The Women of Eden Read online

  For Judge and Karen and John

  There is a destiny now possible to us, the highest ever set before a nation to be accepted or refused. . . . Will you youths of England make your country again a royal throne of kings, a sceptered isle, for all the world a source of light, a centre of peace, mistress of learning and of the arts, faithful guardian of time-honored principles? ... If we can get men for little pay to cast themselves against cannon-mouth for love of England, we must find men who also will plough and sow for her, who will behave kindly and righteously for her, and who will bring up their children to love her. . . . This is what England must either do or perish. . . .

  1870

  John Ruskin

  THE WOMEN OF EDEN

  Nature has given women so much power that the law very wisely has given them little

  Dr. Johnson

  May 10, 1870

  Out of all the futile activity of her day, only these moments made sense, when behind the discretion of a small white lace mask, she could forget the muddle of who she was and what she was.

  Standing safely in the shadows of the red velour stage curtains of Jeremy Sims' Song and Supper Club off the Strand, Mary Eden looked over her shoulder at her two watchdogs. Old Jeremy Sims was there as was Elizabeth, her surrogate mother who triumphantly had taken the place of her real one, who still resided in semiseclusion at Eden Castle.

  Mary looked closer, newly impressed with how pretty Elizabeth still was. Nearing fifty if she was a day, but petite and elegant, adored by men and women alike. It had been Elizabeth who early on had taught Mary that every human being had a right to at least a portion of their own life.

  Then why the need for debate? She really couldn't understand Elizabeth's hesitancy. A quite respectable place this was. Not at all like the East End music halls, where the female entertainers bared their breasts completely and lifted their skirts beyond their garters. No, here Jeremy Sims insisted on decorum, and the ladies who performed were required to possess modesty as well as natural charm.

  As her anger blended with confusion, Mary turned and looked directly at the two in confrontation, aware at first glance that rotund

  old Jeremy was waging a good argument on her behalf. And why shouldn't he?

  Since that first night eight months ago when Mary had badgered Elizabeth into letting her do one song for the gentlemen, Jeremy Sims' Thursday-evening clientele had increased threefold. In fact, now certain club members only attended on Thursday evenings. Mary knew this for a fact and was proud of it. And she knew further why they came. It was to see her, to hear her crystal clear voice singing the songs of their childhood.

  But she knew they came for something else as well, for she'd taken careful note of their faces in the smoky semidarkness of the club, old men mostly, their cravats knotted like nooses about their necks, staring at the flowers tucked between her breasts.

  "But it's such a risk, Jeremy." Elizabeth frowned. "If John were to find out—" She broke off in what apparently was genuine fear, and briefly Mary recognized a disappointing hypocrisy.

  "Then why did we come, Elizabeth?" she demanded, allowing a sharpness to fill her own voice. "Why did you help me to dress, saying how much the gentlemen would like this gown? And why didn't we just stay home and do our French grammar or our needlepoint, or count the carriages that pass by our window?"

  Looking into Elizabeth's anxious face, she saw not the independent woman she loved more than life itself, but merely an extension of John Murrey Eden, the benefactor who gave generously with one hand and took with the other.

  As Mary continued to gaze at Elizabeth, a strange defiance shook her. She was twenty-one. She was educated, polished, groomed, brushed. She could speak three languages, could do figures, could play the pianoforte. She could sew, could organize servants, could sit a horse, could drive a carriage, could navigate her way through the most treacherous table conversation. She could smile on cue. She had never wept in public. She could decant wine, balance books, quote Shakespeare, Aristotle, Plato and Homer.

  Yet-

  She had never been alone with a man other than Richard, her brother, or John, her cousin. She had never felt a man's arm about her, never experienced the sensation of a kiss, save brotherly ones. She had never been permitted to walk in the park alone, or enter a public room alone, or ride on a train alone. She was checked in each night and let out each morning like a prisoner. She was permitted to

  use her natural talents such as her rare clear voice only when it suited others. She was permitted to speak, think, walk, act, talk, only when it suited others.

  The inventory was deadly and took a deadly toll. Without hesitation and only vaguely aware of the two staring at her in apprehension, Mary lifted the mask in her hand with the intention of affixing it in place, all the time speaking with a calmness which belied her inner turmoil. "We came here tonight, Ehzabeth, for one express purpose, the same purpose which brings us here every Thursday evening, for me to indulge in the harmless activity of singing for Jeremy's gentlemen. I promise I will break no law. The songs are innocent. The mask is in place. No one will know or even suspect that I am the property of John Murrey Eden."

  The deHcate white mask was in place, and on that note of defiance, and since neither of the watchdogs seemed inclined to say anything further, and since Betty Merkle's cockney jig was winding down, now was as good a time as any to take the stage, to receive that first heady sensation of seventy-five men staring at her through the smoky haze.

  Oh, how she loved it all, the sense of the spotlight, the sudden quiet, the feeling of power! But as she started toward the small stage she felt a hand on her arm.

  "Mary, I beg you. Please, not tonight," Elizabeth whispered, "the risks are too great."

  "Perhaps it would be best if the songbird remained silent." Jeremy nodded vigorously. "Elizabeth has a point. With all the big doings at Eden Castle, all the publicity, if you know what I mean . . ." And he grinned stupidly and left them with a silence even more confused than before.

  While Mary was trying to digest this nonsense, Elizabeth stepped close again. "Please, Mary, let's return home, where we should have remained in the first place. I'm sorry for initially agreeing and then changing my mind. But I had no idea the club would be so filled." Her hand lifted in an attempt to remove the mask. Mary stepped back, prohibiting contact.

  Obviously Elizabeth saw defiance. "Please," she begged. "John has enemies. You know that as well as I—scribblers who would like nothing better than to spoil the Eden Festivities for him." She drew so close that Mary saw beneath the face powder to the lined face of a

  fifty-year-old woman. "Please," Elizabeth begged, "neither you nor I must provide them with the weapon they so sorely need."

  In the impasse, Mary heard Betty Merkle's pianoforte grow quiet. There was a polite scattering of applause, as though the gentlemen were withholding their enthusiasm until there was something worthy of it.

  "With the weapon they so sorely need. . . .

  Was she now a weapon? She'd played a hundred passive roles on John's behalf. But a weapon? That didn't sound so passive. And what was it to her, the Eden Festivities, the Restoration of Eden Castle? And that foolish painting for which she and Lila and Elizabeth and Dhari had sat for an interminable number of days, gowned in Roman garb while Alma-Tadema recorded for all time "The Women of Eden."

  Now commencing this coming Monday, they were facing a fortnight of public display so common that anything she might do at Sims' Song and Supper Club paled in comparison.

  "Mary, please," Elizabeth whispered.

  So! It was to be as it had always been, John's will stated and obeyed.

  "No," Mary said simply, backing away from Elizabeth's reach, a bit regretful of th
e consternation in that beloved face. "No," she repeated, adjusting the bodice of her pale blue gown to reveal more of her breasts.

  She was almost to the edge of the curtain now, and they were both starting after her, Jeremy Sims, mountainous on one side, his ruddy face contorted with embanassment, and Elizabeth on the other, her earlier gentle persuasion abandoned and replaced by a stem demeanor.

  "Mary, I forbid you!" she said, full-voiced, loud enough to carry to the front tables of the club.

  But Mary was resolved. No force on earth could have kept her from inhabiting that empty stage. Oh, she was aware that she would have bridges to mend later and she would have to endure Elizabeth's hurt. But anything could be endured, even the dreaded fortnight at Eden, if for just a moment she could be someone else, the young woman with the lovely voice known only to the club members of Sims' Song and Supper Club as "Maria of the Mask."

  "Mary, please—" Elizabeth called a final time. Was she weeping?

  Surely not, and even if she were, Mary would have to deal with it later.

  She stepped forward, lifting her head so that the light from the candles in the wall standards shimmered on her hair. A sudden hush fell over the crowded room, the gentlemen looking up from their platters and glasses as though an apparition had appeared before them.

  As she reached the center of the small stage her excitement accelerated. The applause started low, then gradually increased, sweeping over her with the same medicinal effect as the headland breezes off Eden Point,

  Just behind the red velour curtains she saw two figures clutching at each other as though they were weathering a storm. No matter. She was incapable of dealing with that problem now.

  All at once, behind the safety of the mask, Mary blew out the light of her customary identity, touched her breasts in a reveahng gesture, moved delicately among the shadows, and felt like the silver balloon that she remembered launching into space off the quay at Mortemouth when she was a child. , , .

  Out of all the furtive activity of his day, only these moments made sense, when for a brief period of time he could indulge in a vision so lovely that all the secretive dealings and natural confusion that accompanied a double life fell away and left him with a sense of deliverance.

  Seated at his customary front table in Jeremy Sims' Song and Supper Club, Burke Stanhope glanced over his glass of port toward the pianist. Would she never cease? And where was little Maria of the Mask? He looked at his watch. Half past ten. Generally she had appeared before nine.

  Be patient, he counseled himself. She was worth waiting for. Looking out over the crowded club, it occurred to him that he wasn't the only one waiting. For a Thursday evening the club was mobbed, every table occupied, an all-male audience of varying ages, yet a circumspect and decorous gathering. With one exception. He peered at a front table located at the opposite end of the stage, where four young men had been consuming copious quantities of spirits for the better part of the evening.

  Over his shoulder, Burke spotted Henry, his waiter. With a familiarity based on six months of patronage, Burke summoned him to the

  table. "What's the delay, Henry?" he called out, his American accent seeming to resound over the crowded room.

  The skeletal old waiter shook his head. "Don't rightly know, Mr. Stanhope. I've had others making the same inquiry." He swiveled his long neck about. "I can't even locate Mr. Sims to pose a formal inquiry for you." Then, in the manner of a tolerant headmaster, he comforted, "Not to worry, sir. I'm sure the young lady will take the stage soon. She's not one to let us down, now is she?"

  Amused by his feeling of a child being mollified, Burke drained his port and sent Henry scurrying for a fresh decanter. As the pianist launched forth into a spirited rendition of a cockney jig, he lowered his head into his hands, the sense of a lost schoolboy still strong within him.

  He was grateful for one thing, that John Thadeus Delane had not accompanied him here tonight as had been their initial plan. Fortunately a minor crisis had kept Delane in his editorial office in Printing House Square, thus sparing Burke the humiliation of trying to explain his unreasonable obsession for a masked young woman.

  From the table at the opposite end of the room a burst of laughter erupted. A questionable joke apparently had found a receptive audience. Burke looked up to see the four drunken men in uncontrollable laughter. Almost envying them their fun, he watched a moment longer, then again he rested his head in his hands.

  Without warning, as was happening more and more frequently, the sense of his splintered existence swept over him and he felt empty, like a house long since deserted. It was astonishing how clearly he saw the image of his childhood home. Stanhope Hall outside Mobile, Alabama. Effortiessly he saw the colonnaded portico, the long line of leafy elms which led to the house, a little boy in old-fashioned clothes curled in a cool, shady corner of the swept porch, writing words on the back of one of his father's old cotton ledgers.

  The thick curtain which separated the past from the present lifted. The five-year-old boy was replaced by the thirty-five-year-old man, though the sense of loss and confusion remained, the central mystery being what in the hell was he doing here, not just here in Sims' Song and Supper Club, but in London, nursing a weak mother who had refused to return home after the disgrace of defeat, who had successfully re-created the old fantasy by bringing her favorite Negroes with her, and who in her own mad way was generally placid and harmless

  as long as all about her refrained from speaking aloud one name: Abraham Lincoln.

  "Here you are, sir." As Henry placed the decanter of port on the table, Burke nodded in thanks, filled his glass and drained it, knowing the price he'd pay come morning, but filling it again anyway.

  Come morning! There was a dreaded thought. A jostling ride with John Thadeus Delane in his carriage to a place called Eden on the North Devon Coast, where apparently with hundreds of others they would be forced to endure the arrogance and ostentation of John Murrey Eden.

  Burke knew the name well, having dealt with it countless times in his column, which he wrote anonymously for the Times—another example of John Thadeus Delane's macabre sense of humor. For the last five years, at Delane's insistence and on his sacred promise never to reveal Burke's true identity, Burke had written columns for the Times under the pseudonym of "Lord Ripples."

  At first it had started as a lark, something to relieve the tedium, to amuse editor Delane, who had been kind to the entire Stanhope family on their difficult passage through the American Civil War. But three years ago both Burke and Delane had become aware of the interesting fact that thousands of readers were buying the Times just to read and become outraged by Lord Ripples' writings.

  In fact, the public had named him. An angry Englishman had written a letter to the editor after a particularly vitriolic column in which Burke had dared to criticize the length and intensity of the Queen's mourning for Albert. The letter-writer had demanded the immediate identity of the scribbler who dipped his pen into the placid, superior English landscape, causing ripples.

  The very next morning, with a journalistic instinct that amounted to genius and with a wisdom of human nature that informed him that the public loved to hate at least as much as they loved to love, editor Delane had christened Burke Lord Ripples, had given him a free journalistic hand and had instructed him to seek out and graphically describe every boil, sore and tumor on the English national body.

  To this day, no one but Burke and John Thadeus Delane knew Lord Ripples' true identity, that he was a displaced American whose father had sent the family to England in the early sixties for the dual purpose of escaping the carnage of the Civil War and in an attempt to plead with the cotton mills of the Midlands to lift their barricade

  on Southern cotton, a sympathetic gesture against slavery which had threatened to do greater economic damage to the South than the marauding armies of the North.

  Again Burke drained his glass of port. What matter now? It was all ancient history, the South de
feated, his father trying to salvage what he could after commanding Burke to remain behind in London v^th the mad Caroline.

  Sunk in thought, Burke was scarcely aware of the cessation of noise from the pianoforte. The first sound which summoned him back was the drunken laughter of the four young students, which echoed over the now quiet club. He cast a quick glance in their direction. Why was Jeremy Sims permitting such behavior? Then he looked toward the stage and caught a flare of a pale blue gown, as though someone had started out from behind the stage curtain only to be restrained.

  He sat up in his chair. What in hell was going on? Would she appear or not?

  Then she did. The flare of the pale blue silk gown grew and became a full apparition, the young woman pausing beside the stage curtain as though the weight and expectancy of men's eyes had disarmed her. But it didn't last long, for then she was moving, a picture of grace, the gown fully visible, light blue very fine silk wreathed with ropes of seed pearls, while in her golden hair floated two soft plumes of lilacs, another fortunate plume nestling between her breasts.

  In that peculiar way that the imagination will seize on trifles, Burke found that he could not take his eyes off the lilacs, the way they moved with each delicate inhalation of breath.

  He was aware of the applause increasing about him, the gentlemen responding with delight to the vision on the stage. And once again he was struck by the phenomenon known as Maria of the Mask. There were any number of establishments in London where these gentlemen could even glimpse a thigh, the hundreds of music hall entertainers whose every song was an open invitation for seduction.

  Then what was the attraction of this rather shy young girl who conducted herself more like a noblewoman than a music hall entertainer? And why the mask unless to conceal an identity which, if revealed, could cause embarrassment, or worse?

  Now she was looking back at the audience with the greatest serenity, all traces of the earlier timidity gone, as though at last she had found her natural habitat. And Burke was aware of the silence in the