The Shadow Portrait (16 page)

“Father, I’m twenty-seven years old. I’m able to choose my own friends.”

“I don’t care how old you are! You’re still not able to make the right decisions. I’m warning you, Clinton. We’ve been through this before. I’m tired of this foolishness, and you’ll have to make your choice. Either go out and try your crazy idea of racing cars or become a useful member of the firm! You can’t do both. Now which will it be?”

For one moment Clinton came very close to saying,
I’ll see whom I please when I please,
but somehow the thought of being penniless frightened him, and instead he replied, “You’re not being fair, Father.”

“You’ve heard my terms. Now which will it be?”

Clinton stood there for a moment, and then a feeling of hopelessness seemed to engulf him. “All right,” he said. “I won’t see them anymore.”

“Now you’re talking like a man with sense.”

Clinton went upstairs to his bedroom feeling dejected for not having stood up to his father. He went over to his desk and slowly pulled out a sheet of paper. Sitting down, he sighed and began to write, for he did not want to face Jolie or Easy or Peter again. He simply thanked them for their company
and said that he would not be seeing them again. Slipping the note into an envelope, he addressed it and put it down, then slowly began to undress. A great bitterness settled on him. He realized he had failed himself and would never again feel any pride in himself as a man apart from his father.

Two days after the race, Phil Winslow stopped by to see Peter and noticed Jolie was upset about something. While Peter was helping Easy with the
Jolie Blonde,
he turned to her and said, “You seem awfully quiet today. Something the matter?”

Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out an envelope and handed it to Phil. She waited until he had finished reading it, then said bitterly, “His father probably found out about his going to the races and then going out to dinner with us and forbade Clinton to see us anymore!”

“That’s bad. The man needs to stand up for himself.”

“I think he’s forgotten how. You met Mr. Lanier. What’s he like?”

“He’s brutal—a strong man who’s used to having his own way. But I thought better of Clinton than this. After all, he’s old enough to be his own man.”

Clinton’s decision to stop seeing his friends preyed on Phil’s mind the rest of the day. When he went to the Lanier house the next day for his appointment with Cara, instead of continuing with the portrait he was doing of her, he said, “Tell me about Clinton.”

Cara, of course, had heard all about her father’s tirade and her brother’s acquiescence to his unreasonable demands. It was impossible to keep a secret in this house. She had tried to talk to Clinton, but he had been so despondent that he could do no more than say, “Father forbade it, and there’s nothing else to say.” She had stood there for a moment, then had said, “I’m sorry for your friends.”

“I’m sorry for Clinton,” Phil said, after hearing the story from Cara. “What kind of a man is your father, anyhow?”

“He’s a good man,” Cara said defensively. “You just don’t know what it’s like living—” She broke off abruptly, then said, “You just don’t understand Clinton’s position.”

“No, I don’t. I don’t understand Mary Ann either. She’s in love with a preacher who’s a good man, but she can’t have him. You want to go out and walk in the park and lead a normal life, but you can’t do it. Now Clinton wants to make friends outside of his office and try something on his own, and he can’t do it. Tell me some more about your father. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a crueler man in my whole life.”

“Don’t say that!” Cara pleaded. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she said, “Father had a very hard life. He didn’t have a penny, and you don’t understand how hard he had to work.”

“And that makes it all right for him to enslave his own children? You’ll never be a painter or anything else until you are able to stand up to him, Cara. And Clinton will never be a man, and Mary Ann will never be happy and free to marry the man she loves. All of you are living like slaves under your father’s roof.”

Cara listened and grew more miserable. Finally she whispered, “I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

“Cara, listen to me—”

“I’m not feeling well. Please leave, Phil.”

Phil stared at her, then said, “All right, if that’s the way you feel.”

As soon as he was gone, Cara went over and fell across the bed and began weeping. She slept hardly at all that night, and the next day when Dr. McKenzie came to check on her, he was very concerned. Her father came in, and McKenzie said, “I’m thinking she’s had a setback. Too much company, I’m afraid.”

“It’s that artist fellow. He’s kept her stirred up. He’s a bad influence on the whole family. I’ll not have him in the house again!”

Oliver Lanier was as good as his word, for the next day Phil was handed a note that read, “Your attentions to my daughter are unwelcome. You have been a bad influence on her, and upon my son, and upon my family in general. From this day forward you are not welcome in my house.” It was signed, “Oliver Lanier.”

Phil took the note, tore it up, and threw it down. A cold anger washed through him, and then it passed. Instead he felt a great pity. “Those poor people,” he whispered to himself. “Work slaves in the tenements are freer than they are. God help them all!”

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Love Don’t Always Add Up, Jolie . . . !”

Americans looked back on the year 1907 with mingled admiration and apprehension. As always, the year had produced tragedy and turmoil, as well as triumph and victory.

The Chicago Cubs won the World Series with Tinker, Evers, and Chance in the infield, defeating the Detroit Tigers 4–0. But the big news in baseball was yet to come, for Walter Johnson, age nineteen, signed with the Washington Senators. The Big Train, as he was called, would become the greatest fast-ball pitcher ever.

Barnum and Bailey Circus, created in 1881, became the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus and toured the country triumphantly, drawing huge crowds wherever it set up its tents.

Jack London continued to dominate in literature, but the poetry of Robert Service, set in the Yukon and including his poems
The Cremation of Sam McGee
and
The Shooting of Dan McGrew,
swept the country.

Horse-drawn vehicles in New York were giving way to motor buses and electric trolleys. American motorcar production reached forty-three thousand, and, even though automobiles were more expensive than horses, businessmen slowly began to accept the motorcar as a part of American life. The big news of 1907 was the financial disaster that struck the nation. A stock market crash rocked the country, and
one man single-handedly averted the financial panic that followed. On October 23 a rush by depositors to withdraw their money from New York’s Knickerbocker Trust was stopped by financier J.P. Morgan. Morgan obtained a pledge of ten million dollars from John D. Rockefeller, and ten million from the Bank of England, which arrived in the British steamship
Lancaster
on her maiden voyage.

And so as January 1908 came, bringing with it cold blasts that froze the streets of New York, that city and others sighed with relief and looked forward with the optimism so inherent in the American character to a New Utopia.

The feel of snow was in the air as Peter and Avis walked down Broadway. The two of them had taken a half holiday. Avis had stopped by and practically pulled Peter away from his car, saying, “Come along. You’ve got to go shopping with me.”

Peter had protested but actually had been glad to leave the
Jolie Blonde.
He had closed the hood, shot a quick glance at Easy Devlin, who scowled, then grinned. “Okay, let’s make our getaway.”

“You don’t be gone all day, you hear,” Easy had called out as Peter walked away. “We still have lots of work to do on this here car if we plan to have her ready for the race coming up.”

Now as they moved along the crowded streets, Avis took a deep breath and lifted her face to the gray skies above. “I love cold weather. I hope it snows.”

“You haven’t had to ride in cold trains like I have,” Peter returned as he pulled his collar up around his neck. He brushed against her arm and thought of how close they had become in the time since they had first met. They walked together until finally she led him into A.T. Stuart’s enormous store. Stuart’s dominated the retail dry-goods trade in New York. It was the largest importer in the nation, and today all five stories were filled with people. Avis promptly led Peter through the
crowds to the elevator, for a ride to the fourth-floor ladies’ wear department.

Stepping out of the elevator as soon as the operator had brought the floor level, Peter glanced around at the fashions, some of them displayed on dressmaker’s dummies. “What an amazing sight!” he exclaimed. “This is like Sunday afternoon in Peacock Alley, only more so.”

Avis laughed. “There’s something for nearly everyone here. But I like Stuart’s because they’ve got the latest fashions, not just something your mother would wear.” She stopped before a dress with a trailing skirt. “That’s a pretty fabric, but that style is on its way out. Every time I wear one, I think how absolutely stupid it is to wear a dress that drags through trash and spittle and germs from the sidewalk!” She stepped into the next display area and turned back to Peter, beckoning him over. “Now this is more what I like.”

“That?” exclaimed Peter, joining her and examining the object of her interest. “That looks like something a woman would wear in the privacy of her bedroom!”

He couldn’t help staring. The mannequin before them was modeling a sheath gown that had just arrived from Paris and was quickly becoming all the rage with style-conscious American women. As far as he could tell, this model had a skirt that was little more than a cloth tube from hips to shoe tops. “It’s got all the charm of a gun barrel, or an umbrella stand,” Peter scowled. “How does anybody ever walk in one?”

“You don’t—at least not very quickly or very far. It’s what’s called a hobble skirt,” Avis said. “I have to agree that from a practical point of view, it’s a crazy idea—though maybe not more than some other styles that have come out of Paris.” Despite the evaluation, her eyes sparkled as she looked at the dress, but she gripped Peter’s arm possessively and, lowering her voice, confided, “I think it’s psychological.”

“What? A tight skirt?”

“Yes. Some man invented that,” she asserted positively. Her green eyes flashed, and she ruffled her strawberry blond
hair with her free hand, saying, “Men always want to keep women tied down, or tied up in some way. So that’s why they hobble them.”

Peter laughed aloud. “My father hobbles horses out west to keep them from wandering. Maybe it’s a good idea.”

Avis gave him a direct stare. “No man will ever hobble me,” she snapped. “Come along and look at this.” She stopped before another displayed garment. “What do you think of this?”

Peter studied the blouse and finally said, “It looks like it’s been punched by one of those things that makes holes in paper. It’s got holes all in it.”

“Of course it has. It’s called a peek-a-boo.”