Onyx (5 page)

“Father loved to travel and I grew up in inns and hotels across Europe. When I was little I truly believed food emerged whole-cooked from dumbwaiters. And note,” she added triumphantly, “it didn't fall.”

On the high throat of her shirtwaist, where most women wore a broach, she had pinned a yellow hothouse rose. Tom could smell its sweetness.

“You should leave here,” he heard himself say.

She looked up. The rain was the only sound in the warm study. “But why?” she asked. “I'm happy.” The softening of her full underlip told Tom that she lied.

“This is wrong for you, all wrong.”

“Detroit?”

“With all your traveling, you must speak a lot of languages. You could be a teacher.”

One delicate black brow arched questioningly.

“Your father's dead, isn't he?”

She hesitated. “Ill.”

“Then why not find another way to support yourself, and him?”

She continued to look at him in perplexity. All at once she reddened to the hairline. The petals shook at her throat. “Ida's hinted about Uncle, but she's never come right out with the truth. So he
did
have them here.”

For a moment, utterly confused, Tom saw only the rosy blur that was her blushing face.

“You really are his niece?”

The pinkness had receded, leaving her cheeks vivid. Tilting her head coquettishly, she fluttered her lashes.

“You are, aren't you?”

“Ahh, and I imagined it discreet when he set me up as a kinswoman. But you've found me out. Well, nothing remains but to confess and seek your advice. You know Major Stuart. You've seen how he's been with his other, uhh, nieces. Tell me, Mr. Bridger, what can I expect in the way of jewelry?” She touched the rose and both earlobes. “Diamonds and emeralds? Or does he give on a more modest scale? Turquoise and garnets? I won't accept paste. No. Definitely paste won't do.”

“Miss Dalzell, how shall I apologize? What can I say?” He spoke stiffly, attempting to hide his mortification, then burst out, “I'm a prime fool, aren't I?”

“Perceptive. All Europe knows me as
La Grande Horizontale
.”

A log fell in the fireplace, and at the sharp crack they both jerked. When their eyes met again, she touched the rose, this time a shy gesture as though she regretted the raciness of her last remark.

“Father and Uncle are half brothers,” she said. “Father's here too.”

“He is?” Tom gulped. “My only excuse is you and your father weren't at old Mr. Stuart's funeral. I have no excuse except—”

“Enough, enough,” she interrupted, smiling. “Mr. Bridger, Uncle tells me you're building a wonderful no-horse-shay. What will you do when you're finished?”

“Sell it. I need the money to build more.”

“How many?”

“A million or so eventually.” He atoned for his disastrous stupidity by exposing the full extent of his dream, not even voiced to Hugh. “Just think. People will travel long distances, and fast, twenty-five miles an hour, without any worry about watering or feeding or resting a horse.”

“Like on a train?”

“Yes, but not tied to the track.”

She clasped her hands around her knees. “I've always admired people who have their futures charted out.”

“You will too. Later.”

She shook her head. “I'm one of those rowboats that drift along a canal on sunny days, pausing occasionally to enjoy some pleasant shade.”

Footsteps moved across the colonnaded hall. Antonia jumped up, the napkin falling unnoticed from her lap.

“Mademoiselle?” said the French nurse.

“
Excusez-moi. Je ne savais pas qu'il était si tard
.” She turned to Tom. “Mr. Bridger, please excuse me.”

He watched her run upstairs to be engulfed by the gloom of the landing. A door opened and closed quietly. Tom retrieved her napkin, his eyes somber. He knew that whatever Antonia Dalzell found behind the door was as oppressive to her as his mother's high, racing voice had been to him.

IV

Given the belief that certain characteristics show like dye stain through a family, it would be easy to infer that Mr. Dalzell and Major Stuart inherited their self-indulgence from their mother. It was their sole shared trait. The Major, younger by five years, was a large, exuberant man who enjoyed his business successes as well as sensual pleasures. Mr. Dalzell, narrow and drawn into himself, fed his virtues on a lack of energy. He had no ambition beyond an urge to view cathedrals and sites of classical antiquity. At eighteen, coming into a small inheritance, he sailed for Europe, where a favorable rate of exchange cushioned his wanderings. In his forty-first year he married the spinster daughter of an impoverished Florentine house. Ill health plagued her and she died before Antonia was three. Had Mr. Dalzell found the child less winning, he would have deposited her in some convent school, but her liveliness diverted him, so wherever they halted he engaged a chambermaid to tend her physical needs. Her education he handled in a scattershot method, buying a wide variety of books that she read herself. He tried to curb her enthusiasm. “You mustn't devour your ice that way,” he would tell her. Or, “It's not necessary to clap so loudly at every joke Punch makes.” Or, “If you hug the scullery maid like that, Antonia, you'll lose her respect.” In the end, though, his daughter's joyous nature proved too strong for Mr. Dalzell, who adored her completely. She continued to squeeze her small delights to herself as she did the kittens he took forcibly from her each time they moved on.

Mr. Dalzell was the one fixed point in Antonia's life. She loved him utterly.

They chanced to be in Paris on her sixteenth birthday, and to celebrate he took her to hear Madame Galli-Marié in his favorite opera,
Alceste
. During the intrada he was taken with a chill. By the time they reached their hotel a fever shuddered through his narrow frame.

Antonia, terrified, cabled the uncle she had never met. The half brothers had not exchanged a letter in more than ten years, yet the Major set out immediately for Paris, a gesture that bound Antonia to him in grateful love. Eventually the Major brought them to Detroit.

V

Antonia closed the door quietly. “Good afternoon, Father,” she said.

Mr. Dalzell sat in an armchair by the fire, a bed pillow propping his head, his hands resting laxly on knees, slippered feet parallel. His maroon dressing gown moved perceptibly with each breath. Strands of hair were neatly combed across his bald skull, his jaw was faintly rosy from recent shaving. The petulant lines around his mouth had relaxed so his narrow lips were serene.

“I'm sorry I'm late, Father,” she said. “I was talking to Mr. Bridger, he's mending Uncle Andrew's clock—he's the best engineer at the factory. Father, it's just as well you didn't meet him.” She tilted her head. “Do you want to know why?”

Rain dashed against the windows.

When Mr. Dalzell blinked, Antonia answered her question. “You love the past, and for him it's all the future. He's inventing a machine that'll take the place of a carriage. He's positive it'll change the world. He's very unusual.”

Firelight glowed on her enthusiasm. She believed, as she believed in God, that her father retained his critical mind, and she wanted him to like Tom. Accordingly, she described Tom's ability to restore an eighteenth-century clock.

After a few minutes she selected a bonbon from a large beribboned box, nibbling the milk chocolate coating from the nougat below, sitting on the chaise near him, her knees drawn up luxuriously, opening a book to its leather marker. “‘Natasha had not a free moment all day,'” she read, “‘and not once had time to think what lay before her. In the damp chill air, in the closeness and half dark of the swaying carriage, she pictured to herself for the first time what was in store for her at the ball, in the brightly lighted hall—music, flowers, dancing, and the tzar, all the brilliant young people of Petersburg. The prospect before her was so splendid.…'”

Antonia's voice grew dreamy as it always did when she read the scenes about willful, wonderful Natasha who embraced love. Mr. Dalzell's eyes closed, his chin dropped, and Nurse Girardin, having returned, covered him with a crocheted afghan.

“Father listened longer today,” Antonia said, shutting her leather-bound
War and Peace
.

“
Oui
.”

“He's getting better. Definitely improving. Don't you agree?”

Nurse Girardin lifted Mr. Dalzell's feet to the ottoman. She had never heard of a recovery in a case like Mr. Dalzell's. Antonia was gazing at her hopefully, though, and the nurse had become very fond of the girl. “
Certainement
,” she said.

Antonia flushed and left the sickroom. She leaned against the black walnut paneling, her eyes squeezed shut, her nails clenched so tightly into her palms that the knuckles shone, holding in her terrible grief, which she could not express. The Major had made it very clear that one never discussed disturbances of the mental process either inside or outside the house. After a minute she straightened up and went slowly to her room.

VI

“Antonia, I want to talk to you,” said the Major. They were in the study awaiting dinner. The Major stamped to the fireplace. “Ida tells me that you lunched with Bridger.”

“We had sandwiches in here, yes.” She looked at the clock. “He has it keeping perfect time.”

“Bridger worked for a watchmaker,” the Major replied. “That's why I chose him.”

“That is a very old clock,” Antonia said. “An antique.”

“I'm aware of that.”

“He couldn't have seen another one like it.”

“The principle of the mechanism is the same.” The Major banged at a smoldering log.

“Uncle,” Antonia said demurely. “I do believe you're telling me I shouldn't find anything admirable in Mr. Bridger's mending your monstrosity.”

“On the contrary. I'm informing myself that when a pretty, vivacious girl lives in a house only a blundering idiot sends a mechanic to call.”

“In America isn't everyone equal?”

“It's the same here as Europe. People of certain social level don't mix with tradesmen.” The Major dropped the poker. “I'm not blaming you, my dear. I'm blaming myself. You're a vivacious, charming girl, and I'm an old bachelor. I should have recognized that you aren't the type to be shut up like this, with no friends your own age.”

“I've never had friends, Uncle,” she said, summoning a wraith of a smile. “When Father's better I'll be dancing all the time.”

The Major touched her hand gently. “Antonia, you're like me. You like fun. You need good company. I'll arrange a party for the young crowd, and by Christmas, you'll see, you'll be in the swing.”

The Major's entertaining had been limited to an occasional evening of poker and bourbon with his cronies. He had, however, a circle of married friends, some of whom were parents of children about Antonia's age. At his instructions Heldenstern wrote eighteen invitations to a “Dessert Social” and Flaherty, the Major's Irish coachman, delivered the creamy linen envelopes.

The following morning's mail brought half a dozen regrets. That left a good many acceptances to dribble in.

At seven thirty the evening of the party Antonia came downstairs. The hem of her white tulle dress showed a faint circle where it had been lengthened but otherwise was fresh and charming with its large puffed sleeves. High around her slender throat she wore a strand of seed pearls that had belonged to her mother. Her mass of dark hair was caught up in a Grecian knot from which wayward black tendrils escaped. She looked nervous, excited, radiantly eager.

The Major waited at the foot of the staircase. Bowing, he said, “Exquisite.”

“You're being gallant, Uncle,” she said. Her voice shook with uncertainty and hope.

“Take my word, the boys'll be at your feet.” He offered his arm.

They went into the drawing room. The potted hydrangeas Antonia had brought in could not hide the faint musty odor emanating from the huge Spanish tapestry. The telephone rang three times in rapid succession. Ida, her face angrier than usual, came in to tell them that three of the guests had come down with cases of grippe.

Antonia's gloved hands were so tightly clasped that the tulle of her bouffant sleeves quivered.

By eight thirty the last of the guests' parents had telephoned. Antonia sat pale and stern, her enormous dark eyes glistening as though she, too, suffered from grippe. The Major could not look at her. He cursed himself for a fool. Of course none of his friends would permit their tender adolescents under his roof when their ladies refused to venture past his gateposts. Breathing hard, he stamped from the room, returning with a freshly opened bottle of Lafite-Rothschild and two delicate tulip-shaped glasses that he filled.

“Here, my dear,” he said gruffly.

Antonia's fingers convulsed on the narrow stem. There was a loud snap. Both parts of the goblet fell, shattering on parquet.

“Your beautiful Baccarat!” she cried. “Oh, Uncle, the set's ruined. I'm sorry. I'm so clumsy. I ruin everything!”

She ran upstairs.

Her childishly brave attempt to disguise the true cause of her misery touched the Major, and he stood longing to follow her but knowing she did not wish it. In the few months Antonia had been in his house he had come to care for her in a way he had never cared for anyone before. For the first time in his life he felt something difficult, responsible, binding. “The child needs a proper father,” he muttered to himself.

VII

The rest of that year and the following January were mild, but at the beginning of March a freezing blizzard clamped over the Midwest.

One morning, as Antonia helped the Major on with his coat, he inquired, “Can you skate?”