Chapter Fifteen #3
They were on their way to a day of sight-seeing.
Gray had looked forward to seeing Royal’s reactions to New York City, but as it turned out, it wasn’t showing his old friend the sights so much as it was driving this new creature, “Royal and Peggy” to see them.
Because Royal hadn’t so much changed—much as he had changed—Gray thought, as he’d become one of two.
And now he wasn’t as interested in seeing the wonders of New York City: the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Elevated lines, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and Grant’s Tomb, as he was on fire to visit the stores: B.
Altman, Stern Brothers, Bloomingdale Brothers, A.
T. Stewart, Arnold Constable, and Roux and Company.
“We got to get our place fixed up fine,” Royal explained the moment he climbed in the carriage, “and Miz Atkins here, too,” he added tenderly, as he settled himself beside Peggy.
Now, as they drove down Broadway, Royal leaned over, peered down the street, and gave out a whoop. “There it is! Pull her in there. Gray, that’s the place I heard of.”
All Gray saw was a marquee with the name, “C. H. Ditson, that the two of them were sharing some intimate thing right out in public—a thing that always drew them in, and cast all others, even old friends and well-wishers, out.
So she’d often felt with her parents. So she felt more and more with everyone else in the world, Hannah thought and tried to smile fondly at the newlywed pair.
Until she caught Gray’s sympathetic eye.
And then she glanced away, frightened, realizing that in that moment of complete understanding, they too became two who needed no one else, and that it shouldn’t, couldn’t, be.
She was only seeing him again because Peggy and Royal had come to town and would be both hurt and confused if she didn’t come along as she’d promised.
Or so she’d told herself. Because she finally had gone to dinner at Delmonico’s with Gray, his brother, and his sister-in-law on Sunday night, and had a marvelous time of it despite her misgivings or perhaps, because of them.
When she hadn’t been trading wonderfully humorous, traitorous tales about Kyle with Lucy, she’d been laughing with Gray and Josh.
It might have been even more pleasant because it had been bittersweet: she’d vowed that was to be her last night out with Gray.
There was no sense in tormenting herself or leading him on.
She could be neither wife nor mistress to him, and she couldn’t bear to be less, or want more.
It had to end. That was why she’d kissed him when they’d parted that night.
But not why she’d clung to him until sense had returned enough for her to murmur good night and escape from the terrible joy in his arms. Now, only days later, her resolve was slipping again.
The only thing to shore her up and help her lift her head as Gray helped her down from her high seat was the knowledge that Peggy and Gray were only visiting for a little while, and she didn’t have to be with them all that while.
That didn’t stop her from trembling when Gray touched her, but then, it was cold today, after all.
And if she looked away quickly when she saw the way the sun struck his flaxen hair, why then, it was such a bright winter’s day after all, anyone’s eyes might water looking directly into the sun that way.
“Can’t read music,” Royal said as he strode past the racks of sheet music after they entered the store. “And can’t play gitar neither, so come away,” he said as Gray paused by the racks of guitars. “But here we are,” he announced with satisfaction as they reached the pianos.
“Why, Peggy,” Hannah exclaimed, as Peggy ran a gloved hand over the polished surface of the fine mahogany piano that Royal stopped beside, “I didn’t know you played.”
“I don’t,” Peggy murmured. Then Royal took her hand and pressed it and said, on a smile, “But she’s gonna, and every night, too.”
Hannah was grinning at the thought of Peggy laboring over the piano instead of a cookstove in order to please Royal, when a salesman, noting their interest, approached, bowed, and flipping up the tails of his coat, seated himself on the bench of the piano.
“You’ve a good eye, sir,” he said to Royal as he slid open a hidden door in the wood above the keyboard, revealing a paper roll in a secret compartment there.
“And,” he added grandly, as he poised his hands above the keys, “I hope, a good ear. Just listen. It’s our latest model, an Aeolian, and very fine. ”
He began to move his feet and the piano thrummed, and then the strains of Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” were heard.
It was a lovely rendition, the sound of the piano sonorous and grand, as the keys went up and down to the poignant melody.
But the most marvelous thing of all was that the salesman held his hands high in the air above the keyboard all the while, and waggled his fingers every so often to show how unoccupied they were, as the roll turned, his feet pumped, and the piano played on.
“A foot piano!” Royal proclaimed proudly when it was done, as the salesman winced and murmured, “A player, sir.”
“Yeah,” Royal went on, “saw them in saloons in Denver, and I heard they was making them for the home, too, so you could play them without putting in no coins. The very thing for my Peggy, ain’t it?”
“The very thing,” Gray agreed. “But what if her legs get tired?” he added wickedly.
“Then I’ll do it,” Royal said at once. “Or if I’m busy, we’ll hire someone else to. All right, Peggy?” he asked worriedly.
“Why, with all the sisters and brothers you’re taking on, Royal Atkins,” Peggy said, putting her hands on her hips, “if you had to hire someone. I’d be that shamed.”
“Now, for a player accordion and a player harmonica and a player harp, right Royal?” Gray asked, grinning.
“Why, sir,” the salesman said, rising, “we have the very thing! The latest thing! Pianos with full orchestral attachments: banjo, harp, drum, and bells. They’re costly, as they’re usually for public places of entertainment,” he said to Royal as he rubbed his gloved hands together, “…however, if you wish to see them. I’m sure we could find one that would fit in your home. ”
“Only if our home was on a riverboat,” Royal said, as Peggy rolled her eyes.
Gray began to laugh aloud, and Hannah tried not to giggle.
“Thanks, but the piano’s enough for us. My big-mouth friend here is a fair hand at the gitar, and we’ll have him over to supper when we feel the need of a string or two. ”
“Of course,” the salesman said slyly, “there are the music boxes for the home as well, the latest craze.”
As Royal began to shake his head and mutter something about not needing such a little sound, neither, the salesman waved his hand to a section of the store where several large ornate, and beautifully engraved oak and mahogany boxes stood upon high stands.
They wandered after the salesman, bemused, as he lifted the lid on a great golden oak one, withdrew a perforated steel disk easily a foot in circumference from the stand beneath, and placed the disc on a spindle inside the box.
Then he turned a crank and flipped a switch, and in seconds they were listening to what seemed to be a full orchestra as music swelled from the box, music so loud, so full of strumming chords and chimes, the very air vibrated.
They heard a rendition of “My Old Kentucky Home” so beautiful that Gray’s eyes were misty when the two minutes were over and it was done, and the final notes reverberating in the sudden silence.
Before they left, they heard several more tunes; Royal had ordered a music box sent home, as well as the piano, and Peggy had to drag him away from the Edison cylinder phone that had real, if tinny, human voices squeaking from the huge morning glory-shaped horn attached to it.
“ ‘Tis only a novelty, a toy,” she whispered into the ear she’d tugged down to her shoulder. “ ‘Last word,’ indeed! And not half so fine sounding as the piano and the box. And it costs the earth.”
As Royal began to protest, she added, “And there’s only a few cylinders for it, after all.
‘Tis enough, Royal Atkins. Don’t buy a thing more, leastwise not for me.
Is Wyoming so lonely that you need bring a brass band home?
Aye, and what sort of flattery is that to me, now, with you going on all the time about ‘lonely,’ I might ask? ”
“But it’s you I’m thinking of,” he protested. But she interrupted, “Then think on it: wherever you are, I’m never lonely.”
They didn’t kiss, but their locked gaze did more, and Hannah looked away, disconcerted, only to see Gray gazing at her with infinite sadness in his long blue stare.