Chapter Seventeen

AN UNEXPECTED KNOCK AT THE DOOR

After polishing off two mugs of ale, three chunks of bread and butter, and a bowl of thick oyster stew, St. Clair should have been stuffed. And yet several hours later, by the time he reached Bleeker Street, he was hungry again.

After speaking with Murray, he took as leisurely a stroll as was possible down the Bowery. The colorful and noisy street was illuminated by gas-lit white glass lanterns. He deliberately stayed clear of the ruffians, who nightly congregated nearby in the vicinity of Billy McGlory’s Amory Hall on Hester Street, as dangerous a concert saloon as Harry Hill’s was entertaining. Bloody gang brawls were a regular event, as was fleecing unsuspecting and usually intoxicated patrons who came to witness the nightly spectacle.

Once he got past McGlory’s, he enjoyed the rest of the brief walk, despite the typically rowdy atmosphere of a humid summer weekday evening. There were crowds of young men on the prowl for female companionship. Peddlers pushed their wares and vendors were selling hot corn and oysters. Beside them, too, were young children begging for coins and pickpockets searching for their next victims. Excited men and women rushed past him, presumably he thought, to catch the latest theatrical offerings at the nearby Tivoli and Vauxhall Garden.

St. Clair turned left on to Bleeker and the mood noticeably changed. If there was a street in New York reminiscent of the Latin Quarter in Paris, it was Bleeker. Twenty years ago, the neighborhood was fashionably upper class, the address of the city’s burgeoning professionals. Now all that remained of the wealth of that era were aging mansions, which, like the one St. Clair resided in, had been transformed into functional, but crowded, boarding houses. As was well known, several of them rented rooms by the hour or day—discretion was always assured.

The street’s most colorful and eccentric inhabitant, from St. Clair’s perspective, was Eugene Crask, who fancied himself an artist. Crask was, in fact, a drunkard, who rarely cut his hair or washed himself or his clothes, yet every so often produced bizarre paintings that occasionally caught the eye of a Fifth Avenue patron. Rumor was that Crask frequently had utilized the services of ladies from Wooster Street to pose nude for him—although St. Clair saw no evidence of that in his work.

Another of St. Clair’s favorites was Emilé Halloway, a former ballerina from Vienna, with seemingly no source of income, although she lived like a Queen. A bevy of callers, both gentlemen and ladies, could be seen coming and going from her flat at all times of the day and night.

St. Clair had every intention of heading home, when he caught a whiff of the veal stew and roast lamb at one of Bleeker’s most celebrated eateries, the Restaurant de Grand Vatel. For thirty cents, it was possible to indulge oneself in a four-course gourmet meal fit for French royalty—and all prepared with perfection by Grand Vatel’s star chef, Melville Clement. St. Clair dined here at least twice a week and had wanted to invite Ruth to join him for a splendid meal—until he learned that she was leaving the city. The floor of the restaurant was protected with sand and the wooden tables were decorated with pewter crocks that contained oil and vinegar.

An hour later, he was truly satiated. The veal stew—on the menu it was veau à la Marengo—was exquisite as were the salad and potatoes that accompanied it. For dessert, he sipped on a gloria, strong black coffee topped with cognac, while chatting with Chef Clement about the latest political news from Paris. All St. Clair had to do was mention the Emperor Napoleon III. Clement, a Republican through and through, would berate him for hours about the buffoon who had lost Paris to Bismarck and the Germans and extol the virtues of the Communards who had recently attempted to establish a new revolutionary order. A candle at the front of the restaurant burned in memory of the thousands of Parisians who had been killed in April and May, when the National Guard had attacked and taken back control of the city.

From St. Clair’s standpoint, Clement’s position was overly sentimental and dangerous. Liberty and democracy were fine, but not at the expense of social order. Look what had happened in New York during the draft riots, St. Clair suggested to Clemont. Mob rule of any kind was perilous and an occurrence to be halted at all costs. The chef, however, refused to change his mind.

As usual, it was stifling hot and muggy in St. Clair’s sparsely furnished two-room flat. Once, as St. Clair himself had researched for a magazine story, it had been the servants’ quarters for the home of English shipbuilder Thomas Lawrence, his wife, and six children, in the early 1820s. There was a modest although slightly worn sofa and two French-style high back chairs—a wedding present from Caroline’s family—in the parlor. A medium-sized Indian carpet covered the wood floor. He had purchased it more than a year ago at A.T. Stewart’s dry-goods shop on Broadway and Fourth Avenue.

At the back was a smaller alcove—the flat’s second room—that contained a bed large enough for two people and an exquisite hand-carved wooden table, which had once belonged to St. Clair’s great-grandmother. It was the only possession he had that he truly cherished. The water closet and bathroom were down the hall and shared between the other five men on the second floor of the old mansion. St. Clair either ate his meals downstairs at Mrs. Montgomery’s or at nearby restaurants like the Grand Vatel.

He undid his shirt, rinsed his face and hands in a basin of cool water, and made himself as comfortable as possible. Next, he poured himself a glass of whisky and lit his pipe—thankful that his otherwise strident neighbor, a lively ladies’ garment salesman by the name of Johnson, who constantly entertained his married female clients, was travelling.

Exhausted, St. Clair welcomed the peace and quiet and a chance to stop thinking about Lucy Maloney, Madame Philippe, Victor Fowler, and even poor Tom Fox. He picked up a new book he had recently acquired at Hogan’s Book Emporium on Broadway—The Coming Race, which all the critics were raving about, although its author, an Englishman, had opted to remain anonymous. There was some speculation in the press that this romantic saga about an imaginary advanced society in the earth’s interior was penned by the likes of Benjamin Disraeli or Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Whoever the author was, St. Clair found the writing clever and entertaining—despite the book’s witty mocking of the American national character, with its rejoicing of democratic equality as long as proper social hierarchies were maintained.

A steady knocking at the door startled him. He had dozed off with The Coming Race resting on his stomach and his smoldering pipe still in his hand. He checked his timepiece. It was one o’clock in the morning. Who could be visiting him at this late hour? One thought immediately settled in his head—His assailant from the other night had returned. He reached for his pistol and cautiously approached the door. It was bolted shut.

“Who goes there?” he asked in a firm voice.

For about a minute there was no response.

“I say again, who’s out there. I should warn you I have a pistol and am not afraid to use it.”

“Mr. St. Clair, please I need to speak with you, it’s urgent.”

He instantly recognized the voice. It was Ruth Cardaso.

He unlatched the bolt and opened the door, his pistol still at his side. She smiled warmly when she saw him. She was wearing a cream satin dress with a low heart-shaped neckline and was a vision of loveliness. The sight of her standing in the dimly lit hallway nearly took his breath away. The pistol he was holding slid off his fingers and fell to the floor.

“What are doing here at this hour?” he asked her, attempting without much success to straighten his shirt.

“Please, may I come in for a moment?”

“Of course,” he said, and then remembered their last meeting. “I was under the impression that you were leaving the city.” His tone was caustic.

She ignored it. “I am, but I needed—”

“You needed what?” he asked sharply.

“I needed to do this.”

She moved towards him and her strong fragrance once more excited him. Then, before he could utter a word of protest, she kissed him passionately. Her lips were as soft and moist as the first time they had embraced. He did not resist. He put his arms around her waist and pulled her closer to him, kissing her again harder and longer.

“There are many questions I must ask you—” he mumbled.

“Later, Charlie, not now,” she said putting her finger to his lips. He kissed it gently.

She took a step back and smiled at him again. She reached behind her back and undid the buttons of her dress. The garment fell to the floor and she was standing before him wearing a long white cotton petticoat with floral braids on the side that reached her knees. She slipped that off as well. Underneath a pleated waist-length, sheer petticoat revealed the contours of her body.

He noticed that a tiny bead of sweat had formed on the top of her upper lip. He drew her to him, kissed her again and felt the sweat meld with his own. Her heart beat against his chest—his breathing grew more labored. He stroked her cheek softly and she groped for his hand. He grasped it and she led him to his bed.

Ruth stared at St. Clair for few moments and lightly dragged her fingers through his hair—careful not to disturb his sleep. He had been gentle, patient, and passionate with her, as she knew he would be. It was, in her mind, the mark of a man who had once loved deeply. She did not relish the idea of hurting him further. She knew, too, that the more questions he asked of her, the more disenchanted he would become. And eventually, the chasm between them would be impossible to bridge. He would never understand her involvement in this impossible situation. He was far too principled and, admittedly, far too uncompromising. She had noted those two qualities shaped in his character and in his writing. She guessed that the memory of his deceased wife likely nurtured his soul and made him unlike most men she had ever been with. How she wished that matters could be different between them.

But they were not and never would be.

She quietly rose from the bed and gathered up her clothes. Fifteen minutes later, she was out on the street and considering her next difficult decision.

It was close to six o’clock in the morning when the first rays from the sun stirred St. Clair. His naked body was dripping with sweat under a thin cotton bed sheet. He felt tired, yet contented, something he had not experienced in some time. He reached for Ruth.

His bed was empty.

“Ruth,” he called out, “where are you?”

He sat up, peered into the gloom of his bedroom, and listened for the sound of another person. Then, he fell back into his bed. He was alone. Only hours earlier, he had held her in his arms and in the darkness they talked. About the heat, the dance halls, concert saloons, and the magnificent shops in the vicinity of Broadway and Union Square, the so-called Ladies’ Mile.

They spoke about the latest Shakespearean drama at Booth’s, the most elegant theatre in the city. They would attend the next performance of Hamlet together, she had said, not waiting for him to respond. Did she know, he inquired, that the owner of the theatre, Edwin Booth, was the brother of John Wilkes Booth, the notorious assassin of President Lincoln? She did not. He offered to take her for a sumptuous dinner at Delmonico’s and, much to her delight, proceeded to list the menu he would select for both of them—scalloped partridge or lamb’s kidneys in champagne sauce to start with, followed by consommé soup, broiled capon or compote of pigeon, salmon with caper sauce, crusts of mushrooms, and finishing with Gruyere cheese or cream cake.

Indeed, they chatted about everything except what he really wanted to ask her—Why had she lied about reading Tom Fox’s files? What was her interest in seeing Madame Philippe punished? What did she know about Lucy Maloney, if anything? And most significantly, what did she want of him? He had deliberately not broached these subjects, convincing himself that an interrogation was best left for another time.

As St. Clair lay in his bed, already sticky and sweaty from the early morning heat, trying to muster the strength to rise and begin another full day, he realized that he might never learn the truth about Miss Ruth Cardaso. And, that he felt—contemplating what might have been—was a damn shame.