Katherine Keenum (29 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

A Garden Party (1): Who Met Whom

E
dward, who knew he had no special line to heaven, did not pray for sun; but April in Paris can, if it chooses, be lovely on its own, and it chose to be balmy for the party. Cornelia was credited with audacity amounting to genius for staging a garden party weeks before anyone else dared try. On the ten-acre grounds, budding spring leaves were tinted as delicately copper, rose, and blue-green as the last of the winter hazels were yellow. Hundreds of forced flowering shrubs advanced the season by weeks. In the downstairs hallway, a dozen full-sized gardenia bushes were in headily fragrant bloom.

The party was to begin at two, at which hour the least fashionable of the Renicks’ guests would begin arriving in order to enjoy every bit of entertainment provided. Jeanette and Effie were to be among them, but not out of greed. “I’m going to need you at hand, dear, dear Effie; you must stay for the whole afternoon,” insisted Cornelia. “You’ll give me moral support.” There was nothing Cornelia Renick needed less than moral support, but Bette, her lady’s maid, approved and was more explicit about why: There would be a thousand little errands to run all afternoon, she told Effie, while she herself was trapped on duty in the downstairs ladies’ dressing room. In
madame
’s ear, she also made a suggestion: Perhaps Mlle. Pendergrast should be given that plum dress from three years ago? It was Bette’s prerogative to dispose of her mistress’s discarded wardrobe, and Cornelia would never have risked offending either woman by offering Effie hand-me-downs; but she secretly rejoiced when Bette contrived to keep all the social niceties of rank in place and still convey the dress to Effie, altered to subdue its more extravagant effects and flatter a more meager figure.

Jeanette had to settle for the dress with which she had eventually replaced the mortifying gray-and-garnet taffeta school frock, a far subtler silk in a pinkish dove-gray alluringly called
cendre de rose
. By means of lengthwise fitted seams, it lay smoothly down the front over one of the new molded corsets yet had enough fullness at the sides and back to make walking possible (the most tubular versions of the style were said to restrict the knees). A short train fanned slightly in pleats from under a tieback, but there were no ruffles, the easier to keep the dress sponged clean. Over its three-quarter-length sleeves she wore a matching jacket. The costume had been bought with the idea that it could be worn from April through October and made to last several years, as regrettably it must. It was versatile, timely, and bland; Jeanette feared it made her fade into the wallpaper. Nevertheless, before they went down to the waiting carriage, she looked anxiously over her shoulder to check that the tied-back skirt spread evenly.

“How do I look?”

“Pretty as a picture,” said Effie. “Not that it will matter what you and I look like, not with Mrs. Renick in gold satin and the likes of Miss Bernhardt on the grounds.”

It mattered to Jeanette. With her hands in a new pair of gray kid gloves, she touched at her party hat, a narrow-brimmed straw confection trimmed in flowers, and looked in the mirror, smoothing out the look of annoyance from her face. Carolus-Duran would be there, and other artists and writers and famous people, and Dr. Murer. She wanted to shine.

*   *   *

Edward arrived when he judged the party would be well under way without yet being crowded. It was his idea to pay his respects to Cornelia, look for Miss Palmer, then escape quickly if need be. The unveiling at four had no hold over him: He had already seen the painting and expected to see it again, often; he was certainly not needed to swell the throng of its first public admirers. Yet more than he was willing to admit to himself, an ambivalent curiosity inclined him to stay if possible to see Cornelia’s much-vaunted Carolus-Duran, Miss Palmer’s teacher, Renick’s clever man of the hour.

At two o’clock, Marius Renick stationed himself in front of banked masses of peach, rose, and white azaleas at the foot of the grand staircase. People’s movements stirred the gardenia-scented air; a string trio played Mozart and Haydn, the intricate, witty music he loved for much the same reason that he loved the house. After personally greeting each newcomer, he directed most of them on out into the gardens.

“Murer,” said Mr. Renick, in a voice that carried, “glad you could come.” He clapped Edward heartily on the shoulder while his eyes slid on to the next guests, the deputy assistant manager of a competing bank and his wife. The hand on the shoulder gave Edward a barely perceptible nudge toward the staircase as he added in a lower voice, “Go on up; Cornelia will want to see you now. She’s receiving out on the balcony.”

While the deputy assistant bank manager and his wife pretended to have seen nothing, Edward mounted the stairs. At the door to the grand salon, a footman guided him on through to where Hastings stood at the nearer end of the row of French windows, which led out onto the balustraded roof of the ground-floor loggia.

“Dr. Murer,” Hastings announced.

On a wicker settee among more azaleas under a striped canvas canopy, Cornelia sat in the golden satin dress of the portrait with a deep red rose corsage, resplendent. “Darling Edward!” she exclaimed, holding up her gloved hand to be kissed.

“That’s our exit line, Isobel,” said Miss Reade, who was seated in a chair beside her, while Miss Isobel stood to one side with Effie. The sisters were dressed in the bustled silks they had probably worn to vicarage tea parties ten years before, crowned by new hats sporting the feathers Miss Isobel loved. (Hastings would have recognized the type; from Mr. Renick’s having sent them up, he knew just how much respect to accord the sisters in future.)

“Oh, no, Miss Reade, please don’t go yet,” said Cornelia. “This is Dr. Murer, late of Cincinnati, Ohio, where I spent the happiest years of my childhood.”

“We met last fall,” said Miss Reade, “at Sonja Borealska’s removal party.”

“Of course! Wonderful! Then you will be happy to know that he has recently settled in Paris, and I am determined to keep him here for a long, long stay. You must help me do so by becoming the best of friends. Miss Reade studies with Carolus, Edward, in the same class as Miss Palmer; and you remember her sister, Miss Isobel. In a moment, I’m going to dispatch the three of you to rescue our darling Jeanette. She’s down in the garden, poor thing, being chaperoned by the two dullest women in Paris.”

“Why, that’s the first unkind thing I’ve ever heard you say about anyone, Cornelia,” said Edward.

“Much less about one of my own guests, you are thinking. I hope you are right. But wait until you are chloroformed by Mrs. Drummond and her daughter. You’ll see.”

Miss Reade suppressed a short, snorting laugh. “Legendary,” she said.

“Then you know them, too!” said Cornelia.

“Only by reputation.”

“They give respectability a bad name,” piped up Miss Isobel. Effie, beside her, smothered a snicker as she looked down to dissociate herself from the general disparagement (Mrs. Drummond, though not active in its work, was a faithful subscriber to the McAll Mission).

“The gods of hospitality will punish me for my wicked tongue soon enough, no doubt,” said Cornelia, “but not yet. Just look whom they have delivered!”

“M. Hippolyte Grandcourt,” announced Hastings.

The temptation was to linger for any anecdote to come, but the social exigencies were clear. Behind Grandcourt, an exceedingly well-dressed couple approached; and the maestro, who as a favor had advised on the orchestra under the marquee, might have something for Cornelia’s immediate and private ear. Rapidly surveying the grounds below in hope of spotting Jeanette Palmer, Edward offered his arm to Miss Reade and ushered Miss Isobel on ahead of them.

At the foot of the stairs, Marius Renick spoke pleasantly to the Reade sisters. (Effie’s report on their brother’s distillery had checked out.) As the ladies started on toward the garden, he put a restraining hand on Edward’s arm. “Hang on a minute, Murer. We seem to have an invasion from Bohemia.” His eye was on a young couple in most unlikely attire. “You don’t happen to know this pair, do you? I’m not sure they belong.”

Edward was not sure they belonged, either, but he thought it likely that Cornelia had invited them. “They’re named Dolson,” he said, noncommittally. “A journalist and his sister.”

“Ah, yes. Cornelia did invite them, but I don’t believe she has actually met them—nor does she need to. Be a good fellow, Murer; take them with you into the garden.

“Welcome,” he said, smoothly, as Emily and Robbie approached. “I’m Marius Renick. I believe you know Dr. Murer? He’s just on his way to look for Jeanette Palmer.”

“Nothing could be more delightful than finding her,” said Robbie. From years as an unwanted dependant in the houses of better-off relatives, he sensed that he and Emily were being barred from some inner circle; but for now, it was enough to have won an invitation at all. Or if not,
Noggins
could help him take revenge. Robbie ambled on out to the garden with a nonchalance pitched perfectly for the man-about-town who had nothing better to do.

Emily floated, unseeing.

Edward followed in the assurance that Miss Palmer would want to join her friends.

*   *   *

And so it was that when Jeanette—by now impatient to detach herself from the dreary Drummonds—happened to look back up toward the house and see Edward with the Dolsons, her heart leaped, first with a joy that embraced all three, and then with a kind of comic wail. Oh, Emily! Oh, Robbie! They had reached the shallow stairs leading from the marble terrace down to the Rose Parterre, the first of three levels of formally laid-out beds. She and the Drummonds were on the second, the Fountain Tier, where, at Mrs. Drummond’s slow wheezing pace, they were making for the main refreshment marquee. A moment earlier, Jeanette had been wondering when she could decently slip away and how. Now casting convention aside, she said simply, “Oh, please excuse me, I see some friends. I must—” Without finishing the sentence, she fled.

She hurried against the general flow of hungry visitors as fast as her tight skirts would allow. The brilliance of her smile as she approached made Edward’s heart lurch; he wished he knew whether the smile was meant for him or, as he feared more likely, for Dolson. She could not have said. For Jeanette, the special vividness of Dr. Murer’s presence had to contend with the laughter welling up in her at sight of the Dolsons’ clothes.

Whereas every other man at the party wore black, Robbie was pure Beau Brummel, a half century out of date in shades of blue and gray with a yellow waistcoat and cream-colored spats. Neither collar nor cuffs were frayed, no seam was shiny, no spot defiled his cravat. He must have found a new secondhand dealer or theatrical costumier, and he must still be in funds. Oh, oh, and Emily, Emily! Usually demure to the point of nonentity, here she was wearing an uncorseted, pea-green gown with loose folds from shoulder to hem in back, full sleeves gathered intermittently down the arms by bands, and a soft front falling from a yoke embroidered in muted greens, blues, and rose—natural dyes, Edward could have told her; Aesthetic style from London, she could have told him. After Christmas, Amy had brought back British fashion magazines, which they had all studied. One Saturday, they got the idea of each adapting a fashion plate to represent a season. Emily claimed spring and painted a brooding pre-Raphaelite woman amid masses of exquisitely delineated flowers—but who could have predicted she would go so far as this?

“My dear, we harmonize,” said Robbie, holding out the blue-gray of his sleeve to the grayish pink of Jeanette’s jacket. Even as he did so, his eye scanned the grounds.

I am not going to be dropped that easily! thought Jeanette, taking his arm as if it were proffered.

“The
demi-teinte generale
; we set the tone,” she said, brightly. “Now, come redeem me with Mrs. Drummond. Walk briskly. We’ll invite her to join us.”

The mischievous way she looked up at Edward as she spoke reconciled him to anything. It also brought Robbie’s attention back to her. “You sound up to no good. Just who is Mrs. Drummond, and do you think she’ll come? We could always loiter among the roses.”

“No, no. She’s as fat as a spoiled pug. She won’t come—that’s the whole point!”

“Naughty, naughty,” murmured Emily, dreamily.

As Jeanette, laughing, tugged at Robbie to lead him down to the Fountain Tier, Emily took Edward’s arm, resignedly. Edward looked down at her. On a sunny day, it was not surprising that the pupils of her eyes were constricted, but they had been constricted indoors, too.

“How long have you been using the stuff?” he asked, gently.

“It’s for my cough.”

“It would be effective for that, yes; but if you wish, I can have a syrup made up that will ease a cough with less danger than laudanum.”

“That’s what Wee Willie Winkie says, too. He’s always warning me when I need it. But would your balm ease the soul’s distress?”

“No.” God knew, it wouldn’t.

“A garden does,” said Emily, turning her head away from him. With the back of her fingers, she brushed the delicate new leaves of a shrub, pale chartreuse flushed with pink, as transparent and veined as a mayfly wing. Her fingers fluttered into the air.