‘Ask Miss Pringle if she heard?’ suggested Simeon. ‘It wouldn’t do to make a mistake now.’
Fey giggled suddenly, a youthful mischievous sound. ‘You don’t seriously mean me to ask the Pringle? And what would she answer!’ Fey threw back her head and pinched down her upper lip—‘I confess to great astonishment, madam, that you should expect me to listen to childish prattle.’
Simeon gave an unwilling smile. ‘She’s certainly hard to get along with.’
‘Only one way,’ said Fey airily, ringing for her maid. ‘Snub her first, and hardest. I’m learning. Simeon, you mustn’t care so much what people think. You don’t care in business, that’s why you’re successful.’
‘I don’t care in the least what people think,’ he snapped. ‘You make me sound like a frightened schoolboy.’
Fey gave him a quick, indulgent look.
They were slightly underdressed for McAllister’s picnic. Fey, after the first discovery of this, forgot all about it. Simeon suffered and hid it by volubility and a return to his earlier manner of excessive geniality.
Fey heard the booming laugh and the beginning of the story about the insurance agent and the pink garter which had used to be so popular amongst Fisk’s crowd. Oh, dear, she thought, for she saw Simeon’s audience, a small group of frock-coated impeccable gentlemen—listening in polite astonishment.
But she was determined to enjoy herself. This was not difficult if one relinquished expectation of ‘picnic’ and substituted ‘banquet’ in a remote incidental outdoor setting. Long tables swaddled in pink damask were set on the lawn beneath awnings, an orchestra imported from New York played from a raised marquee. McAllister, a beaming host, tripped everywhere, personally frappéing the champagne, as he had previously concocted the twelve-course menu in which two white or two brown sauces must never succeed each other; the terrapin must come only from Maryland; and the filets of beef might be covered by truffles, but never mushrooms.
Fey sat between Mr. Sylvester Bull and Mr. E. Templeton Snelling—exalted company, but she was completely successful with them. Her small talk was perfect: the comparison between Christine Nilsson’s voice and that of Madame Parepa Rosa, the pleasures of archery and croquet, the unseasonable coolness of June and consequent deplorable effect on the strawberries.
She turned gracefully from Bull to Snelling at the end of the fish course, reversing the process after the second entrée, and so on. She listened to them breathlessly and laughed at their gallantries. When the picnic was at last ended and before they all progressed to the marquee for the cotillion, she saw McAllister contemplating her with marked approval. Further accolade—Mrs. Sylvester Bull detained Fey as she crossed the lawn to their carriage, saying, ‘Dear Mrs. Tower, I hear from my Susie that you have a small daughter. Will you send her over next Tuesday at four—little birthday party—and her governess, of course?’
Fey accepted with the proper—not excessive—touch of gratitude.
‘We’re in!’ cried Simeon on the drive back to their house. He put his arm around Fey’s waist and squeezed her, his mustache pricked against her cheek. ‘You were wonderful, darling. I was proud.’
‘I’m glad that you’re pleased,’ she said. She moved gently, imperceptibly, away from him. ‘We are not “in” yet, but in time I think we will be.’
‘In time,’ she repeated, very low to herself. Time ... The carriage had turned onto Ocean Avenue and her nostrils were suddenly filled by the wild smell of the sea. She heard the breakers crashing out there in the darkness and the shrill cry of a sea-gull.
She put her hand to her throat, where there was a thickness, a suffocation. Shut in like this in a black moving box gliding inexorably and blindly through the starlit night.
‘Tell Briggs to stop the horses,’ she whispered. ‘I want to get out.’
‘My dear girl—whatever for? We’re only ten minutes from home.’
‘I want to be near the sea,’ she answered, in a hoarse, unnatural voice. To be near the sea, lying face up on the sand, alone and free, with only the waves and the stars.
Simeon was puzzled. ‘You’re near the sea at Kenilworth; all you have to do is go down the road a bit to Bailey’s Beach. Not tonight, of course,’ he added. ‘The Casino’ll be shut.’
‘I want to get out,’ she repeated, so faintly that he had to bend over to hear her. The horses trotted on faster, sensing their nearness to the stable.
‘Fey, dear,’ he said, stroking her hand, ‘you’re tired. The excitement of the fête. You’ve exhausted yourself.’
Exhausted! she thought, while I sit here crammed with bounding aching energy; when I want to dance, to shout, to beat upon the sides of this suffocating black box until I tear them down!
‘What is it, Fey ? ’ he asked sharply. The lamps from a passing carriage had for a moment illumined her face. She heard the note of fear in his voice.
She pressed her hands hard to her throat and then, relaxing them, put them in her lap. ‘Nothing, Simeon. A mood.’
They drew up under the crenellated porte-cochère.
For the remainder of 1872 and the vexatious year of panic which followed, Simeon was too much occupied in trying to save his own skin to be able to divert much energy to social rise. Annoyance followed annoyance and threat followed threat.
Hard upon Grant’s re-election and the reassuring defeat of Horace Greeley, trouble began with the explosion of the Crédit Mobilier scandal. The Crédit Mobilier had financed the building of the Union Pacific. The astounded and indignant public now learned that ‘every step of that mighty enterprise had been taken in fraud.’
Simeon and the other railroad entrepreneurs retired into bleak, apprehensive silence while congressional investigation flayed the Union Pacific, and Oakes Ames, head of the Crédit Mobilier, was terrified into reading the names of those who had profited. As these included the Vice-President, the Senator from New Hampshire, and a collection of Representatives—amongst them James A. Garfield—the nation’s indifference to public corruption was finally punctured. And the great panic of 1873 had begun.
Simeon, and most of the other millionaires, warned by a dozen signs recognizable only to the initiates, put out sea anchors and survived the tempest.
Jay Cooke was one of those who did not survive. On September eighteenth, his bank, the biggest and best-known in the western world, closed its doors. Five thousand commercial houses followed. For the ten days of acute crisis, while lights burned all night on Wall Street and gray-faced men stared at each other with the blankness of unceasing fear, Simeon scarcely left his office. He slept in snatches on the horsehair sofa, he sent Lemming out for pitchérs of black coffee, and he spent hour after hour watching the ticker, agonizing, hoping, and even sometimes praying. .
By Christmas the situation had settled and clarified itself for the rich men. Simeon, along with Gould, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Morgan, and Rockefeller, had time to breathe once more and compute the damage, while two hitherto unknowns, Frick and Harriman, had already dived in and were profitably salvaging from the wrecks. The financial sea was still troubled, but to Simeon it once more seemed navigable.
‘We’ll manage now,’ he told Fey on Christmas morning. ‘The worst is over. Here, my dear, is your present.’
It was a sable cloak which reached from her chin to the floor.
‘It’s beautiful, Simeon,’ she said, kissing him, ‘but should you, right now?—I know you’ve lost quite a lot of money. Should we not economize?’
‘Certainly not. This is just the time to splurge. Got to guard against the faintest appearance of embarrassment or they’d all be after me like a pack of hounds. Besides, I’ll make back what I lost and more.’
Now’s the time to jump in and expand, he thought. Extend the Gulf and San Diego. Maybe even outsmart Gould and grab the Missouri Pacific.
But it was at just this time, too, that Jay Gould first turned his genuine financial genius upon the problem of acquiring Simeon’s Gulf and San Diego for
himself.
Life in the Fifth Avenue mansions rippled along as usual through that winter of 1874. On New Year’s Day, Fey and all the other hostesses sat in flower-filled drawing-rooms and received the traditional calls from gentlemen who had enjoyed their hospitality. This year the silver basket in the vestibule of the Tower house contained the cards of Sylvester Bull, Templeton Snelling, and Ward McAllister, besides a hundred others. It was gratifying. The season promised very well now that the panic was subsiding. Fey, urged on by Simeon, ordered a new wardrobe from Madame Loreste, and made enthusiastic plans for little supper parties after the opera—they had, of course, taken a box for Monday nights at the Academy of Music.
This is really a most agreeable life, thought Fey, awakening on the morning of January fourteenth, to find her bedroom fire already sparkling and her maid standing beside the bed holding the breakfast tray. Fey yawned, and raised her arms for the swansdown bed-jacket. No plans until lunch, she thought lazily; I might take Lucita skating in the park.
‘Please ask Miss Pringle and Miss Lucy to come here,’ she said to her maid.
The little girl presently came in with her governess. The child came up to her mother, holding her back stiff, toes pointed out, as Miss Pringle had taught her. ‘Good morning, Mama,’ she said, carefully enunciating.
Fey reached out and scooped the child up onto the bed. ‘ Hello, sweetheart,’ she whispered, tumbling the tight curls, and kissing the plump neck. ‘It’s a lovely morning—shall we go skating?’
Miss Pringle, watching the scene in cold disapproval—how was one ever to train up a little lady when the mother acted so undignified?—gave an audible sniff. ‘It is quite impossible, madam, for Lucy to go skating this morning. She has a piano lesson at ten and a fitting at eleven.’ ’
‘Oh, of course—I forgot,’ said Fey slowly. ‘But what would you like to do, darling? ’ She looked down at Lucita.
‘Might I suggest,’ said Miss Pringle, ‘ that the child is hardly a judge, and that it seems to me unfortunate to influence her to skip obligations in favor of pleasure? She has plenty of amusement.’
Dios, how I dislike this woman! thought Fey, but was at once checked by justice. The Pringle was right. Lucita must develop a sense of duty, and it was also true that the child was learning beautiful manners.
‘Some other day then—dear,’ she whispered to Lucita, who had said nothing at all, but turned her head gravely from her mother to her governess as each spoke. The child slid off the bed.
‘Curtsy to your mama, Lucy,’ said Miss Pringle.
Lucita curtsied. Miss Pringle took her hand, at the same time smoothing the ruffled curls not ungently. ‘ Come, dear,’ she said. ‘We mustn’t keep Professor Latoni waiting.’ Lucita came docilely.
Fey lay frowning at the closed door. But there was no real cause for complaint. Lucita seemed happy enough, and Miss Pringle was what they had wanted, conscientious, impeccable, and inordinately refined.
After a while Fey got up and commenced dressing. She would go and see Doctor Rachel on this bright winter’s morning, and with this decision came the realization of how very long it had been since she had visited the Infirmary.
They weren’t at ease with each other any more, she and Rachel. After the first conventional inquiries, there never seemed to be anything to talk about. Fey continued to send checks to the Infirmary, and Rachel acknowledged these by cordial notes, but the visits had ceased. Perhaps, thought Fey, she will enjoy going out for a ride with me, she works so long and so hard.
Fey dressed in a moss-green velvet afternoon costume, so as not to return home before attending Mrs. Sylvester Bull’s luncheon. This meal was a new and fashionable importation from England, now that the dinner hour had gradually moved into the early evening. She topped the green velvet with the sable wrap and matching sable hat and muff. She put on pearl-gray gloves, dangling gold earrings, and a whiff of her frangipani perfume.
Then she paused before her rosewood cheval glass for the last critical appraisal. ‘Muy elegante, Dona Feyita,’ she whispered to her image, making it a tiny bow. Suddenly the richly furred reflection slipped and stood back; another took its place—a pale dirty face between strands of uncombed hair, a tom camiza, a pair of shamed, resentful eyes.
Was that one, too, really me? she thought. Ah, Gertrudis—you would never believe this! But mixed with the triumph there was a formless discomfort.
‘Bah!’ she said violently, and, picking up her beaded pouch bag, she hurried from the room.
Last week’s snowfall had leveled down enough to make sleighing delightful. Briggs, the coachman, was waiting on the street in the red-and-gold cutter. They set off down Fifth Avenue toward Eighth Street, and in the cold crispness the jingle of their silver bells harmonized sweetly with the tinkle of brass or tin bells on inferior sleighs.
Everybody was on runners; the milk and butcher carts, the heavy brewery wagons, family parties bound for skating in the park, fashionable cutters like her own headed for shopping at Stewart's or Lord and Taylor's. At Tenth Street they saw the Astor sleigh. Mrs. Astor herself, muffled to the chin, sat on the back seat in majestic splendor.
Briggs instinctively slowed his horses. Mrs. Astor inspected the Tower turnout, her sharp eyes reaching last of all Fey’s hopeful, uncertain smile. Mrs. Astor hesitated, then, just as the two sleighs glided past each other, she nodded briefly.
Ah, thought Fey, glowing. Wait until I tell Simeon! Perhaps soon now she will even leave cards!
Exultation was still with her as Briggs slid up to the Infirmary entrance, but it was replaced by astonishment at seeing a crowd on the sidewalk. A sullen, murmuring crowd of ragged men and women. As Briggs nervously helped her from the sleigh, two men carrying a stretcher walked around the corner of the block. The figure on the stretcher was huddled under a heap of burlap bags and it was moaning. The crowd fell silent, making way for the stretcher to mount the Infirmary steps. Fey followed it.
The Infirmary hallway and the floors of the clinic rooms were covered by injured women and children lying on sheets, quilts, and old blankets. There was the smell of blood and vomit. From the corner by the stairs came the monotonous, mindless sound of a woman’s sobbing.
Fey stood appalled in the middle of the hall. She saw two of the nurses scurry upstairs, and return carrying basins. In the semi-darkness by the basement door she saw Doctor Daniel bending over something on the floor.
The front door opened and another stretcher came in. Its bearers stared around helplessly and dumped their burden—a child—on the clinic desk.
The dispensary door opened and Rachel came out.
‘Oh, what’s happened!’ cried Fey, trying to slip her sable muff under the head of the child on the desk.
Rachel looked at Fey, then she, too, bent over the child. ‘Take back your beautiful muff,’ she said, handing it to Fey. ‘It won’t help the child. She’s dead.’
‘But what’s happened?’ whispered Fey, her dazed eyes moving from the child to Rachel’s stony face.
Rachel knelt on the floor beside one of the quiet figures. She applied her stethoscope, lifted the flaccid eyelids. ‘As a result of the panic there are tens of thousands starving in New York this winter,’ she said, in the patient tone of one explaining to a foreigner. ‘Yesterday the unemployed and the suffering poor had permission to hold a meeting in Tompkins Square. The city government revoked the permission without notification. The people didn’t know. When they had all gathered, the mounted police closed in on them. These are some of those who have been clubbed, beaten, and trampled. The other hospitals are filled, too.’
Fey exhaled her breath slowly. ‘Let me help! I can help!’ she cried, kneeling beside Rachel and putting her hand on the forehead of the unconscious patient.
Rachel turned her head. ‘In velvet and sables and gray kid gloves?’ There was a spark of amusement in her tired voice.
Fey flushed, seeing the grotesque pearly sheen of her glove against the bruised, swollen foreh
ead. She snatched her hand back, began to unbutton the glove, and Rachel stopped her. ‘No, Fey. Everything is changed in the wards since you were here, and we don’t really need help. See, they’re getting them all upstairs.’ It was true, the halls were clearing. ‘We have many nurses now. Your generous checks have helped,’ she added, smiling faintly.
Fey got up. ‘You don’t want me——’ Her voice trailed.
She stood hesitant, still wrapped in her sable cloak from which drifted the scent of frangipani, delicate and seductive above the stench of the Infirmary.
‘Run along back to your other world,’ said Rachel. She gave Fey’s shoulder a swift farewell pat, walked quickly into the dispensary.
Fey went out and down the steps. The anxious muttering crowd stilled as she passed through them to the sleigh. They stared at her dumbly without hostility. Their agonizing anxiety for their injured, and even the senseless horror of injustice which they had suffered, did not move them to resentment of anything as rich and glittering and safe as Fey. They gawked at her as they gawked at the lovely painted ladies in the Arcade museums.
‘Where to now, madam?’ asked Briggs, thankfully flicking the horses.
‘I don’t know,’ said Fey. ‘I don’t know where——’ Then, catching his startled expression, she collected herself. ‘The park, I think for a while. I’d like to just drive around.’
Chapter Fifteen
ON THE WEDNESDAY MORNING of Valentine’s Day, 1877, the Towers were awakened by the distant bang of hammering and the subdued rushing of excited servants up and down the back stairs.
Fey ran from bed to the window, peered between the tightly drawn damask portieres, jerked them open, and j’umped back into bed again. ‘The sun’s shining already!’ she cried. ‘It will be a fine night for our ball.’
Simeon turned heavily, opening his eyes with difficulty. The light hurt them; his brain felt thick and confused, as it often did now in the mornings. He had had another bad night. Vague nightmares, punctuated by hours of semi-wakefulness caused by the familiar gnawing discomfort in his stomach. Only food, rich creamy food, seemed to stop this periodic gnawing and burning.