The Passions of Emma (18 page)
But for the rest of that day her throat felt tight and her chest was weighted with a strange sadness, as if she were grieving for something she had never seen. A thing that never even was, never imagined.
E
mma forgot that she was never going to sculpt again.
mma forgot that she was never going to sculpt again.
After that day in the woods, she spent hours in the old orangery. She would shape the clay, smash it, then shape it again.
It was deep into the night, in the glow of a kerosene lantern, when she finally stopped and stared at what she had done, and her hands began to tremble. Because for the first time she understood that there was an artery leading from her heart to her hands and those things that she would create with them. She knew that someday she would find that artery, and when she did she would open it and bleed, and perhaps she would die. But she would have made a thing that was real.
She stared at it, this thing that had come from her own hands, and saw not a clay model but living bone and skin and sinew. A man’s hands reaching for the sky.
His hands.
She had chosen to end the sculpture at the wrists. She wanted nothing more of him than that—only his hands.
The rest of Emma’s life dissolved into a merry-go-round of teas and soirees, charity functions and whist parties. Except for one
memorable morning, when the ball gowns that they had ordered last winter from Maison Worth arrived from Paris.
memorable morning, when the ball gowns that they had ordered last winter from Maison Worth arrived from Paris.
When the package came, the Tremayne women were all in the morning room, arranging flower bouquets for the children’s ward at the hospital. Emma, in a flurry of excitement, fell upon the distinctive silk-covered box that proclaimed to the world that it was from Worth’s, and thus expensive and exclusive, and beautiful.
“This is like having Christmas in May,” Maddie said, laughing with delight.
“And it’ll be Christmas before we see them, if I can’t get this wretched knot undone. I’m going to need a knife—no, there it is.” Emma sneaked a quick peek under the box’s lid. “I believe yours is the one on top, Maddie. Shut your eyes while I lift it out.”
Emma looked up, smiling, her hands still now, prolonging the moment.
Maddie closed her eyes, smiling herself in sweet anticipation. Even their mother’s face, Emma saw, had taken on a shine of excitement. Mama had been so irritable that morning, finding fault with everything they did. But then lately she had taken to bathing in cold water every day upon rising, to dull her appetite, and she claimed the baths made her bones and joints ache.
Emma looked at her mother now, where she stood before a glass and white wire table, surrounded by lilies and tulips and sheathed in a mauve watered-silk morning dress. The morning room glowed like the heart of a rose with the way the sun shone through the leaded glass windows to caper on the pink silk walls. Bathed in a pink blush of light, Bethel Tremayne looked young and willowy, and beautiful.
“You’re looking especially pretty this morning, Mama,” Emma said.
Bethel’s smooth, pale cheeks flushed with pleasure, although she shook her head. “How kind of you to think so, my dear, but I can hardly believe it, for I feel positively haggard. I declare, the
suffering
I have endured. I only hope your father . . .” Her voice trailed off
as her blush deepened. “Oh, do open the box, for heaven’s sake. Your poor sister is about to expire from excitement.”
suffering
I have endured. I only hope your father . . .” Her voice trailed off
as her blush deepened. “Oh, do open the box, for heaven’s sake. Your poor sister is about to expire from excitement.”
The ball gown rustled like a flock of doves taking wing as Emma lifted it from the box. It was made of yards and yards of magenta lamé silk threaded with silver that flashed and shimmered rainbows in the rosy light.
Maddie, unable to wait any longer, opened her eyes and uttered a soft gasp of joy. “Oh, my . . . !”
Emma held the dress up to her breast with one hand and spread open the skirts with the other. She did a slow dip and turn, humming the lilt of a waltz. She danced once around the room and then stopped to lay the gown gently, reverently, across her sister’s lap, and Maddie sighed with happiness.
“Oh, it’s so beautiful. It is just so beautiful, don’t you think so, Mama?”
“If only you could wear it to my betrothal ball,” Emma said, although she knew it was a vain hope. It was considered extremely unrefined to dress in the latest fashions. The rule was generally to pack away Paris dresses in a trunk to season for two years, New York dresses for one.
“Still, Maddie, it is such a pity we can’t break the rules just this once,” she said aloud. “All Stuart Alcott would need would be one look at you in that dress and he’d be a goner.”
Maddie started to laugh, but their mother’s sharp voice cut her off abruptly.
“Emmaline Tremayne!” Bethel turned on her daughter her deepest blue frown. “I will not allow such . . . such words of
slang
uttered in my house.”
slang
uttered in my house.”
Emma bit her lip, and her gaze fell to the plush, floral carpet. “I’m sorry, Mama,” she said, but a moment later she looked up and met Maddie’s eyes, and they exchanged smiles.
“What is more,” their mama was saying, “and though it pains me to have to do this, still there is nothing for it, it must be done, for it will not do . . .” She fingered the stiff lace at her throat. The
color receded from her face and then flooded back again. “Madeleine will not be attending your betrothal ball.”
color receded from her face and then flooded back again. “Madeleine will not be attending your betrothal ball.”
“Mama . . .” Emma sat slowly down on a blue and green porcelain stool. “You cannot possibly be so mean, so cruel, so heartless . . .”
Bethel waved her hand through the air as if she were flourishing a palmetto fan. “Oh, do cease your melodramatic nonsense, Emma. Why have all my children always persisted in embarrassing me with displays of vulgar feelings? I’m certain the predilection for it must be a Tremayne trait, for it certainly doesn’t come from my family.”
She picked up one of the lilies, then set it back down on the table. “I intend for my decision to be a kindness to Maddie as well as to our guests. What is the point of allowing her to attend such an event when she cannot dance? To see her sitting there like a pitiable wallflower, through set after set, confined to her chair—why, it would put a damper on everyone’s own enjoyment of the evening.” She picked up the lily again and this time thrust it into the middle of a sheaf of ruby red tulips. “And which would show a want of delicacy on our part that I cannot allow.”
Emma dared a look at her sister. Maddie usually shriveled down in her chair when their mama turned mean like that, but now she was sitting tall and stiff, her mouth slanted up in a funny, twisted way. Yet the blood had drained completely from her face, as if her heart had been cut open.
Suddenly she began to rip and pull at the beautiful ball gown she still held in her lap. And she was crying now, choking, heaving sobs. “Why do you buy me these things if I’m never allowed to go anywhere? I can’t walk, I can’t dance, and I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it!”
She clutched the dress in her fists and buried her face in the shimmering, purple-red silk. “I want to die. Oh, God, please just let me die . . .”
Emma rushed to her sister’s side and, kneeling, tried to wrap her arms around her. But Maddie put the butts of her hands on Emma’s shoulders and shoved her away. She pounded her thighs with her fists. “Let me alone. I want to be let alone, alone, alone!”
Bethel went to the bell rope and gave it a sharp pull. Maddie’s sobs ended suddenly, as if someone had choked them off. She rocked back and forth, moaning, the dress gripped tightly in her hands. A few moments later a servant entered and, without being told, wheeled Maddie’s chair from the room.
Emma stayed where she was, kneeling on the floor. There was such a savage shaking going on inside of her she felt as though a wild and angry wind were blowing through her. She wanted to scream, but she was afraid that if she started she might not be able to stop. That she would become like Maddie, ripping into things, trying to destroy their world with her bare hands.
“I declare,” her mother was saying, and she’d gone back to arranging the flowers as if the interruption had been a mere trifle. “Sometimes I fear that the accident damaged our poor Maddie’s mind as well as her legs. I know it’s unsettling to think of, but perhaps I really ought to speak to your uncle Stanton about having her committed for a time to the asylum at Warren. To cure her of this unreasonable hysteria that seems to overtake her when one least expects it.”
Emma bit down on her fist to stifle a cry, and she closed her eyes against a scalding rush of tears. It was a threat their mama had been making for years, ever since she’d seen old Mr. Alcott use the punishment on his son Stu. And she could manage it so easily, too—all she need do was persuade Uncle Stanton, who was a doctor, to declare Maddie to be suffering from a temporary loss of her reason, and then to have their cousin, who was a judge, sign the commitment papers.
A girl, a woman, Emma had learned, could legally be sent against her will to a madhouse at any time by her father or husband or guardian, even her son. All that was needed were the proper documents.
“She’s understandably upset,” Emma said, trying to make her voice sound calm, reasonable. “We’ve all done nothing but talk
about the betrothal ball and now you say she cannot attend, so she is bound to be terribly disappointed.”
about the betrothal ball and now you say she cannot attend, so she is bound to be terribly disappointed.”
She got stiffly to her feet and went to her mother facing her across a table strewn with lilies and tulips and pink ribbon. “Mama, please. Don’t do this to Maddie. I won’t be able to bear it if you do this.”
Bethel didn’t look up from the ribbon she was tying around a milk-glass vase. “You must learn to put aside your own personal feelings on such matters, Emma. Family dignity and good form should always come first.”
“No, not this time,” Emma said, although afterward she would wonder where she’d found the courage. Perhaps there was a certain power, she thought, in being the family’s only hope. “This time Maddie comes first. Otherwise, I’ll . . . I’ll do something outrageous and spoil it all for you, Mama. I swear I will.”
Bethel gave the ribbon ends a sharp tug, ruining the bow. She heaved a deep, long-suffering sigh. “If one didn’t know better, one would think the pair of you had been brought up in a shanty. It shows an indelicacy of breeding that certainly doesn’t come from
my
family.”
my
family.”
She turned abruptly and headed for the door, abandoning the flowers for charity, abandoning the argument.
“I meant what I said,” Emma declared, her voice quavering only a little.
Her mother pulled the door shut behind her without another word, but Emma knew she had won.
When she went up to her sister’s room, though, she found Maddie lying on her bed, deep in a fevered sleep, and the air shrouded and reeking of chloral hydrate.
Emma sat down on the bed and smoothed the sweat-damp hair off her sister’s flushed forehead. Maddie’s lips were dry and cracked, but she was smiling.
“Look, Stu,” Maddie whispered, lost and yet happy, so happy, in her dreams. “I’m dancing, I’m dancing . . .”
On the twelfth of May, they gave a ball at The Birches to celebrate the official announcement of Emma’s engagement to Geoffrey Alcott. The ballroom was decorated on the theme of an English garden, with potted shrubs clipped to look like topiary animals and real nightingales let loose to sing in gilded rose bushes. Not everyone in Bristol was invited, only those who were anyone.
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