The House of Velvet and Glass (24 page)

“Sure. You think old George in there thinks book collecting’s a worthy pursuit?” Harry laughed with dismissive candor. “No, sir. Not when I could go into transportation, or finance. Or anything else, when you come down to it, that’s not spending his hard-earned money on books nobody wants to read. He’ll make me give it up eventually.”

Eulah placed her hand over his on her arm. “But you’re good at it, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Why, I guess it doesn’t matter if I’m any good at it or not.” He glowered. “My father thinks it’s frivolous, and that’s all there is to it. But that’s to be expected, I think.”

He turned his gaze down to Eulah’s face.

“Is it?”

“It’s the way of all things, from what I can tell,” he said. “A man works hard. Makes something of himself in business. He marries the right woman, who’ll help him achieve his goals. He has children. He wants those children to achieve the way that he achieved. But instead they develop arcane interests that take up their time and attention, and have no use in business. I try to tell him, you know, it could be worse. I could fence. I could race yachts, which is basically like standing in the bath and tearing up hundred-dollar bills for fun. Instead, I research and collect rare books. I’m persuaded there’s a value to my passion. But he’ll probably never see it that way.”

“You should meet my brother.” Eulah smiled ruefully. “He’s in the same boat as you. Only he doesn’t have your drive, I don’t think.”

“What does he do?” Harry murmured, moving his nose behind her ear. A chill gust blew over them from across the ocean surface. Eulah shivered.

“He plays cards,” Eulah said, gazing into the middle distance.

“And?” Harry asked, lips distractingly close to Eulah’s neck. She felt his breath against her skin.

“And, he plays more cards.”

“That’s all?”

“Well, in theory he’s going to school.” She chuckled. Her skin tingled whenever he brushed against it. Her eyes traveled up to the night sky, an impossibly black and moonless night, the stars like tiny points of shattered crystal scattered over a dark velvet cloak. She thought she had never seen a night as dark as this one. It was a formless void, this darkness. She felt that the steamship, massive as it was, was just a tiny point of life alone in the middle of a giant universe. The feeling made her stomach roll over, uneasy.

“Maybe,” Harry murmured, “he just hasn’t found his right calling yet.”

“Maybe,” she said. Her eyes drifted closed. For a time she was aware of nothing but the frigid air on her skin, bringing the blood to her cheeks, and the warmth of Harry’s hands on her waist. At length he spoke.

“And what are your plans, I wonder, Miss Allston?”

“Me?” She laughed, leaning into his chest. “At this point my only plan is to dance a little more. With you.”

He grinned. “Then that’s what we shall do. And not a minute too soon, because it’s far too cold to stay out here!”

Laughing, arms around each other’s waists, Eulah and Harry made their way back to the door to the gallery. Just as Harry was fumbling with the door latch, an icy blast burst along the deck, snatched up Eulah’s hat, with Helen’s butterfly brooch still attached, and blew it skittering along the deck before hurling it over the railing into the blackness of the ocean night.

“Oh!” she squealed in dismay, her hand darting to the top of her head. Coils of pale brown hair blew in spirals around her face, over her eyes, into her mouth.

Harry laughed. “I like you better without it,” he assured her. “Come along. I think the band’s starting up again.”

He led her back with a protective arm through the door into the dining room, but Eulah looked back over her shoulder to the spot along the railing where her hat had disappeared.

Chapter Twelve

Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts
April 17, 1915

“What’d you say this place was called?” Dovie hissed as Sibyl led her down a stately hallway, carpeted in cabbage roses.

“The Oceanus Club.”

“What kind of crazy name is that?” the girl asked in an anxious whisper. “It doesn’t look very nautical to me. I’d expect there to be—I don’t know—figureheads and boat models and mermaids and things. Shippy things.”

Sibyl laughed, helping Dovie off with her coat, which, in the light of day, looked shabbier than Sibyl remembered. “I suppose it is a silly name when you come to it. It’s named for the baby born during the
Mayflower
passage. Oceanus Hopkins. Course, he didn’t survive the first winter, so I suppose there’s a certain fatalism in it. But that’s the name they picked.”

“What is it?” Dovie asked, shifting her eyes to take in the quietly sumptuous surroundings.

“It’s, oh, I don’t know. A club. Luncheon. Cards. There’s a lovely garden,” Sibyl said. She peered into the front sitting room, at the clusters of women sitting, ankles folded, hats bent over cups of tea. She recognized a few faces, women she knew from committees. She felt a twinge of anxiety about bringing Dovie there. But it passed, replaced with self-satisfied rebellion.

“I’m glad my name isn’t Oceanus,” the young woman grumbled.

“Oh, I quite agree. Dovie’s
much
more preferable,” Sibyl said. Dovie glanced over to see if she was being teased, and Sibyl smiled to show that she was, albeit gently.

“Psh,” Dovie said, and poked Sibyl on the upper arm.

“Sibyl is even better, of course,” she added. “Nothing like being named for obscure elements of Greek mythology, don’t you agree? Why, when I was a girl I wished for nothing more than a nice normal name. Like Bertha.”

Dovie laughed through her nose, with delicacy, and the two women moved down the hallway toward the sound of silverware clinking against china, and murmuring women’s voices.

“Why, is that Sibyl Allston?” a practical woman’s voice declared, and Sibyl turned to find Mrs. Rowland, a member of Mrs. Dee’s secret
Titanic
séance circle, sandwiched at a small table between a young woman with the identical round features as Mrs. Rowland’s own, only twenty years younger, and a beaky spinster in old-fashioned dress reform bloomers.

“Why, Mrs. Rowland. Speak of the devil,” Sibyl said, pausing by the table.

“You can speak of him as much as you like, but it won’t make him any realer,” the Unitarian matron said. “May I present my daughter, Mrs. Leopold. And this is our friend Ellen Baxter, up from Rhode Island.” Heads nodded. The spinster adjusted her spectacles and gave Sibyl a long look.

“And this is Dovie Whistler, from California,” Sibyl said.

“How d’you do,” said Mrs. Leopold, eyeing Dovie’s bobbed hair with mixed curiosity and envy.

“California!” Mrs. Rowland exclaimed. “Why, I can’t see why you’d ever leave a place like that. I hear the weather’s near perfect. So unlike New England, isn’t that right, Ellen?”

The spinster flared her nostrils. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Too nice weather can make a body morally weak.”

“Well!” Sibyl exclaimed, hastening their escape. “Such a pleasure running into you.”

“You’re looking well, Miss Allston,” Mrs. Rowland said with significance. “Worlds better.”

Sibyl smiled and took Dovie by the arm. “Thank you,” she said. “I am well.”

More heads nodded as they said their good-byes, and Sibyl led the girl away.

“Were they friends of yours?” Dovie asked.

“In this world,” Sibyl said, “everyone is friends with everyone else. In a way.”

They reached the woman who ruled over the reservations book, and Sibyl said, “Let’s have a table outside, if you please.”

They were led past tables of women, young and old, mothers and daughters, college girls, all whites and organdies and crisp blouses and well-fitted long sweaters, pearl earrings, and elegant straw hats. Deep glasses of iced tea, perfect roseate pats of butter, and tiny sandwiches served on ironed tablecloths. Nervousness poured off Dovie in waves, and Sibyl rested a reassuring hand on the girl’s forearm, guiding her through French doors into the stone garden at the rear of the clubhouse.

They sat at an iron table, framed by starbursts of lush fern, sedate in the spectacle of a perfect spring afternoon.

“So,” Dovie said, grasping for something to say. “Gosh. This is just lovely. Do you come here very often, then?”

“Sometimes,” Sibyl said. “My sister rather liked it. When I did come, it was usually with her. Most of her regular meetings were held here. Mine as well. Temperance society. The suffrage. Tenement reform. They’ve got quite a lively lecture series.”

“That sounds perfectly dreary,” Dovie said without thinking.

Sibyl laughed, shocked. “You’re right,” she said. “I suppose it does.”

Dovie froze, aware that she had made a mistake. But when she saw that Sibyl was smiling out of the side of her mouth, Dovie relaxed and smiled back.

Their tea and sandwiches appeared, and Sibyl gazed over the rim of her teacup at Dovie as the girl bent to help herself to a scone.

“You know,” Sibyl began, as though the thought had just occurred to her, “I don’t think you ever told me how you and Harlan first became acquainted.”

“Didn’t I?” Dovie said, feigning surprise. “I could’ve sworn I did.”

Sibyl shook her head with a knowing smile.

“We were introduced at Mrs. Allerton’s artistic salon,” Dovie said, setting her teacup down and folding her arms.

“Oh?” Sibyl said. “I don’t think I know Mrs. Allerton.”

“But you must,” Dovie protested. “Harlan said he’d been going there for years. He knew everyone there.”

“Did he?” Sibyl said. She thought with warmth of her crafty brother, gadding about in secret, away from the Captain’s prying eyes. No wonder they saw him so rarely. She felt a twinge of envy that Harlan had been free enough to build his own secret world, while she still moved through the one she had been born into. “Well, isn’t that interesting. Tell me, what goes on at one of her evenings?”

“They’re every Tuesday,” the girl said, growing animated. “Louisa—that’s her Christian name, she insists everyone go by their Christian name, she’s very unconventional that way—anyway, she always said that there was never anything diverting going on in the Hub on Tuesday evenings, and that it was high time someone hosted an evening that would bring together artists and society types.”

“Hm,” Sibyl mused. She wondered, privately, what sort of milieu this Louisa Allerton took for “society,” given that at least one of the most prestigious and exclusive historical lecture series had been meeting Tuesday evenings since time immemorial, possibly even before the Pilgrims dropped anchor at that apocryphal rock. “What an innovative idea. And how do the evenings usually go?”

“Well,” Dovie said, “the members of the salon will bring in some artist or other to give a performance, followed by some lively discussion on aesthetic principles. They’ll have a painter come in to talk and do some drawings in charcoal, or they’ll have a writer come and give a reading. They try to rotate who’s invited, so that each week they have someone different. Sometimes there’ll be music, and dancing. In fact, most nights it ends with dancing, even if there isn’t a musician invited. Louisa’s got this wicked punch recipe, you know, it’s just deadly.” She let out a simpering laugh, before remembering that there might be temperance ladies within earshot.

“It sounds like quite a festive bunch of people,” Sibyl remarked, keeping her voice mild, punctuating that mildness with a genteel sip of her tea. In a corner of her mind Sibyl reflected that such an evening would be the stuff of Eulah’s dreams. “And how did you come to be invited, again?”

“Oh!” Dovie exclaimed, through a mouthful of tea cake. She caught some crumbs under her chin with a napkin while saying, “I was giving a dramatic recitation. Of ‘Kubla Khan.’ ”

She smiled, dimpling, as Sibyl’s eyes widened.

“Harley said he’d never heard anyone who could recite poetry with as much passion as I could. That was the word he used,
passion
.” She shivered with pleasure at the recollection, little starbursts twinkling in her eyes, and Sibyl sighed inwardly. Eulah used to talk that way. Eulah always preferred an overstatement of feeling to an understatement.

“So you’re a performer, then?” Sibyl asked, nudging closer to the question of how exactly Dovie Whistler supported herself.

The girl’s face closed behind the veil that Sibyl was learning tended to fall when Dovie wished to avoid discussing something.

“Yes,” she said, without elaborating. “Anyway, they’d just asked me for the one evening, but Harlan took such a shine to me that he kept inviting me back as his guest. I’ve met some very lovely people there.” It felt strange, to Sibyl’s ears, to hear her brother called by his first name by someone from outside their family. He must have been moving in some progressive circles indeed.

“And how long ago was this?” Sibyl wondered aloud.

“Oh, several months, I should think.”

Sibyl coughed, having aspirated some of her tea. She brought a fist to her chest, hacking, and Dovie looked up from her teacup with concern.

“Why, are you unwell, Miss Allston?”

“No, no,” she sputtered, setting her cup down. “Fine. I’m perfectly fine. Thank you.”