WHICH TAKES TWO LIVES
What has been regarded by some as a family jinx has again befallen the socially prominent family of the heiress, the former Drusilla Guenevere Marchantiere, wife of Jonathan Triumphington, who died with their adopted daughter in a fire Thursday that occurred in a small cottage building called the Doll’s House located in isolated woods not far from the family mansion on the Triumphington family estate in the Adirondacks. The tragedy occurred when Mrs. Sylvia O’Kelly’O, the twenty-eight-year-old adopted daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Triumphington and married to an out-of-work composer, had noticed a fire that had started in the building where her playthings and dolls were kept from childhood.
According to a witness, an estate workman, Mrs. O’Kelly’O was seen leaving the Doll’s House and had already walked some distance on the front drive by which the Doll’s House is approached, when, it is believed, in stopping to look back, it was as if Mrs. O’Kelly’O had forgotten something and it was then she must have noticed the fire. In returning and reentering the house, it is thought she did so in an attempt to rescue some very valuable antique dolls kept there. She ignored shouts from the estate gamekeeper not to enter. He described that she seemed oblivious to the fierce flames which had already extensively engulfed the building.
Meanwhile, another workman had gone to raise the alarm and seek help finding Mr. Triumphington, who was at the time at his stables visiting his horses. Mr. Triumphington, upon reaching the Doll’s House, now a raging inferno, soaked himself and his jacket in a nearby rain barrel and put the jacket over his head, then, according to the estate gamekeeper, who attempted to stop him, entered the building, in spite of the intense blaze, to rescue his adopted daughter.
Summoned from seven miles away, the local volunteer fire department, having to traverse the winding and hilly rural roads, arrived at the scene, only to find the small cottage-style building, already with its roof collapsed, beyond saving. The victims’ remains were identified by Mrs. Triumphington, adding yet another tragedy to the long history of misfortune to haunt the Marchantiere family.
Walk along seeing nothing but my feet stepping one in front of the other. The tears chill in the breeze as they roll down my face. And now all over my body I suffer your pain of burning. Unable to stand your being hurt, driven away as you were by my unfaithfulness. Spat upon by your mother. Haunted now by what drove you most to death. We could have had little children with beautiful limbs like yours who at birthdays played games and had treasure hunts in gardens and gathered around a Christmas tree, opening presents at Christmastime. Amid your dolls. Your elegant limbs charred black. Like those conflagrated aboard ship and roasted alive belowdecks after the blast of an enemy shell. Skin melted. Your hair burned off. Lids of your eyes gone. Left staring out of the bone holes in your head. Lips seared, to stretch in a grin of death over your teeth. Triumphington no phony poseur, as I had christened him. Nor was my wife his adopted daughter without principle and dignity. Who unlike Max’s alimony-grasping, greedy helpmates, only said she would give me the cheapest divorce it is possible to get. She intended to die. Walked deliberately into the Doll’s House. On her own exquisite long legs. And now so weary and worn, force my own legs to go back into this Bowery saloon where the bartender has got to know me because I’ve been here twice before. He returned to me quarters in change from my dollar bills, wiping the bar and placing my glass of beer in front of me.
“You must like us in here. And hey, this one is on the house.”
Under the roar of the elevated train, step over five prostrate bodies to get here. Crumpled figures in the doorways. Those still sitting up sat with a bottle clutched in the hand, staring out into the shadowy gloom under the elevated train and mumbling to themselves. Either someone’s son or someone’s father. Then in this bar a brief friendliness comes from out of the bowels of all this dereliction. The long-distance operator’s voice sounding familiar, and I finally get through to the Adirondacks and Dru on the other end of the line. Long silences between her words. Her voice less cold than it was with that inference that I was trying to get something out of her. And now she asks if I agree that Sylvia’s sealed coffin be brought down to New York with her husband’s. A funeral service at St. Bartholomew’s prior to the interment and burial in the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. And did I agree that Sylvia would be buried beside the Triumphington family mausoleum. Then she said that we shouldn’t be seen together but that she was being driven down to the city and we could meet if there was somewhere ultradiscreet, as the newspapers were looking for stories. I suggested the counter selling coffee and hot dogs down in the subway at Lexington and Fifty-ninth Street, as it was unlikely anyone in the Social Register would ever be seen congregating there and where she would be safe from recognition or photographers.
In a morning fog settling over the city, the tops of the skyscrapers disappearing. Trying to stop myself plunging into grief as a misty soft rain drizzled down out of the shadowy whiteness. The atmosphere of the world one now lived in, bleak and black. Wore the same dark suit I wore to our first restaurant meal with Sylvia and her adoptive mother. Put on a black tie. If you’re in mourning people are not supposed to be rude to you or punch you in the face. Each time I enter or return to the apartment, I look behind and watch the shadows ahead for the glint of a knife or lurking figures. Took the Lexington Avenue subway uptown to the Fifty-ninth Street stop. Hungry, I had two hot dogs smothered in mustard, relish, and sauerkraut while wondering how I was going to afford paying for them. Quickly approaching getting broke again after pawning my watch and radio. And now waiting for what one had to presume was one of the richest widows in America. But who after half an hour was not showing up. And just as I was ready to go and sipping the last of my 7UP and reaching in my pocket for coins to pay, she arrived. Black silk scarf at her throat, her tall slenderness covered in a gray mackintosh of the French Resistance sort that Max wore. A black cloche hat pulled tightly down over her hair. And as she stole up to my elbow, looking like an unlikely spy with her sunglasses, it took more than a moment to recognize her. She leaned over, and I could smell her sweet breath as she kissed me on the cheek and my most private part instantly stiffened.
“Sorry I’m late, Stephen.”
“Hi.”
“It’s a very very sad time. I can’t think of anything worse or more dreadful to have happened.”
“Yes.”
A smell of brandy on her always-beautiful breath. She sat on the stool next to me and ordered a coffee and a Danish pastry. I thought, My God, the cup’s not gold and pastry has no diamonds glittering in it. And she’s going to eat and drink like any of the people who have nothing better to do than to be here. Her voice softer and quieter than she’d ever spoken before, speaks.
“But now I’m afraid so many practical things have to come first. You can’t afford to pay for Sylvia’s funeral, can you.”
“I can try. And I will.”
“Please don’t complicate matters, will you. Everything is already being taken care of. Jonathan was an honorable man. And Sylvia a lovely young woman too young to die. And their physical bodies were the most terrible things I have ever had to witness.”
Tears rolling from beneath her sunglasses and down her cheeks. A train pulling in would have drowned out any wounded sob. But stoic she sat, opening her crocodile-skin bag and taking out a handkerchief to dab the tears. And here had now come what had to be the cold calculation that was about to involve our lives. Her assumption that I would be glad to be rid of my responsibilities, even though I was relieved and was too ashamed to admit it.