Morning Song

by Karen Robards

  "Tudi, I've been calling you for this age! Really, I don't expect to have to come looking for servants in my own house!" 58

  Celia's voice, coming from behind them, made all three of them start guiltily and turn to her. Framed in the doorway, she looked lovely, her pale hair smoothly upswept, her dress a soft pink silk with the skirt gathered fashionably toward the back in a style that made the most of her fragile figure. Lace gloves covered her hands, and in one hand she held a painted fan, which she swished through the air with languid grace.

  "Good Lord," she said, her eyes fastening on Jessie and widening with amusement. Immediately Jessie felt about two inches tall, and about as pretty as a bullfrog.

  "Well, I suppose it can't be helped," Celia continued after a brief pause in which no one said anything. "I'm glad you're ready. Stuart's here to fetch us, and I don't like to keep him waiting. Tudi, I want you to be sure to take the linens for my bed outside tomorrow so that the sun can bleach them. They're getting dreadfully yellow—almost the color of Jessie's dress."

  "Yas'm." Tudi's face tightened, but Celia had already turned away and did not see.

  "And, Sissie, you can start embroidering those tea cloths right away, since you won't have to help Rosa with supper. I've no patience with idle hands, as you know."

  "Yas'm." Sissie's voice echoed Tudi's for expressionlessness.

  "Come along, Jessie. And remember what I told you, dear." Celia was already halfway down the stairs, and her voice floated back to Jessie, suddenly as sweet as spun sugar. Jessie guessed, and rightly as it turned out, that Stuart Edwards must be waiting within earshot in the hall below.

  59

  VII

  You may kiss me, Jessica, as we're to be family now." Miss Flora Edwards presented her crumpled cheek. Jessie, doing her best not to scowl, had no recourse but to give it a peck.

  "You may kiss me too, if you like, Jessica," Miss Laurel Edwards said as Jessie straightened away from her sister. Jessie took a deep breath and gave the other elderly lady's cheek a peck. Then Miss Laurel took her hands, and both ladies beamed at her while Jessie did her best to smile back. It was an effort, and she did not doubt that her smile looked halfhearted.

  The picnic supper that the Misses Edwards had put on in honor of their nephew's engagement had concluded as darkness had fallen. The party, which included all the nearby neighbors and some of the ones farther away, had then moved indoors. The picnic had been bad enough, but when Jessie had discovered that dancing was the next order of the evening, she had ducked into a rear parlor to escape. There, to her horror, she had run into the old ladies, who were arguing spiritedly about whose fault it was that the ices had melted before they could be served. She'd known Miss Flora and Miss Laurel from birth, but vaguely, as one did neighbors separated by several miles. Certainly they had never expressed any particular fondness for her before this moment. But, as they proceeded to tell her in great detail, since their nephew was marrying her stepmother (dear Celia, wasn't she just the sweetest creature?), that made Jessie (more or less) their grandniece by marriage.

  Frequently digressing from the point, and more frequently interrupting each other, the Misses Edwards gave Jessie to 60

  understand that their dearest wish was to see their nephew, who was their closest living male relative, settle down near them. To that end, they had invited Stuart to visit, not once but many, many times. Imagine their delight when he had at last shown up on their doorstep! And he so charming, and the spitting image of their baby brother, who had been his father!

  Of course Tulip Hill would be his one day, when both Miss Laurel and Miss Flora had passed on to their reward. Although their family (except for their baby brother, who had died in an unfortunate accident at the age of forty-two, leaving little Stuart without a father during his growing-up years) was quite longlived—their mother had lived to be ninety-one, and her mother had passed on one month short of her hundredth birthday! So Miss Flora and Miss Laurel concluded, with a titter shared between them, that it might be some few years yet before Stuart inherited, as Miss Flora was in her, um, sixties, with Miss Laurel some three years younger.

  "And why aren't you dancing, miss?" Miss Flora demanded of Jessie at last with a mock frown. With her masses of silky hair, which had presumably been dark like her nephew's but was now somewhere between white and silver, she must once have been the beauty of the family. She was taller than her sister and not quite as plump, but both had silvered rather than grayed and had the fine white skin prized by all Southern women. Age had wrought fine lines in Miss Laurel's face; Miss Flora's was frankly wrinkled. But still, the sweet scent of powder and lotion emanated from their skin at close range, both complexions were carefully tended, and both ladies were beautifully dressed.

  "I—I don't—" Jessie stuttered, caught by surprise. The truth was that she didn't know how to dance. Worse than that, she 61

  didn't expect to be asked. She'd grown up with the boys; she knew each and every one of them by name, and they knew her, too. As a child, she'd met them on their own ground—throwing rocks, climbing trees, giving as good as she got in everything from fist fighting to daredevil horseback riding. But now—now she was a young lady, and they were gentlemen. To them, she seemed to be invisible. With them, she had no idea how to act. As for the girls, they might as well have been from a different species. She felt even more awkward around them than she did around the boys.

  The picnic had been uncomfortable enough, with all the young people polite to this near stranger in their midst but gravitating quite naturally to their particular friends. After the initial, politely masked surprise at her presence had died down, Jessie had found herself quite alone. The Misses Edwards had hustled Celia and Stuart off as soon as their carriage had arrived. (Not that Jessie was sorry about that; the ride had been miserable, with Celia fawning all over Stuart while Jessie, in the rear, had maintained a sullen silence.) Once the announcement and laughing toasts were over, the engaged pair had made the rounds of their friends together with Stuart's two proud aunts, accepting congratulations that barely masked the envy the women felt toward Celia for having carried off this matrimonial prize. Watching ladies of every age slaver over Stuart, Jessie had scarcely managed to hide her scorn. What fools they all were, not to see further than a handsome face!

  She'd been quite comfortable lurking behind a bright yellow forsythia bush, observing the festivities while remaining unobserved herself, until Bess Lippman had taken it into her prissy blond head to rescue her. Bess, whom like nearly everyone 62

  else at the party Jessie had known since infancy, was a younger version of Celia: sickly sweet on the outside and hard as steel within. Jessie had never liked her, and Bess's mother had long since forbidden her carefully raised daughter to associate with such a hoyden as Jessie. So she'd been understandably surprised when Bess, rounding the forsythia with a sympathetic "Tch-tch," had scolded her in a playful tone for hiding herself away and, linking their arms with a strength that belied her frail appearance, dragged Jessie out.

  In fact, Jessie would have been flabbergasted had it not been for the admiration in Oscar Kastel's eyes. Of course, Bess was exhibiting her kindness for the benefit of her tall, thin beau, spectacles and incipient bald spot notwithstanding. If Bess's action helped her snare an offer at last, Jessie thought nastily, then she supposed she ought not to begrudge her interference. After all, Bess was twenty, and on the verge of being an old maid despite her pale prettiness and expensive frocks. Perhaps the young men weren't quite the fools the young ladies were, after all. Certainly, if Bess Lippman's single state was any indication, they weren't as easily deceived by outward appearances. Once she was in public view, Jessie could do nothing but grimly endure as Bess pulled her over to the long table set aside for the young folks. Oscar Kastel had beamed in the background when Bess had gaily called everyone's attention to the forlorn one. As the others greeted her, Jessie had no choice but to force a smile and join them. In the end she had sat with them f
or the uncomfortable, seemingly endless meal, although no one had talked to her except to exchange the merest courtesies. She had felt miserably out of place, but at least she'd been able to occupy herself with eating some of the delicious barbecue and the crumb 63

  cake that was the cook at Tulip Hill's (Jessie thought her name was Clover) specialty. But dancing—or not dancing, while everybody watched, and labeled her a wallflower—was an ordeal she just could not face.

  "She's shy," Miss Laurel said with a twinkle in her eyes that were more gray than her sister's. "Don't worry, Jessica, we'll look after you. Come along, dear."

  "Please, I . . ."

  But protests were useless. Miss Laurel hooked her arm in Jessie's as though they were two young girls together and tugged her toward the opposite side of the house, where the pocket doors separating the two front parlors had been opened and the huge space that resulted cleared for dancing. A musicians' platform screened with vibrant masses of potted flowers had been erected in one corner beside two massive French doors that led to the back portico and rear gardens. The lilting strains of a quadrille emanated from the platform.

  Seated on little chairs set around the perimeter of the room, soberly clad matrons of all ages chatted quietly amongst themselves. They would pass the evening by watching the dancers and criticizing the girls and their beaux, taking the floor to dance with only their own husbands or brothers. Marriage automatically relegated a woman to dull clothes and a chair on the sidelines, leaving the pretty, bright dresses and enjoyable flirtations to the young, unmarried girls.

  The older gentlemen, to a man undoubtedly dragooned into attendance by their determined wives, congregated around the punchbowl that had been set up along with a table of refreshments in a small antechamber. Their voices rose and fell as they discussed, from the few words Jessie could overhear, 64

  various hunting exploits and the falling price of cotton. In the center of the room, perhaps twenty young couples twirled about in the movements of the dance. Jessie knew them all, of course, had known them since birth, but—but . . .

  The girls in their soft pastel dresses bore little resemblance to the playmates she remembered from the years before their mothers decided that she wasn't a suitable friend for their darling daughters after all. Every one of them looked so pretty, with their hair all shiny and styled, not in a topknot as hers was, but so that it was tied away from their faces and fell down to their shoulders in fat ringlets.

  And their dresses—their dresses were not like hers, either. Their bodices were tiny and revealed far more of their white bosoms than the inch or so of décolletage that had so scandalized Tudi. Their sleeves, though short and puffed, were styled so that they fell away from creamy shoulders, baring them, too. The effect looked rather as if the top of the dress might fall to the wearer's waist at any moment, but all the girls wore them and in their mothers' presence, too, so that it must not only be the fashion but also perfectly respectable. Tiny waists were accentuated by enormous sashes, sashes that ended in the back in huge bows and trailing streamers and were wide enough to make the sash around Jessie's waist look like a mere ribbon. Skirts were huge and billowing, longer in back than in front, so that small satin slippers and an occasional tantalizing glimpse of ankle were visible as the dancers whirled.

  The dresses they wore on the dance floor were not the same garments they had worn to the picnic earlier. Jessie realized with a sinking feeling that all the young girls except her had brought dance dresses with them, and changed into them after supper. 65

  Her patched-together gown looked more out of place than ever in comparison with the frothy confections the other girls wore for dancing. But how could she have known that they would change? And, given her limited wardrobe, what could she have done about it if she had known?

  Watching, Jessie felt acutely self-conscious. Her own sartorial shortcomings were painfully obvious even to her. With her faded, old-fashioned dress rendered even more dreadful by Sissie's bright pink embellishments, Jessie knew that she looked woefully out of place. If only everyone would leave her alone, she would steal away somewhere and hide until it was time to go home. By coming, she had appeased Celia and given tacit approval to the marriage. Celia was fully occupied in exhibiting her catch, and would neither know nor care if Jessie quietly disappeared until the evening was over. It it ever was over . . . But the Misses Edwards had other ideas.

  Miss Flora fell in on Jessie's other side, linking her arm with Jessie's, too. Jessie had no choice but to let the two old ladies bear her off. They tugged her toward the gaiety like two small keelboats towing a paddle wheeler.

  "Now, then, let's see if we can't find you a partner," Miss Flora said, to Jessie's horror, pausing in the doorway to survey the room. Unable to free herself from the ladies or think of any way to politely circumvent them, Jessie was forced to stand between them, miserably aware of how dreadful she must look in comparison. The Misses Edwards were plump but small. Neither of their silvery heads reached past Jessie's shoulder. Despite their advanced age, their gowns put hers to shame. Miss Laurel was dressed sumptuously in lavender satin, while Miss Flora was clad almost identically in mauve.

  66

  The music swelled. Laughter and chatter filled the air. Eleanor Bids well, resplendent in an apple-green gauze gown, floated by in the arms of blond Chaney Dart. Jessie had know her as Nell when they were little girls of seven and eight, but the petite redhead on the dance floor bore no resemblance to her childhood friend. Tall and willowy Susan Latow, in blue-sprigged muslin, danced with dark-haired Lewis Russell, while Margaret Culpepper, small, dark, and slightly plump but making the most of it in a low-cut gown of palest peach, was partnered by Howie Duke. Mitchell Todd wove his way through the crowd, a full punch glass in his hand, obviously on his way to find his partner, who must be sitting somewhere on the sidelines cooling off while he fetched her a drink. Mitch, who with his soft brown curls and hazel eyes had held a special place in her heart forever.

  . . .

  "Mitchell! Mitchell Todd!"

  Jessie was horrified to hear Miss Flora screech across the dance floor to none other than the object of every single one of her adolescent yearnings. Her head swung desperately toward Miss Flora, her mouth opened to object, but it was too late.

  "Yes, ma'am?" With his customary good manners, Mitch turned and lifted his eyebrows at Miss Flora inquiringly. He had to raise his voice to make it heard over the din, but it was still the velvety voice that sent shivers down Jessie's spine every time she heard it. Then his eyes left Miss Flora and he was looking at her instead and Jessie thought she would die. . . .

  "Come over here, Mitchell, and dance with Jessica!" This command, boomed at the volume of a cannon firing, made Jessie long to sink through the floor. Her face turned seventeen shades of crimson as Mitch hesitated, glanced at the full cup in his hand, 67

  then shrugged and headed toward the threesome in the doorway. If a heavenly chorus had announced that the world was ending right at that moment, Jessie would have fallen to her knees and given thanks. If a killer tornado had whirled through the valley and blown Tulip Hill and all therein into the next county, she would have considered herself saved. If . . .

  But there was no more time for ifs. Mitch stood in front of her. Frozen with embarrassment, Jessie couldn't even look at him, much less summon the wit to try to circumvent what was about to happen.

  "I'm sorry, Miss Flora, I couldn't hear what you said," he said mildly, smiling at the old lady. His front two teeth overlapped slightly, giving him an endearing boyish quality that made Jessie's heart go pitter-pat. Evidently he'd been trying to grow a mustache, because there was a line of brown fuzz above his upper lip. This evidence of burgeoning masculinity made her palms go damp. Or maybe the cause was sheer nervousness.

  "She said you should dance with Jessica," Miss Laurel interjected. Jessie cringed. Her palms grew damper.

  "Why—why—" He was taken aback, Jessie could tell he was taken aback, and of
course he didn't want to, but what could he say? His innate good manners would leave him no recourse. "It'll be my pleasure. If you'll take this punch, Miss Laurel. It's certainly delicious, by the way. Please give Clover my compliments on the recipe." Miss Laurel took the punch cup with a smile while Miss Flora tittered thanks for the compliment to their cook. Mitch held out his hand to Jessie. She looked from it to his face with paralyzing mortification. What could she do? What should she say? She didn't want him to dance with her because he was forced into it. 68

  "Well, Jessie—I mean, Miss Jessica—shall we have a go?" He'd known her forever, of course, and as children they'd been Jessie and Mitch to each other, but now he was Mr. Todd and she— But that was precisely the trouble. She was not Miss Jessica. That was the name of an elegant young lady like all the other elegant young ladies. Like Eleanor and Susan and Margaret and Bess.

  "Go on now, Jessica. Have a good time, and don't trouble your head about us."

  Miss Flora, bless her, whether from ignorance or kindness, had ascribed Jessie's hesitation to a pretty unwillingness to leave her two hostesses to themselves.

  "I—" Jessie opened her mouth to refuse, to tell Mitch that he was off the hook because she couldn't dance, didn't want to dance, particularly didn't want to dance with him, of all people, but he seized her hand and pulled her toward the dance floor before she could get the words out.

  "Jessica's going to be our niece now, you know!" Miss Laurel—or was it Miss Flora?—called after them as Mitch drew her out onto the floor. Then he was turning toward her, smiling, while cold sweat prickled down her spine and her feet, like her tongue, turned to stone.