He reached down and pulled her up from her chair by the wrists. ‘Is it just my money you want, Fey? D’you really love me at all, my girl? Answer me—you boast you always tell the truth!’ He took her chin in his hand, forcing her head back so that she must meet his question.
‘I can’t,’ she whispered, ‘not like this. Let me go a minute, Simeon.’
His arms dropped. She saw in his eyes the quick wariness with which he protected himself. She was dismayed; she wanted neither to hurt him nor to lose him. But as she tried to answer, it seemed as though her mind grew empty, waiting in blankness and listening to a far-off din of murmuring confusion, from which she could not distinguish the sound of truth.
She spoke at last very softly. ‘But what is true—Simeon—or what is love, there are, I think, so many kinds, aren’t there?’
His mouth tightened. He sat down stiffly in the armchair. ‘I suppose so.’
Fey knelt on the hearthrug beside his chair, leaning her head against his knee. She took his hand, and, ignoring his quick withdrawing pull, rested her cheek on it.
Her considering indrawn gaze wandered over the leaping flames in the grate, the brass scuttle, the pale indeterminate pattern of the hearthrug. ‘This is the truth, Simeon,’ she said at last. ‘I like you, more than any man I have known. I’m happy with you and I can make you happy. Also ’—she twisted her head quickly and gave him a mischievous and affectionate look—‘I like very much to sleep with you.’
He made a shocked sound. Surely no woman of really good birth—one did not say such things—but underneath there rose the new sense of triumph.
Fey felt the hand relax beneath her cheek. She went on with a quiet assurance. ‘I am ambitious like you, Simeon. I want money, yes, and like you I want position in the world. The money you can give me. The position we can make together.’
By God! I believe we can! he thought, suddenly and completely convinced. He looked down at the dark head by his knee. Wife. Mrs. Simeon Tower. A new delightful concept, but it brought the carking doubt which must be laid.
He withdrew his hand and pushed back his chair, leaving her unsupported. ‘Fey—have you ever, except, of course, with Dillon——’ He rasped the name, and she waited, her head bowed—‘Have you ever been like this—with any other man?’
She turned so as to face him. ‘No one,’ she said. ‘Nor will there be.’
Simeon sighed deeply. He bent over and pulled her up on his lap, where she melted against him, so delicate and light a weight that he felt her a part of himself.
Later, when he had let himself cautiously from the house—and the need for caution was even greater now that he guarded her reputation as well as his own—Fey slipped from bed in response to the baby’s whimper from the dressing-room. It was a cold dank night and Lucita, who had kicked off her covers, had become chilled. Fey wrapped her in a pink afghan and carried her to the still glowing fire. She curled up on the rug and rocked her baby.
‘It’s Christmas morning, Lucita,’ she whispered. ‘Next year we’ll fill your little shoe with straw for the camels of the Three Wise Kings, and they’ll bring you gifts, as they do at home.’
The baby cooed, her eyelids drooped.
Why did I say ‘ home,’ thought Fey. That is finished. Everything now begins new as I wanted it. But she continued to stare into the fire, smelling, not the coal-gas acridity, but the aromatic perfume of the cedar bonfires that would be lit on every street corner tonight, wreathing the mountain air in fragrant blue smoke. The plaza would be mysterious and expectant in the glancing lights, filled by shawled figures moving silently toward the church. There would be candles—like tiny topazes—set in the upstairs windows of the houses to light the way for the little Santo Nino as He wandered the roads on His natal eve searching for those in need of His help. And soon the Christimas bells would ring out jubilantly from the Parroquia, and the people would pass through the streets—singing. The smell, the sight, the sound of Christmas—Pascua de Navidad; and back across the river in the hills—Atalaya, the watch-peak, guarding the festive town, indulgent to the happy, dancing celebrants, eternally serene in its ancient certainty.
The baby slept, but Fey sat on before the fire, and a bitter pain rose like water in her heart. Why must the past always mean pain? Why was there not release and comfort enough in the escape from it—and in the future? ‘The future’—she murmured the words as an incantation, arming herself with them. She thrust them into her heart and the pain receded, but there was no solace. Instead, before her brooding eyes the fire seemed to die away, and the grate become filled with shadows. As she watched, the shadows moved together and found substance. They became stones—gray stones, piled and forbidding, each ane penetrated by anguish. Behind and through the somber masonry she saw Simeon, not as he was now, but an old man’s face, shrunken, defeated, and his bleared eyes gazed at her in an agonized reproach.
Her breath knotted in her throat, sweat broke out on her back. Simeon’s face softened—and from it now came warning. The gray mass and his face fused back into shadow and vanished. The bright curtain of the firelit room shut them off.
Fey drew a long shaking breath. Mechanically she moved her legs which were tense with cramp. She got up and carried Lucita back to the cradle. Then she washed her face and combed her hair and got into bed. She lay staring at the crack of dawn light as it ran down between the drawn curtains. The bed had become chilled while she sat so long outside, and she pulled the quilt tight around her shoulders. Gradually she became warmer and her mind began to work lucidly, logically. That wasn’t ‘the sight,’ she thought. It was imagination, or the champagne, perhaps. The earthiness of this pleased her, and she restated it. I was a bit drunk, that was it. She felt herself become very reasonable and calm, repudiating superstition. She had learned that word from Simeon—‘superstition.’ ‘That fool of a Vanderbilt,’ he had said, ‘superstitious as an old woman, trots around to fortunetellers, begging ’em to read the future—consulting the stars or the spirits—pure bosh!’
She had agreed without interest. ‘The sight,’ that tingle of awareness and reaching out of self into a different, clearer place, and the flood of golden light which sometimes had come with it—that was a personal inward happening. It had nothing to do with fortune-telling, stars, or spirits. Besides, the thing was gone—if she had ever really had it. The mind-reading she had done for Terry—he hadn’t believed it finally. It had been an accident—a trick, as our love was a trick, she thought. That time long ago with Father—an accident, and I can’t remember it. Natanay—a superstitious old Indian. ‘Superstitious,’ ‘pure bosh.’ There is nothing in me that can know more than my mind does. It was because I was a lonely child, because out there they are simple • foolish people, the Indians and the Mexicans, it is easy to believe silly things as they do. Here in this big city it is different. Here they live by reality. Tomorrow at Mass, this will all be clearer. And I must go to confession again. The priest will tell me how foolish it is to be afraid of an imagined pile of shadows and a face.
The streak of dawn light grew bright. From around the corner on Sixth Avenue she heard the muffled sounds of the awakening city, the rattle of the milk wagons over the Belgian blocks. The shrill cry of an Italian vendor:
‘Buy my sweeta oranges!
Eat my sweeta oranges!
Fine leetle oranges,
For a Merry Christmas!’
Warm and sleepy at last, Fey turned over on her side. Her hand went automatically to her breast, guided by an old habit when she had often used to go to sleep holding the turquoise.
Now she withdrew her hand impatiently, jarred into momentary wakefulness. She tucked her hand under the pillow, noticing before she again closed her eyes that the beautiful jewels in Simeon’s ‘regard’ bracelet gave out iridescent flashes even in the gloom.
Simeon cabled to a confidential agency in Glasgow and, as he directed that no expense be spared, got quick confirmation of Fey’s Scottish ancestry. Three
weeks later the Caledonia brought him a letter as well. It was from a Mr. Ewen MacDonald of Inveraray, and it said:
Dear Mr. Tower:
Your cabled inquiry via Glasgow gave me great surprise and, I must confess, considerable mortification. You see, the lady about whom you asked is the very one for whom I spent a year of search through your magnificent United States. To think that she must have been in New York when I sailed for home! Alas, that I so badly bungled my mission. And now it is too late. Sir James Cameron, her grandfather, died three weeks after my return, and before doing so he altered his will. The title, of course, went to another branch of the family, but now his entire estate has gone there as well. There is no chance, I fear, of breaking the will, but if the lady is in any want please call upon me personally. Will you be good enough to give me her present name and address so that I may write to her, and forgive me—but I am her kinsman—will you tell me the reason why you have taken an interest in her? Several times in your country, and even now and then in the wilds of the Scottish Highlands I have heard of Simeon Tower.
I cannot help but be curious.
I am, sir, your most obedient servant
Ewen MacDonald
Simeon digested this letter with satisfaction, then tore it into shreds as he had the cable.
He wrote back to MacDonald an extremely brief note. ‘The lady is not in want, and as her kinsman I admit your right to know that I intend to marry her. It is unnecessary for you to know any other details, and I ask you never to mention to anyone any circumstances which you may have discovered about her early life.’
He gave neither Fey’s name nor address, and he never told her of this correspondence, unwilling to have her know that he had thought it necessary to confirm her story.
He had made up his mind, and the proceedings from now on were to be handled with a meticulous discretion, so that Fey after their marriage might be presented to public knowledge in precisely the best light.
First the divorce must be got out of the way, and then concealed forever. This problem he took at once to Judge Barnard, who was astonished to have Simeon Tower appear in person at the ornate judicial offices.
‘What brings me this honor, my friend?’ asked Barnard amiably, rising and stroking his glossy black mustache. ‘Little misunderstanding with the Erie boys? or have you maybe got around to needing an injunction for your own Gulf and San Diego?’
‘Neither, George,’ answered Simeon, equally amiable. ‘Personal matter, ticklish and needs absolute secrecy.’
‘Then let’s go to the Hoffman bar,’ returned the judge. ‘Nobody’d overhear anything there if you bellowed, or believe it either.’
They settled at a small corner table in the Hoffman and Simeon ordered two brandies, then went to the point. ‘Lady I know needs a quick divorce. Actual grounds— fifteen months’ desertion.’
‘Won’t do in this State,’ said Barnard slowly; he was feeling his way, wondering just how much this divorce was worth to Tower. ‘ Could she go to Indiana for a bit? ’
‘No,’ said Simeon. ‘You can fix it up here. Any grounds that’ll work. There’s a block of Transic might interest you.’
‘Ah,’said the judge, relaxing. His lustrous eyes glowed. He delicately flicked a wisp of lint from his immaculate cuff. ‘Anybody know where the husband is?’ he inquired.
‘No, but I think Chicago—I’ve made inquiries. I don’t want him found or notified.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Barnard. ‘Half the time one party or the other doesn’t know they’re being divorced. They’ll change that law some day, but fortunately haven’t yet.’
‘I don’t care how you do it,’ said Simeon, ‘but I want it legal. Closed chambers, of course, and not a leak to the press or anyone, now or later. Just to make secrecy and speed more interesting for you, you can count on some useful information six months from today if everything’s gone the way I want it.’
‘It shall be exactly as you want it,’ said the judge, smiling. He leaned back and sipped his brandy. ‘You’re looking very fit,’ he observed playfully. ‘Thinner, aren’t you? Could it be that the fair sex has at last really-’
Simeon got up, laying a five-dollar gold piece on the table for the waiter. ‘ So we understand each other, I believe. Come to my house tomorrow night for a private interview with the lady—get the necessary information.’
Barnard shrugged and bowed. Touchy! he thought. Whoever she is, she’s fairly caught him. It smells like marriage. Then he thought of other things. He had not achieved the supreme court bench and the confidence of Tweed, Fisk, and Gould without learning discretion and detachment.
Fey was duly divorced from Xavier Terence Dillon on the first of March. She had one interview with Judge Barnard in Simeon’s library, and one later in the judge’s chambers, where she signed papers. Both times she was heavily veiled at Simeon’s request and had neither time nor opportunity to examine her surroundings.
She now became, officially, a widow with a new name and a slightly different history. She became Mrs. Dawson, the widow of a Confederate officer who had finally died as the result of wounds sustained during the capture of New Orleans. Simeon picked New Orleans for this purpose because its distance from New York and the post-war confusion there would make it extremely difficult for anyone to check the story. He would have liked as well to suppress Fey’s New Mexican birth, but her Spanish appearance and intonation must be explained. So he contented himself by cautioning her to leave the details of her childhood very vague.
Nobody knew much about Santa Fe, anyway, and the important mercifully true point which would impress New York society was her aristocratic Scotch descent. Everyone, even the Livingstons and the Astors, dearly loved the whiff of a title. And it could be proved, if necessary.
Fey acquiesced in all this. She was as eager as he for acceptance.
It was only in the matter of the actual marriage that he found her inflexible. This time she would be married by a priest. Her marriage to Terry had been no marriage at all in the eyes of the Church, or of Terry.
Simeon was angry and obdurate. He despised Catholicism which was unfashionable, and like most New Englanders he thought of the Scarlet Woman of Rome in horrified capitals. Besides, he had a very different plan.
The wedding must be small, of necessity, but it must be public, and it should be celebrated at the fashionable First Presbyterian Church on Fifth Avenue at Eleventh Street, for it was a Presbyterian Church that a daughter of Calvinist Scotland would naturally choose. Also he hoped to persuade the social Mrs. Joseph Delatone to sponsor the wedding.
Fey listened sympathetically to his wishes and understood his reason, but she could not give in. Her faith had meant less and less to her of late; influenced by Simeon's violent objections, and half-convinced by his exasperated arguments that Catholicism was for her an accident, anyway, because had her father lived she would have had no contact with it, she had begun to omit Mass. Nevertheless, on the matter of the marriage her emotion was stronger than argument. They had their first and only quarrel and Fey was frightened. Her desperation at length suggested a way out of the impasse.
She kissed the scowl from his face and said, ‘Hush, Simeon. There is a—what’s the word?—a compromise. Oh, yes, there is—we will do both.’ And she silenced his scandalized protests, as she silenced her own misgivings. Surely it could not be a sin to gratify the wishes of two people who would have been miserable otherwise.
So it was that on the twentieth of March, Simeon and Fey, unobtrusively dressed in plain dark clothes, took the ferry to Jersey City and were married in an obscure waterfront chapel. They had no attendants except the priest’s fat old housekeeper and an incurious parishioner hastily summoned from a near-by shop. Nor was the priest curious as he performed the ceremony proper to a mixed marriage. He had never heard of Simeon Tower, which ignorance for once profoundly gratified Simeon, who had no wish that the record of this marriage should ever be discovered.
He was s
till a trifle sulky on the ferry ride back. ‘I hope you’re satisfied by that papist mumbo-jumbo we’ve just been through,’ he said to Fey.
She started, bringing her thoughts back to him with difficulty. She had not been thinking of Simeon or their marriage, but of the last time she had crossed toward New York on the ferry. Just here by the stem railing they had stood, his arm around her, his head thrown back, eager for the long anticipated arrival in the city of promise where together they were to start a new glorious life.
That moment on the ferry had been the last that they were really close.
‘I spoke to you, dear, where have you gone?’ said Simeon, touching her arm. His voice had softened. Under cover of her mantle he drew her to him. She yielded gratefully. This one really loves me, she thought. What does it matter that he isn’t big and tall? What does it matter that there are twenty years between us? He is kind and generous and we need each other.
‘Thank you,’ she said gently, ‘for enduring that “papist mumbo-jumbo” for me. In all things from now on, Simeon, I shall do as you wish. I’m grateful to you from the bottom of my heart.’ Her voice trembled. She raised her head and he saw that her eyes were full of unshed tears.
He felt a great answering wave of emotion. He forgot appearances or the danger of recognition and, pressing his mouth to hers, whispered, ‘It is I who am grateful. I’ll make you happy, Fey.’
That same afternoon Fey and little Lucita left the Eighteenth Street apartment and moved to Miss Prendergast’s select boarding-house on Madison Square, thus acquiring an ultra-respectable aura which appalled Fey. The whole house, from the rubber plant in the front parlor to the blue glass skylight—blue glass was healthful for the nerves—smelt of mothballs and brass polish. The austere Miss Prendergast, whose niece was married to Emerson’s cousin, received the young New Orleans widow graciously.