The Second Mrs. Astor(13)

“Ah,” replied Father, bland as rice pudding. “A kind offer, Colonel Astor. Most kind. I must consult with my wife, of course, but I think I can say we are free.” William Force glanced at his daughter. “I admit I do enjoy a good regatta. We would gladly accept your hospitality.”

“Wonderful.” The colonel gave a nod, not looking at Madeleine or her father again but instead at the trampled, empty track that stretched before them.

The thunder of the race began once more to swell near.

Vincent Astor said nothing, only staring bleakly off into the stands.

*

The photographer was persistent, and he got his shot anyway: that carelessly unguarded moment of intimacy, of Madeleine and Jack gazing at each other as the wind teased her scarf, her head tipped back, his bent toward hers, both of them standing a shade too close for propriety.

However, because of her hat and the distance, the frustrated newspaper editor could only safely caption it as COL. ASTOR, DIVORCED, AND YOUNG BEAUTY ENJOYING THE RACES.





CHAPTER 4


I thought I had witnessed splendor before. Luxury.

I had been schooled alongside Knickerbocker girls who would not willingly share a single molecule of oxygen with me if they could help it. Who acted as if I did not exist whenever we dined or studied in common areas, and who spoke to me in classrooms only when our lessons mandated they do so. I had heard about the gulf between their world and mine, but until that weekend at your father’s Bar Harbor cottage, it had all seemed so . . . contrived. Invented. A convenient construct designed to help those splintery, unpleasant young women feel better about their lives. About who they admitted into those lives.

Nevertheless, I remember how flummoxed we were when our History teacher one day chalked out upon the slate that scorching fragment of a sentence from the Declaration of Independence:

. . . all men are created equal . . .

It was, perhaps, the one topic the Old Money Girls and the New Money Girls could agree upon.

Of course, we’re not all equal.

You see, little Jakey, there’s equal—in the sense of human potential and dreams and the rule of law—and then there’s equal. As in, who are your people, my dear?

I guess you’ll find out about all that soon enough.

So: that weekend.

Jack’s leased cottage overlooked the bay, expansive and bright, light and breeze gracing every chamber. Gilt and granite, beeswax and mahogany. It was so easy to waft from one sun-soaked room to another.

The water below us, the forest behind. All that land. All that empty openness unfurled in the midst of one of the nation’s most exclusive towns, upon one of the nation’s most exclusive islands, majestic beyond the harbor. Beyond the sloping grounds, houses crowded closer and closer together; the town streets cut more and more tapered. All of it rippled down to conclude in a thick huddle of wooden shanties on stilts at the water’s edge.

Lobster boats and tour boats and ferries jounced in the bay. They looked barely a dirty smudge against the splendor of the yachts spread along the waters beyond.

*

On the grounds of this fair cottage, there was a garage and stables and gardeners and game attendants and maids and footmen ready to leap into action at the lift of a finger.

Would you like your tea refreshed? More lemon, less sugar? Yes, miss.

Have you lost your croquet ball in the shrubbery? I will find it, miss.

Do you need your wrap, miss? The taffeta or the pongee? I will send a girl for it at once.

The butler (I recall his name was Baird, and that he was leased along with the mansion) seemed to ooze out of the woodwork whenever needed.

Those ordinary workers who circulated their way through the estate each and every day and night . . . I have no doubt they also understood that we were not all equal. Far from it.

That golden-limned summer of 1910, the cottage—indeed, maybe even all of Bar Harbor society itself, so giddy in love with the colonel—seemed to exist only to serve your father, Jack Astor.




August 1910

Bar Harbor



Sunday morning arrived with cerulean skies and a salty wind skating in off the Atlantic that stung her eyes. Madeleine squinted against it, then turned her shoulder to it, keeping a careful hand on her hat. From this distance, the vessels dotting the disk of the harbor moved in sluggish lines, breaking the navy waves into arrows of white.

It was the same harbor, the same ships and boats as could be glimpsed from practically anywhere in town. Yet it felt different here, in this uncommon and enviable space. The slant of the sunlight struck her skin a warmer tone; the clouds soared higher, plumper, a Renaissance painting hanging just above her head. Even the sea looked different, sheer as a sheet of colored glass. If Madeleine could take wing with the host of sparrows fluttering above the bay, she might peer all the way down into blue infinity.

Katherine stood beside her on the colonel’s back lawn. With their arms linked and their skirts whipping, they watched the yachts slowly maneuver into their starting positions.

“What do you plan to do with him?” Katherine asked, not taking her gaze from the ships.

“I plan,” Madeleine said, “to watch this race with him. And then eat lunch. And then attend the dance he is hosting tonight.”

“Don’t be stupid. You know what I mean. Will you marry him?”

“Katherine!”