Laughing, arms around each other’s waists, Eulah and Harry made their way back to the door to the gallery. Just as Harry was fumbling with the door latch, an icy blast burst along the deck, snatched up Eulah’s hat, with Helen’s butterfly brooch still attached, and blew it skittering along the deck before hurling it over the railing into the blackness of the ocean night.
“Oh!” she squealed in dismay, her hand darting to the top of her head. Coils of pale brown hair blew in spirals around her face, over her eyes, into her mouth.
Harry laughed. “I like you better without it,” he assured her. “Come along. I think the band’s starting up again.”
He led her back with a protective arm through the door into the dining room, but Eulah looked back over her shoulder to the spot along the railing where her hat had disappeared.
Chapter Twelve
Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts
April 17, 1915
“What’d you say this place was called?” Dovie hissed as Sibyl led her down a stately hallway, carpeted in cabbage roses.
“The Oceanus Club.”
“What kind of crazy name is that?” the girl asked in an anxious whisper. “It doesn’t look very nautical to me. I’d expect there to be—I don’t know—figureheads and boat models and mermaids and things. Shippy things.”
Sibyl laughed, helping Dovie off with her coat, which, in the light of day, looked shabbier than Sibyl remembered. “I suppose it is a silly name when you come to it. It’s named for the baby born during the Mayflower passage. Oceanus Hopkins. Course, he didn’t survive the first winter, so I suppose there’s a certain fatalism in it. But that’s the name they picked.”
“What is it?” Dovie asked, shifting her eyes to take in the quietly sumptuous surroundings.
“It’s, oh, I don’t know. A club. Luncheon. Cards. There’s a lovely garden,” Sibyl said. She peered into the front sitting room, at the clusters of women sitting, ankles folded, hats bent over cups of tea. She recognized a few faces, women she knew from committees. She felt a twinge of anxiety about bringing Dovie there. But it passed, replaced with self-satisfied rebellion.
“I’m glad my name isn’t Oceanus,” the young woman grumbled.
“Oh, I quite agree. Dovie’s much more preferable,” Sibyl said. Dovie glanced over to see if she was being teased, and Sibyl smiled to show that she was, albeit gently.
“Psh,” Dovie said, and poked Sibyl on the upper arm.
“Sibyl is even better, of course,” she added. “Nothing like being named for obscure elements of Greek mythology, don’t you agree? Why, when I was a girl I wished for nothing more than a nice normal name. Like Bertha.”
Dovie laughed through her nose, with delicacy, and the two women moved down the hallway toward the sound of silverware clinking against china, and murmuring women’s voices.
“Why, is that Sibyl Allston?” a practical woman’s voice declared, and Sibyl turned to find Mrs. Rowland, a member of Mrs. Dee’s secret Titanic séance circle, sandwiched at a small table between a young woman with the identical round features as Mrs. Rowland’s own, only twenty years younger, and a beaky spinster in old-fashioned dress reform bloomers.
“Why, Mrs. Rowland. Speak of the devil,” Sibyl said, pausing by the table.
“You can speak of him as much as you like, but it won’t make him any realer,” the Unitarian matron said. “May I present my daughter, Mrs. Leopold. And this is our friend Ellen Baxter, up from Rhode Island.” Heads nodded. The spinster adjusted her spectacles and gave Sibyl a long look.
“And this is Dovie Whistler, from California,” Sibyl said.
“How d’you do,” said Mrs. Leopold, eyeing Dovie’s bobbed hair with mixed curiosity and envy.
“California!” Mrs. Rowland exclaimed. “Why, I can’t see why you’d ever leave a place like that. I hear the weather’s near perfect. So unlike New England, isn’t that right, Ellen?”
The spinster flared her nostrils. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Too nice weather can make a body morally weak.”
“Well!” Sibyl exclaimed, hastening their escape. “Such a pleasure running into you.”
“You’re looking well, Miss Allston,” Mrs. Rowland said with significance. “Worlds better.”
Sibyl smiled and took Dovie by the arm. “Thank you,” she said. “I am well.”
More heads nodded as they said their good-byes, and Sibyl led the girl away.
“Were they friends of yours?” Dovie asked.
“In this world,” Sibyl said, “everyone is friends with everyone else. In a way.”
They reached the woman who ruled over the reservations book, and Sibyl said, “Let’s have a table outside, if you please.”
They were led past tables of women, young and old, mothers and daughters, college girls, all whites and organdies and crisp blouses and well-fitted long sweaters, pearl earrings, and elegant straw hats. Deep glasses of iced tea, perfect roseate pats of butter, and tiny sandwiches served on ironed tablecloths. Nervousness poured off Dovie in waves, and Sibyl rested a reassuring hand on the girl’s forearm, guiding her through French doors into the stone garden at the rear of the clubhouse.
They sat at an iron table, framed by starbursts of lush fern, sedate in the spectacle of a perfect spring afternoon.
“So,” Dovie said, grasping for something to say. “Gosh. This is just lovely. Do you come here very often, then?”
“Sometimes,” Sibyl said. “My sister rather liked it. When I did come, it was usually with her. Most of her regular meetings were held here. Mine as well. Temperance society. The suffrage. Tenement reform. They’ve got quite a lively lecture series.”
“That sounds perfectly dreary,” Dovie said without thinking.
Sibyl laughed, shocked. “You’re right,” she said. “I suppose it does.”
Dovie froze, aware that she had made a mistake. But when she saw that Sibyl was smiling out of the side of her mouth, Dovie relaxed and smiled back.
Their tea and sandwiches appeared, and Sibyl gazed over the rim of her teacup at Dovie as the girl bent to help herself to a scone.
“You know,” Sibyl began, as though the thought had just occurred to her, “I don’t think you ever told me how you and Harlan first became acquainted.”
“Didn’t I?” Dovie said, feigning surprise. “I could’ve sworn I did.”
Sibyl shook her head with a knowing smile.
“We were introduced at Mrs. Allerton’s artistic salon,” Dovie said, setting her teacup down and folding her arms.
“Oh?” Sibyl said. “I don’t think I know Mrs. Allerton.”
“But you must,” Dovie protested. “Harlan said he’d been going there for years. He knew everyone there.”
“Did he?” Sibyl said. She thought with warmth of her crafty brother, gadding about in secret, away from the Captain’s prying eyes. No wonder they saw him so rarely. She felt a twinge of envy that Harlan had been free enough to build his own secret world, while she still moved through the one she had been born into. “Well, isn’t that interesting. Tell me, what goes on at one of her evenings?”
“They’re every Tuesday,” the girl said, growing animated. “Louisa—that’s her Christian name, she insists everyone go by their Christian name, she’s very unconventional that way—anyway, she always said that there was never anything diverting going on in the Hub on Tuesday evenings, and that it was high time someone hosted an evening that would bring together artists and society types.”
“Hm,” Sibyl mused. She wondered, privately, what sort of milieu this Louisa Allerton took for “society,” given that at least one of the most prestigious and exclusive historical lecture series had been meeting Tuesday evenings since time immemorial, possibly even before the Pilgrims dropped anchor at that apocryphal rock. “What an innovative idea. And how do the evenings usually go?”
“Well,” Dovie said, “the members of the salon will bring in some artist or other to give a performanc
e, followed by some lively discussion on aesthetic principles. They’ll have a painter come in to talk and do some drawings in charcoal, or they’ll have a writer come and give a reading. They try to rotate who’s invited, so that each week they have someone different. Sometimes there’ll be music, and dancing. In fact, most nights it ends with dancing, even if there isn’t a musician invited. Louisa’s got this wicked punch recipe, you know, it’s just deadly.” She let out a simpering laugh, before remembering that there might be temperance ladies within earshot.
“It sounds like quite a festive bunch of people,” Sibyl remarked, keeping her voice mild, punctuating that mildness with a genteel sip of her tea. In a corner of her mind Sibyl reflected that such an evening would be the stuff of Eulah’s dreams. “And how did you come to be invited, again?”
“Oh!” Dovie exclaimed, through a mouthful of tea cake. She caught some crumbs under her chin with a napkin while saying, “I was giving a dramatic recitation. Of ‘Kubla Khan.’ ”
She smiled, dimpling, as Sibyl’s eyes widened.
“Harley said he’d never heard anyone who could recite poetry with as much passion as I could. That was the word he used, passion.” She shivered with pleasure at the recollection, little starbursts twinkling in her eyes, and Sibyl sighed inwardly. Eulah used to talk that way. Eulah always preferred an overstatement of feeling to an understatement.
“So you’re a performer, then?” Sibyl asked, nudging closer to the question of how exactly Dovie Whistler supported herself.
The girl’s face closed behind the veil that Sibyl was learning tended to fall when Dovie wished to avoid discussing something.
“Yes,” she said, without elaborating. “Anyway, they’d just asked me for the one evening, but Harlan took such a shine to me that he kept inviting me back as his guest. I’ve met some very lovely people there.” It felt strange, to Sibyl’s ears, to hear her brother called by his first name by someone from outside their family. He must have been moving in some progressive circles indeed.
“And how long ago was this?” Sibyl wondered aloud.
“Oh, several months, I should think.”
Sibyl coughed, having aspirated some of her tea. She brought a fist to her chest, hacking, and Dovie looked up from her teacup with concern.
“Why, are you unwell, Miss Allston?”
“No, no,” she sputtered, setting her cup down. “Fine. I’m perfectly fine. Thank you.”
The girl nodded, concerned. Then Sibyl saw the girl’s eyes shift, with wariness, over Sibyl’s left shoulder. Dovie’s eyes narrowed in a frown.
“Well, if it isn’t the elder Miss Allston,” a voice tittered, and Sibyl felt her heart sink with dismay. She turned her face up to meet the speaker.
Behind her, arms folded, stood a woman about Sibyl’s age, with an equine face topped by an expensively maintained chestnut cloud of hair, beaming a chill nonwelcome down at them.
“Why, Miss Seaver,” Sibyl said. “It’s been such a long time.”
“So it has!” the woman-pony agreed. “Ages. But it’s not Miss Seaver anymore. I’m Mrs. Leonard Coombs now.”
“How silly of me,” Sibyl said with a tight smile. She knew Mildred Seaver was married. And she knew Mildred was married to Leonard Coombs. Leonard Coombs, a mild-mannered Yalie who, during Sibyl’s first season out, had been vying with Benton Derby for Sibyl’s attention. Instead of dancing, at which Sibyl failed to excel, they ended up sitting on staircases, knees pressed excitingly together, talking in hushed voices about books. Mildred Seaver, in Sibyl Allston’s sewing circle and dance class, gawky but persuasive, had, through a series of maneuvers that Sibyl still lacked the social virtuosity to untangle, insinuated herself with the bookish young man, locking him down in a matrimonial triumph trumpeted across all the regional newspapers the following winter. Ten thousand orange blossoms, the papers breathlessly chronicled.
“And how is Mister Coombs?” Sibyl inquired.
“Just topping, thanks!” the former Miss Seaver beamed, exposing the full panoply of her teeth. “He’s just been named partner in Daddy’s firm. And he positively dotes on Lenny Junior.”
“Ah,” Sibyl said. Lenny Junior. Proof, as if she needed any more, that the Allstons had fallen well off the Coombses’ visiting list. They hadn’t even been sent a card. “Why, I hadn’t heard. Congratulations.”
Mrs. Coombs simpered, shifting her hips. “Oh!” she moaned, a hand to her chest to show how stoic she was. “Well, thanks. It was just awful, you know. Really, too awful to be believed. You are so lucky, to be spared all that. I’d just as soon never go through any of it, to be honest. It really is better, I wager, not having to be married at all. Now, who’s this?”
She turned an appraising eye on Sibyl’s luncheon partner, who responded by sinking lower in her garden chair.
“Mrs. Coombs, I’d like you to meet Miss Dovie Whistler,” Sibyl said. When she faced Dovie, waving her hand at her in introduction, she found the girl’s face purpling with slow-simmering rage.
“Whistler!” Mrs. Coombs whinnied, bringing a thoughtful finger up to her chin. “Whistler. Hmmmm. New York?”
“Never been,” Dovie said, arms folded.
“No? Well, that’s odd. The only Whistlers I know are in New York. We see them every summer at Newport, when we go down for the regatta.”
“No relation,” Dovie said, emerald eyes darkening.
“Well, that’s a shame. They’re lovely people. He’s from a banking family, and they race the most gorgeous little ketch, why it makes me just blue with envy. Blue!”
“People don’t turn blue with envy,” Dovie said, using a voice that sounded like a regular conversational tone but that managed to fill the room. “Must be that good Newport blood you’re thinking of. Sounds like you would know.”
“What?” Mrs. Coombs sputtered.
Sibyl laughed before she could help herself. “I’m afraid she’s right, Mildred,” Sibyl said, heart thudding with enjoyment at adding to the woman’s shock. “Green’s the color of envy, not blue. Why, you should know that.”
“Well!” the woman clopped backward on one of her low-heeled hoofs, reeling from surprise. “My goodness. Miss Allston. I don’t know where you could have found such a creature.” She glared down at Dovie, radiating waves of social contempt.
“I guess we’re just too regular to know from blue, aren’t we, Sibyl?” Dovie remarked, settling back in her seat, legs crossed at the knee, looking up at the woman with an expression of open challenge. “But then, I’ve heard that the thin air up there on Mount Olympus can do terrible things to the mind. And don’t even get me started on what it can do to a girl’s face.”
Sibyl gasped in both shock and, if she admitted it, pleasure. She’d never had the nerve to say what she really thought about Mildred Seaver to anyone but Eulah, and here Dovie had almost sensed it without her having to say a thing. She almost hesitated to look at the young woman sitting across from her at the garden table, for fear that she would give away her delight.
Mrs. Coombs opened her mouth, as though she had been hit in the chest and couldn’t catch her breath. Sibyl glanced at Dovie, who met her look with a mischievous smile. Twin sensations of mortification and mirthful joy rose within her, and Sibyl felt her cheeks flush. She was terribly afraid that she would start laughing.
“My goodness,” Mrs. Coombs managed, struggling to regain her upper hand by addressing Sibyl alone. “What unconventional company you’re keeping. But I suppose those Allstons always did have rather distinctive taste in friends. It’s one of your great strengths, you know. I’ve always said so. You are so openhearted, you’ll just keep company with anyone. How very progressive you are!”
Mrs. Leonard Coombs then turned on her substantial heel and marched through the French doors, through which the sound of whispering could be clearly heard. Sibyl managed to last until the moment when she thought Mildred might be out of earshot before laughter burst out of her mouth, and she folded her arms around
her waist, whooping, shoulders shaking.
Dovie watched the woman go, waves of hostility vibrating off her small form. Then a slow smile broke across the girl’s face. It widened, and she, too, started to laugh.
“Oh! Oh!” Sibyl cried, wiping the corner of her eye with her napkin. “Oh, if you had any idea how long I’ve wanted to say something like that to her. She’s been insufferable since we were girls.”
Dovie grinned, and shrugged her shoulders.
Finally, as her laughter died down to snicker, Sibyl grew aware of the silence within the lunchroom. She leaned forward, gesturing for Dovie to incline her ear.
“I think, my dear, we’d better be going,” she whispered.
“I haven’t even finished my cake yet!” Dovie protested in mock-innocence. “But if you think we must, then we must.”
“Oh, by all means, finish your cake,” Sibyl said, through a nervous giggle. The silence in the clubhouse puddled deeper.
Dovie took the last chunk of tea cake and crammed it into her mouth, puffing her cheeks out like a squirrel. “Done,” she said, word muffled through the mouthful of cake, a few crumbs escaping between her lips, and she brought her hand up to keep the rest of it in.
Sibyl, eyes twinkling with merriment, got to her feet. “All right,” she said. “Let’s be off, then!”
She threaded her arm around the girl’s waist, and they tripped out in lockstep together, heads high. They marched through the dining room, past several dozen silent, watching, judging pairs of women’s eyes. She spotted Mrs. Rowland, a wicked smile twisting the corner of the matron’s mouth. Sibyl and Dovie picked up their pace to an almost-jog, leaving behind a trail of cake crumbs, never to set foot in the Oceanus Club again.
That evening, the two young women perched across from each other in the inner drawing room, a fire going in the fireplace, Sibyl bent over some needlepoint in Lan’s old Greek revival armchair while Dovie flipped through a fashion magazine, her feet tucked under her. They had no other company besides the observing macaw, at whom Dovie cast the occasional worried glance as he sat, immobile as a sculpture, on his hat rack. Lan Allston had yet to return from his business downtown, and the two young women had shared a plain dinner in the dining room, talking with excitement about fashions and magazine stories and society gossip, and revisiting the scene of Dovie’s shocking triumph.