no hotels. Above all I want my privacy, and a great deal of quiet for Clara. The place you speak of sounds ideal.”
“Then I will make the arrangements. I know the family well; Mrs. Noonan and her daughters are very discreet. No one here will know where you have gone, and no one there will say who you are. But of what date are we speaking? For the wedding, I mean?”
“Wednesday, the sixth of June. Mr. Chadwick has told Clara that he will come for her on the eighth, and I want to be far away with her by then.”
“Which gives us exactly”—Buchan does the mental calculation—“eleven days until your wedding.” He melts abruptly into a broad, complicitous smile, shaking his head. “My God, who would have thought it? The notorious Mario Alfieri marrying Henry Slade’s disinherited ward exactly a fortnight after their first meeting. You know, signore, that this will stand New York on its ear, don’t you? And I cannot imagine what all of Europe will think when the news finally reaches them!” He laughs out loud. “I fear that many who go to the opera, come the fall, will be going to do more than just hear you sing. Everyone will want to see what Mario Alfieri looks like as a married man!”
“But it is his pretty young wife who is worth looking at, Mr. Buchan, not Mario Alfieri. Still, if it will make them happy, they are free to stare at me as much as they like … and I promise you, I will not allow Mr. Grau to raise the price of the tickets …”
AM I LATE?” Dyckman says, flushed with hurrying.
“No, sir.” It is Peters who answers, the late Mr. Slade’s footman. “The other gentlemen have just arrived.” He takes the young man’s hat and gloves. “Go right upstairs, sir; they are waiting for you. You do remember the way?”
Dyckman remembers the way. In the last ten days he has developed a nodding acquaintance with this great house; he has known it, however, only in its state of perpetual dusk, and is not prepared for the vast change which this morning has brought. His eyes widen with amazement as he crosses the entrance hall and mounts the stairs.
Light everywhere. Every curtain has been pulled back, every shade raised, every window flung wide, every door opened. From one side of the house to the other, from front to back and top to bottom, the gentle air of June wafts through the rooms, fluttering the pale muslin that still shrouds the furniture, and blowing away the darkness. What is left of it lingers in the high-ceilinged halls and on the alabaster staircase that runs up the center of the house, but it is a muted darkness now: a silvery, soft, underwater darkness that pools in corners and grows shallower until it disappears as it nears doors and windows open to the sun. Staring about him, Dyckman is reminded of a cathedral on Easter morning, and makes his way to the music room—stripped of its net and muslin shrouds, and restored now to its gleaming blue and gold glory—in a suddenly exalted mood.
Alfieri and Buchan are waiting for him with a third man, bespectacled and bearded; a man whom Dyckman does not know, and who is introduced to him as Mr. Wheeler. Alfieri is pale but very composed, and the hand that grips Dyckman’s is both warm and steady.
“The train tickets?” he says.
“I have them here, Mario,” the young man replies, patting his breast pocket.
“And the baggage?”
“Is at the station, waiting for you to arrive.”
“Then there remains nothing to do.” Alfieri rests his hands on his friend’s shoulders. “Except to thank you.”
Dyckman flushes. “There is nothing to thank me for. I have done very little. Besides,” he smiles, “the thanks should be mine. I will be invited everywhere on the strength of this story, Mario; you know I will.”
Alfieri laughs and bows to Dyckman with an elegant flourish. “Then may you have as much joy in telling it as I have in presenting it to you.”
Buchan looks at his watch and nods to the tenor. “Ten o’clock, signore. We should start.”
“Will you go upstairs, Stafford,” Alfieri asks, “and tell the ladies that we are ready?”
When Dyckman returns, Alfieri has joined Messrs. Buchan and Wheeler by the mantelpiece. Wheeler stands behind a small table upon which are a book and two small glasses, one containing wine, the other empty.
Dyckman nods. “They’re coming.”
Buchan presses the tenor’s hand and walks to the door to wait.
Three servants—the two belonging to this house and Alfieri’s own valet—slip quietly into the room and stand a little distance away. The room falls silent, and in the stillness the rustling of skirts is heard in the passage. A fair-haired woman of middle age appears in the doorway; leaning on her arm is a very small, very young woman—hardly more than a girl—in a dove-gray gown. The young woman’s hair is covered by a soft lace veil that falls to her shoulders, and she carries a nosegay of three white roses.
Relinquishing the arm of the older woman, and never raising her eyes from the floor, the young woman takes the arm Buchan offers to her. He walks her slowly toward the little group formed by Alfieri, Dyckman, and Wheeler, but before they have covered half the distance, Alfieri comes forward and holds out his hand to her; and she looks up, for the first time, to see him smile.
At the sight of her face, an old verse of Spanish poetry, learned for practical reasons in the days of his own wooing, and for decades unremembered, springs unbidden into Buchan’s mind: “So pale she is with love, my sweet child, I think that never will the rose return to her cheek …” As Buchan falls back, the tenor folds the young woman’s arm under his own, and together they walk to where Dyckman and Wheeler wait.
Wheeler clasps his hands and looks at each of them; then clears his throat lightly, and says: “Dearly beloved, we are gathered together in the sight of this assembly …”
The wine is shared, the lovely words spoken. Alfieri’s voice is low and clear in the responses, Clara’s very faint. Buchan gives the bride away; no one steps forward to declare any impediment, or to state why this man and this woman should not be joined together. Dyckman produces the ring, which he hands to the justice, who hands it to Alfieri, who slips it onto Clara’s finger …
And it is done. So quickly that it seems a dream, Mario Alfieri and Clara Adler are pronounced man and wife.
The justice reminds the groom needlessly: “You may kiss the bride.”
“No,” Alfieri says, “not yet.” And before the perplexed eyes of the assembly he takes the empty glass from the table where it has stood during the ceremony, unused and unnoticed, wraps it in his handkerchief, places it on the floor, and brings his foot down hard upon it, smashing it to bits. Dyckman and the justice merely stare at each other, dumb, as do the servants and even Mr. and Mrs. Buchan—for the fair-haired woman is none other than the attorney’s wife—and each may be forgiven for thinking, understandably, in the face of such bizarre behavior, that perhaps the sudden strain of long-deferred matrimony has proved too much for the tenor.
But the little bride watches with enormous eyes and her hands pressed to her mouth, looking as if she will faint, and when Alfieri has crushed the glass beneath his foot she rises on tiptoe to fling her arms about his neck. And now, it seems, there is no more reason to wait: cupping her face between his hands, Alfieri takes heed at last of the justice’s reminder and kisses his wife, so long and so deeply that the assembled guests use the time to slip silently away.
AFTER THAT KISS it is all a blur for Clara: the wedding breakfast, which she gets through somehow, managing to speak normally, and taste what is placed before her, and raise her glass to her lips, all as if she were really there when she is not; the toasts to the happy couple, which she hears as strings of words that she forgets before they have been completely uttered; even the last, poignant farewell to the dear, familiar rooms, which she utters