A Lady of Good Family

by Jeanne Mackin

  The American matron smiled even more broadly. She had light brown hair graying in broad streaks, thick brown eyebrows over impossibly pale blue eyes, and a pointed face, all giving her a wolfish look. Gathered around her was her pack of three daughters of marriageable age, decked in pale colors and trailing skirts. They swayed, twirled their parasols, and kept looking coyly about, like girls in a ballroom waiting to be asked to dance.

  “Lovely day,” Minnie agreed, nodding but still not remembering. “The sun is quite pleasant.”

  “It is a bit warm, though.” The woman eyed the glasses of lemonade, the shade of the umbrella, the free chair.

  Mrs. . . . Mrs. . . . Beatrix couldn’t for the life of her remember the woman’s name, only that they had met at another woman’s home, probably in New York, although it could well have been there, in Rome. Traveling was an excellent occupation, except it required so much memory, and the only details in which Beatrix was truly interested were plants and landscape. Her memory for Latin taxonomy names was inexhaustible; for matrons, brief.

  “A bit too warm, perhaps,” agreed Edith, squinting a bit from the sun.

  Mrs. Of-the-Forgotten-Name eyed Edith with a distinct lack of approval. It was rumored that the Wharton woman had written poetry as a young girl. She had even published in journals. Unsuitable. And that niece, Beatrix. Yes, she had heard about Beatrix Jones. Imagine, a lady digging in the dirt, standing in the sun for hours, working for a living. In truly good families, even husbands didn’t work for a living.

  “Well,” said Mrs. What’s-Her-Name, angry that she hadn’t been asked to sit with them. The Jones family was strange, but they were of old blood and old money. The Joneses and Whartons were just the kind of society she needed to get those three daughters married off, to get them, finally, onto Mrs. Astor’s list of those to be invited to future balls and New York charity events. What luck to run into them in Rome!

  But now the Joneses and Whartons had as good as snubbed her in a public place. Bad enough that they couldn’t remember her name, but not to offer her a chair and a place in the shade under their sun umbrella—that was too much.

  The woman flushed. “Will we be seeing you this evening?” she asked. “So many dear friends have sent their acceptances, I can’t quite keep them straight. The princess Constanza will be there.” She had already resolved that if the Joneses and Whartons did not attend her musical evening, she would find a way to make them sorry for the slight.

  Minnie remembered now, with a visible sigh of relief, who this inconvenient woman was. “Thank you so much for thinking to invite us, Mrs. Haskett.” They had met in New York a few years before, and Newport before that, at various charity balls and public events. Her husband had speculated and accumulated a fortune in one of the industries, but Minnie couldn’t remember which. He had died recently, heart trouble. She recalled now that Mrs. Haskett always had her three daughters in tow. They seemed especially difficult to marry off, still being paraded about after so many seasons. And then Minnie repented of that thought, for wasn’t the same being said of her Beatrix?

  “I do worry, though, that my headache may keep me in this evening,” Edith said.

  “It must not,” Mrs. Haskett insisted. The three daughters smirked.

  “Beg pardon?”

  “I said, Mrs. Wharton, that your headache will probably disappear between now and nine thirty and I would so hate to have you miss the music. Signor Lucente is on violin, and Madame Granados will be singing. Perhaps Miss Jones will also sing for us. I hear she has a lovely voice.”

  Beatrix pretended to find a loose thread in her crocheted bag and did not respond. Mrs. Haskett’s eyes narrowed.

  Mrs. Haskett was a social climber of consummate skills. In a few short years she had risen from her beginnings as a shopkeeper’s daughter in Montana to a society wife, sans accent, sans homemade clothing, sans a Western taste for bread dipped in bacon grease.

  But when she first arrived in New York as a young bride, she had hit the brick wall of Mrs. Astor’s dislike of the nouveau riche and stalled there, smashed on the sidelines of old families and old money. Her widowhood had not advanced her cause—single women could be so hard to seat at a dinner party—and though she was invited to parties and balls, they were not the right parties and balls, not the exclusive ones in the Fifth Avenue mansions. Bitterness and envy smoldered in her like an autumn bonfire that will never die completely out but only smoke away, threatening the houses in the near vicinity.

  And now, having made it as far as Rome, as far as a private tea with the princess Constanza, who, though of questionable character, was a bona fide princess of an old Savoy family, she was being snubbed yet again by the New York brigade. She would not have it.

  “Till this evening, then,” she said. “Come, girls. We will be late for our appointment with the hairdresser.” She turned and stalked away, head high as though sniffing the air for her next attack.

  A group of young men, mustachioed and with swinging canes, appeared on the walk and set the three Haskett daughters into a fit of simpers and giggles.

  The Whartons and Joneses watched the blushing girls and their mother disappear down the gravel path.

  “I thank whatever fortune guides me that my Beatrix is not silly,” said Minnie. “Imagine making it your life’s work to marry off those creatures.”

  “We must go to her party, I suppose,” Edith said.

  “She knows I had forgotten her name. I saw it in her eyes. How unpleasant.” Minnie sighed.

  “I would have remembered her if there was any distinction to be remarked,” Beatrix said defensively. “They do all look alike, don’t they? Some simply wear larger jewels and more padding in their hair. I do wonder if there are any New Yorkers left in New York.”

  “You need more exercise,” said her mother. “You are sounding bored. Perhaps you should walk a bit. We’ll stay here.”

  In fact, it was Minnie who was most bored. Beatrix was still being taunted by that weed, and those in the midst of temptation are not bored. But one of the advantages of being a mother was that one’s faults could so easily be assigned to one’s daughter. Not that Minnie was unpleasant about it. She and Beatrix were close and loving, certainly closer than Beatrix and Minnie had ever been with the third part of the family trinity, the husband and father.

  Mr. Frederic Jones, Edith’s brother, was currently, and had been for some time, in Paris with his mistress. If, in some rare minutes, Beatrix, with her soft gray eyes, regal height, and long, straight nose, reminded Minnie of that straying husband, she never said so. She had once loved Freddie, well enough to defy dear Henry James’ fearsome edict that they should not wed.

  Early during Freddie’s brazen adulteries, Minnie had tried to forgive him because of that supreme favor he had once done her: bringing her in contact with Mr. James. Henry had been a college friend of Freddie’s and, knowing the man well, had gone to New York to plead with him not to wed the serious bluestocking Mary Cadwalader Rawle, not because of any imperfection in Mary but simply because of oil and water. That was what he had said. They would never mix well, never be happy together. He had been correct, as always. Henry knew human nature.

  Freddie hadn’t been at home to receive the warning, that afternoon of many years before, so Henry had called on Minnie, instead to voice his doubts about the coming nuptials. It was impudent on his part, even a little rude, but Minnie hadn’t taken it amiss. She had already read his stories and reviews in The Atlantic Monthly and was flattered by the attention of a man of his reputation. In fact, she quizzed him closely on his opinions of Sir Walter Scott, and they spent a pleasant hour together discussing not marriage or Freddie Jones but the novels of Scott, which Mr. James admired and Minnie did not. However, Minnie was in love with Freddie, and Henry James hadn’t been able to talk her out of the marriage. Despite that, they had been friends ever since.

  “
You do look bored, Edith. So am I.” Teddy tugged at his collar and then, understanding his words could be considered boorish, gave his wife a false smile of reassurance. “My immediate company is charming,” he quickly added. “As always. But all these gardens and ruins. What good are they?”

  “You ask what the point of a garden is. Really, Teddy.” Edith tapped her foot with impatience.

  Beatrix shifted in her chair, feeling the perspiration that made her clothes stick to her back and arms, and longing, absolutely yearning, to lean over and pluck that weed.

  THREE

  “Your story is very gossipy,” protested Mrs. Ballinger, the creak of her chair pausing for a moment as she leaned across Mr. Hardy to complain. “I’m not certain I approve.”

  “It is important to reveal character as well as situation,” I explained. “That would have been Mr. James’ defense for detail. Beatrix would have said that the soil must be thoroughly prepared before the planting. Gardeners pay attention to detail. I do not invent, and if you are to understand what follows, you must understand what Beatrix was thinking at the time. I will continue now, Mrs. Ballinger.”

  “Do,” said Mrs. Avery.

  Lightning split the Lenox sky in two like a theater curtain. Girlish shrieks and laughter sounded from the parlor where the young people were dancing.

  “Storm’s coming,” said Mr. Hardy, smiling. He was remembering, I thought, a storm of his youth, when a bolt of lightning sent a pretty young girl, shrieking and laughing, into his arms. “I like a good storm. Cleans the air,” he said.

  My husband, Mr. Winters, had enjoyed a good storm as well. He used to bet on how long it would take for the rain to arrive, once the first lightning struck. He’d bet on which raindrop would trickle down the window first. It was his flaw, his fatal weakness. But he had carried excitement with him the way another man might bundle the daily paper under their arm. I think it was because he had spent so much of his youth and childhood abroad in Switzerland, where because so much is forbidden he had grown up with a sense of outlawry.

  That is the problem, you see, with the overly strict rearing of children. If even little things, such as putting one’s elbows on the table and saying “damnation” when a toy breaks, are condemned as criminality, then the child feels himself to already be a criminal. In for a dime, in for a dollar.

  This was partly Edith’s problem, as well, I believe. Her mother had been strict and undemonstrative, making it quite clear she preferred Edith’s brothers. Edith learned, eventually, to please only those who pleased her, Mr. James among them.

  “Didn’t Mrs. Wharton have a home in Lenox?” Mrs. Ballinger asked.

  “Not far from here,” I said. “But now we are in Rome, not Lenox.”

  • • • •

  “So sorry you are bored.” Edith didn’t look at Teddy but stared into the green distance. “The gardens are lovely, though, aren’t they?” Her voice was clipped and cold, in contrast to the Roman heat.

  Teddy tugged at his collar again and looked at his pocket watch.

  I will never marry, Beatrix thought. Never.

  She had passed through the first heady years of womanhood, the first balls, first waltzes, first dancing card and house party invitations, quickly discouraging any serious suitor. “My mother,” she had simply explained when any young man tried to call on her a little too frequently, implying that her duty to her solitary, hardworking mother made it impossible to accept other affections. Now that most of those young men had already wed, she felt she could easily avoid the issue permanently.

  She jumped up, eager to be away from the table. “I will walk.” She stepped closer to the taunting weed. She bent. She pulled and plucked. It had fibrous roots rather than tap, just as she had suspected. She put the weed in the pocket of her jacket for later sketching and identification and looked around to see if anyone had caught her in this furtive maneuver. Only Edith, who smiled conspiratorially.

  Still, they might never have met, the Italian and the American.

  Beatrix could have walked in the opposite direction, away from the temple. She could have strolled through the rose garden or gone into the casina. But she chose the temple, that eerie replica of pagan passion.

  “Don’t be too long, Trix. We have invitations for this evening,” Minnie reminded her.

  “Fifteen minutes,” Beatrix called over her shoulder, already moving quickly away. “That’s all.” She walked with determination, strides a little longer, a little faster, than was acceptable for a lady during a leisurely afternoon.

  An air of decrepitude, a smell of unwholesome rot and stagnation, circled the part of the garden surrounding the temple. It was like moving from one reality to another, and not entirely pleasant.

  The temple made Beatrix think of Bluebeard and his wives, knights locked in dungeons. To dispel the gloom, she tried to imagine Uncle Teddy as Bluebeard, trying to lock Aunt Edith into her room. Impossible. Edith would climb out the window and be away, never to return.

  They will divorce, too, Beatrix thought. It is just a question of time. What was the point of it, then, courtship and love and marriage? In a garden, things began and ended according to season. In relations between a man and a woman all was disorganization, discord. I will never marry, she repeated to herself.

  I dread marriage, thought a young man walking a good distance away. He had been taking the air before going home, enjoying a walk between the lawyer’s office and the dilapidated palazzo he inhabited with his father. The lawyer had been unpleasant, his voice bordering on a continual sneer, his statements full of ultimatums and warnings. Shoulds and musts. Or else. Your father insists.

  The gardens were full of Americans; the young man who had just been soundly berated by the family lawyer disliked the sounds of their voices, so full of German consonants, not at all soft like his own Italian. The sounds of conquerors, he thought, laden with wealth and greed and taking much of his homeland back with them when they returned to New York and Boston and Chicago. That’s what the visit to his lawyer had been about: the possible sale of several artworks. That, and the other business.

  Empires rise and fall. He lived in a land of fallen empire, part of a family that was falling even faster than the rest of the empire.

  There was no cure for history except to sell: collections, paintings, sons.

  Perhaps Mrs. Haskett would be in the gardens again today. He could accidentally encounter her, remind her that she had promised to come look again at the painting.

  Ahead of him was an example of the fall of empire: a group of boys, dirty, sly eyed, begging, and worse, their grimy hands snaking into the folds and cuffs of passing men and women, searching for coins, watches. They had surrounded a young woman and were practicing their street skills on her. He saw her face, the terror behind the forced calmness of a tight smile. He changed direction and headed toward the crime in action.

  Still, they might never have met. He could have waved from a distance, yelled something the boys would have understood, driven them off with words. But he kept walking toward her.

  Beatrix, suddenly surrounded, trapped by the clamoring children, was forced to a complete halt.

  Where had they come from, this cluster of noisy urchins, each one beautiful enough after a necessary washing to pose as an angel? As she stood, speechless, they grew bolder, tugged at her sleeves, jumped up at her. “Me, me,” they shouted. “Choose me for your guide. A penny. Only a penny, miss.”

  She felt one little hand snaking into the folds of her skirt, searching for a pocket, a purse. The scene changed from charming to fearsome as the children swarmed ever closer, forcing her in one direction, then another. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t escape. She put her hands over her ears, trying to shut out their cries.

  They pressed closer, suffocating her. She became dizzy and was afraid of stumbling, of falling beneath the frenzy of screaming child
ren, being trampled by them.

  “Alt! Attenzione!” A man’s deep voice scattered the boys. One by one, the hands and shoulders and knees that had been closing on her flitted away.

  She opened her eyes to see the last of the children scurrying off, sticking his tongue out at her over his shoulder.

  “Are you all right, miss? May I help you to a bench?” The man’s voice was melodious, with soft middle vowels, slightly rolled r’s. His hand was on her elbow, guiding her, and still flustered, she pushed him, her long arms windmilling in panic. He backed away.

  “Pardon,” he said more stiffly.

  “No, please pardon me.” She offered him her hand apologetically and looked straight at him. This was Beatrix’s way. Direct, open, no coyness.

  Their eyes met in a shock of recognition though they had never met before. Did all birdsong, all conversation, cease for a heartbeat when their eyes met, or did they merely imagine it? You know the moment, don’t you? This one, and no other. If you have never experienced this moment, you have my condolences for your loss. Whatever comes after, the moment is worth it.

  Beatrix, though, was already thinking, There is still time to stop this. She could simply turn away and hurry back to her table, her family. But she stood her ground.

  He had a kind face, a good face. Olive complexion, black hair and eyes, but with none of the leer or suggestion that traveling women often faced in strangers’ eyes in public places.

  Her face was flushed pink, the color of distress that comes over women with hair that particular shade of auburn. Her nose was long and sharp, her mouth and eyebrows straight, no hint of a curve. A handsome rather than pretty woman, with pale gray eyes full of sweetness, though when she was crossed they became the color of a cold rain.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Thank you. I will sit for a moment. Catch my breath.” Her voice, he thought. It sounded of arias and violins, danced up and down scales within those few phrases.

  He extended his arm, palm up, in the direction of the bench. He did not attempt to touch her again.