Gilded Mountain, page 9
I think of you and wish that you could see this place with your own eyes. It is grand and beautiful. I live in a dormitory with other girls who are summer servants. Mrs. Nugent is the housekeeper. She is very strict! I prefer to work with the cook Easter Grady who is teaching me pastry. I will tell you more, but for now, know that I’m keeping well and have done my work to the satisfaction of my employers. Please write and tell me how are things at home.
Yours in Christ’s love, Sylvie
Maman wrote back in French with English smattered in, the way she spoke.
Ma chère fille,
Your father works many shifts even Sunday. We prepare for winter. I grow peas and have put a fence against the animals. I have pickled 53 eggs, malgré we have now only the four hens. Mrs. Rotisserie was carried off by the weasel. Nipper is growing too fast and talking un vrai bavard. A bear two nights before was strolling the quarry road. I wish your father to shoot him but it’s forbidden to hunt in the Padgett property. Henry wants to set the bear trap. You are in my prayers. Bless you and keep you dans l’amour du Christ.
Maman
Below her words was a funny drawing by Papa, of a girl mouse in an apron, brandishing a feather duster. It made me laugh. I missed them, far away on the point of Marble Mountain. I worried. About Henry setting traps. Nipper tumbling off a crag. Maman falling down from exhaustion. Especially about my father in the pit. The Moonstone City Record was full of disaster:
ESCAPE FROM DEATH: Clifford Radcliffe was hoisting one of the new 75-ton cranes, standing on an iron beam about 50 feet from the ground. The hoisting rope broke and swung with a great deal of force. It knocked Radcliffe off the beam, and wound around his neck. He fell and struck the ground with about a foot of rope to spare. Had the rope been shorter the fall would’ve hanged him. He was unconscious a few hours but is set to go back to work on Tuesday.
DOUBLE DANGER: Tommy Gilbert, a mill-worker cutting marble mosaic for tile floors, had part of a left-hand finger cut off by a stone saw not two weeks ago. Returning to work Tuesday, he had the misfortune to lose the entire forefinger of his right hand to the very same saw. The young man is a gifted pitcher for the Moonstone Slammers. Sadly, he is unlikely to play for the team again.
While the marble workers risked necks and limbs breaking rock, I sat with the Countess, taking dictation and watching her feed bits of ham to Bisou, teaching him tricks. He could roll over on command.
“Hold him!” she said one morning. “We will brush his teeth.”
The dog struggled and shed dark hairs on my starched shirtwaist while I held his snout and Inge poked a little toothbrush in his mouth to scrub the long vicious canines. “Shh, p’tit coocoo,” she said.
No one would believe it.
I addressed invitations while we gossiped about the guests, the Richmond society figures invited for the Hunters’ Ball, especially the most important, Mrs. Randolph Sherry, president of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
“Thanks to Coralee Sherry, these daughters give the Company a contract for one hundred thousand dollars,” Inge said. “It’s true! They want to build a monument on the National Mall in Washington out of Moonstone marble.”
I imagined bills of money falling down like snow and forming a marble temple.
“It is a statue to honor the Confederate soldiers and loyal slaves of the war,” Inge said. “But really I think it is for Coralee—to win Mr. Padgett for her lover!” Her eyes were large and spilling secrets as she whispered: “Because—do not repeat—she tried to marry Mr. Padgett before I stoled his heart.”
“Not stoled,” I said, giggling. “Stole.”
“Ah, merde. Stole.” Inge cursed to shock me, and she did, even as I loved her scandalous gossip, while she talked intime like a sister. She had begun to call me Sugar, or Silly, short for Sylvie. Her names made me laugh behind my hand.
“What is funny?”
“Silly, in English, ça veut dire ridicule.”
“I call you Ridiculous because you are too much Mademoiselle Professeur. It’s dull to be so serious. You are too pretty Silly girl for just books and paper.”
Pretty, she said. Jolie. The word lodged like a dart in the shallow regions of my soul. The sin of vainglory was a direct path to damnation. Pretty had never applied to me, and now it was a sugared pastille to savor.
“For myself,” Inge said, “I prefer to commence the party right now. September is too long for waiting.” She fretted and sent letters to society ladies in the East. “Do you think they will come? It is so far to travel. But the grand bal will be like nothing they’ve ever seen. We adore to dance and drink champagne under the mountain stars.”
“I’d love to try it,” I said.
“Oh, yes!” Her eyes shone with a plan. “I invite you as a guest! Sylvie, I think you would like to meet le Roi. The King. Am I right?”
She knew she was by the naked wish on my face.
“Oh, la,” Inge said. “Mademoiselle Pelletier would like to meet the King of Belgium! So you will.” She clapped her hands like butterfly wings beating. “There are never enough young and beautiful women here in the mountains. Only the roughnecks men. You will be fantastic. You will sweep.”
Sweep? Her idea was to have me be a servant. To brush crumbs and observe.
“You know, Sylvie,” she said, “it was in the court of King Leopold that I met my husband. I sweeped him off his toes.”
“His feet.”
“Yes, at just such a party at Laeken. He was fallen for me. Right away we elope to get married.” Her face was lit by the memory. “We’ll dress you up, silly mountain goat,” she said fondly. “To see what happens.”
* * *
The next morning Inge took my mountain-goat hand and pulled me from the writing desk up the grand staircase. We traveled down a wide corridor, past paintings of foxhounds. It was a hallway of doors, all of them closed. “There is the Jasper suite,” she said, pointing through an arch toward what appeared to be a separate wing. “Here’s my own chamber. And… voilà! My closet.”
She opened the door to a room the size of Cabin Six, hung around with racks of dresses and costumes for hunting and dancing, lounging and dining. Above were shelves for hats and below for shoes and boots and slippers. An inner door led to her bedchamber. Two armchairs flanked a window overlooking the gardens. A vanity table held a vase of greenhouse gardenias. From a mirrored alcove, three Inges reflected back and beamed at me, expectant. Three Sylvies stood beside her in the mirror, struck dumb as potatoes.
“Which dress for Mademoiselle?” Inge asked. “We find one to match your eyes.” She began to slide hangers along, as if turning pages. A rose pink, a midnight blue. A linen, a satin, a taffeta. She skipped the wintry woolens, the velvets, saying the names of the Parisian designers as if they were her friends. Poiret, Paquin, Callot Soeurs. She pulled out a long green dress of sheening silk, the color of new grass.
“A beautiful silhouette.” She held the gown under my chin, checking it against my face. “The green for the green eyes. Try it!”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t, thank you,” I performed the modesty of a nun but prayed to the Devil that she would insist.
“Off with everything, silly Sylvie, to try this one.”
My embarrassment was no match for my love of that dress. I went behind a screen and let fall the navy-blue secretary skirt, then stood in my slip, scarlet with discomfort. The gown went over my head, light as nothing. Where were the sleeves?
“Do not be timide like a goose. Come out and show.”
I stepped forth blotchy and bare-armed, and there she was, pulling up a sheath of lilac satin over her stark-naked body, shocking and white as a Roman statue. I cringed back behind the screen to protect her privacy while she convulsed with laughter.
“Don’t be shocked, Silly. It is only woman flesh.” She buttoned herself and assessed me. The green gossamer fabric draped over my moose bones and hung with the hem just off the floor.
“It suits you,” she said. “Take off that slip. It bunches.”
I wrapped my arms around my exposed shoulders.
“Arrêtes, Sylvie. Stop, the face, you look painful—in pain.” She turned me around, judging, humming. “In the palace at Laeken, we girls played all day long with the clothes.” She rummaged on a shelf and found a spring-green shawl of chiffon, emerald sequins in swirls along the border. She put it around my shoulders and tilted her head to judge the effect. “Maybe yes?” She turned me to the mirrors.
There I was, standing like a taxidermied trophy.
“Permit me?” She unpinned my braids and combed her fingers through the plait so my hair fell down in ripples. “Magnifique, oh la,” she said, inhaling. “You’re fortunate.”
That morning as she dressed me up, I felt fortune shining like a star over my head, as good as if I were a manger in Bethlehem. At her vanity she painted my face, twisted and pinned my hair. I was the mannequin plaything of a mountain fairy. But even as I was dazzled at the effect, I felt a whiff of cruelty in the way she adorned me with gems I’d never have, that image in the mirror like a false promise. Did Inge have the power to transform me? I did not realize yet how I’d have to transform myself.
“You have the American beauty,” she announced. From her velvet-lined boxes she lifted a rope of sparkling stones. “These are only paste, but who can tell?” She fastened them around my constricted throat. “Behold Mademoiselle Sylvie la belle. The gentlemen will be at you like bees to a flower.”
I hid my face so she wouldn’t see the effects of her flattery.
“But why do you hide?” she asked. “The gentlemen will like you to show them, non?” She thrust her chest out and lifted her uncorseted bosom in two hands so the breasts rounded and spilled from the V of her dress. “Like this, va, va, va.”
I could not bring myself to hoist my chest as she did, brazen and fleshy. To obey her was to wade into a lake where my feet would not find bottom.
“Oh, don’t be stupide.” With a sudden reach of both hands, she cupped and lifted my bosom, giggling with delight. I squawked and recoiled, laughing despite myself. “You’ll learn, chèrie, to enjoy, because they will anyway appreciate. Your beauty.”
“Vous me faites rougir, Madame. Inge.”
“So beautiful, your blushings, your smile.” She hugged herself, excited. “Now the party will be more amusing. You’ll enter the room, très elegant.” She fluttered her eyelashes and thrust her chest forward. “That’s how it’s done. All the men will ask, ‘Who is she? This beautiful femme mysterieuse?’ ”
“I doubt it,” I said, but thrilled to think so, sure they would laugh.
“They will chase you and fall in love if you only smile at them. Smile, yes. Like that.” For two hours Madame continued her lessons, throwing gowns over our heads and off again, tutoring me about flirtation, about bodices and ruching, drape and pull. Half the dresses were too tight across my back, but she put them on me anyway, leaving the buttons open across my woodcutter shoulders. When I would not remove my slip, she pulled it over my protest and over my head, inspecting me.
I crossed my arms to hide my chest. Inge was bizarre, lewd. Or perhaps she wasn’t. What would I know of royal behavior? Perhaps it was normal to converse half naked. Despite my shock at her talk of love affairs and hunting, I was stirred by a new thrill in the blood. Enchanted by the mirror where our lips were pursed, painted red. Jolie, she said, that worm of a word. Pretty. My mother would be scandalized. K.T. would snort. Just some French vavoom. But I was on my own now, and Inge was irresistible. Delightful. What was the harm in a pretty dress or having fun? One singular fun.
She pulled more gowns from their hangers for us to try. “It is a lark,” she said, and then pondered. “Why do you call the fun times—‘it’s a lark.’ What is the lark?”
“A lark? C’est une alouette.”
“Aha, right, a lark, to dress up. We are the birds, and these are the lovely plumes.”
I did not mention the song “Alouette,” about plucking feathers, the beak, the head. Was I to be plucked? At last Inge chose the green dress for me. “A gift for you.”
“Madame?” It was wrong to accept charity. This dress was the pity of a butterfly for a grub. If I wrapped myself in chiffon, would I turn into a papillon and flutter off enchanted? “Non merci,” I said, but I still wanted the dress.
“You will accept,” she said, like an order. “The King. He will like you. Maybe even he could prefer you. He has not had ever… an American friend.” She hesitated, as if deciding what to say, then spoke in earnest. “A long time ago, Sylvie, it was le Roi Leopold who noticed me and chose me for his court. If not for him, I would never meet Mr. Padgett, I would not be here in this house. Do you understand? Maybe you don’t!” She laughed. “A dress, a king, any wealthy gentleman—he can change the circumstance. For me, it’s true. And for you, I hope.”
“The circumstance for me is already changed,” I said, “thanks to you.”
“You’re welcome, my dear. I enjoy to lift people from the low station to the better one,” she said. “I had hoped, maybe, for Adele, but—you understand?”
I nodded as if I did, but at the time I did not, despite all insinuations.
Later, when I remembered that summer, I saw Inge without the goggles of naïveté that I wore then, and understood that she wanted to make me over as she’d done for herself. That summer, La Comtesse Ingeborg LaFollette deChassy Padgett was only twenty-six years old, the closest to a sister I’d known, and I was under her spell. When she left me alone to pick up the discarded finery off the floor, I twirled in the green dress and admired myself reflected in a pattern infinite as the future seemed to be. I lifted my bosom in my two hands as she had done, burning with new flames of daring. They will chase you. Her words lurched in my stomach like the sickness of hope, not to be a dressmaker dummy or a printer’s devil, but a butterfly. Silence would not be my best garment then, not if there were green silk, satin slippers, a choker of rhinestones.
Chapter Seven
THE DUKE ARRIVED IN A great flurry one Friday evening, with guests from New York. “Important guests,” said Inge. That weekend I stayed in the backstairs and did not get a glimpse of her husband, only heard his bluster and sneezes in the house, his wheezy cigarette laughter. I was glad when Nugent assigned me to the kitchen with Easter and went off to church on Sunday morning with the Croatian sisters. Inge was out riding with her instructor, Cedric. So I jumped when a bell rang from the lower quarters.
“That’s old Padgett,” Easter said, in a bad mood. “Go see what he wants.”
I went in my apron to the new territory of downstairs, imagining the lower floor as a damp dungeon of rats and skeletons. But here was a saloon, a game room with a billiard table big as a hay wagon, red leather couches conspiring around a fireplace, elk heads on the walls. Brass spittoons. Chips and cards piled on a credenza. I took a wrong turn and found myself in a wine cellar. The bell rang again, and I followed it to the end of the corridor to arrive at a suite of offices, empty on a Sunday. Beyond these was the inner sanctum of Jerome “Duke” Padgett, the door ajar.
He was on the telephone and held his finger in the air for me to wait. I stayed just outside and observed. He had a big head of white hair. The wiry caterpillars of his eyebrows rose above spectacles hooked behind prominent ears like whirligig propellers. A cigarette was clamped in his teeth below a luxurious mustache. Smoke curdled above him as he spoke loudly into the handset. “How the hell do you plan to get that shipment to Cleveland by October if the track’s not finished? Work it out, Colonel. Tell those guineas to settle down, half of ’em blotto half the time. Put ’em in tents. They won’t freeze, they’re hot-blooded. Goddammit, Bowles, if you can’t figure it out, I’ll figure it out for you. Get the troublemakers out of town. Ten o’clock. Here. Yes, yes. Elkhorne.”
What did he mean, troublemakers out of town? Did he mean Lonahan? Papa?
Mr. Padgett hung up the earpiece violently. “Goddammit.”
“You rang upstairs, sir?”
He startled. “You’re not that Bohemian gal—what’s-her-name?”
“No, sir. Sylvie Pelletier. Mrs. Padgett’s secretary.”
“Well, well, nice to meet you, Miss Pelletier.” He stretched his arms forward, fingers laced, to crack his knuckles. “All the reports on you are favorable. My wife is happy. Keep up the good work, and I’ll be grateful.” He spoke pleasantly to me with those soft Virginia vowels in his mouth. “Please tell Easter: send breakfast. Then lunch at noon for three men. Thank you.”
* * *
“He would like breakfast,” I said, back in the kitchen.
Easter still appeared angry, beating eggs, chopping herbs with loud thwacks of her knife. When I passed behind her to set the tray, she did something that astonished me. As long as I live, I won’t forget it. She cleared her throat and coughed into her palm. Then she wiped a gossamer stream of spittle like albumen into the dish of eggs and beat them fiercely with a fork. She did not know I’d seen her. Maybe I hadn’t? I did not trust my own eyes. She shook the skillet, adding the eggs, then cheddar cheese, and turned the golden omelet onto a plate, adorned it with parsley and a slice of orange cut like a flower.
“Here’s this,” she said, strangely cheerful now. “Duke’s special.”
I carried the tray downstairs, afraid I might trip on the shock. I didn’t yet understand about revenge, or know Easter’s reasons. But that morning I began to pay attention, watching to discover them.
Mr. Padgett was preoccupied, papers in front of his nose. As I poured coffee, he stood up, reading a document, and went to the corner of the room, where he slid back a red curtain, revealing a heavy steel door. It was painted black with a gold crest of fighting lions on a shield. In the center of the door was an elaborate lock. He spun a dial, distracted, but then stopped and noticed me. “That’s all now,” he said with a smile of dismissal. “Thank you kindly.”
