Gramercy Park. Paula Cohen
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Название: Gramercy Park
Автор: Paula Cohen
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Историческая литература
isbn: 9780007450466
isbn:
evident that morning, as she slipped quietly into her chair. She looked as plain and as ordinary as a shop girl, with her small, pinched face and nervous, nail-bitten hands. Only her enormous eyes, bright with unshed tears, lifted her from the realm of the commonplace.
Immediately after her arrival, the library doors were closed, shutting off the proceedings from the eyes of the servants who lingered nearby, finding more to do in the vicinity than could possibly be accounted for by their usual round of morning duties. For twenty minutes the only sound to reach their ears was the dry hum of Chadwick’s voice from behind the huge ebony doors. Then, suddenly, in the expectant hush there was another sound; a sound so out of place, so inappropriate in that house of mourning, that the hovering servants stared at one another, shocked, and one Irish housemaid, more devout than the rest, made the sign of the cross.
Laughter. Girlish laughter, which did not remain girlish long. Low at first, and musical, it rose swiftly, becoming high and strident: peal after sobbing peal of mirthless, helpless, hysterical laughter.
The heavy doors banged back; Chadwick and his colleagues, ashen-faced, hurried from the room. Within the library, tiny, shy, quiet Clara Adler sat and rocked, tears streaming down her face, laughing the laugh of a demented thing.
Once more a servant was sent flying for the doctor; once more the sedatives were administered. The lawyers went away shaking their heads, and the servants scattered to their separate duties, to whisper what they had seen and heard into the ears of fellow servants in other houses. By the next day all of New York knew that Slade’s ward had been struck down, and knew, too, what had caused it.
What many could not understand, however, was the laughter. Tears, perhaps, but never laughter. Clara Adler, taken in by Henry Ogden Slade at the tender age of fifteen, and reared and educated as his daughter for the four years until his death, had been dispossessed, utterly and completely. Her name had not even been mentioned in his will. It was as if she had never existed.
Still, there was nothing funny—nothing funny at all—about losing thirty million dollars.
DEATH IS A GOOD TOPIC for conversation, and never better than when money is involved. The last, lingering illness, and all of it torments, are picked over with morbid glee; and the greater the suffering—the younger the victim—the more the head-wagging preoccupation with it.
The passing, therefore, of a young and innocent girl would elicit much discussion, in voices hushed and solemn, about life’s vicissitudes and the sudden, inexplicable workings of Fate. Should the girl be one about whom hung an air of mystery, and who had not even the consolation of the Christian faith to sustain her in her final hours, the pious platitudes would rain thick and fast, reminding all that even in the midst of life we are in death.
So New York listened for word of the end of Clara Adler, struck down by brain fever at the age of nineteen, in the spring of 1894, the fever brought on by the twin shocks of the loss of her guardian and his estate. The hysteria with which she had greeted the news of the latter had been the onset of her illness. She was not expected to recover.
It was all very sad—and very satisfactory—and the city settled in, with melancholy anticipation, to await her passing. It was no more than what any truly well bred young woman would have done in her place; and certainly there was nothing else for her, with propriety, to do. The only problem, as the days became weeks and the weeks became months, was that she did not do it …
FROM FIFTH AVENUE, with its gleaming carriages and fine, new mansions, and its smell of money only lately won and not yet fully grasped by the minds of its makers, it is merely a healthy stretch of the leg to Gramercy Park.
There, enclosed on four sides by a high, iron fence, a small oasis beckons the passerby: a graceful green rectangle of shady paths and wide, low benches scattered beneath trees thick with years. It is an odd sight: nature penned in amid a forest of brick and stone, and the innocent stranger might be tempted to pass through the black-barred gate, to spend a quiet hour in contemplation of such a wonder. But the gate is locked, and only the privileged few who live on the borders of the little park possess the key that will open it.
Life appears to be sweet for these keepers of the keys of this tiny Eden, and drudgery is evidently not their daily portion. On warm summer afternoons, one can see nursemaids wheeling the infant lords and ladies of the great Republic along the dappled paths, and spy daintily clad children at play beneath the gaze of vigilant nannies.
But the vulgarly obvious wealth of Fifth Avenue is missing here; these houses, for the most part, are vestiges of an earlier day. Red brick and white stone, they stand side by side with not even a handbreadth of space between them, forming a solid square of dignity, and those who dwell within them have no need of pomp to proclaim their worth to casual passersby. Like their houses, their wealth and power were built in bygone days, and possessing them has become a part of the natural order of things, occasioning no more thought than, say, breathing or sleeping. They know what they have, and that is all that matters.
Near the southeastern corner of this demiparadise stands one house different from the rest. Built of drab red brick in a dull, square shape, its front door is the only one which does not face the park, but opens, instead, onto one of the small, cobbled streets that radiate from the green like the spokes of an angular wheel, as if to declare itself even less guilty of ostentation than its neighbors by virtue of its refusal to acknowledge the center of their common universe.
Somber and self-contained, with windows too narrow for the expanse of wall between them, it is a house which does not welcome: a massive, reclusive, indifferent pile of stone, which holds what it has within it, and takes no notice of anything else.
Of the two men approaching it from the direction of Fifth Avenue on this particular afternoon in late May, the house is wholly oblivious, although the many people enjoying the brilliant spring sunshine in and about the little park do not share this disregard.
The men present an interesting contrast in types, for one of them, a pale man of medium build and middle age, is outstanding only in that he is so very ordinary. His companion, however, seems to be the focus of every eye as he passes—women, particularly, seem to find him of uncommon interest—and this fascination could be laid to his height, which is well over six feet, or the exceptional breadth of his chest and shoulders, or even to the cut of his impeccable clothing. About forty years of age, black-eyed and swarthy, he is clean-shaven and well made, and he draws eyes like a magnet, seeming not so much unaware of the glances cast his way as accustomed to receiving them; a man very much at ease beneath the gaze of others.
“I am grateful for your time, Signor Alfieri,” the nondescript man says to his dark companion as they draw near to their destination. “I will waste none of it, for I know that you must have a great deal to do.”
“On the contrary, Mr. Upton”—Signor Alfieri’s heavily accented English fully corroborates his foreign looks and name—“for the first time in years I am completely free and have absolutely nothing to do, at least until the middle of July. Until then, my time is my own.”
“And will you be in New York until СКАЧАТЬ