Men of No Property (52 page)

The horse flicked her ears and neighed softly. Vinnie listened, but he could hear nothing save the wash of the sea. Then he caught sight of a rider, one with the horse, racing atop a distant cliff as though at the world’s edge. Not for an instant did Vinnie doubt that the vision was Priscilla Taylor. She passed from his sight then and in vain did he wait, holding his breath, for her to reappear. He put his arm around Biscuit’s head and fondled her ears, then her muzzle. Nothing he knew had quite that soft, sensuous feel.

A few moments later Priscilla and her father rode up to where Vinnie waited, hat in hand. She was no prettier, and yet more beautiful than she had been as a child, Vinnie thought, and that she was no longer. She leaned down, smiling, and gave her gloved hand while her father made a hearty introduction that Vinnie scarcely heard. Her cheeks with the ride’s excitement were the tint of coral, her skin the blend of shell colors, and with that pearl-like delicacy. But her eyes were as he remembered them, blue-green like the changing sea, and bright with the promise of mischief.

“I shan’t forget seeing you come across there,” he said, with a sweep of his arm toward the cliff.

“Nor shall I,” said Taylor. “For a moment I thought the beast had bolted over with you.”

Priscilla removed a glove to tuck her strayed hairs back under the bowler. Then she played her fingers over the black horse’s withers. Vinnie watched his skin twitch beneath her touch. “Don’t think we weren’t tempted, Papa. Sable thinks he can fly like Pegasus.”

“With Minerva aboard him,” Vinnie said.

Priscilla smiled and with the gentlest motion forward of her own body prompted Sable on. Her idle foot was like a bird, he thought, the toe peeking out from beneath her riding skirt. She paced them at a trot and then suddenly looked back and called: “Have you ridden lately, Mr. Dunne?”

“Not enough,” Vinnie shouted.

She changed the pace to a gallop, and Vinnie wondered at such consideration for his comfort. Alas, too soon, they were slowed to a walk in the dusty mainways, and at every start in a conversation, compelled to suspend it to acknowledge the parasol dips, and, Vinnie suspected, the arching eyebrows, of proper maidens who would as soon mount an elephant as they would a horse. Simpering hypocrites!

“Will you wear a costume tonight, Miss Priscilla?”

“Oh yes. We all must, you know.”

“Will there be many people?”

“Four hundred, I heard.”

“I shall find you within ten minutes of your arrival,” Vinnie said, “and claim the first dance unless it’s promised.”

“It is,” she said.

“What’s promised?” said Mr. Taylor.

“The first dance, Papa.”

“Whom the devil to?”

“To you, Papa.”

“Oh.”

“The second?” said Vinnie.

“Promised,” and when Vinnie allowed his disappointment to show: “to Mr. Vincent Dunne.”

Vinnie took charge of the horses under the portico and led them to the stable where Tim, the groom, came out to get them. He eyed the horses, and then gave a call to the stable boy, giving him his instructions before Vinnie was out of earshot: “Give the black one a rub and the others a run. ’Tis a fine thing when a young miss is the only one in the house able to sweat a horse.”

Vinnie looked back and tipped his hat, grinning. Better a groom’s scorn than an aching hindside for the dancing. He stood a moment on the terrace and watched the preparations going forward at the next “cottage”. A castle it was, the driveway streaming with vans and messengers, the grounds dotted with men stringing lanterns. How would Priscilla dress? As a Quaker maid? An Indian? Out of Shakespeare or Dickens or Scott? Likely there would be more “Japanese” at the ball than ever sailed away from Japan for here was the home of Commodore Perry. Gods wot! What would he wear himself?

“What sayest thou, bully Bottom?” So Alex greeted him, settling the matter. Taylor was stretched on his bed, a book on his stomach, and Phipps was perched on the footboard.

“Midsummer Night’s Dream,”
Phipps explained.

“It’s time you read it,” Vinnie said.

“Why read it when we saw it?”

“We four,” said Matheson, “we’re going as Snug, Bottom, Flute and…who am I?”

“Snout,” said Taylor. “No lines. You roar like a lion.”

“Am I to be Bottom with or without the ass’s head?” said Vinnie.

“With,” said Taylor. “You want to look handsome, don’t you?”

“Where are we going to find him one at this hour?” cried Phipps, a literal-minded coxswain.

“Don’t let it trouble you,” said Vinnie. “I’ll pick one up for myself. There’ll be many an ass lose his head tonight.”

W
HAT NONSENSE IT ALL
was! What glorious, ridiculous nonsense. At ten o’clock the young gentlemen left the house, having supped alone as though it all were a religious rite through which they were not permitted the distraction of ladies. Tim, who drove the coach (the only economy Vinnie had observed, Tim’s doubling as groom and coachman) held the door to them.

“How do we look, Tim?” Alex asked.

“If I was them over there you’d do your dancin’ in the scullery.” Tim cracked the whip and drove them down one drive and up the next, delivering them in less than five minutes. He drove back then for the family.

With the great doors open the lights shone as though the halls were strung with diamonds. Vinnie’s next observance was of the staircase, vast and winding, and every step a marble slab. He thought of the number of tombstones which could be made of it, but kept the thought to himself. The only lady in sight was their hostess to whom the boys immediately presented themselves.

“Wandering minstrels,” she interpreted their costumes. “You must play for me by and by.” She motioned them into the ballroom and turned to greet Captain Kidd.

“We seem to have disguised our disguises,” Taylor said. They had costumed the characters after Burton’s production, the blouses open at the throat with wide laced waistbands, and each carried a symbol of his trade.

“Maybe she thinks this a bagpipe,” Phipps said, holding up a bellows.

“No,” Vinnie said. “She sees what she wants to see. If your cap were pointed she would have you as her fool.”

Taylor whistled and put his arm through Vinnie’s. “Softly, my friend. What stung you?”

“I’m not stung. Do I sound it?”

“I thought perhaps mother had said something.”

Which meant, Vinnie thought, that mother had said something to Alex. “Am I credited with the mechanic’s influence in costuming?”

“Good God, no. Besides it was my idea.”

Vinnie smiled, gave his friend’s arm a squeeze, and turned to watch the guests pass through the receiving line. The extraordinary thing was he liked Mrs. Taylor anyway. She was what she was, and not as he suspected their hostess to be, as false as her smile from which she rested between arrivals.

The orchestra was playing chamber music. “Better than Bergmann’s Sinfonie, eh?” said Phipps.

“And there’ll be girls to dance with, too,” said Vinnie. He accepted a glass of champagne from the tray of a liveried servant. Many a guest fancied himself a naval man, Vinnie observed—from Viking to Her Majesty’s Admiralty. Or was that the real thing? Couples had commenced to arrive as well as chaperoned misses, and Vinnie realized that it had been pure conceit on his part to think he would immediately find Priscilla. Thank God she was dancing first with her father, him of the plowman’s beard and surely not parting with that for frivolity. Then arrived the king and queen of hearts—he with four hands, she with a daisy, a tableau for an instant as she curtsied to host and hostess. Now there was a queen to the manner born! With them was a white haired gentleman in a dress suit, adding only a faded yellow sash as a concession to costumery. And that might be authentically ancestral. As they came through the ballroom door, Vinnie recognized them, Stephen and Delia, and sashed in yellow, the senator no doubt.

“Vinneee!” Delia cried, holding her hand to him. He kissed her cheek as well as the hand. “Let me think,” she said. “I know I’ve seen it. Don’t tell me.”

“I’m a weaver by trade,” said Vinnie. “I’ll play any part. I’ll roar like a lion, and make you flood the house with your tears when I fall on my sword.”

“Tripping on Shakespeare, no doubt,” Stephen said. “You are discovered, Bottom.”

Delia clapped her hands. “Of course, it’s Bottom! Papa…this is our dear Vinnie, Mr. Vincent Dunne.”

Vinnie brought his heels together and bowed.

“Ah, yes,” the senator said with a smile that jerked the corners of his mouth. “I was regaled at dinner by an account of your skill at ex tempore debatin’, sir.”

“Mr. Taylor and the senator had dinner at the same table,” Stephen explained.

“Then Mr. Taylor will also wear a dress suit tonight,” Vinnie exclaimed.

Stephen looked startled but Delia laughed. “Not Mr. Taylor’s costume, but one of his daughters’ is Vinnie’s concern, I’ll warrant.”

“Devious reasoning, but effective,” Stephen said.

“Logic don’t mean a thing in such matters,” Delia said.

“Like the darky fattenin’ his hog,” the senator said then. “‘It’s takin’ you a long time to fatten him,’ his master said. ‘Time don’t mean a thing to hogs,’ says the darky.”

Vinnie put his name in Delia’s “hop” book. Someone was asking the senator how Washington managed without him. “Enough heat there without me, sir. Enough heat. They’ll adjourn the quicker with me in Newport.”

“There’s your Mr. Taylor,” Delia said, as though Vinnie had not seen him the moment his beard preceded him across the threshold. “I know the girls, you know.”

“Do you,” Vinnie murmured without taking his eyes from the door.

“We drive out together every day.”

“Do you ride, Delia?”

Delia looked at him in surprise. “Oh, Vinnie! It’s the child you’re watching for! We call her the changeling.”

“I’m not surprised,” Vinnie said coldly.

“Twenty bunches for sixpence, three bunches a penny,” Vinnie said, coming up behind Priscilla where she stood with her sisters. “I’ll buy all your matches.”

“Then I shall have to go home!”

“One stick at a time then and the last as the cock crows.”

The sisters giggled behind their wide oriental sleeves. “Alas,” said Vinnie, “I know no Japanese by which to compliment these princesses. Do you suppose I should try them in French?”

Priscilla loosed a stream of French so fluid and fast Vinnie could scarcely follow. He cleared his throat when she was done. “I expect I had better try the Japanese after all.”

They were joined by Flute, Snug and Snout as the orchestra sounded a flourish. Its leader announced in a strong German accent that their hostess and the Commodore would lead the grand march. Alex took his mother, and Mr. Taylor took Priscilla, while Snout and Snug snared the Japanese misses. Vinnie watched from a dais beyond which the doors opened upon the garden. Never had he seen such jeweled magnificence—at the throats, on the arms, the fingers, in the hair, at the girdles of all these maids and matrons. One lady was so bedecked he surmised she must wear a diamond in her belly button. He fled into the garden to escape the march. He had heard that this cottage was fashioned after Versailles. Was there then a hall of mirrors here? And did their hostess fancy herself Marie Antoinette? How long ago departed? There were men dancing tonight alive when she lost her head. And there was poverty in New York and slavery in the South. What was the senator’s story? Time don’t mean a thing to hogs.

The four-quarter music changed: a waltz, the first dance. Alex called him my beloved friend and conscience. A chronic malcontent. And yet, Vinnie thought, I, too, have gone to a dancing master.

“I expect I don’t dance very well, Mr. Dunne.”

The second dance was a hop, a polka, and Priscilla’s fingers resting on the back of his hand were cool, delicate and without rings. “All we need do for this is pretend we’re hares,” he said, “and stay out of the path of the hounds.”

The polka was not meant to allow the dancers conversation, so Vinnie could but nod and smile his encouragement. She was too timid for this boisterous thing, dancing prettily but shyly. A charging Pierrette and Robin Hood crashed down on them and Vinnie saw his partner wince and her eyes dart in their wake. “After them!” he cried, and there was spirit then in her dancing: fire and storm, flash and fury.

“Now,” she said, patting her brow with her kerchief when they were done, “I know how to dance the polka.”

“It should be done on horseback,” Vinnie said. “Wine or soda?”

“I can be quite giddy on soda, thank you.”

“Wine, then.”

“Soda, please.”

Vinnie brought it to where she waited on the terrace.

“Do you know, Mr. Dunne, I don’t find you at all frightening.”

“Is there any reason you should?” he asked, rather enjoying the idea, however.

“Therese and Anne do, and they’ve seen you ever so much oftener than I have. But then, I’ve seen so much more of the world than they have.” She sipped the soda and wrinkled her nose at the sparkle.

“Do you like France?” he asked.

“Oh, yes. I almost ran away instead of coming home.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I wasn’t quite certain how I should make my way,” she said earnestly. “I should probably have had to beg and the beggars are terribly poor in Paris.”

Vinnie touched his fingers to a tattered sleeve. “The condition is fairly common among beggars.”

“You sound just like papa!” Vinnie made a face. “And of course,” she said, “I could have entered the convent, but then I should have seen nothing of the world. They did want me. Ever so sly about it they were and you mustn’t tell papa because my cousins are going next month and I shouldn’t want to spoil it for them.”

“What did they teach you?”

“Silly things mostly: how to walk and how to curtsy and how to sit at the opera. Painting, of course, endless imitations of old ladies in high collars, and oceans of morte d’art. Isn’t that a strange description, but I suppose it’s right. Fruit and flowers do die when they’re picked. And once I did a cherub and got into dreadful trouble.”

“Why?”