The House of Velvet and Glass (9 page)

“Her name!” clamored Rawlings, with Townsend and Bickering together.

“Why, Rolly, don’t you know? I’d think your sister would’ve mentioned,” Harlan said, before tossing a peanut into his mouth and withdrawing from the table with an ironic salute, as the air seemed to rush out of the room.

As Harlan paused in the door of the St. Swithin Club, pulling the collar of his overcoat up under his ears against the chill of late evening, he spotted the form of a man approaching at a laconic pace, streetlights casting his wavering shadow across the brick street. Cursing his luck, a twist of guilt in his belly, Harlan started at a quick clip down the steps, head down, jostling by the man as he started up the stairs to the club. Too late—the man caught his elbow.

“Why, is that Harley Allston?” he said.

“Benton,” Harlan said, injecting his voice with the necessary heartiness. “Good to see you. ’Fraid I must be going.”

“Hold up a minute,” Benton Derby said, keeping a firm grasp on his elbow.

“Wish I could, but I really can’t.” Harlan smiled, shrugging. “People waiting.”

The young man released Harlan’s arm, brushing his coat jacket smooth. “All right,” he said. “You know, I’ve got office hours all during reading period. You’re welcome, any time.”

“Right,” Harlan said, still with an uncomfortable smile on his face. “See you, then.”

Harlan hurried down the street, hands thrust into his coat pockets, eyes on his shoes. He wished Benton hadn’t seen him. Benton must have heard the story by now. Harlan frowned, watching his feet stride down the cobblestones, sidestepping puddles. When he reached the Common he paused, glancing over his shoulder, and saw the silhouette of Benton Derby still standing under the awning of the St. Swithin Club, arms folded, watching him go.

Turning away without a wave, Harlan jogged down the stairs from Beacon Street, enveloped by the anonymous darkness of the Common at night. Hidden in the darkness he felt the shame start to fall away. He crossed southeast, fog thickening around him. The damp created an eerie halo around each streetlight, and moisture beaded on his overcoat by the time he jogged across Charles Street into the Public Garden.

Damn that Benton. Harlan scowled as he passed under the weeping willows by the pond, then through cobbled streets that grew narrower, darker, more clotted with animal waste. The deeper he moved into the center of the city, the more the grip of shame loosened. He paused at an intersection of withered eighteenth-century houses, peeling clapboards and leaning chimneys, places that the historical society ladies treasured without wanting to inhabit. A tiny boy sat in a ball on a stoop, in a pair of greasy boots that were too big for him. The shutters on his house were closed and insulated with wadded newspaper.

“Excuse me,” Harlan said. “Would you say I’m nearly at Harrison Avenue?”

The urchin nodded, and then held out a grubby hand.

“Thought so.” Harlan smiled, pressing a nickel into the boy’s palm. Almost there.

He rounded a corner at a trot, and with a leaping in his chest spotted a brightly lettered placard framed by cherry branches, translated in smaller type as boarding house. Beneath the sign stood a nondescript door. Harlan opened this door and stepped into a hallway whose major decorative element was wallpaper covered in bloodred cabbage roses, curling at the corners. A single electric bulb burned in a frosted glass sconce. He mounted the narrow stair, taking the steps two at a time, his footfalls muffled by worn carpeting.

On the third floor Harlan moved down the hallway, a grin spreading across his face. He reached the door at the end, which he knew opened into the front gable garret facing onto Harrison Avenue. A dried sprig of mint hung, upside down, their private signal, pinned to the naked wood of the door, below the hand-painted numeral 8.

Harlan lifted his hand to knock, his pulse quickening.

Just then the door clicked open, and a smiling green eye observed him from behind a brass chain. The door closed as the chain was unfastened, and then opened again.

“I’m so sorry,” Harlan started to say. “I couldn’t—”

He was interrupted by a delighted laugh, and the sound of shushing. The person behind the door took hold of the lapel of his glistening overcoat, pulled him inside, and closed the door.

Chapter Five

Sibyl’s hands plucked at the edge of her overcoat, anxious. The rattling taxicab rocked her to and fro, and every so often her hand wandered up to reassure itself that the edge of her hat wasn’t bumping the cab window. The previous day’s brilliant light had given way, in the desultory way of New England at springtime, to a thick mist, creeping up the streets in the night and refusing to burn away. On days like this Boston reasserted its stubborn kinship with the water, as if to remind the city that though its swamps might be drained, its air freed of fever, its tide flats filled, it would always be a tiny spit of land in a world of water, river to the one side and sea to the other. The air tasted of salt and wet earth. River bottom.

The cab rounded a corner and approached the Harvard bridge, rising like the back of a sea animal through the fog. Sibyl heard the crack and the groan of metal wheels, the electric 76 streetcar trundling past on its way into Boston, loaded down with writhing limbs, each rider pressing under the overhang to shelter from the drizzle. Sibyl recoiled at the thought of so many bodies pressed together, of the unwanted intimacy of public life. Her busy hands folded themselves around her opposite elbows with a shudder.

A few pedestrians plodded across the bridge, huddling under black umbrellas. Beyond them the slate surface of the Charles rippled beneath the white-gray cloak of fog. The cab moved at a stately pace, motivated, she supposed, by either concern for her perceived gentility or desire for a costlier fare. Sibyl’s eyes slid to the back of the driver’s head. He wore a wool checked cap pulled low, revealing a beefy roll of neck at the top of his collar. She wondered how many times he must cross this bridge in a day. What did he think about on all those bridge crossings? Did he even notice them anymore?

Out of the fog the outline of Cambridge emerged, the new concrete dome of the technology institute rolling into view first. Sibyl’s hands knitted together in her lap. The call had come late, well after her father retired for the night. She herself was only half-awake, already undressed and settled in bed with a book when Mrs. Doherty scratched at her door. The housekeeper appeared, lamp in hand, dressing gown knotted tight, hair in a long braid over her shoulder, grouchy with sleep.

“Telephone. A Mister Derby. I told him ’twas well too late to be rousing the household, but he was most insistent,” Mrs. Doherty informed her, in a tone that suggested Sibyl might think twice about accepting such an impertinent overture.

“Benton Derby? Are you quite sure?” Sibyl asked, perplexed, propping herself up on one elbow.

“I’ve left the handset for you, ma’am,” Mrs. Doherty said, and then withdrew, light from her lamp trailing behind her as she made her way to the service stair.

Sibyl rose, pulling a filmy lace dressing gown over her shoulders and taking up her own lamp. Her bare toes gripping the velvet carpet runner reminded her of the nighttime excursions to the drawing room when she was a girl. In the entry hall, tucked behind the stairwell, she found the telephone in its dedicated niche, a technological toadstool, earpiece waiting on the table. In the background loomed the La Farge. Sibyl hesitated, discovering herself to be nervous, even excited, before pressing the receiver to her ear and moving her lips close to the mouthpiece.

“Ben?” she whispered. A loud cough burst through the receiver, and Sibyl held it away from her ear with a grimace.

“Hi, Sibyl? That you? Sibyl? Hello?” boomed a male voice on the other end of the line, then speaking above the mouthpiece said,
How can you be sure if this damn thing is working? What? Well, it would seem to—no, I see. Wait here, would you?

“Ben? Hello? Can you hear me?” she said, more loudly, feeling conspicuous speaking at full volume in the sleeping house. Her left hand clutched together the edges of her dressing gown at her chest, a gesture toward modesty that she knew to be ridiculous but was powerless to stop.

“Sibyl! There you are.” Then, to the unheard other person,
No, it’s quite all right, I have it now. Thank you.

“Ben, what a pleasure,” Sibyl began. “Though, I must admit—”

Before she could continue Benton interrupted, “I’m so sorry to be calling so late, and so unexpectedly. You know I’d never wish to trouble you, but—”

“No, no,” Sibyl interrupted.

“Sorry? What?” Benton said.

Sibyl smiled, and paused. Her caller paused as well. She took a breath. “Never mind the hour. I was up. Do go ahead.”

“Look, it’s late, and you can’t go around having strange men calling in the dead of night. It’s just I wonder if you might have the time to come by my office some afternoon.”

“Oh!” Sibyl paused, confused. A strange request, given how much time had passed. What could he want? Sibyl wasn’t even sure what business Benton was in. He’d worked with her father for a time, but that was years ago. And she hadn’t spoken with him, alone, since just before he was set to sail for Italy. With his new wife. A tiny slip of a thing, with delicate skin and a persistent cough, Lydia’s health was too fragile for the New England winter. They’d been sitting together in the bay window when he told her, the cheerful new snow on the windowsill insulting Sibyl with its innocence and freshness. They’d promised to be in touch again upon the Derbys’ return from abroad.

They weren’t.

Her eyes darkened at the memory, and all the dashed hopes leading up to it, but she pushed her thoughts aside with resolve. That part of her life was over. No point thinking on it now. She recalled that Harley once mentioned that he spotted Benton from time to time, at the club, or around campus. He even remarked with resentful sarcasm that Benton had accepted a position at Westmorly Hall, though in typical fashion Harley failed to supply any illuminating details. Perhaps Harley’s indifference was pretense, and he was shielding her from the fact of Benton’s return. But perhaps not—her brother took it awfully hard, too, when Benton married Lydia Pusey instead.

“Why,” Sibyl said slowly. “I can find a free afternoon, I should think. Any excuse to get out of a committee meeting. But whatever could you need from me?”

“Well, I’m phoning from St. Swithin’s.” He hesitated.

At once Sibyl understood. She felt her stomach tighten, and she wished she had eaten less at supper. He’d crossed paths with Harlan. That’s where her brother had gone when he ran out on supper. Her brother must have embarrassed himself in some way. It would be up to Sibyl to smooth over the ruffled feathers. Benton was only calling as a courtesy.

“Tomorrow,” she suggested. “If you’ll just remind me where . . . ?”

He laughed, and said aside of the mouthpiece,
In a minute, in a minute!
To Sibyl, he said, “Of course, I’m sorry. I’ve been teaching in Cambridge, actually.”

“Have you!” Sibyl exclaimed with not a little dismay. All that time, and no word from him. Harlan must be in some trouble indeed.

“I have,” he said, and she could hear the modest grin in his voice.

“Imagine that. Benton Derby, the professor.”

“It is, I wager, even stranger for me to contemplate than for you. Let’s say two-thirty. I should be done with actual flesh-and-blood students by then, and on to the paper-marking portion of the afternoon. I’ll welcome the interruption. Be desperate for it, in fact.”

Despite wishing to seem cool and elusive in her first real conversation with Benton, Sibyl couldn’t help but laugh. “And which department? Where shall I find you?”

“Department of Social Ethics. Look for the office with the insufficient light.”

The cab rolled to a halt on a comfortable brick lane, and Sibyl rooted in her pocketbook for change to pay the fare. She stepped down from the cab, which rocked on its springs with her weight, feeling annoyed by the tangle of skirts around her ankles. She’d have to hem this skirt up, no one was wearing floor-length skirts anymore. Sibyl felt foolish and spinsterly, her embarrassment heightened by a gang of underclassmen passing on the sidewalk, completely indifferent to her. The cab shook to life and pulled away.

Sibyl lifted her chin, setting her jaw in a way that made her look fleetingly like Helen. She straightened her hat and crossed under a wrought iron gate onto the campus.

The Yard was dotted with knots of boys in various stages of study and leisure, though rather more leisure than study. Here a gang of them wrestled over a football. There a few stretched in the grass, ties loosened. Chipper music from a Victrola played through an open window, which also contained a pair of socked feet. An older boy coasted by on a safety bicycle, serious under his hat. Sibyl was surprised to see how different the Yard looked, with the new library nearly done.

Sibyl had heard about the library in whispered gossip for three years but hadn’t realized it was so close to completion. Faint hammering was audible inside, but the outside looked perfect, a brick and concrete temple to knowledge. Mrs. George Widener had spent a small fortune on this building, a gift to the university, of course, but a monument to her drowned son more than anything. Rumor was that an exact replica of poor Harry’s study was to be erected at the heart of the library, designated to hold his most precious books.