CHAPTER 38
An Habitual Self-Control
Cautiousness, and the check of an habitual self-control, should accompany the mind of every one who launches out in animated conversation. When the fancy is heated, and the tongue has become restless through exercise, and there is either a single listener or a circle, to reward display, nothing but resolute self-recollection can prevent the utterance of much that had better been left unsaid.
—Decorum, page 230
The shock of Connor’s declaration, coupled with days of inactivity forced by blustery weather, drove Francesca out of doors on the pretext of a walk for Chalk and Coal.
“You’d best go out the back, miss,” said John, helping her on with her coat. “There’ve been a couple of reporter fellows hanging around the front most of the day.”
She was redirecting the dogs to the back of the house when the bell rang. The riot of barking ensued as John opened the door to find Maggie Jerome.
“How are you, John?”
“Very well, Mrs. Jerome, thank you.”
An encounter with the press would have been more inviting than a call from Maggie. She had bothered Francesca very little since Edmund’s arrest, sending messages through Jerry or by hand.
“How are you, dearie? I didn’t sleep a wink last night—for the past several nights really. I thought perhaps we might have a little chat,” Maggie offered tentatively as she took off her gloves. “But don’t let me interrupt if you and Esther have plans.”
“She’s gone up for a little nap, as a matter of fact.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, dearie, were you going out?”
“Just to take the dogs for some exercise.”
“I’ll stay and supervise tea. I can have it ready when Esther wakes up. It’ll be nice for a change, just like I used to do for you.” She unpinned her hat.
“Yes, why don’t you. I won’t be long.”
What unbelievable timing, thought Francesca as the door closed behind her. God was punishing her by sending an angel of retribution for even contemplating involving herself with Connor O’Casey. There they would be, she and Esther and Maggie, drinking tea and talking—Francesca in agony lest she spill the news, relying heavily on Esther’s calm demeanor and diplomacy. Unless they could direct the conversation, Francesca would have to prepare to meet the terrible swift sword of Maggie Jerome. Well, so be it.
Lost in thought, Francesca lingered while Coal and Chalk investigated every wall, fence, tree, and shrub, not realizing how much ground they had covered. When she came to herself, she realized she was headed in the direction of Jerry’s office. What time was it? Jerry might still be there. She picked up her pace, the dogs happily panting at her side. Without thinking, she transferred both leashes to one hand and with the other hailed a cab. A moment later, Francesca and Coal and Chalk were piled into a hansom and whisked away to the Merchants and Mechanics Bank.
It was bad enough to explain how a lady with two large dogs had bolted past every line of the bank’s defenses, disrupted transactions at teller windows, and arrived, all three panting, at the desk of Jerry’s secretary and demanded to see him. How she would explain the arrangement with Connor O’Casey was another matter.
“You’ve what?”
“I know. I know.” Francesca sank into a chair, the dogs lying at her feet. “I can’t very well stop him from going where he wants.”
“Have you lost your senses completely?! How on earth could you agree to this harebrained scheme? Do you know what kind of man he is—what kind of reputation he has?”
“Apparently good enough for you to engage him as a business partner.”
“That’s beside the point and you know it, Francesca. What about that Alvarado woman?”
“He’s assured me that it’s over between them.”
“And you believe him?”
“I have no reason not to.”
“You have several million reasons. I didn’t even know he was interested in you.”
“Nor did I. Not really. I believe he wants to see if we can make a go of it.” The whole thing sounded ridiculous, even to her own ears.
“Make a go of it? Go of what? Is that his idea of a proposal?”
“Apparently,” said Francesca. Jerry began to protest. “Yes, Jerry, it was his way of proposing. And before you ask, yes, he did use the word marriage.” She couldn’t remember having actually uttered the word yes in answer. Could she really have consented to such a thing? Perhaps she was mad after all. Her head was beginning to throb.
“Do you have any idea how this looks—for either of you? Here is a very worldly man who has just shed himself of a, a, a strumpet. Here you are, having just been taken in by a man who turns out to be a gigolo and a murderer, and you think that the two of you can simply sail off into the sunset—”
“We’re going by railroad.” She cracked a smile.
“Don’t be impertinent. You think you can leave all the cares and opinions of the world behind and never have to face society again? You think you won’t be vilified up one side and down the other?”
“I know it looks dreadful.”
“Dreadful? Is that all you can say?”
“I could say more if I could get a word in.” She felt oddly at peace in the eye of Jerry’s storm. The plain language and concern for her welfare were comforting somehow—so unlike what she might expect from Maggie and her formulaic approach to decorum. After the initial tirade, he went to the window, unlatched the shutter and pulled it back, and looked out into the street.
“Yes, I know how it looks,” said Francesca. “I can’t say why I have the least bit of faith in him, except that he didn’t seem to be making promises he wasn’t willing to keep. He didn’t say he loves me. And while we’re on the subject, no, I don’t love him. Don’t you think his intentions would be far more suspicious if he came to me protesting love? I know full well a man like that doesn’t change overnight—if at all. There may be something in what he says about our wanting many of the same things. It seems I might have a better chance of being happy with someone who can be honest about it, with or without love.”
“I wanted better for you,” said Jerry, still staring out the window.
“Better isn’t good enough, Jerry. I want the best. Who, of all the men you know, is best for me? Name three. No, no, name two, or even one. You can’t, can you? Who is to say that in the end Connor O’Casey might not be the best? He wants a chance. So do I. He’s the only man I’ve ever known to be forthright about it and to respect my feelings, in his own bluff way, and to offer me a respectable way out.”
Jerry was calmer now. “You sound resolved to do this.”
“Let’s simply say that I believe I have the right to change my mind, though I think it would be much easier, much better, to take the chance and let God direct things. Human interference has certainly availed me nothing up to now.”
“Do you want me to go with you?”
Nothing Jerry could have offered would have sounded more appalling than Banff with the Jeromes.
“Don’t be silly. Esther and Vinnie will be enough. If I need you I can wire.”
“What’ll we do about Maggie?” Jerry asked, sounding weary.
“Well, you’ll have the perfect chance to find out. How would you like to take me home to tea?”
“I wondered how long it’d be before you showed up,” said Connor, standing in the doorway. “Come in.”
Jerry decided to forgo tea and Maggie and headed for Connor’s hotel. Francesca’s revelation—and her consent, however passive—had left him stunned and perplexed. He liked Connor, the way one likes an underdog. Often Jerry spoke up for him, urging and cajoling others into giving the poor blighter a chance. Connor’s admirable persistence and guts had enabled him to rise from nothing to a position that accorded him, if not respect, at least envy. He understood Connor’s aspiration to shrug off the mantle of an outcast and acquire the tastes and refinements of the social set to which he aspired. Above all, he understood Connor’s desire to ally himself with a woman of intelligence, talent, beauty, and wealth who could help him move easily in society. When the object of that desire was Francesca, however, all Jerry’s noble biases flew out the window and Connor was reduced to the image of the brash, uneducated, unrefined, papist hooligan his friend was trying so desperately to shake off.
Jerry’s own hypocrisy alarmed him. His father had come from stock no more refined than Connor’s, and his father hadn’t Connor’s desire to become self-taught. He was proud of the rugged individualism, however coarse, that made his father self-made. The harangues with Maggie over occasions where his father might embarrass had hurt Jerry deeply.
Oh, God—Maggie. Maggie, who had protected the family honor for their thirty years together, would make life hell for Francesca over this arrangement with Connor. Until this moment he hadn’t understood her revulsion toward his father, pulling Jerry further and further away from his influence—and his love. Jerry now felt a similar revulsion at the idea of Francesca’s marrying this man who drank, swore, fought, cheated, and was far too wealthy for his own good, who had no religion, principles, or scruples. He was ashamed to discover that he couldn’t decide which of the two of them, Jerry or Maggie, was the more noble—Jerry, with his high-minded favoritism of the underdog, who found that his principles couldn’t hold water, or Maggie, who was so damnably consistent.
Connor left Jerry to shut the door while he walked to the sideboard to pour himself a drink. He held out the decanter and raised his eyebrows.
“No, thanks,” said Jerry. He started to make for the settee, then turned. “On second thought, make it a double.”
“So,” said Connor. “Out with it.”
Jerry sat, still wearing his coat and hat. “I don’t know what to say. I couldn’t believe my ears when Francesca told me. What the hell are you thinking of, proposing to expose a woman whom you profess to want to marry to the kind of scheme that could ruin her?” He took off the hat and plopped it on the settee. “Have I failed to grasp the situation? Did you not go to Francesca and suggest that you follow her to Banff so that you and she can ‘get to know one another’ to find out whether she could stand you enough to marry you?” Jerry was on his feet. “Whom do you think you’re dealing with, man? Do you think she’s the kind of woman who indulges in sordid intrigues? What can you think will happen to her reputation while you and she are ‘getting to know one another’? Do you think I’d let her do a thing like that? And Maggie—oh, my God—would probably have you shot. And what about this Alvarado woman? Do you expect me to believe that after all that show and all that talk about Italy and that indecent, yes, indecent, way that she so obviously laid claim to you, that any of us can possibly believe that you and she are through?”
Connor, who was still standing at the sideboard, now and then taking a drink, turned quietly and faced Jerry.
“Might I answer some of these charges?”
Jerry took the whiskey that had been poured for him and took a long drink.
“Did I make such a request of her? Yes. Did I propose to marry her if she could stand me? Yes. Do I understand the position I’m puttin’ her in all the way round? Of course I do.” He set the whiskey decanter back on the sideboard and paused and blew out an exasperated sigh. “Why do you think I proposed marriage outright? So’s she’d have some assurance that marriage is a choice for her if the opinion of the society that you’re so pitifully tied to should go against her. So’s she wouldn’t be left high and dry.”
“Why Francesca in the first place?”
“Why not Francesca?” demanded Connor. “Why should I not aspire to someone of her quality? Why am I not entitled to the same desires for a respectable home presided over by a woman that a man would be proud to have as queen of his castle?” Connor set down his glass and leaned upon the sideboard. “What the hell am I talking to you for? You and your pious—you know, Blanche was right about you. You’re a sanctimonious bunch of bastards.” Connor downed the contents of the glass.
“Do you have any idea what it’s like to be on the outside lookin’ in? Do you know what it’s like to peep through the keyhole, and to watch people feastin’ and fattenin’ themselves, and know that you don’t have the key that will let you in? Do you have any idea what it’s like to spend your whole life hammering on the door and to not have anyone who’ll answer? And what about Francesca? She’s no better off than I am.”
“Just what the hell do you mean by that?”
“You’ve got her trussed up good and proper. She can’t move without your permission or approval. I’ll wager this Banff business is just as much to get away from you and your wife as it is for a pleasure tour. You dandle her in front of people like a Christmas ornament. You wind her up and set her out to perform, then carefully wrap her in tissue or put her under a bell jar for everyone to admire. You don’t really give a damn about her except to find her a husband that you pious lot can approve of.”
“That’s not true and you know—”
“What the hell were you pushing her off on that bastard Tracey for then?”
“That was Maggie’s doing, not mine.” Jerry was in no mood to defend Maggie. A pang of guilt gripped him as he wondered if things might have been different had he shared Shillingford’s discoveries. No, Maggie wouldn’t have believed him anyway.
“Or maybe a bastard great-grandson of an English lord, God help us,” continued Connor, “who’d have swept her off and left her bankrupt. Or some damn rich fool whose whole family hasn’t a worthwhile thought among ’em, who’d bore her senseless. None of them would ever understand what she’s made of.”
“And you do, I suppose.”
“Yes, I do,” Connor said emphatically. “I understand her better than the whole lot of you—and do you know why? Because in the end, we want the same things—to build something that lasts. A name, a family, a reputation. Not just a business or your damned luxury hotel. Businesses can be bought and sold and hotels can be torn down.”
“Reputations can be bought and sold—and torn down,” said Jerry.
“But family and name and doin’ something good that lasts can’t. If you’ve got that, you can keep your damned feasts. You can bolt the door for all I care—but the door is bolted for her just as surely as it’s bolted for me. Maybe not for the same reasons. She has things I’ll never have and I’ve gotten things she’ll never be able to get on her own. But the door is bolted for her all the same. Maybe we can unbolt it—or beat it down together.”
“Why do you want to be one of us if we’re such pious, pompous asses?”
“Sometimes I ask myself that very question. I see how you squeeze people dry, or crush them under your feet, or worse, pretend they’re not there. For all their faults poor people can be nobler than you’ll ever be.”
“I know,” said Jerry, looking into the bottom of his glass. “If you want Francesca so badly, why not court her openly here?”
“If we conduct even the properest courtship here, we’re doomed before we start. You people smother her and treat her like a child. She’s trying to use the brains she was born with, to experience something of life—”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“What would you have me do, show up unannounced and say, ‘Excuse me, ma’am, but I was just in the neighborhood and thought I’d pop in for a spot of scandal?’—which I could have done, by the way. Look, I’ve made her an honest offer of marriage. She can accept me or reject me. All I’ve asked is that she not reject me out of hand without our getting to know each other. This Banff business is the perfect way to do the least damage to her reputation. At least if we’re engaged by the time we get back to New York, nobody’ll have the pleasure of gossiping without a ring on Francesca’s finger.”
“You still haven’t answered my question about Mrs. Alvarado.”
“Do you think I put the two of them in the same class? Blanche isn’t fit to polish Francesca’s boots. Yes, it’s over with Blanche. I sent her packing the night of the dinner at Sherry’s. I’ve bought her passage to Italy and supplied her with money so she can go and leech off her sister.”
“Oh, God,” said Jerry. He drained his glass. “How do I know—how does Francesca know—that that kind of business is over?”
“She doesn’t. Nor does any woman when she gets married—or any man, come to that.” Connor poured himself another drink, then crossed to Jerry with the decanter. “Would you like to know where half the married men in this town go of an evenin’?” Connor poured. “It might prove quite informative for you to accompany me some night and watch outside selected small hotels and see who the clientele might be.”
“I don’t want that for Francesca.”
“Nor do I. Nor do I want it for myself. I’m tired. I’ve had enough. I just want her.”
“What on earth do you expect her to see in you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Maybe I’m not what she wants, but maybe I’m what she needs. Just like she’s what I need.”
Jerry hesitated. “You haven’t said that you love her.”
“I’m not sure I know what ‘love’ means—and I wouldn’t profane the word by using it amiss with Francesca.” He drank. “Do I appreciate her for her intelligence, her ideas? Yes. Do I appreciate her for her talents? Yes. Do I appreciate her for her gentleness and her heart and her soul? Yes. Do I agree with her religion and her mountaintops and her miracles? Probably not, at least not the religion and I don’t understand her mountaintops. But I hope I’m not so stupid that I don’t realize that without those things Francesca wouldn’t be Francesca.”
Jerry didn’t know what to say or think. To give his blessing was out of the question and he had no power to say no. A negative answer would only add fuel to Connor’s fire.
“I don’t know what I’ll tell Maggie.”
“Why tell her anything?”
“She’ll find out sooner or later. And she’ll give Francesca hell before she leaves.”
Not knowing what else to do, Jerry prepared to depart. He stood for a moment, running his hand around the brim of his hat, thinking. He looked Connor in the eye. “If you ruin her, if you leave her to face a damaged reputation alone, if you make one false promise or one false move, if you harm one hair on her head, as God is my witness, Connor, I will hunt you down, I will find you, and I will kill you. So help me God, I’ll kill you.”