Restless Souls

In the chiaroscuro of post-war ennui, Parkington—a Manhattan esthete whose soul is upholstered in velvet and rust—discovers that his wife Lida’s pupils dilate not for him but for the velvet-tongued neosymbolist oracle Swetson, a man who recites Mallarmé as if chewing glass. To liberate her, Parkington stages his own aqueous demise: a plunge from a fog-laced pier, pocketed with stones and a letter that smells of bergamot and regret. Yet the grave cannot hold a ghost who never died; his testament bequeaths everything to Lida, but his rapacious aunt Maria Fortescue—part gorgon, part railroad baron—snatches the will like a hawk claiming a field mouse. Swetson, scenting lucre, pivots his desire from the wife to the aunt, marrying Maria in a candle-lit ceremony where the vows taste of iron. Months later, Parkington—his face a living palimpsest of greasepaint and anguish—returns in the guise of a taciturn gardener. Only the cold nose of his mastiff, Pal, betrays the masquerade. From behind velvet drapes he eavesdrops on a midnight confession: a second, later will exists, one that would disinherit Lida forever. In a single flourish of lamplight he restores the original parchment, confronts the usurpers, and expels them into the snow. The final tableau: husband and wife silhouetted against a bay window, the dog curled like a comma between them, the world outside exhaling white silence.