Cashelmara (31 page)

Sarah’s father, Francis Marriott, lived in a gorgeous, chunky building that looked as if it might have been made out of gingerbread. There was a cobbled courtyard, a massive flight of steps to the front door and a blank array of dark windows below a turreted roof. From one end of the gilded gutters to the other, gargoyles, cherubs, satyrs and griffins leered at one another in exotic profusion.

“I should like to live in a house like that,” said my little half-brother David, who was unashamedly sentimental and loved anything that reminded him of his favorite fairytales.

“How much did it cost to build?” inquired my other little brother. Thomas had a mathematical mind and already kept careful accounts of his pocket money.

“That’s a very vulgar question, Thomas,” said Marguerite, who had become daily more English since she had left this same house eight years before to become my father’s second wife. “I haven’t the slightest idea of the answer, nor is it necessary for you to know.” And when she smiled at me across the top of his sandy head I remembered Derry’s theory that Marguerite was secretly in love with me—which was awful nonsense, of course, because she had been devoted to my father, everyone knew that, and in fact she had been so prostrated by his death that this visit to America to see her family had been planned with her convalescence in mind. Derry never liked Marguerite. I can’t think why. I always liked her very much; in fact, I was fonder of her than I was of any of my sisters, and I believe she was just as fond of me as she was of her brother Francis. She was a marvelous girl, very bright and bobbish, if you know what I mean—not pretty but smart as freshly polished silver with its glitter and hidden strength and sharp pointy edges. Certainly apart from Derry there was no one whose company I preferred to hers, and on the voyage from Liverpool to New York I had looked forward to many companionable hours with her while we promenaded on the main deck or whiled away the hours in the grand saloon.

Never had I been more disappointed. She was busy each day with the boys, for David suffered from seasickness and Thomas was always what Nanny described as a “handful.” Marguerite hardly left either of them alone for a minute, and by the time evening came and the boys were safely stowed in their bunks she lost no time in retreating to her own stateroom to recuperate. To make matters worse, the sea was pretty choppy most of the time, and I knew Marguerite was a nervous passenger. I didn’t blame her, because I was nervous myself. It’s all very well for people to say gaily that ocean travel is as safe as houses these days. They’re the people who always take care to stay on shore and run no risk of disaster whenever some great hulk of a liner has “disappeared without trace.” It might have helped if the steamship companies themselves had put out some word of reassurance, but their brochures spoke only of the gilded saloons and luxurious staterooms and all the splendid food that passengers could eat in the most delightful surroundings. The word “safety” was never mentioned, and neither was seasickness, discomfort and boredom.

However, I don’t want to paint too black a picture of the journey, and since I myself didn’t suffer from seasickness I really shouldn’t complain. I had a fine stateroom, rather small, but at least my bunk was slightly bigger than a coffin and there was enough room for an armchair. The main screw of the engine was hellishly noisy (even though the
Russia,
a new boat, was supposed to have improved the noisiness; God alone knows what the previous ships must have been like). However, one did get used to the noise, although the vibrations were harder to ignore. The public rooms were very lavishly appointed, and I thought the food was pretty good even though I was told by the experienced sea salts that as far as menus went Cunard couldn’t hold a candle to any of the ships in the old Collins line. I felt like saying, “Yes, but at least the Cunard ships stay afloat,” but of course I didn’t, for it would have been tempting fate, and since the Collins supporters were all Americans such a remark might have started one of those nasty arguments about nationality. Besides, since the Collins line was defunct any arguments would have been pointless.

Toward the end of the voyage the weather improved, much to everyone’s relief, and Marguerite began to look less green. In the hope of luring her to stay up late for a chat I raised the subject of my marriage (she had always been dead keen for me to marry), but now to my surprise she showed no interest in the subject and even went so far as to tell me it would be much better if I postponed marrying until I was at least thirty years old because marriage did so tie a man down. This was such a complete reversal of all her earlier advice to me that when I’d recovered from my astonishment I couldn’t help remarking on such a brisk turnabout

“I’ve changed my mind,” she said—very snappishly, I thought. “A woman’s entitled to change her mind now and then, isn’t she?”

Well, it was very unlike Marguerite, and I didn’t know what the devil lay at the bottom of it, but in the end I attributed her attitude to lingering seasickness and tried not to be too down about her snappishness.

My first impression of New York was that it was a magnificent place to approach by sea.

“There’s Sandy Hook!” exclaimed Marguerite, bobbing up and down like a jack-in-the-box by this time. “And the white houses beyond those lovely sands over there belong to Rockaway Beach and Fire Island. Oh look! You can see the hotels of Coney Island! How clear it is today—and there’s the Quarantine Station in the lower bay …”

But I was more interested in a glowering headland and the enormous network of fortifications ahead. Everyone says New York is impregnable, and I’m quite sure they’re right. I’d never seen so many guns in all my life. The whole shore was lined with them.

“Staten Island!” sobbed Marguerite in ecstasy. “The Narrows. And oh look, Thomas, David, look at all the little boats in the Inner Bay!”

We chugged into the great harbor, the city straight ahead of us, Brooklyn on our right and Jersey City on our left. The Hudson River stretched north as far as the eye could see, and the color of the water would have put even the Bay of Naples to shame.

“The light is Italian,” I said, fascinated. “It’s not English at all.”

“Well, of course it’s not English!” cried Marguerite, rabidly patriotic by this time, and hung over the rail as if she could already see her brother waiting at the docks.

He was there, of course. He came hurrying to meet us, and Marguerite ran into his arms so fast that I was surprised she didn’t trip over her skirts. I must say that Cousin Francis, a sporty-looking old cove, did seem awfully pleased to see her. He was pretty civil to me too and patted the boys on their heads and said what fine fellows they were.

“Dearest Francis!” said Marguerite, mopping up her tears with his very own silk handkerchief. Being an American handkerchief, it was almost as big as a tablecloth.

New York is a jolly sort of city, rather plain but with lots of spunk, like a terrier puppy. I don’t care for cities myself, but I should imagine that if you do like them you would easily find New York exciting. Certainly I was excited by the time I entered the drawing room of that house on Fifth Avenue, but that was because I knew I was at long last going to meet Sarah.

I can see that drawing room now. The “shades” were drawn to keep out the oppressive summer heat, and three little black boys in livery stood around waving enormous fans. Unfortunately they were of little use to me as I was already so hot that my shirt was sticking to my back and the sweat was almost washing away my trousers.

Sarah wore a lilac gown. Her skin, untouched by that savage foreign sun, was creamily pale so that her heavily coiled hair seemed unusually dark. She had brown eyes, but they were such a light shade of brown that they seemed golden. They were extraordinary eyes, wide-set and with a slight upward slant that emphasized her high cheekbones. Her mouth, straight and rich, was a luscious shade of red. She had an unbelievably small waist, slender shoulders and a long and lovely neck.

She was gorgeous. I instantly forgot all the pale simpering English roses who came out each season in London, forgot all the overeager misses on the boat and even forgot how to say a simple “how do you do.”

“Allow me, my dear Patrick,” said Cousin Francis Marriott in his plummy voice which reminded me of a bad actor playing Macbeth, “to make the formal introductions. Of course since you’ve been corresponding with each other for some months introductions are hardly necessary, but …” He waffled on for a while about God knows what, but finally he stopped talking and I managed to say something like “Um. Well … delighted, Miss Marriott. Cousin Sarah, I mean. Yes. How are you?” I was red as a lobster by this time, and so hot that I couldn’t conceivably have been any hotter even if, like a lobster, I had been flung into a pot of boiling water.

She looked me up. And she looked me down. The ice at the North Pole was never half as cool as Miss Sarah Marriott in New York City on June the eighteenth, 1868.

“I’m delighted to see you in person at last, Cousin Patrick,” she said with a casual, graceful formality. “Welcome to New York. It’s considerably hot, isn’t it?” She gave me no time to reply but glided neatly past me to meet my little brothers, and I saw only her straight back and that lush opaque hair coiled above her long lovely neck.

My embarrassing gaucheness had meant nothing to Sarah Marriott. She was eighteen years old and had already received proposals from a Russian prince, a California millionaire and an Italian count. She was one of the great beauties of New York society, so accustomed to wealth that fortunes were meaningless to her, so used to admiration from supremely eligible men that my speechless wonder was almost beneath her notice. I knew at once that she was spoiled and pampered; I knew at once that she was enjoying giving all her suitors a hell of a fine run for their money; I knew too that I had about as much chance of success as a donkey in a steeplechase for thoroughbreds—but I didn’t care. All I cared about was that for once in my life I didn’t have to be embarrassed by my good fortune because for once in my life, as far as Sarah Marriott was concerned, I was no more than one of a crowd.

I couldn’t believe it when she said she would marry me. We were sitting in the garden under a shady tree, and Sarah was drawing a pattern on the gravel path with her parasol. The weather was still unspeakably hot, but three weeks had passed since I had arrived in New York and I was more used to the climate by this time. We were discussing the merits of dogs and cats. Sarah had a nasty overbred Pekinese called Ulysses (after General Grant, who was running for President that year) and desperately wanted a white cat, which she planned to call Omar Khayyam. She was just saying how she hoped her father would give the creature to her when I heard myself announce, “Sarah, I’d like to give you anything you want. You wouldn’t possibly want to marry me by any chance, would you, because I’d be awfully thrilled if you did.”

She burst out laughing. I suppose it
was
rather a silly way of proposing, but I’m not much good at acting parts and making flowery speeches, and at least I said exactly what I felt.

“That’s the best proposal I ever had!” she exclaimed, still laughing. “Have you spoken to Papa?”

“No, I didn’t know I was going to propose. That’s to say, I thought I’d wait. I mean …”

“If you hurry you can catch him before he leaves for Wall Street.”

“You mean you—”

“Oh yes,” she said. “I’d love to. I was afraid you were never going to ask me, and we’ve known each other almost a month. I’d practically abandoned hope.”

“But why—all your other suitors …”

Sarah yawned and fanned herself. “You’re different from the others. You talk to me as if I were human instead of an illustration in a picture book. And you’ve never once tried to slobber kisses all over me when you’ve thought no one was looking. I can’t bear men dribbling affection like spaniels.”

“May I kiss you now?”

“Very well, but don’t slobber.”

I did my best not to. Sliding my arms around her waist, I kissed her once on each cheek and once briefly on the lips. She relaxed in my arms, her body pressed against mine and suddenly I felt as if I had had two drams of poteen and was as strong as an ox. I moved back sharply, but she hardly noticed my withdrawal. She was already talking again in her low, oddly accented voice, saying that she would be glad to be married because her mother didn’t understand her and her brother Charles was away in Boston for so much of the year and no company for her at all, and as for Papa, well, she guessed it would nearly kill her to leave him, but.…

“He’ll always think of me as a child,” said Sarah, “and I’m not. I’m grown up and I want to
be
grown up. I want to have my own house and my own life, even if it means I have to be separated from darling Papa.”

“Cousin Francis Marriott is in his mid-forties and thinks himself an awful swell,” I had written to Derry soon after my arrival. “He drinks two bottles of port a day, fancies himself as a first-rate driver of a four-in-hand and loves to talk about ‘The Street,’ which is where the Americans do their financial business. Marguerite told me he hates England, but
he
tells me he now has profitable connections with a large mercantile firm in Manchester as the result of the North of England’s pro-Unionist sympathy during the Civil War, and Cousin Francis’ heart is where the money is. Also Sarah is dying to visit Europe and she loves everything English (it’s become the fashion for American girls to yearn for the Olde Worlde). So since Cousin Francis dotes on Sarah so much he doesn’t dare be too anti-European or anti-British for fear of offending her. Marguerite says she would never have believed that her brother could be so subservient to a woman and is quite annoyed that Cousin Francis should dote so on Sarah, but I think Marguerite is jealous because he was always more like a father to her than a brother and Sarah more like a sister than a niece. Marguerite even seems to disapprove of my admiration for Sarah and keeps trying to interest me in other girls. I must say, I do think Marguerite’s behavior is a little odd. However, Sarah’s mother approves of my conduct, so I really have nothing to worry about.