Astray: Stories Read online

  Her dark eyes were confused, and unconsoled.

  “I can do nothing for your grief, madam, but perhaps I can banish your terrors—if you’ll do me the honor of putting yourself quite in my hands?”

  A moment’s pause, and then she nodded, very fast.

  Her naïveté charmed Huddlestone. His eyes rested on her gold rings as he wondered how much he could get away with charging her.

  That evening, over some hot chops he’d had sent up from the tavern, the attorney found himself savoring all the details he recalled of the young widow. Her tapered fingertips, protruding from her mittens; the intimate creak as she’d lifted her hoops when the interview was over. A sense of smooth, curved limbs under the layers of inky drapery. In response to his questions, she’d told him she’d been married at fourteen and boarded with her husband’s family for the first few years. How these Jews kept their young on a tight rein! Huddlestone knew that his father was eager for grandsons, but at thirty-two he still hadn’t found an appealing partner in life, and besides, he would rather hate to give up his bachelor liberties.

  As he’d requested, Mrs. Gomez came back the very next day, her eyes shadowed by lack of sleep. She produced a sheaf of papers from a leather case. “I looked in his escritoire, as you advised, Mr. Huddlestone. I was obliged to smash the lock.” She spoke breathlessly, as if she’d just committed a burglary.

  “I’m sure your late husband would approve,” he murmured, already leafing through the documents. “Mr. Gomez traded with Jamaica, I see?”

  “And Barbados, and England, and many other places,” she said. “I believe he imported dry goods and wine, and exported lumber and flour and such things.”

  I believe. Huddlestone suppressed a smirk; these fine damsels had no idea how their jewels and gowns got paid for. Ah, here was the will, as he’d hoped. The preamble was distinctively Semitic, to his ear: I bequeath my Immortal Soul into the hands of the Almighty God of Israel …

  When he looked up, Mrs. Gomez was staring out the window onto Dock Street. “Have you read this, madam, may I ask?”

  “Have I—”

  He flushed; perhaps she’d never been taught. He knew Sephardics were an educated breed, but their females were a closed book to him. “Your husband’s testament: has anyone told you its contents?”

  “Oh, he did write one, then?”

  Huddlestone grinned. “It’s a rather extraordinary document, Mrs. Gomez. Composed, I venture to say, under the influence of sentiments most uxorious.”

  She blinked; perhaps she didn’t know the word.

  “It’s a very simple document—ten times shorter than the typical will of a merchant.” What Huddlestone didn’t say was that in his experience, the average New York trader would prefer to chop off a finger than sign his name to such a thing. “Not only are you, his relict, named as sole executor, but also as …”—he paused in pleasurable suspense—”sole heir.”

  Her red mouth quivered. “I don’t quite follow.”

  “Mr. Gomez’s entire estate, after debts are paid, goes to you. Not just for your lifetime use, but outright!” The last time Huddlestone had seen such a will had been in the case of a vintner who’d turned out to have another wife and child back in England. He trusted there’d be no such hitches this time. “Not a penny is reserved for Mr. Gomez’s kinsfolk or friends,” he spelled out. In fact, for a Hebrew it was a particularly strange will; they usually left money to their unwed sisters, third cousins, congregation, even poor Jews back in Bohemia or the Barbados.

  Mrs. Gomez still wasn’t smiling.

  “Madam,” said Huddlestone, reaching across his bureau to seize her hand, “may I be the first to congratulate you on your great fortune?” She withdrew her fingers after a moment, and he wondered if he’d offended her. “How your late, lamented spouse must have doted on you,” he rushed on. “And if I may say so, what a dazzling cornucopia of wifely virtues you must possess to be rewarded so richly in this time of mourning.” Shut up, man.

  The young widow was holding a handkerchief over her eyes. “Far from it.”

  “Come, madam—”

  “I tried to perform my duty, that’s all,” she said, her voice thick with pain. “I have no special powers or talents; I make no pretence to wit. I ran his household, that’s all.” Her jaw moved as if she were grinding something between her teeth. “I gave him no heirs.”

  “Ah, but you gave him your youth,” the attorney told her, and then realized how tactless that was. “The early part of it, I mean. You entrusted him with your obedient devotion, and in return he has bequeathed you his whole earthly estate.”

  The handkerchief came down, and the smoky eyes fixed on his. “What—what might it come to, sir?”

  “Oh, you’ll have to leave these papers with me before I can put a figure to it,” he told her. “But the estate appears to include substantial holdings in stocks and shares”—he leafed through the certificates—”as well as the house on Pearl Street, the blacks and other movables, and a part-interest in a ship …”

  “Who knows what debts there may be, though?” Her face was still pinched with gloom. “But I suppose I must trust in the widow’s cruse.”

  “The widow’s cruise?” Huddlestone repeated, puzzled.

  “A cruse, an earthenware jar,” she hurried to explain. “From the story of Elisha and the widow. It refers to that pittance which can be eked out forever, by good management and God’s grace.”

  “Ah, yes,” he said, nodding, as if recalling the text.

  After she’d gone, Huddlestone put his other tasks aside and spent the whole afternoon going through the Gomez papers.

  Over a mug of cold punch and a pipe, that evening he reflected that the young widow was going to be a very great fortune indeed. She hardly seemed to realize it yet. She was all shrinking modesty; a true woman. She’d flinched at the prospect of thrusting herself into the public eye, by going to court to prove the will, which would involve confronting creditors, or any of the Gomez clan who might object to the wealth going out of the family. Huddlestone had had to assure her that he would guide and protect her, every step of the way.

  He drew on his pipe, now, and mentally tripled the amount he was planning to bill her; she’d never know what other attorneys charged, and besides, it wasn’t as if she couldn’t spare it. He blessed the moment the heiress had stepped sideways into his little office, lifting her vast boned skirts. The tide of his fortune was turning, he could feel it; Huddlestone Junior was going to end up a richer man of the law than Huddlestone Senior had ever been. Mrs. Gomez was his luck, his good angel.

  He sent his servant to the garret to poke around in a trunk for the Bible his father had given him as a boy. He found the story soon enough. The prophet Elisha told the debt-stricken widow to borrow empty jars from all her neighbors, and she kept pouring and pouring from her little cruse of oil until they were all filled up, which earned her enough to keep her in comfort for the rest of her days. Charmingly silly, thought Huddlestone.

  Over the fortnight that followed, the attorney looked forward with growing excitement to Mrs. Gomez’s daily visits. She blanched at the thought of probate dragging on for months—”I can’t sleep, sir, I can’t know a moment’s peace until I’ve completed my duties as executor”—so he was doing everything possible to speed it up. He barked at one mulish court official: “How do you expect this poor widow to produce the body when it’s moldering in a plague pit somewhere in the wilds of Connecticut?”

  She’d relaxed with him, somewhat, he congratulated himself; it was like taming a sparrow. She now consented to a small glass of Madeira at each meeting. Making small talk, Huddlestone happened to mention the item in the Weekly Journal about the female pseudo-court that punished the violent husband. “No,” said Mrs. Gomez, her head nunnishly on one side, “I cannot believe it of my sex.”

  “That’s what I said to myself, madam.”

  “Women—if you’ll permit a generalization—act more privately, more obs
curely. According to the dictates of the heart.” She spoke in a strangely bitter tone.

  “Besides,” he added pragmatically, “how would these creatures know enough to even mimic the correct procedures?”

  Mrs. Gomez leaned slightly toward him. “Indeed. Consider my own case: I’m only too painfully aware that a woman alone, confronting the full weight and complexity of the law, might as well be lost in the bush at night.”

  “Ah, but what gentleman but would be only too happy to escort her home, with a lantern?” He’d got the gallant tone just right, Huddlestone considered, though he wasn’t sure about the two buts.

  There was some private darkness about her, he thought, lying awake that night; he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. It wasn’t just bereavement; he’d met many women who’d lost husbands, and they’d never had such complicated eyes.

  “During marriage you were a nonperson, legally,” he explained the next morning, “but now you’re considered feme sole once more. You could even take up your husband’s business, if his trading partners didn’t object,” he added playfully.

  Mrs. Gomez sucked in her lips. “Oh, sir, I couldn’t imagine anything more grueling. No”—her lovely face settled into fixed lines of sorrow again—”I don’t even wish to maintain a household here.”

  “You’ll sell your blacks, then?”

  “I wish you to sell everything for me,” she told him, with a new decisiveness. Was widowhood stiffening her backbone? “My husband’s stocks, chattels, the house …”

  “Very well. The proceeds could be put out at interest, to provide you with a guaranteed annuity.”

  She shook her head, little curls escaping from her cap at the temples. “I’d prefer the whole sum in gold, to take with me back to my father in Jamaica.”

  He frowned.

  “I am always a foreigner here,” she told him. “It is best to go, and the sooner, the better. To turn the page.” She pressed her fingertips to her mouth as if she had said too much.

  Somehow Huddlestone didn’t like the idea of that glittering, winking fortune being carried off on a ship. It should stay in New York. Mrs. Gomez should stay, too.

  That night he twisted in his sheets, irritated by the lumpy mattress. He relished his freedom, he reminded himself; what needs had he that servant and tavern and coffeehouse and laundry and (once in a while) a harlot picked up at the Battery couldn’t meet? He’d never envied his married friends, with their snobbish wives and drooling infants. But Mrs. Gomez, with her dark lips and quivering lashes, her helplessness and her several thousand pounds …

  By the time dawn broke over the East River, Huddlestone had made up his mind. This was his moment, he could taste it like spring on the air. Nothing ventured, as the proverb went. When the Gomez business was done, instead of sending in his bill, he would present himself at the mansion in Pearl Street and ask for her hand.

  His heart lurched in his ribcage. Although Huddlestone Senior might object to the lady’s religion, the young attorney considered himself quite free of prejudice. Nor was the widow likely to turn him down on those grounds, since the supply of eligible bachelors in her tiny congregation could not be ample. How better, how much faster to turn the page than to take a new husband? Of course she’d felt like a foreigner, cooped up in that little nest of Caribbean Israelites. With an American husband—a bluff young attorney—her real life could begin.

  A brief qualm struck him: the merchant had sired no children on her. But Huddlestone was sure he could do better; didn’t her every curve seem to breathe ripeness? He reckoned it a positive advantage that she had experience of wifehood, she was like a well-broken horse. With her fortune—their fortune, he corrected himself, grinning in the dark—mightn’t they take their place in the upper echelons of New York, alongside the great officials and landowners, and raise sons whose only trade was gentleman? He imagined a great canopied bed; guests sipping from cut crystal; sleigh rides to the Bowery.

  The next day he felt as if he were suffering from a fever. Not scarlatina, he joked to himself, just love. His father, over Sunday dinner, accused him of a coy expression. Huddlestone drank too much at night; by day, he neglected all other business but the Gomez estate. He brought the will’s witnesses into court, harried debtors, and organized a public vendue to turn the contents of the house on Pearl Street into cash. (It seemed a shame to part with the handsome, heavy furniture and silverware, he thought, but this way, the newlyweds could begin afresh, with everything in the latest style.) Huddlestone worked with a thorough zeal that was strange to him, and all the while the image of Mrs. Gomez floated in front of his eyes. She might wear pale blue to their wedding; she might wear lilac. Oddly enough, he thought he liked her best in black.

  When the great day came, and Huddlestone arrived at the almost empty mansion with two strong men carrying a trunk full of gold, Mrs. Gomez let out a little cry.

  “Not a penny more than you merit, madam. May I congratulate you,” he asked, “on bearing up so bravely, these weeks past?”

  She shook her head as if overcome.

  He inquired gently whether there would be a funeral.

  “Oh, yes,” she assured him, “I mean to do all that money can.”

  This casual reference to the trunkful of gold made Huddlestone’s stomach twist. Did she not realize that a really splendid funeral, with a hired inviter and barrels of wine and tobacco, commemorative gloves and scarves and rings for all the mourners, could cost several hundred pounds? “May I offer a word of counsel, Mrs. Gomez? The governor looks askance at the fashion for extravagant funerals. In the absence of a body, in particular, it might seem improper …”

  She hadn’t thought of that; perhaps he was right.

  “Of course, whatever form the obsequies may take, I need hardly tell you that I shall be present as—if you’ll permit—your advisor, your prop, your staff.”

  “Oh, Mr. Huddlestone.” A wet glitter in her eyes. “Such excess of kindness—lavished on an undeserving woman—”

  “Nonsense!” What could explain that air of sorrowful mystery about the young widow? he wondered. What could have infused such infinite regret into that perfect face? He longed to understand it almost more than to wipe it away.

  “These past weeks—”

  “The pleasure has been very great. And all mine,” he said incoherently.

  “I can only say how sorry I am for all the trouble to which I’ve put you.”

  He was briefly speechless; his arms made a circling motion as if to say that all that he was, all that he could do, was at her feet.

  “You must be sure to send in your bill promptly,” she reminded him in a whisper as the servant came to show him out.

  The days that followed were full of pleasurable anticipations, and the nights brought scalding dreams. His sheets were dreadfully stained; he had to send them out for laundering. His best silk suit was aired and brushed, ready for the funeral. Perhaps he would act directly afterwards, while the widow was at her most vulnerable. He mulled over the wording. He tried out every variation, from May I be so bold as to make a proposal which may be of mutual benefit, to I insist that you be mine.

  Huddlestone was in his window seat at the coffeehouse when his eye was caught by the name.

  One Mr. Gomez, a merchant, given out for dead of the scarlatina, yesterday arrived in New York, perfectly well, to the astonishment of his family.

  He gripped the paper so hard, it tore. The coffee turned to bile in his mouth. He’d come so close, his fortunes had trembled on the verge of transformation…. To hell with this Lazarus, and to hell with Connecticut peddlers for reporting rumor as truth!

  How ecstatic Mrs. Gomez would be this morning. Would she throw off her weeds at once and appear in white swanskin and taffeta? It was like a Bible story: all her wifely grief rewarded by this miraculous resurrection. If she’d ever felt anything for her attorney—a mild trust, at most, Huddlestone thought in humiliation—it was nothing compared to her wifely fervor.
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br />   Just wait till they see my bill!

  Out in the street, the air stank; somebody had to be burning oyster shells. Huddlestone talked himself from rage to mere gloom. What kind of demon was he, to begrudge the woman her newfound bliss? After all, she’d never given him any open encouragement, promised him nothing. Wasn’t it her melancholic modesty, her shrinking from any selfish desire, that had attracted him? Come, man, it’s nobody’s fault.

  Perhaps he would pay a call. His feet were already taking him toward Pearl Street. It was common decency to congratulate the widow-turned-wife, to wish the happy couple well.

  (But he would leave it to some other attorney to sort out their legal muddle.) He would drop by only briefly, to take one last glimpse of that scarlet, startled mouth.

  At Pearl Street the manservant annoyed him by insisting that his mistress was gone abroad. “I think you mean,” said Huddlestone, “that she intended to go back to her family in Jamaica. But under the circumstances—”

  No, the fellow wouldn’t budge; Mrs. Gomez had shipped out of New York a week ago, she’d missed the master’s return by a matter of days. Would the visitor like to speak to the master?

  Huddlestone shook his head hurriedly; it occurred to him for the first time that Gomez might see him as having been culpably negligent, to rush through the probating of the will without a proper proof of death.

  His head was throbbing with confusion. Down by the docks, he interrogated some sailors, to disprove the servant’s ridiculous story. Just as he thought, there’d been no ships embarking for Jamaica in the past fortnight. The only sailings had been to Liverpool, Rotterdam, Lisbon, and the Cape. Besides, why would Mrs. Gomez have left New York in such a scramble, before the funeral, with the house not yet sold, without saying a word to her attorney? By what sickening stroke of ill luck could she have just missed being reunited with her husband?

  It was only then, his eyes on the choppy waters of the East River, his nostrils full of the stench of fish, that Huddlestone woke, as if he’d been slapped. It came to him that he’d been a sleepwalker, tangled in the kind of muddy dream in which, while it lasts, monstrosities make sense. Of course, of course.