The House of Velvet and Glass (40 page)

“You know, my dear,” he said as they started up the stairs, “he’s a clever man, that Benton Derby. I’ve always thought so.”

Sibyl wasn’t sure where her father was heading with this vague insight, and had no wish to reveal more of their conversation than was necessary. “So he is,” she said, speaking with care. “I’m fortunate to have him for a friend.”

“Hmmm!” her father rejoined. Halfway up the stairs, he stopped. Sibyl looked up into his face. The corners of her father’s eyes crinkled, and he smiled down at her. “I think you should listen to his judgment,” Lan Allston said.

“What do you mean?” she asked, unsure how much her father knew.

A long moment passed, Lan Allston smiling that unnerving and unpersuasive smile, but there was an abiding sadness somewhere behind his cool pale eyes, and for a moment Sibyl found herself feeling something she had never felt for her father before—pity.

“I mean,” he said, “that I believe I was wrong, to encourage you to keep seeing that woman. I thought it would help. I did. But Professor Derby’s right. It’s better you not go anymore. It’s all just dreams and childish nonsense. None of it means a fig. And, worse than that, it stands in the way of a clear view of the real world. Better for us to look ahead with hope, than look back with regret.”

“But, Papa,” she started to object. Her father’s face closed to her interjection.

“No,” he said, in the tone that Sibyl recognized as signaling the end of a conversation. “I should never have let you get so involved. That was wrong of me. Now, I’d like you to stop. Immediately.”

Sibyl was puzzled at this unexpected admission from her usually reserved parent. She searched his eyes, looking for some clue as to the source of that profound sadness that she saw there.

“All right,” she said.

“That’s my girl,” her father said, using a phrase Sibyl hadn’t heard since she was in pigtails. She yearned to question him. But it wasn’t the Allston way to elaborate. Instead, they stood for another interminable moment, in silent agreement, before starting their ponderous way back up the stairs.

As they neared the top another thumping could be heard, followed by peals of laughter rolling down the second-floor hallway. Harlan tumbled out one of the bedroom doors, his hair mussed, fumbling with the cuff link of one sleeve.

“Good gracious!” he exclaimed, embarrassed and laughing, coming upon Sibyl and Lan Allston making their way up the stairs. “What, is it time to dress already?”

Sibyl and her father exchanged a wary glance before looking back at the youngest Allston family member. He grinned at them, and Sibyl thought she detected a faint smear of lip rouge at the corner of his mouth.

“It certainly is,” her father said, voice returned to the stern detachment that was his usual idiom when addressing his son. “We won’t wait up for you, you know.”

Their father turned to make his stately way down the second-floor hall, and Sibyl caught Harlan’s eye. She motioned to wipe at the corner of her mouth with a thumb, and raised her eyebrows at him. His eyes widened, and so did his grin as he followed her direction, wiping away the smear with the back of a wrist. Sibyl thought about registering her disapproval with her wayward younger brother, but instead rolled her eyes and sighed before shooing him back to his room. He retreated down the hall at a trot, still laughing.

As she passed the guest room, she thought she heard giggling from within.

Later that evening, after a supper that consisted of Benton and Lan discussing developments in the war in Europe while Harlan and Dovie exchanged limpid glances over the flower arrangement and Sibyl stirred her food around her plate with dismay, followed by sherry and a hand of bridge in the drawing room, at which Harlan lost his temper when he was beaten, Sibyl sat at her dressing table, listening to the silence in the house. Downstairs she heard the remote chiming of the mantel clock, telling her that it was midnight. Sibyl raised her hands and withdrew the pins from her hair one at a time, tossing them aside with a
tinking
sound into the porcelain tray on her dressing table.

With her hair falling loose around her shoulders, clad in her dressing gown, Sibyl settled in the armchair by the fireplace in her room, stretching her feet toward the last of the glowing embers. The room was lit only by the cold light of a waxing moon, hanging in the sky over the river basin. She rummaged in her pocket, pulling the wooden box out from the silken folds of her gown. Sibyl opened the box and withdrew the bluish crystal, holding it before her in the moonlight. It looked murky in the half-light of the room, as though dipped in milk.

Sibyl turned over everything that Benton had suggested as she balanced the ball on the ends of her fingertips. Just a waking dream, he said. A construct of her subconscious. She sighed. Everything he said made perfect sense. She trusted him. And her father, who had apparently overheard every bit of her conversation that afternoon, agreed. In fact, he had made her promise to stop.

Without her permission, her mind seized on the kiss, on the feel of Benton’s mouth against hers, and she felt her head swim. She leaned against the side of the armchair, wondering what he meant by it. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps he was just overcome with a sense of protectiveness toward her, overwhelmed and forgetful of himself. She would pretend as though it hadn’t happened. He would be ashamed of himself, of abusing their confederacy that way. Benton Derby was a gentleman. She would rise above it. She would let him feel that she still trusted him. But she would be careful.

Then again, she considered—turning back to the content of their discussion rather than its conclusion—wasn’t Professor Friend also trustworthy? And he disagreed with Benton. He was no less persuaded in his beliefs by the revelation of Mrs. Dee’s fraud. If anything, he appeared more assured of the authority of his own dispassionate approach. Sibyl frowned, staring at the scrying glass.

The vision seemed so different from the stuff of a dream. So much realer, more vibrant. Like a moving picture. Sibyl never went to movies anymore. But she had gone a few times with a group of girls from school, remembered sitting in the audience, her face turned up to the flickering light, piano pounding merry commentary on the adventures on the screen. The whole roomful of people, young people like herself, all jumping back as one from the oncoming train, caught up in the tension of a Keystone chase, horses, gunfire, evil villains twirling their mustaches, heavy makeup around their eyes. The images in the glass were more like that, like something that she was watching, than like dreams.

Sibyl glanced left and right, assuring herself that she was alone. Hearing the deep silence of the slumbering house, she felt reassured. No one would know if she tried again. Just one last time.

Reaching for the glass decanter on the table at her elbow, Sibyl dropped about ten drops of reddish amber liquid into a glass that already contained the dregs of her sherry from the bridge game. She held the glass up, examining it as the red drops dispersed like blood in the liquor, and then tossed the mixture back with a grimace of distaste. She couldn’t imagine that her father took laudanum almost daily. The taste was really dreadful. It must speak to the severity of his pain, if he was willing to brave that bitterness in his mouth.

She set the glass aside, settling back in her armchair and holding the scrying glass between finger and thumb. Her weight relaxed, her head leaned against the cushion, she felt the warmth of the embers tingling on her bare feet. The grip of her worries loosened, and her face softened. A sweet sigh escaped her lips.

After a few silent minutes, with her gaze leveled on the scrying glass, its surface started to change. Black, coiling smoke filled the sphere, billowing and bending back on itself. Sibyl smiled with satisfaction. Each time the image resolved more quickly. She was improving.

The smoke parted, drawing open like curtains on a stage, revealing the rippling ocean surface, only this time the waves glinted under a bright midday sun. Sibyl frowned, confused by the change of time. The point of view within the glass skimmed along the water as it had before, ducking and weaving with intoxicating freedom. She caromed along the hull of a gigantic ocean liner, its hull bright in the afternoon sunshine, then veered up and over the gunwale to the laughing faces on board, the women in their lacy daytime finery, the men in their impeccable suits. She peered at each passing face, and though she recognized some of them from her earlier experiments, none were Helen or Eulah.

As she gazed, Sibyl argued with herself. It was all a dream. Benton was right. Everything she saw could be explained away by the particular state of her mind, altered by the substance that she had taken. But the sensation felt nothing like a dream. She felt as though she were watching something happening, in real life, that she couldn’t possibly see.

The glass wandered from person to person, laughing faces most of them, some of them locked in grave conversation. She moved from the deck into the dining room, past waiters moving about with platters held overhead, swerving around dining tables. All the same, all she had seen before, only set, for some reason, in a different time of day. Dinnertime, the midday meal, rather than a late-night party, but everyone else was identical, all the people located in the same positions. Still no sign of Helen or Eulah. Sibyl squinted her eyes, wishing for more. She couldn’t understand where they could be, and she was running out of time. Soon enough, she knew, it would happen.

And then, it did happen. The ship lurched, everyone in the dining room stumbled, and there he was again—young and handsome Professor Edwin Friend, in his tweedy suit, his mouth open in a shout, or possibly issuing instructions. People breaking into a run, the surface of the boat starting to list sharply to starboard. This was the moment when the vision ended.

But this time, it didn’t end. She watched as Professor Friend hurried forward, helping an older woman who had stumbled, saw him wrap his arm over her shoulders and usher her through the throng. Sibyl’s point of view paused, a still point within a panicked crowd of people scrambling for the high side of the dining room. Then the glass floated to the window of the ship’s first-class dining room.

Outside, through the window, she saw a sudden bright explosion, followed by a hellish tower of smoke and water and debris shooting up into the afternoon sky. She trembled where she sat in her armchair safe at home, her body wracked by the vibrations shaking the ship within the scrying glass.

While she stared in horror the glass slowly filled with billows of black smoke, condensing into a boiling mass. When the blackness looked nearly solid, it abruptly pulled apart, dissolving, leaving the glass perfectly clear.

The orb slipped from Sibyl’s exhausted hand, rolling from her lap to the floor, and she buried her face in her hands with a sob.

Chapter Twenty-one

St. Swithin Club
Beacon Hill
Boston, Massachusetts
May 7, 1915

This afternoon was never going to end. Harlan slouched lower in his club chair, folding and unfolding the napkin on the table before him. He bent first one corner, then the other, fluffing the linen until the napkin had transformed into the shape of a swan.

“Impressive,” Bickering said from behind his fan of cards. “Looks like you’ve got some latent talents after all, Allston.”

“Too bad they’re not anything to do with card playing,” Townsend remarked, rearranging his own hand with a meditative eye. Harlan blew a frustrated hiss of air through his nose, nervous hands working the napkin again until it transformed from a folded swan into a compact elephant.

“Where’d you learn how to do that, anyway?” Bickering asked as Townsend took the trick with a miscounted trump. “Damn,” Bickering said in response to Townsend’s move, out of a sense of obligation to appear dismayed.

Bickering’s partner, a watery fellow with pale whiskers and red stains of acne on his cheeks, frowned with more feeling. Harlan wondered if this fellow, whoever he was, was as ill equipped to lose a hundred dollars as he himself. They’d been hesitant to let him play at all. If he should lose, he’d be finished in Boston. At least, his lines of credit would at last be exhausted. Which was all it took, to be finished in society.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Harlan said, ignoring Pale Whiskers’ aggravation. “You just mess around with things long enough and you figure it out.” A few more folds and twists and fluffs, and the elephant became a dachshund. Harlan mock-walked the dog over to Bickering, and made sniffing sounds while pressing its napkin-nose to Bickering’s wrist. The other man pulled his hand away with a funny look.

“Hmmm,” Bickering said, taking a trick from Townsend with a triumphant arch of his eyebrow. Harlan folded his hands behind his head, stretching his legs out below the table. At least they were fifty points up. Two more tricks and Townsend would make the rubber. Harlan knew Townsend’d make a better bridge partner. Few more games like this and his debts would be square. Nearly. In his worried hands the napkin transformed into a cat.