“Shall you?” asked Charles, softly, and David felt again that mingling of impatience and tenderness.
“Yes,” he said. “I promise.”
He saw Charles next on a Sunday afternoon, and as he was leaving, Charles asked him—as he always did after their encounters—whether he might like to stay for supper, whether he might like to attend this concert or that theater performance. He always demurred, aware that with each successive encounter the question David knew Charles dared not ask loomed larger and larger, until it began to feel as if it had somehow materialized as a fog, so that every movement the two of them made brought them deeper into its obfuscating, impermeable murk. David had once again spent most of his time with Charles thinking of Edward, trying to imagine Charles to be Edward, and although he was, as always, polite to Charles, he was increasingly formal, despite the increasing intimacy of their behavior.
“Wait,” Charles said, “don’t get dressed so quickly—let me look at you a while longer.” But David said his grandfather was expecting him, and left before Charles could ask again.
After each visit, he was increasingly miserable: at how he was treating poor, decent Charles; at how he was conducting himself as a Bingham, and his grandfather’s charge; at how his desperate hunger for Edward was driving him to behave. Though he could not blame his choices on Edward, no matter his reasons for not writing—it was his decision, and only his, and instead of bearing his anguish alone, and bravely, he had now let it infect Charles as well.
And although he returned to Charles to distract himself, being with him also inspired unwanted questions, new doubts: Whenever Charles spoke of his friends, of his nephews, of his business associates, he was reminded that Edward had made it impossible for David to ever locate him. Edward’s friends had been identified only by their Christian names, never their family ones—David realized that he didn’t even know the sisters’ married names. Whenever Charles asked him questions about himself, his childhood and school years, his grandfather and siblings, he was reminded that Edward had rarely asked him such questions: He had not noticed it at the time, but he remembered it now. Was he not interested? He thought bitterly of how he had once felt that Edward had been seeking his approval and was grateful when David gave it to him, and recognized now how wrong he’d been, how, all along, it had always been Edward who had been in control.
The following Wednesday, he was tidying the classroom after his lesson when he heard the sound of his name echoing through the hallway. The previous week, the piano, which until then had remained standing at the front of the room, a monument to Edward and then to his disappearance, had been relegated to its corner, where neglect would return it to its natural state of disrepair.
He turned, and into the classroom marched Matron, looking at him disapprovingly, as always. “Go back to your rooms now, children,” she told the few stragglers, patting them on the heads or shoulders as they greeted her. And then, to him, “Mister Bingham. How are the classes coming along?”
“Very well, thank you.”
“It is very good of you to come teach my children. You know they are very fond of you.”
“And I of them.”
“I came to bring you this,” Matron said, and drew from her pocket a thin white envelope, which he took and nearly dropped when he saw the handwriting.
“Yes, it is from Mister Bishop,” she said, witheringly, spitting out Edward’s name. “He has at last deigned to return to us, it seems.” In the weeks since Edward’s disappearance, Matron had been David’s only, unlikely, and unwitting ally, the sole person in David’s life who was as interested in Edward’s whereabouts as he was. Her motivations for recovering him, however, were rather different—Edward, she had confided in David when he had finally forced himself to ask her, had begged her for leave because of an emergency in his family; he was to return to class on February twenty-second, but that date had passed and there had been no word from him, and Matron was finally forced to terminate the class altogether.
(“I believe his mother, who lives in New England, is very ill,” Matron had said, sounding put out by the fact of the ill mother.
“I believe he is an orphan,” David had ventured, after a pause. “I believe it was his sister who had had a baby?”
Matron stopped and considered this. “I’m fairly certain he had said his mother,” she said. “I would not have given leave for a baby. But, well,” she said, softening—at some point in every interaction with David, she would visibly recall that he was her school’s patron and would adjust her voice and manners accordingly—“perhaps I am mistaken. Goodness knows there are people telling me things about their lives and difficulties all day long and I am simply unable to keep track of every last detail. He said she was in Vermont, is she not? There are three sisters?”
“Yes,” he’d said, relief filling him. “Exactly.”)
“When did you receive this?” he asked, faintly, wanting both to sit down and for Matron to leave, immediately, so he could tear into the letter.
“Yesterday,” Matron huffed. “He came by—the nerve!—to ask for his final payment, and I gave him a piece of my mind as well; told him how he had disappointed the children, how selfish he’d been, taking off and not returning when he promised he would. And he said—”
David interrupted her. “Matron, I’m very sorry,” he said, “but I really must leave; I’ve an appointment I mustn’t be late for.”
Matron drew herself very straight, her dignity clearly injured. “Of course, Mister Bingham,” she said. “I certainly wouldn’t want to inconvenience you. I shall see you at least next week.”
It was only a few meters from the front of the school to his hansom, but he was unable to wait even that long, and he opened the letter directly on the front steps, nearly dropping it again, his fingers trembling from the cold and the anticipation.
My dearest David— March 5, 1894
What must you think of me. I am so ashamed, so embarrassed, so deeply, profoundly apologetic. I can only say that my silence was not by choice, and that I thought of you every minute of every hour of every day. It was all I could do, upon my return yesterday, to not throw myself onto the steps of your house at Washington Square and wait for you to beg your forgiveness, but I was unsure of how I might be received.
I am unsure now, as well. But if you will give me the privilege of attempting to make my amends to you, I beg you to come by the boardinghouse, anytime.
Until then, I remain—
Your loving Edward
XII
There was no choice for him. He sent the hansom driver home with a message for his grandfather saying he was meeting Charles Griffith that night, and then, turning and wincing from the lie, he watched the driver round the corner before he began running, not caring about the spectacle he made. His potential embarrassment now meant nothing against the promise of seeing Edward once more.