Beautiful Wild Page 3

  “To whom?” This from a voice Vida had never heard before, female and British, a voice that resounded high in the nasal cavity. The owner of the voice was practically skeletal and encased in emerald green satin. Peacock feathers were wound into her high, pinned hair. Her age was impossible to determine—she might have been a few years older than Nora and lived a hard life, or was otherwise a perfectly preserved seventy-nine.

  Rosa and Vida must have appeared confused enough by this interjection, for the lady quickly went on: “What I meant, my pretties, was to whom do you want an introduction?”

  The woman sat down beside Vida, ignoring the little brass name tag that claimed the seat for Mr. Arnold Hazzard, and lit a slender cigarette, although there were no ashtrays and smoking was generally not done in mixed company. She put her pointy elbow on the table without the slightest notice of how this rattled the crystal, the china, and the silver. Before Vida could think of a clever way to avoid the question, the woman was talking again.

  “I can introduce you to absolutely anybody you’d like. I know them all. I have a little something on all of them, you know. Don’t blame me. It’s that kind of world. Myself, I am an old libertine, and cannot be shamed. But all of these types”—she made a conductor-like flourish at the assembled—“well, really, I think you could shame any one of them for sneezing audibly, so it’s not difficult at all, and if you ask me, entirely their own fault. There’s Lady Narcissa of Ghent, who was born Lydia Astor. And Charlotte Coburg, who married a duke, making her a duchess of course.”

  For the first time since her slip by the map room Vida felt interested in the evening, and she liked this lady who didn’t seem to believe that any of the first-class passengers were to be idolized at all. Vida’s eyes roamed the room for someone interesting enough that she’d want to learn their secrets. But her gaze became fixed and her bottom lip dropped at the sight of someone not fancy at all.

  “Now, darlings, tell me, whom do you most want to meet?”

  “Who is that?” Vida asked. She would not ordinarily have spoken so impulsively, but her anger had returned, heating her blood and bringing color to her face. The nobody from the map room had caught her eye. He was lingering near the grand doorway with that same easy posture and insolent face. She was glad to feel angry, actually. She much preferred anger to mortification.

  “Who?” The woman squinted.

  “There.” Vida pointed, and then remembered that that was the sort of thing that got a girl like her in trouble, and bent her arm back into her lap. Too late, though. The nobody, even all that way across the room, noticed, and his mouth slipped into a grin.

  “Oh . . . no.” The word dropped right out of the lady’s mouth and she was violent in getting another cigarette lit. “And here I thought you were sharp. He’s a nobody, dear girl.”

  “Oh yes. I know. I’m not desirous of meeting him—he was rude to me, that’s all, and I was curious where he got his gall.”

  “He probably works for one of these gents with egalitarian ideals,” the woman went on, as though gents with ideals were an unfortunate but unavoidable part of life in these modern times. “Anyway, I see Mr. Selvedge has been through and done all the complimenting I was going to do, so I won’t bore you ladies with your qualifications, your stunning wit, and your fine dress and all that rot. But here’s what I do. I try my best to know all the pretty things, for that is where the stories are. My name is Dame Edna—Edna Sackville. I am sure you have read my column in The Daily Chimera.” Here she paused significantly, and met Vida’s eye.

  So this was the lady who had written about her little spree of the night before! Vida knew she should be cross with this woman who had publicized her unladylike behavior, whose column had forced her to pack her bags in the fog of the morning and to find herself on the open ocean now. But in fact she was delighted. The way for a girl to have an adventure, as she had long known, was to make herself seem exciting to people so that she is invited absolutely everywhere. The social columnists were the most useful in making oneself seem exciting. And Vida chastised herself inwardly for having pursued Fitzhugh so artlessly, when the person whose connection she should have really been after was here before her. “Oh,” Vida said. “I’ve heard of it.”

  “Yes, I’m sure you have. It’s all about the shiny young people like you.”

  “Like me?” Vida asked, and gave Dame Edna a little smile to show she wasn’t shy of the attention.

  “Exactly. I know a good story when I see one, and you’re it, dear. Anybody you would like to meet, just ask old Edna. They may not like me, dears, but they fear me. And that is better.”

  She brandished a card of fine emerald-colored stock with her name printed in gold, and then she shook her arm so that a little gold pen, attached to her wrist by a gold chain, fell out, and she wrote on the back the number of her cabin. “Come any time, day or night, with whatever story you have to tell,” she said. “I will always listen, and I will repay you in kind.”

  “Is this woman bothering you?”

  For a marvelous stretch of minutes Vida had forgotten her failure of that afternoon, and had become absorbed instead in the juicy promises of Dame Edna. She had idly draped her fingertips on the edge of an empty crystal champagne glass, and allowed herself to imagine other adventures. But then the young man interrupted them, and it occurred to her that she had heard his voice before, that commanding yet unperturbed voice asking if she were bothered.

  She glanced up at the face of Fitzhugh Farrar. Last night she’d seen it plenty, though that all seemed a bit fuzzy and faraway now. Somehow he was handsomer than she remembered. His sandy hair was neatly slicked up and away from his square forehead and cornflower blue eyes. His strong jawline was more or less parallel to his high white starched collar. His tie was very black, and his teeth were very white, and his cuff links were very, very gold. Here was a man who stood out in any crowd. He wasn’t smiling, and there was a bright intensity in his expression. Vida couldn’t be certain if Dame Edna actually whispered in her ear that she should say something, or if the moment was of such world-shifting consequence that the dame was briefly capable of reading minds.

  “Hello” was the best Vida could do, being uncharacteristically tongue-tied. But she said it archly, with just a smidge of drama, and an extra-subtle raising of her shaped eyebrows, so that that single word had the energy of a brilliant witticism. “I am sorry,” she went on, “have we met?”

  “Last night, though I suppose it was quite a well-attended party, and you certainly may have talked to several young men who own ocean liners.”

  “I usually do,” Vida replied coolly, though she was experiencing an odd and overwhelming sensation, as though a flock of cherubim were fanning her with heavenly air. The humiliation of the last few hours lifted, and she felt curiously light-headed, just the way that lucky, lovely girl addressed by the most eligible man on the ship was supposed to feel. “But, now that you mention it, you do look a little familiar.”

  “Strange,” he said, matching her ironic tone. “You don’t seem like the kind of girl who forgets easily.”

  Vida fought the urge to smile at his knowing this about her. Yes, it was true, she remembered all the details of parties and stories. She remembered when she was insulted, too. But she resisted showing him how much she liked having this part of herself recognized, and kept her gaze quite steadily upon him. She allowed her smile to fade away and lifted her hand so that her fingers dangled in the vicinity of his. “I don’t,” she said evenly. “Where is Mr. Selvedge when you need him? Oh, well, why be formal about it. I am Vida Hazzard, in case you forgot.”

  “I did not. Fitzhugh Farrar, at your service. My family owns this ship, if your memory is weak on that point,” he went on, as though he knew she knew all about it and he was not at all uncomfortable with the fact, “so if you have any complaints, I’m the one at fault.”

  “That’s good to know, Mr. Farrar. It is a pleasure to meet you formally.”

&nbs
p; “Oh, but the pleasure is all mine.” And then, when she was sure he was about to make a little bow and move on to meet other people, so that she could finally turn and look at Rosa in triumph—when she felt that her coup was complete, that she could rest easy knowing she still held his interest—he instead gripped her hand yet tighter, and bowed yet deeper, and said, in a voice so low it seemed at risk of breaking, “Miss Hazzard, would you dance with me?”

  She had not noticed the music before. But now she heard the cascade of strings and the gentle swelling of melody in her belly and in her toes. Already they were moving across the floor, already his arms had made a structure around her body that led her into the rise and fall of a waltz and on into the center of the room under the great winking drape of the chandelier. Little murmurs escaped the crowd, and a thousand eyes seemed to be on them. But Vida—her lips pressed together to keep herself from smiling too much—was looking up into the face of the man her parents wanted her to marry, thinking that maybe for once they did know best, after all.

  The moment was so perfect, so complete, that she could see it in the eyes of a bystander, could see the sweep of her red skirt, and the chandelier light dappling her bare arms, could see the brilliance of Fitzhugh’s smile, the neat black line of his tuxedo as he waltzed her across the floor. She thought that she could hear Rosa’s jealous murmur, could hear the scratch of Dame Edna’s little golden pen, recording this moment so that it could be serialized in the dozens of newspapers that ran her column around the world. It was as though she could hold this moment of gem-like perfection in her palm and have it always. She permitted herself one errant glance—across the room, in the direction of the grand door where that nobody had stood laughing at her, so that she could have the satisfaction of seeing his face at the precise second when he came to understand how entirely wrong he had been about Vida Hazzard.

  But her heart dropped, and her limbs went slack with disappointment.

  The nobody was gone—he had disappeared into the ship too soon to witness her triumph—and there was just the hole of an open doorway where he had been.

  Four

  By the morning of the Princess’s second day at sea, the humiliating incident by the map room was to Vida nothing more than an amusing anecdote. By the second evening it seemed an odd aberration in an otherwise thrilling journey. And by the third morning it had become for her a neat lesson in never doubting oneself. She was on a quest, and any quest comes with little ups and downs. Perhaps her parents were still nervous about the propriety of her behavior, about her reputation being ruined. But they could not argue with the proof of Fitzhugh’s interest. By the third afternoon of their journey, Vida had collected the following evidence that she was well on her way to a proposal:

  ONE note from the famous Fitzhugh Farrar, on a gold-embossed card that bore the logo of the Farrar Shipping Line and a little illustration of the Princess herself, and upon which was written in elegant script what a pleasure it was to have danced with her. (How giddily she and Nora had discussed it when it arrived! She did hope the couple in the next cabin didn’t hear them, as that sort of girlish enthusiasm really was not the image Vida was trying to project.)

  TWO invitations to dance, on the second night after dinner. One might have been taken as an obligatory gesture, since their names had been associated in the columns. But two, Vida thought her parents and everyone else would surely understand, meant that she had become a fixture in his thoughts, that by the third evening he would dance with no one else, unless not doing so would make him seem rude. And the two dances didn’t really convey the attention he had lavished on her. For all last night, from across the ballroom, his eyes had searched for her with such intensity that she forgot the other girls who (as that mysterious nobody had truthfully pointed out) were always trying to throw themselves in his way from every corner.

  THREE minutes of thrilling conversation, that morning after breakfast, when he was passing through on his way to meet with the ship’s captain—not thrilling precisely because of anything that was said, but rather because of the way he looked at her, as though there was nowhere else he would ever want to look.

  And lastly, and most crucially:

  FOUR more days on board the ship in which to make Fitzhugh Farrar fall so madly in love with her that he would not tolerate the prospect of continuing on to Australia without her. She wanted to be at his side when Honolulu came into view, and for Dame Edna and everybody else to remark how quickly she had won this supposedly unattainable bachelor.

  But just now, on the third afternoon of their voyage, there was only the endless expanse of ocean, and the cool whip of wind on her face as their floating fortress moved steadily in the direction of that grand (and very socially acceptable) future. Vida had gone with her parents to the lido deck on the very top of the ship, where on warmer days the first-class passengers sunbathed and swam in the swimming pool, to tally all these proofs of Fitzhugh’s affection. Once they were convinced, Mother and Father’s conversation pivoted to prattle about the ship’s amenities, much as they might turn over the china at a new acquaintance’s home.

  “I suppose it’s all right,” her father said about something or other.

  “The food is good,” Mother replied. “For being prepared at twenty-one knots per hour.”

  To which her father exclaimed, as though this were some sort of scandal: “The food would be good anywhere, my love! Mr. Selvedge told me the chef is quite famous in Paris, and was employed for a time by the great Sarah Bernhardt. The man is an artist.”

  A part of Vida’s brain listened to her parents’ small talk. But another part was focused on the other first-class passengers, strolling on deck or lounging nearby; on the sweep of her petal-pink dress spread over the deck chair and onto the polished boards of the deck itself; and the angle of her hat which, while protecting the pale perfection of her skin, still showed just enough of her face that if Fitzhugh were to come passing by he would see her immediately from her best angle.

  A couple were ambling toward her in the direction of the bow. Her blood quickened. For a few seconds together her eyes were sure the man was Fitzhugh. The woman on his arm was uncommonly beautiful. Her dress was a shade of blue similar to the wide sky that went on forever and ever behind her. A broad hat decorated with little white flowers topped her head. Ropes of blond hair were twisted around her neck and down her breast, like a maiden in a fairy tale. Her mouth was a small red fruit and her eyes were wide lavender lakes. Vida’s heart sank a little with this sight, and even when her eyes adjusted and she realized it was not Fitzhugh, but merely a man very like him, she still felt a little helpless over how much she had cared.

  “Striking similarity, don’t you think?”

  Vida had been staring, she realized, and was so focused on the passing couple that she had not noticed Dame Edna arriving on the chair beside her.

  “My, you do pop up,” Vida said before she could think better of it.

  “Get used to it, dear. If you want to move in the best circles, that is. I long ago mastered the art of arriving in silence. One does overhear such things that way.”

  The columnist, too, wore a hat, an impressively ribboned and bedecked thing of vivid green, and her coat was also of her signature color. As Vida took in the coat, she became aware for the first time that the air had a little freeze to it.

  “Recognize him, my dear?”

  “Oh!” Vida’s heart lightened as she came to understand. “That’s the brother, isn’t it?” She sat up and watched as the figure of Fitzhugh’s older brother, Carlton, ambled along arm in arm with the woman in blue. “And his wife, Camilla.”

  “Yes. Pretty, isn’t she?”

  “Very,” Vida replied, although it wasn’t really Camilla’s prettiness that concerned her, but what kinds of leisure activities she enjoyed and how Vida might sort of accidentally come across her, and become friends with her, thus making her conquest of Fitz all the more inevitable. Plus, when they were sisters-in-law, Vi
da wanted to be sure she was invited to all the best parties. “What’s she like?”

  “Oh, she’s even fancier than he is, if you can imagine it. She’s an Astor on her mother’s side, and her father’s family, the Joneses, own half the copper mines in this country, and have been deciding who is and isn’t invited to things for half a century. Their wedding was one of the most anticipated matches of the decade—they were married in Grace Church, and it was a frenzy among New York society to be invited. Many who weren’t are still bitter.”

  “And what sort of secrets do you have on her?”

  The couple had disappeared between one of the ship’s mighty smokestacks, and Vida’s parents were on to discussing the comfort of the beds in the first-class cabin, the relative virtues of the sheets and softness of the pillows.

  Dame Edna tilted her head and her mouth flexed in amusement. “I do have a little story, though you may not wish to know it.”

  Vida hoped her face didn’t reveal how much she did in fact wish to know it. “Tell me,” she breathed. “I will be ever so much in your debt.”

  “Well.” With an expert gesture Dame Edna had one of her little cigarettes lit, despite the wind, as though her powers were not just over the well-dressed, but also somehow over the elements. “She was with your fellow first.”

  “My—” Vida broke off and her mouth bent in a funny way. She was flooded with such contradictory emotions that she hardly knew whether she should frown or beam with joy. That Dame Edna might so easily refer to Fitzhugh as her “fellow” made her feel as light and free as a balloon floating in the upper atmosphere. But that he had somehow belonged already to that other girl, whose incomparable qualifications Vida could never measure up to—even on the highest crest of her considerable confidence—made her heart black with possessive fury. “My fellow?”