Decorum (40 page)

“How many will you be?” asked Esther.

“Two guides, a packer who will also cook for us, Sandy’s man János, who has been his companion on many such expeditions, Sandy, and me,” said Blanche.

“All men. Goodness,” said Vinnie.

“No apprehensions?” asked Francesca.

“To be honest,” Blanche replied, a little more subdued and trying not to betray the full extent of her misgiving, “I have many. Can a woman who is more fit for an opera box or a ballroom accomplish such a feat?”

“Have you promised Chambers that those seven peaks will be yours as well as Király’s?” asked Francesca.

“Not as yet. One can only convey so much by telegram, which may be to my advantage.”

“Seven weeks on an expedition in the Canadian Rockies may provide ample fodder for news, even if you only cover your companions’ conquests,” Esther offered.

“Thank you for that,” said Blanche. “I do think my editor will hope for more—but yes, there will probably be many opportunities for stories besides teetering on the tops of mountains with a madman.”

“What a wonderful opportunity,” said Francesca. “This could be the making of you, you know. You’ll never get this chance again. I’m confident that you will be able to make the best of whatever comes, and that you’ll come back to us safely to tell us all about it.”

Francesca’s sincerity took Blanche aback. For a moment her eyes stung with the promise of tears, but Vinnie helped to check them.

“I think a lecture at the Springs would be in order, don’t you?” Vinnie asked of the ladies. “Maybe even back in New York. Would the newspaper arrange such a lecture?”

“Perhaps a joint lecture with you and Király,” said Esther.

“If he can sit still long enough,” said Ida.

“You see,” said Francesca. “We all know you can do it.”

“You’ve packed me off for the hinterlands already,” said Blanche. “I haven’t even heard from my editor yet.”

“That doesn’t matter,” said Ida. “Whichever way it goes, I think this calls for champagne.” She raised her hand. “Oh, waiter.”

C
HAPTER
49

“Come in, my dear. I’ve ordered some tea.”

Francesca had received the invitation from Ida West on a few minutes’ notice—tea in Ida’s suite at four o’clock. She had viewed the invitation with mild suspicion.

“Would you rather have something stronger?” asked Ida. She went to a small side table. “Scotch whisky or I have a little cognac?”

“Cognac, if you don’t mind.”

“That’s the spirit.”

Ida poured the cognac into the glass, handed it to Francesca, and then poured herself a whiskey. She handed Francesca a napkin before sitting on the settee in front of the tea tray on which was arranged plates of tea sandwiches and cakes. Francesca sat in the side chair opposite Ida.

“I had to cultivate a taste for tea, you know,” said Ida, offering Francesca a small plate with one hand and the plate of tea sandwiches with the other. “Of coffee or tea, I prefer good strong coffee. D’you know how we used to make it?”

Francesca shook her head.

“Sunday we ground the coffee and threw a handful into the coffeepot and boiled it on the stove. Monday, we threw another handful into the pot and boiled it. Tuesday, another handful—and Wednesday and Thursday and so on through the week. On Saturday, we cleaned the pot.” Though boiled coffee was not unknown to Francesca, the thought made her wince. Ida chuckled to herself. “We made the best coffee you’ll ever have in your life. Even Connor would say so.”

The two ladies had little in common but their acquaintance with Connor, which made frequent references to him inevitable. Francesca suspected that in spite of the small talk, Ida West had a reason for speaking to her privately, and that reason might be her favorite subject. Francesca ate her sandwich in silence and was not displeased with the restlessness her reticence seemed to produce in Ida West.

“You’re not a very curious woman, are you, dear?” asked Ida bluntly.

“On the contrary, my curiosity about some things can be insatiable,” Francesca laughed. “I have found, however, that it’s often more prudent to keep my curiosity to myself.” She ate the last bite of sandwich and helped herself to another.

“Prudence and lack of curiosity can be very irritating virtues when a body has something to say,” said Ida wryly.

“I suppose there’s no chance that my devastating lack of curiosity will dissuade you.”

“Hardly,” said Ida, cutting a small piece of seed cake and offering it to Francesca on a fresh plate. “Do you want my advice? Never mind answering. You’re getting it.”

Francesca took the plate, but said nothing.

“Marry him,” said Ida firmly.

“Did he send you as his emissary?” asked Francesca, trying to maintain her composure.

“We do talk a good deal. He doesn’t confide in me, if that’s what you’re thinking. No, it’s as much what he doesn’t say about you as what he does say.”

“Then why?” asked Francesca. She took the plate, broke off a piece of the cake, and ate with her fingers. “Why have you taken it upon yourself?”

“Because he’s a good man.”

Ida arranged a cushion, took the glass of whiskey from the table, and sat back.

“I didn’t say he’s a perfect man,” she continued. “No man is—but he is a good man. What’s more, he knows he’s not perfect. Don’t let him bluff you. He wants molding and shaping whether he admits it or not. You could be the making of him, and he knows it.”

“Bluff” had struck Francesca as her first impression of Connor. She had even used it to his face and he himself had not contested it. Was this a signal that her first impressions were to be relied upon? For the present she was too annoyed to concede anything.

“I realize that I’m a comparative stranger to you,” said Francesca, her equilibrium restored. “Your interests naturally lie on his side, but I have interests as well. What, in your opinion, will marrying Connor make me—a better woman?”

“Quite possibly,” said Ida, taking a sip of whiskey. “You underestimate him so dreadfully. At the very least he can help you get what you want, and the whole business could probably mold and shape the both of you for the better. The fact that you don’t need it is probably part of Connor’s attraction to you. It won’t be an obstacle to your life together.”

Had Francesca not used a similar argument with Jerry when she told him about Connor and Banff? She stewed in silence and finished her cake.

“What’s the matter?” asked Ida.

“Love is the matter,” said Francesca, weary and angry at the same time. She took a large sip of cognac. “Or is love not in vogue this year? God knows I’ve seen enough loveless marriages. I had hoped I wouldn’t have a loveless marriage myself.”

“Then don’t have one,” said Ida. “It depends on you as much as on him. Now, if you want flowers and candy and somebody who’ll salve your hurt feelings for you and protect you from the world, then indeed Connor O’Casey is not the man for you. If anything, he’ll make you face life, not help you run from it.”

“There’s such a thing as being tired of life.”

“You think he doesn’t know that, too? You think he doesn’t know the difference between running from life and needing rest from it? He doesn’t want a mother, he wants a wife,” Ida said with some impatience. “As for pampering, there’s a time and place for that, and don’t think there isn’t.” She stopped a moment and seemed to study Francesca.

“You can’t make me believe that loveless marriages are the only marriages you’ve ever known,” she said. “Are they?”

“Of course not,” said Francesca.

How could they be, when the best marriage she had ever known was the marriage that brought forth her and her brother. Was she to be afraid of any marriage because of a few miserable examples? For nearly five years she had tried to reason herself either into or out of her fears until she no longer trusted herself to recognize what might truly make her happy.

“Did you love your husband?” asked Francesca.

“Walt?” Ida mused. “When I met Walter West neither one of us had a bean. He was a scrappy fella, though. I was scrappy, too, come to that.”

Francesca recalled Connor’s word for herself—
scrappy
—and understood now where he got it. Not argumentative necessarily, not difficult, or looking to pick a fight. Knowing Ida gave the word a different, perhaps truer meaning—toughness, stamina, an ability to stand on one’s own two feet. In such a light the word was not as offensive as she had taken it when Connor first ascribed it to her. She almost liked it.

“We got on well because we understood each other,” Ida continued. “We wanted the same things and weren’t afraid of work. It was a good time in many ways. We were equals. We had to be or we’d’ve died, simple as that. Making money almost made things harder. Life changed. Our jobs became different—his in business, mine more and more in family and home, something I wasn’t even sure I wanted. But we stuck with it. Turns out the children were the best part of us. No regrets there. Walter was good to me without assuming he knew how he should be good. I molded and shaped him, too, and it worked out fine for all of us.”

“But did you love him?” asked Francesca, unwilling to give any ground.

“Yes,” said Ida, “I grew to love Walter West very much.”

A gray cloud passed across the sky as they sipped their drinks and curtained the room in shadow. A few drops of rain followed until a steady patter caused Ida to rise and close the window. She fetched her glass from the table and motioned to Francesca to hand hers to her to be refreshed. Instead Francesca rose, glass in hand, and followed her to the drinks stand and stood close by Ida as she poured more cognac and whiskey.

“I don’t mean to pry or stir up bad memories,” Francesca began more calmly, “but—”

“How did Walt die? And how was Connor involved?” asked Ida with her usual bluntness. “I expected you’d ask that sooner or later.”

Francesca regained her seat across from the settee. Ida set her glass on the mantelshelf and stirred the fire to life. Francesca watched her as she put on another log—this solid, scrappy, self-reliant woman who, like herself, would not bother a servant to come and do a simple act she could just as easily perform, and do it without comment.

“Walt and Connor met working in the mines more than twenty years ago. They became fast friends. The boys scraped together enough to stake their first silver claim and hire miners of their own.”

Francesca smiled at Ida’s calling them “boys.” This put Connor in a new light, and Walter, too, if Ida would use such an endearing term. Connor and endearing terms seemed out of place. No, that wasn’t true, she thought. Had he not had the effrontery—no, perhaps effrontery was too strong a word—the audacity, that was it—to call her Frankie?

“They always had good relations with the men,” Ida continued. “Having been miners themselves, they tried to do right by them. As they prospered, the boys took on investors—men who’d already made their money and hadn’t set foot in a mine and weren’t about to.

“Walt and Connor had a hell of a time with them—the investors, I mean. The boys knew how terrible and dangerous the conditions were. They spent a lot of time at the mine, keeping an eye on things, while the other investors built themselves fine homes in Leadville and Denver. The boys tried to keep up good relations and see that the miners were paid right—paid at all sometimes. When the investors came in the miners began to think that the boys had sold out. The miners had to blame somebody for their wretched conditions. Walt and Connor were the most visible because they were always there.

“It came to a head one day when Prescott, the chief of the investors, came out to the Five Star with a posse of bodyguards. The miners hadn’t been paid in weeks, to the point where Walt and Connor were taking money out of their own cuts to keep them from getting too disgruntled—and discouraged. Those miners had families to support. Connor had seen Walt in the same fix, trying to support me when the mine owners wouldn’t ante up. Sometimes Connor’d go with nothing for our sakes. When the boys bought into the Five Star they vowed it would be different, but they were bucked up against a majority who didn’t want things to change, no matter how hard the boys tried to convince them. By the time Prescott arrived, everybody was too worked up to listen. The situation got out of hand and the miners rioted. Prescott’s men killed at least half a dozen miners before the miners killed him and his men—all of ’em. Then they took all that pent-up fury out on the boys and beat poor Walt to death. They murdered him.” Ida took a drink of whiskey. “They nearly murdered Connor, too. He was out cold, and broken in body, and had been left for dead.”

Francesca was thunderstruck. For all her living in New York and her experience of desperate people in the tenements and the settlement house, she could hardly comprehend that kind of desperation. She felt terrified and desolate. Her imagination conjured up her life of the last nine months had Connor O’Casey not been there to challenge everything she hoped for and believed in. The expectations of the Jeromes and the Worths and all New York society became puny and insignificant and Edmund Tracey and Nell Ryder receded into a kind of moral oblivion. She felt herself breathing harder and a flush creeping over her cheeks. The last barrier was crumbling.

“Afterward, I brought Connor to Denver with me. It was a mercy for me to look after him and keep myself occupied. It took him six months to recover. I think the whole thing scared the liver out of him, if you’ll excuse my mentioning it. Once he was on his feet, he came out fighting. You should have seen him. He didn’t know how, but he was going to find a way to make something of himself. Not just money. That wasn’t the same as making something of his life.”

The patter against the window became more intermittent and clouds began to lift. A few tentative shafts of sunlight began to illuminate the room. Francesca turned and stood before the fire. Taking the poker from its stand, she jabbed it into the logs and released a new flame. When she again sat across from Ida, Francesca found her looking at her, dry-eyed and determined.

“Marry him, Francesca,” said Ida with finality. “I’ve known Connor O’Casey for twenty years. You won’t find a truer partner anywhere. He understands when the work has to be done to make something the way you want it to be. He’ll work at his marriage with you. Oh, sure, there may be times when you and he don’t like it very much—or each other very much, come to that. But he’s never been a shirker and he knows when the work may be the only thing that gets you through. He knows a good thing and he sees that in you.” Ida fixed a scolding eye on Francesca. “If you refuse him, I’ll mark you down as the most foolish woman I’ve ever known.” Ida left Francesca, still and silent, to stare at the tea service, the only movement the occasional sip of whiskey.

Francesca had not credited Connor with deep feelings, or with a deep sense of honor and fairness that she herself shared. When she sought him out to tell him about Tracey, it was to unburden herself to a human being who she thought could deflect a troublesome emotion and be done with it. Had she so misjudged him? Could anything allow even a particle of love to grow up between them? What of the spark, that part of life she so wanted? What of romance? She had grown comfortable with her assessment of Connor. Now Ida West had fomented anarchy in Francesca’s orderly emotions. She came to herself and realized she could not sit in Ida’s room to work out what it meant.

“Thank you for the tea, Mrs. West,” said Francesca, rising. “I must go. Thank you for the enlightening conversation.” As she reached the door, she turned back, thinking to forestall future outbreaks, and added, “I trust we needn’t repeat this topic in the future.”