Gilded Needles (Valancourt 20th Century Classics)
“Helen, no respectable woman will consent to set foot in the Black Triangle. When you first contemplated these foolish actions, this ludicrous course, did you stop for one moment to think what the repercussions might be—to yourself and, more importantly, to your family?”
“Grandfather, I—”
“Obviously, you did not. Obviously, you had no thought in the world but the gratification of your own vanity, the setting up of your own spirit on an altar of your own building. Helen, you are such a gull, such a gull! Tricked by that insane woman in widow’s weeds, that fat silhouette of mourning, whose house no one will go into because it is no better than a lazaretto, with all her servants maimed and deformed! Duped by those you profess to minister unto, the criminal and the vicious, who want only your gifts, your small-change beneficence, whose real pleasure is to sully a lady with their loathsome contact. You’re an object of ridicule to them all, Helen! Have you been so purblind as never to have seen that? Certainly when this becomes known—and how you thought you could keep it secret for long I can’t imagine!—you will be trussed and spitted above the fires of gossip and opprobrium. And what will be my position, when it is known that I permitted such a thing for my own granddaughter?”
“You didn’t permit—”
“Worse and worse!” cried Judge Stallworth. “We didn’t permit, we didn’t even know of it. It was done behind our backs. My granddaughter absent from the house four or five hours every day parading around the Black Triangle in an open carriage, in the company of a lady of doubtful mental faculties, and we knew nothing of it! Worse and worse!”
“I have never done anything in connection with the Black Triangle of which I need be ashamed.”
James Stallworth eyed his granddaughter closely and was silent for a few moments. When he spoke again, it was with a quietness that contrasted strongly with his former vehemence. “No? Then what of your intimacy with Mademoiselle Leech? What of her ‘friend?’ What of them? Half-women! Would-be men! What of them? Such loathsome creatures would be outcast even from the society of condemned murderers on Blackwell’s Island! And yet you have established yourself as their intimate. . . .”
Helen, mortally embarrassed, looked away. “I have never refused those who were in need of assistance—”
Judge Stallworth smiled coldly. “Mademoiselle Leech is not in want. Mademoiselle Leech is amply rewarded for her appearances in the ring. The friend of Mademoiselle Leech does not suffer from the ravages of any physical disease. And if they are possessed of souls completely corrupted, they are at least blessed with sound bodies and pocketbooks, are they not?”
Helen nodded slowly, and dared say no more in her defense.
Judge Stallworth stood, and came near her chair. “You are to go there no more,” he said quietly. “Do you understand? No more journeys on what you mistakenly assume to be a charitable mission. No more commerce with Mrs. General Taunton. I need not tell you that you are to make no more pilgrimages to the Sapphic shrine on Morton Street. So do you understand me, Helen? It is a sorry life I lead, my granddaughter exposing her breast to every stray arrow of vicious calumny that could be fired from a thousand drawing room windows throughout the city. If you must be lashed to the bedposts, Helen, you will not be allowed to endanger our reputations again.”
Judge James Stallworth stalked out of the room and the manse, and left Helen weeping in the parlor that was now wholly dark.
When Edward Stallworth came downstairs the next day, he was relieved not to find Helen about. The judge had not exaggerated the effect of the news of Helen’s charitable endeavors had had upon her father. He was distressed, embarrassed, and angry—but he still had no desire to confront his daughter. He supposed that she remained in her room, awaiting his summons, the reiteration of the family’s displeasure, and the announcement of her punishment.
On his desk, he found an unsealed envelope, directed to him in his daughter’s hand. He assumed, as a matter of course, it was the abject apology that she was too diffident to present in person. He stood at the window and held the letter stiffly before him so that the sunlight fell directly onto the page. He perused it with a cold condescension that gradually gave way to a mixture of wonder, shame, and rage. It read:
Dearest Father,
I am sorry for the trouble that I may have caused you and the rest of the family. I certainly regret the necessity for silence over the past several months in regard to my beloved work, a reticence that you perhaps rightly interpret—as certainly Grandfather does—as deception. Yet that silence was I think necessary if I now consider your response to my endeavors in the Blighted Triangle, under the loving direction of Mrs. General Taunton. I cannot find fault with your views in this matter, for then I would surely be wanting in filial obedience, but I cannot subscribe to them either. It was of course your own sermons, even more than the articles of Duncan and Mr. Lightner, which prompted me to carry succor to those unfortunately circumstanced inhabitants of our city. It is labor that has been blessed to me, exertion that has doubly turned to joy, dear Father, and I would as soon give up my life as relinquish these gladsome toils.
Therefore, and knowing that I am of age and mistress of my own fortune, I have determined to leave the manse. I could not live every day beneath your reproach. My heart would surely break. In this world a woman’s lot is small and circumscribed, and I had long resigned myself, and never protested—but what I had never fully understood was that a woman’s power to do good was as limited as the opportunity for great evil. I, who have so rarely ventured out of the manse in the entirety of my life, was still not made for domesticity; I have no influence over servants, hospitality is a foreign tongue, the social round is a forest through which I wander with bandaged eyes. My sphere is there, in the Blighted Triangle, and all other places where want and misery are predominant. It is in the service of such poor creatures as burden this city with their groans and wailings that I will spend the portion of my days.
Oh dear Father, if you would accept this resolution in me, I would happily return to you, so happily resume my place in the manse. In this matter alone, however, I must now and forever remain your
Faithless but loving daughter
Helen Stallworth
Postscriptum. I may be reached at the home of Mrs. General Taunton, where I am assured of a warm and indefinite welcome.
Chapter 36
On Saturday night, at ten o’clock, Benjamin Stallworth stood on the corner of King and MacDougal Streets, and had actually to hang on to a lamppost to protect himself from being carried away into the boisterous passing throng. Newsboys sniggered at him, prostitutes detained and solicited him, toughs facetiously threatened his life, and he had nearly made up his mind to leave, when Pet Margery pulled gently on the tail of his coat.
“I’m mightily glad you came,” she said with a smile that promised much.
“Oh yes,” he replied nervously, “word of a straight table would draw me to the ends of the earth.”
“My feet swolled up just thinking about you, Ben.”
“What!”
“My ma always said that love was in the feet, and every time she fell in love her feet started to swell up and she had to put on mustard plasters to draw out the infection of love. After I saw you last night, I went out this morning and laid in a supply of plasters, that’s just what I did!”
Benjamin blushed beneath the harsh glow of the lamp.
“And you dressed up for me, I can see it!” cried Pet Margery, and playfully jabbed Benjamin in the ribs. “Dressed to kill, and barberized to resuscitate, that’s what you are! You and Pet Margery will have one night tonight, I can tell you!”
Pet Margery slipped her arm through his, and led him down King Street. She carried herself beside him as if proud to be in the company of such a man as he. Benjamin was overcome with a mixture of pride that he had attracted
the notice of so pretty a woman, who even if a prostitute, as surely she must be, had made no mention of money; of embarrassment, for she was after all a prostitute; and of excitement, thinking of the promised straight table and other pleasures too that might come to him this same night.
Pet Margery pulled him down King Street, led him across Varick, and then shoved him down a short flight of slippery steps and through a low wooden doorway, kept open despite the chill night air. Benjamin found himself in the heated yellow atmosphere of a groggery of some little pretension—at least in comparison with the rest of the places on that street. It had a mahogany bar with a brass footrail, and mirrors behind; little marble-topped tables and cane chairs for the customers—most of them women; and in the back a red velvet portiere that Pet Margery dramatically lifted to Benjamin.
The room behind—actually the cellar of the adjoining house—was entirely given over to gambling, half a dozen different tables and games, with single gas lights beneath red and green shades hanging over each. The croupiers and bankers were distinguished by their emaciation as much as by their green eyeshades.
“Oh!” cried Benjamin, “I know this area, but had no idea such a place existed. Very very pleasant,” he exclaimed, “especially if the tables are straight!”
He made immediately for the schuss table, but Pet Margery guided him instead to the far corner. “That’s my pa, running vanty-yune. It’s the only table that’s straight, and only reason it’s straight is that I told Pa I was bringing a friend tonight. You stick with Pa, Ben, and your fortune’s made.”
Pet Margery’s father was a gaunter man than those he hired, with a frame that was scarcely wide enough to hang a suit of clothes on and skin that was hard pressed to stretch bone over bone. His eyes were sunken and his cheek dabbed with a wispy yellow beard.
“Seat yourself, sir,” he whispered through a throat gnawed with a cancer, “and my daughter’ll change your cash.”
Benjamin drew forty dollars in gold from his pocket and handed it to Pet Margery, who skipped blithely away. After a moment, which Benjamin passed watching Pet Margery’s father deal out a game to the three men on the bench beside him, the young woman returned with a stack of white and red chips.
“Red’s eight bits, white’s a dollar, suppose you know that?” said Pet Margery’s father in a hoarse whisper.
“Yes, sir,” replied Benjamin, whisper for whisper.
The cards were dealt, Benjamin rested at eighteen, betting two dollars, and won from the bank.
The second and third hands he lost, but in the next three he was a large winner. Pet Margery had brought him a sloe gin sling, and insisted that he drink it quickly in celebration of his increasing pile of chips. The men beside Benjamin, as he continued to play, were of that sort whose livelihood depended upon their anonymity of appearance, and they alternated without his being able to distinguish them one from the other. They were alike too in that they all lost, and different from Benjamin also in that he was a consistent winner at the table.
Finally Benjamin, sipping his third gin sling, found himself embarrassed by the height of the stacks of his red, white—and now blue chips. “Perhaps I ought to try my fortune at one of the other tables. . . .” he suggested.
“No!” cried Pet Margery.
“Oh,” Pet Margery’s father warned him, “your fortune might not favor you so there.”
Benjamin shrugged, though he mightily suspected that even now the table was not straight, but that Pet Margery’s father allowed him to win time after time and sent all the others away depleted. He grew nervous as he heard the other players grumble, but Pet Margery’s father silenced them with a look.
Benjamin, through his alcoholic haze, tried to reason this out. The only conclusion he could draw however was that Pet Margery had taken a great fancy to him, and had persuaded her father to allow him to win at vingt-et-un. There was a pleasant and startling contrariness to this situation—that he was being given money by a prostitute. He must suppose that when her father had decided that he ought win no more, Pet Margery would drag him up to her room. Even if she demanded money of him afterward, for her own good name perhaps, he would be out nothing at all for the experience.
Benjamin Stallworth had never had connection with a woman before, and his suspicion that this was to be the culmination of the evening (as he had hardly dared hope before) grew stronger even than his love of the game. His attention to the jeweled white hand that was gently laid over his became greater than that to the fall of the cards from the gnarled talons of Pet Margery’s father. Benjamin grinned suddenly with the notion that the old man must be in certain difficulty to allow him, who was so distracted, to win at so many hands.
“Oh, perhaps I ought to stop now,” whispered Benjamin to Pet Margery, “I’m a little dizzy and can’t concentrate on the cards. . . .” She had just brought his fifth glass of sloe gin.
“You’ve won over two hundred dollars,” whispered her father. “I couldn’t keep long in business if you came very often, mister. No, sir, I swear I couldn’t.” And he laughed a shrill laugh that echoed in his ribs.
“Oh,” cried Pet Margery, “one more glass—”
“No!”
“One more glass,” she repeated cajolingly, “and while you’re drinking it, I’ll change your chips for you.”
Benjamin nodded dumbly and slouched back against the wall. He peered oddly at the man who sat beside him until the man took offense and retorted with an obscene epithet.
“No, no,” whispered Pet Margery’s father, “he’ll be leaving soon, just let him finish his glass. He won’t be bothering you, let him finish his glass, that’s all.”
Benjamin swallowed the remainder of the dark liquid and stood woozily. Pet Margery was suddenly there to support him. Gold chinked in her hands and she spilled it into his pocket—so much gold that he was tilted beneath its sudden weight on that side.
“Two hundred thirty-seven dollars,” she whispered. “You’re beholden to me, Ben. . . .”
“Oh yes,” he murmured, and smiled drunkenly. “Oh yes, what . . . what can I do . . . to . . . to discharge that debt, Pet? Tell me, Pet, what can . . . what can I do?”
He turned and clumsily attempted to embrace her in his gratitude and had some confused idea that if he returned to this place every night for the next six months he would emerge from that habitude a rich man.
He slipped on the worn floor, and would certainly have fallen on his face had not Pet Margery caught him up and steadied him.
“I should take you out of this place,” she said, “you’re not fit for the games anymore.”
“Where are we going?” he whispered, with a crooked smile.
“Oh I’ll just take you to my place and feed you some tea, that’s what I’ll do—boil water and feed you some tea.”
“Oh,” laughed Benjamin, as he was led through the door. “Your place. I’d like to see your place.”
“Shhh!” cried Pet Margery. “Act sober,” she said, “the ladies are watching.”
Benjamin made a valiant but entirely ineffectual attempt to appear uninebriated as they passed through the groggery. The ladies sitting at the little marble-topped tables nodded knowingly at Pet Margery, who returned their greetings with a bland smile.
“Oh! Which way?” cried Benjamin, as they emerged into the much cooler night air. It was nearly midnight. “What way is your room?”
“This way,” said Pet Margery, helping him back across Varick Street. “I live just a few houses down there. . . .”
“Oh,” cried Benjamin with almost weepy tenderness, “I won two hundred dollars tonight. I never got so much in all my life at the tables! It’s because of you, Pet, because . . . all because of you!”
“That’s right,” said Pet Margery, carefully guiding the drunken young man down the street. “You’v
e a lot to thank me for.”
“Oh, Pet!” cried Benjamin, “do you have a bed?”
Chapter 37
“Oh, it’s a fine soft bed,” replied Pet Margery, “and it’s waiting for us right at the very top of the stairs.” She pushed him through the doorway of the small brick house at number 2 King Street. “Hush!” she cried, “all the way to the top, Benjamin.”
Benjamin stumblingly climbed the three narrow flights of stairs to the attic of the house. Pet Margery opened a door he could scarcely see and pushed him inside. Here darkness prevailed and he wobbled a little, waiting for Pet Margery to light a candle. The lack of light brought dizziness on, and he thrust out his hands to catch his balance; to his surprise they struck the low slanting beams of the room and came away painfully with splinters. “Oh!” he cried.
Pet Margery whispered, “Hush! Not so loudly, Benjamin, not so loudly!”
Benjamin reached out for Pet Margery, trying to drag her into his embrace, but his falling hand only slapped against her cheek. “Oh,” she cried sharply, “watch out, will you? It’s dark as a stack of black cats in here!”
She struck a match and lit the candle.
Benjamin was momentarily appalled, despite his drunkenness, by the poverty of the chamber. In the middle of the room, a couple of feet from where he stood, was an unpainted iron bed covered with a filthy sheet. Beneath the window, which was masked with a man’s shirt pinned up by the sleeves, was a rickety table with a couple of bottles of liquor and a wooden tumbler upon it.
This was all. Neither the roof nor the floor was painted nor improved with ornament.
“You live here?” cried Benjamin.
“No!” laughed Pet Margery. “I live downstairs. Nobody lives up here. Does it look it now?”