The House of Velvet and Glass (21 page)

“Good morning, Papa,” Sibyl said, announcing her presence, her voice rusty from sleep. As she spoke Mrs. Doherty appeared, sliding a silent plate of eggs and buttered toast into place before her. Coffee poured, as if of its own volition, into a waiting cup at Sibyl’s fingertips. Sibyl felt the housekeeper’s gaze on her, as though confirming her safety once and for all. She did not speak.

The newspaper rattled.

“It’s unconscionable, I tell you,” Lan Allston said from behind the morning edition.

Sibyl sighed, unwilling to revisit the previous evening’s events in any detail before she had had so much as a sip of coffee. She brought the cup to her lips, her eyes on the tablecloth, saying only a noncommittal “Hmmm,” sufficient to indicate that she was listening.

“Chlorine gas,” her father continued, head shaking in disapproval. “You can’t even imagine the depths the Hun will stoop to. And I always thought they were an honorable people.”

Sibyl let out an inaudible sigh of relief that her father was wrapped up again in accounts of the war, rather than in the situation within the Beacon Street house. She had no idea what he could be referring to. Whatever it was, it sounded wretched.

Sibyl wrestled with the habit, inculcated by Helen, of closing her ears, and so her mind, to unpleasant things. Few aspects of Helen’s and Sibyl’s overlapping characters would send Eulah on a tear faster.

“How can you be so horribly ignorant, Mother?” Sibyl’s memory heard Eulah demand, sitting one morning at that very breakfast table. Her imperious younger sister always insisted that there was little worse than willful ignorance of harsh human truths. “I can’t tolerate it, I really can’t.”

Eulah’s dominant theme just before her death had been votes for women, a passion unshared by the other members of the Allston household.

“Really, my darling,” Helen clucked. “You act as though women don’t hold any sway over men already. Whatever would I need the franchise for? Then I’d have to start reading newspapers and following party platforms and all sorts of bother. Who has the time?”

“Mother!” Eulah cried. “You can’t go about having Papa speak for you all the time. Don’t you want to have your own views put forward? Haven’t you anything to say on your own account?”

“Why, my views are Papa’s,” Helen soothed. “And Papa’s views are mine on everything that’s important. In any event, I wouldn’t want to have to deal with the consequences of lawmaking, would you? Imagine, if one made the wrong decision. Why, it makes me tired just thinking about it.”

“Sibsie,” Eulah squealed in rage, turning to her sister for moral support. “I can’t believe her! And you just sitting there like a lump, not even saying
anything
!”

At that her younger sister had tossed down her napkin and stormed out of the dining room, tipping over a chair in her haste with an abrupt
thunk
. Eulah always had a flair for the dramatic.

“Must be her special time,” a sullen Harlan muttered, to which her mother hissed, “Harlan! None of that.” She may have even swiped at her son’s elbow with the back of her butter knife, but Sibyl didn’t remember. Helen had been a great one for propriety enforced by butter knife.

Sibyl detected the same streak of self-righteous impatience in Harley, though his point of view was shot through with a naïveté that Eulah, despite her cosseted upbringing, had never had. He certainly preferred to speak rather than listen. Whereas Eulah voiced her politics at club meetings and marches under banners, Harlan limited his activism to grumbled disagreements within the safe confines of the Beacon Street house. Harlan was clear in his sense of how the world
ought
to be, his opinions formed from the view out of the drawing room window. He had so far proven unable to act toward those ostensible ideals, of course. But he was flush with ideals all the same.

Sibyl half smiled, certain that Harley would object to such an unforgiving characterization. And what of Sibyl? She had usually been content to hold back, observing the larger personalities of her mother and siblings as they clashed together. But she chafed at it.

Sibyl straightened in her chair and inquired, “Really? Chlorine gas, you say?”

Her father lowered the newspaper and leveled his blue gaze on her face. She sipped her coffee with a pleasant smile, then took up her fork and stirred the eggs around the plate in a practiced gesture of simulated eating.

“Hm,” her father said, perhaps trying to evaluate the true depth of his daughter’s interest in current affairs. “Well, I suppose we can discuss it this evening. It’s hardly appropriate breakfast conversation.” His eyes traveled from her face to the fork moving around the edges of her plate.

“Indeed?” Sibyl asked.

“Suffice it to say,” he continued, “the Kaiser is a ruthless man. Ruthless. And without honor.”

Sibyl’s eyebrows rose, knowing that to disparage a man’s honor was Lan Allston’s most cutting insult.

“If you leave the paper for me, I’ll read it this afternoon,” she said, bringing a tiny morsel of egg to her mouth. “Be sure you tell Mrs. Doherty, though, or she’ll throw it out.”

“It’ll be in the
Evening Transcript
as well, I’m sure,” her father said, still observing the slow progress of her fork. She brought another, equally minute tineful of egg to her mouth and slid it between her teeth. She made a show of chewing, swallowing, affecting enjoyment.

“Betty does the best eggs, doesn’t she?” Sibyl remarked, to push away her father’s close attention.

“Mmm,” he agreed, watching her.

He reached over and let out a sharp ring of the silver bell that rested by his seat. Mrs. Doherty appeared, not bothering to conceal her aggravation at the summons. She was chewing, Sibyl noticed, which suggested that her own breakfast had been interrupted.

“Sir?” the housekeeper inquired, concealing the bite in her cheek.

“Bring Miss Allston some bacon, if you will. We have bacon, don’t we?” he said, telling rather than asking. It was clear the existence of bacon was not subject to debate. “Good and fried. In butter.”

“Very good, Mister Allston,” the housekeeper said, bobbing a fleeting curtsy before disappearing into the pantry.

“Papa, that’s really not—” Sibyl was silenced by a reproving look from her father.

“You need your strength,” he said, more gently than Sibyl expected. “It was a long night, after all. And it’s shaping up to be a long day today, I should think.”

To her surprise, her father reached a rough hand across the table and grasped her wrist with a reassuring squeeze. She blinked, taken aback by the unaccustomed expression of affection. A smile passed between them, and the meal continued in silence. When Mrs. Doherty reappeared after a few minutes bearing some fragrant fried bacon arranged artfully on a small plate, Sibyl accepted it with a nod, and ate.

Neither of them remarked on the vacant chair at the opposite end of the table.

As breakfast drew to a close, and her father commenced rummaging in his coat pockets for the first pipe bowl of the day, Sibyl decided that the time had come to speak. She cleared her throat, and her father cocked a wiry eyebrow at her, seeming to know what she was about to say.

“Well then. Is she . . . ?” Sibyl began.

Her father nodded, gesturing with his chin to the drawing room across the hall. “I believe you’ll find Mrs. Doherty helped her into some of your clothes. Quite an improvement, it must be said.”

Sibyl started to frown, not knowing that any of her blouses and skirts were missing, and discomfited that they would be taken without her approval. But she stopped herself, feeling churlish. Of course the girl needed clothes to wear.

The previous evening, in a wordless agreement on placing duty over propriety, Sibyl and Lan had pressed Dovie to return with them to the town house for the night. Both the practical Allstons were fearful of letting her travel home alone at such an unwholesome hour, and uncertain of the safety of her rooms, given what had happened. She was a stranger to them, but not to Harlan, discomfiting though that was. And once she was in their home, the girl couldn’t very well be expected to stay in her bloodied tunic, could she? Sibyl covered over her irritation with a determined smile.

“All right,” she said, loitering with her fingertips resting on the dining table.

“I’m swinging by the office,” her father said, one eye on the chronometer in his hand. “I’ve a few things to take care of, I’m afraid.”

“Shall I have Betty hold dinner, then?” Sibyl asked. She knew that the implicit message of Lan Allston’s comment was that the entertainment, or confinement, or investigation of Dovie Whistler was Sibyl’s designated assignment for the day.

“No need,” he assured her, rising to his feet in turn. “I should think he’ll be ready for another visit this afternoon. And while I’m there I’ll see about bringing him home. Ought to be back in plenty of time for whatever Betty’s got in store for us. Lamb chops, I’m hoping.” He gazed on his daughter with a smile.

She smiled back. “Lamb chops would be a nice change, wouldn’t they?” she said.

“They certainly would,” her father agreed.

“A little mint jam.”

“I do enjoy mint jam.” Lan sighed.

He looked on her, his eyes softening, and Sibyl knew without him saying anything that her father wished to reassure her about Harlan. It was a look that she hadn’t seen in some time, and she paused, returning it with a tiny, if unconvinced, smile.

Without another word they drifted apart, Lan busying himself with his pipe, Sibyl moving to the pocket door, squeaking it open on its sticky wheels. Her nerves tingled with anxiety, her stomach clamping down on the rich food, as if a leaden ball had been sewn into her belly.

She usually preferred to feel empty, on the inside. Empty was more manageable. Cleaner. When Sibyl was worried about something—it seemed like she was often worried about something these days—a sure way to keep that worry under control was to maintain the emptiness of her body. Empty was control. Empty was free. She wasn’t sure if her father had cottoned to this long-simmering habit of hers, but she suspected that he might.

Sibyl brought a hand to her waist, massaging her belly to reassure both it and herself as she crossed the front hallway toward the drawing room. The hall stand caught her eye as she passed, its mirror reflecting a wan face, nose sharper than she remembered, eyes rimmed with fatigue. She turned away from the unwelcome specter of herself and opened the enameled peacock door.

Chapter Eleven

Sibyl found the front parlor brimming with pale spring sunlight. Motes of dust glittered in the sunbeams, held in the air by the stirring breath of the long dormant room. Someone had thrown back the velvet drapes, tying them open, and had fluffed and rearranged some of the throw pillows on the divan, heaping them up in inviting disorder. Sibyl surveyed the room, blinking, surprised.

“I’m sorry,” a youthful voice spoke from the yellow silk bench under the bay window. “It was just so gloomy in here, I could hardly see.”

Sibyl followed the voice, losing it first in the glow of sunshine through leaded glass. A slim figure was stretched out on the window seat, leaning on one elbow, toying with something that gathered the light to itself and then sent it out again in sharp, brittle splinters.

For a baffling instant, Sibyl felt transported. Three years ago, maybe, or four, coming into the drawing room after breakfast, with the curtains pulled back just like they were now, squinting her eyes against the spring sunlight pouring through the bay window.

“Oh!” the voice in her memory laughed from its perch on the window seat. “She vexes me so, I can hardly stand it. It’s just too much, to think of going on the tour with her. For months, can you imagine? First on the steamer going over, and you know she’ll want to share a stateroom. With her snoring! Then train after train after train. It just wears me out. I so wish you’d come with us.”

Sibyl furrowed her brows, remembering the mingled envy and resignation that weighed on her that year. She almost hated her mother for giving up on her so quickly. She struggled not to fold that bitter feeling into her affection for Eulah. “I wish I could,” she said. “But you know the cost is just ridiculous. And anyway, I think Mother’s persuaded it’ll do you much more good than it will me. I can’t say I blame her.”

“Nonsense,” Eulah chided from her spot on the bench in the bay window. “Why, if nothing else, you should be there to keep me from throwing her overboard in a fit of pique.”

Sibyl remembered laughing at Eulah’s feigned misery, settling in the windowed enclave across from her youngest sibling.

“Now, now,” she said, already growing into her coming role. It was the duty of Boston spinsters to encourage and reassure marriageable young women, and Sibyl slipped into that performance with worrisome ease. “You mustn’t talk that way. You know Mother dotes on you. You’ll have fun. Just think of all you’ll see. The pictures. A real opera. The cafés, full of artists and writers and singers. I’d love to visit a Parisian café, you know. You’ll order your clothes, and if I’m very lucky you’ll lend me a few of them when you get back, provided I haven’t gotten too fat pining for your return, of course. You’ll meet all sorts of interesting people.”