Another Scandal in Bohemia (5 page)

“La Bernhardt?” mocked the bassoon. “That upstart broomstick? I would be surprised if she didn’t desert Paris for good one day and fly off on one. Even Alice Heine is only American-born, after all, and connected to those German bankers, and you know what they are. Vulgar parvenus. Money men. Like the Rothschilds.”

“She is beautiful,” declared the viola, entering the fray, “and is said to sing like an angel. I hear that she quieted some scandal involving Alice Heine and thus paved her way to marrying the Prince of Monaco next autumn. Some say that this Norton woman is terribly clever.”

“Not clever enough,” the bassoon retorted, coughing as if from cigarette smoke. “A truly clever woman would cease pushing her nose into other people’s affairs and pursue her own. She shouldn’t have to sing for her supper. With her looks she could snag a grand duke, even a prince or a king, if she played her cards correctly. She could collect jewels enough to make even Monsieur Worth’s spaniels sit up and take notice. Clever? Oh no, my dears. She is an utter fool, with enough pathetic pretensions, mind you, to show up here. I cannot think what came over Monsieur Worth to allow her in.”

I had clutched a hand to my mouth, and found my other hand was fanned upon my breast, as if to hold my jumping heart inside my corset.

Irene had moved. I turned to look. She was marching toward the dressing room door, her face as white as cambric. I hurled myself into her path, and found myself, back to the door, facing a whirlwind of ice.

“Irene! You mustn’t. You cannot.”

She reached beyond me for the door lever even as I inched in front of it. “No, Irene. Confronting them will serve nothing but make a scene and make them happy— please!”

“Step aside,” she bid me in the most polite, stony tone I had ever heard. Her eyes were agate, and her lips were carved coral.

“Irene—” I inched away from that terrible gaze. In my instant of retreat, she seized the lever.

“You cannot!” I repeated in the same forced whisper I had used throughout our battle of wills.

“Why not, Nell?” she asked me calmly.

She pulled the door inward and, stunned, I gave with it, only mustering my final argument when she was already over the threshold.

“Irene!” I cried raggedly. “You are not fully dressed.”

She glanced over her implacable shoulder, over the lace and baby blue satin ribbon that edged her camisole like tiny angel wings.

“I am fully indignant, Nell, and therefore adequately attired to administer a dressing down.” And she marched down the hall toward the lightly laughing voices.

Never had my duty been so painful: I must follow, witness, and pick up the pieces.

As I scurried after her, there was no mistaking the proper door. Irene had paused, looking like a vengeful undergarment advertisement, and thrust open a door without knocking. Laughter choked and stopped.

I rushed to follow in her footsteps before I was shut out, and skittered over the threshold to find her momentarily facing me as she had turned to shut it behind her... quite softly.

She said not a word to me, but turned to face the women in the room. Five or six, I saw. I was too agitated to count precisely. Most sat on a pair of brocade sofas at right angles in the corner. Two, I noted with relief, were in equal
dishabille
to Irene, though they had not deserted their private rooms to parade in the passage as she had.

One stood by the long mirror in a hunter’s green riding habit, her auburn hair filling a net snood beneath a jaunty riding derby.

“Forgive the intrusion,” Irene began in a tone that asked no such thing, “but I am helpless to resist a good round of gossip, especially when I am the subject of it.”

A worried looking woman with light brown hair spoke up. “You are m-m-mistaken, Madame—?” In the interrogative lilt, I recognized the flute, as well as a false note in her performance.

“Norton,” the woman in green at the mirror finished for her—and for Irene. The bassoon. Her sharp-featured face wore the cold indifference of the hunter as she looked Irene up and down even more narrowly than Monsieur Worth had. She won no advantage there: Irene wore only the most exquisite underthings. Much as I disapproved of their public debut, I had to admit that Irene’s undergarments were as imposing as most women’s outerwear.

Besides, Irene was not one to let whatever she wore put her at a social disadvantage.

“You have the advantage of me,” Irene told the woman by the mirror, “but please do not bother to introduce yourself. That will save me the momentary effort of forgetting you. I must, however, correct your misapprehensions.”

The woman at the mirror whirled to face us. “We need take nothing from you, including correction. Now get out.”

“I think not... yet.” Irene smiled, her voice adding a fourth and dominant instrument to the chamber orchestra here gathered. She was the cello—rich as chocolate-brown velvet, deep and overpowering.

She began to prowl back and forth like a wolf in deceptively frilly grandmother’s garb.

“You suffer from certain delusions,” she announced. “I do not complain about your attacks on my cleverness. Cleverness is most effective when it is underrated. Nor do I object to your debates about my talent and my physical attractions. These qualities are often the stuff of debates, and I have rather firm opinions of your failings in these areas myself, now that I have seen you all.”

A joint indignant sigh escaped six well-laced sets of lungs. One woman, partridge-plump with jet-black hair and rice-powder skin, half-rose.

“We need not stay to be insulted,” she said.

The other seated women stirred, even the unclothed ones, as a mass exodus threatened.

“I differ,” Irene said. “You definitely must stay. I insist.”

“Who will make us?” demanded the woman at the mirror. In her stern riding habit, she appeared most formidable. I shrank behind Irene as she stepped toward us.

Irene snatched something off the fragile Louis XV table by the door and held it up. At first I took it for a parasol.

“Sit!” Irene commanded the bestirring ladies on the sofa. She brandished her new accessory like a pointer—a riding crop, I saw, its base trimmed with a green plaid taffeta bow. The effect was akin to seeing an organdy bow gracing the neck of a bulldog.

Five ladies eased back obediently with a sighing rustle of dress-making goods. The one at the mirror paused, then initiated action. She moved forward.

Snap! The crop licked at the charged atmosphere of the little room, it whipped like a long, thin snake-tail towards the red-haired woman, driving her back toward her own reflection.

“As you were. You may stand,” Irene gave the redhead elaborate permission, “but you may not move.”

“This is intolerable, Madame,” the viola throbbed indignantly from a sofa.

“Undoubtedly, but I assure you that it is most satisfying to me. Now.” She resumed pacing, the riding crop striking softly across the palm of one hand.

One of the seated women whimpered. Irene had proved at least that they were easy to intimidate. And she craved any sort of audience, even—or perhaps especially—a captive one.

“No, I must admit that my voice, my mind, my face are fair game,” she resumed. “What else are the idle to talk about but other people?” she inquired cuttingly, then stood still. “But you began by insulting my bourgeois flaw of marrying—and marrying so unexceptional a man as an English barrister, although you admit that the wrappings are attractive. You have erred grievously.”

“Oh?” the woman at the mirror inquired archly. “Does Monsieur Norton wear a toupee?”

Irene paused to smile sweetly. “I meant that you err in assuming that he is unexceptional. You ladies all suffer from short-sightedness. I, on the other hand, take the long view. It is true that I have few jewels, only those earned by my own work, or given to me by persons grateful for the exercise of any small wit I may possess. This gives me an advantage beyond price, one that may not be immediately evident to such eager acquirers as yourselves. My sorry trinkets may be modest and few, but no sapphire’s sparkle is tainted by memories of the fools or indignities suffered in its pursuit. No diamond necklace’s blue fire is dimmed by the number of the ceilings contemplated in boredom to earn each stone in the endless string. No ruby’s gleam is bought at the cost of self-respect or honesty.

“As for my marrying, and marrying so modestly, I console myself by regarding the husbands and lovers of women such as yourselves. They leave much to be desired, as you have noted yourselves by observing my husband. I shall never have to embrace some overstuffed sofa of a self-satisfied duke, or kowtow to a prince of industry for the reward of a few costly baubles. I shall never have to contemplate the ceiling—or anything else—in boredom. In truth, I have chosen the better part, which is why I am a subject of such fervid interest to your gossiping circle. I have no pretensions of any sort, which is what offends you. And you are quite right. I am a dangerous sort of woman.

“Now,” Irene finished grandly, flourishing her borrowed crop like a wand, or a scepter, “You may resume your petty discussions. It will amuse me to overhear what you have to say on my withdrawal. I will even have Miss Huxleigh take notes. Perhaps you will be worth a paragraph in my memoirs.”

They looked as one toward me for the first time, as I gasped, and scowled horribly. Had Irene and her whip not been present, I do believe that they would have done me some bodily harm. Witnesses are never cherished.

Only the sounds of whispers and rustling clothing penetrated our dressing room after our return.

Irene sat on the edge of the Empire sofa in her frilly combinations, looking like a chastened schoolgirl required to sit through a lecture, rather than like someone who had only moments before had wielded the whip hand.

I was trembling, in shock and—now—with righteous anger.

“You have caused a scene!” I charged in a hoarse whisper.

She nodded.

“You have paraded yourself in your unmentionables.”

She said nothing.

“You have... destroyed your so-called opportunity to become Monsieur Worth’s experimental mannequin.”

She looked meekly up at me with enormous bronze-colored eyes. “Probably.” She sighed.

“It is your own fault.”

“I know.”

“Such irresponsible gossip is best left undignified by an answer.”

“True.”

“You have gained nothing and lost everything.”

“I cannot argue, Nell.”

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“What are you going to do about it?”

Irene rose slowly, subdued. She looked around the frivolous little room for her Liberty silk.

“Very wise,” I said. “The best thing is to go quietly home and forget the entire episode.”

She moved toward the hook.

The hook holding the violet velvet gown.

“Irene—?”

She lifted it down, then cast the hanger onto the sofa seat. “Will you help me into it, Nell? Or shall I call the vendeuse?”

“You will persist in this madness?”

“Since I have already made a scene, I might as well make another, only with a better costume.” Her lips quirked with rue. “It would be rude to leave without showing the Worths what they wished to see. I believe you’ll have to tighten my corset strings, Nell; I wore them quite loose for the Liberty.”

I would not waste my breath in arguing. I approached her and pulled the corset strings very tight indeed.

Shortly after I was trailing the violet gown, watching the bejeweled train dragging down the hall ahead of me like a gaudy lizard’s tail.

Where Irene passed, voices choked and stopped in midsentence. Eyes fixed on her, not with the sly glances of an hour before, but with bald, hostile curiosity. A subdued vendeuse intercepted us at the bottom of the stair to the Worth quarters. I braced myself for a public rebuff.

Irene did nothing but pause, the same slight smile on her face that she had given the King of Bohemia when he had revealed himself without honor.

Of course she looked magnificent in the Worth gown, like a queen, and worth ten of the women in the salon put together, be they patron or mannequin or “double” of a world-famous beauty.

The vendeuse stepped aside without a word, and Irene’s heavy velvet skirt swayed up the stairs, myself in its wake. At the top we heard twitters and laughter break out behind us. Or least I did; Irene gave no indication of apprehending anything.

The old spaniel greeted us at the salon door and waddled away. Mr. and Mrs. Worth still sat—or sat again—on the sofa with grave faces. Irene paraded for them without being asked, ending in a breathtaking swirling turn before them.

“I have no accessories, of course,” she said without preamble. “No gloves, no hair ornaments—”

“No jewels,” Monsieur Worth barked out suddenly.

They knew. Of course they knew. A man who catered to the aristocracy would be sensitive to every undercurrent of his business. A public scene in a dressing room would effect such a genteel enterprise like a tidal wave.

My cheeks flamed, but Irene’s remained cool and pale as vanilla ice. Only one word described such an incident. “Scandal.”

Monsieur Worth looked at his wife. A severe expression made her heavy features seem implacable.

“Few jewels,” Irene corrected modestly.

“What do you think?” Monsieur Worth asked his wife, who could have been a pillar of disapproving salt.

“No jewels,” she said slowly, as if reading a verdict.

Irene had told the women in the dressing room that jewels didn’t matter, that rich men didn’t matter. But they did, they both did in this artificial world of the rue de la Paix and Paris and France and Society with a capital “S” everywhere... Now she would discover again the power of that terrible truth, as she had on a darker day at Prague Castle more than a year before.

I wrung my gloved hands, unable to prevent the bitter lesson, and bit my lower lip.

Madame Worth glanced at me, attracted by my gesture (Irene remained as still as an elegant statue). Amusement tickled her stern features.

“You are right,” her husband told her. “I want nothing to distract from my work. I will create jewels. A waterfall of jet and beads. And emerald satin gloves, I think. A dash of the unexpected.” He glanced at Irene as if remembering that she was alive. “This gown is destined for the Queen of Italy, but I will make a duplicate for you, and another for you alone.”