Chapter Eighteen
The gifts keep coming from Mr. Pierce, growing only more lavish and generous. Lovely arrangements of flowers arrive daily at our door. Mr. Pierce sends cards with the bouquets, penning sweet notes:
Flowers to brighten the day for the little Spanish Maiden,
who brightens our nights.
And it’s not only flowers. Mr. Pierce’s generosity seems to know no limits.
Footmen appear some mornings with baskets overflowing with grapes and peaches.
Other days it’s candied nuts and peppermints.
One day it’s a box of fresh-smelling soaps.
The next morning he sends a bottle of honeysuckle and jasmine perfume for me, a scent of lemon and verbena for Mamma.
The best gift of all is the security that Mr. Pierce’s regular gifts bring.
Now that he’s insisting on paying for Kit’s schooling and he’s taken over our account at the greengrocer’s, Mamma and I agree that I can cut back my daytime work as an artists’ model and focus almost exclusively on the stage.
It was Mr. Pierce’s idea, in fact. “This way, Evelyn stays fresh. Only take the posing jobs you really wish to take. But never again shall you work out of necessity to win your bread, dear. We all want to see you cheery and bright up there onstage.”
Mr. Pierce comes quite often to my performances, and I love the nights when he is in the packed house, his broad smile shining like a second spotlight.
I always feel as if I, too, smile a bit brighter, kick a little higher, when he’s there.
I want to earn his approval, to offer a flawless performance as thanks for his generosity and friendship.
Dinah is still cold to me, but Dolly is mostly back to her friendly self, if a bit reserved.
I never did hear what my crime was. Had Dinah hoped that Mr. Pierce might become Dolly’s benefactor?
Or even a suitor? But I fear that to ask for clarification might only cause further offense, so instead I carry on being kind to both of them, hoping things will return to how they were with time.
Penny and I have become closer than ever after our months together onstage and frolicking across the city after the shows.
Gentlemen and young lads continue to fawn over us when we step out, but I kindly demur their requests to dance, their offers to dine.
I’ve been warned—and at this point, I’m most interested in working and enjoying my scant leisure time after the shows with the girls.
One night when Penny and I sidle up together to the gleaming bar at Rector’s, the server tells us that he has a bottle of Pommery Sec champagne waiting for us on ice.
I throw him a dubious look—we’d never order such an expensive bottle.
But the man hoists his hands, brandishing the chilled bottle.
“Mr. Pierce wishes for me to tell the Spanish Maiden that she should enjoy the finest French vintage.”
“Cheers to that,” Penny says, tilting a glass to accept the first pour.
“How did he know we’d be here?” I ask, clinking my own glass against Penny’s before taking a sip. I close my eyes to appreciate the first taste, how the bubbles dance across my tongue.
“He must have eyes all over this city,” Penny says, glancing around the packed supper club. She says it playfully, arcing an eyebrow as she leans close. “He’s watching you.”
I laugh at the quip. And then Penny, swallowing, says, “He’s stuck on you, Ev.”
“Hush,” I reply. “He’s twice my age.”
“How old is he, do you think?”
I tilt my head sideways. “Forty?”
Penny leans on me, nuzzling into my shoulder and acting moony. “But you make him feel like a young lad, you lovely little Spanish Maiden.”
“More like a protective friend,” I am quick to retort. But is that the full truth? I wonder, even though I don’t say it aloud.
“Do you mean to tell me, Ev, that you’ve never…” Penny eyes me with an appraising look. “That he’s never, well…you know?”
“What?” I ask, my heartbeat quickening at the intensity of her stare.
“The two of you, you’ve never?”
“Never what?”
“Not even…a kiss?”
“A kiss?” I giggle the word. “With Mr. Pierce?”
She nods once.
“Never!” I gasp in reply when I see that she’s being entirely serious.
Penny rests her elbow on the bar, eyeing me with a mixture of surprise and skepticism. “Honest?”
“Of course I’m being honest, Pen.”
“He’s never even tried? All those rides in the back of his motorcar?”
“No,” I say, and she finally turns away, mumbling: “I guess, once in a blue moon, a girl may actually be as innocent as she seems.”
Standing there, clutching my champagne flute, I certainly feel like the tender little na?f she apparently sees me as. But admitting that I’m confused would only make me look even more like a babe.
Later, as Penny and I slip out of Rector’s with our arms linked, I spy Mr. Pierce’s cranberry auto waiting across the street. We walk together to take a closer peek. Mr. Pierce is not in the car, but the driver appears to be expecting me, and he steps out now. “Miss Talbot?”
“Yes?”
“Mr. Pierce has asked for me to wait for you, to bring you and your friends safely home.”
“Well, isn’t that nice? We accept the offer.” Penny gives my arm a squeeze, and then, so that only I can hear, she whispers, “See? What’d I say? Stuck on you. Smart fellow, too. Just make sure you stay smarter.”
That’s not the way of it, I want to say.
To Penny, to myself. I am smart. And Mr. Pierce is treating Mamma and me like true friends, with nothing untoward ever even hinted at.
I remind myself of that as Mamma accepts and appreciates each one of his kindly gestures.
And every time I think I’ve seen Mr. Pierce’s generosity at its finest, he surprises me with yet another, even grander gesture—the grandest yet arriving the next morning.
Mamma and I are finishing a late breakfast. Our days are less harried now that we aren’t shuttling back and forth to sittings before the theater.
I’ve slept late, given the excitement of the previous night at Rector’s.
I have a slight headache from the champagne Mr. Pierce arranged, but I don’t breathe a word of that to Mamma.
There’s a knock on our door. Mamma flashes me a puzzled look, swallowing her bite of croissant.
I reply with a shrug—I’m not expecting anyone.
I can see what she’s thinking: our room is so dingy, hardly a place in which we feel comfortable receiving guests.
When she opens the door, several members of Mr. Pierce’s household staff stand at the threshold.
I rise from the table, joining Mamma by the door to greet his butler, two footmen, and a lady’s maid.
Mamma has gone mute, so I step in. “Yes? Good morning. How can we help you?”
The butler stands straight as a sergeant. “It is we who have come to help you, Miss Talbot. Mrs. Talbot.”
“Help us how?” Mamma asks.
The butler peers over our shoulders into our cramped little room. “We are here to pack up your belongings.”
I look to the maid, to the footmen, then back to the butler, confusion evident in my tone as I ask, “And bring them where?”
“To the Audubon, mademoiselle,” the butler says.
“The what?”
“The Audubon Hotel. Where your new suite awaits.”
“I don’t understand,” Mamma says, crossing her arms as she looks to me and then back to Mr. Pierce’s servants.
Neither do I, but the butler goes on. “Mr. Pierce insists you are not to worry about a thing; leave it with him, and he shall explain it all. Now, if you’d be so kind as to point us toward your personal effects, madam?
Mademoiselle?” The man sweeps the room with his gaze and a wave of his gloved hand, glancing around as though beholding a meal for which he has little appetite.
“Anything you do not wish to part with, that is.” With a courteous smile hitching his tidy features, he adds: “Mr. Pierce told us not to bother with the furniture. He’s had it all arranged. ”
In less than an hour, a cart is loaded with our trunk and bags, while Mr. Pierce’s gleaming automobile awaits us.
The chauffeur whisks open the door and helps Mamma and me into the plush leather interior.
We roll away from the boardinghouse and Twenty-second Street in bemused but trusting silence, the motorcar not stopping until we arrive outside the Audubon Hotel in the much more affluent neighborhood of Madison Square.
A tuxedoed attendant stands sentry-like outside the hotel’s wide glass doors. I still don’t quite understand what is happening. As I step away from the auto and toward the hotel, I’m half expecting the man to turn us away; I’ve never set foot inside any place this grand, let alone spent a night.
But, to my shock, the man greets us with a most cordial smile, as though he’s been expecting us for hours and is entirely delighted to finally see us.
“Miss Talbot, Mrs. Talbot, it is our honor to have you here. My name is Mr. Carlton, and I am the concierge here at the Audubon Hotel. On behalf of our entire staff, I would like to say that we are most pleased to welcome you. We have worked with Mr. Pierce to ensure that everything is prepared, and you are to tell us if there is anything we might do to make your stay more comfortable. Though of course, it is our earnest hope that you shall never have to ask.”
The sun is shining brightly, so I squint my eyes as I look from this man to the gracious building behind him, with its striped awning and facade of white limestone, tall windows and tiered balconies rising up toward the sky.
Mamma, at my side, seems agitated now. “Our stay?” she asks, repeating the concierge’s word.
“Yes, ma’am,” the man answers, an unwavering smile painted on his features.
“And just how long is our stay arranged for?” she asks.
“Why”—Mr. Carlton clasps and then unclasps his gloved hands—“indefinitely, Mrs. Talbot.”
“Indefinitely?” Mamma looks up once more at the building.