CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Snow climbed the grand stairway to Lady Tewksbury's ballroom and wondered for the tenth time what he was doing at this party. He should be home, working. The opera had been indulgence enough. If Caleb, whom he hadn't seen for days now, hadn't sent a note reminding him of the invitation, he wouldn't have even thought of it. He suffered without protest the butler's mispronunciation of his name as Tonker James Gnome and entered the huge room in a daze.

It took him a moment to register that he was hearing not the expected party sounds of violins filtering through a tipsy ringing of crystal, but a pounding, hammering rhythm of incredibly loud drums.

Squeezed into the fern-framed alcove where one would normally find a discreet string quartet or small brass band was a cluster of ten black-skinned Nubians in leopard robes, swaying like a Welsh chorus, pounding at their waist-high drums. Snow s mouth fell open.

He looked around and realized that no one was paying much attention to the din. The hundreds of guests chattered and shoved their way through the crush for more champagne, calling out over high hair and jewelled tiaras as if nothing were out of the ordinary.

The room looked like an imagined forest grove, or a walled garden. Live greenery covered most of the walls, hanging not in traditional festoons but in wild profusion as if it had grown up overnight. It must have been five hundred guineas' worth of ivy. A stirring in hanging moss near the ceiling made Snow realize there were birds flying through the room; long-tailed parrots, green budgerigars, doves. One landed on a lady's shoulder and she broke into hysterical shrieks and laughter.

More Nubians, naked to the waist and looking depressed and chilly, squeezed through with trays of food high over their heads; piled grapes, chunks of lamb, a whole roast calf. It was as if some opium dream of King Solomon's palace had come to life.

Then Snow remembered; Lady Tewksbury had provided forty thousand pounds for an exploration up the Nile five years ago and the leaders had just returned. She was showing off her spoils.

The party was well under way, with everyone's face showing the delighted look of the fourth glass of champagne, as if nothing could bother them, and this wild troop of dazed and homesick Africans was just one more fling to pass the time. You would never guess that a plague was speeding along outside the door.

Snow had stayed until the very end of the opera. When it had been time to leave and push through all those departing hordes he found himself shrinking from touch. Behind the communal scent of ambergris and expensive face powder lingered a base of sweat and wet dog. In the first corridor his arm wedged against a lady's back, his face almost in her gray hair. Her damp heat pulsed through the thin silk of her dress. He suppressed an urge to push, shout "fire," scream at the limit of his lungs, anything to get the placid look of post-show contentment off their faces. Instead he groped to the edge of the crowd and grabbed a chair to wait it out.

When the corridors were nearly empty he had left the building and walked the mile and a half to Lady Tewksbury's, gulping the stale Thames vapors, which seemed fresh by comparison. He kept looking to all sides of him along the way, but saw nothing suspicious.

Now that he was here at the party the crowd was just as dense, always shifting, moving on, seeing something prettier on the other side of the room. Caught in the flow, Snow found it hard to look away from the famous faces he spotted, in the same way it's hard to look away from a deformity or an open wound. He had to keep himself from gawking like a yokel at personalities he recognized from caricatures in Punch and The Times.

To his surprise he caught sight of a few men he knew from Westminster Hospital or Guy's Hospital; professors, squirrelish characters, faces he'd never thought to see out of the surgery theater or anatomy laboratory, certainly not in this opulent room.

One of them talked with Lady Tewksbury herself. She was smiling without respite, her dress cut low enough to hint at the nipples of her breasts, and cuddling her inevitable terrier with its diamond collar. She was glowing, celestial, and leading a physicist by the pinky for yet another introduction. Perfume hovered over her like a cloud of gnats.

Suddenly Snow realized how he had merited an invitation to this event; Lady Tewksbury wanted to surround herself with "men of science" and make a trend, a name for herself.  Forget the opera stars and the minor lords, ignore the fashionable ladies who collected sheiks and unknown eastern European kings. She would go for the scientists. She was collecting them the way people keep drawers full of lengths of string. In case they came in handy.

Snow smiled to himself at his childish disappointment. And he thought she'd heard of his work! She must have got his name off some list. Another scientist for her collection. He wondered if she had illusions of contributing her own ideas to some discovery or development; a new treatment for consumption, or a revised measurement of the circumference of the earth.

This was no more a scientific gathering than shaking the hand of the Princess Alberta at a fete was getting to know the royal family.

The drumming was getting out of hand, so loud that one had to shout to be heard. Now he recognized Crooksworth and Gump, the leaders of the expedition. They sat on mock thrones at the head of the room, under gilt palm trees. Crooksworth's face was deep yellow with fever and he looked about to fall over. Gump's hand shook as he raised his glass to his mouth. The tropics ruined a man in a year. Snow shuddered. He'd take a London slum any day, even in this cholera epidemic.

Snow still hadn't been able to reach the end of the room where the refreshments were. He could see light glinting off a giant ice sculpture of a hippopotamus, and a punch bowl the size of a cathedral's baptismal font. He assumed it had water lilies floating in it from the crushed ones all over the floor, staining the wood boards with their slime. He gave up trying to get there, found a pillar, and pressed his back against it.

Directly across the room from him he saw a woman doing just the same thing, clutching the pillar behind her with a kind of amused desperation. At least she'd been able to get a glass of champagne. She saw him and smiled at their mutual predicament, then raised her glass to him with a gentle swoop. It was clear she'd had more than this one glass to drink. She seemed to have no escort.

Snow couldn't look away from her. It wasn't that her face was symmetrical, or delicate, or even dramatic. It was the way she looked at everyone, enjoying it, as if watching a play. Eating it up. Taking mental notes. She was actually listening to the drummers, moving her head in time. A mist of sweat on her upper lip caught the light from the chandeliers.

She wore something gray. Wisps of light brown hair escaped her elaborate arrangement and curled in front of her ears. And there was something odd about her appearance, but he couldn't quite place it; then it came to him. She had pearls on her wrists, in her ears, even at her waist in a narrow belt. But she wore no necklace. Her white throat was bare above the low neckline of the dress.

A couple squeezed past him and he let go of the pillar a moment to make room, then had to step a bit to one side for a footman with a tray. In half a minute he lost his spot. When he looked up to see her again she was gone.

He hadn't forgotten about her, but was beginning to think of leaving when he recognized Sir Philip Constable five yards away, looking just as ill at ease as Snow felt. It took minutes for Snow to push his way over. They shook hands.

"Ah, Dr. Snow. Good evening." The man was shouting over the drums. "How is your work going?"

By now Snow was getting used to Constable's vagueness, his air of never having remembered their last exchange. At first he tried to understand if Sir Philip was referring to the objectionable survey work, or Snow's medical practice, his laboratory work, or even some other imagined work such as furthering his knowledge of South Sea island languages.

Snow decided to fight vagueness with more vagueness. "The patients keep coming in, and that's what pays the rent." This, of course, was untrue; Snow hadn't seen a patient for weeks. And he owned his house.

"You must drop by my office soon so we can discuss that membership in the Royal Academy."

But he hadn't agreed to anything! For a second Snow wondered if he'd imagined the late night visit, the threats, the strange offer. No, he couldn't have. This man made no sense.

Luckily the drums and jostling of the crowd allowed Snow to avoid answering, and then they were interrupted by the minister of finance, who began a long and technical election discussion with Constable. Snow tried to maintain a politely interested expression on his face but gave up after five minutes. It was clear they had nothing more to say to him. He excused himself.

Within two steps he recognized Deborah Beersdon. Her gleaming bird eyes shone even more than usual at her triumph of being at this great party of the season. She stood out from the other ladies in her drab rust-colored dress, its severity barely softened by a few inches of revealed skin at her upper chest. Snow wished she hadn't revealed it. Of all the hues she could have chosen, this burnt red made her skin look the yellowest.

Deborah looked straight at him with a blank smile, as if he were a stranger. Of course. As the wife of a prominent editor, who could report on the party tomorrow with all the glory it deserved, her status was higher than a mere doctor. Snow decided to aggravate her.

"Why, Mrs. Beersdon, what a surprise. I never thought to see you at Lady Tewksbury's."

Her eyes narrowed in annoyance, which she turned into a pretense of trying to place him. "It's Dr. Snow, isn't it? How nice that you are able to come to these little things. I know that evening clothes are so expensive.

"And where is Caleb? Unable to introduce you to the heavenly bodies?" He had to yell over the drums, which seemed to be getting louder.

Deborah said something he couldn't hear and gestured to the top of the room, where he saw Caleb talking to the explorers and Lady Tewksbury, along with the owner of The Times. Deborah started chattering again, apparently having given up trying to snub him and preferring to talk to him rather than nobody.

When Deborah spoke, the tip of her long nose moved down toward her upper lip, in time with whatever syllables she used. It had always been hard for Snow to look her in her eyes instead of watching the antics of that bit of flesh, and this time he stopped even trying to listen.

The drumming grew louder and even more frenetic until, in a dazzlingly orchestrated unison, all of the drummers stopped short. The silence left Deborah's words audible everywhere.

"— Dr. David Livingstone over there? They say he was intimate with native women all through the Congo, and now his syphilis —" She caught herself up with a cough as sleekly as a stumbling cat.

Violins began tuning up. After the drumming they sounded whiny and feeble, like insect music. The clearing of the center of the room for the dancing resulted in a worse crush along the walls. Snow and Deborah swayed like deckhands until they were pushed apart and separated. Snow caught sight of Caleb again, closer this time and still deep in conversation with The Times's chief. Snow tried to reach him, and immediately Caleb walked off, his arm on that of the other man. Snow could hardly believe Caleb would avoid him, but that was how it looked.

The dancing began. They started with old-fashioned country dances, the lines of couples moving through strictly ruled formations, but after a few selections the orchestra broke into a waltz.

One of Snow's first arguments with Caleb's wife had been over waltzing. She thought the new dance was indecent and he had been foolish enough to debate the point with her. Of course, she never danced at all, it was a sinful waste of energy, but she could allow that some less devoted souls might occasionally indulge in a chaste prance across the floor. But waltzing, where you actually held on to each other's waists, was little better than public fornication, she said. She used the word probably not even knowing what it meant.

Snow stood wistfully gazing at the dancers. He felt his life draining away into middle age, his youth wasted. He had never danced at an affair like this, not once. He spotted the woman he'd seen by the pillar, dancing now, looking happy, her head thrown back in the pleasure of her turns.

Snow could see she didn't care about her partner. She would have danced with anyone just to be out there. It wasn't until he came to this conclusion that he realized how hard he'd been staring at the two of them. He forced himself to look away. But his eyes crept back of their own accord to her swaying hair, her strangely naked neck, her half-closed eyes.

Though her hips and legs were hidden, Snow knew enough anatomy to perfectly visualize the thighs that would match her strong upper body, the well-developed back and upper arm muscles. This was not a woman who spent her life sitting in a velvet room with the shades drawn. She was an inch taller than her partner, but not once did she slip into the error of leading him in the waltz. Snow guessed she could have thrashed the man if she'd wanted to.

A voice came from over his shoulder.

"It's Snow, isn't it?"

Snow turned to see Dr. Phineas Greeley.

Under the white hair there was a knob on his pink skull, sprouting up like a benign tumor of loneliness. He balanced on one hand a huge plate of slabs of cold meat. A hunk of lamb was in the other hand, and he ate it with his fingers. He kept his shoulders hunched in a primitive way, as if someone might snatch the food from him at any moment. Even so, his eyes, like Snow's, followed the dancing woman in gray.

Snow hadn't seen the old man in a year, but he'd hardly changed since Snow's medical school days. The pinkish skin was a little more lined, and matched a rheumy glow which spread from the rims of his eyes. He still rocked on his heels as he talked.

He spoke through mouthfuls. "So, young man, I've been hearing quite a bit about your cholera hobby. Been in all the papers, haven't you? I like to see my students spreading their wings with pet theories." He leaned forward and plucked a speck of lint off Snow's lapel.

Snow resisted an impulse to bat the greasy hand away. "They're more than pet theories, sir. It's absolutely clear at this point that water is a mode of transmission. I have all the data to prove it, if only it could be clearly organized."

"Have you? How interesting." Greeley swayed on his heels and his green eyes became more lively. His head pushed further forward on the grizzled neck. "I'd love to look over your notebooks sometime."

His face was too close, with a strong smell of meat, and Snow pulled away. The old man must be joking, he thought. He'd never let someone like Greeley look at his notes. A stirring came from one side, and the press parted as if for a deity, to let through Lady Tewksbury. She squeezed in next to Snow. He could smell the fur of the tiny terrier. Its large ears were thin as fine linen, with a network of blue veins.

"Oh, Dr. Greeley, I'm so glad I found you. Everyone is asking about this cholera business. I feel just terrible, half of my guests didn't even come tonight. The room looks just deserted. Little Cheops was so sad." She paused for a sympathetic stroke at the dog's pelt. "Tell us, is it as bad as everyone says?" She looked sideways at Snow, sizing him up, not yet ready for an introduction until she had made her little speech and had a pretty answer.

Greeley took a short breath through his nose. He held the plate down but still glanced at the meat, clearly wanting to gnaw more of it. The dog looked at it, too.

"I assure you, madame, we are quite safe." He stopped when he saw that the terrier had nabbed his meat and was wetly chomping at it. Lady Tewksbury seemed to approve, so Greeley went on.

"It's the low areas, the poor and immoral airs, the vapors of vice, which spread the disease. I would take precautions, of course. Keep your servants off the streets. Daily prayers, without a doubt. Cold water baths. But you should be safe, quite safe."

"I am so glad to hear it."

Snow couldn't help himself. "Madam, if I may—"

She turned her face to him, as if he were an interrupting footman. "Yes, sir? I don't believe we've been introduced." She seemed to forget she had invited him to her party. But her eyes glowed. A debate! This was what her party was for.

"Dr. Snow, madam. I cannot agree."

"No? Not agree with Dr. Greeley here?" She pulled her shoulders back, exposing her breasts even more. The dog's short rough hairs had chafed the skin below her left collarbone into an angry red.

"Any person, in any part of London, can become ill with cholera, simply by drinking the wrong water."

"What? Water? Even here, in my house?" She smiled and then changed it into a theatrical, sympathetic frown. "It can't be true, can it Cheops darling?" She squeezed the beast closer to her, shreds of meat and all.

Others began to gather. Cholera caught their ears.

"I'm afraid so, Lady Tewksbury," continued Snow, his heart beating faster. "It's fairly clear."

"If water carries the sickness, young man, then why isn't all of London dead with it?" asked Greeley, bristling like a shuttlecock. "We all drink water, every day."

Snow was afraid someone would ask that. It was the weak point in his whole theory. He fumbled for an answer.

"There must be different sources, different pools of contamination. The water does flow, after all. It changes. The poisons, or cholera organisms, could move their location, from one day to the —"

"I never heard such nonsense. That could only be true if the water was actually separated. But it's all from the same place, all from the same place. The Board of Health, Sir Philip Constable over there, they all agree." Greeley looked smug.

Was it? Snow had never stopped to wonder about this before. It could make all the difference. What if there were actually two, or even more, sources of piped-in water, that were truly separated? Not the ditches and ponds, or the water straight from the river. He knew that stuff was deadly. But the supposedly pure water that the companies provided.

Greeley, probably sure he had won the argument, wandered off. Snow was trying to fend off the cholera questions of the clamoring hangers-on near Lady Tewksbury when he saw her. Ten feet off, the woman in gray, the waltzer, was talking to Greeley. Snow winced when Greeley touched her bare arm. With her was an older, fat woman in black. As soon as he could escape the questioners, he edged beside Greeley.

Snow forgot his debate. He felt a rise of all his old student's misgivings, as if an examination were about to take place. He was afraid to look at the woman, and with a desperate churlishness acted as if she weren't even there. She became a very important gray luminosity in the corner of his eye.

He plunged his hands in his pockets like a schoolboy. Feeling the bits of pocket lint and a pencil stub he came upon something he couldn't believe he'd forgotten about until now.

Two pearls. At the end of the opera he'd felt a slight tapping at his heels, a small rodent kind of sound, and he'd shifted his feet over what felt like pebbles until he'd stooped to retrieve them. Good ones, from the little he knew about pearls, though yellowed. Now he rolled them, warm from the body heat in his pocket, between his fingers and thumb. For something to say, he pulled them out.

"The most extraordinary thing, really. At Covent Garden, the end of The Magic Flute. These pearls. I suppose they're quite valuable." Snow held them out to Greeley, a student offering, like an odd bug he'd found, or a bright agate from the beach.

Greeley leaned over, frowning, to peer at the shining globes.

Lillian spoke. "I believe you've got two of my pearls there."

The tone of her voice was half cross, half flirting, so that his first thought was that he was standing on the train of her dress. It took him a long moment to connect what she said with the pearls in his hand. They matched the drops in her ears and the ropes wound around her wrists. Close up like this her bare neck looked as inviting as if she had pulled up all the silk and hoops under her costume to expose the white inner skin of her thighs.

With great seriousness he dropped the two pearls onto her outstretched palm. When she smiled at him he felt as if he'd been blessed by one of the lesser saints.

Greeley was halfway through the grumpy introduction before Snow heard him.

"Dr. John Snow, Miss Aynsworth, Mrs. Colonel Aynsworth."

Mrs. Colonel Aynsworth? he thought. She's married? Oh, no, that must be the mother, the fat one.

"The Aynsworths arrived here a few months ago from India. Old family connection."

Snow had a dim recollection of the name Aynsworth. Cholera. That was it, the outbreak in India. In the paper, just last week when he was in Yorkshire. The governor had died. Her father? And a son. He felt he should give something in the way of a condolence, and opened his mouth, but instead heard himself say,

"You waltz beautifully, Miss Aynsworth. May I have the pleasure of the next dance?"

Snow could hardly believe his own words, or that she was assenting as casually as if he'd handed her tea. The orchestra started up and they curved together onto the dance floor.

He was hopeless as a dancer. He stepped on her feet three times before she whispered to him, sending goose bumps down into his collar, "Just let me show you." Their steps meshed. He winced to think that she'd probably done the same with the other man ten minutes ago.

"They were part of my necklace. It broke at the opera."

"How unfortunate." Snow saw a confusing expression of sadness, then relief, cross her features. "Were you able to find most of the pearls?"

"Oh, no. Yours were the only ones." She gave him a smile of gratitude, but mocking, as if he'd picked for her one meadow poppy when there were thousands on all sides.

"Of course the theater manager can recover them."

"Yes. Perhaps."

He couldn't understand why she seemed so unperturbed by the loss.

"Have you known Dr. Greeley long, Dr. Snow?"

"He was my teacher in medical school." Greeley was the last thing he wanted to talk about.

"I don't think you like him very much," she said. "Neither do I." After another few bars of music she said, "We don't need to talk."

The joy of holding her overpowered everything else. He could feel her abdominal muscles twist through the turns, and the pulse in her left hand was strong and slow. His fingers were only three inches from her breasts. Her breath smelled of strawberries, her skin smelled of sandalwood. Snow felt far from reality, as if he'd been drinking champagne the whole night.

When the long dance ended gloom suddenly descended on him. He'd actually forgotten for a few minutes that he wouldn't be able to spend the rest of the evening with her, the rest of the night, and all the days after that. In miserable silence he returned her to the large woman in black.

Just as he was leaving them, Sir Philip Constable caught up with him. "Ah, Snow. So sorry to have to interrupt our talk back there. The minister is persistent. As I was saying about that membership —"

Sir Philip's glance fell on the woman and the two stared at each other. Their eyes locked like those of nervous wrestlers. Her hand, still on Snow's arm, began to shake. He was astonished to feel from her an almost telepathic sense of distress and shame. It was nearly visible, like a green cloud flowing out of her and into his mind. He had never known anything like it.

His clinical side took over and ignored such impossible sensations; she must be about to faint, he thought. He stepped closer to support her, but then he looked at Constable. The man's face had gone bright burning red, even up to the large bald patch.

She didn't faint, and Snow's sense of being invaded by her distress disappeared instantly. He suddenly remembered the salt on the man's shoes, and stole a glance at the toes of his polished opera pumps. They were spotless, of course.

Constable finally pulled his eyes from Lillian and turned back to Snow. "As I said, you must come to see me this week." His voice shook. He abruptly bowed to Miss Aynsworth and left. She said nothing.

The stepmother spoke up. "Lillian, dear, you don't look well. I'm afraid all this dancing has been too much. Please come sit down." Mrs. Aynsworth shot a look at Snow, as if he were to blame for her sudden exhaustion, and led the young woman away. She stumbled once as she went off.

A moment after she passed him he inhaled the air deeply, an old trick he'd taught himself, and smelled her; sandalwood again, and a faintly athletic tinge of fresh sweat.

So her name is Lillian, thought Snow. And she knows Sir Philip Constable. He laughed at himself at his own use of the word. "Knows" was putting it a bit lightly. Seeing their eyes lock like that he had felt more intrusive than during the most intimate medical exam.

He stood in a daze for a moment or two, letting the crowd push past him. He hadn't known how physical the sense of jealousy could be. It had a shape to it, like some sharp metal object ready to burst from his chest. Of course a woman like that would be taken, he thought. But why should he have the terrible luck for it to be Constable?

Another dance, not a waltz, began. It was time for Snow to leave. He'd wasted enough of the night in this place.

He didn't get to the door. A rising murmur of voices grew to shouts and screams, all directed at the center of the dance floor. One of the dancers lay writhing in a puddle of silk and vomit at the center of the floor. The rest backed slowly away from her with white faces and covered mouths. Cholera. From several points around the room came sounds of coughing and retching. A woman screamed.

A frantic surge for the door began. The stairs clogged as more and more guests pushed their way out. One woman fell, then another. The table with its vast buffet of a dozen lobsters and the ice-sculpted hippo crashed to the floor, as well as what remained of the punch. The floor was awash. The anonymous victim still lay in the center of the ballroom. Snow couldn't have reached her if he tried.

Craning his head over the crowd, he scanned all sides for brown hair and gray silk. He finally spotted Lillian and her stepmother near the outer door, Greeley leading them out with an arm over her shoulder. Lillian turned her face back into the ballroom for one long, searching look before she was forced out by her escorts. Snow knew she searched for him. As the panic increased on all sides, so did Snow's trembling euphoria. He understood that for the first time in his life he was in love.