by Karin Tanabe
“Porter Hamilton is a student at Harvard,” Belle clarified for the others, a firmness in her voice hinting at her sympathy for Anita on this particular subject. “He’s finishing at Cambridge in June, and then it will be back to Chicago. Lottie and he are . . . what would you call it, Lottie? Flirting? Or that modern term, dating? Or perhaps more?”
“Flirting with a man from Chicago, Miss Taylor?” said Marchmont, teasingly. “Then you may become your mother yet, just in a lesser city.”
“I most certainly will not,” retorted Lottie. “I plan to sail for Japan immediately after graduation. If a man loves me enough, he can follow me. Or wait.”
“Yes, your affections do change so quickly,” said Belle, saying what Anita did not dare to. “Just a few months ago you were so taken with Joseph Southworth.”
“Then I discovered that his mother was a teenage prostitute in Japan when she gave birth to him,” said Lottie. “You can all imagine why I had to abruptly throttle my emotions.”
“Is that true?” said Talbot, looking at his wife. “Doesn’t the family reside in Cambridge? In that handsome house on Beacon Hill?”
“This is the son of Benjamin Southworth we are discussing?” asked Marchmont.
“Yes,” said Lottie, “Joseph Southworth. Or Southpaw, as we call him.”
“I know the family well,” Marchmont replied. “They have a cottage on Walker Street, one of the largest in the Berkshires. They don’t stay there often, but I have met Benjamin and remember him as being very respectable, as well as amiable.”
“This sounds like a very American scandal,” said Xavier. “If this Southpaw—”
Anita opened her mouth to correct him, but Caroline shushed her. “Please don’t. I’m enjoying it too much,” she whispered.
“If he were residing in Paris and had found a lover, he would still be welcomed everywhere, even if she was with child,” said Xavier.
“His son, too?” asked Anita.
“Mais bien sûr, his son, too,” said Xavier. “Just think of Alexandre Dumas. He was half-nègre.”
Anita had read two of Dumas’s works in their original French at Northfield, but no one had ever mentioned his race. She was shocked to hear Xavier say he was a Negro, knowing his place in the French literary canon.
“I wasn’t aware of such a scandal in the Orient,” said Marchmont. “But I suppose a man will be a man, no matter which country he is traveling in.”
“That is such a preposterously male thing to say,” said Lottie. “You and your freedoms, able to do what you please, the world always bending to your whims. As women, we cannot make our choices so lightly, since the consequences are far graver.”
“I think that’s often your own faults,” said Talbot from his comfortable perch. “It is the women who run society and the women who judge each other. We as men may tell you what you can and can’t do professionally, but personally, socially, women make the rules.”
“I think American men would be much happier if their female counterparts had more sexual freedom,” said Xavier, causing every woman to blush except Lottie. “And I agree. It’s the women who keep each other from it, who impose their idea of morality. Now in France—”
“I think that’s enough of this talk!” said Nettie, springing into action as their chaperone.
“Come, gentlemen,” said Marchmont, standing up. “Let us leave these women to their plans for changing the world. How about a game of billiards before we dine?”
“With cigars,” said Talbot. “You’re right, Marchmont, I should change rooms. I can see my wife is desperate to denigrate me and my rigid ideals to her charges.”
“That’s right,” said Nettie, blowing her husband a kiss.
The following morning found the group in good spirits as Xavier had woken them all up with a delightful piano piece he had recently composed.
“That’s certainly more pleasant than a bell,” said Lottie, walking into Anita’s bedroom already dressed.
“It’s wonderful here,” said Anita, looking out at the hills and the dogwood trees in bloom. During her entire career at Vassar, she had behaved as she assumed a woman passing as white should. Blending in, disappearing into the middle, was her main objective. But now, she realized, she was throwing caution away and doing exactly as she pleased. She no longer heard Frederick’s voice every time a man spoke to her, or shared her mother’s concern when she attracted attention for doing something outstanding. She was finally just letting herself be who she was, indeed, discovering who that was, and she relished the feeling.
After breakfast, served in the vast dining room at a table that could easily seat twenty, the group retired outdoors, where lawn badminton was set up. The new game had become a craze at Vassar since the girls’ freshman year. Anita and Lottie were pitted against tall Caroline and the athletic and even taller Belle, and appeared headed to certain defeat when Marchmont came to the net after the first set and asked Anita to take a walk with him.
“There are the most beautiful flowers to be picked near the stream. It runs all along the edge of the property,” he said, leaning on a golf club in his sporting costume. “I think you would enjoy it.”
The other women stared at Anita, their faces blank with surprise, since it had been obvious to all that Belle was the one who had set her cap for Marchmont.
“Yes, I would like that very much,” said Anita, feeling it would be rude to decline outright though she was terrified of being alone with him. She guessed he wanted to speak about Boston, though she knew the others would not think so. “Lottie has become a passionate horticulturalist this spring. She spends many afternoons engaged in the traditional Japanese art of ikebana. Perhaps she—or Belle—would like to—”
“If you don’t mind,” said Marchmont to the other girls, “I think Miss Hemmings would most enjoy this particular walk.”
Anita nodded a stiff yes, put down her racket, and looked at Belle apologetically. Belle looked hurt, but there was nothing Anita could do. She reached for her hat, which was resting on the outdoor glass table, and followed Marchmont.
“This is such a beautiful house,” said Anita, when her schoolmates were out of view. “I was in preparatory school not too far from here, and this view of the orchards reminds me of the one I woke up to there.”
Marchmont nodded approvingly, and the two walked in silence until they reached the stream. Anita leaned down and placed her hand in the cool water. She swished it about, then placed it on the back of her neck. She bent down again and plucked several flowers from the bank, turning to look at her host to make sure it was allowed.
“I find your quiet nature very arresting, Miss Hemmings,” Marchmont said, watching her hands. “So many women tend to screech. They remind me of canaries having their feathers plucked. Not you.”
“It must be because I don’t hail from New York. Everything is louder on Fifth Avenue,” said Anita, becoming increasingly nervous in the older man’s presence.
“That’s right, you are from Boston,” he said, studying her soft features as she looked up at him from under her straw hat. “The Back Bay. Or was it Beacon Hill?” He leaned down to take the flowers from her hand.
“Miss Hemmings, I am sure I have seen your face before,” he said, his eyes fixed on her as if she were a scientific specimen. “I have a very good memory for such things, because I am an only child. I had very little to do when I was young but watch the faces of New York go by my window. To this day I never forget a face, and certainly not one as pretty as yours. Now, when did I see you?”
“I don’t know,” said Anita, turning to face the water so he couldn’t scrutinize her. “I don’t remember seeing you before we met at the opera. I’m sure of it.”
“No, I’ve seen you before, I am certain,” he said, reaching for her face and bringing her chin toward him. “Such a delicate appearance, nothing Roman-nosed about you. I think it was in Boston around the New Year,” he said, letting her face go. “Were you in Boston then? And cou
ld you have been walking through another part of the city, not the Back Bay, with a . . . a younger woman?”
Anita thought of the many times she had walked in the snow with Elizabeth. They hadn’t left Roxbury, but still, how could she have been so callow as to think she could go wherever she wanted, even there, as if the city had gates separating the color lines? The rest of the world lacked the safety she took for granted at Vassar. White men were often in Roxbury. She had walked past many of them when she was home; she could easily have walked past Marchmont Rhinelander and never known.
“I spent most of my time indoors this holiday,” said Anita. “I am not one for the cold. But when I did get outside, it was only around the Back Bay.”
“Not a fan of winter,” said Marchmont, ignoring her last claim. “Then you must love this.” He kicked the tall grass as the two moved farther from the stone house.
“I more than love this,” said Anita, praying he had dropped the subject of Boston. “Every spring is like walking into a world you’ve never seen. Because it is, isn’t it? Everything changes, takes on new forms, new growth, new air.”
“Yes, I’ve always liked change, too,” said Marchmont. “I often think about change when I make my trips to Boston. You see, I make them quite frequently.”
“Why is that?” asked Anita, crouching down to pick one perfectly formed spring daisy.
“My father has a child there,” said Marchmont abruptly. He bent down to help her uproot the flower without crushing the stem. Anita looked up at him, her face a picture of shock, and appeared about to lose her balance. Marchmont took her arm and helped her stand up.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to seem so shaken,” said Anita.
“It’s perfectly fine,” he said, letting go of her arm. “I would expect you to be. Come, let’s walk a little way, it’s good for nerves.”
He offered her his arm as he led her over a patch of high grass and fallen branches. “His daughter—my father’s daughter—is illegitimate, as I am sure you assumed. Her name is Carrie, and she lives with her still very young mother in Boston. I look after them financially. I visit her when I feel it’s appropriate. She’s young herself, just eleven years old.”
“Was her mother a servant? Or—”
“No,” said Marchmont, cutting Anita off before she had to say something uncomfortable. “She was employed in a less fortunate way in New York’s Tenderloin district. I know now that my father has had a penchant for such women for decades.”
“And your mother?” asked Anita, thinking of what she might do if she were in her place.
“She is aware of his bad habit, she stays, and she ignores. And she prays, of course, but it doesn’t do much good.”
“Does she know about his daughter?” asked Anita, lifting her skirts higher than she should have as she walked, as the girls did at Vassar.
“She does know there is a child in Boston,” said Marchmont, his eyes drifting to Anita’s slender ankles encased in her small leather boots. “But she doesn’t know that she lives in the Negro area of town. She doesn’t know that her mother is a Negro.”
“A Negro!” Anita said loudly. If Marchmont had not steadied her, she would have fallen in the grass. “The mother of this poor child is colored?” asked Anita, not realizing how hard she was gripping her escort’s arm.
“She is,” said Marchmont calmly. “She is from New York originally, but she went to Boston after she learned she was with child. She has a forgiving aunt living there who took her in. She and Carrie still live with her.”
Anita was stunned into silence. If Marchmont had been in Boston after Christmas visiting this Negro child, he was most likely in Roxbury. He certainly could have seen her. She looked up at him and prayed that if he had glimpsed her with her sister, he would have the decency not to say a word about it to anyone but her. She bent to pick another flower and said, “That’s very surprising.”
“It is surprising,” said Marchmont, his voice still flat. “But it’s a fact. And though it surprised me at first, and I disapproved of my father’s behavior, I’ve become very fond of Carrie. I don’t plan to abandon my support of her, either financially or emotionally.”
“Does your father know her?” asked Anita, focusing on the mossy ground rather than her host.
“No. He’s never met her, or even seen her mother again after she announced she was with child. He didn’t believe it was his and sent her back to the brothel house. In her state, it was unforgivable. I only learned about Carrie six years ago when he confessed everything to me on my thirty-fifth birthday. He figured me man enough to know then. It was a lecture given so I would not make the same mistakes he had, but instead it brought me to Carrie. My father has always thought of me as a man just like him, but I will never be that sort of man.”
“What is the area of town called?” asked Anita, finally looking up at him. As soon as she said it she knew, and he knew, that she should know the name. “Where she lives. Which neighborhood is she in?”
“Roxbury,” he said, looking at her intently, reaching for her face again, but stopping short. “It’s called Roxbury.”
“Is this why you called off your engagement with Estelle Schotenhorn?” Anita asked quietly.
“That’s partly the reason. Estelle is a lovely girl, despite her mother’s steel will pushing her this way and that. She doesn’t deserve to be mixed up in a scandal, if it ever broke. I’ve made many mistakes in my life, but scandalizing a young woman has never been one of them.”
“Why did you tell me this?” Anita said, wishing that he touched her face again. There was something about Marchmont that she liked tremendously, not in a romantic way, but in every other way. “I assume this is something almost no one knows?”
“Very few people outside my family know,” he said. This time he did put his hand on Anita’s cheek, and left it there longer than was proper. “But there is something about you.” He let his hand slide down her face and placed it on her shoulder, and looked at her respectfully. “I know you’ll keep my secret.”
When they finally returned to the house, everyone was sitting in the drawing room, cooling off after their sporting endeavors.
“These are for you,” said Anita, handing Belle the little bouquet of wildflowers she and Marchmont had picked. “From Marchmont,” she added.
“Oh!” said Belle, clutching them in surprise.
Anita watched Marchmont as he bowed, and her heart swelled with relief. Yes, he had guessed her secret, but in exchange for knowing hers, he had confessed his. See, Anita wanted to shout at Bessie and Frederick. There are men like this in the world. There are people who think this way, who act this way. Look at me at Clavedon Hall, allowed to stay here even though he knows the truth. Look at me!
“Belle, I do hope I can call on you in Fredonia once you have graduated,” said Marchmont when he accompanied them to the train station in Pittsfield two days later. “That is, if you’re not off to Italy straightaway.”
“Of course,” said Belle, blushing to the roots of her hair. “You would be most welcome.”
The porters carried the girls’ suitcases onto the train and they settled into a wagon with strong gaslights and a tea tray already set up. Within an hour, Lottie and Caroline, who were seated in front of Belle and Anita, had their heads resting on each other in deep repose.
Belle pressed her face to the window, watching Massachusetts become New York, and said, “Do you like Marchmont, Anita? Do you think I should allow him to write to me? To call after graduation?”
“I do,” said Anita. “And you should. I like him very much.”
CHAPTER 23
Back at school after their surprising trip to the Berkshires, Anita made it one of her first tasks to collect the mail. She separated her letters from Lottie’s, which were all from Porter Hamilton, and hurried up to their shared parlor room.
She tossed Lottie’s mail onto her disorganized desk and closed the door loudly behind her, heading to Caroline’s r
oom. Opening the door, she found Caroline with her head on her table, her writing papers scattered around her and all over the floor.
“You’re just in time to keep me from checking myself into the infirmary for mania,” she said, not lifting her head.
“Why would you do that?” asked Anita, coming in and starting to straighten Caroline’s things. “Sane as you are.”
“Because of Founder’s!” said Caroline, handing Anita an opened letter. “Raymond DeGroot can’t leave Yale so close to finals; he’s too nervous about them. He says if he comes to Founder’s, he’ll fail. Have you ever heard anything more absurd?”
If Phil Day had possessed the minds of the Vassar students for weeks, Founder’s Day riveted them for months. It was a favorite day on campus, featuring not only celebrations for the birthday of school founder Matthew Vassar, but also the other large annual dance. And because Founder’s fell so close to the end of the school year, and the end of the Vassar experience for the seniors, it was a day full of nostalgia.
“We can find you another date for Founder’s,” said Anita, patting her friend’s bent head. Caroline’s hair was unfashionably down, as it often was when she was in her room alone. “It’s not for three weeks. I don’t yet have an escort myself.”
“Of course you don’t, because Lottie Taylor and Porter Hamilton broke your heart,” said Caroline, sitting up. “Poor Anita. If I were braver, I would tell Lottie exactly how I feel about what she did to you. And Founder’s is not three weeks away, it’s but two and a half.”
“That is still ample time for us to find escorts,” said Anita. “As for Lottie, she’s not entirely to blame for my current state. I’m the one who broke off my engagement with Porter, so he was technically Lottie’s for the taking.”
“Any true friend would not have taken,” said Caroline. “I don’t mean to say that she’s not fond of you. She is. She prefers your company to that of every other girl at school. She was never close to Dora the way she is to you, and they roomed together for two years. The problem with Lottie is that above all else, she loves herself.”
