The Moon by Night (8 page)

While Mrs. Duvall was replying to a comment about the opera they were to attend, Shiloh mentally kept taking note of how gracefully his mother-in-law guided the different elements of the gathering. When the conversation became general, involving the entire table, Irene skillfully controlled it. At all times she was watching the guests to see if they needed more food or drink. With very slight nods she signaled the servants—young girls named Sylvie and Mallow—and then encouraged them with approving smiles, all the while keeping up with the conversation. She and Richard also exchanged meaningful glances to communicate when one of his neighbors was being neglected or when it was time for the next course. Shiloh wondered if these graces were a matter of education or practice or simply a birthright of the privileged classes.

But then, he decided with deep affection, his wife was “to the manner born”—as Prince Hamlet of Denmark so memorably said—but generally she was much too engrossed in whatever conversation she was in or whatever topic her active, mercurial mind was working on at the time to be very proficient at conducting a dinner party. It was just not in her nature to be concerned about such things, he realized, even though Cheney was a sociable creature.
I need to learn how to do these things,
he thought with one part of his mind as he listened to Victoria and Irene talk across him about the seating in the Academy box for the opera.

Cheney's used to lavish social functions like dinner parties and cotillions and assemblies and junk like that. With the holidays coming up, we should be entertaining some, but just how am I supposed to learn? I don't know, but I'll figure it out. Cheney would like it, and she shouldn't have to be married to a big dumb oaf who doesn't know what an aperitif is or which spoon to use for the pudding….

“Mm, Madame Gallot's cherry roly poly with Dally's double cream,” Richard was saying as Mallow set the delicious dessert in front of him.

“Mother, you actually got Madame Gallot to admit that Dally's double cream is better than her sweet whipped cream?” Cheney asked.

“No, she never admits it,” Irene answered. “She just uses Dally's cream and pretends that it's her own.”

“Ah yes, Colonel Duvall, I had forgotten,” Victoria said mischievously, “that you had replaced Dally with Madame Gallot, who speaks only French, I recall? And how do you get along with her?”

“Just fine,” Richard answered with a twinkle in his clear gray eyes. “I do whatever she tells me to do, eat whatever she prepares, and never answer back to her, so we get along very well. Over the years Dev and I came to understand that that is how a gentleman had best conduct himself in a houseful of females.”

“So true, sir,” Dev agreed with a rare smile, his dimples flashing. “That reminds me—Shiloh, have you told everyone about the addition to the Irons-Winslow household?”

Hastily Shiloh answered, “Buchanan, you're going to get me into hot water for sure. I haven't even had a chance to talk to the doc about him yet.” Cheney had stayed at the hospital until late, and Shiloh had had four meetings that day, so both of them had barely had time to bathe and change before one of Victoria's coaches had arrived at Gramercy Park to pick them up. Cheney and Shiloh had discussed their day with each other on the ride, but Shiloh hadn't quite had time to figure out how to approach the subject of Phinehas Jauncy with Cheney before they had arrived at Duvall Court.

“Oh. Sorry,” Dev said guiltily. He, too, had come to understand the supreme importance of discussing domestic things with his wife before springing them on her, as it were, at dinner parties.

But Cheney merely smiled. “I already know anyway, Dev. It's all right. You didn't get Shiloh in trouble. I had a feeling that yesterday we had a highwayman camped in the front parlor, but today we have a new butler.”

“Er…he's a gentleman's gentleman, if you please,” Shiloh said, sighing. “I named him PJ. Can I keep him, Doc?”

“So long as he doesn't track in or eat us out of house and home,” Cheney said solemnly. “Of course, he's so little and wizened I don't think that's likely.”

“He's not little and wizened,” Shiloh said solidly. “He's willowy. He told me so.” Shiloh went on to tell them, with much embroidery, about Phinehas Jauncy and how terrified he and Balaam had been of the little man and his umbrella.

“And so he says he and his family have been in service to the Rawlings baronets for four generations, and now he's sort of applied to me for the job,” Shiloh finished.

“Do you believe him?” Minerva said innocently. “I mean, can you believe him? He sounds cute and funny, Mr. Irons-Winslow, but he was, after all, a thief.”

“You should believe him,” Richard said suddenly. “He's telling you the truth. Tommy Rawlings' man, yes, now I remember all that grumbling and complaining at the club a couple of weeks ago. You and Dev haven't been at the club for a while, Shiloh, so I guess you missed all the gossip.”

He then addressed the table. “At the Century Club there was a loud, pretentious, snobbish young Brit named Thomas Rawlings IV who was Gerald Barnstaples' guest a couple of weeks ago for the Founders' Feast. At the table young Rawlings went on and on about his man, and how his valet had stolen everything but the shirt off his back, and how he had been obliged to throw himself on Barnstaples' mercy and borrow money just to tide him over until his father could wire him, and now he had no valet, and on and on. I recall thinking at the time that somehow Rawlings' story didn't quite ring true, but of course I didn't say so. Later on Mason Forbes told me that Rawlings had left New York to return home without so much as a by-your-leave to Barnstaples, much less paying him back what he had borrowed. And then Amos Eno—he owns the Fifth Avenue Hotel—said all the servants knew the real story, down to the silver medallion on the brandy decanter. Without even meeting Jauncy I can tell you, Shiloh, that his story sounds much more likely than Rawlings' did.”

Shiloh nodded. “He rings true, as you say, Colonel Duvall.”

“He is such a well-spoken gent,” Cheney put in, her green eyes alight, “as Sketes says. Often.”

“It's because PJ calls her a delightful young person,” Shiloh said. “He calls all ladies ‘young persons,' and as far as I can tell, he really does think they're all delightful.”

There was much more animated discussion about Shiloh's new valet as Mallow and Sylvie took up the last cloth and brought in coffee, tea, nuts, and a fine Stilton cheese. After everyone had been served, Richard said, “Normally the ladies would retire to the drawing room now while we men smoke up the place and drink port. But in this new era where the ladies become chairwomen of the board of directors”—he made a small bow to Victoria and Irene—“I would like to ask their preference in how they would like to conduct this first meeting of the hospital board.”

Irene, who had been named chairwoman of the board, replied, “I don't think it's necessary for the board to withdraw. The only persons here who aren't on the board are Miss Wilcott and Shiloh, and I doubt very seriously whether our discussion must necessarily exclude them. Am I correct in this, Mrs. Buchanan?”

“Of course,” Victoria said smoothly. “I have no detailed pressing matters to go into tonight, only a few very general comments and questions to put to the rest of the board. Shiloh, Minerva, will you stay and suffer through our discussion?”

Both of them assented, so Victoria continued, “Tonight I only wished to let everyone know that the administrative side is going very well. Dr. Pettijohn has done a marvelous job with the purchasing and the bookkeeping. Our lawyers are happy with the setup of the recordkeeping, and I'm scheduling the Steen Family Trust bookkeepers to do an initial audit in the first week of January. The only thing needed is for us to set a fixed date for board meetings so that we can have reports from the lawyers and bookkeepers and, of course, the doctors.”

Richard nodded. “Once a month, do you think, for the first year, Mrs. Buchanan?”

“I think that would be fine. Today is the first Friday of December—how would the first Friday of every month suit everyone? Fine? Good. I'll let everyone know next month where and what time we'll meet,” Victoria said.

“So Dr. Pettijohn is doing a good job? In administration, I mean, Victoria?” Cheney asked thoughtfully.

“Yes, he is,” Victoria answered. “He has so much experience with suppliers and, of course, with the different readymade prescriptives and the ingredients of the pharmacopoeia too. He assisted his father in the apothecary before he went to Paris, so he does have a wide knowledge of that aspect of the business.”

“But how is he as a doctor?” Shiloh asked, his expression alert.

Cheney shrugged. “Fine, I suppose, although I haven't actually worked with him very much. There's no doubt that he is well educated and knowledgeable. L'Hôpital de la Charité is a teaching hospital of international renown. Isn't that so, Dev?”

“Ye-es, it is,” Dev answered slowly. “But as we've discussed before, Cheney, the leading minds and much work in all of the sciences have become more centered in Germany now, rather than Paris or London. L'Hôpital de la Charité is regarded as old school these days. Still respectable but behind the times.”

Dev shifted his gaze to include the entire table. “Cheney and I have had several discussions about the science of medicine and its progression from a dark art to a hard science. But I don't think it would be of interest to us here and now. Unless Cheney feels that Dr. Pettijohn does not suit, for some reason, then I think the matter should be taken up in private.”

“No, no. Nothing like that,” Cheney said hastily. “I haven't had an opportunity to work with Dr. Pettijohn yet, so I was just curious, Dev. And I do know that Victoria is a good businesswoman and a shrewd employer, so if she says he's a good administrator, then I'm very happy to have him. I certainly don't want to have to shuffle the papers and keep up with all those little chits and ledgers and orders and journals.”

Disdainfully Minerva added, “
And
the geometry.”

****

Built by the old Knickerbocker families and opened in 1854, the Academy of Music was the city's leading opera house. The eighteen boxes at the Academy were more sought after than seats on the stock exchange and had been promptly snatched up. The
nouveau riche
—the Astors, Vanderbilts, Morgans, and Goulds—never had a chance to purchase an Academy box for the simple reason that none ever came vacant. They were willed down the long family lines as carefully as if they were made of gold and paved with diamonds.

But Victoria Elizabeth Steen—at the tender age of eighteen—had done what no railroad mogul or venture capitalist king had ever done. She owned a box at the Academy of Music. Her first husband's family, the de Lancies, were original patrons. One item that Victoria insisted upon in the terms of her marriage settlement was that the patronage of the Academy of Music be put in her name and that she become the owner of record of the box. Josefina Wilcott Steen, Victoria's mother, had joked that the Academy box was the only reason she and Victoria's father had allowed Victoria to marry into the pedigreed but penniless family—the box made the outrageous amount of her dowry a little more palatable.

When Victoria's first husband, Lionel Jann de Lancie, had died in the War between the States, naturally Victoria had made it clear to her husband's family that they could use the box any time without asking her permission. But the surviving de Lancie family was small, and there were no young people. Finally Lionel's aged parents and two uncles moved to Cape May, where they had sumptuous summer homes and no desire to winter in Manhattan. So Victoria had the box at the Academy of Music. All the old Dutch families that owned the other boxes still referred to it as “the de Lancie box,” a sure sign of their refusal to believe that their era was almost over and their rarified society was being overrun by the
arriviste
hordes of clever, industrious peasant stock.

“I had no idea
Dinorah
was so popular,” Cheney remarked to Victoria as they sorted themselves out in the box. “What a crush.”

Minerva, Victoria, Cheney, and Irene sat close together in chairs along the railing. Behind them the men stood in a loose circle around Irene's chair, talking about President Ulysses S. Grant. Irene was entertaining them with the story of how bewildered Richard and then-Secretary of War General Grant had been as to how to address the Marquess of Queensberry.

“I'm a little surprised myself,” Victoria agreed with Cheney. “Its American debut was here, in 1862. It wasn't all that well attended then, if I recall correctly. It's a little bit frothy for my taste. It's a Grimm's fairy tale sort of plot, with magical treasure and supernatural tempests and enchanted pipers and village soothsayers.”

“Why do they call them soothsayers, I wonder,” Minerva said idly. She was leaning eagerly over in her plush chair, already participating in the most favored pastime at the opera: examining everyone else through opera glasses. “Are they those people who say ‘Forsooth, you!' or ‘Forsooth over there!'? Or do they just say ‘Sooth!' Is that a different category entirely?”

“Those are examples of Minerva's rhetorical questions,” Victoria told Cheney. “Thankfully, they require no answer. Now as I was saying, I don't care too much for this opera, but there is one thing I do like very—”

“Is it the goat?” Minerva asked, opera glasses still glued to her eyes. “I love the goat.”

“There's a goat?” Cheney asked blankly.

“Yes, an enchanted white goat,” Victoria answered. “I told you it was that kind of opera. But I wasn't talking about that. I love
Ombra leggiera
, the
Shadow Song
. You see, Dinorah wanders into the woods—”