Savage Girl (27 page)

South of us loomed the elegant Fifth Avenue Hotel, in the ballroom of which, in a week’s time, Bronwyn would accomplish her formal coming-out.

She would debut with girls from five other families. Other debutante balls at other venues, scattered over the weeks of late winter, brought out other groups of debutantes, but our Fifth Avenue soiree would easily be the grandest and gaudiest, the most heralded, the one that crowned the season.

We took a turn around the square, Edna Croker on my arm, Bronwyn with Percy, Tu-Li and the berdache coming along behind. I seethed at the big lout’s flirtation with my sister.

As we arrived back at our carriages, Percy bade his “magical Bronwyn” good night, having the effrontery to kiss her hand.

I crossed Fifth to where Colm stood at the edge of the Madison Square Park. He peered into the darkness toward the immense copper rendering of Liberty’s upturned hand.

“Up on the catwalk,” Colm said. “Do you see him?”

A far-off figure, raffish, square-hatted, in black outline only, leaned on the railing around the gigantic sculpted flame and seemed to be gazing at us as we gazed at him.

“Butler Fince?” I asked, and Colm shrugged.

The figure had disappeared by the time we threaded our way through the bare trees of the park to stand beside Liberty’s torch.

22

“Hugo,” Bronwyn said, silently mouthing the words. “I need you.”

Come up, you fool.

She stood atop the balcony of the Fifth Avenue Hotel ballroom. Two curving staircases of white marble swept downward to the dance floor. I ran up one, and Bronwyn tried to bring me along into the ladies’ parlor, where no escort was meant to venture on this night of nights.

It didn’t matter, since I found I could not wedge myself through the door, there were so many bell-shaped belles inside, their skirts of gauze and tulle fanned out, occupying the whole of the small powder room that the hotel had set aside for the evening’s debutantes.

“I need my mirror,” Bronwyn whispered, my way to her blocked by several egregious bustles. She had asked me to carry her hand mirror, as it would not fit in her evening bag. I gave it over and returned back downstairs into the ballroom.

“How is she?” Anna Maria asked.

“Fine,” I said. “Cool as a cucumber.”

“You really should not have gone up there,” Anna Maria said.

Midnight on the leap-year evening of February 29, 1876. Bronwyn’s debut. Everything we had been working for found its culmination in this ballroom on this night, all of us—my parents and myself, Swoony our secret old-guard weapon, Tu-Li and the berdache, Bev Willets acting as Beau Brummel for the endeavor, Colm lending muscle—and Bronwyn, Bronwyn the Savage Girl, Bronwyn most of all.

I had been to these affairs before. The glitter took one over until the whole business entered into an exalted reality. It may have been
frivolous in the grand scheme of things, but you could never tell that by us while we were swept up in it. Life, cruel, degraded, ordinary human existence, sets itself apart for a brief moment and becomes suddenly and unexpectedly ravishing.

On the adjoining sidewalks, the hordes. All of New York, those not on the inside, were outside with their noses pressed up against the windows of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, their curiosity inflamed by the newspapers. What gown? Which jewels? Who was the heiress, the ingenue, the debutante of the moment? Who waltzed with whom?

The process of coming out in Manhattan was as tightly scripted as any religious ritual. By Lent the whole crop of that year’s young women would be presented to society—for harvest, to complete the rather awkward metaphor. The dozen or so debutante balls each gathered together hundreds of swells to review the maidens and grant their tacit approval. The occasion was also for dancing, drinking and making merry.

But it served a serious purpose. The women—the mothers, the grandmothers, the aunts—sponsored and introduced their prospects. The whole coming-out process, offering up younger members of the tribe as potential mates and breeders, thus exercised and displayed matriarchal power in society.

It all made me glad that there was no concomitant ceremony for young men.

The male role at a female debut was in fact limited. Observer, meet the observed. Dance with her (but only once), admire her (from afar), allow her to excite your enthusiasm for possessing her. Within the year, or at the very outside within two or three, all of the sixty or so mesdemoiselles of the season should become mesdames. If not, they would be taken out into a field and killed.

Well, not really. But you get the idea.

At our Fifth Avenue Hotel ball that evening, a half dozen debutantes readied themselves to descend into the bon ton assembly. I stood below with Bev. All around the room were ranged stiff white gentlemen in stiff white shirtfronts and mature women in jewel-toned gowns. Almost every member of the Circle was there—though Delia, I noticed, was conspicuously absent.

Swoony, Fabby Tremont and other society grandes dames, including the well-powdered Caroline Hood, took their places on the polished floor and turned their faces up to the balcony.

Draped in maroon taffeta, bustle and train elongating her small figure to drastic proportions, Swoony already fastened onto her teacup as though we had prematurely arrived at the dessert course. She appeared positively thrilled to be present for the coming-out.

By means of pale silver reflectors, the lighting of gas lamps and candles had been fixed to evoke moonlight. On the round supper tables that ringed the floor, crystal and bone china gleamed on crisp, snowy linen, a bevy of gilt-wrapped favors beside each place setting.

Also on display, a profusion of monstrously expensive hothouse flowers. Garlands mounded in great tumbling masses, hundreds upon hundreds—lilies of the valley, gardenias, carnations, glads.

Freddy stepped up beside me, tears shining in his eyes, the old softy. We had pulled it off. Finally my father was proud of me and I of him. We embraced manfully.

A cornet sounded. The evening’s debutantes began to make their way down the crimson-carpeted steps, each one holding her train over her arm, each one dazzling in white. Edna Croker, Bronwyn’s great friend from dance class. Gertrude Debry, the Tremont niece. Sally Gildings and Emma Vanstyle and Georgina Worrell.

They descended carefully, slowly, one brittle doll after another finding her place beside her mother, aunt or grandmother, whichever woman had been charged to usher her from one stratum of society to the next.

Bronwyn halted at the landing for a moment. A small shiver ran through the assembly. It was the dress, its jeweled bodice catching the light of the gas jets and throwing it back into our eyes. She shimmered, all creamy silk and creamy skin, her satin-gloved hand resting lightly on the white marble of the balcony. Her eyes blazed dark, and her lips must have been painted, because they were red, much deeper than their natural color, which effect only rendered her skin paler and more ethereal.

A delicate, sparkling tiara encircled her forehead. Perhaps the gasp
from the assembly came in reaction not to the dress but to Bronwyn’s coiffure. Unlike the other debutantes, with their tightly fixed tresses and artificial curls, Bronwyn had allowed her locks to flow freely.

No one had ever seen anything like it, not at a coming-out ball—daring, shocking, a little unreal. Her black mane fell in soft waves halfway down her back, like some kind of mystical mermaid. Tu-Li had put it up earlier, but the deb herself wanted it down.

“Bronwyn Delegate,” I heard someone behind me murmur. “Bronwyn.” “Who is she?” “Good God! Can they do that now?” “The Delegate ward.”

She began her procession down the steps, slowly, as though she were gliding within a silken bubble, looking out over the cavernous room all the while.

“Perfection,” said Bev, at my elbow.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Well, that wasn’t a compliment for you,” he said.

“No, I mean, thank you for all you’ve done,” I said, tearing my eyes from my sister to turn to him. “Really. Thank you.”

He gazed around at the crowd. “We’ve put one over on them, haven’t we?”

“I’m not quite sure we haven’t put one over on ourselves,” I said.

I moved toward the bottom of the stairs to give Bronwyn my arm. I felt as though I were floating, too. My sister looked eager, like a child at Christmas, although I then recalled that after age four she actually had been wholly deprived of Christmas mornings.

“Nervous?” I asked her.

“I only hope they put blood in the punch,” she said. “All mine’s gone to my head.”

Many grand bouquets had been sent to The Citadel for her, as was the custom—from Bev, from the Bliss brothers, from Percy Roehm, from every damned Tom, Dick and Harry who had ever encountered her. I had ventured into the fray myself with an arrangement of wildflowers, imported from the West.

The bouquet she chose was a simple one, presented to her by Freddy, a clutch of white rosebuds and white violets bound in japan
paper and trailing a pair of long silver ribbons. The scent of the flowers enveloped us as we walked.

We crossed to Anna Maria, and Bronwyn embraced her with a kiss. I fear this might have been the apogee of my mother’s life. I expected her to ascend heavenward in a beam of white light. Her hopes for her adopted daughter had been fulfilled and surpassed.

We let Bronwyn go at the side of Swoony, who exercised her grandmotherly duty by spending the next hour formally introducing the girl to the Manhattan uppertens, a flock of impeccably feathered turkeys, presented to her one at a time.

“Virginia, my granddaughter,” Swoony would say.

“Bronwyn Delegate,” the Savage Girl corrected mildly, performing a deep curtsy. Over and over again, never failing with her “Very pleased to meet you” and “So happy to have you here.”

The fashionables pressed forward to get a better look at the bejeweled beadwork on her gown. They made her turn around. Over and over.

The dance followed supper. My sister and I waltzed. Bev took her for the mazurka. In violation of etiquette, he took her again for a quadrille.

But as her escort I had rights, and I reclaimed her for the German. Monsieur Henri of Madame Eugénie’s had been assigned to call the figures. The dance was an eccentric sort of performance. At the climax the ladies held a stout rope, which the men tried to get over, under or around.

As the dance then demanded, Bev and I show-wrestled while Bronwyn watched, her hands clasped. A handkerchief was tied around my eyes while the other dancers marched in a tight circle.

•   •   •

In a gesture of her high regard (for Swoony at least, if not for Bronwyn), Caroline Hood had given over to the Delegate family the use for the evening of her four-in-hand coach, an old-fashioned affair imported from Germany, gilded and black-enameled over every inch, with the Hood family crest emblazoned on its doors.

It was the dead hour, four o’clock in the morning, when we finally
emerged out of the ballroom into the frozen night. Snow dusted the park across the avenue. The front stairs of the hotel filled with euphoric ballgoers, Freddy a veritable peacock in his thrill of accomplishment.

I looked for Colm. Across the street, in the park, still illuminated by gas jets, Liberty raised her torch.

Bronwyn stepped outside, took one look at the outlandish carriage waiting for her and emitted an appalled laugh. “That is for me?”

“Your fairy godmother has come through,” Bev said.

Even in the wake of her triumph, I was happy to see she still treated the whole thing as I had suggested, as a game, as a lark. Some girls might grow vain with all the fuss. Not she.

The crowd of gawkers had thinned but not entirely dispersed, a few journalists sprinkled in among them, identifiable by their predatory look. “Bronwyn!” they called. “Miss Delegate!”

They wanted her to display her gown. She shrugged the wrap from her shoulders, and it dropped away as a cloud might move from in front of the sun. It would have fallen to the pavement if I hadn’t caught it. She turned, posing, showing her profiles and backside to the multitudes.

A gasping sort of cheer rose from the sidewalk assembly, similar to the one I had heard inside the ballroom. I saw the newspapermen scribble furiously, sketching the flatter, diminished bustle, the new style Bronwyn (and Bev) had wrought.

I thought it all a bit much and moved to cloak her again.

Several things happened at once. I saw a man in a Stetson Boss hat push his way through the crowd. He had on a long leather greatcoat and didn’t wear a tie. Milling spectators blocked his way, but he plowed ahead.

Butler Fince.

The shooter I had last seen in the Comstock, murdering a man. As then, in his hand he held a pistol.

Behind the intruder, Colm Cullen raced forward, a desperate look on his features. He wasn’t going to make it, I realized.

A curious effect: Time slowed to a crawl. Bev Willets moved up
next to Bronwyn. My parents turned away to bid good night to the hotel stewards, perhaps to tip them with a bit of coin.

The man Fince extended his pistol at my sister and fired.

Bev flinched back. I stepped forward, trying to shield Bronwyn.

The bullet smashed into her bodice. I felt the embroidered pearls explode into a hundred pieces, some fragments of which stung my face. But the diamonds held.

Screams, chaos.

Bronwyn staggered backward, caught in Anna Maria’s arms. I reached for my .38, but it got fouled in my belt and shirt back. I realized there was something wrong with my right foot. Colm grappled with Fince, stripping the man of his weapon but receiving a blow to the head that put him down.