Mentioning his siblings led to a discussion of them, and he described how John and Peter had grown increasingly alike in sensibility and habit in the years since they married, and how they both worked for Bingham Brothers—in an echo of their parents, John was a banker and Peter a lawyer. Then there was Eden, and her studies at medical school, and Eliza’s charitable work. Charles knew of their names—everyone did, for they were always appearing in the society columns, spotted attending this gala or hosting that costume party, Eden written of admiringly for her sense of style and wit, John for his conversational skills—and asked if he was fond of them, and although David was not overly concerned with Charles’s opinion, he found himself fibbing and saying he was.
“And so you and Eden are the rebels, then, for not entering the family business. Or perhaps John is the rebel, for he is outnumbered, after all!”
“Yes,” he said, but he was growing anxious, for he knew the direction the conversation would now take, and before Charles could ask, he offered, “I did want to work with my grandfather—I did. But I—” And, to his embarrassment and horror, he was unable to speak further.
“Well,” said Charles, quietly, into the silence David had left, “but you are a wonderful artist, I am told, and artists should not spend their lives toiling in banks. I’m sure your grandfather would agree. Why, if any member of my family were to ever demonstrate any artistic skill in the slightest, you can be certain we wouldn’t expect them to spend their time tallying numbers and charting sea routes and appeasing traders and brokering arrangements! But, sadly, it seems that there is very little chance of that, as the Griffiths are, I’m sorry to say, workaday people in the extreme!” He laughed, and the mood grew lighter, and David, having recovered himself, finally laughed with him, feeling a swell of gratitude for Charles.
“Practicality is a virtue,” he said.
“Perhaps. But too much practicality, like too much of any virtue, is very dull, I think.”
After their dinner and drinks, Charles walked him down to the entryway. David could tell, from the way he tarried, the way Charles held his hand in both of his, that he wished to kiss him, and although he had had a pleasant evening, although he could even admit to himself that he liked the man, indeed, liked him very much, he was unable to stop himself from looking up at Charles’s face, flushed red from wine, and the stomach that not even his cleverly cut waistcoat could conceal, and comparing him unfavorably with Edward, his spare, slim frame, his smooth, pale skin.
Charles would not demand affection from him, he knew, and so David merely put his other hand atop Charles’s own in what he hoped was a conclusive gesture, and thanked him for a lovely evening.
If Charles was disappointed, he did not betray it. “You are most welcome,” he said. “Seeing you has been a bit of happiness for me in a very trying year.”
“But the year is young.”
“True. Though, if you might see me again, it would guarantee that it will only improve.”
He knew that he ought to say yes, or if not yes, that he must tell Charles he would have to decline his offer of marriage, and was so deeply grateful for it and honored by it—and he was—and wished him every happiness and good fortune.
But for the second time that evening, speech failed him, and Charles, as if understanding that David’s silence was a kind of acquiescence, merely bent and kissed his hand and opened the door to the chilled night, where the Binghams’ second coachman stood on the sidewalk, snow speckling his black coat, patiently holding open the hansom door.
X
Over the next week (as he had the week before), he wrote every day to Edward. Edward had promised that he would send him his sister’s address in his first letter, but he had been gone almost two weeks and there had been not a single piece of correspondence. David had inquired at the boardinghouse if they had an address for him, and had even suffered an encounter with the terrifying Matron, but neither had yielded further information. And yet he continued to write, a letter a day, which he had one of the servants leave at Edward’s boardinghouse in case he should inform them of his location.
He could feel his aimlessness transforming itself into desperation, and every evening he set himself a plan for the following day, one that would keep him away from Washington Square until just past the first post delivery, by which point he would be either alighting from the hansom or rounding the corner on foot, returning from his trip to the museum, or the club, or a chat with Eliza, who was the sibling he liked best and to whom he sometimes paid a visit when he knew Eden was attending class. Grandfather had, pointedly, asked him nothing about his dinner with Charles Griffith, and nor had David volunteered anything. Life resumed its pre-Edward rhythms, but this time, the days were grayer than before. Now he made himself wait until half past the hour when the mail arrived before finally ascending the stairs, and he made himself not ask Adams or Matthew whether anything had come for him, as if, by not doing so, he might cause a letter to materialize to reward him for his discipline and patience. But day after day passed, and the post brought only two letters from Charles, both asking if he might want to attend the theater: The first one he declined, courteously and quickly, begging family obligations; the second he ignored, angry at it for not being from Edward, until he was on the verge of being rude, whereupon he jotted a brief note apologizing and saying he had caught a chill and was staying indoors.
At the beginning of the third week of Edward’s absence, he took the hansom west and, the day’s letter in hand, determined to uncover answers himself about Edward’s whereabouts. But the only person he found at the boardinghouse was the wan little maid who seemed to spend most of her time lugging a pail of brackish-looking water from one floor to the next. “I dunno, sir,” she mumbled, looking doubtfully at David’s shoes, recoiling from the letter he held out for her as if it might burn her, “he dinna say when he’ll be back.” He left the house, then, but stood on the sidewalk, looking up at Edward’s windows, over which the dark curtains were fully drawn, the same as they had been for the past sixteen days.
That evening, though, he remembered something that might help him, and as he and his grandfather assumed their after-dinner positions, he asked, “Grandfather, have you heard of a woman named Florence Larsson?”
His grandfather appraised him, coolly, before tamping down the tobacco in his pipe and puffing. “Florence Larsson,” he repeated. “That’s a name I’ve not heard in a very long time. Why do you ask?”
“Oh, Charles was mentioning that his clerk lived in a boardinghouse she owns,” he said, dismayed not just by the speed of his duplicity but by his involving Charles in it.
“So it’s true,” his grandfather murmured, almost to himself, before sighing. “I never knew her myself, mind you—she is even older than I am; frankly, I’m surprised she’s still alive—but when she was around your age, she was involved in an awful scandal.”