It was decided that I would join them in Berlin. Mr. Winters had insisted I take another week of vacation, away from family worries. What many men don’t understand is that mothers worry more, not less, when they are away from their children.
Even so, after a quick trip back to Paris to see that all was well with the children, I went on to Germany, to rejoin Beatrix and Minnie. I had not yet learned to stand up for myself, or even to argue back.
Since leaving Rome, Beatrix and Minnie had toured the Boboli Gardens in Florence, the gardens of Villa d’Este and Hadrian’s Villa, the public gardens of Milan. In Bavaria they had visited Nymphenburg, the Grosser Garden in Dresden, and the conifer collection in Pillnitz.
Beatrix had filled several journals with sketches, measurements, and notes. When she slept, she dreamed of parterres and fountains; awake she reminded herself constantly of Mr. Olmsted’s advice to hunt for beauty in the commonplace, in the rustic.
“I think it is difficult to accomplish what Mr. Olmsted and Mr. Sargent have recommended,” she said after our first day of sightseeing in Berlin. “To make gardens a place of joy rather than an extension of court and palace. The Italians cling to the formal past as if they would drown without it, and the Germans seem inspired mostly by grandiosity,” she said.
“It does all make me rather long for Maine,” Minnie admitted. “Some of the gardens feel as formal as Mrs. Astor’s drawing room. The world needs gardens where children can play.”
“I have seen only one such garden.” Beatrix stared at the sprigged wallpaper.
She hadn’t stopped thinking about Amerigo since leaving Rome. I could see it in her face, a combination of dreaminess, worry, and longing.
“The garden of the young Italian who came to your hotel room,” I said.
Minnie shook her head, a half smile on her mouth. “The poor man no longer has a name, it would seem. He is just the man who importuned my Beatrix. I have heard sly remarks from a dozen and more people about that evening.”
Amerigo had been right about that. There had been gossip. Minnie hadn’t minded much. She trusted her daughter. But in those more innocent days, the world took a dim view of young unmarried girls receiving men in their hotel rooms.
“A garden for children sounds a delightful thing,” I agreed, trying to turn the conversation away from Amerigo.
Beatrix rose and tapped her damp walking shoes, which she had placed on the window ledge to dry. It was much too warm for spring, and the three of us had been sitting as still as possible, fanning ourselves occasionally and sighing over various concerns. Minnie had had another letter from the Paris lawyer about the divorce settlement; Beatrix looked lost between two worlds, that of maidenhood and that of passion; and I wondered what Mr. Winters was doing that evening back in Paris, with whom he was playing cards, for playing cards he assuredly was.
The remnants of our own supper, soup and sausage and boiled potatoes, still littered the huge round table positioned in the center of our room in Pension Grindelwald. Berlin was inferior to Rome and London and Paris in that it did not yet have any grand hotels, and this one proved the point. The street floor was a tavern with a sawdust-covered floor, and while there was a separate room where unescorted females might dine, we had decided to take our dinner upstairs, in privacy.
The owner of the little hotel must have been an avid hunter, for boar and deer heads abounded on the walls, and the candlesticks were made of antlers soldered into pewter bases. One particularly disgruntled-looking boar looked down on us from the corner of the room, and a snarling stuffed wolf crouched in the hall. It was, on the whole, too much like being stuck in a fairy tale. We had all dreamed of wolves the night before.
“Wasn’t it strange? My wandering there like that?” Beatrix asked. The sound of shouting, singing, and accordions came up to us from the street. It was the Whitsun holiday, and all day, brass bands had marched through Berlin. Crowds of young people filled the plazas, the boys wearing caps of all colors, the girls in their white blouses and dirndls. Many of the young male scholars had dueling scars crisscrossing their faces, worn proudly as badges of honor.
“You mean that young Roman’s garden?” Minnie asked. The heat had disordered our imagination, and the conversation twisted and turned on itself, coming back to Amerigo.
Minnie studied her daughter’s face, which was a blank. Perhaps too blank. Beatrix was learning to hide her feelings, and that of course meant she had feelings. For this man, this Amerigo.
“Yes. So strange, I think.”
“No stranger, really, than my running into Mr. Winters at the Colosseum,” I said, and then almost bit my tongue, for Mr. Winters had followed me; there had been no coincidence about it at all. “I did not mean it like that, dear Beatrix,” I quickly amended.
Beatrix laughed, but Minnie looked as if she wanted to ask something but could not with Beatrix there. Minnie often talked to me in a very entre nous manner. I was ten years older than Beatrix and only fourteen years younger than Minnie, which gave me an extraordinary position in their household, an intimate of both mother and daughter, as need and situation required.
“It’s so warm tonight.” Beatrix leaned out the window to look at the revelers below.
“Finish the story. About wandering into Amerigo’s garden,” I said, at a loss to suggest another topic of conversation. She hadn’t really talked about it in detail, not until the gossip began.
“Amerigo confessed that he had seen me in his garden, speaking with his housekeeper, but he hadn’t come out to greet me. He said he was in the middle of a discussion with his father.”
“I would guess a heated discussion, if it preempted his sense of courtesy,” I said.
Minnie was no longer looking at me but staring at the stuffed boar head on the wall. She had removed her stockings, and her feet, so white and narrow, looked like calla lilies resting on the green velvet ottoman.
“I wonder what they were quarreling about,” Beatrix said, closing the window. A particularly loud brass band had begun playing.
“That is between father and son,” Minnie said, “and nothing to do with us.” I hope it has nothing to do with us, her little sigh added.
We sat fanning ourselves.
“Did you know Mrs. Haskett is also here, in Berlin?” I said.
“Oh, Lord,” sighed Beatrix.
“Is she planning on purchasing the Prince of Brandenburg’s art collection, or perhaps all the old shields from the mercantile board for her garden gazebo?” There was venom in Minnie’s normally sweet voice.
“Not that I have heard. Something about a cousin of a cousin studying here for a year, and she has come to inspect and support. He has been keeping odd company and she’s been enlisted by his parents to usher him into some better drawing rooms. He has gambling debts and Mrs. Haskett is to try to imbue some sense into him.”
“How much we learn about almost strangers.” Minnie sighed again. “How people do talk.”
Reprimanded, I shrank into the horsehair cushions of the sofa.
“Mrs. Haskett seems to be everywhere,” Beatrix said. “A most unpleasant woman.”
“Impossible to avoid her, I’m afraid,” I said. “She knows you are here and has already planned a musical evening for your enjoyment.”
“Oh, Daisy! You didn’t tell her!”
“No, dearest Beatrix, she already knew. I ran into her this morning at that little milliner’s shop.” Her comment stung me with its suggestion of blame. In fact, Beatrix had made herself somewhat notorious by receiving Amerigo in her hotel room in Rome. The American community abroad was keeping its collective eye on her, just as it had once kept its eye on me.
“We’ll have to go.” Minnie sighed. “It would look strange, otherwise.”
“For my sins, I assume.” Beatrix was laughing.
At that very moment, there was a knock on the doo
r. Minnie’s maid came in with a card on a salver. Mrs. Haskett had extended a formal invitation for the very next evening.
• • • •
I was with Minnie and Beatrix the following day when they toured Berlin’s Tiergarten. The peonies were in bloom but the strange heat of the season made them look as blowsy as a woman of questionable reputation who has not been properly laced up. There was a sensual profligacy to them, with their big, scented pink petals, the deep green leaves, the stems not quite strong enough to support the full flower heads.
“They need backbone,” I said with a sniff.
“Cooler weather,” Beatrix corrected. “Peonies do not like the heat. Walk on, Daisy. I want to see the iris beds. I’ve heard they have some varieties we do not yet have in the States.”
Because it was a holiday, the gardens were thick with people, some of whom—the young people especially—looked as if they had celebrated to excess the evening before. Hats were worn crookedly; faces were red; some seemed to stumble rather than walk. A group of young men lurched into us by the rose garden, almost knocking Minnie over. They apologized and bowed several times, then lurched off in the opposite direction, shouting back and forth and waving invisible foils at one another in pretend dueling challenges.
Minnie walked blindly, clinging to her hat, sighing often. The heat made prickles of perspiration run inside my clothing.
Berlin, with its premature heat and festive mood, agreed with me, though. Compared to Paris and especially Rome, it was a very new city. For the past decade or so they had been busily replacing medieval streets and ancient houses with new avenues and strong, tall buildings. The Chicago of Europe they called it, and it did indeed remind me of Chicago, especially the Chicago as it had been during the world’s fair, loud and brassy and busy and so filled with newness it fairly gleamed in the sun. It smelled of new paint and fresh sawdust. Rome had been all ghostly ancient ruins and Renaissance villas, and Paris was so well satisfied with the moment it had no need of a future. Berlin seemed the city of tomorrow, being constructed even as we watched.
“I don’t think I can spend much more time here in the garden, Beatrix,” Minnie complained. “It is simply too warm.” She tipped her hat to an exaggerated, even rakish angle, to get the sun off her cheeks. Her face was florid and damp.
“Let’s sit. I’ll see if I can find a lemonade seller.” Beatrix ushered us to a free bench and then went off in search of cool drinks. Minnie and I sat fanning ourselves and watching the throngs of people go by. Some looked the worse for wear, after the long celebrations and the license that masks and free-flowing alcohol provide.
Whitsun is a holiday situated between the hard days of winter and the busy planting of spring. Much as it has been given its proper religious overtones, it still maintains its pagan undertones of resurgent fertility, to match the season. That day in the Tiergarten the blond, rosy-cheeked German girls looked particularly blooming; their young men looked properly mettlesome. It made me think of June weddings and March christenings, of Mr. Winters alone in Paris.
Minnie’s thoughts wandered along similar lines. “I think Beatrix has changed,” she said when we were alone. “Have you noticed a change?”
I had. There was a tension in Beatrix’s movements that hadn’t been there before Rome. Sometimes she left her sentences unfinished, and Beatrix had never been one for leaving anything unfinished, certainly not a thought.
“Perhaps the tour has been too demanding,” I said.
“No. She is physically stronger than ever. It is something else, something more subtle than mere exhaustion.”
“You think it is the Roman, Amerigo.”
“Perhaps. Such a complicated age, twenty-three. Last winter one of her New York friends teased her about being a spinster, did you know? A spinster, when she is still so young! And I am almost useless on this matter. Here I am, entering into a divorce settlement just as my daughter is facing decisions about the rest of her life. I don’t want her to rush. There is no need to rush. Yet if she never takes a chance . . .”
Minnie looked as if she might weep. I saw the difficulty, of course. You’d have to be blind not to: a mother on the verge of divorce with a grown daughter on the verge of . . . well, we didn’t know, and that was the problem, wasn’t it?
“The heat makes you worry,” I said. “Beatrix has more common sense than anyone else I know. She won’t rush. She won’t be unwise.” But I had had a vision of Beatrix in a travel costume, tiptoeing down a hotel staircase late at night. A vision of an elopement. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. But then, perhaps that was the chance she needed to take?
“Gardeners love order and control,” she had admitted to me that day at Holms Lea, when we first met. “But before there can be control, a certain amount of risk has to be taken. Will that peony get enough light? Will that tree, full grown, cast too much shade? You must be willing to take chances.”
“Daisy, you of all people should know,” Minnie went on. “Sometimes one doesn’t make the decision. It is made for one. It is why young people are so fond of the words ‘fate’ and ‘destiny.’ They still believe in it. A Roman! She would be so far from home.”
Beatrix came back before I could answer, carefully carrying three glasses of fruit punch. There was a half smile on her lips. Minnie and I looked at her.
“Is something wrong?” Beatrix asked. “Do I have a smudge on my face?”
“Let’s go look at the lion,” I proposed. “I hear he is a particularly sweet old thing, all yawns and big yellow eyes. If I don’t go to see the lion so I can tell her all about it, Clara will never, ever forgive me.”
But even the lion was overcome by the heat and refused to do anything more amusing than swish his tail at the flies, so we returned to the hotel, and the stuffed animal heads peering at us from all the walls and corners, to rest for the evening.
ELEVEN
Mrs. Haskett’s residence in Berlin was on the newly fashionable and expensive boulevard Unter den Linden. There, she had rented a large town house for several months to avoid the summer heat of Rome, though Berlin did not seem much cooler. The owners had obligingly moved into the back rooms so that Mrs. Haskett could enjoy the front rooms—and they could enjoy the undoubtedly large rent she paid them. They pretended to be cousins, to avoid the stigma of a crass financial arrangement, but unless one searched back to Adam and Eve’s extended family, I don’t think a blood connection could be found between Mrs. Haskett and the Baumgartens.
“Must we?” Beatrix was still protesting when our carriage pulled up in front of the house that evening. The Berliners kept marvelous horses, large and white and as clean as porcelain, so unlike Rome, where one might end up being forlornly pulled about by a single horse with its ribs showing, or even donkeys. That evening, the carriages with their liveried coachmen and footmen and magnificent plumed horses filled the wide boulevard.
“Yes,” Minnie said, smiling. “We must. For your sins in Rome.”
“It is a high price to pay for a few minutes spent in moonlight in the Colosseum.”
“Beatrix, don’t forget the hotel room,” I said.
She shot me a scalding glance. “If I could go back in time, I would never open the door to his knock,” she said, but I didn’t believe her. Nor did Minnie, judging by her expression.
Beatrix wore a red dress that evening, dangerously close to scarlet. If she was going out to be seen, then she would ensure she was seen. She wore a little tiara of pearls, and two larger pearls dangled from her ears.
To my eyes, and to others as well, I assume, she looked decidedly American: tall and healthy and full of confidence. When she stepped up the stairs to the entrance, her movements were filled with athletic grace and ease, the result of a childhood spent on horseback and swimming and besting even the strongest boys at tennis. It was as if the Americanism of this young woman declared, “The nineteenth centur
y might have been Europe’s, but the twentieth will be ours!”
I walked between mother and daughter, our arms interlinked. Heads turned in our direction as we entered the ballroom. Minnie was small and dark, precariously balanced between her mature beauty and the inevitable, mortal loss of it. Beatrix was all youthful strength and radiance. I, in the middle, blond and average in size and height, was the young matron. The Three Graces, we had been called when we went out together in New York. Conversation ceased when we stood at the top of the stairs to be announced. The footman, dressed in a Louis XVI costume, as were all the other servants, barely had to raise his voice.
The room was ablaze with candelabras and huge urns of white roses. Mrs. Haskett, resplendent in a tawny spangled Worth gown and with diamonds at her throat and wrists, broke free from a circle of friends, more likely sycophants, and rushed forward to greet us.
“I’m so glad you could come,” she said, putting her arm around Beatrix’s and Minnie’s waists in an overly intimate manner. This seemed a bad omen. She was condescending, and only people who believe themselves to be superior can be condescending.
“Good evening, Mrs. Haskett. You have a lovely rental here in Berlin.” Minnie managed to look down her nose though her hostess was four inches taller than she. Mrs. Haskett’s patronizing familiarity was too much. Minnie was a warmhearted and generous woman, but she was also a member of one of the oldest families in the East, and she preferred that people not forget it, especially not when her daughter’s reputation was at stake.
“It is rather quaint, isn’t it?” Mrs. Haskett said, making it seem as if she had rented a hut, not a huge town house. “I was tempted to take a castle in the Odenwald for the season, you know, one of those airy, ancient places that look down on the river . . . which one is it? I don’t remember . . . but it seemed just too, too beyond the pale. All trees and wolves, from what I heard. And there was dear cousin Harold to consider. He does need me.”
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