Dragonwyck (30 page)

'Then you'd better save your money, ma'am; they're much better off as heathen.' He lowered his gaze to Mrs. Ellet's
décolleté,
which revealed a great deal of craggy bosom. 'And they're no more naked than you are,' he added with emphasis.

The lady flushed furiously. The Count quivered with repressed mirth. But Miranda, horrified by this contretemps, for surely an accomplished hostess would have prevented it, brought out the first thing she could think of. 'Mr. Melville comes from a Dutch family too, you know,' she said hastily, with a confused idea of mollifying Mrs. Ellet. 'His mother was a Gansevoort.'

'Indeed,' said the insulted lady, dripping ice.

'Ah, look who is coming, here!' cried the Count, tactfully creating a diversion and recognizing a familiar European figure. 'It is La Albanese herself. Now we shall have a treat!'

They all turned to see Nicholas greeting a vision in orange satin and rhinestones. The Italian singer radiated good nature and peasant vitality from her oily black hair to the broad feet on which she wore dirty red slippers.

She pumped Nicholas' hand in a cordial grip, seized Miranda's, and pulling the girl toward her crying
'Ab, que bella! La bimba!'
implanted a garlic-laden kiss on Miranda's forehead. She waved to the Count, whom she had met in Paris. 'So 'appy to see everywan,' she boomed, describing a sweeping gesture. 'Now I seeng for you.'

She surged over to the piano, leaving a trail of musk through the rooms. 'Who will accompanee me?' she cried, drawing a sheaf of music from under her arm.

'I shall give myself that pleasure, signora,' said Nicholas, bowing and seating himself on the stool.

Mrs. Schermerhorn raised her lorgnette and peered doubtfully at La Albanese. An Italian opera singer in the drawing-room! Most startling! In any other house she would have been affronted. But Mr. Van Ryn's reputation for conservatism and
savoir-faire
was impregnable. And his blood was of the bluest.

Before the rich earthy voice had finished the 'Casta Diva' from 'Norma,' Mrs. Schermerhorn had relaxed and was wondering if it would be possible to persuade Madame Albanese to appear at a little soirée next week.

Gradually according to their separate natures they all succumbed to the spell. The singer had great artistry, her flexible voice fell pure and true on the exact middle of each note, but far more persuasive than that was the vitality that flowed from her, the unashamed and wooing passion.

She gave them 'Voi Che Sapete' from the 'Marriage of Figaro,' and the mad scene from the new 'Lucia.' And the applause was much louder than the decorous gloved spatter expected in a drawing-room.

La Albanese bowed, flashing a toothy, delighted smile. 'Never 'ave I seeng so good,' she announced, beaming. But she knew what none of the audience had enough musical knowledge to guess, and she swept 'round dramatically, extending her hands to Nicholas. 'But eet ees you who inspire me, signor. You play
con fuoco, con amore—maraviglioso!
Nevaire do I teenk to find soch playing een America.'

You do me too much honor, madam,' murmured Nicholas, smiling.

Tiens,
thought the Count, craning to see his host, who was hidden behind the music rack, that's true. Who would expect to find so much fire and brilliance in a man like that? The Count ran over to himself the many social gatherings he had attended in this country. At none had he ever seen a gentleman concern himself with music, beyond lending an embarrassed tenor to a duet with a young lady. Piano playing was entirely relegated to the fair sex. And yet no one could possibly think Nicholas effeminate.

He was unclassifiable, thought the Count crossly; like all his countrymen he liked analysis which resulted in things being neatly labeled and docketed.

'Now I geef you a song een Eenglish,' announced Madame Albanese proudly, and the Count moved his chair a trifle so that he might see Nicholas.

The diva sang Maritana's plaintive ballad, 'Scenes That Are Brightest,' contriving somehow to invest the trite words and simple melody with an indescribable pathos. The tragedy of vain hope, of unfulfilled love.

During the singing of this ballad, the Count saw Nicholas turn his head so that his intense blue gaze rested on Miranda's averted face. There was longing in that look, an appeal. But when the girl shifted her position, unconscious of his glance, his eyes fell quickly to the music.

So, after all, maybe there's something not right between those two, the Count reflected. Suddenly he was bored with his own speculations and delvings.
Zut alors,
he said to himself, stretching his plump legs, I make mysteries like an old woman. He wondered how long it would be until supper.

He had not long to wait. The recital finished with a gay Italian folk song; then amidst the chorus of appreciation, Madame Albanese bowing and smiling made her way to Miranda. 'I want the W.C.,' she announced with simple Latin realism. Weel you show me ze way?'

'Oh—oh yes,' stammered Miranda, blushing scarlet and hurrying the prima donna from the room.

More embarrassment awaited her upstairs, for her guest gave a cry of delight when she saw the bedroom. She admired the curtains, the rugs, the bed. 'Your 'usband mus' be verra fine lover,' said La Albanese enthusiastically, patting the bed. 'I can tell. You are lucky,
bambina,
and verra happy. No?'

For a moment Miranda was outraged, and then she responded to the genuine friendly interest in the shining black eyes.

'Of course,' she said, 'very happy.'

La Albanese frowned, unsatisfied. 'But you are too serious!' She put her large orange silk arm around Miranda, enveloping the girl in scent and garlic and good will. 'Look,
bimba—
In my country we have a—how you say? —a proverb.
Amare, cantare, mangiare.—
Loving, singing, eating—these are God's three gifts. You don' need more.'

Miranda smiled. How wonderful it would be if life were as easy as that! But why can't it be? she thought suddenly. And under the influence of that vibrant personality, she felt lighthearted and gay.

When they got downstairs the guests were starting toward the dining-room. Nicholas came over to her and whispered, 'Everyone is delighted with you. The party is going well,' so that her new mood was easy to maintain, and she found herself talking and laughing at the supper table, all nervousness forgotten.

Nicholas had placed Madame Albanese between the Count and Herman Melville, knowing that the other gentlemen might find her a bit overpowering. But Melville did not; he talked with animation and from time to time his laugh boomed out. Whereupon Mrs. Ellet glared at him across the table.

She was placated, however, when Nicholas asked her about Edgar Poe, in whom she had a proprietary interest. The lady bridled, shaking her sparse ringlets. 'Poor Mr. Poe. Such misfortunes—his little wife—dying, I fear—and they've moved miles out in the country to a positive hovel.'

She lowered her voice to a piercing whisper which immediately stopped all other conversation at the table. 'I feel so sorry for him—his terrible failing, you know—too dreadful; and then this scandal with Mrs.—Oh—' she cried with a little scream of confusion. 'Everyone is listening!'

Everyone was, but with a collective start they began politely to talk of other things. None of them except Nicholas had much interest in the poet's misfortunes; they had simply been hypnotized by Mrs. Ellet's whisper.

Nicholas, however, felt otherwise, and to Miranda's astonishment, for she thought Mrs. Ellet a vulgar and unpleasant woman, he engaged her to drive out to Fordham with them on Monday and introduce them to the Poe household.

'But why, Nicholas?' Miranda asked him later after the guests had gone. 'Why are we going to meet the Poes, and don't you think that so much of Mrs. Ellet's company will be tiresome?'

'I do,' he answered. 'But we can hardly appear there without someone to introduce us.'

'But why go at all?' she persisted. The expedition seemed to her highly unattractive, a hovel in the country, a drunken, and some said unbalanced, man with a wife who was dying of consumption.

Nicholas' mouth set. He disliked being questioned, nor was he accustomed to the slightest opposition to his arrangements. She sat before her dressing-table brushing her hair, which fell like a rich gleaming mantle nearly to the floor. In her cream lace négligée she looked very fresh and lovely, and she had behaved well tonight, had profited to perfection by his careful coaching. He suppressed the sarcastic and final reply which he had been going to give her. 'You wouldn't understand, my dear,' he said.

She put the brush down and turning on the satin seat looked up at him. 'Why wouldn't I?' she cried passionately. 'Why do you always shut me out? Tell me sometimes what you're thinking and feeling, before—' she stopped. She had nearly said 'before it's too late.' How had so much emotion been aroused in her by so little? No wonder he stared at her.

He was silent for a second, then he pulled his violet dressing-gown closer around him and sat down in a chair opposite her.

'My love,' he said, smiling, 'I had no idea that my motives in wishing to meet Poe were so important to you. I'll gladly explain them. I admire the man's genius, I sense in his writings a strong kinship with my own mind; they have a macabre quality, a voluptuous flavor of mystery and evil which attracts me strongly. And I am curious to see his present degradation. It interests me.'

His ironic voice ceased, and she made a hopeless little gesture, while tears came to her eyes. Her mind was closed to the meaning of his words, some of which she did not know—'macabre,' 'voluptuous.' She had thought for a moment that he was really going to confide in her, to answer her appeal with frankness at last. It never occurred to her that under the masking lightness of his tone he had told her the simple truth.

And he, seeing this, laughed. 'Come, my pretty one. It's very late. Go to bed and don't perplex yourself with matters you don't understand.'

ALTHOUGH MIRANDA DID NOT KNOW IT FOR THREE years, the visit to the strange and unhappy little household at Fordham had far-reaching effects on her life.

On Monday she and Nicholas dined very early at one, picked up Mrs. Ellet at the exclusive boarding-house where the lady resided when she visited the city, continued up Broadway, crossed the Harlem River, and arrived at last upon the Kingsbridge Road.

The day was exceedingly hot, typical of this summer of 1846, which was to be the hottest that New York remembered. Inside the closed brougham it was oppressive and made Miranda feel languid; she and Mrs. Ellet both used surreptitious handkerchiefs to remove tiny beads of perspiration from their upper lips. But Nicholas, who seemed impervious to temperature, was cool as usual while he questioned their guest on the various recent accomplishments of 'the starry sistethood,' as the feminine literati, Mrs. Anna Cora Mowatt, Margaret Fuller, Mrs. Osgood, and Anna Lynch, had come to be known to the irreverent.

Eliza Ellet considered herself a whole blazing constellation amongst the starry sisterhood and was delighted to tell him of the salon's brilliance, even more delighted to recite little snatches of transcendental verse which she had herself indited 'in that hushed hour between midnight and dawn when Morpheus' sable hands touch the rosy finger tips of Aurora and even the fairies are slumbering on their flowery couches,' said Mrs. Ellet with a rapt look.

But she spoiled this pretty fantasy by an uncontrollable sniff, and sudden, glistening pallor. 'It's so warm, and there seems to be an odor of—' she paused, '—of boiled ham.'

'Oh, I'm so sorry, Mrs. Ellet,' said Miranda, rousing herself, for the transcendental snatches had not held her attention. 'It must be the hamper we're taking to the Poes. You know you said it was the custom to take them something.'

A large wicker basket crammed with provisions, a roast chicken, a game pie, calves'-foot jelly, and the offending ham had been placed under the seat. At the last moment Nicholas had added a bottle of port wine and a bottle of brandy. 'The port for the invalid, and the brandy for Poe,' he explained to Miranda.

'Oh, but Nicholas—should we take spirits to him—if he has that—that failing?' she had protested.

'I hear he's far more interesting when he's drunk, and I intend to find out,' said Nicholas.

She did not feel quite the shock that this speech would have given her two months ago; she was living in a new country where the moral precepts that had formed her conduct no longer prevailed.

Now, while with courteous apology that his guest should have been made uncomfortable, Nicholas spoke to the coachman and had the hamper moved outside to the box, Miranda rested her head against the cushions and thought: I suppose I'm too serious. Madame Albanese said so.

The Poe cottage was not a hovel, but a small workman's frame house with two doors and a porch wreathed in jasmine and honeysuckle. It stood on a slight rise of ground under a shading tulip tree, bees droned around the honeysuckle, and as the Van Ryn carriage approached, the monastery bells of the near-by College of Saint John clanged melodiously on the hot, still air. There was here a paradoxical effect of rustic peace.

Paradoxical, because there was no peace within the house where a dying girl and a half-crazed genius were ministered to by the harassed and kindly mother, Mrs. Clemm. She hurried out of the kitchen door to greet Mrs. Ellet, who introduced the Van Ryns.

'Happy to see you, I'm sure,' said Mrs. Clemm. 'Eddie likes company, and my poor Virginia does too, though this is one of her bad days—poor lamb. Doctor Francis is with her now.' She sighed, her plain middle-aged face puckered with anxiety. She was immaculate in her black dress and white cap with long lappets, but the dress was shiny and frayed, and Miranda noticed with pity that Mrs. Clemm's right shoe had split and been neatly mended with a piece of plaster painted black.

'If Mrs. Poe is ill—perhaps we shouldn't intrude?' said Nicholas, at the same time motioning to the coachman to bring the hamper.

'Oh, no, it'll do 'em good, poor children, to see you and dear Mrs. Ellet. Come on in, do.'