He opened his eyes and looked into his grandfather’s stern, handsome face, his flint-gray eyes, and knew he had to speak, though when he did, his words surprised them both: David because he knew it was what he really felt, Grandfather because—although he would like to pretend otherwise—he knew as well.
“I do not believe it,” he said.
He watched his grandfather’s worried expression become incredulous. “Do not believe it? Do not believe it? David—I hardly know what to say. You know this comes from Gunnar Wesley, the best private investigator in the city, perhaps in the Free States?”
“But he has made mistakes in the past. Did he not miss the fact of Mister Griffith’s time in the West?” Though even as he spoke, he knew he should not have mentioned Charles’s name.
“Oh, come, David. That is a minor matter. And that was not a period Mister Griffith sought to conceal—Wesley’s oversight was simply that, and of no harm to anyone. But the information he did gather was all correct.
“David. David. I am not angry. I assure you, I am not. I was, when I received this. But not at you, but at this—this confidence man, who has taken advantage of you. Or has tried to, at least. David. My child. I know this is difficult for you to read. But is it not better to know now, before serious harm is done, before it jeopardizes your relationship with Mister Griffith? If he were to discover that this was the sort of person with whom you were associating—”
“This is of no concern to Mister Griffith,” he heard his voice say, a voice he did not recognize, it was so cold and clipped.
“Of no concern! David, he is making great allowances for you—unusually large ones, I should say. But not even a man as devoted as Mister Griffith could overlook this. Of course this would matter to him!”
“But it does not, and it will not, for I have declined his offer,” David said, and he felt, deep within him, a hard kernel of triumph at his grandfather’s mute astonishment, and at the way he drew back as if he had been singed.
“You have declined! David, when did you do this? And why?”
“Recently. And before you ask, no, there is no reconsidering, on my part or his, for it was ended badly. As for why, it is simple: I do not love him.”
“You do not—！” At this, his grandfather suddenly stood, and walked to the opposite corner of the room, before turning to face David once again. “With all respect, David—you are not one to judge that.”
He heard himself laugh, a loud, ugly bark. “And so who is? You? Frances? Mister Griffith? I am an adult. In June I will be twenty-nine. I am the only one to judge. I am in love with Edward Bishop, and I will be with him, no matter what you or Wesley or anyone says.”
He thought his grandfather would erupt, but instead he grew very still, and before he spoke next, he gripped the back of his chair with both hands. “David, I promised myself I would never speak of this again. I vowed. But now I must, and for the second time tonight, because it is relevant to your current situation. Forgive me, my child, but: You had thought yourself in love before. And you were proven incorrect, in the most horrible way.
“You think I am lying. You think I am mistaken. I assure you, I am not. And I assure you as well that I would give all my fortune to be wrong about Mister Bishop. And all yours to stop you from getting hurt by him.
“He doesn’t love you, my child. He is already in love, with another. What he loves is your money, the idea of its being his. It pains me, as someone who does love you, to tell you this, to have to speak it aloud. But I must, for I will not see your heart broken again, not when I could have kept it whole.
“You asked me earlier why I wanted Mister Griffith for you, and I answered you honestly: because I sensed from Frances’s report of him that he was someone who would not harm you, who would want nothing from you but your company, who would never abandon you. You are intelligent, David; you are perceptive. But in this matter, you are unwise, and long have been, have been since you were a boy. I cannot take credit for your gifts—but I can protect you from your deficiencies. I can no longer send you away, though if you would, if you cared to, I would gladly do it. But I can warn you, with everything I have, to not make the same mistake again.”
He had not thought, despite his grandfather’s earlier allusion, that he would mention the events of seven years ago, the events that, he sometimes thought, had changed him forever. （And yet he knew that was wrong: It was almost as if what had happened was preordained.） He had been twenty-one, just out of college, taking a year of art school before joining Bingham Brothers. And then, one day early in the term, he had been walking out of class and had dropped his supplies, and when he knelt to retrieve them, there was someone by his side, a classmate of his named Andrew who was so sunlit, so effortless in his charm, that David, upon registering his existence the first day of class, had not spent any further time observing him—he was so far beyond the kind of person who might ever want to know him. Instead, he had talked to and made efforts to befriend the men like him: the quiet, sober, mouselike ones, the ones who, in recent weeks, he had succeeded in meeting for a cup of tea or a lunch, where they would together talk about books they’d read, or works of art they were hoping to copy as they became more skilled. These were the people to whom he belonged—usually the younger siblings of more dynamic elder sisters or brothers; competent students but not distinguished; pleasing in looks but not exceptional; able but not memorable conversationalists. They were, all of them, heirs to fortunes that ranged from good to extraordinary; they had, all of them, moved from their parents’ houses to their boarding schools to their colleges and then back to their parents’， where they would remain until a marriage could be arranged for them with a suitable man or woman—some would even marry one another. There was a group of them, artistic-minded and sensitive boys, granted a year of indulgence by their parents before they would be sent back to school or join their parents’ companies, as bankers, as shippers, as traders, as lawyers. He knew this, and he accepted it: He was one of them. Even then, John was first in his class at college, studying law and banking—though he was only twenty, his marriage to Peter, also his classmate, had already been arranged—and Eden the head girl at her school. His grandfather’s annual midsummer party was crammed with their friends, rafts of them, all shouting and laughing beneath the net of candles that the servants had hung earlier across the garden.
But that had never been David, and he knew it never would be. He was, for most of his life, left alone: His name had protected him from abuse and harassment, but he was largely ignored, never sought, and never missed. And so, when Andrew had, that afternoon, first spoken to him and then, over the successive days and weeks, talked to him more and more, David had felt himself becoming unrecognizable. Here he was, laughing out loud, in the street, like Eden; here he was, arguing petulantly and being thought adorable for it, as John did when he was with Peter. He had always enjoyed being intimate with others, though he long had been too shy to pursue it—preferring to visit the brothel he had been patronizing since he was sixteen, where he knew he would never be rejected—but with Andrew, he asked for what he wanted and received it; he was emboldened, elated with his new understanding of what it meant to be a man, a person in the world, young, rich. Ah, he remembered thinking, so this is it! This is what John felt, what Peter felt, what Eden felt, what all his classmates with their merry voices, their echoing laughter, felt!