Two Graves

16

DR. FELDER CROSSED SEVENTY-SEVENTH STREET, ROUNDED the corner onto Central Park West, climbed a short set of broad steps, and walked into the dimly lit confines of the New-York Historical Society. The austere Beaux-Arts building had recently undergone an extensive renovation, and Felder looked around the public entrance curiously. Although the galleries and library had been subjected to a painstaking twenty-first-century face-lift, the institution as a whole seemed firmly rooted—or perhaps mired—in the past, as the hyphen in its name New-York made abundantly clear.

He approached the research information desk. “Dr. Felder to see Fenton Goodbody.”

The woman at the desk consulted her computer screen. “Just a minute. I’ll call him.”

She picked up a phone, dialed. “A Dr. Felder to see you, Mr. Goodbody.” She hung up. “He’ll be right down.”

“Thank you.”

Ten minutes passed. Felder had ample time to examine the entrance hall in its entirety before Mr. Goodbody appeared. He was tall, bespectacled, heavyset, and florid, in perhaps his early sixties. He wore a hairy tweed suit with a matching vest.

“Dr. Felder,” he puffed, wiping his palms on the vest before shaking hands. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

“No problem.”

“I hope you don’t mind if we make this quick? It’s already half past eight, you know, and this evening we close at nine.”

“That should be fine, thank you.”

“In that case, follow me, if you please.”

Goodbody led the way past the research desk, along an echoing passageway, through a door, down a narrow staircase, along a second, far more institutional passageway, and then into a large room whose walls were completely covered by metal shelving stuffed to bursting with material: large archival boxes, yellowing papers tied up in dusty ribbons, rolled documents, volumes bound in crumbling leather, accordion files labeled in copperplate script. Felder looked around, his nose itching. He had heard stories of the historical society—of its endless, almost uncatalogable collections of documents and artwork—but this was the first time he had set foot inside.

“Now let me see.” Goodbody took a scrap of paper from his pocket, removed the glasses from his nose, folded them, put them in his jacket pocket, held the scrap of paper an inch from his eyes. “Ah, yes. J-14-2140.” He put the paper back in his pocket, removed the spectacles, polished them with the fat end of his tie, and seated them assertively back on his nose. Then he strode over to a far wall. Felder waited while the older man searched, first high, then low, without success.

“Now, where in blazes… I was just looking at them… Ah! Here we go.” Goodbody reached over, seized a stack of oversize sheets, and brought them to a nearby desk. They were awkwardly held together by loose covers tied with string. Beaming at Felder, Goodbody dropped the assemblage lightly onto the wooden surface. A puff of dust arose.

“So, Dr. Felder,” Goodbody said, indicating a chair set before the desk. “You’re interested in the work of Alexander Wintour?”

Felder nodded as he took a seat. He could feel a four-alarm allergic reaction building in his nose. He didn’t want to open his mouth until the dust had settled.

“Well, you will probably be the first. I doubt anyone besides myself has examined these since they were originally donated. Following your query, I was able to dig up some information on the man.” Goodbody paused. “Just what is your doctorate in again? Art history?”

“Ah, yes, that’s right,” Felder said quickly. He hadn’t given any thought to what his cover story should be—or even considered he might need one. The lie had come quickly and thoughtlessly, and now he was stuck with it.

“Then if you’ll show me your credentials, we’ll be all set.”

Felder looked up. “My credentials?”

“Your research credentials, yes.”

“I, ah, I’m afraid I don’t have them with me at present.”

Goodbody looked surprised and pained. “Don’t have your credentials? Oh, dear. Oh, dear, that is a shame.” He paused. “Well, I can’t leave you here by yourself. With the collections, I mean. Rules, you understand.”

“There isn’t any way for me to… examine these?”

“I shall have to stay with you. Remember, half an hour’s all we can allow, I’m afraid.”

“That will do.” Felder wasn’t especially eager to stay any longer than necessary.

His guest’s compliance seemed to restore Goodbody’s equanimity. “Well, then! Let’s see what we have.” He untied the string, removed the cover. Beneath was a sheet of heavy, textured paper, its surface almost entirely obscured by dust.

“Stand back!” Goodbody said. He fetched a deep breath, then blew laterally across the sheet. A gray mushroom cloud arose that briefly obscured the archivist.

“As I said, I did come across some material on Wintour,” came the disembodied voice of Goodbody. “Notes in the accession files dating back to when this donation was accepted. It seems he was the lead illustrator for the Bowery Illustrated News, a weekly periodical published in the final decades of the nineteenth century. That’s how he earned his living. But what he really wanted was to be a painter. It seems he was fascinated by the lower classes of Manhattan.”

The dust had cleared again, and Felder could make out the image on the paper. It was a painting, oil by the look of it, of a young boy sitting on the front steps of a brownstone. He held a ball in one hand and a stick in the other, and he was looking straight out of the frame with a somewhat truculent expression.

“Ah, yes,” Goodbody murmured, glancing down at it.

Carefully, Felder turned it over and placed it to one side. Beneath was another painting, this one of a large storefront, the label R & N MORTENSON WOODEN & WILLOW WARE above it. Four children were leaning out the lower course of windows, again with rather sullen expressions on their faces.

Felder turned to the next. A boy, sitting in the back of what appeared to be a brewer’s wagon. The street beneath was very uneven, full of rubble and broken stoneware. On the verso, somebody—probably Wintour—had scrawled WORTH & BAXTER STREETS, 1879.

Several similar paintings followed. They were mostly studies of young men and women, framed by lower-class Manhattan backgrounds. A few showed men at work or children at play. Others were more formal portraits, either head-and-shoulders or full-length poses.

“Wintour was never able to sell his work,” Goodbody said. “After his death, his family—despairing of disposing with them any other way—offered everything to the society. We couldn’t accept the sketches, studies, and albums—space considerations, you understand—but we took the paintings. He was, after all, a New York artist, if a minor one.”

Felder was looking at a painting of two boys playing hoops before a storefront whose banner read COOPER’S GLUE. BY THE BARREL. AT HIS PRICES. He wasn’t surprised Wintour had not had more success selling his work: by and large, the paintings were rather mediocre. It wasn’t the settings, he thought, so much as a sort of artistic indifference, a lack of vitality in the faces and the poses.

He turned to the next sheet—and was utterly transfixed.

There, staring out at him, was Constance Greene. Or rather, Constance Greene as she would have looked at around six years of age. This time, Wintour had risen to the level of his subject matter. It was similar to the engraving Felder had seen in the newspaper, Guttersnipes at Play, only infinitely more life-like: the turn of the eyebrows, the faintly pouting lips, the drape of the hair, were unmistakable. Only the eyes were different. These eyes were quintessentially child-like: innocent, a little frightened perhaps. Not at all like the eyes that had looked into his own in the reading room at Mount Mercy that very morning.

“Now, that one is quite nice,” Goodbody said. “Quite nice indeed. A candidate for display, perhaps?”

Hurriedly, as if waking up from a trance, Felder turned the page. He didn’t want Goodbody to see how powerfully the portrait had affected him—and for some obscure reason he didn’t like the idea of it being put on public display, either.

He moved rather quickly through the rest, but there were no more of Constance, and there was no lock of hair to be found.

“Do you know where I might find more of his work, Mr. Goodbody?” he asked. “I’m particularly interested in the albums and sketches you mentioned.”

“I’m afraid I have no idea. Our records indicate his family lived in Southport, Connecticut. Perhaps you might try there.”

“I’ll do that.” Felder stood up, wobbling slightly and catching his balance on a shelf support. The portrait had thoroughly shaken him up. “Thank you so much for your time and effort.”

Goodbody beamed. “The society is always happy to help art historians in their research. Ah: it’s just nine o’clock now. Come—let me escort you back upstairs.”