She Walks in Beauty (14 page)

Especially when I saw those same women looking right back at him.

Beneath the buzz of the crowds could be heard the sounds of the orchestra. Scratching and screeching. Plucking and whining. A great primeval beast come to life, slowly. Sleepily.

A moment later the lights began to dim and the noise of the crowd fell to a whispered hush. As the curtains rose on the opening scene of
Romeo and Juliet
, I soon forgot all those around me. I left my own world for Juliet’s.

As I listened to Miss Emma Eames sing “Je Veux Vivre,”
I want to live … in the dream
, I could not keep from sighing. She was at a party and had just seen Romeo,
her
Romeo, and it was love at first sight. As she sang about it, her voice wound through the opera house like an enchantment. I was entranced. A female version of Byron, her words were a hymn to the raptures of love. Faster and faster, up and down the scale she sang until, finally, she had exhausted the expression of her newfound love.

A girl, just like me, who was about to enter into the romance of a lifetime.

I want to live in the dream.

Oh, so did I! With a dashing, elegant man by my side.

At the intermission, Aunt tapped me on the arm with her opera glasses. “Get up. We’re going out.”

“I don’t need anything.” I wanted to stay in the theater, within the shadows of the box, and relive the songs in private.

“But we are here for you to be noticed. I haven’t seen the De Vrieses, so their box must be below ours. If we hurry, we can make it down to their level before they reach the assembly room.”

We might have hurried had we been the only ones with that idea, but all the female occupants of the boxes on our level flooded the stairs at the same time. And all had the intention of descending.

Aunt grabbed me by the hand, poked at the woman in front of her, and pulled me through the small gap that was made as the woman turned to glare at us. “We’ll never reach him at this rate.”

At this rate I had no confidence at all that we would be able to find our way back to the box before the opera ended. Slowly, ever so excruciatingly slowly, we descended the stair. “Do you see Mr. De Vries? Do you see Mr. De Vries?” Aunt’s queries began to sound like a chant.

The only glimpses I’d ever had of him had been at church, but I was certain that I would know him. His dashing manner, his elegant clothes, and his wink had been engraved upon my memory. To oblige Aunt, when we had gained the second floor, I stood on my toes in order to see past the feathers and tiaras of all the women around me. Just … there. In the corner … ? Wasn’t that his head? With all that dark hair swept back toward his crown? “Yes. I see him.”

“Where?”

“Over … just . . .” Attentive to her lessons about not pointing, I tried to indicate the direction with a tilt of my head.

“Where?”

“Over . . .” I took my reticule and swung it in the direction of the corner, but it hit a woman in the elbow.

“Just point!”

“There.”

Aunt managed to shove through the crowds until we had almost reached the corner. Then she pulled me close and leaned toward my ear. “Whatever happens, do not drop me.”

“What—”

At that instant, Aunt fell clean away into a dead faint. It took all the strength I had not to drop with her to the floor. Especially since, with my corset cinched so tightly, I could hardly bend, let alone breathe.

A gasp rippled out from around us, and a space soon opened in front of us.

“Aunt?”

There was no response.

“Aunt?”

Her cheeks suddenly seemed to lose the rest of their color.

“Aunt!”

All at once, there came two voices at my side. One from each elbow.

“May I help you?” A man’s voice. It sounded rather familiar, but before I could turn to him, Lizzie’s voice demanded my attention.

“Clara! What’s happened? Oh, Clara!”

“Lizzie, find Father!”

Tears trembled at the corners of her eyes. “But what—how did—Oh, Clara!”

“May I help you?” I turned toward the other voice, discovering it belonged to Mr. De Vries. The winking, dashing one. The heir.

Disaster!

That he should find me in an awkward predicament. Again.

“Is she … is she … dead?” At Lizzie’s conjecture, the crowd around us fell silent and then a woman shrieked. And another and another until mass pandemonium ensued.

“Lizzie!” Oh, how I wished she would be quiet. It was difficult to think over her moans and sighs.

“Clara?” Tears glistened on Lizzie’s cheeks, and her normal color had turned ashen. Her hand reached out to clutch at my elbow.

At the same time, a warm, firm hand gripped my other elbow. “Is there nothing I can do?”

I turned to him and said the only thing I could think of. “Please, will you stay with Lizzie and my aunt while I go find my father?”

Mr. De Vries stepped beside and behind me, taking up Aunt as I loosed my grip.

As I turned to go, though, I thought I heard her speak.

He must have heard her too. He had begun to ease Aunt toward the floor, but then he started and dropped her.

Her head hit the tiled floor with a thud. Her eyelids fluttered open for a moment, her eyes rolled back into her head and then her eyelids fell shut.

“Did he … did he … kill her?” Lizzie’s words were tremulous.

“No, Lizzie!” At least I hoped not. But if he did, then perhaps he would marry me to make amends and save me from my nightmarish existence.

At that moment, Father pushed through the crowd, handed his cigar to Mr. De Vries, and then knelt beside Aunt. He lifted first one of her eyelids and then the other. Slipped a hand inside his coat and pulled forth a vial. Waved it under Aunt’s nose.

She snorted.

Sputtered.

Opened her eyes. Her gaze traveled the ring of people standing around her and then they came to rest upon me.

Father looked up from her to the crowds. “Just a concussion. She needs air. And may I remind you that intermission is nearly over.”

The women began to rush toward the stairs and the hall soon became deserted.

Father placed his hands beneath Aunt’s arms and hauled her to her feet.

Mr. DeVries handed Father back his cigar.

Father clamped it between his teeth. “I thank you.”

Mr. De Vries bowed. And then he turned toward Lizzie and offered his arm. I felt a keen stab of disappointment. I would have liked to have said something to him. Something amusing or clever. I would have liked to have given him some other impression than that of a clumsy young girl in constant need of rescuing.

Aunt grabbed my arm as I turned to follow them. “What were you thinking? To leave Lizzie alone with the De Vries heir?”

“You fainted.”

“I hadn’t fainted. Didn’t you hear me:
Whatever happens, do not drop me
.”

“And I didn’t. He did.”

“Whom you were happy enough to leave alone with your rival!”

She muttered all the way through the foyer and back up into our box. “And now my hair ornament is falling out!”

I put up a hand and tried to push the ribbons back into place.

“Stop poking!”

I did. After one last jab.

It stayed.

The rest of the opera was so terrible, so tragic, that by the time it ended, tears were streaking down my face, wetting my throat, and causing my nose to drip. As I held a handkerchief to my nose, my eyes wandered to Lizzie’s box. And … I couldn’t believe what I saw!

I raised my glasses to my eyes and took another look.

Yes. It was true. Lizzie had fallen asleep! With her hands curled up over the railing and her cheek against an arm, she wasn’t just resting. She was slumbering. True, the hour was late. Much later than I was used to seeing. But how could she have fallen asleep during an opera?

13

IF I HAD expected some reprieve from society as a reward for my appearance at the opera, I didn’t receive it. The next night was the night of my first ball. The day began early. At least it seemed that way. But when Aunt thrust open my curtains, I discovered the sun to be quite high in the sky. “Get up.”

I groaned.

She paced to my bed and proceeded to yank my pillows from behind me. “However can you sleep this way?”

“It’s the only way I
can
sleep. The corset—”

“Enough sleeping. There is much to be done in preparation for the ball!”

The maid helped me into a breakfast jacket and then I went downstairs. As I ate, Aunt informed me of all the work to be done—the first item of which was a visit from the dance master.

I hurried back upstairs and was aided into a morning dress. The maid quickly twisted up my hair and buttoned my shoes, but still I descended to find the dance master awaiting my appearance. My head was too sleepy and my eyes too bleary for me to care very much where he danced me. Which pleased Aunt enormously.

“Well done, Clara. Very well done. I knew you could conquer it.”

I put a hand to my mouth to hide a yawn.

Afterward, the maid drew a bath and perfumed it with the scent of violets.

Then, paradise: She released me from the confines of my corset. To breathe deeply again! To glimpse flesh where I was only used to corset cover! I sunk into the water to my chin. And I might have succumbed to the temptation of sleep, but the maid did not let me linger. Once dried, she squeezed me back into my corset and then dressed me in a combing sacque. Then she placed a chair before the radiator and bid me sit as she combed out my hair.

Aunt came in as she was doing so. “You’re to stay there to hurry along the drying.”

“All morning?”

“As long as it takes.”

I persuaded the maid to bring me Byron before she left and I passed several hours there in front of the radiator in complete and total bliss. There were perhaps some small benefits to being a debutante!

Just before lunch, the maid came to help me back into the morning dress. She followed me upstairs immediately afterward to help me change into a house dress. Later that afternoon, once I had been tested by Aunt on etiquette, the maid returned to arrange my hair. By the time she was done, all my hairs were stretched so tightly across my skull that I feared they might pull themselves out by the roots at any moment to avoid further torture.

As I was being dressed, Aunt came in and asked the maid to cinch my corset tighter.

Though expected, the pull of those laces still threatened to undo me.

As I steadied myself and adjusted to the compression, the maid put out my slippers. They were beautiful. Made of satin and decorated with a bouquet of ribbons and silk flowers, they were made for dancing. And they were much too slippery. I stepped right out of them.

“Let me see those.”

The maid handed them to Aunt.

“Let me see your foot.”

I drew up my skirts on one side and stuck out my stocking-clad foot so she could see it.

She took my foot in one cool hand and then she turned and barked at the maid. “Fetch me the violet water.”

The maid hurried to do as she requested.

Aunt took it from her and sprinkled it on the bottoms of my feet. “Try them now.”

I pushed my feet into the slippers. The moistened stocking seemed to cling to the satin.