The House of Velvet and Glass (8 page)

He barked a single laugh, almost identical to the one barked by his father downstairs.

“Not likely,” he said, swirling his glass. Harlan couldn’t bear her steady gaze—why did she have to look at him like that? Why couldn’t she hide how disappointed she was? He cast his eyes sideways to the fire, and the loose lock of hair fell over his forehead.

“Well, you needn’t decide all at once. It’s a month yet before semester’s end, isn’t it?” she pressed.

Instead of answering her he got to his feet, ambling to the bay window that looked through the elm branches down to Beacon Street. He’d have preferred the room facing the river, Sibyl’s room. She was the oldest, so she always got the best of everything. But he supposed that would have to wait until the old man kicked the bucket. Harlan drew aside the brocade drapery, the glow from the streetlight illuminating the young lines of his face.

“How did the Captain seem?” he asked, trying to sound indifferent.

Sibyl said nothing, and Harlan glanced from the window to her, expectant.

“Oh, Harley,” she said at last. “What can have happened?”

Something inside Harlan broke apart, and the full flood of his self-loathing washed through him like a tide of spoiled milk. He turned on her, mouth a tight line, nostrils flared. Sibyl withdrew deeper into the armchair, and he just glimpsed fear in her face before she was able to hide it. As soon as he saw that she was afraid of him, his cheeks flushed with mingled anger and shame: at Sibyl, for not seeing that he wanted to be reassured, and at himself, for his accursed weakness. He stalked across the room to the door, flinging it open with such force that it bounced off the wall, leaving a dent in the paper.

“I have nothing to say to you,” he said, too loudly. “I have nothing to say to anyone.”

Sibyl rose, and Harlan knew that she was covering over her discomfort with formality. It was typical of Sibyl to respond that way to anything unpleasant, she had adopted it from their father, and Harlan wanted to grasp her by the shoulders and shake her, to force her to see how he was feeling without him having to explain, as she used to when they were children. He so desperately wanted her to
see
him. In that instant he almost hated his sister. Helen and Eulah had left; and now here was Sibyl, leaving him, too.

She moved past Harlan, head high, lips pressed into a grim line like his own. When she reached the door she lingered, her fingertips on the doorknob. “You’re tight,” Sibyl said, voice measured and cold, and the judgment in her voice caused the muscle at his jaw to twitch. “No more of that, now. You’d best rest up. I’ve ordered supper for seven thirty.”

She cast her eye down his disheveled self and back up to meet his gaze. “Dressed.”

The door closed behind her with a click, and Harlan’s fist tightened around the glass until it cracked.

At precisely fifteen minutes before the dinner hour, but well after the dressing bell, Harlan peeked his head out from his bedroom door, looked left down the carpeted hallway to the main stair, looked right to the rear stair and the door to Sibyl’s rooms, and satisfied himself that she was still dressing. No sound stirred the halls of 138½ Beacon Street, save the distant ticking of an unseen clock. He eased one stockinged foot out the bedroom door, followed by the other. His hair was smoothed back, held in place with a combed sheen. His dinner jacket was brushed, with a fresh sprig of mint tucked, in daring defiance of fashion, into his buttonhole. His black silk tie was elegantly knotted, and his cheeks glowed pink with a fresh shave. One hand held a pair of evening pumps buffed to a high sheen, an overcoat draped over his arm, while the other eased closed the bedroom door.

One foot after the other, catlike, exaggerating with high steps of his knees for his own comic amusement, Harlan crept past Sibyl’s closed bedroom door. As he passed, the ball of his foot pressed on the joint between two floorboards, which let out a protesting creak. Harlan froze.

Inside, delicate humming stopped. Both parties on either side of the door held their breath, ears straining. No sound but that distant, placeless clock. In a moment the humming began again, the humming of hair arrangement, and Harlan exhaled in slow degrees before resuming his progress. He eased open the door to the rear service stair, slid through it, and closed it with a click.

Down the narrow service stair, silent, as when he was a boy, stalking through the house playing pirate, or Union spy on a raid behind Rebel lines. He’d loved to dress up, winding one of his mother’s scarves around his head for piracy, or in a wide sash at his waist to play at being a Zouave, with a cigar-box fez and an invisible cutlass. He’d creep on all fours through the shadows, spying on the kitchen girls, eavesdropping to collect intelligence for the general back at the base, or the pirate captain waiting on shipboard, thrilling at his secret rebellion. He’d write up his notes in a complex code of his own design, borrowed from ship log shorthand and algebraic notation. Harlan loved feeling concealed, on a noble mission, hidden from whatever his father might have wished for him to be doing.

Harlan sat on the bottom step of the service stair and bent to slip into his shoes.

“Oh!” a voice gasped.

His head snapped up, and he beheld the startled face of Betty Gallagher, her hands struggling not to drop a platter of roast chicken.

He leaped to his feet, stepping forward to slide both hands under the platter to help rescue the chickens. His pulse rose, enjoying that Betty Gallagher would now be in collusion with his plan.

“Mister Harlan!” Betty said when she had recovered herself. She took in his dinner jacket, the overcoat on his arm, and glanced at the door into the dining room. “But . . . supper’s not been ordered ’til seven thirty.”

Harlan, standing close as both their sets of hands supported the platter, gazed down into Betty’s face, with its wide eyes and wild hair. Her freckles were delectable. Most fellows didn’t care for freckles as a rule, thinking they were tough-looking. But Betty’s were appealing. Like cake batter you could wipe off with your thumb, buttery and sweet. He smiled out of one side of his mouth, wondering if she’d pull away, and coiled a tentative arm around Betty’s waist.

“Not for me, it isn’t,” he whispered. “I’m dining at the club.” He tightened his grip a little and felt the inviting give of her flesh under the apron and shirtwaist. She wasn’t pulling away. He wondered with a shiver of pleasure if he could press further.

She half-smiled in return, gripping the platter with both hands. “Why, Mister Harlan,” she chided. “Whatever will your father say.”

“Hmm,” he said, pretending to look concerned. “Why, I hadn’t thought of that. What shall we say to him?” He ducked his head nearer Betty’s freckled cheeks, crinkling his eyes in commiseration.

“What indeed?” she whispered. Their eyes met, his sparkling with mischief, hers watchful.

Thrilling at the window of opportunity she seemed to have cracked open for him, Harlan leaned in and pressed his lips to Betty’s mouth. He felt resistance, and then beneath his insistent pressure felt that resistance give. She tasted as he knew she would, like flour and salt and cinnamon, and his fingers pressed into the small of her back, sensing the texture of her skin. He pressed himself closer, slipping his tongue between her lips and probing the roof of her mouth. Her mouth was delicious, warm, yielding, but oddly inert under his kiss, accepting without participating. After a moment she broke herself away, wiping her mouth with the back of her free hand and then batting him on the cheek.

“Brute,” she scolded, but with a knowing smile.

Harlan laughed. She was a fine, game girl. He’d suspected she would be.

Just then the kitchen door opened to reveal the back-lit silhouette of Mrs. Doherty, her face impassive. “Is the girl bothering you, Mister Harlan?” she asked without preamble.

“Why, not at all, Doherty, not at all,” he said, eyes twinkling. “But I am bothered.” He reached up to confirm that his tie was in order.

“In that case we’ve the table to see to,” she said, frowning, in a manner both commanding to Betty and dismissive to Harlan.

He winked in Betty’s direction, but she wasn’t looking. Instead she hurried, head down, to the door into the dining room, opening it with her back, platter of chickens in both hands, eyes averted. Mrs. Doherty turned an icy glare on him and seemed on the point of saying something. Harlan flashed her his most winning smile, brushed his hand over the mint sprig in his buttonhole, and slipped out the back door.

“Two spades,” said Rawlings around the pipe between his lips, coils of smoke leaking out the corners of his young mouth.

“Pass,” grumbled Bickering. Harlan wished Bickering would have a better card face. This was bound to be a wasted rubber if he couldn’t keep his cards to himself.

“Four spades,” tossed out Townsend. He was a smooth fellow, with shrewd eyes. The sort of man who’d have hobbies about which he could be an insufferable bore. Chess? Philately? It didn’t matter. It could solve a number of problems, having a bridge partner like Townsend.

“Pass,” said Harlan, as evenly as he could.

“Well, dummy’s you,” Townsend said to Rawlings, who laid his hand out faceup with resignation and rekindled his pipe.

“Well, Allston,” he said, slipping the pipe back between his lips. Rawlings cultivated the pipe at college because clenching it in his teeth forced him to flatten out his vowels. Trying to obscure a southern boyhood, was Rawlings.

“Well?” Harlan remarked, eyes on his cards. He shifted a few in pairs, considering his strategy.

“Sir.” A murmur by Harlan’s ear stirred the fine hairs at the base of his neck. A uniformed porter bent in a confidential attitude by the card table, hands behind his back.

“I’m rather occupied,” Harlan said, without looking at the houseman.

“So sorry, sir, but you have a telephone call. Where should you like to—”

“I’m in the middle of a game.” Harlan’s voice tightened. “I should not like to take it at all.”

The porter cleared his throat, saying, “Very good sir. What time shall I tell Captain Allston would be more convenient?”

Harlan looked up at the houseman with a sordid glare, saying nothing.

“An hour then, sir?” the porter suggested, unflappable. Captain Harlan Plummer Allston Junior, Lan to his intimates, Lannie to his wife, had been a member of St. Swithin’s longer than his son. His influence there, as in all other venues of Harlan’s life, was considerable.

Harlan returned his eyes to his cards, slapping a useless seven of hearts on the table.

“Blast,” said Bickering. “If that don’t cap all.”

“Ninety-five,” Rawlings remarked with amusement.

“Well, I reckon we’re beat,” Bickering said, stretching his arms overhead.

Harlan scowled, heart sinking. Ninety-five! And on top of everything else, too. He should’ve known better, picking Bickering for a bridge partner.

“Now then, Allston,” Rawlings continued, lips moving around his pipe. “Rather early to be slinking out of old Westmorly Hall for the summer, isn’t it?”

“What d’you mean?” Harlan asked levelly.

Rawlings laughed as Bickering and Townsend exchanged a glance.

“All right, have it your way,” Rawlings said. “But I wish you’d give us the scoop. Otherwise we’ll just amuse ourselves with speculating.”

Harlan paused, considering how they might respond if he actually told them the truth, and then laughed. Impossible. They’d never believe he meant it. He could afford a variation, at most. He rummaged in his jacket pocket and withdrew a silver cigarette case.

“Well, Rolly, I’ll tell you,” he began, lighting his cigarette as the three young men pricked up their ears. “It’s a pretty good story.”

“I knew it,” Bickering said to Townsend, who raised his eyebrows.

“It has to do with a certain young lady,” Harlan said. “About whom I can’t say any more, for fear of her reputation. You understand.”

“Oh, come now!” Rawlings protested. “Can’t a man speak plainly within the confines of his club, and in the company of gentlemen?”

Townsend and Bickering gave their audible assent.

Harlan made a show of hesitating, and then deciding to persevere. “Very well. I’m sure you’re aware, this isn’t the first time a member of the fairer sex entered our humble Cantabrigian domicile. So I invited this lady of my acquaintance in for a drink and some companionable conversation.”

“That’s the boy,” said Bickering, elbowing Rawlings in the ribs. Rawlings grinned, teeth still clamped around the mouthpiece of the pipe.

“So there we were, a nice fire going, a couple of excellently made cocktails,” Harlan continued.

“And some
companionable
conversation, no doubt,” Bickering interrupted.

“When she comes over faint,” Harlan said in feigned surprise.

“The poor thing,” Rawlings said through his grin.

“Well, what could I do?” Harlan asked, hands spread in helplessness. “I helped her to loosen her dress. Ladies’ underthings can be so restrictive, you know.”

“I’m all for dress reform, myself. So much more modern. So much more . . . accessible,” Bickering mused.

“Well, wouldn’t you know, the tutor chose that most inconvenient moment to drop in.” Harlan sighed. Anguished groans broke out around the table. It wasn’t a lie, exactly.

“Not Baker, was it?” Rawlings asked.

“I had a few run-ins with Baker myself, before I parted ways with the Crimson Goliath,” Bickering remarked to no one in particular.

“So there you have it, fellows. Hoist by my own petard.” Harlan took a last drag on his cigarette before rubbing it out in the brass tray on the table. Townsend idly shuffled one of the decks of cards, his hands in constant motion as Rawlings pursed his lips around the base of his pipe.

“Now, Allston,” Bickering said, adopting a faux-schoolmarm tone, “there’s a rather important detail lacking in your account.”

“Oh?” Harlan asked, in false innocence.

“The name of this infamous lady. Mademoiselle Petard,” Bickering said.

Harlan stood, hooking his thumbs in his waistband and gazing down on the other men at the card table with a sultry look. “You certain you’d like to know?”