She Walks in Beauty (10 page)

“But doesn’t blue become her?” She had the most startling pale blue eyes.

“Yes. Maybe. With those limpid eyes. But, honestly! Last season’s blue? To church? Didn’t she know everyone would notice?”

Lizzie seemed to be offended, though I couldn’t quite understand why. “Maybe she thought everyone would be concentrating on the sermon.”

“The sermon?”

“It was quite good.”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

I’d always had the feeling that most people didn’t. I don’t think they paid much attention to the hymns either. But on Sunday, the choir had sung one of my favorites. One of Mama’s favorites. And it was then I had recalled something Mama said when I was younger. As she was having her hair done to go out to a ball.

I had heard her, throughout the day, humming a tune that even then I had recognized was from church. But it was only that evening, from five o’clock until six—the hour that was mine alone with her—that she had begun singing the words.

Just as I am, tho’ tossed about
With many a conflict, many a doubt,
Fightings and fears within, without,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

She had turned to me, after the maid finished with her hair, and hugged me with an unaccustomed fierceness. “Would it not be wonderful if God loved us just as we were, darling girl? Without affectation or pretension?” Her tone had been deliberate and vehement.

The maid and I had exchanged a look.

Mama smiled and grabbed a handful of earrings from her box of jewels. “Without bustles or corsets or falls of false hair?”

I nodded simply because it seemed that was what she wanted me to do.

She bent and kissed me on the forehead. Then she held a pair of earrings up to her ears. “Which do you think? Do you like these?” She let them dangle for a moment and then put them down on her dressing table and held another pair up to her lobes. “Or these?”

I chose the pair I always did. I chose the amethysts that swayed from a setting of diamonds and sapphires. They were the exact shade of the best candied violets.

“The amethysts, then.” She looked into the mirror and screwed them onto her earlobes without hesitation. Then she spun around toward me. “How do I look?”

“Perfect.” Mama always looked perfect.

She smiled and bent to kiss my cheek. “Then I suppose it’s worth every pinch and poke and squeeze.”

I threw my arms around her neck and pressed my face into her hair. It smelled of spicy lavender and sweet jasmine. “You’re beautiful, Mama.”

She hugged me hard, and then stood me away from herself so she could rise from her stool. “I fear it’s simply artifice, darling girl.”

“I like you just the way you are.”

She then bent and gave me an additional kiss. “And that’s the nicest compliment anyone has ever thought to give me.”

She had gone from the room after that, a vision in coral, ivory, and green, leaving in her wake the impression of tumbles of ruffles and lace. And the question of why no one liked her. Truly. Just the way she was.

“Do you think, Lizzie, it matters so much if we wear just the right colors or say just the right things?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean … what if … why do we have to pretend to be people that we aren’t? Why do we have to seem thinner than we are, and happier than we feel, and know the uses for dozens of kinds of forks when usually just one will do?”

She looked at me as if I had just asked her to translate my words into Latin. “Because we have to.”

“But wouldn’t you like me just the same? Even if I wore last season’s blue?”

“Of course I would. But I might not invite you to dinner. Once I’ve married.”

“You wouldn’t?”

“I couldn’t.” She began to shrug, I could see, but then she yanked her shoulders down. “Not if I wanted to be fashionable and you weren’t.”

“So you would just … cut me?” Lizzie would cut me? Me—her dearest friend? I would never have thought it of her!

“I wouldn’t
cut
you. I would never cut you! But I might have to confine myself to visiting on your at-home day or meeting you at the art museum. Unless you became one of those marvelously eccentric people. Like Aunt Beulah down in Vicksburg. Mama says she has an enormous ear trumpet that she leaves strapped to her head
at all times
.”

“Is she deaf?”

Lizzie’s eyes began to sparkle. “No. She’s just convinced that everyone talks about her and she doesn’t want to miss one word. You could be eccentric like that and no one would mind.”

“Really.”

“Don’t pout. I’m only telling you what’s true. It’s what anyone would do. What any of us should do. And besides, you aren’t like that at all.”

But that was just it. I was.

Lizzie leaned forward to kiss me on the cheek. “Don’t forget to meet me next week. And bring a fan!”

9

MY FIRST AT-HOME arrived more quickly than I had wanted it to. I tried to summon some happy anticipation for sitting beside Aunt for several hours, conversing with people I didn’t know about topics that didn’t really matter, but the only emotion I felt was anxiety.

I didn’t want to leave my room.

I wondered what would happen if I sat down in one of my pansycovered chairs and refused to leave it. What would Aunt do? What could she do? I frowned as the maid wound my hair into a bun. It wasn’t what Aunt would do … it was what Father would think. I couldn’t bear to disappoint him. My father worked tirelessly; I owed my family this debut. And if I had to undertake it, then I would do everything within my power to make a success of it.

The house gown I was helped into was close-fitting and rather stifling. Made from a rose-colored wool, its high neck was encased in lace that ended in a point below my throat. The puffed sleeves fell straight and free to my forearms, where they had been caught up with more lace descending to my wrists. The bodice clung to my corset cover and then eased over my hips and fell straight to the floor. I was encased. Completely. From head to toe. But still, my form was revealed in all its curvaceous glory.

I looked nothing like myself.

And I rather liked the image. The girl in the mirror before me looked as if she belonged in society circles. The girl in the mirror was the definition of elegance, grace, and charm. She would know how to dance; she would know how to converse. A room filled with strangers would never send her fleeing to her bedroom for refuge.

I only wished I felt the way she looked.

We descended to the parlor just before three o’clock and waited on the sofa a full half hour before Aunt moved a muscle.

Beneath the sleek lines of my gown I was being eaten alive. My corset bit into my sides like an asp. The fine lace at my throat scratched at my skin and the delicate points of my slippers nipped at my toes.

“Why don’t you play the piano. While we wait.”

I rose from the sofa, relieved to be allowed to move.

“No. No. Better not to. We wouldn’t want our first caller to think you had no other callers.”

I took up my place beside her once more.

At four o’clock we heard the butler answer the door.

A moment later, he stepped into the parlor, carrying a silver tray well out in front of him. Stopping before us, he offered up the tray.

Aunt snatched the calling card from it and took it to hand.

“Mr. Ira Hooper.” She frowned. “Ira Hooper. Ira Hooper. I think … he must be related to those Hoopers that live in Boston … if I remember correctly, his mother was a sister to Charles Wilson of the Boston Wilsons who made their fortune in boot-blacking. Back at the time of the food riots. In the thirties.”

She had lost me at “sister to someone of the Boston … someones.” I was still trying to trace that rather vague lineage in my head.

Aunt nodded. “Yes. Send him in.” She turned to me as the butler left us. “At least when the other callers come, they’ll discover someone else here before them.”

The butler’s disappearance coincided with the appearance of a rather cadaverously lanky young man. I thought I remembered him from my tea. If I had placed him properly, and I was almost certain that I had, he was the one who had stood in the corner near the piano and glared at me. Just as he was glaring now. If he didn’t like me, then why had he come? Twice.

I tried a smile on. To see if it would cause him to speak.

It did not.

We stood as he approached.

He bowed.

We nodded.

Aunt smiled. “Mr. Hooper. So kind of you to visit us.”

“I could think of nothing else since Miss Carter’s tea.”

“So nice of you to attend, wasn’t it, Clara?” Aunt had clearly passed the impetus for the conversation on to me.

“Have you . . .” Where was it Aunt said his family had come from? Boston! “Have you been in the city long, Mr. Hooper?”

“Yes.”

He had? “Are you well-acquainted, though, with Boston?”

“Not particularly, no.”

“Would you like to be?”

“No. What I would like to be is in the company of my sister.”

I felt my brow rise as I tried to make sense of that non sequitur. “Your sister. Is she … debuting this year?”

“She ought to have been. Yes.”

Ought to have been? But then that meant she wasn’t. “Is she ill?”

Beside me, Aunt coughed. Apparently, I had ventured into dangerous conversational territory.

“She
was
ill.”

“Then she’s cured.” And so, I hoped, was my faux pas.

“Minnie is dead.”

“Oh. My. My goodness! I’m so very sorry.”

“And so am I. And so ought Dr. Carter be.”

“Dr. Carter?”

“Dr. Carter. Your father.” After that extraordinary pronouncement, he simply continued to stare at me in that same bilious, unblinking way that he had been. Speaking with him was going to be like talking to one of Aunt’s Pomeranians. And so that was exactly what I pretended to do. And in truth, Mr. Hooper’s stare was so like that of Aunt’s beasts that it was not difficult to undertake such an endeavor. I chattered on about … nothing. For a full quarter of an hour. Until the bell chimed.

And it was then, finally, that Mr. Hooper decided to speak. “I do hope I’ll have the pleasure of seeing you at the opera this season.”

Did he? But it seemed quite obvious that he hated me.

“Or at one of the balls?”

Aunt rose.

I popped up beside her, thankful to be doing something, anything, besides talking. To someone who had so very little to say.

Our rising required that he do the same.

I nodded at him, wishing nothing so much as to be rid of his ill temper. “I am sure that you will. Good day, Mr. Hooper.”

Aunt enfolded my hand within her own as Mr. Hooper made his way from the parlor. When he was gone, she pulled me to the sofa beside her. “What a contrary young man! You managed admirably in spite of his ill manners. Just as I told you, it is always to your advantage to know how to carry on a conversation with a person who cannot or will not speak.”

As I was contemplating the pleasures of an empty parlor with no one to speak to and nothing to do, the butler appeared, silver tray in hand.

“Mrs. Isaac Hobbs.” Aunt nodded to the butler, placed the card back on the tray. And then she spoke to me as she pushed to her feet. “Mrs. Isaac Hobbs is the wife of Mr. Hobbs.”

Evidently.

“And the mother of Mr. Jeremiah Hobbs, who will be following Mr. Hobbs into business.”

Hobbs. Hobbs. It seemed like I should know that name. “What is their business?”

A woman appeared in the doorway and Aunt had only a brief moment to whisper an answer. “Mortuary services. The finest in the city.”

I felt my brows peak and struggled to tug them back down into place. Mortuary services! Of course.
Hobbs Mortuary Services: Your death, our sacred trust
. But that was … that meant … I scarcely dared contemplate what that meant. And was exceedingly glad that I was destined for a different, more earthly minded suitor.

“Mrs. Hobbs! How lovely of you to call.”

“Such a splendid tea you gave for your niece. Miss Carter.” The woman nodded toward me.

I returned the gesture.

She sat on a chair as we sat on the sofa. “Debutantes are so lively these days, Mrs. Stuart. Not like they were in our day. In our day one would cough as soon as smile. And languish as soon as dance. Don’t you remember it?”

“I do. We were positively consumptive. All of us.”

“That’s true, that’s true.” She plucked a handkerchief from her sleeve. “We were none of us long for this earth. And we knew it.” A nod punctuated her reminiscences.

Aunt smiled. “We did.”

“It’s so important to contemplate one’s eternal future.” She dabbed at an eye.

“It is. I heard Mrs. James Cole passed last night.”

“She did. A lovely soul. But . . .”

Aunt cocked her head. As did I.

“But … the coffin chosen for her was unaccountable.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Mr. Cole chose … well … I shouldn’t say … not really.”

Aunt folded her hands into her lap. “I would hate to intrude upon Mr. Cole’s private affairs.”

“Of course. Think no more about it.” Mrs. Hobbs turned toward me. “And who are you debuting with, my dear?”