Katherine Keenum (13 page)

“But the crowd—?”

“I’m sure it’s no different where you come from,” said Effie. “A straight back and a firm step, that’s all it takes!” Her eye fell on Edward’s bad leg. Too excited to be daunted, she added brightly, “Or, I guess, the rap of a good walking stick to clear the field.”

Jeanette froze, stricken, but Edward was only amused. He thought he had never met anyone so guileless as Miss Pendergrast. With the ivory knob of the weapon in question, he rapped for the driver to halt, then helped the ladies down and offered his arm to Effie.

The Great Exhibition Hall built specially for the fair covered several square blocks; its walls of bluish glass reflected changes in sky and atmosphere. At its main entrance, burgundy-red doors set in highly ornate iron frames admitted visitors into a deep foyer from which arches led into long avenues of galleries devoted in turn to agriculture, manufacture, education, and art. If she and Effie had come alone, Jeanette would have propelled them to the fine arts section at once, but the Grand Vestibule itself contained dazzling displays of luxury goods that slowed most visitors. Beside a life-sized equestrian statue in bronze, which commemorated an imperial visit by the Prince of Wales to India, two storys of slender columns and latticework rose to onion domes.

“Inside that pavilion,” said Edward, “they’ve got a display of treasures the prince brought back with him.”

“Oh, may we take a look?” begged Effie. “I’m like a crow with a piece of shiny tin when it comes to glitter, Dr. Murer—I just can’t resist it.” In her perennial black, amid all the peacock colors around them (malachites from Russia, huge vases of lapis lazuli), she might suggest a crow; but the yearning in her face was not acquisitive, it was a longing to admire. The only jewelry she ever wore was a gold locket containing a picture of Polycarpus and a lock of his hair. “Of course, if you two—”

In answer, Edward steered her toward the pavilion. Solemn-faced attendants in turbans greeted them silently. Inside, a respectful hush prevailed in the presence of so much wealth: silken draperies, carpets underfoot, velvet cushions on which rested coils of pearls, huge rubies and emeralds encircled by diamonds, sapphires, amethysts, gold, brassware.

“I feel like Aladdin in the den of thieves!” said Effie, happily.

“Wrong country,” teased Jeanette.

“Den of thieves is right,” said Edward.

“Oh, you two,” said Effie. She dawdled, admiring all the riches, but kept moving. “What next?” she asked, when they emerged from the pavilion.

“May I suggest the Avenue of Nations?” said Edward. “We can dip into some of the exhibits there, then come back up the length of the fine arts galleries at our leisure, Miss Palmer.”

Although they knew they would soon give up trying to see everything, they began with the first exhibit, a full-sized house with a Queen Anne façade. One room had high wainscoting and Chippendale furniture; others held other styles of furniture sold by England to the world. It was all very pretty and very forgettable until they came into an up-to-the-minute chamber decorated by James McNeill Whistler. Tones of mustard yellow dominated, enriched by the luster of gold, softened and harmonized by the use of buff, and brought to life by touches of ochre.
Dandified
was Edward’s reaction, but he could see that the ladies had other thoughts. Jeanette had never been so engulfed by a color. It made her impatience with drawing lessons worse. She wanted to apply paint to canvas, pigment to ground. It was more than the superb balance and blending of related hues; it was the subtle effects of texture and lighting, the contrast of effulgent gleam to matte finish. And the minute Effie entered, she felt an upsurge of delight, a leap of the heart. How Polycarpus would have hated it! How indignant Maude would be. Fashionable Adeline would falter before it, doubting whether she could bring it off—but not Effie. “Oh, my. Well, I am glad to have seen this while I’m fresh,” she said. Speculating on how to achieve similar effects on a tight budget, she bent and stood on tiptoe to examine every detail, intending to remember them all.

After that, the fair became one sensation piled on another, a jumble of goods and revelations. Despite the sound-absorbing wood, plaster, and cloth of the displays, the endless tramp of feet and sound of voices roared and echoed throughout the huge hall, loudest in the long corridors but audible in even the quietest, most obscure corners of the least-visited exhibits.

At the end of the Avenue of Nations, Edward proposed that they take a break. It was a relief to step outside and leave the hall behind. Not only their heads but their whole bodies felt lighter in the pleasant late-spring air. Lawns and trees separated the hall from big restaurants on the edge of the grounds and offered breathing space. The brasserie to which Edward led them fed a thousand at a time. It was noisy, too, but its pastry buffet offered a tempting array of choices always with more chocolate, more whipped cream, and strong dark coffee. A half hour later, they reemerged fortified to tackle the fine arts galleries.

They started by trying to look at least quickly at every painting in each gallery. Effie took a straightforward delight in scenes of places she would never visit. Edward enjoyed the landscapes, too. Jeanette was trying to observe, learn, sort, and analyze, but had to give up. Much too soon, she found herself becoming dazed again, then slaphappy. In the Austrian section, in front of a colossal history painting—thirty feet long, eighteen feet high—Effie was ready to sink down onto a bench and dutifully study its many, many, many details, but Jeanette giggled. Catching Dr. Murer’s eye and seeing that he, too, somehow found the challenge funny, she shook with laughter. She could stop herself only by biting down on her fist. “It’s really good, only, only—”

“Only!” agreed Edward, and laughed out loud with her.

“We’d better just find the gallery with M. Bouguereau’s paintings,” said Jeanette, stumbling backward between gasps. “He’s my teacher, and I do want to see them.”

They had to search through several galleries, stopping occasionally along the way. With a dozen canvases hanging, Bouguereau turned out to be one of the better-represented artists. Full-length portraits. A Virgin with the Infant Jesus and Saint John. A Pietà. A very pretty, very naked maiden who faced the viewer with a naked cherub on her shoulder. “Fondant,” Jeanette overheard someone say. She bridled and then looked again at the nude;
fondant
was apt, not that she would admit it out loud.

Ahead lay many more French paintings, and then the Italians and the Russians. As they came into the next-to-the-last section, British art, even Jeanette was past caring. Seeing the fatigue in her companions’ faces, she said, “I can’t look at another picture either. We’ll just have to cross the Channel someday, Cousin Effie. Oh, no, wait—I take it back. Please, I must look at this one. Have you ever seen anything like it, Dr. Murer? Is it wonderful or ghastly?”

What had snapped her back to attention was a six-foot-high painting of two life-sized figures: An elongated, barefoot woman in clinging draperies stood with an open book in her hand; her lips parted slightly as she stared fixedly over her shoulder. Behind her a man half reclined on a bench under a bower—no, in the low, twisted branches of what? a vine?—a split hawthorn tree in profuse bloom.
Edward Burne-Jones, The Enchantment of Merlin
, read the label. Around the woman’s head coiled snakes or a strange cap. The more Jeanette looked, the weirder the picture became. It was flattened and decorative like a tapestry design. Jeanette was deeply attracted and repelled at the same time.

“I don’t know the story,” said Edward.

“It’s from King Arthur,” said Effie. “Viviane was an evil young sorceress who apprenticed herself to Merlin and cast a spell on him to make him fall in love with her. Then she trapped him inside a tree and kept his book of magic all to herself.”

No fool like an old fool, thought Edward, studying the wizard’s regretful, stupefied face. It was the face of an ascetic sensualist who, once having broken his own discipline, would yield again despite knowing the costs.

“Funny,” said Effie, with a frown. “He doesn’t look like Merlin. He isn’t old enough—just middle-aged.”

Frizzy wisps of unkempt gray hair escaped from under the figure’s turban. “To her, he must seem very old,” said Edward.

“But Merlin should have a beard.”

Jeanette squirmed at Cousin Effie’s obtuseness. “Notice how the white hawthorn flowers clustering around his head are open,” she pointed out as civilly as she could. “They surround his face with a kind of hoariness, like the traditional hair and beard of an old man, but the buds and blossoms around hers are only half opened. That’s a good symbolic touch.”

“She hasn’t triumphed over him yet,” said Effie. “She’s still half afraid.”

“Angry, too,” mused Jeanette. “It makes you wonder whether she loved him at least a little.”

*   *   *

“Cornelia,” said Edward, a week later when he called on Mrs. Renick once more before leaving Paris, “I want you to look after Miss Palmer and Miss Pendergrast.”

“Have you seen them again, my dear? It was so sweet of you to take them home.”

Edward told her about the visit to the World’s Fair. The three of them had enjoyed it so much that he had taken them and Eddie to the Cirque Fernando on Montmartre.

“A very different wooden O from Shakespeare’s Globe, I hear!” laughed Cornelia. “Is it really built in the shape of a circus tent?”

“It is, and painted gaudy colors. The French should be told about boiled peanuts.”

“And did Mlle. La La hang by her teeth from the trapeze?”

“She did.”

“Oh, Edward!” exclaimed Cornelia, clapping her hands together, “why didn’t you take
me
?”

“It never occurred to me that you hadn’t gone. An equestrienne like you should see the riding. Why hasn’t Marius taken you and the children?”

“Oh, Marius is the dearest man in the world, but he has no taste for anything vulgar. And, of course, it would be impossible for me right now—but I’m going to ride again, Edward, I am, and walk all over the place. It’s too tiresome being hobbled. What I need is an extra pair of hands and feet—what do you think of Effie Pendergrast, besides as an object of your most darling charity?”

“I think she’s very sensible, Cornelia,” said Edward, although it was clear from the way he said it that other people might disagree.

“Just what I thought, too! I can see her becoming indispensable. But what about her charge, Sarah Palmer’s Jeanette?”

A gleam came into Edward’s eye. “At the Palais du Trocadéro, when we came to the statue of the elephant—”

“Our little artistic know-it-all told you it was no good.”

“No! It isn’t any good, by the way, not compared to my rhinoceros. No, what she told me was about the time a circus came to Circleville. She and her sisters climbed out onto the roof of their house so they could watch with field glasses while the elephant was being given a bath at the racetrack.”

“And you remembered the time we went down to the wharves and sneaked onto the showboat to watch the horse act rehearse,” cried Cornelia, clapping her hand and whooping.

“You’d like her, Cornelia, she’s a girl after your own heart.”

“Well then, my dear, maybe we should let her into the club.” Maybe, she thought, you already have.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Paris in Summer

T
en days after the party, Mrs. Renick invited Effie for morning coffee. “Oh, my,” said Effie. Jeanette was relieved; at least she had not spoiled everything.

When Effie arrived at the Rue de Varenne, Hastings showed her up immediately to where Cornelia was positioned on a chaise longue in an informal sitting room, if any room hung with an eighteenth-century pastoral tapestry and carpeted with a twelve-foot Savonnerie carpet could be called informal.

“Oh, how kind of you to come, Miss Pendergrast. A quiet little tête-à-tête is just what I need this morning to rescue me from fretting over this silly piece of needlepoint. Either I’m cross-eyed or it’s askew.” She set the embroidery aside. “Do sit down. I call this room my Poutery. Did you know that
boudoir
comes from the French word for pouting? Well, it does—so like the French, so wise, to have a room where a woman may withdraw to sulk in peace. But I’d much rather talk than pout.”

“May I see your work?” asked Effie, who was itching to get her hands on it.

Cornelia had guessed she would be and handed it over (in her experience, there was nothing like an opportunity to give advice to break down social inhibitions). “It’s the rabbit’s head. Doesn’t it look wrong?”

Effie’s fingers moved rapidly and her tongue clicked. “It’s an extra stitch on this row that’s throwing off the developing pattern,” she said. “Would you like me to rip out for you? My cousin Maude Hendrick always has me do it; she finds ripping tiresome.”

“It is, so I wouldn’t dream of asking a guest to do it.” Cornelia took the work back and hid it. “Instead you must tell me how you are occupying yourself in Paris.”

Effie described spending mornings at Galignani’s reading room and investigating shops and department stores. What gave most shape to her days, she said, was the McAll Mission, where she had agreed to teach English in a class for little girls to make them more employable. She also helped set up halls for prayer meetings and expected soon to receive an assignment in a neighborhood health clinic. To Cornelia, the mission work sounded dismal, but it confirmed her hunch about Effie’s abilities. The next week, she invited her again for morning coffee and did not deceive herself that she was being charitable.

*   *   *

For a while, Effie continued to accompany Jeanette to and from Julian’s; but the streets were well policed, and after Jeanette discovered that another American in her class lived nearby, Effie left them to themselves. They were sometimes joined on the walk by a Polish woman named Sonja Borealska, who lived farther south on the edges of Montparnasse and painted in the class for the full nude.

Sonja was in her midtwenties, tall, big-boned, and forceful. Her clothes were the most disgraceful of anyone’s in the school, and many students tiptoed around her on account of her temper; but she and Amy Richardson were friends. Miss Richardson had introduced Jeanette to her one day when they all happened to run into each other in the
passage
. “Sonja Borealska has a real future,” she said, afterward. “Quite worth getting to know.” And Effie unexpectedly liked her—probably, thought Jeanette, because in addition to her native Polish, Sonja spoke English (as well as French, German, Italian, and, so everyone said, Russian, though she would not admit to it).

Walking with other students pulled Jeanette deeper into school gossip and caused the world outside Julian’s to dwindle in importance to her. Although she still checked the mail every day hoping for letters, news from Circleville and Vassar came to seem very far away. Her own weekly letters home were filled with school anecdotes and marginal drawings of what she saw around her. The need early on to admit that she had been assigned to draw instead of paint had been embarrassing, but she quoted Miss Richardson on how everyone else at Julian’s expected to spend at least two years drawing.
Some professional painters even come back for a month of practice from time to time
, she wrote.
I guess I’m a very small frog in a very large pond.
After that, she strove always to write in a happy, confident tone and impress the folks back home with her sophistication (her account of the dinner party was a masterpiece of judicious selection).

It genuinely helped her morale that Emily Dolson also worked with pencil, not brush. As so often happens after a first accidental placement, they continued to set up next to each other at the beginning of each week. Emily had little standing among the other students; her circumscribed work inspired no emulation, and she was not gregarious. Nevertheless, Miss Richardson occasionally set up on Emily’s other side with the familiarity of a friend. When Jeanette asked how long they had known each other, Emily said, vaguely, “My brother and I met her when we came to Paris a couple of years ago.”

As a spell of hot, dry weather set in late in June, the fourth-floor studio grew stifling. By noon, the streets below felt blessedly cool in comparison. Jeanette and Emily took to walking a few blocks south at midday to a public garden at the Place Louvois, where water cascaded in a fountain.
It’s one of the civilized features of French life
, Jeanette wrote home,
that you can eat your bread and cheese on a park bench and nobody thinks the worse of you
.

One day, when Miss Richardson was along, Jeanette spotted strawberries at a fruitier’s stand.

“We grow those at home, and I haven’t seen any since I left Ohio! My treat.”

“They cost a fortune.”

“Just this once, Miss Richardson. They won’t get any cheaper.”

“Then I’ll buy a pot of crème fraîche, and do call me Amy outside class. If we’re going to dip into the same jar, we’d better be on first-name terms.”

Later, when they had eaten, she said to Emily, “You’re still as flushed as the berries, my girl. It’s too hot. Why don’t you take the afternoon off? You can work this evening when it’s cooler.”

Emily sat wilted against the back of the bench. “Evenings,” she murmured, keeping her eyes on the fountain, “that reminds me—would either of you be interested in getting up an informal anatomy class?”

“Sorry, not I,” said Amy. “I’m working with Sonja Borealska on sculpture.”

“Well, I would,” said Jeanette. “Does this mean your brother’s medical-student friend, the one with the skeleton, is willing to take us on?”

Emily nodded. “His name is William Winkham, and he has a problem about housing just now—only temporary, but he needs a place to store the skeleton. He offered to give us lessons in exchange for a place to put it. Robbie is willing, but only if there is at least one other girl to make it proper.”

“Robbie?” said Amy. “Offering to house a skeleton and turn home sweet home into a teaching studio?”

“No-o-o,” said Emily, “not exactly. He isn’t keen on cluttering up the sitting room with a skeleton or having girls underfoot. Not that he’s ever really home in the evening.”

“Just as I thought. Colossally selfish, that brother of yours, like all good-looking men.”

It was a line that Jeanette thought her cousin Adeline would appreciate, but it was all too clear that Emily did not. “What about our room?” she proposed. “We’ve got a worktable and an alcove where the skeleton could stand, and we face south, so it’s light well into the evening. Of course, it’s hot.”

“Everywhere is,” said Emily, her face beaming with gratitude. “It could be ideal.”

*   *   *

Ideal, it was not. With better ventilation than the studio, the room on the Rue Jacob cooled off overnight and was generally pleasant by morning; but that evening when Jeanette got home, it was airless. Effie’s black dress clung to her back.

“A skeleton? Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “What will Bootsie?—well, more important what will Mme. LeConte—? We must ask her first.”

“Can’t. I’ve already made the arrangements. They’re coming tonight.”

At eight, prickly with the heat and on the defensive, Jeanette went down to the courtyard to greet her guests. A short, intense man in a flat cloth cap carried something like a hat rack trussed under canvas. With him were Emily and another man, tall and languid, who must be Robert Dolson. The resemblance between brother and sister was unmistakable—though how cruel of Nature to make him so handsome and her so shy! In an evening coat from a previous generation and a much-brushed beige top hat worn at a tilt, Robbie Dolson strolled as if he owned the world. Emily must have accepted his opinion, for Jeanette had never seen her happier.

“For one of my stripe to be servant to a ministering angel sits strangely, Miss Palmer,” said Mr. Dolson, with a bow and a flourish of the topper, “but so you find my unworthy self—at your service.”

“I’m being selfish,” laughed Jeanette. “It’s very good of Mr. Winkham to give us lessons.”

Before they could enter the house, however, Mme. LeConte appeared in the door of the
portière
’s office to demand what was going on. Jeanette tried to explain. Mme. LeConte frowned skeptically: The premises had no license as a teaching establishment; the other tenants must not be incommoded. She pulled aside an overlap in the canvas.
Non, absolument pas!
she shrieked. What could
mademoiselle
be thinking? This was a decent house. M. Mort must be removed immediately.

“You don’t mean to say you never tipped Cerberus first? No wine-soaked sops, no coin?” muttered Mr. Dolson in Jeanette’s ear. “Well, you are the tyro, aren’t you?”

Jeanette burned at the sarcasm.

“What am I to do now?” fretted Mr. Winkham. “Look, Dolson, if only for tonight, couldn’t you—?”

“No, Winkie lad, sorry; I’ve told you. Oh, but see here, there must be a way. Come along, Miss Palmer, introduce me to your three-headed dog. Bound to be a closet or cupboard we can commandeer. M. Mort, she called him? Very well, Mortimer shall be housed.”

With all the ease and arrogance of a young milord, but in fluent French, he apologized for the inconvenience, complimented Mme. LeConte on her house, and worked his way around to the subject of broom closets. Mentioning a consideration, he held a hand open behind his back. Mr. Winkham sighed and slipped him a franc. With little more wheedling, Mme. LeConte agreed to hold the abomination overnight.

Anatomy lessons might have ended right there had it not been for Sonja. The next day, after Jeanette had recounted the previous night’s debacle during the walk to Julian’s, Sonja followed her up the stairs on the Rue Vivienne.

“Amy,
ma chérie
, we change courses,” she announced. “A skeleton in my own studio? It is too good to refuse. We shall show the Countess that she is not alone in obtaining such a treasure. You and I, we model in clay from bones—from bones! Emily and Jeanette draw. Maybe, this Mr. Winkham, he will allow me to cast the skull.” She fingered the air. “Oh, I cannot wait to touch over its contours.”

*   *   *

Sonja’s studio was an ancient shed in a squalid yard reached through a series of connecting yards off the Boulevard du Montparnasse. Its original purpose was forgotten. Some years back, the current owner had salvaged glass from an industrial exhibition, knocked holes in the walls of a warren of workshops and two-story warehouses, and, after installing windows along with a few furnishings, rented out spaces to artists as studios. Sonja’s was the most dilapidated: The stucco had broken off most of its soft, old bricks; the roof leaked at one end; the wind, whistling through cracks at the windows and doors, was a trial in winter. But it was her own; it was cheap; and she cherished a disheveled, squat willow beside it that a basket weaver had once kept pollarded.

“If there is a willow, there must be a hidden spring,” observed Robbie Dolson, the next evening. He and Mr. Winkham had retrieved the skeleton from Mme. LeConte and brought it around with Jeanette, Emily, and Effie.

“True,” said Sonja, from her doorway. Her honey-blond hair was swept up carelessly. Her sculptor’s smock, stained red with clay, did not hide that she wore loose trousers. Her feet were in clogs. “It is why the floor stays damp.”

“And why,” said Mr. Dolson, “a trickle perpetually oozes down that noisome gutter, I suppose. Good lord, have Haussmann’s sewers not reached this far?” A shallow depression, unevenly bricked, carried runoff from one yard to the next; it did not bear close investigation. “Really, Emily, I don’t think you should—”

“Please, Robbie, it’s just for a few weeks.”

Emily so seldom contradicted him that Robbie Dolson lifted his eyebrows questioningly. Her look was beseeching. He patted her arm. “Well, Wee Willie, what do you say? Are the girls safe?”

“Barring an outbreak of cholera.”

Dolson stared at Mr. Winkham for a moment, then burst out laughing. He saw that the joke was on him, and it transformed his face. There were amber lights in his gray-green eyes. Sonja, however, glared belligerently, as though she, too, were having second thoughts—in her case about admitting them into her domain.

“I say. That starry-crowned Minerva above you,” said Robbie, at sight of a fragment of glazed ceramic bas-relief, perched at a slant on a ledge over the door. “Where on earth did you find it?”