But she’ll also soon be moving. Sleeper’s found a place in the country, which he’s in the process of enlarging. Asia looks forward to living with frogs and bees and rabbits again. She hopes that she’ll be able to ride by then. It will be like being back on the farm only without the horrid farming.
Meanwhile, John is tiring of the Marshall Theatre. He tells Asia the city is too easily pleased by his performances and he’s come to believe their enthusiasm is once again for the memory of Father and not for his own accomplishments. There are additional considerations he doesn’t share with Asia. He’s entangled himself with more than one young woman—actresses and prostitutes. He’s made proposals he won’t honor, promises he won’t keep. And he has debts. He’s unwilling to live on his income and too proud to ask Edwin for an allowance.
Edwin helps in other ways. He persuades Matthew Canning, a manager from Philadelphia, to take John on. Canning stipulates only that John must perform under the Booth name, to which John agrees and then does not do. He’s making his move now from stock player to star. He begins to tour. His emotional attachment to Richmond, however, remains potent. Even more than Baltimore, Richmond is the city of his heart.
* * *
—
“My head is full of Marry Mary marry marriage,” Edwin says to everyone who is not Asia. Asia is pretending an unlikely concern over the feelings of Adam Badeau. Poor Adam—wandering alone and forlorn. Quite given up. Undone by Edwin’s cruelty.
Adam is threatening a retaliatory marriage himself. He’s chosen a woman educated in the French way, which he explains to Mary means a woman without a heart. Mary is distressed by this vision of marriage, so he offers a bizarre counter proposal: He’ll forgo his own wedding, if only Edwin will agree to play London.
Edwin already has plans to do this so it’s an easy promise to make. The woman with no heart is saved.
On July 7th, in New York City, Edwin and Mary are wed. It’s a short ceremony on a gold and silver summer morning. Mary wears a crown of white flowers, her hair loosely knotted low on her neck, tears of joy dampening her face.
Few are in attendance. Not Mother, not Rosalie, not Joe, certainly not Asia—only John is there, and Adam. Adam’s touched to see John’s unabashed happiness for Edwin; how he throws his arms around his brother and kisses him. Asia hears this and thinks that she is glad, glad, glad not to have been a witness. Her whole family is made up of fools.
For their wedding trip, the couple rents a house on the Canadian side of Niagara. Niagara, where Asia was once so happy, is being taken away and given to Mary instead. Edwin invites Mother and Joe to join them.
Asia goes out into the mild summer evening, pushing Dolly’s pram through the square. The sparrows and pigeons are hopping about as the glare of day shades into a rosy twilight. Dolly’s hand has made it into her mouth. Sometimes her sucking is so loud, Asia can hear it over the sound of the pram wheels.
She’s thinking about that happy trip to Niagara. It wasn’t all that long ago and yet, in her own memory, she seems like such a girl. She remembers the godlike feelings she had looking down on the Falls, that sense of perspective and power. She remembers the rainbows hovering about the water by the dozens. The cup to Asia, Edwin had said, but maybe he’d never meant it, maybe he’s never loved her the way she’s loved him.
* * *
—
The third guest in Niagara is Adam. He says that both Edwin and Mary are taking pains to prove that their affection for him is unchanged. But this is a story for public consumption. In fact, tensions are rising. Mary is that much more sure of her claim on Edwin, which makes her bold enough to say openly to him that Adam’s a bit of a bore. Adam talks and talks and talks over anyone who might redirect the conversation. He’s far too interested in hearing his own opinions. What a shame he’s not “like other men,” she tells Edwin, “for then your friendship could be secure.” Implying that since he’s not, it’s not.
How quick Asia would have been to take Adam’s side if only she’d known. Her letters to Jean contain fantasies of Mary going under the Falls or taking a swim in the whirlpool. Every Hamlet needs his Ophelia. When down her weedy trophies and herself Fell in the weeping brook.
xviii
Asia tells herself that she’s contented with the small doings of her own establishment. Dolly is endlessly engrossing—she has two teeth and can pull herself to standing!—and Sleeper as attentive as ever. They go to the seaside. She revels in a trip to Baltimore to see old friends. She has trouble making new ones. My heart’s a poor soil for it, she says, and longs only for the dear old faces. She takes Dolly in her pram to see her aunt and grandmother. No one mentions Mother’s time at the Falls. No one speaks of Mary Devlin at all. Mary Devlin Booth.
Asia’s succeeded in driving Edwin and Mary from Philadelphia. Edwin decides he can’t subject Mary to her ferocious enmity and they never do occupy the house he’d rented, leaving it to Mother and Rosalie. Asia tells herself she’s glad of it, so very relieved, although there’s no real victory to be had from an opponent who simply quits the field.
Instead Edwin and Mary move into the new and opulent Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City. Joe goes to see them and comes back with tales that, Joe-like, he seems unaware will cause her pain. The hotel is where the rich and connected stay. It has an enormous dining hall, lobby, and common rooms, all fitted out in deep green and red curtains, rosewood counters, white marble columns, and masses of gilt. In order to access the upper floors, guests ride in the astonishingly modern vertical screw railway, an elevator operated by a steam engine that rotates a gigantic screw to raise and lower the car.
Mary’s developed her own style, which Joe is unable to describe to Asia’s satisfaction, but he does say that her gowns are all in deep blues and wine reds, and that she has a lot of them. The hotel staff refers to Edwin as the Prince and Mary (the daughter of Irish immigrants!) as the Princess, a particular triumph since the Prince of Wales has also stayed there and been found insufficiently royal to take Edwin’s crown. Joe talks of glittering friends and grand parties.
It’s clear to Asia that Mary is living rich. She has no idea how hard Mary is working for this money. Mary’s taken the artistic advancement of Edwin’s career on as a calling. She makes notes on every performance. They discuss these over dinner. She is my severest critic, Edwin says, and therefore my kindest.