The House of Velvet and Glass (54 page)

He broke her embrace, laughing, embarrassed by her sudden show of emotion. “Oh, come now,” he said with a grin, shaking her off.

But as Sibyl gazed on him, she thought she might never have seen her brother so determined. And, she realized, she might never have seen Harlan look so happy, either.

The gaiters, of course, were never found, and when the taxicab arrived Harlan was still asking Mrs. Doherty if she could look just one more time in the laundry room, to see if they could have ended up there after a hunting expedition three months’ earlier. While she insisted to him that they were not there, had in fact never been there, and while Lan Allston remarked to the hall stand that he felt certain gaiters could be obtained for a reasonable price even in the impenetrable wilderness of New York City, Benton Derby helped the cabbie load the trunks onto the rear of the taxi, lashing them one on top of the other as it idled at the curb. At last the trunks were secured, the gaiters were given up for lost, and Harlan stood with a rucksack over his shoulder on the front steps of the Beacon Street town house, facing his family.

“Harley,” Dovie burst, unable to contain her objections any longer. “I wish you wouldn’t go. What do you want to go for? It’s nothing to do with you! Don’t go. Don’t.”

He grinned, glanced at his father and sister with a twinkle in his eye, and then leaned down and kissed Dovie flush on the mouth. The kiss went on for a while, long enough for Benton to clear his throat.

“Come on, Doves. It’ll be swell,” Harlan said, gazing into her eyes with tenderness mixed with excitement. “I promise. And you won’t even know I’m gone, I’ll be back so fast.”

The girl brought her hands up to her mouth, her eyebrows rising in the middle of her forehead into an inverted V of misery. The sound of sniveling could be heard behind her hands, and her eyes were two emerald pools of water. Harlan placed his hands on her shoulders and this time planted a kiss square on the top of her head. “You be a good girl, now. And you write me. Write me all you want. All right?”

She nodded, but the sniveling continued.

Harlan then turned to Lan Allston, whose chiseled face reflected a stoic impassivity that the Allston children had long taken as a substitute for emotion. Sibyl watched her father out of the corner of her eye. Deep beneath the false impassivity she could read the subtle signs of a man seized with grief. A man who had known this day would come, even before his son was born. She finally understood that the frozen features of her father’s face were there to hide not how he felt about his children, but to hide what he knew from them. The stoic mask, one of the many faces Lan Allston showed the world, was worn at great cost to keep them free.

“Captain,” Harley said, extending his hand. Their father took the young man’s hand, shook it, and then he pulled his son to his breast and embraced him. His wrapped his arms tight around his son’s shoulders, eyes squinted shut, jaw set in granite. He said nothing, their father. But Sibyl watched him hold his son, hold him tightly, and at the very corner of her father’s closed eyes, she saw a glimmer of a tear. Lan Allston was not the sort of father to tell his children, in so many words, that he loved them. Sibyl knew it. Harlan knew it. And in that moment, he didn’t need to.

Last, Harlan turned to Sibyl. “Well, Sibs,” he said, with a grin. “I didn’t go back to school. Think you’ll ever forgive me?”

Sibyl smiled, and as she did so, she realized that she was wearing a stoic mask of her own. Deep inside her heart, where no one could hear, she screamed,
Harley, don’t go! Stay here! Whatever you do, stay here, stay safe with us!
She felt two sets of eyes on her, belonging to her father and to Benton, watching, waiting. She swallowed, her fists taut at her sides.

“I guess you can always finish up when you get back,” she said. Her cheek twitched, and she covered the twitch with a broader smile.

Her brother laughed a delighted laugh, threw his arms around her in a spontaneous embrace, and lifted her off her feet.

“Harley!” she cried, kicking her feet while the others laughed. “Come on! Put me down!” He put her down, grinned, and turned to Benton.

“Well, Derby?” he said. “You ready to go?”

“Just about,” Benton said.

The bottom fell out of Sibyl’s stomach.

“I beg your pardon?” she said, looking at him.

“He’s on my same train,” Harlan said, opening the back door of the taxi and tossing his rucksack inside. “Better run. Wouldn’t want to miss it.”

She stared at him, a strange buzzing in her ears. Benton looked down at her with a sad smile.

“What is he talking about?” Sibyl said, her eyes widening in panic. She reached out and took hold of his jacket sleeve. “Ben? What’s Harlan talking about?”

“I’m going, too,” he said, softly.

“But you can’t.”

“I can,” he said, still smiling. “I must.” He brought a hand up and laid it, softly, against her cheek.

“But,” she protested, her eyes flushing with water. “But I don’t want you to go. I want you to stay here.”

He leaned down, not caring who saw, and kissed her. Sibyl lost herself in it, in the feel of his mouth on hers, in the gentle insistence of his lips and his hand cupping her cheek. He kissed her like he was sipping cool water, like it was the most natural and perfect thing in the world. Then he pulled away, and whispered, “I’ve had my things sent along to the station.”

She held fast to his sleeve, her knuckles white. “Don’t,” she whispered, eyes looking up into his, pleading.

He leaned in, his mouth close to her ear, and said, “You didn’t see me there, did you? Maybe I can look after him. Maybe we’re freer than we know.”

Then he turned, holding her steady in his gaze, and climbed into the taxicab next to Harlan. Twin streams of tears started snaking down Sibyl’s face. Her father’s hand slipped into hers and squeezed. On her other side, Dovie edged nearer, wrapping her arm around Sibyl’s waist.

The taxi gunned and pulled away down Beacon Street. Sibyl couldn’t stand it. Just when she finally found him again, Benton was leaving. Her lower lip trembled, and she bit down on it, hating him for going, hating herself for being unable to stop him. The taxi honked a merry
awoo-gah
, and Sibyl, Lan, and Dovie each raised a hand in farewell.

Before the cab had gone half a block, Harlan stuck his head out the rear window and called out, “Good-bye! Don’t let old Baiji die on me, now!”

And then the taxi rounded the corner of Marlborough Street and was gone.

The three of them, Lan, Dovie, and Sibyl, stood in a knot on the front steps of the house for several minutes, as if waiting to see if the cab would come back. When it didn’t, Lan finally let go of Sibyl’s hand, and fumbled in his pocket for the chronometer.

“Hmmm,” he said.

Sibyl turned to look at him, and said, “What is it, Papa?”

He smiled at her, and behind his ice blue eyes Sibyl saw the true, echoing depths of his sadness.

“Looks like they’ll just make their train,” he said, in a tone that Sibyl found impossible to read, and stepped back inside the house.

The door closed, and when it clicked shut Dovie’s arm dropped from around Sibyl’s waist.

“You,” the girl hissed, turning miserable, accusing eyes on Sibyl. “You! Let! Him! Go!” With each word her voice rose in pitch, until on the last one it was nearly a scream.

“What do you mean?” Sibyl said, confused, so lost in her own grief that at first she didn’t know what the girl was talking about.

“You said you’d talk to him!” Dovie shrieked. “You promised! How could you just let him go like that? How?”

Sibyl’s heart quickened with mingled confusion and fear, and she remembered that Dovie was right. She had promised to speak with Harlan. And, of course, she had spoken with him. Just not the way Dovie had wanted her to.

“Dovie,” she said, reaching a tentative hand toward the girl, who was shaking with sorrow and rage. Sibyl heard the sound of a window sash opening, somewhere down the street, and she swallowed, anxious to keep the girl from making a scene.

“No!” Dovie exclaimed, stamping her foot. “You promised! Now he’s gone. Oh, he’s gone, he’s gone.” With a moan the girl sank to the ground, her knees pulled up like a street urchin, burying her face in her hands, weeping. Surprised, Sibyl took a step back. Dovie wrapped her arms around her knees and sobbed into her skirts. “He’s gone,” she moaned. “What’ll become of me now? What’ll I do?”

Slowly, peering up and down the street to ensure that they were unobserved, Sibyl seated herself next to Dovie and wrapped an arm over her thin shoulders. “Dearest,” she said gently. “You’ll be fine. It’ll be hard, having him gone, but you’ll manage. You’ll see.”

“No, no, no,” Dovie bawled, rocking back and forth. “You don’t understand.”

“Sure I do,” Sibyl murmured, stroking the baby-fine hairs at the base of Dovie’s neck. “You love Harlan. I know that. It’s awful, saying good-bye to someone—” She paused, an uncomfortable realization dawning inside her. “To someone you love,” she finished.

“No,” she wailed. “I mean, yes, I do, of course I do, but that’s not it.”

“It’s not?”

Dovie turned wet green eyes, black kohl puddling beneath them, onto Sibyl. Her nose bubbled, and her ruby lips were swollen from crying. Sibyl smoothed the hair away from her brow and kissed her forehead.

Dovie hiccuped and wiped her nose with the back of her wrist. She was still wearing one of Sibyl’s shirts.

“Sibyl,” she gasped. “I—I’ve got something I’ve got to tell you.”

But deep within herself, Sibyl found she already knew what it was.

Interlude

Old City
Shanghai
June 9, 1868

The early light of dawn felt cool, drier, as though the miasma of night air had been swept away by the river and carried off to sea. Lannie inhaled, bringing the crisp, differently spiced air deep into his lungs. He felt in his pocket to reassure himself of his new chronometer and the last of his money. All was as it should be.

The scholar sighed with satisfaction. “Another day to be alive. We are fortunate, indeed.” He stretched his hands overhead with a luxurious yawn, and smacked his lips. “I could do with some tea, and that’s a fact.”

They strolled at an easy pace, passing vegetable-laden wheelbarrows and a child driving pigs. They stopped at a window and procured two cups of tea from the woman within, paying her more than she asked.

“It’s going to get hazy, later,” Lannie remarked, squinting at the sky.

“It’s not,” Johnny said. “Too cool.”

“Maybe it’s cool now,” Lannie said. “But you mark my words, John—those light clouds up there, like brushstrokes? There’ll be haze by midday, and rain by nightfall. You see if there isn’t.”

Johnny shook his head, muttering about sailors thinking they knew everything God had planned, and it being worse for them when they were wrong.

“You’ve been robbed of your night’s sleep,” he remarked.

“That’s true,” Lannie agreed. Oddly, he didn’t feel tired. He felt the tea warming his belly, felt the ease of his limbs in motion. He felt more alive in that instant of dawn than he had on any other day in his life.

“I’m thinking we’d best get you back to your crew.”

Lannie looked down at his feet, watching his boots step through the dust. A sleeping cat, coiled in a ball, vanished with the vibrating of his steps.

“I guess so,” he allowed without enthusiasm. Who knew what labor he’d be bent to during their time onshore, or what sort of mood he might find among the crew.

“Hm,” the scholar mused, eyes on the heavens, as though reconsidering the weather. “I wonder where they might be?”

“Back at the whorehouse, I guess.” Lannie was brought up short by Johnny’s glare. “Sorry, my mistake,” he said. “They’re probably back at the”—he struggled, not knowing the right word—“back at the—”

“Yes,” Johnny cut him off. “They probably are. That’s where we’ll go.”

They walked for a while in silence, listening to the chirruping of birds. In the distance, a few peddlers were starting to shout their wares. The city was shaking off the last of its sleep. A new day was beginning.

They passed through the fortification wall that bounded the Old City and wound their way through narrow streets. At one point they loitered at an intersection, Johnny looking left and right.

“I think we came from that way,” Lannie said, pointing left.

“Your ignorance is an embarrassment to us both,” Johnny joked. “Anyway, the streets are about parallel. It won’t matter much.” They turned right, ambling under knotted plum trees weighed down with a colony of twittering songbirds.

After a few minutes’ progress down a dim alley lined with hanging laundry, Lannie was certain they’d taken a wrong turn. He glanced at his companion. He thought Johnny might look nervous, but he spoke as though nothing were the matter.

“How long are you here for, then?” the scholar asked.

“Not sure,” Lannie said. “A couple of weeks. However long it takes the captain to transact our business and refit.”

“Long trip back.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, perhaps you’ll come to dinner before you go,” Johnny said, with studied carelessness. “My father will find your manners atrocious, and you’ll find my mother’s cooking inedible. However, you’ll discover my sister to be beautiful, and when you insult her with your attention, I’ll be forced to kill you. A perfect evening.”