Anna Godbersen - Splendor

“It is perverse how they all think Miss Broad is so high and fine, all the while giving me nasty faces. Does that make any kind of sense to you?”

Buck’s silence continued as she turned her gaze, slowly, in his direction.

“Does it?”

“Perhaps…” Buck pressed his fat lips together. The plentiful flesh of his cheeks threatened to obscure his eyes. “Perhaps it is that they think — erroneously, of course — that you are out a little soon after your…illness. When your husband is away, that is, and in harm’s way.”

A collection of words have never been more carefully strung together, and yet they could not have sounded more cloddish, stupid, ill-informed to Penelope’s ears. “I’m thirsty,” she snapped. “Get me a drink.”

She did not watch Buck go. Already she was crossing the large parlor on the second floor of Carolina Broad’s new house with proud purpose. The panels of her red silk dress caught the chandelier light, as the lace of the underskirt frothed up around her feet. The elegant people all around her must have suddenly come into some reserves of reason, for they moved aside for her with a suggestion of deference. She stalked to the middle of the room where the girl with the petite stature and Holland-esque face was standing, and promptly looked away from her.

“Would you believe that no one has asked me to dance all night?” she demanded of the prince of Bavaria, allowing the absurdity of the statement to bear up in her voice, along with the flat American vowels.

The prince — he was unusually tall, she realized when she was beside him, and his skin had the glow of all things very rare and expensive to maintain — assessed her with amused, appreciative eyes. His jaw shifted. “No,” he said after a minute.

Penelope cocked an eyebrow and let her chin rise just a little, the better to display the long, pale symmetry of her neck. The countess and her daughter were watching this American girl in her unseemly red gown with an air of European haughtiness, no doubt, but their expressions were irrelevant just then. As she waited, her confidence, as well as the excitement of being in the middle of a room, at the center of attention, of having done something slightly irregular, grew. Then the prince reached for her hand and planted his lips on the other side of the gaudy engagement ring that she had had to buy herself.

“Allow me the pleasure of being the first,” he replied in English just slightly inflected with a foreign sophistication.

Neither she nor the prince glanced at the Frenchwomen as he lifted his arm so that her hand could remain rested against his and aloft while he led her into the adjoining room. Several of Miss Broad’s guests were still dancing, but they parted for them with reverent interest. A hush fell over the couples. They were all watching her now, Penelope realized, and she smirked a little to think how easy it was to win their attention, even after everything.

The prince’s eyes darted once more to her hand before he circled her firmly with his other arm, and moved her backward into a waltz.

“What a pity you’re married,” he said, in a voice that implied a greater familiarity than could possibly have been justified by their few minutes of acquaintance. He was dancing very close to her, closer than an American boy would have — but then she was not shy of holding his gaze.

“Well, you see, my husband is at war,” she replied with a broad flash of smile. “In such situations, you never know who will be coming back, and who is gone forever, and a lady must always be hedging her bets.”

For a moment she feared that she had gone too far, that the prince would find her cavalier assessment of Henry’s soldiering and possible death unseemly and leave her standing alone on the dance floor. But then he tossed his head back and laughed heartily, until she too laughed, emitting a twinkling bell-like noise in the direction of the coffered ceiling. Then he moved closer and went on dancing her across the floor in a way that made all those people who had so recently snubbed her stop what they were doing and stare at her gape-mouthed. The prince of Bavaria was still laughing, a little smugly now, and this indicated to Penelope that he had a rather perverse sense of humor and also that, over the course of the evening, they were going to have a very good time.

The skirts of the women all around them brushed up against one another to form a solid wall of fine pastels; their mouths, and whatever they were whispering, disappeared behind their fans. Light twinkled from the jewels that sat on Penelope’s wrists and neck and waist and hair. The fearsome Mrs. Schoonmaker had been away for some months, but it had only taken a few hours, and not especially much of her patience, to once again captivate an entire room.

A gentleman travels to become hale and experienced; a lady travels to complete her hat collection, and must be mindful she does not rub up against too much of the world.

— MRS. L. A. M. BRECKINRIDGE, THE LAWS OF BEING IN WELL-MANNERED CIRCLES

“DRINK UP NOW, BOYS!” CRIED DIANA HOLLAND, IN a brassy tone that would have made her mother shudder, from a location that would have made the old lady weep. “Because it might be a hurricane tomorrow….”

Out of doors the winds were loud and full of bluster, but there was no rain yet. The air inside Señora Conrad’s was hot and festive, and the barmaid with the curly wisps of short brown hair pinned away from her face could hardly see through the crowd of soldiers, from her post behind the long wooden bar, to the open shutters of the saloon and whatever weather lay beyond. The fabric of the white button-down shirt she wore fell away from her lightly sweating skin. The sleeves were pushed up to her elbows and tucked into the long, plain black skirt that was secured with a wide, brown leather belt. Her pretty skin had grown rosy with exertion, and her lashes formed black, pointed coronas around shiny eyes. A mad piano played in the corner, encouraging the droves to drink faster and laugh louder — an imperative they merrily obeyed.

“The rain will begin soon,” Señora Conrad said from her perch at the end of the bar.

“But,” Diana returned gaily as she poured glasses of straight rum for the gentlemen who watched her from the other side, “it is not raining now .”

Señora Conrad’s was off the Plaza de Armas, and the bottles shone with reflected light from the candles lining the elaborately carved wooden shelves. Mostly men came there — Cuban businessmen as well as hordes of the American servicemen who had been stationed on the island since the conclusion of the war. The proprietor was the first wife of an American whose interests in Cuba had dried up. She decorated her generous figure in black as though she were a widow, although in fact Señor Conrad had simply returned to Chicago, where he began trading commodities again and started a second family with his third cousin. But he had loved his Gertrudis, and had left her with a business of her own to live on. There were plenty of gold flourishes in the place, just as there would have been in any of the gentlemen’s watering holes in New York, although the effect was shaded with a heady dose of Spanish gloom. On a Friday night, all the little round tables were circled by men in uniform, who stretched their long legs across the old stone floors and toasted to being far from home.

A thunderclap close by shook the bottles and rattled the windows. The saloon customers quieted momentarily and turned toward the street. Although a distinct wetness hung in the air, still nothing fell from the sky. Señora Conrad made a low, whistling noise; a moment later, the din rose again. Then everyone moved toward the bar, rowdily calling out that they would have another. As the crowd began to roar, the old gentleman bartender, who worked in front of the large oval mirror to Diana’s right, removed his bow tie as if to say that now, finally, he was ready to get down to business. Beads of sweat clung to his forehead — even they were too lazy to move — and though Diana thought it might be interesting to go on observing him, voices all around her were demanding one more. She bent forward, shoveling ice into glasses, setting up another row of drinks.