Many the hopes that have vanished after the ball.”
The young man finished with a flourish, and stood and bowed to the assembled twenty or so children, who had been listening raptly and now broke into cheers and applause, and David stood straighter and cleared his throat.
At this, the man looked at him and smiled, such a broad, brilliant smile that David was once again flustered. “Children,” he said, “I believe I’ve made you late for your next lesson. Now, don’t groan, it’s very rude”—David flushed—“just go and get your drawing pads and I shall see you next week.” He began, still smiling, to make his way over to David, still standing at the door.
“I say, that’s a very strange song to play for children,” he began, trying his best to sound severe, but the man laughed, unoffended, as if David had been only teasing him. “I suppose it is,” he answered, good-naturedly, and then, before David could ask, “I am being very rude; not only have I made you late for your class, or, rather, your class late for you—you were on time!—but I haven’t introduced myself. My name is Edward Bishop—I am the new music teacher here at this fine establishment.”
“I see,” he said, uncertain how the conversation had slipped from his control so quickly. “Well, I must say that I was quite surprised to hear—”
“And I know who you are,” the young man interrupted him, but so charmingly, so warmly, that David once again found himself disarmed. “You’re Mister David Bingham, of the New York Binghams. I suppose I don’t need to say ‘New York,’ do I? Though surely there’s another set of Binghams somewhere in the Free States, don’t you think? The Chatham Binghams, for example; or the Portsmouth Binghams. I wonder how they must feel, these lesser Binghams, knowing that their name will always only mean one family, and they not a part of it, and therefore condemned to perpetually disappoint when people ask, ‘Oh, of the Binghams?’ and they having to apologetically say, ‘Oh, I’m afraid not; we’re of the Utica Binghams,’ and watching their inquisitor’s face fall.”
He was made quite speechless at this delivery, which had unfurled with great gaiety and speed, so that all he could muster, stiffly, was “I had never thought of it like that,” which made the young man laugh again, but quietly, as if he were laughing not at David but at something clever he had said, and the two had shared a confidence.
And then he placed his hand on David’s arm, and said, still merrily, “Well, Mister David Bingham, it was very nice indeed to meet you, and I apologize once again for disrupting the schedule.”
After the door closed behind him, something essential seemed to leach from the room; the children, who had been alert and attentive, suddenly became wan and defeated, and even David could feel himself slumping, as if his own body were no longer able to participate in the farce of enthusiasm, of uprightness, that a well-modeled life demanded.
Nevertheless, he plowed onward. “Good afternoon, children,” he said, receiving a tepid “Good afternoon, Mister Bingham,” in reply as he assembled on the stool the day’s still life: a creamily glazed vase in which he arranged a few branches of holly. As usual, he took his position at the back of the room, both so he could supervise the children and so he too could sketch if he so chose. Today, though, it was as if the only object in the room he could see was the piano, which stood behind the stool with his poor arrangement and, for all its batteredness, seemed the most beautiful, most compelling object there: a beacon, something shining and pure.
He glanced over to the student on his right, a frowzy, tiny eight-year-old, and saw that she was sketching (poorly) not only the vase and the flowers but the piano as well.
“Alice, you are just to draw the still life,” he reminded her.
She looked up, all eyes in her pinched little face, her two protruding teeth resembling chips of bone. “I apologize, Mister Bingham,” she whispered, and he sighed. Why would she not want to include the piano, when he too was unable to stop himself from gazing at it, as if he too might be able to conjure its player simply by hoping, as if his ghostly form lingered still in the room? “It’s all right, Alice,” he said. “Just start again on a clean sheet.” Around him, the rest of the children were silent and sullen; he could hear them shifting in their seats. It was foolish to feel so pained, but he did—he had always thought they had enjoyed his class, enjoyed it at least almost as much as he had come to enjoy teaching them, but after witnessing their earlier delight, he knew that even if that had once been true, it no longer was. He was a bite of an apple, but Edward Bishop was that apple baked into a pie with a shattery, lardy crust pattered with sugar, and after a taste of that, there was no going back to the other.
At dinner that night, he was morose, but Grandfather was in a cheery mood—was everyone in the world so happy?—and there was David’s favorite roasted squab for dinner, and stewed cardoons, but he ate little, and when Grandfather asked, as he did every Wednesday, how his class had been, he murmured only “Fine, Grandfather,” whereas normally he tried to make him laugh with stories of what the children had drawn, and what they had asked him, and how he had distributed the fruit or flowers from the still life among the students who had done the best work.
But Grandfather seemed not to notice his inwardness, or at least chose not to comment on it, and after dinner, as he was trudging upstairs to the drawing room, David had, preposterously, a vision of Edward Bishop, and what he might be doing as he himself prepared to spend another night indoors near the fire, across from his grandfather: In it, the young man was at a club, the kind David had been to only once, and his long throat was exposed, and his mouth was open in song, and around him were other handsome young men and women, all dressed in bright silks, and life was festive, and the air smelled of lilies and champagne as, above them, a cut-glass chandelier tossed wobbling spangles of light around the room.
V
The six days until his next class passed even more slowly than usual, and the following Wednesday he arrived so early in anticipation that he determined to take a walk in order to calm himself and use up some time.
The institute was in a large, square building, simple but well-maintained, on the corner of West Twelfth and Greenwich Streets—a location that had become less salubrious over the decades with the arrival, three blocks north and one block west, of the city’s brothel quarters. Every few years, the school’s trustees would debate whether or not they might relocate, but they always chose in the end to remain, for it was the nature of the city that apparent opposites—the rich and the poor, the well-established and the newly arrived, the innocent and the criminal—should have to live in close proximity, as there was simply not enough territory available to make natural divisions otherwise possible. He walked south to Perry Street and then west and north on Washington Street, but after he completed the circuit twice, it was too cold even for him, and he was forced to stop, breathing on his hands and returning to the hansom to retrieve the package he’d brought.