Belle Cora: A Novel (47 page)

I tried to persuade them that they had breached the defenses of a special heart. Portraits of Byron and Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft hung on the walls of my room, and a shelf near my bed displayed their books, along with the works of similar folk, like Fanny Wright and George Sand. Men who stayed the night tended to ask about them. If the right kind of interest was shown, I would say that these writers were my idols, tell their story and mine, and with numerous small touches present myself as a Boston-bred Marguerite Gautier, awaiting the Armand who would revive her finer feelings. I
claimed
to live just for gaiety—let us revel, revel
and forget! I
claimed
to be grateful for the fall that had made me into a fascinating woman, but I was a creature of sudden fancies and contradictions, and in intimate moments I would reveal my tragic self, unable to hide the truth that I would have given anything not to have taken the wrong path. (If only
you
hadn’t come along, reminding me of all that I can never possess!)

By special arrangement with me, Sean Donovan, the eleven-year-old son of my former landlady, was on call at the house a few hours each day to carry messages to the various men whose affections I cultivated. I was careful not to endanger their marriages, engagements, or reputations with puritanical employers. Sean delivered the letters to their place of business or to their habitual tavern or saloon. My letters were florid and romantic, and, I realize now, longer than they really needed to be. I enjoyed writing them. To make my state bearable, I had accepted without question the traditional hierarchy of whores, which looms very large for those within the profession, and when I wielded my pen I was always conscious of performing an action that marked me out for a rung near the top, with a skill that Lewis’s friend Bridget would never master, though she might do certain other things just as well as I.

Not all men want a Marguerite; I could be other things. I could be shy or naughty or obedient or a good sport; I could be of the opinion that men were beasts and we women loved them for it. Unfortunately, sometimes there would appear in Mrs. Bower’s parlor one of those men who cannot have a good time unless the girl suffers. If I was fortunate enough to recognize such a man for what he was, I would avoid him by occupying myself with another gentleman. But my instinct was not infallible. I had my share of unpleasant experiences, and all and all, I received a thorough education in a relatively short time.

Mrs. Bower began to show me special signs of her favor. She would ask me to come with her into the kitchen while she did the books, or invite me to go out riding with her, and tell me how superior I was to the other girls: “I like talking to you. You notice things. My words aren’t wasted on you. Gwendolyn can act refined, but it’s all tricks, it doesn’t go deep, like it does with you.” A little later she would say, “Annabel would do murder to have your figure; that’s why she speaks ill of you behind your back.” She would tell me how lucky I was to be working in her house. She did not do the things that other madams did: She did not bring us to dress
shops where we were charged twice the going rate and the madam got a kickback from the dressmaker. She did not take us to be overcharged by druggists and doctors and restaurants with whom she had the same cozy arrangement, so that she might make extra money and keep us in debt. Her competitors did that sort of thing: not she. So she said, and she did not think she was lying, because, although she did in fact take us to a handful of stores where we paid more than everyday people paid, we were not cheated so badly that we would remain her slaves forever. She couldn’t do that to us; we had more choices than the miserable girls on lower rungs of our profession and would not have put up with such treatment. Besides, Mrs. Bower did not need to keep us in peonage. Like most madams of fashionable parlor houses, she tried to bring in a fresh girl every few months. She wanted us to stay for about a year and a half and then move on to some other house, in another city. Earlier in her career, she had run a cheaper establishment and had practiced all the mean, dishonest methods she described. I knew better than to trust her.

I had been with her about four months when I broke the lock on her desk and examined her day books, where she entered the payments she had made and received. There was a book for 1845, last year, and 1846, the current year. Every page was dated, and letters beside each of the payments identified grocers, dressmakers, hairdressers, vintners, patrons, policemen. She used abbreviations, but since her memory was not good she made them simple and obvious, and I recognized many names easily. Hurrying because someone might come upon me at any moment, I flipped through the 1845 book to the date of Jocelyn’s arrival at the child brothel. I found, as I had expected, a payment explained this way: “J. Cut’r—Jcl’n.” That would be Jack Cutter’s finder’s fee for bringing Jocelyn from Harmony Mills to the arms of Mrs. Bower. With an excitement that had less to do with the risk of being caught reading the day book than with the unpleasant suspicion I was about to confirm, I switched to the beginning of the 1846 book and the date of my arrival at the parlor house. Sure enough, an entry said: “J. Cut’r—HK.” HK would be Harriet Knowles, me. It was as I had thought. I had done a lot of thinking by this time, and it was my belief that Cutter’s arrest of my brother had been part of a plan to drive me by deceit into Mrs. Bower’s clutches. I found no payments either to Mrs. Donoho or Hugh O’Faolin, both of whom I
suspected of helping to trick me by insisting that my brother was likely to be killed in prison, but their absence from the book did not exonerate them.
I
had paid Mrs. Donoho; and Cutter could have rewarded O’Faolin either with money or easy treatment at the hands of the law.

It was too late to do anything about it, but I had wanted to know. I did not want to be a fool anymore. I did not want to be a fool ever again. I wanted to know my past folly, to suck all the humiliation out of it until there was nothing left and it could not hurt me again. And then to shrug and say: All right, never mind, the damage is done; it was my fate. I had to believe that somehow I had always been meant for this. Anything else would be torture.

XXXIII

ONE DAY I RECEIVED A LETTER FROM A MAN
I had heard of but never met. Its tone was formal but friendly—the message of one potentate to another. It made me feel important. Arthur Heywood, publisher of the
New York Courier
, wished that we might meet to discuss the welfare of a person for whom he was sure we both cared greatly. Though the letter did not say so, I had no doubt that the person in question was Arthur’s son, Philip.

We met at a tavern where Heywood could provide us both with a pleasant luncheon but far enough uptown so that no one who knew him was likely to see us.

I took a hack to our meeting. I felt nervous—I must not waste this opportunity—but I complimented myself, too. I was not the suffering creature I had been ten months ago: Eric Gordon, Italy,
Take me away
. I would never be that foolish girl again. When, with a folded parasol, I entered the tavern, I was told that Heywood had arrived first, and I was directed to his table. He was a well-dressed man in his late forties, portly, with a drunkard’s twisted radish of a nose, hanks of greasy hair athwart
his balding head, jowls, spectacles, dandruff on his coat, bread crumbs on his waistcoat. He struggled stiffly to his feet and bowed, saying that no one could mistake such breathtaking beauty, and a glance was enough to explain the enchantment under which his son had fallen.

It followed from the tone of his letter that he would treat me this way, which flattered us both: he could be gallant and feel like a gentleman. I understood this, and knew that if I showed weakness or frustrated him too much he would change his tone. I removed my gloves, held out my hand; for a moment, I was worried that he would not kiss it, but he did. I sat and then he sat. The two of us spoke as we imagined fine high-tea-taking people in England did; I asked questions about the running of his newspaper and certain stories I had condescended to read therein, and he avowed himself impressed and surprised—though not to an insulting degree—by my knowledge of and citizenly interest in such topics as police corruption and election fraud.

At last, with our meal about finished but brandy still before us, he wondered if I had guessed the matter he wished to discuss with me.

“Does it concern these?” Removing an inch-thick bundle of Philip’s letters from a pocket hidden within the folds of my dress, I gave them to his father, whose face showed alarm gradually subsiding to relief, as if a falling pianoforte had just landed a few feet away from him; I thought it had gone very well so far. “I see,” I said. “You didn’t know about these. Then you’re here to ask me to—to give him up.”

In fact, I had assumed as much. Philip was a garrulous bedmate; he complained constantly about his father, and I had a pretty good idea of his father’s plans for him. I had also retained two of the choicer letters.

“Regretfully,” said Arthur Heywood, “and with the utmost respect.”

“May I ask why?”

“He’s engaged to be married. She’s a fine girl, not that you—”

“I’m fine in my own way, but still. Only a stone fence separates her father’s newspaper from yours.”

“Not a business connection. But they’re an old family, and we’re new money. He had agreed. Only now …”

“He’s infatuated with a Cyprian.”

He spread his meaty hands. I reached out, and he gave me one to hold. “In my heart,” I said, “I knew it couldn’t go on forever; it was a beautiful
dream, but dreamers awake. I must stand aside. But how? How? How shall I find the strength?”

“I know how difficult it will be for you.”

“Does it even mean anything, for
me
to do what’s right, just because it’s right? Can I afford the luxury of such scruples? Is there not something strangely false in it?”

“I am prepared to be generous.”

“I don’t want money from you. That is, not for this.” I laced our fingers together. He blushed—mostly in his nose.

“What do you want?” His breath came short.

Here it was. Much less confident than I was trying to appear, I took the leap: “Remember, earlier, we were talking of police corruption? There is a very bad policeman in the Sixth Ward who acquired his position through bribery.”

“As do they all,” he said, with a certain distance still from his own words.

“Let God attend to the others. I’m interested in one who goes by the name Jack Cutter. This tavern is also an inn, did you know that? There are rooms upstairs. I wonder about them. Do you share my curiosity?”

“Yes,” he said hoarsely. I reached under the table and put my hand on his knee. “Oh,” he said, just like his son. “Oh.”

I took him upstairs and applied my skills; before long, he lay gasping on the bed like a fish on a deck. When we were both sure he wasn’t going to die, I broached the subject of his newspaper’s upcoming investigation of police corruption in the person of Jack Cutter, and the Sixth Ward politicians such as—possibly—Alderman O’Daniel and Constantine Donoho.

I had never before tried to influence a powerful man to do me an elaborate favor, but I had met and talked with many such men when they had their hair down, and I had heard them talking to each other. I had come to know them better than their wives and their employees knew them, and I had an instinctive understanding of what was required. At the center of it was a bargain: I would stop seeing Philip, keeping his father’s involvement secret. The father, in return, would conduct investigations and write, or have written, the exposés, timed to hurt O’Daniel and Donoho in the upcoming Democratic primary.

That was not all, however. He would replace his son as one of my regular customers. This was to keep him before my eyes, where I could watch him and urge him on when necessary. It was also another inducement, because, as he was aware, money alone could not purchase my favors: I was popular and I had choices.

He was shrewd enough to guess that I might at the last minute ask him not to mention O’Daniel or Donoho or others who fell into his net, if they undertook to promise—promise
me
—that in the future they would mend their ways. After all, he said, “No human soul is beyond redemption.”