“‘I promised my father I would be there, and I will be there, on time, dead or alive!’ the bridegroom shouted to the wolves.
“The day for the young girl’s nuptials dawned fair. One has to wonder why it never rains on such days in such stories, but it doesn’t. She was dressed by her maid in her wedding gown of ivory satin; the last roses from her bedraggled garden were twined into her hair. Thus attired, she was leaning on her chamber casement and looking out when the groom arrived.
“He was filthy with the mud and dust of travel, his face white and haggard, his horse sharp ribbed and lathered.
“‘I was set upon by thieves,’ the young man gasped when the baron came down to greet him.
“‘Think no more of it, and prepare yourself for the church,’ said the baron, though he was discouraged by the young man’s ragged appearance. The daughter, still leaning out her window, sighed. Even under the paleness of fatigue and the dirt of travel, his was a face to make the sun shine. All her worry for nothing!
“The wedding was held, even though the groom limped and his beautiful face was gray. There were deep shadows around his burning eyes.
“When the baron’s daughter lifted her veil for the kiss, she felt love stir even more strongly in her. His lips on hers were as damp and cold as stone. He needs a rest, she thought. Still, she was suddenly looking forward to the wedding night. He could rest afterward.
“The musicians played merrily, but the groom did not dance. She loved the feel of his hand over hers, though his fingers were icy. She loved the gleam of his eye, though it was feverish. She loved that he was hers, all hers, forever.
“But when the time came to put the bride and groom to bed, the groom rose from the feasting table with a wild look on his face.
“‘I cannot stay the night,’ he said, his voice as forlorn as the sound of a tree falling after lightning has blasted it. ‘I have an appointment elsewhere.’
“‘Elsewhere?’ thundered the baron. ‘Where else should the groom be this evening but in bed with his bride? What cheating game is this you play?’
“‘The only cheat is that I was here at all,’ said the groom, his words turning all the colors in the room to gray.
“The bride felt a fist clench around her heart.
“‘My appointment is in St. Anselm’s Church, some twenty leagues away from here,’ said her groom. ‘I must return to my bier and prepare for my burial. I was murdered in the forest.’
“Oh, the sorrow in his eyes, in his face, for groom loved bride as well as bride loved groom, and he wished more than anything in life or death to stay by her side. But he could not. ‘Come,’ he said, offering her his hand. ‘Say farewell.’
“The guests were frozen with horror and perhaps with a bit of magic as well, for no one moved or protested as the bride put her hand in the hand of her corpse groom and walked with him into the garden, to make their farewell.
“‘I came for you,’ he said, ‘And now that I have seen your face, know that I will return for you.’ He turned her hand over, placed a cold kiss on her hot palm, and disappeared into the green and black darkness of the forest.”
• • • •
“Oh, I’ve got shivers!” Mrs. Avery rubbed her arms.
All the chairs on the porch had stopped rocking, and the crickets were even louder than before. The air had become heavy and still. A clap of lightning illuminated the night and Mrs. Avery gave a little shriek of fright.
“That story was told to me by Edith Wharton herself,” I said. “One summer night at the Mount, when a storm was coming and we felt uneasy. Beatrix was most moved by it. ‘A specter bridegroom,’ she said. ‘Ghastly.’
“‘To some extent, all bridegrooms are specters,’ Edith told her. ‘We never marry the man we believe ourselves to be marrying.’ That was after Minnie’s divorce, and a few years before her own.”
“There is such a thing as a happy marriage,” protested Mr. Hardy. His wife had died ten years before, and I had noticed that the more distant our spouses are, the more saintly they become.
“I did not say there was not,” I said. “I was only telling a ghost story, upon request.”
“We will need to go in soon. I felt a drop of rain,” Mr. Hardy said, holding his hand out to test for more.
“I could talk all night,” I said, and laughed.
“I noticed,” said Mrs. Ballinger.
The piano player in the hotel’s front parlor stopped tinkling halfway through “At the Devil’s Ball,” and a moment later we heard him shut up the piano. People had been singing along, and now they fell silent, but the tune finished itself in my head.
“Never approved of that song. It’s blasphemous,” declared Mrs. Ballinger, as if Mr. Irving Berlin needed her permission.
“It’s merely whimsical, and funny, if you think about it. Good for a laugh,” Mr. Hardy said. “The soldiers enjoyed it.”
Rain started to fall then, though “fall” wasn’t quite the word. It came down like a curtain, thick and noisy, a light, eerie blue against the blackness of night. We jumped from our chairs and cowered against the porch wall trying to stay dry.
“I think we must go in,” Mr. Hardy shouted over the heavy pattering of the rain. He ushered us into the doorway as men do, as if herding sheep or ducks, his arms making a semicircle. I have always loved that particular gesture. Inside, we shook ourselves and raindrops spun from our heads.
Mrs. Avery yawned. “I’m going upstairs. It’s been a long day. And tomorrow I’m going to the afternoon concert at the pavilion with my daughter and her children. She’s coming in on the train.”
“Of course,” I said. “Sleep well, Mrs. Avery.” We were silent until long after her heels had clicked down the hall. Mrs. Avery’s daughter had, yesterday, telephoned at the last minute to say she couldn’t make it; we feared she might repeat this inconsiderateness tomorrow. The telephone had much to answer for. When people had to take the time to write notes and send them out through a footman or the post, people were more obliging.
“Poor soul,” sighed Mrs. Ballinger. “Children can be so ungrateful. If my Evie kept breaking her promises to me . . .” She left the sentence unfinished and went upstairs to her room.
“She’d tan her bottom,” Mr. Hardy said, when we were alone in the hallway. “Will you take a drink with me, Daisy? Before you go up for the night?”
We went into the hotel’s barroom, where the young people had set up a gramophone and were dancing. We sat at a little table as far away from the dancers as possible, though once in a while a particularly vigorous couple would jump in our direction, their arms and knees going off at all different angles.
“I could barely waltz. If I had to do that dance, I would have given up on socials after my first party.” Mr. Hardy ducked his head the way shy children do.
“I waltzed divinely,” I said. “When Mr. Winters and I took to the dance floor, people stopped to watch. I’ll have a brandy,” I said.
We sat in silence, watching the dancers, listening to how the rain sometimes overpowered the thumping recorded music, and I thought of the first time I had waltzed with Gilbert, on the little dance floor of the Hotel Eden, in Rome. It was two days after he had found me with Giovanelli at the Colosseum, two days after he stole the first kiss, or thought he had stolen it, though I had been planning that kiss all along. “I believe you are a flirt, Miss Cooper,” he said, pulling my chair out for me and extending his hand. “Someone will have to watch over you and keep you out of trouble.” We whirled to Strauss’ Treasure Waltz, one-two-three, one-two-three, around and around. He waltzed well.
“Was Mrs. Nevill a flirt?” I asked. That was the name that had been associated with his.
Gilbert stopped dancing so suddenly I almost lost my balance. “You will never say that name again,” he said. “We had an association, and now it is over. You need kn
ow no more.” He took me back to the table where I had been sitting with my mother, and the three of us sat in awkward silence. He wouldn’t dance with me again that evening. But he asked to see me the next day, and the day after.
Mrs. Nevill was never mentioned again. My mother carefully explained that single men often form attachments, and some married men as well, but brides and wives simply look the other way and hope the attachment ends soon. I was luckier than many women in that I had met Gilbert after Mrs. Nevill was no longer a part of his life. She had found richer game.
“Terrible weather,” said Mr. Hardy, interrupting my thoughts.
“It is,” I agreed.
“You were very far away, just now.”
“I was in Rome. Again.”
“I’ve never been to Rome,” he said. “But I did go to the world’s fair in Chicago. Saw Little Egypt dancing on the midway.” He chuckled. “Have to admit, went back several times to see her. The missus wasn’t too pleased with me, but that girl could really shimmy, and her costume, all spangled and sparkling, was a sight to remember.”
He smiled and even blushed a little, and there was something in his face, a kind of innocence, a reminder of other times, that made me weak with nostalgia. I thought again of that yellow barn against a blue sky, the row of hollyhocks, and had a sudden and overwhelming urge to return to the farm outside of Schenectady, to see if that barn was still there, even though my grandparents had died years before. Perhaps new owners had painted it a different color, or even torn it down.
“Well,” Mr. Hardy said, when I had finished my drink. “It’s late.”
“Sleep well, Mr. Hardy.”
“Walter. Call me Walter, Daisy, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind at all, Walter. Good night.”
I climbed the stairs slowly to my room, exhausted yet still unwilling to be alone. Solitude did not come easily to me.
In my room, I flicked on all the lights and out of habit checked to see if the maid had left any mail or messages. No. There was, of course, no letter from Mr. Winters. Again, that terrible pang of loss and regret. I should be used to this by now, I thought. But I wasn’t. I tossed and turned for most of the night, and when I did sleep I dreamed of dark catacombs and a formal Italian garden where all the flowers were black.
The next morning dawned sunny and mild. The heavy rain had broken some of the roses in the garden, but those with the stronger stems looked freshened, pleased with themselves.
“They needed a good soak,” said the gardener, looking up at the sound of my footsteps. He was clipping off the spent flowers and I remembered something else Beatrix had once told me about her childhood. Her first garden lesson had come from her grandmother in Newport, who had taught her how to deadhead the garden, remove the spent blooms so that new ones would come. The first thing Beatrix had learned was how endings lead to new beginnings, and that was a lovely thing for a child to understand.
“There will be a fresh set of buds, after that rain,” said the gardener, turning back to his work.
It promised to be a pleasant day, so I decided to walk downtown and look into shop windows. I tried on a hat, a little white crocheted cloche, so much more practical and comfortable than the wide-brimmed, silk-flower-bedecked cartwheel hats of my girlhood, but decided against spending the money. I had lunch in a little café and then sat in the park, reading, or trying to read. By dinnertime I was ready to retreat to my little inn and to my porch companions.
We gathered again for the evening on the hotel porch, and Mrs. Ballinger was her usual complaining self. There had been fried haddock for supper, and she did not like fried fish.
Mrs. Avery was even more timid than usual, shrinking in her rocking chair as if she needed, wished for, someone to hug her. As we had anticipated, her daughter had called at the last minute and canceled their afternoon outing. Walter, who seemed to feel keenly the pain of others, had pushed his chair closer to Mrs. Avery’s and patted her hand every so often.
I was growing fond of Walter. He was not a progressive thinker, that was true, but if you turned your back on all those who clung to older ways, you could grow very, very lonely. He was kind, and a good listener. I noticed that evening he wore a different jacket, a new and more stylish one, and kept his collar buttoned. Once in a while he caught my eye and smiled at me.
“I’d give her what for, if my daughter didn’t keep a date with me,” said Mrs. Ballinger, taking a lump of green knitting wool from her bag and beginning to wind it furiously.
“Feed her to the lions,” I said, “like the Christians in the Colosseum. I have always felt sorry for those poor beasts, chained and maltreated, that were forced to eat humans, who, I’ve heard from a South American explorer who lived for a while with cannibals, taste like pork, when the lions would have preferred a little deer or hen.”
Mrs. Avery gasped and began to rock so quickly her chair gave off mouselike squeaks at the pace of a quick polka. Mr. Hardy frowned and gave Mrs. Avery’s hand another little pat of comfort.
Mrs. Ballinger did not miss that gesture. I think she had rather been hoping that Mr. Hardy might develop a certain tenderness for her.
“You go too far, Mrs. Winters,” she spluttered. “I don’t see why I sit here, taking this abuse.”
“It is not abuse. It is only after-dinner chatter,” Mr. Hardy protested, turning Mrs. Ballinger more enthusiastically against me, but then men rarely understand the subtle malice of female competition. “Although we could do without further references to cannibalism,” he said. “Mrs. Avery might have a delicate stomach.”
“Don’t know how the subject came up at all,” Mrs. Ballinger said.
“The lions in the Colosseum and the ghost of Nero,” I said. “Rome.”
“I’m sure my daughter had her reasons,” Mrs. Avery said with a sigh.
“Blazes,” said Walter. “Look at that sky, will you?”
Yet another thundercloud moved in sullen, inky shadows over the horizon. It was a week of storms, as if some angry god had been awoken and would not go back to sleep. There was no breeze, and we all, Walter included, fanned ourselves vigorously against the humming attack of mosquitoes, the ladies with lace and gilt paper Japanese fans, he with the morning copy of the newspaper.
“The afternoon was so nice. But tonight it’s like a hothouse,” I complained, wishing I could take off my stiff leather shoes, but one does not sit barefoot in a public place. Oh, go ahead, a voice whispered in my head. Minnie. She was a proper lady, well-bred and well-mannered, yet once in a while she had felt an urge to break the rules. Henry James had seen it in her, that tuft of rebellion as soft as a feather, yet also as enduring. Feathers last a very, very long time. Coward, said Minnie’s voice in my head, laughing.
“Did you know that the word ‘orchid’ comes from the Greek orchis?” I said.
“Of course,” lied Mrs. Ballinger, springing to the bait. Stupid women are always overeager to show off how much they know, which is very little.
“And that orchis means ‘testicular,’” I continued. “Ground-growing orchids tend to have twin tubers that look like—”
Walter jumped in before I could finish. “Some iced tea, ladies? Should I ring for the bellhop?” He gave me a little look of reprimand. Poor Mrs. Avery had stopped rocking entirely and seemed about to spring up and run away.
“Perhaps, Daisy, you should continue the story,” he suggested.
“I’ll never be able to enjoy my Easter corsage again,” muttered Mrs. Ballinger.
I slipped off one shoe and then another and wiggled my toes, enjoying their freedom. Mrs. Ballinger pretended not to see. Walter winked at me.
TEN
Amerigo was out of sight but not out of Beatrix’s mind as she and her mother journeyed from the land of noodles and bright sunlight and stornelli songs on the Spanish Steps to the land of Schubert Lieder, sch
nitzel, and dark forests surrounding medieval towns.
As they traveled ever farther north and east, the sun dimmed and the vegetation grew lusher, thicker, more intimidating. On the days when they went by carriage after dark, they could hear wolves calling to one another. Shadows lost their contrast and the difference between day and dusk was not as strong as it had been in the south. Time felt different, too. Beatrix had been warned by her aunt Edith that she would feel this change, and it would mark the moment when she knew she was entering a different reality.
Rome had ghosts, of course, but for the most part they had been talked of as naughty children, wanderers who refused to stay in the grave but had no power over the living. Even Nero’s ghost, wailing its way through the Piazza del Popolo, had a clownish rather than frightening quality.
The ghosts were different in Germany. More powerful. More omnipresent, especially if one listened to downstairs gossip and read the more lurid type of travel book. In Germany, one slept with the covers pulled tight to one’s chin, and not just because it was cold at night in the late spring.
Beatrix thought often of ghost stories as she and her mother toured the houses and gardens of Berlin, places where Edith as a child had been told those frightening tales that had haunted her ever since. Edith still refused to sleep in a room where there was a collection of ghost stories or even a suspicion of a haunting. She believed in them, you see. That’s why she wrote her own series of ghost stories: to try to tame her fear of them.
Beatrix was more pragmatic. She believed in fevered imaginations and unexplained thumps in the night, the moving shadows and moaning winds that are the beginning of the imagination’s overpowering of the mind’s logic. She did not, however, believe in ghosts, though she loved a good ghost story, that raising of the flesh on the arm, the momentary sense that some unseen presence stands behind your chair. I suppose in her heart she was a bit of a pagan. Most gardeners are, and they know that life has forms both visible and invisible. The new rosebud is there, hiding in the stem, invisible to the eye but there, nonetheless.
A Lady of Good Family Page 11
