Anna Godbersen: Splendor

— FROM THE “GAMESOME GALLANT” COLUMN IN THE NEW YORK IMPERIAL , TUESDAY, JULY 24, 1900

“MISS BROAD, IS THERE ANYTHING I COULD GET for you, perhaps tea or—”

“No.” Carolina — posed limply on a pink upholstered silk settee, below the window in the second-story drawing room of her town house — did not so much as blink an eye as she rejected her maid’s offer. She wore a dressing gown of coral-colored lace that piled up around her torso and rose and fell in listless folds. It was too late in the day, she was dimly aware, not to have put on real clothes, but she could not bring herself to care. She had grown weary staring out the window at Leland’s house, but there had been nothing doing. One of the girls who worked in her kitchen told her that she had heard from one of Bouchard’s parlor maids that the master had already left town, for a long stay at his family’s country home on Long Island. “Nothing.”

Ever since her return from church on Sunday, she had found it difficult to put more than one word into a sentence, or to want very much of anything. “Nothing,” was what she heard herself saying over and over. Food, tea, drink, flowers, gowns, jewelry, sunshine, stars — all seemed like so many varieties of pointlessness to her. The only thing she wanted in the whole wide universe was Leland, and he was the least possible for her to attain. Her eyes were sore from crying. It was as though her whole body had gone dry, after such a vast expenditure of tears.

It no longer seemed possible to her that she could be one of the richest girls she knew. And yet she was. There was nothing Tristan could do to her anymore, and perhaps sensing this, he had not again tried to claim some compensation for his knowledge of her past. The modest town house near the park was still hers to live in, except that it seemed entirely too big for her, now, when she was so unbearably alone; just as her wealth seemed a kind of perversion, when it could not purchase her lone desire.

“But would you perhaps like a book, some cake, the papers—?”

“No papers.” Carolina drew her prominent, round shoulder — white flecked brown by the sun — to her cheek, and closed her eyes. “Please just go.”

The maid shuffled away, leaving Carolina to attempt sleep. She tried, but could not transcend that sad room, that impossibly fraught street, into dreams. The sourness in her stomach was too great; the regret seized her brain every time she thought it might be possible to doze. Time passed, she had no idea how much, and then she heard the stairs from the first floor groan as someone came up from below.

“Miss Broad, I’m sorry to disturb—” the maid began.

“I said go,” Carolina muttered without opening her eyes.

“But Lina,” said a third voice, “you can’t just lie there being useless all day.”

Carolina’s lids fluttered back. The sunlight fell like a path of gold across the long parquet floor, leading to the spot where Claire had put down a small black leather case, beaten almost gray by the years.

“Oh, my dear,” the older girl sighed. Her red hair was pinned under a simple hat, and she wore the black boatneck dress that had been both Broud sisters’ uniform for years. “Oh, what has become of you?”

For a moment, the mistress of 15 East Sixty-third was angry that her sister had been allowed to witness her in defeat. But then the need for human warmth overwhelmed. One and then the other of Carolina’s enfeebled arms reached out. The older girl arrived at her baby sister’s side and pulled her in close for an embrace, just as she always had when they were children, in the days after their mother was gone, when Lina had had a nightmare.

“I was a lie,” Carolina whimpered.

She was being kissed, on the forehead, at the hairline. Feeling was coming back to her, but this only made fresh for her all that she had lost, and she began to cry again.

“They took it all away from me,” she wailed, as her sister tried to blot the salty droplets staining her cheeks. The tears were no longer the main thing, however; her whole body was being wracked with sobs. “They took him away from me.”

“Oh, my little Lina, my little Lina,” Claire whispered, as she rocked her younger sister. “You really loved him, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“But at least you have experienced such things,” Claire reasoned, kindly. “At least you are not like me, who has never even been in love….”

The intention was kind, and yet there was nothing to say after a thing like that. For Carolina it colored the situation even bleaker. She wailed again, and burrowed against her sister.

“Listen,” Claire went on, once the sobbing had quieted. “I have brought something to cheer you up.” She paused to draw a piece of newspaper from her pocket. “It’s ridiculous, isn’t it, a girl following her sister’s every move in the papers? You must think I’m an awfully silly, simple sort of person.”

Perhaps a few days ago Carolina would have responded to this confession with a mixture of imperiousness and embarrassment. But her whole life had been turned upside-down, all its contents spilling out and a scattering across the floor, and the notion that someone might want to read about her, much less be considered simple or silly for doing so, seemed the height of absurdity. She almost wanted to laugh — and then, through her misery, she did manage something like a guffaw. “I am silly, or the world is. You are not.”

A slight glow of relief came into Claire’s fair, round face when she saw her sister laugh. “Listen,” she insisted. “It’s from Mr. Gallant’s column: ‘We cannot help but acknowledge that we have glimpsed in it the future of high society: wealth without class. And while I am sure many will bemoan the death of an era, I for one think that the inbred old families of this city have reigned long enough, and that if new blood comes from a girl who, no matter her other qualifications, so charmed a connoisseur like Longhorn that he left her everything, I am inclined to say that is not altogether a bad sign.’”

Carolina watched her sister’s cheeks swell up in smile, and the daylight reflect in her cheerful eyes. Behind her, the room was full of the ghosts of parties and little evenings she’d had, or planned to have. She remembered sitting in just this spot on nights when Leland appeared, on the landing, with his excitement at seeing her clear in his face. For a moment she feared this house would always make her sad. But then the beautiful rosewood paneling, the dangling crystal chandelier, the fine parquet all twinkled at her, and she saw that it was just as fine a home as it had been the week before.

“Don’t look dour, love. It’s not so bad really, don’t you see? Imagine, my Carolina in the ‘Gamesome Gallant’ column. He thinks that no matter what is being said about you right now, you have your independence, and you represent the direction the fancy world is headed in. Carolina Broad is the future, he said. That’s you!”

“No.” Carolina took her sister’s hand, and forced her bee-stung lips into a kind of smile. Her dark hair, which not so long ago had been arranged in curls, fell across her shoulders and chest. Once her face had assumed a happier expression, she realized that it was not so far from her feelings after all, and that perhaps her circumstances did, in the end, warrant some joy to chase the melancholy. The dressing gown was pleasant against her skin, and the air around was fragrant and warm, and the person at her side loved her no matter what she had done. “That’s us . I hope you brought everything you want from Mrs. Carr in that old case, and told her good-bye, because you live here now, with me, and — you and I? We’re going to have an absolute ball.”