Parlor Games: A Novel Part 21

"Mother does. We don't know where Father is."

"What was his work?"

"He used to own a grocery store."

The clang of plates and utensils rang out around us, and the buzz of chatter pulsed over the jam-packed booths and stools. I leaned across the table to better hear and be heard. "What happened to his grocery business?"

"He sold it. Or lost it gambling." Miss Emmett shrugged. "Took up professional card playing."

"So he travels around doing that?"

"He's made a life of train and boat travel. Playing cards with strangers."

"You mean with people who don't know he's a card sharp?"

Miss Emmett nodded, her lips clamped in glum resignation.

"And your mother. How does she manage?"

"She takes in laundry. And d.i.c.ky and I help as much as we can."

I reached out and patted her hand. "We have a few things in common, I'd say."

She studied me with unblinking eyes. "How's that?"

"Having mothers who are on their own. Who need our help."

A smile of knowing recognition flitted over her face. "Most people call me Daisy. I'd be pleased if you would, too."

It appeared that Daisy Emmett was someone I could trust. She was not afraid to tell the truth, but she showed good judgment, too. After we agreed on her salary, I apprised her of my intent to journey to London, which pleased her greatly. But first, I explained, I wished her to make discreet inquiries about an old friend, a young man now in the arts-and-antiquities business in New York.

Two days later, she strode up to me in the lobby of the Gilsey. "Miss Dugas," she said, "I've news of John Graham."

I slipped a marker into the page of my Baedeker's London and Its Environs. "Yes-what did you learn?"

"I think we should go to your room."

I closed the book on my lap. "Why?"

She stood as erect as a pine tree, her five-foot-six frame looming over me. "You said you wanted to be discreet, didn't you?"

I rose and headed for the stairs, all impatience. "Must you be so awfully good at following instructions?"

Once in my fifth-floor room, Daisy led me to my easy chair and commanded, "Sit."

I eased down and looked up at her.

She unfurled a New York Sun and pointed to a column. "It's old news now. Happened two weeks ago."

My eyes latched on the column headline: "John D. Graham Found Dead in Apartment."

I stared at the words "John D. Graham." "No, no, it can't be," I said. "It can't be my Johnny."

Daisy c.o.c.ked her head to meet my gaze. "Your Johnny?"

"We were engaged."

"Did you meet him in Tokyo?"

"Yes."

"Oh, my."

"Please," I said, more as a desperate prayer than anything else, "don't let it be him." I pictured Johnny: bounding up our hotel stairs and turning to scoop me into his arms; glowing with awe at j.a.pan's intricate, soaring temples; laughing so hard at my imitations of Kotone that he rolled off his chair. Johnny, so spirited, so full of life, couldn't be gone.

"I'm sorry, then, for it is your Johnny." Daisy ran her hand down the column. "It says here he killed himself for love of a woman he met in Tokyo."

I crumpled over my knees. "Oh, no. Oh, Johnny, please forgive me."

Daisy brushed her hand over my back. "You loved him."

I buried my face in my hands. The headline's words imprinted on the dark screen of my tight-closed eyelids, glaring at me like an indictment. "I killed him. I killed him."

Daisy gripped my shoulder. "Don't say that."

"It's true." My insides sloshed. Nauseous, I crumpled over. "I didn't have the courage to stand by his side."

"How could you have known?"

"What does that matter?" I dug my fingernails into my forehead. Their sharpness cut into my flesh. I wanted to feel pain. "Johnny's dead. And it's because of me."

LONDON AIRS.

NEW YORK AND LONDON-18911892

I refused to leave New York without first paying tribute to Johnny. I enlisted Daisy's brother to transport me and my miniature memorial to Trinity Church Cemetery on Riverside Drive. I obtained directions to Johnny's grave from the groundskeeper and set out down the designated row of gravestones in my simple black dress and wide-brimmed hat and veil. As I caught sight of Johnny's fresh grave, I clutched my belly-it chilled me to imagine his once-vital body lying there, inert in its coffin. The earth mounding before his marble headstone glistened under October's misty sky, its newness a personal rebuke: You might have saved him.

Closing my eyes, I silently recited my last words to him: "My dear Johnny, forgive me for not honoring our love. You will always be my Romeo." I opened my eyes to the quiet midday, to the place that would be Johnny's home forever. A morning rain had moistened the tree trunks and fallen leaves, deepening their hues to burnt brown and rust. A piquant mushroom odor-of gra.s.s and loam and dying leaves-chafed at my nostrils.

"d.i.c.ky," I said, calling the reluctant youngster to join me at the graveside. "You can unwrap the stone now."

d.i.c.ky unfolded the burlap covering to reveal the simple memorial, a slender, foot-wide stone plaque on a solid base, and handed it to me. I placed it at the foot of Johnny's grave, so that he might gaze down upon it, and walked to the head of the grave, where I could view its inscription: TO MY JOHNNY, FOR WE WERE ONCE.

A PAIR OF STAR-CROSS'D LOVERS.

Once I had completed my private remembrance ceremony, I couldn't quit New York fast enough. It pained me to look at the tall buildings, walk through Central Park, or dine in any of its fine restaurants. All I could think was, Johnny might have eaten in this very place, Johnny must have gazed on these buildings, Johnny probably trod this street. I wanted to blame someone: Reed Dougherty for his unscrupulous, coldhearted pursuit of Johnny and me; Johnny's father for hiring a Pinkerton to do what a family member could and should have done; and Johnny's family for not giving us a chance. But what good did that do? Johnny was gone, and I'd had a hand, unknowing as it was, in his tragic end.

Never again, I vowed. Never would I permit myself to mix with a young man under the thumb of a reproving family. Never again would I risk wounding someone as decent and innocent as Johnny.

The path to my new life materialized quite clearly: I would slip into the respectable and cultured life I'd sought all along, and in doing so I would avoid giving Dougherty, or any of his ilk, leverage over me. Such was my frame of mind upon setting foot in London in November of 1891.

I wished for two things from London: to distract myself from the pain and sorrow of Johnny's tragic death, and to insert myself into London's high society. I hoped to satisfy both in the West End theater district, where I took a suite at the Shaftesbury Hotel for Daisy and myself. Soon enough, Daisy had researched the London theaters and discovered that the Royal English Opera House, which had closed after one run of Ivanhoe, was struggling to reopen. Convinced the venerably named establishment warranted my support, I offered modest sponsors.h.i.+p for its new production of Andre Messager's opera La Basoche. After a run of the opera, the theater planned a grand party on closing night in January 1892. I was to attend with another donor, Alfred Cooper, the brother of the conductor, and his bachelor son.

"I suspect," I told Daisy as I seated myself at my maple vanity and opened my jewelry case, "that Mr. Cooper is anxious to introduce me to his son."

"Why shouldn't he be?" asked Daisy, pulling out the necklace compartment. "Everyone wonders why you've not stepped out with any gentleman."

The yellow-diamond necklace, I thought, would look lovely against my jade-green gown. I pointed to it. "By rights I should be wearing black. Except then I'd have to explain to everyone who I'm mourning."

Daisy picked up the necklace, lowered it around my throat, and latched it. She folded her palms over my shoulders. "You can't do anything about Johnny. You have to live your life."

"If only I could convince my heart of that."

Daisy closed the jewelry box. "You shouldn't put off insuring your jewelry any longer."

I centered the necklace's middle diamond against my gown's tufted bodice. "Why don't you go to Lloyd's tomorrow and look into that."

When the lobby bell at the Royal English Opera House rang, Mr. Cooper and his son escorted me to our second-level box. The elder Mr. Cooper offered me the prize seat, the one with the best angle on the stage. I chatted with the younger Mr. Cooper and gazed out on the ma.s.ses settling in the house's layers of plum-colored chairs and gilded black boxes. The clattery fits and starts of the orchestra's tuning wafted from the pit. The conductor took up his baton. As the audience hushed, I turned my attention to the stage, and my gaze pa.s.sed over a box on the opposite side of the theater. A red-complexioned man-of middle age, I guessed-stared at me. Even as my glance met his, he continued in his steadfast enterprise. I s.h.i.+fted in my chair to optimize my view of the stage and waited for the curtain to rise, all the time noticing out of the corner of my eye that this man gazed steadily at me.

It was not unusual for me to be acquainted with the box holders, but I'd never seen this gentleman before. His perfectly knotted silk tie, satin-collared frock coat, and cross-over vest suggested either great wealth or dignitary status, even if his behavior indicated otherwise.

At intermission, the Misters Cooper and I made our way to the Stalls Bar. As I sipped champagne with my companions, a bald gentleman approached our party and addressed me. "Pardon me, Miss Dugas," he said in an accent as thick as the Black Forest, "I am the secretary to Baron de Vries, and he wishes to make your acquaintance."

I studied him. Yes, just as I thought. He'd been sitting next to the man whose eyes had bored through me all of Act One. I glanced at the elder Mr. Cooper, whose expression had turned quizzical, and then back at this man. "Please tell the Baron that I am occupied with my own acquaintances at present."

That should have put an end to the Baron's rude comportment, but the next morning a message arrived at my hotel room: "Dear Miss Dugas, As we have not been introduced, I hope you will forgive the presumption, but I humbly request your company for dinner tonight, or any other evening this week. You may send word to me at Claridge's. Yours, Baron Rudolph de Vries."

"This man is exasperating," I told Daisy over breakfast.

"He's a baron. And probably altogether respectable."

"He's impudent."

"He's taken with you. At least let me find out more about him."

Over the next month, the Baron persisted in sending two or three messages a week, sometimes including flowers, which likely commanded dear prices during London's dreary February. Would I, he begged, accompany him to the opening of Oscar Wilde's play Lady Windermere's Fan? Might I like to attend a lecture on Egyptian antiquities at the British Museum? All the while, Daisy continued to press me to accept his invitation.

"He's criminally wealthy," she said, arranging the fresh bouquet of tulips he'd had delivered. "He's a medaled sportsman. Why not give him a chance?"

"I don't care for him."

"Because he's not Johnny?"

"He does suffer by comparison."

"You can't replace Johnny."

"Then because he's arrogant and insolent."

"You've never exchanged a word with him. How can you know that?"

I scampered to her side and shook his note under her eyes. " 'Miss Dugas, I am determined to meet you.' Who is he to impose himself like this?"

"He's his own man. You said you wanted an independent man."

"Independent, yes. A fool, no."

"You're the one being foolish." Daisy threw her hand out in an arc, directing my attention around the suite. "How are you going to pay for this when your bank account runs dry?"

"Something will come up. It always has before."

Daisy slapped a hand to her hip. "You're testing my loyalty. I have a mother depending on me. I can't manage without pay."

Never before had Daisy sounded such a note of alarm. Although I had grown accustomed to trusting that each day would take care of itself, Daisy's life had not been so blessed. And I had brought her here all the way from New York. I looked into her teary eyes. "Very well, inform him that he may pick me up for dinner this Thursday at seven."

As I descended the stairs at the Shaftesbury Hotel, I spotted the Baron in the lobby, standing erect beside a carved wood chair and dressed in a black Prince Albert coat and a black bow tie. With clipped step he marched up to me, reached for my hand, and bowed. "Miss Dugas, I cannot say what a great pleasure it is to meet you."

As he rose from his bow, he raised my gloved hand to his lips and kissed it. Though he sported a thick, dun-brown mustache, a spot of thinning hair on top of his head revealed s.h.i.+ny pink skin. He held his long-waisted torso bent slightly forward, as if to make it easier for our eyes to meet, and he appeared taller-close to six feet-than I had guessed he was, with a trim figure not at all compromised by his middle-aged years. His olive-flecked hazel eyes played brightly against his reddish complexion, and a broad forehead dented and gave way to a nose that sloped sharply from a b.u.mp at its midpoint. We stood suspended for a moment on the hotel's expansive burgundy-and-navy Persian carpet, beneath leaded-gla.s.s gasoliers, while he held my hand and gazed into my eyes.

"Yes, Baron," said I. "We meet at last."

"Please, do call me Rudolph."

I nodded.

In a long step and swivel reminiscent of a military move, he came to my side and offered his arm. "Shall we go to dinner?"

With a graceful lift of his other arm, he put on his top hat. I pulled the folds of my pelisse together, and the Baron escorted me out of the hotel to a gla.s.s-windowed landaulet.