Vadriel Vail - Vincent Virga
Vadriel Vail - Vincent Virga
Vadriel Vail - Vincent Virga
Native moments - when you come upon me - ah you are here now,
Give me now libidinous joys only,
Give me the drench of my passions, give me life coarse and rank,
To-day I go consort with Nature’s darlings, to-night too,
I am for those who believe in loose delights, I share the
midnight orgies of young men...
***
The cobbled street at the foot of the iron stairs was a crammed bazaar
closed to vehicular traffic. Shouting and laughing, hundreds milled and
shopped, their drab and battered outfits brightened by treasured remnants of
European finery: a simple lace collar, a red silk waistcoat, golden earrings.
Pushcarts displayed spotted fruit and limp vegetables, custard-yellow,
gummy fish, and dull magenta animal parts to sniffing, haggling customers.
Men ladled milk from large tin containers - milk often drawn from
tubercular cows, adulterated with water, then whitened with chalk or
plaster of paris. The bogus butter on sale from chipped crocks was a blend of
hog fat and slaughterhouse innards doctored in filthy work sheds and
colored canary yellow.
Pickle barrels were everywhere. Most of de Guise’s poorer tenants
were addicted to the stimulants used in the pickling process and ate nothing
but pickles, bread, and tea. Knife sharpeners, used-clothing vendors, hot dog
men, hot corn and match girls, shoeshine and nut boys shrilly hawked their
wares while clutches of New Yorkers stalled to gossip in every European
language or to gather around agitators organizing labor meetings. Against
handbill-covered walls, “doctors” held office hours, “dentists” pulled teeth
with pliers, and gypsies told fortunes. Women openly nursed babies.
Underfoot, children howled, begged, and played like agile squirrels. Couples
courted. Whores winked and flattered. The mob did not mask its animosity
toward a rent collector: De Guise was bumped and rubbed against and was
grateful he carried no valuables. The overheated light hurt his skin. The reek
brought tears to his eyes.
Armand de Guise fled Franklyn Square as soon as he was able to
maneuver himself free from the stunning crush. It had the chaotic impact on
him of the dark dreams that haunted his sleep. In a recurring one, he lugged
his corpse in a hand-carved silver casket; in another, he was misdirected,
lost, and confused, searching for a train to take him home.
On a trash-clogged side street the crowd thinned to a steady flow of
chattering people, roaming dogs and pigs, overloaded carts, and overstuffed
horse-drawn buses with people perched on the running boards like birds
clinging to the sides of a cage. Somewhere a rooster crowed. De Guise
crossed the street, quickly approaching his goal. Lust generated a heat within
him equal to the city’s sweltering dusk.
Stealthily, he wended his way past the sole surviving row of
Knickerbocker houses. Broken and beaten, their broad brownstone steps,
graceful sloping roofs, and dormer windows were sad reminders that this
noxious neighborhood once was fashionable Cherry Hill. Originally built for
occupancy by one prosperous Protestant family, each house was now cut
into titmouse cubicles and rented by his agent to five penurious irrepressible
tribes. Two nights before, a similar property of his on Mulberry Street - That
dangerous suburb of Naples known as The Bend! - had disgorged 60 people
and three hogs during a Sanitary Police raid. Each of these structures held
the same number of paying customers, give or take a hog or two dozen
chickens. Real estate, well managed like these houses, paid 100% return on
the initial investment monthly. The thought made de Guise light-headed
with fiscal pride.
He scaled a small hill of broken cobbles and kitchen slops to cross the
next street. The sidewalks were a maze of sealed packing crates warehoused
on the footpath by merchants a common ploy in these neighborhoods.
Living with pigs ‘cause they are pigs! Tenements are what they’re good for!
Tenements are what they’ll make of any home. He had voiced this
observation at his Metropolitan Club and every man present had
vociferously concurred.
“The weak shall inhabit the earth. The rich inherit and govern it,” his
revered father had preached, often adding: “Money talks all languages, even
Armenian. And don’t you forget it, sonny!” Such homilies were still
entertaining to the son’s casuistic mind, well honed and neatly
compartmentalized by the rigors of his upbringing and the demands of
amoral Harvard Law. I want to inhabit all those worth the price of
admission. Turn here, sonny.
***
Most of the smaller de Guise holdings in the ward had been torn down
and replaced by rows of square, six-story wooden rent barracks. Cheaply
constructed, they immediately looked, in his own words, “tattered and
greasy, as if the immigrants wore, rather than simply inhabited them.”
Crammed directly behind the barracks, where gardens once flourished, were
mirror-image buildings. These human hives neatly abutted, providing more
rental floor space.
Since only front and back rooms had windows, laws required that air
shafts be installed between the row houses, and air holes cut into hallway
walls for the dark interior rooms. Yearly, summer temperatures reached 115
degrees indoors, killing hundreds, sometimes thousands, of tenants,
regardless of whether the air laws were obeyed. De Guise could not be
bothered paying off the greedy city inspectors. He had shafts in most of his
buildings; the tenants used them for garbage chutes. Yet, these people
seemed to thrive, along with the rats, if he judged by the packs of children
rummaging in the refuse barrels.
De Guise hoped - what is the boy’s name? - did not inhabit an interior
coop. It’ll be foul as death! Black as pitch even with a skylight! Need to see
every precious inch of what I’m buying. Should have brought a candle. He
was tempted to shop, but decided the next time he came calling - If there’s a
next time! - he would be better prepared, including a scented handkerchief
to hold over his nose. Could pretend I’ve a cold. The locals should sell civet
oranges to randy tourists. Hope the boy hasn’t lugged his mattress up to the
roof. Or out on a fire escape. Many of his neighbors do to catch the cooler
evening breezes... ”share the midnight orgies of young men...”
***
***
Armand de Guise had never soiled his hands laboring, never mind
pumping for water. His parents’ town house in Washington Square, and his
own in Gramercy Park, had hot and cold running water on every floor.
There was never a time without the requisite staff to do the chores.
His titled great-great-grandfather had come to America from France as
an emissary for Louis XV during his disastrous Seven Years War. A personal
retinue of four aides-de-camp had ministered to him. That first stateside
Armand de Guise made straight for Nieuw Amsterdam after the Treaty of
Paris. With those same four comrades, he built a home in Turtle Bay and an
import business in the New World where France, having lost her colonies to
England, was eager for a friendly port of call in the East River. De Guise’s
descendants methodically infiltrated the pure Dutch-English stock that was
carefully cross-bred to manipulate the conduits through which the nation’s
commerce flowed, until the industrial revolution produced “new breeds” like
Astor and Vanderbilt and Huntington. The result of their rapacity was 34
Cherry Street.
We “old money” never hesitated to cash in on their schemes.
Diversifying interests. Never hesitated to invite the robber barons into our
homes. Quickly, an amalgamated social order prevailed, but de Guise’s old
guard clans – “We may break, but we won't bend!” - still acknowledged only
20 “legit” families ("people we know”) and privately bemoaned the loss of
more gracious times when ill-gotten gains were frowned upon and shunned.
However, as a business adversary, Armand de Guise was more ruthless than
his intrepid ancestors because in this new order of things, he learned that
every soul was dispensable - like an incompetent footman - and every soul
malleable to his own ends - like a competent valet. As a result, he suffered
from an unfathomable loneliness.
On the second floor landing, Armand de Guise came upon men and
women silently crisscrossing the narrow hallway like sleepwalking shadows
in the variable light. The scene reminded him of European railroad stations
where languid passengers switched waiting trains in the dead of night from
both sides of the platform.
As he climbed the next dozen stairs, he reflected on how much of his
life was spent on the move. He owned a private railway carriage and a racing
sloop, Peony. Houses. Property. A transitory life ordered by the seasons.
They induce in me a restlessness. I’ve no home. No erotic hearth. I amuse
myself. I’m frequently bored. Quickly at home wherever I land. At heart a
wanderer. Man on a quest? With neither goal nor destination...
From the third floor above came sudden raucous laughter and shouts
of haste. Lauding stolen beer kegs, the gabbling occupants made a barroom of
the hall. A dozen men and women slurped the golden heist from cans, cups,
glasses, and chamber pots. It was a frenzied party with bursts of raw hilarity
that did not extend far beyond its foaming source. As if by magic, the crowd
vanished: A rent collector was spotted skulking in their midst.
Armand de Guise smiled. His public life was given over to social
gatherings too but none as tumultuous or spontaneous as this one. Last year,
219 engagements. Of one bright stripe or another! The list of events was
detailed in the social calendar managed by his social secretary. It was a
rigorous life that, most of the time, distracted from contentious impulses or
rumbling dissatisfactions. I abhor the eternal obsession with fashion. The
regimentation. The rules. The envy. The frenzy for status. The feuds and the
factions. I willingly bear them to keep under wraps my most vital passions.
My intrinsic self. Made conspicuous only inside Chez Gaby. Though de
Guise was known for his liberal opinions, his support of radical causes - like
female suffrage and Negro equality - he never strayed too far from the pack
for fear of an enemy’s detective work.
To his way of thinking, binding his soul was a bargain price for
intoxicants like this clandestine foray to discover Angelo della Fiore. I’m
profoundly uneasy with this perpetual double-dealing. Uneasy like
Chekhov’s Gurov in “The Lady With the Dog”? We know all personal life
rests on secrecy. Every man has his real, most interesting life under cover of
secrecy. Under the cover of night, Juggling realities garnered me a reputation
for coldness. And hard-heartedness. I’m not hard-hearted. According to my
late wife. I’m without a heart entirely! Had one at school. Somehow
misplaced it for a second hot throbbing organ.
At boarding school, he had formed quicksilver, carnal friendships, and
frolicked as a popular “bijou” in romantic entanglements with the older boys
- "protectors” - earning the sobriquet “trollop” from those less favored than
he; and when his turn came for falling in passionate love with a bijou, he set
a record for reciprocation. But the rampant sex abruptly ceased among his
social peers at Harvard, as if an incubus had been exorcised overnight by the
religious instructors threatening hell and damnation, expulsion and
disinheritance. Boys will be boys no longer. Seeking sensorial pleasure
assumed the force of a religious vocation for him.
At the far end of the fourth dark hallway, a man and woman
copulated. Quick to kindle, Armand de Guise was put in rut by the lout’s
uninhibited guttural moaning. He strained to see. (At Chez Gaby, his
voyeuristic tendencies were gratified for a price.) The man’s clothed
haunches rose and fell. The orgasmic whining urged de Guise upward.
Within the envelope of excitation, the void I name my heart is
occupied. Lust never lies to me. Lust gives my life substance. It alone engages
my imagination. What’s romantic love? A conventional notion of fidelity!
Mystic narcissism. A love for love itself. Ultimately a love for death and a
means to a “higher” life. I want to fly no higher than two more landings.
The fifth landing coddled the silence of death. A black wreath, made
of dyed rags, hung on an open door near the stairs. A dozen whispering
people huddled by the boxed corpse of a young woman dressed in white. A
group lingered in the hall talking in hushed tones. Armand de Guise did not
pause.
When he was 11, a Van Leer cousin was kidnapped and murdered,
giving rise to dark dreams of annihilation. De Guise’s father hired a young
male bodyguard, assigning him a narrow cot in the corner of his heir’s
bedroom. One winter night, after awakening in a panic, de Guise had
climbed under the covers with his musky virile servant. Both were surprised
by what ensued. The ambitious man allowed his person to be utilized, but
wanted recompense for the extra duty, however pleasant. De Guise
requested an allowance from his father.
“Don’t I give you everything you need, sonny?”
“Not quite, Father,” the boy had honestly replied, gaining more pocket
money weekly than the bodyguard saw in a month. I was extravagantly
generous! And dear Ben. Honorable fellow! You tutored conscientiously.
De Guise did not go wanting at Cambridge, even if he did have to
venture outside his social circle. One of his first moves after Harvard was
joining Chez Gaby. Never averse to paying for sex, and having once been
blackmailed, he considered the club an investment in his safety. The streets
of New York City were explosively erotic and deadly dangerous. That a puff
of wind can destroy me is infuriating! Time’ll bury me. Fortune can
demolish me (maybe). Thank Christ, I’m free of Love’s burdens! Its bitter
wounds! Free! Of course, I lose Love’s kinship with Beauty. Nothing’s
perfect. Perfection is not of this world! Engrossed in getting what life can
deliver, I risk all. Rarely know despair. The living are bound to the living not
to the peaceful dead.
His mother was born a Van Leer and died soon after he was enrolled at
Groton. He studied law at Harvard to appease his widowed father, who died
in 1904 of heart failure. (De Guise had refused to kneel and pray at the old
man’s deathbed; not believing in an afterlife, he saw no point.) His wife of 20
months, also a Van Leer, had died one year later giving birth to a stillborn
son. My life’s a gallery of dead relations! New York. France. They’re
constructed upon the exploits of my family. All dead. All melted into the
earth. I, Armand de Guise, born the first of May, 1879. I’m the last of my
line. Another kind of death. The only one defeatable!
The sixth landing was the top floor. In one of these sweatboxes,
Angelo della Fiore rested. While Armand de Guise wiped his face with his
soiled monogrammed handkerchief, he clearly discerned, above the renewed
partying din, the final whinnying convulsions of the man spending in the
darkness of the fourth floor hallway. Desire has a life of its own. Power
corrupts. Not lust. Power. Not feelings or activities. Choice is destiny . Eager
for combat, he attended to the cunning of his needs.
***
There were seven doors on the landing. One was open. In the tiny
room, a mother and her four young children - girls wearing rag ribbons -
buddled around a candlelit table that was covered with blue oilcloth. They
were assembling artificial flowers, chains of beautiful, bright red roses.
Liberally applying arsenic to make the colors more vivid, each of the girls
suffered from swollen hands, and the mother’s arms were blotchy with sores.
Arsenic eventually debilitates them all. Ironic how beauty ones such great
suffering!
Soundlessly, Armand de Guise moved down the hall. When he passed
the hall sink, a stench assaulted him as strongly as if a fist had pounded his
nose. Some dead thing decaying in the drain. Angelo pays $12 for his room.
Must be a window. Unless middle rooms have skylights.
Traditionally, each floor had four flats: this building, like most owned
by de Guise, had been subdivided into seven rental units per landing. There
was no air vent in the hall wall. So no air shaft. And no skylight. The
abutting rear building blocked the adjacent windows: The enterprising
family with the paper roses used a stove with a pipe jammed through a hole
in the roof.
Walking to the far end of the hall toward the street, he stashed the
rent book and his hat in a corner. Then, he listened at the door to his right.
Sliding his hand into his jacket pocket, he caressed the vial of French, peony-
scented unguent Gaby had imported for lubricity. The knowledge that his
catch was cornered - dolce mia vita - quickly aroused him. He savored the
sensation of stiffening.
The sounds of splashing water were loud and clear. De Guise was
delighted; he loathed gamy gamin. Slowly, he lifted the latch and pressed
forward to see. Inside the tiny room, at its center, Angelo stood bathing with
his back to the door. By the dim moonlight and the murky glow of a penny
candle, his naked torso looked like a golden star suspended over a tin
washtub. He was shorter than de Guise had expected, but much more
shapely, much more developed. From a white cup held aloft, water cascaded
down the straight spine, reflecting the neighboring flame like molten glass
and igniting a longing in de Guise that soldered him to the spot. The water
fanned over the high rise of shadowed buttocks; droplets landed on de
Guise’s shoes.
Angelo shifted weight from one submerged foot to the other. The
sound of moving water filled the room. Spreading his long legs and bowing
slightly at the hips, he soaped between his thighs with his free hand,
methodically working up a creamy lather that rolled over his calves like
phosphorescence on hastening surf. The pungent scent of rose soap
sweetened the overheated air. De Guise slipped in the door. The candle
flickered from the slight breeze; at that moment, the boy squatted into the
tiny tub and noticed nothing. Noiselessly, de Guise closed the door.
The room was smaller than any of the three closets in Armand de
Guise’s dressing room; five normal steps in any direction would traverse it. A
cheap string hammock, the kind used to sleep steerage on a freighter, hung
from the corner on his left to the center of the wall opposite. It was rolled
over itself and pulled taut to take less space; a draped cotton sheet screened
the boy from prying eyes across the street. In the dim light it appeared wafer
crisp. On a tiny crate to his right was the candle in a jam pot near a neatly
folded white towel Angelo paid the woman down the hall to launder along
with the sheet, the same woman who woke him at five in the morning.
Clean linens and various other garments hung from nails. A picture of
Angelo with Joey was tacked to the wall above the crate; the brothers had
their arms entwined and were laughing expansively.
The tub was two short paces from de Guise, who watched as though
entranced by a scene on a stage played against a white backdrop. He
considered his options.
The boy softly sang a Sicilian song in a lilting tenorino while he soaped
his slender forearms and rounded muscular shoulders. He knelt, rinsed,
stood, and turned.
Gasping with shock at the sight of the intruder, and forgetting the
imprisoning rim of the tub, Angelo leapt backward and lost his balance,
flailing his arms. To intercept a fall, de Guise rushed forward, but the agile
Angelo grabbed for the hammock with his right hand and swung out hard
with his left, causing de Guise to rear up short of his goal and slam his shins
into the basin. In a jot, he regained himself. Straddling the tub, he pinned his
sopping prey against the swinging hammock by clutching both his arms.
Angelo trembled with terror.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Angelo.”
“I’imploro! Let go! Please, let go!”
He loosened his hands. “If I let you…”
“What you want? Who you are?”
“Be nice to me, Angelo”
“Why you know me? Who you are? I done no wrong!”
“Joey sent me. He said you would be nice to me.”
There was a pause. Breathing heavily. Angelo stared into the bright,
feline eyes. “I am not my brother,” he whispered, pushing his chin up and
stretching his arms to get a firm hold on the loosened hammock. He shook so
violently he needed the support to stay upright. His dark eyes bulged and his
unlined face was hard with fright - though he tried to project anger. De
Guise gripped the biceps tighter and silently examined his lovely catch.
“Let me free, mister. Please, let me free! Please? I beg for you, please!”
“Tesoro, you are the most beautiful… much more beautiful than Joey.
You are aptly named, my angel.” Leaning chaser, he kissed the young man
on the mouth.
“Go away!” Angelo growled. “I am no putan!” With a rapid movement,
he thrust his knee into de Guise's groin.
The pain stunned. Instead of freeing the boy, de Guise held harder,
digging his nails into the firm pliant muscles. Angelo tried to jump out of the
tub. With his feet on its front rim, he upended it, slamming himself in the
back of the knees and soaking de Guise, who, in a fury, grabbed him by the
throat and squeezed. A howl of laughter from the third-floor revelers
conscripted Angelo's bellow: The beer drinkers had climbed out onto the fire
escape and were baying at the moon.
The boy punched and flailed. Still enraged, de Guise released his
stranglehold, then cuffed him ferociously on the side of the head and hurled
him against the door where he bounced and shipped to the soapy floor.
Touching his smarting neck in disbelief, Angelo choked and coughed.
“Stand up!” de Guise commanded in a low whisper, again cognizant of
his own strength and appalled by the turn of events. Opening his hands, he
stretched to smooth Angelo’s hair, to offer an apology. The flickering candle
sent his shadow darting around the room like a rampaging demon.
Petrified, Angelo could not budge. De Guise stepped toward him.
Rigid, the boy groaned, shielding his face with his arms. He began to
hyperventilate as a stream of urine eddied under his locked thighs.
“I told you to stand up! Come here, boy, pronto!” de Guise ordered in
measured counterpoint to the howling mob below. Having seen tears before
from other excitable youngsters, he ignored what he considered Angelo's
theatrics. De Guise’s sternness always imposed order. He was loath to inflict
harm, and had never before; but roughhousing was sometimes required to
break down resistance and to allow capitulation without loss of face. He
wiggled his fingers impatiently, silently encouraging the boy to move. “This
has gone on long enough. I’m sorry if I hurt you.”
Angelo knelt, stood, then shakily knelt again. "I not Joey. I not...you,
yes, you hurt me!" His tears were falling so rapidly that they streaked down
his cheeks. The filth from de Guise's boots had mingled with the spilled
water, coloring the naked body like large bruises.
“If you don’t come to me. Angelo, I will come to you. You will be
very, very sorry, tesoro, if you make me do that, I swear!”
Light-headed and quaking with nausea. Angelo stood again. Muttering
incomprehensibly and weeping like an infant, he raised his hands - palms
outward - imploring not to be harmed. A red welt rose around his throat,
smeared with dirt from his own hands. “I hurt.”
“Come here, now!”
Spinning to his right, Angelo lunged to open the door. With two
strides, de Guise crossed the room and grabbed him around the waist. Using
his powerful arms, strengthened on the Harvard crew, he pinned the puling
youth to his hip and lifted him off the floor. Angelo blacked out.
Unconscious, he was gently draped over the sheeted hammock. Like a
garment on a wash line, he dangled low, bent in half.
Aghast at this turn of events - What a fucking debacle! - Armand de
Guise stood gaping in disbelief. After a few moments, the sight set him in
motion again. Removing his wet trousers and silk undershorts, he hooked
them on a nail, then thoroughly toweled las bruised legs dry before mapping
off Angelo. He was taken aback by the smell of urine. When did this
happen? There was enough water in the bucket to do a decent clean, after
which he felt the need for gentle foreplay: guilt had cooled his ardor. Christ!
Violence makes me soft! I hate it! He's a virginal child. You might have
killed him. Take him down!
He examined the body, exploring the inherited della Fiore heft. Don't
be a sentimental gu! This is no child, man! He's an exquisite uncut jewel.
Rare at any price! He'll come round. Get him juiced. He kneaded and stroked
the cool flesh with expert hands while rubbing his flat abdomen against the
downy skin. Squatting, he saturated his goal with his probing tongue;
quickly the morsel before him became irresistible. Standing, he liberally
slathered the fragrant grease on himself and between the chaste, swaying
buttocks. Not to further damage the mythic splendor, he entered the body
carefully, hesitantly, sighing with satisfaction, aroused by his own
consideration as a lover.
The odor of roses rising from his catamite stimulated his senses. The
revered scent seemed to impose grace, absolving him from transgressions
against the boy. All's fair in love's wars! Slow. Go slow. Stir the honeypot
gently. Make him forget the bad beginning. They all come round. In the end
they all come round to it.
Suddenly conscious. Angelo felt the invasion and grieved
uncontrollably. Yelping at the clawing grip on his sides, he struggled to grab
the windowsill, to brace his body with his arms while the fiend snaked deep
inside his rump, withdrawing and lunging, over and over, slowly then
furiously, swinging him with hands like grapnels, emitting grunts that
matched in ferocity the voices baying at the moon.
The boy frantically prayed to Jesus. He begged not to be killed like
Tommy across the hall: A man doing this same thing to Tommy stuck a knife
into his back. If one of the wrenching hands released its hold. Angelo knew
his timid heart would stop before a blade could pierce his skin. Remembered
tales of Jack the Ripper having come to New York engendered prayers to the
Madonna. He repeated the Hail Mary over and over to keep from crying
aloud.
In a spastic frenzy before orgasm, egged to heights of glee by what he
perceived to be Angelo’s responsive writhing. Armand de Guise sputtered “e
spenta!” and thrust with such brutal force that Angelo straightened his back
as a reflex and slammed his head into the window frame, knocking himself
unconscious. “Stupido!” de Guise muttered once he could speak “Fucking
ridiculous! Had him going there too!”
Taking a break, he hit a small Havana cigar. Kissing and caressing the
luminous haunches, he fondled the petal-smooth phallus, trying
unsuccessfully to raise a full response. Adeptly, he drew pleasure through his
fingertips like a blind man pulling words from familiar paper pricks. The
folded body made other attentions unfeasible. Eager for headier sensations,
he reestablished his position. Angelo’s lifeless semblance was as uninspiring
as de Grise’s wife’s performance had been; he finished from a sense of duty in
disappointed silence.
After wiping himself on the boy’s towel, he was buttoning his soaked
trousers when Angelo became sentient and crumpled into a fetal knot on the
muddy floor. De Guise nudged the boy’s thigh with his foot. When there
was no acknowledgment, be squatted and touched a shoulder; beneath his
hand, he felt the body clench. “If you mention this to anyone...” Angelo
shook his aching head; nauseated and disconsolate, he pressed close to the
floor. “Capisce, piccolino. Not even to Joey! This is our little secret.” Angelo
nodded, unable to speak from fear of vomiting. He was trembling again,
terrified of being beaten or strangled. “Answer me, boy!”
“Yes, sir.” he managed, barely able to breathe. “No one...I tell no
one...promise.”
“Good fellow,” de Guise said gently. After patting the shoulder and
placing a $20 gold piece on the naked hip, he rose, adding: “I’m sorry if I
hurt you, Angelo. Your antics made me very angry. We could have had fun
together. Maybe next time?” Turning, he quickly left the room.
***
Angelo della Fiore did not move. He pulled in deep breaths and lay
like a wounded animal left for dead listening to his predator’s departing
noises. When the footfalls were no longer, he snatched the towel to wipe
away the oozing traces of the rape, but the grease and male fluid made a
viscous paste that matted all his crevices. He lamented and loudly cursed
Jesus, then wept with a surge of gratitude that he had not been butchered. In
a rage, still too weak to stand, be climbed into the hammock and hugged the
cool sheet to his chest. No one to tell. Who cares for me?
If he ever saw Joey again, he would kill him. His head was bleeding
slightly; a thin trickle rolled from beneath his thick black curls and mingled
with his tears. His sides and thighs were cramped. His rectum hurt; he
covered the throbbing with his fingers. He had to wash his body clean.
Cradling himself in the hammock, waiting for the waves of dizziness to
subside, he begged God to forgive him for not having fought meaner.
Calmer, he stood. Should I confess? Would Father believe he was
overpowered like a weak, puny girl? He should have fought braver. He had
tried to get away. The man was too big. The man was too strong. The man
took him by surprise.
He had to wash; he could not stop shaking and crying. Lifting the
soiled towel, he wiped himself dry. He needed to bathe again. He had to
dress and lug the pail to the pump in the alley five times. The sink was
blocked. Some kids stuffed a rat in the drain. Bending over, he vomited in
the pail.
Why did God let this happen to me? He knelt, light-headed and sick to
his stomach again. Dear God! Why You send this Devil to hurt me? He had
wanted to be pure for his future wife, the way the priests taught, but there
would be no wife. He hated sex. It make men pazzo. It make them do
terrible things. Poor Tommy! Men paid him and some man killed him. Why
wasn’t it Joey who got killed? He yanked the picture of his brother from the
wall and tore it into tiny pieces that he dumped into the pail. Then, he pissed
on top of them. Pounding his head with both fists, he begged God and the
Madonna to forgive his sins.
Exhausted beyond sense, Angelo leaned against the window. There
wasn’t strength to lift the pail. For a fleeting moment, he considered flinging
himself out into the street the way the young mother on the floor below had
done the previous night. The family keened through the dawn. For a second,
when the man was strangling him, he’d thought the howling drunks were
the mourners resuming their grieving. The gold coin caught his eye. Give to
them. Some good from this sin. They have niente.
He understood the mother’s craving for death. Sitting on the floor, he
wept anew. How could he wash the man away with nothing but freezing
water? He knew what grease was like; his life was thick with it: One of his
kitchen tasks was scraping the roasting pans. In the morning, he would wrap
a cloth around his loins to keep from staining his one pair of trousers; then,
before changing into his white uniform, he would slip into the stillroom of
the big house and wash in the lead sink with hot water. No one would notice
him. Most were leaving for Newport in the afternoon. Everyone would be
packing and scurrying around on errands. No one notice. No one care!
He sobbed like an abandoned child, wiping his tears with his fists.
They were sending him to Newport for the summer. For a moment, a tremor
of happiness dispelled his despair the way a penny candle shattered the
darkness of his room. Normally, the lowest servants, the most easily replaced
in Newport, were left behind to scour the house; but Mrs. Molloy, the
housekeeper, had taken him aside that very morning to compliment his
nimble hands, his cleanliness, and his diligence. She spoke of a promotion
with full room and board and maybe a scarlet waistcoat to cover with an
apron. “Footmen are the butler’s acolytes,” she said. Angelo was to follow
her in three days. Three short days and he would never see Cherry Street
again. If the man reappeared, he would be gone forever.
If he come back? Before I go? He say maybe next time. He stood and
wrung his hands. He started to tremble and groan. He could not stay on
Cherry Street. I go sleep in big Central Park ‘til Newport.
The other servants had told him how Newport was far away on the
ocean. If he remembered very hard, he could see the ocean from his
mother’s arms on the boat that brought the family over from Sicily. The
thought of his dead parents made him swell with grief. Never before in his
life had he known such deep despair. Curled upon the floor, he stuffed the
towel between his legs and cried himself to sleep.
***
Armand de Guise, empty and light as vanity could make him, feeling
the power of a satiated satrap, hurried home by hansom cab. He was satisfied
with his adventure. Always get what I want! Return for seconds when I
want them. Thirds, with my hot longings. And with no coolant on earth?
None save death? The kid’s a cub. Compared to his panther brother he’s a
starter! Wonder if it'’ as big? Each is worth his weight in rubies.
The capricious vein throbbed as he recalled the cushion of heat
lightning it had nuzzled into for far too short a time. Rump’s like a wild
colt’s! Needs to be tamed. Needs to be ridden well. Mediterranean men
adjust fast. All that enveloping warmth?
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and sighed. Christ! Went too far
in the heat of the hunt. Not your seductive best, Armand. Actually pissed
himself with fright. Fuck! Stupid little bugger. Thought I had him going too!
Thought the kid was singing opera! He’s dead serious! Who knew? Another
victory like that and we are done for. Remember Asculum? Corpse-strewn
plain? Is that next in love’s war? Damn! Should’ve gone home. Knew I was
out of control at the bridge. It’s this stinking heat! Never again. When they
say no, it’s no! Unless I can tell they need a little coaxing. Just reel in the
tosser and go home, Armand. Christ! Shins ache. Probably black-and-blue.
Don’t feel any bumps. Deserve what I got. Make it up to him next time. Slow
and easy. Kid’s outta sight. Ass of life. Big balls like Joey. Lost my balance.
Who wouldn’t? Shit! He pissed himself! Didn’t know people did such things.
A bit extreme! Shins hurt. Damn the little wop fuck!
He scratched his nose. Traces of the unguent were lodged beneath his
fingernails. The yeasty sweetness of peonies momentarily detoured his
thoughts. It was nearly time for their brief perennial appearance. Their
globular blooms lay heavy in the palm, and de Guise became aware of
certain erotic parallels. The cream-rich whites dribbled with crimson, the
double pinks, ruby reds, green-golds, and yellows stirred his pulse to gallop.
His gardeners cultivated both herbaceous and tree “pineys” in abundance in
towns and country. Impervious to drought, cold, heat, and insects, the
Eurasian flower seemed immortal in its perfection. Like my mother. I gain
beauty’s kinship with emotion through flowers. Our gardens were ravishing.
A clock struck 10. The evening air was cool. Humming “Questa o
quella,” he remembered with discomfort the mounds of business awaiting
him in his study. In barely two weeks, with peonies in full bloom, he would
be leaving the city for the summer. Its lengthened days were to be spent in
and beside the welcoming Atlantic. He imagined the unfurling, translucent
waves with sweetly scented frothing tips, like the milky foam that had
tumbled down Angelo’s inner thighs.
But July and August by the sea entailed endless social responsibilities
with the fashion from town. Unfortunately, the male brothels in Fall River
were too close to his home not to produce anxiety over being spotted. If
inquietude struck as in the past, he could return to these hot, jumbled streets
to visit Joey or Angelo who, according to his brother, was stuck in the city
with the lower servants. He dared not dally with a farmyard Adonis, though
the sight of their bared torsos and corrugated midriffs always set his tongue
to swelling.
Another bored widow from cinq à sept? Need to burnish my deserved
reputation as a ladies’ man! A dashing lover! Reputation was fundamental.
The fate of Oscar Wilde was never to be forgotten. The old coot was as out of
control as I was tonight. Armand de Guise had spent too many evenings over
whiskey and cigars with the pampered progeny of the city’s founders, the
leaders of his totem-ridden community, to doubt their rigid notions of a
well-regulated society. They’re unforgiving. Absolutely unyielding. Cannot
survive without their approbation. Thank Christ there’s Joey!
He would marry again. It was time. The right woman - he had selected
Placidia Van Leer - if judiciously handled and properly managed with
tenderness and generosity, could ease his social burdens by presiding at his
table. Within the confines of marriage, there would be liberty for evenings at
his clubs, including Chez Gaby. My ace of clubs!
Every piece would interlock as he designed. It was the centuries-old
prerogative of his station, this belief that he could organize the stars. Why
should anything be altered by another tedious Season on the eastern shore in
Chateau d’Eau at Newport?
CHAPTER TWO
On ember Sunday, wearing an outgrown dark blue traveling suit of the
previous year’s cut and looking like a vision of sorrowing beatitude, Vadriel
Vail fervently prayed in the rear pew of the monastic church of Gethsemane
Abbey in Kentucky “O that Thou shouldst give dust a tongue / To crie to
Thee, / And then not hear it crying!” The long plain nave and the simple
19th-century Gothic apse were crowned by a wooden steeple plated with
tin. It seemed to him the barred entranceway to Heaven. At the center of the
nave, a choir of white-robed monks sang the austere communion antiphon
Spiritus ubi vult spirat with its four alleluias marking the end of paschal
time.
“Nescis unde venit aut quo vadat: The Spirit breathes where it wills,
and you do not know where it comes from or whither it is going.”
Vadriel could not remember where the year had gone. For the first
time in his life he had marked it by the seasonal acts of planting and
harvesting the food for his community. Now, cast out, despairing, struggling
not to cry, he softly sang in his light baritone: “Elected silence, sing to me...”
He tried to pray as Saint Benedict instructed, with all humility and purity of
devotion: not in many words but in purity of heart and the compunction of
tears.
The voice of his long-lost friend Wriothesley-Jones muttered from a
dark hollow of his mind: No tears, Vail. Skip the tears. Don't give them the
bloody satisfaction.
Instantly, Vadriel was on the defensive: These sanctified men take no
pleasure in my failure.
He tried to follow the Mass, but he could not concentrate, though the
service at the Trappist monastery - offered by hands toughened through hard
and sacrificial labors - always choked him with love and reverence. He
believed he knew what Lucifer felt after expulsion from Paradise: fierce
willful rage. They throw me back into the world! With its violence and
selfishness. God, damn them! I thought they loved me!
The year before, when he turned 21, Vadriel had reckoned his life
consecrated to simple and contemplative union with God, as he understood
Him. He expected to follow the rule - walking in the presence of God
through the discipline of silence - spending his probation time as a postulant
until accepted as a novice for two years; then, three years after making
simple vows, he would make solemn perpetual vows. He had expected never
to go back to the world. But God, through Dom Daniel the Abbot of
Gethsemane, had decreed otherwise. The official reason, the cause for
dismissal as relayed to the Abbot General in France, was the absence of a
true vocation. Vadriel honored it. He had no choice; it could not be
appealed. Once the shock subsided, he was alternatively sad and enraged.
Dom Daniel and Meister Eckhart say everything happens for the best.
I don’t buy that. Think everything happens, period. We’re left to make the
best of it. With God’s help. If we want it. From force of habit, Vadriel prayed
to accept whatever plan God had for him. At least he had learned that
happiness was a possibility; once given, God would not take that gift away.
He would miss the harvesting of the wheat in July; but he had cut the first
crop of alfalfa with these men he loved, these men from every walk of
American life who had become his brothers.
In the reception area, where visitors were sequestered, Vadriel’s
guardian, Ebenezer Norwood, waited to take him home to Boston. The man
had borne witness to the most momentous moments in Vadriel’s life. The
first was after his parents’ death; Vadriel was 6 and immediately packed off
to boarding school in England. The second was one year gone: On his return
from Oxford they had convened with lawyers to sign a sheaf of papers before
Vadriel traveled to Kentucky, to the life that was not to be. Rising from the
pew, with the words of à Kempis on his lips: “Come, O Lord Jesus, and
vouchsafe to make Thy abode with me,” Vadriel stepped into the aisle,
genuflected, and directed his will to the path ahead, away from the ethereal
world of the absolute religious life. Swiftly, without glancing back at the
choir - the only family he had ever known - he walked out of the church as
if exiting the cave of God’s heart.
“Skip the tears,” he muttered, startling a lone monk out of meditation
as he passed and looking like a six-foot altar icon of Saint George striding off
to battle evil, shielded only by his legendary beauty.
The monk sighed. “If looks were grace, that boy could take us to
Heaven on his coattails!”
***
Vadriel Vail had written Ebenezer Norwood to come collect him.
Ebenezer had dutifully complied. For 65 years, the small, dapper man had
labored for the family Vail. At the age of 12, he was apprenticed as a scribe
to Vadriel’s grandfather, Septimus; his job, copying cargo lists into the
master log. It was the time of sailing ships when the pace of business was
slow, affording gentlemen merchants a dignified leisure that they filled with
cultural and political pursuits. Septimus Vail, like his grandfather who had
founded the company, was a fund of general knowledge; such a mind was a
prerequisite for running a mid-19th-century global concern. Ebenezer
absorbed information effortlessly and soon became invaluable.
In 1863, after the death of two of Septimus’s younger brothers at
Antietam, and after torturous deliberation. Septimus took advantage of the
Conscription Act, paying $300 to hire a substitute rather than cast Ebby into
the insatiable maw of the Civil War. As a descendant of a “signer,” Septimus
was rabidly in favor of the Union, despite his own father’s having repudiated
the federal government at town meetings from the day Andrew Jackson – “A
scurrilous man!” - entered the White House. (Thereafter, Septimus Sr. had
devoted his energies to financing free public schools.)
Desperate to fight secession with a gun, Ebenezer stoically resigned
himself to aiding the Union with his brains. By 1880, he was managing the
Boston office and overseeing the Salem shipbuilding enterprise with
Septimus’s only son, Nathaniel, Vadriel’s father.
Vail business was Ebenezer Norwood’s life. Nathaniel had wed into
other Boston Brahmin stock and reproduced immediately; the child died of
scarlet fever after six months of life. Two others suffered similar fates. On
May 1, 1886, Vadriel was born at 8 A.M. and named for the angel of the
ninth hour; It was hoped the heavenly spirit would guard him during the
perilous days of early childhood. The Episcopalian priest present at the birth
informed those gathered that the newborn infant appeared swathed in
virtue. wearing it like a turban, and decreed that Vadriel Vail, blessed among
men, was destined for great happiness.
Ebenezer often wondered how God had revealed this to the earnest
reverend, who was not normally given to dabbling in prophecy. He was
reminded of the words every time he gazed upon a hand-tinted photograph
of Vadriel on the mantle of Septimus’s study. Posed when the family
celebrated his first year of life, Vadriel was swathed in ermine - hat and full-
length coat - and seated in a two-wheeled cart, gripping the straps to a
nattily groomed Angora goat, its crescent horns and split hooves painted a
lustrous gold. The princely child in the photograph definitely looked blessed
among men. His beauty bloomed early and confirmed for the family the
priest’s report at his birth. No Vail before him had ever been furnished with
violet eyes. Only Ebenezer understood that everything achieved a certain
veracity in time.
Septimus was instinctively drawn to the infant. He arranged for
Ebenezer to visit the nursery three times a week to keep him apprised of the
child’s development. For four years, until tutoring officially began, this was
the routine; then the Harvard divinity instructor took over Ebenezer’s
watch. Nanny Osgood proudly informed the tutor of the child’s seraphic
heritage; it increased tenfold the instructor’s yearnings to engage Vadriel’s
will in “the fermentation of beatitude” to guarantee that men would pay him
allegiance. He inculcated in the boy the liberal tradition with its Lockean
ethos: “The rights of private property and self-government, sir!”
Septimus had sought a tutor who, like himself and Ebenezer, had
achieved manhood in the decades before the Civil War when religion,
philosophy, and science were inseparable. There were to be no obstacles to
aligning religious faith with the democratic one. Benjamin Franklin’s belief
that morality was the core of the sanctified life and that worldly success was
awarded to the moral man, was the cornerstone of Septimus’s philosophy. It
had been imposed upon him and his son from birth - upon Ebenezer from
the age of 12. Now it was bestowed upon Vadriel Vail.
“The components of this morality are honor and duty,” has tutor told
him. “Duty is to triumph even at the sacrifice of life. Death rather than
infamy! Passion subjugated to reason. Reason is that which is best in man.
It’s very simple. Sit up straight, Master Vadriel.”
Yet Septimus and Ebenezer believed in the efficacy of miracles. They
prayed to a benevolent, reasonable God who never demanded the
impossible. In their hearts, the Enlightenment strongly embraced
Romanticism. Like Emerson, they believed there is in the soul of man a
justice whose retributions are instant and entire. But, like all wealthy
Americans of his period, Septimus had a deeply ingrained conservative
streak, which is why he decided to send Vadriel to boarding school in
England after both parents and Vadriel’s younger brother perished when
their sailboat was dismantled by a sudden squall on Narragansett Bay in
1892. The Boston Latin School was sound; but Septimus revered the rituals
of the English landed estate, and he welcomed with capitalistic prescience
the international connections. Also, he wanted something special for
Vadriel, who would know nothing but prosperity and he Emerson's “Young
American” incarnate.
In his sorrow over the loss of his son, the old man turned to Ebenezer
Norwood for sustenance. He relied upon him for answers to business
questions, and he trusted him in matters of the heart - even appointing his
employee as guardian to his orphaned grandson. Vadriel’s mother left a large
family, but Grandfather Vail wanted one of his own to manage the last of his
own. He threatened to cut the child out of his will, leaving the “kit ‘n’
caboodle” to the Boston Public Library if anyone objected. No one openly
dared. No one wanted to be stuck with a penniless, though remarkable,
child. Normal ones were difficult enough.
At age 6, Vadriel knew his own mind. The loss of his parents was a
terrible disruption, but the child had grown as a separate entity, secluded in
the nurseries of the large red-brick house in Louisberg Square and the
summer cottage, Cormorant. His parents had been the titular heads of the
kingdom; he, however, ruled his domain, its contingent of servants, and his
younger brother with the power of an exiled prince. Unlike most children
who perceive much and distinguish little, Vadriel’s conclusions were
remarkably accurate, revealing a disconcertingly precocious intellect. He
frightened his parents. They recognized in their progeny the legendary
power and aggression that marked a true Vail - a tidy abstraction that
removed him further from them. Vadriel was not in the doomed sailboat
because the previous afternoon he had accused his father of taking
unnecessary risks while driving four-in-hand.
Ebenezer agreed to oversee the boy from a distance. He admired the
noble little nature - generous and greedy, tolerant, tenderhearted, and
affirmative - that surrendered totally to the aimless, formless nowness of
living. Since Ebenezer never married, his energies were absorbed by his
work and his surrogate family. Yet, in his old age, he lodged no complaints.
Sitting in the monastery, waiting to recover his charge, he was quite at
home. His life, he proudly reasoned, was also one of devotion. And now he
was about to receive his reward: The scion of the immense Vail fortune was
to take the keys from the man who had helped negotiate its rise to corporate
greatness. Then Ebenezer could happily retire to the comfortable,
independent home that Septimus had organized for him.
***
The sun was rising. Birds were singing along with the men. Mass in
the monastery had begun at 4 A.M. In his assigned corner, Ebenezer
Norwood grew restless. Mote-filled sunbeams speared through latticed
lunettes too high in the tall stone walls to offer distracting views. The
uncomfortable trappings were a brace of plain pine chairs and a low oak
table on which a cloud of peonies - velvety yellow edged with crimson -
erupted like foam from a polished brass container. They dropped petals
fitfully, revealing bloodstained hearts to the heated air while visions of
Vadriel, age 6 blissfully spun in exaltation beneath them.
Images of a dancing boy, violet eyes, dark and golden, barefoot,
dressed in yellow linen, harmonized with lignite cliffs, a beryl sea, and a
turquoise sky. Detaching from the family picnic, he had run against the
warm, scented wind to the edge of land. Rock-still. he gazed upon the lucent
world as if considering flight, until his forceful joy tugged his curly head
from side to side to mark the rhythmic pounding of the ever-breaking
waves. His spirit flamed. He swayed his hips, thrust up his arms, and spun in
looping circles, abandoning his senses to the rapture of the peerless summer
day.
He danced like a fledgling oriole testing its powerful wings, oblivious
to the bellowing adults who ordered he not twirl himself over the precipice.
Dropping to the grass with dizziness and triumph, he laughed and nuzzled
the flowering earth. His mother had promptly swooned. His father had
dragged him from the crumbling edge and yanked him to his feet, intending
a memorable punishment; but Vadriel threw himself into Nathaniel's arms
and covered his bearded face with gleeful kisses, unaware of the distress he
had caused. Nathaniel hugged him to his heart and struggled not to weep
from overwhelming love for this seraphic child of God.
“Where is this child of God?” Ebenezer wondered aloud, checking his
watch.
He had been a shadowy figure that tragic summer. Though working in
the guesthouse a good part of each day, he nevertheless observed the boy’s
immersion in the sensual world: rolling over lawns flecked with yellow
buttercups, stomping naked in shallow streams, tearing carmine poppies
from the flower borders to sniff and twine in his black hair - all the while
uttering his discoveries. Trees could not be passed without their textured
barks caressed and sidled against and - if a weeping beech or willow -
entered so his small limbs could entangle with theirs. He was constantly
picking things up, or squatting to study an insect, a turtle, a stone, or
running wildly, arms extended, through the hectares of rippling, grassy
wheat. Even then, his beauty caused adults to pause before shyly addressing
him.
Once Vadriel was settled at Eton, things changed. This was to be
expected; but Ebenezer was utterly bewildered by what was, in his
estimation, the deleterious outcome. The prefect of boys had sent monthly
reports, which Ebenezer studied and fed to the ailing Septimus along with
Vadriel’s weekly letters, achieving beneficial results far greater than the
prescribed medicaments. Twice Ebenezer had journeyed to Eton incognito;
once to get the lay of the land, and once to attend the commencement
exercise. His young man had loomed above the lords of the realm by virtue
of his extraordinary physical presence. True, Ebenezer loved the boy, but the
face was a fact of nature, as well as the talk of everyone around him.
Ebenezer had been determined to locate among the graduates one
Henry Wriothesley-Jones, heir presumptive to the earldom of Southampton.
For six entire terms, he and Vadriel had been inseparable. Letters home were
detailed retellings of their adventures; then, suddenly, they never mentioned
his name. The boy vanished from our epistolary lives with no explanation.
Questions about him were ignored. The monthly reports soon noted a
lapse in the group activities that had previously engaged him. The letters
were reduced to lists of school events and book reports.
Years later, at the commencement, not a word or glance did Vadriel
exchange with the slender, brooding redhead who answered to the name of
Wriothesley-Jones. Ebenezer had studied the sharp aristocratic features, the
small ferret eves, and the “stick-up-the-rump” bearing, pleased the
friendship had ended for whatever reasons. However, Vadriel did not
socialize with anyone who did not first approach him. There were many
sisters calling in favors from their brothers to gain an introduction; he was
polite but not forthcoming. Most distressingly, Ebenezer noted that his ward
seemed to have an aversion to being touched.
The introvert phase did not end at Oxford. His tutor at Balliol College
reported that Vadriel had few friends and kept himself so private that people
dared not pursue. It was considered shyness, not contumely, for he was
never rude or cruel. In his second year, he swam, played cricket, crewed, and
accepted leads in the theatricals - his greatest triumphs were Angelo in
Measure for Measure and the Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance - but he
never lost his reserve with those around him. He was frankly adored by the
younger boys who peered at him as though he were a star on the horizon;
his heart was as distant and as equally out of reach.
The conversion to Catholicism had occurred during the second year at
Oxford. Near the close of his penultimate year at Eton, he’d become obsessed
with Gothic cathedrals, traveling each holiday though Europe - staying a
month at Chartres - to study and sketch them. He explained in a monograph
for his history class: “The aspirations are something one can live for and
adore.” He tacked above his desk: “The equilibrium is visibly delicate beyond
the line of safety, danger lurks in every stone.” A trip to Prague spun him
into Baroque during his first Balliol Christmas break; by Easter he was under
the spell of Dante and the visionary mystic William Blake who, by refusing
to adjust himself to his society, had evolved his own brand of faith and, by
refusing to define Love, possessed it.
Blake’s affinity with Catholicism led Vadriel to the metaphysical poets,
especially Crashaw, whose conversion intrigued him, and Donne, whose
poems and sermons were memorized by the dozens, then to Thomas
Aquinas, Dr. John Henry Newman, Matthew Arnold, and Walter Pater. The
Roman Renaissance was going full tilt among English intellectuals; Vadriel
was spellbound by the power of the Word when spoken with such searing
eloquence, to cut through the false distinctions of a worldly morality.
Attaining insight into the misery and corruption of his soul, Vadriel
experienced true contrition. There was a movement of his will: a tentative
surrender. Overwhelmed by its tremendous, unified doctrine, he, too, sought
“the one visible Church.” In his vocation, he believed God called out to him.
The chanting from the church recalled Ebenezer to the present. He
was grateful the old man had gone to his grave before Vadriel went over to
the Catholics because the shock would have been seismic. In America,
Catholicism is primarily the religion of immigrants. And the working class.
It has no concern with the life of the mind, only with vocational study. The
English-speaking Irish, with their Puritanism, superstitions, and militancy,
have run roughshod over the French and German intellectual traditions.
Poor America! Nowhere are there two halves of an Irish brain to rub
together to spark an idea!
Ebenezer knew the disintegration of his beloved country hadn’t
started with the Catholic immigrants and their political machines. For my
money, the spiritual rot set in right after the signing of the Declaration of
Independence. By 1796 the Federalists were already engaged in a smear
campaign to discredit Jefferson. But I think the Papists’ greed and mindless
hunger for power are more dangerous to democracy. Much more dangerous
than the family loyalty of us Protestants. Something cunningly childish
about Catholics. Could that be it? Is Vadriel trying to rediscover his
childhood? But why search where neither pleasures of the mind nor of the
flesh exist?
Ebenezer sat stymied. He was grateful the boy had returned to
America. He might have been successful in a European monastery. Here,
there can’t be any difference between being a child of God and being His
prisoner.
The day progressed. The monks were still singing. Ebenezer rose and
paced the cell-like room. Why choose an order with a vow of silence? And
why would the priests allow a fish as big and rich as a Vail to escape Peter’s
net? His money could build a rash of these forts. Gethsemane? Imagine
devoting an entire life to suffering? Not healthy, he concluded, relieved that
Vadriel could now take his rightful place in proper society.
Yet, he was furious at the priests for having refused his boy a safe
harbor from the storms that had forced him to seek refuge with them. He
reviled them for finding his boy unworthy to seal himself up in their tomb.
This complex of opposites gnawed at Ebenezer’s peace like an incorrect sum
hidden in a ledger until Vadriel appeared to distract him from it. Ebenezer
was surprised to see his charge looking so healthy. He seems to have
outgrown his suit! I didn’t think a man could survive without meat. During
the Lent that had just ended, the Trappists ate only one meal a day of
vegetables, soup, and bread.
“Cheers. Ebenezer! Shall we go?” Vadriel’s English accent made the
words seem lilting and casual, but the sensitive guardian caught the darkness
and the sorrow in the timbre of his voice. “Thank you for coming to fetch
me. I couldn’t bear exiting on my own.” A head taller, the muscular young
man offered his cold, work-calloused hand, which Ebenezer clasped. Their
eyes met and held.
Ebenezer spoke softly: “I couldn't have you leaving on your own if it’s
not what you wanted. Master Vail.”
“You must call me Vadriel, Ebenezer, Please!” The hand was gracefully
withdrawn. The astonishingly lovely face was as blank as the walls.
“I'll try.”
“You agreed to try in Boston. Now that we’ll be sharing
accommodations – ”
“Oh?”
“Have you other plans for me?”
“Uh…no! I’d assumed – ”
“Assumed what? Another monastery? I think God’s made His wishes
eminently clear on that score. You mustn’t feel obliged, Ebenezer. You’ve
done more than what’s required of a guardian. I am of age. I simply thought
–”
“Yes, of course. And rightly so, I'm delighted.”
“Brilliant! Are you really?”
“Yes, really!”
“Swear?”
“I swear!”
“Are you ready?”
“I've been waiting.”
“Sorry. Thank you for waiting. I took a walk around the old place.”
“Are you finished?”
“Yes, thank you. I am. As finished as I'll ever be. Please help me leave.”
“Give me your arm, Master Vail.”
Vadriel smiled. “Cut the ‘Master’ routine, Ebenezer. This is America,
you know.”
“Thank God for that, sir!” he exclaimed, charmed.
“Well, as the Statue of Liberty, with her arm raised in welcome, says to
those of us yearning to breathe free: ‘Get to work!’” They both laughed. “We
shall see, Ebenezer. We shall see...”
The older man slipped his arm around the younger’s and guided him
toward the door. Buzzing flies and stirred cool air entered the waiting room
when he yanked the latch forward. From under the tall outside arches,
blazing light blanched the flower-scented mugginess of a deserted covered
walk. Doric columns supported a cloister arcade that enclosed a patch of
lawn bright as liquid emerald. Shutting his eyes against the glare, Vadriel felt
dropped into a tunnel, so deep was the stony stillness.
The two men walked hurriedly around the echoing courtyard, past the
novitiates’ chapel guarded by statues of Joan of Arc and Saint Theresa, the
Little Flower, past the four banana trees at the guesthouse, to a broad
doorway where they turned into the monastery’s entrance hall. At its far
end, beside a huge wooden door, a hooded Trappist stood beneath a sign that
read GOD ALONE. He was the same monk who had admitted Ebenezer
earlier.
Vadriel nodded to Anselm, who smiled lovingly, signed a farewell
blessing, then pointedly glanced away. Ebenezer politely thanked him,
handed him a $20 gold coin as an offering, then hastened past the portal. The
dense heat of the Kentucky summer clasped the guardian and his charge.
Fragrant honeysuckle freighted the hazy air while catbirds sang their
mewing trills overhead. The two men separated and directed their arrowy
pace to the waiting carriage. Neither felt the eyes of Dom Daniel upon him.
***
From his office sanctuary, the crow’s nest as it was affectionately
called, the tall, reed-thin abbot watched Vadriel Vail depart his care. He felt
the disappointment of his community keenly. It had not been easy to
convince the Master of Novices and the Abbot General that Vadriel was not
a suitable candidate. His vocation appeared sound; he was neither detached
from life nor too weak to face it; and the Vail fortune was greatly needed.
Dom Daniel had persevered because he knew that the peace and sanctity of
his men were in mortal danger as long as the willful boy was among them.
To admit the mistake is not difficult. When I consider the alternatives.
The abbot was aware of everything that occurred in his abbey. He was
as finely attuned to the emotional fluctuations of the men in his care as he
was to the winds and the weather that controlled their daily rounds. The
very moment the Master of Novices had introduced Vadriel into their midst,
Dom Daniel had commanded himself to full attention.
Dom Daniel had been standing in the cutting garden under the
scented shade of a magnolia tree. It was his favorite place for greeting.
Vadriel’s presence on the parallel walk startled his mind and viscera. The
boy had a tidal beauty. It carried everyone’s attention in his direction. It
produced a response as immediate as the piquant scents of the lilacs growing
against the stone walls. It was a beauty of the earth, strong and bold as an
elm, and its grandeur made its owner a marvel to behold Vadriel’s perfectly
proportioned figure inspired in the abbot a comparison with peach colored
German irises, another example of sublime architectural form, these flowers
lined the red-brick walk on both sides and looked like an honor guard posted
for the newest postulant.
When the boy smiled, the priest’s heart thumped – “as though
applauding God's handwork” - which is how he later phrased it in his diary.
He surveyed the boy more closely, recalling the warning of Saint Basil, a
warning he rapidly misplaced: “Let him keep his attractiveness hidden until
his appearance reaches a suitable state. Sit in a chair far from such a youth….
Do not by gazing at his face take the seed of desire from the enemy sower
and bring harvests of corruption and loss.”
After the introduction, Vadriel did not fidget under the abbot’s
merciless scrutiny. He was accustomed to being stared at and early on had
grown oblivious to it, until he was sent to school. There, the older boys
pounced the day of his arrival. They set a premium on his beauty. Their
demands for kisses or hushed fondling in the darkness were too assaultive;
they came before he was equipped to respond with anything but confusion
and fear. Profoundly rattled, he grew wary of everyone, ignoring even the
senior boys who courted him passionately and delicately. (He saw them as
young Steerforths and was haunted by the fate of Little Emily.)
Soon lesser beauties snatched the limelight. While they were learning
to be coy and winsome, thriving on the flatteries. Vadriel was reclusive in
the library, cultivating a blank, impassive face that only aggravated the
situation when he reached puberty by allowing people to read into his
expressionless visage whatever they wished him to be thinking or feeling. He
grew to hate his body. Then, along came Wriothesley-Jones.
“You’re like a circus attraction. Vail, you know? Types gawk at you as
if you had no feelings. No wonder you're gun-shy. It must be bloody awful.”
“I never think about it.”
“You’re a bloody liar! You never think of anything else. You are a
miracle of self-consciousness. I’m amazed you're such a bloody good actor on
the stage. You know you’ll never play a male role here. Those legs and that
bum are as wondrous as that face and those warlock’s eyes. I adore your
Rosalind. Have you a cigarette?”
“I admire your Orlando. I don’t smoke... filthy habit.”
Wriothesley-Jones laughed. “You talk like a Dickensian ingenue, Vail.
Lord! You even blush like one! Don't go, please. I'm worried about you,
Vail.”
“Don't bother, please.”
“Why not? You’re as simple as a half-wit. Someone must. You
honestly hold yourself responsible for the chaos you engender in young
hearts, don’t you? Don’t you, Vail? The difference between the others and
me is when I look I see you, Vail. I see you clearly, little boy. And, believe it
or not, I admire the chap I see.”
“You have a weakness for circus attractions?”
“Only bears and lions and panthers like you, Vail.”
With Wriothesley-Jones he learned to enjoy his beauty by thinking of
it as a gift, a talent, like his acting ability. Eventually, Vadriel acquired
enough self-confidence and humility not to care what most people thought
or said; but Dom Daniel’s intensity jarred him. He had seen it on no other
face but his own when, trying to view his features objectively, he stared
nearsightedly into a mirror. It was then that Vadriel had smiled at the priest,
as an act of self-defense.
“Welcome,” Dom Daniel said softly, not removing his eyes from
Vadriel’s face, not extending a hand. The abbot observed that the boy’s head
sat poised on its neck with the elegance of freesias balanced on their delicate
stems. He looks virtuous as an angel! ‘True virtue is Soul, always in all deeds
All.’ To invoke Donne. And don’t you forget it!
“Thank you, Father Abbot. It’s been a tiring journey.”
“Now you are home, my son.”
The boy nodded and smiled again, a fuller smile, baring perfect white
teeth. The priest noted that God did nothing by halves. If He wishes to bless
the world with le beau ideal, He completes His gesture admirably. We can
all learn from this! Mr. Vail’s outer ears resemble the unfurled petals of Duke
of Wellington tulips. God also does not fear repeating Himself. Another
lesson here?
Dom Daniel had never seen violet eyes - Each iris a perfect poppy! -
and he was amazed to find such a color existing among the genes of
mankind. Then he queried himself on this reaction, knowing the color was
common in nature. It was the color flowers reverted to unless selectively
bred. Petunias, phlox, and sweet peas Nicotiana and foxgloves. The Garden
of Eden was a set of magenta blooms! But in a living human face it seemed
supernatural. Rare is all. Like perfection in human form. Unfamiliar. like
grace to a hardened sinner. The eyes show his soul's steady flame.
Silently, the two men walked around the garden. The abbot noted that
hair curly as chrysanthemum petals and black as Ace of Spades tulips was as
common as orchid species. Phlox-white skin he had seen often. Chins square
as a box hedge with the trace of a cleft, he had also seen. Strong chins are a
key factor in male beauty. Where would Raphael? And Caravaggio? And
Michelangelo? And Rubens be without them? Even straight noses flared at
the base to force symmetry and alter perspective on bird-of-paradise jaws
had been seen. I’ve been around for someone leading a secluded life! But,
taken together and blessed by eyes resplendent as Saint Elmo’s fire, that was
something very special to see. And not a dimple broke the face’s planes.
Azaleas and jonquils and flowering almond trees surrounded them, as
well as the flowers that constituted Linnaeus’s clock - the flowers that
opened and closed their petals at particular times of the day, sun, or cloud.
Any informed member of the community could read the approximate time
by glancing at certain flowers. The St. Bernard lilies and red hawkweeds
were shut. It was nearly 4 o’clock.
“Do you like flowers, my son?” Dom Daniel asked gently.
“I don’t know, Father Abbot.”
“Do you have any feeling for them?”
“Some. I love the way they smell.”
“Some will do. Brother Anselm needs help with the Virgin’s flowers
for the altar. He also tends Her fruit and nut trees. He takes great pain with
Her figs. They are renowned the world over.” Dom Daniel summoned the
gardener from among the dwarf hazelnut trees near the outer wall.
The monks worked with their hands outdoors as a form of prayer for
five or six hours a day. When not working, they collectively prayed, studied,
and meditated. The round of canonical hours brought them together in the
choir seven times. Their day was intended to be one prolonged prayer
ending always with Salve Regina.
Vadriel had chosen the Cistercian Order because he believed the
silence - the orison of quietude - would remove a major distraction between
his inner voice and his Creator. He knew that for most, religion was the
means of winning the favor of the gods; worship was public, a group
experience with priests as mediators. For him, it was not ritual appeasement
of God, but a direct relationship that he craved. The Word was a flame
within. Spirituality was not a specific thing to him: It was various sentiments
focused on his perception of God. His appetites, his acts, his original
experiences might lead him to understand and to accept his monstrous
loneliness, his sense of incompleteness, as part and parcel of man’s estate;
and by entering fully into them, by embracing his human frailties, he would
gain access to the kingdom of God. He would be silent to hear what God
uttered within him. He would go beyond the presence of death, bearing
witness to life by cultivating the essential solitude. By leaving all creatures,
he would discover God. Or so he believed.
Finding the machinations of society moronic, he had no trouble
renouncing the world. In man, the capacity for loving is limited. It has to be
completed. Completed by being loved. God loves me unconditionally. God
won’t ever abandon me. That was his absolute. The rest was inconsequential.
He would dare to live in seclusion, on the margin of society, an irrelevant
outsider not dependent on social acceptance. “Existence under a state of
risk,” as Dom Daniel expressed it. He would dare to seek direct communion
with God.
“Serious daring starts from within. The journey of my life will be
inward,” Vadriel had written to the abbot.
This young man is not in fugue. He’s seeking true surrender, was Dom
Daniel’s conclusion as they stood face to face in the garden. Thoughts thrill
him like adventures. I adore the early freshness of purpose.
Brother Anselm approached. He wore an apron over his robe. The
abbot knew the gardener would not only share his skills with Vadriel, but
would also set an example as he offered fraternal correction. He was 38 years
old and had been in the Order for nearly 20 years. He’s a rock of her Love.
As gentle and kind as civilized man can be. He's also smart as Gest makes us.
Honest as hyacinth blue.
“Anselm,” the abbot said, “This is Thomas.” He introduced Vadriel by
the name given him for his new life. Thomas for Aquinas, whom Vadriel
loved beyond bounds. “Thomas, this is your guardian angel. He will help you
find your way.”
Anselm stared at Thomas as if he were studying a rare, imported bulb.
He was visibly flustered by the face. The young man arched a brow and
accepted the homage as naturally as plants take sun. Dom Danel recorded it
all: Under the humility. Thomas’s souls streaked with Pride. Streaked clearly
as the Absalom tulips have color breaks. (“An appropriate simile,” he later
wrote. “The tulip’s colors are the result of a virus disease. Introduced in
1780, I believe. This child’s Pride is like a virus.”)
“Does he like flowers?” Anselm asked the abbot.
“Yes.” was the immediate response from Thomas.
Learns fast too, Dom Daniel noted, pleased with his new postulant. He
and Vadriel had been corresponding for a year. Vadriel wrote long, complex
sentences, beautifully crafted, that clearly expressed his desire to join the
Order. During several retreats in England, the Master of Novices had
interviewed him; though accepted there, he requested a place in Kentucky.
“I am an American,” he had explained. “I’ll be content anywhere, but I’d
very much appreciate taking my vow of stability in my native land.”
In one letter he had written of his conflict of Faith by quoting Gerard
Manley Hopkins: “My prayers all meet a brazen heaven; And fail or scatter
away.”
Dom Daniel counseled that Faith is not an Absolute: “It must be
pursued each time it appears to have escaped. ‘It hides and then it shows.’
We have glimpses, like a light dancing before our souls, which is how God
shows us it exists. Faith is freedom. Faith will overcome Doubt.”
Vadriel also wrote that he, like Milton, sought a perfect chastity of
mind. He practiced a mild asceticism. He revealed an absence of feeling for
others, which the abbot ascribed to self-absorbed Youth. He confessed to
sins he feared he might commit and was advised to avoid the sin of Pride.
Pride was evident from the start.
But it was their shared passion for John Duns Scotus - the Irish
medieval philosopher - that won the abbot’s final consent. Vadriel believed
unequivocally in the “individualizing difference, in final perfection, which
makes this man this and not that.” He found in the “thisness” of Scotus, in
the haecceitas, the solution to his quest for the immense God. The
“individual” as “a most special image” is knowable by the intellect in union
with the senses. Through this knowledge of the singular, by abstracting, he
would arrive at the universal. To know himself would lead Vadriel directly
to God. He was eager to enter the labyrinth: “‘O, my God, speak louder, that
so, though I do hear Thee now, then I may hear nothing but Thee.’”
The abbot resolved to be patient with the young questing soul; he
recognized its worth. While Thomas slept his first sleep in the novice’s
dormitory of paillasses laid on planks, Dom Daniel reread the letters,
assessing what possible problems lay ahead for the postulant. Intrigued by
Thomas, he gave not a thought to Anselm.
***
Of all the members of the community, obedient Brother Anselm was
the most beloved. Not once had he made an enemy or been at the center of a
controversy. His exemplary patience and good humor, like his magnificent
blooms, were a banner proclaiming joy in his heart and the universal
optimism of a true vocation. His contentment and ebullient happiness were a
model for everyone.
In his humility and unaffected disinterest he had declined to enter the
priesthood: He believed himself a vessel, a nothingness, not strong enough to
hold in his hands the body and the blood of his Lord, Jesus Christ. In his
goodness, he nursed the sick - both men and other animals - and possessed
the gift of healing, which he facilitated by means of herbal potions and
acupuncture, arts learned as a child in the back hills of Virginia. In his purity
and childlike innocence, he existed in a perpetual frame beyond terrestrial
concerns. Thomas, oblivious of everyone, brought Anselm of age. Though
“particular friendships” were a threat to monastic harmony and asceticism,
no one could forget Jesus and Saint John. Hadn’t Saint Ælred of Rievaulx, a
fellow Cistercian, taken friendship to its limits? “God is friendship,” he
preached. Thomas and Anselm - on a postulant, a lay brother - sat side by
side during each collation, they sang side by side in choir, they worked in
adjacent flower beds. The change in Anselm was not immediately apparent
because the two were together by decree of the abbot. They prayed over the
Cautions and Counsels of Saint John of the Cross, grappling with the
seemingly simple, though far from easy, set of practical rules for arriving at
religious perfection. Anselm had Thomas memorize Saint Benedict’s “De
Zelo Bono” – “On the God Zeal which Monks should have.” They breathed
as one. To Thomas it was soon clear that plants and flowers, like his body,
were holy things. Both men made a fetish of the blooms. Both welcomed
each dawn and loudly rejoiced, singing matins. By the fourth Sunday in
Advent, they were bound like clay and sand in loam. Together they strove
for the illumination of grace and the gift of mystical contemplation. Singly,
Anselm acted for the good of Thomas’s soul and thus for the good of the
abbey.
Every glance carried the message: You are my charge. I am offering all
my actions to the Virgin for your good. Anselm longed to deliver Thomas
from the doubts that banished sleep, that drained him pale in the image of a
Fra Angelico angel of the Annunciation, more ravishing to behold than Jesus
must have been in His Gethsemane. Sweet Jesus, Ultimate Perfection, forgive
my blasphemy! Contentment came from soothing and comforting Thomas,
earnestly attempting to warm his frigid heart. By the Feast of the
Annunciation, he was willing to be blinded and die to intercede directly at
Mary’s throne.
During the day, Thomas shared the playful spirit of the other men,
teasing and joking in sign language. He was always at the center of a group,
always being pursued for companionable walks in the woods. At first, Dom
Daniel was amused by his popularity. Then he became concerned, as one
monk after another began confessing impure thoughts and sins of the flesh
involving fantasies about the radiant young man. Several confessed sexual
activity with one another, inspired by their longings for Thomas. The abbot
was accustomed to hearing the men discuss what he termed their “slouching
toward celibacy,” but he had never experienced so much sexual desire
focused on one person.
Nightly, Thomas wrestled with his own temptations of the flesh.
Erupting from sleep, he would sob and moan in shame. He ached to be
relieved of his need. He wore a shirt of coarsest horsehair, meditated, and
fasted beyond what was prescribed to mortify the body. He begged Anselm
and the other men to pray harder for him. He sought daily counsel from
Dom Daniel. The frenzied distress of the postulant wrenched the abbot’s
heart.
“Thomas, my son, passion handles all things ill. You must pray to be
calmed. Without the consent of reason, if your judgment remains sound and
entire, of which I have no doubts, these temptations will leave you with no
injury or alteration. The impression of the passions will remain superficial
unless you judge according to them and conform to them. We can never
exempt ourselves from perturbations, we can only learn to moderate them.
God furnishes the material, but leaves for us to give it form. You are young
and healthy. These trials are to be expected.”
Thomas quoted Saint Augustine: “They have suffered just so much as
they have given in to pain.”
“Yes, well... Augustine is not always the most compassionate of men.
Put him aside for now, Thomas. Take up Saint Theresa’s The Way of
Perfection, and Bonaventure’s Itinerarium; he is instructive on desire. And
John Duns Scotus’s distinction on beatitude, the 49th in the Fourth Book of
the Oxoniense. Your needs are a part of you. You must recognize them,
know them, for they are you, my son. Men are tormented by the opinion
they have of things, not by the things themselves. God wants all of you, dear
Thomas. It takes time. There is no instantaneous and miraculous perfection
for anyone but the saints. Self-discipline is a process; it is not an event. Forgo
the dramatic poets of your youth. Stay with the mystics who wear the
imprimatur, please.”
Anselm grew gaunt from empathy. One night, while Thomas tossed
and heaved in carnal dreams, the monk entered the novice’s quarters to pray
at the foot of his bed. The sight of the sacral youth drenched with sweat, in
the clutch of passion, gasping with thrusting fierceness and edging toward
release ushered Anselm’s heart into another dimension: For the first time in
his life, he experienced the beam of light within himself of earthly and
exclusive love. Falling prostrate, he dedicated his heated blood - at God's
evident command - to caring for Thomas.
Absorbed by his many duties, as well as by the articulate demands of
Thomas, Dom Daniel had trusted Anselm to come to him of his own volition
in time of need as the other men had done. Thomas made frequent visits to
the crow’s nest to pray and seek guidance; they were the spiritual highlights
of the abbot’s days. No one ever anguishes so exquisitely. His spirit, burning
with contrition, seems to melt and run down his cheeks.
Dom Daniel saw that Vadriel had submitted, but not surrendered to
the Will of God, and he worked to reach beyond the devout Thomas’s willful
mind. Uplifted by giving instruction, he had averted his eyes from Anselm,
whose pleasant disposition had disappeared: He was moody and gloomy and
often in tears. Others began to comment in words and sign language. Others
knew from personal experience what was going on with him and Brother
Thomas.
Anselm started breaking his vow of silence and impatiently offered
advice to the distracted, self-obsessed Thomas: “You refuse to accept your
powerlessness over your God-given humanity, Thomas! You aren’t praying
hard enough to have God remove your shortcomings!” The problem was so
obvious to Anselm that he believed it his Christian duty to relieve Thomas of
this major stumbling block to his serenity. Once this was done. Anselm
planned to humbly accept Thomas’s gratitude. Eventually, he would own his
love exclusively, having earned it royally.
Anselm wanted to understand everything about Thomas as he had
once strained to understand God. He queried his violet-eyed friend about his
past life: “Who is this Wriothesley-Jones you cry out for in your sleep?”
He gazed constantly upon the precious face. He longed for an
emotional response, for an eloquent attestation of sentiment, but he would
have settled for a simple acknowledgment of his temporal existence. Finally,
Anselm could bear no separation; he followed Thomas to be always near
him. He grieved for him. He fretted. He nagged. He buried his tender
feelings with virginal belligerence until, one long and stormy night, his
passion cracked through his defenses, nudged by a dream of a purple
hyacinth blooming under Thomas’s robe. Distraught, Anselm rushed to Dom
Daniel. Astonished, he confessed the impure nature of his attachment.
Weeping, he laughed uncontrollably.
It was clear to the abbot that Anselm was not to be given as stern a
penance as he had given to the other men in love with Thomas. His monastic
record is impeccable. His soul is beaten gold! I thought him immune to
carnality. No. I didn’t think of him at all. Why should he be any different
from the others? Why should he be any different from me?
Dom Daniel knew he had fancied himself a heroic Theseus entering
the unlit maze of his postulant’s soul. Being a frail human, he had been
tumbled by Satan into the heart’s darkness. I’ve been drawn beyond the
reach of reason. Drawn down and taken naive Anselm with me. Searching
for willful Pride in Thomas, I’ve lost sight of it in myself. The devastation
was total. After prayer and meditation, he concluded that there was no
longer a place among God's simple sons for the egotistical riptides of Vadriel
Vail. The youth would have to leave Gethsemane Abbey.
***
***
Turning right, onto the more navigable plateau of the lower region,
the carriage quickened its pace and sped toward the train that connected
with the boat that would take them to Boston. Vadriel Vail prayed for a
peaceful interval during which he would, perhaps, decide what to do with
the rest of his unhappy life. Ebenezer Norwood had no suggestions beyond a
restful, uneventful summer. How could it be otherwise? They would spend
the time together by the ever-soothing sea on the Vail estate named
Cormorant at Newport.
CHAPTER THREE
Placidia Van Leer was dressed, until teatime, in a silk frock of cerulean
blue that matched the color of her eyes. (“A lady never wears green in the
country,” her mother insisted.) Agitated, she paced the outer border of the
soft and deep savonnerie rug in the vast, flower-decked morning room at
Larchwood. Except for Newport’s immense brightness, she might have been
in the family's mansion on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. The furnishings
looked practically identical: American and French and Oriental antiques, but
most of these were expensive copies.
She thought it quite silly of smart New York to summer by the sea
with the same ornaments and overstuffed upholstery of town. Her projected
cottage would be, first of all, a real cottage – small, not a 60-room
extravaganza masquerading under that quaint pretension; secondly,
elsewhere; and thirdly, empty but for a few pieces of white wicker and a few
yards of flowered pima cotton to keep out prying eyes. And there would be
photographs of her heroines, the inexpensive images one bought in druggist
shops, tacked unframed to the walls. And books, of course, she would have
mounds and mounds, shelves and shelves of books. Best of all, I’ll never
formally entertain!
A letter she hungered to reread crackled in her right pocket. It was
from her heart-whole friend. Georgina Farnsworth - My Olive Chancellor,
my mentor - and was crammed with news of the American Federation of
Labor’s convention in Boston. Their dream of a Women’s Trade Union
League had become a reality. Placidia had answered before coming down to
breakfast:
***
Eleanor Van Leer sighed. She knew Placidia, at 20, had reached the
zenith of her life as a woman. It was her spring, her May, and marriage was
essential by her June because by her July the effort to wed would produce
nothing but perspiration en famille, Eleanor sighed again. She freely
admitted that Placidia was beyond her ken and terrifyingly unique. A lady
must never be unique if she hopes to find it good home. There can be no life
for a woman of quality. Not without a good home.
Placidia was the youngest of four children. The two girls before her
had been docile, obedient, and pre-Georgina. One wisely married Lond
Fitzpane, an English baronet - First cousin to Georgina! - and a business
partner of Van Leer, she now lived comfortably in London and Norfolk. The
other daughter married a wealthy chandler, a major retailer of Van Leer’s
grain, and she lived in Victorian gingerbread splendor in San Francisco. The
only son, Regis, had married a Waring of St. Louis and the biscuit fortune;
she had brought half a million in her purse, a town house on Fifth Avenue in
Manhattan, and six devoted servants of varying hues: One tree-tall beige
fellow was from Brazil; he was trained to open the door and startle the guests
with his blazingly white teeth, which resembled the milky opaline globes in
a Tiffany chandelier. Regis and his Melody had made “exotics” popular last
Season. It was, as yet, their singular accomplishment and brought a quiet
glory to their happy marriage.
Of course, Regis had not needed Melody’s dowry. Yet, as Eleanor well
knew, money in large denominations proved invaluable to a wife’s morale.
The capital was controlled by the husband, but the trust was for the
children. Having contributed, a woman felt worthy of the pin money
allotted each month by her husband; it was a tiny extra above the sums
required to run the house and give lawn parties where the youngest and
loveliest and the bane of a mother’s heart might meet the man of her
parents’ dreams.
No, Eleanor could not blame the aberrant nature solely on Georgina.
Guilt reared its pointy head, prickling Eleanor’s tender heart. If her problem
child lacked the Van Leer self-control, the mother acknowledged her failure
to supply it. There are just so many hours in a day, she pleaded for self-
forgiveness. There were but a handful of moments each day to consider the
children. In her favor, she had selected nannies well for the most part.
Nanny Wilkinson was with Eleanor 18 years before she retired to Brighton,
England, at a cranky 84 when Placidia was three. How Placidia wailed! They
had to call in Doctor Braverman for the distraught child.
Then there was impetuous Kitty Floyd for two years. She ran away
with Regis’s tutor. Doctor Braverman’s services were required again!
Fortunately, Augusta Dooley arrived and stayed, rejecting Kitty’s conclusion
that if the Devil hadn’t put Placidia out when he gave up housekeeping, she
didn’t know where the girl had come from. Augusta was adamant: “The
child isn’t foul-tempered, Mrs. Van Leer. She’s oversensitive, overbright, and
radically overwhelmed by life. Lovin’ is the answer, ma’am.”
It was she who mothered Placidia - she, a barely literate soul from the
bogs of Mayo, Ireland. She and Georgina, brought in when Placidia, at 12,
was bored to the edge of neurasthenia. They've made that child what she is
today. And the bicycle! God forgive me! Eleanor considered the current
vogue for the bicycle the final abomination. Straw boaters and serge
knickerbockers, or any bifurcated garments, were deplorable substitutes for
décolleté necklines blossoming with roses. Guilt segued into fear for
Placidia’s future. Men despise serious women.
The fear subsided, conquered by Eleanor’s optimistic and affirmative
slant on life. At least she has the delicacy to be nervous. Even if just a little.
Owning an eligible female of 20 who is a recognized beauty, a healthy,
vivacious, intelligent – too intelligent! - charmer, should have brought
triumph to the Van Leer family tree.
“Oh!” Eleanor exclaimed aloud. The last time she drew Placidia’s
attention to the Van Leer pedigree, the ungrateful child - Worse than a
serpent’s tooth! - had retorted that nothing did more to confirm her belief in
Darwin’s theory of evolution than the human preoccupation with family
trees. The blasphemy, implying their venerable ancestors were related to
orangutans, required smelling salts. Armand de Gouse had rudely guffawed
when Eleanor recounted the episode at Tea the next day.
Placidia had already refused three candidates for her hand. When the
last was dismissed, she instructed her father: “Rename the house Belmont,
and buy small caskets of gold, silver, and lead. In one, place my portrait, and
future suitors can buy one guess each. Winner take me!”
Her father was outraged. “Have you no respect for yourself? Lead?
Wouldn’t you prefer platinum or ivory for the third box?”
“ ‘By my troth’,” she quoted grandly, hand over heart. “ ‘If I live to be
as old as Sybilla, I will die as chaste as Diana, unless I be obtained in the
manner of my... will!’ I won’t be harnessed to a mule! This is the 20th
century. Father! You cannot force me to marry a dolt! I have Grandmother
Charlotte’s money to live on if you decide to throw me into the street.”
“Placidia!” her mother wailed. “We would never force you to marry
against your will. And we would never – ”
“Father? In law, what does ‘covert’ mean in reference to a wife?”
“When said of a married woman, it means 'under the cover, authority,
or protection of her husband.’ It was coined in 1483 in England.”
“Covert means concealed and disguised to me. I’ve nothing to hide. As
I said, this is the 20th century, not the 15th. It’s time we changed laws made
before this country was even known to England! What does America stand
for anyway? Don’t freedom and equality come into it somewhere?”
“You aren’t qualified to discuss the law, young lady, and I won’t have
you criticizing this great country in my presence. Mrs. Van Leer, what kind
of daughter have you given me?”
Chastised, Eleanor whimpered.
“May I read for the bar with you, Father?”
“Don't be absurd!” he uttered, shocked.
Replaying the scene for the umpteenth time, Eleanor thought: One
year later, and I’m still shocked! To settle her sensibilities, she rang for the
housekeeper. Review the party preparations. One more time. Glancing out
the window, she eyed the condition of the lawn. Ever since Mrs. Vanderbilt
had painted hers two Seasons past, grass au naturel didn’t seem respectably
green. I will lay many thick Turkish rugs.
Mrs. Molloy appeared. She assured Mrs. Van Leer that the silver
gleamed: “He cleans each piece separately, madam, to avoid scratches. First,
he sponges them free of grease, then rubs in by hand, madam, the moistened
plate powder. He rubs for all his little life is worth until the shine is brazen,
then he brushes out the crevices and ornaments and tines before finishing
with leather. Young Angelo is a true treasure, madam!”
Eleanor sighed. A treasure! Why isn’t Placidia a treasure? If the
servants - European peasants! - can achieve that lofty state? Where is my
stubborn daughter deficient? “Too smart for her own good” explains so
much! She queried halfheartedly: “And the napery?”
“Crackling, madam.”
“People don’t any longer take napery seriously, though Delmonico has
raised the public’s standards, thank God!”
In a world before the elevation of the fork, during the debasement of
the fingers, while England’s Queen Elizabeth I was doting on her Tudor
napery’s Flemish lace - a major expense in her daybook – Holland’s Van
Leers were acclaimed for the crispness of their linens as well as for moral
rectitude. Being born into the Social Register, a lady must keep up her edge
of civilization’s golden mantle. Eleanor wore this heavy wrap decorously, the
way the Van Leers had in New York for 300 years.
As late as 1870, Dutch was spoken at their pristine table. They were
among the few “best” families that could pay their debts promptly and afford
to keep a horse-and-four in town, not to mention go unashamedly to church
on Sunday. Their money was clean. No breath of scandal had ever warmed
their honored name, which was more than any of her neighbors could say.
Society, with its fluid state of manners, was different from when she was a
girl. I dine with people my sainted mother would not have driven over.
People “in trade,” no matter the bank balance, were not the equal to captains
of industry, bankers, lawyers, Wall Street men. Positions that never placed a
member of the family on the wrong side of a counter. On the level of a Jew.
The Van Leer fortune, accrued from the Dutch East India Trading
Company, was fortified by huge land grants in North America, magnified by
importing plate glass and stained slag glass - There are two kinds of
importing. Some goods are socially acceptable, and some are decidedly not.
This is one of the mysteries of the inner sanctum! - and quadrupled by the
purchase of miles of Manhattan after the Panic of 1837. By 1868, Galaxy had
listed the senior Van Leer as one of New York’s bona fide millionaires.
Eleanor Hanover had taken her regaled place as wife to Honorius Van
Leer, the younger, when she was Placidia’s age. She was proud of her
“woman’s head.” She managed every detail of his four large houses as
efficiently as a first-class European hosteler, with approximately the same
responsibilities. She also attended to the travel arrangements, kept the social
calendar, performed as hostess, parent, and wife, and displayed the
perspicacity of a mind reader with husband, children, guests, and the 31
servants required to run Honorius Van Leer’s establishments. Eleanor was a
stern taskmistress with everyone but Placidia, who could wind her like a
ribbon around a maypole, a fact vastly amusing to Honorius who was more
boastful over cards at the Century Chub of his daughter’s “spirit” than of
anything else he possessed - except his racehorse Nugget, a Triple Crown
winner two years back.
“Are you pleased with the new Limoges, madam?”
“Why shouldn't I be pleased. Mrs. Molloy? I chose the pattern!”
“It is lovely, madam. Such good taste. It will instruct those of us
fortunate enough to handle it.”
During this soothing domestic exchange, Eleanor caught a glimpse of
Placidia skipping through the privet hedge with neither bonnet nor
sunshade. “Louisa!” the fraught mother bellowed, causing Mrs. Molloy to
leap from her seat and rush, frenzied, from the room in search of Cousin
Louisa as if the word shouted had been “Fire!”
***
Placidia Van Leer heard her mother scream. Guiltily, she ran for the
cliffs. (“A lady is never in a hurry!”) The absence of a whalebone corset made
her fleet of foot. The light silk frock of cerulean blue was one of six day
dresses newly arrived from Worth's of Paris. She had awakened with an
irrepressible urge to eschew the uniform white skirt, ubiquitous blouse, and
stiff belt in order to wear the silk for her own pleasure.
At breakfast, her mother had assumed it worn to entice Cousin (twice-
removed) Desmond, visiting for 10 days from his oil-soaked beef plantation
in Texas. As a suitor he lacked only a mind, but he disarmed Placidia by
displaying a shrewd awareness of its absence. A neat reversal on the average
male’s pathetic behavior, Placidia thought. Her mother promptly misread
her daughter's curiosity for infatuation and began culling the facts about the
Panhandle state's climate in order to plan a sensible trousseau.
When the conversation tilted toward him, Desmond was tolerable,
occasionally amusing; when it pointed elsewhere - in the general direction
of the outside world - his contribution was negligible. Cousin Louisa, who
had just turned 18 and put up her hair, was enchanted; Placidia plotted to
make her a present of him. They’re a perfect pair. Neither knows who
Dreyfus is! Physically, Desmond had a florid attractiveness in the style made
transcendent by Armand de Guise who, in Placidia’s estimation, had an
estimable mind but no discernable heart. She again deduced that life was
unjust. De Guise was paying a great deal of attention to her since their
arrival at Newport. It made her nervous.
Halfway across the sloping rear lawn. Placidia glanced over her right
shoulder. The soft, billowy day was sublimely fragrant; the earth was
drenched in primary colors, and flowers seemed alive, with hearts that could
feel. She felt able to walk on the light. Overhead, seabirds called while her
eluded cortege was engaged playing croquet on the neighboring groomed
lawn behind The Breakers, she could hear the click of balls and the laughter.
That 70 room, four-story, oceanfront, gold-encrusted palace, that fugitive
from the Italian Renaissance, never failed to distract her by the way it
overwhelmed its surroundings. In her life as a crusading New Woman, the
Vanderbilts and their churlish sort were anathema. The Breakers breaks me!
Such an obscene marble playhouse! Real historical rooms carted from
France? It’s a piece of theater Moliere could not have bettered! I hate their
greedy, flamboyant guts!
She remembered as a child viewing the fire that had destroyed the
original Breakers. It had taken a cast of 500 people two years to construct its
replacement and furnish the pseudo-Genoese palace at a cost of $10 million.
Richard Morris Hunt had also designed the 60-room Chateau d’Eau, two
down on her left, modeled after a de Guise castle in Brittany. Each one was a
mountain of Indiana limestone. Is there any Indiana left in Indiana? After
the revolution, these Gilded Age mansions will be tourist traps. Attractions
like Versailles!
“Placidia!” her mother yodeled from the terrace, trying to mimic an
operatic trill. The young woman obediently turned and waved. From force
of habit, Eleanor politely returned the salute and smiled, revealing two
dimples. The vision of her daughter, radiant in the sunshine, caressed and
fluffed by playful breezes, touched her good heart. The dress was perfection!
The hair - one lock charmingly escaping from the thick, loose topknot -
looked like antique French gilding darkened to a lustrous patina. A lovely
girl! No one would guess!
Eleanor remembered the day Placidia’s hair was ceremoniously pinned
up - the day she reached 18 - as a signal to the world that she was on the
marriage market. After that, it was never worn down again outside her
bedroom or a fancy-dress ball. Her child fit the proper Edwardian bill: “A
lady should look as if she has simply blossomed out of her inner
consciousness into a beautiful toilette. Not as if she were a creature of
chance.”
Still waving, Eleanor spied the energetic footman, della Fiore. heading
toward the seawalk near The Breakers to hand Placidia’s hat and sunshade
over the fence to Louisa. Eleanor experienced a spear of envy for the
opulence of the Renaissance. True, Larchwood was an H.H. Richardson
masterpiece; but, unlike his famous fortress manner, it was superficially
Tudoresque in inspiration, combining plaster, wood shingles, and local
quarried stone in a delicate arrangement of gables and peaked roofs and
tower-like red brick chimneys. The furnishings for the “tiny” 40-room
cottage were predominately Phyfe and Hepplewhite with Osgood Codman's
French, Italian, and Oriental “accents” growing stronger each Season.
Mercifully, the morning room is nearly transformed! But no marble! No
gilded bronzes!
Eleanor stopped waving. Placidia had disappeared down the cliff’s
steep stone steps to the shore below, but Louisa would soon be in pursuit.
The dutiful mother returned to her desk to study with Cook the menu for
the party: pâtés, cold birds, lobster salad, many other summer salads, oysters,
jellied tongue, a dozen fruits, cakes, sorbets, ice creams, and chilled French
wines. Nothing irregular to unsettle the guests. After luncheon, she planned
to claim a headache and retire to her rooms with a new-fangled aspirin
tablet until it was time to dress for dinner.
***
Having attained the sandy beach, Placidia paused. She was exhilarated
by her proximity to the pungent sea. She cultivated her sensitivity to its
various moods, an art she learned from Sarah Grand’s heroine, Beth
Caldwell, in The Beth Book. Today it was calm as a great puddle, with
miniwaves lapping at the shore. She had hoped for thumping pounders to
churn up excitement, but accepted the wisdom of serenity. To her left, a
noisy flock of royal terns scattered and lifted off the earth at her appearance
in their preening midst. She barely had time to admire their deeply forked
tails before they were gone, up over the ocher bluffs.
Slipping out of her black house slippers - she had sneaked from the
house without her ankle-high boots - and rolling off her white silk stockings
after freeing them from their bulky garter clip, she was grateful her mother
could not see her. The breeze swirled under her skirt. She felt wicked.
Women were requested by the Bailey Beach Club’s committee not to appear
in public with legs or feet uncovered and not to lounge in the sun while
wearing bathing costumes because the immodest but relatively swim-safe
short skirts barely covered the knee. Last summer, “modern-minded”
Georgina had gone still-water bathing without stockings and many people
had left the beach in protest.
Placidia’s spirit was stirred by thoughts of her courageous confidante.
The four years spent under her tutelage, reading and interpreting history,
studying the role of women, and gaining insight into the anguish of women
through the ages, were the years Placidia considered the most formative of
her life.
When she called Georgina her Olive Chancellor, after Henry James’s
rich suffragette in The Bostonians, she was neither imputing to herself the
gifts of Olive’s brilliant protégé, Verena Tarrant - her own speaking
engagements were not intended “to wake up the attention” of nonbelievers,
but to inform the converted - nor was she imputing to Georgina the
obsessive, possessive, love-starved nature of Olive. Rather, she was
identifying her Georgina as a master, as someone who was an authority, like
Miss Chancellor and Beth Caldwell, someone who could communicate, as
Henry James did, that it was women, in the end, who had paid for
everything; it was they who had done all the waiting and taken all the
wounds. The sacrifices, the blood, the tears, the terrors were theirs.
Placidia took the letter from her pocket. Walking toward the surf,
stepping over tufts of eelgrass and shards of mollusk shells, she reread the
paragraph about the new plan to “picket” certain factories, for workers to
carry their complaints on placards attached to brooms, to carry them as far as
the White House if necessary: We must bring our uprising into the domain
of practical politics. We must not be afraid. Just for today, we will be
unafraid.
Placidia did not fear strife or pain. She hoped that, like Beth’s, hers
was a nature with a wide range. At the water’s edge, drops of surf-spray
streaked the ink, as if the matrix were shedding tears of rage. Retreating up a
pace to spare her dress, she drew a breath and recited full voice Florence
Nightingale's dictum to women: “ ‘Better have pain than paralysis! A
hundred struggle and drown in the breakers. One discovers the new world.
But rather, 10 times rather, die in the surf, heralding the way to that new
world, than stand idly on the shore.’ ”
“Oh, brave new world.” she prayed. She would reach it. Though she
revered the sanctity of the domestic circle, she would have a life of her own,
alone if it came to that, rather than marry like Verena or Beth and give up
her right to be informed, loving, and loved. She would know true passion,
have the sun in her spirit, and speak her mind. “I will be free. Free and
liberal as the air! I’ll not spend huge sums on houses that entomb the living.
I’ll not accept codes of behavior binding as religious orders! I’ll be more than
the sum of my children, my housekeeping, my new dresses, and my
husband. There’s more to life than the Patriarch’s Ball and scorning people
who dine in the middle of the day.”
Fortunately, Placidia was wealthy in her own right and could have her
independence. She would assist her poorer sisters - I will open my front door
with a latchkey. No servants for me! She wished she had a strong, bold Irish
beauty like Georgina’s; her own was too orderly and traditional to ever be
majestic or heroic. It proved a nuisance; men treated her like a young girl or
like an angelic heroine from a Dickens novel. David Copperfield’s
diminutive Dora with her prettily pettish manner and her baby talk made
Placidia's teeth ache with rage.
The result of men’s condescension was clear. If she didn’t behave,
they’d throw her out into a blizzard like that poor creature in Way Down
East, a melodrama that had played Newport in 1897, making a great
impression upon the young Placidia. Instead of instructing her to mind her
p’s and q’s, the play gave her a rude awakening to the double standard that
ruled society.
To lessen the chances of being treated like a pretty talking flower, she
had refused to curl her hair into childlike fashions, and she preferred simple
classic garments. She was ever conscious of Carlisle’s “clothes screen” and
wanted to connect her exterior with her true self by wearing clothes
emblematic of her legitimate distinctions. No lacy, frilly fancy duds bodying
forth the mastered role of cipher! Yet, whatever she did, she was a slender
woman with all the attendant coloring of a New England’s pinkish summer
dawn or more to the chafing bit, a porcelain doll. I long for something
unfortunate. Like red hair!
“What would Georgi say?” she wondered aloud, as she briskly strutted
in the foaming tips of the dying waves before they sank into the sand. Use it,
woman! She heard the words with the clarity of her friend standing beside
her: Make your looks your big stick! Teddy won't know what hit ‘im! Here's
an opportunity to strike hard for women’s unions. And women’s suffrage!
With the very man who believes that in ethics lies the cure to politics.
As an assemblyman in Albany, Theodore Roosevelt had zestfully
supported laws to protect workingmen. Then, as president of the board of
police commissioners in New York City, he brought the conditions of the
poor in the cesspool slums to the public’s attention with the help of
Georgina’s friend Jacob Rus. And then, as president of the country, he had
successfully urged Congress to add a secretary of commerce and labor to his
cabinet.
For years, Placidia had wished she were born a man, but no longer. I’ll
be demure and sensible and throw everyone off the scent. Then, when the
time is right, I will clobber Teddy! Echoing her beloved Beth, she called
aloud: “I shall succeed! What a great time to be alive!”
At the start of the new century when Placidia was 12, she saw that her
life and its passage would end and never repeat itself. She felt unique, and all
her days became precious. If she lived the life other people lived, she would
have no life of her own. She did not want an ensured imitation of other
people’s lives. She wanted her own, and she longed for it with the wild greed
of youth.
It also occurred to her that in a brief 100 years nearly everyone on
earth with her would be dead. This realization placed humanity for her on
an equal footing with the most humble insects. Since humans also swarmed
and perished en masse, then each deserved an equal share of their
indigenous territory, like every other contending, bustling life form. Yet the
rich would have and hold it all, keeping the poor hungry and covetous
unless they were strong enough to force their captives’ hands. I’ll make them
strong. Then all men and women will be equal. It made good sense to her
and to her struggling, suffering friends who trusted in Karl Marx and John
Stuart Mill and in the possibility of reanimating America. We’re not trapped
in our history. Yet.
Georgina counseled: Things will be the same for at least 1,000 years.
Some surface alterations will be made, some harmless-to-their-rule laws to
guarantee an equal this, an equal that. But basically things will remain the
same no matter how different they may appear. Societal changes are like the
waves in the sea: up down, up, down. ‘The world is not a bit better for
centuries of self-sacrifice on the women’s part… and therefore I think it is
time we had a more effectual plan.’ We do our bit, the best we can, and try
to have few illusions.
Placidia planned to write a novel in her middle years, telling the truth
about the hollow, wasted lives of upper-class women in America. Edith
Wharton, at 37, had published her first fiction; Mrs. Wharton fled Newport
for Lenox, Massachusetts, and Placidia experienced no difficulty
understanding why. Herman Melville was a Gansevoort, a cousin qualified
by birth to be received, but he became a bohemian for his art. I will do the
same! To her parents, writing was a cross between a black art and manual
labor. Her book would stir the world and explode the myths. I won’t lie! I’ll
dare to tell the truth. Like Fanny Kemble, I’ll dare! And do! And be!
***
After lunch the same day, Placidia questioned the women gathered
around obese Gracia Nelland’s table to discuss the Charity Bazaar. A fruit
punch spiked with hard apple cider heightened everyone’s color as well as
the level of chattering and the frequency of the ramblings from the
designated topics. Each ice cube contained a decorative purple ageratum at
its core. The tiny flower was an emblem of Placidia’s brooding: Dare I call it
love?
The pale, aquiline-nosed Cynthia Ings averred the mysterious stranger
sounded like her storybook image of Sir Lancelot; no one could recall the
color of the errant knight’s eyes. “Who is to pledge the cakes?”
Gracia wondered if the boy were Harriet Mattson’s nephew, because
Harriet had said something about him during Regina Wilson’s dinner the
previous Thursday. But Aunt Lillian Hanover – Eleanor’s youngest brother’s
wife - said that although she was sitting on the other side of the table from
Harriet and half listening to her dinner partner, Reverend Lewis - there
were murmurs of condolence and eyes rolled to Heaven – she, Lillian,
thought Harriet had made reference to a niece not a nephew: “I think she
said she was coming the first two weeks in August. Pity that Harriet’s home
with the headache!”
“Conveniently,” Gracia muttered from the side of her tiny red mouth,
while Cornelia Blake distinctly remembered talk of August and declared: “I’ll
take on the cakes, ladies. It’s the least I can do.”
“Well! This is still July! That settles that, niece or nephew,” Eleanor
chirpily observed, moving the meeting to the subject of pies. She frowned at
her mooning daughter’s kissing the ice cubes. They’re a cute notion. But who
in her right mind wants soggy thingies floating in her drink after the cubes
melt in this tropical heat? Her daughter was uncharacteristically quiet. Not
even her usual snide gibes! She’s quite absentminded. Or presentminded
elsewhere. Who was the young handsome scamp? To address her without a
proper introduction! I wonder what they talked about? If only Louisa had
approached more quietly. And both barefoot? Toe to toe. She blushed from
her sense of shame and then became frightened by what she saw as the
natural progression of Placidia’s degenerate behavior. She must be married
immediately!
Cynthia Ings was intrigued by Placidia’s enthusiasm for her beautiful
apparition, but she feared appearing too interested. Placidia never spoke
favorably of any man. Suddenly she sounds positively smitten! A toothsome
divinity with violet eyes is just what the doctor ordered for this silly crise of
mine. A solid dose of revenge! Might be the lye necessary to burn Armand
out of my system.
Armand de Guse was the love of Cynthia’s very discreet life. However,
he had that very morning informed her of his plan to have Placidia’s hand by
the end of the Season. He assumed Cynthia would understand his position: “I
must marry to pass down the heritage of de Guise.” Though still beautiful
and desirable at 35, the wealthy widow Ings was past her breeding prime. De
Guise had asked for her assistance in wooing Placidia: “After our wedding.
I’ve no intentions of curtailing my wife’s social work. She and I will have
relatively independent lives. You and I need not end our relationship.” In
her shock, Cynthia had agreed to help. Now, lost in an impassioned tumult
of remembering, she wanted him dead at her feet. Murder’s messy.
Particularly in Newport. I’ll have to settle for the collapse of his dreams. Yes,
she would oversee the fillings for the pies.
***
***
The drawing room was ablaze with red velvet. The heat of the day
hung in the air like an unpleasant odor. Each woman crinkled her nose upon
entering the stifling room, and each longed to relieve her head of its
garniture of false curls or enameled pins and tiaras. The long windows and
doors were firmly shut to restrain a thick Atlantic fog that pressed insistently
against the panes. The drapes were being drawn by the parlor maid, who had
delivered the silver service of steaming coffee and tea.
“This is death!” Harriet declared, collapsing into an overstuffed chair.
She checked the fireplace to make certain Lillan hadn’t ordered a log lit for
atmosphere. Not even the servants pulling the cords to move the punkah
fans high over the table had budged the air in the cavernous dining room. “I
thought I was going to puke!”
“Please forgive the ribs!” Lillian pleaded. “They would not have kept
another day in the ice room. I was forced to plan the meal around them.”
“You should have fed them to the dogs!” Harriet blasted at the ceiling.
“Or to the servants! Whoever came to the feeding trough first!” There were
several titters.
Lillian was flabbergasted by Harriet’s boisterous display and put it
down to her condition, or else she would have taken offense, and that was
socially awkward. She took courage from the height of her social pedestal as
she fingered the shimmering green rocks around her neck with the hand
that bore their newest adopted kin. The cool emeralds never failed to
reassure her that she was a jewel beyond price. Just like it says in the Bible!
“Aunt Lillian!” Placidia called from the piano where she was fingering
a two-part variation by Mozart. “Could we not have all the drapes drawn? I
feel as if I'm being shut into a jewel box!”
“Don't you mean a boiler room, Placidia?” Gracia Nelland asked,
flushed and miserable. “That fog out there could be steam!”
Nine women murmured in agreement as they lounged around the
half-imitation Marie Antoinette parlor and furiously fanned themselves to
prevent puddles of perspiration from forming between their encased breasts.
“Death!” Harriet repeated softly to no one in particular as she stuffed a
lace handkerchief into her décolletage.
“Not too much longer to go,” Regina Wilson comforted, toying with a
French cigarette she hungered to light. The closeness of the room made her
sniff it instead.
“Coffee or tea?” Lillian bravely offered in her brightest hostess mode,
fighting her disappointment that the tumultuous white fog in her garden
blocked the view of her new, supremely expensive, pink, Caen marble
fountain. It sprayed gallons of water into a rippling blue shell basin that was
guarded by four dolphins and 16 putti.
“Is it raining?” Cynthia Ings asked, crossing to sit beside Placidia on
the piano bench.
The other women froze in their positions to listen to the comforting
sound of rain. “Thank God!” Gracia cried.
Lillian twitched the Irish Georgian silver teapot. She cleared her
throat. “No.” she said, smiling weakly. She hated to give more
disappointment. “We have a new water feature in the garden. Coffee or tea?”
No one claimed the cups. Why didn’t I wait for the men before ordering the
coffee? When the maid approached to ask if anything else was required of
her, Lillian told the young girl to have the fountain turned off immediately.
Next time. They’ll see it next time.
Several women were petulantly demanding iced water. Gracia Nelland
lifted the local paper to find the weather report and read a headline aloud
about a plague of locusts somewhere in Kansas. “Things could be worse,
ladies. We could be in Kansas.”
Harriet shrieked in mock horror.
Eleanor snored on the settee while Lavinia Gosling complained to
Cornelia Blake about a footman claiming to be “as good as anybody.”
Daisy Peabody interrupted to share her experience: “But servants are
human. They can be made to conform to the rules by which humanity is
governed.”
“Let ‘em be human on their own time!” Harriet snapped, slowly
twisting her head from side to side.
“You play so beautifully,” Cynthia said softly to Placidia. “I was hoping
you would play for us tonight, but I think we’ll break up early.”
“I hope so, Mrs. Ings”
“Please call me Cynthia, Placidia. You’ll be married any day... to the
man of your dreams. I hope. A handsome young man with violet eyes?” She
would have preferred subtlety, but there was little time and even less
sobriety after four kinds of wine followed the cocktails. Placidia turned her
head slightly and continued to play. Cynthia lowered her voice further.
(Regina Wilson was listing in their direction; she had two eligible
daughters.) “I believe the Vail trust is managed by Ebenezer Norwood, who
is my father’s old friend through the Vail grandfather. I’m expecting Papa
from Boston tomorrow for a week’s visit. Shall I arrange a Tea for Friday?
Just a few people. Papa hates crowds.”
Placidia turned her face toward Cynthia’s tight grin. She nodded.
Cynthia’s tension vanished as her smile broadened. Though not accustomed
to having female friends, she assumed herself perceived as an ally. “What's
the use of flurrying yourself, Placidia? We must plan a campaign. Every
woman will be girding for the kill. Harriet’s Beatrice turned scarlet with
longing when you described Lancelot this afternoon. Gracia and Lavinia will
be pulling all the family strings for her. Quite an orchestral sound, that!”
“She’s too old. He’s just turned 22.”
Cynthia beamed. “I can name a baker’s dozen for his hand, my dear.”
“I love him,” Placidia whispered, entwining her freshly minted words
with a silvery thread of radiantly joyful music. “I can’t explain it, but I love
him! I’ve missed Georgina desperately. I’m pleased I have you to share this
with now.”
Cynthia clutched at the offer of friendship. She knew that Placidia,
being young, saw happiness based in the tomorrow, and she discovered anew
the pleasures of hope and expectation. Compassion rose, releasing her from
the vise of hurt and anger as she struggled against tears. “I enjoyed what you
said to Willie Beauchamp yesterday when he behaved so unchivalrously to
our sex. I’ve not always been for the cause of suffrage, but I try to be honest,
Placide. Do you know how difficult it is for a woman to be honest?”
“It’s easier to pass through the eye of our needles,” she answered,
raising her brows as the doors opened to admit the gentlemen. “Here come
our betters.”
“Thank God!” Cynthia uttered, rising to her feet. “I’ll go wake your
mother and invite her to Tea on Friday.”
“Darling!” Harriet called to her husband with such delight that he was
frankly puzzled. She hurried to hug Lillian good night. “Good-bye forever!”
she whispered in her hostess's ear. Lillian puckered her face into a smile to
mask her dismay as the other women lined up for a farewell kiss and a hasty
flight without coffee or conversation.
Armand de Guise had been the first to enter. Flushed with brandy, he
headed for the piano, intending to give Placidia a closer look at him before
she again publicly declared this angel fellow more handsome than he.
He appeared relaxed and jovial, but Cynthia read the stress. The men
have been discussing the Vail fortune. He knows he has a serious rival now.
His jaw is set with that spoiled-child determination. Was he born rotten? Or
is bad training the root cause of his inability to deny himself a moment's
gratification? For the second time that evening, his heart was compared to a
stone. If you treat him kindly you are his friend. He has the instincts of a
horse. He doesn’t even approach the higher sympathies of a dog. If you strike
a bargain with the Devil, is it dishonest to cheat him? How could I possibly
have loved him? Don’t be tiresome, Ings! He's gorgeous. And charming. And
sexy as hell. And it’s over now.
As de Guise bent to whisper a flattering word to Placidia, several
peony-scented curls dropped between them. In the room’s overbright
electric light, they looked like tongues of flame. He broke the pretty posing
to straighten up and brush the hair back from his narrowed eyes; he
employed a hasty gesture that seemed impatient of its result, though he well
knew the tousled effect was a virile complement to his formal clothes.
Considering his beauty sufficient ornament, he wore no jewelry, only the
simplest onyx and platinum studs.
Placidia did not believe his game of love. She hoped his sudden ardor
would return to cordial friendship when denied encouragement. She rose
and gave her hand to him. With this ring I love renounce, she composed as
the appropriate wedding service for a life with Armand de Guise. Thoughts
of Vadriel Vail ensued. Reason vanished like a star in the morning sky.
It was clear to Armand de Guise that she was no longer present in her
mind to him. For the first time, he was conscious of being powerless over a
woman’s attention. He grew angry and was barely civil to Lillian at the door.
After the last guest departed, Lillian vented her frustrations by
furiously berating the housekeeper and butler for not managing the pantry
more successfully. Only her husband’s promise to produce a desired choker
of cabochon moonstones and platinum by the end of the week quieted her
nerves sufficiently for sleep to be discussed.
***
On the rocky beach below, Vadriel Vail wandered alone. The fog drew
him from Cormorant. Wrapped in a long cape, he was besieged by vivid
memories of England and tormented by the absence of his school friend,
Wriothesley-Jones. Loveless and forlorn, he tried to pray. ‘My words fly up,
my thoughts remain below / Words without thoughts never to Heaven go!’
Denied comfort, be grieved, believing neither grace nor love would ever
descend upon him again...
CHAPTER FOUR
Grief melts away / Like snow in May / As if there were no such thing.
Vadriel Vail awoke happy with the George Herbert lines in his mind. The
heady fragrance of the ocean blended with lemon verbena, honeysuckle,
hawthorn, and clematis, alerting him to the pleasures in store when he got
out of bed. He lay entranced by the shuffling sounds of the sea and by a
remembered game from childhood: Early mornings, he could track in his
head the slipper-shod servants making their hushed ways through the large
house.
The birds were engaged in an intense chattering on his lawns and in
his trees. After their cacophony dropped to mutterings and cluckings, a
horse explosively sneezed. He fancied it was what a dinosaur grazing on the
dune grass might have done a million years ago. Dinosaurs? Haven’t given
those reptiles a thought. Not since I was in their thrall at age 5. I feel rather a
laggard today.
Shuttered windows, their open louvers slanted down, and the teak-
slatted bedroom door allowed a strong, cool breeze to circulate; it tugged the
drapes, rattling brass hooks, and gently pressed the white star quilt against
his slender, work-hardened body. He had not closed the solid inner door to
his room because the outer venetian one offered sufficient privacy. It was
odd sleeping alone after having adjusted to the dormitory. He had awakened
at 2 A.M. and again at 5, but there was no difficulty returning to sleep. He
did not miss the crowing of the monastery’s roosters.
Somewhere in the house a door was slammed by the wind. He
remembered his parents had always shut both the inner and outer doors to
their bedrooms no matter the weather. Frequently, in the morning, when he
and his brother made their way down to the garden with Nanny Osgood, the
inner door of his mother’s room was ajar and his father could be heard
snoring within. Another morning smelling like this one, he and his mother
had run along the jagged cliffs hunting butterflies . I wore a crisp new sailor
suit. She wore a purple-belted white dress. It flapped gaily in the wind. We
held nets aloft. Nets with long wooden handles. Raced like mad things! Ran
after glittering wings. Laughing through asters. Swaying dandelions.
Flowering bearberry. In his memory, the banks of sweet peas matched the
color of his mother’s silk belt.
A fragment of a dream brought him into the present. That lovely
young woman with the husky voice. The one named by her shouting friend
“Placide.” She walked beside me at Stonehenge. We both wore the same
white linen suit. Overhead, my parents leapt from monolith to monolith.
Jumped and blocked the sun like scudding clouds. They mottled the earth
with shadows. I said: “Suffering is an active part of life. The vale of tears? Its
function is to reconcile and harmonize.” She handed me a leather-bound red
book. I couldn’t read the title. But knew it was a book I wanted to own.
It was strangely comforting living with the presence of his parents
everywhere. This room had been his father’s. There were stirrings within
him of complex emotions, like rumblings of distant thunder. In a closet he
had found a lacquered Japanese box that contained a collection of old
snapshots mostly taken by his father. Wrapped in a piece of purple silk, they
were of his mother, brother, grandfather, and of his younger self swathed in
ermine with an angora goat; there was a formal portrait of his parents and
one of his father alone, looking askance. Vadriel had carried these relics to
the bed and spread them across the counterpane. They mesmerized him. It
was more than untombing mummies. It’s what remains of the visible spirit.
Alive in the eyes. In the turn of the head. In the fold of the hands. My
people. They created me. Dead. Gone. Where? Time eats us up.
Wriothesley-Jones had mournfully commented: “Devouring time,
blunt thou the lion’s paws / And make the earth devour her own sweet
brood.” Life’s a bitch, Vail!
He had smiled at his grandfather who scowled up at him. The picture
of his grinning brother evoked a warm sensation and was placed near the old
man then moved aside to allow room for his father in between. Progression
complete. In the palm of his hand, Vadriel had carried his child-self to the
mirror and studied the present reflection, searching for similarities. Memory
doesn’t hold earlier versions of me. I’ve only the face I bring to the glass. A
defense? Against the terror of aging and death?
The people in the photographs had seemed imprisoned in their tiny
squares, victims of a spell cast by time. Moving out of the mirror, he was
saddened that he could not release them from their frames as easily as he
could free his own breathing self. The face in the mirror’s a fugitive from
time. Right on it’s a photograph. A picture held in someone’s full-blooded
hand? Too easily shuffled with anyone else. Its fate a mystery. Only known
to those who shared it. As Vadriel collected the faces, he desperately wanted
to know: What was life like for you? How does it feel to die? What the hell
is all this living and dying about anyway?
He sat up in bed and stretched. Putting on his glasses, he read his
morning prayers. They brought him serenity. My heart is restless until it
rests in Thee, O Lord. He usually awoke heart-racing frightened and alert
with sexual energy that rippled through him, converting into gnawing
anxiety when it reached his heart. This sweet morning, he prayed with
gratitude for self-knowledge and to surrender his will in an act of loving
faith or an act of faithful loving. Whichever happens first, he explained to
his God. For the first time in his life, he prayed for his parents. Then he
picked up Melville’s Redburn, His First Voyage and resumed reading.
There was a light tap on the door. He called entry, removing his
spectacles. A young male servant appeared, carting the morning tea. The boy
smiled and shyly nodded. Depositing the heavy short-legged tray at the foot
of the bed instead of across Vadriel’s lap, he bustled to open the shutters.
Sunlight invaded the room, casting golden rhomboids on blue walls and
patterned surfaces of inlay, chintz, and complex weave.
“Thank you.” Vadriel said, as he stretched down to claim the tray.
“What's your name?”
“Timothy, sir.”
“Thank you, Timothy.”
“You're welcome, sir. I’m sure, sir.”
“How are you today?”
“Today’s my birthday!”
“Well, well! And how old are you, Timothy?”
“Eleven, sir How old are you?”
“Twenty-two. Exactly twice your age!”
“When’s your birthday?”
“The first of May. I love my birthday too.”
We all loved your birthday! “Hooray, hooray, the first of May! /
Outdoor fucking starts today!”
The boy suddenly stiffened and grimaced. “Oh. I am sorry, Mr. Vail!
Griggs instructed me not to talk. I was supposed to be French and just say
good morning, and not disturb you like a German. I wasn’t even supposed to
say good morning unless you said it to me first! I'm sorry if I've been
German, sir. I won’t do it again. sir. I promise I won’t do it again, sir! Now
Griggs will scold me!”
“You haven’t disturbed me, Timothy. I asked you a question. It would
have been rude not to answer. You were marvelously proficient. Thank you
for my tea. And, happy birthday!” Turning, he reached for a silver dollar that
had dropped from his pocket when he was undressing after his walk on the
shore in the fog. He tossed the shiny coin to the startled boy who laughed
with delight and exclaimed: “Oh, boy!”
Alone again, Vadriel repeated softly, “Oh, boy!” He felt comfortable.
This island village of Newport was a peaceful sanctuary. The house was
perfection, its seclusion ideal. Meadows of vivid daisies and clover and
bittersweet nightshade sloped down to a lily-sheeted pond large enough to
warrant a painted boathouse that he assumed contained a sizable craft. A
private wood was his for walks and meditation. He dearly loved the forest
walks at Gethsemane; but in the bracing sea air he also felt the calming
embrace of God. Any wonder my parents loved this place? Ebby says they
loathed leaving at Season’s end. Wish they’d found a more salubrious one
way to leave here. Won’t follow their example anytime soon! God willing.
Never want to leave here! I’m the boss. Oh, boy! What I say goes! You
betcha!
And fuck the begrudgers, Vail!
***
Cormorant, with its oval rooms, window seats, and long corridors, was
commissioned by Vadriel’s great-grandfather in 1811. It was the last house
designed and constructed by Samuel McIntire, the famed joiner,
housewright, and wood sculptor of Salem, Massachusetts. Built of tongued
and grooved boards, the classical, square-frame house had surprisingly
elaborate interiors with dadoes, carved cornices, and mantle pieces inspired
by Robert Adam’s use of antique motifs. It was furnished mostly with Irish
Chippendale from the 1750s “Beauty,” Septimus Sr. had preached, “is never
satisfactory unless allied to the true.”
Cormorant was beautiful. Its full name was Galapagos Cormorant, and
on a shelf in the basement sat a stuffed specimen of that bird – “the only one
of its species with wings too short to fly. A bird nonetheless,” Septimus had
written his wife, Rose Ellen, from the bird’s home off the coast of South
America when he announced the name of their summer retreat: “The ways
of God are not to be fathomed by the likes of us. One is forced to redefine
‘bird.’ And what variations have we not vet discovered in man?” We must
always remember that our knowledge is but a gap in our ignorance.
‘Cormorant devouring Time,’ It will also remind me that Greed is a Capital
Sin.”
The house had never been the scene of great parties or displayed
pageboys in fancified livery as some of its neighbors had done. It was built
because Septimus married Rose Ellen Ogilvey of Augusta. Her family, along
with other “gentlefolk” from Georgia and the Carolinas, “summahd on the
dainty isle of Aquidneck,” a natural jewel with dozens of points and
promontories affording views and drives and airs in abundance. Septimus
wanted access to both ocean and Narragansett Bay; the area near the rough
moorland, the Rocks, suited his temperament best. When the fashionable
New Yorkers arrived decades later, the Vails made no effort to mingle.
“New Yorkers spend all their time talking about travel in general and
Europe in particular,” Septimus Jr. had observed. “And they have little of
interest to say in general or in particular. They think it rude to have ideas.
They’ve all been to the same places, visited the same churches, and seen the
same few people worthy of their attentions. They go everywhere and learn
nothing but under which cypress Keats is buried in Rome. I’ve a sneaking
suspicion they’d rather we’d never warred with the crowned heads of
Europe. We Bostonians exist to remind them that other things can happen at
a tea party besides an exchange of the latest gossip.”
The house had six family bedrooms and a nursery on the second floor,
five upper servants and visiting maids-or-valets rooms on the third. “Upper
servants do the top of the work.” Nanny Osgood had explained while
checking them off on her fingers; “House Steward, Butler, Cook, Ladies
Maid, and Valet.” There was also an attic for the regular servants, with the
females two in a room and the males in a partitioned dormitory that allowed
each a private cubicle no matter their rank. “In service, men are a more
valued commodity, dote.” There were now only a handful of servants, the
necessary number to operate the house for two gentlemen and to manage the
smaller buildings: the bakery-stillroom, the laundry, the fowl-plucking
house, the coach house, and the barns. One gardener attended the grounds,
the vegetable patch. and the cutting garden where Timothy helped in the
afternoons.
“A young gentleman needs run a simple home, Vadriel,” Ebenezer
remarked when he explained his arrangements. “Your social life will be a
busy one. You will dine out most nights and here, in Newport, you will have
a dozen carte blanche informal luncheon invitations daily.”
“How informal?”
“Lawn-tennis whites. It’s self-service, buffet they call it, with only one
footman present to refill the sideboard."
“Doesn't sound crippling. Rather like a country weekend in Kent or
Surrey. I’ve had my share of ‘buffits.’ I won’t put us in the doghouse.”
“I daresay you shan’t! You already have the grace of high culture. You
must now seek to add knowledge of America’s social laws. You will learn to
write a graceful note, to answer invitations promptly, and to attend to all the
intricate etiquette of card leaving.” Ebenezer solemnly handed his ward a
slim silver case containing small, thin, white cards, unglazed, with his name
in scrupulously plain script and his Newport address engraved in the lower
left corner. There would be another set for Boston.
“The card, Vadriel, may well be noted as belonging only to a high
order of development. No monkey, ‘no missing link,’ no Zulu carries a card.
It is the tool of civilization, its field mark and device. It may some day be
improved. It may be and has been abused. But, it cannot be dispensed with
under our present environment.” He then detailed for one hour how a
gentleman functioned with these morsels of pasteboard: when to leave it,
where to leave it, how to leave it, what to say to the footman who opened
the door, and when to turn down which corner to accomplish what coded
end.
Vadriel was grateful to his guardian Newport, with its rigid
conventions, was a foreign planet made accessible only by Ebenezer’s
patience and concern. Their first days together were holiday relaxed as they
adjusted to each other’s rhythms. The one minor altercation had been easily
settled. As was his custom, Ebenezer claimed the study on the first floor
behind the library for his quarters. Vadriel would not sanction it. “Ebenezer
you are not an odd 'n' end guest or a prized butler! You belong with me.
Have your things moved to the room next to mine. Then you’ll have a lovely
view of the sea.”
“But that was your mother's room, Master Vadriel – ”
“By damn! I am not your bloody master, Ebenezer! As my social guard,
you are my master! Every time you call me ‘Master Vadriel,’ I feel 6 years
old. Yer doin’ me dirt, pal.”
The two men laughed.
“Cooper Crane, and Melville are adding color to your lingo, son.”
Vadriel stared unswervingly at Ebenezer Norwood. He put on his
glasses for a sharper view. I believe the old man loves me! At first Vadriel
had assumed it a trick of his needy imagination; but soon he knew it to be
true, although it had no basis in reality. How could it? We’re strangers to
one another. He was moved by what he perceived, yet it generated
tremendous confusion. Love’s an earned estate. Not one inherited or
commanded by law. Valuing love above all things, and fearful of rejecting
disinterested love, he quickly accepted it. If it gives the old man pleasure?
Who am I to object?
He was aware of a need in himself to make people happy, to please
them, often at the expense of his own comfort. He seemed to have a
propensity for being loved. He had read somewhere that good-looking men
enjoyed the advantages the world accords to those who amuse it. Loving him
seemed to amuse people, and it required nothing in return but good-natured
compliance, another natural facility. He recalled Anselm and Wriothesley-
Jones. Usually complications arise. Ebenezer’s a different matter, really. He’s
a simple old man. Needs little. Accustomed to receiving even less. Whatever
I give will be gravy.
A Chopin prelude took form in his memory as he selected one of his
father’s silk robes, a ruby red one identical in color to the long-stemmed
roses pulsing like shards of medieval stained glass by the window in the
sunlight. The much-loved secular music had not been recalled in over a year.
His fingers flexed in anticipation. At his request the piano was newly tuned,
no easy task by the seaside. The robe was a perfect fit. Standing in front of
the mirror, he stroked his father’s monogram on the left breast pocket,
staring at the gold letters vacantly. A shudder passed through him, though
the sun warmed the room. The baroquely scrolled “V” deepened his sense of
emptiness. The merest hint of anger flickered in his eyes and then
disappeared. Turning away, he refilled his cup and carried it to Ebenezer’s
room through the adjoining door before bathing, shaving, and dressing for
breakfast.
He found his guardian propped up with pillows and sorting the post
while sipping black coffee. Mounds of papers and reports were piled neatly
on every level surface. The unexpected visit flustered Ebenezer, but he
quickly regained his composure as his guest settled at the foot of the bed and
leaned against one of the four posters. Vadriel was touched by how frail the
old man looked without a starched collar; Ebenezer was stirred by the young
man’s abundance of graces. He handed him a cache of unopened embossed
envelopes. “Didn’t I promise you’d be kept busy here?”
Donning his glasses, Vadriel ripped into the mail, carefully arranging it
by subject on the coverlet. “Oh, boy! Here are six dinner invitations, two
luncheons, a birthday party tonight, a lawn party Saturday, and a very
charming note from a Mrs. Cynthia Ings, who has also written to you. Did
you send out indian runners to announce our arrival? I'll be doggone!” The
kind words from Mrs. Ings were very like ones received by him at Oxford
from a concerned mother inviting her son’s American classmate for a holiday
in the English countryside. “We’ll have a swell time in the old town tonight,
pal! Do I bring a gift?”
Ebenezer smiled at his enthusiasm and at the quaint acquisitions to his
vocabulary, which he pronounced with an exaggerated Southern accent and
sewed seamlessly into his British English. “No gifts. Gifts are the privilege of
the immediate family and intimate friends. I don't see myself accompanying
you to these events, Vadriel.”
“Why not? Isn’t it one of your duties as tour guide!”
“I'm not accustomed to experiencing society.”
“Neither am I… much. We’ll enter this highfalutin universe together
It’ll be a lark, you’ll see.”
Ebenezer nodded. Vadriel laughed aloud, patting the old man’s feet
under the coverlet. He noticed a piece of paper lined with columns of
figures.
“I think you should commander the study downstairs for our official
office, Ebby. I want you to send for a clerk to help you. No! Wait! I’ll help
you!” Leaping off the bed graceful as a starling, he paced the room. “Is it
possible for me to assume control of my business?”
“Of course. I had hoped… yes! It would be most appropriate.”
An ordered, purposeful existence opened before Vadriel, one that
went beyond developing a municipal conscience. It was settled. “Shall we
begin after breakfast? I’ve always abhorred the notion of being ‘a man of
family’ and ‘a man of leisure.’ I’ll forgo my walk on the beach, and after
lunch we’ll visit Mister Healy. I must introduce myself to my tenant, and we
both need the exercise.”
The breakfast room was brightened by a huge assemblage of white
camellias. Mr. Griggs explained: “From the Van Leer's hothouse, sir.”
“The Van Leers?” Vadriel queried, flipping through the invitations.
“Yup! Here it is. Saturday, the lawn party. Shall we accept, Ebby?”
“If you wish.”
“I wish! I’ll kill two birds with one stone: thank ‘em for the flowers
and say yup to the eats. You’ve seen to my wardrobe, dear cicerone. Have
you the proper duds?”
“I didn’t expect – ”
“Oh, boy! Shall we wire or shall we shop?”
“I can make do.”
“We'll wire for some whites. No! We’ll shop in the Old Town after
Healy. What a lark!”
“Those shops are horribly expensive.”
“Too expensive for me, eh?”
“You can afford anything.”
“Are we short of cash?”
“No.”
“Did you transfer funds here or are your pockets stuffed to bursting?”
“Bank transfers, of course!” he exclaimed, shocked.
“Jolly good, as my old mates would say. I mustn’t ever again. I want to
be a real American! The monastery was not the best place for me to hear
American spoken!”
The monastery? Mr. Griggs wondered, offering porridge.
Picking up a silver spoon, Vadriel held it high, like a wand. “I’m a
sorcerer!” he announced. “Everything will be altered. In no time, I’ll sound
like the rest o’ youse. Ebby, you must teach me how to speak correctly,
please. I want to be like everyone else! Just like everyone else!”
Ebenezer sighed and nodded. Asking the impossible! Inconceivable
this magician could ever pass for a mere mortal.
In truth, Vadriel intended no radical alterations to his person. I could
not bear to be one amongst many. It would not suit the something there is
about me. He wanted a few vowels shortened, a few current colloquial
phrases laced into his King’s English, and his musical intonation modified.
He disliked the flat sounds that assailed him from all sides, though
Ebenezer’s true Bostonian accent had an interesting cadence - not as lovely
as the American Southerners he knew at Oxford but worthy nonetheless of
emulation to a minor degree. He was aware of his accent’s charm among
these fashionable anglophiles, as aware as he was of his other assets; but he
wanted to belong with the people around him to the best of his ability. My
formal initiation will be a birthday ball tonight. Begin and end the day with
a happy birthday. Nothing as amusing as congruency.
Absently, he fingered the ornate “V” engraved on his silver spoon. The
letter also embellished his linen napkin and the serving towel draped over
Griggs’s arm. Who cared for all my stuff? Who waited while I grew into it?
Everything’s ready here for me. His next thought rattled with a quake of
fear: This house is haunted. Are there prayers to exorcise the past?
Finishing the meal, the two retired to the study. Vadriel wrote
Cynthia Ings, signed 10 calling cards, then dispatched Timothy in the
donkey cart to drop them off at each hostess’s front door, thereby accepting
every invitation received that morning. “Be grateful the offers of hospitality
were not made in person, or your entire day would have been shot going the
rounds yourself. Fashion is more casual in the summer,” Ebenezer explained
as he opened the books to begin teaching his bespectacled ward the business
of financial management.
***
***
***
After their lunch. Vadriel and Ebenezer mounted horses to ride over
the low promontory of the island’s tide-troubled points with its stone-
walled, featureless fields. They both admired the bold, bluff outer sea. From
the cliffs, they saw numerous strands and coves and private wooden piers.
The wide-curving bay shimmered like hammered silver in the sunlight and
the air was clear enough to offer views of Providence.
Ebenezer identified the various properties, proving himself crammed
with archival lore, and delivered each family genealogy as if reciting an epic
poem, having exhaustively researched the Social Registers to discover where
the suitable maidens were residing. Enchanted, Vadriel listened, reminded of
days when Wriothesley-Jones detailed his royal lineage with its famous
historical intrigues. Newport was a playground for America’s aristocracy, and
there was a decidedly European cast to this outpost of Rhode Island with its
mock castles and formal English gardens.
“Chunks of ancient traditions and cultures have been swiped by these
self-made, ignorant immigrants,” stated Ebenezer. “They mimic the kings to
whom they recently paid allegiance.”
“What else do they know?”
“Everything’s jumbled together here, Vadriel, and imposed at a cost of
millions on the outer rim of a 17th-century New England port town. The
extravagance rivals 17th-century France! Your grandfather was appalled and
sickened by it. These fantastic symbols of status and wealth nearly ruined
the place for him.”
As Vadriel dismounted to explore an old grain tower recently struck
by lightning, the trim sloop Peony glided along the horizon looking like a
flower petal caught in a strong current. Placidia and Armand, driving the
craft together, were discussing the annealing power of love.
***
***
***
***
From the very first moment, Vadriel had brought sensual pleasure into
Placidia’s life. She had not known such physical exhilaration since the days
when Georgina introduced her to the Delsarte system of movement -
exercises created to train the body and express the soul. Freed from her
corset and the imprisoning layers of clothing, she had worn long Greek
gowns, the uniform for the dress-reform contingent, and had exercised with
symmetrical gestures, twists, and leg swings that produced, for the first time,
a clear sense of her body inhabiting space. For years, Placidia dreamed of
herself alone on a stage dancing. Now she dreamed of herself waltzing in the
arms of Vadriel Vail.
As she rapidly passed from disbelief to acceptance of her good fortune,
she shed past interests and past concerns as hastily as if they were tattered
garments. Her full attention was soon his. Overnight, it seemed, she had
found a new perspective. “I feel drugged,” she told Armand de Guise, “or
hypnotized like Trilby into becoming great, Vadriel is my Svengali.”
After officially meeting at the Nelland party, Placidia and Vadriel
spent most days together. Their match was sanctioned: people invited them
to every afternoon fete and each evening handed Vadriel her name in the
small white envelope that informed the gentleman of his dinner companion.
Their courtship became an event, as did his setting the style by adapting the
latest fashion of black tie and dinner jacket while the other men wore the
traditional white tie and tails until their tailors could meet the demand. She
noticed that he also adopted, around the edges, the unique accent of her clan
- the American Eastern Seaboard elite. The sounds resulted from French,
German, and English nannies and tutors, and from speaking only to children
with similar word formations. She assumed the changes he made in himself
were for her delight alone.
De Guise became a chaperoning ally. He offered his yacht, his racing
sloop, his catboat, his secret bathing cove where both openly admired
Vadriel’s form, surprised by the boldness of his musculature. “So audaciously
calipygian, Army!” She considered de Guise her truest friend, not only for
his generosity and inventiveness in beating the crowds, but also for how he
listened to her every word about Vadriel. He never grew bored with the
subject and accepted her preference without a struggle, which struck her as a
remarkable display of character. He encouraged her headstrong pursuit,
fascinated by Vadriel’s rapid acquiescence; and along with the picnic baskets,
he brought books to assist her in understanding the mysteries of love.
“Love is a bandit,” de Guise suggested. “It swipes our brains.”
“Love is a fire, Army,” Placidia argued. “It melts spirits together.”
“Remember the Titan Prometheus?” de Guise asked. “He stole fire
from heaven and gave it to men. Women weren’t created then, Placide.
Jupiter created the first woman to punish Prometheus and his brother. Her
name was Pandora. We know all about her.”
“Besides the world’s ills, she also gave us Hope, Army.”
“True! Hope. I live in hope. In any case, Prometheus was bound to a
rock for his sins and an eagle tore his heart from his breast. Love is an eagle.”
“How does love happen?” Vadriel asked.
De Guise shrugged and, at a loss for words, suggested: “ ‘Alas our
frailty is the cause, not we, / For such as we are made of, such we be.’ ”
“ ‘Such as we are made of.’ ” Placidia mused. “My mother’s and
Georgi’s voices talk to me all the time.”
“If I were a peony bash. I’d naturally bring forth peonies.” de Guise
argued.
“You think we become a part of the people we love?” Vadriel asked
Placidia, not wanting to be a part of anybody, not wanting to be absorbed
into anyone.
Don’t fret, frail one! Wriothesley-Jones counseled. You can be a rose
bush, Vail. Your thorns will protect you.
Love was their favorite topic the first Newport summer, the summer
before the wedding. Weeks were devoted to Plato, Plotinus, Stendhal’s On
Love, and to King Rene’s Book of Love, an allegorical romance of the Heart
as Love’s captive On horseback or bicycle, on foot or in electric brougham,
they argued passionately about “Love at First Sight.” discussed the Four
Types of Love and the Seven Stages of Love, and unanimously agreed that
Jealousy was the archenemy of Love, along with Denial, Fear and Shame -
the green-eyed monster’s sisters.
“Sisters?” Placidia complained. “Why not brothers?”
“They could be brothers, I suppose,” de Guise admitted. “They
certainly are mine.”
“Are you a jealous man, Armand?” asked Vadriel.
“No, I don't believe I am. I can wait my turn.” They hooted with
laughter, nearly tipping the catboat. “But Fear, Denial, and Shame are the
whole ball of wax for me,” he confessed shyly. While the other two tried to
imagine what could possibly cause him shame, he brooded: Who in love’s
presence dares to speak of hell? And who in their presence dares argue like
Lucian? Only manly love - musculus amor - is a thing partaking of both
virtue and pleasure? Or dares mention Plutarch’s dialogue “Of Love?” He
insists that only masculine love inspires virtuous action? It was de Guise who
raised the issue of the ancients on friendship and love.
Vadriel plonked down absolutely on the side of Aristotle and Cicero:
“True friendship - philia - is possible only between equals - men who are
good and alike in virtue.”
“So they claimed.” Placidia affirmed. “I think today they’d have to
factor in Georgi and me and millions of others like us.”
“And sexual desire?” de Guise nudged.
“For them, sexual desire - eros - always fulfills a need, “Vadriel
recollected. “It seeks to overwhelm the other person and possess him. I think
Freud would agree.”
“Yes,” de Guise nodded in agreement, feeling a deep sadness. I know
all about overwhelming and possessing! But what about Plutarch’s virtuous
action? Couldn’t that become a need?
The courting two continued the discourse in the letters they
exchanged daily. It was Vadriel who initiated the correspondence, an art
form he enjoyed immensely. He detailed impressions of people, places,
books, and ideas; she treated the exercise as she would a diary entry, growing
effusive in her words of love and delighting in his gradual unbending to
include his feelings for her. (She was profoundly grateful that on her yearly
shopping trips to Europe she had pestered Eleanor for permission to visit
museums and the historic sites. I’m also grateful for an elaborate wardrobe
allowing four changes daily. A lady is never informal. That word is one of
the deadliest foes to higher civilization! And Vadriel’s not blind to the
charms of artifice.)
Some of the letters from Vadriel she shared with de Guise. One of the
most memorable was devoted to fidelity and monogamy. In it he posited:
“Fidelity is not a discipline or abstinence or acceptance of the conventional
or lack of imagination or timidity. It is a pledge, which is not a limitation but
a constructive way to live. It is something we create together. Fidelity is
totally unconventional! Its goal is happiness, intimacy, not obedience to a
Truth. And happiness, of course, appertains to being not to having. It is
brother to a state of grace.” De Guise blanched, matching the color of his
straw hat and stiff collar. “Yes,” he said to her “Of course.”
The letters revealed Vadriel as the man she had imagined him to be.
Her love was rooted in this confirmation. She told herself that his “reserve,”
as she named it, his “distancing” whenever she became demonstrative, would
stop when “the strangeness of a woman’s love wears off. There is a barrier in
him,” she wrote in her secret diary, not willing to share these thoughts with
anyone, “a reef that I must wear away. It will take time and every ounce of
feminine energy and wiles, but, oh! the joys awaiting me when it’s gone! He
is a man and is naturally guarded in matters of the heart.”
His thoughtful and compassionate nature was as curious as hers, and
they interrogated each other about their pasts “Thomas? For Thomas
Aquinas? Vadriel, do you know what he said about women?”
“Uh… no.”
“He said, my dear, that women are defective and accidental, a male
gone awry… the result of some weakness in the father’s generative power!”
“That wasn’t very nice.”
Their friendship was broad-based and instantaneous. They talked
politics and ideologies, religion and women’s causes; he agreed with her
down the line, and this affirmation settled, for the present, those larger
issues in her life as thoroughly as if a sacred snowfall had silenced and
transformed the earth into a wonderland. They talked from the second they
clasped hands in the morning before breakfast - Ebenezer delivered him to
Larchmont at 8 A.M. - until they parted, often at dawn the following
morning. (“It’s a miracle.” Eleanor enthused to Mr. Van Leer. “He can jabber
as much as she can!”) Placidia ceased caring about the chaperones assigned to
them by her excited mother. No matter the mob around them, they were
able to be alone, especially by the sea.
“You turn golden brown and I burn!” she complained jokingly
underneath her sunshade.
“Well, you know what Aristotle said about women?”
“Uh...no.”
“He said, my dear, that nature gave men strength of body and
intrepidity of mind to prepare him for great hardships like the sun, while
women were given a weak and delicate constitution accompanied by natural
softness and modest timidity, which fit her only for a sedentary life in the
shade.”
“Cute. Very cute.”
That first summer, Vadriel discovered an intense connection with the
sea. “Ebenezer says I always loved the ocean, but who remembers.?” He
swam or sat on the rocks or played in the sand with her and de Guise for
hours. The daily routine had de Guise arrive after breakfast and walk with
them to the beach or transport them to his cove. There, he handed over a
pail and shovel, which Vadriel used to build fanciful castles or walled forts or
canalled cities at the water’s edge while the three carried on their endless
conversations laced with gossip about the people they knew. Ebenezer had
given Vadriel the formal histories; his two friends added “the dirt.” It was at
the cove, on a brilliantly clear morning. when he first mentioned
Wriothesley-Jones.
“What happened to him?” Placidia asked.
“He’s in England. Married when last I heard. Hadn’t inherited yet.”
“Do you ever think of him?”
“Yes. Sometimes. Armand reminds me of him.”
“I do? How?”
“Oh, many ways.”
“Do you write him?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“We ceased being friends.”
“Why?”
“Many reasons. It was quite...awkward.”
Awkward, Vail? Awkward! Try hideously painful.
“Did you love him?” de Guise dared to ask.
“Yes. As school chums will do.”
De Guise narrowed his eyes, remembering all the schoolboys he had
loved. Not wisely but passionately well! He knew this was an important
jaunt down memory lane for them both, and he would have journeyed
further but Vadriel emitted fields of anxiety over this Wriothesley-Jones.
The chat forked into a general discussion of friendship; they followed that
path without detouring into the realm of Plutarch and Lucian. De Guise filed
the discarded school chum: Subject for mucho further research. Hot damn!
Oh, those ravening eyes!
When a picnic wasn’t planned, Placidia insisted they join friends for a
buffet and go to one public event or more. She enjoyed being at the center of
attention, accepted and prized like a visiting celebrity; and she adored seeing
the envy in the eyes of her female peers. She was aware from early
adolescence that she had inherited her father’s drive and ambition. That
summer, thriving on the sense of power that accompanied her success, she
focused her will on Vadriel. I’ll use my gifts on the battlefield of society.
Employ them for the greater glory of my husband! Which is what women of
our class ought to do. The question a Lady asks is “What man shall I choose?”
but “What man shall I suit?” When I fit myself to him, I feel myself drop
into his eyes. Eyes of a little boy a whom wonder thrills. Eyes that shine like
pools of water in the night. Pools dark and immense with secret depths.
Depths in which I vanish. Vanish! Vanish in a shimmering rapture! Vanish
like the sun into the cave of night.
The Season’s two months were nearly gone before she found the
courage to maneuver their first kiss. It was after a Ball at The Breakers. The
night was balmy, and a group had formed to stroll home along Cliff Walk.
By slipping behind, Vadriel and Placidia managed to be alone. He took her
hand. He told her how much he cared for her.
“Do you love me. Vadriel?” He nodded. “I love you madly, Vadriel.
More than I love myself. You are my life.” Brazenly, as she later told de
Guise: “I stepped into his arms. The kiss was brief but deeply stirring. I felt at
one with him, the sea, the stars, and the moon.” At sunrise, she wrote him
four lines from Meredith:
***
***
***
***
The next morning, Placidia and Vadriel sailed for Palermo en route to
Rome. She suggested they go to Constantinople instead; he reminded her
that de Guise had taken rooms for them in Rome. Unhappily, she acquiesced,
struggling in Sicily to forget the incident as neatly as she excised it with
sewing scissors from her travel journal. Its terror often regenerated
spontaneously, was violently stifled in anger, and precipitated their first
serious arguments. No stranger to attacks of memory, he respected their
maddening force. Frightened by her fury, he withdrew and wrote to Dom
Daniel for guidance, waiting for her to become rational.
“Love makes us healers,” she persisted, reading his withdrawal as
abandonment and, striking out blindly, raging over his fear of being touched.
“This is patently absurd, Placide!” he argued, but fell silent while she
wept. What is she really angry about? She knew his weak peripheral vision
caused him to experience darting hands as if they were pecking birds when
he wasn’t wearing his reading glasses, yet constantly wearing them
interfered with his depth perception. He had carefully schooled himself not
to flinch if she touched him unexpectedly from any direction but head on.
When he first explained his optical condition, she had made a delightful
joke, paraphrasing Oscar Wilde: “Is your guardian preparing you to be
nearsighted?” Now he felt helpless in the face of her senseless accusation.
And useless to the dead as air, Vail. Take her in your arms. Tell her
you love her.
I touch her when she is touchable. Not when she’s emitting sparks of
irascibility
That never stopped me with you!
Vadriel burst into tears, and Placidia was instantly mollified. From that
moment, she ostensibly buried the man and his monkey.
They took a horse cart to the catacombs where the long dead,
mummified by the muzzy coolness, were displayed in their rotted funereal
finery for the spiritual edification of the living. “Memento mori meets Grand
Guignol,” she shuddered. This is as bad as the Hadrianic mummy portrait
from Roman Egypt he bought in Cairo. No. This is much worse. That poor
dead fellow with the huge sad eyes! Christened him Antinous. He’ll hang on
the wall of his study. Thank God. No one will see it! One of these poor
things would probably be placed in the parlor. It’s all demented! Why don’t
people leave the dead in peace? Both Placidia and Vadriel were deeply
disturbed by the gruesome spectacle. During Mass in the basilica at
Monreale, she vowed: I will never upset him again! I get the message, God.
Cremation is the message.
***
***
Don Juan renounces all the duties that bind him to the
remainder of mankind. In the great market of life he is the
dishonest trader who always takes and never pays… a man
bearing an historic name is more likely than another to set fire
to a town to cook himself an egg... he believes he has mastered
the great art of living. But, in the midst of triumph, when he is
scarcely 30 years of age, he is astounded to notice that his life is
barren.... Don Juan’s love is an emotion similar to a love of
hunting.
***
***
The next morning, the three tourists stepped into St. Peter’s Square the
instant Pope Leo XIII arrived in a gilded coach pulled by four black Arabian
stallions. It was a mundane occurrence at the Vatican, but its panache never
failed to generate a rush of emotion and clamorous applause from the
spectators. The Vails raced for a closer look at one of the world’s most
famous men; de Guise fell behind to collect his wits. When the three had
assembled seconds before, he had discovered Placidia skittish and dour. After
having spent long stretches of time with her during the courtship, he knew
her moods. Troubled. Yet, the frequent exclamations of promulgating
connubial bliss slammed the door on any discussions of dissension in
paradise. No blemish on the face she shows the world.
From the beginning, Armand had secretly measured his responses to
Vadriel against hers. When she announced herself in love, he dared consider
that impossibility for himself. This sorrow of hers another transmutation of
love? Should I be looking for my symptoms of it? Are there darker truths to
loving? Lake in the poets? Hoped it was poetic license. Or didn’t pertain to
my type of love in these modern times. A scary twist! Very like discovering a
cat prowling among one’s prized singing birds.
During supper with the Blakes the previous evening. Placidia had
related “The Tale of the Tarot.” It had amused everyone but Armand de
Guise. He laughed loudly, pretending delight in the absurdity, ignoring the
tension he saw in her eyes, and all the while refraining from offering his
own interpretation the way he had refrained from cutting in on their first
dance in Newport. Now, flabbergasted by the symphonic swell of emotions
at the sight of Vadriel - Dazzling in the rivulets of Roman sunlight. Regal as
a coral zinnia taking the air! - Armand could not gauge to what degree he
had concealed the turbulence in his heart. To show too much will frighten
him. To show too little will destroy the possibility of an eventual response. I
want to sing “E luceevan le stelle.” And pelt him with violets and pink
carnations!
De Guise was distracted from himself by the Caravaggio types dressed
as liveried footmen escorting His Holiness across the Square. I want. I don’t
know how to get what I want. Like a schoolboy dressed to the nines with no
place to go! If I truly loved Vadriel? I’d not cause him distress. I’d return to
New York pronto. Stashing one of those tasty footmen in my cabin, please.
I’d fling satin slippers and wish the newlyweds a long and happy life.
Renounce my love in the presence of this magnificently gowned symbol of
Human Excellence. Il Papa is nearly gone from sight, his guardian angels in
tow. But, to do so, to renounce his love, would doom Armand de Guise to
never resolving it, to never knowing what happened when one human being
reciprocated another’s strongest emotion. He firmly believed the opportunity
would never be offered to him again in his life.
The Pope paused, turned to the suddenly hushed crowd, and spoke,
like an actor during a curtain call. The essence of the homily was undeniably
the advice de Guise longed to hear: “Truth resides in Love.”
Like his second favorite poet, Keats, Armand de Guise committed
himself to the holiness of the heart’s affections. He resolved to reveal his
state of mind while concealing its true cause; then, at least, he could call
some delight from his condition. Supposed to be fun being in love. It was for
Placide. He would don a mask and somehow communicate the dissimulation
to Vadriel. It was imperative that Vadriel be aware of the game if he were to
be converted into a spectator and thus be involved. Involvement is all I
want. For now… He scanned his memory for an amusing ploy. Simple. Must
be simple. Simple as truth. The plot from a recently read Balzac novel, La
Fausse Maitresse, offered itself. Captain Paz invents an affair. Covers his love
for his best friend’s wife. Steal a fig leaf from a master. Love is a muse of fire!
“Shall we go inside the basilica?” Placidia asked, reappearing to grab
his arm. I haven’t been here in well over a decade. It doesn’t look a day
older.” Her equanimity was restored by the Pope’s performance. “He is the
High Command, boys,” she joked, falling into a silent reverie as they crossed
the monumental threshold. The poised army of marble statues lining the
towering walls reminded her of the figures on the tarot cards. Sadness
tightened her throat and, for a moment, she feared crumpling down. Blame
it on the incense fumes? Georgi says my experience is what I attend to! She
consciously changed the subject of her thoughts to her love for Vadriel Vail.
She remembered how on the day after the birthday ball in Newport he
called to leave his card. She had received him alone in the knot garden. His
frank and Friendly manner pressed back any doubts of her enchantment as
briskly as a bumblebee dodges the petals of a flower to draw the nectar. She
was thrown askew by her physical response to him. The concentric ripples of
his smile sent waves of warm sensations through her body. Her heart
embraced him with a tenacity it had never displayed toward anyone that
wasn’t a character in a book; and, as with fictional characters, she felt him
happen within her in his entirety, freed of the opaque, fragmented
interlacing of most human personalities. This is the wisdom of love. Now, a
year and a half later, catching her breath in St. Peter’s, Placidia concurred
and crested anew with love for her husband.
As the three headed toward Bernini’s altar. Vadriel excused himself
and entered an English-language confessional. He had received a
dispensation from the Bishop of New York to miss Mass while on the Nile;
though he had discussed the state of his soul with a priest in Palermo, he
satisfied the need to examine it with another. Placidia professed no similar
need. She and de Guise walked on, admiring the enormous house of worship.
They paused before a mosaic depicting the martyrdom of a virile
Erasmus. Initially, de Guise fancied the near-naked reclining body, but the
erotic charge was short-circuited by horror at the cause of the muscled
saint’s ecstatic spasms. Attached to an overhead wheel, like a skein of nubby
rope, was his glistening intestine done in whites and pale greens; it was
being unraveled from inside his gut by two passive brutes obviously bored
with the job. De Guise considered for an instant what had befallen men for
loving another man in a way not sanctioned by society. His own gut ached
when he thought of the world’s disapprobation. No one will ever know! He
offered a short prayer for himself and an admiring thank-you to Erasmus.
You had the courage to die for the man you loved! They’d do the same to me
today.
“He’s got great legs.” Placidia smirked. “This is a religion? Only men
would find this sadistic stuff inspiring.”
“Only some men. Placide. Nobody we know. At least, I don’t think
so!”
She gave out a peal of laughter.
Still smiling with her, de Guise turned to look for Vadriel. Pleasurably,
he spotted a beautiful Italian of Vadriel’s age lighting a candle at a nearby
altar dedicated to Saint Francis of Assisi. After laying down the taper, the
young man raised his hands, palms outward, in supplication. The hazy,
golden glow of the candles only partly illuminated his face, and to the
startled Armand de Guise, the supplicant was Angelo della Fiore.
Panic caused de Guise’s heart to race and his breath to catch in his
throat. Shit! Must hide! Get away! Mustn’t see me! Before any action could
be taken, the young man quickly genuflected and swiftly passed de Guise,
who began to breathe again. Not him! Thank Christ. Terrible fright. What
would I have done?
To gather his wits, he wandered over to the flower-decked Saint
Francis altar and, on impulse, lit a candle and placed it among the hundreds
blazing. Thoughts of the starry sky at Newport distracted him. He had
intended to ask the most gentle of saints to help him seek forgiveness from
God for the act of violence that caused Angelo to haunt him. Instead, he
gave thanks for being spared a messy scene. “La commedia e finita! Grazia.”
Shoving Angelo della Fiore out of his conscious mind. Armand de Guise
wondered what he should have for lunch and rejoined Placidia.
***
***
The Vails left Rome in March, planning to stay with de Guise and his
uncle in Vienna for a month. They made a brief stop on the way in Ravenna
to view the mosaics at the fifth-century mausoleum of Galla Placidia.
Placidia filled two drawing books studying the stylized rigidity of the
Byzantine figures. Vadriel was thrilled by her facility.
“And you claim to admire Jane Austen!” she teased. “Ladies of sense
and sensibility always sketch beautifully. That’s one of the few things we’re
taught!” While in Rome, Vadriel had sat for three painters and two sculptors,
refusing a dozen more artists. He asked her why she had never wanted to
sketch him. “Who needs a two-dimensional copy that reduces you to lines
and planes when I’ve the roseate original at my fingertips.” His delight in her
art revived her own interest in it. From that day, she rarely left their
lodgings without a pad. She also took to making quick sketches of him
dressed and undressed. Need to capture him. Pin him down.
De Guise’s uncle was the American ambassador to Austria. The de
Guise connections there were with the community of European aristocracy,
the ancien régime that had no need to replenish its coffers by marriage to
American features. The Vails received three dozen calling cards their first
day in unsere Wein; they were the sensations of the spring social Season.
Armand toured and guided them, arranging for everything. He was an
exemplary friend. Although the propinquity to Vadriel inflamed and
exacerbated his needs, his deportment was impeccable. Essential to my plan.
Vadriel must be comfortable with me. Besides. The setup has its distinct
advantages.
Once before in New York, the two men had shared de Guiser’s home
for a month. Armand took Vadriel swimming at his chub three times a week
for the exquisite frisson of seeing him naked. Four times, as they stood by the
edge of the pool. Armand had dared to touch the triangular pad of muscle at
the small of the back while encouraging a dive. In the gymnasium’s steam
room, he had scrutinized the hard surface of Vadriel’s body - Every inch of
the skin’s six yards - storing in his memory the contours, the pattern of black
hairs - My favorite cross to bare! - and the darker coloration of the lips, the
nipples, and the flaccid, hooded sex.
Each morning, de Guise visited his guest to chat about the day’s events
while Vadriel shaved wearing only a towel wrapped snugly around his slim,
firm waist. Every evening, before leaving the house, he would take the
liberty of straightening Vadriel’s tie. In Vienna, Armand successfully carried
out similar maneuvers, though Placidia now took care of the tie.
One blustery night, a chamber orchestra performed a Bach program
following a dinner for 50. It was a regular event at the embassy, and de Guise
dutifully trailed after the Vails into the music salon. A recent convert to
music - First that King Arthur in New York. Then last night’s Tristan and
Isolde! Still gasping for air. Who knew? - he had always accepted stoically
that social occasions often revolved around musical entertainment. The
announced pieces renewed doubts. At least I won’t be bored if he’s nearby.
The musicians filed in and de Guise was amused to see that the oboist had
auburn hair the shade of his own; the lead violinist had a black curly head on
top of a body similar to Vadriel’s in outline. The two stood together at the
center of the small stage with the others fanned out behind them. After
tuning, the group began to play Bach’s Concerto in C-minor for those two
featured instrumentalists.
Startled by the directness of the beat - Like a dance band with a
harpsichord - de Guise felt a rush of energy. His mind produced images of
himself and Vadriel racing nude in the humming surf as the musical dialogue
between the reed and the strings engaged his attention and emptied his brain
of pictures. He watched the two men making music, moving and swaying,
mingling their “voices” as sensuously as people courting - Music is a muse of
fire! He was giddy with pleasure and began imperceptibly twisting his head
and torso in time, dancing in place, dipping, bending from side to side,
accompanying the gifted fingers manipulating the singing instruments.
The adagio was another matter. The two men had stepped closer
together, and their sweetly blending melodic sounds filled him with the
yearning tenderness he experienced thinking of Vadriel Vail. To Armand’s
ears, the entwining legato lines were deftly making love. He listened,
amazed by the clarity of what he was feeling. It was as if he had passed into a
purer realm of being. This music is a religion!
The swift allegro was mysteriously lachrymose. He danced again in
place but questions were raised - Must we grow old? Why must we die?
Grieving for himself, and for Vadriel, he grieved for everyone he had ever
lost. Suddenly Bach’s harmonies brought comfort, and his sorrow dilated
into a quiet joy. Moving his hand to graze Vadriel’s on the armrest, he
resolved into a serenity. He sat stunned. Musical notes on a page had amused
him intellectually from time to time; now, in the thick of love, his emotional
self responded to the sensation of sound. When the piece was over, he
applauded lustily, and brusquely excused himself. In a fit of exaltation, he
walked the snowy streets for hours.
Music spread a tissue of meaning over his life through which he saw
his interior self more clearly defined. Wish my feelings were balanced in
harmonies and counterpoints. Like those applied to musical composition.
What is love but harmonies and counterpoints? In love’s formula is our
resolution. Cannot get enough of music!
Most nights in Vienna he arranged for them to have music. It
physically excited him and gave him peace. After a performance of Mahler’s
Resurrection symphony he knew his spirit had moved closer to choosing
good. “It’s the spiritual comfort,” he explained to Mahler.
The maestro, soon a personal friend, nodded in understanding. “It is a
comfort to feel have, Armand.”
When roiled by a fit of lust, there were a great many willing arms in
the student and bohemian cafés. A passionate liaison with a blond Russian
prince was hastily terminated because de Guise continually called him
“Vadriel” in the heat of their strenuous couplings. Familiar with the owner
of the name, the satiated prince was amused. “You have marvelous taste,
Armand. I am flattered to be his surrogate! In my country, you are the stuff
of romantic love stones, while I feel like the narrator in Dostoyevsky’s
White Nights.”
De Guise grunted, hoping for the fate of Nastenka, whose great love
returns to her. I’ll conserve my energies for the real thing. It’ll spur me on.
Three days later, in a fancy coffeehouse in the Ringstrasse, over
multilayered cream cake confections, de Guise killed off Clotilde de Vaux.
“It’s for the best. And I don’t want to talk about it ever again!”
“Oh, Army…” Placidia began.
“Good riddance. I say,” Vadriel consoled. “She was bloody antisocial, if
you ask me.”
De Guise laughed, relieved to be done with this madness at last. He
had intended to end it in Rome, only to have it immediately take on a life of
its own, and he had been forced to invent excuses for “poor Clotilde” that
were constructs as complex as the pastry Vadriel was devouring. Nearly
came to grief with this one. Terrible mistake. Terrible. Mustn’t try to
manipulate people. You do it very badly. Thank Christ it’s finished. Fast
curtain. The end. He ached with a distinct premonition that there would be
repercussions from this deception and incorrectly put it down to frazzled
nerves.
The Vails journeyed by train to Pontorson in Normandy, planning to
hook up again with de Guise in Paris. The couple rented a carriage that bore
them through countryside reminiscent of New England and onto the
chaussée across the sands, bringing them to Mont-Saint-Michel on the eve of
the equinox tides. High on the summit in front of the Benedictine abbey’s
west facade, they held fast to one another while far below in the Gulf of St.-
Malo, the twisting, tumbling waves advanced to isolate the ancient shrine
from the mainland. It looked as if the powerful sea would loosen, lift, and
bear away the cone-shaped rock island.
Excited, Vadriel chanted: “Dies irae, dies illa / Solvet seculum in favilla
/ Teste David cum Sibylla.” He was awed by the presence of God’s force in
nature. Wonder if Armand has ever witnessed this flood?
“Army would love this, Vadriel!”
For the next two months in Paris, they resumed their social life à trois,
touring the outlying regions by day and being entertained at the theaters and
salons by night. Under the rose window at Chartres, Armand announced his
return home. “Time to resume my chores, children!” He sailed from Le
Havre when the Vails sailed for London and the final stage of their trip: A
visit to Placidia’s sister, Edith, Lady Fitzpane. Onboard, Placidia brooded: “I
dread a woman taking his full attention from our lives, Vadriel. Don’t you?”
“I do. But I fear it won’t happen soon.”
“You fear?”
“I mean, I doubt it will happen immediately.”
You had it right the first time, Vail! Coward!
***
***
Vadriel Vail was sequestered in the library, the least frequented room
in Edith’s vast house. It reminded him of Oxford. Odd being back in
England. It was odd because he realized how much he missed it. Love the
colors of the earth here. Soft air with sweet smells. And the delightful
cadence of British English. If only England were inhabited by another race!
This visit’s opened my eyes wide as a gate, believe you me!
Disconsolate, he paced around the heavy, ornate furniture. How can
they xenophobically consider themselves superior to everyone else? Look at
that bloated, hedonistic clown of a king! He’s the earthly symbol of the order
of things? The order of things serves a handful of his titled cronies! Time for
revolution here!
A Rembrandt crucifixion shimmered on the wall. For the first time he
realized that the Christian sense of Heaven duplicated the earthly realm.
What else could fishermen and tax collectors do? A king?" A queen? A true
hegemony? Replete with honor guards called saints and angels! The pope’s
trappings are similar to the full regalia of that chap out there in the topiary
garden groping Lady Margaret. Why do the English value haughtiness?
Oh, you have your own touch of severity, Vail! Do be kind! I came
from people. And these are they!
You were still unspoiled, W-J, when we met.
You often accused me of being arrogant. You said I even kissed
arrogantly, leading with the tongue.
Vadriel continued pacing and thinking about the English. What
quality of human being exerts damnation over much of the planet it
inhabits? I relied on my accent and bearing to isolate me from everyone in
America. The same way these savage people use manners to camouflage their
shriveled souls.
We are steady and of sound intelligence, Vail.
Yes. Love, my soul’s child, was not indigenous to my soul’s kingdom.
What I have of love, Placidia has imported from America. Her lesson in
loving’s liberated me. Now I need to earn a place in the human race.
He wondered what would have happened to him if his parents hadn’t
died, propelling him into this cold, alien world. He remembered his
confusion upon arrival; the library suddenly called the Master’s study at
Eton. He sat in an oversize chair. Dwarfed, he blinked from the force of
memory. The feelings of abandonment were excruciating. But they died.
They died! Wasn't their bloody fault. No matter. I’ll never forgive them for
it.
Who’s left to forgive, Vail? They’re dead and gone, drowned like
Ophelia.
Vadriel leaned back in the large chair. They left me stranded here. I
hate them! Had they listened to me in the first place! It would never have
happened! He blinked away tears as he felt a warm column of air open
within him. It slowly expanded, filling him with what his observing mind
perceived as a deep sadness, a fathomless grief that was transformed
gradually into a dense meditative stillness. The image of his young parents
cobbled together from photographs anxiously watching him play at the edge
of a cliff on a hot summer’s day took hold of his mind. His tears were too
heavy to blink away. He allowed them to fall into his lap. Never knew how
much I loved them. Never knew how I miss them.
Better not to know, Vail. Too awkward.
Painful. Too painful. I need to know these things.
You’d think –
Feelings don’t think, W-J! They know nothing! They’re like children
spinning away on the edge of a cliff. He took a deep breath to stem the flow
of tears. Instead, he burst into an explosion of weeping, rocking back and
forth in the chair. My hands hurt!
This is pathetic, Vail!
It’s how I felt when I lost you!
A plethora of feelings erupted within him, contiguous and melding, on
and on, no end in sight. He gripped the arms of the chair. There was a big
funeral. Crowds and crowds of people. Stood between my grandfather and
Ebenezer Norwood. They squeezed my hands. Everyone cried but me I
didn't understand.
Slowly, and with much heavy sobbing, the grieving ebbed and the
stillness returned. The tears slowed. He sobbed and sighed and relaxed,
closing his swollen eyes. I see it all now! I was wide asleep when they went
away. I didn’t comprehend it was forever.
For a moment, there was nothingness. An expanse of sea appeared to
him, shimmering and inviting It was followed by the smiling face of Armand
de Guise. Happiness enveloped his corporeal self, the sensation was akin to
being immersed in a white heat. Again, he wept. These tears are different.
My hands no longer hurt!
Weeping, always weeping, Vail You and Alecto, daughter of Pluto and
Grief’s drear mistress. Old habits die hard.
And new ones are born hardest.
The clock struck the hour. Been here a long time! He rose to dress for
dinner. He wished he were in Newport. There, even the most formal dinners
were amusing and colorful affairs, especially if Armand de Guise were
present to lead the conversation. Here we’ll eat as soon as served, W-J
There’s no comment on the food, however fine. Which is just as well since it
will be cold and tasteless. Communication will be in low tones with no
gesticulating. There’ll be no seconds on soup or fish; seconds will be offered
on the overcooked roast. Unless, of course, the king is drunk. As he usually
is. Then, things can get very bawdy indeed. I pray for a dull and typically
upper-class feed. Lake we used to have at Lady Letitia’s in Kent. I loved your
tongue, W-J. But not for starters.
A wall of red, calf-bound books looked ablaze in the light of the
setting sun. He crossed to them, touching their spines and flicking his index
finger over the gold-embossed titles of Balzac’s novels. He decided this visit
was a perfect time to catch up on his reading. For no conscious reason, he
pulled La Fausse Maitresse from the shelf and tucked it under his arm,
wondering if Armand had ever read it. Turning, he reluctantly left the safety
of the library. No need to fear. Ready now for whatever happens I feel
strong. Able to defend myself.
Beware of hubris, Vail!
I am a little overwrought. No need to fear, I say. I’ll write to Dom
Daniel for counsel. With God’s help, I’ve come of age today. Begun to put
the dead to rest at last. Ready now to live my life. Live it truthfully and
happily! The way God intends us all to live. Isn’t that the plan?
If you want to hear God laugh, Thomas. Tell him your plans.
Am I not on track Dom Daniel? Don’t I see my way clear?
There was no response to the questions. Quietly, he closed the door
behind himself. The silence reverberated down the lengthy corridors into
infinity.
CHAPTER SIX
I beseech Thee, therefore, O dearest Lord, keep me from that madness
of heart which would lead me to turn from Thy purpose to which I have put
my hand, in life or in death may I follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest.
As the ocean liner Dauphine pulled into its North River berth, a
solitary Vadriel Vail prayed on the deck, breathing in the pungent summer
smells of New York City. He was delighted to be home and eager to begin
living an adult life in America. Lacking the ambition of a captain of industry
and the heart to amass any more money - the Vail estate had more on
reserve than the U.S. Treasury - he was happy with his decision to leave the
daily management of the Vail Corporation to Ebenezer Norwood. He had
broken the news before leaving America for Europe with Placidia the
previous year.
“These are bad times for governments financially, but great times for
business,” the guardian had agreed when Vadriel explained the reasons for
his decision. “Never has there been so much profit so quickly, Vadriel. 1909
will go on record as a banner year for investors. We have been fortunate. I
won’t say lucky. We’ve earned every cent.”
Vadriel had come to see the family’s conglomerate as a piece of theater
superbly well cast, with many gifted understudies waiting in the wings to
assume the leading roles when time necessitated change. “You organized it
without me as an active player, Ebby. I want to make the money work in
other ways. I’d like to use it philanthropically like Mr. Carnegie. Our latest
mergers with Mr. Rockefeller make the Vail balance sheet a vast resource for
good.”
“I know your grandfather would approve, Vadriel. He agreed with
John Adams about future generations enjoying the fruits of a family’s labor.
However, he would be disappointed if you divested yourself fully of the
family’s concerns.”
“No, no! I’ll remain a leading player in the boardroom as we’ve
arranged. You’ve inculcated in me the company’s vision, Ebby. I understand
how it functions as an organic whole. In theory, it’s fascinating. Day-to-day,
it’s not for me. I want the managers to manage and the supervisors to
supervise. I’ll personally direct the Vail Foundation, however.”
Placidia had cheered Vadriel’s decision and offered her services. “Let
me at it! The Foundation could be wonderfully exciting! Isn’t it heaven to be
responsible people?”
Ebenezer’s genius had quadrupled the Vail inheritance. Vadriel
happily left multiplication matters with the old man and his competent
people. As a gesture of gratitude, he doubled everyone’s salary - much to
Ebenezer’s chagrin - and instructed his lawyers to set up a foundation in his
father’s name for grants to scientific, social, and artistic endeavors.
On impulse, he had begun to write again while abroad with Placidia
and was determined to continue in Boston and Newport. Vadriel was
reckoned a superb general essayist at Oxford; publishing regularly in the
most prestigious literary journals, he was awarded an achievement medal
upon graduation and a contract for a book, which he turned down to enter
Gethsemane. The interest served him well at Courtney Park when he
sequestered himself in the library as a respite from the onlooking fish-eyes of
the party and from his torment over Armand de Guise.
“Madness of heart” was an apt description of his emotional response to
Armand de Guise. Upon discovering the Balzac novel, he knew his instincts
had been correct.
Instincts, Vail? You mean your heart’s desire!
The man loved him. Now, after the long voyage home, he knew he
loved the man. He reasoned it was a tessellated condition, developed slowly,
day by day, over the two years of their friendship. My heart’s like Blake’s
sick rose. Becomes host to an invisible worm that flies in the night in the
howling storm, finds my bed of crimson joy, and “this dark secret love” does
my love destroy!
Is that why love is called a plague, Vail?
Whatever it’s called, it’s finished. What’s to be done? Not a thing. Not
a bloody thing. It was over before it began.
He opened à Kempis and read:
“ ’Let me not consent unto sin,’ ” he said, closing the book. Years
before in the arms of Wriothesley-Jones, he had concluded there was no sin
attached to loving. Loving is not the sin. Betrayal is the sin.
***
Placidia Vail emerged from the hubbub around Vadriel on the deck of
the docking ship. Flushed with excitement, she had begun her day at dawn.
By her orchestrating the energies of four crew members and her maid,
Penelope, who had joined them in London, all was in order before breakfast
for the noon disembarkation. She puttered about, barely masking her
ferocious anxiety about constructing a satisfactory life in Boston for Vadriel
– He’ll go mad without the proper stimulation! Will philanthropy cut the
mustard? - and about her profound distress over his moods, which now had
him withdrawing from her to write for days at a time.
“Write what?” she demanded, her reproachful eyes never leaving his
face.
“Thoughts and ideas.”
“About what?”
“Death.”
“Death?”
“Yes. Death. I’ve been thinking a good deal about my parents. And
about the cloud of forgetting that shrouds our existence - so to speak.”
“No wonder you’re depressed, my poor darling.”
“I’m not depressed. Placide. I’m writing about the possibility of living
authentically! By confronting death freely and resolutely, despite anxiety
and guilt. I’m - ”
“You look depressed.”
“I do?”
“Yes. You’re moping around as if you’ve been struck by dry-wilt. You
look very depressed! Everyone says so.”
“They do?”
“Yes! Everyone’s quite concerned.”
“Oh, God! Please stop trying to read me and listen to what I tell you.
I’m many things, but I am not depressed. I’m working in the tough discipline
of essay writing. Now, please leave me to it.”
She nodded. I adore when he gives a little spritz of authority. Shows
character.
Placidia left him to his moods, which had descended upon him in
England. She was rabid to set up his home, bear his children, encourage new
endeavors, and do whatever was necessary to make him happier. It’ll take a
while to get over the debacle that was England. Even I was constipated by it.
“Oh, sit down and think which way / To walk and pass our long love’s day.”
Though he swore he was pleased to be back on this side of “the pond,” she
was convinced his troubles lay in being divorced from European standards
that showed their strength in delicacy of manners. She compared him to a
transplanted Jamesian hero, albeit in reverse, and saw herself as the opposite
of Kate Croy: Having only his interests at heart. I’ll manage life’s transitions
for him.
Georgina Farnsworth’s voice chided Placidia: If you had been the wife
of Hercules, six of his labors you’d have done and saved your husband so
much sweat.
Leaning against Vadriel at the rail of the ocean liner, Placidia watched
the lowering of the gangplank and scanned the crowd mingling behind the
barriers below. Both spotted Armand de Guise at the same moment he
spotted them. “There he is!” she called, waving and turning her laughing face
toward Vadriel without removing her eyes from their friend. “Doesn’t he
look handsome?”
Vadriel put his arm around her waist. “Yes. Handsome, indeed.” He
saw with the eyes he had acquired in Europe. Exquisitely formed. How his
eyes boldly kiss me! Those bright green eyes. Eyes as full of sweet messages
as a field jammed with wildflowers! The kisses heat the air in my lungs.
When we touch hands, I know I’ll feel the force of a full embrace. If he hugs
me? The joy will bring forth tears.
That would be attractive, Vail. You spurting hot tears like so much –
I love him.
I know. So do I. So does she. So do we all.
I love him. I love him. I love him.
Amo Amas Amat. Thoughts do not hasten things, Vail, or yours would
have done so. Can it be that you have death in your heart? What a different
thing from love!
Armand brought his steam yacht, Sea Lion, from Newport to carry
them home to Cormorant. Dressed in a white flannel suit, a green and white
striped shut, and a yellow tie the color of the morning sun, he sported an
Italian straw hat so crisp and new it looked molded from edible wafer, its
band was a violet ribbon. Viewed from above, he reminded Placidia of a
hardy “dandy-lion” stretching to capture their sunny feelings for him.
He was in high spirits, shimmering with health and vitality. Over
breakfast with Gideon Blake, de Guise had joked, “My romantic love buoys
me aloft!”
“Be careful, Army. The world will crucify us given half the chance!”
Now, standing on the bustling pier gazing up at Vadriel, Armand’s
exhilaration was nourished by a physical buzz as palpable as the rising heat
of the day. Giddy with the sensual pleasure emanating from his groin, he
enhanced it with a piece of a newly learned erotic sonnet: “My soul doth tell
my body that he may / Triumph in love, flesh stays to farther reason, / But
rising at thy name doth point out thee / As his triumphant prize....”
Indulging his body’s expansive greeting, he drew a silly comparison with
divining rods, until decency’s chafing restraints recalled him to his
surroundings. Christ! Should have worn a truss. No self-control. Evident to
anyone with eyes! Take deep breaths. Attend the couple! The two look
enchantingly à deux, Armand.
After hugging them both, he said, “I feel rude, quite rude, not
thrusting masses of flowers into your arms. But I’ve developed an allergy and
I don’t look my best with tearing eyes. So take this instead.” He handed
Placidia a Nantucket lightship basket containing the amethyst brooch
bought in Newport when he’d first glimpsed Vadriel. “And you, take this!”
Removing the straw hat from his own red head, he dropped it over the thick
black curls of his startled friend. “Perfection!”
“Oh!” Placidia exclaimed, fondling the jewel. “Army! What a
wonderful gift! I adore it! Please pin it here,” she insisted, pointing to the
collar of her white traveling dress. Glancing at Vadriel, she laughed with
glee at the sweetly rakish sight of him. “Army, that hat is divine! And so is
the giver. You are such a darling.” Affectionately, she touched his cheek
with her gloved hand. Her purling voice had developed a tremolo, infusing
the simplest phrases with the dark tones of passion. He’s truly happy. In love
again, I think.
She’s changed. Wiser. Sadder...
“Thank you, Armand.” Vadriel said, recalling the day on the Peony
when they discovered their common hat and shoe size. “If it looks as good
on me as it did on you, I’m a fortunate fellow!”
“You are exactly what the doctor prescribed...for that hat.” Armand
laughed. He’s never at a loss for a gracious response. Wonder what it feels
like?
Settled on the yacht with baggage stowed, Vadriel grew solemn and
asked: “Every flower, Armand?”
“Every bud and budlet,” Armand answered, crimsoning with pleasure
over Vadriel’s remembering. It’s been hours since I mentioned my allergy!
Such a darling!
“Since when, Army?”
“Since my return to New York. It’s most absurd and most
inconvenient. I can’t be in the same room with them. Or the same garden.
It’s a damned nuisance, let me tell you. And just when everything is rolling
along perfectly too. I’ve never been happier or more productive in my whole
life. Everything is under control but this thing. It’s a curse!”
“How awful! Have you seen a doctor?”
“Yes. Several. In fact, they say it’s not uncommon to suddenly develop
an allergy. It may disappear just as suddenly. They’ve not been much help
with it. I’m afraid. It’s making me crazed. ‘But if the while I think on thee,
dear friends / all losses are restored and sorrows end.’ ”
They stopped for lunch at Spring House on Block Island and dawdled
over dessert to catch their breath before entering the crush at Newport,
which de Guise labeled frenetic. Former president Theodore Roosevelt was
finally visiting, having never arrived the previous two summers. He had
been the first rich man’s son to occupy the White House since William
Henry Harrison; he was also an aristocratic New Yorker from a very old
Dutch family.
De Guise was highly amused by the excitement the visit was
generating. “The Roosevelts came from Holland as settlers around 1644,
Vadriel, just like your wife’s gang. Teddy’s a Republican, though he’s
considered a traitor to our class and may be running on the Progressive Party
next year to get reelected! Lots of la-di-da-dadoos this summer, dear kiddies!
Placide, your mama has been at the starting gate since the Season began!”
“My mother became an intimate friend with Miss Alee Lee of Boston,
Vadriel, when Alice arrived in New York and Hyde Park betrothed to Young
Teddy,” said Placidia. “They maintained a correspondence through the
summers when the Roosevelts left for Oyster Bay and Mother decamped for
Newport, Mother continued writing to Teddy after Alice’s early death. Oh,
dear. She’ll be exhausted by the end of the Season. Has everyone gone mad
with fancy parties?”
“Stately simplicity is the mode this Season,” de Guise mocked,
referring to one of Roosevelt’s first acts as the youngest president in
America’s history clearing the White House of Chester A. Arthur’s Victorian
embellishments and returning it to its original “stately simplicity,” complete
with cockades and livery on the White House coachmen. Vadriel pares his
nails straight across. Doesn’t curve them. Doesn’t follow the form of the long
slender fingers. Must do the same. Ravishing.
De Guise coughed to cover his distraction and continued with the
news. “The talk in the best of houses is of the Elkins Act and antitrust suits.
Imagine all those railroad fortunes and massive trusts sitting and nodding in
hypocritical agreement. They are all just dying to smash Teddy’s big stick
over his idealistic big head!”
Sunlight dappled the table. Vadriel moved his hand into his lap
unaware of de Guise’s fascination with it.
“Or they talk of last year’s anthracite coal strike. And national forests.
And Righteous Courage. And Love of Country,” de Guise ridiculed. The
three laughed. His heart dilated from the approbation in Vadriel’s eyes.
“Yesterday morning, our bully warmonger was riding along the beach on a
bully horse when some children and women got in his way. He bellowed
quite seriously. ‘Move there! Move there! I’m the once and future president
of the United States!’ ” de Guise mimicked, flailing his arms. “If the popular
press is correct and this solid burgher is the incomparable symbol of virility
in our time, I, for one, am packing it in! Thank God I wasn’t asthmatic as a
child!”
“The people love him,” Vadriel offered, still laughing at de Guise’s
performance. “I think he’s a good man. The system of national parks is a
major feat.”
“The people love King Edward,” Placidia reminded. “The people love
whom they are told to love. They’re easily led. He’s a prig and a jingoist.
When women vote, all this will change!”
“Don’t bet on it, Placide! Women are people too.”
“A different species of biped, Vadriel.”
“People nonetheless,” de Guise quipped, but she did not pursue as once
she was eager to do. “Shall I tell you what I’ve been up to?” he asked, excited
to score his points. Both listeners enthusiastically encouraged him to display
every morsel of news. He remained silent. Where to begin? How do I tell
them how different I am? He dropped into a deep reverie. Must do this
correctly. My life depends on it! His listeners patiently waited, happy to be
in his loving presence.
***
Where do I begin? How to tell them what I’ve been up to? Begin in
New York? The winter after the engagement? When Vadriel was a guest in
my Gramercy Park home? When we were all dining with the Blakes and
Vadriel’s eyes grew lambent with indignation over New York’s slum
landlords...?
“The boundary line of the other half,” Vadriel had passionately
declared, “lies through the tenements! They are hotbeds of epidemics and
nurseries of crime. It’s the scab that covers the wound.”
Precious Blake had thought Vadriel even more bel homme when his
dander was up. Her father had taught her that the poor are happy in their
squalor, and she was bound to say: “They know no better, poor bêtes.”
“Nonsense!” Vadriel had shouted, thumping the table and waking two
of the elderly guests who had never even seen a tenement. “The poorest
immigrant goes to America to better himself. He’s being blamed for the sins
of the tenement owners. The Italian street scavengers of today will
tomorrow own a fruit stand, then a shop, then a chain of stores. The Irish
hod carrier will become a bricklayer or a publican, then the alderman of his
ward. The Chinese already control the laundry business.”
“What else can those poor midgets do but starch my shirts?” Blake had
asked, causing a derisive pause.
“They had a dozen civilizations fall before our ancestors were out of
the cave,” Vadriel continued hyperbolically. “Tenement owners have a
caveman mentality and stone hearts. They are in violation of the true spirit
of democracy.” He went on to quote Lincoln Steffens and Jacob Riis.
Blake had openly chortled at the handsome but foolish Vadriel Vail.
He had no intentions of giving up his lucrative properties unless the scandals
proliferated. His son, Corky, paid no heed to the argument. He waited for a
pause to ask de Guise a question about a coming engagement, distracting his
chum from the beauteous Vail: De Guise was displaying his love by staring
with the intensity of someone suffering from a fever.
“Who can take the strictures of our society seriously,” Vadriel had
concluded, “when they’re so obviously made to enforce an evil status quo
with no regard for human feelings or even human life?”
De Guise took the plea to heart. He stepped up the actions he had
begun when he stopped paying bribes to city officials and inspectors six
months before. In the year and a half since that dinner with the Blakes,
there had been dozens of tiny but radical changes in his business policies. He
summed it up in his diary: “Gentle love deeds, as blossoms on a bough / From
love’s awakened root do bud out now.”
And it was the logical conclusion for him - as well as the grand gesture
to his beloved for which his romantic imagination had been searching - to
begin the slow process of divesting himself of his tenement properties until
he realized there was a more just way to solve the problem of the evil he had
condoned and encouraged. I’m no Napoleon III. I can’t tear down a quarter
of Manhattan to throw light into dark corners. I can stop bribing the Health
Department officials, however. I can get on with the job of constructing
decent housing. Already there are two experiments in model tenement-
building in the city. The Improved Dwellings Association on East 72nd
Street, and the Tenement House Building Company on - amazing! - Cherry
Street! Ellen Collins has cleaned up and ventilated six buildings on Water
Street. Forty-five families from the poorest class in the city. Kept them in
good condition, once firm rules were established and enforced. The problems
are solvable.
“Those who would fight for the poor must fight the poor to do it,” de
Guise learned. If he put in new plumbing, the tenants would tear it out to
hock at the junk shop for food. There had to be supervision. Ellen Collins did
it personally, with the help of a full-time janitor, because it was a matter of
education. He followed her lead. The poor aren’t different from me. To
change me, I have to fight me to do it.
To his astonishment, he discovered that the experiments not only
bettered living conditions, but also returned a profit from 5% to 5% annually
on the capital invested. A far cry from 100% returned monthly! Hell! Profit’s
profit. Sits happily beside saving grace! He met with architects, studied floor
plans, and made the findings of the Tenement House Commission his motto:
“The condition of the tenants is in advance of the house which they occupy.”
He took Sir Sydney Waterlow’s London development plan as his own.
Tenements were ringed around a large central garden, a grassy playground
where those rear buildings used to fit so snugly. He even considered a
scheme of dividends, sharing the profits with good tenants in the form of one
month’s rent out of 12 as Mr. E.T. White was doing in Brooklyn’s Riverside
Buildings. Let’s not go overboard just yet!
De Guise was particularly struck by the findings of the Gaylord
Commission, a privately funded study:
***
***
The homecoming was a crowded affair. People sent cards and were
received the entire afternoon. They welcomed the couple, gossiped, and
exchanged the freshest public secrets. There were two engagements, one
divorce - a common, though still scorned occurrence now - and 34
invitations accepted for the month of August: 18 dinners, six balls, seven
Teas, and three picnics. Ebenezer Norwood oversaw arrivals and departures.
He had acquired an easy social manner with everyone but Armand de Guise,
whose presence discomfited him. His eyes became as searching as a sea
hawk’s whenever de Guise approached “The Boy.” He had marked a fullness
in the man’s attentions. Like any doting parent, he knew a passion directed
at his charge; unlike most parents, he’d spent a lifetime around sailors
observing their sodomitical ways. He only lacked proof that de Guise was
unscrupulous enough to make a move on his naive charge.
It was Placidia who noticed the disappearance of Vadriel’s stereograph
portrait from the piano. Done in London, it was a present for Ebenezer. She
ordered the servants to search the room while she practiced the music she
was to perform for President Roosevelt after dinner at Larchwood. Vadriel
and Ebenezer begged her not to fret “It will turn up,” Vadriel insisted. Both
know the hand-tinted image had been stolen by Armand de Guise.
“Where could it have gone?” Placidia puzzled in the carriage on their
way to dinner at Larchmont.
“I haven’t a clue, Vadriel lied, scrutinized by Ebenezer. Both had
observed de Guise clench when le squinted through the stereopticon at the
piano. He had passed the viewer to Cynthia Ings and moved away, returning
on three separate occasions. He was visibly hooked on the visuals. Ebenezer
watched him stupidly launch his hasty exit from the vicinity of the piano
our hour later. Vadriel had been too engrossed in Armand’s preposterous
machinations to spot Ebenezer reading the scene like a page in a play script.
“Isn’t it odd?” Placidia pressed.
“Yes, very!” Vadriel nodded, guilt rising fast. Never lied to her before.
Prevaricated. That’s different. Everyone does that from time to time. This
caper’s amusing. Silly. Touching. Romantic thing to do. Suits me fine.
Oh, right, Vail! Suits you as in: “Here take my Picture, though I bid
farewell / That, in my heart, where my soul dwells, shall dwell.” Not a
chance, Vail.
“Most odd,” Ebenezer concurred. “I’ll write to Richard’s Stereoptic
Company in London for a duplicate, Placide. Don’t distress yourself any
further. It isn’t worth it. I’ll take care of this.”
On the front steps of her parents’ house, Placidia dropped behind
Ebenezer to whisper to her husband. “An admirer took it, Vadriel. Some
giddy, heartsick girl who may be allaying the ardor of her temperament in
solitude as we speak!”
“Placide!” he uttered, pinching her waist. “Gird up the loins of your
mind! What a naughty thing for a ‘sensible’ woman to say! Do you honestly
think so! This very moment as we speak?”
“Absolument, mon cher. We need only watch to see which maiden is
following Ophelia into the drink by the end of August. You didn’t know
that’s why she became a document in madness, did you? Why do men grow
fur on their palms, Vadriel? Georgi and I could never figure that out.”
“Because it’s supposedly ‘beastly” for us. I never found it so.” The two
guffawed entering the front door of Larchwood. Eleanor Van Leer was
seated in the parlor with President Roosevelt and the rest of the party. She
heard the commotion and clasped her hands hard, like a nun in the presence
of blasphemers. She forced a smile when the two were announced. Marriage
has tamed her immeasurably! She looks commendably feminine in those
diamonds and row upon row of Valenciennes lace over antique white silk.
But Edith has warned me. There is still a great deal more to be done. What
fresh hell lies in store for me tonight?
***
***
While she sang, de Guise crossed to Vadriel, who stood in a corner. “It
brought the house down,” he said over the bully cheers “I knew it would
when I bought it.”
“I’m sorry, Armand.”
“For what?” Silently they looked at one another. “Yes,” Armand
whispered, “Thank you.” He could not pretend the misunderstanding no
longer mattered or that the apology wasn’t justified. The time for
insouciance is over.
“You should not have pinched the picture.”
“I had to have it. Until the day - ”
Vadriel walked away. De Guise had no chance to follow. Ebenezer
Norwood cut him off. He spoke in a clipped, cold, formal manner. “They are
very happy together, Mr. de Guise.” He gestured with his hand to where
Vadriel and Placidia stood talking to the president.
“Yes they are,” de Guise answered solemnly.
“I want them to stay that way.
“Why shouldn’t they?”
“Make do with the portrait, Mr. de Guise.”
Speechless, Armand de Guise turned to face the old man. He was cold
with shock.
Ebenezer moved away with a sneer of disgust curling his upper lip. No
one will take advantage of my boy’s tender, innocent heart to lead him down
a perverse path. A shudder of revulsion forced him into the first empty chair.
For a moment, he feared he would be ill. Seeing his state, Cynthia Ings went
to his side. She offered to fetch a glass of water but he begged her not to
bother, assuring her that he was overheated and sorry to have upset her.
Neither saw de Guise depart without thanking his hostess for a memorable
evening.
Placidia held her own with the president. They talked about Booker T.
Washington’s dining at the White House, an event she aggressively
condoned. He said in passing that the Negro would never be equal to the
rights he now held: “They are not like us.”
She disagreed: “Everyone is equal to freedom. And what about
women? Isn’t it now the woman’s hour?”
“It is the husband’s duty to represent his wife politically.” he declared,
raising his fist in the gesture he made famous.
“Bulltwaddle!” she exclaimed, shocking the people around her, but
causing Roosevelt to bellow with appreciation for her feisty rebuttal. “Mr.
President, over six million women are working today. Women’s work is no
longer personal service for men. We contribute to the well-being of the
nation, now, and we should have a say in the how it’s run.” She quoted from
Dr. Mary Putnam-Jacob’s famous “Common Sense” Appeal to Woman
Suffrage. She chastened Congress and the Supreme Court for playing judicial
statesmanship instead of considering the tenor of the times and the needs of
the people.
“Women need to be protected.”
“True, Mr. President. Too true! Over one million of us work in hideous
factories. We need laws to protect us. And until we have a political voice, we
won’t get them! It’s the way of the world.”
“We’ll give those laws to you.”
“Like you’re giving us suffrage? You confuse protect with control, sir.
No political influence means low wages, which means a kind of slavery. We
must have our own amendments giving us the vote and declaring us equal to
men in the workplace. There’s no other way for us.”
“All of us are equal already, Placide. Read the Constitution.” It was the
first note of irritation.
“I have read it, Mr. President. The Fourteenth Amendment gives the
Negro male suffrage. That’s the first time ‘male’ replaces ‘citizen.’ Are
women still citizens? If so, why can’t we already vote?”
“A lady’s obligations are familial, not civic or social!”
“Who says?”
“I say. And I’m the future Progressive Party President of the United
States!”
Placidia laughed with him, “Bully for you!” Boldly, she concludes her
argument. “Then please include the cause of women in your party’s
platform. The sexes must work together.” She quoted Sarah Grand: “ ‘The
women’s movement aims to perfect life, not to disrupt it. It is an effort of the
race to raise itself a step higher in the scale of being.’ ” She curtsied. “I pray I
may cast my first vote returning you in the White House, sir.”
Even though Eleanor received a full five-minute paean of praise from
President Roosevelt on the wonders of her daughter, she could not return
Placidia’s good-night kiss. “Bulltwaddle” is the end of the line!
In the carriage, Placidia recited “The Owl and the Pussycat,”
beseeching to be whisked to Sterling Harbor: “ ‘We’ll take some honey and
plenty of money....’ ”
Vadriel joined in, then lavishly praised her musical performance. He
was in nervous high spirits and wondering why Armand had vanished
without a sign. Placidia felt his merriment and congratulated herself on
taking his mind off death. Maybe we should stick around Newport awhile?
“I think you should go to Sterling Harbor as soon as possible,”
Ebenezer suddenly announced. That man is a loose cannon! He’ll stop at
nothing! Get them away. This danger will be slain by time.
***
Late into the night, Armand de Guise read and wrote in his private
study. It was the only room in the house he kept locked, the only room that
was cleaned in his presence. On its walls hung the two curtained portraits of
Vadriel Vail. Its shelves held books and monographs, journals and papers
reflecting the changed interests in his life. On the desk was a hand-copied
edition of Zola’s La Roman d’un inverti, a manuscript the master refused to
publish for fear of reprisals, and the 10th volume of Burton’s Arabian Nights,
opened to the “Terminal Essay,” which de Guise was in the process of
studying.
There were also the latest issues from Germany of Der Eigene, the
publication of the Committee of the Special, and Jahrbuch fur Sexuelle
Zwischerstufen, the publication of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee;
both organizations had fought to defeat Paragraph 175, a Prussian penal code
attempting to ban homosexual acts.
When de Guise was in Europe with the Vails, he had avidly followed
the arguments in the press. England still reeled from the backlash of Oscar
Wilde’s trial - According to them, the most depraved man in the world! -
and that had spurred the debate. De Guise made contacts with politically
active men who supplied him with everything of interest on the subject
recently at the center of his mind. The struggle for my rights to self.
The case immediately to his left held the newest editions to his library:
Edward Carpenter, Havelock Ellis, August Babel, Walt Whitman, Benedict
Friedlander, Magnus Hirschfeld, along with Plutarch, Lucian, Horace, and
Marlowe. There were seven Greek novels, and a section devoted to Wilde –
“the martyr to his individuality,” as the French and Germans called him; “the
unwise one” in de Guise’s opinion - a section that included a collection of
pamphlets hawked on the streets of London condemning Wilde and his
kind, and a complete transcript of the trial with the summation of Mr.
Justice Wills marked in red: “People who can do these things must be dead
to all sense of shame and one cannot hope to produce any effect upon them.”
Ebenezer Norwood evidently doesn’t agree with Mr. Justice Wills. De
Guise’s fer crimsoned with anger and shame. He sat at his desk and opened
his journal to write: “What does he think I am? He thinks me defected and
contagious, sinful, depraved morbid? If I’m none of these, what the hell am
I? Pirouetting in the dark; / One spellbound in sorcery? I’m seeking a
satisfactory word for what I am, not for what I do. This relatively new word
homosexual, of one sex, is compounded with a Greek prefix and a Latin root.
A barbarous hybrid! A coinage of the clinical, scientific nineteenth century
Musculus amor is as old as mankind! Homosexuality is the modern invention
of a culture obsessed with sexuality. I’ve been reading that for Greeks and
Romans, sexuality was largely an ethical concern. In the Middle Ages it was
a moral one. During the Renaissance, it metamorphosed into a subject for
self-reflection and intellectual analysis. So Shakespeare in his sonnets
struggles to give my desire a voice. His boldness astounds me as much as his
genius. ‘But rising at thy name doth point out thee! Christ! He knew that
sexuality, unlike sex, can’t exist without being talked about. Drawing sex
into discourse turns sex into sexuality. It’s funny that prior to Whitman
there were homosexual acts but no homosexuals. The love that dare not
speak its name first had to have a name. Until then, it was not classified
information.
“I decry the word uranian, and rest in peace Ulrich who insists I’m a
woman’s soul trapped in a man’s body. Nonsense! I’m too enamored of my
own maleness, too narcissistic, too proud of what I possess as a male to ever
wish it otherwise. My man’s soul, my manhood, has an inborn attraction for
its own kind is all. It’s not contagious. Not alchemical. The consequences of
my affections flow from my nature with the same necessity as peonies result
from the nature of the peony bush. Of this I am certain: All of me wants all
of him, not just access to his virile tosser, however fine a one it is. That it’s of
goodly proportions doesn’t make me want him more, I can’t measure my
love in inches! Amusing that angel or ingle meant catamite in Elizabethan
slang. Ah, my beloved Baudelaire: ‘When you say Love, I tremble at the
name / And yet my mouth is thirsty for your kiss.’
“There is another word currently in use at Gaby’s. Ever au courant,
Joey has latched on to it. British, he thinks. At first I assumed it their word
for prostitute. ‘Leading the gay life’ always meant being for sale. He says no
longer. Men who love other men with passion, and men who only want sex
with other men, are using gay among themselves as an adjective. It is never a
verb, though occasionally I have heard it used as a noun. I’m not content
with its also meaning wanton or whore, but Joey assures me that’s nearly
forgotten here. I will as soon believe that the world will forget the frenzy
over Wilde. Men of my generation are forever traumatized by it. We
proceed with great caution. Joey also believes that the laws in 50 years will
decree us equal to others. Joey is very young and very naive. Perhaps in 100
years the ‘gay people’s hour’ will come? I won’t be around to find out. Now
is my bailiwick, my moment in history. Gay also means happy. I am
luxuriously happy, and this is my finest hour!”
De Guise had read every book he could find on the newborn study of
the unconscious mind. In Vienna, it had become another preoccupation.
Attending open lectures at the university, he searched out the meeting
places for those in the classrooms; eventually, a friend introduced him to a
group of warmbruder with whom the fledgling words, phrases, and ideas
constituted the common parlance. They told him what to read. They helped
him find his way. They encouraged him to keep a journal.
“I see how Freud and his associates want to alter forever the Judeo-
Christian indoctrination in us and its hatred of sexuality in human beings.
No easy task! Too late for Ebenezer Norwood! Idealistic work. For the first
time in the history of the world, we humans are trying to examine our
behavior free of morals and theology. Ergo quasi-scientific words like
homosexual. It’s a revolution. We seek to know, not to judge. To draw inner
nebulae. Donough Gaylord has been with Freud. He didn’t go into details.”
Armand de Guise was determined to understand himself. Whenever
he saw a desirable man, his being pulled tense as a drawn bow with longing.
He hoarded that energy, hugging it close, and used it to feed his ambition.
“How can I love intelligently, wisely, and well without thought?” he
wrote. “I can no longer obey my erotic impulses blindly. I know that as long
as I continue to act with unbridled priapism, I will not experience love fully.
My aggressive drives are one with domination and obliteration and seem to
leave small room for love. I see no person. I feel only flesh. To objectify men
as sexual objects is to deny their humanity and to eliminate all grounds for
love. I am struggling to comprehend. I must practice self-discipline and self-
control as spiritual exercises if I am to regain feelings. I am not
compartmentalized like Jekyll and Hyde. I’ve discovered I cannot abstain
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and prowl for sex the other nights. I have
confused feelings with sensations. I must tether aggression. I must propagate
tenderness. All my adult life as a gay man - how easily I adopt at! - I have
treated my sexual partners as though they belonged to another species. I
must reconnect myself sexually to the human race. Passion is contained by
compassion. By love and not by morals. How did I manage to see Vadriel?
Why did I allow his loving presence to enter me? Like Ulysses, was I always
roaming with a hungry heart? Some learned men believe my nature evil. I
am simply a creature in search of affection, turning to men the way a plant
turns to light.”
Armand de Guise closed his journal. Outside his window, the sun was
rising and the dawn illumined the waves; light beams swarmed to life in
their hollows. The sea appeared alert and active while the land slumbered in
stillness. The sweet scent of hawthorn throbbed in the air, reminding him of
the flux of things, of the brief time he had to live his life.
Vadriel loves me, Norwood knows it. Else he’d assume him impervious
to me. Must have seen signs of capitulation. Signs? Lover’s signal! Traditional
or gay. Not that we don’t have our traditions. Must never deny the place of
history in making the future possible. Or we’ll always be in the way.
Language. Language is the key. Society’s structured around it. Gay codifies
and signifies what’s crusted eternally. Our love. Gay love.
***
It did not loosen its grip once they were settled on their Long Island
estate. The first afternoon, Placidia studied her husband from the newly
painted balcony outside her bedroom window. Alone, Vadriel walked near
the calm sea, separated from her by a haze of bright blue rhododendrons, a
sloping lawn, and an acre of sandy, overgrown dune; yet, she knew distress
lined his brow. Love’s the balm for his sickened soul, she told herself.
Renewed, he’ll gratefully love as emphatically as I! She wept from the
glorious weight of her charge. Unable to see through her veil of tears, she
cautiously groped her way out of the day into a chamber with shadows as
dense as centuries of darkness.
On the beach, Vadriel recited: “Let Thy hard bonds secure me true
liberty, restrain me from profitless wandering, and by a firm discipline, keep
me true to Thy service.”
He stalked back and forth until his turmoil quieted. In his left trouser
pocket was a crumpled letter. The morning post had brought it from Armand
de Guise. He offered condolences, apologized for not seeing them before
their departure from Newport, and asked for permission to visit. Placidia had
argued that de Guise might revive his spirits; Vadriel had refused to be
swayed. “I am not depressed!” He had insisted on solitude. He knew she was
desperate to aid in his recovery, but this morning he considered himself
beyond human assistance.
As was his custom in times of difficulty, he again wrote Dom Daniel,
telling him the full story: “Placidia’s worrying herself sick about me. It
makes things worse. I don’t know how to tell her. Until I can talk about my
love for Armand honestly, I dare not even mention his name for fear of what
will come out of my mouth. Rest assured, I will never leave her. ‘Til death us
do part and all that.”
Dom Daniel answered Vadriel’s letter promptly. He was firmly on the
side of Ebenezer Norwood. “Your soul is in mortal danger, Vadriel. You well
know there is no room in a Christian life for the love you describe unless it
remains of the spirit. You are not powerful enough to have killed Ebenezer
Norwood. His harvest was gathered, his sheaves were bound. I grieve with
you. No one is not unhinged by Death, my son. No one can be civilized with
Death. No one can be prepared for its devastation. The mystics learned to
love it. Remember Donne? ‘Death, be not proud, though some have called
thee / Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so / For those, whom thou
think’st thou dost overthrow / Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill
me...’ ”
Forget Donne, Vail! Life is out to kill us! All this sorrow is a tide of
tears in the shore of death’s eternity. Fate shadows us like a dog at heel.
What is it you want while you’re alive?
Serenity, I want serenity. I want Armand to take me in his arms. I
want him to hold me. I want him to comfort me. I don’t want him to die,
ever.
We will not anticipate trouble, Vail. It will be on us soon enough!
People get used to anything even the loss of love resembling old Newton’s
Absolute Space - that which stands still, that which we can cling to. If you
can’t get over it, you must get used to it.
I’m leaving my loss behind, W-J. It’s best for me and for other people.
I wish I could suffer something so I could quietly rise above it.
Daily, Vadriel strove to suffer purposefully, to be honest with himself.
He trusted that grief, untampered with, would lead him to himself. He
recognized it had a driving force, like love and like grace.
I don’t want him to die before.
Before what? Ebenezer demanded.
Before I learn in his presence how to live without him. Before I lift
him out of my heart with my own two hands. Before –
He seeks to ruin you!
I won’t believe it! He can’t translate me into a werewolf. He seeks to
love me!
Inner voices groaned, demanded he listen to Ebenezer. Trying to
distract himself, Vadriel searched among the sea debris for shells and starfish
to carry home to Placidia. He found the skull of a small deer - its antler stubs
and teeth intact - wave-polished and looking like an elaborate ivory carving.
Ebenezer knew about everything. He asked about Wriothesley-Jones.
Yes, I loved him, I guess.
Have there been others?
Men? No.
You love him?
Yes. I love him. Don’t you want me to be happy, Ebby?
There was silence.
Wriothesley-Jones taunted: “Whoever loves, if he do not propose /
The right true end of love, he’s one that goes / To sea for nothing but to
make him sick.”
“I want to be happy!” Vadriel said aloud. “So, I love him. There’s
nothing to be done but wait for it to pass.”
Pass like life, Vail? Why does that frighten me? You guess you loved
me? Why does that frighten me even more?
After making love, Placidia held him to her pounding heart. “Vadriel,
what’s wrong? Please tell me.”
“I’m frightened of what I feel, Placide. It’s not wrong. It simply is.”
“Death is frightening.”
“Yes, I know. And I want to wait the fear out.”
“You’re very courageous, Vadriel.”
“No, confused, more like. Death’s the natural change and end.”
“But - ”
“I know. Things have radically shifted in my spiritual realm!” He
laughed and held her tight. “Dom Daniel counsels to little avail. It’s not a
question of courage to face it. It’s an honest belief, and it helpless.”
“You should try to forget about it.”
“No. I want awareness of death to become part of my daily life. How
sweet life will seem then! I don’t want to hide death in a box.”
“What’s wrong with sticking things that frighten us in boxes?”
“We have to spend all our time sitting on the lid!” They both laughed.
“There’s no time to feel anything but the heat rising from Pandora’s box
under our bum! With hope, I can wait out denial.”
“What do you do while you wait?”
“Observe what I feel and write and think about what I observe. It’s a
full-time job.”
“Do you ever think of me?”
“All the time, Placide. I think of you all the time. And I feel about you
too. All the time, I swear I carry you in my heart always.”
Placidia nodded. I’d rather be with you in this bed. I like a more usual
resting place close by your bum.
High summer had delivered the amicable sea of his childhood
memories, only somewhat warmer. The arching waves reflected the blinding
sun. They resembled concave mirrors shattering in the breakers and
strewing the water with sparkling shards of glass that shot light beams into
his eyes as accurately as Armand’s face had been transported there in a
Newport jewelry shop.
If I walk facing the sun, with the water to my right, the earth’s veiled,
its colors softened to pastels by a gauzy scrim of light. If I walk with the sun
behind, the earth’s hard-edged, the colors bold and clear. He began to think
of his feelings for Armand as walking with the sun at his hack, bringing his
life into sharper focus and awakening him to reality.
Undressing out of sight of the house, Vadriel slowly walked into the
water. Diving into a wave, he was twisted around, flipped upside down,
boiled by its undertow, then, laughing with excitement, sent out above his
head. Swimming lazily - Like Alice in her pool of tears? - his mind replayed
the dream it had made the night before Ebenezer died. Suspended in space,
he had hung wild with terror. Now, suspended in the water, he smiled with
understanding. Hold and cradle myself? Stretching full, he reached with his
own arms and swam. Lifted by the waves, he felt his pain subside. Powerless
over life. But not the way I choose to live it. Why am I frightened of
everything?
Full fathom five your family lies! And poor Lycidas is sunk beneath the
watery floor. What comes first, the chicken or the egg?
Depends on what you mean by “first”!
Ever the madcap full of glamour! Let’s see who’ll next ride in on the
horse of a different color.
Immediately, he saw that he had been betrayed by Ebenezer Norwood,
Like everyone else! Except Placide. He wasn’t the detached person that he
seemed. She’s something other than she was. That’s another matter. ‘Tis one
thing to be tempted, to betray, another to fall. He remembered Shakespeare’s
Angelo conversing with Isabella:
***
***
Dried by the sun on the dunes after his swim, Vadriel stood, dressed,
and marched back to the house. The windows were open to the freshening
breezes and carpets were spread on the lawns. He was eager to reach his
manuscript; answers awaited him there. Luckily, the house was perfection,
conducive to work; in its solidity, it promised to close around him and
protect him from harm.
Built in 1840, the white clapboard building was a solid example of
four-square Greek Revival. The second-floor balcony was added in 1880, the
same year the orieled pavilion was attached to the right side; it was entered
by a narrow corridor off the library where Vadriel worked on his book, or
through the rose garden and an arch of laburnum. This sunny room, with its
unbroken view of the sea, was his favored spot for watching the purple
finches, red-winged blackbirds, blue jays, orioles, robins, cardinals, and the
songbirds that darted about the garden after splashing in the birdbath. There
he wrote letters, took tea, and read novels. (With the fading of his belief in a
sacred master plot organizing his world, he began reading fiction
voraciously.)
The pavilion’s quiet was made delectable by nearby mint, chinese
twining honeysuckle, and sweet-scented clematis. He wanted to repaint the
entire house a mellow color to suit his mood, one less discordant to sunshine
and to nature - fawn, perhaps, or light gray. The rear lawn was scythed once
a fortnight, and he planted, for his children and grandchildren, large
deciduous trees - white horse chestnut, purple-leaf beech, ash, linden,
American elm, and cucumber magnolia. By one side of the house, a tall
catalpa, with its heart-shaped leaves, was dotted by red and white flowers
that looked like baby orchids. This simple house in Eden is an answered
prayer.
Placidia had organized a daily workforce of local women. She hired a
staff to care for the grounds and a small household of cook, laundress, butler,
waitress, and chambermaid. This battalion busied itself under her
dictatorship, and she was grateful her mother had prepared her for the job.
(“A lady may be in an apron actually, but she never gets into one mentally.”)
Immersed in tomes on housekeeping, she displayed the commitment
of a squirrel cracking a nut. “Vadriel, did you know that green sage in closets
will keep out red ants?” she asked one starry night after dinner while they
sat in the pavilion. Her complexion was reddened by the sun in spite of the
umbrella-size straw hats sent by Eleanor - hats she never wore - though she
did wear a dash of makeup under each eye to mask the bluish tinges of stress.
“I wonder why?” he asked, intrigued, looking up from Corneille’s Le
Cid. “I like ants. Must we chase them away?” Rising, she crossed to him and
set a kiss on the top of his head. His black hair was streaked with gold from
the sun and his skin was the color of polished bronze. Puzzled by her
laughter, he pulled her down into his lap. “Ants are invaluable, Placide! Did
you know birds allow them to run through their feathers, employing the
ant’s formic acid as an insecticide?”
“Isn’t nature accommodating?” she teased, pleased that has tension had
dramatically abated over the past week. “How do birds know that ants are
what the doctor ordered? Will it work for us?”
“Nope, not what the doctor ordered for us,” he answered, suddenly
distracted by a memory of Armand de Guise presenting him with a straw
hat, “Formic acid irritates our skin.”
“What does for some doesn’t do for others. So you don’t want ants
running through your fur and neither do I. It’s the hammerhead or sage
leaves.”
“Sage! Sage! Nature knows best. Aren’t you a clever puss? Who taught
you about the sage?”
“Mother’s Litle Helper is a wonderful little book. I must thank mine
for sending it.”
“Mother’s Little Helper?”
“I am humiliated to commend it.” she whimpered comedically,
tucking her head into his collar and covering the green binding with her
hands. “However, that’s what the clever darling’s called. I do wish men
would publish these books stressing their scientific aspects, or even the ones
closest to witchcraft. The cloying tone of these puppies forces me to hide
them in my shoe trunk.”
“How times have changed, Placide.”
“My shoe trunk is very annoyed.”
***
The following morning, six cartons of books arrived for Vadriel from
his bookseller in Boston, with a new cookbook by “Boston’s own” Frances
Merrit Farmer for Placidia. There was also a letter from her mother. It was
thick with advice and contained a dozen additional fish recipes from Mrs.
Molloy to make any man delirious. Eleanor also reported in a hasty
postscript that Armand de Guise was “seriously hurt” after nearly drowning
when the Peony was caught in a sudden squall and swamped. “We all pray
he recovers. I hear it couldn’t be worse!”
“ ‘We all pray he recovers?’ ” Vadriel shouted, leaping to his feet.
“Bloody hell!” He could not find words and began to shake with emotions
that spouted like geysers of fear, grief, anger, and shame.
“I’m sure mother exaggerates, darling. You know the way she is!”
Placidia was gripped by his anxiety. “At least, I hope she exaggerates!”
“We must go to him!”
“Yes, of course we must,” she acquiesced, enmeshed with Vadriel’s
fear, taking his trembling hand to prevent his running around the house
barking orders at the servants. “It’s the least we can do, my darling.” After
checking the train schedule, ordering the carriage to take them to the station
in one hour, and instructing Penelope to pack. Placidia requested tea.
While Vadriel paced, she sat on the sofa and distractedly opened a
letter from Cynthia Ings who stated in her first sentence that she had just
returned from a visit to Armand de Guise. “He sends his love and assures you
he’s feeling full of vim and snap,” Placidia read aloud. “You are not to fret!
He is his normal self, joking and teasing and making trouble,” she concluded,
sensing that Vadriel had stopped moving. He was pale and obviously in a
lather. She rejoiced to see the depth of his affections; it was proof of her
influence over his burgeoning heart. “Come here, Vadriel, my darling! Come
sit with me!”
He obeyed. Placidia took him in her arms. He was rigid and damp. He
heaved a sigh and collapsed in a heap against her. Frightened her out of her
wits! What next? Who the bloody hell am I?
“ ‘Full of vim and snap’ sounds just like Army.” Placidia whispered as
though to a child, laughing, on the verge of tears herself. “Shall we go
anyway and surprise him?”
“No.”
“Shall we invite him here to recuperate?”
“No.”
“I understand,” she lied, hoping to be enlightened by his next
sentence. She patted his hair.
He clung to her. “I want to be with you, Placide!”
“I understand,” she repeated, her heart swollen with relief, convinced
she comprehended the man she loved.
At midnight, the two of them frolicked in the ocean lit by a full moon
with two concentric red auras. They wore no bathing costumes. Naked, they
walked toward the neighboring estate, the one owned by de Guise’s friends
the Gaylords. In a cove, they made love and ran into the surf. Both were
deeply satisfied by their Adam and Eve routine, and they vowed to partake
of the freedom as long as the weather permitted. “I’d risk pneumonia for this
in the snow too,” Placida confessed, pinching his cheek.
At white dawn, bolting from sleep, Vadriel eased free of their
blankets, pulled on trousers, and went back to the shore alone. Placidia
bounded to the balcony. Her sight raked after him until its path was blocked
by dunes. Pulling up a chair, she waited. Fearing to doze, she brooded. If he
returns to his own room? To the library to write? How will I know he’s safe?
What could happen? Undertone is strong. Might drown. Until I see him, I
won’t be able to sleep a wink. Not a wink. Not until I see him safe will I
sleep....
***
***
At 11:50 that morning, while writing to Armand de Guise, Placidia
sighted a steam yacht from her sitting room. The view through the tall
windows looked seamlessly stitched together from bolts of brightly colored
silks, with noonday glistering brushstrokes sharply across it. At first the ship
seemed a stage prop, or a toy carved out of white soap. Once it gained her
full attention, she immediately identified it as the Sea Lion and exclaimed a
guttural “Huh!” Shouting for Vadriel, she rose from her desk and sped down
to the lawn with graceful, fluid movements that belied her heavy heart. He’d
never appear uninvited without a pressing cause.
She spotted her father climbing down into the dinghy. It was an
awkward descent for him, and he displayed no jocularity, which made it
clear to her that he bore no merry tidings. Anxiety clawed her. De Guise
waved and smiled unenthusiastically, restrained by the burden of his charge,
she assumed, as she leaned against Vadriel, now beside her. “It must be
mother!” she exclaimed.
“Let’s go find out, Placide, before we fly off the handle.”
“Yes,” she agreed, forced to smile by his use of that comical
colloquialism. Wonder where he found it? His arm was tightly around her
waist. No matter what happens, I can manage it with his support. Vadriel
was trembling. His eyes were wide with confusion, their color heightened by
the flush on his cheeks. She read his upset as a sign of his love for her. As
they walked toward the shore, she calmed herself for fear of upsetting him
further.
Her mother was, indeed, responsible for this unexpected visit. A low-
grade fever had endured for four days before climbing to 103 degrees where
for two days it rebuffed all medicaments. The doctor feared pneumonia. Her
father embraced her. “Your mother wants you by her side, Placidia. De
Guise kindly offered to bring me over to fetch you.”
“I was just writing to you, Army,” she said, hugging him tightly while
he tried not to sneeze from close proximity to countless flowers on borders
and bushes, each swaying or twitching in the soft breeze as if trying to get
his attention. “I won’t be long packing.”
De Guise nodded, trembling also, eyes shut in confusion. Feel
possessed by silence. Silence and thick night. Like a cellar when the key’s
lost! He looks deeply troubled. Tanned golden! Should have brought my
camera! His joy in music had enriched his appreciation of the visual arts and,
by extension, increased his intellectual pleasure in the beauty of Vadriel’s
face and body. The lines, the curves, the outlined form instilled in him anew
that particular astonishment at being alive that he ascribed to being in love.
Seeing him after an absence shifts awareness of life’s enchantment into your
eyes. He’s music to my eyes. Here stands my love incarnate! Embrace him!
Embrace him with a chaste smile. Behave yourself!
Vadriel’s appearance was subtly but unmistakably changed for
Armand. And I don’t mean the suntan. Inhabits himself differently. Energy’s
rerouted. It sparks from the eyes unharnessed. His presence hovers! Hovers
like an aura cut loose. Every hair on my body’s frizzed. Brain’s scrambled.
Heart jolted into a gallop. Scrotum’s up tight. Mouth’s dry and filled with
spit at the same time. This is love? Resembles distemper! I’m drooling!
Vadriel shook hands with both men. Armand’s palm could cushion
any fall! Walking back to the house with the party, he broke free to organize
the return to Newport. His emotions fluctuated wildly. Happiness, anger,
sadness, fear, abiding love - each remained separate as if divided by invisible
lines like the ones that presented the bands of pink, gold, and green from
merging at sunset. But the colors bleed. Darkness happens.
Everyone we love dies, Vail. Even ourselves! That’s the messiest shock
of all. And the greatest sadness, don’t you think?
I’m afraid Eleanor’s going to die next!
He experienced an interior tremor and was suddenly steaming with a
burst of energy that quickened his step to a jog. De Guise followed, leaving
Placidia to comfort her father and lead him into the pavilion for a few
private moments; she was grateful for Armand’s thoughtfulness. When
Vadriel realized who was trailing him, he began to run.
“Vadriel, wait!” De Guise paused to sneeze repeatedly.
“I must hurry!” the younger man called over his shoulder. flustered by
Armand’s seizure and arrested in flight. If I’m not going to act on my
feelings? Why am I in full bloody flight?
“I’ll help,” Armand rasped, staggering forward. “I want to help. Please,
let me help, Vadriel.”
“OK. Help me. Let’s find Mrs. Sobel.”
They found the housekeeper in the kitchen preparing luncheon;
having sighted the visitors, she assumed they would require feeding. Taking
command of their departure, she left Vadriel without direction. He
suggested they rejoin Placidia, then reversed himself by announcing he
would go assist his valet. “I have to change.”
“I’ll come with you. Vadriel.”
Vadriel stared blankly into his face. “Oh,” he uttered, dropping his
kindling eyes and stalling in the kitchen near the door. “Well...” he added
dumbly.
“Not to help you change, for God’s sake!” de Guise laughed aloud.
“Don’t look so frightened. I’ve seen you without your clothing. Nothing rude
occurred outside the randy confines of my mind!”
Tweaked by the bold admission. Vadriel stammered: “I’m not
frightened,” and tilted his head to stare defiantly over Armand’s ear. “You
don’t scare me!”
“Well, I trust you to behave,” de Guise sniped softly, grinning. His
target turned tomato red from the neck up. De Guise was appalled watching
his quip spread a frenzied disarray. Looks on the brink of suffocation! Christ!
Why do I keep treating him like an equal adversary? All is unfair in love’s
wars with him! I must keep the peace if I’m ever to claim a piece of his heart!
Vadriel vanished into the parlor.
Chagrined, de Guise meekly followed. Cut marigolds, zinnias, dahlias,
and roses pummeled his senses, bringing sneezes and tears and gasps for
breath. “Lovely place, Vadriel...what I can see of it!”
Both men rushed up the stairs. In Vadriel’s room, de Guise collapsed
into a chair and concluded his fit while miming instructions to his host, who
obediently threw an armload of roses out an opened window. “Do you want
some water, Armand?”
“No, I’d only choke on it. I need a stiff drink. Gin. Have your man get
it for me, please. Straight up. That’s a good fellow. What have I done to
deserve this torment? I was never unkind to flowers! Why do they hate me
so? I’m a nice person most of the time!”
Vadriel laughed and ordered the decanter of gin. Then he vanished
into his dressing room. He reappeared in 10 minutes wearing fresh whites
and tossing the brightly colored stone from hand to hand. It disappeared into
the right trouser pocket. De Guise put down his glass and asked to see it.
“Why?” was suspiciously demanded.
“Because it’s beautiful,” de Guise responded, smiling, swallowing - like
you - and nearly gagging from the effort. He caught the stone. “Glows with
color!”
“It’s my favorite color.”
“Which? The violet or the purple?”
“The purple. I love purple.”
Armand de Guise fondled the stone, “A lucky charm?”
“Yes, I suppose I found it on the beach.” Vadriel nervously devalued it,
unable to explain his attachment to a pebble; “A gimcrack souvenir, you
might say.”
“Nothing cheap about this,” Armand said gently, eyes adding - Or
about you. He was proud of his restraint. Perhaps he’ll relax. Stop behaving
as if I’m holding him at gunpoint? The allergic symptoms were gone and the
gin was producing a delightful buzz. “Purple and the color of your legendary
orbs! Are they a family tradition like my red hair and sweet temperament?”
Vadriel laughed Armand’s voice had acquired a warm, furry richness
from the gin. A bit like a purr. The shame of intimacy - the pain and
frustration that the intimacy brought - started to nag him in desperation.
Still smiling, he lay across the bed, propped up on his left elbow. De Guise
sat straighter in his chair and crossed his legs, he sipped more gin. The smile
on Vadriel’s face lingered. “Ebenezer said my mother’s eyes were flecked
with violet. I don’t remember her eyes. Did you know my parents?”
“By sight. I don’t remember her eyes either. I was an adolescent when
they died. The generations were strictly segregated then, but I remember
seeing you more than once.”
“Do you really?”
“Would I lie? Don’t answer that! I used to lie all of the time. I don’t
anymore. At least, I try not to lie. I succeed most of the time now by
thinking of you. I know you never lie, Vadriel. It is an inspiration to me. Do
you believe me when I say I don’t lie anymore?”
“Yes,” Vadriel lied. “Where did you see me?”
“Here and there. I forgot all about it at first. Once we were at a large
picnic on the cliffs. You were playing near the edge. You were wearing a
yellow linen suit Funny the things we remember! Everyone in your party
got very agitated. They took you home.”
Vadriel sprang upright, like a body in a jack-in-the-box toy. “Did I
nearly tumble over the edge?”
“No. Not that I can recall. You were spinning around and fell down.
You looked quite safe from where I was sitting. Parents with nannies often
overreact. They’re not used to kids. They teach us to be afraid. You knew
where you were and what you were up to and what you wanted. Times
haven’t changed - ”
“We have to go!”
“You’re the boss.” He tossed back the stone and took a last sip of gin. “I
hear you’re working on a book.”
“How do you know?”
“Placide wrote me. What’s it about?”
“Didn’t she tell you?”
“No.”
Vadriel smiled and shook his head sadly.
“What’s so funny, Vadriel?”
“Nothing, Armand. It’s not funny at all.”
“Is it a novel?”
“No. I have no imagination. Surely you’ve noticed?”
Armand laughed. “A book of criticism?”
“God, no! I’m not angry about having no imagination. It’s a series of
essays. Reflections...on death.”
“Death? We’ve both seen enough of it, God knows. It’s not a very
popular subject. When will I be able to see the manuscript? I know some
publishers.”
“I haven’t a clue.”
“May I read it when you’re finished?”
There was a long pause. “If there is anything to read, I’d like your
opinion, I think. Maybe. Sure!”
“We have to go,” Armand said, rising, eager to avoid another run-in
with confusion.
On the way down the rear lawn to the dinghy, de Guise walked beside
Placidia and thought about Vadriel’s lovely stone, trying unsuccessfully to
distract himself from the rape of his senses by the flowers . Going to pass out!
Fucking allergy gets worse each day! Can it kill me? He filled his mind with
the color purple then recalled his favorite purple flower in Shakespeare and
wished he had its powers. I’d sort out this topsy-turvy:
***
***
Five nights later, near the end of a dinner party given for the Vails by
Cynthia Ings, the men sat cloistered in the smoking room and the women in
the parlor. Eleanor Van Leer was holding forth on the horrors of facing
death during the Season and the delights of recovery, while Lavinia Hanover
and Regina Wilson whimpered and sighed and shook their curls without
dropping a stitch in their needlepoint. The others gossiped or snoozed.
Dressed in black, Placidia scanned the luxurious room. The
conversation was as closed to her as grackle chatter. She marveled at the
decorous women assembled around her. Their total lack of developed talent
and taste beyond the cut of their elaborate costumes made exchanges that
were not commonplace remarks impossible. What have I done to deserve
such a fate? These women couldn’t tell me how to soft-boil an egg! Is there
still a felicity in the world?
She felt her throat constrict. Four times since Ebenezer’s death,
Placidia had experienced difficulty breathing. She ascribed it to anxiety and
reproached herself for a lack of self-control. Pinched tightly by her corset,
she panicked at the thought of an attack in the midst of these useless women.
Vadriel’s frigid Withdrawn again. Why didn’t I foresee repercussions for
myself? Why didn’t I sit near an exit from this clowder masquerading as
adult women?
Fortunately, her face was heavily painted to cover the effects of the
Long Island sun, effects that had prompted Eleanor to shriek in scorn from
her sickbed: “Who let a nigger into my room?” Placidia sighed. If I don’t
start to weep, I can safely hide this turn behind the enameled mask. No one
knows I’m a stranger in the disguise of myself. Oh, God! Please don’t let me
suffocate! Suddenly, the spell abated. Anxiety gave way to a sickening
loneliness. Turning to Cynthia Ings, she remarked: “Surely the men will be
joining us soon?”
“Are you so desperate for jackstraws, whist, or a game of patience,
Placide?” Cynthia smiled, taking her friend’s hand. “Placide, are you happy?
You look happy tonight. But at your age a good night’s sleep still works
miracles.”
“I am deevine,” she answered, laughing, wishing to change the subject.
Cynthia perceived her desire and obliged; she was frequently saddened to
think that their vows of friendship had come to such poor fruition. It’s clear
she’s miserable. Her failure to politely inquire after my well-being bodes ill.
Cynthia sat in silence debating whether or not to share her own new
happiness. No one knew but Armand de Guise; he was privy to it only
because he was its prime mover.
Three months before, on the first Monday in May, a dinner was given
at Delmonico’s by the National Civic Federation and its committee working
for a New York State Workmen’s Compensation Bill. De Guise was a sponsor
of the event. He asked Cynthia Ings to accompany him. She had refused. He
insisted. “There is a man I want you to meet. I have treated you abominably,
Cynthia. Mr. Beaton is a widower who knows how to behave with a lady.”
Cyrus Beaton and Mrs. Ings were seated side by side. The intended
match was a successful one. If everything ironed smoothly, she would be the
second Mrs. Beaton, with three healthy children to raise and a rich, loving
husband. Being happy and full of gratitude, she was even more sensitive to
Placidia’s misery. I know she’s in love with Armand. He’s a changed man.
He’s with her whenever possible. There’s no other explanation for his
transformation. And for her unhappiness. Vadriel still seems besotted with
her. She could never be unfaithful to him. The absence of children? No. She
no often praises Mrs. Sanger. It’s love, I know.
“Armand is a wonderful man,” she offered, squeezing her friend’s
hand.
“Yes, Army is a dear!” Placidia answered, her eyes brightening. “I don’t
know what I would do without him.”
Cynthia knit her brows and was about to reveal her secret when a roar
of angry male voices caused the other women to behave as if the parlor had
been hit by an earthquake. They leapt about, dropping things and loudly
squealing. “Good heavens!” Daisy Peabody sobbed for them all..
A second boom brought a larger response from the tensed women.
Cynthia rose majestically to the occasion. “Ladies!” she bellowed, causing
Placidia to peal with laughter. “The gentlemen are probably discussing our
millinery bills. Gather your skittish selves and your wits and hush up! No
fainting allowed!”
Fanning furiously, everyone agreed that Cynthia Ings was the soul of
good sense. Privately, they nattered that in a pinch a woman’s delicacy was
her best defense, a swoon her top-drawer ammunition. Cynthia was found
wanting in feminine wiles and was quietly condemned for misbehavior
when the sky could have been falling on their expensively coiffed heads.
“Which is why,” Eleanor declared, “no man will ever again honor or cherish
or till-death-us-do-part with Cynthia Ings.”
The men created a third uproar. The women stared sharply at one
another. The subject under heated debate was evidently not one for mixed
company, which is why it was taking so long. Each woman hoped the ruckus
in the smoking room was reaching its conclusion; each prayed her man
would not be too drunk to leave on his own two feet. Except for Placidia,
who prayed Vadriel would not be made depressed by the men’s stupidity. It’s
either politics or sports! He must be out of his mind with boredom. Each
woman joined in a second round of fruit liqueurs to quiet her nerves.
***
Closeted, the men passed the brandy. Placidia was completely off the
mark. Their subject was neither politics nor sports. Bucky Peabody, drunk
and totally enraged, exclaimed gutturally: “Unnatural beast! He is a monster
in the shape of a man! Whoever the bastard is!”
Vadriel thought of birds in flight. He glanced around the table at the
bibulous, fleshy, hairy faces. Never ceases to amaze me! These dead clods of
sadness equate their grandparents’ industrial revolution with Darwin’s and
Wallace’s natural evolution. They honestly believe they’re the naturally
selected. The fittest. Bred for their responsibilities by a male God with a long
beard just like their Papas.
Bred especially by God, Vail? Then why are they such trolls? Except,
of course, for him! Just look at that man! Bread and butter for the heart and
soul!
Opposite, Armand de Guise smiled at Vadriel Vail. His eyes sped on
without waiting for an acknowledgement. Though Vadriel’s white rage was
cooled, it had cracked open a vivid, dazzling pain, and he had avoided seeing
Armand alone. Tonight, he sat with a blank face throughout dinner. After
the smile, he reached for a silver wrapped oval mint. Love’s like an egg.
Once opened, its golden secrets are revealed. All the king’s horses. All the
king’s men... He was lost in a maze of his own emotions. Continue this
policy of isolation. Lack any other. I know he’s locked in the maze with me.
Ever eager for confrontation. Can’t dissolve the maze! Which way to turn?
As Placide’s beloved Portia says: “The lottery of my destiny / Bars me the
right of voluntary choosing.” Who could say it better?
I am always surprised by the lowering cloud, Vail. What is faith but a
silver lining?
The men continued ranting around him. “In London,” Stanley Nelland
related enthusiastically, “there are signs in certain pubs: BEWARE OF SODS.
We’ll need ‘em here if we don’t pass some laws with harsher penalties.
Making ‘em felons isn’t good enough!”
“We should cut his balls off!” Honorius Van Leer demanded to a
general consensus. “The hell with legislation! Laws won’t stop them! Next
they’ll want equal rights with the women!”
His snarled remark caused an outbreak of sniggering laughter while a
folded white paper was pulled from Louis Peabody’s vest pocket. It was a
short, pithy letter in simple black script intended to disguise the hand that
put brown ink to double-weight white paper bearing no monogram.
Gingerly, it was passed from fist to fist in a silence broken only by
disgruntled hrumphs and disgusted snorts expressive of each reader’s
outrage, Gideon Blake, with a flourish of his napkin, pronounced it
unconscionable. De Guise read it with a bored countenance and without a
sound. Vadriel glanced at it to assure himself it was from one man to another
and recognized de Guise’s hand lurking behind the hedge love affair. A deep
sorrow constricted his ribcage. Ebby told me so! Not to be trusted! He passed
the paper to Willie Beauchamp, who went off on a diatribe that ricocheted
four-letter words off the green Spanish leather walls.
Sickening on sadness, Vadriel decided: I must cut myself free. Go back
to Sterling Harbor tomorrow.
He knows I wrote it, Armand observed, suffering a fierce remorse and
cursing himself for having obliged Gideon Blake. He said they’d crucify me.
What he didn’t say was he’d be carrying the nails! I could kick that fool
around the room! Firstly, for inveigling him to assist in the pursuit of Louis
Peabody’s bachelor brother, Lucius, a peer of Gideon’s visiting Newport for
the Season; and secondly, for having dropped the silly letter in the country
club locker room; and thirdly, for that obsequious “unconscionable” he had
felt compelled to mutter. Gideon had insisted that de Guise’s love for Vadriel
was his inspiration to seek a happy marriage with Lucius, who was eligible
and interested but hankering for some old-fashioned romance. I should have
insisted he write the letter himself. Even if he can’t spell worth a damn!
Lucius is probably a worse speller than he is! Shit!
“I think I should burn this thing,” Louis Peabody suggested, seeking
advice. He would never have believed it was addressed to his hulking,
bushy-bearded, gentleman farmer sibling from Kentucky, who bore not the
slightest resemblance in his eyes to the salutary “Dearest Little Bit of
Brown,” and who - at that moment - was trying to look appropriately
nauseated by the decadence of the East Coast elite. His flushed face was
misread by most as boondocks embarrassment.
“No, Louis,” Honorius advised solemnly, using his resonant
professional voice. “Hold it for evidence. In case...”
“In case?” Vadriel asked, intrigued. “In case of what?”
“No one recognize the hand?” Honorius queried the group, ignoring
Vadriel’s question. He treated his young son-in-law with the condescension
he showed every resplendent creature, male or female, cat, dog, or caged
parakeet, assuming physical brilliance replaced brains. The monastery in
Vadriel’s past put him on the shelf for good . I can’t comprehend Morgan’s
penchant for Adonis types. But if Vadriel ever needs a job, Morgan would
hire him on sight. What is it they say on The Street? “When the angels of
God took unto themselves wives among the daughters of men, the result was
J.P Morgan’s partners.” Maybe it has something to do with J.P.’s deformed
nose? Armand de Guise was the handsome exception. He’s earned our
respect. You don’t sit on the board for 22 railroads and not know which end
is up! Damn cool head. Even at a time like this one.
Vadriel was accustomed to being thought mainly ornamental by these
men. When no one could identify the culprit’s writing, he repeated his
question: “Keep it in case of what?”
“In case it happens again, Vadriel. One never destroys evidence,”
Gideon Blake patiently explained, dropping his eyes under Vadriel’s
unwavering inquisitive stare. His Majesty the Angel is a pisser! He was
unbalanced by Vadriel’s presence, an occurrence that kept the loquacious
Lucius silent too. Each man had registered the other’s chagrin and had shyly
confessed to each other - after much alcohol was imbibed - that they felt
their insides rearranged whenever the younger man entered the room. It was
the cornerstone of their covenant.
“How could it happen again?” de Guise asked, settling his shirtfront.
“One doesn’t lose a love letter a second time.”
“Love letter!” Honorius exploded. “He writes of sucking prick –
‘gamahuching’ - and ‘licking ass’ and you dare call that love!”
A murmur, like that of growling dogs, circled the table, building to a
crescendo, when Willie Beauchamp grabbed a red Bristol rummer and flung
it into the black marble fireplace. Taking up a crystal wine glass, he smashed
it on the edge of the table, then knocking back his chair, he stood unsteadily,
brandishing the jagged stem. “Better shove this up my bung than have a sod
plug me!” he yelled.
He shows more spunk, Vail, than his hero Teddy Roosevelt charging
up San Juan Hill!
There was riotous approval from 12 of the 14 men present. De Guise
shook his head in wonder; Vadriel raised his perfect brows in lieu of
laughing aloud at Willie’s drunken excess. Honorius noticed both abstainers.
He could not condone de Guise’s liberal notions, and he misread Vadriel’s
contained amusement for shock and wounded sensibility. He apologized to
the group for inciting Willie, who was back in his seat and still waving his
weapon like his country’s flag. The apology was boisterously rejected.
“We are all men of the world, Woody,” Osgood Hanover insisted with
a chortle before turning his attention to de Guise. “I enjoy a good gamahuch
from my mistress, Armand, but I don’t mistake it for love. I pay for my
pleasure. I don’t pay for love.”
Whitney Mattson boomed out: “Hear! Hear!” The men rumbled
agreement, though every husband sitting around the table, excluding
Vadriel, reckoned Lillian Hanover’s addiction to jewelry a killing price to
pay for love.
Emboldened by the wine and Osgood’s frankness, Arlington Wilson
admitted has fondness for the sport, bragging that his favorite home in Fall
River had to specialists in granting those small favors.
“Not such small favors, if you ask me, boys,” Freddie Gosling insisted,
inducing a general merriment and sending Willie toppling out of his chair
with unbridled hilarity. Freddie added, when he could again be heard, “My
girls either practice the art or don’t get my business.”
For a split second, Vadriel thought Gosling was speaking of his
daughters not inheriting the family’s steel mills. He blushed at his confusion
- a happenstance interpreted by Honorius as more prudishness : Maybe that’s
why Placide is so unhappy?
Vadriel asked, “Where was it found?”
“In the changing room at the club. The day of the golf tournament. de
Guise answered. “You were the only person absent, Vadriel.” He lit a large
cigar in his left hand off a candelabra and exhaled the smoke to lewdly
inflame its glowing tip. Gideon Blake laughed, swallowing it as a cough.
Vadriel frowned. De Guise added, “It was a perfect day for passing billet-
doux, boys, no matter the desired end.”
Gideon coughed violently. Lucius flushed, suppressing a laugh.
Looking like a schoolboy trying to hide his hilarity from the teacher, he
rushed to pound Gideon’s back. The other men were silent. Willie was
passed out cold. Vadriel leaned forward in his chair, stretching for a purple
Turkish cigarette from Armand’s platinum case. Then he stood to light it on
the same candle Armand had used. Sitting, he leaned back and exhaled
through his nose, catching hold of Armand’s eyes. He hated the habit and
hadn’t an inkling why he’d suddenly craved the cigarette he now held
burning in his right hand. His head seemed to float toward Armand de
Guise.
“I didn't know you smoked,” Armand said, managing an intimate
exchange in the midst of the breaking storm.
“I don’t.”
They both smiled. It was obvious to Vadriel that Armand was not
acting with egregious bravado in order to mask his shame. If he wrote a
letter to express his own feelings, he’d never have altered the script.
There Lucius stands, Vail, solicitously behind his Gideon. They’re like
players in a tableau! That’s some big “little bit of brown,” the tasty bruiser
They’re sweet!
“Billet-doux?” Bucky managed to sputter, breaking the stunned silence
for the rest of the company, “This isn’t a laughing matter, Armand! Some
ghoul is on the prowl trying to pour his spunk into our children! Maybe
planning to murder one of our boys!”
“Horseshit!” de Guise sharply interrupted, rising to leave the room.
“I’ve had just about enough of this nonsense. That’s a letter from one rutting
adult to another. It’s an open-and-shut case of hotly requited lust!” He stood
firm on his hard-won sense of honor, and his spirit was stirred by pride.
“Gentlemen, in closing, I quote Antony’s question to Augustus ‘Can it matter
where or in whom you put it?’ ”
There was mayhem so volcanic de Guise expected to be throttled. He
raised his hands in a gesture of appeasement, not from fear of bodily harm
but to halt the shouting lest it frighten the women. Hunching his shoulders,
he pressed his arms forward, palms outward, commanding order. He looked
immense, engorged with the force of his truth. How the fuck can I be
truthful in my feelings I can’t be truthful about them?
Rigidly attentive, he moved his eyes from face to sodden face. A cold
sarcastic smile courted contradiction while his bulging muscles strained his
clothes, warning of a power that could rip an adversary limb from limb.
When his eyes encountered Vadriel’s, he was jolted to discover them
glistening with tears. Not needing words, be begged forgiveness, no longer
blind to courage. I am not the man I was.
Yes, Armand, I see.
Armand offered an eternity of loving, and Vadriel most willingly
assented, embracing for the measure of a heartbeat what was not his gift to
take or to refuse.
Love has made us free, Vadriel.
Love’s made you free, Armand. I am bound and captured…
Turning, Armand de Guise left the room.
The other men, sensing nothing but a chance to escape, sat, stood,
milled, and soon followed on his heels. Vadriel remained alone, lost in
meditation, finishing his cigarette.
***
Armand de Guise could not face cards and gossip. Dismissing his
carriage, he made for the cliff walk, pausing to cool his hands and brow in
the garden’s fountain. The flowers made him lightheaded; they seemed to
crowd and demanding recognition, and his consciousness throbbed with a
sense of wrong. Befuddled, he closed his eyes. Vadriel’s smile merged with
the afterimage of the blazing crescent moon. “Tesoro,” he whispered,
splashing in the refreshing water, thinking of the man he loved. Tear-shaped
droplets streaked his patent leather shoes unnoticed.
When he reached the white pebbled path, de Guise stood
thoughtlessly gazing at the argent sea. Filling his lungs with the briny air, he
admitted to the stars the immensity of his happiness. “Something ferocious
has been released within me. This love pulls on my being relentlessly. Pulls
on my soul like the moon on the tides. And Vadriel is my moon! We’re
together. Being near him is enough. Enough for starters. Were vows not
deftly exchanged in the depths of that silence?” He hurried home and went
directly to bed, secure in love. He awoke to find himself deserted.
***
At dawn, Vadriel Vail, alone, left Newport for Long Island. He told
Placidia he was not yet ready for society with Ebenezer so newly buried. She
did not argue and said she would soon follow. He sent Armand de Guise a
note consisting of lines from A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “Behold! / The
jaws of darkness do devour it up / So quick bright things come to confusion.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Vadriel crossed to Providence on the ferry Mount Hope. On the train
he took a stateroom and reserved an entire first-class rail compartment for
six to secure his privacy. Meals were brought to him. Once on Manhattan
Island, he strolled downtown to the Brooklyn ferry, enjoying the anonymity
of the large metropolis. It was a clean, cool day for late August, with a bright
blue cloudless sky that hung like a taut stage backdrop and forced the
illusion of walking among two-dimensional cutouts of tall buildings in a
pop-up book.
A heat wave had broken the night before with a heavy rain. The
sinuous folds of the lower metropolis were washed and the citizenry
enlivened to a buoyant holiday mood, which added at playful spirit to the
usual hum of activity. Even the ubiquitous construction noises lost their
power to deafen. Vadriel was dressed in summer whites with a lavender tie
to match the band on his Italian straw hat. His eyes glittered with the
excitement he felt at the wondrous sight of people in every shape, size, and
color - speaking, it seemed, in every language spoken on the planet. Young
women smiled at him; one in a large group picketing for better working
conditions in a factory actually whistled her approval, causing a general
hilarity. Men tipped their hats in greeting; some men boldly winked.
Lasing New York, he wished that a town house in Gotham was to be
his permanent home. Long aimless walks. My favorite solitary sport. And
nickelodeons everywhere! I wish I had time for a movie.
On the ferry crossing to Brooklyn, he stood at the prow’s upper railing
in the most blazingly brilliant sunlight. Colors popped; the busy river looked
like the scored platinum surface of Armand’s cigarette case. Snatches of
Whitman’s poem, a gift from Armand de Guise, ran through his mind: “I too
lived / …Just as you are refreshed by the gladness of the river, and the bright
flow, I was refreshed…”
Ample time remained for him to find his way to the Sterling Harbor
train after the boat docked. There were not many people so late in the
morning; the only other traveler with him on the deck was a tall young man,
ash-blond fair with broad shoulders similarly draped in tailored summer
whites. He nodded politely. The fellow’s pale green eyes were warmly
responsive to Vadriel’s violet ones. Admiringly, the young men stared at one
another, comfortably aware that each offered competition if the goddesses
revived their game with the prized golden apple.
Dark ones last longer, the blond reflected, recalling an article recently
read explaining why “light ones” fared badly onstage. We wash out under
lights. And we’re recessive in mobs. Do I care? My, my! Violet eyes! Could it
be he? How could it be he? Why not?
The dark one was amused by the frank, positive appraisal
accomplished without salaciousness by one obviously accustomed to similar
treatment from people of both sexes. He recalled Armand springing at him
from within a mirror in a Newport jewelry shop, and his heart swelled with
sadness for his own lost innocence. He smiled, acknowledging approval of
the blond one and returning his own. Then he stared down into the river.
Could he be my friend? He’s about my age. Wonder where he’s going?
Go talk to him, Vail.
You go talk to him! You’re the one with the mouth on you. I never
know what to say to people.
The blond one noted discontent and sorrow in those violet eyes; then
he too stared down into the river as though the way to open conversation lay
submerged there. Looks like he doesn’t want to be bothered. Too bad.
Mustn’t be pushy. Donough says I'm too forthcoming. Whatever that means.
Both were pleased by the happy occasion that set them side by side.
Neither knew how to approach the other, and rather than seem
presumptuous - a poor excuse for shyness, the blond one tallied candidly -
they continued to grin and to look at each other, and to wish they had
something pressing to say that would make actual the friendship they each
desired.
They appeared to be contented companions to the blond one’s
Japanese servant when he approached carrying a silver bowl of fruit. Robert
Whyte Gaylord chose an apple. Vadriel Vail looked confused, chose a peach,
thanked Taio, and repeated his thanks to his host who closed the few yards
between them, offering his hand with his name.
“Gaylord?” Vadriel echoed, stunned by the coincidence while greedily
biting the peach.
“Uh-huh,” Robert barely managed, his mouth full of apple as a familiar
dread began to color has cheeks. Is this enticing fellow, with eyes a point
match in glamour to Donough’s, the divinity Armand de Guise goes on
about? Viola odorata rarely spares its hue for eyes. Or is this fabulosity no
friend? Does he own slums? And hate unions? Object to building libraries?
Condemn funding studies of cancer and alcohol addiction? Loathe Carnegie?
Should I run for the safety of the carriage?
“I’m Vail. Vadriel Vail. I’m your neighbor at Sterling Harbor.” Vadriel
cheerfully explained after fortifying himself with the entire peach. “I’m also
ravenous,” he added, charmingly embarrassed by his gluttonous behavior.
“I’ve been traveling and walking all day.”
“From where?” Robert signaled for more fruit, which Taio set on the
rail in the bowl by the hungry dark one before vanishing and reappearing
with biscuits, butter, and sharp cheddar cheese.
“Newport.”
“You like Newport?”
“No. I despise it.”
“Me too. It’s like Southampton, only carved in marble. You can sick-
up from it. Join me for lunch?”
“Thank you. Where?” Vadriel peered around the deck. “Is there a
dining room below? Is there time before the train departs?”
“No. We’ll eat on the train.”
“On the train? There’s a dining car on the train?”
“No!” Robert laughed. “The wheels are barely on the train. We have
our own. You’re traveling alone?”
“Yes. My wife’s coming over in a few days. Her mother’s been ill,
which is why we were there.”
Robert led him to the carriage in silence. Your wife! De Guise never
mentioned the wife in my presence. Wonder if he’s confided in Donough?
Donnie never tells me anything! A long letter came from Newport recently.
I really should start reading his mail. How do I tell what I do know? And
what’s going on at home as we speak? Don’t blab right away, hon. Keep the
mouth clamped tight. Listen and learn.
Over a lunch of vichyssoise, cold duck, parsnips, and chilled white
wine in the Gaylord’s private railway carriage, the two young men
conversed on general topics. They matched minds and wits - their tastes
were strikingly alike - while the train sped them along the southern shore of
Long Island to its eastern end.
Vadriel closely observed Robert. His easy manners and thoughtful
attentions were attractive; but the way he made time for the many people
from all ranks of life who had stopped them on the platform and who had
visited before the train got underway revealed a sweet, unspoiled nature. He
knew most by name and seemed involved in their personal histories, and his
humility was unforced and rare to Vadriel’s experience of young, wealthy,
handsome men. Each moment, he grew more assured of Robert’s soundness
of character and wholeness of personality; each moment, he drew closer to
revealing himself.
It was pleasing to Robert watching Vadriel relax - unwrap himself
from around his tension - and grow less emotionally overwrought, a state of
being not unfamiliar to Robert. Don’t pry! Don’t presume an intimacy not
yet earned. Advertise as available for confidences. Offer one or two choice
morsels of private, essential data. Something with each course at luncheon.
Hope he likes parsnips. The English usually do. It’s one of the few nice
things you can say about them. First off, his alliance with Donough Gaylord
was unequivocally presented with the white wine, as was the absence of
close friends among his peers.
“I haven’t had a close male friend since boarding school.” Vadriel
confessed, succumbing to his need and to Robert’s open, honest emotions. “I
had a great friend then for a time.”
“In England?”
“Yes. I spent my school days in England. My parents died when I was
6, and I was sent abroad.”
“Vail? Boston? I’m older than you. Born 1882.”
“Yes, Robert, Boston. Born 1886. Must I call you sir?”
Robert laughed and questioned him about the rumored Vail
Foundation. Vadriel detailed the plans he and Ebenezer had completed
before the guardian’s death. “It’s all in the process of happening legally while
I’m working on a book.”
“What kind of book, Vadriel?”
“Essays on attitudes toward death through the ages.”
“I have a strong attitude toward death. I’m against it!” They both
laughed. “I most abhor not knowing where the dead have gone. They vanish
with no forwarding address, and the void they leave frightens me. I’m very
disappointed that I was born to die. I think of it often.” He quoted
Montaigne: “ ‘Let us learn to meet it steadfastly. And to begin to strip it of its
greatest advantage against us, let us take an entirely different way from the
usual one. Let us rid it of its strangeness, come to know it, get used to it. Let
us have nothing on our minds as often as death. At every moment, let us
picture it in our imaginations in all its aspects.’ ” He smiled and added
enthusiastically. “The book sounds like a splendid project. I have a small
library on the subject. The usual stuff, von Tepl, the mystics, Whitman, that
crowd. When I came up against death myself, I needed all the help I could
get to deal with it. For me, death’s the end of the line. I love books! I’m sure
you’ve covered the waterfront, Vadriel, but you’re welcome to come
browse.”
“I will. I’m using Montaigne as the opening lines of my prologue: ‘He
who teaches men to die would teach them to live.’ The book is very
important to me, Robert. I need an anchor. I’ve felt misplaced until now.”
Work will anchor you, Vadriel. Though it does seem an anomaly for
us to retire to a private paradise to think out the problem of the slums! What
happened to your boarding school chum?”
“We loved and lost,” he said frankly, with blushing shrugs,
paraphrasing a popular song of the day, a song Placidia frequently sang.
“What an ass to have loved and lost you!” Robert exclaimed outraged,
thinking. To have progressed so far with this one! And to let him get away!
No one I know would have been so dumb!
“Oh, right!” Vadriel mocked, pleased to have been understood. I hear
you’ve loved and won, sir!”
It was a daring leap. Robert caught him expertly. “Yes. I sure have!
You hear from whom?”
“Armand de Guise.”
Robert nodded. Tell him now? He decided to wait. “It’s a long and
very complicated story with everything including the bloodhounds nipping
at my rear end! But it has a happy ending!”
“Was he married?”
“No. That is probably the only knot we did not have to slice before
making a home together!”
“Shall we have a go at friendship, Robert?”
“Yes, let’s have a go. Youth must stick together.” They laughed.
Shaking hands on the deal, they hoped for the best. “Vadriel, will you come
to dinner tonight?”
“With pleasure!”
“Come early and we’ll swim. We’ll eat fish. I have a yen for flounder
lightly sautéed in butter for seven seconds on each side. And… whoa! I
forgot! Damn!" He scowled and rose from the table. Turning, he glared out
the window without seeing the scrub pine forest speeding by. He was lost in
his problem. Should have mentioned de Guise when he gave me the chance.
When will I learn? Nanny always says: Secrets are the boomerang of life .
“What’s wrong, Robert? Have you a previous engagement?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll come another time.”
“There is no one in my life I am not eager to share with you, Vadriel.”
Vadriel stood, crossed to his side, and placed his hand on Robert’s
shoulder. “However?”
“However, well, how do you feel about dining tonight with Armand
de Guise?”
Vadriel visibly paled. “Oh!”
“That bad, huh?”
A glaze of bewilderment covered Vadriel’s eyes. He removed his hand
from Robert’s shoulder. “I thought I’d left him in Newport.”
“You did. He’s on your trail. I guess. He cabled Donough to ask if he
could stay with us. Donough cabled me to say he was remaining at Gaywyck.
We’re terribly old-fashioned out there. We have no phone. Donough
cherishes the solitude.”
“There’s no phone at my place nor at Cormorant in Newport.” The
conversation stalled.
“Vadriel, my dear new friend, as Nanny Welles would say: ‘You look
like you’ve been hit by the fist of life.’ ”
Vadriel nodded, smiling.
“Well?”
Vadriel nodded again, frowning.
“When I first saw you, Vadriel, I wondered if your violet eyes
belonged to his paragon. He speaks of you rapturously.”
“He speaks to me rapturously.” Turning, Vadriel walked to the far end
of the railway carriage, sat on a red velvet upholstered settee, and crossed his
arms.
“Lake Coriolanus,” Robert said. “ ‘His heart’s his mouth.’ Armand’s
joined our Board of Directors. He’s working with us to clean up the
tenements. And he’s a great supporter of Rose Hawthorne Lathrop,
Nathaniel’s daughter. She’s Sister Alphonse now and runs the Cherry Street
nursing home for poverty-stricken cancer victims. Most hospitals send you
home to die. She’s created a safe place to which people go to die in peace. It’s
called a hospice. Armand volunteers there to assist the patients. He says he’s
doing penance for past sins and making himself ready to receive the priceless
gifts of truth and love. I admire him greatly. Do you want to talk?”
“Not yet. I’m too confused. Thank you for asking.” His arms remained
folded tightly across his chest.
This is the friend you prayed for, Vail. For shite’s sake, talk to him!
Ask him why he didn’t come clean?
“Robert, why didn’t you come clean about Armand?”
“I wasn’t sure how involved you actually were with him. Often, we
meet sad, unfortunate men who fall in love with people who aren’t available
for many different reasons. Primarily so they can remain sad and
unfortunate. I think, sounding like a potted Doctor Freud. Armand doesn’t
strike me as the self-tormenting type.”
“He isn’t.”
“He isn’t?”
“Well, I suppose he is...”
“Are you in love with him, Vadriel Vail?"
Vadriel unfolded his arms and leaned back against the pillows. This
leap is the most daring of all. I’ll fall into a pit of isolation of I don’t catch
hands with Robert Whyte Gaylord. Sitting up straight, he said very softly:
“Yes.” Raising his eyes to meet the pale green eyes of his friend, he repeated
himself loudly, directly, happily. “Yes! I am in love with him. Robert. But I
love my wife. And I will not play a double game. I left Newport to get away
from him. To think. I cannot come to dinner while he’s with you. I’m glad
you didn’t mention him right off, Robert. It would have paralyzed me.
Please forgive me. I’m absurd! I’m a bloody fool!”
“Love is absurd!” Robert walked to him and sat by his side. He put his
arm around Vadriel’s shoulder and pulled him close. The dark one leaned
gratefully, encircled by comforting warmth. “Vadriel, if only our emotions
could think and our thoughts feel. Life would be so much easier. Love is the
fool! ‘So true a fool is love that in your will / though you do anything, he
thinks no ill.’ Armand and Donough have become very thick. He may be
visiting Donough and not be in mad pursuit of you, you know. Does that
disappoint you?”
Vadriel laughed. “No. Does that disappoint you?” They both laughed.
“I know I can’t escape him indefinitely.”
“It isn’t a question of escape, Vadriel. Perhaps you aren’t fleeing from
him but running toward your wife? You’re the only one who knows. As
Lincoln said, we are as happy as we make up our minds to be.”
“I am happy with Placidia.”
“Then your path is clear.”
“Tell that to my heart,” Vadriel whispered.
“You tell your own heart. You’re the only one who speaks its
language.” Vadriel laughed. “It’s true!” Robert protested, hugging him hard.
“I don’t make things up. I find them out. Books and movies help. More
coffee?”
***
Vadriel’s house was a healthy walk from the Gaylord gate. He insisted
on going the rest of the way on foot. Reluctantly, the friends parted. They
agreed to meet privately on the beach the next morning after breakfast.
Vadriel raced home. He was eager to fling himself into the ocean.
The area was raw wilderness with dense woods, open meadows, potato
farms, and winding dirt roads. It was miraculously unspoiled so close to
Southampton. Vadriel was lulled by the various birdcalls - a rapidly
hammering woodpecker made him smile with delight - and soothed by the
sight of deer and hedgehogs, by the smell of untrimmed summer, and by the
touch of moist, unsullied air. Very like Gethsemane. Restored to an
optimistic frame of mind, he hummed Haydn’s “Adagio Cantavole” from the
Prussian Quartet, and discovered a peacock-blue sea, calm as an inland lake
with tiny waves orderly as fish scales, laght rode their backs. Near the shore,
the waves flattened and overlapped like layers of molten rock forming the
earth before his startled eyes, then frayed into foamy curls at the edge. These
draped the shore with the panache of a feather boa in both directions to the
horizons.
The sea absorbed Vadriel’s attention as thoroughly as the sand below
his feet drank in the waves. Quickly naked, he stepped into a swirl,
unbothered, it completed its graceful sweep around his ankles, including him
in its immutable order. I’m grateful to be received without a calling card,
like a Zulu! And accepted unconditionally. He walked up to his knees,
paused, then strode up to his shoulders. The water fondled him. Relaxed, he
twisted onto his side and kicked into a swim.
Suddenly the air above the dunes, for miles in each direction, was
snowy with terns. The late afternoon light was soft and welcoming to their
silent rising. High into the space between sea and clouds they soared. Vadriel
knew he was witnessing a phenomenon called a rapture. Glorying in their
youth! Or so we’re told. Looks right. Feels right too. The swarming lasted an
entire 20 minutes. Exhausted by their celebration, the birds nestled back into
the dunes and disappeared, leaving Vadriel in a state of jubilation. Creation’s
here and now! Earth is one huge piece of unfinished business. Like me. It’s
working every day. Changing. Rearranging. Adjusting. Like me. And when I
die - and when I die! - I’ll not stop evolving for a second. I’ll change into
mold and fungi. I’ll change into dune air brimming with the smell of the sea.
Birds’ wings will heat in me as surely as my heart does now.
Amen, Vail. Let’s go eat.
***
While Vadriel ate his early, solitary dinner, he was interrupted by the
arrival of a piano, a house gift from the Gaylords. A card from Robert read:
“We have five, and nothing exceeds like excess. You mentioned that Placidia
wanted one. Welcome, neighbor!” Vadriel had it placed in the pavilion
where he later settled himself to play.
Though his musical talents were considerable, not even Placidia was
aware of them, beyond his ability to read notes and carry a tune in a lyrically
fluid and neatly controlled baritone voice. “I was a favorite of my music
masters at Eton and Oxford,” he had casually explained, never detailing the
extent of his training after he was made boy soloist in the vespers choir at
Eton. It was a subject he had reckoned closed when Placidia responded to his
praise of her abilities with: “I play for us both.”
He saw no reason to contradict her. He would ask for Mozart’s Sonata
in D-major, and he could feel her fingers caress his face with the tenderness
of the adagio. Her love never speaks as richly as when it takes the sonata
form. Listening, he would sit opposite the open piano, hunched over, head
bowed, with his legs apart and his elbows on his thighs. Hands clasped
between his knees in an attitude of prayer, he would gently sway to the
rising and falling notes while his breathing matched their tempi. His face
would grow puffy with emotion, like a child newly awakened from deep
sleep.
In the pavilion alone, he summoned the music with his own hands.
This is the most perfectly Mozartean music. Whenever I hear his name, it’s
what the sounds of the vowels call into my mind. Before he finished the
allegro movement, he was drawn into its duettish oppositions; and deep in
its counterpoint, he found the vehicle for his passion. The adagio was more
ravishingly lamenting than he remembered. It made him weak with sorrow.
As if I’ve stuffed too much dreaming into my heart. And my heart’s in
danger of exploding.
Trembling, he had opened the pages of Schubert’s Drei Klavierstucke
before Mozart’s last allegretto measures reached the garden where Armand
de Guise, in an equally volatile condition, was wrapped in the expanse of an
evergreen shrub, concealed from the light of the pavilion. The music had
transported him into a tranquil Elysium; it brought rest and recreation from
the pressures of the war raging within him. Now, in the moments of silence,
the tumult resumed and threatened to tumble him into the moonlight. The
first Schubert keyboard piece, in E-flat major, subdued him; its somber
crescendos suggested restrained nostalgia.
Armand had excused himself after dinner with the Gaylords and gone
up to bed. The evening had been pleasant, although Robert was distracted
and spent a good part of it in conversation with his white Persian cat, Cael.
Later, when Armand sneaked down the servants’ stairs, he saw his hosts
engaged in serious debate while sitting by the side of the pond adjoining the
house. Donough sand something that made Robert laugh uproariously. The
younger man took the elder’s hand and kissed it. The overt tenderness
quickened Armand’s pulse, hastening him into the starry night.
Silently, be made his way through the dried mudflats to a cove, where,
turning right, he hurried along the beach with great loping strides.
Stealthily, be entered the woods on the near side of Vadriel’s house. His was
a familiar dark excitement when he daringly stepped from the leafy
camouflage into the exposing light of the moon. The rush of adrenaline took
him by surprise. He had experienced pangs of guilt at the idea of visiting
Vadriel uninvited. I’m spying on him! This is not my better self! Scurrying to
the back of the house, no reservations slowed his pace and he was nimbler
than the wind. Just one look. Then home to bed. At Gaywyck I’ll dream of
him contentedly.
Nearing the pavilion, he heard the Mozart sonata. It stopped him dead.
Placide’s changed her plans? Arrived tonight? Like me, can’t bear to be apart
from him? He dropped to his knees and crawled to the edge of the
evergreen. Resting on his haunches, he stretched with feline ease; the sight
of a bespectacled Vadriel producing torrets of music knocked him sideways.
Huddled amidst the foliage, he surrendered to his amazement. Is there
anything he can’t give me?
The second Schubert keyboard piece, a rondo, held Armand fast.
Without a pause, Vadriel segued into the third in C-major; its simple ternary
form evolved a theme he knew from his childhood, a theme once converted
into a popular Victorian melody. In its original form, it shimmered on the
summer air and, dissolving into a minor key, left Armand without defenses.
A cool breeze wafted the smell of late-blooming roses from the nearby
garden. He clutched his nose in an attempt to stifle a sneeze.
“Armand!” Vadriel uttered, half in a sigh, still in the trance the music
had wrought. Attending to the call, de Guise stood, eager to lay siege to the
pavilion. “Armand de Guise.” Vadriel whispered. fingering A, D, D sharp, G,
as the ground base figure while embroidering a Lydian fantasia on the four
notes with his right hand. “Armand de Guise...Armand de Guise…Vadriel
Vail... Armand de Guise...”
Overwrought, Armand burst into tears of happiness and, turning,
crawled into the rose garden while Vadriel began to sing “Ideale” by Tosti.
He felt empowered by the beauty of the singing to bay at the moon but,
instead, rent the night sounds – and Vadriel’s song - with a walloping sneeze.
Vadriel bolted to his feet and vanished into the depths of the house.
Armand fled deeper into the claustral rose garden. Spiraling around, he
stared at the house. His face was twisted by lust to go hunting: to slip into
the darkened house, to climb the stairs, to rout Vadriel out of his hiding
place, and to force him to receive every scalding drop of guilt and shame and
sadness that swooped - like the Furies - in this heavily scented spot.
“No!” he sobbed, halting his panic and bursting into tears. “No routing!
No forcing! I want you to hold me, Vadriel! I want you to take this pain
away! Please!” The stars above his head looked like flickering candle flames.
He remembered standing in St. Peter’s in Rome and feeling a certain peace.
“Saint Francis, I need help! God! Erasmus! Free me from this sorrow! Lift me
out of this misery!”
A spray of white roses, shifted by the wind, recalled creamy lather
rolling down an inner thigh like phosphorescence on a breaking wave.
Falling to his knees, Armand was struck dumb by horror. I attacked that
virginal child! I raped him! He ground his teeth to keep from howling. He
saw the boy cowering on the floor, heard the cries, tasted the innocence.
Doubling over, he retched for what he had done. Trying to stand, he
crumpled into a fetal knot and tumbled into a seizure of weeping.
Minutes later, sight returning, he saw he lay beside the bank of roses.
Their whiteness was like milky wetness in the darkness; they no longer
pressed themselves upon him, demanding his attention. With frigid clarity,
he recalled Cynthia Ings smugly chirping when he nearly choked to death in
the presence of silk peonies: “This allergy business is all in your mind,
Armand!”
“Angelo della Fiore,” he sobbed, struggling to his knees. Thrusting his
arms into the thorny rose bushes, he yanked and tugged, trying to uproot
them from his soul. “Angelo della Fiore, my angel of the flowers,” he
moaned. “Forgive me! Please, forgive me! Oh, God! Whatever will become of
me?”
Tears streaming, bleeding, Armand de Guise wandered down to the
sea. Stupefied by the weight of his transgressions, he tumbled unto the surf.
Lost in shame, he was without hope. I’ll never be worthy of anyone’s love! If
all the creatures in heaven and on earth banished him, he would not object
because he knew the punishment just. Lying on the beach, looking at the
sky, he fully accepted the egregious nature of his sin.
Love’s overarched and engulfed me. It’s like death. Final and
mysterious. Must be worthy of my own best self now. Racine is right in
Athalie. Innocence has a champion. Innocence has a protector. And so have
I. So have I! Sitting up, he buried his face in his cut hands and quietly wept,
begging forgiveness from the embracing presence he called God, from the
universe, and from Angelo della Fiore.
***
***
By the time they reached Gabriel Norcia’s home, nearly every parcel
had been breached and every purchase tasted, save the wine. The spotless
rooms were sparsely furnished: a chair, a bed, a cluttered bookcase, a bureau
and a lamp in one; two chairs, a pine table, a second lamp, a woodstove, and
a blue tin sink that ran only cold water in the other. The wooden walls were
whitewashed, the floors unvarnished wide-plank boards. The windows were
large, filling the tiny house with light. “I’d ain’t much, Vay, but id’s home.
An’ Uh’m landlord! An’ I got my own outhouse! Put dem flowers in dese.”
He rounded up several tall crockery pitchers; the fragrant flowers were
distributed throughout the house with an air of ceremony.
Vadriel was delighted with the place. Our Boston town house has 19
rooms. Every one smothered in wall hangings. Paintings. Crammed with
every ingenuity of modern taste. Two bathrooms with scalding hot water.
Eleven mahogany pieces. Not including the new staircase handmade to our
specifications in Philadelphia. This simple home is much more inviting.
This simple home is embellished by him, Vail. He is luxurious! He is a
piece carved by the gods, guy.
Gobby went into the yard and returned with an armful of huge red
tomatoes and red onions. He lit the stove and, after scrubbing his hands, laid
out the olives and began to prepare the bruschetta. He was obviously pleased
with the present of olive oil, which he poured liberally over thick slices of
toasted bread before anointing it with the garlic, red onion, spices, cheese,
and chunks of tomato.
“This is bliss!” Vadriel exclaimed, taking a second slice.
“Dis’ll hold us. Grilled mushrooms afta’ de bath. OK? Before de pasta?
Or afta?”
Vadriel smiled. “You are a wonderful cook! Whatever you say, Gobby.
You’re the boss!”
“Ya stayin’ fuh de night?” Vadriel shrugged. “I gotta wash allovva
whedda youse in de bed wid me or no, ‘cause ya get pretty stinkin’ inna
mill.” Without waiting for a comment, he went out into the backyard, agam
with las guest in tow.
From the hack door, Vadriel was shown the pump in a small clearing
near the center of a half acre of fenced yard. It gleamed in a puddle of sun
that dropped between dense chestnut trees; other similar shafts of light -
defined in the air as neatly as hanging strips of gauze - illuminated the
property. The golden bough shines for us in this wilderness! One beam
spotlit an impressive vegetable garden.
“I make zucchini omelettes fuh breakfast. I flour dem flowers an’ fry
‘em foist in de special olive oil. Real swell, Vay You like?”
“I’ve never eaten the flowers.”
“No. Very special, Vay. Like you.” He laughed and removed his shoes
and socks to water the garden.
The fence and the trees in the neighboring yards afforded complete
privacy. The brightness made Vadriel squint. The birdsong made him smile.
The air was pleasantly warm and smelled of cooking food. Brooklyn’s like
being in the country. A gentle breeze rustled the leaves. Children played
somewhere near; their laughter made a lovely noise. In the distance,
someone played a waltz on a piano. Impulsively, Gobby grabbed Vadriel and
danced him around the yard. He led gently yet forcefully with a light and
graceful step. The tails of his white cotton shirt floated dreamily behind him.
Laughing happily, both stopped only when the music ended.
Gobby bowed to his partner and walked over to the large tin tub that
stood against the house. Effortlessly, he carried it to the pump. After filling
it, he went into the kitchen for soap, washcloth, scrab brush, towels, and a
cup. Putting two large pans of water on the stove for Vadriel, he explained
that cold water dissolved flour while hot made him pasty. “Youse’ll havva
proper soak.”
Vadriel watched Gobby shed his clothing and shake clouds of flour
into the sultry air. “You must have been carrying two whole loaves of bread
there, Gobby!”
He is two whole loaves of bread, Vail! Have we wandered into
Hercules’ grove?
Except for his upper torso, the skin on Gobby’s body was the palest
white, not rosy but softly golden. Curved and firm, he was thick at the waist
and fleeced with feathery black hair on his contoured shoulders, long
rounded buttocks, and protruding thighs. Naked, he no longer impressed as
simply massive. He was revealed to be as symmetrically formed as the
overhanging chestnut trees.
Ah, Vail. God is good! “Man is all symmetrie / Full of proportions, one
limbe to another / And all to all the world besides....“Those chestnut trees,
Vail, are yet another exception in nature, you know? Remember phyllotaxis?
Your basic leaf arrangement on the stem? Well, must trees have an
unvarying mathematical distribution to economize space and light. The
chestnut’s stem is frequently variable on different twigs on the same tree,
and it follows an unruly, wayward leaf arrangement. And its nuts are sweet
and edible too! He is a perfect, well-delineated endomorph. You and
Armand are mesomorphs. I'm an ectomorph.
Oh, yeah? Who cares? I want to build a willow cabin on those broad
grassy planes between the furrows. I’m not afraid. The image of himself
running up a dark flight of stairs to hide released another quiver of numbing
terror. Thoughts and feelings of excitement vanished.
Keeping his back to Vadriel, Gobby stepped into the freezing bath,
making comical cringing noises. The water rippled, reflecting light that
darted into body crevices pioneering for hesitant violet eyes. He scooped a
cupful and poured it down his spine. The water glittered in the sunlight
while the muscles on either side visibly bunched, lifting both crescent
buttocks higher into the slowly arriving dusk. With a splash, he squatted,
ducking his head. Waves of water splattered over the rim and rolled toward
Vadriel’s shoes.
“Come wash my hair, Vaydril!”
Vadriel approached and took the extended bar of yellow soap with a
washcloth. Joy and alarm bubbled inside him like air in water about to boil.
Squirming to kneel. Gobby sloshed another flood over the edge; it
plummeted and soaked the earth as Vadriel leapt backward. A nanny’s voice
scolded for splashing in the hip bath. It scalds my bottom, Nanny, while my
shoulders are gooseflesh freezing! He blinked. The past association
extinguished the budding erotic charge as if it had been doused. “Wait a
second Gobby,” he said, unbuttoning his shoes. Without a pause, he slipped
off the rest of his clothing.
“Ya gotta’lotta muscles fuh a swell.”
“I crewed.”
“Ya whut?”
“I rowed boats in school.”
“Ya wenta school ta row boats?”
Vadriel laughed and dunked his host’s head. “Among other things,
yeah! I also farmed. Whutsamatta? Wanna make somethin of it?”
“No. I like crust. Most swells are doughy,” Both men laughed. “Y’ever
think about ya looks, Vay?”
“No. I take them for granted. They are of a high order but I would
rather claim it of other things - of brains, or personality, or character, or
heart. You ever think of yours, Gobby?” Gabriel shook his head and blushed,
pleased by the compliment. Vadriel lathered the thick curly hair twice. The
second time he continued soaping down and across the back. “Stand up,
Gobby.”
When the man obeyed, Vadriel stepped into the tub to thoroughly
lather down the flanks and inner thighs. He scraped bits of clotted flour from
between the buttocks in the dense hair.
Gobby spread his legs. I could be a horse ta him. The washcloth
showed no shyness. He did not turn around until ordered. The same process
began at the neck and proceeded southwards. Face to face with the near-
smoothness of Vadriel, he suddenly grew self-conscious. “Uh’m hairy like a
gorilla.”
“No, you’re hairy like the sun.” Vadriel pointed to Gobby’s shadow on
the grass. “You have a corona of solar flares like the sun in eclipse. You know
what I mean?” Gobby shook his head in confusion. Vadriel explained in
great detail as he energetically applied the soapy washcloth.
When Vadriel knelt in front and began a meticulous search for floury
knots with both hands, the standing man was compelled to interrupt the
lecture before he embarrassed them both. “Ain’t id too cold fuh ya, Vay?”
“No. I’m fine.”
“Swells wid hands soft as a baby’s arse can’t take de cold, Vaydril.”
“Some of us swells are tough, Gabriel.”
“Yeah, some’a youse got steel hearts.”
“Not this swell. I’ve no heart at all today.”
“Ya coulda fooled me, guy. My turn. Stan’ up.”
“I’m not done yet!” Vadriel continued working diligently. He
chuckled. I know not by what power I am made bold, / Nor how it may
concern my modesty....
We’ll muddle through somehow, Vail. Be very thorough! Gimme!
Gimme! These tender vitals are not in the classical mold. Phidias would have
found them too ostentatious, too grandiose, too vulgar. I find the beauty in
that ancient ungenerous tradition questionable.
The legs were firm as the bar of soap. “Sit so I can use the brush on
your feet, Gobby. OK. Your turn.”
Gently, Gobby washed Vadriel from head to toes in the imperceptibly
dimming light. He was most considerate of his guest’s modesty, though he
gave his curiosity full rein while trying unsuccessfully to emulate Vadriel’s
detachment in the process. (Vadriel blushed from the attention to certain
details.) Only once did Gobby plop down in the cold water to short circuit a
blatant physical response; he was grateful Vadriel’s back was turned to him.
Cleaned, he insisted they rinse in a newly filled tub with the hot water
added.
Gabriel sat at one end; Vadriel sat at the other until he was instructed:
“Turn an’ slide up against me, Vay.” Gobby bent his legs as Vadriel reversed
himself and pressed back to lean against the broad chest and to rest his arms
on the plush knees.
“A perfect fit.” Vadriel sighed. Captured and bound.
Gobby embraced him from behind and gently closed his legs like a
vise. The sun lowered in a tussle of colors while the two young friends rested
peacefully together after a long day.
***
***
Resing from Gabriel Norcia’s bed, Vadriel Vail hurried to dress. On the
kitchen table he drew a heart with the bar of soap. At its center, he placed
his gold cuff links as a souvenir of his passage and his calling card with a note
on the back: “If you ever need anything, this is where you’ll find me.”
Silently, he left.
In the deserted streets, he was alert to the smells of early morning.
They mingled with the thrilling scents of Gobby’s body that he carried on
his person like stolen gift – “Tesoro!” - Heart pounding, Vadriel turned
around and walked back toward the house; quickly, he turned again and
detoured into a church where Mass was being said. A priest was hearing
confessions. In the darkness of the confessional, Vadriel got straight to the
point: “Last night, I committed adultery, Father. It was the first time. I don’t
intend to do it ever again.”
“Did you intend to do it this time, my son?” The priest’s English was
lightly inflected with an Italian accent. He sounded old and very patient.
“No, Father. Not when I departed home.”
“You were waylaid by temptation? How long have you been married?”
“One year, Father. And, yes, I was waylaid. By another man, Father.”
“Oh. Are you in the habit - ”
“No, Father. Not since I was a young boy at school in England.”
“You went to school in England? I wondered about your accent. From
what I understand, there’s nothing unusual about boys together in English
boarding schools.”
“No. But it’s a sin there too, Father.”
“True, but that doesn’t seem to stop it. Did you enjoy being waylaid,
my son?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Why do you think it won’t happen again?”
“Because I’ve found out what I needed to know.”
“It was an experiment with your almighty soul?”
“More an exercise, Father, in self-awareness.”
There was a long pause. “You seem very young, my son, for a married
man. Have you any children?”
“No, Father. Not yet.”
“Children will mature you quickly. For your penance, say a rosary to
Saint Aloysius Gonzaga. He’s the patron saint of growing boys both here and
in England. Go home to your wife in peace, son.”
Vadriel crossed himself and left the church, intending to say his
penance on the train. No double life! A single married life is my Fate. If Fate
is what happens to one. The relief of absolution alerted him to the
excitement of being in love with his soul cleansed of sin. My book’s the
active force within me. Working hard and living wisely and well. Death will
be defanged. “Nothing can be so grievous that happens only once. Is it
reasonable so long to fear a thing so short?”
So short! Surely you jest, Vail?
Death, fool! He’s talking about death!
The Thing of Death? Hmm. Death is the opposite of Birth, Vail, not of
Life. Interesting concept, that. The Thing of Death. In lieu of the scythe?
The trigger is pulled and the fusillade begins? Definitely something I would
anoint my soul with olive oil to receive and –
Aw, piss off, W-J!
Is the book going to be illustrated?
***
Vadriel reached the station in time to catch the mail train to Sterling
Harbor. On the ride home, he resolved to tell Placidia the truth about his
feelings for Armand de Guise. Her love and her faith in him would lend the
support he needed. To keep myself balanced! He said his rosary and tried to
pray. Lines from à Kempis about suffering in cheerfulness repulsed him.
Don’t convert Placide into a cross to bear. No stoicism here. I want love.
True love. Not pain. We’ll travel to wear away my obsession with him.
Always wanted to see Kyoto. I’ll reread Lady Murasaki.
“Genji! Another shining prince to dream about Chrysanthemums
instead of lilies?”
Vadriel debated whether to tell Placidia about Gobby. She’ll be
worried about where I’ve been. He grew guilty and perplexed. In seconds,
his situation became more complicated than what he could contain in his
weary brain. Slept very little these last two days. Frightened and anxious, he
paced the empty train. Gobby’s no challenge to my wife. Why muddle things
more? He’s my business. Last rite of passion. I mean passage!
His heart ached. When he raised his hand to his chin, the smell of
olive oil seared him with a lascivious image of Gobby. Say I was lonely.
Went to New York. Went to the pictures. That’s the truth! And stayed in a
hotel. The Fifth Avenue Hotel. My first and only lie. No need to lie again.
Should have thought of this in confession. No good. Sin of pride. To confess
sins we might commit? Dom Daniel warned me against it.
Like so much else, Vail.
Two notes awaited Vadriel at the empty house. The first was brief:
“Where are you? Your deserted new friend. Robbie. P.S. This is how you’re
supposed to treat old friends.” The second was longer. Placidia explaining
that she had remained in Newport for another dinner with President
Roosevelt and that she would be back “in a day or two.”
Thank God I won’t have to lie.
For what it’s worth, Vail, you already have!
He dispatched a note to Robert asking if Armand de Guise was still in
residence at Gaywyck. His new friend delivered the affirmative in person.
They lunched on fresh crab together, then went for a walk on the beach and
a swim. A counterpane of sun- shine spread over the ocean was torn by each
move of the waves. Vadriel told Robert about Gobby - the spiritual
revelation and the emotional resolution.
“Uh-huh,” Robert said, thinking. I’m full of rude questions! Who said
God is in the details?
“Uh-huh? What does that mean, Robbie?”
“It means I trust you and stand by you. Whatever you decide to do. It
also means that Gabriel sounds delicious, a swell way to achieve
enlightenment.”
“If I were a sufficiently spiritual person. I could have come by the
lesson spiritually. I would not have had to be shown physically.”
“True, hon. But like Saint Stephen, who saw Christ standing in
Heaven, you too had to be shown the goods. ‘Therefore let us strip off the
husk, and eat the sweet kernel.’ Gabriel brought you the gift of truth.
Treasure it. That’s all I mean. Vadriel, do you ever think you were born into
the wrong century?”
“Survived into, perhaps. I’m straining every possible nerve in every
possible way to know and experience myself as I really am in this century.”
“You seem to be straining every possible muscle too.”
I think you’re straining his patience, Vail.
Vadriel laughed. “OK! To sum up quickly and get this show on the
road: I must surrender Armand de Guise to God. We are conjoined souls,
which means our bodies...”
“Uh-huh. ‘Idle youth / Enslaved to everything. / Through sensitivity / I
wasted my life. / Ah! Let the time come / When hearts fall in love.’ ”
“Not even joy can make me irresponsible, Robbie.”
“ ‘Your ardor / Is duty.’ ”
“Oh yeah!” In their path a flock of seagulls scattered as the two men
approached. Some moved inland; some took to the air and cruised out to sea,
settling on the pitching water. “What a shame everything runs away from
us. Robbie.”
“Well Vadriel, man is the monkey that kills. The other apes are still
vegetarians. Even pour Christian god found it necessary to kill His only
begotten son to demonstrate His so-called love for us. No thank you. Amen.
Speaking of the gods, I wonder if Gabriel Norcia will ever contact you
again?”
“I shouldn’t think so, Robbie. He’s an independent chap with a full
life. There’s no place in it for me.”
“I’m sure he got as good as he gave, Vay.”
Vadriel blushed and grinned. “He said as much.” Robert laughed and
punched him on the arm. “Actually, I’d love to see him again, Robbie. To
thank him properly, I mean.”
“Uh-huh.”
***
***
Out the window, the constellations burned fiercely bright. The sea
murmured as if in consolation. And Armand de Guise raced along the shore
toward the inn at Sterling Harbor in a state of exaltation. Laughing aloud,
uncertain how to proceed with his life, he tugged wildly at his moonstruck
hair. By the cold light of the familiar crescent, his twisted locks resembled
spiraling tongues of flame.
***
Placidia Van Leer Vail closed the shutters tightly and studied her
husband’s form safely tucked into the bed. He slept immediately. Silently,
she left the room. Grief swelled her heart as she slowly descended the stairs
and walked through the dark silent house into the abandoned back garden.
She carried the sense of being betrayed as if it were a sleeping child
cradled against her breasts. As she walked down the rear lawn toward the
dunes, that child violently stirred, causing her to lose her footing and
stumble to the plush sandy earth. Clumsily, she stood, overbalanced by the
weight of her charge, and took a few more short steps. She stumbled again,
but this time she maintained her footing and her tears fell to the ground
instead.
“How dare he?” she sobbed. “How dare he do this after what I have
sacrificed? How dare he?” She beat her fists against her sides in rage, “I will
never divorce him. Never! I have made him my life I will die if he leaves me.
I will die!” She crossed and recrossed the lawn, weeping and struggling to
come up with a strategy to get them through this crisis. Must know who she
is. Must know how this happened. There has to be a way to keep her at bay.
Oh, God! He’s mine! What am I to do? How dare he do this to me!
Silenced by terror, she ran up the lawn and through the house,
climbing the stairs two at a time until she stood outside his bedroom door.
She closed her eyes and covered her mouth to quiet her panting while she
listened for the sound of his breathing. Still here! Must not let him out of my
sight. If this is madness, then I’m mad He’s driven me to it.
She entered the room. He was awake but did not welcome her. She
crossed to a chair in front of the closed shutters and sat in the darkness.
Neither spoke. Neither moved. Each was encased in a shroud of confusion.
CHAPTER NINE
The Vails sat reading on the rear veranda of Cormorant. Though the
final morning of August was cool, no breeze stirred the purple lythrum in
the Georgian cut-crystal bow! that, with a scattering of unopened books,
adorned the table between them. The late summer light was sharp and
brilliant, it made the earth and its creatures look enameled, layered with
brightness. Vadriel was engrossed in the letters of Mme. de Sévigné,
disgusted by her obsessive love for her daughter; Placidia was rereading The
Bostonians. I am Verena Tarrant.
Both shifted their attentions. Vadriel spotted a praying mantis gauging
the distance between itself and a monarch butterfly feeding in a mauve
snapdragon; Placidia studied her husband indirectly through his reflections
in the complex polygonal facets of the bowl. Both were aware that a love had
established itself in him at a depth where neither could descend to dislodge
it.
Again, she observed material changes. He looked older, more mature.
The angles seem more clearly defined. Like a photo brought into sharper
focus. These delicate alterations in his physical appearance distracted her,
possessed her. She was pleased she had insisted they return to Newport.
Isolated on Long Island, I would have thought of nothing but his betrayal.
When I’m angry, there’s no love in me.
***
After finally leaving Vadriel asleep in his room that first night of the
new order - in Placidia’s mind her life had become divided into before and
after his confession - she had gone to her writing desk and sat until dawn
composing a letter to Georgina and, in the process, coming to the conclusion
that she did not want to remain with a man who did not love her
preeminently. Then, seemingly without transition, she grew angry and
began to offer justifications for her not leaving him. He says he loves me!
which soon segued into, Who is she? The letter was destroyed. Sleeping for
three hours, she awoke in a rage and brought her distemper to the breakfast
table. Vadriel looked rested, it tormented her and without premeditation she
demanded they return to Cormorant.
“I was hoping we could travel and - ”
“I need my friends! If you love me at all, you will grant me this wish.
It’s our duty and our responsibility to go home.” She knew that he, like
Mme. de Sévigné whom he adored, was daft on the subjects of duty and
honor and responsibility. Only stays with me for those reasons. I’m no fool.
They left Sterling Harbor before noon. She prayed that the rigors of
Newport would distract her while they nurtured his sense of justice. There
were moments when she was convulsed with fury and, alternately, moments
when she had to restrain her impulse to hurl herself at his feet, begging him
to love her most. Counseled by distress, she could not tolerate her life until
his attention was again fully hers to dispose of as she chose. She plotted to
see him buffeted by the storms that now assailed her and by the thousand
others she would arrange for his torment. The return to Newport was one of
them. Reason restored, she was exhausted and ashamed. This is absurd! We
must find the means to put everything right. She would move toward him,
eager to express her sorrow; but, at the bewitching sight of him, jealousy
would instigate angry reprisals and he would stare wide-eyed like a child
unjustly abused.
Both were demolished by the skirmishes. She was degraded and
humiliated, he was made distraught by his belief that he had caused her to
feel this way. Her fomenting rage made her physically repulsive to him; by
an act of will, he deemed this response unacceptable, doubling his efforts to
reassure her. Calming herself, she was able to receive his compassion by
recognizing the absence of pity. Her love for him blazed along with her
resolve - I will never let him go! - until it was replaced by anger over her
situation, or by guilt over her failure to hold him, or by fear at the thought of
losing him. Who is she? And the cycle would begin anew with a deeper dusk
encroaching upon her personal world.
Publicly they were a jovial couple; privately they sat mute, muzzled by
confusion and the expectation of the next flare-up. They never touched
except when their erotic attachment propelled them from fury into a lust
beyond their libidinal needs.
Newport kept them constantly engaged. Placidia vigilantly scrutinized
him in the hope he would reveal himself by word or glance, keeping herself
in perpetual agitation that her rival might be exposed at any moment. The
waiting in her heart became a separate agony. She rated him as infinitely
desirable; the reflected glory blinded her to her own worth, and she suffered
a collapse of self-esteem, which she artificially inflated by fantasizing giving
him up magisterially. I can live without you, Vadriel! I’ve already begun to
replace you in my heart with Armand de Guise! It’s all in the cands,
remember?
***
With the book had come the text of a speech given by Georgina and a
long letter detailing a meeting of their brave young friends at the Triangle
Shirtwaist Company, still struggling to organize a strike protesting their
working conditions; the brutish owners continued to lock the fire exits,
presenting the girls from taking leaks and keeping the union agitators from
“polluting” them.
The speech delivered to the workers by Georgina opened with a quote
from Mrs. Sandford: “Nothing is so likely to conciliate the affection of the
other sex as a feeling that women look to them for guidance and support.”
Georgina used the words to demonstrate the thesis that the 19th century
made love a six letter word fiscal. Thus women became pawns in the game of
power played only by men, white men, who converted Darwin’s and
Wallace’s survival of the fittest into a social program to justify their barbaric
behavior and to condone their greed. “Chastity and monogamy are tools to
make women valuable possessions, equaling them with real estate.”
Placidia was annoyed by the generalities of the speech. The
philosophy seemed shot through with contemporary contradictions . Is there
no difference between personal virtue - a love that not only takes but gives,
like the ideal of Beth Caldwell - and a marriage that is merely a continuation
of private property regulations? A life of passion and license is antithetical to
the domestic and sentimental virtues supported by the inane Mrs. Sandford.
She confuses being a wife with being a servant. Must it always be polarized?
Isn’t it my right as a New Woman to choose? Rejecting the past where it no
longer suits me? Adapting what satisfies my needs? Even chastity and
monogamy must be a matter of choice!
Choice was the issue. Placidia reasoned, rising to hurry to her room.
Choice needs to be stressed when next Georgi speaks. Shelley’s words
entered her mind: “The world is weary of the past / O might it die or rest at
last.”
Climbing the stair, she said aloud: “But the past doesn’t die. It haunts
us. We die, each taking a small fragment of it with us, one death at a time.
The world needs an eternity to create a new species. Women are entombed
with the past in prisons called homes that are founded on its traditions. Oh,
Blessed God!” she moaned, struggling against tears. “What has happened to
me?” she asked, opening her writing pad and once again beginning the long
overdue letter to her friend: “I have come to a crisis in my married life.” She
paused to ask herself: How can I claim my right to a choice, if I attempt to
deny Vadriel his? Her hand formed words as quickly as it could manage.
Resling her head in her left palm, she failed to register that she was running
a low fever; it had begun after a chill taken during the first abortive attempt
to write her confidante.
On the veranda below, Vadriel sat dreading the scheduled luncheon
with Cynthia Ings and her betrothed, Cyrus Beaton. The idea of sitting at a
table with Armand de Guise, who always managed to land a place in his
vicinity, caused his lungs to inflate with desire. No denying it. Since our
return to Newport, I’ve bitten into the sinew of the dilemma! (Most of his
recent metaphors and similes revolved around flesh, which he found both a
solvent and an irritant.) When his blood felt rife with hot metal filings,
Vadriel had tried prayer to lift him out of his body; but prayer did not
cleanse him. I don’t want to be cleansed! Then, one night as he approached
Chateau d’Eau for dinner, he recognized its ornate wrought-iron
entranceway as the door to God in a recent dream. How can I battle my
unconscious mind?
Vadriel ceased going to Mass, to his wife’s dismay. As he wrote to
Robert Gaylord: “The liturgy’s didactic reliance upon guilt and fear to
explicate Christ’s love has sparked a rebellion in me against these mentally
lapidified vestiges of the old curses that I see condoned in every sign of the
Cross. Slipping from the Papal grip. I feel loosened from gravity. I don’t want
to be good! Walter Pater is right: A color sense is more important to the
development of the individual than a sense of right and wrong. There is no
right or wrong. There is only what brings us closer to God, as we understand
God.”
Vadriel had to admit that de Guise never gave offense when they met
in Newport. In fact, Armand showed discretion verging on disinterest. It
didn’t lay anything to rest. Vadriel’s emotions were rooted in him and
needed only the mildest stimulation to outfit his heart with runners of
budding sensation that followed laws of their own. A glance, the tone of
Armand’s voice, the touch of his hand in greeting shot paroxysms of love
through Vadriel’s frame. He took every act of cordiality to heart and
searched for proof that these simple gestures reflected his own feelings.
Poor little boy, Vail! “The dialogue is dark and clear / When the heart
becomes a mirror!”
To complicate matters, Vadriel was in constant turmoil over Placidia,
worrying about her health - She isn’t sleeping. I hear her prowling around at
night - and her state of mind – She’s relying on some spontaneous gesture to
unmask me. Something like my hair going on fire at the night of my beloved!
Or is the social contact punishment? A torture for betraying her? No. More
in her nature to punish herself. Torment herself in some way not even
known to herself – She’s never consciously cruel. Must tighten my guard.
He plucked a piece of purple lythrum from the crystal bowl and
twirled it around his finger. Petals of the field marigolds are closed. Nearly
noon. Mantis are feeding. Go dress.
***
***
***
Vadriel and Placidia did not see each other until the carriage arrived
from the stable to take them along Bellevue Avenue to the Vanderbilt’s
Marble House for dinner. Vadriel had sent Placidia a note asking that they
stay home; it was returned with one word – No! - emblazoned across it.
As they drove over. Placidia hummed the music she was to perform
after dinner. She looked pale and drawn and tired, but none of the guests
would surmise she had suffered what she diagnosed a death of the heart.
Vadriel looked grim and tense. Her continued rage terrified him.
When he reached for her hand, she avoided his grasp, thinking: If he
touches me, I don’t trust myself to hold back my curses! At the same time,
Placidia feared she would die from the loss of hope and the feelings of
abandonment.
In the Gold Room at Marble House, the charismatic Maud Gonne was
the center of attention. She was regal enough to appear mistress of the
Vanderbilt’s palace, but too innately, severely elegant in plain black velvet to
have commissioned, as she saw her latest venue, “Such a mighty roaring
hodgepodge!” Taller than most of the men, she was placed at a vantage point
in front of the Allard mantle of fleur de peche marble where two bronze
figures (old age and youth) held huge candelabra over her head like burning
wax constellations.
The red fireplace struck Maud as larger than the sitting room of many
an Irish cottage. Marble House, a cottage indeed! Desperate! She had trusted
her stage instincts and, deciding not to compete with her famous setting,
wore no jewelry or adornment beside her god-given Celtic, extravagant
gorgeousness in her plan “ta put the screws on the rich Yanks fer a few
quid.” Physically, up to her mound of auburn hair, she was the embodiment
of mythical Ireland. Knowing the romance attached to revolutionaries, she
cunningly toured America, giving a performance heavy on Irish charm for
the holy cause. Even for her, the gilded dreamworld of Marble House was a
hard act to follow.
She had been briefed by her contact in Newport that the house was
modeled on the Petit Trianon at Versailles. “And to make it grander, Miss
Gonne, William K. Vanderbilt has added to the front a row of columns
copied (and enlarged) from the Temple of the Sun at Baalbek. He does not
fool around, this man! The place is considered the Gilded Age or American
Renaissance incarnate, and it cost two million dollars to build and another
nine to furnish. It’s the best stage in town for your genius.”
The Gold Room where Maud was displayed had paneling in red,
green, and yellow gold. The Age of Ostentation is what they do mean to be
saying. It’s hilarious! And not even faintly amusing. An Ark of the Covenant,
by Jaysus, and a symbol of this god’s presence among his people, I’m sure and
certain. A castle for a baron, rubber or otherwise, is it not! And in spirit very
like the follies the English have perpetrated on us Irish for centuries.
The Vanderbilt display of wealth curdled her wits as totally as the
confidence exuded by her bejeweled hostess, Alma Vanderbilt, who swore:
“I know of no profession, art, or trade that women are working in today.
Miss Gonne, as taxing on mental resources as being a leader of society.”
Dumbfounded, Maud Gonne nodded. And what’s more taxing, pray,
than the recent party I read about in the papers where one Mrs. Fish had the
guests talk baby talk through dinner? Or the dinner where a sandpile ran
down the center of the table with tiny silver shovels and pails for each
costumed guest to dig out buried treasure: diamonds. rubies, pearls, and
emeralds? Mother o’ God! We’re starving to death and they’re playing patty-
cake with gold knives and forks and eating six-course meals very night! She
took a deep breath and exhaled through her lips, using an old warm-up
acting exercise to reclaim her sense of humor. Breathing in and out,
grounding herself in some verities, she chatted and joked with the friendly
people on the extensive reception line, many of whom offered tearful
condolences for her conquered country.
The moment Vadriel approached, she clasped his hand, introduced
herself, and, hearing his accent, reminded him that she herself, was English
born. “Yet it hasn’t prevented me from making a decent life! Willie Yeats
would be off to the races with those eyes o’ yours!” When he laughed, she
heard his sorrow all the while she was complimenting Placidia on her “good
fortune and fine taste in fellas. May I steal him fer the evening, Mrs. Vail? I
would love fer him to be me escort, along with Mr. Vanderbilt, if Mrs.
Vanderbilt wouldn’t mind shifting a place or two at her grand table?” She
offered her most radiant smile in payment for any inconvenience, because
everyone expected her to be a wee eccentric and would probably be
disappointed if she weren’t. And what’s a feckin’ place card here or there
anyhow?”
Maud Gonne’s pleasure in Vadriel’s matinee-idol qualities heightened
the color of her cheeks. She frequently enlisted the services of handsome
men to offset her own beauty and to prevent the crowd from forgetting her
femininity, which she could later discard to greater effect in her role as
patriot.
However, with Vadriel Vail there was an added incentive. I hate to
admit it, woman, but the soft cadences of his lovely spoken English give me
comfort so far from home. Ah, these Americans are a generous people. A
grand hospitable people. But when do they serve the drink? For Sinn Fein or
for Daughters of Ireland, her women’s society, she could tolerate Marble
House or anything else these plutocrats dished out, surmising as she did that
they would have done to Ireland what they did to Puerto Rico, Cuba, and
the Philippines, had it been within their grasp. The irony of taking their
money to defeat their English counterparts in the British Parliament and the
House of Lords was not lost on her.
Seated in the ornate red-marble dining hall, she took in her
surroundings. I’ll dine out on this fer weeks at home. But who will believe
me? Creature, this is hideous! A terror! Make no mistake! Fer a meeting of
the clans, the Hill of Tara it is not! Turning to Vadriel on her right, she asked
in a low voice: “Tell me, now. Do you, yourself, live in one of the
‘replications’ of this grand palace?”
“God, no! Cormorant’s a lovely place!” He briefly described his house
in Newport and then his idyllic home on Long Island. “I hate it here,” he
admitted in a whisper. “There’s a Gothic room upstairs that’s a lark! But
Newport gives me the pip.”
“I don’t wonder,” she replied with a smile, holding back her question:
Is that why you’re so sad? She asked instead: “Why have they put the trees
out of the way?”
“So the guests don’t bang into them when they leave these gross feeds
banjaxed drunk. Which is most of the time.” They laughed conspiratorially.
“Actually. Miss Gonne - ”
“Call me Maud, dote.”
“Thank you, Maud. You must call me Vadriel.”
“It’s a grand name! I’ve a friend called Gabriel.”
“So have I.”
“What is if you were about to say, Vadriel?”
“Just that the rich folk in Newport do away with most of the trees in
order to assure themselves that they control nature the same way they
control the world of men. At least, that’s my theory, Maud.”
She nodded, accepting has theory as fact and storing it for those dinner
parties in Dublin. “It’s a powerful grand theory, Vadriel. Don’t mind if I
make it me own.” He laughed. She studied his face. The eyes would convert
Jack Yeats to fauvism!
Across from them sat Armand de Guise. Maud had noted, when she
claimed her assigned place, how fortunate she was to have the two best
looking men in her purview. But the redhead too was parsimonious with has
smiles and seemed to be wearing an aureole of tristesse. He also kept his eyes
away from her section of the table.
***
***
Cynthia Ings presented Maud Gonne with an opening gambit: “Do you
like America?”
This question led the honored guest into the reason for her visit. “I
mean the reason for my life!” She expostulated brilliantly, holding the crowd
in her thrall and Vadriel’s hand in her own under the cloth. “One need only
to gaze upon a map,” she proclaimed, “to see that Holy Ireland is all of a
piece on its lonesome in the sea.” She believed that nations, like people, died
if they were not true to themselves - if they dare not fight to claim their
destinies. “Certain people have been trying for centuries to impose their
images, and their customs, and their beliefs, and their language on us Irish.
They will not succeed! They never have restrained our spirit. And like the
human soul, we will be free to choose our way. But more of that later, while
we digest this scrumptious feast!”
After dinner, the guests rose and retired to the ballroom, where chairs
were arranged in orderly rows, and where the large group invited for
speeches and dessert waited happily. Placidia sang “O Mio Ferrando” from La
Favorite and “Una Voce Poco Fa” from The Barber of Seville. As an encore,
she performed with studied bathos, a new sentimental ballad de Guise had
found for her, “Only Mother’s Picture.”
“You’ve warmed the house to a toasty glow fer me, Mrs. Vail,” Maud
Gonne assured Placidia while the house wildly applauded. The acclaimed
Irish actress took her place alone at the front of the hushed Americans. As an
opening to her speech on Home Rule, she recited from Cathleen m
Hoolihan, the play Yeats had written for her that made her one in her
country’s mind with the legendary essence of her homeland.
Before the appreciative audience could applaud, she segued into a
history of Ireland and its agony that had forced her to cross the sea. She
spoke for a full hour, then her two female traveling companions made
themselves visible to collect the bank drafts and postal money orders that the
guests had been advised to prepare beforehand. As usual, the straw baskets
received cash, rings, ear clips, and watch fobs. She made an emotional
display of gratitude before hurrying off to catch the final train for Boston.
The last person to receive her farewell smile and wishes for happiness was
Vadriel Vail.
***
***
***
On the ride home, Placidia tugged Vadriel into her arms. The pain in
her heart still pulsated, but the love seemed intact, if a little ragged from her
slashing anger. “Is it true that Maud Gonne held your hand under the table?”
“Who told you?”
“Cynthia. She can be very funny! She said she hoped that was all Miss
Gonne was holding! Can you imagine? I nearly died. We laughed like two
silly schoolgirls.”
“What was Cyrus holding during this exchange? Smelling salts?”
“He was away getting us some punch. It was something Army might
come out with, you know? It was really terribly funny. He didn’t look well.”
“Cyrus? I’m not surprised.”
“No, silly! Army didn’t look well. He looks sad. He really must marry.”
Placidia chatted, exhilarated by having Vadriel back in her good graces. She
missed had him horribly when her fury banished him from her heart’s view.
She and Cynthia had also talked briefly about compromise. She couldn’t
remember how the subject had arisen under the circumstances. The notion
of compromise gave her comfort. I’ll never love him as I once did. That’s a
grief! Everything changes in this life. She held him close. Cynthia had also
talked about children, and for the first time Placidia wanted Vadriel’s child.
A child will bring us closer together. Might be the solution to everything.
She smiled. “Life is swell,” she said softly.
“No. Life is life. It’s you who are swell.”
They laughed. They shared their impressions of the night. Placidia was
inspired by Maud Gonne. “In a few weeks, my darling, we’re returning to
Boston. I’ve decided to resume working for the unions. And for the vote.”
She was determined to make an independent life for herself while accepting
the love that Vadriel had to give. I’ll continue to go the rest of the way to
him. Who knows what changes a baby will generate in him? It occurred to
her that his choices included her, and she was happy.
Later, as Placidia lay beside him, nothing seemed important that did
not bring Vadriel happiness. She grew sad that he did not have a matched
craving for her well-being. Awakening at dawn, she turned to enfold him, to
inhale the warm sweetness of his body. He was gone. Rising, she climbed the
hall stairs and opened the door to the widow’s walk on the roof.
At the garden wall near the cliffs, Vadriel paced with his right hand
raised, palm outward, as though pushing something ahead of himself or
holding something at bay. Lost in thought, he seemed to be reenacting a
conversation. The tenderness within Placidia evaporated, leaving no trace to
temper the anger and fear. He’s not thinking of me. Who is she?
***
That same moment, Armand de Guise sat copying a sonnet into his
diary:
“Bewailed guilt”? Yes I’m guilty of not containing my love for you, my
honorable man.
He closed the diary and returned the quarto-size volume from which
he had copied the sonnet to its Elizabethan carved-ivory repository, which
he carefully placed on a shelf out of sunlight’s reach. The treasured book’s
18th-century purple leather binding had convinced him that this particular
edition of the greatest love poems in the English language would make a
fitting farewell gift. It was among the rarest things he possessed and had
been in his family since 1609 when an ancestor visiting London bought it for
five pence. I’ve already given him my most valuable possession.
Armand had decided to leave America for an indefinite stay abroad.
The day’s earliest hours would be devoted to sending telegrams and to
organizing his itinerary while the servants took to preparing him for an
imminent departure. In time, I’ll get over this pain. Time is a gentleman.
***
***
The midweek New York Yacht Club Race was a major event of the
Season. The Vails attended a luncheon hosted at the Casino by the Goslings.
Rather than drive to Castle Hill or go out in a boat, they rushed in a
cavalcade of open carriages to a tent at the cliff’s edge on the Hanovers’
grounds to see the boats round the last turn.
The day was cloudless and cool, perfect for outdoor amusements. A
good-humored discussion ensued with small bets placed on favored
contestants, until Stanley Nelland mentioned Workmen’s Compensation,
which riled the men beyond caring what boat was where or whether
Honorius Van Leer - who had just achieved his pilot’s license was in the
water or on the rocks. Cyrus Beaton held forth on his theory of state
insurance systems, which he swore were “the coming things” where fortunes
would be made. The women were locked into a discussion of the Beauchamp
Costume Ball, the closing event of the Season. It was rumored to be costing
over $200,000. “A scratch on the walls of his silver mines,” Cynthia Ings
guaranteed.
Standing apart from both groups, Vadriel absently watched for the
boats to arrive. He knew the race was important to Armand, and he prayed
his friend would win.
Like flag-bearing knights, sailboats charged into view, done up in full
regalia. The herald caused Vadriel’s blood to fizz with undiluted joy. Caught
by surprise, his heart jumped madly. He called the others with a childlike
shout.
The first boat’s sails of Egyptian cotton had been dyed a glorious
purple, the shade of the stone in his pocket. It was the Peony’s successor,
Velella, christened in honor of the sea’s man-of-war. The name appeared on
the graceful, blond-wood pointed prow in the same noble purple, beginning
with a baroquely scrolled, enormous letter V.
To Vadriel, Velella seemed to hover above the water as if preparing to
rise from the waves and nimbly ride the wind to where he stood. Pausing
briefly, Armand would take him abroad and carry them both over the
horizon into the arms of Orion. A prisoner of gravity, Velella sailed by,
singing Vadriel’s name - it did for Vadriel and Armand - in four short
musical blasts of A. D. D-sharp, G, on its sweetly triumphant siren, and all
the while veiling its flag in submissive homage.
Wriothesley-Jones intoned: “ ‘The barge he sat in, like a burnished
throne / Burned on the water; the poop was beaten gold / Purple the sails,
and so perfumed that / The winds were lovesick with them - ’ ”
“It’s Army!” Placidia shouted, laughing and clapping her hands. “He’s
won! He’s won! Velella looks like a visitor from the North Country of Oz.”
Vadriel watched Velella pass from sight, and sent his spirit along in its
wake. He was excited to distraction by the love he bore the extravagant man.
In the midst of the chattering assembly, he held fast to an infinite variety of
pleasurable sensations. We are a fragile vine, Armand. Hoisting upon slender
rigging. Overhanging a stormy sea. No chance for survival. What a lovely
show we make!
Pacing by the wall, Vadriel had difficulty controlling his ebullient self
until Cynthia Ings wondered aloud what woman in Newport was partial to
purple: “No man names a boat after a jellyfish!” Vadriel turned from the
scene of his triumph and quickly walked to his carriage across the two acres
of scythed lawn. He wanted to roll and tumble and somersault, to leap and
spin and twirl, he satisfied himself with a loping gait, coattails flying. People
followed his lead. The party was returning to the Casino to toast the winner.
He wanted to be the first to touch his hero’s flesh.
When Armand shook his hand an hour later, Vadriel gripped hand
and was palmed a note. The man wore a purple cravat, the color of the stone
in Vadriel’s pocket. The note was four lines from Marvell’s “The Definition
of Love” and a brief instruction:
***
Vadriel Vail and Armand de Guise saw each other on three occasions
before taking opposite seats at Vadriel’s rose-decked table on Friday night.
Each time, they had shaken hands, hiding their fiercely alert hearts behind
polite smiles; each time, they had walked side by side, concealing messages
of secret harmonies in bits of trivia and talk of books. They were very much
at ease with one another. Only once, at a picnic, when Vadriel wanted to sit
beside him on a blanket rather than join Placidia at a table, did the conflicted
husband ask himself how he would behave if he and Armand were just
friends. He sat with Armand.
The ritual of a 7 P.M. formal dinner provided many distractions.
Conversation was flourishing, fueled by rounds of Manhattan cocktails in the
front parlor. The anticipated slip of silver-embossed white cardboard - Mrs.
William Beauchamp requests the pleasure...cotillion at 10, costumes required
- had arrived in the morning post, and the excitement stirred memories of
Mrs. Astor, “that patron saint of ball giving,” de Guise expostulated, “who
transformed society into a secular religion.”
At the far end of the table, Eleanor Van Leer silently conjectured
which people would not be her dining companions if Caroline Aston’s
ballroom at 350 Fifth Avenue had accommodated 300 instead of 400
members of blueblood New York society. Cynthia Ings and Regina Wilson
were made decidedly uneasy by Eleanor’s fleeting, accusatory glances; each
vied to share her memories of the night she was invited to grace the divan
and to watch the cotillon from the sacred vantage point of Caroline’s throne.
“It was halfway down the gallery-ballroom, against the wall under the
famous Duran portrait of her. In those days, there was no greater honor in
New York,” Cynthia assured the less fortunate or too-young-to-remember at
the table, while Regina loudly offered corroborating evidence. Both women
were noticeably relieved when Eleanor turned her narrowed eyes on Gracia
Nelland.
The Vail power house had been completed in the spring, and the man
in charge was generating maximum current for the gala evening. Electric
light exposed each polished facet of the table settings and rioted among the
baguettes of Lillian Hanover’s diamond gorget, causing her neighbors
opposite to squint. Worth a Jew’s eye. Cyrus Beaton thought, glancing
apologetically at his host as the meal officially began.
Solemnly, Angelo della Fiore, dressed in a new black frock coat and a
scarlet vest, hair shimmering like the wings of the 13th angel of vengeance,
stepped into the dining area from behind a partition screen set up to block
the backstage view of the adjoining workrooms. He appeared on a cue from
Placidia relayed by Mr. Griggs, who stood at her back against the sideboard.
Oblivious to his audience, Angelo walked slowly, concentrating on the
task that marked his debut at table. In his white-gloved hands was balanced
an early 17th-century sun-yellow delft platter that held 16 moon-white
Belleek plates, each with six little neck clams adorned by a wheel of lemon
and nestled on a crisp lettuce leaf. Obediently, he jiggled nothing loose from
its precise arrangement. He had rehearsed this entrance in his mind for
years. He wanted it to be memorable.
Lucretia Gosling, faithful to the subject of the venerable Mrs. Astor,
recalled the famous dinner given for the Prince del Drags, who turned out to
be a monkey.
Eleanor sharply corrected her. “The hostess was Mrs. Fish, Lucretia.
Caroline had no taste for foolishness! And the host was that bizarre Henry
Lehr, who claimed to make a career out of being popular and who used
every costume ball as an excuse to climb into women’s clothing!”
Angelo stationed himself beside Mr. Griggs. He waited for his fellow
servants to appropriate the first course. His other duties were to serve two
rounds of heated plates using a thumb napkin, to wipe the large china
platters sent up in the dumbwaiter, to sweep the table with the crumb
scraper and silver waiter after the waitress cleared it of everything before
dessert, and to bring in the finger bowls and ice-cream forks before the fruit
and sorbet. He was prepared for each of his scenes in this opulent
production. Calmly, he raised his eyes to watch the stellar performances by
the most experienced servants. Clandestinely, he scanned the dazzling
guests.
De Guise spotted Angelo first. He stopped mid sip of his Montrachet,
raised a brow in disbelief Holy shit! - and forced himself to answer a
question from Cynthia Ings about his forthcoming trip. She sat on his left,
toward Placidia, and he averted his face after curtly replying to her. The boy
seemed absorbed in his platter. No longer a boy. More desirable than Joey.
Turning to Lavinia on his right - she was busy with Honorius Van Leer - de
Guise ignored Cynthia’s follow-up question.
He had once been served at a lawn party by a young man with whom
he had come to terms, but never had he been confronted by a victim of his
lunatic lust. He cursed the irony - Nearly out the door! - and cursed himself;
then he pressed for the action of grace. Not the man I was! Maybe the kid
won’t recognize me! Room was dark. Never recognize me. Ages ago! But if
he does... Before de Guise could conjecture further, he heard the sound of
keening terror.
Conversation was cut off as Angelo dropped the platter. Clams, leaves,
and lemon wheels rocketed on shards of Belleek and Delft into the far
corners of the room. Women exclaimed; men gasped. Armand de Guise sat
in petrified attention, riveted by Angelo’s stare. Placidia leapt to her feet in
fright. The abject terror on the weeping boy’s face upset her more than the
accident. Before she could move, Griggs ushered the food-stained Angelo
behind the screen, followed by Vadriel. She returned to her place hearing
her mother’s dictum loud and clear: “Be mistress of yourself though china
fall!”
“That sent us off with a bang!” she joked, as Griggs reappeared to
whisper in her ear that they should resume without Mr. Vail.
Mrs. Howe entered unceremoniously, trailed by three maids with the
appropriate implements to tidy the room. It was soon business as usual.
Conversation sputtered to life. There were several quips about the guests
going home unfed and about new serving techniques in the home of a New
Woman. Everyone laughed at the slightest pretest to save Placidia’s annual
“do” from going the splintered way of the delft, no one mentioned the
peculiar diversion. Eleanor was proud of her daughter’s composure, and
accepted full blame. I sent her a boy to do a man’s job. Fresh clams appeared
in front of the grateful diners. Several bewildered glances were aimed at de
Guise’s head until Amontillado dulled recall.
Armand de Guise was mortified. To cover himself, he made a weak
joke about clams never having stopped traffic before – “Unlike your face!”
Cynthia quipped, but he was nauseated with fear. What is the boy telling
Vadriel? Why hasn’t he come back to me? After their intimacy in the
Casino, when de Guise had moved Vadriel to make an assignation, after that
hard-won victory, he could not allow himself to imagine the words being
used to describe him now. His heart turned dry and lifeless as a knot of
withered heather. He functioned automatically, eating without taste,
speaking without thought, laughing without humor.
We’ll talk! We’ll talk! an inner voice reminded, fluttering hope
through him like a breeze inflating purple sails. I’ll make him understand.
I’ve become a different man. Not the man I was. The man he agreed to meet
is not the same debauched creature who attacked Angelo della Fiore. I’ll
make him see me. See me as I am now. I will not leave! Not until he knows
my truth. We’ll talk. We’ll talk. He reasoned with himself, battling to
tranquilize despair until he could surrender to it unobserved.
***
***
***
Placidia dropped the letter and fell back in the chair, too short of
breath to cry out. Staring at the paper, she was baffled and stunned. A flutter
of wings caused her to raise her head. A bright yellow Baltimore oriole had
flown into the library through the open doors. It circled the room twice then
slammed into the mirror over the fireplace, crumpling to the carpeted floor
with a series of squeaks. She rushed to fetch it. Carried out into the blinding
sunlight, the bird quickly revived and flew erratically toward the sea. The
sight of the freed bird brought her to tears of relief. But with the return of
feeling, her mind disengaged from her body like a planet slipping its orbit.
Rigidly walking to her rooms, she sent Penelope to arrange for a
carriage. Ransacking her closets, she searched for a silk dress the color of the
sails on Velella. Vadriel’s mine! Army must give him up. Before Army leaves.
Must grow him up! Must not take Vadriel’s heart away. Cannot take it with
him It belongs to me!
Preparing herself without assistance. Placidia reached the gate before
discovering the absence of her silver case of calling cards. Laughing bitterly
at her absurdity, she clutched her sides to contain her feverish mirth and
climbed into the carriage, which she ordered to hurry. As it sped down the
long drive, she saw herself and Vadriel dancing down a path on Block Island
with Armand behind them. I’m not in the way! Scoundrel! We are husband
and wife. Married in the eyes of God. Married. Married. Married.
***
***
***
***
The three men were alert throughout the night. Vadriel Vail locked
his bedroom door to keep himself in; Armand de Guise unburdened his heart
to Donough Gaylord; and Angelo della Fiore, with the concentration of an
owl, peered from his perch. At dawn, Vadriel and Armand, in perfect affinity
though miles apart, walked in the surf. Angelo returned to Sterling Harbor
Inn, correctly intuiting his adversary’s nocturnal affinities, and sent a
telegram to Placidia, who lay abed tossing with fever and imagining the
lovers in perfect contentment with herself the butt of their mockery.
Penelope brought Angelo’s message into Placidia at Cormorant. Three
words: BOTH HERE, SEPARATE. Placidia wired one: STAY. Instructing the
servants, she remained at home to no one and stubbornly ignored Penelope’s
importunings to send for Doctor Bigelow.
***
For both Newport and the east end of Long Island, the new day was
dark, heaving with damp, and poised on the edge of violence. Breakfast with
Robert and Cael enabled Vadriel to discuss his condition. “I’m feeling very
complicated.” Robert listened silently, nodding or shaking his head
sympathetically. A cheer from the kitchen announced Cael’s success. “So
soon, Robbie?”
“Mousing is his avocation.” They laughed. “Armand says he’s not the
man he was, Vadriel. You say you’ve heard this song before, or words to that
effect. He doesn’t deny what he’s done. On the contrary, he weeps bitterly
for his sins. Literally. He weeps. Buckets. I am not attempting to poeticize
this, you know, as ‘buckets’ clearly attests. People do change. Not often, but
it can happen, even without the intervention of Doctor Freud.”
“You think love works miracles?”
“No. And don’t sneer. Nanny Welles says sneering curdles the cream.”
They laughed again. “I think love is a miracle.” Robert continued, with a
serious expression on his face. “I think miracles happen in the name of love.
I also think the unconscious mind is too old and too wise to give up a
complex language system for baby talk. ‘I love you’ and ‘I will’ won’t do the
trick. As Virgil says, and he says it much more succinctly than I: ‘Each
creature is led by that which it most longs for.’ However...”
“Yes? I’m listening”
“However, Armand de Guise has been working hard to change, Vay. If
we never change, we never learn.”
“Oh, yeah?” he sneered again, in perfect Brooklynese.
Robert blinked. “Yeah! At the risk of nagging you, I will offer his
rehabilitation work in the tenements - ”
“Oh, those blasted tenements! That’s where this whole bloody thing
started! We can change without learning, Robbie. Indeed, change may
involve a certain forgetfulness.”
The door to the dining room opened and a white Persian cat with
auburn triangle markings appeared carrying a dead mouse in his mouth.
Robert blinked again and bent off his chair to receive the gift in his linen
napkin. “Thank you, Cael. What a guy!” Robert sat up straight and discreetly
tossed the corpse out a nearby window, having first distracted Cael with a
piece of bacon. “My hero!”
“Can’t take the mouser out of the cat, Robbie. He’s only following his
natural instincts.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, Vadriel Vail, man is capable of not
answering the call of his nature. He can also pretend the number’s been
changed until the call’s not put through anymore. However, it wasn’t
instinct that drove Armand, and you know it. If he was less than a man,
you’re striving to become more, and I don’t know which spiritual condition
is worse, frankly. And while we’re on the subject of instinct, hon, noble and
rational behavior is often a smoke screen for instinct and egotism. Often -
not always. So watch where you cast those asparagus - as Nanny Welles
would say. Funny how your monkdom skips town when it suits you!”
“Don’t sneer, Robbie. The cream will curdle.”
“It already has!”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah!” They both laughed. Robert scooped his cat into his arms, gave
it a loud kiss on the nose, then announced: “We are going home. Thanks for
breakfast. We both had a outta-sight time. And don’t fret about the demise
of the mouse. It didn’t know what hit him. Very like the other occupants of
this house. Except, of course, for that gorgeous portrait of Antinous in your
study. He looks like he knew exactly what was coming his way.”
“Tell Armand I don’t want to see him.”
“Why should I tell him what he already knows?”
“What should I do, Robbie?”
“What do you want?”
“I want to do what’s right.”
“What does that mean? There’s one right for Placidia and one right for
Armand! But, if you don’t do what’s right for you, Vadriel Vail, all three
involved will suffer: You from unhappiness, the one who loses, and the one
who wins a miserable you You’ll always resent the one you chose unless you
choose the one you want. You could sing that if you had a mind to! Why
have three suffer when only one need do? Suffering is not love, Vadriel.
Suffering is suffering. Let’s have an end to all this suffering soon, please? If
Armand is the loser, you know what will happen! I’m not making this up,
hon. Remember what Virgil’s Corydon says of his beloved Alexis – ‘There’ll
be another Alexis, if this one rejects you.’ Because Rosalind is right, you
know, and she’s the expert not me: ‘Men have died from time to time, and
worms have eaten them, but not for love.’ You know what you want. We all
know what we want. We want serenity and peace. We want to be at one
with God. Isn’t that your line? What action will bring you that? Isn’t it
always the most difficult thing to do? Isn’t that why we need courage?”
“I’ll do my best, Robbie.”
“Everyone knows duty is seldom liked either by the doer or the object.
It’s not often of advantage to either. I trust you to do what’s right for you,
hon. The truth creates its own need, like it or not.”
“I don’t trust me at all.”
“It takes work, Vadriel. Like change. I leave you to your groggy heart.
As an exit line, I offer your buddy Donne: ‘All things do willingly with
change delight / The fruitful mother of our appetite?’ ”
“Shows you how much he knew!”
When Robert and Cael departed. Vadriel went to the shore. He was
lost in confusion and obsessing over having not asked Robert to telegraph
Placidia. What can I say in 20 words or less?
How about, ‘Come to me!’
I don’t want either Placidia or Armand to come to me. I want her to
stop his leaving until this suffering is reel for us all. I want to sit here alone.
Until he’s gone. If I sit silent, eyes shut tight, the time will pass and I won’t
know day from night. And then he’ll be gone. Then I’ll have what I need to
regain the heart’s view of my wife.
What? What will you have?
The absence of Armand de Guise. He won’t be blocking my way.
Then what?
I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen after he is dead to
me. So...I will sit here waiting for him to be gone. Then I’ll know death.
When I’m without him, I’ll know what it feels like. What I am without him.
What will be left of me to offer Placidia. And everyone else I love. Maybe
she’ll just arrive. We’ll sit here together. Together we’ll figure out what’s to
be done. Maybe he’ll figure out how to make everything OK. Then he’ll take
me in his arms. And we’ll understand that he has to go away because...
because he has to! And then? I’ll go on.
Secure in the corner of a tall dune, Vadriel watched for hours as
thunderstorms built five miles to the west. A downdraft of damp air presaged
a heavy rain. Four cumulus clouds frothed into anvil shapes; they floated
above him, detached and immense, like steam yachts within walking
distance. Shadows stained the earth and birds darted for cover. Lightning
jaggedly cut through one cloud, and hail the size of his purple stone fell out
of another. The smell of ozone was in his nose; booms were in his ears. One
bolt lasted long enough for him to see a dozen multiple strokes; another
connected two of the clouds while a ball of light raced back and forth like a
spinning jewel on a chain. The lightning streaks, great ladders of electrons -
invisible to him when traveling down, but bright on their return - recalled
images of the immense Nile when up was also down and down up.
Close to tears of confusion, Vadriel struggled to justify his decision not
to send Placidia the telegram. I need this time alone. We have a lifetime. A
lifetime to be together. And Armand and I have a lifetime. A lifetime to be
apart.
Destructive as the bolts are, Vail, life on earth would not survive
without them. And that’s a simple fact. But don’t confuse simple with easy,
Vail. Lightning appears a rare phenomenon to us down here on terra firma,
but it rends the stratosphere 100 times a second! Lightning is everywhere!
Outta sight!
“Outta sight, indeed!” Raw thoughts of Gobby swirled the air in
Vadriel’s lungs, bringing him back to Armand de Guise. He thought of the
Gaylords and of their successful life together. He thought again of Armand
when the storm clouds parted and a double rainbow bridged the sky. Sucked
into a vacuum of wonder, he sent a prayer of gratitude to Iris, goddess of the
rainbow and messenger of the gods: Thank you for sending the escape route
to heaven!
Gadzooks, Vail! There’s no room for humans there! Will you ever stop
trying to hide among the gods?
Drawing deep and even breaths, Vadriel was at home among the
elements. He was also ravenously hungry. Racing back to the house for
lunch, he was watched with feral intensity by Angelo della Fiore, who sat
munching on a cheddar cheese sandwich from his bundle.
***
***
TOGETHER! the cable read, sending Placidia into the noisome, wild
night, down to Newport harbor, and racing on her father’s boat to catch and
destroy them both. Possessed by her fury, she rode at the freezing prow rigid
with expectations, ignoring all entreaties to take cover from skies seemingly
in collusion with her wrath.
In an unseeable dawn, Angelo was jolted by the wretched sight of her
when she stiffly climbed into the rented wagon at Sterling Harbor pier
where he sat as instructed by Penelope’s cable. In the spouting rain, Angelo
stared at Placidia’s badly windburned face and salt-stiffened curls; loosened
from their pins, they hugged her head and shoulders like tightly coiled
snakes. She wore a black wool cape over the soaked purple gown. When the
cart moved into the rutted, muddy road, the two lurched back together. “Are
you absolutely certain?” she asked hoarsely.
“Yes.”
Shivering violently, Placidia nodded and, staring straight ahead into
the beating wet, envisioned Vadriel and Armand laughing and touching
hands, reflected in each other’s eyes. She vacillated between wanting to
prostrate herself at Vadriel’s feet to beg forgiveness for being a woman,
unsuitable to join in their masculine pursuits, and wanting to stab him
through his treacherous soul for dishonoring her in a manner beyond her
recourse. A powerful premonitory terror that Vadriel had discarded her as
irrelevant and inconsequential fractured her concentration, draining her
brain of blood. While the saturated clouds whipped her with drenching rain
- He is my life! - she beseeched herself to help herself. What am I to do?
How can I live without him? Overwhelmed by her heart-struck injuries,
Placidia sobbed then cried out in anguish. “No! I will not allow it. Not allow
it! Hurry, Angelo! Hurry!”
Arriving at the side of the house, Placidia ran up the back stairs
without removing her dripping cloak. Pounding on his locked door, she
screamed for them to admit her if they knew what was good for them.
Wrapped in a quilt, Vadriel opened the door. Pushing him aside, she stalked
to the center of the unlit chamber. "Where is he hiding?" she growled, faint
with relief to find Vadriel alone, and suddenly desperate to fling herself into
his naked arms to be comforted and forgiven and reassured that it all was a
mad delusion.
Lightning flashed, illuminating the small room. The full sight of her
made him cry out in alarm. “Placide! You’re sopping wet!” He stepped
toward her. She backed away, putting her arms up to keep him at a distance.
“Answer me! Where’s Army?”
“He isn’t here.”
“Don’t lie to me, Vadriel. I’ve read your disgusting letter. When did he
leave?”
“He was never here with me. Take off your wet clothes before you
catch pneumonia. Oh, God, Placide! Look at you! Please!” He offered his
comforter, which she snatched away and tossed into a corner.
“Tell me the truth!”
“The truth? You know the truth!” He lit a small lamp on the mantle
and knelt to light a fire. She stood ensnared in shadowy chiaroscuro, yet he
could clearly discern her body’s shivering. In her hysterical, frenzied sorrow,
she appeared to be vibrating with grief. He fumbled with paper and kindling
in the grate. Tears of shame and self-loathing swelled his throat shut.
“I know he was here with you last night.”
“I have not seen him, Placide.”
“You lie! Still you need to lie to me?”
“I have no cause to lie.” The fire lit, he stood to face her. Tears slid
down his face. “He may have been here, Placide, but he was not with me. I
have not been unfaithful to you with Armand de Guise. Whoever told you
he was in my bed is mistaken.” The sight of him naked, weeping, subjugated
her anger. When he approached, however, she flinched. “Placide!” he
sobbed, now more affected by her visible fear of him than by her physical
condition. “Placide! I love you!” He reached for her.
She stepped aside. Catching his reflection in a standing mirror, he
moved to get his robe. She blocked his way. “Do you deny you are in love
with him?”
“No I can’t deny it.” He wiped his wet face on his arm.
“Say it. I want you to say it.”
“Give me my robe, please?”
“No, Not until you say it. Not until you tell me that you are in love
with him.”
“You know I’m in love with him.”
“You’re really in love with him?”
“Yes. I’m really in love with him.”
Lightning flashed. She raised her hands to cover her smarting eyes.
Her head ached and her throat burned and her chest scalded. When she
uncovered her face, it took a moment for her to focus her attention. Vadriel,
unclothed in front of her filled her with a momentary tenderness. Then
hatred sparked her tongue: “How could you do this to me?” Ready to
collapse, she gripped the bedpost for support. “If it’s true that you’ve not
been unfaithful to me with him. I’ve only your cowardice to thank for your
constancy.”
A rage of light silenced them.
Amazement in his face turned into anger. “Cowardice?” he asked, no
longer conscious of his nudity. His back straightened; he stood firmly on
both feet. “You think me a coward?”
“What other excuse kept you from his bed? Your love for me? Your
kind does’'t know the meaning of the word.”
“My kind?” he asked softly, raising his brows and crossing his arms in
front of his chest. He wanted her to continue speaking. He wanted her to
free them both. Unable to be a loving witness to her suffering, he stared into
the fire. I’ll not weep again or we’ll stumble over my tears. He prayed for
courage. “My kind?” he repeated to the flames, as if they held the answer.
“Yes! Your unnatural kind! You hurt people! You’re pathetic and
despicable. Depraved, you’re all depraved. You go against nature. You cut
yourself off from nature!”
“Placide!” he commanded, turning to face her and raising his arms
palms upward. “My dear Placide,” he tenderly whispered, “I am nature!"
Soundlessly, she took his meaning. Turning away, she staggered a few
paces toward the door. He rushed to catch her; she swung out with her fist
and ordered fiercely: “Don’t you touch me!” Lurching for the knob, she
yanked the door open and disappeared into the hallway.
“Placide!” he yelled, grabbing for his robe.
Running down the central stairs, she could hardly catch her wheezing
breath. Inner voices bade her halt, argued for her to drop and sleep; anger at
her thickening enervation propelled her downward, across the foyer, out the
front door, and into an unsettling calm. A stillness blanketed the earth, as if a
bell jar had replaced the rotundity of the world. Yet the sea nodded and
hissed volcanically, slamming the shore with the intensity of detonations.
The very air was a bright green in this, the eye of the storm She might have
taken a leap into the stratosphere or through the looking glass, so total was
the dreamlike strangeness of her surroundings.
The force of the natural calm completely disoriented her. Must go
home. Must find Vadriel. He’ll be worrying about me. Wondering where I
went. And the way that I went. The gravel drive directed her feet until
dizziness made her seek cover in the woods that ended at a dune where she
tumbled to the sandy earth. Crawling over a grassy mound, she rolled into a
swale, entangling her flailing limbs is dusty miller, bearberry, and low beach
plum. Ahead she saw a second dune. Behind, she heard her shouted name
merging with the thunder of the waves - Why is Vadriel angry with me?
Must hide! - Awkwardly, she struggled to stand. Throwing off her heavy,
crippling cape, she careened to her left. Hugging the dune, she dragged her
feet through the sand. In a deep valley between two dunes, she fled her
lonely way calling out for Vadriel and praying to be forgiven for a sin she
could not remember committing.
***
By the time Vadriel reached the open front door, Placidia was
enmeshed in the wood. Going to rouse the servants, he found Angelo asleep
near the warm kitchen stove. Waking him, Vadriel sent the boy to get the
other men while he returned to his room to dress. All the servants, wrapped
in rain gear, gathered in the parlor.
“Wherever she can go, I can go!” a young parlormaid insisted, balking
when Vadriel hesitated to enlist the women.
“I grew up around here, Mr. Vail. I know this area better than you!”
the scullery maid asserted, winning a cuff on the ear from Mrs. Sobel who
apologized for their boldness and offered their great affection for Mrs. Vail as
their excuse.
Vadriel assented, sending everyone in different directions while he
mounted a horse to check the pitch-dark road. Must be careful! Don’t
trample her down!
The wind rose and the rain resumed in cataracts during the three
hours Vadriel searched the area on horseback. He rode into Sterling Harbor
on the off-chance that she might have flagged a passing wagon; finding the
village deserted, he galloped home frantic and prepared for the worst. I’ve
killed her! My lying has murdered her. Killed her like Ebby!
In the driveway, a drenched and shivering Angelo paced, awaiting his
arrival. “Safe!” he cried the moment Vadriel appeared. “She’s safe! We found
her!”
Dismounting, Vadriel raced into the house and started up the stairs.
Angelo followed. “No, sir! She ain’t here. She’s at the Gaylords. I found her
out cold on the beach near their house. I couldn’t lift her. I went to them for
help. They took her in and sent for the doctor. She’s safe,” he repeated.
“She’s safe now, sir.”
Vadriel descended, shadowed by Angelo, and was halfway out the
door before the young man’s physical condition impressed itself upon him.
Taking Angelo’s arm. Vadriel led him into the upon library where Mrs.
Sobel had built a large fire and set down on the hearth a tureen of chicken
broth with a pile of towels and blankets to warm.
“I’ll ride with you, sir.”
“No. I’ll go alone. You’ve done enough.”
“But it is my fault!”
“If anyone is to blame, my dear Angelo, it’s I. You’re wet through to
the skin. Get out of those wretched clothes before you sicken too. And drink
this,” he commanded, handing him some broth. “Don’t argue with me!” The
distressed young man gulped down the soup. “Good lad!”
Catching a towel Vadriel tossed to him, Angelo glanced over his
shoulder at the open door and hesitated. Vadriel quickly closed the door,
hastened to Angelo’s side, and led him to the hearth. “Let’s be quick about it
before you start sneezing!”
Spreading a towel on a chair, he tugged off the thin cloth jacket and
gently pressed the young man to sit while he unlaced the flooded boots and
peeled off the cold, wet socks. “Your feet are frozen! Stand up!” he ordered
gently. Shivering violently, Angelo obeyed and gratefully allowed Vadriel to
help him divest himself of the stuck, clinging garments, which were flung on
the hearth.
Vadriel could not conceal his own distress. “Had you come from a bath
you could not be wetter! Angelo, you’ll catch your bloody death! What a
mess I’ve made for everyone! Turn around and take off those shorts.”
Wrapping the naked youth in a large white towel, Vadriel briskly and
thoroughly rubbed him dry.
“My fault! All my fault!” Angelo sobbed, spewing out the story of the
telegram, practically oblivious to the attentions being paid him. By the time
the towel was traded for a blanket, he was weeping bitterly.
On impulse, Vadriel spun him around and pulled him into his arms.
Angelo resisted briefly before collapsing against him. Vadriel hugged him
very close. “You are to blame for none of this! You have done nothing
wrong!”
“I wanted you safe. No one been good to me like you people. I seen
him come in here. He hurt me. He hurt me bad, sir”
“Yes, I know I know he hurt you. I’m sorry he hurt you, Angelo.” He
sighed. And so is he sorry. So is he.
“I’m sorry he hurt me too.” Brushing away tears with the blanket, he
unself-consciously nestled close to Vadriel, feeling relieved of a great
burden. “But he ain’t hurt you, sir. Youse safe, sir!”
“No. He didn’t hurt me, Angelo. He would never burt me. And he
would never hurt you again. He’s not the man he was, Angelo. He’s changed.
I must go to your mistress now. Are you OK? Are you hungry?”
“Naw, sir. Jis tired. I ain’t slept good in a long time. I been ascared at
night. I think I sleep now.”
Vadriel led him to the couch. “You can sleep here.” Angelo stretched
out and was covered tightly with another blanket. Vadriel placed his hand
on the young man’s hair and gently ran his fingers through the thick, damp
curls. “Wait a minute, Angelo.” He crossed to the hearth, picked up a small,
warm towel, and returned to place it under Angelo’s head. “Now, let me tuck
you in before I leave.”
“I’m too old, sir!”
“No one is ever too old!” Vadriel leaned over and kissed him the
forehead. “Now, pleasant dreams.”
Angelo blushed and laughed happily. He was asleep before Vadriel
exited the room.
***
***
Inside the warm room, Vadriel knelt beside the bed, weeping and
holding Placidia’s dry, hot hand, and waiting for her to open her eyes. She
kept them closed as she opened her chapped lips to emit a gruff, hoarse
whisper. “You drop tears over a death you caused. I’ve loved you with my
entire soul and you’ve betrayed me for someone whose honor is based on
rape.”
The phrases scraped out of her, resonating in the room with the dark
sounds of her anguish. The words had been rehearsed in her mind during
lucid moments. Being weak, she was pleased by the amount of breath
mustered to make him suffer. Want him to suffer. He was my sun. By giving
his warmth and light to another, he’s annihilated me. She shivered and
moaned in acute pain. “When I’m dead - ”
“You aren’t going to die, Placide,” he lied.
“That smart aleck with the monkey was right about Army. He was
right about a lot of things. He said I was going to die, you remember?”
“He never did. You did.”
“I’m very ill. I’m seeing double. It’s very peculiar.”
“It’s desperately serious, Placide. But the doctor says you’ll be fine.”
“He did?” She opened her swollen eyes. “He’s a fool. I’ll be dead soon.
Death releases grief that has no other release, Vadriel.”
“Tears and time work just as well, Placide.”
“I want you to promise me you’ll never see him again.”
“No! I’ve done nothing with him that I couldn’t have done with you
by my side, Placide. I see nothing wrong in loving him.”
“Promise me, Vadriel. It’s my dying wish.”
“What an inane dying wish, Placide! Why should you care what I do
after you’re dead?”
She turned her head to see his face. Her rheumy eyes focused and she
struggled to sit up. Her lips pursed in annoyance. Terrified of exhausting and
extinguishing her, he stood to press her down; more fearful lest she slip back
into a stupor and fade away, he decided to allow her to collapse under her
own weakness, which didn’t take long. “You’re right,” she sighed, convulsed
with self-pity. “My death will set you free to do what you wish with him.”
She slumped back down and closed her eyes.
“Divorce is much easier on everyone, my dear.”
“Me and Nancy Astor Cunard? A lady never washes her dirty linen in
public. Mother wouldn’t ever speak to me again! I’d be an outcast in our
circle at Newport.”
“Is that so terrible?”
“I’m dying, Vadriel. It’s rude to make jokes,” she muttered, grinning.
“I’m sorry, Placide.” Vadriel whispered.
A grimace of sorrow replaced her smile.
“Don’t turn your face to the wall!”
She clucked at the apposite reference; she too was betrayed by those
she trusted. Sobs gagged her.
“Placide!” he exclaimed, kneeling and kissing her hands.
“How could you do this to me, Vadriel? We were so happy together!
Weren’t we? I thought we were.”
“I don’t know how I came to love him.” he confessed, weeping anew.
“It had nothing to do with you, Placide. I love you as I always have.”
“You love him more!”
“I love him...differently. I love you in my conscious, rational life. I
love him in some other, some unconscious feeling life. Does that make any
sense?”
“If I don’t divorce you, will you run away with him?”
“I will never leave you, Placide. Nor will I ever betray you again.”
“Yes,” she rasped, closing her eyes. He felt her withdrawing from him.
“I want to sleep,” she growled, removing her hands from his grasp.
“Let me send Margaret to you.”
“No! I want to be left alone. Put out the light. I want to die in peace.
I’m feeling airborne. I’m weirdly ill...feel so dizzy.” She sobbed like a
frightened child and seemed to sink into the bed as if she were melting.
“You are sick, Placide, dangerously sick! Your lungs are inflamed.” He
felt frantic to keep her alert. “Delicate and sensible women like you aren’t
meant to run around in the wind and the rain!”
“Oh!” she croaked, opening her eyes with a snap and pursing her dry
lips again. “Talk about stupid, Vadriel!” She struggled to sit up. He took her
in his arms. She didn’t resist his embrace.
“I love you, Placide. I can’t imagine my life without you! Please
forgive me!”
“What for? For being stupid?”
“Yes!” he exclaimed loudly. “Exactly!”
“Don’t shout, Vadriel. I’m dying,” she insisted. “What a way to go!”
He laughed, hugging her expansively. “I’ve been bloody stupid,
Placide. I’ve been talking of abstracts like courage and betrayal instead of
talking about your needs and mine.”
“Never mind talking to me.”
“I will never not love you.”
“I know. I believe you, Vadriel. Forgive me for calling you coward.”
“I am a coward.”
“No! It took courage to stick to your guns with an arrow through your
heart.” Still in his grasp, Placidia leaned back on the pillows. “We were a
perfect team. You eclipsed your head with your heart, and I eclipsed my
heart with my head. That seer sure knows his onions. Doctor Freud could
learn some card tricks from him!” She sighed. “I’m thirsty.” He gave her
water; she could not hold the glass without his help. Wringing out a cloth,
he gently patted her forehead. “That feels wonderful. Thank you. Dying is
rough. Make sure you write about this part of it.”
He fixed and placed a cold compress. Her face was blotchy and puffy.
Taking up a vial of tablets, he squinted to read the instructions. “One every
hour. Did you take your medicine, Placide.”
“No.”
“You’re dreadfully windburned. You went out without your parasol,
my darling.”
“Huh!” she grunted, taking a pill. “I was deranged. I went out without
my mind. I thought you no longer loved me. I thought you had replaced me
with him entirely. How could I do battle with him? I’m not equipped! If the
victor were a woman. I could have reread Racine. But Army? I didn’t
understand the need.”
“I don’t understand the need.” He sat on the bed beside her.
“How much do you love him? Tell me again, please.”
“I think I love him as much as you love me.”
“Ah!” she exclaimed. “That much!” She leaned toward him and asked
to be taken in his arms again. Kissing his tear-soaked cheeks, she rubbed her
flushed forehead against his chin. “We have so much to talk about,” she
rasped.
“Not if you’re dead, my darling. I don’t truck with spiritualists. They
don’t have monkeys.”
“I’ll change my plans. If it’s not too late. Leave me now. Send Margaret
quickly. And please wire for Georgina.”
“Shall I also wire for Eleanor?”
“She’s already here! Remember your man Wilde in his Earnest? It’s my
tragedy as a woman: I’ve become my mother.”
“You’ll be a New Woman again in no time.”
“Oh, Vadriel! I’m afraid!”
“You aren’t going to die, Placide.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of, my darling.”
They kissed. He left the room. She closed her eyes and was sucked into
a dizzy nausea. Her lungs felt singed, her throat ablaze. Must not die! I will
succeed. I’ll find a way to make a life. Without him. My own unconscious
feeling life will follow in due time. It’s I who am the coward. A feeling of
tenderness relaxed her. It expanded into compassion. Silently, she wept for
them both. “It’s no little thing to make mine eyes to sweat compassion.” If he
can find the courage to admit this love for Army, I’ll find the courage. The
courage to herald the way to that new world. To be the one. Oh, Lord, pray
for us all...
Margaret entered carrying the poultice. She was followed directly by
the diminutive Nanny Welles, an ancient of days, who had small a cup of
herbal concoction in which a moldy biscuit floated. “This will cure what ails
you, dote.” she declared in a voice that brooked no nonsense.
Placidia meekly, gratefully complied, suddenly flooded with well-
being: The chaos within resolved into the sense of security inculcated by her
own Nanny Dooley in the nursery.
The herbal brew, heavy on goldenseal, had a purple cast. Placidia was
pierced by grief. Fetch me that flower! While she drank, the scald in her
throat eased and no longer competed with the one in her heart. “Thank you,
Nanny,” she whispered, having her pillows fluffed and her covers
straightened, and edging toward healthful sleep. The flower maidens call it
love-in-idleness. The wild pansy, once white, milk-white. Now purple with
love’s wound. Like me. The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid will make him
madly dote upon the next live creature that he sees. Which will be me. Of
course. Alive and well. Very beautiful. Alive and well -
***
In the study below, the four men sat in silence. With the dawn came
Nanny Welles to tell them the fever had broken. “It was touch and go at the
Hour of the Wolf, but we brought her back and she’s doin’ fine lads. Give us
a hug, Donnie. I was mighty worried ‘til Mr. Vail came and worked the
miracle with God’s love. All the medicine in the world means nothin’ if the
heart is dead to living.”
The men walked out into the early morning. The day was brilliantly
clear and fragrant and still as the oceans on the moon. Birds sang raucously,
as if to express their relief over Death’s departing empty-handed. Four swans
drifted over to greet Robert and Donough at the edge of the pond. The two
paused to talk to them.
Vadriel consumed to walk, drawing in deep breaths. Armand joined
him. “This was a hideous night,” he said softly. Vadriel nodded. They walked
on in silence.
“When are you leaving. Armand?”
“I don’t know. Do you want me to leave?”
“Yes. I do.”
“You and Placidia - ”
“No. We’re going to separate.”
“But - ”
“I love you, Armand. I know I love you. I also know we ran never be
like them.” He gestured toward Robert and Donough Gaylord. “We have too
much unhappiness between us now. And there are other reasons. I’ve made
up my mind. Good-bye, Armand.”
He offered his hand. The older man took it. They looked at each other
in silence. Vadriel’s deep-set, extraordinary eyes filled with emotion, hiding
nothing. His perfect manners and formality could not extinguish the glow of
love. He smiled into Armand’s grave, kind, startled eyes. Awkwardly,
Vadriel pulled his hand free, turned, and rushed back toward the house.
Robert left Donough’s side to take Vadriel to the room adjoining
Placidia’s sickled. Behind the closed door. Vadriel paced the floor, repeating
his decision, and concluding with “I’m too tired to explain myself now.”
“You needn’t explain or justify yourself to me, Vay,” Robert insisted.
“If you wish to talk about it, I’m here to listen. I want you to be happy like
me.”
“That’s impossible, Robbie. I’m not like you.”
“So? Love can survive anyone!”
“Oh, yeah? Ya wanna bet?”
“Uh-huh. I’m living proof of it.” He gave Vadriel a hug. “Sleep tight,
hon. You’ll need all your strength,” he said affectionately and sighed.
Heartbreak dead ahead!
“Thank you, Robbie,” Vadriel whispered, hugging his friend tightly in
return. I’m too stupid to be living. Too stupid not to foul it up again.
Robert rejoined Donough and a distraught Armand de Guise, who
stood gaping into a border of lavender impatiens and purple-blue mist. The
three friends discussed the alarming turn of events. On their way to swim
before going to sleep for a few hours, they acknowledged that Armand still
had time to catch his boat for Europe. He agreed: “Maybe when I come
back...”
“There are other boats,” Robert suggested. “There’s only one of him.
He loves you. He admits he loves you. What more do you need to know
besides he’s frightened? And who with any brains isn’t? Love is a violent
emotion. It overpowers and makes us helpless. It splits us wide open, and our
unraveling guts look like vipers and beasties and things that go bump in the
night. No wonder the ancients went straight to the guts to find truth. Love!
Suddenly we think we can fly when we know we can barely crawl.
“Army, can you blame him for wanting to hide in the guilts and the
failures of the past? Can you blame yourself for wanting to hide inside some
vague noises about the future? Anything to avoid the present dilemma! If it
isn’t awesome and frightening in its disruption, it’s not love. Love brings us
unannounced to the surprised center of ourselves. Once there, we play hide-
and-seek with emotions that break all the rules. Blindfolded love is always
the victor! He pins our donkey, and we are all ‘translated’! Bottoms up! If at
some point we don’t hesitate and doubt our capacities to survive, we end up
‘star-crossed’ and doornail-dead twits!”
“Robbie has some very strong opinions about love.” Donough
remarked, laughing and pulling his friend close.
“All this talk about courage,” Robert muttered. “We need some action
around here. Love is an exigency, a welcoming of life at any cost! Vadriel’s
awake behind his ring of fire, Army. The gods are toppled. He’s a prime
catch for a fearless hero. You want me to sing the whole wondrous thing for
you?”
De Guise laughed loudly. Distracted, he walked into a small, slender
tree, very like a large, graceful bush. Its blossoms were bright yellow at their
centers with open, waxy-white petals. He thought of fried eggs and realized
he was famished. “What is this thing?”
“A franklinia tree,” Donough answered, grateful for the new
distraction. “Ben Franklin sent a cutting to my great-grandfather after
finding the last one on earth in the bayou. Technically, it’s extinct. They
recognized it from fossils. The leaves turn red soon, and it will flower into
the heart of winter. It’s quite a sight in the snow.”
De Guise touched the tree respectfully, then grew playful. “Be patient
with me, Robbie. For all intents and purposes, I was dead ton. I’ve come a
long way from the tiny flicker of feeling that was my first stage of cognition.
I know I have a ways to go. Through that ring of fire?” He shook a limb of
the tree. “Howdy, pardner. I hope I’ll also be flowering into the heart of
winter. Questing men brought us both back among the living.”
On the beach, they stripped and ran shouting into the calm sea as the
sun rose over the horizon, filling de Guise with a lyrical light. It’s like
bathing in liquid dawn. The sensuous colors overhead, more floral than
aerial, recalled the petals of his peonies: pink and peach and yellow-gold. A
celestial bouquet!
Dazzled and warmed, he drifted with the current, rocked in the
comforting rhythm of the tides. His dreams revived within him. I’ll be
gentle. I’ll be kind. I’ve come from nothingness. Out of the cave of night.
Into this wondrous morning. Now every human heart’s a sacral grove to me.
How little time is needed to change all things in nature! I’ll be firm. Candid.
Soon I’ll have my day in the sun with him. The morning tide seemed a pure,
sentient spirit, and each cloud contained an active soul. To loving eyes, life
burst forth in everything.
A mauve light shimmered in the water around Armand de Guise. He
thought of the rainbow-purple irises of his beloved. The message of
passionate love he had clearly read in them at their parting simmered in his
blood. Felt lifted into heaven! His muscles flexed in response. Diving down,
clasped by the warm, gentle current, he exulted in being alive as he relived
the sensation of being embraced by Vadriel’s love-granting, life-giving eyes.
“Twin darknesses of flowing depth / But however deep they are, they carry
me / Another way than that of death.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Last night I dreamed the birds were burning. The sky was full of
them! I woke in terror. The papers don’t agree, Georgi. How many people
did you say are dead?”
Georgina’s eyes welled with tears “One hundred forty-six, Placide.
One hundred twenty-five are girls, mostly 16 to 23 years of age. The
majority of them could hardly speak English. Almost all were the main
support of their families. Scores are still lying in the City Morgue waiting to
be identified, burned beyond recognition. Many jumped ablaze to the
pavement on Greene Street.”
“Helpless as sparrows torched in the nest!”
“The fire was confined to the eighth, ninth, and 10th floors. As we
know, the exits were locked. The papers are all mute on that small point!
The fire started near the very end of the day. Five more minutes and they
would have been out of there.”
Georgina trembled with fury. “District Attorney Whitman has started
an investigation into the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. Who’s he kidding?
None of the owners will be prosecuted. Who gives a tinker’s damn about
young immigrant girls? The Manufacturers’ Association called a meeting on
Wall Street to take measures against Fire Chief Croker’s plans to enforce
better methods of protection for employees. They are not men but
salamanders, surely, able to dwell in fire.”
“I hope so, considering they’ll be spending an eternity consigned to
the flames!”
Placidia and Georgina walked barefoot by the cyan sea wearing white
nightgowns and long woolen sweaters. It was unseasonably warm for early
April; the crocuses and daffodils were long above ground. Placidia removed
her sweater.
Three months pregnant, unmarried Georgina ate an apple to the core,
stopped to bury it in the sand, then took her friend’s hand and continued
their discussion of cosmetics. It intrigued her that women wore no eye
makeup when most oppressed, yet painted them liberally during periods of
greatest equality. “Think of Cleopatra.” She conjectured why the eyes told
the tale, following the trail of seeing as metaphor. “Think of our mothers’
generation. An Edwardian lady never fiddles with her eyes no matter how
much white enamel she trowels on her face.” Both women agreed it was
fascinating. They walked for a time in silence.
“Our work is cut out for us, Placide!” Georgina took a deep breath.
“Isn’t it simply gorgeous here! So different from that other heinous place. No
wonder Vadriel loves it. The air is ambrosia. How long will he be gone?”
“He didn’t say. It’s been over three months already. And he nursed me
for three months before leaving. He only went because I insisted. I don’t
expect him back for a few more weeks. I’ll be long gone. Dramatically, she
quoted: “ ‘I must be gone and live or stay and die.’ ”
“He did a fine job of nursing. You look splendidly healthy, fully
restored. It was frightening how ill you were, Placide. We were desperate for
you! Do you feel as well as you look? Are you truly ready to start work?”
“Oh, yes! I see things much more clearly now. I’m amazed to discover
the strength of my desire to live, even without him. I never really knew
him.”
“He never really knew him.”
“True!” she laughed. “And I never really knew me, either! I loved what
I imagined him to be. As well as his kindness and sweetness and gentleness
-”
“And his beauty!”
“That too, yes. Certainly that. And he approved of me. But I think he
loved me as a person, not as a woman. Does that make sense, Georgi?”
“Most men love us as women but not as persons! Very few men are
capable of both. We transform ourselves to fit their ideal of us and become
strangers to ourselves and to them. It’s our fault too. The mind is restless,
impetuous, self-willed, hard to train. To master the mind seems as difficult as
to master the mighty winds. Humans will do anything to avoid taking
responsibility for their lives.”
“Do you despise him?”
“Despise him? Placide, why should I despise him? He is what he is and
we are what we are. In our new world there must be a place for everyone.
We must despise no one. It distracts us from our goal! I embrace everyone
not represented by this white male supremacist government of ours. Besides,
my dear Placide, I like Vadriel. I like them both. More to the point, do you
despise him?”
“No. I find it easier to separate from him knowing he’s not going to
another woman. That’s the truth of it. I wish I could say his destination
didn’t matter, but it does. It does!”
“He’s willing to stay.”
“Swell! I don’t want him to stay! I want him to be with me!”
Georgina laughed. “There’s a fearful amount of work to be done if my
daughter is going to inherit a decent world.”
“Your daughter? What if the baby is a boy?”
“His need will be equally as great.”
“I am happy to be joining you, Georgi.”
“Liar!” She stopped to face her friend. “We must be honest with each
other if the ‘great experiment’ called America is to work at last. ‘Eager’ is, I
think, a more appropriate word for now. In time, you will be happy. Most of
the women live in squalid rooms on a pittance - more vulnerable sparrows!
You’re secure, safe from what so many endure. Gratitude will help you
mightily, Placide.”
“I am very grateful to be alive, but my bank notes may be all I can
contribute for a time, at least until I get myself settled. I’ve decided to share a
house with friends in Cambridge. I’m frightened and confused. I won’t be
much good to anybody for a while.”
“Bulltwaddle! I don’t mean to deprecate what you’ve been through,
but we’re all frightened and we’re all wounded, Placide. While we alter the
world, we work to change our own attitudes. The only sign of life is change,
yet it doesn’t come easy. You’ve done nothing wrong.”
“I haven’t? It’s not a good idea, Georgi, to turn your will and your life
over to the care of someone else, someone not your God, that is.”
“You’ve done what’s natural for a woman to do. Verena’s father is a
mesmerist with good reason. You are not Verena Tarrant. You are more a
Jane Eyre. ‘You will be my angel,’ Mr. Rochester declares.”
“ ‘I will be myself,’ Jane replies.”
“That is still a revolutionary work! God love her!”
“I feel as if my heart has just had its stays loosened! I want to learn
how to believe that I too am nature - not a thing apart, born to do service
But, I’m as riddled with fears as a crystal bowl has facets!”
“We’re all afraid. Women are taught from birth that fear is at virtue.
Damn! It makes me so mad!” She screamed, stamping her foot. “Fear
paralyzes the soul! Eats it alive! Fear is the enemy! Down with fear!”
Placidia agreed, screaming twice as loud. They joined hands and ran
back to the house to dress for a meeting with the Gaylords. They had
submitted a proposal to the Foundation for money to aid the families of the
Triangle fire as well as to finance a concerted effort to combat the
Manufacturers’ Association with lobbying, newspaper ads, and magazine
articles detailing the truth of the fire.
“Action, Placide! We must take action! Change is about action,
communal action! Let’s go commune!”
As a board member of the Gaylord Foundation, Armand de Guise had
written Placidia requesting permission from her to attend the meeting. She
had answered in the affirmative, thanking him for his consideration and
assuring him again that he had been forgiven for disclosing what he had
overheard in the garden. “It will be good to see you, for it’s doubtful you’ll
be spending much time in Boston.”
Later that night, when the two women sat in the pavilion discussing
their triumph. Georgina paused to comment. “Did you ever see three more
ravishing men at one table? What a loss to our sex!”
“But what a gain for theirs!”
“True,” Georgina said with a laugh. “Placide, you never cease to amaze
me. I must confess - ”
“I know. I feel the same way. It will take time. We must not draw
lines, remember! We must keep our eyes on all the sparrows!” Placidia
paused, then added, “After we have our own rights amendment, we must
work for theirs. It’s only fair. They’ll need it in writing too.”
“The Gaylord Foundation was very generous. You were brilliant. You
moved me to tears again with your dream!”
“It wasn’t exactly a tough sell, Georgi. The Foundation is a staunch
supporter of the Garment Workers’ Union already. And the fire has them as
riled as we! I must say, your detailed budget was quite impressive. I had no
idea newspaper advertising is so expensive!”
“It helps if the grant givers an on your side, Placide. But we still had to
convince them we’re serious business. You did a wonderful job! It’s clear you
have a vision. I’d say it’s all in the cards for you.”
“Oh, yeah?” Placidia said as a sadness quaked through her. She recalled
Armand de Guise’s red hair shimmering in the sunlight on the Gaylords’
patio and an old Egyptian man with a monkey who brought unfriendly
tidings in what seemed a millennium ago. “All in the cards, indeed. It’s time
I dealt myself a fresh hand...”
***
At dawn, Placidia Van Leer Vail awoke renewed. Seated at her writing
table, she began a letter to Vadriel, forcing herself not to dwell on her fears.
At the end of five pages she knew her hopes far outnumbered her worries;
she knew she loved him with her entire self; and she knew she had begun
the long, slow process of saying good-bye.
Noting tears swelling, she avowed: Excessive affliction isn’t
constructive, my dear! Dangerously self-indulgent. Rising from the desk, she
strode to her balcony. It was another warm morning. On the dunes below,
an imaginary Vadriel paced. Spring charged the air. The darkly boned trees
were tinged with hazy greens, pale as mist. Turning from the bright new day
into the shadows of the room, she began to accept sorrow’s invitation. “Oh!”
she exclaimed. “Sadness is one thing, but I don’t want to brood anymore. As
Robbie says: It’s trashy to brood!”
Slipping from her nightgown, she snatched a white cotton frock from
her closet. Hair unbound, barefoot, she tiptoed through the sleeping house
and out to the dew-soaked rear lawn. Racing down the sloping green, she
climbed a sandy knoll, gaining the lay of the land. The beneficent sky was
the palest extant blue, dabbed with the boldest white filigree clouds. The sea
was a wrinkled velvety gray and a sequined violet-green. Low-tide breakers
were 20 yards out, creating a silvered acre of light-bedazzled surf that
Placidia sped to enter. A lady never displays bare flesh!
This woman is far from bare! Georgina’s voice teased, quoting one of
their favorite poets: “ ‘Hope is the thing with feathers.’ ”
At the water’s edge, Placidia found a small garden snake perilously
close to drowning. Taking a stick, she attempted to flick it up to the dunes.
The snake stood on its end and sprang toward her, darting its tiny tongue
and causing her to leap away with a low shout. She persevered; the serpent
was saved. Must tell Georgi! The snake in Eden brought the curse of Choice.
Eve chose to eat that apple! Woman was the first creature to exercise free
will. And look what it brought down on our heads! A reign of terror for
breaking the rules. My poor Vadriel ...
Discarding her dress, Placidia waded in. The water was bracing. She
trembled with rare immutable joys. Better to have pain than paralysis! The
swirling, pressing water quickly reached her knees. She paused. Dare I? Very
cold! She dared to take another step. The water dropped again to her ankles
as she climbed a submerged sandbar. The warm air stroked her wet legs.
Balanced, she stood on a narrow peak of sand. Note well: Women’s strength
is like a sandbar. Infinitely more than meets the eye. The same eye, she
reckoned, that would see her from the shore as standing on the water.
Laughing aloud, she walked to and fro. I wonder if this is how He did it?
Praying softly, she added aloud, “I’ve reached the breakers safely. I’ll not
drown! I will not perish! Not me. My name’s Placidia Van Leer Vail. And I
won’t let You forget it!” she swore, raising her fist to Heaven. Turning, she
jumped into the sea and happily splashed to the waiting shore.
***
Instead of returning to his office, the abbot entered the church to offer
more prayers of gratitude. He believed that God had presented him with a
second chance to minister to the troubled soul of Vadriel Vail. This time, I’ll
be on the lookout for signs of my own fallibility. This time I won’t relegate
my responsibility to another less qualified than I.
The experience of Anselm’s spiritual collapse had precipitated a crisis
for the abbot, who journeyed to the Mother House in Melleray, France, to
seek guidance from the Abbot General of the Order. Dom Daniel had come
to accept that he had acted with faith and hope to the exclusion of charity.
Without charity there can be no love. By placing Anselm above reproach, a
mere victim of Vadriel’s pride, the abbot had negated both their humanities.
Dom Daniel realized that Vadriel was punished once with exile to atone for
the sins of others. In good conscience, could he now be excommunicated for
loving men?
“It is not a question of Love,” Dom Daniel had explained patiently to
Vadriel when the former postulant arrived at the abbey. “It’s a question of
coition. There is no median point. The Church is adamant. But the flesh is
pliable, Vadriel. It’s the quivering stuff of tragedy. We must want what God
wants for us. Armand de Guise is an improper object of desire. You wish to
enjoy him, to rest in him with satisfaction for its own sake. This world must
be used to reach God, not enjoyed. You have wandered far from God, my
son.”
“You were correct about Augustine, Dom Daniel.” Thanks to Vadriel’s
descriptive accounts of his life in unrestrained letters to the abbot, the two
men had resumed their discourse with a tender intimacy. Both were
delighted to be in each other’s company again. “Augustine is short on
compassion. He doesn’t understand the primacy of human emotions in
discovering our truth. Like Plato and Plotinus, he separates the head from
the heart. They are quite wrong, you know.”
“The head can control the heart.”
“Quite, quite wrong. Head and heart are inextricably enmeshed in the
workings of the mind. My stream of thought, my consciousness, contains the
fullness of feeling. ‘I not only feel cold; I feel if, but, by, and.’ True, however,
the flesh is pliable. And the heart can be deadened by the mind.”
“This, I presume, is William James?”
“This is the 20th century, Dom Daniel! We are learning more each
day. We don’t know yet the relationship of a mind to its own brain, but we
know that cognition is only one species of mental activity.”
“Psychology was originally a branch of Christian theology, Vadriel, for
the study of the human soul. The word goes back to the 15th century. Now
it’s being applied willy-nilly to more ‘scientific’ forms of analysis. There is no
residue of man’s animal past, no unconscious mind, my son. Your James and
his mentor, Freud, have taken the Church’s concept of human duality and
extended it downward!”
Vadriel laughed as the abbot gestured to his own groin. “Dom Daniel,
you accept an invisible rational soul, yet balk at an invisible irrational one?
Everything in nature has its opposite! Why not a dualism of the mind as well
as of the flesh’s body and soul? Our self extended outward, into space?
“And truth? What is truth these days, Vadriel?”
“Truth is right thinking, which is thinking and feeling that correspond
to reality. Your reality is predicated on immortality. Mine is not. Mine is
living with my creature anxieties and accepting death as final. Mine is facing
what I am in nature. Truth is a man-made language, a conceptual shorthand,
in which we each write our reports on the world.”
“Why have you come here?”
“I had no place else to go.”
“Is that the only reason?”
There was a short pause. “No,” he said very softly. “I love you.”
The statement shifted the ground between them.
Life is hard, Vail, then you die. Let’s go be bowled along by the beauty
and variety of the world.
“I love you too, my son. Your salvation is extremely important to me.”
“Yes...yes, of course,” Vadriel said ardently.
During this initial interview, Vadriel had expanded upon the
information given in his letters to Dom Daniel. He was physically debilitated
by not eating and sleeping properly. He had nursed Placidia to the detriment
of himself; his mind and body had been supported by the fever of suspense.
Once cooled, he careened toward collapse. The priest had insisted upon
clarifying one point before sending Vadriel to bed in the guesthouse.
“God did not bring you and Gabriel together, Vadriel, to instruct you
to situate Armand de Guise in the realm of the spiritual only. God has given
us a free will to choose what is good for our souls. What is good for our souls
is God's will, dominus voluntas. When we pray ‘God’s will not our own’ we
pray for the wisdom to be true to our selves as God created us, which is to
say, we pray to choose as God would choose for us. Salvation comes to those
who work for it, my son. The choices we make determine the person we
become.”
“If I were true to myself, Dom Daniel - ”
“Sometimes we must make great sacrifices to enter the Kingdom of
Heaven.”
“Your Kingdom of Heaven.”
“Yes. I do believe there are others, Vadriel. God has sent you an
encounter with evil, revealed by an act of treason, as you call Mr. de Guise’s
breaking into your home and heart. Your task is to discover your
relationship to the act of treason, accept the sinner, and forgive. Suffering
purifies the soul. You must find a way to happiness, for God desires His
children to be happy in their suffering. But it must be a happiness that will
not destroy your spiritual worth in your own eyes and in the eyes of God.”
Happy in our suffering, Vail?
“What is evil, Father Abbot?”
“Evil is despair of self, despair of man, and despair of God.”
“Then I am in the grip of evil. May I remain on retreat?”
“Yes.” Dom Daniel blessed his guest. After completing the sign of the
cross, he said: “You must sleep now, Vadriel. When you’re rested, we’ll talk
and pray together. Go in peace.”
The abbot wrote in his diary of their meeting: “Dear Lord, his
excellent beauty continues to alarm my senses. Its solemnity seizes the
imagination and demands the cynosure of neighboring eyes. Ought I not be
used to the sight of him by now? Alas, the senses have no memory bank! My
heart continues to foment at the perception of his agony. His presence
confirms that he’s the changed man of his letters, beyond the fully bloomed
masculinity and the modified accent. The child’s awe over being alive has
matured into the adult’s quandary over dying. Those sweet-hued eyes still
promise love. He makes my playing the devil’s advocate a sinful pleasure.”
Vadriel slept for 24 hours. He dreamed: I’m a student at Oxford again.
Walking in a heavy mist. The cobblestones turn to sand. The mist has the
texture and the smell of the warm sea at Sterling Harbor. Visibility is barely
five feet in any direction. I’m on a tiny island of clarity that moves with me.
Moves like a spotlight. A man emerges in front of me. Swinging a malacca
cane, he comes toward me bringing his own island of clarity. Our islands
merge in what has become a dense, thick, swirling London fog. Fog
yellowish like clotted cream. We stand in silence facing eye to eye. He says:
“Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.” I explore hills and dales.
Red forests. Green lakes. I’m on a hot, sweet-smelling planet I recognize as
the body of Armand de Guise.
Awake, Vadriel discovered the scents of late winter in the knob
country quite intoxicating. The atmosphere in the guesthouse was
tranquility and happiness. Showering, he allowed the cold water to flow over
him until his flesh tingled and felt firm as the stones beneath his feet. As he
crossed the grounds to the kitchen, many monks greeted him, expressing in
sign language their pleasure at the glowing sight of him. Several of those
who were postulants with him now wore the tonsure of solemn perpetual
vows.
Anselm presented Vadriel with a white rose. They looked at one
another shyly, smiled, embraced, and to Vadriel’s admission of love, Anselm
responded by touching his own chest and lips and nodding energetically.
They parted reluctantly, with Vadriel promising to find him after supper.
Brother Gregory gave him hot milk, goat’s cheese, and freshly baked bread.
Vadriel joined the men rooting up cedar stumps and brambles from a
field to be planted with oats. In the choir, some monks sang while his hoe
struck and clanged on stones; the sounds of work and prayer blended in
harmony. He wished Armand were at his side to hear them. For two hours,
Vadriel forgot his problems and stayed in conscious contact with God,
resolved to continue the simple occupations that are suitably offered as
prayer Dona nobis pacem.
In the guesthouse dining room, Vadriel ate bean soup and fruit pie
while a brother read the life of Venerable Maria Celeste Cristarosa, an 18th-
century mystic. The First Antiphon for Vespers sounded full of joy to him;
he met with Dom Daniel in high spirits. They picked up the pieces of their
previous conversation.
“Do you love the man, Vadriel?”
“Yes. I love him. Totally. He is my most special image, Father
Reverend. But, as Augustine would say, I’ve contaminated the spring of
friendship with the dirt of lust, and darkened its brightness with the
blackness of desire. Then, Augustine also said, ‘Give me chastity and
constancy but not just now.’ ” Both men smiled. “And I love him for the sake
of love. It’s done. Can you believe that Augustine said woman alone is not
the image of God whereas man alone is? Placidia would be demented. Now
what?”
“Pray for the strength to resist. This love in any disguise cannot be
acted upon, my son.”
“I have resisted. I will continue to resist with your help. But I’m
wrapped in it...swathed in it.”
“You must uproot this undisciplined love of the flesh and sow the
disciplined love of the spirit to reap life eternal. Your love for Armand de
Guise is transitory. A better good is intended.”
“Yes, Dom Daniel! And a better good has been achieved! My love for
him has opened a wellspring. It’s the one from which all others rise. I’m
amazed to discover it’s not the mark of the beast. I know it. It’s a goodness. If
I seal it, if I bind and chain my haecceitas, I know I’ll do terrible damage to
myself. Doing determines being.”
“The wellspring will find other outlets. I can attest to love’s prismatic
effects. You must not lose sight of the fact that Mother Church teaches your
love for Armand de Guise is against the laws of creation.” He avoided the
concept of nature. Too much in the animal kingdom was not exemplary of
sexual propriety. Aquinas said man should follow the example of the lower
animals in matters of morality. How can one emulate incest? It makes no
sense; therefore, it’s a matter of Faith. Even the greatest saints are sometimes
in error. Gives us hope for ourselves to sometimes be correct.
“My need for Armand must be an addendum to the original laws of
creation, Dom Daniel. An addendum made by the human heart after a
moment’s reflection on its own behavior.” Vadriel paused, adding with a
smile, “I’m a stranger in a strange land. I’ve discovered that accepting truth is
the beginning of a loving surrender. Reality is the main event.”
“Faith is the main event, my doubting Thomas.”
“Faith exists to forgive and to unite. Morality divides and punishes. I
have Faith: Faith that God knew what He was doing when He gave me
Armand de Guise. As Meister Eckhart teaches: If it were not God’s will, it
could not be.”
“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, my son.”
“A little love is even more dangerous, Reverend Father. Love has
brought me face to face with death. Death and resurrection ‘in this our
life.’ ”
Vail! You left out being hot for certainties, Vail. “Oh what a dusty
answer gets the soul / When hot for certainties in this our life.” I’ll take the
dusty answers, buddy. They’re tough to swallow, but those hot certainties
more than compensate!
Listening to the taunting inner voice of his first love, Wriothesley-
Jones, Vadriel smiled. “The dusty answer’s what I’m trying to write about,
Dom Daniel,” he continued speaking. “The dread of death. That, and about
the ways we protect ourselves from it. By forgetting and ignoring the sun,
the stars, the heavens, the very fact of our being suspended in limitless space.
This phenomenon’s called repression these days. I want to build an ego
strong enough to die. Most men walk behind their noses shutting everything
out; most live by lying to themselves about themselves and about their
world. I want to lie as little as is humanly possible. I understand that lying is
an integral part of our survival mechanism. However, I’ve come to my
senses, literally, thanks to Gobby. He was one of God’s greatest gifts to me!
Oh, those pleasures lightly called physical!”
“Do you believe in God?” Dom Daniel asked, startled by the raw
hedonism.
“Yes, of course! I don’t believe in a singular presence as you do. I do
believe in a power greater than myself, a power I reside in when I’m serene.
A loving presence. A mystery. I believe I’m set free in this world like all
God’s creatures, and bad things happen to me the same way flies get caught
in spiders’ webs. I’ve a rich spiritual life, though I believe my death puts a
full stop to Vadriel Vail. Then I’m a mote in the eye of God! And I believe in
the eternal godhead in me and in everyone else!”
“I believe in him too, Vadriel Vail. We must pray for this earthly love
of yours to be lifted by God. Or the ‘singular presence’ I call God will not
free you from your entanglement in Satan’s web. You say you no longer
believe in Him. In every man there are two people; One who believes in God
and one who does not. We must explore what fears are keeping you bound
to His laws.”
Vadriel was given permission by Dom Daniel to do research for his
book in the vast library, and he decided to stay indefinitely. The months
swept by, and he was content until the day he received the three letters.
There had been other letters; never had his correspondents collided.
Placidia’s letter brought great comfort. It was obvious that she had
regained her footing. She wrote at length of her meeting with the Gaylord
Foundation. She asked Vadriel to write specifically about his plans; she
wished to meet with him in Boston to discuss their separation. “It’s time for
us to move forward,” she concluded. “We’re having a very early spring up
here. The trees are budding prodigiously and I too am entering a new season,
my darling, a reawakening of my own. You’re certainly in the right place.
Georgi has told me that courage is fear that has said its prayers! Pray hard for
us both! Self-acceptance is the heart of the matter and to have the
willingness of Tommy Jefferson to follow the truth wherever it may lead.
How goes the book? Are you staying there much longer?
From the start. Placidia’s illness had taken precedence over
everything. Its severity made all personal conflicts inconsequential as
everyone focused on getting her well. Since the Gaylords’ house was
centrally heated, she became a permanent guest and soon a beloved member
of the family. The snows arrived when she was able to sit up and take
nourishment. By that time, Armand de Guise had made his amends to her.
The apology was tearfully accepted during an intensely emotional scene.
Immediately afterward, Armand had gone to Russia.
Vadriel lifted the letter from him next. There had been many from
him over the months of his travels. They had been informal, chatty, full of
affection, and very circumspect. Vadriel’s emotions had such direct
commerce with his nerves that his fingers seemed to be caressing firm flesh
as he handled the envelope with its New York City postmark. A frisson of
lust made his mouth dusty dry. The singing of the monks calmed him
without lessening his physical longing. The way a dropped wind can ease the
storm. Ease it without stopping the rain. He lay the unopened letter aside to
read the third one, from Robert Gaylord:
When Vadriel showed the poem to Dom Daniel, the old man sighed.
“The Church responded differently then to homoerotic love. Saint Elred
idealized love between men and even accepted carnality because he believed
the joy of lovers brought them closer to God. We moderns have come to
reassess certain human frailties, my son. Even our beloved summa comes a
cropper with this one. If Aquinas couldn’t avoid contradictions when
discussing unnatural love, how can I presume to understand it? The Church’s
teaching must be accented as an act of Faith.”
Vadriel read from Aquinas. “ ‘Natural inclinations occur in things
because of God, who moves all things.... Whatever is the end of anything
natural cannot be bad in itself, since everything which exists naturally is
ordained by divine providence to fill some purpose.’ ”
“What purpose, my son?”
Vadriel gave out with his favorite news from Saint John’s first epistle.
“ ‘Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love
does not know God; for God is love.’ ” He raised his right hand, palm
outward, for emphasis. “As I’ve discovered Ælred was on the mark. Besides,
if God made me in His image and likeness, I am perfect as I am.”
“God made you perfect. The Evil One has you in His thrall. He too is a
fallen angel, Vadriel.”
“Deus caritas est.”
“Liberum est cor quod non tenetur aliquo amore nisi Dei.”
“Domine, non sum dignus...”
Dom Daniel raised his head. He appeared to be tranquilly staring at
the ceiling as though listening for distant voices or, when his nostrils flared,
sniffing for perfumed incense. Vadriel expected another quote from Saint
Bonaventure or Saint John of the Cross or Saint Benedict. Instead, there was
silence. Suddenly, the priest grimaced, twitched violently, rolled his eyes,
and was still. Death was instantaneous. A trickle of blood, bright as raspberry
sauce, rolled from his left nostril into his sagging mouth. Unable to move,
Vadriel gaped, cold with shock.
Momento mori, Vail. Remember death! “We are such stuff / As dreams
are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.” Dom Daniel’s died
of a massive quandary, you know, Vail For God’s sake, he’s holding his
tongue and letting us love! Go call the others. Let’s take our stuff home and
build our dreams. And let’s leave him to Heaven.
Vadriel Vail left Gethsemane the following morning after Matins and
Lauds of the Dead. He had sat up through the night watching and weeping
by the body in the chapel. It wasn’t your approval I sought, Dom Daniel. It
was my own reflected in your loving eyes.
The poignancy of the chanting men affected him profoundly. Their
unisonant music brought into three dimensions the simple trajectory of
earthly life. His grief was freighted with a sense of liberation. This new loss,
the last link with his life before Armand de Guise, graced Vadriel with
absolute trust in his own mortality. Embracing it, his panic settled as a
question arose: Is love adequate compensation for having to die?
Remember, Thomas: “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes
all things, endures all things.... So, faith, hope, love, abide, these three, but
the greatest of these is love.”
The church music assured Vadriel that freedom lay only in the arms of
Christ and the way that He went.
I prefer Fidelio, Vail. “Mein Mann an meiner Brust!” The prison gates
are open! Let’s skedaddle!
***
***
Two gifts arrived from Armand de Guise that evening. One was a
rambunctious, silvery-blond borzoi puppy from St. Petersburg with a note
on his collar: “I call him Myshkin because he is as endearing and translucent
in his emotions as Dostoyevsky’s prince. I’ll rest easier knowing you are safe
from red-headed prowlers and furry gnomes in your garden.” The dog was a
great success. He and Vadriel were inseparable from the moment they laid
eyes on each other. Their yelps of pleasure brought the entire staff into the
pavilion to make his acquaintance.
“What do Russian dogs eat?” Mrs. Sobel fretted. “We’ve not caviar on
hand.”
“I think caviar would make him ill, Mrs. Sobel. He eats what dogs eat,
I’m sure.”
“Does he speak English?” Angelo wanted to know. He was in
permanent residence, working in the kitchen. When Placidia went to
Boston, he had requested a place with Vadriel, who happily obliged.
“Well, he understands certain words. Watch this. Sit, Myshkin!” The
dog obediently sat, immediately leaving off sniffing and licking all the new
people in the room. The staff applauded. Myshkin barked and stood to wag
his long tail. “He’s very musical,” Vadriel said, laughing. “Angelo, you must
teach him Italian so he can accompany me in Verdi duets!”
“Sedi!” Angelo commanded, and the dog again sat.
“He’s absolutely brilliant!” Vadriel declared in a vice charged with the
delight everyone loved in him. He was smitten entirely. “A linguist! Just like
his namesake! Aren’t dogs outta sight? Isn’t he the most beautiful dog in the
world?”
The second gift, was a Victorian circular crystal that nestled in the
palm. This tuzzy-muzzy was decorated with an etched nosegay concealing
an ardent message expressed in the language of flowers.
The daffodils, Vail, declare: I yearn for your affection. They
paradoxically symbolize both unrequited love and affection returned, us well
as being an emblem of eternal devotion. Very like a dog. The holly stands for
masculinity and domestic happiness. The hepatica is a statement of
confidence. Sweet and to the point, Vail, if a trifle hold for Temperance.
“Alas that love, whose view is muffled still / Should without eyes see
pathways to his will.” Interesting that Jupiter never carried a woman off to
heaven, like he did Ganymede, I wonder if Armand has read Tatius’s
Clitophon and Leucippe?
The spring blossomed 10-fold in quick time. Vadriel and Myshkin
lived out of doors, both at their home and at the Gaylord estate where other
dogs resided. Cael showed impatience with the puppy’s antic methods of
greeting: a few well-placed clouts soon had the dog quite sedate in the cat’s
presence. You’re here on my sufferance, Cael’s body language said clearly: So
watch it, buster! Again, the compliant borzoi was declared a genius by his
owner. “Robbie, isn’t he just the best!?”
“ ‘Peace, you ungracious clamors! Peace, rude sounds!’ Sit, Myshkin!”
Robert commanded. “And stop barking! Thank God Armand de Guise is such
a gent! His gift would be housebroken! Where are the kids? I’m too old for
this!”
One drizzly afternoon, when the sea was intolerably jumpy and its
surf too rough to play with, Robert took Vadriel on the art tour of the big
house at Gaywyck. They set out from the smaller house on the estate, the
house inhabited by Robert and Donough, and they used the underground
passage that connected it to the larger manse. “This tunnel was built when
Gaywyck was a stop on the underground railroad before the Civil War,
Vadriel. Donough’s father built it along with our house in case his mother
wanted to come north from Atlanta.”
“Did she come north?”
“No. She was killed by marauding Yankees after Atlanta fell. Donough
and I moved into the smaller house after his tutor murdered the music
teacher and set the house on fire. I needed to get away. Oh, yes. I was nearly
killed too. I moved next door, so to speak. It’s not particularly far
geographically. But emotionally, it’s a galaxy away. More will be revealed.
Are you OK, Vay? You’re all bug-eyed.”
“Did I hear you correctly, Robbie?”
Robert laughed. “Yes, you did. hon. I’ll give you the blow-by-blow
while we look at the family pictures.”
To Vadriel’s expressed delight – “I expected family portraits!” - there
were dozens of works by his favorite European and American masters.
While they sauntered through the vast main house shadowed by Myshkin
and Cael, Robert cheerfully told the convoluted story of his life. He finished
it in the gamboge music room, where they sat on straight-back Chippendale
chairs under the inscrutable smile of a Botticelli Madonna.
“What a fantastic tale!” Vadriel exclaimed, eyes wide.
“Isn’t it!” Robert enthused, pleased by the power of his narrative. “I
must say, when you’re living through it you lose the flavor and the thrust of
the drama. You know, I agree with your pal Dostoyevsky when he says that
what most people call fantastic and an exception sometimes constitutes the
very essence of reality.”
“You should write a book of memoirs, Robbie. The story’s got
everything: murder, incest, secrets, love. It’s outta sight!”
“Uh-huh. But unless I change me to a young girl, who but our
brethren would believe it? It’s my story, Vadriel. I figure, in my old age, the
world may be ready for it.”
“You think so?”
“Who knows? We humans have made the earth an unpleasant place to
visit. I’d go someplace else if I could, someplace with a true spirit of
democracy, someplace where my gay man’s life, liberty, and pursuit of
happiness are guaranteed by law. We need to watch the time. We’re having
tea with my mother and my aunt, Donough’s mother, Mary Rose. She’s still
quite mad. That much hasn’t changed. She’ll love Myshkin and will probably
start talking to him in her version of fluent Russian. Let me show you
Matisse and Cézanne. Did you see any in Paris?”
“Nope. The people we visited jeered at them.”
“Oy, Vay!” This verbal game was a favorite joke with Robert, it always
made him chuckle and Vadriel roll his eyes. “People, en generale, are so
fucking disappointing. They see only what they already know. They try and
understand things in light of their own lives. Follow me, lad.”
Robert and Vadriel paused to consider a Manet: “The one family
portrait. It’s been described as Donough’s staunch expression! It was painted
in Paris when Donnie was living there. Isn’t he flawless! They viewed a
Whistler, a Turner, a Rembrandt, a della Francesca, a Christus, and a five-
foot wooden carving of Saint Sebastian by Tilman Riemenschneider. “Not
even the wondrous he can cure this plague of love! Those are the arrows of
Hamlet’s outrageous fortune, I swear. Ever notice how Sebastian is always
depicted as a stunner?”
After studying the several brilliantly colored Matisses, they turned
their attention to Cézanne. “Look at this picture with an open mind, Vadriel,
and it speaks for itself loud and clear. Come here.” They moved closer. “You
see the planes and blocks of color?” Vadriel nodded. “Now come back here.
Voilà!”
“A landscape!”
“See! Under a microscope, our smooth skin’s made up of trillions of
cells just as paintings have countless brushstrokes. These Impressionists paint
light. They’re far removed from the photographic reporting we’ve always
thought of as painting. It makes you think about the varieties indigenous to
an art form. Do you like it?”
“Yes. It’s splendid, Robbie.” He studied the canvas with the movement
of comprehension igniting his eyes. “I’m struck quite dumb.”
“You want one?”
“Do I want one?”
“Yes! We have tons of them. Donough adores Cézanne. I constantly
move them around or I begin not to see them.”
“I think it’s absolutely marvelous! May I really have one, Robbie? I
have the perfect spot for it in my study.”
“Absolutely! This is one more thing we can share. Armand also loves
them. He has several in his town house. They hang with one of the portraits
of you he bought in Rome. Don’t look so surprised. Your face might freeze in
that expression. Then where would you be?”
They went to look at photographs of Yosemite by Carleton Watkins
and of gothic cathedrals by Frederick Evans in a room that included pictures
by Alfred Stieglitz, Clarence White, Gertrude Kasebier, and Edward
Steichen; Vadriel was familiar with all the artists, excluding Watkins, from
the magazine Camera Work. The two friends talked of their mutual
fascination with the photographs. Then Robert said, “Let’s go have tea, Vay.
Brian made his famous spice cake.”
“Will Donough be joining us?”
“Sure! Would you rather he stay over in our house?”
Vadriel laughed. He had been observing his two hosts together,
scrutinizing the way they behaved with each other. “You’re together,
Robbie. And yet you’re separate,” he commented the next afternoon while
he and Robert rode horses along the beach.
“Uh-huh.”
“Is that because you’re two men?”
“No. It’s because we’re two people. I tried hard to become him but it
didn’t work. Two people are two despite what you read in novels and what
you hear in popular songs. It’s sad but true, Vay. We can become parasites,
but that’s not conducive to true happiness. The refuge becomes an ophidian
nightmare. Do you want an apple?”
“No, thanks. We’ve just finished lunch, Robbie.”
“It’s all this talk of love.”
“I haven’t mentioned love.”
“You talk of nothing else.”
“I fear you’re right.”
“You fear too much. You’re just like me, Vay. And Armand is very like
Donough. You can tell by the way they walk that they’re carrying the
goods.”
Vadriel guffawed and set his horse to cantering. He rode ahead to
conceal his blushes. Robert caught up with him. “I mean they know who
they are and what they want...and what they have to offer. Armand’s
arriving in three days, Vadriel.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Robert shouted, startling a molting gull into the air. “Sorry,
sweetie,” he muttered to the bird, tossing it his bitten apple, which Myshkin
caught and ate. Robert directed a cold stare at his companion. “I know I’m a
bit dim, Vadriel Vail, but - ”
“I’m not ready to see him - yet.”
“OK. Fine! He’s coming to discuss the Foundation’s commitment to the
Child Labor Commission. You know he’s a member of our board. As you are.
We’re forming - ”
“OK.”
“OK? OK what?”
“OK. I’ll be there with Myshkin. You’re right. Now is as good a time as
any. Whenever I see him, he’ll be carrying the goods.”
“They’ve got your number on ‘em.”
“This week they do.”
Robert narrowed his large green eyes and lamented: “ ‘For beauty, wit
/ High birth, vigor of bone, desert in service / Love, friendship, charity, are
subjects all / To envious and calumniating time.’ ”
“I could not say it better than Ulysses, Robbie.”
“He also says, my lad: ‘Perseverance...keeps honor bright.’ ”
“ ‘Of my privacy I have strong reasons.’ ”
“ ‘ ‘Gainst your privacy / The reasons are more potent and heroical /
‘Tis known, Achilles, that you are in love...’ ”
“Potent and heroical, my foot!”
“Yes, your foot, Achilles. That’s as good a place as any to start. I’m sure
he’ll be thrilled to see Myshkin.”
***
***
Myshkin and Roger, the houseboy, led Armand de Guise through the
house to the pavilion, where Vadriel sat pretending to read a seed catalog.
He had filled the room with flowers and had dressed in the cheerful colors of
early summer - a yellow shirt, white slacks, emerald green socks - to enliven
what he imagined would be a sedate visit. Myshkin’s delirious cavorting
with Armand - “He remembers me!” - changed the opening moments to
light-hearted gaiety. “Who could possibly forget you, Armand?”
When Armand finally managed to approach Vadriel, each man was
stunned by the weight and force of the other’s presence. Each was aware of
happiness taking hold of his heart, a happiness as heady as the dog’s
slobbering glee.
The sunny pavilion was dappled with undulating shadows and the
light was thick as clouded blond water. The younger man rose. Both men
stood looking at each other. Vadriel’s face was blank. Armand smiled. What
would he do if I hugged him tight? He observed matter-of-factly: “You look
well, Vadriel.”
“I am well. You look quite well yourself, Armand. Travel obviously
agrees with you.” Vadriel dropped his eyes. I love you. I do.
Armand extended a hand. Vadriel accepted it. They stood, hand in
hand, facing one another, smiling into each other’s eyes. Armand tightened
his grip. Vadriel’s blood heated, lightly stirring the surface calm, while
Myshkin whimpered between them, eager to be included in their
lovemaking. Young brought tea. They separated. They sat at a table in a dim
corner across from one another. When Young left, they smiled, adjusting to
the weight of answered prayers.
“Do you want tea, Armand?”
“No.”
“Neither do I. But Myshkin does. He loves his tea. And I love him!
Thank you again. I’ve always wanted a dog. Would you like coffee? Do you
want anything?”
“I want everything. I want what you want.”
“How do you know what I want?”
“You want what I want. I can see it in your eves. I can feel it in your
hand. You are the harbor of my love. I long to rest with you.”
“Vadriel’s breathing stopped. It was as if he were being hugged tight.
Flustered, he raised his brows and blinked twice. The heightened, poetic
approach he had not expected.
He’s so smart, Vail! “Who shall debar Cupid the service of Poesie, shall
weaken him of his best weapons.”
Stimulated and eager for more, Vadriel held fast. Before Armand had a
chance to fly higher, Young reappeared: “Mr. Vail, sir, Mr. Carver has
arrived to discuss the renovations in the library. He said he knows he’s early
but he was at Gaywyck and came over directly from there. He’s having a
visit with Mrs. Sobel.”
“Carver’s early, Young. Tell him Mr. de Guise has only just arrived.”
“I did, sir. He says everything is copacetic.”
“Everything is what?”
“Fine, sir. Everything is fine.”
When Young departed, de Guise sat back in the cane chair covered in
shadow. Made another appointment to protect himself. There was a long,
nervous silence during which Vadriel fixed a saucer of warm tea for Myshkin
and a cup for himself.
“I’m sorry for the interruption, Armand. My books have arrived from
Boston and I need more shelf space. This is now my permanent home. I want
to find a place for myself in Manhattan. The Vail corporate headquarters is
in Boston and so is Placide, but I fancy New York! I know Angelo will have a
swell time there.”
“I just met Angelo, Vadriel.”
“You did? Where?”
“Near the herb garden. I said what I needed to say to him.”
To Armand’s dismay, tears choked him. Embarrassed, he stood to
leave.
“I’ll come see you tomorrow, Army. We’ll talk.”
Armand exited through the pavilion door. Myshkin swept out with
him, flapping with delight. The dog raced around him in circles, tugging at
his trouser cuffs and leaping to kiss his hands. When Armand scooped him
up into his arms and hugged him, Myshkin seemed to deflate and go limp in
his surrender. Armand sat on the grass cradling the young dog in his arms.
Watching from the window, Vadriel was stabbed by jealousy. I’ve
been so afraid of life. Don’t want to grow old and die without growing up.
Not without being cradled and loved by him. His heart opened to both
creatures now rolling around on the lawn laughing and barking.
Armand rose and ran down to the sea. Myshkin followed to the edge
of the lawn where he paused, glanced up to Vadriel in the window, shook
his entire body, and raced back up to the house. Armand turned and waved
to Vadriel who returned the salute. Standing in front of the sparkling sea,
the sun-draped man looked like a silvered icon.
He’s a vision, Vail, transported from the plains of Troy! Only he’s
clothed, alas, Achilles!
Vadriel met Myshkin at the door, lifted him into a tight embrace, and
kissed him on the cold nose. “I know he left a kiss here for me! Now let’s go
find Angelo and get the scoop on what transpired near the herb garden, pal.”
***
The next afternoon, Vadriel and Myshkin went to Tea with the
Gaylords whose guests, Goodbody and Mortimer, had departed by train for
New York early that morning. After greeting everyone in the parlor,
Myshkin sat and keeled over backward into a deep snooze. The puppy’s
graceless collapse caused a general hilarity that eradicated all tension.
While the four men sat discussing Vadriel’s plans to electrify his house
and add central heating, suddenly, mid sentence, a piece of inlay from a side
table, buckled by the damp, was ejected across the room to the thrill of a
dozing Cael. He sprang off Robert’s lap in pursuit, upsetting a cup of scalding
tea. Robert excused himself to change his trousers. Donough excused himself
to find someone to clean the mess. Cael found the piece of escaped wood,
sniffed it, batted it around with the agility of a hockey player dancing a puck
down a pitch, swatted it under a chair, and ran in search of something not in
the room. A second piece of inlay hit the ceiling. Myshkin snored loudly
Vadriel and Armand grinned at each other. “Years ago,” Armand said
quietly, “I was at a Newport dinner party where a huge sideboard
continually fired inlay throughout the endless meal. Like Myshkin, we were
all too polite to notice.” Vadriel laughed. Armand nearly tipped his cup.
“You look magnificent, Vadriel. So bright a harbor.”
“As do you! It must be your healthy habits - especially your walking
around my garden at all hours of the night. It amuses Myshkin
tremendously. You give him something to look forward to after sunset
beside the masked raccoons.”
Armand laughed and blushed, relieved not to be chastised for his
impropriety. “I must see you every day. I must know you are well. Then I
carry you home with me wrapped in my hope, Vadriel. I know you love
me.” Drained of courage, he paled and fell silent. Another piece of inlay flew
across the room, crashed into the mirror over the mantle, and clattered back
across the hardwood floor.
“Yeah,” Vadriel said, distracted. “It’s asinine for me to deny it.” He
glanced at Armand, glanced at the offending table, and withdrew into
himself by staring into the middle distance the way Placidia often did. “It’s
getting hot!” he muttered, loosening his tie. “I love the snow. Myshkin will
feel quite at home in the snow. I want to visit St. Petersburg someday. The
Russian Empire is so vast...”
De Guise watched him silently. In his imagination, he removed the
offending tie entirely and began undoing the shirt buttons. He sent his
sweating hand for a sausage roll. Desire was rising and confusion descending.
Mid reach, he spoke in a flash of emotion as more inlay popped. “Vadriel! I
have never loved as I love you! Before you entered my life, I didn’t know
these feelings lived in anyone outside a novel or opera or play. I am joyful
when I’m beside you. My eye catches your eye, my ear catches your voice,
my tongue catches the melody of your speech. I am ensnared by you, and my
sorrows are as momentary as sound, swift as shadow, and short as a bad
dream.”
“Have you no lasting regrets?”
“Yes, of course. I regret overhearing you tell Placide you love me. No!
That’s not what I regret. I regret having blabbed to Blake I became a court
jester drunk on happiness. I wanted to tell you, to plead for forgiveness, but I
was paralyzed by remorse and horrified by the grief I had caused you two. I
was also afraid. And I regret not having seized you our first summer together
in Newport.”
“I wish…” Vadriel stopped, smiling sadly.
Armand was lacerated by tenderness. Everything within him was
thrown askew. “Vadriel?”
“I wish I had never hurt Placide as I did. Her pain and suffering will
reproach me always, Armand. I behaved shamefully to her and to you.
“Vadriel, you did what you knew how to do. You've expiated the
wrong, continue to expiate it.”
“I was always surprised by my feelings for you. I kept expecting them
to diminish, or to make some sense. I still get blindingly confused. I loathe
the disorder of passion. What’s the point? Life’s too short to scramble the
works. I want serenity in my life. It’s too late for you and me.”
“Vadriel, what are you talking about? Too late? I’m talking about our
lives, not catching a train.”
“We have different goals in life, Armand. Love is only an excuse for
pleasure to you. Pleasure’s written in smoke.”
“You haven’t experienced pleasure like my pleasure in loving you or
you wouldn’t speak disparagingly of it. I’m afraid to ask what you suddenly
find objectionable in God-given pleasure.” he said angrily. “Haven’t we
suffered enough? Or is this Christian life of yours irredeemably tied to
suffering and death? What’s wrong with pleasure? Life is written in smoke!”
“Nothing. But there are other things, Armand. I don’t see the point of
pleasure these days.”
People will keep dying, Vail, from time to time.
And what if Armand’s next?
And what if you go up in smoke without receiving communion from
him? You must seize him this day, Vail!
“Of course there are other things, Vadriel! Don’t you think I take
pleasure in the honor, duty, and responsibility I owe to the people I love?”
“No, Armand, I don’t. You speak only of yourself.”
“My first duty is to myself.”
“I don’t accept that, Armand.”
“Your God commanded me to love my neighbor as myself. That
assumes self-love. Not self-interest, or self-regard, Vadriel. I love you as I
love myself. I want to cherish you as I cherish myself.”
“Unless you can teach me to forget how love can become a smoldering
pile of ash, you mustn’t try to teach me any extraordinary pleasure! And how
long does your pleasure last? What’s the point? We’ll all be dead and buried
soon.” He had finally said it. Armand sat erect and raised his hands in
confusion. A piece of inlay fired; neither noticed its demise. “The
stubbornness of fortune’s kept our love alive, Armand. It’s evolved into so
sweet a style.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“I don’t trust myself to withstand the pain of losing you to death. Or to
someone else, which is the same thing. I loved Placide. Look what happened
to that love! Look what happened to her when she realized I loved someone
else. It would have been less traumatic if I’d left her for another woman, but
not a jot less painful in the end. I know her heart. It’s just like mine. Today
the goods are mine. Tomorrow - ”
“The goods?”
Vadriel frowned. Another square of marquetry bounced onto the table
between them. “Bloody hell! Nothing is copacetic around here, Army!
Everything’s coming apart! I have to go home.” He rose hastily. “One of us is
going to lose an eye!”
“You’re already blinded, Vadriel. You said so yourself. This is the 20th
century, not the 17th! We define honor and duty and responsibility for
ourselves these days. I love you! Does this mean nothing?” Standing, he
crossed to Vadriel, took him in his arms, and kissed him on the mouth.
Vadriel stiffened and pulled away. “Romantic love is a miserable lie,
Armand.”
“Damn you, Vadrel! You never loved Placidia as you love me! You
were unformed then, a child. Now you’re a man, ready to love as a man with
all the attendant risks. ‘One man in his time plays many parts.’ Don’t do this
to us!”
“Us? There is no us!” His eyes welled with tears. “I told you” Nothing
can come of nothing. I love you. I know I can’t love anyone more than I love
you. But I’m standing on the other side of a vast chasm and I don’t know
how to cross over to you. I’m not a phoenix or a piece of inlay, Armand. I
can’t just fly across...”
“I understand.”
“No. You love me. That’s not the same thing. To know something and
to know about it are different. We’ll be platonic friends or nothing,
Armand.”
Greatly agitated, Vadriel called for Myshkin, waking him from a sound
sleep. The dog sprang to his feet and plopped over again before he could
reclaim his balance. Struggling to stand, he groggily stumbled out of the
room after Vadriel. Both were followed by the last two pieces of expendable
inlay.
Armand de Guise smiled. You’re both wide asleep! Both babes in the
woods! He watched the two lope down the lawn to the strand gleaming in
the soft light. A thing is not nothing if it is all there is. I do understand your
chasm, my beloved. Love is a phoenix. Am I not proof of it? Love’s courage is
the way, my sweet innocent. Love lends us wings. If we dare to use them.
What the hell are the goods?
***
Vadriel spent the next few hours walking and sitting on the beach,
toying with a willow whistle, and playing naked with Myshkin in the water.
He felt strange, unbalanced. Something’s shifted inside me. Something
immense has occurred between us. How long before I clue myself into
what’s happened?
Adieu, good Monsieur Melancholy. Bonjour, Signor Love! And while
we’re in a receptive mood, Vail, I’ll sing you a favorite song. Ecoute, cherie:
“Then talk not of inconstancy / False hearts, and broken vows / If I, by
miracle can be / This live-long minute true to thee / ‘Tis all that heaven
allows.” Dream not of forever, Vail!
Vadriel was strangely calm and secure in his serenity while the earth
vibrated around him in the burning light at the start of the long, slow sunset.
The sea changed from opalescent pallor to fiery contender for his attention.
Along the beach, moving in his direction, came Robert and Cael, the cat
riding atop a wicker picnic basket his friend carried. Yanking on a white
cotton robe, Vadriel walked toward them.
“I’ve brought you something to eat, Vay,” Robert called, lifting the
basket. “Sorry about that confusion at Tea.”
More confusion ensued as Myshkin unwisely ignored the sphinxlike
creature in repose on the fragrant basket’s lid and tried to burgle the
container with a flying leap. His forced retreat took him yelping into the
dunes for cover. Retrieved and comforted by everyone but Cael, the puppy
quickly regained his sense of propriety and waited for tidbits.
“You know, Vay, this adorable canine galoot is just like Armand de
Guise before he was love-shaked and you so berhymed by him! Talk about
unrestrained abandon morning, noon, and night! I mean, there’s a time and a
place for everything, even unrestrained abandon!” Robert handed the dog
and cat some cold chicken. “What a weird Times obit I nearly concocted this
afternoon: ‘Foundation Board Shot to Death by Table.’ Many scalawags
would rejoice, you know. Are you OK, Vay?”
“Certainly! Why?”
“Well, Donough is locked in his study with Armand, who is sighing
like a furnace, and I wonder what fresh hell you two have cooked up for our
growth and edification.”
“He didn’t seem overly bothered when I left.”
“Uh-huh. I just love strong men with stiff lips.”
“Upper lips, Robbie! Stiff upper lips,” Vadriel corrected, twisting with
raucous laughter and jabbing his friend in the arm. “You know bloody well
-”
“Upper? Lower? As long as something is stiff!” They both laughed like
naughty schoolboys. “Look, Vay, I don’t care what happened between you
two yet again. And you don’t have to tell me, even though I’m your best
friend - your only friend within walking distance. And I wouldn’t want to
miss any stage of this drama. I’m deeply absorbed in it. But that’s not why I
came to see you.”
“It was more of the same, Robbie. And something completely
different. I can’t explain exactly.”
“Oh! You’ve tilted the ambivalence! How divine!” He sang a quick
edited verse from The Beggar’s Opera: “ ‘No power on earth can e’er divide /
the knot that sacred Love hath tied! Though my heart were as frozen as Ice /
At his flame ‘twould have melted away / When he kissed me so closely he
pressed / ‘Twas so sweet, that I must have complied!’ ” A large, heavy manila
envelope was tugged from the basket. “Happy birthday!”
“It’s not until tomorrow, Robbie. I’m coming for dinner, aren’t I?”
“I certainly hope so! Brian is making the cake as we speak. Since we
wish to celebrate Armand’s birthday as well. I hope you two are willing to be
in the same room?” Vadriel nodded. “Good! This is a preview of coming
attractions. Open it. I call it Portrait of a Changed Man.” It was a photograph
of Armand de Guise in an art nouveau silver frame.
“Oh, it’s splendid, Robbie! Thank you! You’re quite gifted, friend! This
is worthy of Camera Work.”
“Not to toot my own horn, Vay, but Mr. Stieglitz has already shown
several of my pictures in a group show at his photo-secessionist gallery ‘291.’
He hasn’t seen this series yet. It’s a gum bichromate platinum print. I’m in
love with the process. But, you know, I’m starting to move away from it
toward something simpler, something without any manipulation of the
image, something closer to the truth. I want to photograph you before your
Ascension. And Myshkin before Cael finishes him off.”
Both men laughed. “I have others in my new straight, snapshot
method of Armand sunning nude on the boulder after bathing. I was
inspired by Matisse drawings. It’s very artistic stuff, mind you; they don’t
show him open for business or anything like that.” Vadriel checked the
envelope. “They aren’t in there, Vay. You know what a virile animal he is. I
wanted you to concentrate on his eyes and think what other certainties he
offers you in this our life.”
“There are things more powerful than love.”
Robert sang out as Bellini’s Romeo: “ ‘Do I hear aright? And what
power is greater for you than love?’ ” He answered as Juliet, ending with a
highly inventive and amusing coloratura run on the final word: “ ‘That, ah,
that of duty, law, honor, yes, yes, of honor!’ ” When they both stopped
laughing, Robert added: “May old Keyes rest in peace! He was Donough’s
crazy music teacher. He taught me things that are always coming in handy.”
Vadriel stared at the image in his hands. It was a living, smiling
presence in a halo of light, warm and alive as the sitter. He imagined it in his
parlor among the family faces brought from Cormorant. Armand de Guise’s
appearance in their midst, on their terms, animated them. Makes death
merely one of their achievements! They’re no longer coffined in frames. No
longer hid in death’s dateless night.
Vadriel gripped the picture hard. It was a fragment of time, an emblem
of beauty, a precious marker in life’s relentless melt. He kissed Robert on the
cheek. “Will you dine with me, my dear best friend?”
“I might as well, hon. Those two visions of life itself closeted back
there will never miss me tonight.”
***
Vadriel went immediately to his room with Myshkin. For two hours,
he performed ablutionary tasks using creams, scented oils, silver scissors, and
a pumice stone. Before getting into bed, he wrapped himself in a white
cotton quilt and, kindled with love, stood on the balcony. This is the eve of
our birthdays. The moon was fiercely aglow, as white as the brightest stars,
and in its own soft circle of light; it conjured a memory of a magic lantern
image flung upon a billowy lace curtain in his nursery the night before his
parents and brother died.
The sadness was deep and pure. It was free of anger and guilt. He
lowered his eyes from the moon. Everything ceased to exist but the sea’s
radiance streaming toward him. It washed away the past and filled his heart
with hope and gratitude for being alive. Time is my third dimension. He
searched out familiar constellations. O vere beata nox. O blessed darkness. A
night in which heavenly things are united to those on the earth, and things
divine to those which are human, he sang softly, smiling at his own
solemnity.
Don’t make plans, Vail. You’re going to die soon. But as Nietzsche
sand in a bad mood, “The living are only a species of the dead, and a rare
species at that.” Wait patiently for resurrection. Won’t be long now.
Remember, Thomas, “Love is the fulfillment of the law.” Romans
13:10.
Vadriel tried to fix the beauty of the night in his mind; he had a sense
of confusion that he knew was the result of tampering with time. Longings,
obscure and vague, were replaced by a melting mood as clouds covered the
moon. Lit from behind, they transformed the sky into a vastness of black and
white marble like the vault of a great cathedral. Returning to his room, he
slid under the blankets and lay listening to the night sounds in counterpoint
to Myshkin’s snoring.
Asleep: I speed down the side of a mountain. On a raft toward a dry
riverbed. My companion’s a colorfully winged, pint-size, honor-guard angel.
He’s on leave from the Gaylards’ painting of The Nativity by Petrus Christus.
We approach the foot of the cliff. A rush of water fills the empty canal. The
raft bounces and rides the waves. It’s guided by the flood into a dark tunnel.
Laughing, I enjoy the ride. The tunnel opens into a calm V-shaped bay. “This
is where we want to be,” the angel assures me. We’re waiting for a train on
the Brooklyn Bridge. Alone with Myshkin at sunrise, I’m standing atop a
large boulder in the surf. A boulder like the one at Gaywyck. I wear a
rustling cape of laburnum leaves. The waves are lit torches roaring light. I
call out for Armand de Guise. I call his name several times. He stands naked
on a beach of inlaid blond wood. I beckon him up, and he climbs out of a
blinding brightness. Climbs through a ring of pale fire. Fire very like the
flaming corona of the sun. He carries a Letter of Fire and Sword. I know it’s
been issued by W-J to his sheriff. “Proceed against the delinquent Vail by all
the means of force at your disposal!” I extend my hands to be captured and
bound....
The actual presence of Armand de Guise in the house woke Myshkin
with a snort. He bounded off the bed and went to investigate.
A short while later, Vadriel awoke after calling aloud for Armand de
Guise in his sleep several times. The room was stuffy and he rose to open the
windows. A strong breeze blew shut the bedroom door. He lit the bedside
lamp to check the time; it was midnight. Moving to reopen the door for
Myshkin, Vadriel was distracted when the still dead surface of the standing
mirror reflected his full, naked self as boldly as the moon gave back the light
of the living sun. Captivated by his own image, he approached it slowly,
grateful for his parental gene pool.
Raising his right hand, he outlined his face, tapping each violet eye as
if selecting precious stones from under glass in a Newport jeweler’s shop.
Leaning forward, he impulsively kissed his moistened mouth. He smiled. It
can’t be true that I was born to die. I know I’m the one exception to the rule.
I alone will navigate Eternity. Here on earth. At peace. With Armand de
Guise. Forever is a state of mind. I am my allotment of Forever!
Turning a hand upon his self, he stroked and rubbed and squeezed and
probed while thinking of nothing but what his fingers caused to happen. If
reason and virtue and truth spoke clearly to us through our senses, should
we not perish, consumed by love?
***
***