Nell threw back her head and laughed. “What do you think a lady is?”
“Somebody who talks nice and knows what to wear and how to write a thank-you and how to act when she meets somebody. I don’t know any of that, and it’s too late now.” Elvira laid her head on her arms. “I’m a yokel.”
“You’re not. Elvira, you’re already a lady. The things you’re talking about are just . . . the trimmings.”
“Well, that’s what I want—the trimmings! And I’ll never have ’em.”
Nell didn’t want Elvira believing that “trimmings” made the lady—and she certainly didn’t want to play Pygmalion to Elvira’s Galatea. It would be false and patronizing. But the girl looked brokenhearted.
“If I teach you some trimmings, will you come with me to the wedding?”
Elvira nodded. “I’ll come. If you teach me what to say when I meet Mr. George’s bride.”
chapter eight
EACH TIME SHE GLANCED at the sewing machine in her bedroom—a wedding gift from her family—Nell warmed with gratitude. The family had gone without in order to buy it. But patting Nell’s hand, her mother had said, “Think of the money it’ll save you. And yer poor fingers, too.”
When not in use, the pale oak body made an attractive table, and Nell had always been pleased by the iron treadle with its intricate open-work design. Though she was not particularly adept, rocking the treadle back and forth with her feet was a satisfying exercise. And, as Mam had suggested, it had saved her fingers this week as she’d fashioned Elvira’s dress.
Now, though it meant starting up the cookstove to heat the iron, Nell spread towels on the kitchen table and pressed the birthday gown of peach lawn that she’d raced to finish before the wedding.
“Oooo, it’s pretty,” Elvira fluted, running her hands over the satin waistband. “Can I try it on? May I try it on?”
“Of course. Only be careful not to wrinkle it.”
Nell was pleased to see how the color set off the girl’s dark eyes and hair, and how the fitted bodice showed off her supple figure and small waist. “There was enough satin left to tie your hair back.”
Elvira stood before the mirror in Nell’s bedroom, turning around, studying herself over her shoulder. “I look like a town girl!” she cried.
George and Cora had scheduled their wedding for a Sunday so that no one from the store need miss it.
Since it was a Lundeen wedding, a few of the less scrupulous Catholics were on hand in the Methodist Episcopal Church, a matter that would surely find its way into Father Gerrold’s next sermon. Missing the occasion would have offended Nell’s conscience more than attending.
The weight of Bertha Rabel’s German Catholicism would not allow her to attend, though she did not begrudge Nell and Elvira, and so had offered to look after Hilly. “You’ll tell me all about it when you come home.”
The wedding was all that Harvester might have hoped. Though the church was plain, with only dark beams and paneling to relieve the simplicity, lilacs and peonies had burgeoned with timely consideration, and masses of them filled every possible space.
As the organ in the choir loft pumped out Handel, and the six bridesmaids in simple pink gowns hesitation-stepped their way toward the altar, the congregation stood “to gasp at the delicate beauty of Cora Pendleton in a seed-pearl-embroidered gown of silk organza over lightweight silk satin,” as the Standard Ledger would report.
In the first pew, Cora’s mother stood at her daughter’s approach. Mrs. Pendleton, blonde and youthful, smoothed her pale-blue gown, touched a handkerchief to her nose, and smiled a watery salutation. Mr. Pendleton, square shouldered and proud, led his daughter to the altar.
Following the ceremony, Mendelssohn accompanied the couple back up the aisle, the bride merry and laughing, dancing toward the open doors. Nell thought it a pity that all brides didn’t laugh and dance as they left the church.
Elvira pulled a tiny handkerchief from the waistband of her gown. Nell eyed her askance, noting tears gathered in the girl’s eyes.
Reception guests made their way to the picket-fenced backyard of the Lundeen home where crab apple trees, planted when the house was built, were coming into their maturity and dropping late-blossoming confetti onto the assembly. Beneath a grape arbor, a string quartet imported from Minneapolis played Offenbach, Mendelssohn, Gilbert and Sullivan, and Strauss.
Following Nell through the receiving line, Elvira cast the bride a nervous smile and in clarion voice improvised, “I’m Elvira Stillman, and I work for the Lundeens at the dry-goods store. I think you’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. Best wishes.”
A moment’s pause followed. Then Cora Pendleton Lundeen grasped the girl’s shoulders and lay her cheek against Elvira’s. “Thank you.”
Smiling, Nell took the moony child’s hand and led her toward a long table dressed in pink linen where a banquet was spread, and girls in white frocks brushed away flies with palm fans. On a separate table, a tall wedding cake sat amidst a snowy scattering of white-satin rosettes.
After filling their plates from an array of fancy sandwiches, caviar and its accompaniments, several salads, and delicate cookies with pale icings, Nell and Elvira moved along to the drinks—fruit punch and champagne, ladled and poured by two young men who had declined to sign the temperance card at the Epworth League.
Recovering from her rosy oblivion, Elvira cast Nell an inquiring look.
“One glass of champagne,” Nell conceded, nodding to the servers.
Toward the back of the deep yard, the women found a table among the many that were dressed—like the buffet—in pink linen and furbished with squat vases of roses, satin streamers, and tiny boxes of groom’s cake.
Minutes later, fortyish Anna Braun, who operated the little telephone switchboard at the dry-goods store, came scurrying along, heedful not to spill champagne on her best gown. She settled herself at the table, placing an open palm on her breast as if something inside threatened to explode.
“Don’t this beat all?” she said, spreading a napkin across her lap and glancing around with visible delight. “Everything so beautiful. They don’t do it any better in Boston, I’m sure. Not that I’ve had the pleasure, but what could be more elegant than this?” She bit into a salmon-salad sandwich, wiped crumbs from her lips, and swallowed. “And young George. Where could a bride find a nicer, handsomer groom?”
Elvira set down her glass abruptly.
“May we join you ladies?” The assistant manager at Lundeen’s, Howard Schroeder, and his wife, Elsie, pulled out chairs.
“Fruit punch?” Anna teased Howard, looking at his glass, her heroic laughter audible at wonderful distances. Elsie Schroeder peered around, anxious lest their table appear raucous.
“Elsie here signed the pledge,” Howard said. “I keep tellin’ her I never signed the darn thing, but still I gotta be a long way from home b’fore I can get next to spirits.”
Anna laughed. “That’s the advantage to being Catholic,” she told him, lifting her glass. Elsie pursed her lips but said nothing.
“These chairs—” Howard confided, “rented from an outfit in Chicago. Brought in on the train. How ‘bout that? None of yer borrowed church chairs that collapse under a fella.”
“Excuse me, please,” Elvira interrupted. “Anyone need something from the buffet?” She left the table.
“That’s a good girl,” Howard said of Elvira when she was out of earshot. “She’s the pet down at the store.” To Nell he whispered, “She’s been practicing her manners on us. Wants to be like a lady, she says.”
“I told her a lady is someone with a good heart. She thinks there’s more to it,” Nell told him.
“Too many girls these days are trying to be a somebody,” Elsie said. “Putting themselves forward, my mother called it.” Elsie’s was a voice one might hear exclaiming, “I don’t think I’ve ever been completely well.”
Taking umbrage, Anna said, “Elvira wants to make something of herse
lf. If that’s putting herself forward, I’m for it.”
Straightening, Elsie observed, “Getting married and keeping house was good enough for some of us.”
“Not everybody’s cut from the same cloth,” the unmarried Anna said, rising. “May I refill someone’s drink?”
As Anna wandered away, Nell asked, “Does anyone know where George and Cora will honeymoon?”
Howard lifted his chair away from the table and crossed his legs. “France and Italy, his dad told me. They’ll come home in the fall. By that time, the new house’ll be ready.”
“The Lundeens are building George a new house?”
“Building themselves one.”
“Where?”
“On Second Avenue, across from the school. George loves this old house, grew up in it,” he said, gesturing toward it. “So Juliet—Mrs. Lundeen—said, ‘take it.’”
“Wasn’t that kind.”
“Well, he’s an only child. They dote on him.”
And so the conversation continued. After ten minutes, Nell missed Elvira. Ah, there she was, at the drinks table—but seemingly caught in a trance. Was it the wedding couple she was staring at? Moments later, though, she was holding a glass of punch and returning arm in arm with Anna.
While guests basked in the warm afternoon, Juliet Lundeen made her way from table to table, thanking everyone for coming. “We’ll soon be getting to the toasts,” she warned, “so be sure your glasses are full.” Laying a hand on Elvira’s shoulder, she said, “My, but you look pretty. Is the gown new?”
“Yes, ma’am. For my birthday.”
“Don’t tell me today’s your birthday?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m seventeen.”
Juliet bent and kissed the girl’s cheek. “I wish you the same as George and Cora—a lifetime of happiness. Now, before you leave, take a satin rosette from the cake table. There’s one for each woman.” At this, she moved on, telling them that the two servers in charge of drinks would be coming around to refill glasses.
From beneath her lashes, Elvira surveyed the others, hoping they had noted Juliet including her among the women. And when the servers came around, Elvira requested champagne. “For the toasts,” she told Nell—a statement, not a question.
Nell worried about the second glass, and she knew that Elsie Schroeder’s eye was bent in their direction. “Just this once,” Nell said. “We don’t want people talking.”
Toasts were drunk—Laurence Lundeen’s, “It is fortunate when your only child is the one you’d hoped for, and his bride is the daughter you’d have chosen. To George and Cora!”
From a table of family intimates, a gentleman of high color and assurance was the last to rise. Lifting his glass, he said, “As a Dutch uncle, I’m allowed to offer advice: After ‘I love you,’ the four happiest phrases in the language of marriage are: ‘I’m sorry,’ ‘What do you think?’, ‘It’s just what I wanted,’ and ‘Let’s have a glass of beer.’” Laughter. “Cora and George.”
Nell looked inquiry at Anna, who leaned toward her. “John Flynn. Lawyer.” Cupping her mouth with her hand and nodding significantly, she added, “Widower.”
Later, the bridal couple, wearing street clothes, were seen off in a festooned buggy destined for the depot and the Chicago-bound train. Nell and Elvira rose now to thank the Lundeens and say their good-byes. As she and Anna followed the girl, Nell noted that Elvira was not altogether steady on her feet.
At the gate, drawing on her newly acquired “trimmings,” Elvira managed to blurt at the Lundeens, “Thank you for a grand time. Everything was . . . grand,” before dashing headlong down the drive, pulling the handkerchief from her waistband for the second time that afternoon.
“She’s a little overcome by it all,” Nell explained, and hurried to follow.
It wasn’t until Elvira reached the park across the street and slowed that Nell caught up. “What on earth . . .” she began, clutching the stitch in her side.
Elvira sank onto a bench, weeping and bending over the side to vomit. Nell dug in her bag for a handkerchief. Emptied and weak, Elvira laid her head on the back of the bench, eyes closed.
“What’s going on, Elvira?”
The girl shook her head slowly, not opening her eyes. “Nothing,” she whispered. “I am so sad. That is all that is going on.”
chapter nine
DURING THE REMAINDER OF THAT SUMMER, Elvira begged for trimmings and more trimmings. “Teach me how to set a table! Proper!” Or how to carry on polite conversation—and what was polite conversation?
Before marrying Donal Ryan and moving west, Nell’s mother had been in service in Boston. She knew how things were done; Nell might have grown up in homesteading poverty, but she had “better ways,” as Mam would say, so now Nell could only imagine Elvira’s sense of inadequacy.
To Nell’s satisfaction, however, Elvira wanted at last to read—good books. “Nothing too hard to start out,” she cautioned, so Nell brought home fifth- and sixth-grade readers. But Elvira’s country-school education had been solid, as far as it went, so it wasn’t long before she graduated to adult books on loan from Juliet Lundeen.
For all Nell’s delight in Elvira’s progress, she was disquieted. Behind Elvira’s new needs lay a troubling something. And the normally chatty and candid child was silent regarding that something.
Autumn exploded in a flash of gold. School reopened, the young Lundeens returned from Europe, and George’s parents moved into a substantial new house across from the school and half a block off Main Street.
In mid-September, the Standard Ledger noted:
“Young Mrs. George Lundeen hosted a tea on the fourteenth of this month. Present to enjoy ribbon sandwiches and tea cakes were Mrs. Laurence Lundeen, Mrs. Edward Barnstable Jr.,” and so forth.
“The weather continuing mild, tea was poured in the garden beneath the grape arbor, asters and sedum lending a riotous setting for the conviviality.”
Elvira, who followed news of Cora Lundeen with feverish devotion, had begun a “George and Cora” scrapbook. Clipping social items from the Standard Ledger, and picking up orts of hearsay from the store—“They have a telephone now. In the kitchen. And a hot-water heater. Imagine. Everything so up to date”—slavishly she entered these into the growing scrapbook. The white rose from the wedding reception was pressed in amongst the other Lundeen miscellanea.
Nell wondered at Elvira’s hero-worship of George; still, she smiled at Elvira’s devotion. It did no harm to have models. And young Cora was a proper model: visiting shut-ins with her mother-in-law, serving as hostess at Ladies Aid gatherings, and spearheading a Christmas toy drive for children living south of the railroad tracks.
In a village, however, the gears of social converse are oiled by gossip, so, in spite of good works, Cora was bound to be a topic of back-fence talk. So lovely, so well dressed, so well educated, so social: “Yes, of course she’s good natured, but wouldn’t we all be, if we had her money?”
Nevertheless, one Saturday night after work, Elvira stomped up the outside stairs, slammed the apartment door, and stood in the living room shaking her fist. “I can’t believe some people!”
Pulling a nightshirt over Hilly’s head, Nell asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Aunt Martha!”
“What’s she done now?”
“She came into the store to return a corset she’d ordered from St. Paul. She’s had it two months and I’m sure she’s worn it, but today she said it was too big and we’d have to take it back. What could possibly be too big for Aunt Martha?”
Suppressing a smile, Nell rocked Hilly and waited.
“I went up to the office and asked Mr. George—really the finest gentleman you’ll ever meet—what I should do. He said to give her the money, it wasn’t worth fighting about. I told him I didn’t mind fighting with her, but he said no, he didn’t want to put me in that position.”
“You wouldn’t want to create a scene in the store,” Nell said.
“I wouldn’t mind creating a scene with her. But I gave her the money. Then what does she say? How do I like working for a high-hat who’s too good to marry a local girl?”
“That was uncalled for.”
“Well, I gave her a piece of my mind. I said Mr. George was a prince and Cora Lundeen was a perfect angel and anybody who said otherwise was a jealous troublemaker.”
Nell laughed despite herself.
“That got her goat,” Elvira continued. “‘Jealous of a snip who’s too good to buy clothes in her husband’s store?’ she said. I was so embarrassed. It was a blessing no one was close by, but they could’ve been. Poor Mrs. George, if it got back to her . . .”
Nell carried the sleeping Hilly into his bedroom. When she returned, she said, “It’s admirable to stand up for friends, but there’s always going to be gossip in a whistle-stop like Harvester. Don’t take it seriously.”
Elvira flopped onto the daybed. “What should I have said?”
Nell considered. “When you’re in a public place, you have to be discreet, or you may generate more gossip. Let’s see. You might have given Aunt Martha a sharp look and said, ‘I think highly of the Lundeens, and what they do is none of my business.’”
“Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Because you’re still a girl. But you’re a quick study. You’re becoming a lady.”
Elvira clapped her hands. “You really think so?”
Nell loved the warm semidark of Lundeen’s, the sense of possibilities. Standing there, she drank in the crisp perfume of fabric bolts and new-minted overalls, the serious and promising smell of work boots, the dreamy waft of women’s soft leather shoes.
In yard goods, she searched through the fabric remnants for a dark, heavy piece to sew short pants for Hilly. The boy stood at her side, watching customers come and go, listening to the palaver as they jawed with each other and with Elvira, behind the counter.
“And Hilly will need a pair of kneesocks,” Nell told Elvira.
Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse Page 4
