Conjurer (9 page)

So she sets forth, marching first north toward Lombard Street. She never looks back at the orphanage, just as she tries to avoid seeing the denizens of the street. She knows only that she needs to be among her own kind. She needs to return to the comforting cave of wealth, security, and power.
Let the good Samaritans of the world attend the unfortunate and destitute
, she tells herself.
I have not the stamina for it. I have not the heart
—
or the talent or the skill or the intellect
.

But those excuses are suddenly and woefully challenged by a familiar voice calling her name.

“Miss Beale? It is Miss Beale?”

Martha's face flushes red. “Mr. Kelman!” As she utters the hurried words, her foot sinks into a malodorous stew of horse dung and ancient refuse, releasing a stench so potent she reflexively closes her eyes.

Automatically, Kelman reaches out to aid her while she, just as unconsciously, leaps back, leaving them both standing silent and awkward on the dingy street.

Finally, Kelman speaks. His tone is formal and clipped. “You're making good your promise to give aid to the poor, I imagine?”

“No,” Martha replies in deep chagrin. “No … I am not.”

“But—?” Kelman looks past her. He recognizes the orphanage in the distance.

“I fear that I'm late for an appointment, Mr. Kelman. You must excuse me.”

Kelman draws into himself; the memory of her rejection flashes hot through his brain. “Of course. I did not intend to detain you.”

But Martha doesn't move. Instead, she blurts out an unhappy “You said you'd help me find my father.”

Kelman eyes her coldly. “And I remained true to my word, Miss Beale.”

She looks at him; mistrust and hurt play upon her face; resentment darkens his.

“The note I wrote you stated as much, Miss Beale. My men worked for four solid days, and far into the evening hours, as well.” He pauses, then states a bitter “I trust you are now quite improved from your indisposition.”

“What indisposition, Mr. Kelman?” is her startled reply. Then she adds a slower but equally perplexed “I never received a missive from you.”

Unanswered Questions

M
R. SIMMS
,”
MARTHA ANNOUNCES THE
moment she enters the double withdrawing room of her father's city house, “I've just come from a chance encounter with Mr. Kelman. He claims to have written to me while we were yet residing in the country, only to have his message rejected with the news that I was indisposed and so could not personally accept his report on the search for my father.” Martha doesn't know what else to add to this statement, so she stands upon the carpet, waiting. Her shoes are wet from her tramp; one is most probably ruined, but the state of her footwear is less troubling than this mystery.

“I suppose one of the servants took it upon himself to act on your behalf, Martha.”

“But who would do such a thing?”

“I have no notion, I'm afraid.” Simms is slitting open Lemuel Beale's letters as he speaks, his mind clearly on matters of greater consequence than this minor domestic question.

“I'm quite surprised that anyone at Beale House should imagine he could speak for me.”

Owen Simms looks up for a moment only. There's a placating but distracted semi-smile on his face. “I assume the act was done in order to protect you, Martha.”

“But I don't need protection, Mr. Simms. Not of this fashion.”

Simms finally puts down the correspondence. “Of course you do, Martha. You're in the midst of an extraordinarily trying time, and I and everyone else in your small sphere must do all we can to support you.”

“But I asked Mr. Kelman for his aid, and then—”

Simms stands and walks to her side. For a terrible moment, Martha fears he's about to embrace her. She instinctively steps backward, but even as she does so, she wonders what it is about her father's confidential secretary that so unnerves her. Then, with this query comes an offended
I'm the mistress of my father's household, am I not? In his absence, I am … I should be, shouldn't I?… and act accordingly, too, and be treated as such …
But those bold notions die away, as usual, leaving Martha looking merely confused and ill at ease.

Simms, naturally, cannot read her mind, and his tone continues both caring and faintly chiding. “You see, Martha, my dear! I hope you recognize how overwrought you've become. You leap away from me as if I wished you harm, which I assure you I do not. Until this tragic mystery of your father's disappearance is resolved, you must allow me to act in his stead. He would wish it. You know he would. Your protection and safety have always been his chiefest concerns.”

“But I've been rude to Mr. Kelman,” Martha persists. “Or rather, someone has been rude on my behalf.”

“I wouldn't concern yourself with the likes of Thomas Kelman, Martha. For all his purported political connections, he's really no better than a local constable.”

“But he did organize a search for Father.” Martha knows she's losing ground in this interview; she feels it slipping away beneath her feet as though the room had turned mountainous and steep. It's precisely the pattern of her many conversations with her father:
But why may I not participate in a drawing class for young ladies? Why am I forbidden to attend the opera with you now that I'm old enough? Why may I not consider a proposal of marriage
—
or even encourage a young gentleman to look upon me with favor?
Her requests were frequent; the response always that she was too inexperienced to understand precisely what she was demanding of her parent. “When the time is right,” her father had advised again and again, “when what you wish, dear child, is reasonable and sensible.”
Reasonable and sensible!
If it were possible to dislike two words, Martha knows she would chose those.

“And so Kelman should have done. Without you asking him.” Owen Simms returns to Lemuel Beale's affairs while his daughter knits her fingers together in frustration.

“But you discouraged him, Mr. Simms. You said—”

“What I said was that the river was in flood and the currents treacherous; and that I did not envision how any man—even a man as hale and robust as your father—could survive a plunge into its depths. I remind you, Martha, that I was repeating what many others had also asserted.” Simms's voice has taken on a harsher tone, one Martha has never heard before. Then all at once, his anger—if it was anger—dissipates, and he again regards her with pensive concern. “And what was Mr. Kelman's conclusion following his search?”

“He and his men found no trace of Father.”

“Yes, I know.” Simms opens another letter and begins to read it.

“You knew, Mr. Simms?” Martha asks, but he's become so engrossed in the page before him that he fails to respond. “You knew?” she repeats, then waits, although she realizes she doesn't expect an answer. Of course, Owen Simms, as a man, would be privy to many situations she would not. It's how the world runs.

Simms surprises her. He puts down the letter. “I had hoped to spare you, Martha. I had hoped that we might hear more conclusive news, and until such time, I felt it incumbent to safeguard your very sensitive heart.” He pauses. “This citified life is not conducive to your mental equilibrium, I fear. Perhaps we should retire again to the countryside. What do you say to that? Wouldn't you rather be in that more healthful environment?”

All Martha's mind's eye can envision is the ice-encrusted river and the lanterns bobbing along the shore as they began the search for her father, but she answers with a weary “If you wish it, Mr. Simms.”

“It is for you that I desire it … Good, then. We will depart in the morning. And what work I must attend in town—Well, that is not for you to fret over.”

As martha concludes this uncertain conversation and wanders upward through her father's city house, Emily Durand yanks open her own bedroom door, then pauses on the threshold observing the corridor, staircase, and part of the foyer below. Not a soul is in sight, not a sound is heard unless it's Emily's rapid breathing and the pounding of her heart—which seems to her very loud indeed.

As quickly as she opened the door, she closes it again, then stands leaning her forehead into the painted wood, which feels cool and soothing to her perspiring face. She has received a private letter from Eusapio Paladino, suggesting he has a message he needs to impart to her in person. What this might he, Emily doesn't know, but the very fact that he has written to her—and that she has kept the wretched thing—has become a torture.
Perhaps he wants money
, she tells herself,
perhaps he imagines because I didn't flinch away from his clandestine attentions that I am one of those sophisticates who crowd the European capitals: ladies with lovers, and husbands too occupied with their own amours to care. Well, I am not one of those immoral women; I'm a pillar of our American society; I was born to be one, and it is incumbent upon me to maintain the role for which I was raised
.

Even as she makes these grand arguments, Emily realizes how specious they are. Excitement and danger are precisely the sensations for which she yearns.
Why else do I purchase clothes that outshine all others'? Why else the constant need to be the most
au courant
of my set, to make the cleverest remarks, to dance so close to the disapproval of staid Quaker Philadelphia? And what paltry substitutes are those for the real things!

Emily's brain is now so thoroughly anguished that she presses her body closer to the door until its soothing resilience pushes against her breasts and thighs. The comfort she receives seems almost human, and she closes her eyes, releasing a groan of anguish and need.
No, I cannot leave my house on this absurd mission. I must cling to the life I've embraced. What I'm experiencing is an aberration only. It will pass. Don't I have all that I wish: a lovely home, a husband who respects me, more than ample means by which to guide my pleasant life?
Yet even as these arguments spill forth, others make their sly, subversive way forward, and her eyes fly open to stare into her room as if trying to discern the future.

But why should I be discovered visiting the conjurer's rooms? Who's to know whom I see or where I go? John doesn't dog my every step. My maid and my other servants come at my behest and no sooner. I'm Emily Durand, not a piece of chattel or a child who must be watched over and guarded. I'm a woman of means; I'm the mistress of my own affairs, and if I'm careful
—Here the private monologue abruptly veers into more negotiable terrain:

I will visit the conjurer this one time only. I will go out of curiosity
—
and because to shy away from such a proposal would be cowardice. And I have never been
—
nor ever will be
—
accused of lacking in bravery. One brief journey to the Demport House Hotel: Surely that should be a trifling matter for someone like me?

Even cynical Emily is unaware how dishonest these promises are.

The Future Glimpsed

“I'
M TELLING YOU, ROSEGGER, KELMAN
is—”

Owen Simms's host makes an abrupt and silencing gesture while his wife continues fussing over the tea table, slicing aniseed cake and adjusting lemon slivers as if those tasks were the most crucial in her life. Her white lace hair dressing and demi-gloves—mittens, as she calls them—flutter through the brown and murky air of her husband's private study. “Mrs. Rosegger,” he says after some additional moments of china chinking and silver tinkling, “you may leave that.” The accent is guttural and demanding. Despite the fact that he is no longer Austrian but American, that he speaks English flawlessly and has prospered hugely in his elected homeland, Rosegger's words still sound like orders issued by an old-world patriarch. The room reflects this view: only two vapor lamps lit; the new cast-iron stove that resembles a Gothic castle providing heat but no cheery hearth-light.

Rosegger's wife's knitted fingers instantly fall to her lap. “You will send for me, Mr. Rosegger, should you desire additional hot water—or something stronger, perhaps? Some port or a sherry wine?” Unlike her husband, Mrs. Rosegger is a native Philadelphian, but she has a curious manner of searching for words as though she weren't certain they were acceptable or right. “There's a cold roast in the larder, as well, I believe … venison, I think it is.”

“We will need nothing further.”

At that conclusive statement, Mrs. Rosegger makes a quick, polite bow to her husband's guest and withdraws. Her face is flat and emotionless, although in the corridor the mask breaks apart, and she gazes with both bitterness and fear toward the closed door before tiptoeing back to stand beside it, pressing her ear to the keyhole.

“You were informed that no trace of Beale was found? Well, what of it, Simms? It's a large river to be searching for a single man,” she hears her husband say in his deliberate, hectoring tone, and then his guest reply with an agitated:

“You're taking this very smoothly, sir.”

“Unless you bring me news of more substance, Mr. Simms, I have no other choice.” Rosegger's wife knows that sound of his speech well. It's intended to discredit and demean. “And I fail to understand why—”

“I don't trust Kelman,” Owen Simms interjects. “I don't know why it was necessary for him to be involved.”

Rosegger permits himself something that sounds like a dismissive laugh. “A person as important as Lemuel Beale—”

“Dammit, man, I know all that! But facts don't make this situation any easier. Why can't he simply accept the obvious, that Beale drowned?”

“It sounds to me as though he does, Mr. Simms. It also seems to me that you may be of a different opinion.”