1896

The rooms inside the Casino were done in dark paneling so it took a moment for Franklin’s eyes to adjust to the light. Whoever had called him to come have a smoke and drawn him away from Mrs. Belmont and the other women—Hobson he thought it had been—was nowhere to be seen. He milled about with the men in their summer jackets and their cigars. One of the tennis players was standing in the embrasure of a window with a circle of admirers. Franklin added himself to their number so he wouldn’t look conspicuous. But the talk was so tiresome that he peeled off after a few minutes and strolled toward one of the other rooms where there was the clack of billiard balls. He stood a ways back from the table, hands clasped behind, and watched.

Children, he thought. How had he missed that? True, he had not given much thought to this Mrs. Newcombe after the winter—there were half a dozen Mrs. Newcombes to whom he had been introduced in the past half year—but he did not like being taken by surprise. He did not like not knowing what was arrayed against him. What he had to contend with. And what he had to contend with evidently was children. Two at least, he should think. And what to make of that?

He had always envisioned a woman weakened by widowhood, by loneliness, by the sight of herself in the mirror. He imagined, in short, an invalid who would be hungry for the sun of his attentions. Onto such a battlefield—always keeping a path of retreat in view—he might indeed stride and conquer. His lack of wealth, his respectable but by no means exceptional family—if the invalid were weak enough, none of this would matter.

But children. Children gave the widow an obscure heft. How did they alter matters?

The thing he knew—had always known—in the deepest part of himself, was that he could not make love to a woman. He could not. He could not even do what some of the men he knew from the Slide could do: make love to their wives once a month, have children by them, turn their wives’ naiveté to their advantage, keep a loving smile on their face as they went out the door Saturday nights. No, if he was going to do the deed—and he must—if he was going to lure a woman into the trap of marriage with him, he would have to do it with the private understanding—an understanding with himself, he meant—that he must be prepared to destroy her. To tell her after the wedding that theirs would be a public marriage only, that he was prepared to treat her in the presence of others as admirably as any husband treated his wife, that he would dote and fawn and caress—she would have his word on this. He would not rob her of that dignity. But she must understand that in private they would be—how would he phrase it? as brother and sister? as friends—well, however he managed it, she must understand that in private she could not expect attention from him of the other sort. He would be polite and pleasant in private, but not more than that. If he could phrase this kindly, he would. If not, so be it.

And who knew, perhaps children could be his allies in this. He was not un-fond of children, he supposed. He could picture himself winning their little hearts, and by that their mother’s affection. He could turn the little so-and-sos into his advocates. And then afterwards, after the deed was done, would they not provide the woman with an emotional reserve? She would have her children at least. And she could comfort herself with the thought that her husband appeared to adore them. Would that not serve?

“Drexel!” he heard behind him. He turned—it was Hobson and the others, all dressed in their smart summer suits. He smiled his hail-fellow-well-met smile.

“I say, Parrish, pour the man a brandy!”

They circled around him, put a snifter in his hand. Was he going sailing? they wanted to know. Briggs had the Dolphin outfitted, and there was going to be an evening party, was he coming? Alas, no, he had made a promise to Mrs. Belmont for tea.

“Oh, break it,” they all cried. “Come sailing!”

“Yes, that’s right,” Hobson said with some sort of meaning. He had planted himself opposite Franklin with his chest out in that way he had. He was smoking a cigar. “You don’t mind breaking the rules, do you, Drexel?”

“As long as they’re not Mrs. Belmont’s rules,” he smilingly replied.

Hobson knocked his ash into his empty snifter. “Parrish here tells us you were breaking the rules just the other weekend. Isn’t that right, Parrish?”

Parrish just grinned. He was dressed in a rather undergraduate-looking jacket, all wide stripes and cheeky naiveté.

“He’s given us to understand you’ve set yourself up as something of a cicerone. A docent of the demimonde. Is that true?”

“I shouldn’t mind a tour of the demimonde,” put in Phelps with his British accent and with the tops of his ears reddening. “Ladies of the evening, don’t you know.”

“It isn’t ladies of the evening that form the chief attraction of Drexel’s sightseeing, as I understand it. At least not the sort of ladies you’d like, Phelps.”

“I like all the ladies,” said Phelps. “And they like me.”

At which the others guffawed.

“As to that,” Hobson went on, “I have no doubt, these ladies would like you, Phelps. But come clean, Drexel, we’ve got it from Parrish here.”

“I had it from Simmons,” Parrish added somewhat sheepishly. “He said you took his set down into the Bowery. Ghastly, he said. He said it quite undid him.”

“Ah, that,” Franklin found himself saying with his easy smile around. “It’s become quite the Fifth Avenue fashion, didn’t you know? Rather like Virgil and Dante, I should say. A tour of the demimonde—why, it’s better than the zoo!”

“Simmons said there were these places where—! Well, I say,” Parrish said and stopped.

“What?” the others cried.

“Yes, spill it!”

Parrish looked helplessly about himself. “These places where there were men with—! Well, with girls’ names.”

“All part of the tour!” Franklin managed. He smiled around as if daring them. As if he were in the know, had stolen a march on them, the donkeys. “Next time we’re all back in town, what do you say? Shall I give you my Baedeker’s for the Bowery? If you think you’ve got the stomach for it. Eh? But don’t be telling your mothers!”

They all laughed and then someone mentioned a story in the Mirror about a police raid in the Village—had they seen it?—and then it was off into newspaper gossip. After a few minutes the billiard game broke up and Phelps and one of the others began to play. And then it was back to Briggs and the Dolphin and whether there would be any young ladies at the evening party. Franklin drank his brandy and listened, dimly aware that he had managed to step back from the precipice. Indeed, he was so preoccupied with looking unimpeachable—Parrish had offered him a cigar—that it took him a moment to realize the others had stopped talking and were looking at him. It was another moment before he realized that someone—Mrs. Belmont’s footman—was waiting beside him for his notice.

“Ah, Wells!” he said, turning.

“Thank you, sir,” the footman responded. “Mrs. Belmont wishes me to communicate to you that Mrs. Newcombe will be accompanying Mrs. Belmont in her carriage to Marble House for tea. As you are expected as well, sir, she is wondering if you would be so good as to return with Mrs. Newcombe’s conveyance.”

“Mrs. Newcombe’s conveyance?” he found himself saying. “You mean her bicycle?”

“Yes, sir.”

He was aware of the others’ eyes on him. Was he going to be twice in ten minutes held up for scrutiny? “Look here, Wells”—what else was there to do but make light of it?—“did you dream this up yourself?”

“No, sir.”

He let his accusing smile grow even broader. “Not trying to do me a mischief?”

“No, sir.”

“Ah! Then Mrs. Belmont is.” He wagged his cigar in the air. “But I shall outflank her. I shall prove to her that I am an excellent cyclist. None better!”

“Very good, sir. I understand the bicycle to be somewhere adjacent to the pavilion.”

“Thank you, Wells.”

“Very good, sir.”

He stood a moment longer smoking so as not to look like he was at the beck and call of a footman, and only when the billiard game ended said his good-byes all around, said he’d try to make it down to the wharf before Briggs’s lighter ferried them all out to the Dolphin, but not to wait for him, and then turned and left the Casino. Outside, the crowd had thinned. The sun was a little lower in the sky. He crossed the grass courts toward Berger’s Pavilion.

He was obscurely aware that he had been insulted. That as playful as Mrs. Belmont’s request was—he could so easily imagine the laughing conversation and the importuning of Mrs. Newcombe: she must not ride her bicycle all the way back down Bellevue Avenue, rather she must come in Mrs. Belmont’s carriage at once—why, they would get Franklin Drexel to ride her bicycle back (the young man claimed to be such a lover of bicycle riding!)—yes, playful as that was—indeed, he could imagine making the joke himself—still, to be summoned by Mrs. Belmont’s man there in front of the others . . . ! Well, he supposed he must take refuge in its being Mrs. Belmont who was doing the summoning. Hobson and Parrish could whistle into the wind until they were so summoned.

There were three bicycles outside the pavilion but just as he drew up a young man and woman wheeled two of them away. He sauntered over to the remaining metal contraption and eyed its pedals and wheels and its chain drive. He supposed it was not so very difficult to ride. Women managed it, after all. He took the thing by its handlebars as he’d seen others do and walked it away. He would start down Freebody Street, where he would be out of view until he had gotten the hang of it and then come out onto Bellevue.

But how the deuce did one mount the thing? He supposed he might use the curbside as a mounting block as women did when mounting a horse. There was that box hedge to watch out for. One foot on one pedal, push off—he believed it was necessary to have a certain initial speed—swing the other foot around onto the other pedal and . . . and . . . oh, good lord!

He inspected the bicycle first to see if there was any telltale damage. The end of a handlebar had dug into the sod, but the machine appeared otherwise unscathed. Not so his leg! His trousers were not torn but there was a deuce of a scrape on his shin! He became aware of some children laughing at him from across the street. He righted the bike and without looking at the nasty creatures began walking it away.

It was a good two miles to Marble House.

But damn that Simmons! What was he doing blabbing about their slumming expedition? It was indeed becoming fashionable among the younger set to tour the Bowery and the tenements—but really! one needn’t broadcast one’s divertissements. Especially to a knucklehead like Parrish. And what had made Franklin suggest the tour in the first place? Was he so perverse? So indifferent to exposure? It had been dangerous and foolish.

He had at least had the good sense to keep the party out of Bleecker Street and Washington Square, where he had his own haunts. They had instead threaded their way through the tenements along Mott and Spring and Hester Streets, marveling at the throngs of people, the carts and laundry hanging between the buildings, the smells and the spray of incomprehensible languages, the Italian women with babies riding on every hip and the Jews with their absurd ringlets and ridiculous clothes. He had taken them into a couple of the taverns along the Bowery where the drink-mollies plied their trade and the prostitutes showed their wares. And then—what had he been thinking? really, he had wanted to force their muzzles into it, hadn’t he?—he had steered them into the Paresis, where Simmons and that fool Chauncey went quite white. Well, if Hobson and Parrish and the others took him up on his offer—and he wouldn’t be back in town for any extended stay until September and there was a good chance the whole matter would have blown over by then—but if they did importune him, he would confine himself to showing them the tenements and the prostitutes—let them wonder where the mincing Mary Anns were.

He was coming up on the broad face of the Massasoit Hotel, where he had his rooms. The resort with its wide veranda and striped awnings had been fashionable in the fifties and sixties just before the great years of cottage building and was still discriminating enough, but it was no longer frequented by the best society. Mrs. Belmont, for one, never inquired as to where he was lodging. She no doubt knew—Wells or one of the other footmen had no trouble finding him—but she did not wish to have the matter acknowledged between them. Because really, when one came right down to it, he was lodging with parvenus and Jews and with families from Scranton and Albany, and with the occasional shopgirl who had saved all year to spend two weeks in Newport where there were lawyers and brokers who might be induced—by the double-barreled testimonials of her beauty and her being able to lodge at the Massasoit Hotel—into marriage. One of these girls had the previous year, he believed, set her sights on him. He had been kind enough—comrades-in-arms!—to set the poor dear straight.

Now, wheeling Mrs. Newcombe’s bicycle along as fast as he could without looking ridiculous, he wondered whether he might not turn in for a drink of water—he was devilishly thirsty!—but he was already on thin ice for his remark about the Dollar Princesses; arriving late would have the ice cracking under him. There was nothing to be done but to keep going.