Chapter Three #2
Louisa could tell Julia was not looking forward to the visit. “Give her a chance,” she said.
“I promise I will”—Julia sighed—“though it’s hard to imagine developing a fondness for anyone with judgment so dubious as to marry William Demarest.”
“I’m just glad he found someone.” Louisa was not blind to William’s faults, but she had long believed he envied Julia’s social ease, and she felt some sympathy for him. (If that was the case, Julia thought a good first step would be for him to stop being such a prig.)
William would never confide in Julia, but Boston was small enough for her to have learned that her brother had experienced a few romantic disappointments.
He met Miss Powell through a Harvard friend who hailed from some ancient Virginia family, and reportedly pursued her with a single-mindedness that even Julia acknowledged sounded almost human.
Father had grudgingly said William’s fiancée was a “pretty little thing.” When Pauline opened the door to her family’s townhome with a welcoming smile, Julia instantly saw the accuracy of his assessment.
Miss Powell was just a few inches above five feet, with exquisite posture, glossy brown hair, and pleasant, even features.
Father had also said she was “poor as dirt, with a dozen younger siblings.” Julia took this to be hyperbole, but noise from behind a pair of double doors off the hallway of their small house suggested the number might not be far off.
“Follow me, Miss Demarest. We will hide back here, where we might hear each other.”
She led Julia to a library at the back of the house. It was tiny, just two chairs by a fireplace and a desk under a window that overlooked the back garden, but it had a cozy feel. Book-filled shelves lined three walls, a warm fire burned in the grate, and tea awaited on a little table.
“How many brothers and sisters do you have, Miss Powell?” Julia asked.
“I am the oldest of eight, though I know it sounds like twenty.” She laughed, as she gestured for Julia to sit.
“They are in a particularly pitched battle at present. Every few months, some cousins send us a big barrel with all their castoffs. We complain bitterly about the insult, but as soon as it arrives, we spend days in protracted arguments over the contents.”
“I imagine it has been very hard since you lost your father.” According to Father, the Powells, while socially prominent, had been left land-poor after the Civil War and never quite recovered. Their circumstances deteriorated further when Pauline’s father died a few years ago.
“Yes, terribly. My mother is a darling, and I regret she is visiting my grandmother and not here to meet you, but I’m afraid she is dreadfully impractical. We must take in boarders, and she and I have grand rows.” She smiled and added, “Mostly about butter.”
“Butter?”
“Mother lets the boarders use as much as they wish. I get angry, seeing the great quantities left on their plates. Then Mother asks, ‘When did you get to be such a Yankee?’ And round and round we go.”
Julia laughed. Before long, Miss Demarest and Miss Powell were Julia and Pauline. Julia admired Pauline’s clarity, candor, and humorous perspective on her family, who, even in their penury, clung to their First Families of Virginia pride.
“I argued with my grandmother once about Charles Darwin’s theories,” Pauline said. “She insisted we cannot be descended from monkeys because we know for a fact we’re descended from Charlemagne.”
By the time Julia left an hour later, she quite liked her new relation-to-be, and the family’s straitened circumstances helped her understand Pauline’s decision to graft herself onto William.
Julia and Louisa were staying in the two-story ivy-covered cottage, which had once served as Margaret’s studio, in the Seabornes’ backyard. Julia stiffened when she heard the door, followed by footsteps ascending the stairs toward the bedroom.
William knocked, and when Louisa beckoned him in, he entered with his chest forward, his entire bearing even more insufferable than usual.
Father had a thick brown mustache, while William was clean-shaven, but they otherwise looked much alike—tall, with broad shoulders, and impeccably combed dark hair, parted in the middle. Father carried it off better, though.
Pauline followed him into the room, but she went straight to the bedside, quietly introduced herself to Louisa, and spoke to her with the ease and sympathy of one accustomed to attending to younger siblings.
“May I speak with you alone, Julia?” William said, his voice barely controlled.
“Well, hello, William. Lovely to see you, too,” Julia replied, but she followed him out to the staircase landing, where William handed her a copy of the afternoon paper.
It was folded back to reveal a picture of Louisa, eyes half closed, head wrapped in Julia’s bloodstained scarf.
In addition to ignoring her request to keep Louisa’s face out of the picture, the photographer evidently had raced to a darkroom to develop it.
“You allowed Louisa to become a spectacle. And what were you thinking, putting her in such danger? Mother will be furious.”
Louisa’s voice came through the door: “Don’t fix this on Julia, William. I chose to go!”
“And why should we have anticipated danger?” Julia unfolded the newspaper, scanned the page, and then pointed to another headline.
“Look at the criticism being heaped on the police for failing to provide the protection they promised! Reasonable people blame them, not the peaceable women who behaved with dignity and restraint in the face of a marauding band of horrible men.”
“You should not have been consorting with those people,” William huffed.
Julia put a hand to her chest and adopted a scandalized expression. “Why, William, are you suggesting we were consorting with those horrible men?”
“I was not referring to the men, Julia,” he said, impatiently.
“Oh, so by ‘those people,’ you meant women who believe they should have the right to represent their own interests in this country?”
“No, I meant socialists and radicals, but I see there is no talking sense into you.” William turned and went back downstairs, leaving his fiancée behind. Julia took a deep breath, then returned to the bedroom. Pauline, still by Louisa’s bed, seemed quite calm.
“I am sorry you had to hear that, Pauline.”
“Perhaps he is overwrought, thinking what might have happened to you.”
“Perhaps,” Julia said. William probably would not have cared if Julia had been trampled by the crowd, but no one wanted to believe that a brother and sister shared no bond of affection.
“For what it’s worth, I think you’re very brave, marching as you did today and speaking your mind so freely,” Pauline said.
Julia looked at Pauline, a question in her eye. “Do you not, Pauline? Speak your mind, I mean.”
Pauline paused and looked out the window. “Sometimes I wish I could,” she said finally.
“What stops you?”
“Oh, everything…”
Louisa shot her a warning look, but Julia had no intention of pressing Pauline on the matter. It was not hard to fill in the blanks.
“I heard you and William went to Newport,” Louisa said, kindly changing the subject.
“Yes. I met William and Julia’s grandmother there,” Pauline replied. “I suspect I made very little impression on her.”
“I’m sure that’s not true, Pauline,” Julia said.
“You mean to console me, I know,” she replied, with the hint of an impish smile. “Rest assured, there is no need. It was my dearest wish to make as little impression as possible.”
Julia laughed. “Pauline, you are very clever. It is also one of my chief ambitions to ensure that my grandmother takes as little notice of me as possible.” When she was little, Lillian was forever trying to mend Julia’s ways.
Never say, “You bet.” This isn’t a saloon …
Comb your hair. You look as if a gale was blowing …
You’ll never get a husband if you don’t put on better looks …
Julia doubted she had ever spent more than ten minutes with her grandmother without hearing her abbreviated “ugh,” paired with a minute shake of her head.
Pauline had to marry someone eligible, and William certainly qualified. As horrifying as it was that she would have to mold herself to William’s wishes, if nothing else, it reminded Julia of why they had marched today.
Margaret called in her own physician, who said Louisa must rest another day before returning to New York.
A lifetime of indifferent health had taught Louisa to take things as they came, but she seemed worried.
Louisa’s scholarship required her to be “straight as the roads of Kildare,” as she always put it.
Missing class for illness was one thing, but this injury had resulted from her choice to attend a march of which many faculty members disapproved.
Of all people, it was Mina who put her mind at ease. She came by the studio the next morning with flowers, and handed Louisa a newspaper. “Nice words from your dean in there.”
The Teachers College dean was quoted in the story as deprecating the violence at the march, and expressing pride in his student Louisa Murphy and his hopes for her full recovery. Louisa was relieved, and Julia was glad her friend had a glimpse of Mina behaving with normal human sympathy.
Julia, meanwhile, was to enjoy the unexpected pleasure of a day with Margaret Seaborne.
She did feel some compunction about this, however.
Though Woodrow Wilson had eschewed the usual inaugural balls, considering them too frivolous for such a solemn occasion, the ceremony itself would be attended by the usual pageantry.
Mr. Seaborne was not only a prominent newspaper publisher but also a graduate of Princeton, like the incoming president, and would likely enjoy the royal treatment.
“Margaret, I feel guilty that I am keeping you from the festivities today,” Julia said, when she joined the Seabornes at their breakfast table, having left Louisa to rest.