The Wharton Plot, page 18
Excusing herself, she made her way to his table, inventing, as she went, a tale of a nephew who desired a position with a political personage. What would the work entail? How much travel? Depew Jr.—what did his day look like? Did he, by any chance, travel to Gramercy Park often? Taking a deep breath, she reminded herself that the mayor was present, which meant a number of policemen were also present.
“Mr. Depew.”
He looked up, startled.
“A fine speech,” she began.
His grip remained tight on his fork. It took him a moment to frame the correct response; when he did, it was almost a question. “Thank you.”
On impulse, she discarded her story of a nephew who sought a position in politics. Hoping candor might unsettle the young man, she said, “I hope I did not offend you earlier with my remarks about Mr. Phillips.”
“You didn’t. But I would be grateful if you did not raise the subject again. It is not a happy one for my family. He wrote inflammatory and unjust things about my father. We are sorry, of course, that the man is dead.”
“Are you sorry, Mr. Depew?”
He looked pained, as if she were twisting his ear. “… Of course.”
“Where were you on that day?”
“I was in Albany.”
“Why Albany? Your father is a senator, surely his business is in Washington.”
The smallest smile at her ignorance. “Albany is where the real decisions are made, Mrs. Wharton.”
Remembering the senator’s joke about strange doings in that place, she said, “But it seems they have decided that they no longer require your father in the Senate.”
“My father is retiring after many decades of service to the people of New York. As you can see, he is beloved.” He nodded around the room. “That is all the payment he has ever asked.”
That and three houses and who knows what else, thought Edith.
“And what will you do when your father retires?”
“I?” He seemed surprised. Clearly an inquiry as to his plans or feelings was a novel experience.
“Yes.”
For a long moment, he considered. “I shall feel the greatest relief imaginable, Mrs. Wharton.”
It was not the answer she had expected, and she took it for a lie. “You have no concern for your own future?”
“Oh, I expect something will be found for me.”
His tone was complacent, almost bored. She looked about the room, the happy chattering crowd that swirled past their odds-and-ends table. There the mayor, there Thomas Edison, Walter and Minnie, and everywhere, everywhere, Vanderbilts. In short, everyone who mattered in New York.
Skeptical, she said, “But it will not be this.”
“No, and it will not be a musicale at One West Fifty-Seventh Street. Or Christmas at Biltmore. Or tennis at Newport. But I shall miss none of it.”
Intrigued despite herself, she said, “Really? You feel you can simply … walk away? Live a different life entirely? You won’t miss telling people ‘I dined at Alice Vanderbilt’s the other evening. I had the most fascinating conversation with her son Reginald’?”
Depew Jr. looked toward that young man who had stumbled into a waiter and was now laughing his head off. “Has anyone ever had a fascinating conversation with Reggie Vanderbilt?”
Why, that was an attempt at humor, she thought. And not wholly terrible either.
Then she heard him say, “Did you know that he’s killed three people?”
Amazed, she could only repeat the number. “Three?”
“Driving. He killed two men in New York City, one in Cannes. He’s hit many more, of course. In Cannes, he was particularly put out because the ambulance blocked the road, making him late to the casino.”
Had she known this? She knew Reggie had accidents; she knew he drove badly. And yes, now that she thought of it, she had heard of people being hurt. But somehow the words killed or dead had never been used. She almost said, But poor driving isn’t murder, when she remembered Anna Walling’s remark about careless young fellows.
“He knocked over a messenger boy in Harlem. Injured him badly.”
That she did know and she corrected him, saying, “No, but that was the chauffeur’s fault.” She remembered feeling rather smug about her own driver and thinking the Vanderbilts sloppy in their hiring practices.
“Yes, because the chauffeur was paid handsomely to say he was driving the car at the time.”
She had known Reginald Vanderbilt his entire life. Inordinately fond of brandy milk punch, he was often drunk when she saw him and always quite stupid. She had thought he bumbled through life, as many youngest sons do. She had read about his wedding, his triumphs in carriage racing, a dinner with his sister, the Countess Széchenyi. Privately, she had heard about his gambling debts and his mistresses.
But she had never seen him as a killer.
“None of this has been in the papers,” she said stupidly.
“No, none of it has been,” he said. “Neither has the fact that Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt”—he nodded to Grace and Neily—“own almost nothing. The Newport house, the jewels, the Chinese vases, the linens, even the grand piano—all rented to create the illusion of wealth. Nor has it been in the papers that your friend George Vanderbilt has spent a significant portion of his capital on that palace in North Carolina. He is also in debt. You will notice that Alice never opens the Breakers and her New York home in the same year. She cannot afford to. Perhaps you can understand why I shall be relieved when my father leaves office. Soon, all that will be left is the auction block and the wrecking ball.”
Edith thought to assure him that he exaggerated. Then she remembered the Princeton Club. Which had once been Stanford White’s house. Which might one day be known as the place David Graham Phillips, America’s leading novelist, had been shot. Before that too was forgotten.
She thought back to the first time she had seen father and son. The senator using his awkward child like a prop to change the subject. The son cringing under his father’s hand. Yet he had not shrugged him off.
“But you admire your father.”
He considered. “Did you enjoy Natoma, Mrs. Wharton?”
“Not in the slightest.”
“And yet my father found a way to make it seem just fine. Almost as good as Carmen! So rather than feel embarrassed or awkward”—he gestured at the room—“everyone is happy. They know it was terrible, but they’ve saved face. My father is a gifted flatterer. He makes Americans feel good about themselves. Do you know he gave the oration at the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty? I was eight years old. I remember being confused, as if my father and the enormous copper lady were somehow getting married.”
He looked up at the dais. “When my father worked with old Cornelius Vanderbilt, they united New York through ferries and railroads.” He looked to William K. and Reggie. “Now they buy things. Gamble. Build palaces no one needs. I do admire my father. But I know what he has become.”
His disdain reminded her of the murdered man’s loathing for those who lived to consume. “Then you don’t blame David Graham Phillips for your father’s…” She thought fall, said instead, “… retirement.”
“Why would I blame David Graham Phillips?”
“Because he wrote Treason of the Senate.”
“Oh, that.” To her surprise, he looked apologetic. “Writers aren’t all that important, Mrs. Wharton. People don’t really care about books. If you’ll forgive me for saying so.”
Mildly piqued, she said, “The House of Mirth sold one hundred and forty thousand copies, Mr. Depew.”
“Yes, and the population of the United States is ninety-two million people.”
The calm assertion that books did not matter was such heresy to her that she had no idea how to refute it. As she tried to muster an argument, Depew gazed around the room as if taking a last look, then said, “Do you know? I should like to go to Paris.”
Stunned, she said, “Oh. Well, you must. Everyone should.” And stopped herself just in time from saying he must call on her.
* * *
Walter wished to go. Mrs. Goelet insisted they join her in her motor. Looking at Walter—lighter and livelier than she had seen him since his return from Egypt—the magnificent Mrs. Goelet beside him, Edith realized she was de trop and said she would go with Minnie.
“What on earth did you have to say to young Depew?” asked Minnie when she had given instructions to the driver.
She thought to say, We discussed books. But said instead, “Did you know Reggie Vanderbilt has killed three people?”
Minnie tugged at the edge of her glove. “I’m surprised it’s so few.”
And yet none of us have ever said anything about it. She remembered her fear when she considered the prospect of being in the same room as the man who had killed David Graham Phillips. Yet she had been in rooms—and cars—with Reggie Vanderbilt and thought nothing of it. It was not the same, she told herself. But why wasn’t it?
Minnie said, “Henry says there has been much tension and excitement. That you are flying here, there, and everywhere about this man who was murdered.”
“He died on my birthday,” she said. “Of course I take an interest.”
“He also says you asked him if you should part with Teddy.”
“Yes.”
Minnie put a strong hand over hers. She would not give advice; they had known each other too long for that. But the press of her fingers said, I am here. I will always be here. Edith squeezed her hand back to say, I know. And thank you.
Thinking again of Depew, she tried to cheer herself with self-congratulation. Anna Walling and Carolyn Frevert had been wrong. The person who shot David Graham Phillips had not been an agent of Depew or the Vanderbilts.
It did not cheer her. The man was still out there, twisted and stunted and ill. And he was not, she thought, as remarkable as she might wish. Unhappy young men, it seemed, were everywhere. Young Depew was disappointed and apathetic. Alice’s worthless Reginald. She wanted to say to her sister-in-law, These men who have had everything our world has to offer, these men who should be our future—what is wrong with them? Something has gone sour.
“When do you return to Europe?” Minnie asked.
“As soon as Dr. Kinnicutt delivers me. I pray it is soon. New York seems so appalling to me now. It has lost all sense of its history and tradition.”
They were approaching the Belmont. Minnie said, “I have come to the conclusion that New York is always appalling. That is its history and tradition. We all have our ‘New York.’ None of us gets to keep it. If we’re lucky, we hold fast to our little bit as long as we need it.”
She kissed her cheek. “Goodbye, Edith dear.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
It was mere steps to the hotel. She was close enough that the doorman touched his cap and reached for the door. And yet she raised her hand: Thank you, but no. The strain of the evening weighed on her too heavily for her to lie down and sleep. If she did, there was a very good chance she would never get up. It was the old debilitating misery. Were she in Lenox, she would walk in her garden. In Paris, retreat to her study. This was New York, where she had no garden nor study. So she had to walk. Even if only around the block. Leaving the doorman, she kept him firmly in mind. Should the killer suddenly leap from behind a lamppost, the doorman would hear her screams. Although whether he would reach her in time to stop a bullet was doubtful. Those handsome purple overcoats were heavy.
When she heard the footsteps behind her, she told herself that it was only because she was thinking so hard on murder that the hairs on the back of her neck rose and fear uncoiled in her belly. New York was a city of millions. Anyone might be behind her. The idea that Mr. Do Not Write had found her again was ridiculous.
Still, she began to walk faster. As she did, she calculated how far she had come from that comforting doorman. One corner turned. That meant two more before she was back within the doorman’s sight. Two more corners and what now seemed to her two endless streets.
If she stopped, would he stop?
She couldn’t risk it. It felt essential to appear unconcerned. Somehow, to acknowledge the threat would give him the excuse to strike. And so, no rushing. No shouting. Nothing unseemly. Without turning her head, she tried to find other people. The evening had been unforgivably long—truly, if she was not murdered, she was going to make sure not a penny of her money went to the Metropolitan ever again. The streets were largely empty. A pair across the street, but they had eyes only for each other.
Wanting reassurance, she slowed. Felt the person behind her slow as well.
One corner. The longest expanse of concrete ever laid in a city stretched before her. To her right, a darkened Grand Central Station, trapped like Gulliver under ropes and scaffolding. No travelers this late. Builders gone home. Surrounding the half-ruined, half-rising structure, a deep wound of excavated earth. A trench where a body might be hastily buried.
The fear was becoming intolerable. It clutched at her throat, attacked the sinews of her legs, leaving them rubbery. Every nerve screamed that she should run (something she was no longer sure she could do, her knees were so cranky) or, perversely, turn around and face it. It was the not knowing that was unbearable, the pretense that what was actually happening was not …
The final corner in view, she set her feet on the pavement. Turned.
And saw her husband.
He started, hands raised, as if he were the one followed. Then he peered at her through the winter murk of fog and streetlamp. She looked for White behind him, but the poor man had obviously gone to sleep never dreaming his middle-aged charge would escape.
“Oh, Teddy.”
Slowly she walked toward him, saw the old confused shame in his eyes.
“Have you been following me all this time?”
“Yes.”
“… Why?”
She saw him struggle with how to express it—words her power, not his. Watched as feelings of want, despair, and fear played over his face.
Finally he said, “You’re leaving me.”
“No.” Even as she realized, Yes.
She looked down at his feet, saw that he was wearing slippers. His coat was open, showing his nightshirt. His poor, scrawny legs were bare, the withered flesh trembling in the cold. His face, already harrowed by age, sagged toothless on one side. What had she seen when she first met him? A large man, laughing. Oddly comfortable in himself, unaware that others found him faintly ridiculous. He was a friend of her brother Harry, and her mother liked him. But he was older than she, and although they moved in the same circles, they did not know each other well. Still, the sight of him in a crowded room always brought relief—There’s a safe spot. Also boredom. He was not intimidatingly bright. Without paying much attention to him, she had absorbed that he sometimes laughed too late or too loudly. Other times, he seemed to drift from the conversation, a small frown on his face as if he’d forgotten something and then forgotten what it was he’d forgotten.
But then came the summer of the broken engagement. Everywhere, she was met with curiosity masked as sympathy. After the agony of that winter’s Patriarch’s Ball, where it was whispered that Edith Jones had broken with Henry Stevens for the sake of literary ambition, her mother had thought it best to avoid Newport, settling instead for Bar Harbor, Maine. One afternoon, Mamie Updike’s tennis tournament had been spoiled by rain, everyone fleeing into the house, where towels were brought and tea was served. As there was now nothing to do but talk, Edith had found herself nibbled at by a variety of people, hoping for details of her mortification. She felt like a horse that had fallen at the first hurdle, and now everyone was awaiting her dispatch with a mix of dread and anticipation. Finally, she had taken refuge by a window. When she felt him settle next to her, she wondered, Teddy Wharton, why on earth…? I’m hardly a fishing rod, rifle, or racehorse. She had pretended not to notice him.
Then she heard him say, “Poor old duck.”
The words, not meant for her, surprised her; concern was not something she was used to hearing from young men. Edith looked up, and he nodded to point by the fireplace, where a spaniel was cowering under a stout leather wingback chair. It was difficult to see the dog at first; she was surrounded by a forest of legs, swaying summer skirts, and light striped trousers. The dog lay on her belly, head between her paws, eyes darting miserably with every sudden, careless movement. They were not aware of her, those young, laughing people. But she was deeply aware of them.
“I’ve been trying to rescue her for ages,” he said.
Mamie Updike let out a peal of laughter. Terrified, the dog rose, tried to escape, only to discover she was barricaded by silk tea slippers and canvas tennis shoes. Mamie shrieked, “I’d simply adore to have him do me!” This in reference to a very fashionable painter. Edith and Teddy exchanged glances: One edition of Mamie Updike’s face was quite enough—the world did not require more. And the dog was still trembling.
She had said, “No creature should have to endure that.” Standing, she had nudged the chatterers away from the wingback—after the broken engagement, one more odd move made no difference. She moved the chair, caught the spaniel as it tried to flee, and brought it back in her arms to the window and Teddy Wharton’s applause.
“Bravo,” he said. “Joan of Arc.”
She accepted the praise even as she thought Joan of Arc probably represented the sum total of Teddy Wharton’s knowledge of women in history. But right now, she appreciated that he wasn’t clever enough to be spiteful. If he ever heard gossip, he probably forgot it the moment he left the person who had shared it.
Together, they soothed the spaniel, Teddy stroking its ears with surprising delicacy. “I think she’d be happier outside,” he said. “I agree,” she answered. So, out they went. It was lightly drizzling, but she was happy to exchange the noise and close confinement for fresh damp air and the feel of earth giving under her feet. As the spaniel trotted ahead, they congratulated themselves for liberating it. The talk turned to summer: Was he enjoying it? Very much. Was she?
