She Walks in Beauty (25 page)

The next week’s mail held invitations to even more dinner parties and more balls. Aunt, sitting at her desk, attacked them with ferocity.

“Another for you.” She removed the envelope from the bunch and then slit it open. Pulled out a card. She smiled. “Delmonico’s! A dinner party to be given by the Schemerhorns! I’ll have to find out who’s on the guest list.”

“Delmonico’s?”

“Where the Patriarch’s Ball was held. But this is to be a dinner party. So only the very best of the best society will be attending. And dining on oysters.”

“Oysters.” I couldn’t help pulling a face.

Aunt looked up at me. “Oysters. If you go to Delmonico’s, then you must eat oysters.”

“I don’t like oysters.”

Her mouth seemed to tighten. “If you go to Delmonico’s, then you must eat oysters.”

“Oysters make me retch.”

“Then we’ll just have to practice eating them, won’t we?”

Practice began that very day. Oysters for lunch. In a stew. And for dinner, on ice with lemon. “I think it’s the way they smell. And the way they look.” Stewed or on ice, they still made my stomach heave.

“You may
not
close your eyes while eating them.”

I hadn’t thought I would. But if I could just somehow avoid looking at them … then perhaps I would actually be able to eat one. Because I hadn’t yet succeeded. They truly did make me retch. That’s why Mama had never served them. “Why do they have to be so … slippery?”

“They aren’t. Not when they’re stewed.”

“Then they’re chewy.” And I had not been able to decide which was worse.

She watched me as I took one up and squeezed a bit of lemon juice onto it.

“Very good.”

I speared one with an oyster fork and raised it to my lips. Determined to eat it, I opened my lips and—I dropped it.

“If you would just taste it, then you might like it!”

“I can’t. And I won’t.”

“You can’t
not
eat oysters at Delmonico’s. It’s just not done.”

“Well, perhaps I can set another trend. I
am
Miss Carter, you know, arbiter and mistress-in-chief of all that’s fashionable. And oysters are not.” I rose, putting my napkin on the table beside the plate, and left the room.

The next day was Lizzie’s party. Aunt sent her maid to dress my hair. “Not too ornately. It’s only a dinner party. Given by the Barneses.”

At least, due to her disapproval, I was given a coiffure that didn’t poke or pull. I had expected to wear my new dinner gown—a gown that one of the dressmakers in town had sent me. Aunt, however, asked for the old one.

“But—”

She stared at me.

“The De Vries heir will be there.”

She sighed. Pressed her lips together. “So he shall. No”—she waved the old gown away—“we want the new one.”

It was a simple gown of yellow net with ruching about the bottom, but sprays of embroidered pansies had been scattered about the skirt and lined the edge of the collar. It was both elegant and charming and one of the prettiest dresses I’d ever seen.

I would have walked to Lizzie’s house that evening, but Aunt insisted on the carriage. And so we sat within it, Father and I, for the twenty seconds it took to arrive.

Once there, we were greeted by a butler, had our cloaks taken by a footman, and then were shown further into the front hall, where Lizzie stood to greet her guests.

“Finally! I kept assuring Mama that you were coming. I don’t think she believed me.”

“I’m sorry. My aunt.” Those two words were all it took to erase the rebuke from Lizzie’s eyes and replace it with sympathy. She linked her arm through mine and together we walked toward the parlor.

I could see Harry and several other guests, as well as Lizzie’s mother and father.

But … “Where’s Franklin?”

“Over in the corner.”

As I walked into the parlor, I could see that the rest of the guests were also bachelors. “So many men!”

“Franklin mustn’t think he’s the only contender for my affections.”

“Of course not.”

“And neither must he think it of you.” She smiled brightly and twirled her fan.

I smiled at her and twirled mine in response. And I noticed that there were quite a few pairs of eyes trained upon us both.

She left me then and went to talk, not to Franklin, not to Harry, but to Mr. Porter and Mr. Lorillard, who were standing together in front of the fireplace. But Mrs. Barnes called us to dinner shortly thereafter. And I can’t say that I was disappointed. The table was magnificently set with silver and decorated with orchids. There were spoons and forks and knives in abundance.

I was seated between Father and Harry.

As Harry took his seat, he glanced over at me. “Good evening, Miss Carter.”

“Good evening, Mr. De Vries. Father? Do you know Mr. De Vries?”

Father glanced over my head at Harry. “We have not met.”

“No.” Harry was smiling genially.

“I have, however, attended your family in the past.”

“Father is a physician.”

Harry nodded.

“I believe it was your sister I saw most recently.”

“It can’t have been that recent. She’s been living abroad for—”

“Eight years now, if I recall correctly.”

Correctly? With Father’s bright eye and precise speech, there seemed little need to doubt the veracity of his memory.

“Yes.” Harry seemed more attentive now. “Yes, she has. Eight years now.”

“I trust she is doing well.”

“Quite.” Harry spoke that one word with the finality of the end of a conversation.

“Good.” And Father did the same.

Harry ate through the courses with practiced ease. Through a lobster bisque and salmon with cucumber. Through a roast of lamb served with mint jelly. It was obvious that he had no difficulty remembering which knife to use or which spoon to take up … until a dish of beef marrow was served with points of toast and a lemon salad.

He began to attack the bone with a regular knife and spoon.

Until I nudged him with an elbow. “The marrow shovel.” It was meant to reach down to the bottom of a bone and lift the marrow out.

He reached for the utensil. “That’s right. I always forget!”

He wouldn’t if Aunt had been his teacher.

“Why do you think it is that we can’t just use a knife?”

I smothered a laugh as I remembered that I had asked Aunt that very same thing. “I don’t know.”

“Neither do I. This table is a pigeon trap. A dozen different forks and knives and spoons. Four different goblets. All of them just waiting to be knocked over or misapplied and mishandled. It’s a wonder anyone is ever tempted to eat!”

“You’re doing quite well.”

“Franklin’s much better at all of this than I am.”

“But you’re much better at conversing.”

“And making you laugh? Am I better at that?”

I smiled. “Yes. I would say so.”

“Good. Because that, at least, is something worthwhile.”

22

AFTER DINER, Mrs. Barnes played the piano while Lizzie sang. She performed “Deh Vieni, Non Tardar” from
The Marriage of Figaro
.

Oh come, don’t delay
.

I hoped Franklin was listening. If he married Lizzie, then he wouldn’t have to marry me. And I would be freed … to marry someone else.

Then Lizzie sang her mother’s favorite. “The Jewel Song” from Faust. And then “Funiculi, Funicula” and “Oh, Promise Me
.”

It was while she sang the third song that I began to feel a most peculiar sensation in the deepest regions of my stomach. A growing pressure that pushed, unlike my corset, from the inside to the out. I shifted in my seat, trying to relieve it.

Harry, sitting next to me, glanced over.

I smiled. Much more cheerfully, I hoped, than I felt. As I sat there, listening to note after note, song after song, the pressure within me built to a near intolerable level. At the end of the last song, I was the first to leave my chair and applaud. And there, standing on my feet, some of it seemed to subside.

As Lizzie and her mother left the piano and headed toward the other end of the parlor, the guests followed them. Harry glanced over at me. “Would you like to play a duet?”

And risk sitting down again? “No! No. No, thank you.”

His smile dimmed. “I understand.”

Understood … what? That … Oh no! He understood that I hadn’t wished to sit beside him. “No, I might not wish to play a duet, but … would you rather like to . . .” What? What could I offer in its stead? “It’s so difficult, while playing the piano, to be able to talk.Don’t you think?”

He nodded.

“Then why not … let’s just talk. We could talk right here. Away from the rest. Where we can see each other. And hear each other. Wouldn’t you much rather? And I could show you . . .” I knew the Barneses’ parlor like I knew my own. But what would be of interest to Harry? To an international traveler who had seen the latest of what Europe had to offer? “I could show you Lizzie’s collection of skeleton leaves!”

“Her skeleton leaves? Then by all means, lead on.”

I walked over and gestured to a shelf above the piano. Lizzie’s handiwork was displayed under a glass dome. In fact, that particular work was a phantom bouquet made entirely of skeleton leaves arranged in a cut glass vase. “Lizzie’s so very good at these.” I couldn’t do the work; it was too tedious. But Lizzie reveled in boiling leaves and then rubbing the flesh away to reveal the skeletal structures beneath.

“Is she?” His mouth quirked up on one side.

“She’s a genius with leaves. And it exhibits such beauty in death.” At least that was what Lizzie proclaimed. Though the pressure within me had subsided, I had begun to feel a bit light-headed. And a sweat had broken out behind my ears.

“Are you feeling well?”

“Yes. Fine. And you must see this example over here.” I led him away from the piano to a small marble pedestal where another collection of leaves had been caged under a glass dome.

“Ah. Yes. A very fine example of … handiwork.”

“Yes.”

We stood there, the two of us, looking at Lizzie’s accomplishment.

Harry leaned close. “What is it for?”

“Why, it’s … one just … I honestly don’t know.” What did one do with a skeleton leaf? “But her mother takes great pride in it.”

“Mothers take great pride in all sorts of unreasonable things. Witness Franklin, for example. My mother’s pride is based on the fact that he will, upon my father’s death, take leadership of one of the largest banking empires in the country.”

I glanced over at him. I was not quite sure what to say. Shouldn’t mothers take pride in those sorts of things?

“Even though, if you ask him the difference between an acquittance and an acquisition, he could give you no decisive opinion.”

“What is the difference?”

“I have no idea, but there must be one. Wouldn’t you think?” He put the question to me in the same way Miss Miller might have.

“There must be.”

“So we’re agreed. There must be one. We don’t know what it is, but don’t you think Franklin ought to? If he’s going to be in the business of dealing in them?”

“One would think . . .”

“Of course one would.”

We stood there for at least a minute, gazing at Lizzie’s bouquets. And the absurdity of her handiwork and the extreme effort we were putting into appreciating it nearly drove me to convulsions of laughter. And so, to hide my mirth, I turned my back on the ghastly thing and asked him a question. “If your father’s businesses go to Franklin, what is it that you want to do?”

He shrugged.

“Is there nothing that holds your interest?”

“There are some things.”

“Such as?”

“Such as … art.” He spoke the word as if it were a confession.

“Art?”

“Yes. I could spend all day looking at a painting.” Enthusiasm had lit him from within. “A well-conceived one.”

“Like … a Rembrandt? Or a Rubens?”

“Yes … but there are some new painters. Gauguin. Bernard. Van Gogh. Not anymore, of course—unfortunate circumstances—but there’s another one. A fellow in Paris. Name of Signac. He paints in dots.” His hands had begun to speak on his behalf. “Masses of them in all different colors. Quite structured and regimented. But really quite wonderful. I can’t create art; I’m too literal. But I enjoy it. If I could do anything, I should like to deal in it.”