She moved over to a small chair and sat down. ‘Why have you come, Terry?’ she said quietly. ‘And I might also ask, how did you get in?’
Terry grinned. He also seated himself on a brocaded settee. The long body was as lean and muscular as ever. There were a few lines across his forehead and around his bright hazel eyes, and his flaming hair was dulled a trifle from the sun, but ten years had scarcely touched him.
‘It’s like this,’ he said amiably, while she waited in a chill, resistant silence. ‘I got back to New York last month—first time since I left, by the way, and I went to Delmonico’s for a decent meal. Who should I see at a distant table but a little girl I once toted out of Santa Fe with a mule team. Only I didn’t know her right away, because she’d turned into a fashionable lady, drooling sables and diamonds. So I asked the head waiter who that was, and he said “Mrs. Simeon Tower.” Then I went home and did a lot of thinking, and I read the papers.’
‘Go on,’ said Fey. ‘Hurry—I’ve got to get back.’
‘Well—in the papers I saw a lot about a masked ball to be given by these Simeon Towers. So I decided to go. Having just spent three years in Mexico on interesting but not very productive business, I dressed myself in the suit I wore there, added a domino, and when guests were streaming into the house I streamed in with them. Very simple.’
Simple, yes, and melodramatic, the kind of thing you’ve always wanted to pull off, she thought, her anger rising again. But she controlled herself, and said: ‘Yes, I see. But now you must leave immediately. You owe me that much. Simeon mustn’t know—no one must know who you are.’
‘Why?’ he inquired with interest. ‘Didn’t you ever tell Tower about me? Are you a bigamist, my little love?’
‘I divorced you,’ she said acidly. ‘ Besides, as you told me that morning in Mrs. Flynn’s boarding-house, we were never really married.’
Terry got off the settee. He stood near her, but not touching her. ‘I’ve regretted that morning, Fey, regretted it deeply.’ Sincerity in that caressing voice, the rare humble note which had always melted her.
‘I was a fool,’ said Terry. ‘Underneath it’s always been just you—mi corazón.’
Useless to tell herself that he had learned from and doubtless practiced this endearment on dozens of Spanish women. It was the one she used to Lucita and it was warm with sentiment. Lucita! This is Lucita’s father.
‘Go away, Terry,’ she said, moving to the door. ‘I didn’t want and I never do want to see you again.’
‘Ah but you do,’ he said. ‘I saw your eyes just then.’ He spun her around, pulled her to him and kissed her.
Her mind tried to get away, it called to her thinly—‘ See how practiced he is, how well he knows how to rouse a woman, even more than he did then.’ But her lips remembered, they parted under his, and the thick sweet long-forgotten delight swept down through her body.
‘Ah, my dear,’ whispered Terry. ‘You don’t act like that with old Tower, I’ll bet.’
Fey could not speak. She looked at him with hatred and with passion.
‘Do you remember’—said Terry gently—‘the park bench between the Marble Arch and the Mall where we used to sit that week we had together in New York? Will you meet me there tomorrow at three? I’ve got to talk to you again.’
She did not answer.
He picked up his black hat, swinging it from the chin cord. ‘I’ll worry you no more tonight,’ he said. ‘But remember, I love you, Fey, I always have.’ He looked at her yearningly and walked slowly out the door.
Cheap! she thought, shoddy dramatics as they always were. But suddenly she fell on her knees, her hands clasped, her head bowed—‘Madre de Dios,’ she whispered, ‘help me, help me!’
Fey returned to the ballroom just before the cotillion ended. Simeon, who had been watching for her, but assumed that her absence had something to do with supper, noticed that her cheeks were flushed and her breathing rapid. Momentarily released from paying court to Mrs. Astor, he hurried up to Fey. ‘My dear, there’s nothing gone wrong with the arrangements, is there? You look a bit strange.’
She lifted her lids and looked at him. A little man in a ridiculous brown wig, a bogus empty scabbard dangling from a glittering belt which was buckled too tight around the middle. ‘Your wig’s crooked,’ she said.
There was a silence. The cotillion had dissolved, the music stopped. Everyone was waiting for Mr. Tower to usher Mrs. Astor in to supper. Heads were turned their way expectantly.
‘Why do you use that t-tone?’ said Simeon.
Fey swallowed, pushing it down, trampling on it.
‘I’m sorry. Excitement, I guess.’ She smiled, raised her hands and gently straightened the wig. ‘They’re all waiting to go in to supper.’
Chapter Sixteen
IN HIS SMALL ROOM at the Saint Nicholas Hotel, Terry whistled cheerfully while he dressed himself for the park rendezvous with Fey. He was almost certain that she would come, and it amused him to see how eager he was. In his experience old loves were always stale and flat when resurrected, but this was different. As evidenced by her response to his kiss, she was as receptive as ever, and her old attraction for him had returned. Though he had forgotten it for years, he now remembered that he had never had a woman quite so romantically and sexually satisfying as Fey had been during the first weeks of their marriage.
She’s a strange little thing, he thought, brushing his hair before the mirror, adjusting the cat’s-eye stickpin on the brocaded cravat, and look what an extraordinary success she’s made of her life!
He admired this success and he was curious about it.
Curiosity and the pursuit of a new variety of amorous adventure were, as yet, the only motives responsible for his renewed interest in Fey. He wished her well and he had no intention of making trouble. He owed her that much certainly. If she didn’t show up in the park today, he’d leave her alone and go on back to Chicago, as he had intended to.
Chicago suited Him a lot better than New York. He had been doing well there until the great fire in ’71. He and Maude had set up a high-class gambling house. But the fire wiped them out. They had then wandered through the Middle West working the river boats, holding medicine shows, and sometimes playing bit parts in local opera houses. Now and then they were flush, more often broke. They had got bored with each other at about the same time, and parted amicably in St. Louis. After that, Terry drifted down into Mexico, where luck and the tender interest of a politician’s wife brought him to the notice of President Lerdo de Tejada, Juarez’s successor. A pleasing and remunerative sinecure followed and lasted for three years. Unfortunately, six weeks ago Porfirio Diaz’s revolutionary activities had coincided with a violent quarrel with the politician’s wife, and Mexico had become too hot for Terry. He had shipped out of Vera Cruz on the first boat and it had carried him to New York. He had two hundred dollars in gold and undimmed optimism. Chicago by all accounts was nearly rebuilt and bigger and better than ever. This time he would really find himself some permanently profitable enterprise. But there was plenty of time to dally with Fey if she were so minded.
He flicked his cravat, sleeked his hair with scented macassar oil, adjusted his gray bowler, and set out by the Broadway streetcar for the park.
The horses were slow, and at Fifty-Ninth Street Terry was still further delayed by a young lady who needed help to cross the slushy street. The lady was pretty and appreciative, and it was only a surreptitious glance at his gold watch that startled Terry into bowing himself off. He hurried toward the Marble Arch.
She was already there, pacing up and down the walk. Her small figure wrapped in a furred and hooded cape gave an unmistakable impression of agitation.
Terry smiled to himself. He walked quietly so as to come up behind her and sang in her ear—
‘Chula la mañana, chula la mañana—
Como que te quiero...’
the gay New Mexican love-song.
Fey stiffened and stopped. He slid his hand under her
elbow. ‘Do you remember how you taught that to me out on the Kansas prairie?’
She drew herself away. ‘I came only to tell you that you must leave New York at once!’ But it was not the tone she had meant to use.
‘I would have, darling,’ said Terry softly, bending down and smiling into her strained, tight face, ‘if you hadn’t come today.’
Fey gave him a frightened look. But it can’t be true—he’s lying! Oh, why did I come! Yet she had used logic and clear thinking in making the decision. When the last guests had left at five and she and Simeon were at last in bed, she had lain for hours staring up at the embroidered tester, not moving for fear Simeon should speak to her. She knew by his breathing that he wasn’t asleep either. He would want to talk about the ball, and for her the ball had blurred into a jumbled background to the scene in the anteroom. Again and again like an adolescent she relived the physical impact of Terry’s kiss while her mind jeered at her. This conflict went on with slowly diminishing force until the clock on the landing struck ten and she decided to get up. She raised herself cautiously on her elbow and saw that Simeon was asleep. He had tucked his hand under his cheek and his unguarded face held an expression of anxious hopefulness. That is the way he looked as a little boy, she thought painfully. She kissed him on the forehead. He stirred and said ‘Fey’—but he did not wake.
She slid out of bed, determined to ignore Terry. She dressed and went downstairs, where exhausted servants were trying to put the great house to rights. She tried to busy herself in helping and directing them, but they did better without her and a lassitude swept over her. She lay down on a couch in her boudoir, and it was then that it suddenly occurred to her that she had better see Terry once more. So long as he did not know the circumstances of her marriage to Simeon, he was clearly a menace. For Simeon’s sake, she must explain and appeal to him. But she would not mention Lucita. Obviously he knew nothing of the child’s existence, and there was no reason why he should. She would speak but a few words to him; she would make him realize that last night meant nothing, and she would be back in the house in an hour. Simeon was still asleep when she ordered the carriage and had herself driven to Central Park’s Fifth Avenue entrance. She told Briggs to wait and walked from there.
‘Let’s sit down here,’ said Terry. ‘It’s quite warm and I can’t see your face when you fidget about like that.’
She hesitated, sat down on the corner edge of the slatted wooden bench.
‘I can’t stay,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to tell you—to ask you——’
‘Yes—?’ he questioned lazily. He was watching her mouth. He lifted one of her gloved hands and put it to his Ups. ‘What did you want to tell me, mi corazôn? ’
She snatched her hand back. ‘ Don’t call me that ! ’ She went on crisply. ‘No one knows I’ve been divorced, of course. I can trust you not to say anything? ’
Terry considered this. ‘No, I suppose all those swells you had there last night wouldn’t speak to a divorcée. Just how’d you get rid of me, might I ask? ’
‘Simeon arranged it through Judge Barnard in ’68,’ said Fey, very fast. ‘We gave out that I was a widow, a Mrs. Dawson from the South.’
‘Why Mrs. Anything; much simpler for you to appear unmarried, I should think? ’
‘I couldn’t because of——’ She stopped. Fool, fool, what’s the matter with you——
Terry sat up. ‘Because of what?’
She was silent. Two small boys skipped past the bench bound for the skating lake; their skates bouncing on their shoulders made tiny musical clinks and the runners flashed in the sunlight.
‘You had a baby,’ said Terry.
Her lips tightened and she said nothing.
‘Was it mine—or Tower’s or somebody else’s?’
‘It was yours. A little girl. But Simeon has been her father. He’s given her everything and he loves her.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me—that day at Mrs. Flynn’s?’
‘Would it have kept you? And would I have wanted to keep you—out of pity? No, Terry, I have managed alone, as you told me to.’ She got up, drawing the cloak tighter around her. ‘Now good-bye.’
‘Wait a minute!’ He jumped up and stood in front of her. ‘Please, Fey—I don’t blame you for feeling the way you do, but think of me, too ; this news is a shock. I’d like to see my child once. It’s only natural.’
He saw her eyes darken and shift from his pleading face, but she answered inflexibly. ‘No, it’s impossible. It would hurt Simeon deeply if he ever found out. He thinks of Lucita as his own. And he’s very conventional. We’ve been a long time reaching the place where—well, where we could give a ball like last night.’
‘Oh?’ said Terry. He found it interesting, this hint of social struggle, not only for Fey, but Tower too, and he caught the faint whisper of a new idea.
‘Look, honey—don’t go yet,’ he said. ‘There’s nobody about. Let’s walk toward the Mall as we used to. I know I treated you badly, but I didn’t know about the child, and I can’t help wanting to understand a few things, can I? ’
Go, said a voice clearly in Fey’s head, go quickly. There’s danger here. You’ve already said too much. But, on the other hand, what harm is there? A few minutes more, this man was my husband, the father of Lucita.
He felt her arm relax beneath his fingers, and he moved his hand under her cape so that he touched her bare skin above the glove. He heard her indrawn breath as they began to walk down the path.
‘Tell me about Tower,’ he said. ‘How did you manage to meet him in the first place? ’
At first she answered Terry’s eager questions in monosyllables, but gradually as they strolled along she found that there was pleasure in reliving that far-past year-and-a-half of struggle, to the accompaniment of his sympathetic exclamations, and she told him about everything. The Arcadia Concert Saloon and her first glimpse of Simeon, the months at the Infirmary, her assault on Simeon’s office and his quick and exciting capitulation.
‘Smart girl,’ said Terry, laughing heartily. ‘The nerve you had diddling him into buying that old lump of Injun turquoise I I always felt sorry for you, setting such store by that thing, but, of course, you didn’t know any better. You’ve come a long way, sweetheart.’
‘Yes, I have,’ said Fey, smiling. She had forgotten that Terry was an enemy, in the delight of sharing the carefully guarded secrets with someone, the sense of triumphant accomplishment reflected from his admiration.
The sun slanted over the low broken line of brownstones on Central Park West, a chilly wind sprang up, and the Mall became nearly deserted.
‘Funny little thing you used to be,’ said Terry, squeezing her arm, ‘with your mind-reading and your visions. Used to give me the creeps sometimes when you’d stare right through me with those big gray eyes. Thank the Lord, you’ve lost all that nonsense.’
‘Yes,’ said Fey, ‘I guess I was quite ridiculous.’ She shivered suddenly, and Terry under the protection of her cape slid his arm around her. ‘Tienes frio, mi amor?’ he inquired tenderly.
‘Don’t!’said Fey. ‘Don’t talk to me in Spanish. It belongs to that other life. I don’t want to remember it. Simeon hates it—that part of me.’
Aha! thought Terry. He had begun to form a very clear picture of Tower’s character from the many little sidelights she had thrown. He saw a rich man who was nevertheless insecure and morbidly anxious to appear conventional. A middle-aged man in love with a young wife and jealous of her past. The new idea which had glimmered before began to take vague form.
‘I’m afraid you should go now, darling,’ he said very gently. ‘I don’t want you to get into any trouble.’
She started and flushed. ‘Yes—yes,’she said. ‘I must. It’s terribly late.’ ’
‘Tomorrow,’ said Terry, holding her closer, ‘you’ll come here again and bring the little one? Yes’—he said against her quick protest—‘if it’s my child you can’t deny me just once.’
His hazel eyes were warm with entreaty.
It’s only fair that he should want to see her, thought Fey, it’s only fair.
‘You won’t tell her, Terry, don’t say anything that would give her an idea——’
‘Of course not.’ He looked hastily around, bent and kissed her on the mouth.
She broke away from him, running down the Mall, her furred boots slipping on the frozen snow.
Terry watched her disappear before he moved. Then he walked back toward the Broadway entrance. Upon his return to the Saint Nicholas, he went into the bar and settled in the corner with a bottle of whiskey. After the third glass he began to hum ‘ Chula la Mañana ’ softly to himself. It was a good world and still crammed with interesting possibilities.
The next day Simeon went to the office and it was simple for Fey to arrange her afternoon as she wished. After breakfast, when he kissed her good-bye, he asked her plans for the day, but on hearing that she proposed taking Lucita for a drive in the park Simeon nodded absently, and set off on foot down Broadway. Walking helped, it cleared the brain. The Gulf and San Diego stock was not behaving right. Gould and his new ally, Russell Sage, were manipulating under cover somewhere, but so far all efforts had not been equal to flushing them out.
But I’ll get ’em, he thought, it’ll be all right. I’ve done it before. He stifled the insistent murmur that never before had his position been so shaky, of the further colossal bank loan which he must somehow wheedle from the Continental Trust. Bluff would do it again, bluff and the confidence built up by his past glittering successes. Old Stevens at the Continental had hardly batted an eye when he granted the last loan, and he was close-mouthed as a pike, no danger of a leak. Publicity about the triumphant ball would help—the fifteen-thousand-dollar ballroom, the catering and orchestra—most splendid yet seen in New York—not paid for yet, of course, but they’d wait. Nobody ever doubted the Tower credit. Just a little more push, a little more fight. Get back that old certainty, that sure hold on a problem. This muzziness would pass, this uneasiness which seemed to unsettle the mind as it also reproduced physical sensations below the diaphragm.