Pentecost Alley (13 page)

From listening to Arthur Symons, she moved into the next room and eavesdropped on a conversation between two young men who seemed oblivious of her—an experience she had not had before, at least not at a party in her circle where politeness was exercised, often in defense of very obvious truth, and compliments were the usual currency of exchange.

This was outside all she knew, and invigorating because of it. No one mentioned the weather or who was courting whom. Politics need not have existed, or bankers or royalty either. Here it was all art, words, sensations and ideas.

“But he wore green!” one young man said in horror,
his face twisted as if he suffered physical pain. “The music was the most obviously purple I have ever heard. All shades of indigo and violet, melting into darkness. Green was absolutely so insensitive! So utterly devoid of understanding.”

“Did you say anything to him?” the other asked quickly.

“I tried,” was the reply. “I spent ages with him. I explained all about the interrelationship between the senses, how color and sound are part of each other, how taste and touch combine, but I really don’t think he understood a word.” He gestured intensely with his hands, fingers spaced and then clenched. “I wanted him to grasp a complete art! He is so one-dimensional. But what can one do?”

“Shock!” his companion said instantly. “With something so sublime he will be forced to reconsider everything he has ever believed.”

The first man dashed the heel of his hand against his brow.

“But of course! Why didn’t I think of that? That’s what dear Oscar says: the first duty of the artist is continually to astonish.”

His friend leaned forward.

“My dear! Did you read
Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine
last month?”

Both of them were completely unaware of Emily, a bare six feet away.

The young man thought for a moment.

“No, I don’t think so. You mean July? Why? What was in it? Has Oscar said something outrageous?” He touched the other lightly on the arm. “Do tell me!”

“Absolutely! It’s almost too marvelous.” The reply was so eager the words almost fell upon each other. “A story of a young and beautiful man—guess who? Well anyway, he falls in with a depraved dandy, an older man with a wonderful wit, to whom he says one day that he wishes he could never grow old but would always have
the looks and the youth that he has at that moment.” His eyebrows rose. “He is very lovely, you understand?”

“So you said. What of it?” The young man leaned back, precariously close to the potted palm behind him. “We would all be delighted to retain such beauty as we have. Such a thought is hardly worthy of Oscar’s invention, and certainly not shocking.”

“Oh, but this story is!” he was assured. “You see, another man, a largely honorable man, paints a portrait of him—and his wish is granted! His face is beautiful!” He held up one long-fingered, white hand. “But his soul grows steadily more and more harrowed as he indulges in a life of utter pleasure seeking, regardless of the cost to others, which is high, even to life at times.”

“Still ordinary, my dear. A mere observation of the obvious.” He leaned back against the Chinese cushions behind him, exhibiting his boredom.

“Do you really imagine Oscar would ever be obvious?” The first man’s high eyebrows rose even farther. “How unimaginative you are, and what a poor judge of character.”

“Well, it may not be obvious to you, dear boy, but it is to me,” his companion rejoined.

“Then tell me the ending!” he challenged.

“There is no ending. It is merely life.”

“That is where you are wrong!” He wagged his finger. “He remains as young and utterly beautiful as ever. Years and years go by. His face is unmarked by the squalor of his soul and the viciousness of his life—”

“Wishful thinking.”

“But the portrait is not! Week by week the face on the canvas grows more terrible—”

“What?” He sat suddenly upright, knocking off one of the voluptuous cushions. Emily suppressed her instinct to pick it up and replace it.

“The face on the canvas grows more terrible!” the man continued his tale. “All the sin and meanness, the disease of his soul, is stamped on it, till the very sight of it is
enough to freeze the blood and make you lie awake at night for fear of sleeping and dreaming of it!”

He had his friend’s total attention.

“My God! Then what? What is the end?”

“He murders the artist, who has guessed his secret,” the man said triumphantly. “Then at last, terrified at the hideousness of his own soul which he sees in the painted face, he stabs it.”

Emily drew in her breath in a gasp, but neither of them heard her.

“And …?” the man demanded.

“It is himself he has killed! He is inextricably bound with the painting. He is it and it is he! He dies—and the body takes on the monstrosity of the portrait, which now becomes again as beautiful and as innocent as when it was first painted. But the story is full of marvelous wit and wonderful lines, as Oscar always is.” He shrugged and sat back, smiling. “Of course, there are those in the establishment who are furious, saying it is depraved, evil and so on. But what do you expect? A work of art accepted by everyone is damned from the start. There can hardly be a more explicit way of demonstrating that it has nothing whatsoever to say! If you don’t offend anyone at all, you might as well not bother to speak. You obviously have nothing to say.”

“I must get
Lippincott’s
immediately!”

“There is talk he may publish it in a book.”

“What is it called? I must know!”

“ ‘The Picture of Dorian Grey.’ ”

“Wonderful! I shall read it—probably several times.”

So shall I, Emily thought to herself, moving away as the two men started to discuss the deeper implications of the story. But I shall not tell Jack. He might not understand.

She was beginning to feel a little dizzy, and certainly very tired. She was not used to so much smoke in the air. In polite society gentlemen retired from the main apartments in order to smoke. There were rooms specifically
set aside for it, so as not to offend those who did not, and special jackets worn, not to carry the smell back into the rest of the house.

She looked across and saw Tallulah. She was flirting with a languid young man in green, but it seemed more a thing of habit than of any real intent. Emily had no idea what time it was, but all intelligence said it must be very late indeed. She had no way of going home, except with Tallulah. She could not leave alone and wander the streets looking for a hansom at this hour of the morning. Any men around, any policemen, would take her for a prostitute. Since the uproar four years ago about prostitution generally, and the purge on pornography, all sorts of decent women had been arrested walking about in daylight in the wrong areas, let alone at this hour.

A fraction unsteadily, she made her way across the room, stopping by the chair and looking down at Tallulah.

“I think it is time we excused ourselves,” she said clearly, at least she meant it to be clear. “It has been delightful, but I should like to be home in time for breakfast.”

“Breakfast?” Tallulah blinked. “Oh!” She sat upright sharply. “Oh yes, the mundane world that eats breakfast. I suppose we must return.” She sighed. It seemed as if she had already forgotten the young man, and he did not seem disconcerted. His attention turned as easily to someone else.

They found Reggie quite quickly, and he was amiable enough to be willing to leave, wandering outside with Emily on one arm and Tallulah on the other. He woke his coachman and they all climbed into the carriage, half asleep, Reggie closing the door behind them with difficulty. There was already a pale fin of light in the east, and the earliest traffic on the roads.

No one had asked Emily where she lived, and as she sat jolting gently as they moved along the riverbank, then turned north, she looked at the sleeping figure of Reggie
Howard in the light of the lamps they passed under, and hesitated to ask him to take her home first. They were going in the wrong direction. She would have to wait.

They stopped rather abruptly in Devonshire Street. Reggie woke with a start.

“Ah. Home,” he said, blinking. “Let me assist you.” He fumbled to open the door, but the footman was there before him, offering his hand to Tallulah, and then to Emily.

“You’d better stay with me tonight,” Tallulah said quickly. “You don’t want to arrive home at this hour.”

Emily hesitated only a moment. Perhaps this was also a polite way of allowing her to know that Reggie’s carriage was not available for her any further. It was quite true; it would be easier to explain to Jack that she spent the night with Tallulah than that she was out until four in the morning at a party in Chelsea with artists and writers of the highly fashionable decadent school.

“Thank you.” She scrambled out with more haste than grace. “That is most generous of you.” She also thanked Reggie, and the footman, and then as the carriage rumbled away, she followed Tallulah across the pavement, through the areaway doors and into the back yard, where the scullery entrance was apparently unlocked.

Tallulah stood in the kitchen. She looked surprisingly fragile in the first cold daylight, away from the gas lamps’ glow and the velvet hangings. She was framed instead by the wooden dresser with the rows of dishes, the copper pans hanging on the wall, and the flour bins, the black kitchen range to the left. Clean linen hung on the airing rack above, and there was a smell of dried herbs and strings of onions in the air.

It would not be long before the first maids were up to clear out the stove and black it and light it ready for Cook to begin breakfast.

The same would shortly be happening in Emily’s own home.

Tallulah took a deep breath and let it out soundlessly. She turned to lead the way up towards the stairs. Emily followed, tiptoeing, so as not to be heard by the early-waking servants.

On the landing Tallulah stopped outside a guest room door.

“I’ll lend you a gown,” she said very quietly. “And I’ll send my maid in the morning.” She winced. “At least about eight o’clock. Nobody’ll breakfast very early … I don’t think. Actually …” She looked at Emily with a sudden misery in her face. “Actually, it’s not a very good time, at the moment. Something rather wretched has happened.” Her voice was no more than a whisper. “A woman of the streets was murdered off the Whitechapel Road somewhere, and the police found an old club badge there that belonged to my brother. They actually came to the house asking questions.” She shuddered. “Of course he didn’t have anything to do with it, but I’m terrified they won’t believe him.” She stared at Emily, waiting for her to say something.

“I’m sorry,” Emily said sincerely. “It must be awful for you. Perhaps they’ll discover the real person quickly.” Then her habitual curiosity broke through. “Where did they find the badge?”

“In her room, where she was killed.” Tallulah bit her lip and her fear was naked in her face, accentuated in the sharp shadows cast by the faint light of a gas lamp glowing dimly at the stairhead and the daylight beginning to show through the landing windows.

“Oh.” There was nothing comforting Emily could say to that. She was not shocked that Tallulah’s brother should use a prostitute. She was worldly enough to have known such things for years. It was not even impossible that he had actually killed her. Somebody had. Perhaps he had not meant to. It could have been a quarrel over money. She might have attempted to rob him. Emily knew from Pitt that such things happened. It did not take a great deal of imagination to think how it could
come about: a rich young man, expensively dressed, gold cuff links, gold watch, perhaps cigar cutter, card case, studs, money in his pocket to spend on satisfying his appetites … and a desperate woman who was tired, hungry and not even certain of a roof over her head next week. She might even have had a child to feed. It was only surprising it did not happen more often.

But that was hardly the thing to say to Tallulah. Although perhaps—looking at her pale face, tiredness smudging shadows under her eyes, fear bleaching the vitality and the spark from her—it was something she already knew.

Emily forced a smile, bleak and a little shaky.

“There must have been lots of other people there too,” she said hopefully. “It was probably someone she knew. They have men who take their money and look after them, you know. It was more likely he. The police will know that. I expect they only came here as a matter of form.”

“Do you?” Tallulah asked. “He was very polite. He spoke beautifully, I mean like a gentleman, but he was rather scruffy to look at. His collar was very clean, but crooked, and his hair was all over the place. If I didn’t know he was a policeman, I would have thought he could have been an artist, or a writer. But I don’t think he was a fool. He wasn’t afraid of Papa, and most people are.”

Emily had a sudden feeling of chill, a ripple of familiarity, like a scene from a dream, when you know what is going to happen before it does.

“Don’t worry,” she said as confidently as she could. “He’ll find the truth. He’ll never charge the wrong person. Your brother will be all right.”

Tallulah stood motionless.

Outside a cart rattled along the street and someone on the footpath was whistling as he walked. It was almost daylight. The scullery maid could be coming down the back stairs any minute.

“Thank you,” she said at last. “I’ll see you at breakfast. I’ll fetch the nightgown.”

Emily smiled her gratitude and determined to find a telephone the moment she could, and at least inform her ladies’ maid that she was perfectly well and spending the night with a friend. If Jack was home, that would serve for explanation to him as well. If he should rise in the morning and find her late for breakfast, he would understand.

Emily woke with a start. The sun was streaming through the open curtains into a room she had never seen before. It was all yellow florals with a little gray and blue. There was a maid pouring hot water into a large china bowl and fresh towels over the back of the chair.

“Mornin’, miss,” the girl said cheerfully. “Nice day again. Looks to be set for sunshine and warm. Miss Tallulah said as if you’d care to borrow one of her dresses for the time bein’, you’d be welcome. Seein’ as your gown’s a bit formal for breakfast.” She did not glance at Emily’s green dinner gown with its ivory and yellow roses spread over the chaise longue, its skirts fanned out, its deep-cut bodice and flimsy sleeves looking like wilted flowers in the sharp morning light. Nor was her expression anything but politely helpful. She was a very good maid indeed.