possibility of social contamination.
But Mario Alfieri is no ordinary artist. The reigning god of Europe’s opera stages for as long as Mrs. Astor has been the reigning goddess of New York society, he is still bettering his art, going from strength to strength, and triumph to triumph. What is more, he is said to be able to trace his ancestry back, in an unbroken line, for five hundred years, a feat that dazzles in a country where four generations of known ancestry constitute an aristocracy. Lastly, and providing the absolute gilding on the lily, is the fact that he dines regularly with the Prince of Wales. Alfieri is notorious, in fact, for having certain tastes in common with His Royal Highness that cannot be mentioned in polite society, and it is widely rumored that the two have been known, on numerous occasions, to cap their dinners with visits to certain private establishments where exquisite young women use astonishing skills to gratify quite other kinds of appetites.
True or not, it makes no difference. The entire Continent lies at the tenor’s feet, and those American aristocrats who have seen and heard him during seasons in London, Paris, and Milan have, for several years, been feverishly negotiating for the honor of humbling themselves before the tenor on their own soil.
And success is theirs at last. On the nineteenth of November, a little less than six months from tonight, Maestro Alfieri will make his debut at the Metropolitan Opera House and begin his conquest of yet another continent. To have ample time to prepare for this momentous occasion, he arrived here a week ago; and the reverence in which New York holds him can best be appreciated by realizing that Mrs. Astor had arranged to call upon him—in her own person—on the very next day, bearing an invitation to tonight’s gala.
Alfieri had been reluctant to attend at first, pleading the fatigue of his travels, but Mrs. Astor had, of course, carried the day … with the result that he is here, now, looking like a prince of darkness with a familiar in mauve and purple—which is Mrs. Astor herself—appended to his arm.
Magnificently arrayed, formidable in her majesty, Mrs. Astor stands in her traditional place beneath the celebrated life-sized portrait of herself by Carolus-Duran, bidding welcome to the long line of lesser divinities as they approach. Pearls and diamonds glitter, thick as the stars of heaven, across her antique lace bodice and down her long velvet train, and crowning her black pompadour is the fabulous diamond and amethyst starburst tiara that had once belonged to the Empress Eugénie.
But for all her splendor, Mrs. Astor is eclipsed tonight. It is upon the tall and smiling man at her side that all eyes instinctively fasten. His face has long been familiar to habitués of Europe’s greatest opera houses: the wide forehead, the brilliant black eyes and heavy brows, the prominent nose, the full lower hp. Familiar, too, is the way that, in smiling, the right corner of his mouth draws up, creasing his cheek with deep lines of mirth and almost shutting his right eye … as if the warmth of his smile, so like the sunlight of his native land, causes him to squint even as it brightens everything it touches.
Mrs. Astor, standing with her hands clasped about his arm, flutters in the light of that smile like a netted moth; and if Alfieri seems amused that she forgets her imperial dignity in his presence, it is a kindly amusement—such lapses happen all the time and he is used to them by now: one German princess even forgot herself so far as to kneel to him.
“You are most kind to a stranger in a strange land,” he says to those who crowd around him as the receiving line dissolves in the heat of the evening’s excitement. “Thank you for inviting me.” His voice is soft and very light, holding no hint of any hidden glory.
“The pleasure is New York’s, we assure you, maestro,” says one matron. “We only hope that you will enjoy your stay in our city, and come to think of it as home.”
“Madame, if all of its people are like you, I cannot fail to do that.”
It seems, in fact, that this night he cannot fail at anything. At the sight of him, New York goes slightly mad, its most exalted citizens jostling each other in their haste to be at his side, and he laughs as he shakes the hands of the gentlemen, and bends over the outstretched fingers of the ladies, and says charming and appropriate things to the glowing faces of both—such as how he remembers Mrs. Dobson from that reception in Rome two years ago, and hopes her daughter’s wedding had come off as planned; and how, yes, he does recall Mr. Martindale from that small supper party after the performance of Faust last fall in Paris, and trusts that his gout is much improved; and no, he has never had the pleasure before, but surely Mrs. Pennington must be a cousin, and not a very distant one, of the delightful Comtesse de la Mercier-Trouville, for the resemblance is certainly remarkable …
And the city surrenders.
Thaddeus Chadwick watches it go down from a vantage point on the far side of the ballroom. Three broad, shallow steps lead up and into the conservatory, and he stands on the topmost of these and observes the debacle through gleaming spectacles, a small, mild, Buddha-like smile on his face. He is a portly man, all jowls and chins, with sausage fingers encased in tight white gloves, and an odd, bobbing quality to all of his movements, for his thin legs and small feet seem not to support him so much as to anchor him to the ground, much as a string holds a child’s balloon.
“… most astonishingly handsome,” one substantial lady in blue silk and sapphires is saying as she passes by amid a knot of revelers, fresh from their introductions to the guest of honor. “And not vulgar in the least. I had expected him to be quite uncouth … and yet he seems a perfect gentleman, for all that he is such a notorious libertine …” And she gasps, turning bright pink at her own audacity.
Her companions laugh and murmur agreement, but a slender woman in dove-gray satin embroidered with pearls, replies: “Oh, no! My brother has written me from Florence. He says that the Alfieri family is most respectable. They can trace their line back to the fifteenth century, and are descended from the Medici.”
“The Medici?” Chadwick says, lifting a glass of wine from the tray of a passing footman. “What of them, Mrs. Hadcock? If it is true—and I very much doubt that it is—they hardly seem to have done him much good. Your great Maestro Alfieri is no better than Little Tommy Tupper. He, too, sings for his supper.”
It is the lady’s husband who takes up the challenge. “Perhaps you would call it supper, Chadwick, but then, attorneys doubtless set far richer tables than do bankers, which—alas!—is what I am. I rather think of what Maestro Alfieri sings for as a twelve-course banquet. With an excellent vintage at every plate.” Hadcock smiles faintly. “He earns twenty-five hundred dollars for each performance. A very rich supper,” he says, and eyes widen as jaws go slack.
Chadwick clicks his tongue in disapproval. “Details of finance before the ladies, Hadcock? How shocking!”
“Only when the boodle’s your own, old man,” says another member of the little group, turning to Hadcock. “Is that his price? For each performance?”
“That, and twenty-five percent of the gross over five thousand … every time he steps onstage.”
Another man does the calculations. “But that’s upward of five thousand dollars a night! For twenty performances … that’s one hundred thousand. You must be joking! Grau would never spend that kind of money … and even if he would, Morgan and the other shareholders would never stand for it!”
“He would and they have. In fact, Morgan and the others will hoist Grau on their shoulders. Grau knows what draws, and he’s willing to spend in order to get. Alfieri will bring money into the house as it’s never been brought before.”
“Where did you hear all this?”
“Beeson told me over luncheon at the club. Grau called him in during the negotiations; they needed his expertise in foreign currencies and rates of exchange. Alfieri is no one’s fool, by the way … he’s being paid in pounds sterling and the money is going directly to his account in London.”
“Beeson advised him, of course,” someone else says.
“So I thought,” says Hadcock. “But Beeson says not. He said it was one of Alfieri’s own stipulations. He also said that he wished his own people had as much business sense.”
“Quite a compliment, coming from Beeson,” says still another. “But the man must get advice from someone. He’s a singer, not a financier.”
Hadcock shakes his head. “Perhaps he does. But it appears that he handles all his business affairs himself, and just today Beeson told me that in the week Alfieri’s been here he’s made inquiries about some very sound investments.”
“Then perhaps he is descended from the Medici, after all,” murmurs Mrs. Hadcock.
For these, at least, of Mrs. Astor’s guests, it only remains to be seen if the tenor can make lame men walk and blind men see; there is plainly nothing else he cannot do.
Still talking amongst themselves about the prodigy they have just met, the little group moves on. Chadwick watches them go, slowly sipping his wine until, tiring of the noise and the heat, he retreats to the conservatory, to seat himself in the cool shadows and smoke a cigar amid the foliage. If he is surprised, halfway through his cigar, to have someone sit down quietly beside him, he gives no sign of it.
“Mr. Chadwick?”
“Yes?”
“Mr. Chadwick, I believe that you are the only man in New York tonight whom I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting. I am Mario Alfieri.”
“I know who you are, signore, even though I did not join the lines of those waiting to shake your hand. I am not easy in crowds.”
“On a warm night even I find them trying, Mr. Chadwick. There is no need to apologize.”
“Apologize? I’m not apologizing, signore; merely explaining.”
The tenor smiles in the darkness. “Then let me explain, as briefly as I can, why it is that I have sought you out. You are, in fact, the chief reason that I am here tonight, although I would hope that you would not say as much to Mrs. Astor. I understand from Mr. Upton that you were the late Mr. Slade’s attorney.”
“If this is business, Signor Alfieri, perhaps it will wait until tomorrow? You may not be particular about where you are when you break into song, but I make it a rule never to discuss business either after hours or away from my office.” He stands and bows shortly. “Allow me to retire so as not to disturb you.”
“I wish to buy Mr. Slade’s house, Mr. Chadwick.”
There is silence for several moments. “Did you say ‘buy,’ signore?”
“I did.”
“Strange. I was not aware that the property is for sale.”
“Nor am I. That, obviously, is why I am speaking with you now.”
“But you are aware that the house is available for lease. Did Mr. Upton tell you why?”
“He told me that you are in no hurry to sell it, but wish the money for its upkeep to come from somewhere other than Mr. Slade’s estate.”
“Mr. Upton does not have a massive intellect, Signor Alfieri, but he shows houses very well, and his memory is excellent. What he told you is perfectly true. What, then, makes you think that we are prepared to sell the house, at this time—to you or any other speculator?”
“Because the sale of the house—for cash—which I am prepared to pay, Mr. Chadwick—would both relieve you of the burden of responsibility for it and enrich Mr. Slade’s estate considerably. And surely a man as careful as yourself would welcome the opportunity to save time, as well as money.”
“You are being presumptuous, signore, which is unbecoming to a so-called gentleman. And have you any idea of what the property would fetch if it were for sale?”
“I have a vague idea, Mr. Chadwick. I saw the house today. I have a few properties in Europe—a town house in London, an apartment in Paris, a country place outside of Florence. I would wish to buy Mr. Slade’s house as it is, by the way. Completely intact,” he says pleasantly. “Just as it was during Mr. Slade’s lifetime.”
“As an investment?”
“As a place to live. I will be here for more than a year.”
“And what do you wish me to say to you, signore? Surely you do not expect me to quote you a price here and now?”
“Hardly that, Mr. Chadwick. I merely wish you to tell me if the house is for sale, and, if it is, whether or not you will see my attorney if I send him to you.”
There is another pause in the darkness; then: “I will see your attorney, Signor Alfieri.”
“Thank you. I am grateful to you.”
“I have not said that the house is for sale, signore. Merely that I will see your attorney.”
“But you have not said that it is not for sale, Mr. Chadwick, and I am an incurable optimist.”
“Then I will take my leave now,” Chadwick says, with another bow.
“Forgive me, Mr. Chadwick,” Alfieri says as the attorney turns to go. “There is one more thing I must ask you.”
“Yes? What is it?”
“I met Miss Adler today.”
There is a brief silence. “That is not a question, signore.”
“No, Mr. Chadwick, it is not.”
“Would you care to tell me the circumstances of your meeting?”
“Gladly. Miss Adler was feeling better than usual this morning, or so she told me. She thought that a walk, to build up her strength, would do her good. You know, of course, that she will not go outside—not even into the garden—for fear that someone will see her unfortunate hair. She decided, instead, to walk in what she calls the ‘shut-up’ part of the house. I fear that she is not so well as she tries to be, Mr. Chadwick. She became tired and could go no further, entered the music room and fell asleep. And that was where I found her.”
“You would make an excellent trial witness, signore. You are succinct and very clear. Did you speak with Miss Adler?”
“We had tea, Mr. Chadwick, and spoke, yes.”
“In her room?”
“In her sitting room.”
“Of course. And just what is it you wish to ask me about Miss Adler?”
“Just this: I am prepared to make over one whole wing of the house for her exclusive use, and to provide her with a staff and a companion—a duenna, or chaperone, if you will—so that she need not leave the home she is accustomed to. She told me that you have made arrangements to have her moved elsewhere once she is strong enough to leave. She is frightened, Mr. Chadwick, and very much alone, and she does not wish to go. She is not of age, and you are her late guardian’s attorney, and so I appeal to you. Will you permit me to do this?”
“Signor Alfieri, if your attorney comes to see me, and we find that the house is in fact for sale, and we discuss terms, and you are able, somehow, to meet those terms, and you buy the house, then you may do whatever it is you wish to do with it, including pulling it down around your ears. Miss Adler, however, is another matter entirely, which I have no intention of discussing with you, either now or in the future. I bid you good night, sir.”
Alfieri listens to Chadwick’s departing footsteps until they are lost against the distant sounds of a waltz coming from the ballroom beyond the conservatory. After several minutes, another figure disengages itself from the shadows and takes Chadwick’s vacated seat.
“Forgive my intrusion, Mario, but when I saw him leave and you did not follow …” Alfieri does not answer, and the speaker says quietly: “Is it that bad?”
Alfieri shakes his head. “I fear that Mr. Chadwick and I will never be friends, Stafford. He is not an agreeable man and I—stupidly—let him provoke me.” His tone is bitter. “You said your attorney was eloquent? He will have to be a perfect Cicero to win for me now.”
“You tried your best, Mario.”
“And failed.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Oh, yes I do. He will not discuss the matter with me under any circumstances. That is what trying my best has led to—”
“Then let Buchan handle it. I have seen him win the most amazing battles. Leave it until tomorrow.”
“—I could cut my tongue out!”
“Mario, Buchan knows him. Let him deal with it.”
“He does not care that she is afraid. How could he not care? How could anyone be harsh with her? Such a small child, Stafford … such eyes. Did I tell you about her eyes?”
“All afternoon, Mario.”
Alfieri turns to his friend, his smile returning. “You think I have gone mad.”
“I think you have been struck by lightning, as they say in Italy. Are you in love with her?”
Alfieri’s laugh is incredulous. “I? In love with a child? My God, Stafford, are there not women enough in the world? You think that now I must start with little girls?”
“She’s not a child, Mario … I understand she’s nearly twenty.”
“An old lady, certainly! But only if one is your age, ragazzo.” Alfieri shakes his head again. “Stafford, you know my family. My youngest sister—the baby, Fiorina—will be twenty on her next birthday. When she was born I was twenty, and already singing leading roles. How could Miss Adler be anything more than a child to me? And a little child, at that … when I first saw her I thought she was fourteen and no more.”
“Then why this concern for her?”
Alfieri shrugs, his smile fading. “Can you see a child in pain, and not try to help it? Some can, maybe … Mr. Chadwick, perhaps. But I cannot. And then …” He stops, thinks, shakes his head again. “I tell you, Stafford, there is something about her. She is so like … and yet not …” He raises his hands, then lets them fall, helpless, to his sides.
“Let it go until tomorrow, Mario; wait and see what Buchan can accomplish. There is nothing more to be done, certainly not tonight. Besides, all of New York must be wondering where Mrs. Astor’s guest of honor has gone.”
“You are right, my friend,” the tenor says, as they make their way back to the ballroom. “At least I know that little Miss Adler is not in any distress now. Only musicians—and the very rich—turn night into day. At—what time is it?—two o’clock in the morning?—most of the world, and especially children, are in their beds and fast asleep.” He lifts two glasses from the tray of a passing waiter and hands one to his friend. “To our success, Stafford, and her sweet dreams.”
REST OF ANY KIND, whether of mind or of body, has always eluded Clara. She cannot remember a time when sleep has come easily for her; perhaps it never has. Even in childhood, in the many beds and the many rooms of the many houses in which she had passed her years—more than a visitor, less than a guest—sleep had been a stranger. What wonder, then, that now, in her forfeited bed, in the room that is no longer hers, in the house she will soon leave forever, it should continue to pass her by.
She has left her childhood very far behind her; but she lies now, in her warm bed, as she did then, under the thin blankets and the mended sheets, in the hot rooms or the drafty ones; lies awake and staring at the chink in the curtain where morning glimmers like a star, listening to the birds wake and call—such a lonely sound—in the twilight world outside.
What was it he had said that morning? “You deserve a better life.” She had thought so, once. “My dear child,” he had said. “Have you no family to return to? No one at all?”
“No one.”
“No parents? No brothers or sisters? No relations of any kind? All dead?”
“Yes,” she had said. “All dead.”
“Then where will you go? Has anyone told you?”
“No.”
“How can you bear not to know?”
“They will tell me when it is time.”
“Haven’t you asked?”
“No. It doesn’t matter.”
“My dear, if that doesn’t matter, then what does?”
“Nothing.”
He had looked at her so pityingly. He had been so kind. He will take the house—he had told her so—and she will move on once more.
It occurs to her, now, lying in the gray light, that he must think her mind unsound; must believe her despair to be both symptom and proof of madness.
Not so. Her mind has already passed through that shadowy realm, like a soul sinking into hell, and fallen out the other side. To go mad again would mean an ascent, an upward journey; but she has tumbled out of madness onto a plain of such pitiless clarity, and there is no escape.
Madness would be a relief. Madness, at least, being shadowy, had offered her places where she could hide. But it has all come back to her now, one death resurrecting another, grief reviving grief … and here, in this boundless desolation, the vision stretches endlessly: the past remembered clearly, the present lived clearly, the future—oh, not the future of his tea leaves—seen clearly.
What she has done is always with her now, as is what is left to her; and the two are joined inextricably, the one engendering the other, and both are linked through what she is. It is like being the point where two lines cross; like peering through the wrong ends of telescopes into remote distances on both sides of her life at once; like looking forward and backward together.
There is no forgiveness in either direction. No pity. No hope.
She wipes her eyes. Waking to the sound of his voice, she had thought, at first, that she had died, and for the moment she had felt such joy, knowing that her misery was over at last. And then she had opened her eyes and seen him, and he was his voice made flesh, dark and beautiful, and she was glad she was not dead … forgetting, as she watched and listened, that alive or dead is the same to her now. If she were different, if she were not who she is …
Never mind. He had been kind. He had kissed her hand and read her tea leaves. How could he know that there was nothing to see in them because she had ceased to be long ago?
If she were different, if she were not who she is …
Alone in the dawn, Clara curls herself up, and cries.
Chapter Four
THE GRAY LIGHT WARMS and turns to gold, the creatures of the night melt away like dew, and the pace of the city quickens with the progress of the new day. Clara sleeps at last in her sun-warmed room and, mercifully, does not dream.
Thaddeus Chadwick, although he had bidden Mrs. Astor adieu only shortly before dawn, rises at his usual hour, which is eight o’clock. Chadwick needs little sleep—an advantage, perhaps the only one, of advancing years—but even in his youth sleep had been a luxury he could forgo at need. Far more important to him is the orderly management of time. If Mrs. Astor’s life is measured in cotillions and balls and levées, Chadwick’s is measured in hours and minutes and seconds, each day being so finely calibrated that one can be certain of exactly where he is at any given moment, just by looking at a clock.
Nine o’clock finds him at his breakfast in the morning room. His house is one of a graceful row of houses fronting the north side of Washington Square, its red brick faded by time to a rosy hue, and the morning room, at the back, looks out onto his small garden, where the lately radiant dogwood trees are now losing the last of their pink and white blossoms.
This is his favorite room of the house: a sunny chamber filled with shining, dark furniture lit by the gleam of brass, the table laid with a snowy cloth and fine china. It is a room with a clear conscience, a room indicative of a healthy appetite and a good digestion, and it illustrates the guiding principle that informs every aspect of Chadwick’s existence: serenity. As a bachelor, he can shape his life to suit his wishes, and he does precisely that. No voice is ever raised in his presence; no untoward emotions ruffle his days or intrude upon his nights. He floats through life upon his small feet, his placid smile upon his lips, observing the world benignly, and the occasional furor—such as the sudden death of his friend Slade, or the equally sudden affliction of Slade’s little ward—falls into his life with no more effect than that of a pebble flung into a glassy lake: the ripples soon die away, leaving the water as tranquil as before.
Take, for instance, the unexpected approach of the tenor last night, with his ridiculous offer to buy the Slade house. He—Chadwick—had been irked at the time, it is true, but his annoyance was as much a reaction to the high-handed manner of the man who made it as it was to the proposition itself. Reflecting upon it quietly this morning, however, over his eggs and toast, it occurs to him that the Italian has done him a very great favor. The sale will do more than merely fill the coffers of the Slade estate to better than overflowing and relieve him of an unnecessary burden (as Alfieri had so astutely pointed out, to give the Italian devil his due); it will also provide him with the opportunity to bring to fruition a plan—a most important plan—which has merely been waiting for the right set of circumstances to occur before he could set it in motion.
And this is the time. He has not grown rich in the service of others by failing to know when the proverbial iron is hot enough to strike, and the tenor’s desire to own the Slade house has suddenly fired this particular metal to white heat. Chadwick is pleased, with himself as well as with events. Alfieri’s arrogance—and particularly his insolence in requesting the girl—is something he can easily put by … for now. It is important to maintain one’s mental balance, however, for the mind functions best when not clotted up with petty annoyances and ill humors; and besides, as the Italians themselves say, revenge is a dish that is best tasted cold.
But he is in no hurry. Nothing must disturb the routine—serenity, always serenity—and a glance at the clock tells him that he has the better part of an hour yet, before his scheduled arrival at his office. The documents needed to put his plan into effect are already prepared—they have been so for months—and are waiting to be filed with the courts; all that remains is for him to affix his signature.
With a small sigh of contentment, Chadwick folds back his newspaper, pours himself more coffee and, raising the cup to his lips, mentally salutes Alfieri. Because of the tenor, the greatest plum of his—or, indeed, anyone else’s—life is almost within his grasp. And if it takes a little time for his fist to close about it … well, what of that? Lighting his first cigar of the morning, he gazes out into the flower-decked garden, a happy man with all the time in the world.
The clock moves on, and noon finds Alfieri en route to his appointment with the attorney who will do battle on his behalf for the house of the late Mr. Slade. The morning has not been easy for him; he has had the curious sensation, since waking from a fitful sleep—and a brief one, as he, too, had left Mrs. Astor at dawn—that every passing minute poses some increasing threat to the solitary child in the great, empty house, and he keeps a preoccupied silence during the ride downtown.
He is accompanied by his friend of the previous evening, Stafford Dyckman, who has known the tenor long enough to recognize when speech will be unwelcome; long enough, indeed, to be quite comfortable in the complete absence of any conversation. He sits wordlessly beside Alfieri as their carriage threads its way through the noontime crush of lower Broadway, intruding only occasionally upon his friend’s thoughts to point out some feature of interest on the bustling New York pavements.
Their destination, the offices of Daniel Buchan, Esq., is very near Wall Street, and so close to the graveyard that surrounds Trinity Church that its second-floor windows look directly out onto the weathered, tilted stones of the green and quiet burial ground. Dyckman makes the introductions as the church’s chimes ring out a quarter past noon.
“Your view is quite beautiful, Mr. Buchan,” Alfieri says as he and the attorney shake hands, “but perhaps somewhat … suggestive for your clients?”
“Actually, Signor Alfieri, the view is for my improvement. I find it most helpful. On those occasions when I succeed for a client, this view helps me to maintain my sense of proportion. It serves the same function as the slave who would ride in the chariot with the hero during ancient Roman triumphs, whispering ‘Remember, you are mortal.’” He is as dark as Alfieri, but small and balding, and his brown eyes are bright and very shrewd.
“On the other hand,” he says, ushering his guests to their chairs, “on those occasions when I do happen to fail, I look out the window and take solace from the fact that, win or lose, we all come to the same end eventually.”
“A comforting sentiment, to be sure,” Alfieri says, smiling. “But as I am considering retaining your services, Mr. Buchan, I would be a great deal happier if you could assure me that the former occurs considerably more often than the latter.”
“Often enough to pay the rent,” the attorney replies with an answering smile. “Now, Mr. Dyckman has explained very briefly what it is that you wish to do, signore. Might I ask you to provide me with more detail?”
The matter is quickly explained.
“This is very intriguing. I know Mr. Chadwick well,” Buchan says, leaning back with his elbows on the arms of his chair and his fingertips pressed together, forming a steeple. “He and I have been on opposing sides many times over the years, and I know that he is not an easy man to sway. And yet you say that he seemed open to consideration?”
“Of the purchase of the house, yes.”
“But that is the important thing, surely?”
Alfieri shakes his head. “Important, yes. But not more important than the house’s current occupant. I do not wish to disturb her, or be the cause of her displacement.”
“And are you willing to make that a condition of the purchase?”
“Meaning do I wish you to tell Mr. Chadwick that if he insists upon moving the child I will retract my offer? If you feel that that will carry weight with him, by all means, Mr. Buchan, make that a condition.”
“And if he still insists, Signor Alfieri? If he calls your bluff? Will you then withdraw your offer?”
“Yes, Mr. Buchan, I will.”
“And yet you tell me that you want the house very much.”
“Very much. But not enough to cause a little invalid to be made homeless.”
Buchan sits up. “Signor Alfieri, there is one point upon which I must satisfy myself. I hope that you will not take offense if I touch upon a … well, a rather sensitive matter.”
“I am here seeking your assistance, Mr. Buchan. Ask me whatever you wish.”
“Thank you,” the lawyer says. “But perhaps Mr. Dyckman wishes his luncheon? It is unfortunate that we have to meet at such an awkward hour, but I see no reason to deny him his sustenance, signore, even though you and I may be here for some time, yet.”
Alfieri nods at the young man. “If Stafford wishes to leave, I certainly will not stop him. But I have nothing to hide from him, Mr. Buchan. We have known each other for years.”
“As you wish, of course. I will be blunt, then. Before I agree to represent you, I must be confident of your intentions in this matter. You see”—he hesitates, choosing his words judiciously—“your reputation for more than merely singing has preceded you across the ocean. The rumors of your, let us say, ‘expertise,’ signore, with the ladies have been making the rounds of every gentlemen’s club in this city for weeks.”
Alfieri says evenly: “And you wish to know if they are true, Mr. Buchan?”
“I wish to know if they have any bearing on your desire to have the late Mr. Slade’s ward remain in his house.”
Dyckman, silent until now, turns red to his ears and opens his mouth to speak, but a swift gesture from Alfieri checks him.
“My tastes do not run to children, Mr. Buchan, if that is your concern.”
“And Miss Adler is not a child, Signor Alfieri; she is a young woman, and therefore your tastes become very much my concern—especially as their catholicity has become a topic of general discussion.” He stops, shaking his head. “I am truly sorry, signore,” he continues more gently. “I do not enjoy treading on such delicate ground, nor do I wish to cause you undue embarrassment. But if I am to argue for Miss Adler to remain in your house, I must be absolutely certain that she will come to no harm.”
“She will come to no harm. I promise you that.” But Alfieri’s own words remind him of the unease that has plagued him all morning. Disturbed, he says quietly: “You say she is not a child, Mr. Buchan. But I have seen her, and I have spoken with her, and I tell you that I have known real children half her age who were better able to care for themselves than she is.”
“No doubt. But it is the duty of others to be responsible for her. That is frankly not your place.”
“Is it not?”
“No.” Buchan is firm. “Though you might wish to do it for the most unselfish of reasons, it could never appear other than highly improper. It is simply unacceptable, signore.”
“So much for our Lord’s teachings. Is it unacceptable to provide a haven for a bereaved child?”
“I repeat: she is not a child.”
“For a bereaved young woman, then. I would allow her to stay safely beneath her own roof, in her own familiar surroundings, with her own things about her. And you tell me this is wrong?”
“No. I tell you it would appear wrong. Consider those rumors about you. She would be compromised forever in the eyes of the world.”
“And what does it say for the world, Mr. Buchan, that it could read something indecent into the desire to do a kindness, or suspect the worst of a little invalid because she accepted it?”
Buchan says, almost sadly: “But that is the way of the world, signore. You know the world, perhaps better than most. Why do you deny what you know to be the truth?”
“Because”—Alfieri’s words are sharp, his face dark—“because the way of the world is paved with hypocrisy, Mr. Buchan, which we both know; and I find no virtue in celebrating that fact.”
Buchan leans toward him. “And do you speak of virtue, Signor Alfieri?”
Dyckman sucks in his breath. The tenor’s eyes widen and he half rises from his chair—only to sink back, looking at the attorney with a frown and a small, puzzled smile.
“Do you know, Mr. Buchan,” he says, after a pause, “I think you are trying to make me angry.”
“Why would I want to do that, signore?”
“Perhaps to hear me admit, in an unguarded moment, that I am Don Juan and Lothario and Casanova rolled into one, and that I plan the imminent seduction of little Miss Adler. Well, I am sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Buchan; truly, I am. But she is so small, and so very much alone. Only a monster would take advantage of her; and I am many things, but I am not a monster. I do not prey on the defenseless.” He spreads his hands helplessly. “I do not know what else I can say to convince you, and you must decide for yourself, of course. But if you could find it in your conscience to help her, I would be very grateful.”
The two men regard each other in a silent appraisal that ends when Buchan’s face relaxes. He extends his hand to the tenor.
“Signore, I will be pleased to speak to Mr. Chadwick on your behalf.”
The relief is plain in Alfieri’s face. “Thank you, Mr. Buchan, so very much. You cannot imagine how pleased I am.”
“But you must not be too hopeful,” the lawyer cautions. “You must realize that the odds are not with us.”
“As I told Mr. Chadwick last night, I am an incurable optimist.”
“Then let us hope that your optimism is justified.”
“Amen to that.” Alfieri rises and walks to the window, where he stands gazing out at the brown bulk of Trinity Church across the narrow street. “I should like, by the way, to speak briefly of those rumors you mentioned, if you would care to listen.”
Buchan looks surprised. “There is no need for that now, surely? I brought them up only because—”
“I know why you brought them up. But I would rest easier in my mind if I thought that you understood. You see, Mr. Buchan, very simply put … women make themselves available to me. They do it in embarrassing numbers and with a regularity that astonishes even me. But do not be fooled, Mr. Buchan; I am not so irresistible as the numbers would seem to indicate, although I would not be honest if I said that I did not sometimes flatter myself on that score. Nevertheless, what most of the ladies are seeking is the carnal equivalent of an autograph; and while most delude themselves into believing that they are in love in order to justify what they do, their real desire is not for me—it is for the heady experience of being in the bed of someone world-famous.”
He turns and faces the lawyer. “What is wrong, Mr. Buchan? You look uncomfortable. Are you having second thoughts about me? I have not yet mentioned the ladies who give themselves to me because they believe me to be Faust, or Hoffmann, or Lohengrin, or Otello. You think I should turn away all those eager ladies, and practice abstinence for the sake of their poor souls? But they do not care a whit for their souls, and I am no fool, to refuse a gift freely given. However, lest you think that I am utterly without self-control, I must point out that I do not accept the favors of every woman who makes her interest known: for one thing, there would not be enough time in this life; and for another, since I can pick and choose, I limit myself to those who are the most attractive.”
“Are you certain you should be telling me this, signore?”
“You are my attorney now. My confidence is safe with you. And someone besides Stafford should know the truth. And, just perhaps, when you are next at your club you could put in a kind word for me, to counter all those rumors: poor Mario Alfieri—so many women, and not one of them but sees only her own reflection in his eyes.”
“Forgive me, signore,” Buchan says quietly. “But isn’t that what each of us sees in another’s eyes?”
Alfieri shakes his head, smiling. “We must speak of this further sometime, Mr. Buchan, at length, preferably over dinner. But now,” he says, going to the attorney and holding out his hand, “I will leave you to your work. I am still unknown here, and free to walk about the streets like anyone else. I must take advantage of that happiness while I can.”
“But the rest of our discussion?”
“All the rest I leave in your hands, Mr. Buchan. I trust you wholeheartedly. Stafford will stay and give you any further information you need. No, please do not get up, either of you. The day is lovely, and my time has so rarely been my own …”
The door closes behind him.
The free sample has ended.
