She Walks in Beauty (9 page)

After she was done prodding and poking, we walked into the parlor together.

Pillows in profusion dotted the furniture. Lamps, not content with their own lampshades, had been draped with lace and trailing fringe. A collection of family miniatures and fans decorated the shelves. Rugs upon rugs covered the floor. Mirrors reflected back myriad statues and figurines. And bows adorned the chairs. All but one.

All but our revolutionary relic.

That chair sat amongst the others, devoid of any ornamentation. Proud in its rude form, it proclaimed to any who saw it that the Carter family had some connection to our nation’s valiant past.

Elsewhere, vases frothed feathers. The desk was embellished with a scarf, as were the piano and the curio cabinet. Mama’s collection of bells had been polished and now gleamed bright as stars. The brocade curtains had been drawn back to expose the sheer lace curtains behind them. As light filtered through their web, it translated the pattern into a series of bars upon the floor.

In the dining room, the table had been laid in lace and the tea set placed in the middle. In addition to a cup for cream and a bowl for sugar, there were all kinds of cold meats, a tiered silver server filled with tea cakes and another filled with muffins. A pyramid of hothouse strawberries. Sparkling crystal pots filled with jellies and tiny china cups of custards. And among all the implements and dishes had been placed nosegays of cut flowers of the most spectacular varieties.

At four o’clock, the first guest arrived. And after that first one, they came in droves. Lizzie and her mother among them. Aunt sneered when she saw Lizzie and her mother. “No doubt trolling for information for Lizzie’s tea.”

“Lizzie’s having a tea?”

“Of course she’s having a tea. Next Monday. At Sherry’s
restaurant
.”

A restaurant! Lizzie must be wild with excitement. There was nothing grander than a restaurant. And to hold a tea at one!

Aunt sniffed. “Sherry’s. If it must be done at a restaurant, Delmonico’s is the only place to do it; he knows the worth of old money. Besides, there was a time when every decent sort of person received guests into his own house, not at a restaurant like some itinerant vagabond. What is it, I wonder, that they’re trying to hide?”

I fluttered my fan surreptitiously at Lizzie.

She returned the greeting.

“Stop that! You’ve guests to attend to. Prospective suitors. Leave Lizzie and her mother to their own devices. They’ve only come to see what it is that we have. At least they’ll see a tea given in a proper manner. And I’ve no doubt they’ll leave before it’s over.”

Aunt was right. For before I could free myself from the reception line and look to Lizzie for amusement, they had gone.

The receiving line seemed infinite. Filled with people, each one of them waiting to be received by me. There were young men of all shapes and sizes. From the one who immediately slunk into the corner and cast malevolent looks at me to the one who treated my greeting as a perfunctory obligation, to be endured only for the sake of access to the bountiful tea table. But there was no particularly dashing young man among them. Not even a rather disheveled darkhaired one. Among all those many guests, I never saw the man for whom I had been prepared. For whom I searched.

I greeted both mothers and their sons. Indeed, half my time was spent in greeting visitors. The other half seemed to have been spent in bidding them good-bye. To each of them I said the same.
Thank you ever so much for coming
and, when they were readying to leave,
Good day
. It was only after the last guest had exited the front door that I thought to ask about the De Vries heir.

“Did he come?” Had I missed him? I don’t know how I could have. In spite of my responsibilities and the crowds of people, I had been able to visit both the parlor and the dining room. Twice.

Aunt turned from a lampshade she was adjusting. “Who?”

“Mr. De Vries.”

“No.”

No? But … what little pleasure I had taken in my tea evaporated. He hadn’t been here? He hadn’t seen me? What had all of this been for if not for him? All of my work, all of my social etiquette had been put on display for nothing.

8

THE NEXT WEK I’m afraid my spirits were still rather low. If Mr. De Vries would not present himself for an introduction, I did not know how I should have the opportunity to win him. As had become my habit, I turned aside the cheeses and sausages. Took up a piece of dry toast instead. It was one of only very few foods that did not linger overlong in my stomach. I always took a taste of the cook’s coddle, of course. Aunt made me. But I always hid the remainder beneath my napkin as I left the table.

Aunt surprised me by speaking to me through the pages of her newspaper. “I have changed my mind. We will be attending Lizzie’s tea.” Aunt said it as if changing her mind were a daily occurrence.

“We … we will? Today?”

She glanced at me over the top of the paper. “We would not want to go tomorrow.”

Later, after lunch, the maid met me in my room. She pulled a visiting gown of pale green from my wardrobe. Laid it across the bed. Then she found my gloves and a pair of bracelets and placed them all beside it. As she was giving a quick tug to my corset laces, Aunt came in.

She fingered the gown on the bed, then glanced back, over her shoulder, toward the wardrobe. “Perhaps … perhaps your lavender silk would do better.”

“The lavendar silk? But isn’t it meant for receiving guests? At home?” And because it was meant for receiving rather than visiting, it was more subdued in design. More sober. And less … pretty.

“Yes, yes. Leave me think for a moment.” Lifting her head, she closed her eyes. I could see them at work beneath her eyelids, rolling back and forth. Up and down. Finally, she leveled her chin and opened them. “You must not seem too old; neither must you seem too young. Lizzie is altogether adorable. If you try to compete on the basis of plump cheeks and golden curls, you will surely lose ground to her. Your skin is rather too consumptive to compare favorably with her ruddiness. The best policy will be to keep you present at the tea but apart from her. And what is wanted in a dress is something with vivid color. We must attract attention away from Lizzie. Yes, the green gown will do.”

She sat down in one of my pansy-embroidered chairs, her dogs filling the space around her feet.

After being dressed in a corset cover and combing mantle, I sat in front of a mirror while the maid pulled back my hair and began braiding it into a plait that would be looped at the back of my head.

Aunt stopped her. “A coiffure that is rather more refined is what’s needed here. We have already announced your entry into society, Clara. You may wear your hair in a more sophisticated design. Lizzie may not. At least not today. And that is an important distinction to make.”

She and the maid discussed different options, finally settling on an up-twisted coiffure.

Once I had been dressed and coiffed, my gown and shoes brushed, I swept down the stairs behind Aunt.

Father caught us as we were leaving. “You’re not taking the Victoria.”

“We are.”

“But I might have need of it this afternoon!”

Aunt hardly paused in her step. “You will just have to tell your patients to … be patient.”

“There are such things as emergencies.”

“And anyone who expects you to attend them under such circumstances between the hours of four and six o’clock must be told to die some other day.”

Aunt walked out the door.

At Sherry’s, our cloaks were taken from us and we were ushered into a fantasy world of extravagance. Multiple tables had been laid out at the head of the room. One for tea, one for meats and savories, and one for ornate desserts.

My tea table at home had been interspersed with flowers. Lizzie’s tables had columns of fruit extending near to the ceiling, dripping with cherries and gooseberries, fanning out at the top with frondy pineapples. And beside them were stationed pillars of flowers that could only have come from exotic countries. Candles were reflected in mirrors and from the hollows of countless cut crystal decanters and vases and pots.

It was a glimmering, shimmering show of elegance and refinement.

“Well.” For once, Aunt’s observation was followed by … nothing at all. In truth, I did not think there was anything for her to criticize. But she only needed a moment to gather her thoughts. “If they meant to serve dinner, then why did they specify tea? Only common people serve up supper at this hour.”

T
HE
N
EW
Y
ORK
J
OURNAL
—S
OCIETY
N
OVEMBER 17, 1891

Everybody, and that’s everybody, congregated at Sherry’s on Monday afternoon to honor Miss Elizabeth Barnes’s debut. If the crowds are not mistaken, Miss Barnes is clearly the debutante of the hour … if not the year.

Lizzie’s debut had been a social triumph. But that was not what she wanted to talk about on Thursday when we met behind the hedge.

“Did you see what Emma Vandermere was wearing? To church?”

Emma Vandermere? Had she been there at all? “Should I have noticed?”

“No. Not at all. Because she was wearing
last season’s blue
!” Lizzie’s eyes had grown wide at the pronouncement. “Can you imagine? To church! Where everyone would see.”