Lawless (47 page)

Payne shrugged. “Some don’t. In any case, you’ll have a much better understanding of the effort required to create even one edition of a newspaper.” The editor cocked his head. “Any comment?”

Gideon drew a deep breath. “If you expect a protest, you’ll be disappointed. The dock is fine. I felt I should start in a menial job.”

Theo Payne took the younger man by surprise, and smiled. Not a cynical smile, but one that was genuinely friendly.

“Delighted to hear it,” he said, “because you don’t deserve to start anywhere else, Gideon.”

A
SUITABLE PRESENT
for Margaret suggested itself to Gideon next day. It was one she’d been asking for, at least indirectly, over a period of several years. He spent the remaining days before Christmas touring the town with real estate agents, though he took a couple of hours out to close the
Beacon’s
last office. By Christmas Eve he had papers covering the first stage of the land transaction in his pocket and was ready to present the gift to his wife.

Light snow began to fall about seven o’clock as the family finished supper. The temperature outside was twenty degrees, and nine-year-old Eleanor begged permission to take her skates to the frozen pond before the snow covered it.

“Excellent idea,” Gideon said, laying his napkin beside his empty plate. Eleanor jumped up to hug him around the neck. Across the table, Margaret watched and frowned.

“See that Will’s in his bed before you go, would you please?” he added. “Your mother and I must have a chat.”

He was smiling as he said it, but the remark brought a look of anxiety to Margaret’s face. He was disturbed. He’d smelled something new on her breath when he arrived home. Whiskey. The odor even penetrated the scent of the clove she must have chewed to perfume her mouth. Why was she drinking more heavily? Did she suspect?

No, impossible. He hadn’t brought any of Julia’s letters home. After he read and reread each one until he’d virtually memorized it, he consigned it to a stove.

“What is it you want to talk about?” Margaret asked when Eleanor was gone. Her speech was slow; thick. “Is it the newspaper? Have you decided it won’t be to your liking?”

“Not at all. I’m anxious to go to work.”

“Six nights a week.” She made a face. “All night.”

“Margaret, I explained before—that can’t be helped.” As they left the table, he put his arm around her. She drew away. He sighed, then said, “Why don’t we go into the parlor? I’ve a little surprise for you.”

She shrugged in an indifferent way. For the first time he noticed a faint streaking of white in her hair. Just a few strands—but she wasn’t yet thirty years old. The gray hair, the apparent drinking in secret, and her outbursts of anger all combined to bring her father to mind. A man whose sanity had been destroyed by alcohol.

Her obvious misery only intensified his guilt. He touched the side pocket of his coat, as if the paper tucked there was a remedy that would magically restore happiness to the household. In a way, he’d hoped the paper would do exactly that. He feared the hope had been a vain one.

He heard Eleanor clatter down the stairs with her skates, call a cheerful goodbye and hurry out. The parlor was dim and inviting with only one gas fixture aglow. Gideon found a match and began to light the small candles on the fragrant pine tree decorated with cranberry strands and homemade gilt paper ornaments. Soon two dozen tiny flames cast a warm, shimmering light over plump red berries, dark green needles, golden angels. He dropped the burned matches in the bucket of water kept handy in case of fire, then reached to his pocket.

Margaret’s distracted expression stayed his hand. She was seated, staring at the table where the Rogers group had stood.

“Margaret?”

Her head turned slowly. “What is it?”

“Please tell me why you’re so unhappy. I thought that once I gave up the
Beacon
and went to work at something with a better future, you’d feel better.”

The strange, vacant look left her eyes, and they shone with some of the fire he remembered from their courting days in Richmond, when they’d argued about the nature of war.

“I’ve thought it over and it’s my conclusion the
Union
is no different from that sheet you published for those wretched railroad men.”

“Wretched? Margaret, Daphnis Miller wasn’t just my friend, he was yours too. Our neighbor. Our benefactor.”

She waved her hand in a vague way. “That was a long time ago. A very long time ago. This is the present. The
Union
is no different. Oh, perhaps the work’s a little safer. For the sake of your children, I’m thankful for that. But essentially you have the same job. One which again proves you place the welfare of others ahead of that of your family.”

He hadn’t wanted to lose his temper tonight. But he did.

“Damn it, Margaret, you put the most twisted interpretations on everything I do and—”

“Kindly do
not
use filthy language with me, Gideon Kent.”

“But I don’t know what you
want
of me!”

“The knowledge that you really care about my wishes.”

He stalked toward her. “What does that mean? What does it
really
mean? Complete surrender to your whims? A clerk’s job in some store? A daily routine in which my most important concern is hurrying home to chop wood or paint the porch trim?”

“Yes.” Defiantly, her head came up. “That’s exactly what I’d like for a change.”

“Well, I’m sorry, but you’ll never get me to live that kind of life.” A sad smile. “You taught me too well.”

“I wish to heaven I hadn’t.”

“Yes, I’m aware of that feeling.”

“Then give up the newspaper business.”

More firmly: “It’s selfish of you to ask that of me.”

“No,” she retorted, rising, “selfish of
you
to deny the request. By doing so you’re destroying this family. You’ve already destroyed our marriage. I don’t know why I should expect it to be otherwise. You’ve always put your work first.”

“Margaret, you’re wrong!” he shouted. “That’s a deliberate and wicked distortion!”

How had she developed her sick, destructive need for dominance? He was too angry to care very much. He stabbed his hand into his pocket, yanked out the document and slammed it on a table. “Obviously tonight is an inappropriate time to discuss this.”

She stood motionless and gazed at the paper. Unexpectedly, the candlelight lent her face a certain forlorn quality that touched him and cooled his temper.

“What is it, Gideon?”

“A real estate purchase agreement. I’ve bought a large plot of ground: a corner lot at Sixty-first Street and Fifth Avenue, opposite Central Park. It’s prime residential land, and this very afternoon I engaged an architect to draw up plans for a big, comfortable house—” He had been speaking with increasing weariness. His voice was soft as he finished. “If all goes well, we’ll spend next Christmas in the kind of place you’ve always wanted.”

She pursed her lips. “How thoughtful. It certainly represents a compromise. I’d concluded that you meant to keep us living shabbily forever.”

Ignoring her bitterness, he forced himself to walk to her. To place his hands on her shoulders. This time she let him touch her, but she stiffened as he did. Somehow, he felt like weeping.

A candle on the tree hissed and dripped wax on the carpet. He thought he detected a flicker of movement at one of the lace-curtained veranda windows. Then he decided it was a trick played by the shimmering flames.

With all the restraint he could muster, he said, “I know you’ve felt I was wrong in refusing to spend the California money on ourselves. Perhaps I was. I admit I can be mule-stubborn sometimes. In any case, to try to make up for that shortcoming, the house is a Christmas gift. I spoke to the architect in terms of a construction cost of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The very finest materials and appointments throughout. It will hardly put a dent in the inheritance, and I’d like you to have a home you can live in proudly—”

Again his voice trailed off. Her lackluster eyes and the sour set of her mouth made him drop his hands from her shoulders. He shook his head.

“I thought you’d be just a little pleased.”

“Of course I am.” She didn’t sound it. “I do question your motives. Why are you showing me kindness all at once? What else are you doing that you’re ashamed of?”

For one harrowing moment, he was positive she’d found out about Julia. His face turned ashen. “What the devil do you mean?”

She laughed, harshly. “You know very well. Deep down you’re ashamed of your selfishness. Ashamed of putting everything—
your
wishes,
your
work, your everlasting need to crusade for something—ahead of this family. You know that kind of behavior is a weakness in your character.”

“Some might not consider crusading, as you snidely call it, to be a weakness.”

“Who? Your newspaper cronies? Your radical friends? Never mind! Let’s stick to the subject of the new house. I recognize it for what it is. A bribe.”

“God in heaven—” he breathed. “Margaret, it’s a
gift.”

“No. You thought you’d bribe me in the hope it would salve your conscience and change my feelings at the same time.”

Guilt pierced him again. There was an element of that in the transaction. But he’d honestly wanted to make her happy, too.

“I’ll live in that fine house, Gideon. I’ll live there because you owe me that. It alters nothing between us. We’ll remain husband and wife for the sake of Eleanor and Will. But it will be a marriage in name only until you put your priorities in order.”

“Until I do exactly what you say, isn’t that the heart of it, Margaret?”

“Until you put your priorities
in order!”
It came out a soft scream. Her hands clenched at her sides. Her eyes glittered with reflections of the holiday candles. “Until then you’ve touched me for the last time. You have come into my bed for the last time—”

The situation was careening out of control, flogged by her anger, and by his own that he tried to check but couldn’t.

“Oh, I’ve heard
that
before. Well, no loss. You’re no bargain any longer, Margaret, let me tell you.” Suddenly he realized what he’d said. He extended his hand. “I’m sorry—”

It went unheard as she shrieked, “You have experience, then? A basis for comparison? How many, Gideon? How many other women have you had? How many are you keeping? What kind of houses are you building for them?”

“Margaret, I know you’re drinking in secret—”

She stepped back, shaken. Was she so muddled that she’d convinced herself he didn’t know?

“I think it’s affecting your mind. God knows something is. All you have in your heart any longer is venom. Venom and some kind of warped desire to make everyone around you, but especially me, do precisely what you say. I’ve told you I won’t and I tell you again now. Nor am I going to listen to any more of your ranting. Not this evening.”

He snatched the purchase offer and flung it at her feet.
“Merry Christmas.”

He stalked out of the parlor. In his haste to escape he knocked over a china umbrella stand in the hall. A moment later his feet hammered the veranda. He disappeared down the snowy street, his hands in his pants pockets and an expression of fury on his face.

When Eleanor reached the pond, she found no one skating. Too much snow had already accumulated. Disappointed, she returned to the house within a few minutes of her departure, her skates tied together by the laces and dangling over her shoulder.

On the steps of the veranda, she paused to pull off her knitted cap and shake melting snow from it. That was when she heard her parents shouting at one another. The strident voices in the parlor brought tears to her eyes, and filled her with a feeling close to physical pain.

She crept along the veranda and crouched down by one of the windows. Heavy condensation on the glass diffused the Christmas candles into blurs of light. She rubbed her mitten against the glass with a circular motion, then stopped as she realized the condensation was on the inside. It was the movement of her hand which Gideon had seen.

The horrible shouting went on and on. Eleanor didn’t understand why Papa and Mama couldn’t get along. It had something to do with Papa’s work and his absences from home. Beyond that, she was mystified.

Eleanor loved her handsome father. She loved his long, light-colored hair and that eye patch, which gave him such a unique and dashing appearance. She loved his gentle hands, and the sound of his fine baritone voice when he sang to her. But he hadn’t sung at all lately. He was gone too much. Remembering that brought a flash of resentment.

Resentment of Gideon wasn’t an unusual emotion for Eleanor these days. She spent most of her time with her mother. She attended to household chores, which she already found boring, and to little Will’s care, which she enjoyed. Without realizing it, in her own mind, she was beginning to take her mother’s part. After all, didn’t Mama repeatedly say it was a father’s duty to make his family happy? Papa was obviously making Mama miserable.

Suddenly he stormed out of the parlor. Eleanor caught her breath. Terrified, she heard his boots thud in the hall. It was too late to run.

Not three yards to her right, the front door crashed open. He came striding out, cursing under his breath.

She pressed against the siding between the parlor windows. Her skates slipped from her shoulder, striking hard on the veranda. But by then her father was through the gate in the little picket fence and striding away down the snowy street. She’d caught a glimpse of his face as he passed. Angry. He was evidently in such a rage, he hadn’t heard the thump of the skates.

Once more she knelt in front of a mist-covered window. Inside, her mother moved toward a cabinet where bottles of bad-smelling dark brown liquid were kept. Like the contents of the bottles in the cellar, that liquid made her mama walk unsteadily after she’d had too much. And she went to the cabinet at least once and sometimes twice every morning and afternoon.