By The Sea, Book One: Tess (8 page)

"I have absolutely no idea what you're
talking about."

The maid laughed. "That's funny. In the
halls they say you're too smart by half. But I guess I can tell
them different, then."

"I don't see that it's your business to tell
anyone anything," Tess answered, distressed. "I don't even know
your name."

"Name's not important, miss. What I just
seen
is.
Well, if you'll excuse me, miss. I have to get back
to my own kind
."
The maid dropped into an exaggerated curtsy
and hurried back to a small knot of servants. Her sneering giggle
sliced the darkness between Tess and them.

Newport.
What else could you expect
from a town devoted to idle pursuit? Everyone, from the wealthiest
mistress to the lowliest scullery maid, was contaminated by the
atmosphere. Tradesmen, shopkeepers—no one was immune. Everyone was
jealous of everyone else, and a meanspiritedness seemed to lie over
the town like a damp July fog.
It's because Newport is in
America,
Tess decided. Castles and servants in breeches
belonged in England, but not in Newport.

"It's unnatural," she whispered, and
re-entered the mansion. She had hours still to think about it.

****

It was five in the morning and Tess,
sleepy-eyed and nursing a secret and quite irrational happiness,
was removing the last of the pins from Cornelia's honey-blond
hair.

Cornelia was even happier than Tess.

"Perfect! It was a perfect, divine evening,
the best ball I've ever attended. Poor silly Isabel, having to pass
it up. Oh Tess, it was wonderful! Could you hear the orchestra?
Some said Alva Vanderbilt's ballroom at Marble House was grander,
but that's ridiculous. What could possibly surpass perfection? If I
snapped at you, Tess, I didn't mean to. But I was so nervous, and
with good reason. I met—well, the most extraordinary—well, he's
just—oh! So handsome, with such wonderful manners, and he
dances—his eyes are piercingly blue—and wavy hair. Well! Everyone
just—
stared
at us, Tess. He claimed every waltz! Just tore
up my card! I suppose we behaved scandalously," she finished with
delicious satisfaction.

In Marie's absence Tess seemed to have been
suddenly promoted to confidante. "He sounds quite wonderful, Miss
Cornelia," she agreed, amused by her own new status. "Has he been
in Newport all season?"

"Of course not! I would've noticed him
instantly. And I daresay I wouldn't have escaped
his
attention either," she added coyly. "No, he's just arrived from—"
Her eyebrows tilted in a beguiling effort to repeat the name of his
birthplace. "—from ... Nasdrovia? Is that how he pronounced it? It
was rather hard, you see; his accent is enchantingly thick. Anyway,
it's someplace in a northern Baltic country, I think. He owns
millions of acres or whatever they measure land in. Oh Tess—I've
got myself a baron!"

Tess felt a keen disappointment the next day
when Mrs. Bracken informed her that she was to be relieved of her
temporary duty as a chambermaid. Now there was virtually no chance
of her ever seeing Edward Hillyard.

Maggie, to whom Tess had blurted the events
of the night before, was sympathetic. "It's a crying shame, if you
ask me, when a decent woman can't have two minutes' conversation
with a gentleman that's interested in her simple welfare without
folks staring. Is this America or isn't it?"

"You know, I thought that last night, Mag.
In Wrexham everyone was kinder, more relaxed about who they were.
But here! Everyone walks around all puffed up, and they'd as soon
boot you off the hill as let you come up and share the view."

"It's true, it's true," Maggie said with a
sigh. "That's why your Mr. Hillyard is so to be revered. Tess,"
Maggie said, taking her sister's hand in her own, "you
must
see him—just as he asks."

"But
how,
Maggie? Where? And most
important of all—why? Last night was a fairy tale, no more true
than—"

"Than the pretty stories you make up about
me? Oh no, Tessie; last night was
real.
No one can ever take
it away from you."

"Take
what
away, Mag? A few kind
words? I've seen a gentleman more worked up about an injury to his
favorite hunter. And yet …."

"Tell me, Tess. And yet what?"

"And yet I want to know the ...
nature
... of his interest. I'm sure I'm a fool, and yet I
have to know."

"Tessie, anything's possible. Wasn't it no
more than three hours ago that Bridget told me Mrs. Ellerhaus's
eldest son has fallen madly in love with his youngest sister's
governess and taken her away?"

Tess had been peeling an apple for her
sister with a pearl-handled purse knife that Lady Meller had given
her for her sixteenth birthday. Shocked, Tess stopped mid-peel and
said, "I don't believe it! To marry?"

"Well—not to say
marry,
necessarily.
Although, who knows? This
is
America, Tess. Anything can
happen in America. Isn't that why Father brought us all here, after
all?" she finished timidly.

The fact was, Maggie, like their mother, had
never felt comfortable with her family's emigration. She had
allowed herself to be persuaded by her younger sister's enthusiasm:
Tess, their father, and young Will had among them carried the day.
And now that they were here, each of the Morans was reacting
predictably to the pressures inherent in a land of opportunity.
Emigration had killed Mrs. Moran and crushed Maggie; but it had
fascinated young Will, seduced Mr. Moran, and ensnared Tess in ways
she never could have imagined.

The week after the Morans were processed
through Ellis Island, Tess's father, cocky and ebullient, had taken
his children to see the Liberty Colossus in New York Harbor. High
up inside the statue's torch, the Morans had been presented with a
vista that had inspired thousands upon thousands of newcomers
before them. But Maggie had shut her eyes and refused to look out,
convinced that the torch was going to break off from all their
weight and fall into the ocean. Tess herself had remained
captivated and profoundly silent, while her father and young Will
had jabbered on about ships and states and foreign trade. The
males, at least, were ready for anything.

"I miss Will," said Tess suddenly to Maggie
as she finished coring the apple and handed her sister half.
"Margaret Mary Moran! What if I were to sweet-talk Bridget into
giving you the afternoon? Would you like to come see Father and
Will with me?"

"If you can do that, Tess, you've got the
gift of blarney sure," Maggie answered with a grim smile. Bridget
wanted everything done yesterday; Maggie was methodical and
careful, but she was slow.

"You just watch me, my timid little turtle."
And Tess flew off to negotiate two hours' freedom for her sister.
The price was high: a fine lace handkerchief. But Tess didn't care.
She craved a dose of her father's anything's-possible optimism.

"There now!" Tess's voice was triumphant as
she flung open the door to their little garret room.

The smile died on her lips. Maggie had
crawled between the covers, flushed and exhausted.

"What's happened? Mother of God, what is
it?"

"Just a little ... fit, is all," said Maggie
with a faint smile. "It will pass. Bridget …?"

"Bridget said
fine
to the afternoon
off."

Maggie cleared the phlegm from her throat.
"I don't believe it."

"Well, you'd better believe it. A cup of
tea, and away we go," she said gently but without much hope. Maggie
wasn't going anywhere that afternoon.

"Fine ... yes, tea …."

Her eyes fluttered closed, and in another
moment she was asleep. It was the best thing for her, Tess knew, so
she left her asleep to make her way down to the waterfront. The
weather was fine, the distance not far. Less than half a mile
separated Bellevue Avenue from the waterfront, but every foot down
the hill marked a drop of several thousand dollars' annual income
for its inhabitants as the widely spaced Bellevue mansions of the
great financiers quickly gave way to the comfortable clapboard
houses of Newport's captains and merchants. Still farther down, the
series of streets that connected Spring Street to Thames turned
into little more than lanes, along which the shingled cottages of
fishermen and mill workers were packed cheek to jowl. No carriage
houses here; day workers couldn't afford horses. Nor had the
fishermen any use for them; their boats—their first loves—were a
mere spitting distance away.

The fishermen's cottages and shacks were
home to the wives, but not to their men, obviously. Curtains were
clean, but chimneys needed tucking; windows were washed, but roofs
needed shingling. If any hand tilled the bits and patches of soil
under the marigolds and herbs, it belonged to a woman whose man
simply passed through their bed between trips to sea.

The fishermen without families sometimes
rented out their houses while they were away. William Moran had
managed to find such a place for young Will and him, and that made
it possible for the elder William to find a job.

Tess dropped down to Thames, a crowded,
bustling street lined with boat shops and bakers, cigar stores and
bookstores, hat shops, liquor stores and produce marts, newspaper
offices, druggists and dry goods shops. If you had money to spend,
borrow, or deposit, you could probably do it on Thames Street.

Crossing Thames, Tess made her way toward
Waite's Wharf and her father's place. The house was less a cottage
than a shack, less a home than a shelter, tucked between a dark,
ill-equipped chandlery and a small fish market and cordage shop.
The shingles on the weather side had been blown off long ago, and
sheets of tin had been hammered over the skeleton. The roof quite
obviously leaked; Tess could see that the south-facing eaves
beneath it had rotted away. If the shack had ever been painted, it
was not in Tess's lifetime.

Lifting her skirts slightly, Tess treaded
gingerly over a load of quahog shells that had been recently spread
but not yet crushed by the wheels of passing wagons into a ground
cover of small white pieces; the area reeked of the decaying
shellfish. Fishermen passed Tess, staring; a wagon driver whistled
and smacked his lips provocatively. Tess had got clear directions
from her brother a few days ago, but he had not prepared her for
the coarseness of it all, and she winced.

I have grown used to the splendor of
Bellevue Avenue,
she thought critically.
I would rather not
know that this part of town exists.
There was nothing so wrong
with the waterfront, but it was a man's part of the world, without
either glamour or softness. She wasn't afraid, but she felt out of
place.

The door to the shack was of
tongue-in-groove pine, warped and peeling and with a broken latch.
Tess knocked and it swung inward.

"Father? Will?"

From within a pleasant baritone said, "Tess,
is it? Come in, girl. And about time too."

Tess opened her eyes wide, trying to adjust
to the dimly lit room—for it was no more than that. A cot and a
straw mat placed end to end along one wall, and a table and two
rickety chairs along the other, justified the landlord's claim that
the house came furnished. A small filthy window let in just enough
light to let Tess see, after a while, that her father was finishing
his midday meal in a chipped and battered bowl. The dogs at Beau
Rêve ate from better crockery.

Tess kissed her father shyly on his cheek
and asked, "Where's young Will, Father?"

"Ah-ha! Wouldn't you just like to know," he
said with the childlike good humor that she associated with him.
"There's news at this end, girl. Will has got employ as a ball-boy
at the Casino. What do you say to that now, hey?"

"I say that's good news indeed," said Tess,
drawing up the other wobbly chair and sitting down gingerly on it.
"Because I don't think Maggie will be kept on much longer as
laundry maid."

"Well, if you get down to it, I never
should've left you two up there, any more than I'd leave young Will
to fend for hisself in the streets. A man's obliged to his family,
and no mistake." He rubbed the back of his neck with a huge,
calloused palm the way he had of doing whenever the world outside
did not conform to the one inside his head. "Ah, well, no matter,
really. Things'll work their way through. So you think Mag will be
coming home, then?"

"Home?" The word sat like a stone on her
tongue as she looked around her.

"It's true, the place needs a woman's
touch," her father agreed sheepishly. "Knicky-knacks and such. But
girl, I've been damned
busy
at the smithy's. It's uphill
work, all the way. Still, the place has a future for me, Tess." He
folded one massive arm over the other on the table, which
immediately disappeared. "I see me own business down the road a
piece. Maybe a partnership; then, someday, all mine. See if I'm
wrong."

She stared at him.
Here we go again,
she thought. "Oh? How will you manage it, Father?" she asked him
aloud. Always before, Tess had humored her father's sanguine moods,
falling in with his endless happy forecasts of prosperity and good
times for the Morans. For the first half of her life he'd convinced
her that they would one day own a dairy farm; for the last half,
he'd had his heart and high hopes set on being master of a river
barge. He knew nothing of animal husbandry and less of navigation,
but who cared? There was time enough to learn, time enough to save,
and meanwhile—plenty of time to dream.

But the sands were running low; somehow Tess
had to make her father see the peril they were all in.
"How will
you manage it?"
she repeated, nearly shouting. "Has Mr. Needham
given you a raise? Or promised you a share? Has he given you a man
to work under you, or started teaching you to keep the books? Has
he adopted you or made you his heir?"