Chapter 30 Salve Regina
Salve Regina
It’s been fifteen years since Alice last set foot in this vestibule, but she still knows the path to the sitting room, even
without Mrs. Astor’s butler showing them the way.
“It’s good to see you again, Thomas,” she says.
“And you, Miss Archer,” the butler replies, just as formal as she remembered him. “If you’ll allow me a moment of sentiment,
it is lovely to see you all grown up.”
“Grown tall but too skinny,” comes a retort from the sitting room. “Now that all this nonsense is over, perhaps Alice will
finally take my advice and allow her figure to fill out a little more.”
Mrs. Caroline Schermerhorn Astor, queen of New York society, strides across her Louis XV salon toward them, eyebrows raised,
brown eyes sparkling.
“Exertion does not become you, my dear,” she says, offering her cheek up for a kiss.
Alice obliges with a peck. “So you’ve told me many times, Aunt Lina.”
“Aunt?” Ward sputters a cough, his hands clasping at the cravat at his throat.
“For heaven’s sake, Ward,” Mrs. Astor snaps. “Cease your conniption and sit down.”
She points to the settee. Like a well-trained puppy, Ward obeys.
“Now, Calvin. Let me look at you.” She squints as Cal presents himself for inspection, her discerning eye catching on his
cheeky grin, making her own face break into a grudging smile upon seeing it. “Hopeless as ever.”
Alice sits in a high-backed chair, her vision almost blurring with relief. Thomas wheels the tea service into the room, leaving
it for Mrs. Astor to serve.
As Mrs. Astor sets out saucers and cups, she addresses Cora. “Do you know, my dear, that this young man used to terrorize
my daughter Carrie with tales of goblins and wicked ghosts roaming the city streets? I always knew he had a gift for fiction,
but I never dreamed he would use it in quite this capacity.”
“You haven’t been formally introduced,” Alice realizes. “Lina, this is my good friend Coraline O’Malley.”
“The belle of the season.” Mrs. Astor sniffs, taking Cora in, head to foot. “And already engaged.”
“Oh. Well.” Cora’s throat bobs as she swallows. “That’s obviously not happening. Given current events.”
“I meant this one,” Mrs. Astor snaps, nodding to Cal. She turns to Alice with a frown. “Has he not proposed yet?”
To this, Alice can only shake her head in honest befuddlement.
“I might have stopped by Aunt Lina’s for a few visits.” Cal winces, caught. “She wanted to know how things were going!”
“Not that he indulged my curiosity,” Mrs. Astor comments dryly. “I could scarcely glean a single insight as to your little confidence game, because all this young man could talk about was Miss Cora O’Malley, the clever, beautiful, and kind.”
The outrage that floods Alice’s veins at hearing of the absolutely reckless, unnecessary, and frankly typical risks her brother
has taken fades surprisingly quickly. Yes, he was a fool. But that no longer matters. Much has taken place unseen, without
Alice there to pull the strings, and when all is said and done, the realization comes as a rather immense . . . relief?
She’s done controlling every possible angle now. She can let it all go.
“So?” Mrs. Astor demands. “Are you or are you not engaged?”
“Give me a minute to catch my breath, Aunt Lina.” Cal laughs, loosening his collar. “Anyway, I’ll be able to offer Cora a
much finer ring after we divide up our takings than anything I could’ve afforded on a reporter’s salary.”
Cora looks like she might cry from happiness.
Cal gazes back at her in open adoration. “Maybe even diamonds and emeralds?”
Cora’s expression morphs from rapture to a laughing wince. “Anything but emeralds.”
“If you’ll beg my pardon,” Ward cuts in, apparently recovering from the first wave of his surprise, not yet predicting the
greater shock soon to follow. “I hadn’t realized you were all relations.”
“Not by blood,” Mrs. Astor says, pouring Alice’s tea. “They call me aunt as an endearment, much simpler and more affecting
than anything you’ve concocted, Ward. ‘Mystic Rose’ indeed.”
Ward’s face goes mottled with embarrassment.
“Mrs. Astor was my mother’s dearest friend,” Alice says. “And my own godmother.”
“She was the only one to attend our father’s funeral,” Cal recalls, his eyes distant.
“I offered financial assistance after the disaster, but Mary wouldn’t have it.” Mrs. Astor sets her own tea aside with a leaden
sigh. “Alice and I kept up our correspondence over the years, but I found that in adulthood she’d inherited her mother’s stubbornness.”
Alice shakes her head. “I only wished to keep you clear of all this, dear Lina. It was not your vendetta.”
“Oh, but there I disagree,” Mrs. Astor says, a vicious smile spreading across her face. “I always hated them. The lot of them.
Ogden’s predations and his wife’s hatred of her own sex. The Vandemeers with their unseemly competitiveness. Those new-money
Ameses, desperate for legitimacy. I have half a mind that Iris Witt killed her husband for the fun of it—it’s a wonder she
hasn’t offed those dreadful children. And Peyton. Well, he’s the very symbol of everything rotten in society today. Honor
means nothing to this breed. Only cold hard cash, earned by any base means. I’m glad to see them as thoroughly ruined as poor
Mary, who deserved it not a whit.”
Ward nibbles a cookie, trying valiantly to puff himself up again. “What divine felicity that I happened upon your own goddaughter
that day at the flower market!”
“Divine poppycock!” Mrs. Astor turns to stare at Ward in sheer incredulity. “It was my own handiwork, you fool.”
Ward drops the cookie. Scrambles to pick it up from the silk settee.
“I sent you to the market that day to fetch me roses. I directed Alice to run the same con you’d fallen victim to months prior, knowing you wouldn’t be able to resist assuming the role of wise mentor. You do enjoy the sensation of feeling far more clever than you actually are.”
Cora lets out a snort, then stares into her teacup. “Excuse me. Bit of dust in the air.”
“I’d have done far more myself,” Mrs. Astor says. “But Alice thought it might be more prudent to drop you into it instead.”
Ward glances between them, his eyes at last flashing panic. “I thank you for that decision, my dear Alice. It’s proven to
be a rather lucrative one for both of—”
Mrs. Astor rolls her eyes. “Oh. That.”
She rises with a sigh, motioning for everyone to join her.
“We may as well get the vulgar bit over with. Come on.”
Alice, the least bewildered among her crew, follows behind her godmother, treading a track from her childhood, down the back
corridor of the house, into the servants’ stairway and down to the kitchens, where she and Cal used to hide with the Astor
children to steal any treats left cooling from the oven.
The treats in question today are spread about the wide servants’ dining table. Stacks upon stacks of money. Béa stands counting
the last of it, clutching Alice’s old ledger, a charcoal pencil pressed between her lips. Absolutely adorable.
Surrounding Béa, Dagmar and Konrad—both swilling beer from pewter mugs—are the half dozen newsies they employed, all happily
tucking into jam tarts and milk, just as Cal and Alice used to when they were about that age.
Béa’s eyes spark with happiness as she looks up and sees Alice. “Thirty-two million one hundred and sixty thousand dollars.
All here, cash in hand.”
Dagmar lets out a long, low whistle.
“The emerald itself has gone amiss, I’m afraid,” Béa continues, “but with this amount of takings, I should hardly think it matters.”
Alice’s eyes dart to Cora, who stands staring at the ground, a small smile playing over her face. Perhaps she kept the stone
for herself as an unsanctioned bonus?
She’d look the other way, if so. But she suspects Cora has used that stone to help defray the cost of all this to her own
stung conscience.
Ward steps forward, irate. “Like hell it doesn’t matter. I want every bit of our winnings accounted for.”
“Oh, shut up, Ward,” Mrs. Astor says. “Surely by now you can see that you’ve won nothing.”
“I’d have happily given you half,” Alice says calmly. “If you’d only refrained from threatening me, I’d have honored our agreement
and bid you farewell as a friend. But now?”
She shakes her head.
His face goes white with indignation. “I say—”
“I say,” Mrs. Astor cuts in, “that if you stay quiet, like the sycophantic little worm you always were and always now will be,
I will stay quiet as well. I shall not tell the truth about your role in all of this to my friends in society. I shall not
turn you away or shun you, much as I now long to. All will remain exactly as it is. Picnics in Newport, Patriarch’s Ball in
January, evenings at home with your lovely wife. How is dear Sarah, anyway? You hardly mention her lately. It’s almost as
if you’ve designed it so that she’s sick all the time.”
Her glare says it all. Alice knows that with Mrs. Astor’s own husband forever “off on his yacht,” the older woman holds a
strong opinion or two about marital neglect.
Ward swallows. “She . . . she sends her regards.”
Mrs. Astor rolls her eyes. “Come now. Leave them to conduct their business now that you’re out of it. I have some curtain
patterns I want you to look at for the east guest room. I simply cannot decide on my own.”
Ward glances over his shoulder in desperate, ineffectual entreaty as Mrs. Astor drags him out of the kitchen and back upstairs.
“Leave him two hundred dollars,” Alice says. “For the use of his carriage.”
“Maybe he can finally buy himself a suit that fits,” Cora suggests.
And Alice lets out a laugh so big, it startles even herself.
They bid goodbye to Dagmar and Konrad downtown. Other than the German woman’s insistence that she “earned her place in thees
city and will not be geeving it up for anybody,” none of the rest of them are any the wiser about what she plans to do with
her winnings.
“Perhaps she’ll open a theater,” Alice muses as Mrs. Astor’s carriage drives away from the bar down on the Bowery. At Cora’s
incredulous expression, she grins. “She’s quite the dancer, and she didn’t break character for a second at the embassy. I
could see a future.”
“Nothing compared to Cora’s groveling act, though,” Cal says fondly. “Right here’s the true actress.”
“Never again,” Cora groans.
She motions down at the outfit she’s now wearing—simple gingham and a straw hat, to all appearances a Midwestern tourist heading home from her idyll in the big city, just like the rest of them.
“From now on, I am plain old Coraline O’Malley. I never want to see a fine gown again for as long as I live.”
“How are you going to spend all that money, then?” Cal cocks an eyebrow.
Cora scowls thoughtfully. “Well, maybe not as long as I live. That pink chiffon was rather nice.”
“And what about you?” Béa cocks her head to gaze at Alice.
“You mean ‘us’?” Alice peeks out the window. “I’m tired of deciding everything. I thought I might let you pick.”
They are dropped off just outside the Brooklyn Bridge. The driver tips his hat and steers the carriage away, no doubt realizing
what a wash the fine vehicle will need after braving these mucky downtown streets. After the tip they just gave him, he can
afford to buy several new ones instead.
Alice breathes in the salty air of the river. She takes in the incredible feat of engineering with a wave of wonder, of aliveness,
that she hasn’t allowed herself to feel for as long as she can remember. It’s almost humbling, this marvel of a bridge.
Almost.
Alice smiles, thinking of the tangle of confusion they left behind. Even if, as she expects, their ruined victims have made
their way to a police constabulary to demand the identification and arrest of a group of flagrant frauds, it will take untold
hours to sort through their muddled story to reach the heart of it. A Württembergian duchess, you say? Here because of a resistance,
and emerald mines and a called-off engagement to which far-flung prince . . . ?
By the time anyone even believes them, Alice and her funny little family will have disappeared into the middle of this sprawling continent like so many anonymous others, only the stories of the great confidence game they pulled remaining in this shining sham of a city.
Now that is a feat of engineering.
Béa comes to stand beside her. Alice slides close, so their wrists and pinkies touch.
“A school,” Béa says quietly.
Alice looks at her.
Béa smiles out over the shining river. “For girls of all stations. Not to teach them how to quiet their voices and select
the right fork at dinner, but real things.”
“Such as?”
Béa thinks. “Financial management, for one.”
“World history, current events?” Alice suggests, only half sardonically.
“Why not? We’ll make independent young ladies out of them. Nobody’s victim. Nobody’s fool.”
At that, Alice glances at Cora, standing beside her brother, the two of them the picture of innocent courtship, their fingers
idly playing in each other’s as if no one else can see—just as her own fingers play against Béa’s.
“Where are you headed then, Cal?” Alice calls.
He lifts his hat. “Why, wherever Miss O’Malley goes.”
Cora’s cheeks turn pink.
“Then I suppose you’re headed to Topeka, Kansas,” Alice replies.
“Topeka, you say?” Cal smiles. “I like the ring of that. Sounds far away, for one thing.”
“I’ve heard it’s known for its beautiful countryside, birdsong galore, endless horizons,” Alice muses. “The perfect place to go unnoticed for the rest of one’s days and not mind one little bit.”
Cora’s eyes spark warm as they meet Alice’s. “Not to mention a very long and shining creek running through it all. Enough
room for several houses. And . . . Béa, did I hear you mention a school for girls? Well, as a matter of fact, you might have
just helped me solve the biggest problem I’ve got with my plan to buy back the family farm, one I simply couldn’t come up
with a solution to until now.”
Cora links arms with a smiling Béa as Alice cocks an eyebrow.
“Oh really? What’s that?”
Cora grins, cheeky as the day Alice met her. “I hate farming.”