The Gilded Years (32 page)

“You’ve always been such a staunch friend,” she said to Belle, overcome with gratitude. She put her arms around Belle’s neck and promised to save her two seats in the senior section of chapel. “And Belle?” she said, before leaving the room.

“Yes?” Belle looked up at her from her mirror.

“I’m sorry you and Caroline won’t be in the same box for the dance. I feel wretched about it.”

“Do not worry about that,” said Belle. “You, Anita Hemmings, should never feel you are a second choice. I’ll still see Caroline, as will you, and we will have a wonderful evening. Let’s make it so.”

Anita slipped downstairs to the visitors’ parlor to wait for Joseph. When she arrived, she was the only student in the elegant room.

“Old Southpaw!” she said, standing up when Joseph joined her ten minutes later. He was just as handsome as she remembered, and he had lost none of his sophisticated air.

“You were brave to say yes to my invitation,” Anita said, taking the bouquet of white roses from his hands.

“I was happy to receive it,” he said, perfectly at ease with her, just as she had hoped. “We are first, I see,” he said, with a glance around the empty parlor. “Lucky me. More time spent with you.” He offered her his arm and they headed to the chapel.

“I’m honored to be your escort, you know,” he said when they had sat down, he a proper distance from her, she clutching her flowers. “I assumed, when I received your invitation, that there is no ill will between you and Hamilton or you and Miss Taylor. Am I correct in thinking so? Hamilton said as much on the train down, but who believes a Hamilton? I thought I should ask the more intelligent party.”

“None at all,” said Anita, her heart fluttering along with her lie. “They are happy together, and I am content on my own. I’ve come to appreciate that academics are the reason I am here, not to fall in love with Porter Hamilton. And in any case, life would not be interesting without twists and turns, would it?”

“Not mine, anyway,” said Joseph with a broad smile. “My life has been on a path shaped like a figure eight since birth, and frankly, I think I’m a better man for it.”

Soon afterward, Belle came into the chapel to collect Anita for their warm-up with the Glee Club and Professor Gow before their performance. “We will return soon,” she said to Joseph, whom she had greeted like an old friend. She left her date, a Columbia man she’d been paired with by Nettie Aldrich, and the two girls retreated behind the organ to meet with their group.

Anita was performing one of two solos that evening, singing “O Saving Victim” by Berthold Tours, as she had
done two weeks earlier at the Easter concert, also in the college chapel. To her delight, it went off beautifully, and the crowd’s faces blurred comfortingly before her. But when she walked back to sing with the group, she couldn’t help but search the rows for Porter. Neither he nor Lottie was anywhere to be seen. When they sat back down, Belle whispered in Anita’s ear that Lottie and Porter did not seem to be present, or if they were, they were not in the senior section.

Anita tried to peek behind her at the upper level, wondering if they had sat with the freshmen, but Vassie James, the fair-haired president of the Students’ Association, stepped onto the stage and Anita had to turn her eyes to the front. Vassie introduced the evening’s speaker, a Columbia philosophy professor who was to address them on the education of public opinion.

The lecture over, the crowd flooded out of the chapel for refreshments in the hallways before moving on to the dining room. As Anita and Joseph approached the tables of glass pitchers filled with lemonade and teas, she saw two seniors looking at them questioningly and exchanging whispers. When they caught Anita’s eye, they stopped midsentence and moved away quickly.

“Don’t worry,” said Joseph, looking down at Anita. “I am sure they were speaking about me, not you. I imagine Lottie spread wild stories about disgraced Old Southpaw all over school. I must be something of a cause célèbre around here.”

“Does it not bother you that people gossip about you? About your mother?” Anita asked.

“Yes and no,” Joseph replied. “I’ve known from childhood that people were going to gossip about my birth, my race, my parents. My father’s money helps quiet the rumors a bit, but women like Lottie Taylor will never let me forget.
I knew that from the start with Lottie, but she amused me, so I thought I’d push it as far as I could. I don’t regret it, really. She’s like a pleasant breeze that you enjoy while it’s there, knowing it won’t last.”

“But why did you tell her your mother was deceased?” Anita asked. They had moved to a corner of the hallway, a little removed from Belle and the rest of the students.

“That’s been my story for quite a while,” Joseph explained. “Less scandalous that way. I’m sure it will continue to be my story once I move out of these school circles. Scandals come and go, Anita. They don’t just follow you like a stray dog.”

“I hope that’s true,” she said, looking up at him. “For your sake,” she added quickly. “You are too entertaining, too kind, to have the circumstances of your birth haunt you forever.”

“Aren’t you a truly modern woman?” said Joseph, motioning to a waiter to refill their drinks. “And to think you’re Lottie’s very best friend. Oil and water. I can see why she is so fond of you.”

Anita looked down and thought how unfortunate it was that Founder’s couldn’t be just like Phil Day, and all because of Frederick barring her relationship with Porter Hamilton and Lottie leaping across all boundaries to take him for herself.

“Don’t worry so much about people like Lottie,” Joseph advised, as Anita remained silent. “Wealth will only get one so far if they don’t have the wealth of heart to match.”

“Some men may feel that way,” said Anita. “But their mothers will care about her bank account.”

“Luckily for you, my mother barely speaks English,” said Joseph, finishing his drink.

When Belle and her date, Lawrence Foster, had joined them, Anita took the opportunity to slip away. She badly
wanted to find Caroline, who had stopped to say hello as they were taking their refreshments, and ask her where Lottie and Porter might have gone. Anita had been sure she would see them before the girls were announced with their escorts, but she had yet to spot them in the large crowd. Was it possible they had chosen not to attend?

“Caroline went outside with a few others,” said Hortense Lewis, when Anita questioned her. “Lottie and Sarah Douglas and their dates, I believe.”

“Lottie and Sarah in the same group?” asked Anita, surprised.

“I’m quite sure of it,” said Hortense. “They went down the main staircase. I assume they just wanted to take some air before the dances start.”

“Thank you,” said Anita, taking off down the stairs herself.

Outside Main, she found several groups standing about enjoying the twilight, but Caroline, Porter, and Lottie were not among them.

Anita was about to turn to go back inside when she saw a man in a black tailcoat walking away from Main in the direction of the farm. From his gait—long steps favoring the outside of his shoes—she knew it was Porter. Without stopping to think, she ran toward him, briefly losing sight of him as he walked down the slope toward Sunset Hill. She lifted her skirts, ran faster, and called his name when he was in view again. He turned around as soon as he heard her voice.

They looked at one another for a long moment, and it occurred to Anita that this was the path they had walked together when he first came to the campus. It was where he had asked whether his affection for her was misguided. It wasn’t then, and if there was any left, it was not now.

Porter looked behind his shoulder up the empty hill, then turned back to Anita, and held out his right hand to her. That was the only signal she needed to approach him.

Her eyes fixed on Porter, Anita did not at first notice Lottie Taylor appearing at the top of Sunset Hill in a daringly low-cut ivory dress. When she did, it was clear from her horrified expression that Lottie had seen her first.

“Porter!” Lottie called, watching Anita.

Porter tensed when he saw Anita’s gaze shift and her expression change. He turned and looked up the hill, as well.

“You were to meet me on Sunset Hill,” Lottie called down. “Did something keep you? I’m growing awfully lonely here. Fresh air can keep a woman entertained for only so long.”

“I will be there shortly,” said Porter. He turned back to Anita and started to walk toward her.

Anita had never seen Lottie look so angry. If she were a hurricane, her face was its terrible eye. Anita made a lightning calculation: she could never have Porter, but there was a chance she could still keep Lottie. She looked at Porter walking rapidly toward her, his hand no longer extended but his desire to join her showing plainly on his face. She was desperate to go to him, but instead, she turned away. With Main now in her sights, Anita took off running and never looked back.

I
t was a mere confusion,” Lottie declared to Anita later that week. Porter and Lottie had not come into the dining room for the scheduled fifteen dances, as all students were instructed to do, after Anita had seen them. They had stayed on the farm, Lottie explained, so as not to put Anita or Joseph in an uncomfortable position.

Anita had her own explanations ready. “I did not leave Main looking for Porter,” she said from her perch on the divan. The girls had rearranged the furniture in their parlor as the weather grew warmer, and the divan was now centered under their window. They had taken to kneeling on it and looking down the drive to the gatehouse at night when the lights were low and the stars were out.

“It doesn’t matter. I have much bigger things to think about,” said Lottie, brushing her long hair in front of her mirror. “I’m not cross with you about that trivial business.”

Anita, who knew the cadences of Lottie’s voice as well as she knew her own, was unconvinced. She tried again.

“I had a wonderful time with Joseph,” she said. “He has a maturity about him that I admire. He’s already been exposed to so much, and his perspective is a refreshing one.”

“I doubt he has been exposed to more than you,” said
Lottie, turning around from her mirror and smiling sweetly at Anita. “For who has seen more than Anita Hemmings?”

“Just about everyone,” said Anita, laughing. “Certainly you have.”

“Me?” said Lottie, letting out an odd little chortle. “Most definitely not. I, it turns out, am the naïve one. You are the one running the show.”

“You’re not naïve, Lottie,” said Anita, looking away from Lottie to rest her head on the windowsill. “Your appreciation of life, your thirst for it, is my favorite thing about you.”

The room was quiet for several minutes as Anita took deep breaths of the spring air, in and out, in and out; it was like a pharmaceutical for the soul, she thought. When she looked at Lottie again, she was surprised to see her in the same place, still facing away from her mirror, watching her.

Anita smiled and turned back to the window, delighted to see the guard’s lights go on inside the Lodge. She liked to catch that nightly ritual and always felt a pleasing shiver down her spine when she was looking out the window at the right time. She turned around again to beckon to Lottie to join her, but Lottie was still sitting in the same position, still watching her.

“Do you know how I found out about Old Southpaw being the son of a prostitute?” Lottie said finally.

“I thought the correct term was
geisha,
” said Anita from the window.

“It is,” Lottie replied. “But tonight, I think the word
prostitute
sounds just fine.” Her tone had altered, but her expression remained studiedly bland.

“I see,” Anita replied. “But no, I can’t say I remember how you found out about Southpaw.”

“And I don’t know that I ever explained it,” said Lottie. “But now seems the right time.”

She put her brush down and tilted her head, examining Anita. “You see, Anita, how I did it—how I found out the truth about Joseph—is I asked my father to hire a private investigator. Resourceful, I know. Papa is often involved in sensitive business affairs down in the Carolinas and has to work with men from quite a different class than . . . us. These men have the most colorful backgrounds, and some of them may or may not have been engaged in questionable business practices. So Father, who is an enterprising man, has them investigated first. He’s been doing it for years, and has stepped up his investigations as he’s expanded the southern railroads into the mountains. It’s wild out there, as you are aware. Or,” she said, taking a step away from her desk and toward Anita, “maybe you are not aware.”

Anita felt her body shrinking down into the sofa as Lottie spoke, but she couldn’t bring herself to say a word.

“What Father does,” Lottie continued, “is he hires a man to trail these aspiring employees, and that man sets out to find the unfindable. Scandals, embezzlements, anything that would make them untrustworthy, that’s what he’s after. I told father that I had grown interested, romantically, in Joseph Southworth but that a story he had told was keeping my affections from growing, and I asked him to have his investigator look into it.”

“And it was the investigator who confirmed that the geisha was still alive?” asked Anita in a small voice.

“That’s right,” said Lottie, moving from her desk chair to the larger couch. She fluffed the pillows and propped herself on them, reaching for her favorite blanket and draping it on her feet. She took a cigarette from the small silver case on her left and lit it, ignoring the stringent college rules. “The investigator, a very thorough man, looked into legal documents, and even had a man in Japan search for this geisha’s
death certificate. It does not exist. The young woman is alive and well and waiting for Benjamin Southworth’s poor parents to die off so she can come here and ruin Joseph’s life even further.”

“I’m glad you found out before it was too late,” said Anita, now able to hear her heart beating. “Though Joseph did admit to the half of it on Phil Day. The only discrepancy was that in his telling, she was deceased. He didn’t deny her existence.”