Onyx (14 page)

“Not at all. He won't be up to heavy physical labor, that's all.”

“Never Hugh's preference.” Tom smiled. “What about the bandages?”

“They'll come off, eventually. For the time being, though, bring him to the clinic twice a week to have them changed.”

“He dreads that tweezering. Is it necessary?”

The doctor scratched at his freckled cheek, leaving red marks. His irritation was not directed at Tom, for whom he felt a natural affinity, but at any lay questioning. “Sound medical procedure,” he said. “The left side of the face appears to be a third-degree burn. That might mean scarring.”

Gazing through the shafts of dusty sunlight that fell from clerestory windows, Tom watched an orderly lift Hugh, help him into the topcoat. “Major Stuart asked you to look after Hugh, didn't he?”

“Yes.”

“I'd like the bills sent to me.”

“The Major has always taken care of accidents at the factory.”

“But this is
my
brother.”

The doctor cleared his throat. “I know that your horseless carriages were all destroyed in the fire, and—”

“I'm through with that,” Tom interrupted. “I have a proper job now. Chief engineer at the Edison Illuminating Company. I can afford to pay you, sir.”

“Bridger, you know you're refusing because of the insurance investigation. Well, let me tell you, that's a fine bit of idiocy. Men sifting through the ashes for a week—what a waste of time! They found nothing. Of course they found nothing. There's nothing to find. Lloyd's is satisfied to pay the claim.” The tall, stout nun rustled up to the desk. McKenzie ignored her and the patients who were watching from nearby beds. “Losing the factory is the worst kind of blow to Andrew Stuart. I've known him all my life, and I've never seen him like this, not even when he was wounded at Gettysburg. The man's in utter despair.”

“Send me my brother's bills.”

“All right, all right, you're being foolish, but I understand.”

“Thank you, sir. You'll get the money fast.”

“The fees don't worry me. My concern is the left side of my patient's face.” The doctor consulted a stiff sheet of paper, then looked at the nun. “What do you think, Sister?”

She sighed. “In my opinion, there's permanent damage.”

“I concur.” He turned to Tom. “Don't mention this to your brother. We don't want him to brood until he's regained some of his strength. We're lucky he pulled through, very lucky. Now. Take him home.”

VII

A windy, cold morning, drafts prowled the horse-drawn cab, and as soon as they reached the flat Tom heaped the covers from both pallets on Hugh, heating milk and sugar, adding whiskey, a toddy. Hugh drowsed. Tom sat with his hands on the round table, his new pink fingertips curled loosely. Before the fire he had always brought home a spring to fix, a pin to file, a sketchpad to figure a more efficient order for assembly. Now his free minutes disappeared as meaninglessly as pebbles tossed into a murky pond.

There was a light rap at the door. Intuitively he knew it was Antonia.

Though he had not seen her since before the fire, she was forever in his mind. Antonia, Antonia. He had nursed a profound resentment of her guardian before the fire, but now his feelings extended beyond loathing. He could not bear the thought of Antonia living in the gray mansion with the Major. They must be married right away. And the mystery of his decision was how it hurdled every single practical consideration: his lack of money, Hugh's condition, the mound of unpaid medical bills, Mr. Dalzell's expenses, Antonia's own wishes. For Tom there was only this obsessive truth. She could not continue to live with his enemy.

Another rap sounded. Steeling himself to explain his intractably adamant heart, he went to the door.

Antonia's arms were laden. “I brought some things for Hugh,” she said, adding in a rush, “Tom, I had to see you, I had to. It's been so long.” Delicate shadows underlined her eyes.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I've been so worried,” she said, setting down the packages: a tissue-wrapped oblong that was probably a book, four hothouse peaches nestling in a basket, a jar of tawny jelled broth. “How is he?”

“Asleep. I just brought him from the hospital.”

“Dr. McKenzie told me.”

“Have you been ill?”

She shook her head. “No. Very worried.”

Antonia looked so pale that Tom did not know how to put his demand. Instead he said, “Thank you for the letters.” Each day one or more notes had come from her. “I'm not much at writing, but hearing from you sure helped.”

“Tom …” Hesitating, she fingered the basket. “There's my seed pearls from my mother, and my gold bar pin. You could get something for them to help start the new racer.”

“There's not going to be another.”

“But you said entering sweepstakes would attract buyers.”

“I'm finished with that,” he said firmly. “No more automobiles.”

“You've had a setback, a horrible one, but—”

“It brought me to my senses.”

“You sold all you built.”

“To rich people. Luxurious toys wasn't what I had in mind.”

“Tom, please don't be like this. You're such a shining, shining man.”

“I've thrown away my silver armor,” he said. “How do you like it?”

Her brows raised in perplexity. “What?”

“The flat.”

She glanced at the curtainless window, the sink piled with dishes, the cheap, squat stove, then said ruefully, “Anybody would know that bachelors live here.”

Of course she would not see it in the light of poverty. Antonia's eyes never pigeonholed the gradations between rich and poor. “Henry Ford's quit. He put in a word with his supervisor at the Edison, and I have his old job. Chief engineer. It pays well.” In a louder tone that sounded wretchedly forced to him, he said, “We can be married.”

A joyous smile animated her drawn face. “Tom, I think about that all the time.”

“Tomorrow morning we'll go across to Windsor and find a justice of the peace.”

“
Tomorrow
? Canada?”

“You aren't of age, and here they ask for a birth certificate. Over there they don't.”

“Father's been coughing all week, and—”

“Antonia, your father's never going to be himself again,” Tom said with as much gentleness as he could. “I need you so much now.”

“And I need you,” she whispered.

“I figure it'll take me four months to pay off Hugh's bills, then we'll be able to rent a house, hire a foreign woman, bring your father to live with us. He won't even realize you're gone.”

“Tom, Father's not a lump of wood. He knows, he understands.” She looked down at the basket. “Uncle's ill. Losing the factory's a terrible blow to him. He's broken.”

“Doctor McKenzie told me that Hugh'll be scarred.”

“Oh, Tom.” Her eyes glazed with tears.

“The left side of his face. God knows what he'll look like.
That's
your poor, broken uncle's work.”

“You've heard about that stupid investigation.” She was on her feet. “It's as if he's lost a child, Tom.”

“He didn't lose that child, he sold it for a quarter of a million dollars.”

“He was home when the fire started.”

“Did I say he lit the match? He owned an unprofitable factory and he needed money, so Hugh was squashed like an ant at a picnic!” Rage quivered through Tom, and to regain his control he bit down on his lip, hard.

“Tom,” she said, reaching toward him. “Why are we arguing?”

“
I
was talking about us, about our being married.” Tom was torn by the strongest desire to hold her, to bury himself in her slim, ardent body, to reassure himself that she, indeed, loved him, yet in his craze of anger and doubts it seemed perfectly reasonable that he not permit himself to take her outstretched hand. He rapped his knuckles on marble. “The question is, are you coming to Windsor with me tomorrow?”

The fragile jaw raised in that gallant, obstinate determination to hold tight to all that was dear to her. “Tom, I love you more than anything in the world. But Uncle, when I needed him, he came to me, all the way to Paris. He brought Father and me here, he's been so generous—even though it's turned out he really couldn't afford it. He's truly shattered. For a little while I must stay with him. This is the very first time I can help him.”

“Then you aren't coming?”

“Uncle—”

“A straight yes or no!”

“He just sits around all day, and Father's—”

“One syllable! Is that so difficult?”

“Tom, please, you're everything to me—”

“Damn you, are you coming with me?”

“Until things have settled down, I can't.” Her sigh quivered. “No …”

The breath was knocked from him. He heard his own gasp before his lunatic jealousy raged forth. “So you're staying with that degenerate who corrupted you?”

“Tom!” She sank back into the chair. “At the start, you thought that. Such a silly mistake.”

“Was it a mistake?”

She looked out the window at the mean, unpainted shacks straggling across what was once the garden. “You of all people should know,” she whispered through appallingly white lips.

He needed to annihilate her as completely as her rejection had annihilated him. “All the proof I've had puts it the other way,” he said with a dissonant laugh. “Oh, I admit that the first time you put on a fine act of innocence—but after that! Oh, Antonia, after that! I've never been able to afford your class of woman. I've never been sucked and kissed by such a skilled whore.” As he spoke memory assailed him, and he actually saw her luminous whiteness in the green shadows, saw her face ablaze with love, felt the exalting joy she communicated with her tender, wandering kisses.
Oh, God, God
, he thought, and wanted to grovel and beg her forgiveness. Yet he also accepted that she was staying with his worst enemy. Her choice was, for him, irreconcilable. “You'll go far. The most sought-after commodity in the world is a whore who doesn't look it, yet practices every kind of whore trick!”

She had been passing her small needlepoint purse from hand to hand, but now she clasped it tight. “The way I acted … that was part of love, part of loving you.…” Her whisper held a plea. “Tom, wasn't it the same for you?”

She was crying, and he was close to tears himself. “I had one hell of a good time!”

She moved toward the door. He grabbed the soup jar, attempting to force it into her hands. “Here. We don't take charity.” The glass fell, shattering loudly, and beef-odored jelly drabbled down her skirt, staining it darker beige. He moved back.

“You sicken me,” he said thickly.

A cloud was covering the sun, and in the shadows her huge wet eyes shone darkly; those fathomless eyes seemed to mourn all the inexplicable cruelties and sorrows of time and the world.

She turned away, letting herself out the door.

Tom leaned against unvarnished pine, listening to her light footsteps. He could scarcely breathe.

“Tom?”

At Hugh's call he went slowly to the sink, dashing cold water onto his face before going to the slit of a bedroom. Lashless blue eyes looked from between bandages. “I never thought you were the type to pull wings from hummingbirds.”

“So you've been eavesdropping.”

“Your shouting woke me up. He must have forced her, the Major.”

“Like hell. She was an innocent, a total innocent. She didn't even understand what we were doing.”

“Then how could you have said those things to her?”

“I enjoy pulling wings off hummingbirds,” Tom snarled, and dropped onto his own pallet, burying his face in the gray-striped ticking, his shoulders heaving with rusty gasps.

Hugh could not remember his brother weeping, not even when they had buried their mother then their father in that desolate prairie yard. The awful sound grated against his gauze-covered ears, and he longed to comfort Tom, but he was seventeen, embarrassed by this outpouring of grief, weak from the morning's exertion, and besides, he was accustomed to Tom caring for
him
.

CHAPTER 7

The day that Dr. McKenzie removed Hugh's bandages, October 15, an unprecedented early snow fell: the doctor, worried about getting through the streets, started immediately on his house calls.

While he examined Mr. Dalzell, Antonia waited outside. “Your father's a little improved today,” he said when he emerged from the sickroom.

“That's wonderful,” she said. The gloom of the hall hid her expression. “Doctor, how is Hugh Bridger?”

“The left side of his face is badly scarred.”

She put her hand on the dark wainscoting.

“Are you all right, child?”

“A bit dizzy, that's all.”

“You're looking peaked and have lost weight. You seem under the weather. Come, let me take a look at you.”

She protested, but he led her into the blue-wallpapered room with the curve of windows that overlooked the snowy back garden. After she undressed down to her prettily embroidered chemise, he examined her, asking questions that became more and more clinical. It was not long before he came to a conclusion and confronted her with his diagnosis.

In his experience girls caught this way tearfully denied it or blamed the man. Antonia lay back in the pillows, her enormous dark eyes fixed on him.

Closing his satchel, he asked, “Didn't you guess?”

She shook her head.

Grasping the worked-brass footrail of her bed, he said in a stern voice, “You mustn't stay in the sickroom so much. The air is unhealthy. Take proper meals. You're far too thin. Nap after lunch. And—” He was about so say
no monkey business
, meaning no crochet hooks, knitting needles, no salts, packing with pepper, or seeking out kitchen-based midwives, but those huge bruised eyes stopped him short. “I suppose my first prescription should be for you to marry your young man.”