The Last Days of Night(69)

“And Henry La Barre Jayne?” asked Paul. “Would he agree?”

He’d never said the name aloud to her before. His voice sounded petulant, even to himself.

“You apparently have a lot of opinions about someone you know nothing about.”

“That was mean.”

“It was.”

Paul had avoided this conversation for two days on the train. He’d avoided it many times in New York. But the intimacy of having Agnes in his parents’ house made him feel unable to preserve such polite silence any longer.

“I’ve spent my life coming in second place to men with last names like Jayne. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.”

“Second place?”

Paul searched her face. Her mother had apparently not told her about his invitation to a Sunday walk among the flowers. Was this a generous act on Fannie’s part? It had saved Paul some measure of embarrassment, without his knowing. Yet he no longer had anything to lose by honesty.

“I asked your mother if I might take you walking,” he confessed. “She informed me of the time you’ve spent in the company of Mr. Jayne.”

“That sounds like the kind of thing I’d expect from my mother.”

“I’m sorry for insulting him,” said Paul. “It wasn’t fair of me.”

“I’m sorry that my mother embarrassed you,” said Agnes in turn. “She is…complicated. As is the situation.”

Paul looked at her curiously. He wasn’t sure what she meant.

She appeared to be in the midst of making a very difficult decision. Paul stayed quiet. If she was going to say something to him, something difficult, he would let her make that decision on her own.

“Look,” she said at last. “There’s a lot about all of this—my mother, Henry Jayne—that you don’t know. And…well, I want to tell you.”

“All right,” said Paul.

“But I’m afraid to.”

Of all the emotions she’d expressed to him, fear had never been among them. Edison had not frightened her, nor had Stanford White, nor had the danger of keeping Tesla in her home. What was scaring her?

“You can trust me,” said Paul. “If nothing else…I’m your lawyer.”

She smiled for a moment. “I lied to you.”

“About what?” He watched her struggle to find the words. “Miss Huntington?”

“That’s just the thing,” she said at last. “My name isn’t Agnes Huntington.”





The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams.

—KARL POPPER



SHE HAD BEEN born Agnes Gouge in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Her mother, Fannie, was not then the high-society maven Paul had met; she was a maid. Agnes’s father had sailed deep-water. Once, when she was eight, she’d received a letter from him. The postmark was Oslo. He’d sketched the serene harbor for her, and inquired as to her health. He’d left no address at which to reach him. And she’d never heard from him again.

She’d always loved to sing. The upstairs neighbors would bang their boots against the ceiling, but she didn’t care. Neither did her mother.

When Agnes was fourteen, Fannie moved them to Boston, where she scrubbed floors and polished china plates for the Endicotts while Agnes auditioned for the Bijou. The parts went to local girls whose parents knew the manager. Agnes got a job sweeping stages at the Howard Athenaeum, but it wasn’t what she’d imagined. She did not find herself amid a tight-knit group of artists. There was no creative camaraderie in which to conspire. She was the sweeping girl, the singers were the singers, and the stagehands were sauced. It was as much a bordello as a theater. Though a bordello might at least have been profitable.

Boston wasn’t working. Fannie had seen her daughter’s tears, had felt the pain of her unrealized ambitions from the moment they left Michigan. She knew how much Agnes wanted this, and she also knew that the daughters of housemaids didn’t become prime donne. Fannie had to watch her precocious, inquisitive, curious daughter learn cynicism. That was what she could not stand.

Agnes had no idea how long her mother had been planning it when it happened. Whether it was a spur-of-the-moment decision or whether her mother had set the whole affair up months before.

One day, when she was seventeen, Agnes came home to find a dress lying across her bed. The dress was of a color that Agnes had never before seen. It was green, bright but somehow still subtle. The shade of orchid leaves, lady’s mantle, saxifrage. The shade of a faraway ocean. She gasped when she saw it, when her eyes caught the glimmer of afternoon light from the dirty, square window. At the top of the dress, resting delicately over the silk, was a string of diamonds.

Agnes stepped closer. She reached out to touch the fabric, but pulled her hand back. She was afraid to press her grease-stained fingertips against such a cloth. This dress, these jewels, did not belong to anyone she knew. Or anyone she might know. They were a princess’s evening wear.

“Do you like it?” Agnes turned to see Fannie in the doorway, smoking a thin cigarette.

“What is it?”

“It’s a dress,” said Fannie. “And it’s yours.”

“You…” Agnes couldn’t believe what she was going to say. “You…stole it?”