Black Silk (11 page)

He opened a second drawer. “I don’t like this shirt. I like this one.” He set it aside. He was digging through the drawer, looking for something; he didn’t know what.

But the touching and handling of his things felt good. Immeasurably good. He tossed the book from his bedstand into a trunk. He was only halfway through reading it, yet seeing the book at the bottom of the trunk gave him the oddest sense of dispatch. He picked up his humidor full of cigars and tossed it in, too.

“Your Lordship, you use those,” his valet protested.

“Right. So I’ll need them at Netham.”

Graham yanked open the doors of his jewel keep and began unloading all its tiny shallow drawers. He tossed watches toward the trunk, his valet catching, sometimes missing, watches that flew too wide of the mark.

“Sir—”

Graham moved to the wardrobe. Like a madman, he hefted out an indiscriminate load of clothes. He piled them into the trunk too, feeling as he did a wild sense of elation. “God—” He emptied the wardrobe into the trunk until it was too full to close. He threw some things out, slammed the lid, wasn’t satisfied, then stuffed the things back in. He really stuffed it, climbing into the trunk to mash everything down. Then he shut the lid and climbed on top of the trunk. He felt a rush.

He stood on the trunk, panting. It still wouldn’t close. “Where’s another?” he asked his valet.

The man was standing back against the wall. “Another trunk, sir?”

“Right.”

“Ned is packing the linens from the linen press in one.”

Graham was off. Down the hall, he packed that trunk too and every trunk in the house he could lay his hands on. And there were still drawers and shelves and cupboards of things he hadn’t even begun to empty.

“More trunks,” he called to Ned, his under butler.

“We don’t have any, sir.”

“Buy some.”

“I would have to send to Abercrombie’s to make some up, sir. With everybody leaving, sir, there are none left in town, sir.”

Sir, sir, sir. He would not be soothed with deference. “Oh, shut up. Just
unpack
all these,” he told the man. “We’ll start again. I’ll have to be more selective.”

And this selection he attacked with more enthusiasm than he had had for anything else lately.

His toiletries and writing paper and every pen and inkwell went. His summer clothes, his best soaps, his sharpest razor. All that was significant was packed off to Netham. The game was laid. He screened each possession for its importance to his daily routine. Though he gave frightened servants the mumbled explanation, “for my later convenience,” there was never any doubt that he was stripping the house of everything intimately familiar to him.

Then he went to work on the staff, creating total upheaval. Those vital few who remained for some modicum of comfort Graham dismissed summarily to the country, including his own manservant and barber. The last livery, butler, footman, and groom went. Word had it that a housekeeper and gardener, with possibly a maid here or there, re
mained but avoided him for fear of being sacked. That was all well with him.

The removal of these things and people filled him with a sense of accomplishment. And it resulted in another gratification: Inside of twenty-four hours, he was as literally isolated in his vacant, comfortless house as he felt emotionally.

For a day or two, he languished in aloneness like some palliative drug he had taken to excess. He slept long irregular hours and ate more irregularly still. One night, when the rest of the city was asleep, he found himself suddenly awake with no watch in the house and the four clocks downstairs stopped. He tried to doze until dawn, but it seemed hours and hours in coming, with him waking countless times. He rose, found some stale bread and cheese in the kitchen, then, tired after his night’s vigil for morning, he slept again. When he awoke this time, it was dark. He had slept an entire day and into the night, having eaten only one meal.

On the sixth day of the trial’s recess, Graham, along with his solicitor and junior barrister, was called to a meeting in Tate’s chambers. Graham arrived red-eyed, unshaven, and forty-five minutes late.

Tate greeted him with, “Are you sober?”

Graham gave him a surly look. “No. Have you got a drink? I haven’t had breakfast.”

The lawyer’s mouth pulled into a line. “You look terrible.”

“I
feel
terrible. Can we get on with this?”

“Sit down.” Tate tapped his finger onto a sheaf of papers. “We have the first fruits of our labors. The other side has made an offer to settle out of court. Mind you, I’m not recommending it, but I’m obliged to show you.”

He passed the papers across the desk to Graham. After the first two pages, Graham began to skim the rest. He looked up. “Lord God, where is the pen? Where do I sign?” The offer
included no matrimony, no claim to title or land. By omission, the papers were disclaimers if ever he’d seen any.

When Tate didn’t immediately respond, Graham leaned forward and said very distinctly, “I want to sign them.”

“You understand what they say?”

“I give her an annual sum. She drops all charges.”

Tate stood, ostensibly to get together the ink and pen and blotting paper required. Everything seemed to be in a different drawer. “These are still punishing terms. They involve large amounts of money, a limited legal responsibility.” He was shaking his head. He couldn’t seem to find an acceptable nib for his pen. He rejected several into a basket on his desk. “I can’t understand why an innocent man would sign these.”

“To escape the beating he is taking in the name of innocence. Can it all be done through you? Set up as a kind of trust so I never have to see the business again?”

“Yes, and through your solicitors. But it makes you look guilty.”

Graham threw him a sarcastic look. “So you shouldn’t mind.”

Tate frowned up at him from the shuffle of papers and pens. “Being right is seldom enough. You must also be persistent.”

“How can you possibly say such a thing after the way you’ve defended me?”

“I know you’ve objected—”

“You
agreed
with them.”

“I didn’t argue on any but the vital issues. There is no point—”

Graham had to look away. He sat back in his chair as the offense of the total proceeding reintroduced itself in his mind. “There is great point—” he began.

“Well, I don’t see it. If it is slander and defamation you are worried about, I would have to get you someone else.”

“Because you don’t believe me.”

“Your ‘believability’ is up to the court, not me.” Tate returned to the pen-nib business, finally picking one up and pushing it onto the stem of his pen. He began to hunt through the papers on his desk as if looking for something more. “It is because I don’t do slander. For your future reference, I do domestic and probate; I could get you someone else from my chambers if that is what you want. But I recommend continuing the paternity for a more clear vindication.”

“No.”

Tate looked up crossly. “No, what?”

Graham was taken aback. For an instant he wanted to answer, “No, sir,” or “No, thank you,” whatever he was being coached to say. Then he realized Tate was only asking for clarification. “No, I am satisfied. May I have it?”

Tate handed him the pen.

There was the formality of witnesses. Clerks were called in. Graham affixed his signature and seal, then there was more signing.

Tate tapped all the collected papers together. Over the top of them it was difficult to tell his mood, though it seemed to have shifted from any sincere remonstrance. “These can still be destroyed,” he offered.

“I can think of nothing better my money could buy.”

Tate
tsk
ed. “A poor man could not afford to throw away his innocence.”

“A poor man wouldn’t have been sued.”

Tate’s eyes squinted, performing a little smile, then he shrugged and began to put things neatly into a folder. “Your solicitor will prepare the final papers, but you may sign them here if you wish. We are still officially in trial until both you and the young lady have put your names on the final documents. Can you come in next week? We should have the matter arranged for your approval by then. A trust, correct?”

“If that is the best thing.”

“I should think.”

“Can you send for me from Netham?”

“I’d prefer to have you remain here until everything is tied down. There might be further discussion on small points. I don’t expect any problems, but you should be here. You will have to meet with the girl and her lawyers once more.” Nodding to the other men in the room, he added, “And yours.”

“Very well.” Graham stood to go.

“Shall we say then, unless there’s some emergency, two o’clock Wednesday? At which time we shall make you the limited guardian and generous benefactor to this woman’s children.” Tate paused. Again he made a perfunctory smile. He tilted his head. “It is a shame to see someone your age so cynical. Especially someone who has as much as you.”

Gathering his things, Graham said, “I am up to here”—he made a chop at the underside of his chin—“with how much I have.”

“I was not referring to money or class. You are an intelligent young man, with the benefits of a good education. A poor man might not have been sued, but neither would have a more innocent man—and I don’t mean innocent in this particular case: You are guilty of a much greater waste, and you know it. You are too old to have nothing to show.”

“A moment ago I was young and had so much.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I’m afraid I don’t. Is this all included in your fee?”

“You are the same boy, aren’t you?”

Graham didn’t know precisely what the lawyer meant, but he felt the need to turn away again. He hid a mild, involuntary flush. “I am old enough to resent this continuing attitude of yours—”

Tate waved his hand. “My apologies.” He was rising to walk the group of men to the door. “It is only that—habit, I suppose. Henry, I mean. He talked of you…. I tend to think of you…protectively, in a sense. I mustn’t. I’m sorry. You are perfectly right in being angry.”

Submit carried her coat out to the landing and laid it over the banister so she wouldn’t forget it. For a change, the coat wasn’t damp. The weather had dried out, the rainy days giving way to a series of bright, hot ones. It looked as though London and its environs might finally enjoy what so much of the rest of the world did, a truly warm summer.

In her room, Submit put the last of her bags by the door. A manservant, Mr. Schild’s valet it turned out, had offered to take these down. He had arrived this morning to pick up the last of Mr. Schild’s clothes. For the past week, except for the coming and going of servants, Submit had had the house to herself. Rosalyn Schild had graciously allowed her to stay the extra days remaining on the lease. The house, however, was about to revert to its English owners; the Schilds’ rent had covered the London season, and the season was over. After tomorrow, it was no longer their prerogative to allow her to stay.

It didn’t matter. Submit was ready to move on. She even looked forward to the very humble arrangements she had once more made for herself at the inn. In the last few weeks, she had begun to relish even the smallest things as she accomplished them on her own. She would have liked having a more luxurious life, but the fact that she could manage with less, and be happy, gave her satisfaction.

She latched the bag, one of seven, plus a trunk. For a near penniless woman, she laughed to herself, she certainly had a lot of baggage to move around. William had let her take all her personal possessions from Motmarche. If he or his wife, Margaret, had any inclination to use any of their clothes or toiletries from Charlotte Street, she had told him, he had
better let her have hers from East Anglia. Thus, their first accommodation—they had each come away with the things from their personal drawers and clothes cupboards.

Or closets, as Rosalyn said. The American woman called her clothes wardrobe a closet, which made Submit do a smiling sort of double take. All she associated with the word “closet” was the W.C., the water closet. The American was amazing and amusing. Rosalyn herself laughed over these sorts of discovered differences; she seemed to love them. But they must have affected her beyond this, for she also promptly adopted the English way as soon as she realized any discrepancy between the two cultures. She was becoming a strange kind of ersatz Brit; it was false, but somehow not unappealing. Rosalyn Schild was reshaping herself, joyously following her own tastes down a path that puzzled the English and might, Submit speculated, offend the woman’s own stauncher countrymen.

Still, Submit could not help but like her. Rosalyn loved everything she did, every moment. The people. The dressing. The entertaining. The gossip. The games. Even the mean competitiveness of her own circle—even when this was directed pointedly at her. “Aren’t people
awful
,” she said with a laugh, as one of the more proper women, paying a call, suddenly left. “She had the nerve to tell me, ‘Why, the earl of Netham isn’t here, my dear. I didn’t know he
ever
went home.’ So I told her back, ‘He goes home if the kitties climb all over him too much. Or when he sees you coming, darling. You see, he doesn’t like anything that hisses.’” Rosalyn had followed this with a peal of laughter. “How awful of me, don’t you think, Submit?” Rosalyn was, by her own authority, on a first-name basis with everyone. “Because, of course, Graham loves me, and I am the cattiest thing in skirts!”

She was. Rosalyn Schild was incorrigibly vindictive and self-centered. She was also generous to a fault. She truly
liked other people, so long as they didn’t get in her way. She had even wanted to pay the summer rent on this house—it would be considerably less than it had been for the season, Rosalyn insisted; she wanted Submit to stay. But Submit felt uncomfortable with such indebtedness to a woman who was so frank with her passions, good and bad. One could trust Rosalyn Schild to be honest, Submit thought, but Submit preferred to trust herself to be consistent and kind. She had refused politely.

Outside, a carriage stopped in the street. Submit went to see if this was Arnold Tate. He had offered to take her to her next “home.” He had also, in fact, offered to pay her way. Again she had refused. “That would be a fine thing,” she had teased him, “for everyone to whisper how the widowed Lady Motmarche was being kept by her attorney.” He couldn’t argue. She looked out the window, but the driveway was empty. The carriage she’d heard had stopped across the street.

Submit came back to her bags and was about to ring for the manservant when she caught sight of the little black box.

She was going to leave it, of course. She had tried to deliver it. Besides, she didn’t want it with her anymore. She had opened it three more times, and the contents simply upset her too much. It was bad enough the outside was gaudy; the contents were vulgar enough that every time she looked at them, they stopped her heart. Let the servants or the next tenants figure out what to do with the box. It would serve Graham Wessit right if people came to associate it with him. Submit frowned at this thought, then lost track of it. The front bell downstairs rang. Before she could think, Arnold Tate had come up the stairs, picked up her bags, and was breathing hard under the strain of trying to carry too many of them down again.

“Arnold, please. At least let me take one.”

But he wouldn’t. And he wouldn’t let the servants help,
except with the trunk. He put her bags in the front carriage boot himself, instructed that the trunk be tied onto the rear, then raced around to give her his hand. He lifted her, helping her in not only by her hand but also with a light pressure at her waist. She looked at him a moment. She felt nothing. No, of course she felt something. It felt wonderful to have Arnold here. She could count on him to be decent, civil, a true gentleman—even if his idea of suavity included exhausting himself over her bags. She smiled at Arnold.

“Thank you.”

He smiled back. “My pleasure.”

But a vague unease wouldn’t let her return his warmth. She touched his hand. “Arnold.” She frowned slightly. “The box I picked up at your office a few weeks ago. The box I was supposed to give Graham Wessit—”

“He didn’t take it.” It was a statement, not a question.

“I didn’t give it to him,” she corrected. “I don’t know what happened, but I just didn’t manage to hand it over as I should have. And now I’ve left it upstairs—”

“Fine.” He drew his brows together. “Don’t worry about it.” He pushed her skirt in.

She had to stop his hand from closing the door. “Arnold, do you know what it is? What’s inside? What it means?”

He paused, the carriage door still in his hand. He looked at the door’s edge, at its latch, pressing his lips together in much the way he seemed to want to seal up the vehicle—tight. When he looked back at her, there was an uncomfortable determination in his eye. “No,” he said.

Submit leaned back into the carriage. He was lying. “Then be a dear and go get it for me, would you?” Hang him anyway, she thought. She would hoist him on his own closed mouth. “It’s on the nightstand.”

The attorney hesitated, started to say something, then shut the door gently. When he joined her in the carriage a few minutes later, he handed the black box over to her, then
sat silently back into the far corner. Submit offered him no reprieve. She said nothing, and for the forty-five-minute trip he also remained silent. If he had offered one bit of truth about the box, she would have listened. If he had tried to change the subject, she was sufficiently baffled and angry at him, at Henry, that she would have cut him off. As it was, she let him sit there in his dark corner, allowing him to be a victim of his own unspoken thoughts.

Graham was humming as he climbed the carriage-entry steps. The day was beautiful, he thought. Life was rich. Then he opened his own door and remembered: His household was a mess.

The small private entrance area had its few furnishings draped over, its usual knickknacks either hidden or sent off. The door closed and echoed behind him. No one met him to receive his hat.

In his room, the bed was made, a pitcher of fresh water set out by a clean basin—testaments to a living presence, the housekeeper or maid. He realized there was actually nothing that needed his attention, except perhaps Rosalyn’s last letter. It lay on his dresser folded over the accompanying ripped-out pages of the magazine. He opened the top drawer and swept the whole lot into it, then rang for a bath.

He found he had a staff of exactly three: one housekeeper, one gardener, and one footman—minus any vehicle to foot. Between himself and the apologetic footman, he managed a shave with only a minor injury—a small gash at his throat, which ruined the first collar he put on. In finding the second, he also found a watch at the back of the drawer. He wound and set it according to the footman’s. Then, too efficient, he found himself with a warm and uncommitted afternoon.

Graham told himself he was thinking of Rosalyn until he was actually at her door, ringing the bell. By then, he was
having to concoct a more credible excuse to himself: Rosalyn was of course gone from her London house. This left the widow, he expected, once more with nowhere to go; he was there to inquire after her.

But as the door to Rosalyn’s house swung open, in the face of a familiar servant, Graham was halted. He mumbled something about a mislaid cloak.

He was admitted into the shuttered house with the comment that he was lucky. The last of the Schilds’ staff were leaving tonight, new tenants coming tomorrow or the day after. He could ring if he needed help in finding the cloak. There was some awkwardness, apparently Graham’s alone. A butler, then an upper housemaid, nodded to him as they passed him in the hallway; the rest ignored him. He was given much the run of the place, though he didn’t move comfortably about. He couldn’t shake the feeling of red-handedness as he touched Rosalyn’s possessions, her habitat.

He was half an hour at this wandering and rummaging, this guilty search for the nonexistent cloak, when he finally had to admit that his other reason for being here was absent as well. Ironically, wistfully, he found an inexpensive outer coat, a nubby black wool he was sure was Submit’s, draped over the banister at the top landing. He had a vague longing to purloin the garment—a hostage. But in the end he put it down. It might, should Rosalyn discover it, become traitor, not hostage, to his secret inclinations. Standing there at the top of the stairs, he pondered the extent of these inclinations. He wanted to see the woman again. That much was clear, but he didn’t know what came after that. He only recognized that he wanted something from her by the size and substance of his guilt. Friendship? he thought. With an odd stroke of insight he realized, perhaps more than anything, Rosalyn would not be pleased with that.

The coat was the only trace of the widow. No carefully
phrased questions yielded a hint. There was no forwarding address. And, no, the mistress hadn’t taken the lady with her. He hardly knew what to think. He had considered the widow more or less obligated to be on hand, at least until Henry’s papier-mâché case had been delivered to him.

Graham sat down in an empty bay window and surveyed one particularly empty room—the front parlor, where he had last spoken to Submit Channing-Downes. He felt lost, deprived, foolish, as if some trick had been played on him. He wanted to blame someone, but candidates were scarce. Therefore, because it was so convenient and easy to blame a dead man, he put Henry at fault. The miserable old man. How could he marry such a nothing of a woman? Such a young woman? A woman who could slip behind a screen of day-to-day trivia, behind the flamboyant Rosalyn, behind Graham’s own smug reliance that he had her safely shelved for future reference, and simply disappear, leaving behind only her crumpled coat?

Three days later, Graham was again at odds with Tate, only this time it was to his advantage to say nothing. He was not the object: Tate preached to the courtroom-mother on the subjects of conscience and sin.

“You should be less ashamed,” he told her, “of the babies born out of wedlock than to be involving an innocent third party.” Graham’s advocate to the end, he pressed her to tears to release Graham from the “reprehensible responsibilities” that she, as an “unjust opportunist of his past difficulties,” was thrusting on his shoulders.

Graham watched her. Her lip-biting brevity. Her determination. Little was known of this young laundress, but Graham saw enough on her face to doubt she knew the meaning of the word “reprehensible.” Her teary silences said she knew only that she was wrong, and that she knew—
lived—circumstances that made her determined to stay wrong. Anyone could have told Tate to save his breath.

But he didn’t. He picked at her, deliberately and over a protracted stretch of time, until her solicitor finally put a halt to it. Graham wished then that he had said something. He sympathized with her mortification at being lectured on what had become a moot point. The matter was settled. Still, Tate went on and on in that closed room, trying to make an “honest” woman of her by making her feel guilty.

Listening to all this, so reminiscent of Tate’s lectures to him, Graham began to feel a kinship with the girl. In their disparate silences, he recognized himself a week ago—the sliding sense, the deep, unnameable discontent, the signs of heavy burden and the incapacity to communicate to anyone its particular weight. If Graham had been struggling to keep his head above water a week ago, he was staring now at a face that looked half-drowned. She was deathly white and as thin as a cadaver. He remembered someone saying she had hemorrhaged during the delivery of her babies, and she looked it: She was less the feisty, table-climbing girl at the beginning of all this, and by many more pounds than just the weight of twin boys—she had borne two sons.

Sitting in that office, Graham began to feel a peculiar ambivalence toward her that had to do with pity, though not necessarily the generous sort. He felt instead the kind of pity that celebrates a little: There but for the grace of God…. At one point, she looked at him directly. Or so he thought. Her eyes became flat and vacant, even as they were flooding over with tears—as if she cried for something far off, far removed from either herself or her present situation. It was an eerie look. In that instant, she seemed as mad as a hatter. And Graham’s animosity toward her all but disappeared. He felt a sadness, a sorrow that was for her alone.