Page 79 of The Cabinet of Dr. Leng

“Children,” she said, “how would you like to go on an outing?”

“Where?” cried Binky, clapping her hands.

“To the Museum of Natural History.” The museum had opened three years before, a Gothic Revival building erected in the uptown wasteland known as Manhattan Square.

At this, little Constance clapped her hands again in excitement, eyes shining.

“Dress warmly for the carriage ride. We’ll leave in half an hour.” She hesitated, glancing at Joe. “We’re going to see…dinosaurs.”

At this, a flash of interest crossed Joe’s face before it shut down again.

Murphy brought the carriage around and helped them in, the horses steaming and stamping in the cold sunlight. The light mantle of snow was still virgin on the sidewalks, but in the streets it was already churning up into a mess of slush, wheel marks, and horse manure. They set off uptown, the matched Percherons clip-clopping up the avenue to Fifty-Ninth Street, then heading crosstown to the West Side and continuing up Eighth Avenue. Binky had her nose pressed to the glass, drinking everything in with childish fascination. Constance, recalling her own early memories of the Five Points, had never seen fresh snow—it turned to filthy, frozen soot almost before reaching the ground.

Beyond Sixty-Sixth Street, the city seemed to halt. The roadways had been laid out, but there were very few buildings, mostly vacant lots in the process of being cleared and leveled. At Seventy-Second Street, the hulking form of the Dakota—at present it was only half constructed, and it would not get the moniker for another eighteen months—loomed up, occupying the block to Seventy-Third. Now it was Constance’s turn to stare fixedly out the window, unable fully to shake off the many memories and emotions that came to mind of the vast structure—and Pendergast’s rambling apartments within.

To the north, another expanse of vacant lots stretched ahead to the museum, grim and severe despite its newness, surrounded by a wilderness of rubble, stagnant ponds, a scattering of small goat farms, and the wooden shacks of squatters in the process of being evicted as the city marched inexorably northward. To their right stretched the expanse of Central Park, vast but still relatively wild and undeveloped.

The carriage turned into the museum’s drive, then halted at the entrance. Murphy helped them down. Constance, taking the children’s hands, ushered them past a pair of stern-looking guards and into the grand gallery that soared upward two stories and ran half the length of the building. Its walls were lined with glass cases full of mounted and stuffed animals, fossils, and skeletons. Binky gasped and squeezed Constance’s hand more tightly. Even Joe’s eyes widened.

The place was thronging with all manner of humanity: top-hatted gentlemen, workers in overalls, popinjay dandies, scruffy boys staring slack-jawed, and nannies on outings with their young charges. Constance released the hands of Joe and Binky to let them explore. She was pleased to see how fascinated little Constance was by the exhibits: a giant mammoth skeleton with curved tusks; a fanciful reconstruction of a dinosaur; endless cabinets stuffed to the gills. Some of the labels, she noted from the perspective of a twenty-first-century education, were wildly inaccurate. Not only that, but the tusks on the mammoth had been mounted in reversed position, so that they curved outward instead of in, and the reconstructed dinosaur looked nothing like any that had actually walked the earth. But of course, none of this mattered to the two children, who were entranced.

They reached the end of the central gallery and climbed a set of cast-iron stairs to the second floor, displaying dioramas full of stuffed animals, artificial wax plants, and painted backgrounds. The children devoured the exhibits, one after another, until at last Constance decided she’d best reserve some of that childish interest for a future visit.

“It’s such a beautiful day,” she said at last, gathering them to her. “Why don’t we take a ride around the park?”

50

ONCE AGAIN THEY ENTEREDthe carriage; Murphy picked up the reins and then guided them southward. Compared to the Central Park that Constance was familiar with, this stretch looked unkempt, with half-built roads, piles of dirt and rocks, downed trees, and other signs of a landscape under construction. Once they passed the remains of the Old Reservoir, however, a degree of orderliness began to impose itself. There were carriage paths and walkways winding among the bare trees, and the Mall and Bethesda Fountain had been completed. Murphy turned in at a transverse lane, circling the north end of the parade ground. The lane itself was already packed and scored with innumerable wheel ruts, but the meadows to either side were mantled with snow, the tree limbs and bushes covered in white icing.

Binky looked out the carriage window, eyes wide. “It’s sobeautiful!”

Joe, too, was clearly astonished by the vista, although—as in the museum—he kept his emotions and thoughts to himself. She wondered what it would take for him to let down his guard and finally accept the reality of his new life in a Fifth Avenue mansion. Her memories of Joe before he’d been arrested were hazy at best, but she recalled how guarded and withdrawn he’d been after his release…in that brief space of time before he was killed in the pickpocketing attempt gone wrong. She glanced at him privately as he scanned the fields of snow and lines of trees. She had always thought the challenge would be freeing him from imprisonment—but that had turned out to be just the first step.

Binky was pulling at her sleeve and speaking excitedly. “May we stop, Aunt Livia? Just for a minute?”

Out the carriage window, Constance could see young people cavorting at a distance, but the snow nearby remained virgin and she noticed a turnout just ahead. She directed Murphy to pull into it.

“Make sure you keep your mittens on,” she said to the children. “Caps, as well. If you’re good, I’ll show you how to make snow angels.”

She opened the carriage door and Binky was out in two bounds. Immediately she dipped her mittened hands in the snow—gently, as if it were delicate gossamer that would disappear with rough handling. Then—seeing the furrows her hands had made—she began scooping up great handfuls of snow, tossing them in the air, clapping them between her mittens and sticking out her tongue to catch the flakes as they streamed back down.

Joe had descended more slowly from the coach. Constance watched as he stopped and looked out over the vast expanse. He crouched and slid a mittened hand across the unbroken snow, as if conducting an experiment.

Binky’s shrieks of delight were a stark contrast to his silence. She traced figures, laughing at the images she made. The sun had warmed and softened the snow, and Binky began packing and forming it into what, no doubt, would be the base of a snowman. Getting out of the coach, Constance knelt and showed her how to roll the snow into a ball, pushing it along to make it bigger, exposing the dead grass beneath. Joe watched, and she hoped he might join in.

When the base was finished, she started another ball for the snowman’s body. Suddenly, she heard Murphy’s warning shout. At the same time, she saw a flash of movement and looked up to see Joe bolting away from them, running toward a distant stand of trees.

Disbelief and rage mingled within her. After all the kindnesses and proofs of fidelity she’d demonstrated, he’d still run away, as untamable as a wild animal. Murphy was down off his seat now, beginning to lumber after the boy, but he was big and slow.

The same, however, could not be said of Constance.

She took off, hand clutching the snowball she had started to make, and—with aim long perfected by training with a stiletto—she launched the missile at him, shouting furiously: “Oi!Half Jigger!”

Hearing the epithet nobody save his father had ever called him, Joe turned and looked back—just in time to get the speeding snowball full in the face. He staggered back in astonishment, slipping in the snow, but even as he righted himself, Constance came at him with a cry of “Ungratefulbastard!” as she scooped up another handful of snow and rocketed it toward him, again making a direct hit, this time on the side of his head as he tried to duck.

“Criminy!” Joe yelped, stumbling back once more in reaction to the unexpected onslaught.

As he regained his balance, his eyes met Constance’s over the playing field of snow. Their gazes locked…and something that could not be put into words passed between them.

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