By The Sea, Book One: Tess Read Free Page B

that characterized a summer's day in
Newport. After a drawn-out, elaborate luncheon, Newport society
would take to their demi-daumonts, victorias, landaus, and
four-in-hands for the traditional exchange of calling cards. Those
who could compel their husbands to accompany them did so; those who
could not had their children in tow, hideously bored but spotless
in white gloves, clutching their own little card cases. The
coachman, rigid with stateliness, his black boots polished to the
same blinding perfection as the coach box he occupied, would bring
the superbly bred horses to a stop in front of a prominent entrance
along Bellevue Avenue (known simply as "the Avenue"), and a
liveried footman would alight to deliver the occupant's card to the
front door. No one was ever home, of course; each of the ladies was
out dropping her own cards at the castlelike "cottages" of her
friends.
    Just as the great marble cottages were not
actually designed to be homes, the dazzling equipages were not
intended as mere transportation. They were entries in a grave
competition of wealth, painstaking arrangements of rosettes and
braided manes, issuing from huge stables and carriage houses that
would humble virtually every home in America. Never mind that on
this typical Sunday afternoon, many of the husbands were hiding on
their yachts or had fled to the safety of their Wall Street
duchies; never mind that the miserable young heirs and heiresses
who were pinned to their carriage seats were forbidden to move a
muscle. The important thing was that, to most of the participants
as well as to the spectators, the display of opulence seemed to have enormous significance.
    Certainly Maggie thought so.
    "Ooh, Tess, just look! It's Mrs. Astor; I
could tell her anywhere, even without the blue livery, by the way
she holds her head so high and still. Why, she don't see anything
or anybody!" Maggie giggled and pulled at her sister's sleeve.
"Would you be looking at those two—in the barouche—fussing
for her attention. There, now, she never saw 'em, and their heads
spinning around like piano seats when they passed."
    "And look at the wheel spokes," Tess
added in a scandalized tone, humoring her sister. "Caked with mud,
and the sky without the merest cloud in almost a fortnight. Wait
until I tell Father. Who are they, do you suppose?"
    "Trash from New York, I'm sure," Maggie said
flatly. "Bridget says most everyone new this summer is in trade.
Bridget says it's got to where everyone's a millionaire and the
'Four Hundred' is soon to become the 'Four Thousand.' Bridget says,
why, it's madness, and there's folks will gladly pay fifteen
thousand dollars to be invited into one of Mrs. Astor's balls, only
they'd be laughed at. Imagine that." Maggie never took her eyes off
the snail-like progression that was inching its way up the Avenue
as she babbled breathlessly on.
    "And you're going to believe everything
Bridget says, are you?" Something like affectionate jealousy crept
into Tess's challenge.
    "Well, of course ," said Maggie
equably. "If Bridget isn't the third cousin of Mrs. Astor's
scullery maid, I don't know who is."
    "The scullery maid! And I suppose she hobs and nobs with the rich cottagers, does she?" demanded
Tess.
    "Oh, Tess, don't be that way, so standoffish
with the other servants. Bridget regards you as the most haughty
creature, and she'll never believe me that it's you're shy—"
    "I am not shy, Margaret Moran. And I
am not standoffish. It's only that I have—other considerations on
my mind."
    "I know you do, Tessie," Maggie agreed,
instantly repentant. "Don't I know that you're the one holds us all
together? And that you're doing my work for me in the laundry? But
soon that will change, Tess. I'm better today, and tomorrow I'll be
better still, wait and see."
    "I should think so, my dear Mag. And when
you are, I'll make you my slavey and you shall do all the work
while I loll on a chaise longue or knock about with the others at
Easton's Beach."
    The