Savage Girl (24 page)

“Now, mesdemoiselles, messieurs,” said Monsieur Henri. The piano struck up softly behind him, and he held one finger aloft, as though testing the air. “The origin of the accomplishment of dancing has never been traced. Probably it is coeval with legs and feet—”

Cousin Sébastien interrupted him. “We don’t need all that!” he cried. “Anyone can manage to knock up a hop of some kind or other. We will begin.”

He leaped to the piano, shoved the recitalist aside and launched into a sevillana.

Monsieur Henri went from couple to couple, ostentatiously adjusting their positions, placing a hand on a shoulder here or turning a face there.

“Lancers Quadrille!” shouted Sébastien.

“Oh!” gasped Edna, looking at Bronwyn.

“In the first figure, the Rose, the ladies and gentlemen advance four steps to the right. . . .”

“Dance is the poetry of motion!” called out Monsieur Henri.

Watching the action, I sensed not poetry but latent cruelty, the flavor of Darwin present in the incessant, insistent pairing-off. Thus do fledgling humans make their first tentative claims to positions in the social hierarchy. Or, perhaps a better metaphor, they string the needle with a particular thread, and ever afterward their lives will be stitched with the color they choose. Destiny awaited. At a dance academy!

Later, as the flush-cheeked dancers came off the floor, I reacted with something akin to panic when I saw that Bev Willets had cornered Bronwyn. I registered a slow-moving disaster as my malevolent friend was able to have a good few minutes conversing with my sister before Anna Maria came and fetched her.

Miserable, I let my mother and Bronwyn leave without wishing them good-bye.

At least I got to Bev before he could reach Delia and pass on his newfound gossip. “Where are you going after this?” I asked him.

“She has never in her life been to San Francisco,” Bev said, a congenital mean streak showing in his tone. “From what I gathered, she is no blood cousin to you and is definitely not related to your mother’s side of the family. So the question naturally arises—what or who is she?”

“I have my carriage,” I said. “Why don’t you take a brandy at the Lotos with me?”

He cast a glance at Delia, still waiting in the balcony, a golden opportunity for him to pour poison. Wouldn’t Delia love to hear that the Delegate family ward was a sham! In the wake of our breakup, Delia Showalter furiously scented out rivals to blame and, ridiculous as it was, had formed a clear antipathy toward the girl. Equally clear was Bev’s ardent interest in Delia since the canceled engagement.

“Let’s go,” I said. “My sister’s real story is rather more interesting than the one that has been put about.”

Between present evil and future mischief, Bev chose the latter, and we were off, both of us giving a wave to Delia as we went.

19

In mid-January, two weeks after that first dancing class, Bev and I proceeded down Fifth in the Thirties, heading for the atelier of a London-based couturier, the House of Richardson. We were to meet Bronwyn and Anna Maria there. An essential step of the debut season required that the prospective debutante be provided with the full wardrobe of a lady.

Bev manfully volunteered to advise in the process. He and Cousin Willie and I and others among our male friends had dressed many women, many times—light women, kept women, mistresses, whatever you’d prefer to call them. We usually steered clear of the House of Richardson as too public for these purposes, but we all had open accounts at Kate Reilly’s, just down the avenue, and a licensed importer from Worth in Paris named Victor Goldthorpe.

It was one of Bev’s many pretensions to know more about couture than any dressmaker, to be abreast of fashion in such a way as to be able to anticipate it, play at it, make others stand in admiration of his taste and discernment. He pored over
Godey’s Lady’s Book
with the passion of a schoolgirl and took notes when he visited Paris on whatever look was then dominating the scene.

He fussed over his own wardrobe, of course, but was known as a lethal judge of female style. In any other man, this facility might have been revolting, but with Bev Willets it was merely another aspect of his fixation on power and thus recognized and accepted by the paragons of society.

Our conversation at the Lotos Club after dance class that first day began with him hurling scorn at my choice of venue. The Lotos was one of my affectations, a mutt of a club, near the Union, the Knick and
the Academy of Music at Irving and Fourteenth, but miles away from the other venues in terms of prestige.

“I’m ashamed even to walk by here,” Bev muttered. The place had been founded by literati, a class of people made for the sneers of cynics such as Bev Willets.

Ignoring the sally, I proceeded to lay out the truth of Bronwyn Delegate’s life. Not the whole truth. I cut and tailored the fabric to suit my needs. Nothing about jaguars, for pity’s sake, and certainly nothing about the Comanche. That she was a waif, a foundling, an orphan plucked from the wilds of Virginia City. Brought here and shaped up by Friedrich Delegate in order to advance into society.

“Something in the nature of a challenge,” I said. “See if we can sneak her past the old goats who guard the ramparts.”

“You won’t be able to do it, my man,” Bev said. “Never.” Then he added, as I’d bet everything that he would, “Not without my help.”

Foreseeing certain disaster in having Bev as a spoiler in Bronwyn’s transformation, I was forced to take him on as an ally.

With enough champagne, Bev turned enthusiastic about the project, gloating at the idea of “putting one over” on society, then becoming ruminative.

“You know, there’s a quality about your girl,” he said. “She’s different. Do you know ‘duende’? A Spanish term, they use it about music. Something like authenticity. When I stood talking to her at Miss Eugénie’s, I felt it.”

He shook his head, as if to clear from it a memory. “I had an uncanny feeling that she wasn’t taking me quite seriously,” he said. “At any rate, she’s not one of our fading violets, is she?”

With that he promised to help, “throw my whole being into it,” as he said, vowing that in his “role as
arbiter elegantiarum,
” he would make Miss Bronwyn Delegate the success of the season. He had even agreed to meet with my mother, at The Citadel, to look at fabric swatches and advise her on what might be à la mode.

We arrived at Richardson’s, a street-level emporium with a bow window that held a display of samples. The bell at the door tinkled as we entered to see my mother and sister, already arrived.

“Here you are, here you are,” called Anna Maria. “Mr. Richardson, this is my son Hugo, and here is his partner in crime, Beverly Willets.”

“I know Mr. Beverly well,” said Richardson, a gentleman who displayed every bit of the primness required of his trade. That and a trim Vandyke beard, which left him with more hair on his face than on his pate.

“Mr. Hugo,” he said, bowing. “Your sister, the lovely young Miss Delegate, she is the prize.” He made a display of seizing Bronwyn’s kid-gloved hand to kiss the air above it.

Bronwyn blushed prettily and yet managed to look calmly down at the top of Richardson’s egg-bald head, as though such men kissed her hand every day.

Three bowlegged chairs had been arranged around a small table, which supported a pitcher of ice water and a plate of untouched butter cookies. In the center of the room lay a circular mauve carpet with a triptych of mirrors beside it.

“This is how we will proceed, my ladies and my gentlemen,” Richardson said. “With masterly strokes of genius, laboring night and day, I have created couture based on the materials Mr. Bev and Mrs. Delegate chose earlier in your gorgeous palace so far uptown on the Central Park. The mademoiselle will try them in sequence.”

A woman in a narrow black dress stepped forward to lead Bronwyn to the back dressing rooms of the shop.

“Very nice, very courteous,” said Anna Maria. She took some ice water. My mother always appeared a little subdued around Bev. He had dressed for the day as a man-about-town, in a pearlescent morning coat, checked trousers and a bowler not of black, as everyone in the world wore, but in the most delicate dove gray.

I had been only tangentially involved in the arrangements. I wanted to allow Bev a free hand, knowing that the more time he spent at it, the less likely he would be to spoil the whole project. I had never seen my sister in anything fancy or womanly, at best a plain day dress with simple lines and a high-rising neck, topped with a modest little bow-tied bonnet.

So I was thunderstruck when I saw Bronwyn emerge from the
recesses of the store and glide toward the mauve carpet, a long train trailing behind her. Bev had demanded, Anna Maria had accepted and Morgan Richardson had executed a cerise walking dress with tiers of ruffles. The elaborately draped overskirt produced a swag at the front, and the form-fitting sleeves flared fashionably at the wrist.

I had never seen anything like it. The gown’s squared-off neckline showed a few more inches of Bronwyn’s skin than the New York world had ever seen. A magenta ribbon encircled her neck and drifted down her back almost to the bustle, which consisted of a hump that I doubted would allow the girl to sit down.

The woman in black knelt beside Bronwyn with a mouthful of pins, fluffing out the skirt’s flounces with the utmost concentration.

Anna Maria clapped her hands in delight.

“Well, I wondered,” Bev said. “But the girl can carry off cerise.”

“This, this,” said Richardson, hurrying to Bronwyn’s side. “It is perfect.” He proffered a chapeau of dark straw that tilted from the crown of her head down her forehead, to be fastened, before it slid away, by a length of wide magenta silk.

Bronwyn looked at me, puffing out her cheeks and raising her eyebrows.

“Sister,” I said, “you are a vision.”

She examined herself in the mirror, turning slowly around.

“This will do,” Bronwyn said, and we all broke out laughing at how regal she sounded.

“But there are so many more!” Richardson said. “Go! Reveal yourself to us.”

“She’ll be dressing for a good half hour,” said Bev to me, retrieving a silver brandy flask from his morning coat as Anna Maria went off with Richardson to investigate accessorizing the gowns.

“I well know the mysteries of the corset, if that’s what you mean,” I said. I’d had plenty of fumblings with it at Miss Cora’s sporting house down on Twenty-seventh Street. Among other places.

“It’s more than that, much more,” Bev said. “A chemise first, then drawers. Without . . . um . . . ahem, with no center to them. The corset and the busk that opens it. A corset cover. A decency skirt. Then
the petticoats. Crinolines. Then the gown and its garniture. Finally hat, gloves, parasol.”

“Don’t tell me any more,” I said. Every insane person I ever met always talked too much.

“And don’t forget the bustle,” he said. “Metal and canvas stuffed with horsehair.”

“A necessity,” I said.

Bronwyn arrived from the back of the store and stood in front of us. She had taken much less time than we imagined, prompting the thought that perhaps she had skipped a few of the underlayers.

“What’s a necessity?” she asked.

“Your adorableness,” said Bev.

She walked to the mauve carpet, faced us and glanced over her shoulder into the mirror.

She wore what would become among the most celebrated garments of the age.

“Magic,” said Bev.

“Bravo,” said my mother, returning with Richardson.

A long, floor-sweeping gown of creamy silk, off the shoulder, with short puffed sleeves that exposed her whole ivory-pale arm, and a décolleté that plunged, so that her breast was disguised only by a scrap of lace. Suddenly Bronwyn had a voluptuous figure, thanks to a steam-formed corset.

A tight cuirass formed the upper part of the outfit, which snugly circled the hips and trailed off to a riot of satin ribbon and fabric frills. But the masterpiece was the jeweled embroidery of the bodice, encrusted with a shimmering panoply of diamonds and pearls.

Bronwyn had been made into a priceless bauble. It would be a wonder if a thief did not steal her.

“For the debut,” said Richardson, watching our reaction. “Yes?”

“Oh, yes,” Anna Maria said.

“They only do this kind of work in Germantown,” Bev told me.

Bronwyn turned to the mirror then, and we saw the back of the gown. Bev and I exchanged looks. The posterior displayed an enormous bustle—gigantic, really—a cream-colored, audacious powder
puff, all the more exaggerated because it emerged from a back that was so slender.

“Allow me,” said Bev, jumping over to the mauve carpet.

“Now, now, Mr. Bev, please wait,” said Richardson.

“No, really,” Bev said. “See and learn.” He put his hand on Bronwyn’s bustle and, in a slightly obscene gesture, massaged it flat, collapsing it to a more natural appearance. “And so. Much more modern.”

The woman in black looked stricken. Anna Maria appeared appalled. Richardson considered. “Perhaps.”

“No ‘perhaps,’” Bev said. “This is in Paris today, and tomorrow it will be on the Ladies’ Mile. After all, Miss Bronwyn is not an animal, is she? She doesn’t need to accentuate her hindquarters to attract a mate.”

Bronwyn looked over at me. “Tahktoo would love this shop,” she said. “I want to bring her here.”

She tried on half a dozen more outfits that morning. A princess sheath dress, a purple-striped day gown with a lilac polonaise, a tea gown in the artistic style, with uncorseted lines and appliquéd daisies. She took some of them with her in the carriage, wrapped in white tissue paper, to await her coming-out.

The pearl-and-diamond-festooned debut gown remained at the shop to have its bustle trimmed.

•   •   •

I returned home to find Freddy and Colm assembled in the library with a visitor.

“You remember Sheriff Dick Tolle, Hugo, don’t you?” Freddy said, throwing me a frown and gesturing to the fellow. Large drooping nose, larger drooping mustache, painfully erect posture.

“I ain’t a sheriff no more,” Tolle said, crossing to shake my hand. “Turned out of office by a thieving Democrat.”

“You repeat yourself there, ‘thieving Democrat,’” I said. Colm, at least, laughed.

“I believe you’ve made Tolle your correspondent,” Freddy said. I felt instantly on guard, more so than when I first walked in and
discovered that the Virginia City lawman had journeyed across the country to show up at our door.

“Alerted by your telegram, which you saw fit not to share with me,” Freddy said in a thin, forced voice that I recognized from childhood. When I had done something wrong.

“Oh, I didn’t want to bother you,” I said. “A minor matter, a query about a memorable incident of our western sojourn last summer.”

“Yes,” Freddy said, drawing out the word to indicate he remained unconvinced by my blithe manner. “At any rate, in connection with that ‘memorable incident,’ Tolle has an extraordinary tale to tell. I wonder if you’d mind repeating it, sir, for my son’s sake and for my own, since I could hardly feature it upon first telling.”