Beautiful Wild

by Anna Godbersen

  “Can I bring you there?” he asked, indicating the ship. “Your mother and father are eager to see you.”

  For a moment she had no sense of the world. It was so hard to believe. Maybe she was afraid to believe. Yet it must be true what he said. They were all right, everything was all right, her mother and father had survived. Fitzhugh stood and faced her and she couldn’t help herself, she needed someone to hold on to, to steady her shaking. She threw her arms around his neck, pressed her body against his chest for support, and whispered, “Thank you, oh thank you, oh thank you so much,” into his ear.

  Part Four

  The Fate of the Princess

  by Dame Edna Sackville

  A concatenation of private rail cars has been traveling cross-country rather more slowly than is usual—they have had to cut their speed considerably before entering a town, on account of the large crowds that have gathered to welcome the survivors of the sinking of the Princess of the Pacific, of which I was famously one. This has been a heartening experience for all of the survivors, who, as I have expounded upon in my serialized account, suffered a trial of body and spirit on a desert island in the South Seas and were rescued only by the heroic voyage and return of Fitzhugh Farrar, sole heir to the Farrar Line after the tragic drowning of his older brother. Our trip back to the mainland was upon the grandest of the Farrar ships, which has recently been rechristened the Vida.

  However, several of the survivors have confided to me privately that they will be glad to finally reach New York, where the Farrar family has put up all members of the island camp in the Waldorf-Astoria indefinitely. The ordeal on the island was of course exhausting, but that is nothing compared to being feted by crowds of thousands! What we all know, and few will acknowledge, is this, my dears: the crowds are particularly vociferous on account of the sweethearts whose union was sealed on the aforementioned island. As you have read in this account, the proposal was of a most dramatic and memorable nature. It is said, though they have been coy about a date, that Fitzhugh Farrar and Miss Vidalia Hazzard, who met as fellow passengers aboard the Princess and began their courtship in a faraway place of swaying palms, will be wed before the year is out. Keep reading this column to learn if this rumor can be credited. . . .

  Twenty-Six

  “What are those?” Vida asked, her palm pressed to the glass in the private salon of the Farrar ferry, which delivered its transcontinental-to-transatlantic passengers from the Pennsylvania Station in New Jersey to the docks of Manhattan, where they might take an evening’s rest in one of the city’s fine hotels before beginning their journey to Europe. That was her own destination—hers and Mother and Father’s. They were all dressed in smart new suits for their first trip to New York City, Vida in a fitted high-necked jacket and skirt of cornflower blue—a shade she could not possibly have worn with her former complexion, but which was quite striking on her now—and a broad, beribboned hat; Mother and Father were in maroon and dark gray. Her life was just as it had been before the Princess (parties, dresses) except much grander, and much more talked about in newspapers.

  Meanwhile the life she had led on the island had become dreamlike. She knew she had been there, but it did not seem quite real.

  Except, sometimes—or maybe, really, if she was being frank with herself, several times an hour—she would close her eyes, and the smell of the ocean and the breeze against her neck and the salt from the sea sticking to her ankles were more tangible than this busy, safe world of railcars and fitting rooms and interviews and celebratory dances. She could almost hear Sal saying:

  Look at the world, look at all this wonder, stay still and just look at it, what are you rushing for, what else do you need?

  Then the life of parties and social columns seemed the illusion. She would be surprised when she opened her eyes and saw that it all went marching on. That more invitations arrived, and very interesting people sent notes seeking her friendship. There were so many appointments to be kept; it seemed the rest of her life had been planned out for her. That without a word from her, the whole trajectory of her story on this Earth had been written, described in print, heralded before it even took shape. And, all the while, various travel accommodations had been made in her name—she was moved inexorably toward a future she couldn’t remember agreeing to. Another day, another place like this: a first-class salon on a train or boat, with all the tassels, crystal lamps, silken settees, and regularly circulating trays of tea or champagne. An aura of luxurious and perfumed quiet that enveloped her thoughts and made her tired.

  “What are what?” Fitzhugh, who sat beside her on the sofa, one leg crossed over the other, looked up from his newspaper and glanced at the river. His appearance too had undergone a change—he wore a trim black jacket and chewed his bottom lip as he read the news. Her handsome fiancé, the one she’d dreamed of. Yes, the river was crowded with every kind of ship, skiff, or tug, and beyond the water traffic rose the high buildings and factories of a city unlike any Vida had yet witnessed.

  But she had meant—as she had thought would be obvious—the long sheets of white on the blue-gray surface of the Hudson. She pointed: “Those.”

  “Ice floes,” Fitzhugh said.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” she whispered. “Rivers don’t freeze where I come from, they just keep running.”

  “This one keeps running, too, believe me. The Hudson is a great highway. It brings goods from New York Harbor to the Great Lakes. It must have been damn cold overnight, or those ice floes wouldn’t survive with all the boats on the water.”

  “Isn’t it strange?” She meant the feeling of the word in her mouth. “Ice,” she said, to taste this fantastical concept. On the island it had been hot, often intolerably hot. You would have thought she dreamed about ice all the time. But the opposite was true. She’d forgotten its existence. She was about to say this when she realized that it was Sal she wanted to say it to, not Fitz, and then she had tripped once again into a murky room of her consciousness where she felt helpless, and a little stupid, and most definitely ungrateful.

  Shouldn’t she just feel lucky? Lucky to be alive. To be rescued. To be engaged to the famous Fitzhugh Farrar.

  But there were so many things she wanted to ask Sal, and he was always leaving rooms when she walked into them. She was always catching a glimpse of his back, and though she hoped that he would turn, that he would meet her eye, he never did. He would be gone again, and she would be one again with that helpless yearning feeling. The feeling that tugged at her, demanding to know what might have been. Then she’d wonder if she had made it all up—that Sal had wanted her, and she had wanted him. Maybe that was just a delusion caused by too much sun and salt water.

  Surely yearning for something back on the island was delusional. What after all would have become of them if they hadn’t been rescued? It would have been a nightmare, she reminded herself, not some blissful dream.

  “Well, it’s frozen water, I don’t know if ‘strange’ is the word exactly. . . .” Fitzhugh folded up the paper and tossed it on the little teak side table. He smiled, put a hand on her shoulder. “Have you ever seen snow?”

  “Oh yes, there’s a lodge Mother and Father like in the winter. There’s plenty of snow in California. But that sounds strange, too, now that you mention it.”

  “I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I’ve taken this trip a thousand times, but you’ve never seen the approach to the city. Should we go up to the observation deck?”

  “Oh yes, can we?” Vida asked.

  They crossed the salon, Vida trailing behind her fiancé, to the wingback chairs where Mother and Father sat, both reading the newspapers that had been delivered to them by servants in Farrar Line livery at the train station as their twenty-seven pieces of luggage were loaded on a wheeled cart to be delivered to the ferry. Having lost one suite of fine bags, Vida had thought this a little ridiculous. But Mother seemed to have learned the opposite lesson from the sinking of the Princess, and insisted upon bri
nging enough spare clothes for a lifetime. Vida had rolled her eyes, but Nora reminded her what a trial Mother had been through, that she should go easy.

  “Oh, but do be careful,” Mother said now, almost standing up as though to come along with them.

  “I know that it will take some time for you to trust this,” Fitzhugh said in his steady way, “but I will never let your daughter in harm’s way ever again.”

  Mother smiled and lowered herself back into her seat, and Father patted Mother’s knee. “Well, put a fur on, anyway,” she said.

  The air on the top deck of the ferry was sharp and exhilarating. Vida felt the cold under her cheekbones, behind her earlobes. This despite the fur she had dutifully draped over her shoulders. A city was coming into view—a city unlike any she’d ever seen. It went on and on forever, its forest of docks stretching off the coast of the place, the buildings that rose from its whole length, as far as she could see. She didn’t know precisely what lay beyond that first line of cityscape, although she had somehow or other absorbed all the legends of the ladies and gentlemen and their carriage rides around Central Park and their fancy dress in the ballroom of Mrs. Astor and the way they watched each other from across the opera. As she stood, in the middle of a great river, on a ferry surrounded by other ferries, alongside the unattainable bachelor who had seemed the male version of her equally unattainable self, a curious feeling sprang spontaneously from the region of her breastbone, and it was so unnatural that it took her a moment to identify it: she was nervous.

  “Do you think they’ll like me?”

  Fitzhugh was leaning against the rail, staring off at the city, and he laughed and glanced at her. “Who?”

  “I don’t know . . . New York, I guess. Your friends.”

  “What would make you worry about a thing like that?”

  “I’m not worried, exactly. It’s only that . . .” Vida’s gloved hand floated involuntarily to the back of her neck, where Nora had done as good a job as she could with pins to make it look as though her shorn hair was swept up in some fashionable arrangement. “Well, you don’t think it makes me less chic, to have my hair so short?”

  Fitz’s grin darted to one side. “Oh, Vida,” he said, his voice changing, lowering—it was no longer the sure voice of the Farrar scion but something more private. “Is this because I’ve been a gentleman with you?”

  His eyes went over her shoulder, determining who was around. But the other passengers were staring at the city growing larger before them, oblivious to the famous couple in their midst.

  “When I was on that raft, in the storm, when the sea was all around me and we seemed certain to drown, I kept thinking of you, thinking of your lips, and I thought that if I could only steer her true, I’d survive and I’d be able to kiss you again.” His gaze held hers, and his hand moved to her corseted waist as though to show her how much he’d thought about her body.

  Her heart did a pirouette, thinking that he was about to kiss her again, here, in front of everyone.

  Holding her waist he leaned in, let his lips hover at her ear. She was breathless, waiting, wondering what he would do. Then he placed a chaste kiss just slightly off the mark of her mouth, and returned to the position he’d been in before—elbows leaned casually against the rail—as though nothing had happened.

  “I’ve been thinking about that a long time,” he said, staring out at the river but smiling in a way that she felt was just for her.

  Her heart was pounding, although she found herself curiously unable to reply in kind. Not truthfully. Which was odd—she had been the master of a lightly bent truth in the service of getting what she wanted. And getting a boy to kiss her so that he would want to go on kissing her, and thus have to make all the promises that might otherwise be withheld, had ever been her game. But the game did not thrill her as before, and without the game, the moment had lost some frisson. Say something, she admonished herself, but before she had a chance, Fitzhugh concluded their conversation.

  “Don’t worry—they are sure to be impressed by you.”

  Vida nodded and returned her gaze to the big city growing larger by the second—she was reminded of that long-ago day at the Embarcadero, of the sheer cliff of the Princess, of the jittery rush that was the beginning of a voyage, when a girl has a mission and something to prove. She wasn’t sure what she wanted now.

  Or, she wanted too much.

  But something was different on this journey—she was different.

  They knew she was coming, of course—she was betrothed to one of their own. But because of the ordeal of the survivors of the Princess, she had become rather legendary herself, and she was looking forward to showing them how impressive she was, too. She gripped the rail, and imagined the adventure that lay beyond those piers.

  Tried to, anyway.

  But that phrase of Fitzhugh’s—“I’ve been thinking about that a long time”—echoed in her thoughts. Her heart clenched. She thought of kisses she had had, and kisses that never were. She wondered for the millionth time what would have happened on that beach the day they were rescued if she hadn’t stepped away. If she and Sal had arrived there a little earlier, a little later. Was this her forever? Riding the machinery of the Farrar Company, being carried from one place to another, thoughts of what might have been never far behind.

  Twenty-Seven

  “I can’t wait for it to be over,” Vida said in the direction of the three-part mirror, but really to Nora, who was just finishing with the little pearl buttons that went up the back of Vida’s lilac satin gown. The neckline revealed a lot of neck and shoulder, the sleeves were airy poufs, the skirt was a mermaid’s tail, and Vida had to acknowledge that neither she nor Nora had lost their touch in these matters.

  Nora observed her in the mirror. “What part of it?”

  From a suite in the Waldorf-Astoria, Vidalia Marin Hazzard, who had been famous in the picturesque backwater of a city where she had been born, had set about making herself a young woman to pay attention to in the hothouse of New York. This was a role she’d been born for. Now that she was on stage she found it was almost too easy. New Yorkers were very impressed by themselves and their city. But to her eyes it was much the same as anywhere—just bigger.

  In short order she had become a regular at certain restaurants, tearooms, and dressmakers’ shops. She learned to seem to watch a play or an opera while in fact noting from the corners of her eyes who was sitting with whom, and what they were wearing, and whether the particular set of their expression indicated that they felt on good terms with, or excluded by, fine society. She learned the system of streets—grid-like, except where they went all screwy and were laid down at curious, crooked angles—and how to argue with the driver of a hansom cab if he seemed likely to take advantage of her apparent newness. They could not all know that she was soon to be Mrs. Fitzhugh Farrar, of the shipping fortune Farrars, who lived in a Fifth Avenue palazzo that was staffed, on an uneventful day, by fifty-five (on the day of a function, twice that). Vida had come to know this house, too, which would be her house someday. Everything in that house was strenuously formal—the servants wore gloves, and so did the guests, who were announced by the second butler, even if it was just a little tea or something. Vida quickly discerned that a person could live there and, without any special effort, avoid other people who lived there, too. This was, as she admitted to herself and to Nora but to no one else, a relief. Mrs. William Farrar, mother of Fitz and the late Carlton, was a formidable woman, fearsome with her staff, unsmiling with her friends, a woman who traded favors, and whose favor was everywhere sought and rarely to be had. She was a legend, and Vida—who had always thought of herself as the sort of girl who would one day be a legendary hostess herself—should have liked her. But try as she might she could not persuade herself that she did.

  This was unkind, she knew—Mrs. Farrar had lost her oldest child, and then learned that she would lose her second son in a different way. That she would lose him to a girl nobody had
ever heard of. Winning her approval was the sort of campaign Vida used to enjoy. What a delight it was to be underestimated, and then to see the surprise in a person’s face when they realized what you were really made of! But, at the end of November, when Vida had been a New Yorker of ten days (all of them absolutely snow-smothered and toe-numbing), she found herself in her fancy hotel dressing room being tied into her evening’s finery by Nora and afflicted by a malady that she had been heretofore free of: boredom.

  “What part are you hoping to be over soon?” Nora asked again.

  That was perplexing, and Vida had to turn the question over for a moment or two. “The wedding, I guess.”

  “Well, it’s only another week, you shall have your wish. But I feel I should at least mention that a wedding is usually only the beginning.”

  “Oh.” This sounded true, but it also unsettled her stomach, so Vida babbled in another direction. “Do you remember that night I said, ‘What’s all this about another boat; I want to go to the party and laugh at all these people who are so easily impressed’? Can you believe that foolish whim got us here?”

  “Yes and no,” Nora replied easily, and went about busying herself with the strand of freshwater pearls that she had wound around Vida’s coiffure to disguise that there wasn’t especially much coif. This was Nora at her most irksome: not willing at all to engage Vida’s fantasies, her attention set upon the mission at hand. “Here we are. What else can you say? Fitz’s man sent up a note twenty minutes ago. I don’t think you can keep him waiting any longer.”

  Vida entered the famous ballroom of Alva Vanderbilt, at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-second, on the arm of the young man she’d campaigned for and who was now hers. The place was a chateau on the outside. Inside it was alive with flowered vines and potted palms; the floors were of black and white marble, and the fireplace was supported by caryatids, and the roof was of carved oak, and all the staircases were massive and curving and may as well have led all the way to the sky. Vida wasn’t such a student of interiors—none of the grandeur impressed her particularly. It was always what happened in fancy rooms that interested her. The house went on and on, room after room, each a little different but mostly just gleaming with golden accents and astoundingly high ceilings. This was the sort of victorious entrance that girls of social ambition dream about, and Vida—never unambitious herself—should have been giddy with her success. But she was consumed with the thought that everything looked just as she had imagined it would; that this famous place held no surprises.