Katherine Keenum (31 page)

“
Pas quand même, Sarah chérie, mais à outrance
,” said Mlle. Croizette, moving forward energetically. She tugged on one long glove with her other gloved hand as she spoke.
“Carolus vient d’arriver.”

“Avec—?”

“
Oui
,” pronounced Croizette, with considerable asperity, though the purse of her lips and a look in her eye betrayed amusement.

Jeanette could not quite follow what was happening. Carolus-Duran had just arrived, that was clear—but with what, or with whom? After Croizette had led Bernhardt and her entourage into the library, Jeanette looked at Edward with the unspoken question dancing in her eyes: Did you see that? He, too, had perceived it as uncommon luck to witness a fragmentary comedy unfold for their eyes alone. More disturbing, pleasurably disturbing, she saw his attention now fix entirely on herself. She felt his body’s warmth through his coat. Just for an instant, it was tempting to lean into his firmness. He knew and raised his arm to the back of the bench, but hesitated. She jumped to her feet.

They both knew they had to go indoors, if only to see what would happen next in the little drama just set in motion. Even so . . . Looking at him sidelong, Jeanette moved slowly, not toward the door, but away from it. Thin, scraggly grass at the edge of the beech shade ran out into a thicker stretch of lawn, which ended at the rim of a small fishpond. A cloud of tiny insects hung gold over its mirrored surface. The water gleamed.
Tswee-tswee-tsit-tsit-tick!
sang the chaffinch. “It’s perfect,” said Jeanette, under her breath; Edward, standing behind her, rested his hands lightly on her upper arms. But the sound of her own voice and the deliciousness of his touch were too much for Jeanette. She turned around, took his hand to pull him toward the house, and said, laughing, “Come on!”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

A Garden Party (2): Who Saw What

I
n the front hallway, Carolus-Duran had arrived with Lucille Dobbs on his arm and a retinue of his other pupils behind him. Just as Jeanette and Edward reached the library door, Croizette, with a sweeping gesture, commandeered him. (Miss Dobbs treated her effacement as an oblique triumph and boldly surveyed the assembled guests. Her eyebrows lifted when she espied that new Miss Palmer in the sole company of an extremely well-dressed man—obviously
not
her father.)

Carolus-Duran seemed not in the least disconcerted to have his mistress, if that was what she was, replaced at his side by his sister-in-law; for the genius and good looks of one played brightly off the genius and good looks of the other. An instant after kissing her on both cheeks, he turned to divert congratulations on the portrait about to be unveiled with a gallant compliment on the sitter’s beauty while Croizette, keeping firm hold of his arm, bent in the other direction to dazzle a well-wisher.

A few steps up the curved stairway, Marius Renick watched the scene in his front hallway, well content. He had Sarah Bernhardt beside him.

Gradually, the crowd parted to allow Carolus and Croizette through to join their host. They were almost at the foot of the stairs when the artist happened to see his new student with a gentleman he did not know. He was struck at once by the man’s gaunt face, a type that interested him; this one had known illness, suffering. Little Mlle. Palmer he already knew to be a protégée of the Renicks. Her companion must be at least an acquaintance; and if his frock coat was anything to go by, he might be worth meeting. With a smile of entreaty and the least jerk of his head, he summoned them. Jeanette was almost disbelieving. Stardom! As she moved forward, she glanced up excitedly into Edward’s face to make sure that he, too, came.

The irony of his having told Cornelia that he disliked crowds only to find himself being pulled to the center of one was not lost on Edward, nor the further irony that he was enjoying the moment. He was detached enough to know that it was neither the crowd nor the glamorous principals that pleased him, it was being with Miss Palmer and being seen to be with her. No fool like an old fool, he told himself, wryly.

At the top of the stairs, Hastings had been standing by the door to the grand salon, as immobile as a torchière. When the assembly below began shuffling into motion behind Mlle. Bernhardt, he opened it. Jeanette glimpsed a swatch of plum-colored train pull back. A moment later, Mrs. Renick emerged, walking without a cane and shining in her gold satin. It was the first that most of her guests knew that she could walk again. Her appearance was met with gasps and, after a moment’s hesitation, applause. For a moment, she held on to the banister railing and smiled down on everyone else; then she turned toward the stairs to reach out to the hero of the day, Carolus-Duran. Carolus waved to the crowd, and the three lead couples proceeded into the room, where the covered portrait stood beside the piano. Mrs. Renick was conducted to the sofa in grand style and posed as she appeared in the painting.

As the line of guests began to move behind the leaders, Jeanette and Edward fell in step and were among the first to enter the almost-empty room. Jeanette looked around for Cousin Effie. She was standing in front of a panel of curtains between two sets of French windows onto the balcony, a dim silhouette obscured by shafts of afternoon sunlight flooding in from the west. From this near invisibility, she had a perfect vantage point for watching everyone and everything else the sunlight landed on, including the easel.

“Do you mind joining my cousin?” asked Jeanette.

“Nothing would please me more.”

Jeanette could not have said why it suddenly seemed so important to be with Cousin Effie. Part of it was a guilty leap of affection for singular, self-effacing Effie, who had no doubt thought it a privilege to be run off her feet all afternoon on Mrs. Renick’s behalf.

“Isn’t it just grand?” said Effie. “The day has gone off perfectly!”

When the salon was three-quarters full, Mr. Renick signaled Hastings to bar entry to the room for the time being. From the piano, unbidden, came three loud chords, struck by Maestro Grandcourt to demand silence. Marius glanced back over his shoulder, amused. Grandcourt bowed. There were those in Paris outside financial circles who thought of Marius Renick primarily as Cornelia Renick’s less interesting half. He never tried to correct the impression. On this occasion, he spoke briefly, to the point, and without a memorable word, after which Mlle. Croizette took up a corner of the velvet draped over the portrait and contrived to make pulling it away momentarily suspenseful, then a spectacle. As exclamations and spontaneous clapping greeted the painting, she and Mlle. Bernhardt departed to the adjoining picture gallery, whence they were accompanied by an adulatory footman to their carriages. The rest of the afternoon belonged to Cornelia and Carolus-Duran.

“Have you had a chance to go out to the gardens?” Jeanette asked Effie, as they along with Edward made their way slowly in the receiving line to view the picture up close and congratulate artist and sitter.

“Not yet.”

“Or eaten?”

“Oh, yes! Mrs. Renick had refreshments brought upstairs.”

Jeanette suddenly realized that it was she who was hungry, but she had to suppress her appetite; for when they got to the head of the line, Carolus-Duran handed her back to the honor guard of pupils whom Jacques, the footman, brought up a back way to stand behind the picture. It gave her a chance to speak to John Sargent, whom she had not seen again since they met at the Renicks’ house.

“I understand you are due congratulations, too,” she said. Earlier in the month, the women’s atelier on the Passage Stanislaus had been as excited as the men’s by the news that Mr. Sargent’s portrait of the master had been accepted for the Salon. “I hear your portrait of Carolus is wonderful.”

“He-he did me the honor to s-sit,” said Mr. Sargent.

Jeanette, still buoyed by the flood of her afternoon’s happiness, read in his alarmed eyes a shyness with girls that made her want to giggle. She stepped past him to join Miss Reade.

“Done it again, has Carolus; and I like Penders’ Mrs. Renick.”

Penders?
A nickname? Jeanette turned her head quickly to see whether Effie had undergone other unsuspected transformations. None visible. She turned back to make light conversation about Mrs. Renick, the painting, the gardens, and the Drummonds, all the while trying to keep an eye on Cousin Effie and Dr. Murer as they were absorbed into the circulating flow of guests.

*   *   *

As much as Edward regretted becoming detached from Jeanette, he knew that if he stayed with Miss Pendergrast, sooner or later they would be reunited. Unfortunately for him, just as Miss Isobel was about to join them, he espied General Noyes. He came to attention. The two ladies disappeared.

“Afternoon, Murer,” said the ambassador, “good to see you.”

“Sir.”

“Was that Circleville Palmer’s girl you were with just now?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good-looking gal and good of you to look after her. Ohio must keep an eye on its hatchlings. Remind me what’s she doing in Paris?”

“Studying painting, sir. With M. Duran, as a matter of fact.”

“Bit of a roué from what I hear, but one of the best. Well, well, as long as Cornelia Renick has the chick under her wing, no harm likely to come.”

“No, sir.”

It was all nonsense—
girl, hatchling, roué, chick
—but it upended Edward’s sense of well-being. As General Noyes hobbled away, Edward felt like kicking the Old Man’s wooden peg out from under him with his own gimp leg. He looked with regret to where Jeanette was merrily chattering away in the young cohort to which she belonged. When, later, Carolus-Duran led his pupils along with their hosts for an enthusiastic and illuminating tour of the Renicks’ collection, Edward had long since made his way downstairs. Head down, shoulders forward, he avoided being caught by anyone else he knew. His intention was to leave the house and grounds at once, but at the foot of the stairs, he paused. On the other side of the library, where the beech tree stood, the afternoon light was golden.
Everyone should have a secret garden
, Cornelia had said, and given him the freedom of hers—which would forever be his and Miss Palmer’s as far as he was concerned. Perfect, she had called it. Not a hatchling, not a girl; a young woman.

As he headed for the door out to the walled bay, the last thing he expected was to be startled out of self-absorption by a sordid little crime, but a movement at the other end of the long, narrow room caught his attention. He looked just in time to see Robbie Dolson’s hand come out of a display case and drop something into his pocket. Miss Dolson sprawled across a chair with her head turned away, whether asleep, in distress, or lost in a drugged haze, Edward could not tell.

“If I were you, Dolson, I would put that back.”

Robbie swung around. Fear followed by a spasm of anger crossed his face, then a sort of hopelessness. In a remarkable display of either sangfroid or despair, he retrieved a small but costly porcelain-and-gold box from his pocket, examined it briefly with the air of a connoisseur deciding against a purchase, then lifted the glass cover a couple of inches and slid it back. His long fingers rested on the glass top of the case.

“What are you going to do now?”

Edward knew that at the very least he should ring for a footman. Call the police, warn the Renicks. Ever stolen a starving man’s ration?

“Have you taken anything else?”

“No.”

“Then I’m going to advise you to leave.”

“Good man,” murmured Robbie, without looking up. He smiled to himself. His hand moved to the display case catch. The snick of the lock obliterated any evidence of attempted theft.

His complacency shocked Edward. “I would also advise you, sir, to look after your sister,” he said, more roughly. “Miss Dolson is not well, and too much laudanum will do her no good.”

Robbie drew himself up and turned with a snarl. “I may be in no position to demand satisfaction, Dr. Murer, but I would advise
you
to mind your own business,
sir
. Come along, Emily, time to go.”

Without so much as another glance at Edward, Robbie pushed a drooping Emily ahead of him out the door at the other end of the library. For a moment, Edward stood stunned by the man’s effrontery. And that poor girl. Without knowing why, Edward stepped back into the hall. The front door was just closing. If Miss Dolson had worn a wrap, it had been abandoned.

“
Cet homme-la
,” he said to a footman on duty in the hallway. That man—Edward was not sure what more he wanted to say.

“Oui, monsieur.”
The footman maintained an impassive demeanor, but the look in his eye was shrewd. He spoke with finality: That man had been under surveillance all day.

*   *   *

Strangely enough, the episode had shaken Edward out of unhappy doubts induced by the general’s careless remarks. Jeanette Palmer was young, but he could wait. He would not interfere with her education nor attempt to dissuade her from pursuing the art that clearly animated her heart and imagination. He would not press his suit too strong too soon. But neither would he besmirch himself or her by thinking ill of what he dared to hope was a growing understanding between them. The unsettling Dolsons were more troubling. As he went out into the secret garden, his lungs were grateful for the damp, spring air, cooling at the approach of dusk, and his nose for green, earthy smells free of smoke and all traces of cloying, artificial sweetness from the hall.

With his head resting against the trunk of the tree, he slipped into a reverie until a chilliness in the air made him open his eyes. Only the upper branches of the beech tree remained burnished by the sun. He had better get moving. He let himself out through the gray-painted door in the stone wall onto the terrace across the back of the house. He must find Marius Renick before he left and tell him what had happened inside (also confess that he had let the scoundrel escape); but first he leaned on the balustrade and looked out over the whole garden.

Shadows stretched across the Rose Parterre, the Fountain Tier, the Maze Level. Light trembling between silver and gold lay hazily on the meadow grass beyond; it dwindled into dimness among the branches of orchard blossom. In the general fading, water jets of the big fountain were gray; only their crests splashed white with a touch of sparkle. Emptied of people, the maze attracted him; but he felt too indolent to move, and only an idiot would enter its blind alleys at this late hour and risk the mortification of requiring release by a gardener sent out to secure the grounds.

The orchestra played its last waltz. Stragglers headed for the house. Thumps, scrapes, and desultory scraps of voices from the orchestra tent signaled that the musicians were packing away their instruments. Edward turned around to go into the house. Just in time. There, coming out, were Cornelia in her gold, Marius in black, Effie only half visible in the purple dusk, and Jeanette.