The Second Mrs. Astor

by Shana Abe

  Clergyman after clergyman refused to wed us—and then flocked to the press to smugly explain why:

  Divorce was reprehensible.

  Remarriage after divorce was reprehensible.

  Colonel Astor was reprehensible.

  Miss Force was . . .

  And on it went.

  In the meanwhile, conjecture about the wedding date, the location, or anything at all to do with the ceremony, consumed the masses. Newspapers speculated about what I would wear, the color of my bouquet, who would be invited, what manner of exquisite foods would be served at the meal after. Yet for every inch of column space rapturously dedicated to the bride-elect or the service, there would immediately follow some dour, dire write-up by A Person of Virtue denouncing me, my parents, my education, your father, the entire world itself as corrupt and beyond redemption.

  It was ghastly.

  Within days, it became impossible to step foot out of my house without being followed and badgered. Everywhere I went, I dragged with me an unwelcome entourage. Your father took to bringing Kitty with him whenever he came to call, perhaps to act as a buffer between Us and Them (although, to be honest, Kitty was such an affable soul that she never managed to rebuff much).

  Kitty, in fact, became one of the photographers’ favorite subjects, maybe because all decent people love dogs, and it truly seemed like she was nearly always smiling. Even when I would toss away the articles about me, I would save the clippings that featured her, usually captured in some pose close to your father’s side, walking or sitting or gazing up at him with worshipful eyes.

  Those clippings must still be around here somewhere. I left them behind when we departed for Europe, but surely someone packed them away for me.

  When the lack of privacy became crushing, the only solution was to flee. Since both the Fifth Avenue mansion and my own home on East 37th were so plainly situated in the public right of way, the newsmen simply waited to ambush us, following us every step of the way wherever we went.

  So we began taking the Noma to Beechwood more and more, or else to Ferncliff Farm in Rhinebeck, with its hundreds of protected acres of meadows and forest. Or we’d simply seclude ourselves onboard, Jack and I—as well as my parents, and sometimes Katherine, too—and just sail and sail wherever we wanted to go. No journalists, no photographers, no one to gape. Only us, the crew (who were far too well-paid to gape). The glory of all that deep open cobalt surrounding us, endless.

  We ate and drank and laughed and caught what must have been bushels of fish. My hair became licked with mahogany; my skin began to turn brown.

  Back then, the ocean was a friend. Back then, being out at sea felt like freedom.

  So many precious days and nights your father and I spent tossed about the waves together, both before the wedding and after. How strange it seems now that I never had any sense of what was to come.

  August 1911

  At Sea

  “Madeleine. Wake up.”

  “Father?”

  The night had been rough. The Noma had been weathering a bruising purple gale for hours on her way from New York to Newport. Even as the yacht bucked and tossed, Captain Roberts had assured Jack and everyone else that there was nothing to worry about, that it was more a windy wet storm than a proper squall, and the Noma, so sleek and sturdy, was more than enough of a ship to handle it.

  The captain had actually winked at Madeleine as he’d added that last bit. Winked. It was so patronizing and out of character that her anxiety instantly increased.

  After a dinner of swordfish and salad, she’d retired to her cabin with her stomach pitching; she fell asleep at last with her fingers knotted in the sheets. Even so, she had dreamt of the storm, of being thrown from her feet with black heaving waves washing high over her, over the deck of the yacht, over Jack and Father and everything. She heard teakwood cracking apart, brass fittings and rails twisting and groaning. The smokestacks collapsing, gurgling with water. The wind, screaming and screaming, the Noma ripping into pieces, and still she couldn’t get to her feet, she couldn’t fight the greedy cold ocean—

  It had been real enough that when her name was spoken above her head, she snapped awake at once, sick with certainty that they were all about to drown.

  “Maddy, get dressed. Come up to the deck.”

  “Is it the storm?” she gasped, sitting up, grabbing her father’s hand. She’d left a single electric sconce glowing on the far wall, just in case.

  “The gale’s blown south, and we’re not in danger, but there’s trouble afoot. Another boat, nearly gone over.”

  She realized the yacht was no longer rocking quite so wildly, and the noise of the engines had fallen to a low, rumbling hum. Water slapped the topsides; footsteps—many footsteps—thumped back and forth along the deck. Rising thinly above it all was the harsh, uneven clanging of a bell.

  She flung back the covers. Father went to the door.

  “We’re in the midst of a rescue. The colonel thought you might like to see.”

  * * *

  The Zingara had floundered, her sails shredded by the storm. The sloop had nearly capsized, her hold filling with water from the powerful black waves (so much like her nightmare, so very much) surging over the wreckage and the five men clinging to the debris. From Madeleine’s vantage up on the bridge, the men looked anemic, slight as paper cutouts, turning their faces away in misery from the searchlight aimed at them from the Noma.

  “Are they okay?” Madeleine asked, tugging her polo coat tighter around her chest. Jack rubbed a hand up and down her back, peaceful, unhurried strokes. She found herself leaning against him and he took her weight readily, not even shifting on his feet.

  Kitty paced uneasy circles around them both, her nails tick-tick ing against the wood.

  “Roberts will get them aboard, if anyone can. He’s the best there is. Don’t fret.”

  “What luck to have come across them at all,” Father said.

  They watched as the Noma’s lifeboat was lowered, slowly and smoothly, down to the water by the crew.

  “Ahoy there!” called out an oarsman to the listing sloop.

  “Ahoy,” came the response, much weaker.

  “Blind luck,” Jack said. “They should count their blessings the gale cleared out when it did, and we came this way. On a night like this, we might just as easily have passed them by. They saw our lights, and Roberts heard them calling, if you can believe it. That was all that saved them. They didn’t even shoot flares.”

  The lifeboat maneuvered through the crests and troughs of the waves, a misty smudge shaped like an almond, pale against the dark.

  “Will we tow the wreck?” asked Father.

  “I doubt it, although it’s up to the captain, of course. She looks too far gone. We’ll probably just wire her position back to shore and hope for the best.”

  “How long do you think they’ve been stranded out there?” Madeleine asked.

  His hand still at her back, Jack peered up at the inky vault of the sky. At the stars burning above them, diamond chips scattered in ribbons in the aftermath of the storm. “It’s after midnight. Hours, I’d say. Three or four. Must have seemed like an eternity to those wretched souls.”

  Madeleine remembered her nightmare. The icy, suffocating pressure of salt water slamming over her, filling her lungs.

  “How cold is the water?”

  He looked down at her, his expression guarded; she had the sense he was trying to read her face, to gauge the level of her distress.

  “Honestly,” she insisted. “How cold? Might they be in shock?”

  “They might,” he said slowly. “It’s the middle of the summer, but it’s still the Atlantic. This far north, the water never truly warms.”

  She tucked her hair behind her ears. She’d only had time for a swift, loose braid that hung in a rope down her back, and it was already unraveling. “I’ve read about maritime rescues, but I’ve never seen anything like this. I’ve never even thought . . . I’ll go
below to see about coffee for them. Some food and blankets.”

  Jack looked at her sideways; she had the swift and unpleasant realization that this was not her yacht, not yet, nor was the food hers to offer, or the blankets.

  “Would that be all right?” she asked, uneasy. “I only want to help.”

  “Sweet girl,” said the colonel, breaking into a smile. “That would be a godsend, I am sure. But those pitiful men will think they’ve drowned and ascended to heaven after all when they encounter the indomitable Madeleine Force serving them hot coffee.”

  * * *

  She was becoming better at the cotillions, the dinners, the teas. She was becoming better at meeting coolness with coolness, with artificial smiles and softly spoken barbs. The Newport crowd loved to talk, it seemed, and they especially loved to talk about the colonel.

  What they loved about Madeleine was to dissect her. They did it from a distance; they did it to her face; and when she and Jack turned a corner along a scrupulously swept sidewalk on their way to luncheon at the Muenchinger-King Hotel, Madeleine could only brace herself as an auburn-haired matron in slate silk and feathers strode toward them, lifting her hand in greeting.

  “Jack,” called the woman, in a clear and carrying voice.

  “Margaret.”

  The three of them came to a halt, facing each other. Jack tipped his boater. Madeleine felt her fingers tightening on his arm—a nervous reaction, one she was starting to loathe about herself—and forced herself to unclench them.

  The woman noticed, a quick indirect look (no flicker of expression to betray what she thought of that, of Madeleine’s gleaming white knuckles) then returned her attention to the colonel.

  “Dobbyn told me you were back in town,” she said.

  “Dobbyn,” replied Jack with emphasis, “isn’t supposed to talk, even to you.”

  “You’re going to have to forgive him. I have such a sweet-talking way with men, I swear. He never knew what hit him.”

  The woman shifted her gaze to Madeleine. Before Jack could introduce them, she stuck out her hand. “You must be Miss Force. I’ve read all about you, I’m afraid.” And she laughed, her onyx earbobs swaying.

  “Oh,” said Madeleine, uncertain, extending her own hand.

  Unlike nearly every other Newport matron Madeleine had met, instead of looking wearily to the side of her, or icily straight through her, this woman’s eyes bored into her own, greenish-gray and directly assessing. She had a strong face, not plain and not fair, exactly, but something of both, with even features and laugh lines around her mouth and very dark eyelashes. There was an air about her of barely repressed mirth, as if she knew some happy, hilarious secret she was determined to keep to herself.

  The feathers of her hat drooped in graceful curves down to her chin. Madeleine resisted the urge to straighten her own hat, a simple French basket of navy-dyed straw; like everything else about her, it was the best she could do, even if it was not quite right enough for the Rhode Island set.

  “You’re far more beautiful than the papers give you credit for,” said the woman in a pleasant tone; her handshake was forceful and brief. “But then, I never give the papers much credit to begin with.”

  “Madeleine,” said Jack, also smiling. “May I introduce Mrs. J. J. Brown, an old summer friend.”

  “Margaret,” the woman corrected him. “Please. I hope you don’t mind if I call you Madeleine. I feel as though I know you already.”

  “Not at all. Um, Margaret.”

  “I read that you had quite an adventure the other night. A midnight rescue at sea! Is it true, Madeleine, that you helped lower the lifeboat yourself to help save those unfortunate sailors?”

  “Oh,” said Madeleine again. After months of serenely murmured slights (the lifted, plucked brows; the faux looks of concern; my dear, are you really quite at ease here? Perhaps you’d feel better playing games with the children on the porch rather than trying to converse with us dreary old folks), Margaret’s open friendliness was rattling. “Hardly. I got them drinks, really. Some sandwiches.”

  “More than that,” said Jack, covering her hand with his. “You were their beacon. They told me so themselves.”

  Madeleine shook her head, embarrassed. She’d wondered at the time if she should have done more. Once aboard the Noma, the rescued men had essentially shrunk into sodden, vacant-eyed hulks, even wrapped in blankets and fortified with steaming mugs of coffee (laced with brandy; Jack had poured it himself), their fingers brushing dead cold against hers. After that, both Jack and her father had assured her there was nothing more to be done. Everyone was safe, and they’d be back to shore by morning. She’d returned to her bed and tumbled into a dark, dreamless sleep.

  Across the street, a fleshy man in a battered jacket had stopped to observe them, pulling a pad of paper from his breast pocket and a pencil from behind his ear.

  “We’re on our way to luncheon,” Jack said now, nodding toward the hotel ahead, glass windows glinting, men and women ambling in and out of the main doors in crisp linen and gauze and more silk. “Might I tempt you into joining us?”

  “Why,” said Margaret Brown, “there is nothing I would enjoy more.”

  She sent Madeleine another smile—if there was any animosity behind it, Madeleine truly couldn’t tell—and fell into step beside them. None of them looked at the man across the street.

  As they approached the entrance, Margaret asked, “What were those fools doing out on a sloop in the middle of a gale, anyway?”

  “Bankers,” answered Jack, succinct, and Margaret laughed again as they walked inside.

  CHAPTER 13

  Your father wanted me to like Newport. Oh, he wanted me to love it as he did, and I swear to you, I did try. But it’s difficult to love that which not only does not love you in return, but regards you with little more than thinly veiled contempt. For all of his efforts, for all of Jack’s dinners and dances, the tennis games at various clubs, the Astor Cup, the polo matches—Newport remained stiff and hoary toward me. We were invited places; after all, no one directly insults an Astor, not without risking certain consequences. But besides Margaret Brown, I found no genuine friends.

  The warm and sunny days of my girlhood were back in Bar Harbor. I suppose they always will be.

  The only thing I miss about Newport is Beechwood itself. The cottage belongs to Vincent now, and that’s fine, too. I had my days there. I had that one special, magical day there, and no one could ever ask for more than what I was given then.

  It was a short, brilliant ceremony held in the ballroom. Ivory and mirrors and gilt. Chilled, motionless air. The ocean crashing, a rainstorm rolling in. Red roses everywhere, everywhere.

  My mother wept; my father, sister, and I did not; and for once, your brother kept his dark opinions to himself.

  I had awoken that morning aboard the Noma in my little cabin as Miss Force.

  I fell asleep that night aboard the Noma in a different cabin, with a different name.

  And I was uncoiled.

  And all the world was new.

  September 1911

  Manhattan; At Sea; Newport

  Everything was kept as secret as possible. Which meant, naturally, that hardly any of it was secret.

  It was predicted that the terms of the colonel’s divorce meant he could not be married again in a church, or that he could not marry again while Ava lived, or that he could not marry again in the great state of New York. Only that last guess was actually true, which left them with Beechwood or Bar Harbor if they wanted to keep the thing small and in the family, which they did, according to every single person except Jack himself. But he was willing to do whatever it took to hasten the ceremony. They hoped, all of them, that after it was done, the publicity, the notoriety, would begin to fade.

  Madeleine had her doubts. But it seemed easier to go along with her mother and Mr. Dobbyn’s plans, to allow herself to be swept up and away by them rather than resist, flotsam atop a tidal wave of other
people’s ideas about flowers and cakes and dresses and vows.

  She didn’t care. She didn’t. She wasn’t one of those girls who lived for the explosion of excess lavished on one single day, Consuelo Vanderbilt, May Goelet. Even as a child, she’d never spent hours daydreaming about her wedding; it all seemed rather silly to her. Surely the most important part of it all wasn’t that day. It was every day after.

  And now, on the brink of that ritual that would change her name, her family, her home, Madeleine knew in her heart that all she truly did care about was the end result. Becoming his wife. Heart to heart, flesh to flesh.

  Jack’s attorney had managed at the last minute to wrangle a Congregationalist pastor for the ceremony, who was quietly shuttled in from Providence, and then just as quietly shuttled out afterwards, a thousand dollars richer. It seemed a strange miracle that none of the newsmen lurking in town had picked him out of the crowd, but then, there were so many frantic rumors regarding what was going on, who was where, when was what, that perhaps it was just the benefit of chaos.

  Colonel Astor and Miss Force were to be married in Connecticut in a week. No, Boston in a month. No, Robins Island in the next few days. The Noma was being provisioned and coaled for a short voyage north, or a long one south, or maybe she was preparing to head all the way to the Bahamas. The crew wouldn’t say.

  To throw the press off the scent, Madeleine and her family had spent the days leading up to the ceremony back in Manhattan, popping in and out of the brownstone on so many errands the reporters had to trot to keep up, and split into groups, and hurl their questions on the fly. Jack was still able to fend them off with a laugh and a quip, but Madeleine had given up attempting to be cordial. When a man demanding to know the details of the antenuptial agreement actually stepped in front of her to prevent her from entering a jewelry store uptown, his black eyes gleaming, his sour breath in her face, she found herself recoiling. She found herself clenching her fists.