She Walks in Beauty (3 page)

“Not in this house!” Aunt pushed Miss Miller out the door and signaled the doorman to shut it. When she turned toward the stairs she saw me. “Miss Miller has gone.”

“But … where?”

“Away. For good.”

“Why?” Why would she send away my teacher and closest confidante?

“Her personal views are incompatible with the requirements of your education.”

“My education? But we hadn’t even begun to work on rhetoric!”

“Yes. Well. All good things must come to an end.”

“But—”

“I’ll hear no more about it.”

“You’re a tyrant and a bully! And I wish you’d go back to where you came from!” I could not keep tears from blurring my vision but turned to run up the stairs to my room so I could catch a glimpse of Miss Miller. My forehead pressed to the window, I watched her walk down Fifth Avenue. Her back straight, her pace measured, she never, not even once, looked back. And so I sat in the window, a grown girl of seventeen years, and cried as I had not cried since my mother had died some six years before.

After a while, once my tears stopped, once I discovered I could take a breath without a stuttering in my chest, I decided upon a course of action. I decided I would take the situation up with Father. There was a strategy involved in that sort of thing. Father seemed, of late, to trust his beloved sister with everything having to do with my welfare. She had raised him when their parents had died, so I could not be thought to decry her actions. Neither could I be suspected of being ungrateful for her care. She had, after all, so recently sacrificed her own life of noble widowhood within the bosom of her husband’s family to come live with us. And since then she had ruled the house in righteous selflessness.

I suppose I was late in appearing for dinner. Aunt and Father were already seated when I arrived; I encountered their fierce stares when I entered the room. But I couldn’t bring myself to care. We sat in silence and ate in silence, the butler officiating from his place at Aunt’s elbow. First the soup course, then the fish course, which was followed by the meat course.

Father stirred in his seat.

I’d always thought myself the most fortunate girl in the world to have such a handsome father. With his silvery hair and neatly trimmed beard, he looked quite dashing. The very picture of respectability. He was, of course, the city’s preeminent physician and the inventor of
Dr. Carter’s Patented Tonic
. His medicine had made him a fortune.
Dr. Carter’s
was advertised in newspapers and on posters throughout the city.

He looked up from his lamb chop and smiled at me. Returning the smile, I cast a glance at Aunt, to see if she would speak.

She did not.

I could not speak. Not when I had not first been spoken to. Either Aunt would have to say something about Miss Miller or my opportunity would be lost. So when I reached to butter my roll, I put out my elbow and knocked over my water goblet.

“Clara!”

I folded my hands into my lap and bowed my head at Aunt’s admonishment.

“She can’t even eat a meal properly and she’s to debut this season?”

Lifting my gaze, I saw Father frown. “Debut? This season? But I thought … she’s only . . .”

“I know she’s only just turned seventeen, but the De Vries heir is coming back from the Continent. There must be no delay.”

“Certainly not. Not if the De Vries heir is available.”

“There is much work to be done.”

Father’s frown deepened, and I saw my chance. “If Miss Miller could be persuaded to stay, then maybe she could educate me.”

Father’s eyebrows rose in alarm. “Persuaded to stay? Why would she have to be persuaded?”

I cast a glance toward Aunt before returning my gaze to my dinner plate.

“Why?” Father was looking at his sister and there was an edge in his voice. “Miss Miller came highly recommended. And I had to pay a fortune to entice her from the Vanderbilts.”

Aunt sniffed. Jet pendulums swung from her earlobes as she emphatically cut into her lamb.

Father placed his knife on his knife rest, then aligned the bottom of his spoon with the bottom of his cheese knife. He speared Aunt with his eyes. “My dear sister, you know I rarely question your methods, but I find I must question this.”

It was now that I must make my point. Even if I had not yet been addressed. “Really, Father, I know nothing at all about society. I am terribly unprepared for a debut.”

Aunt sent the smallest of smiles in my direction. “Exactly. It is exactly as Clara has said. She is terribly unprepared for a debut. Miss Miller has completely failed in her duties.”

Father’s brows rose to a peak and then gathered together as they sunk. “If you think her not ready … ?”

“She will be. Now is the time, Brother. Just think: the De Vries heir. This is the moment for which we have been waiting.”

They turned then, both of them, to look at me. And there seemed to be something more than Father’s usual good humor lurking in his smile.

I returned to my room after dinner, defeated. Listless, dispirited, I flopped onto my bed. As my head encountered my pillow, I felt something hard. I rolled onto an elbow and lifted up the corner. There was a book beneath it! Two of them.

I pulled them out into the evening’s gloom.

The first was my Byron. Mother’s Byron. And the edge of an envelope protruded from its pages.

I sat up, reaching out to turn up the gaslight, then let the book fall open on my knees.

A letter. Addressed to me. In Miss Miller’s elegant script.

Pulling the envelope from the poem “She Walks in Beauty,” I slit it open, then withdrew from it a single sheet of paper.

My dearest Clara,

Do not be saddened at my going. We both know that you surpassed me in your studies long ago. I only regret that I did not share Riis’s book with you sooner. It is left to you now to learn what I am not equipped to teach you, and in this, your aunt must be your tutor. Study well her lessons. She truly has only your best interests at heart, and her experience and guiding hand will prove invaluable in the days and months to come. If ever you should need to contact me, I can be reached in care of my sister,

Farewell. I remain forever your friend.

Julia Miller

I picked up the other book. The book by Jacob Riis.
How the Other Half Lives
. I opened to the first page and began to read. An hour later I emerged from its pages long enough to turn up the light once more.

Such things I learned about the conditions in which half the city lived. Such horrors! I read of tenement buildings so devoid of fresh air that people slept on the roofs in the summer … and frequently rolled off to their deaths. I read of plumbing so antiquated that water did not reach even to the second stories, let alone to the seventh or eighth. Of rabbits’ warrens of tiny rooms where a dozen people were expected to sleep. And of diseases I had thought eradicated that swept those buildings each summer, leaving scores of children dead in their wake. All of these things occurred,
occur
, within the city. My city.

Right here.

And the photographs! The haunted eyes of lost souls, of women and children, peered out between the pages. Beseeching, pleading. Begging.

In my city. My home.

I used to love the idea of Lady Liberty, standing in the harbor, welcoming the visitor to the city. Even the thought of her raised hand still thrilled me to no end.

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

To what end? For what purpose did she greet the immigrant? To welcome him to a rat-infested, disease-ridden hovel? To offer him no home, no food, no sturdy shelter? Lady Liberty, it seemed, had failed to fulfill her promise.

I fell that night into a fitful sleep, haunted by the images of destitute children and by the certain knowledge that dozens of them were living, were dying, in rude poverty every day. But what could I do? What could anyone do? The problem was so vast. If half the city lived in tenements, then … that was over one million people. Surely one person, surely I, could do nothing that would effect any change.

Miss Miller’s legacy may have been disturbing and dismal, but life without her seemed dull and devoid of direction. Though Aunt had taken it upon herself to improve my social education, there were, as yet, no lessons being taught. For the first two days following my governess’s departure, I was left entirely to my own devices.

The third day was a Sunday. As we walked into Grace Church, there was an almost imperceptible shifting in the pews. A shifting toward us. As we began our walk down the aisle, our footsteps echoed up toward the lattice of vault work that supported the ceiling.

Father squared his shoulders.

Aunt lifted her chin.

I tried to ignore the members already in their pews—and their stares. Tried not to think about anyone but Lizzie, taking comfort in the fact that she would face the same gauntlet, the same scrutiny when her own family followed us in.

But they would not follow too closely.

No, each family at Grace Church wanted the aisle to themselves for at least a few moments. The better to be seen; the better to have gowns catalogued and hats critiqued. Some of the most elaborate costumes of the week were worn on Sundays.

I used to stare at the people in the pews as I walked down the aisle. But that was when I was younger. Before I knew that those same people were staring back at me.

Finally, we reached our pew. I took my seat beside Aunt, who sat beside Father.

“Over there.”

I looked around, trying to see who it was that had spoken.

“Over. There.”

I could attribute the words to no one.

“For goodness’ sake!” The words pierced my ears with a hiss. It was Aunt. She held herself so still that she gave no indication of speech. “If you look beyond us, across the aisle, there is a long pew. Occupied by two people.”

I shifted so that I could see it.

“Not. So. Conspicuously.” The words were spoken through her teeth.

I straightened my spine and then leaned forward, ever so slightly.

“Do you see it?”

“No.”

Aunt leaned backward, ever so slightly. “Now?”

Did I? It was so hard to tell where the pews started and stopped. Especially when they were across the aisle. And there were several pairs of people over there. Granted, most of them were surrounded with other people. But how could I tell if a pair that had space around them were
the
pair or not?

“Did you see them?”

I supposed I had. The pair had to be one of them, didn’t it? “Yes.”

“That is where the De Vries heir will sit. When he comes back to the city. Next to the woman in blue.”

Oh!
That
woman. I had been looking too far down the aisle. Mrs. De Vries was dressed in a costume of medium blue with beige lace at her throat and around her wrists. Her dark blue hat, set atop a piled mass of blond hair, was trimmed in ivory-colored ribbons and a puff of ivory ostrich feathers.