Anna Godbersen: Splendor

For the first time all afternoon, Henry cracked a smile. The sight of the colonel floundering in the tranquil, opaque water was too comical to inspire any other reaction. The girls all shrieked and crawled forward to look at the foolish American whose fancy uniform, like the rest of him, was now submerged in the bay. They shrieked again when Henry undid the remaining buttons of his shirt, threw it on the deck, and dove in. He plunged deep into the cool silence; for that one moment of immersion it seemed to him that Florida was not, after all, too far to swim. The water, however murky, had a transformative effect. By the time Henry had gotten his arms around the colonel, gasped for breath at the surface, and pushed him back onto the deck of the boat, his anger had dissipated.

“Are you all right, sir?” he asked, hoisting the colonel on the deck. The resentful lethargy he’d been feeling was washed away.

“Yes, my boy,” he replied, clapping Henry on the wet back. There was something stunned in his appearance, but there was nothing really wrong with him. “All in good fun. I won’t harangue you about girls anymore, so long as you pour yourself a drink and at least pretend to relax a little.”

“Yes, sir.” The air felt cooler now, and Henry pulled the sleeves of his shirt back over his slick arms. When he was finished with the buttons, he accepted the fresh glass of rum that Harvey’s girl had poured for him. Drinks were being passed all around.

“To Cuba,” the girl said, raising her glass, “y Los Estados Unidos.”

They all drank to a long friendship between their countries, and Henry, in his own mind, said his usual private toast: To Diana, whatever she might be doing these days, and to the grain of a chance that she might one day forgive him.

The party that everyone wants to attend this evening is being hosted by Miss Carolina Broad, at her new townhouse on East Sixty-third off the park, and will be attended by such luminaries as the Prince of Bavaria, Mr. Reginald Newbold and his new bride, Adelaide, and Mrs. Henry Schoonmaker, the former Miss Penelope Hayes, who has been convalescing since a small family tragedy of early spring, and who may cause something of a scandal by going out so soon when her husband is still serving his country abroad. One invitee sure to be absent is Miss Broad’s new neighbor, Leland Bouchard, whose European tour was extended several times, and whose Atlantic voyage back to New York has been delayed by bad weather….

— FROM THE SOCIETY PAGE OF THE NEW-YORK NEWS OF THE WORLD GAZETTE, FRIDAY, JULY 6, 1900

THE HEAT WAS STIFLING, AND EVERY CONCEIVABLE inch of floor — from the shiny granite of the foyer, up the polished oak of the spiral staircase, to the herringbone parquet on the parlor level — was obscured by black dress shoes or sweeping skirts. Perfume and innuendo filled the air, although one could scarcely hear the voice of one’s neighbor, if that lady or gentleman were speaking at anything like an appropriate level. Music played, but only the best dancers kept going, for space was at a premium and everyone would have thought poorly of a less talented couple throwing their limbs about at a time like this. The throng pressed against the ivory-and-rose-flocked wallpaper of the first three stories, and although the windows had been left open, the air inside remained stagnant. Of course, no one dreamed of leaving. On that Friday evening, there was no place any of them would have rather been.

Through the crush and up and down the stairs darted the hostess, Carolina Broad. She caused a little stir wherever she went, and not only because of the lavender silk dress that revealed her shoulders, hugged her hips, and trailed behind her like a bridal train. The beadwork on her bodice was so minute, it might have escaped the attention of her guests, had it not been for the incandescence those beads created in the chandelier light. There had been a time when she would have hidden her shoulders — they were big and bony, and in the summer they were darkened by freckles the same way her nose was — but she had learned not a few things since inheriting the mighty fortune of her late benefactor, Mr. Carey Lewis Longhorn, and among them was that a girl, if she is clever, owns what she already has. She had come from a Western family, a copper-smelting fortune, which was somewhat modest compared to her current holdings. That was the official story, at any rate, and her big, bare shoulders, their pale skin adorned with auburn flecks, the teeth that were slightly oversized for her mouth, confirmed it. Now, if she seemed a little large or coarse in places, it only enhanced her aura.

The evening was a triumph, but she could not begin to enjoy it. The one person whose presence she cared about was somewhere out on the Atlantic.

Perhaps to distract herself from disappointment, she moved hurriedly, setting off little currents and eddies among the guests who filled the halls and galleries of her new townhouse — No. 15, with a redbrick façade and tall, narrow layout. She had wanted one of those grandly squatting monoliths that they built on Fifth Avenue nowadays, but she had been very specific about wanting a home on this particular block, and number fifteen had been the only one available. To her surprise, this choice had proved advantageous to her. Everybody knew that she could afford someplace grander, but they applauded her in the press, and over decadently laid dinner tables, for choosing something elegant and appropriate to a young heiress without a family.

These days, and especially tonight, everyone wanted to whisper in her ear. Carolina smiled and posed, and when her cheeks grew a little red from the warmth, that only served to make her green eyes look especially so in contrast. She exchanged coiffure compliments with Mrs. Reginald Newbold, née Adelaide Wetmore, who was stationed with her new husband under the life-size portrait of Carolina as a horsewoman that hung over the mantel in the third-floor library. It was the largest of the late Longhorn’s collection of portraits of society beauties, and his final commission. Halfway down the stairs she exchanged cordial hellos with Agnes Jones, who had at one time been a charity case of Carolina’s childhood friend Elizabeth Holland. Agnes was not in and of herself an interesting person, but she did — Carolina had recently discovered — feed bits of gossip to the New-York News of the World Gazette society columnist, and so if one was kind to her, one could count on that kindness being returned in print. Carolina flirted casually with Amos Vreewold at the entryway of the second-story rosewood-paneled drawing room, and his reputation for rather familiar compliments did not disappoint.

When she couldn’t stand it any longer she broke from the throng and stepped toward the south-facing windows. The fragrant summer city smelled of heat and leaves and vaguely, not entirely unpleasantly, of animal. There were horses below, beside her guests’ drivers, who waited, and would wait some more, probably until the very advanced hour of the morning when the party, to everybody’s disappointment, ended. Carolina took what seemed her first breath in a long while, and then she did something she did almost every day, and some days every hour: She permitted her eyes to drift down the block, to a limestone mansion with the number 18 carved into its impressive face. That was where Leland Bouchard lived — at least, when he was in town, which had not been the case for several months.

For a moment she’d let herself hope that he had finally returned, but now she saw the windows were just as dark and inscrutable as they had been for months. She swallowed dejectedly, and her shoulders slumped. Leland was supposed to have arrived from Europe two days before — Carolina knew because his departure from Paris had been announced in the society column. It was the whole reason she had decided to have her party that evening; it was the whole reason she had chosen this particular house on this particular block in the first place. But then stormy seas had delayed his ship, and he had not returned in time to attend the opening of her house after all.