Gilded Mountain, page 16
Jolie, jolie, jolie, the Devil tunneled that word along the channels of my vanity.
Inge watched the royal cluster proceed into the ballroom. “I knew he would like you,” she said. “He invites you to visit later, for conversation. If you care for the adventure.” Her smile was lopsided by drink or some wicked suggestion.
“Madame?”
“I think you care for it. Yes? The adventure? L’éxperience?” She touched my bare arm. “You will not regret.”
“Inge—?” I coughed.
“Do not pretend you’re shocked. Too bad you did not descendre l’escalier. The King is not the only gentleman at the party to see you. There is one Astor. A Rothschild. Lord Ashforth. They’re crazy for the West. For Americans. It was a chance for you—”
“Desolée, Madame—”
“Phhf, it’s not too late!” Inge put her arm around my shoulder to whisper. “For me, it makes no difference what you choose, because, myself, I did sweep. That’s my lesson for you, to try. Your chance I give you. But I have maybe mistaken young Sylvie. You’re not the hungry girl, as I was. Pas assez faim.”
Not hungry enough. That old lecher with the terrible beard would like me to visit him. If I were bold. If I had such appetite. That King was wrinkled as a walnut, the barbarian of the Congo. His copine Caroline was a silvery electric eel. I knew nothing about foreign customs or the habits of royalty. Inge did not mean—“conversation,” did she? What would we discuss? Mr. Lilongo of the Congo. What Inge implied repulsed me. I was seventeen. Une naïve. I preferred hunger to the meal ticket she offered.
Mr. Nugent rang the chimes. Music started in the ballroom, and the guests floated toward the violins as if pulled along a river. The Duke whispered something to Inge. She laughed and toggled her fingers at me. “Bonne chance, Mademoiselle.” In the wake of the King, on the arm of her husband, she went on to the dancing.
Towed in the stream, I was flanked by men in dark jackets. The air was flavored with champagne fizz and the scent of L’Origan, while my head was full of helium and disbelief, tipped to gawp at the crystal chandelier sending shards of light onto the party. When I left off craning, there next to me was Jace Padgett without his glasses, dressed in a tailcoat, a white tie, the marks of a comb in his hair. When he noticed me, he pulled his head back on his neck in surprise and, I dared hope, delight?
“What the? I didn’t expect—” He beamed.
“Jasper,” I said. Not smiling.
“Oh my! So glamorous, Sylvie.”
Champagne and his comical squinting foiled my intention to frost him. “I thought you were killed,” I said.
“There are some who’d like to murder me. But look at you! You’re rearranged.”
“Ben oui, je suis la favorite de l’été.”
“Speak English, Sylvester, please, I am in no condition.”
“Inge says I’m her favorite friend now.”
“Not me! I’ve disgraced myself.” His face was pale and miserable above a brimming flute of bubbles. “I am a discredit to the Padgett line.”
“Why?”
“First, I’m entirely inebriated. Number two: I stayed in the woods in order to avoid—this party, the hideous guest of honor. But I could not stay away. From you.”
“And that makes you a disgrace?” I said.
“No, it makes me lovelorn.”
My face broke a smile, I could not restrain it.
“My disgrace is—” Jace sighed. “At dinner I made the mistake to remark that perhaps His Majesty would like a large platter of roasted hands served up to him fresh.”
“You didn’t.”
“Which was overheard by my father—”
“At the table?” I said.
“Our kingly guest, Leopold—in case you don’t read the newspaper—is the Devil.” Heads turned in the party crowd that eddied around the small rock of us.
“Shh,” I said.
But Jasper carried on in exaggerated whispers. People stared while he ranted.
“Old Leo has killed ten million people in the Congo. Enslaved them for the rubber harvest. His overseers chop off their hands! Their feet! They kill infants with ax blows. Hang the women and cut off their—”
“Shh. Not so loud.” I put my hand over his mouth, but he removed it. Held it in his own. “Stop.”
“Don’t shush me,” Jasper said. “My father says shush. Everyone says shush. But it’s true. Ten million. I have seen photographs.”
“Jasper, you’re shouting.”
“I knew he was a king and a devil,” he whispered, “but I did not know he was in cahoots with Lady Bountiful and her sociological experiments.”
“They aren’t experiments,” I said, not yet ready for the scales to fall from my eyes. “The school is under way. The Company has donated a marble stone foundation—”
“A foundation of slavery,” Jasper said. “They’re building a monument to it out of our fine marble.”
“Why don’t you do something about it, then?”
“What would you suggest I do, Silver Sylvie Pelletier? I can’t—how?”
“When I can’t change something, I try to not think about it.” In truth, the more I tried not to think about what I was powerless to change, the more I chewed the problem. For one night, I wanted to revel in the party, waltzing to my transformation in hopes that dancing and champagne held a power like alchemy. “Don’t think about it,” I said.
“What should I think about, then?”
Me? I smiled at him, bold as brass. “Think about whatever makes you happy.”
“You make me happy.” He listed toward me. “Happy you’re here in this… beautiful, lovely, dazzling frock. I did not dare hope.”
Oh, hope. It was still green that night as my dress, silken and fragile.
The musicians played quick time, and the guests went whirling, one-two-three. “Let’s get out of here.” Jasper grabbed a bottle of champagne from the passing waiter and steered me away from the music, the dancing, away from the fountain of punch where a cherub carved in ice slowly melted.
A little rueful, I looked over my shoulder like Lot’s wife at Sodom. Was I changed by regret to a pillar of salt? Not regret, exactly, but I do wonder sometimes what might’ve been had I followed the plan. I shudder to think. But I went with Jace. He was not like them, not like his people, obsessed with copper and gold frivolity. He was angry. That anger drew me, because I was angry too. We did hate the same things, I think, the unfairness. I was not cut out to be a plaything of kings, a project of countesses. If I left the party now, I would have to be simply myself. Belong to myself alone.
Chapter Fourteen
OUTSIDE, THE BRIGHT BAUBLE OF moon cast shadows on the colorless grass.
“Look! It’s a pearl.” I pointed up.
“It’s a silver dollar,” said Jace.
“Not everything is money.”
“Tell that to my father.” He held the bottle at my waist and we began to waltz, clowning, amused by our bad dancing, twirling and giddy, then stopped to look up at the vast mysterious heavens. Stars like silver midges of happiness and possibility swam across the dark. “Oh-la,” I whispered. “C’est magnifique.”
Jace danced me farther on, toward the woods, the river. “Sylvie, come along, now, like a good girl!”
A good girl. What was goodness? Obedience? Chastity? Listening to editors and countesses and cooks, I was grappling toward some other sort of goodness to claim for myself. The hem of my thin silly gown trailed down the slope of the lawn in Jasper’s crooked wake.
“To hell with them all!” he cried.
“To hell, yes!” I savored the taste of hell in my mouth with the champagne fizz.
Jace took my hand as if we were conspirators, as if, by leaving the party, we’d struck a blow against the barbarism of a king, when really we wanted to find the kissing rock by the river. Under the pine trees, we crept over soft carpets of needles toward the water, a gleam of foil in the moonlight. Crickets and cicadas grated in the trees so the very air vibrated, tense and trembling with sound. We sat again on the riverbank, on that same flat stone worn smooth.
“Where have you been?” I asked, plaintive.
“In the wilderness.”
“While I was left in the dark.”
“I’m in trouble, Sylvie.” Jasper put his head in his hands. “Big trouble.”
“Trouble is a pebble, my mother says. Un caillou.” I picked up a little stone and held it in front of my eye. “See? Here it fills your whole sight. You throw it—” I tossed it away. “Et voilà—it’s nothing.”
“That is fatuous,” he said. “We’re not talking about pebbles. We are talking about boulders. About big blocks. Of stone. We are talking about a fifty-foot monument to glorify slavery.” He drank a long pull from the bottle. “Despicable. Shameful.”
His distress caused tender feelings in me. “Are you all right?”
“I’m advised to leave it alone. But I can’t.”
“Tell me, then. I’d listen.” If he confided in me, his confession would be a secret I could keep, a hold on him akin to the power of priests.
“Since you are kind enough to care, here’s the trouble: I told my father, ‘Do not build that travesty. Do not bring that King here.’ And—do you know what he said? ‘You are a disgrace. Get out.’ That’s my trouble. But the subject instead is: Jasper has insulted a king. Jasper has brought shame upon the house of Padgett. I am banished.”
“Banished?” I cried. Did it mean he would leave, depart the kingdom? I’d never see him again. The melodrama of my imagined plight increased my ardor and the hope that we would commence kissing.
“The Old Man took me aside at the party, sentenced me to spend the winter here in Moontown. I’m to work in the quarry in the snow till I learn the value of hard work or get rocks in my head. Same as his. I’m forbidden to go back to school, as Father does not see any benefit to the study of philosophy. He believes it’s corrupting my mind.”
“But I’m glad you’ll stay.”
“I’ll drink to that.” He toasted and passed the bottle, and we drank.
“Why are you so mad at your father?” His anger made me strangely happy.
“The idea that he would court the devil, King Beard of Belgium, for money. That he would marry—her.” He drank a long pull on the bottle.
“Inge is kind to me,” I said, still defending her. “She taught me to waltz.”
“I bet she did. Three years ago she waltzed my father straight out of Belgium. They say old Leopold found her in a brothel and she went shopping for a sugar daddy among his guests.”
“It’s only gossip.” The French vavoom. Maybe K.T.’s story was true. “Inge’s very refined. She can speak three languages.”
“She speaks a certain universal language, for sure,” he said. “We heard about it in Richmond. Richmond heard it from Paris. Surely my father heard it, but he didn’t care. The country-club crowd snubs her. Inglebork DeWhatchamacallit has no social-register pals this side of the Atlantic, so she invites a King as bait.” He blew a low mournful note over the lip of the bottle.
“Inge is known for her kindness,” I said. “Her charity—”
“It’s not charity that gets the stone out of the mountain. It’s the lash and the stick. And men. Like your father. Like Frenchy.”
I smiled to think of mon père.
“Look at you, Sylvie Pelletier. Mention your papa, you smile your radiant smile. Whereas I think of my old man and I get a murderoush—murderous anger.”
“Jace, you shouldn’t say such—”
“Because the gossip.” He held his head like a melon and shook it in his hands. “Everyone’s heard it.”
“I haven’t.”
“I’d never heard it myself until—because Caleb is—” He let out a groan.
“Caleb Grady, you mean?” I had no idea what he was going on about.
“Never mind.” He put a finger across my mouth. “Ignore the gossips and snoops.”
“Busybodies,” I said, to ally myself with him. “People have nothing better to do than make up stories.”
“I have something better to do.” He threw his arm around my shoulders and pulled me against him. “Sweet, patient girl Sylvie. You are kind to endure my ravings about the old man. Thank you.”
That he was in need of kindness was a revelation. I was in need of it too, some reassurance that I was more to Jace than a shoulder to cry on. I stayed in the crook of his arm, impatient for us to kiss again.
“Now you talk,” he said. “Tell about your father instead.”
“My papa is a wizard,” I said, to show him my father not just Frenchy, covered with dust, driving a Snail. “He’s a magician. He can juggle knives. Also swallow fire. He taught me how.” Now I would impress the prince of Elkhorne. “Do you have a match?”
Jasper rummaged his pockets for matches, struck one, and held it out.
“You eat pennies,” I said, tipsy still. “I eat flames.” I took the lit match with the drama of a sword swallower and put it in my mouth, closed my lips till the fire snuffed.
“Whattya know?” Jasper was aghast. “The girl has an appetite for fire.”
“Your stepmother says I have not appetite enough.”
“What was she suggesting you consume? I’d guess, but I’m a gentleman.”
“Thank you. Don’t guess.”
“And what has she done to your hair?” Jasper brushed his hand along the nape of my neck and pulled out pins so the arrangement uncoiled. “Crowning glory,” he said, and ran his hand along the loose length of hair and talked all southern and soft, kissing. “Sylv. Sylver. Sylverie. You taste of fire.”
“You taste of liquor.”
“Dangerous,” he said. “We might ignite.”
I pulled my legs under the long dress and bound my arms around them, frightened by my own dangerous combustion of heat and yearning. Biblical warnings did nothing to quell the force of it, though I struggled as we were taught to struggle, against our very nature.
“Hey, now, come back. I told you, I’m a gentleman,” Jace said. “Don’t worry.” His mouth on my mouth again. Moonglow shone metallic on his face, the tendrils damp at his temples. We kissed so fiercely it could not be love. Love was tidy and chaste, a romance of poems and roses, not this possession of teeth and lips. This was something else, a molten greed that defies words.
“Sylvie.” Jace suffered and shook. “Save me.”
My heart went out like a sparrow and was caged. The flat stone where we grappled was unyielding, but I was not. The skin scraped off the knobs of my backbone. I buckled, drunken, and lost against the swoon. It was the liquor again and the weakness in me. Forgive me, Father, for I have. The liquid river pulled over slick stones, and I stopped him just on the precipice of ruin, in fear of it. The dress wrinkled around my waist, despite my pulling it down, pushing the weight of him off me.
“Stop,” I said. “We should go.”
“Stay.” Jace held on. “Stay, please, forever on this rock.”
In the murk I searched his face for a sign to trust, and hid in the hollow of his neck so he wouldn’t see my secret wish: not to lose him. Not to lose. This night, this wild transporting.
“Do you hate me?” he said.
“No! Why would you say that?” I stood up and brushed off grains of river sand stuck to my skin.
“Well, that’s someone who doesn’t, anyway.” He threw the bottle into the river and got to his feet. With elaborate chivalry, he draped his jacket over my shoulders and took my hand. We went weaving through the trees while Jasper sang a little snatch of song, “Oh, my darling Clementine.” He embraced me, “Good night, Sylvester,” resting his head on the bone of my clavicle. “Sylver. Sylvation. I’m lost without you.”
Was he? His lostness answered something in me. As if each of us were trying to forge a new way to be in this new West, but neither with a path to follow. I was his salvation, Jace said, needed for my sweetness, a quality I wasn’t sure I possessed. I righted the glasses on his nose and brushed the curls off his forehead. He could’ve seen down to the roots of me, had he looked.
“You do care for me, then?” he said.
“I do, yes, Jasper.”
“Also I care. For you, my lovely.” He kissed me so I could not breathe. “Sweetheart, good night,” and backed away toward the stables, singing. “Oh, my darling Clementine”.
Clementine drowned, I did not say.
In a dishevelment, I went up the path to the Cardboard Palace, altered and surely riddled by damnation, as a sack of millet is by worms. I had made myself a disappointment to my mother and to Sainte Marie, but still it was pure happiness that flooded around the boulder of my transgressions. Jace Padgett was lost without me. I was smiling and atwirl in the dark. To be called lovely. To be kissed and intoxicated in the moonlit mountains. Through the trees came the music of the Hunters’ Ball, the clink of crystal filtering across the scree, claps of laughter. The sounds carried up into the village and on up the slopes and down into the hollow cavernous quarry where the men worked even now, by carbide light and bare electric bulb, to pry stone out of the mountain on the graveyard shift. The fumes of the party washed into the night, into the secret grottoes and crevices where the cold was gathering, the leaves were turning, the animals bracing for winter.
Chapter Fifteen
AS THE SUN ROSE, THE royals and the Padgetts and their guests drifted to bed. The rest of us cleaned the wreckage of the party. A wire of pain pulsed in my temples. Cigarette ash mingled with dregs of champagne at the bottoms of glasses. The ice cherub was dissolved into the punch bowl. Crumbs flecked the white linen, stained red with crushed berries and burgundy wine. Shards of kisses were spikes in my blood. The air smelled of oil soap and evaporated spirits; a whiff of shame leaked out the windows into the pine wind. A new chill was in it, a turn of the weather.
The breakfast was on all morning. Bloody Marys. Blood sausage. We cleared the plates and washed them as the partygoers packed up, their luggage hefted down the stairs, the carriages waiting in front. We lined up to bid farewell to the royal party. The King left with his entourage, his trophy bighorn, and his fervor to invest in the riches of the Colorado peaks, or steal them. Leopold II took the Sunrise out of Moonstone. Years later, local people only remembered with pride that a king had visited their town, never the atrocities he committed in the remote Congo.
