Part 9 (1/2)
”You could actually discharge it at someone?”
”If it meant my life.”
”Put it away! Its very existence proves that you take my point. London streets at night are dangerous for a woman alone.”
”It is dangerous for a woman alone anywhere at any time,” Irene retorted. ”Such is the nature of the society and century in which we live. It is up to women to reverse the situation.”
”You fancy yourself as dangerous?” I had never thought of a woman as a weapon, only as a bulwark and that of the home, not the larger society.
”Oh, I am very dangerous, Nell. You have no idea what a Bohemian you reside with. If I had my way, we would live in a very different world.” She smiled and tucked the gleaming black revolver into a pocket inside her m.u.f.f. ”And I doubt you'd like it all.”
”Hmph,” I sniffed, knowing better than to pursue such a conversation. Irene would have her anarchist moods. I refused to let my own sensible opinions serve as a lucifer to light her incendiary ideas.
So Irene came and went at her late hours, and I came and went at my more conventional times. Often our paths would not cross for days. It was mere chance that I happened to be at home one windy and wet April afternoon when a note was delivered to Irene, who had risen late and was sipping chocolate in her Oriental wrap.
A sudden rustle of stiff silk jolted me from the latest novel of Mrs. Oliphant, which I had obtained at a circulating library.
”We must neaten up at once, Nell! We are to have an eminent guest.”
”A guest?” I leapt up guiltily, straightening the antimaca.s.sars covering my easy chair's worn arms. Our only guests. .h.i.therto had been Mr. and Mrs. Minucci or their singularly untalented daughter, Sofia.
I began sweeping the scattered newsprint into the fireplace to both warm our environs and eliminate clutter.
”Not the Agony Column!” Irene shrieked, rus.h.i.+ng to rescue the lurid pages from the blaze. ”And it is ourselves we must first make presentable-very presentable. Mr. Oscar Wilde is to arrive at three.”
”Oh. Him.” I dropped the armful of ribbons I had swept from the seat of Irene's sewing chair back to the cus.h.i.+on. ”A most nonsensical person. I don't doubt that disarray 'inspires' him.”
Irene paced, fanning the note before her face. ”However you judge him, he is a man of the moment in London's artistic circles. Notorious, yes, but with notoriety comes... notice. This is exactly what my poor stalled career needs. And”-she turned triumphantly to me, her eyes s.h.i.+ning-”he mentions a private matter I might help with. I believe he is a client.”
”Truly, Irene, I prefer you walking out at all hours to rehea.r.s.e an opera over continuing in this tawdry investigative sideline of yours. Better Mr. Wilde be a sponsor than a client.”
”Why not both?” Irene said lightly. ”Besides, I am so put out at my failure with the Zone of Diamonds. All my inquiries have led no further than this 'old Norton,' whom I begin to swear does not and never did exist. If I successfully a.s.sist Oscar Wilde, who knows what doors shall open to me?”
”Unsavory ones, I've no doubt,” I murmured.
”But I am a ruin!” she suddenly cried, shaking out her wrap. ”I must make myself respectable.”
I held my tongue as Irene dashed into her chamber, leaving me to tidy the main room and conceal my daybed niche behind the threadbare curtains that masked it. With our best efforts at our separate talents-mine domestic and Irene's cosmetic-our rooms and persons were ordered if not ordinary by three o'clock.
A knock did not come at our door until three-twenty. Irene opened it to the same tall, pale young man who had praised my pouring abilities at the Stokers' reception. Of course I did not expect him to remember me.
”Miss Adler.” He bore a bouquet wrapped in tissue, which he changed from hand to hand as I un.o.btrusively removed his damp greatcoat and arranged it on the unnamed (and unclothed) dressmaker's dummy that Irene used in the front room as a coat rack.
Mr. Wilde noted the bizarre stratagem with an approving nod and began unpeeling wet tissue from the wind-chilled flowers. I thought of onion skins.
”I confess myself at a loss, Miss Adler, in selecting a floral offering to adequately pay you tribute. I rejected the lily for obvious reasons: another, although equal, beauty has claimed it. The sunflower, although greatly favored, is too full-blown for your refined loveliness. I considered the regal iris, but it is a touch common. Thus I have-”
Oh, get on with it, I thought uncharitably while subsiding into the background. Irene smiled politely at this flowery discourse as if she cared what blossoms he would produce. They would be wilted within a week in any case.
”-decided upon the rare Holland tulip!” With this he whisked away the last of the tissue, revealing a cl.u.s.ter of blood-purple blooms ruffled to cerise along their extravagant edges. Even I gasped at their glory.
”They are called Borgia Tears, but, alas, have no scent.”
Irene laughed, delighted, as she took the glamorous bouquet. ”You are not only a wit and poet, Mr. Wilde, but a sublime diplomat. You have chosen perfectly-give me the royal color and velvet sheen of the opera house curtain, give me mystery and drama over mere odor any day.”
”And for your charming companion...” Here, to my horror, Mr. Wilde turned to me. ”I see you were as taken with her pouring at the Stokers' as I and have stolen her away to preside at your hearth. I antic.i.p.ated no other lady, but could not resist lily of the valley at the florist's for my rooms. Accept this nosegay, dear Miss...?”
Aghast, I stood silent.
”Huxleigh,” Irene trilled loudly as she settled the tulips in a white pitcher. ”Miss Penelope Huxleigh, late of Shrops.h.i.+re.”
”Penelope!” The poet seized upon my ungainly cla.s.sical name as a rat terrier upon a bone. ”Wise and loyal wife, clever and faithful spirit of hearth and home. These small blossoms swoon with scent and are said to attract nightingales to warble by one's bed. Alas, this humble human nightingale will have to suffice for you.”
Picturing Mr. Oscar Wilde warbling by my bed was ludicrous enough to make me pale as I seized the nosegay and installed it in a tumbler on the table.
”Penelope was a fool,” I muttered ungraciously. ”I certainly should have never taken that bounder Ulysses back after he'd wandered all around the Wrekin.”
”Wrekin?” The poet blinked, silenced.
”A Shrops.h.i.+re expression, Mr. Wilde. The Wrekin is a small mountain, which is what you are making of my poor molehill of virtues. But pray excuse me; I have 'domestic duties' to attend to.” Here I withdrew to my daybed niche and took up some darning.
My exit, although I was still within earshot and had left the draperies agape, seemed to wilt the poet's demeanor until it drooped like the soft cravat of yellow silk at his throat. Irene led him to the shawl-draped sofa, where he sat languidly. She, being corseted, could affect no such easy posture.
”Your note mentioned a private matter, Mr. Wilde.”
He glanced in my direction.
”Miss Huxleigh is more than discreet, as I'm sure you discern. My dear Nell would no more reveal a secret not her own than a martyr would deny her G.o.d.”
”Of course. But the matter is extremely... delicate and of the most personal nature.”
”I see,” said Irene, her tone unencouraging. ”I have occasionally shed light on mysterious events, but not on the shadows of the heart, I fear. I am no go-between.”
”Certainly not! Though the difficulty began as a matter of the heart, I fear it comes down to the rightful return of property now.”
”As do so many so-called matters of the heart, ultimately. What is the property in question, Mr. Wilde?”
”A gold cross-not of any great worth, I suppose, but valuable to me as a memento. You may not be aware that in the late seventies I was an admirer of that peerless beauty, Florence Balcombe. In that capacity I gave her the cross, as well as a.s.sorted poems and even a pencil portrait from my own hand.” The poet's long melancholy face lifted in a smile. ”I secretly sent a floral crown this past January when she made her Lyceum debut as one of a hundred vestal virgins in The Cup. Ellen Terry herself gave Florrie the offering, though she never revealed the sender.”
”Of course, Florence Balcombe is no vestal virgin now,” Irene pointed out. ”She is Mrs. Bram Stoker, is she not, and the mother of a son, Noel?”
”Yes. And has been for a few years. Quite frankly, I would have married her, but she preferred another Irishman, and who am I to quarrel with so excellent a choice? Bram is such a hearty, straightforward fellow that I cannot be too bitter. But I would like my cross of gold back.”
”Then ask for it.”
”Ah, so direct, Miss Adler. After much hinting, that is exactly what I did. Florrie refused.”
”Refused? I suppose by rights it is hers, but the value was trifling?” He nodded and Irene controlled her expression. ”Have you considered that the lovely Florence still harbors a tendresse for you that prevents her from relinquis.h.i.+ng your gift?”
”My first a.s.sumption,” he admitted, ”and I should respect her understandable sentiment, but she has shown an evasion in discussing the subject that is quite inexplicable. The cross is precious to my past; since Florrie is no longer mine in the present, I should like it back and she should be more than willing to return it. Her refusal is most... odd.”