Twain's End (38 page)

Mr. Gabrilowitsch lowered the heavy lids that had protected his forebears' eyes against the winds howling across the steppes. “I have a ache-ear.”

“Sorry to hear that. Miss Lyon, fetch the man a doctor.”

Mr. Gabrilowitsch kept the bag pressed to his ear. “It is better I go home.”

“Nonsense. Ossip, meet Helen Keller. She's blind and deaf, but don't let that fool you. This girl doesn't miss a trick.”

Mr. Macy signed The King's remarks to Miss Keller, after which she got up and extended her hand.

“And this, Helen, is Mr. Gabrilowitsch, Clara's beau and a damn good pianist. Name sounds like ‘Gabby Love-Itch,' but that's not how it's spelled, though ‘Gabby Love-Itch' suits him to a T around Clara.”

“Father. Stop it.”

The King introduced Mr. Gabrilowitsch to the others. “We were just talking about Shakespeare, Ossip. Do you believe that Shakespeare was really a poor boy from Stratford who made good with his plays?”

“I do not know about Mr. Shakespeare.”

“It's a charming picture.” Mr. Macy spelled into Helen's hand as he spoke. “Will Shakespeare started out holding horses for patrons outside the Globe Theater, then worked his way into the playhouse and eventually became an actor, and then, well, we all know the rest of the story.”

“He held their horses?” The King sagged and put his forehead on his hand, then, flinching at his wound, sat upright again. “I didn't know that.”

“That's the legend,” said Mr. Macy.

“He was just a poor boy who held rich people's horses,” The King repeated.

“The poorest,” said Mr. Macy.

“And they are trying to take his plays from him, saying the rich boy Bacon did them?”

“Well, it is more likely that Bacon wrote them, isn't it?”

“Are you a rich boy, Macy?”

Mr. Macy's signing hand went idle. Helen turned to him, questioning.

“Father,” said Clara, “shut up.”

A red spot appeared on each of The King's cheekbones as he calmly smoked.

“You speak disrespect to your father,” said Mr. Gabrilowitsch. “You must apologize.”

Clara burst out laughing.

Mr. Gabrilowitsch turned on his heel to leave.

“How kind of you to save Miss Clemens!” Helen called out.

Mr. Gabrilowitsch paused.

“The sleigh ride last month,” said Helen. “When your sleigh nearly fell off the ridge at Redding Glen and you had to save Miss Clemens. Teacher read the article in the paper to me. We were so relieved that you saved The King's daughter.”

Mr. Gabrilowitsch expelled a loud breath, his back still turned to them.

“He was a hero,” said The King. “Now, don't be modest, Ossip.” He took a slow draw from his cigar. “Tell them how you untangled Clara, who was being dragged by the horse on the edge of that ravine, and how you carried her to safety.” He coolly smoked as the rims of Mr. Gabrilowitsch's ears turned crimson. Apparently, even Ossip had a glimmer of the outrageousness of the story.

Isabel had tried to convince The King of its implausibility when he had made it up to cover up Clara's affair with Wark. It was a miracle Ossip had gone along with it; he'd done so only because he'd thought that was what Clara wanted. Now, from across the room, it was clear that the slightly built pianist would have labored under Clara like an ant under a dead beetle. But The King refused to care
how far-fetched his tale was, and he was right. Because it came from him, the reporters believed it. Helen and the Macys believed it. Even The King himself had come to believe it, as he so often did with the tales he'd made up.

Just then the doorbell jangled in the hall, causing Mr. Gabrilowitsch to rattle in his loose suit of clothes. Isabel remembered that there was no butler. The doorbell rang again as she rose.

“Excuse me.” She paused to pick up the napkin that Miss Keller had dropped. She hadn't gotten to the library door when Ralph Ashcroft appeared.

“Visitor for Miss Clemens.”

Clara sat up, blinking with energy. “Who is it?”

The King rose up and, radiating fury, stood over her, swaying until Isabel feared that he might fall.

Clara melted back.

“Stay there.” He shambled to the door.

January 8, 1909

Stormfield,
Redding, Connecticut

R
ALPH ASHCROFT STEPPED INTO
the room vacated by The King. Outside, the snow had resumed. It stuck to the windowpanes as Isabel went to his side, the burn in her digestive tract relocating itself to her heart muscle. His pointed Van Dyke beard grazed his high white shirt collar as he looked down at her; he put his hand to her lower back as they turned to face the guests. His simple gesture of support made tears sting her eyes.

She pulled herself together. “May I introduce you to Mr. Ralph Ashcroft, Mr. Clemens's business manager?”

Ralph saluted Mr. Gabrilowitsch, whom he already knew, then, after shaking hands with Mr. Macy, took Miss Keller's hand tenderly in his own.

“She won't break,” said Mr. Macy.

Mr. Ashcroft smiled earnestly into Miss Keller's unseeing eyes. “Very pleased to meet you, ma'am.”

Mrs. Macy spelled his words into Miss Keller's other palm.

Mr. Ashcroft kissed Miss Keller's hand, then put it down gently before turning to Mrs. Macy with a smile. “You must be Anne Sullivan.”

“Mrs. Macy, chap,” said her husband, correcting him.

“So this is the woman who delivered Helen Keller to the world. Madame, I thank you.”

Mrs. Macy seemed to inflate slightly as she looked up at him.

“That you could find a way into her mind, when all of the usual channels were blocked, was nothing short of genius.”

“Oh, Helen would have gotten out without me,” Mrs. Macy said, spelling her words into Helen's hand. “She is more resourceful than you know.”

Helen shook her head. “I needed you.”

“Maybe not so much anymore,” said Mrs. Macy.

Clara swung around in her chair, suddenly interested. “What was it like to be cut off from everything, Miss Keller? Did you make up a world of your own?”

Helen smiled upon receiving Clara's question from Mrs. Macy. “Don't we all make up our own worlds?”

“But weren't you let down by this tawdry old world, with all of its silly rules and small minds,” asked Clara, “once Mrs. Macy brought you into it? I should think your imaginary universe was an improvement upon this disappointing one.”

“I was just a child,” said Helen.

“I do not know about you,” said Mr. Gabrilowitsch, holding his ear, “but I like this world and all the beautiful music in it. Especially when I do not have the ache-ear.”

Ralph sat forward. “It's interesting, when you think about it. From moment to moment, what I experience is different than what you experience. Here we are all together in Mr. Clemens's cozy library, with the fire crackling and the snow blowing against the windows, yet we are living in our separate worlds. You'd think we'd all be having the same experience, but we aren't. Mrs. Macy and Miss Keller”—he spread his hand out to encompass the entire group—“Mr. Macy, Miss Lyon, Miss Clemens, and I, all of us are thinking unique and private thoughts. Do you think we can ever truly glimpse what someone else is seeing?”

“Brazierres, I didn't think you had such poetry in you.” The King strolled into the room, then, not bothering to say who'd been at the door, sat down heavily by the fire. “Aren't businessmen supposed to be all numbers and facts?”

“People don't stay in neat little boxes, Father,” said Clara. “No matter how much you want them to.”

The King opened his white cashmere jacket. Isabel willed his hand away from the cigars. He was taking in more smoke than air these days. Surely it would kill him. Perhaps that was precisely what he wanted.

“You're right, Clärchen. You should never think that you have pegged your fellow man. You get burned that way.” He leaned to the side to pull matches from his pocket, glancing at Isabel.

Clara stroked her forearm as if it were a cat. “I've got a proposal. Miss Lyon, do you think you could outfit the pack of us in blindfolds and earplugs? I think we all ought to be forced into our own little universes, like Helen is in her world, just for a time. See how well we do.”

Mrs. Macy's brows, thin as nail clippings, rumpled with disapproval as she signed the suggestion to Helen.

Helen squeezed Mrs. Macy's hand. “Unless you have someone like Teacher to guide you, you might find it frightfully lonely.”

Clara shooed off Isabel. “Go see what you can do about rounding up those blindfolds, Miss Lyon.” She twitched her mouth in a smile. “Please.”

• • •

Upstairs, Isabel plucked monogrammed handkerchiefs from The King's chiffonier drawer, her gut knotting along its length with stress. She had bought the handkerchiefs for The King, as well as the bird's-eye-maple chiffonier. He had made fun of her for calling the piece of furniture by its proper name when she'd acquainted him with the house last June. While she was showing him the contents, he had made her repeat the word,
chiffonier,
then had said it himself with an affected lisp.

“What would you call it?” she had asked, more amused than exasperated.

“A cupboard.” He had kissed her on the cheek with a tickle of mustache. “My little society girl.”

At that moment she had realized: he had been sending her a message all these years. He knew she was not a society girl, no more than he was a society boy. They were two outsiders, looking through steamed windows at the party going on inside.

Now she heard footsteps in the hall—a woman, by the tap of her shoes. When Isabel turned around, Clara came to the door, the puffed tops of her mutton-leg sleeves nearly vibrating with her agitation. “What are you doing, going through Papa's things?”

“Getting the blindfolds that you requested.”

Clara snorted scornfully. “Don't get one for me. I have more important things to do than grope around the furniture with Papa's friends.”

“It was your idea.” She would not let Clara rattle her. “Anyway, Mr. Gabrilowitsch seemed interested.”

“Oh, him!”

Isabel lined up the edges of the thin linen handkerchiefs that had been so carefully ironed by Katy.

“I have been meaning to ask,” said Clara. “Where did you get that necklace?”

Instantly, Isabel felt the weight of the strand of coral upon her neck. “Your father gave it to me. Years ago.”

“It wasn't his to give. It was Mamma's.”

“You're right,” Isabel said evenly. “But it was too heavy for her to ever wear it.”

“It was a gift to her from Papa.”

Isabel had bought this gift on his behalf the first year she had worked for them, but she would not be provoked into saying that. She folded the pile of linen in half, then halved it again.

“She left that necklace to me.”

“I didn't know that. I'll give it to you.” She raised a hand to the clasp.

“I don't want it now.”

“I'll put it in your room, then.”

“You mean my ‘Nightingale Cage'?” She laughed bitterly. “Was there ever a space more appropriately named? At last—Papa has finally built a cage for me.”

Isabel would not respond. Last June, on his first tour of the house and grounds, The King had looked up and, seeing Clara's suite of rooms with its sleeping porch, dubbed it “Clara's Nightingale Cage.” He had meant the name to please Clara, it being a nod to her profession as a singer, but it no more softened her disdain toward him than did his giving her money or singing lessons or an education in Europe. It occurred to Isabel that should he ever give Clara things which were inconsequential to him but important to her—her cow Jumbo, his approval of Will Wark, his favoritism over her sister Susy—
then,
he might reach her.

Clara lowered her voice. “Isabel, you've got to help me.”

Isabel looked up.

“Papa is trying to force me to marry Ossip.”

Isabel folded over the pile into a small square. “This is 1909. He can't force you to marry, Clara.”

“He can't?” Clara sat on the edge of her father's great bed. “One time when I was a little girl, I ran into the kitchen to get a lump of sugar for Jumbo, and there was Papa, with our English maid Lizzie. She was leaning against him with her forehead tipped in to his chest, crying, like I would do if I'd stubbed my toe, yet somehow different. It was raining out, thundering, so they must not have heard me. I hid under the table where the cook made bread just as our mechanic, Willie Taylor, came in through the rear door. Before I could make sense of it, Papa grabbed Lizzie and pushed her into Willie Taylor's arms. He started verbally ripping into them in the way that my family did
anything
to avoid. Was there was ever a man born who could so
demolish a person with words?” She folded her arms tightly. “I never saw Willie Taylor nor Lizzie again. Mamma told me that they left to get married.” She looked at Isabel. “You knew about this, didn't you? He tells you everything.”