The Gilded Years (30 page)

“The Rhinelanders are one of the original families,” Nettie reminded Lottie. “They can’t run him out of town, even if they want to. He can trace his roots in New York back two hundred years. That’s earlier than the Schotenhorns, though they don’t like to admit it.”

“Still, I hear Estelle Schotenhorn hasn’t appeared in society since,” said Lottie. “The poor bucktoothed little thing. That man turned her into a recluse, forced to live a life of solitude like Henry David Thoreau. And with summer on the horizon, too. She’s spent every summer since she’s been out in Europe or Newport. But not this year.”

“Luckily for us!” said Belle, grabbing a golf club from the ground and swinging it with all her might.

“You remind me, I need to tidy those up,” said Nettie. “Marchmont, Talbot, and the Frenchman Xavier de Montmorency are in town,” she added, leading them inside where a maid was ready to help them unpack. “They’ll return shortly. The Frenchman is very regal indeed, descended from one of the grandest noble houses in France. He’s a composer, but he still has an air about him. He’s charming
and plays the piano wonderfully. You’ll enjoy his company. Come now, I’ll show you the drawing room. You’re going to fall in love with this house.”

“I already have,” said Belle, looking into the first of forty-one rooms.

When the men returned from town, the women were gathered in the drawing room, dressed for dinner. The tall windows had been thrown open, and the sheer curtains fluttered in the fragrant breeze of the early evening.

“Well!” said Marchmont, striding in. He had had a new spring suit cut for the occasion of hosting four unmarried women in his family home, and all the ladies looked admiringly at him as he approached. “It looks as if you’re holding a party for ghosts in here. Everything blowing every which way,” he said, taking Lottie’s hand in greeting.

“Marchmont Rhinelander,” she said, standing to meet him. “You’re one of a kind, aren’t you? Inviting us here after we spoke to you at the opera. I don’t know that it’s proper, but we are all very glad to be here.”

“I’m happy you could get away from your studies, devoted academics that you are,” he said, turning to Belle next and kissing her hand with familiarity. “It will be an amusing weekend, most notably because I will be in your company, but also because we have Monsieur de Montmorency here,” he said, indicating the fair-haired Frenchman, who appeared closer in age to the girls than to Marchmont. “We became acquainted on my second long tour in Europe when I was taking in opera after opera and he was Paris’s musical prodigy.”

“We must hear you play,” Anita said politely. “And if you’ll allow us, Belle and I would love to join you for a song.”

Anita knew that one of her greatest social assets was her voice. And perhaps, she thought, it would help persuade
Marchmont that she was not the girl he had seen walking the streets of Boston.

Xavier promptly complied, and the rest of the group sat mesmerized as he played, and Anita and Belle sang, the flower duet from
Lakmé
. The girls had trained in the same choir for nearly four years, so their voices blended well, Belle’s strong mezzo holding its own against Anita’s soaring soprano.

“Such beauty!” said Marchmont, standing up and clapping when they had finished. “And
Lakmé,
of all things. Anita, you sang Lakmé’s role superbly, and Belle, your Mallika was just as it should be, engaging and fresh, with all the power of a mezzo. I was in the audience in Paris when
Lakmé
was first performed at the Opéra Comique. The angelic Marie van Zandt and Elisa Frandin debuted your roles. It is to this day one of my fondest memories. And you both sang it so well.”

“Lovely,” said the Frenchman from his seat on the piano bench. “For two American students, I am most impressed. But now, for a little something
plus dramatique
!” he said, before launching into Chopin’s exceptionally difficult Sonata No. 3.

When he was finished, Marchmont rose again and said, “The three of you, please do join us in New York next season when I am no longer banished from the ladies’ drawing rooms. Your talents would make it much more bearable. So many of the young women in New York have voices like cats and play the piano as if their fingers were sewn together.”

“I can’t imagine why you’ve been banished,” said Lottie slyly. “You’d think all the hostesses of New York would be competing to be worthy of such compliments.”

“At least there is Lottie Taylor,” said Marchmont, moving to sit next to her as Belle’s face dropped. “You’ve never bored anyone.”

“I don’t want a thing to do with New York society,” said
Lottie, as Nettie closed the windows next to them. The sun had just started to sink behind the rolling hills, and her husband, Talbot, turned on the lamp beside him, illuminating Lottie’s face.

“I’ve seen its effects on my mother,” Lottie went on. “She threatens suicide through poisoning if there is a notable event and she’s not invited. It’s ridiculous the things intelligent women become worked up about: tea trays and china, balls and parties, the nip in the waist of a gown. Marchmont, we here represent a different generation of women, the first girls in our families to attend college. And we won’t succumb to the same fate as our mothers. We have minds formally molded to do important things. Splendid things.”

“Well said!” commented Nettie from the sofa she was sharing with her husband.

“And what do you intend to do after your graduation from Vassar, Miss Taylor?” asked the Frenchman, still perched on the piano bench.

“Me? Nothing but the greatest adventures that money can buy. I plan on traveling back to the Orient—Japan specifically—for a good deal of time. I’d like to study the language, the culture. It’s so much more interesting to see a country that has been open to trade with the West for only forty years. France and Italy, England, too, with so many Americans already established there, they don’t attract the pioneer in me,” she explained to Xavier. “So off I will go, chaperoned, of course. But I’ve been skilled in shaking off a chaperone for decades now. Who knows, I may stay forever. I may even marry one of them.”

“And Porter?” said Anita suddenly. “What will become of him then?”

“Porter Hamilton is a student at Harvard,” Belle clarified for the others, a firmness in her voice hinting at her
sympathy for Anita on this particular subject. “He’s finishing at Cambridge in June, and then it will be back to Chicago. Lottie and he are . . . what would you call it, Lottie? Flirting? Or that modern term, dating? Or perhaps more?”

“Flirting with a man from Chicago, Miss Taylor?” said Marchmont, teasingly. “Then you may become your mother yet, just in a lesser city.”

“I most certainly will not,” retorted Lottie. “I plan to sail for Japan immediately after graduation. If a man loves me enough, he can follow me. Or wait.”

“Yes, your affections do change so quickly,” said Belle, saying what Anita did not dare to. “Just a few months ago you were so taken with Joseph Southworth.”

“Then I discovered that his mother was a teenage prostitute in Japan when she gave birth to him,” said Lottie. “You can all imagine why I had to abruptly throttle my emotions.”

“Is that true?” said Talbot, looking at his wife. “Doesn’t the family reside in Cambridge? In that handsome house on Beacon Hill?”

“This is the son of Benjamin Southworth we are discussing?” asked Marchmont.

“Yes,” said Lottie, “Joseph Southworth. Or Southpaw, as we call him.”

“I know the family well,” Marchmont replied. “They have a cottage on Walker Street, one of the largest in the Berkshires. They don’t stay there often, but I have met Benjamin and remember him as being very respectable, as well as amiable.”

“This sounds like a very American scandal,” said Xavier. “If this Southpaw—”

Anita opened her mouth to correct him, but Caroline shushed her. “Please don’t. I’m enjoying it too much,” she whispered.

“If he were residing in Paris and had found a lover, he would still be welcomed everywhere, even if she was with child,” said Xavier.

“His son, too?” asked Anita.

“
Mais bien sûr,
his son, too,” said Xavier. “Just think of Alexandre Dumas. He was half-
nègre
.”

Anita had read two of Dumas’s works in their original French at Northfield, but no one had ever mentioned his race. She was shocked to hear Xavier say he was a Negro, knowing his place in the French literary canon.

“I wasn’t aware of such a scandal in the Orient,” said Marchmont. “But I suppose a man will be a man, no matter which country he is traveling in.”

“That is such a preposterously male thing to say,” said Lottie. “You and your freedoms, able to do what you please, the world always bending to your whims. As women, we cannot make our choices so lightly, since the consequences are far graver.”

“I think that’s often your own faults,” said Talbot from his comfortable perch. “It is the women who run society and the women who judge each other. We as men may tell you what you can and can’t do professionally, but personally, socially, women make the rules.”

“I think American men would be much happier if their female counterparts had more sexual freedom,” said Xavier, causing every woman to blush except Lottie. “And I agree. It’s the women who keep each other from it, who impose their idea of morality. Now in France—”

“I think that’s enough of this talk!” said Nettie, springing into action as their chaperone.

“Come, gentlemen,” said Marchmont, standing up. “Let us leave these women to their plans for changing the world. How about a game of billiards before we dine?”

“With cigars,” said Talbot. “You’re right, Marchmont, I should change rooms. I can see my wife is desperate to denigrate me and my rigid ideals to her charges.”

“That’s right,” said Nettie, blowing her husband a kiss.

The following morning found the group in good spirits as Xavier had woken them all up with a delightful piano piece he had recently composed.

“That’s certainly more pleasant than a bell,” said Lottie, walking into Anita’s bedroom already dressed.

“It’s wonderful here,” said Anita, looking out at the hills and the dogwood trees in bloom. During her entire career at Vassar, she had behaved as she assumed a woman passing as white should. Blending in, disappearing into the middle, was her main objective. But now, she realized, she was throwing caution away and doing exactly as she pleased. She no longer heard Frederick’s voice every time a man spoke to her, or shared her mother’s concern when she attracted attention for doing something outstanding. She was finally just letting herself be who she was, indeed, discovering who that was, and she relished the feeling.

After breakfast, served in the vast dining room at a table that could easily seat twenty, the group retired outdoors, where lawn badminton was set up. The new game had become a craze at Vassar since the girls’ freshman year. Anita and Lottie were pitted against tall Caroline and the athletic and even taller Belle, and appeared headed to certain defeat when Marchmont came to the net after the first set and asked Anita to take a walk with him.

“There are the most beautiful flowers to be picked near the stream. It runs all along the edge of the property,” he said, leaning on a golf club in his sporting costume. “I think you would enjoy it.”

The other women stared at Anita, their faces blank with
surprise, since it had been obvious to all that Belle was the one who had set her cap for Marchmont.

“Yes, I would like that very much,” said Anita, feeling it would be rude to decline outright though she was terrified of being alone with him. She guessed he wanted to speak about Boston, though she knew the others would not think so. “Lottie has become a passionate horticulturalist this spring. She spends many afternoons engaged in the traditional Japanese art of ikebana. Perhaps she—or Belle—would like to—”

“If you don’t mind,” said Marchmont to the other girls, “I think Miss Hemmings would most enjoy this particular walk.”

Anita nodded a stiff yes, put down her racket, and looked at Belle apologetically. Belle looked hurt, but there was nothing Anita could do. She reached for her hat, which was resting on the outdoor glass table, and followed Marchmont.

“This is such a beautiful house,” said Anita, when her schoolmates were out of view. “I was in preparatory school not too far from here, and this view of the orchards reminds me of the one I woke up to there.”

Marchmont nodded approvingly, and the two walked in silence until they reached the stream. Anita leaned down and placed her hand in the cool water. She swished it about, then placed it on the back of her neck. She bent down again and plucked several flowers from the bank, turning to look at her host to make sure it was allowed.

“I find your quiet nature very arresting, Miss Hemmings,” Marchmont said, watching her hands. “So many women tend to screech. They remind me of canaries having their feathers plucked. Not you.”

“It must be because I don’t hail from New York. Everything is
louder on Fifth Avenue,” said Anita, becoming increasingly nervous in the older man’s presence.

“That’s right, you are from Boston,” he said, studying her soft features as she looked up at him from under her straw hat. “The Back Bay. Or was it Beacon Hill?” He leaned down to take the flowers from her hand.

“Miss Hemmings, I am sure I have seen your face before,” he said, his eyes fixed on her as if she were a scientific specimen. “I have a very good memory for such things, because I am an only child. I had very little to do when I was young but watch the faces of New York go by my window. To this day I never forget a face, and certainly not one as pretty as yours. Now, when did I see you?”

“I don’t know,” said Anita, turning to face the water so he couldn’t scrutinize her. “I don’t remember seeing you before we met at the opera. I’m sure of it.”

“No, I’ve seen you before, I am certain,” he said, reaching for her face and bringing her chin toward him. “Such a delicate appearance, nothing Roman-nosed about you. I think it was in Boston around the New Year,” he said, letting her face go. “Were you in Boston then? And could you have been walking through another part of the city, not the Back Bay, with a . . . a younger woman?”