by Karin Tanabe
Anita left the farm flooded with anxiety. She walked down the hill, the art gallery, with its undulating roof, coming into view. At Northfield, Bessie had sympathized with her; now she was chastising her. What would Anita have if she went home? Could she be the person Bessie believed she was? Is that even what she wanted?
No, she thought. Not yet. She still hoped to travel, to study, to soar beyond what she had been so often told were her limits.
As she passed the gallery and headed into the rear of Main, she thought of the rift that might open between her and Bessie after her graduation. She thought about the possibility of a life without her. Bessie had made it clear in her letter: if Anita chose to live permanently as a white woman, they would no longer see each other. Anita chewed on her lip, biting back tears at the prospect. It wasn’t fair of Bessie, she thought. She didn’t turn a blind eye to her now, while she was living as a white woman at Vassar. Why should she after graduation?
Anita brushed the dirt from her dress and hurried inside Main in time for her Greek class with Miss Macurdy.
At thirty-one, Grace Macurdy was one of the youngest professors at Vassar, having graduated from Radcliffe in ’88 and joining Vassar when Anita came in ’93. This semester, Anita’s last, she had shared with her students one of her deepest passions, the history of Hellenistic queens in Macedonia, Seleucid Syria, and Ptolemaic Egypt.
After forty minutes of translation work, so difficult that one of the students had tears of frustration smearing her pen marks, Miss Macurdy switched to the lecture format she most enjoyed. Anita listened, fascinated, as the professor spoke about Berenice I of Egypt and her lack of royal blood. Miss Macurdy looked directly at Anita, who had previously confided in her teacher how much she enjoyed the subject, and said, “Berenice’s end was like her beginning. She knew how to live dangerously and how to die bravely, and she had a pitiful heart.”
“I could listen to those stories all afternoon,” Hortense Lewis, Belle’s studious roommate, said to Anita as they stood up to leave together. Hortense and Anita had never been great friends, as Hortense was the kind of person who could only be great friends with a book, but they shared a passion for Greek history, which gave them fodder for conversation after class. Anita was poised to respond when Miss Macurdy approached her.
“Miss Hemmings, please stay a minute. I’d like to discuss something with you, briefly before the dinner bell.”
Anita nodded, said goodbye to Hortense, and tried to shake off the dread filling her body faster than a well in a rainstorm. She had not been asked to stay after class since Miss Franklin had kept her to share her complicated views on the Negro race. Miss Macurdy placed a pile of papers in front of Anita and pulled out the chair next to her. She gathered her skirts and sat next to her devoted student, her face unsmiling.
“Applications for graduate scholarships awarded by Vassar are on the top. The paperwork for the Babbott Fellowship and for the fellowship for four hundred dollars given by the class of ’87 are underneath. Anita, we will get you to Greece so you can continue your studies, I am sure of it.”
Anita looked at her professor and wanted to cry out with delight. Miss Macurdy, Anita knew, refused to see a passion for the classics wasted. She had told Anita her freshman year that she hailed from Vermont, a state she described as feeling farther from the riches of Greece than the sun. “I myself will be in Europe this summer,” she added now, “at the University of Berlin. Perhaps we will have a chance to meet.”
“I would love that,” said Anita, flipping through the application. “I’m so appreciative that you thought of me. That you recommended me.” Her eyes fell to the Babbott Fellowship paperwork and the space where an applicant was required to fill in her race. French and English, Anita thought to herself. And nothing more.
She thanked Miss Macurdy profusely and headed up to her room to spend the hour before dinner.
Before she reached the top of the staircase, she collected the mail, three letters, all for Lottie. Two of the stamps indicated that the letters had been sent from New York. The other was from Cambridge. Anita looked at the handwriting and recognized it as Porter’s. Desperate to open the letter before Lottie did, she looked around the hall, trying to work up a nerve that did not come naturally to her. But before she could persuade herself to tamper with it, to read it, Caroline stepped out of the elevator.
“Anita, I was hoping you’d be about,” she said. “Let’s go and sit and do absolutely nothing in your parlor before the dinner bell rings. I’ve had such a day. I’m coming from a Phil meeting, and I swear to you that Vassie James is more demanding than the head of the Metropolitan Opera. I have nearly one hundred lines to learn. And you should see the program design for the next play. It’s in the shape of a small black coffin, isn’t that ghastly? My character is not moribund, she’s quite in the prime of her life.”
“But isn’t the play about death?” asked Anita. Lottie had been reciting her lines for the play all week.
“It is, but why must we be so literal? The last program was in the charming shape of a teakettle, and the play was not about tea.”
The girls walked into Anita’s parlor room and found Belle and Lottie already there, Belle strumming her mandolin idly as Lottie rested, a book on her face.
“Your Shakespeare is upside down,” said Anita, picking up the book to reveal Lottie’s closed eyes. “And I fetched the mail. All for you.” She handed Lottie the letters, and Lottie immediately put Porter’s down and out of sight. Sitting up, she opened the first one from New York with her ornate silver letter opener, which boasted a large T at the top with a pearl-encrusted loop.
“Can I try my hand at that?” asked Anita, reaching for Belle’s mandolin. As she took the neck of the instrument in her hand, Lottie let out a gasp like a punctured bicycle tire. They all dropped what they were doing and gathered around her.
“Why, we’ve been invited to Clavedon Hall!” said Lottie, as she continued to read.
“The four of us?” asked Caroline. “How delightful. What is Clavedon Hall?”
“Moreover, where is Clavedon Hall?” asked Belle.
“It’s the Rhinelander estate in Lenox, Massachusetts, in the Berkshire Mountains,” said Lottie, still looking down at the letter embossed with the family’s intricate monogram. “Marchmont Rhinelander has invited us all to visit. He says we could come during our spring vacation in just two weeks’ time!”
She looked up, seemingly as surprised as everybody else. “He writes here that he appreciated our kindness at the opera and would like to see us all again. He’s encouraged us to come for at least a weekend, but preferably a week.”
“Did he write that? All of us?” said Anita.
“He did,” said Lottie, pointing at the line. “There will also be a musician, no, a composer, from France as a guest, and he says that Belle will have many opportunities to showcase her voice.” She looked up at Anita and added, “You, too. I’m afraid we forgot to mention how well you sing. Won’t that be a surprise?”
“Do you think it’s a good idea?” asked Anita, thinking about what Marchmont had said to her. She had managed to deter him once, but could she block his scrutiny for a whole weekend? She didn’t want him to have time to study her face. And what if Frederick were to find out? He would cross Massachusetts to drag her home by her hair and lock her away in Roxbury forever.
“I don’t know,” said Lottie. “I’m not sure we can go. The Rhinelander family is one of the most highly regarded in New York, but Marchmont is very much its black sheep—”
“But we must!” said Belle excitedly. “I’m already half in love with him, and a week at Clarendon Hall—”
“Clavedon Hall,” Lottie corrected her.
“A week there will certainly make the other half surrender, too. Please respond yes, Lottie. My parents expect me home, as does your mother, but we don’t need to be there for more than a few days, and spring vacation is nearly two weeks long.”
“I planned
to remain at college,” said Anita, “and Caroline, too.”
“Even if my mother does approve, we’ll never be allowed to make the trip without a chaperone,” said Lottie from her sofa. “It’s just not done. And my mother as companion is out of the question.”
“What about Nettie Aldrich?” asked Belle, sitting down with her and taking the letter from her hands. It was written on the thickest paper either had ever seen. “Nettie is married and close by in Boston.”
“Of course!” said Lottie. “And Harvard has its spring vacation in April, as well. Perhaps Talbot can accompany her. That would appease my mother.”
“It has to happen!” said Belle, turning pink. “You will come, won’t you, Anita? Caroline?”
“If Lottie’s mother approves, and our families consent, then yes, we will,” said Caroline, answering for both of them. Anita knew she would have to lie to her parents and say she was staying at college for the entire spring holiday. But she couldn’t worry about that now. She was too busy wondering how she could alter her appearance in two weeks’ time so that Marchmont did not bring up the subject of Boston again.
Mrs. Taylor more than approved. Marchmont may have been the pariah of New York that spring, but he was still a Rhinelander, and when the scandal had blown over, he would again become one of New York’s most eligible bachelors, even at forty-one. Lucretia Schotenhorn had already approved him for her young daughter, and that meant everything in New York.
CHAPTER 22
When the four girls disembarked from their train at Pittsfield on the first Friday in April, the Rhinelander coach was waiting for them. And when they were helped down from it in Lenox, where the Rhinelanders’ stone mansion sat on 128 acres, the first person they saw was Nettie Aldrich. She ran toward the large carriage, the sleeves of her light blue dress billowing. Lenox was full of white-blossoming trees, but between them lay open fields, cleared by farmers, which let the wind through.
“Nettie!” Lottie cried as the girls spotted her.
“Aren’t you all a delight to ask me here?” said Nettie. She was wearing her hair in an even more voluminous style than the last time they had seen her, and they all admired the way it puffed out under her straw sporting hat. “The weather is too beautiful to be in the city,” Nettie said, patting her coiffure lovingly. “And to kick off the spring season at the Rhinelander estate, it’s just marvelous. We’ve already been here three days.”
She turned to Lottie and said, “I was shocked when I received your note. How ever did you acquire an invitation to Clavedon Hall? It’s the grandest house in the Berkshires.”
“We were polite to Marchmont,” Anita explained before Lottie could. “When no one else was.”
“When no one else was!” echoed Nettie, laughing. “Of course no one else was, Anita. He called off his engagement two days before his wedding to Estelle Schotenhorn! Seven hundred oysters had to be thrown out, three hundred live quails had to be returned—can you imagine the embarrassment?”
“Oh, no, not the live quails,” Caroline whispered to Anita, making them both laugh.
“Enough, you two,” said Lottie. “Hailing from the middle of nowhere, both of you. You just don’t know the power of the Schotenhorns in New York. They run society, and society runs the city. I’m surprised they still allow Marchmont to live there. He really should be banished to this Berkshire cottage.”
“The Rhinelanders are one of the original families,” Nettie reminded Lottie. “They can’t run him out of town, even if they want to. He can trace his roots in New York back two hundred years. That’s earlier than the Schotenhorns, though they don’t like to admit it.”
“Still, I hear Estelle Schotenhorn hasn’t appeared in society since,” said Lottie. “The poor bucktoothed little thing. That man turned her into a recluse, forced to live a life of solitude like Henry David Thoreau. And with summer on the horizon, too. She’s spent every summer since she’s been out in Europe or Newport. But not this year.”
“Luckily for us!” said Belle, grabbing a golf club from the ground and swinging it with all her might.
“You remind me, I need to tidy those up,” said Nettie. “Marchmont, Talbot, and the Frenchman Xavier de Montmorency are in town,” she added, leading them inside where a maid was ready to help them unpack. “They’ll return shortly. The Frenchman is very regal indeed, descended from one of the grandest noble houses in France. He’s a composer, but he still has an air about him. He’s charming and plays the piano wonderfully. You’ll enjoy his company. Come now, I’ll show you the drawing room. You’re going to fall in love with this house.”
“I already have,” said Belle, looking into the first of forty-one rooms.
When the men returned from town, the women were gathered in the drawing room, dressed for dinner. The tall windows had been thrown open, and the sheer curtains fluttered in the fragrant breeze of the early evening.
“Well!” said Marchmont, striding in. He had had a new spring suit cut for the occasion of hosting four unmarried women in his family home, and all the ladies looked admiringly at him as he approached. “It looks as if you’re holding a party for ghosts in here. Everything blowing every which way,” he said, taking Lottie’s hand in greeting.
“Marchmont Rhinelander,” she said, standing to meet him. “You’re one of a kind, aren’t you? Inviting us here after we spoke to you at the opera. I don’t know that it’s proper, but we are all very glad to be here.”
“I’m happy you could get away from your studies, devoted academics that you are,” he said, turning to Belle next and kissing her hand with familiarity. “It will be an amusing weekend, most notably because I will be in your company, but also because we have Monsieur de Montmorency here,” he said, indicating the fair-haired Frenchman, who appeared closer in age to the girls than to Marchmont. “We became acquainted on my second long tour in Europe when I was taking in opera after opera and he was Paris’s musical prodigy.”
“We must hear you play,” Anita said politely. “And if you’ll allow us, Belle and I would love to join you for a song.”
Anita knew that one of her greatest social assets was her voice. And perhaps, she thought, it would help persuade Marchmont that she was not the girl he had seen walking the streets of Boston.
Xavier promptly complied, and the rest of the group sat mesmerized as he played, and Anita and Belle sang, the flower duet from Lakmé. The girls had trained in the same choir for nearly four years, so their voices blended well, Belle’s strong mezzo holding its own against Anita’s soaring soprano.
“Such beauty!” said Marchmont, standing up and clapping when they had finished. “And Lakmé, of all things. Anita, you sang Lakmé’s role superbly, and Belle, your Mallika was just as it should be, engaging and fresh, with all the power of a mezzo. I was in the audience in Paris when Lakmé was first performed at the Opéra Comique. The angelic Marie van Zandt and Elisa Frandin debuted your roles. It is to this day one of my fondest memories. And you both sang it so well.”
“Lovely,” said the Frenchman from his seat on the piano bench. “For two American students, I am most impressed. But now, for a little something plus dramatique!” he said, before launching into Chopin’s exceptionally difficult Sonata No. 3.
When he was finished, Marchmont rose again and said, “The three of you, please do join us in New York next season when I am no longer banished from the ladies’ drawing rooms. Your talents would make it much more bearable. So many of the young women in New York have voices like cats and play the piano as if their fingers were sewn together.”
“I can’t imagine why you’ve been banished,” said Lottie slyly. “You’d think all the hostesses of New York would be competing to be worthy of such compliments.”
“At least there is Lottie Taylor,” said Marchmont, moving to sit next to her as Belle’s face dropped. “You’ve never bored anyone.”
“I don’t want a thing to do with New York society,” said Lottie, as Nettie closed the windows next
to them. The sun had just started to sink behind the rolling hills, and her husband, Talbot, turned on the lamp beside him, illuminating Lottie’s face.
“I’ve seen its effects on my mother,” Lottie went on. “She threatens suicide through poisoning if there is a notable event and she’s not invited. It’s ridiculous the things intelligent women become worked up about: tea trays and china, balls and parties, the nip in the waist of a gown. Marchmont, we here represent a different generation of women, the first girls in our families to attend college. And we won’t succumb to the same fate as our mothers. We have minds formally molded to do important things. Splendid things.”
“Well said!” commented Nettie from the sofa she was sharing with her husband.
“And what do you intend to do after your graduation from Vassar, Miss Taylor?” asked the Frenchman, still perched on the piano bench.
“Me? Nothing but the greatest adventures that money can buy. I plan on traveling back to the Orient—Japan specifically—for a good deal of time. I’d like to study the language, the culture. It’s so much more interesting to see a country that has been open to trade with the West for only forty years. France and Italy, England, too, with so many Americans already established there, they don’t attract the pioneer in me,” she explained to Xavier. “So off I will go, chaperoned, of course. But I’ve been skilled in shaking off a chaperone for decades now. Who knows, I may stay forever. I may even marry one of them.”
“And Porter?” said Anita suddenly. “What will become of him then?”