Henry and Clara (11 page)

“Well,” said Henry, rising to his feet and putting his arm over her shoulders, “in that case we had better get moving. We can’t have you missing your dreams because you’ve missed the train.”

“Do come back,” said Howard to Clara as she kissed him goodbye. “I couldn’t stand it if you didn’t.”

Through the bedroom window Sarah and her mother watched Henry and Clara disappear down Elk Street. “Clara told me they’re going to Tivoli, Mother. Do you remember how lovely it was?”

“Yes,” said Emeline. “Lovely.” She peered unsmilingly at the receding figures in the street.

From his pillow Howard could not see Henry and Clara, only the backs of his mother and Sarah, and the sparkling raindrops on the window. He too remembered the lights of Tivoli, from whatever Rathbone family tour he’d seen them on. Right now he tried to picture how Clara would look, some night several weeks from now, in those faraway gardens and under those lights. He was also, he realized, trying to imagine himself next to her. But Henry refused to leave the picture.

She put the letter into its envelope, quickly, before she could think about the two little lies in its last paragraph. Not everyone was missing Will (Henry couldn’t have borne his presence), and it was of course Henry, not Amanda, with whom she was going to stroll.

“I’ll be back,” she said to her sisters, who looked up from their novels and knitting and curling papers to nod at Clara and, after she’d closed the cabin door, one another.

She knew just where he’d be, and in the dark she walked with careful speed along the damp wooden deck, trying not to slide toward rail or rigging. She felt the vibrations of the boilers beneath her feet as she looked for the air funnel behind which
Henry had stood waiting for her each of the past two nights. She thought she had the right funnel in view, but there were so many of them; perhaps she was wrong. Or maybe she was early. Or perhaps he’d decided not to come. She pulled her shawl tighter and hoped no one would see her and wonder what she was doing by herself.

It was so dark that when the voice came she nearly screamed.

“You’re not below, praying with your papa?”

“No!” she shouted, before realizing who it was. Then relief made her angry. “I nearly jumped out of my skin! And don’t scoff at Papa!”

“I’m not scoffing at your papa,” the voice said, laughing. “I’m too occupied with his daughter.”

Her fear gave way to a different sort of excitement, though another, delicious sort of fear was mixed into it. She tried to calm herself, to keep him from thinking she was scared of the dark. “Do you think,” she asked, in too much of a rush to sound as casual as she wished, “that our Italian trip will be spoiled? It’s a shame the Piedmont may be torn up by war just because the French and Austrian emperors can’t get along.”

He laughed. “Have you been writing to Will? On affairs of state?”

She tried to laugh with him, but was still worried that anyone who saw them, tucked into this dark alcove, might start some talk. “There’s a woman over there,” she said, pointing toward the railing.

“Do you think she’s going to jump?” he asked. “A jilted maiden who purchased a ticket to come out upon the ocean and do away with herself? They say it happens, you know, even on the commodore’s ships.”

“I think she’s a happily married mother,” said Clara, not pleased at the way he was spooking her tonight. She wanted to get out of this small space, to see his face. “I think,” she added, trying to push him away from her, back into some moonlight, “I think she’s probably trying to get away from a roomful of beautiful, noisy children who haven’t given her a moment’s peace all day.”

He laughed at her hypothesis and at her pushing, and he took her wrist and pushed back, gently at first and then harder, until she whispered “Henry!” loud enough, she hoped, to make him stop what he was doing, but not so loud the woman at the railing would be alarmed. But now the woman was out of her view, erased by the black silhouette of Henry’s head, which was moving closer, blocking everything else from sight, until his face reached her own and he pressed his lips against hers. He took hold of her with both arms and squeezed her, so hard he forced the breath out of her mouth and into his. He removed his lips and brought them to her neck, and when she realized her mouth was free, and open, she expected to hear herself crying out, to the woman at the railing, for help. But the sound she heard coming from herself was a soft moan, a series of murmurs keeping time with the strokes of Henry’s hands upon her breasts. Her thoughts went back again to the woman, who now seemed only an annoyance, a hindrance to this moment her own body wanted to continue, this moment that her hands, pulling on Henry’s shoulders — and her face, biting at his whiskers — were trying to prolong.

And just when she thought her pounding heart might burst, the moment was stopped by the sound of footsteps. Two evening strollers were approaching, and as she closed her eyes, breathing with fear, several seconds passed before she realized that Henry had slipped away into the dark. She was alone.

O
N THE LAST
Friday morning in May, Pauline Harris sat on a bench in the Tuileries, reading the copy of the London
Times
she had purchased at Galignani’s. Henry and three of his sisters were taking a turn about the statuary, still near enough for Pauline to hear their feet scrunching the gravel paths that ran beside the orange trees and lilacs. Judge Harris, complaining of indigestion (the result of having had too late a supper after last night’s opera), was back at the hotel, being cared for by Amanda.

A brief look around convinced Pauline that it was unusual for a woman to sit here by herself reading the newspaper, but none of the strolling dandies and mothers with children seemed to be paying her much mind. More likely these days to crave solitude than attention, she took a long, slow breath and appreciated the momentary absence of the chattering girls, and of her husband, too, who remained almost as fretful and self-pitying as he’d been the day of Mary Hartung’s conviction. It had never been like him to find fault with trifles, but so far his progress through Europe had been a parade of small, nervous complaints about everything from how the breakfast eggs had gone off to the way the fabulous sets at the Opéra only distracted one from the music. Over the years, he had learned to watch
her
for signs of irritation, but these past several weeks their parts had been reversed, and she was grateful for the escape his indigestion was affording her this morning.

Alas, there was no escaping Mr. Seward. Along with news of the fighting in Italy, the London paper was full of his English trip: the way the
Ariel
’s band had piped him aboard with “Hail to the Chief,” how he’d been presented at court and entertained at Lord Palmerston’s home in Piccadilly. It was as if the Harris
party had been in London just to sweep an anonymous path before him: Mr. Seward’s French plans included a visit to Napoleon’s tomb, which Henry had insisted on their seeing just the other afternoon. At least they would be gone from Paris by the time Mr. Weed’s favorite caught up with them. After that, their paths would diverge, Mr. Seward going off to see the pope in Rome and the Harrises proceeding east into Germany.

A few dozen yards away from Pauline, Clara’s gaze paid less attention to the sculptures and flowering trees than to the gravel at her feet. She and her sisters followed Henry as he recited from Baedeker’s and delivered an ironic commentary on the guidebook’s account of the treasures they were passing. Even solemn Louise giggled at his cleverness, but Clara walked in silence, confused and humiliated: the girls might as well be pigeons trotting behind a priest, as he strolled through the matutinal passages of his breviary.

Had she dreamed those nighttime walks on the deck of the
Vanderbilt
? From the moment they docked at Southampton, Henry had made not the slightest allusion, by word or glance, to them — not even to counsel secrecy. Her instincts and shame kept her from making any reference herself. Would this whole grand tour have to be a mere interval, until they were embarked for home and she and Henry could once more safely meet amidst the shipboard shadows?

Since their arrival in England, every day had been smothered in a jabbering fuss about carriages, trunks, itineraries, and meals, all of it made worse by Papa’s sulkiness. The exasperation she felt with him and with all the touristic nonsense should have drawn Henry closer to her, made him realize she could finally appreciate the way he’d endured the whole past noisy decade of doubled family life. But all the bother of travel seemed to trouble him not at all. In fact, Amanda had taken to teasing him about his cheerful new disposition.

An hour later, among the tangled vines and leering funerary monuments of Père Lachaise, Clara continued to worry. Pauline had gone back to the hotel with Louise to check on Papa, leaving her and nine-year-old Lina to stumble with Henry over the illustrious corpses. The Gothic gloom didn’t fret Lina; she went
gamboling among the sarcophagi, popping up here and there in imitation of a gargoyle’s eyes and open mouth, while Henry looked up from his guidebook just long enough to laugh.

Clara felt sick with frustration, wondering why, even in this threatening place, Henry seemed unable to resurrect his doom-saying self. “Give me that voice again, my Porphyro,” she wanted to cry out. “Those looks immortal, those complainings dear!” But he remained horribly merry and fraternal. Only Howard, who Clara hoped was out of his sickbed and on the high seas, could have been gladdened by this new incarnation. The afternoon wore on, and during a long walk through Les Halles, the noise and smells and butcher’s blood succeeded only in further animating Henry and Lina. After they had all, at Henry’s ciceronian insistence, crossed the Pont Neuf and walked clear through Montparnasse, Clara was still unable to find her nerve and demand an explanation of his good spirits.