The Second Mrs. Astor(46)

Madeleine returned that gaze a minute longer, then turned around and crept away.





CHAPTER 15


December 1911

Manhattan



Mr. and Mrs. Robert Goelet regretfully decline the polite invitation of Colonel and Mrs. John Jacob Astor for Sunday afternoon, December seventeenth.



Mr. and Mrs. G. W. Vanderbilt II regret that an absence from town will prevent them from accepting the kind invitation of Col. and Mrs. John Jacob Astor for Sunday afternoon, December seventeenth.



Mrs. Hermann Oelrichs regrets that she is unable to accept the polite invitation of Colonel and Mrs. John Jacob Astor for Sunday afternoon, December seventeenth.



Mr. and Mrs. William Church Osborn regret that they must decline the kind invitation of Col. and Mrs. John Jacob Astor for luncheon on Sunday, December seventeenth.



Mr. and Mrs. August Belmont regret that a previous engagement prevents them from accepting Col. and Mrs. John Jacob Astor’s kind invitation for Sunday afternoon, December seventeenth.



Mr. and Mrs. John Davison Rockefeller must regretfully decline the kind invitation of Colonel and Mrs. John Jacob Astor for Sunday afternoon, December seventeenth.



Mr. James B. Duke very much regrets that he cannot accept Col. and Mrs. John Jacob Astor’s kind invitation for luncheon on Sunday afternoon, December seventeenth.



Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Fortune Ryan regret that a prior engagement prevents them from accepting the polite invitation of Col. and Mrs. John Jacob Astor for Sunday afternoon, December seventeenth.



Mr. and Mrs. John Pierpont Morgan, senior, regret that they will be unable to attend the luncheon of Colonel and Mrs. John Jacob Astor on Sunday, December seventeenth . . .





CHAPTER 16


We were roundly snubbed. I don’t mind admitting that to you now, although at the time, it was a reality we danced around, your father and I. A blank space had opened between us, this conclusive fact of our apartness, and neither of us could quite think of how to breach it. Or even if it was ours to breach. Anyway, it’s not much of a secret these days, that cocoon of isolation the Four Hundred spun around us after we ventured off the Noma. I honestly can’t claim it came as a surprise—at least, not to me.

But I don’t think Jack had ever noticed how many versions of she’s certainly not Ava, is she? were exchanged behind our backs. The whispers of the Knickerbockers never wormed their way into his ears the way they did mine.

The press delighted in noting our unusual lack of festivities, especially so close to the holidays. Why, the colonel and Mrs. Ava Astor had entertained so grandly in the years before! They had opened their mansion and their wallets and the legendary stories of French champagne and resplendent dinners and costume balls had become etched in the memories of anyone who mattered, and a great many more who did not. It was, after all, an Astor tradition to throw such glamourous parties, those lavish fêtes, just as the Mrs. Astor used to do.

How strange that her son and his teenaged bride had shunned the idea of even an informal Christmas reception. Perhaps the new Mrs. Astor wasn’t feeling quite well.

And I wasn’t. Not really.

The mansion was cold. I was cold. Every single day was cold and raw and lonely, even the ones when my family came to visit, or some of my old Junior League friends (their eyes wide as soon as they walked in, trying not to gawk at the relentless cascade of ostentation and gloom).

Jack told me to give his people some time. “They’ll come around,” he said. “They must.”

But I didn’t see why they should. They were his set, not my own. I had nothing to offer them beyond myself, and they had already made their feelings about that resoundingly clear.

The jewelry safe in my boudoir still holds nearly forty stickpins of solid gold, untouched, each engraved with our initials, J&M, lovingly intertwined.

I suppose I can always sell them for scrap.




December 1911

Manhattan



The fire was tall and blazing in the south morning room, lending the brèche blanche marble hearth an ambered, shifting glow. Even with the logs burning so hot, even with the winter sun outside shining so bright, the chamber remained shivery, the heat lost to the immense corners and lofty ceiling, or eaten up, perhaps, by all the cuivre doré, gold and gleaming, that seemed to decorate every last inch of space.

Gold-leafed sconces, pilasters, cherubs, medallions. Gold-leafed tables and chairs, cabinets and commodes. There were still rooms in this hulking home that Madeleine had barely explored, but it seemed to her that Lina Astor had not spared her hand at gilding every lily she’d ever seen.

Sometimes, some mornings (like this one), it hurt her eyes to try to take it all in.

She sank deeper into her cushioned chair by the fire, gathering her cardigan tighter around her waist. Dug her heels into the nap of the rug (woven with little identical birds, wings spread, beaks agape), as if that might help. She wore opals this morning, maybe to counter all of that unrelenting gold. Black opals, eldritch and fiery, stone rainbows captured on her fingers and wrists.

“It’s so kind of you to have me over,” said Margaret Brown, seated in the easy chair opposite hers. She leaned back, looking completely at home, her legs scissored at the ankles, her toes pointed, like a ballet dancer’s. “As I mentioned over the telephone, I could have saved you the trouble and stayed at the Ritz.”