The House of Velvet and Glass (58 page)

“I couldn’t,” Helen said, brushing a wary hand over her stomach. “It was all too good. I mustn’t.”

She couldn’t believe Eulah managed to eat at all, given that she’d spent all of dinner being led from one side of the dance floor to the other. Occasional young men attempted to cut in on her and Harry. Once, when the entree was served, he laughingly surrendered her to a rival so that he could sit down to eat. She’d foxtrotted by as Harry chewed, mouthing “Help!” in the direction of their table. Harry waved at her with his fork, grinning, pretending not to understand. By the time the foxtrot segued into a waltz, Harry was back on his feet.

“George, he’s being terrible.” Eleanor laughed with the indulgent smile of a mother who thinks her son isn’t terrible at all. “You really must say something to him. Poor Miss Allston’s not getting a moment’s rest. She’s already missed the asparagus.”

“I don’t think,” her husband grunted, “there’s much to miss about asparagus.”

“Really, Helen,” she whispered aside. “He’s never like this. He’s normally a very well-behaved boy.”

Helen smiled beatifically, tapping her thumbs together in her lap. Her daughter spun by in the throng of dancers, hair falling loose over her shoulders, head tossed back, beaming.

When they finally regained the table, Helen looked over her daughter, noticing the falling down coiffure.

“Why, Eulah,” she said. “What can have happened to your hat? With my butterfly brooch on it, thank you very much?”

“Oh!” she gasped over Harry’s chuckling laughter. “My hat?” Eulah stared off into the distance, mouth twisted in a faux-serious smile. “My . . . hat?”

Helen shook her head, and nudged her daughter under the table with her toe. “Oh, for Pete’s sake. You didn’t lose it, did you?”

“Me? Never,” Eulah whispered back. Then she added, “Maybe,” and grinned.

The hour was growing late, and Helen noticed the crowd of diners beginning to thin. A few dancers still clustered at the end of the gallery, and men lingered over glasses of cognac while ladies in twos and threes picked their way back to the cabins. An eclair sat untouched on Eleanor Widener’s plate as she sighed, taking another sip of her wine.

“I think I’d best be getting to bed,” she mused to no one in particular.

“Are you all right, Mother?” Harry asked.

“Oh, yes. Just a slight headache, is all.” She drew her evening cloak over her shoulders with a yawn. “George? Do you suppose you and Harry could . . . ?”

“Of course, my dear,” George said. “As we all know, nothing will bring on a headache faster than an eclair in close proximity.”

Harry and Eulah exchanged another high-frequency look, and Helen had to bite the inside of her cheek to conceal her excitement. Harry stood as George helped Eleanor get to her feet, fussing over her chair.

“Well,” Eleanor Widener said, arranging her wrap and hunting about for her beaded pocketbook. “It’s been a lovely evening. Mrs. Allston, a pleasure as always.”

“Indeed,” Helen said. “I do hope we’ll see you in Boston one of these days.”

“Well, Harry might be going up for his reunion,” Eleanor ventured, with an eye on her son.

“Oh, I am,” he assured her. He looked directly at Eulah and said, “I am.”

“Why, that’s just next month, isn’t it?” Eulah exclaimed, and Helen kicked her under the table. She was as cunning in her dealings with men as poor Harley was at the card table. Really!

“I believe it is,” Harry said, taking his mother’s other elbow.

“We’d be so happy if you’d join us for supper while you’re in town, Mr. Widener,” Helen said with perhaps too much majesty. Eulah grinned at him and nodded, a strand of hair drifting into her eyes.

“I’d love to,” Harry said. George Widener made a show of rooting in his waistcoat pocket for his watch and consulting it with a weighty grunt.

“Ah,” Harry said, observing his father’s machinations. “Good night, then!”

“Good night,” Eulah trilled. While she watched the Wideners make their way through the dining room, Helen watched her watch them.

When they were out of sight, Eulah plopped back in her chair with a gasp and immediately set to wolfing her eclair with unconcealed delight.

“Well, that Harry fellow certainly seemed nice, didn’t he?” Helen said, launching a volley.

“Mmmhmmmm,” Eulah said, giggling with a mouthful of pastry. She grabbed up a hasty napkin to save her bodice from crumbs of chocolate.

“He certainly seemed interested in
you
,” Helen pressed. “Why, I don’t suppose I’ve ever seen a boy so keen on dancing with a young lady. Were you nice to him, darling? Were you careful to ask him about himself ? You didn’t just talk his ear off, I hope.”

“Of course,” Eulah said, enjoying taunting her mother with the possibility that she could have been anything less than perfectly nice. “He told me ever so much about his book collection, you know. He was after a particular volume in Paris, he said. Something called
Le Sang de Morphée
.”

“How very odd,” Helen said before she could stop herself. “Well, at any rate, he certainly seemed keen to visit us for dinner next month, didn’t he? So what do you think of that?”

Eulah leaned forward and took her mother’s hand in hers with a smile.

“I think,” she said, “that we should order some champagne.”

As she spoke, Eulah raised one long, white arm and gestured for a waiter. He swanned over with a smile and Eulah mouthed the words
champagne, please
, gesturing at her mother and herself. The man cast the briefest glance at his pocket watch and then gave Eulah a wide beaming grin and disappeared.

“Champagne!” Helen exclaimed, shocked and pleased at once. “But we should be going to bed, my dear. It’s late.”

“Nonsense. We have nowhere to be,” Eulah said, leaning one arm over the back of her chair, cocking her head to the side, and smiling with her eyes half closed. Her loosened pale brown hair drifted over her shoulder, and she tossed it back with a careless sweep of her hand. “Mother, it is quite possible that we are living at a magical moment. Have you ever considered that?”

“Why, whatever do you mean?” Helen simpered. The waiter appeared at their elbows, bending at the waist and presenting Eulah with the bottle, wrapped in a linen napkin and held so that she might view the label.

“Oh, dear. Do you know anything about champagne?” Eulah asked her mother. “I’m sure I don’t.” She looked left and right, possibly to see if there was some gentleman of their acquaintance whose opinion could be sought, but finding no one she turned to the waiter and said, “Oh, that will be lovely, thank you.”

“Very good, mademoiselle,” the man said with a nod. He turned away from them and released the cork with a festive pop. Some sweet froth spilled over the lip of the champagne bottle, and the waiter licked it from his thumb.

“I only mean,” Eulah continued as the waiter poured two tiny wide-mouthed glasses of sparkling wine for the two Allston women, “that time seems to move faster, somehow, these days, I think. Why, just consider your life, Mother. When you were a girl you couldn’t cross the ocean half as fast as we are right now. You couldn’t send telegrams halfway round the world in a matter of moments.”

Helen laughed. “But of course you could! Silly girl. I’m not as old as all that.”

Eulah grinned and took a sip of her champagne to show that her loose grasp of the facts would do nothing to dissuade her from the larger point she was making.

“Mmmm. Perfect.” She sighed. “Just perfect, thank you.” She paused, savoring it with her eyes closed. Then she continued. “Electric light everywhere you go. Automobiles simple enough that even women can operate them. Cars make every place that much closer to every other place, you know, because they’re so fast. The telephone. Why, you can talk to people across the city without even leaving the house. That brings people closer, too. In a little bit we’ll get our suffrage, too, you mark my words. It’s like the world is so eager to come into itself, that it’s all we can do to keep up.” She sighed, pleased. “I’m so fortunate to be young now,” Eulah mused. “Don’t you think so? I think about that all the time.”

Helen sampled her own glass and found its sweetish fizz to be, as her daughter said, perfect. Cold and sharp and wonderful. She took another, longer sip, and closed her eyes, relishing the bright floral flavor. How did Eulah know just what was required to make a moment unforgettable? It was a real skill her little girl had. She had a way of seeing right into the heart of a situation, and knowing it for what it was.

Helen let her eyes come to rest on her child’s face, full cheeked, blushing with life, a few rebellious strands of pale brownish hair sticking up comically into the air, like butterfly antennae. Before she could think what she was doing, Helen reached forward to cup her daughter’s cheek in her hand, brushing her fingers over the girl’s young skin.

“Oh, my dear,” she said, sighing. “Have you had a lovely time? I only hope that you have.”

“I have, Mother,” Eulah said, turning her shining blue eyes on Helen’s face. “In fact, I might be happier in this very moment than at any other time in my life. Happier than I could ever imagine being.”

Helen dropped her hand to Eulah’s shoulder and squeezed. Eulah poured a touch more wine for both of them, and they settled back in their chairs, the downward slope of their shoulders in repose marking them indelibly as mother and daughter. At the opposite end of the dining room the orchestra, looking a little sleepy around the edges, conducted a quick conference in which they seemed to debate whether enough people remained for them to play a few more songs. The consensus seemed to be that there was time for one or two more, but there was no particular rush. The plinking and plonking of instruments being retuned emanated from the end of the gallery.

Deep within the ship, under the hum of late-night conversation and the clinking of glasses, the clock, the one in the grand stair with sculptures of “Honor and Glory crowning Time,” began to chime. Out of habit Helen listened, counting as she did with the mantel clock back home on Beacon Street, but as usual she lost track of the number of chimes. Must have been the wine, which, she had to admit, was going right to her head. Helen brought a hand to her temple and massaged it. Well, it couldn’t be helped. She felt fine right now. Better than fine. She felt marvelous.

Tuning at the ready, the orchestra opened with the languid first few bars of the same song that was playing when Helen and Eulah arrived in the dining room for dinner. The tempo was slower now, sleepier, drawing the evening to a close.

“It’s that song you like,” Helen remarked, feeling herself lulled by the melody.

“Mmmmm.” Eulah nodded. After listening for a bar or two, she started singing along with a husky alto. “Cuddle up, and don’t be bluuuuue. All your fears are foolish fancy, mayyyyybe . . . you know, dear, that I’m in looooove with youuuuuu. . . .”

Helen smiled an indulgent smile at her daughter. “Singing at the dinner table,” she said, shaking her head. “We just won’t tell your father.”

Eulah laughed, taking another sip of her champagne.

The orchestra continued to play, a few scattered couples swaying in each other’s arms. The candlelight on each table flickered lower as the candles burned away, and the smell of burnt wax blended with the heady springtime scent of lilies in the air. Helen let her elbow come to rest on the dining table in a nest of cast-aside napkins, resting her cheek in her palm and letting her eyelids drift closed. She and Eulah sat together, listening to the languid music, not speaking.

Under her feet, Helen felt a subtle change. Her eyes opened. The vibrating of the ship’s engines, so omnipresent and steady that she had stopped noticing it, had shifted in timbre, from a steady hum to a laboring
lug lug lug
. Helen moved her gaze to Eulah’s face, to see if she noticed the change as well. A few of the remaining diners murmured among themselves, bending their heads together, speculating. Several men stood and strode to the windows of the dining room, looking out and down through the fog toward the water. But Eulah sat still, her head tipped back, eyes closed, long expanse of creamy neck exposed, lips curved in a tiny smile.

The orchestra gave no sign that they had noticed anything different, segueing into another slow-tempo popular tune, which Helen also couldn’t identify. The dancing couples, after pausing to discuss among themselves the lurch they had felt, shook off their worries with a collective shrug and resumed dancing.

“Curious,” Helen said to herself.

More alert, she straightened in her chair, surveying the dining room. Several of the gentlemen at the windows were locked in hushed conversation, hands moving, animated. A group of them hurried through the door to the deck together, while another group broke away to return to their tables, bending and whispering to their dining companions. Murmurs started to circulate among the dining tables. A few uniformed men rushed past the dining room windows, almost at a run.

Everyone else, however, carried on as usual. Full of vague disquiet, Helen waited. For a long few minutes, nothing happened.

Then, Helen heard a groaning, cracking sound, and the dining table shifted, scooting under her arm and sliding six inches down the floor, almost as though she were at one of Mrs. Dee’s séances. It took a moment for Helen to figure out that the table had moved because the ship had listed to one side. Startled, she took hold of the table with both hands, eyes wide. A few women in the dining room let out surprised shrieks, but were soothed by the men sitting with them. The orchestra stopped playing, looking around themselves, uncertain. Outside the dining room, in the gallery below and along the walkways outside the windows, the thrum of running feet and shouts could be heard. Helen’s heartbeat quickened.

Eulah opened her eyes and smiled at Helen. Her daughter looked so serene, so full of joy. Helen couldn’t help but return the smile.

“Darling,” Helen said. “Did you feel that?”

Eulah just smiled and shook her head. “Feel what?”

Helen stammered. “Why, I could have sworn—that is, it seems almost like—”