The House of Velvet and Glass (32 page)

“You’re upset,” Benton remarked.

“You’re damn right I’m upset,” Harlan hissed through clenched teeth. “You have no business making light of what’s happened after vanishing like you did. You don’t know me at all.”

Benton brought a finger to his lips, watching Harlan, and seemed to consider his response. Harlan waited, wondering why he hadn’t left yet, annoyed at himself for not having left, but arrested where he stood, waiting. For some reason, it mattered very much to him what Benton would say.

At length the professor took a long breath, still with the finger pressed to his lips.

“You’re right,” he said. He slid his spectacles off and worked a hand over his forehead, then tossed the spectacles onto the desk.

Harlan was taken by surprise.

“I beg your pardon?” he said. The rage in Harlan’s belly bubbled lower, as if the heat had been turned down. Not off entirely. But down. His hand found the back of the chair and clamped down on it, but he didn’t leave.

“I said, you’re right. Have a seat.”

Harlan, startled, plopped himself back into the seat across from the professor, feeling simultaneously mollified and chastened.

“Now then,” Benton said, leaning forward on his elbows, leveling his gray eyes on Harlan’s watching face. “The fact of the matter is, your reasons for your actions, whatever they might be, are beside the point. Our main enterprise here is looking at ways to get you back into school. You want to get back in, don’t you? Sit for your exams? Walk with the rest of the ’fifteen fellows?”

Harlan wondered why the young professor was trying so hard. Benton didn’t stand to benefit from helping a sad sack case. If anything, Benton would be running a substantial risk. If Harlan failed, if he violated the tiniest college rule, Benton’s reputation would suffer for having vouched for him. And even if Harlan were successful, if they found a loophole whereby he could be readmitted, if he sat for his exams and walked the following month, the administration wouldn’t care that Benton had helped.

A fissure opened in Harlan’s mind, allowing him to see past himself for a moment, and he wondered if Benton felt guilty. If he missed the Allston family as much as they missed him.

“Maybe,” Harlan said. His comma of hair slipped over his forehead, and he brushed it out of the way with a toss of his head.

Benton nodded. “All right. We’ll give it some thought, then. Now, I have one other question. Don’t mean to pry, of course. . . .” He trailed off.

Harlan waited, giving away nothing.

“The girl,” Benton said, cheeks reddening. Harlan could tell that the professor found the entire matter distasteful, though perhaps not shocking. In some respect his friend’s disappointment was the most unbearable part of the whole sordid situation, worse than his father’s censure, or his sister’s cloying worry. “Where do things stand? Were promises made?”

Harlan sat forward, suddenly exhausted. He was tired. He was tired of worrying about what he was supposed to do, tired of hiding, tired of trying to be the kind of man that he knew he was supposed to be. His side hurt. His split lip was sore. He brought his hands to his face, sinking his cheeks into his palms with a heavy sigh. The sigh was almost long enough to turn into a sob, but Harlan choked back the fear and shame rising in his chest with a gurgle. He felt, rather than saw, Benton’s expression grow both more concerned, but also softer.

“I know what you all must think of her,” Harlan began, his voice small behind his hands.

Benton waited. Then he asked, “Are you planning to marry her?”

Harlan held his head in his hands, shrugging his shoulders.

“She’s . . . I want to, Ben, I want to, so much. But I don’t see how. . . .” Harlan left the thought unfinished.

Harlan heard the professor shift his arms on the desktop, as though one hand were worrying the gold band that he still wore on his left ring finger.

“She ran off from her family. In California. She’s been on her own for ages. She goes on the stage. You think I don’t know what that means? It’s just that . . . I love her. I know I’m not supposed to. But I do,” Harlan said. He dropped his hands between his knees, head hanging, avoiding Benton’s gaze. He felt the weight of a hand descend on his shoulder. The hand squeezed.

“So I see,” the professor said.

Wiping the corner of his eye on the back of a wrist, embarrassed, Harlan struggled to his feet, shuffling them together in his haste to escape his admission. Benton’s hand fell from Harlan’s shoulder, and Harlan helped it go, shrugging him off.

“I should go,” Harlan mumbled to his feet.

Benton nodded, hands in his pockets. The two men stood like that in Benton’s office for a little while, each waiting to see what the other would do.

“Going to try to catch the game?” Benton asked, failing to sound jovial.

Harlan shook his head. “Nah. Too wet,” he said, eyeing the dismal spring world waiting for him outside in the Yard. “Guess I’ll just . . . Oh, I don’t know.”

Benton shifted his weight and made a noise of assent.

“Well then,” he said after a time. “Why don’t I have another word with the dean, and then we’ll just see where we are?”

“All right,” Harlan allowed. Head still hanging, he turned to leave.

As Harlan reached the office door, his cheeks scarlet with shame, he was waylaid by Benton’s clearing his throat. Harlan glanced over his shoulder to find the young professor rocking back on his heels, as though he had something else to say.

“Harley,” Benton began.

“Huh?” Harlan grunted.

The professor paused, one hand clasping his opposite wrist. “Ah. You’ll give my regards to Miss Allston, won’t you?”

If Harlan didn’t know better, he would have said that Benton looked nervous.

“Sure,” Harlan said, lowering an eyebrow before pulling the office door closed behind him.

Chapter Seventeen

Bosworth Street
Boston, Massachusetts
April 30, 1915

The door swung open on a merry crowd of fancifully hatted women, clinking glassware, low-hanging cigarette smoke, and the smell of cooking butter. Sibyl loitered in the entry, pulling off her gloves. She flopped them against her palm, craning her neck to look over the heads of the diners. She spotted him, pressed into the corner of a wooden booth, and Sibyl shot her hand up, waving to get Benton’s attention. Lifting his chin with an answering smile, Benton started to get to his feet, nearly shouldering aside a long-aproned waiter balancing a platter laden with covered dishes. The waiter unloaded a torrent of French on him that Sibyl gleaned rather than overheard, due to the ambient roar of the restaurant, and she laughed.

By the time she wove her way to his table Benton was standing, hands in his trouser pockets, ducking his head with embarrassment after his tongue-lashing. He took Sibyl’s hand in both of his and said, “I thought for sure I’d be thrown out of here before you made it to the table.”

“Serve you right if you did! He almost lost his Welsh rarebit, you know. That would’ve been a disaster,” Sibyl chided.

He helped her out of her coat, settling it on the hooks on the high end of the booth, and gestured for her to take the seat across from him. Sibyl didn’t usually dine in restaurants, and she enjoyed being in the noise and bustle of the room at midday. The restaurant, a venerable French institution in downtown Boston, echoed with wooden chairs scraping under the weight of diners, voices rising to make themselves heard over the din. The room was narrow, tiled in black and white, with a marble bar along one side and the row of wooden booths along the other. Several waiters swanned among the tables, platters overhead.

Benton gazed at her over his spectacles, and then looked down at the menu, chuckling.

“What is it?” Sibyl asked, noticing his laugh.

“Nothing,” he said, shaking his head.

“What? Now you have to tell me,” she insisted.

He looked back at her across the table with a small smile. “It’s nothing much,” he said. “You had the biggest grin on your face just now. I wasn’t used to it.”

Sibyl’s eyebrows rose, and she brought an abashed hand to her cheek. “I did?” A blush crept down her hairline, warming her skin.

He smiled more broadly. “You did.”

Sibyl laughed softly, through her nose, and hid behind the menu under pretense of studying it closely.

The indifferent waiter reappeared, jotting down Benton’s poorly accented order with a hint of disapproval, including a request for a
pâté en croute
over Sibyl’s napkin-twisting objections. Then, after they each swallowed a long drink of water, and spent the requisite amount of time admiring the surroundings, exclaiming over how delicious everything looked at other tables, and expressing relief that the rain had begun to let up, Benton leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table.

He hesitated, and then closed his hand over Sibyl’s where it rested next to her water glass. She twitched in surprise but didn’t withdraw. His hand felt warm to the touch, softer than she expected, but with a latent strength. The contact point where her skin met his tingled, and Sibyl swallowed, able to concentrate on his face only with difficulty.

“It’s good of you to join me,” he said. “I know you don’t usually . . . that is, I’m not accustomed to seeing you out and about. During the day.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Well. I was glad for your call. It’s a treat, really. To have lunch.”

“Well,” he said. “I’m glad of it.”

Again, the awkward silence. “I suppose you know,” he continued, “that I spoke with Harley yesterday.”

Sibyl nodded, eyes on her salad fork. “That was good of you.”

“Well, your father asked.” Then he added with haste, “I was happy to oblige, of course.”

“Of course!” Sibyl agreed.

“Your family,” Benton said, “felt like a second home for me, you know. After my father . . . well.”

“Papa always liked you,” Sibyl said. “I think he’d have been happy for you to join the firm. If you’d wanted to.”

“Oh!” Benton exclaimed. “Yes. I never was much of a businessman, I’m afraid. And then, I was moving to Italy, so . . .”

“For Lydia’s health. I remember,” Sibyl said. She kept her voice neutral with difficulty.

“Right. Anyway,” Benton said, perhaps realizing his mistake, “I was happy to help.”

Sibyl shrugged, as if she could roll off the unpleasant memory. “Harley. He seems to be feeling better, I think. Though we’re no closer to him telling us anything.”

“I’d be surprised if he did. He’s an awfully proud fellow. And rightfully so.”

“Rightfully!” Sibyl exclaimed. She was on the point of pressing him when the waiter appeared, sliding a platter of
mignons de porc bordelaise
with
haricots verts
before Benton, who waited, cutlery at the ready, and a small bowl of onion soup before her. She glanced at Benton’s plate of delicious steaming meat, into which he was sawing with gusto, and then looked back at the bowl before her, an inviting cap of browned cheese melting over its edge. Between them slid a baked pâté wrapped in pastry, as browned and crisp as leaves of burnt tissue paper. Benton was five bites into his dinner before she managed to pick up the soup spoon, dip it into the broth, and bring it to her lips.

“Yes, rightfully,” Benton continued, stabbing a tiny green bean with his fork. “You should try this,” he said, without asking, depositing the vegetable on her plate.

Sibyl blinked. She could hardly refuse. He would notice. And anyway, it was just a green bean.

“It’s normal for a man your brother’s age, or a bit younger, to push against what’s expected of him,” Benton said, chewing with evident pleasure. “All part and parcel of him figuring out what sort of man he wants to be. He looks at the rules bounding his behavior, and by God, he wants to test them.”

“Oh, there’s no one like Harlan, for testing,” Sibyl said drily.

Benton eyed her with a smile. “Could be worse. There’s no need to go into details, but I’ve spoken with the administration and gotten a clearer picture of what happened. I think, with some promises made to the right dean, we can eke him back in.”

“Well, that is good news. Papa will be so pleased.” She paused. “And what did happen?”

Benton laid his fork aside and looked at her over his spectacles. “If it’s all the same to you, Sibyl, I’d rather not mention the specifics. There was some”—he paused—“ungentlemanly behavior.”

Sibyl pressed her lips into a disapproving line, irritated. “Well, of course there was, Ben,” she said, laying her spoon aside with a sigh of impatience. “A boy doesn’t get asked to leave college for behaving himself
too
well, does he? I wish you didn’t feel the need to protect me from my brother’s considerable shortcomings. I can assure you I’ve a pretty good idea what they are already.”

“Have you?” Benton asked, one eyebrow raised.

“I have. She’s actually very nice, you know,” Sibyl said briskly. She took a bite of the bean and chewed, not meeting Benton’s gaze.

Benton laughed in surprise. “Oh, is she now!”

“She is,” Sibyl affirmed. “Papa was adamant. After what happened to Harlan, he insisted we help extricate her from what was doubtless a very complicated situation. It was the decent thing to do.”