That night, he had a dream: It was years in the future. He and Edward were living together in Washington Square. The two of them were sitting, side by side, in chairs in the parlor, where a piano now stood beneath the window that overlooked the park’s northern boundary. At their feet lay three dark-haired children, a girl and two boys, reading picture books, the girl wearing a scarlet velvet bow atop her glossy head. There was a fire burning and boughs of pine arranged atop the mantelpiece. Outside, he knew, it was snowing, and from the dining room came the fragrance of roasted partridge, and the sounds of wine glugging into glasses and of china being arranged on the table.
In this vision, Washington Square was not a prison, or something to dread—it was his home, their home, and this was their family. The house, he realized, had become his after all—and it had become his because it had become Edward’s, too.
VII
The following Wednesday, he was leaving for his class when Adams hurried to the door. “Mister David, Mister Bingham sent word from the bank this morning—he requests you be home precisely at five o’clock today,” he said.
“Thank you, Matthew, I’ll take it from here,” he said to the valet, assuming the box of fruit he was bringing for the students to draw and turning his attention to the butler. “Did he say why, Adams?”
“No, sir. Only that he asks for your presence.”
“Very well. You can tell him to expect me.”
“Very good, sir.”
It was politely stated, but David knew it was no request but a command. A mere few weeks ago—a few weeks! Had it only been a scant month since he had met Edward, since his world had been redrawn?—he would have been frightened, anxious about what his grandfather might have to say to him (for no good reason, as his grandfather had never been unkind to him, had rarely rebuked him, even in childhood), but now he felt only irritation, for it meant that he would have less time with Edward than he otherwise might. After class, then, he went directly to Edward’s, and it seemed as if in no time at all he was having once more to dress and leave, with a promise he would soon return.
At the door to Edward’s room, they lingered, David in his coat and hat, Edward wrapped in his horrid scratchy blanket.
“Tomorrow, then?” Edward asked, with such unabashed yearning that David—unused to being the party who would provide the affirmative answer upon which another’s happiness would be determined—smiled and nodded. “Tomorrow,” he agreed, and finally Edward released him and David tripped down the stairs.
As he climbed the steps to his house, he found himself nervous to see his grandfather in a way he never was, as if this were to be their first encounter after months of distance, rather than less than twenty-four hours. But his grandfather, already in his drawing room, merely received David’s kiss as he always did, and the two of them sat with their sherry and chatted about topics of little consequence until Adams came to announce dinner. It was only as they were going down that he whispered to his grandfather. But “After dinner,” his grandfather replied.
Dinner, too, was uneventful, and near its conclusion, David found himself experiencing a rare resentment toward his grandfather. Was there no news, nothing for his grandfather to relay? Was this only a gambit to remind him of his own dependency, of the fact—which he knew very well—that he was indeed not the master of this house, that he was not even an adult but someone who was allowed only in theory to come and go as he pleased? He heard his answers to his grandfather’s inquiries become curt, and had to correct himself before he crossed from being taciturn into being rude. For what could he do, what could he argue? It was not his house. He was not his own man. He was no different from the servants, from the bank’s employees, from the students at the institute: He was dependent on Nathaniel Bingham, and always would be.
And so he was seething with emotions—irritation, self-pity, anger—by the time he was settled in his usual chair by the fire upstairs, when his grandfather handed him a thick letter, much battered, its edges crisped with dried water.
“This arrived at the office today,” his grandfather said, expressionless, and David, wonderingly, turned it over and saw his name, addressed care of Bingham Brothers, with a Massachusetts postmark. “An express delivery,” his grandfather said. “Take it, read it, and return,” and David stood, wordlessly, and went to his own study, sitting for a moment with the envelope in his hands before at last slicing it open.
My dear David, January 20, 1894
There is nowhere for me to begin this letter but with my deepest and most sincere apologies for not having written earlier. I am wretched at the thought of any pain or upset I might have caused you, though perhaps I am only flattering myself—perhaps you have not thought of me as often as I have thought of you these past almost seven weeks.
I do not wish to make excuses for my poor manners, but I do want to explain why I have not communicated, because I do not wish that my silence should be mistaken for lack of devotion.
Shortly after I left you in early December, I was obligated to make a trip up North to visit our fur trappers. As I think I mentioned, my family has had a long-standing agreement with a family of trappers in northern Maine, and over the years, it has become an important aspect of our business. On this trip, I was accompanied by my eldest nephew, James, who had left college the previous spring to work in our business. My sister, understandably, was not enthusiastic about this idea, and nor was I—he would have been the first among us to graduate from college—but he is grown and we finally had no choice but to acquiesce. He is a wonderful young man, high-spirited and enthusiastic, but as he has no sea legs and is indeed given to sickness, my siblings and parents and I decided that he might be trained to eventually oversee our fur trade.
The North has been unusually cold this year, and as I had mentioned, our trappers live very close to the Canadian border. Our visit was largely a ceremonial one; I would introduce James to them, and they would take him out to demonstrate how they caught the animals and skinned and cured them, and then we would return to the Cape in time for Christmas. But that was not what happened.
Initially, everything proceeded as planned. James immediately formed a friendship with one of the members of the family, a very likable and intelligent youth named Percival, and it was Percival who spent several days introducing James to their trade while I stayed behind in the house to discuss how we might expand our offerings. You may well be wondering why we are concerning ourselves with fur when the industry has been in decline for the past sixty years; certainly our partners did. But it is precisely because the British have now all but abandoned the area that I think we have the opportunity to make our business there more robust, by selling not just beaver but, crucially, mink and stoat, which are much softer and finer and for which I believe there will be a small but meaningful group of dedicated customers. This family, the Delacroix, are also one of the very few European families left in the trade, which means they are much more reliable and much more suited to the realities and complexities of business.