The Pages of Time

Gilded Summers-8

As I brushed on broad strokes of vibrant colors, pigments pure and unmixed, I remembered Mary Cassatt"s indomitable expression in the face of my mother"s barely concealed disapproval. I strove for more than her talent.

I put my brush down, pleased with the morning"s work. Perhaps the memories had helped. I turned my attention then to my next project.

I hoped I might catch a glimpse of the new arrivals to our home.

They were so unique to my world. Filled with such people, people who lived to serve us, Mr. Costa and his daughter were the only Italian people I had ever seen in one of my homes. That sounded dreadfully snobbish, I know that now, but there it was, the truth of my life. Though Mother and her friends, indeed all of the powerful women who ruled domestic life, complained about the lack of good servants—the opening of factories and shops had found many of those who thought servant life worthy before, now found it was no longer worthy enough—few looked to Italy and other countries to fill the void. Did they carry some disease? I thought that unlikely. Did they smell? I giggled. I thought that simply foolish.

Their novelty intrigued me. Ginevra with her sharp eyes and her quick tongue, particularly so. There was more to her, I had seen it in the fleeting few minutes I had to study her. I wanted to learn more. I suppose it was not well done of me, to think of her as an object of curiosity and not as a person. How often we strive to break the shackles of breeding. How very difficult it could be.

It would be a feat to spend time with her as I had few interactions with the staff, but I would try my best. It would be a little easier as I walked through my life so unnoticed. My father had his work; like the other men of this summer colony, he would often be here only on the weekends, perhaps coming back on a Thursday rather than Friday. My brother had so many activities, I rarely saw him. My mother had her events, tons of them throughout the day, all of which she would change her clothes for. Mother rarely sought me out save for the times she longed to look like a doting mother or when, even at my age, she aimed to put me in front of the eye of eligible men.

“It"s never too soon to make an impression,” she said to me so often it was like a prayer.

We were an incestuous bunch of a sort; it was rare for anyone of the “set” to marry outside it. We played together, bowed to each other as we took dance lessons together. It seemed only natural to find a mate with those we spent the most time. Yet, if one should become a widow or a widower, it was often that the surviving partner married the deceased partner"s dearest friend. It was like the quadrille, the most popular dance of the time; they changed partners in life with the same ease and frequency that they did in the dance. My nose crinkled at such couples. I turned from them and such couplings that made me long for a bath.

I knew most of the morning would be mine, especially if Mother chose not to go to the Casino. As the fog still hung thick around the house, clinging to the trees, shrouding the statues all over the grounds, the typical morning spent seeing and being seen would not be in the offing today. For the first time, I was quite glad for it. All the better for my hunting about.

I would not wear his distinctive hat or carry his pipe, but I relished with childish delight playing the role of Sherlock Holmes. It had not been so long ago that playing, pretending, was something I did all the time; the freedom of childhood is hard to relinquish. I confess I was more than a little smugly pleased to do something my mother would absolutely detest. Doing so had become as important to me as `fitting in" was to her. We were equally misguided and wholly oblivious to it.

As I was not yet old enough to wear a corset, I was allowed to dress myself for I had not yet been assigned my own maid. My governess, nearly obsolete in my maturing eyes, supervised my choice of morning dress when I called for her, helped with the long line of buttons down the back, checked my stockings and my low-heeled slippers.

“You"ll do,” she said as I stood before her for the final inspection. It was all she ever said.

Thank you ever so much, I longed to respond with a dash of my mother"s stinging sarcasm.

Thank you ever so much,A spinster who had never known much of life, Miss Jameson seemed excessively concerned with my education, my father"s doing I was sure, but not so with my grooming, though she tolerated it, my mother"s instructions no doubt.

Many of the girls my age had wonderful relationships with their governesses, asking questions about life as well as about their studies or comportment. I was never sure whether I was glad or sad I had no such familiarity with Miss Jameson. It would have been wonderful to have a grown woman with whom I could confide, to whom I could ask questions, questions growing increasingly more complex as I grew older. There was only emptiness there, a void of womanly wisdom, a terrible void for a girl trying to become a woman.

On the other hand, our distant relationship allowed me more freedom than my friends enjoyed. Freedom I was especially thankful for that morning. I rushed from my room and her.

As I surmised, I was alone in the breakfast room. Nonetheless, Birch stood guard at the pantry door, a door hidden behind a black and gold Chinese screen matching the exotic décor of the room. He looked less formal in his morning suit, though the informality never made its way within him, while James piled the sideboard with enough food for ten people. One can truly see abundance only if they have seen its lack. I never had.

I ate a few bites, wiped my mouth with the thick linen napkin, and pushed back my chair with a squawk against the parquet floor.

“Thank you,” I chirped to the men as I scampered from the room.

“But Miss…” I heard Mr. Birch call out. He rarely saw me eat so little; he may have thought me unwell. The staff knew so much about us, so much more than we would ever know about them.

“I"m fine, Mr. Birch, not to worry,” I called as I rushed out into the gallery, my low-heeled ankle boots clicking upon the cold stone floor, disturbing the silence of the house.

Ginevra had said she could sew, but I doubted if the indomitable Mrs. Briggs would allow her to, or if the housekeeper would put the new girl—a foreign girl—to work at some other menial job. I thought the latter more likely, so set I out to find chambermaids and kitchen sculleries at work.

I searched room after room. Ginevra was not in a one.

* * *

Her quiet sobs, thick with sadness, helped me to find her at last.

It had taken far longer than I expected. I had even made a most fictitious excuse to go below stairs to the steamy laundry room—knowing if my mother found out it would not go well for me—but Ginevra was not there either. Nor could I ask for her. I knew, even then, how the staff would look down on me if I did.

These hard-working people, ever at the whim of others who deemed themselves better, had as many notions of what was proper and what was not as those they served. They could be as ruthless about the rules of this life as the wealthiest of families. Anyone who had lived with servants for the whole of their lives knew we were great fodder for their spiky tongues, though my mother ever denied it. She did little to worry about what they said of her. She revealed too much of what should never be revealed.

They must have allowed Ginevra to fill the position of seamstress after all. I ran through the hall, up two flights on the main stairs. I ran like the child I had been, enjoying myself far too much, or like the boys who enjoyed sports whom I envied so. No one saw me, thankfully.

There was no one in the sewing room, but there had been. The lone gas lamp was on, a sure sign of detailed work, drawers were open, needles and thread and scissors littered the room, tools of the trade looking recently used.

When I heard my father"s soft voice, with Geoffrey, his valet, a quiet sort of man as well, I hid behind the door of the sewing room. Should they pass this way, though they had no reason to, I had no desire for them to see me, to answer the questions that would surely come. In truth, I had launched myself into the role of spy and had no desire for the gambit to be broken, for the juvenile amusement of it to end.

They spoke of trivialities, of coming and going, of what to take and what to leave behind.

They moved on quickly, into my father"s room, and back out, back down the stairs. The quiet, the most common sound in my house, ruled once more. That"s when I heard it, the crying. Any game I played ended abruptly.

There are many sorts of crying. Joyful tears had laughter mixed with them. Deep loss, the pain of grief, came from a dark, desperate place. I had heard that sort of crying only once—had heard my mother crying only once—when her mother passed away. The quiet sobbing I heard now was not like either; they were the tears of a lost child.

I followed the sound toward the south of the house, near the rooms of my parents and brother. The sound was as muffled as the pain they evoked. Melancholy spoken without a word. To cry was a release, as much as was laughter and affection. To contain it, whatever sort, was to deny it. Without release, there could be no overcoming. I may have been young, but I had cried enough to know.

I stood at the end of the hallway, hearing it, but not finding it. It was as if I played another game, one of hide and seek, though the one hidden clearly had no desire to be found. She played no game. A few steps this way, and suddenly I knew.

The odd construction of the house, with its individual foyers and hidden hallways, created a wealth of small empty spaces. I found her there, in the hall within the hall between my parents" room.

Huddled in a ball, her dark dress enveloping her, her head hidden beneath a shield of her arms, she didn"t hear my approach.

“Ginevra,” I said quietly, as I might to a small animal I had no wish to frighten. She flinched but didn"t look up. She retreated further into the narrow corner in which she had lodged herself.

“It"s all right, Ginevra, I"ve not come to chastise you,” I cooed at her. “I"ve been looking for you all day.”

At last, her eyes found mine. Almond-shaped yet red-rimmed and swollen, the beleaguered depth of her nut-brown eyes belonged on a life-weary adult, not a child. She looked no more than twelve or thirteen though I would soon learn she was older.