New York

  The trouble was, tempers had been running higher against the city Negroes lately. There had been strikes down in the Brooklyn docks not long ago, and the companies had brought in cheap black labor to break them. Hardly the fault of the black men, who wouldn’t have been welcome in the strikers’ unions anyway. But of course they’d been blamed.

  But that was nothing to the effect of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

  “Free the damn niggers in the South, so they can come up here and steal our jobs?” the laboring men of New York protested. “Dammit, there’s four million of them.” The fact that Lincoln had not actually freed a single slave was overlooked. But then politics was seldom about reality. “Our boys are fighting and dying so that their own kith and kin can be destroyed? No more they ain’t.”

  Lincoln’s war had been anathema for many months now, in the Saturday-night saloon.

  And now, the tall, gawky president and his Republicans, with their rich abolitionist friends, were going to force them to fight for these damn niggers, whether they liked it or not.

  “We, the working men, will be the cannon fodder. But not the sons of the rich abolitionists. Oh no. They’ll send a poor man to die for them, or pay a fee to stay home and play. That’s Lincoln’s deal.”

  Yesterday it had come to a head. More than a thousand names had been chosen in the lottery that day. During the process, it had been quiet enough, but by the evening, people had had a chance to compare names and take stock of the process. In the saloon last night, everyone seemed to know at least three or four of them.

  “My nephew Conal,” cried one man, in a fury, “that was due to be married next week … Shameful!”

  “Little Michael Casey, that couldn’t shoot a rabbit at five yards? He won’t last a week,” joined in his neighbor.

  Some men were cursing, others were in a sullen rage. At the end of the evening, when he came upstairs to bed, Sean delivered his verdict to his wife.

  “I could save the Prince of Wales,” he said, “but I tell you, if Abraham Lincoln had come into the saloon tonight, I couldn’t have done a thing. They’d have strung him up.”

  And tomorrow, Monday morning, the draft selection was to resume.

  Broadway was quiet as he and Hudson walked along. The sun was bright. They crossed Canal Street. Still no sign of trouble. But Sean knew that didn’t mean a thing. Having got Hudson safely to Prince Street, he said to him as they parted: “Come straight back to the saloon after church. And when you get home, fix the bar on those shutters.”

  From Prince Street, he kept walking north. After a little while, he went right for a block, then picked up the Bowery. He was watchful as he walked. Still not many people about. At East Fourteenth, he turned right, then up Irving Place, into Gramercy Park.

  He hadn’t been to the Masters’ house for some time. It was quite a few years now since his relationship with Mary had ceased to be a secret, and he’d come to see her there once in a while. Everyone knew that he could well afford to look after her, but she was perfectly happy where she was. He’d have liked to see her married, but she’d told him not to interfere, and he reckoned she was old enough to know what she wanted.

  He encountered Frank Master from time to time. He’d long since repaid Master’s kindly treatment of him back in ’53, with an offer to buy into some property the mayor was releasing at a sharply discounted price. And a year after that, chancing to meet him down on South Street, Master had done him another good turn.

  “There’s a fellow I know who’s got room for one more investor in a small venture,” he’d told Sean. “Profits might be high, if you don’t mind a little risk.” Sean had only hesitated a moment. Trust the man, was his credo.

  “I’d be interested,” he’d said.

  Sean had taken quite a bit of cash out of his strongbox to make that investment. And returned three times that amount to the box, a few months later. Since then, he and Frank Master had done small favors for each other, from time to time. In fact, he’d done a discreet service for Master just the other day.

  Sean went to the front door, not the tradesmen’s entrance. He always made a point of doing that. A maid came to answer it. But in reply to his question, she told him that Mary wasn’t there.

  “She went to Coney Island with her friend. She’ll be gone all this week.”

  He’d known about the plan, and that they’d delayed it for a while. He felt slightly annoyed that Mary hadn’t told him before she left. On the other hand, he was glad that she was out of the city just now. And he was just turning to leave when Mrs. Master appeared behind the maid and, seeing him there, motioned him to come in. He stepped from the bright sunlight into the shadowy space of the hall.

  “Good morning, Mr. O’Donnell,” she said. “I’m afraid Mary’s away.”

  “I knew they were going,” he said, “but I didn’t know they’d already left.”

  Mrs. Master wasn’t the kind of woman he liked. A privileged evangelical, a fervent abolitionist, a damned Republican. When ninety-two society ladies had got up a committee to improve the city’s sanitation, he hadn’t been surprised to learn that she was one of them. Perhaps they did some good. He didn’t much care.

  But she’d been a good friend to Mary. And that was the only thing he needed to know.

  “I have the address where they’re staying,” she offered. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “No, I don’t believe so.” He paused a moment. “The reason I called, Mrs. Master, is that I think there’s going to be trouble.”

  “Oh. What kind of trouble, Mr. O’Donnell?”

  “Trouble in the streets. I hope I’m wrong, but I wanted to tell her to be careful. You and Mr. Master, too,” he added.

  “Oh,” she said again. His vision had adjusted to the shadow of the hall, and now he noticed that she was looking unusually pale. Her eyes were red, too, as if she’d been crying. “If you happen to see my husband,” she said, “please be sure to tell him. In fact …” she seemed to hesitate, and he saw a little look of desperation in her eyes—“just so I know he’s safe, you might ask him to come home.”

  The St. Nicholas Hotel was huge. Its white marble facade dominated the whole block between Broome and Spring Street on Broadway’s west side. Six stories high, six hundred rooms. Luxury on a huge scale. Well-heeled tourists crowded in there, and their New York friends were glad to meet them in its paneled halls, where you could take tea under frescoed ceilings and gaslight chandeliers.

  So if a New York gentleman happened to visit one of the guests, no one was likely to notice. And Frank Master had been in the St. Nicholas Hotel since Saturday afternoon.

  The guest he was visiting also resided in the city. Her name was Lily de Chantal. At least, that was her name nowadays. When she was born thirty-three years ago in Trenton, New Jersey, it had been Ethel Cook. But the professional name she had chosen, when she’d still had hopes of being a soloist, was so pleasing to her and all those who met her, that she never bothered to use her old name at all now, if she could help it.

  Some successful lady singers had big bodies to go with their big voices, and maybe Lily’s voice wasn’t quite big enough to propel her into the first rank of singers, but her body was certainly a very pretty package indeed. Her speaking voice was quiet, but she had trained herself to speak with an actor’s precision; so that, if her accent wasn’t French, you certainly wouldn’t have guessed—except for moments of private laughter, or passion—that she came from Trenton. You really couldn’t have said where she came from.

  Lily de Chantal had only had five significant lovers in her life. She had chosen each of them in the hope that they might further her career. The first, and best, choice had been an impresario, the next a conductor, and the other three were rich men of business. Of those, the first two had been significant patrons of the opera. Frank Master went to the opera, but that was all, and perhaps her choice of him indicated that she had recognized the need to look for other insurance policies now. br />
  But while she was yours, it had to be said, she gave you her entire attention, which was well worth having. Besides that, she was always amusing, often tender, and sometimes vulnerable. All her ex-lovers were her friends. If only her voice had been a little better, she’d have had everything she wanted.

  Frank Master wasn’t really her lover yet. Though he didn’t quite know it, he was still on trial. She found him intelligent, kindly, somewhat ignorant of opera, but maybe improvable.

  It wasn’t surprising that Frank Master should have met Lily de Chantal at the opera. Ever since the city’s opera had been set up as a going concern the century before—by Mozart’s librettist, no less—it had been a big thing in New York. Operas had been performed in numerous theaters, and not only for the rich elite. When Jenny Lind had sung for a huge open-air crowd, she had been the toast of the city. The main venue for opera these days, however, was the Academy of Music, on Irving Place, only a stone’s throw from Frank Master’s house in Gramercy Park. It was a handsome theater, seating more than four and a half thousand, with boxes for the regular patrons. Frank Master was a regular patron.

  As far as Frank could see, it was time he had an affair. During most of his marriage, though he’d noticed other women, of course, he’d only really wanted Hetty. But the years of tension between them had taken their toll. And the sense that in her heart she did not really respect him had caused Frank, in self-defense, to say to himself: “I’ll show her, even if she doesn’t know it.”

  Lily de Chantal had been singing in the chorus on the night he met her. On the pretext of talking about the opera house, he’d persuaded her to meet him for lunch at Delmonico’s the following week, after which she had invited him to a small recital she was giving. He had gone, and watched her with a new interest. He had liked seeing her standing up there alone in front of an admiring audience. It had impressed, and challenged, him. She had graduated that day from a pretty woman to an object of desire. All the same, he’d been quite surprised, at the end of the evening, when she’d discreetly intimated that, if he’d care to take her out to dine after a matinee the following week, she’d be glad of his company.

  She had a pleasant little house near Broadway on East Twelfth, convenient for the opera house. And there, after their dinner, his advances had not been discouraged, but not been fully satisfied either.

  “You must go home now, or you will be missed,” she had said. “And besides, I have to think of my good name.”

  “Where can we meet?” he’d asked.

  “They say the St. Nicholas Hotel is pleasant,” she’d answered.

  They had met there ten days ago. The meeting had been very satisfactory. He had gone there two afternoons running, and stayed each time until early evening.

  He’d quickly realized several things. Perhaps it was just because he had lived so many years of his life with Hetty, and that all the women he met socially were like her, but the fact that Lily de Chantal had to work for her living seemed novel and exciting to him. She had a mind of her own. She knew far more than he did about the arts. She could open new doors of intellect for him, make him a more interesting and important fellow. His wife also had a vigorous intelligence. And what she did for the sanitation committee and her other charities was real enough, and important. But Lily de Chantal lived in a different world and had chosen a different path. Bohemian yet respectable, intoxicating yet safe: it seemed like the perfect adventure.

  Yet if, on the one hand, she was independent, on the other, she was vulnerable. She needed someone to promote her, or at least protect her. The idea of having a mistress who was a public figure in her own professional right, but also needed him, gave him a subtle new sense of power which was as flattering as it was thrilling.

  They had arranged to meet again that weekend. This time, Frank was determined to stay the night. And his row with Hetty, he thought with some pride, had been very well managed indeed. Hetty might think he had stayed at his counting house, or angrily gone to a hotel. But she hadn’t the least reason to think he was seeing another woman. Nor would she be able to find him, since the room had been booked by a third party, on whose discretion Master knew he could rely.

  For the official occupant of the room was a certain Mr. Sean O’Donnell.

  And now it was Sunday afternoon. Should he go home? He gazed at the lovely figure reclining before him.

  No. He’d remain here, and go home on Monday evening. Let Hetty suppose that, out of anger, he’d left for two nights instead of one. It was, so to speak, the economic choice.

  After breakfast on Sunday, Theodore said he wanted to read a newspaper. So Mary and Gretchen set off alone. This time, instead of walking to the Point, they went eastward along the open strand of Brighton Beach. Before long, they had the place entirely to themselves. They went on a couple of miles. There was still a light breeze, but it seemed a little hotter than the day before.

  “I ought to be in church,” Mary said. “I always go to Mass on Sunday.”

  “Never mind,” said Gretchen with a smile. “You’ll have to be pagan for a day.”

  Mary was carrying a light canvas bag slung over her shoulder, and when Gretchen asked her what was in it, she confessed. “It’s a sketching pad.”

  “When did you take up drawing? You never used to.”

  “It’s the first time,” said Mary. She’d been wondering what items she should take on holiday when Mrs. Master had suggested a sketchbook. It had seemed a rather ladylike sort of thing to do, but then she’d thought, why not? And seeing the sketching pad in a store the next day, she’d bought it, along with two A.W. Faber artist’s lead pencils.

  “I wouldn’t have brought it if Theodore had been with us this morning,” she admitted. “His being an artist.”

  “Well then,” said Gretchen, “I’m glad he stayed behind.”

  After a time they came to a place where two landscapes met. On one side, seagrass and beach and shallow water went out in a bright sheen to find the ocean horizon; on the other, over some low dunes, there was green pasture and mossy ground, and a small wood offered shade.

  “Why don’t you sketch here?” said Gretchen.

  “Not if you watch me,” said Mary. “I’d be embarrassed.”

  “I’ll stare at the seagulls,” said Gretchen, sitting down on a hummock, and gazing at the ocean as though Mary wasn’t there at all.

  But Mary wasn’t ready yet. So instead of sketching the seascape, she wandered over the little dune, and made her way along the broad green path toward the wood. Glancing back, she was surprised that she couldn’t even see the sea, though its invisible presence was there. And she’d only gone a short way further when, to her surprise, she caught sight of something else.

  It was a deer. A doe.

  She stopped and stood still. The doe hadn’t heard her. Neither she nor the deer would have expected the other to be there.

  Long ago, when only the local Indians lived by these shores, there were plenty of deer. But once the Dutch and English had come to settle there, the deer had little chance. Farmers do not care for deer, so they shoot them. Nowadays, along the whole hundred-mile length of Long Island, there were only a few sanctuaries from which the deer had not been driven out. Nor could the deer get away. They could not swim across Long Island Sound. But some, evidently, had come across the creek, or used the shell road, to find safety in the open wastes of Coney Island.

  The deer was not far away, and seemed to be alone. A few yards in front of Mary there was a small fallen tree. Carefully, she moved forward and sat on it. Then, drawing up her legs, she rested the pad on them, slowly opened a page, took out a lead pencil and began to draw.

  The doe seemed to be in no hurry to move. A couple of times she raised her head, ears alert. Once she stared straight at Mary, but evidently did not see her.

  Mary had made little drawings now and then: a standard house, or cat, or horse. But she’d never tried to draw anything from life before, and she hardly knew how to begi
n. The first lines she put on paper seemed to bear no relation to the doe. She tried concentrating on just the head, and drawing smaller. Not knowing any rules, she just tried to reproduce on the paper the exact line as it came into her eye. At first these lines seemed clumsy and formless, but she tried a few times more, and by and by they did seem to make shapes that were recognizable. Then, to her great surprise, something else seemed to happen.

  Not only the form of the deer’s head, but the lines on the page seemed to develop a kind of magic of their own. She’d never thought of such a thing, certainly never experienced it before. After half an hour, she had two or three little sketches, very imperfect, but which seemed to capture something of the deer’s head.

  She was enjoying herself, but Gretchen had been waiting patiently for a while, so she got up. The doe started and stared, then sprang away and ran into the trees.

  Retracing her steps, she found Gretchen sitting in the same place where she’d left her. But to her surprise, Theodore was also there. He’d taken off his jacket, and his shirt was open at the collar, so that she could see little curly hairs at the top of his chest. It gave her quite a start. He looked up with a smile.

  “Show me.”

  “Why?”

  It was such a silly thing to say. She’d wanted to say “No,” but that would have been rude, and somehow “Why” had come out. Theodore laughed.

  “What do you mean, ‘Why’? I want to see.”

  “I’m embarrassed. I’ve never done a sketch before.” But he wouldn’t be denied, and took the sketch pad from her.

  Opening the pad, he stared at the drawings. He stared at them quite intently.

  “You really looked, didn’t you?” he said.

  “I suppose so.”

  “Look, Gretchen.” He showed the drawings to his sister. “Look at what she did.” Gretchen nodded. Mary could see they were both impressed. “They’re good, Mary,” he said. “You try to draw, not what you think you should see, but what you really see.”