The Second Mrs. Astor Page 7

  Madeleine pressed her finger against a crumb on the blanket, flicked it out to the sand. “I think that . . . sometimes it’s easier to understand a problem when standing outside of it, rather than from within. So here I am, on the outside. I don’t know your son very well, but it’s clear he looks up to you. If you remain his anchor now, I bet he’ll find his way again.”

  A measure of the tension hardening him lifted; his gray eyes softened. “Words of wisdom, Miss Force?”

  “Oh!” she said, embarrassed. “Words, at any rate.”

  The colonel examined the wrecked sandwich in his hands with an expression of vague surprise, as if he hadn’t quite realized what he’d been doing all this time. The Airedale placed a hesitant paw on the blanket, a question in her glance, and he dumped the entire mess in front of her, then whisked his palms clean.

  “Thank you, Madeleine.”

  “For what?”

  “For listening. It’s been a long while since—well. It feels good to be heard. Truthfully, I’d forgotten how good.”

  She shifted and the giving sand shifted with her, and she pushed her feet out from beneath her skirts, stretching her legs before her as he had done. The Maine summer day gleamed around them both, perfect as a postcard.

  “You are most welcome, Jack.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Bar Harbor, you will discover, isn’t a terribly large place. First of all, you’re on an island, water on all sides, which is crackerjack in some ways but not so crackerjack in others. You’re on this island—a lovely island, yes, a bucolic island—in this little bijou of a town, and for all the summer months, everyone is as trapped as everyone else (except for the papas, those hustling businessmen who all flock back to the city on Sundays to pay heed to their various vocations, only to trickle back to the island again on Thursdays or Fridays, girded once more for their wives and offspring). So everyone knows everyone else, and where to go, and what to do, and they all do it at practically the same time, in the same way, day in and day out, until it’s time for everyone—the summer colony, at least—to trek back to their respective urban homes to hunker through the wintertide.

  (No one in their right mind wants to winter on the island, not if they can help it, with the Arctic wind screaming down and the snow blowing horizontal and ice caking thick as planks over the houses and walkways and spiky dead gardens.)

  Anyway, everyone knows everyone else, the locals and the cottagers alike, and everyone has their own familiar routines, from the person nibbling lobster rolls while idling in a hammock, listening to the wind stir song through the birches; to the person who brought the lobster rolls to the person in the hammock; to the person who brought the lobster to the cook; to the lobsterman himself. There really aren’t any strangers in Bar Harbor proper.

  That’s why when the newspapermen began to drift in, everyone noticed.

  August 1910

  Bar Harbor

  She wouldn’t quite remember the program of music played by the Boston Symphony that one particular evening at the Building of Arts; Madeleine had meant to keep the card detailing the program, to treasure it, preserve it between the pages of some special book, to be discovered and admired later on, but at some point during the concert she had misplaced it, and hadn’t noticed until it was too late to procure another.

  She did remember the air outside as she’d walked beside her mother up the path leading to the grand marble entrance, how mild and tender it felt, not quite cool but not too warm, either, because sunset was only a half hour or so away. She remembered how the light turned the enormous Ionic columns that braced the roof from pale gray to peachy gold; how it reflected off the windows in great blinding squares; how all the other concertgoers greeted each other in friendly tones, everyone gratified with the air and the sun and the turnout.

  She remembered their seats, somewhat near the back third of the interior hall but not unreasonably so, her own right at the end of the aisle. Sitting there with Mother, fanning herself with the program card, wishing she could peel off her gloves.

  Mother was smiling and scanning the audience, because the purpose of going to a concert at the Building of Arts was not, of course, to actually listen to the music. It was to see and be seen, and on this occasion, she would be seen in her new evening gown of palomino crêpe, which had arrived only that very morning from Redfern in Paris.

  Madeleine was there to be seen fixed at her side, her gradually-becoming-notable daughter, a shining ornament in human form, casting her meager glow upon the sophisticated Mrs. Force.

  Katherine, sensing the trap, had refused to come. Father had escaped back to New York days ago. Jack was—

  Jack was here, standing before them. He stood with his hat in his hand, his tanned fingers distinct against the black beaver brim. He smiled down at her as if he hadn’t been gone for days, as if he hadn’t just materialized from the air as he always did. She glanced to his left and right, but his son wasn’t in view. Only the man himself, bowing his head to her mother, lifting his gaze back to Madeleine, bidding them both a good evening in that quiet, pleasant voice as people pushed by him along the aisle.

  “Good evening, colonel!” said Mrs. Force. “We hadn’t heard you were in town again.”

  “My final meeting was canceled—the fellow missed the train in Pittsburgh—so I was able to sail a little sooner than I’d planned. I did hope to return in time for the concert. Madeleine mentioned you might be here, so it’s happy luck I’ve found you. How well you look tonight, Madeleine. That shade of green suits you.”

  “Thank you,” she said, acutely aware of how quiet the members of the audience in their immediate vicinity had become.

  “Where are you seated, Colonel Astor?” inquired Mrs. Force.

  “Oh,” he said, gesturing with the hat, “I’ll be standing in the back. All the other tickets had sold. It’s the price I pay for my tardiness.”

  “Nonsense!” said Mother. “You must take my seat.”

  “Madam, I could never take—”

  “I insist! Look there, right over there, is my friend Mrs. Silas Reynolds. Her husband could not attend at the last moment, and so she has an empty seat right next to hers.”

  Mother turned and waved to a woman stationed at the far other end of the hall, who lifted her hand and returned the wave so instantly, Madeleine knew they had planned the entire maneuver. Heat climbed up her neck, flooded her cheeks. No one, no one could possibly be fooled, least of all a man as sharp as Jack.

  “There, you see? I shall have her empty chair, and you shall have mine, and everyone will be happy.”

  Madeleine couldn’t bear to look up at him. She couldn’t look at anyone. She kept her gaze trained on her hands, fingers and knuckles clenched in a white satin ball on her lap.

  “Are you certain?” Jack was asking gravely, as if she were sacrificing her arm or her heart’s blood.

  “Positively. I would never be able to enjoy the music knowing you were stuck back there with the hoi polloi. You’ll be wonderful company for Madeleine. She’s mentioned she missed you very much, you know, even though it’s been only days.”

  Madeleine closed her eyes. Her face felt on fire. “Mother, please.”

  “Well, you did. And now you don’t have to.” Mrs. Force came to her feet.

  Jack said, “At least allow me to escort you to your friend.”

  “I wouldn’t want to bother you . . .”

  “It’s no bother at all. Now I insist.”

  Mother brushed past and Madeleine stood to let her by, and then she and Jack were looking at each other straight on. He was smiling, really smiling, but in a way that looked like a secret: his lips pressed closed, the corners tipped. There was merriment behind his eyes, but she couldn’t tell if he was amused at her, or at her mother, or at the whole scheme, so clumsy and obvious.

  Sorry, she mouthed.

  And his smile grew. He looked back at her mother, offered his arm. “Mrs. Force? Shall we, before the musicians file in?”<
br />
  They slipped away, Jack a full head and a half taller than Mother, who always walked with the straight dignity of a ballerina, no matter how transparent her intrigues.

  Madeleine resumed her seat. After a moment, she summoned enough pluck to lift her chin, finding the thick card of her program again and using it as a fan, casually, easily, as if she had not a single care.

  From the edges of her vision, she felt their stares, all the people seated around her appraising her, whispering behind their hands. She felt their curiosity, their disdain and titillation shivering along her skin.

  * * *

  He returned just as the lights were dimming, once, twice, thrice, to let the audience know it was nearly time to stop gossiping and preening and at least imagine, for the next hour or so, that they had gathered together as one to be uplifted by the magnificence of the performance, by the hard work and mastery of the musicians and conductor and composers.

  She made herself look up at him as he settled against the velveteen cushions. She’d abandoned the program as a fan but couldn’t stop herself from twisting the slim bangle on her left wrist around and around, a band of silver firm as a manacle against her glove and bones.

  “I’m afraid she’s not very subtle,” she said.

  Jack tugged his waistcoat straight. “I’m quite accustomed to ambitious mamas. Yours was obliging enough to read my mind, at least.”

  “Did she?”

  That secret smile returned; he gave her a sideward look. “She did. And I thanked her kindly for it, too.”

  Madeleine sat back, relieved and yet still mortified. The burning bulbs in the chandeliers above them sank away into cherry, into cinders, into ash.

  She hesitated, then whispered, “If you encourage her, though, she’ll never stop trying to throw us together.”

  “Madeleine,” he replied quietly, leaning his head toward hers, “what on earth makes you think I want her to stop?”

  * * *

  This was why she would not remember the music played that night by the accomplished musicians of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, nothing beyond the first few dramatic notes of Bach’s Fantasia in G minor: because in the newly fallen darkness, Jack reached over and took her hand—deliberate this time, nothing absent-minded about it—and he held it the entire while, the entire performance, while Madeleine’s cheeks went warm again and her heart bloomed like a savage flower inside her chest.

  * * *

  It was the habit of the audience of the Building of Arts to wend slowly outside again once the affair was done, the play or music or lecture, where they would discover vendors in rolling wooden carts parked in the grass, selling sarsaparilla tonics or hot frankfurters or oysters or roasted corn by lanternlight. Any children in attendance would immediately begin tugging on their parents’ arms, pleading for pennies, only to run amok once they’d claimed their prize, darting from cart to cart to decide which treat looked best. And although most of the ladies, in their fine gowns and gemstones, declined to handle the mess of a shucked oyster or a buttery ear of dripping corn, a small slice of cake might be acceptable, as well as a glass of lemonade.

  As a child, Madeleine would have been delighted with the corn, with the sweet tonic or a sharp mustardy frankfurter. But, as she’d said to Jack before, she wasn’t a child any longer; she was a young woman wearing white satin gloves and a dress of jade silk, and so when Jack Astor turned to her beneath the evening sky and asked if she would like anything, anything at all, she glanced around the carts until she found the one selling cider doughnuts, because they were easy to eat and always came with a thick paper napkin to hold the crumbs.

  “Perfect,” he said. “My favorite.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Mrs. Force, for you?”

  Mother shook her head. She would not risk her new gown, not on its very first wearing.

  The doughnuts had been fried during the day by the wife of a fisherman and were sold at night by her daughter, a freckled girl of about fifteen, and they were always moist and dense and tangy with apples. Madeleine took her first bite and closed her eyes in pleasure. She opened them again to find Jack watching her, his own doughnut untouched.

  A pair of boys stampeded between them, clutching stick candies and yelling for a friend. A cool breeze followed on their heels, scented of sugar and the promise of rain.

  “You . . .” Jack said, and paused. “You, ah, have a . . .”

  He took a step closer, lifted a hand as if to touch her face. Before he could, Madeleine raised her own hand and brushed away the crumb from her lower lip and that was when the light exploded only feet away, startling her. She immediately turned her face aside as Jack did the opposite, pivoting toward that blinding burst.

  “Sir,” he said, a word edged with exasperation. “Some warning, if you please.”

  The smell of sugar and rain vanished, replaced with an acrid, chemical stink.

  “Beg your pardon, colonel,” said the photographer, grinning. “It was a nice moment, though.”

  Jack moved to stand between Madeleine and the photographer. There was now a giant pale spot in her vision that she couldn’t blink away.

  “Very well, you’ve gotten your moment. My companions and I would like to get on with our evening, if you don’t mind.”

  “One more of you and Miss Force, colonel? One more, with fair warning?”

  Jack glanced back at her; she gave the slightest shake of her head, but perhaps he didn’t see. “One more, if you agree to leave us in peace afterwards.”

  “Deal,” said the man, swiftly adding powder to his handheld trough, lifting his camera again. “Look this way, Miss Force. There you are, thanksverymuch. A wee smile, please, miss? I promise it don’t hurt a bit.”

  Flash!

  * * *

  But it did hurt. A petty little wound, this photograph, that photograph, this mention in the papers, that one. Each one chipping away at any thought she might have had of privacy, of control of her own face or figure or destiny.

  Two years from this nice moment, Madeleine would be a widow and a mother, the most famous widowed mother on the entire planet, and by then she would have developed her own flinty ways of dealing with the press.

  But that was still two years away. For now, in the short months to come, Jack would teach her his rules on how to interact with them:

  Learn their names, so you can get an idea of how they write about you.

  Learn where they work, because some papers are more discreet than others.

  Never say more to them than absolutely necessary; words are easily misquoted.

  Don’t get caught in a lie; a good newspaperman will always sniff it out.

  Don’t lose your temper, no matter how they goad you. Spectacles always sell sheets.

  And finally, if truly pinned, negotiate. Offer them something they want, a very limited something, so that you can have something you want. If it helped, he would tell her, kissing her hand, she could think of it as a tiny sacrifice for the greater good.

  * * *

  That sultry August evening after the concert, Jack’s idea of the greater good was simply the freedom to walk with her, to enjoy apple-flavored doughnuts with her, to speak of flimsy nothings while quietly learning the unspoken things about each other: how they harmonized, how they linked, how even the silences between them were light and lovely.

  And it worked, more or less. After the photographer had gotten his shot (Madeleine pasty and smiling nervously; Jack at ease; Mother cropped out entirely), the man had tugged at his cap and let them alone. But the next morning, there were two more of them camped out across the street from Madeleine’s house, underneath that sturdy red oak.

  They were only the beginning.

  CHAPTER 7

  BEWARE LA FORCE MAJEURE!

  —Special to Town Topics

  September 1, 1910

  Bar Harbor, Me.

  Mother Force has her heart set upon adding a certain army officer to her list of kit
h and kin, and nothing will stand in her way. Mr. and Mrs. William H. Force, favored with two stunning jewels in their family crown, would happily bestow either upon this newly eligible suitor, no matter his recent marital woes.

  Sources have caught sight of both of these freshly polished gems being squired about this Mount Desert town by the fickle man himself. The question becomes, what will this fortunate fellow choose to do with such generous offerings?

  The papers, even the scandal sheets, had been able to unearth only the barest-bone facts of the luscious Ava Lowle Willing Astor’s divorce from her lanky, obscenely rich husband. The details of the petition and decree remained sealed by the court, which meant there was nothing to rein in the breathless rumors: that he had been unfaithful, or she had. That they had fought incessantly; that they lived apart; that the only reason the divorce had not happened sooner was that they’d been forced to await the passing of the colonel’s puritanical mother. No doubt had the dissolution of their marriage happened in her lifetime, the disgrace of it would have stopped Lina’s heart.

  A year ago, Madeleine had paid little attention to the talk regarding the Astors. Gossip was a ceaseless fact of society; there was no getting around it, she knew that firsthand. Tittle-tattle flitting through school would catch flame in the dormitories, in the hallways. Madeleine had seen perfectly pleasant girls ruined by slander, and perfectly horrible girls elevated by it. She’d managed her final few years of finishing school by keeping her head down, mostly, and her comments close.

  Graduating from it all last June had been a relief. The ceremony itself had been conducted out-of-doors in an amphitheater dotted with flowery hats and lace parasols. The one-and-three-quarters hours of speeches had been tedious and wilting and crammed full of phrases like fair womanhood and gentle hearts and our future wives.

  And here I am, anyway, Madeleine thought now, the ink-smudged sheets of the tabloid crushed in one hand. Being gossiped about, someone’s future wife—at least according to the papers. Maybe nothing ever really changes.