Chapter Twelve
1896
Solomon’s Letter
After Christmas when we took the spruce branches down, we found that they had oozed a sticky sap over every nearby surface, and the sap had hardened while we celebrated. After seven full days of work in the laundry room, we finally had to give one set of curtains up for rags. The lesson was clear. Next year we would not use those branches for decking the halls again.
And I began to wonder where next Christmas would find me.
Would I still be here? I was a servant now, and not a bad one. But the feeling I’d had when I danced for the other servants and they applauded me, I wondered what it meant. My mother had wanted me to dance on the stage. Could I do that, if I tried? How would I go about it? I enjoyed the applause more than I’d ever enjoyed the dancing. There had to be something to it.
I made excuses to find my way into the library again over the next few weeks, and when The Picture of Dorian Gray was returned, I took it for my own use and read it avidly. It was not a nice book, but I could see how he’d been compelled by it. And tucked into the very last page was a simple note: Garden, when you can. C.
The first time I went to meet him among the roses, there was only conversation. The second, I knelt next to him in the dirt while he plucked out weeds, and he drew his fingers slowly up the length of my arm as we talked, setting every inch of my skin on fire. The third, we made plans to meet in a different place—a quieter, more private one—and that was where we met thereafter.
We met in the billiard room, which saw very little activity when there were no guests. It smelled of new felt and spilled whiskey. We talked little during these meetings, fearful of having our voices heard. But when he talked, he talked of leaving. He asked if I was content washing bedsheets and sweeping floors or if I wondered what else I might do out there in the world. He said I was such a smart girl, so clever and beautiful, that I must know I was meant for larger things. An agile mind like mine was wasted in the body—such a lovely body, he hastened to add—of a young drudge so far from a city of any import. He asked if he were to leave, would I go with him? I would not, I said. And the subject was dropped, until the next time he raised it, testing to see if my answer had changed. It hadn’t. If he found this frustrating, he didn’t say so. He would ask, and I would refuse politely, and he would fall to kissing me again, and such talk was easy to set aside in favor of more pleasant and pleasurable things.
Almost every night, there was time for a few stolen kisses, a handful of whispered words. His words were always flattering and tender. In addition to my eyes, he complimented the fragile bones of my pinkie finger, the shell-like curve of my ear, and other parts of me that weren’t strictly visible. His words were lovely, but his kisses were what truly held my attention, along with the unbearably exciting thought of where the kisses might lead.
One evening as we pressed together against a heavy oak billiard table, his lips traveling slowly and tenderly up my neck, we heard voices. Quickly we separated. He cocked his head toward one door, listening to confirm the direction of the sound, and grabbed my hand to lead me out through the other exit. We scurried along in near silence. Down the hallway, there was a staircase, and I followed him down without hesitation. At the foot of the staircase, instead of continuing down the hallway to another room, he doubled us back into a kind of storage space under the stairs, a dead end, out of the way. There we paused and waited, listening, until we’d heard nothing for several minutes but our own breathing, shallow and quick.
We resumed kissing, but something had changed. In the alcove under the staircase, we were more hidden than before, more alone, more protected. The air felt close, intimate. My lips parted wider for his. I stepped closer, pressing more tightly against him, and in answer, he pushed me back against the wall, my bottom lip between his teeth, his knee between my knees.
Then his hand was inside my dress, his fingertips rough against the delicate skin of my breast, and I lost my breath for a moment. The world narrowed to a small, small space. The pleasure was almost too much to take. I wanted more. I wanted everything.
If the blood hadn’t been rushing in my ears, all my attention on his skin against mine, I would have heard the footsteps. As it was, I only heard the voice.
“Separate at once,” the booming voice ordered, and I obeyed by instinct. We drew away from each other with a jump, although Clyde imposed himself between me and the intruder, which I took as chivalrous. Cheeks burning, wanting to disappear, I made myself look at the man who had interrupted our tryst.
It was the master of the house.
We rarely saw Mr. Vanderbilt, and even when we did, we never spoke to him nor he to us. I’d heard his voice before at a distance but never so close up. He had a lamp in his hand, casting a puddle of light around our dark hiding place. He wore a black smoking jacket over his shirt and trousers. There was no doubt who he was speaking to or what he’d seen. My mouth felt sore and swollen.
“You, Garber.”
“Yes?”
“Go to your room now. I do not want to hear of this behavior again. If I do, no matter how valuable I find your skills, I will have you dismissed. You understand.”
“I do.” He nodded briskly, turned the corner to scuttle quickly up the stairs, and was gone. I heard the sound of his footfalls fading.
I moved to follow, and Mr. Vanderbilt caught my arm. “Young lady, just a moment.”
“Sir?”
Then, oddly, he grinned at me. His teeth were white and gleaming under his thick mustache. “Oh, my dear, you look terrified.”
“Is that amusing?”
“No,” he said and let his smirk slip into a gentler smile as he released me. “I have to remember I was once as young as you. You and your young man. I was foolish too at your age.”
I couldn’t help raising my chin. “I’m not foolish.”
“Oh, I know you don’t think so now. When you look back,” he said, “that’s when you’ll see.”
I opened my mouth to protest and he held up a hand.
“Shush. I only want to give you some words of advice.”
I waited.
“When it’s like this. When these things happen. You’ll need to control yourself,” he said. He gestured up the dark stairs after my departed companion. “He won’t be able to. Nor will any other young man.”
I stared at him dumbly.
“It’s up to you. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It appalls me when people think they don’t have agency. We all do. We all have will. So use yours where and when it counts.”
“Yes, sir.”
He waved me off and I went. I had been chastised but neither punished nor dismissed. It seemed almost a miracle. That night, I played the scene over and over in my head. The hot, sweet urgency of skin on skin. The master appearing, as if from nowhere, to deliver a message, raising his lantern like a priest with a censer. The more I considered it, the more it felt like a blessing. I’d been prevented from doing something foolish. Where it went from here was up to me.
I made myself confront the facts. I was a servant in a grand house, and I could either work hard and earn my keep and make concrete plans, or I could moon about, tumbling into sin with a boy who whispered honeyed words against my ear and made my nerves sing but who had never promised me anything in particular. Besides, I had no time to waste on something uncertain. Any spare moments I could snatch went to dancing—regular exercises in my room every morning and whenever I could slip away, taking advantage of empty ballrooms and hallways—and that was real. Could I spare the time for anything that might not be?
And if what I felt for him was real, all the worse. I’d seen what happened when people fell in love. Love was responsible for all my mother’s poor choices. Without the mistake of conceiving me, without running away with Victor and sacrificing her comfortable life, who knows what she would have been? I couldn’t be so foolish. I reminded myself that I had to make the right choices so as not to be subject to what others would have me do for their own ends. I would have to be levelheaded. Mr. Vanderbilt was right about that. No other heads were to be trusted.
The spring was a rainy one, full of murky, shadowed days. The garden was easy to avoid. Whenever I went through the library, I forced myself not to peek inside the books. If there were notes, I didn’t collect them. The clandestine meetings halted. On occasion, I would spot Clyde from far away, and when he tried to draw nearer to me, I dodged him. I knew he wondered what had changed, and I burned to go back to the seductive simplicity of our late-night meetings. My body missed his.
Over the weeks and months, I altered my routine to avoid walking through the still, silent library altogether. I couldn’t help but see and feel his absence every time the sound of my footsteps echoed off the walls. It was easier just to close the doors and take the long way around.