Now, when Stepan greeted her as they arrived at Mathilde’s house, Rosa felt a pang of envy. He was such a fine specimen, and so excellently trained. She took Tania’s hand and went into the Louis XIII living room, admiring it, in spite of herself. She adjusted the spray of lace at her throat, and mentally reviewed her appearance. Truly, the emerald afternoon gown from Worth was perfect, and Tania’s pink pinafore was adorable.
Mathilde was rising to greet her, and Rosa noted with displeasure that Sonia, at her side, was a pretty child. Her eyes were smoky-gray, her features delicate, her hair raven black. But she looked so very Russian—men would find her attractive but… ordinary, unlike Tania, so golden, with her eyes such a bright blue.
Mathilde was also regarding Tania, and thinking, How absurd! A child in raw silk, which will stain when she plays. But she held out her arms and embraced her sister-in-law.
Sonia was staring at Tania, her eyes wide with admiration. “You are very beautiful,” she said, taking her hand. “You are like a princess in a story.”
“Yes, I know,” Tania replied sweetly.
“But you’re not supposed to answer that way,” Sonia said with consternation. “Mama will be quite shocked, and so will your Mama.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Tania explained. Her eyes twinkled. “Everybody compliments me. And Mama and Papa are very happy about it.”
Sonia bit her lower lip. “You are very lucky,” she said. “I guess I’m just not as pretty as you. Nobody tells me I am, except for Ossip.”
Tania clapped her little hands together. “Ossip! Oh, where is he? I should like to see him again. He was a handsome boy when I saw him last. He gave me candy.”
“You want to see my brother?” Sonia was hesitant. “Don’t you want to go to my room and have cakes, and play with my dolls, and see Anna?”
But Tania made a wry face. “No. Anna is ugly. I don’t like ugly people. But I like Ossip. He will play dolls with us.”
“I’m not sure, for he is a boy,” Sonia answered. “You will have to ask. And Anna is not ugly. You must promise never to say that again, or I shall not be friends with you.” Her cheeks grew red with anger.
“Your Mama will force you to be my friend,” Tania stated primly. “And Ossip will play what I want. They always do. Everybody.”
“Ossip is not an everybody,” Sonia replied, annoyed. Then she shrugged. “Come on,” she said, and took her cousin’s hand. She led the way out of the room.
Rosa commented to Mathilde: “They are so sweet together. Snow White and Rose Red.”
A half-smile appeared on Mathilde’s serene face. “Tania does get her own way, doesn’t she? Someday she will be roundly spanked by an older and larger child. Or,” she added, “by a sensitive mother.”
But Rosa saw no irony in these words. “She charms the whole world,” she said fatuously. “And besides, my dear, no one would dare to lay a hand on the daughter of Baron Alexander.”
Mathilde poured some dark amber tea into tall Russian glasses. She sat back, annoyed at the irritation which disturbed her peace in this room which she loved. Rosa was like a fly, buzzing around her. Mathilde put a hand to her temple, and wondered if another migraine was about to begin. Her thick pompadour weighed on her head. She was vaguely pleased with Sonia, who had controlled her anger toward her cousin, and somewhat annoyed with Anna, who had refused to come to tea. Later she would enter, to kiss her aunt gingerly on the spare brown cheek, but that was hardly sufficient for the elder daughter in a family. Still—she could imagine Anna sitting in surly resentment on the edge of the sofa, her red hair hopelessly disordered. Rosa would tell all of St. Petersburg about it. Mathilde sighed. The only bright point of this colorless afternoon would be when Johanna would join them, after making sure that the two older children were settled in their rooms with cake and tea.
“You have not met my Johanna,” she said to Rosa, and her face quickened. “She is a jewel—not merely with the children, but also here, with me. She is literate and worldly and has traveled. And she has such a flair for fashion!”
“A hired woman? Come now, Mathilde, you exaggerate. Tania’s governess is perfectly adequate—a Swiss girl—but I would no more discuss fashion with her than I would with your Stepan.”
“You are so wrong! You, David—thinking in terms of pay. Johanna is a lady, I tell you. She comes from as fine a family as we do. Money is scarce. There is no dishonor in working.” But she shivered at the thought, and her heart, so rarely touched, warmed with compassion for Johanna de Mey. She felt a surge of anger with Rosa that she had not felt when Tania had called Anna ugly.
Moments later, with a swishing of satin, Johanna de Mey entered the room. Her appearance alone made Rosa de Gunzburg shrink and darken in contrast, for she wore a gown of soft turquoise, and her hair fell in ringlets onto the nape of her neck. She said, “I am so sorry to be late for you, Mathilde.” The smile that accompanied her speech was radiant. Rosa touched her breast with an intake of breath, and her black eyes rolled in their sockets. Mathilde repressed a smile.
“This is Johanna de Mey, Rosinka,” she said, as the Dutchwoman took the small bony hand and made a slight but precise curtsy. Her willowy form hardly seemed to bow, so smooth and brief was the formality. “My sister-in-law, the Baroness Alexander de Gunzburg.”
“I am pleased to make your acquaintance.”
Mathilde patted the seat next to her on the sofa, and the governess sat down. Rosa watched, unable to speak. Smoothly, Mathilde poured a third glass of tea and handed it to the fair-haired woman beside her. Rosa thought, Mathilde has taken leave of her senses. But she could not regain her composure. Johanna de Mey, coolly sipping tea, was examining her with eyes of crystal blue. Rosa shivered. And then a tremendous envy welled up inside her, and she wanted to tear out Johanna’s fine golden ringlets and spill tea over her elegant turquoise gown. She said, her birdlike face craned toward Mathilde, “I was planning to give a dinner in your honor, to celebrate your arrival. Sasha has discussed it with David.”
Mathilde’s eyebrows curved up. “Did you not wish to speak to me about it before the men discussed it?” she asked. Then, more kindly, she added, “But no, of course, they are brothers. When shall we come?”
“Two weeks from Thursday,” Rosa replied, refusing to look at Johanna. Her hands were rigid in her lap. “We shall be only family. David was very touched,” she emphasized.
“As am I, dear Rosa. So we shall be the Sashas, the Davids, Uncle Horace, and Johanna?” Mathilde made an effort to speak with gentleness, and her control jarred her sister-in-law’s nerves. Rosa touched her forehead absently. “Did you hear me, Rosinka?” Mathilde inquired with solicitude.
Suddenly Rosa de Gunzburg came alive, with fury. Her hands clenched into fists. She half rose, and screamed, “No! You will not bring this woman to my house! You will not spoil my intimate supper! She is nothing, nothing at all, and I have not invited her. I also did not bother to include Stepan. What would Papa Horace say? Or Sasha? My God, Mathilde, it is uncivil enough for you to impose this creature on me alone, when I come to tea for the first time since your return. Are you trying to ruin me?” She burst into hysterical sobs, pressing her fists against her temples, her neat chignon coming undone.
Mathilde’s eyes widened, but her expression of tranquil poise did not shift, She said calmly, “Let’s be mature, Rosa. You have insulted me by insulting my friend. Johanna is my friend, and nobody will belittle her in my presence. You are my sister, and I value your good will. I would not think of including Johanna if she were not already precious to me. She is a lady, I have told you. But if you invite me to supper in front of Johanna, whom I have asked to join us for this tea, then it is only natural for me to assume that she is also invited. If she were not, you would have discussed the supper at another time, privately.”
“But you gave me no chance!” Rosa cried out.
Johanna de Mey stood up. Her eyes had turned a strange opalescent hue, and her thin nose see
med pinched. She said, “Mathilde, it is clear that I am not wanted. The Baroness seems to think that I am a servant. It appears that I committed a grave error in accepting this position with the Gunzburg family. Your reputation is high, and I was told that I would fit into its aura of gentility and generosity. Yet now I am treated as a menial. I have not been invited, although a party has been discussed in my presence. That is the prerogative of the Baroness, but it is mine, nevertheless, to return to France. I have never accepted humiliation, and I never shall. If you seek a servant, then I am sorry, but you have made a mistake. My mother, in the Netherlands, was also a baroness.” Even as Mathilde’s hand reached out to touch her, she evaded it, moving aside with a swish of her satin skirt. She turned and left the room, where Rosa was still sobbing. All color had departed from Mathilde’s cheeks. For the first time since her wedding trip, Mathilde de Gunzburg felt control slipping away from her, and remembered the ghastly night that David had forced her to spend in a train station. She thought of her father, pounding his fist upon the dinner table to roar insults at the cook for overheating the soup. Fear rose in her breast. She thought wildly: Johanna will go away, and she is the first person who has truly been my friend, the first person who has understood me since I left my sisters. She was in St. Petersburg, where she needed Johanna, needed someone with whom to share her feelings. She needed Johanna to act as buffer, to control the children, to help with the servants... to laugh about female things, to chat with idly. She could not let Johanna go, not now, not ever. A desperation such as Mathilde had never experienced in her thirty-one years overwhelmed her.
Fumbling wildly, she rang for Stepan. When he appeared, Mathilde said with a supreme effort at control, “Please help the Baroness. She is much distressed. She will need her coach, and her daughter. I must tend—to something.” Without looking at Rosa, she hurried from the room, knowing but not caring that the maître d’hôtel was staring at her in shock and bewilderment. Only one thing mattered, and that was to convince Johanna not to leave.
If Johanna de Mey had made a lifelong enemy of Rosa de Gunzburg, it did not ruffle her in the least. Quite to the contrary, she smiled to herself, for the incident in the living room had, she knew, created a permanent, if unspoken, breach between Mathilde and her sister-in-law. And that was all to Johanna’s advantage.
Mathilde had spoken to David about “Rosa’s appalling lack of tact,” and had indicated that she expected to receive a note of apology. As she lay upon her pillows, her face whiter than usual, a cautious David sat on the bed and held her hand soothingly. “It is a matter best forgotten, dearest,” he said. “Rosa is a snob, and she behaved like an impudent child. But perhaps henceforth you had best refrain from asking Johanna to tea.”
Mathilde, outraged, silenced his protests. She would not go to supper unless he spoke to his brother about the apology. It was Johanna who had been cruelly wronged.
David, who was a diplomat in business affairs, felt acutely uncomfortable. Family was precious to him, even if Sasha was imperious and envious, and they had never been close. Surely Rosa, whom David privately disliked, deserved priority over his children’s governess. But thoughts of Mathilde, distressed, flooded his mind. In an agony of embarrassment, David went to the bank to speak to his brother. Sasha laughed. Women were foolish creatures, though it amazed him that Mathilde, whom he had always admired for her regal beauty and elegant poise, would stoop to this sort of silliness. Had David, by the way, seen that little milliner whom Sasha now kept near the Nevsky Prospect? Imagine, renting an apartment there! The girl was a saucy piece, but costly, costly. David was wise not to indulge in passions of the flesh. David smiled, thinking of Mathilde. He had his passions; had they not driven him here against his better judgment?
After much deliberation, and a burst of anger from Sasha, the brothers had agreed that for the sake of family relations Rosa would send the note. At home, Sasha had to contend with his wife, who flew into a wild fury, throwing a precious vase against a wall and pummeling his chest. He had calmed her and repeated what he expected of her. Then, after she had rewritten the apology three times, he had taken her to bed. And so Mathilde had informed Johanna that her sister-in-law had begged forgiveness, that most certainly Mademoiselle de Mey was to be included in her dinner party. Johanna had known how to play this, too, to her own advantage.
“My dear Mathilde,” she said, “I could not possibly attend. Rosa is doing this only for courtesy. Her heart is not in this invitation, and I do not wish to upset her further by being present where I am not truly a welcome guest.”
Mathilde had agreed.
Johanna reflected upon all this as she munched daintily upon a crumpet. It was nine o’clock and she was partaking of breakfast in bed. The children had had their Hebrew lesson—what nonsense!—with their father at seven thirty, and now awaited her in the lesson room. But Baron David would be occupied in his study, receiving his daily petitioners and reviewing each of their cases before taking the carriage into town and the ministries where he worked. She pursed her lips with disgust. Never had she seen such an array of evil-smelling tatterdemalions as inhabited the waiting room outside the Baron’s study. But then, it was just like this religious fanatic to work himself to death over supposed injustices committed against some poor Jews. Well, let him waste his time! It kept him from visiting the lesson room and discovering that she was not present. The children had their assignments: they were to learn a passage from the history book by memory, and that would take them a good hour. She would arrive at ten.
She remembered her own education. She had been the eldest daughter of Johan de Mey van Alkemade, of Utrecht. Her father, imperious, tall, and handsome, had possessed much noble blood, although her sweet, delicate mother came only from a bourgeois background. Her parents had bought a magnificent house on Lake Geneva during her childhood, and she had loved the blue-green, cool beauty of Switzerland. She had also loved her splendid, aristocratic father, after whom she had been named. She had vaguely despised her more common mother, always so gentle and kind. She herself had been authoritative from the start, and her father had said: “She is named for me, she resembles me, and she is strong-willed like me. I shall educate her well, not like these cream-puff females who adorn the world and are of no use to anybody.”
His wife had blushed, knowing he was referring to her.
So Johanna had been sent to the best school for young ladies in Geneva, a boarding establishment run by two spinster ladies, the Frauleins Broun and Weichbrodt. They tolerated no nonsense, and were rigid disciplinarians. She had been the pet of the Frauleins; she followed discipline marvelously.
When she had completed her education, the Meys had moved to Neuilly, an elegant suburb of Paris. Not realizing that her husband was nearly ruined from mismanagement of his affairs, Lise de Mey had entertained lavishly. Her husband was too proud to admit his failures to her, and too stubborn to admit the extent of the damage to himself. Johanna, as beautiful and stately as an iris, had been courted by many wealthy young men. But compared to her father, they all seemed stupid and graceless. And Johan encouraged her dispassion, for it fed his own ego. He had reared his daughter to be brilliant, like a man. It did not matter to him that Lise was distressed.
And then, quite suddenly, catastrophe struck. Headstrong, vain, Johan de Mey continued to spend extravagant sums of money until one day there was nothing left. He had gone into his study, shut the door, and put a bullet through his left temple. Johanna had found him, slumped in a pool of blood, and her heart had ruptured. She was twenty-five. In her agony she had shaken her dead father, splattering his blood over her fine gown, screaming again and again, “Why have you done this to me?” Then, hardening herself, she had thought brutally: He never loved me, it was I who was a fool to think he did. He was a... nothing. I thought he was God, but he was nothing.
Lise was shattered and helpless, wracked by her pain, paralyzed by catastrophe. It was Johanna who took matters in hand. First, she paid off the
servants with proceeds from the sale of the house, then she faced her father’s creditors with rigid posture, meeting their cruel eyes with her own proud stare. It was she who auctioned off the paintings—beloved Vermeers and a small, treasured Rembrandt—the furnishings of buhl and rosewood and fine mahogany. Her heart did not stir with pain; it remained numb and cold inside her.
Johanna transferred the family to a small apartment in one of the less expensive areas of Paris, and raised her fine head as she took the degrading step of finding work for herself. She became a ladies’ companion to a young American girl. She was well treated, for Americans felt insecure about their breeding, and hers, so properly European, had impressed the girl’s family. But they had been ready, after several years, to return to America. It was a stroke of fortune that had allowed their return to coincide with Mathilde’s need for a governess.
Mathilde. Johanna ran a finger down her nose, smiled, and touched a golden tendril on her forehead. She passed her hand over her chest, then parted the fine blue gauze of her nightdress and felt her small but well-formed breasts, like half-apples, and their hard nipples. A tremor of delight ran through her, and she shook herself out of it. Mathilde, in many ways, was like a child. She was an accomplished woman of the world, but innocent too, for it was clear that she had never been aroused. Certainly not by that sapless husband of hers. Mathilde tolerated him, but surely bore him little love and no passion. And had Mathilde not told her that they had been betrothed during her childhood? Certainly, then, no other man had stimulated Mathilde’s imagination. Women, in truth, could only be appreciated by other women. Suddenly blood rushed through Johanna’s body and she clasped her hands in blind yearning. For while her senses had known pleasure before, no one had ever possessed them in full save herself. Until now. But one had to be careful, to tread lightly—or all would be lost. She had to be more astute than ever before. Mathilde de Gunzburg was a proper woman, who would need to be deluded.
The Four Winds of Heaven Page 7