“Do forgive our monstrous home,” she said at once. “It’s Palladian, I fear, and quite out of fashion at the moment.”
She was wearing a satin tea apron over a skirt and blouse, the apron edged with embroidery and pastel satin ribbons. Her blond hair, frizzed onto her forehead in front, was swept straight back into a French twist and a bun worn rather higher than American women were wearing them.
“Moira,” she said to the maid, “do bring in the tea, won’t you? Come in, dear Lizzie, come in,” she said, and took Lizzie’s hand in both her own and led her into a room that quite took her breath away.
“You’ll find the drawing room a bit cluttered,” Alison said. “Albert so loves clutter. Please sit down, my dear. Tea will be here in a moment.”
She had called it a drawing room, and Lizzie assumed it was the equivalent of what at home would have been either their parlor or sitting room. But, oh, the immensity of it! A fireplace dominated the room, a carved wooden mantel above it — stained the same darkish brown as the woodwork and the bookshelves — a brass coal scuttle beside it, a huge mirror in a gilded frame above it. The bookshelves ran around all four walls of the room, standing as tall as Lizzie herself did, brimming with books bound in red and green leather. The wallpaper above the bookshelves echoed the books themselves, a leafy green embossed upon a deep red field. The carpeting on the floor looked to be Oriental, with glowing reds and muted beiges and here and there a touch of blue that complemented the jungle green of the wallpaper’s embossing. The green was again repeated in the plush velvet upholstery on a buttoned, padded sofa and the armchairs beside it. As in the vestibule outside, there were any number of stands topped with blooming flowers and ferny plants, as well as lower inlaid tables bearing porcelain and glass. In one corner of the room—
A knock sounded at the door. The maid came in and placed the tea tray on a gateleg table flanked by a smaller sofa (again done in the green plush velvet) and two chairs upholstered in red.
“Thank you, Moira,” Alison said, and the maid curtsied and soundlessly left the room.
“Now then,” Alison said, “would you prefer lemon or milk?”
“Milk, please,” Lizzie said, and sat in one of the armchairs facing the sofa.
“We’ve all sorts of goodies to tempt you,” Alison said, and began pouring from a richly ornamented silver pot.
In one corner of the room was a small, upright piano with music spread on its rack and a piano stool before it. There was a needlework cushion on the stool’s seat, and all about the room were framed needlework samplers. Lizzie wondered all at once if the handiwork was Alison’s. She wondered, too, if the predominately green theme of the upholstery and heavy draperies had been deliberately selected to complement Alison’s eyes. Behind the drapes on each window were white lace curtains that seemed a trifle gray from London’s interminable soot. A writing desk stood against a wall upon which hung framed water colors of nude women frolicking in a vernal—
“... to be making your first trip abroad now,” Alison was saying.
“Pardon?” Lizzie said.
“Our clutter has overwhelmed you,” Alison said, smiling.
“No, it’s... beautiful,” Lizzie said. “Forgive me, I was simply admiring everything.”
“The cottage is Albert’s,” Alison said.
“The cottage?”
“The small piano. He plays abominably, but it relaxes him after a day of coping with high finance. He should be here by now, but undoubtedly he’s been buttonholed by one of his money-worshiping cronies. Sugar?”
“Yes, please,” Lizzie said. “You were saying earlier?”
“Only that you’re fortunate to be making your first trip abroad now, and not ten years ago — or even five, for that matter.”
“How do you mean?” Lizzie asked.
She considered herself fortunate to be making the trip at any time, and she could scarcely believe the stroke of good luck that had led first to their chance encounter on the train, and now this — to be invited into an English home! And such a home! As Alison continued speaking, Lizzie’s eyes roamed the room in wonder, touching upon the silver everywhere about, and the framed paintings and drawings, the cut-glass decanters, the bric-a-brac, the dark mahogany cabinet with its glass doors and its fine china within, the iridescent globes on the unlighted gas fixture overhead, the—
“... convenience, of course. Until last year, the only London hotel offering separate tables for dining in public was the St. James — quite near you, in fact — on the corner of Piccadilly and Berkeley Street. Now there’s the Savoy, of course, and many other such establishments where a well-bred lady” (and she rolled her eyes) “can dare to dine in public with a friend of her own sex, and without the fortifying presence of family or spouse. One can even dine at the Savoy on a Sunday now, rather than rushing off to Evensong, or wherever it is religious people are always scurrying to in the fog. You’re quite fortunate, truly.”
There was in Alison’s voice, as a counterpoint to its low and typically English musicality, a note of — mockery, was it? — and Lizzie felt somewhat uncomfortable in her presence. She could not imagine any respectable woman of her acquaintance making sport, first, of the cherished precepts of ladylike expectation, and next — not a moment later — of religion, which Lizzie considered the mainstay of her life in Fall River. Nor could she imagine that Alison would have dared to speak so boldly in the presence of her husband. And yet, hadn’t there been that same challenging tone on the train when Albert was talking about naming a child? “Note the male posture,” Alison had said, with the same slight raising of her eyebrows, the same half smile on her mouth, the same liltingly derisive edge to her voice.
“Not too many years ago, had you been a woman traveling alone,” she said now, “and I include your friends, of course — women traveling alone — you’d have taken a hotel in Bond Street, most likely, or perhaps Cork Street, and your accommodations would have included a dining room of your own. Horrors to have thought that a proper lady would have rubbed elbows with strangers at a common table in the coffee room below! Nor would you have enjoyed, as I’m sure you do at the Albemarle, the conveniences of running water and a gas fire, though I imagine the Albemarle has those new electric radiators, has it not?”
“Yes, it does,” Lizzie said. She was thinking that she herself would not have enjoyed dining with strangers, either, and she was grateful for the separate tables offered at the Albemarle last night and at the Criterion this noon.
“You’ll find things have changed on the Continent as well,” Alison said, “though most of the women there still consider any visiting American girl an opportunist.”
“Opportunist?” Lizzie said.
“Yes. Setting her cap for marriage to a titled foreigner with scads of money. You’re not looking for a French or Italian nobleman, are you?”
“No, of course not,” Lizzie said, and lowered her eyes.
“Am I embarrassing you?” Alison asked.
“Why would you be?”
“I shouldn’t think I was, but nowadays so much pressure is put upon young women to marry — how old are you, Lizzie?”
“Thirty,” Lizzie said. “Just.”
“I would have thought much younger.”
“Thank you.”
“There’s something so... fresh about you,” Alison said.
“Well... thank you,” Lizzie said again.