The girl shook her head, cautiously.
“Well, I remember you, and hope we’ll be special friends.”
Marthe’s nose wrinkled as if she was uncertain she wanted a friend, much less a special one.
“Be nice to Madame Chanler,” scolded Marie-Louise.
But I waved this away and leaned closer to the girl. “What is it you’re drawing?”
“You can’t tell?”
I squinted, admiring the zeal of her scribbles. “Hmm, well, let me see . . .”
With one quirked brow, the little girl asked, “Is it a kitten?”
“Ah, yes, of course. I see it now. A pretty kitty!”
My enthusiasm was rewarded with a sigh that seemed to come from the center of the little girl’s very soul. “No, it’s not. It’s a piggy.”
Having been tested and bested by a little girl, I laughed until my sides hurt—as did all my friends, with whom I was so glad to be reunited. Marie-Louise had prepared a magnificent tower chamber for me with a view of the garden, where a gaggle of children played—clean, clothed, rosy-cheeked, and thriving after having escaped bombed-out towns in gas masks or having scavenged for food in the streets of Paris. Their bright laughter told me the horrors of war were beginning to fade away here in the volcanic mountains, where I could almost feel the earth’s fire warming the very soil beneath which these orphaned children would start anew. Here, after all, was a place that instilled the heart with courage and reinvigorated the spirit.
Certainly it was reinvigorating mine.
I liked my tower sanctuary. I could work here, I could sculpt here. What a peaceful studio it would make with all the light filtering in. Maybe I could even teach little Marthe how to draw a better pig. But of course, I could not stay forever . . .
“We must cherish Beatrice while we have her,” Emily warned when we took a light supper in the ancient kitchen. “She insists this is her last great adventure.”
Emily wasn’t happy about my determination to make a future with Furlaud in New York after the war, though she pretended otherwise. She was still, after all, a very stouthearted girl.
Clara, perched by the casement window, chewing licorice in an effort to give up cigarettes, guessed what Emily was getting at. “So you mean to go through with it, Beatrice? Tell me you’re not going to leave Mr. Chanler and marry your French cavalier. That’s hard to believe after the news article . . .”
“What news article?”
Clara, who devoured newspapers, fished one out of a copper vase. She’d been saving it just for me. Then she leaned back, propping her feet up until Marie-Louise gave her a harsh look as if to say, Not on Lafayette’s table! I supposed Clara had got hold of Mitzi Miller’s latest column about my labor mission. Or maybe even some feature about our work here in Chavaniac. Still, my stomach churned at the thought it might be gossip about my relationship with Maxime Furlaud . . .
“It seems you’ve been held up as an example of marital bliss!” Clara explained, spreading the pages onto the rustic table so we could read the headline in the Buffalo Times: Why the Home-Loving and Maternal Instinct in a Good Woman Is More Powerful Than Any Desire for a Career . . .
A photograph of me from another era graced the article, from which Clara read aloud, “No more practical husband lives than William Astor Chanler, explorer, author, soldier, politician, and game hunter. Mr. Chanler flung riches at his lady’s feet, but something else moved the starlet to become Mrs. Chanler and fade forever from public view—”
“Fade forever?” I tried to snatch up the pages. “I’ve never faded from anything in my life, much less public view!”
Clara kept the paper out of my grasp, her voice lilting with amusement. “Mrs. Chanler has never spoken of the happiness which is hers, but it is mutely expressed in the perfect life that has marked the union.”
Having just ended things with Willie, I was actually pained by this, but Clara unwittingly plunged on. “Minnie Ashley had eight years of public worship, when along comes the practical husband offering nothing but home and himself. And with a smile she pushed aside the wreath of fame and took instead the veil, which spells happiness and all things worthwhile.”
“What a silly article,” I said. It vexed me. And not only because it dredged up my stage name. Or at least what I claimed was a stage name. The more upsetting matter was that I was very much not a woman for whom marriage had spelled happiness and all things worthwhile. Though I hoped for happiness, at least, with Max, and I was angry that an article like that should make me doubt it. I wondered what sorts of hats I would wear as the wife of a French banker. I didn’t think any of the ones I owned would suit!