Tiffany Girl (30 page)

“On every side, every horizon, were colossal white palaces, gilded domes, lofty pillars, decorative statues, and curved bridges.”

CHAPTER

39

T
he train trip Flossie enjoyed so thoroughly brought great distress to Nan, whose stomach could not adjust to the constant motion of the car. When they finally arrived in Chicago and made it to their hotel, darkness had once again fallen. Nan fell into bed. Flossie pulled back the curtains of their window.

Their room overlooked the mile-long Midway Plaisance and the giant Ferris wheel at its center, which had opened the day before. In awe, she watched it turn, its edges gleaming with hundreds of electric lights so bright they hurt her eyes. The wheel was huge, enormous, the grandest thing she’d ever seen. She’d read about it, of course, but seeing it for herself was entirely different.

Lampposts, Japanese lanterns, and spotlights were everywhere, turning night into day. People crowded the Midway’s broad walkway from end to end and side to side. Costumed foreigners mingled with sober-clad businessmen and tourists dressed in their best.

Farther down, spectacular white-domed buildings loomed against the dark sky. She couldn’t help but think of Columbus, whose discovery of America was being celebrated at this World’s Columbian Exposition. Four hundred years ago, he’d expected to find a city of fabulous wealth with sky-kissing temples and gold-tipped spires. He’d been disappointed then, but he wouldn’t be
disappointed now. For this was more beautiful and more imperial than any city he could have ever imagined. It was indeed the city of his dreams—and of hers.

Flossie touched her fingertips to the cool window, her heart stretching toward the joys that would come with the morning sun.

She rose extra early and slipped out of their room, careful not to wake poor Nan. She crossed to the Madison Street entrance, showed her exhibitor’s pass to a tall, handsome Columbian Guard in blue regalia, and then she was in.

She wanted to see the chapel alone and in all its glory before the gates opened to the public. Street cleaners swept away the last bit of debris from the night before, their bristles making a rhythmic
swish-swish-swish
and stirring up clouds of dirt. The midway’s queer villages slept behind striped awnings and arched entrances. A thick-set man with a white flowing cloak and enormous straw hat with tassels took a pull on a cigarette and watched her as she passed beneath a viaduct and into the official White City.

Nothing could have prepared her. On every side, every horizon, were colossal white palaces, gilded domes, lofty pillars, decorative statues, and curved bridges. Cutting between these majestic structures was a sapphire-blue waterway—a liquid street—that reflected back to her in twofold the beauty of the marble-like facades.

She had no trouble spotting the Manufacturer’s Building. Being the largest building ever erected, it had been touted as the Eighth Wonder of the World. The guidebooks even said the Eiffel Tower could lie flat inside it without ever touching the enveloping structure and still have thousands of feet to spare.

Her circuitous route took her past a set of descending marble steps leading to the water’s edge. A half-dozen gondolas bobbed in the lagoon awaiting their first passengers. Gondoliers fresh from Venice lounged about in brigand’s leggings and colorful sashes, their broad-brimmed hats shading brown faces and black eyes, their quiet conversations in musical Italian.

Crossing a bridge, she glanced into what looked like a wooded fairy island with winding paths, fragrant bowers, and shadowy glades. A brood of ducks glided out into the water, cutting an arrow-shaped swath across its surface.

The closer she came to the Manufacturer’s Building the more it dwarfed her. Climbing its steps to the grand portal, she passed beneath a triumphal arch, then paused at the imposing entrance. She looked behind her, almost expecting to find the celestial city had vanished like an illusion, but the magic spell of its ravishing vista remained unbroken.

TIFFANY CHAPEL 
²³

“Shallow stairs at the front invited her to approach, their risers covered in mosaics, their designs simple at the bottom but gaining complexity with every step up she took. To her left, a white mosaic lectern stood like an angel, silent and impressive. To her right, an ornate baptismal font rested in an alcove backed with one of their windows.”

CHAPTER

40

U
nder any other circumstance, Flossie would have been captivated by a miniature city inside a building—complete with streets rather than aisles. Instead, she looked up, up, up to the dizzying height of a pendentive dome, and there it was. The mural that Louise and Mr. Cox had painted.

With one hand holding her hat and the other touching her throat, she noted that instead of painting the upper part of the vault, they’d placed female figures in each of the triangular segments dropping down from the four corners of the dome. In one shield-shaped space, a robust woman testing a sword suggested steelworking. For ceramic painting, a graceful girl in blue-and-white drapery decorated a vase. A tall, shapely woman in golden-green robes wielded a carpenter’s square to represent building. And in the final pendentive, a maiden of fair complexion held a distaff to symbolize weaving.

Flossie couldn’t imagine how on earth Louise was able to paint something all the way up there. It made Flossie’s stomach fill with butterflies just thinking about it. Still, their work was breathtaking. All of the literature she’d read only mentioned Mr. Cox’s name, but Flossie felt sure Louise would have signed her name alongside his. Try
as she might, though, she was too far away to distinguish anything as tiny as a signature.

When her neck couldn’t stand the strain any longer, she lowered her chin and scanned the building until she spotted the clock tower, then headed toward it and the American section of the building. The Tiffany exhibits were not hard to find, for Mr. Tiffany, his father, and Gorham Manufacturing had footed the bill for the entrance to the American pavilion. As such, their names were prominently displayed, their exhibits the first inside the gate.

Grasping the gilt handle of the chapel’s door, she opened it and stepped inside, then caught her breath. God’s presence filled the place. Didn’t matter that it was an exhibit. Didn’t matter that no services were held. Didn’t matter that there was no pastor or priest. Holiness encompassed every corner, every crevice, and seeped into her very soul.

A peace settled over her, chasing away all the upheaval of coming and going. The sound of her boots on the marble floor echoed as she walked down the aisle between highly polished pews. Shallow stairs at the front invited her to approach, their risers covered in mosaics, their designs simple at the bottom but gaining complexity with every step up she took. To her left, a white mosaic lectern stood like an angel, silent and impressive. To her right, an ornate baptismal font rested in an alcove backed with one of their windows.

Joy rushed through her as she absorbed the full impact of the window—a halo of light and color. The stained glass didn’t overwhelm the font, but instead complemented it.

Shaped like a bejeweled globe, the font was the perfect tribute to the Garden of Eden, where innocence once lost had been recaptured and sealed forever by the miracle of baptism.

Another step and she stood before the altar. Pairs of columns made a semicircle around it and her. Multicolored swirls of mosaic climbed up them as if the waves of the stairs had crashed into
breakers upon reaching the holy of holies. They supported rounded arches in the shape of concentric rainbows.

Worked into one were Latin words she didn’t understand and couldn’t pronounce. She’d asked Mr. Tiffany about these words, though, and learned they translated into,
Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, who was, who is, and who always will be.

Nearer and nearer the columns drew her, each one more extravagant than the last, all leading to the masterpiece framing the altar. A chef-d’oeuvre of mosaic art, the reredos held an iridescent crown of the King, worshiped by spreading peacocks, the Byzantine symbol for eternal life.