the age of dissonance (3/?)
Dan, Blair, Serena. Appearances by everyone.
9303 words. PG.
A re-working of Wharton's The Age of Innocence.
Summary: Dan often feels as though he is yanked in two opposing directions – back into the poor past he hardly remembers, forward into the respectable life that has been carved out for him. He remains unsteadily in the middle of these two points, helpless to choose between them.
Part One
Part Two
Note: I've been kind of terrible about posting lately, but hopefully this'll make up for it because it's stupidly long. And, as ever, some direct plagiarism of Wharton with dialogue and occasional lines of prose.
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The Countess had said after five and Dan follows her instruction almost too well, climbing her steps so long after that the hour has nearly changed to six.
He is surprised at the neighborhood she's chosen upon leaving Mrs. Rhodes', having assumed that if she were planning to relocate, it would be to somewhere just as lavish. Her house is nice enough from the outside, cared-for and neat, but nowhere near the caliber of her grandmother's house, or the home she had grown up in. It stands out amongst the shabbier surrounding homes, so he imagines some dusting-off had been done to it for her sake. Just down the way he recognizes the home of an artist formerly in Dan's acquaintance, a young woman and her sister whom he hasn't spoken to since his family moved up in the world.
In fact, the Countess' new neighborhood is the very like the one Dan's family had left behind so many years ago – a little run-down but still charming in its way, housing the less well off, the eccentric, the artists. Once Dan had looked forward to calling himself one among their number, but he's since put his efforts toward becoming a more respectable sort of man.
It is strange to reconcile haughty Blair Waldorf with this neglected corner of New York. Perhaps her French husband has left her with less than Dan thought.
Dan is ushered into the house by a foreign maid who speaks to him in an unfamiliar language that is beyond his abilities of comprehension. Still, despite the barriers of communication, she is pleasant and kind-faced as she takes his coat and waves him on to an empty sitting room. Despite his own lateness, the Countess has yet again done him one better: she is apparently not yet home herself. He frowns, standing uncertainly by the threshold. It's another minor annoyance on top of a day of them.
He had lunched with the Rhodes and, after that, gone on at least half a dozen more engagement visits to various families, smiling half-heartedly as the same conversations were enacted over and over again. There was cooing over the ring and questions about the date of the ceremony (Dan pressed soon, I hope, which Serena's family sidestepped expertly), the length and locations of the honeymoon. It was terribly tedious but Dan had consigned himself to a lifetime of it, starting as soon as Serena would have him.
He had intended to tell Serena of his planned visit to the Countess Grimaldi's but they hadn't had a private moment to spare, and he knew better than to mention the Countess in mixed company. Besides, he really needn't mention it at all; had Serena not urged him to be kind to her cousin? He was merely following her request.
Upon reminding himself of that, his irritation fades somewhat and he allows himself a proper look around the room for the first time. The décor is rather haphazard but nonetheless charmingly arranged; little bits of her show in pale blue silk tacked up over the discolored wallpaper and the small porcelain figurines scattered here or there. Above the mantle she has an arrangement of painted silk fans and single blooms in delicate vases, quite a change from the overstuffed bouquets favored by everyone Dan knows. Then, on the wall opposite, there is a collection of startling little paintings that seem French in color and scope, but are alien to him. His mother is something of an art connoisseur and she has passed her passion for it down to him; Dan has an extensive knowledge of art and makes a point to stay on top of all the latest news relating to the topic. He is opinionated on the subject, often to the point of condescension. Yet these paintings are new to him, excepting one or two that he only half-recognizes from having read about them; it makes him almost resentful. Not having had much opportunity to travel, Dan hasn't seen as much art up close as he'd have liked to.
His discomfort is compounded by the unexpected emptiness of this peculiar little house. He begins to regret that he did not tell Serena he was coming. He realizes it's probably very suspicious for him to be waiting here alone; suspiciously intimate, at any rate, though Dan is usually not one to worry about things like that. Or he wasn't, before his engagement.
He wonders that the Countess summoned him with such command and then forgot him so entirely. Should he continue to wait? Had her invitation not been genuine?
Just as he moves towards the door, intending to leave a note with the maid and then depart, there is the clatter of a carriage out on the street. He hears it roll to a stop in front of the house, then the door of the carriage creaking open. Dan steps closer to the window, twitching the curtains aside and peering out in time to catch Countess Grimaldi stepping down onto the street, aided by none other than Chuck Bass.
Dan frowns.
Bass says something to Madame Grimaldi, holding her gloved hand in his own, and she seems to nod before pulling away. Bass gets back in the carriage; the Countess moves briskly towards the steps. Dan pulls away from the window, letting the curtains fall back into place.
Upon stepping into the room, the Countess appears not at all surprised to find Dan waiting. "How do you like my little house?" she asks, shedding all her outside layers and handing them off to the maid who appears silently at her shoulder – gloves, bonnet, cloak, all set aside. "It's not the finest or the prettiest but I think it suits me, really."
Before he can help it, he says, "Are you saying you're neither fine nor pretty?"
She pauses and looks at him, the barest of curves tilting her mouth. "That will be all, Dorota, thank you," she says to the maid, but her eyes remain firmly on Dan. "Well, Mr. Humphrey, what do you think?"
For a moment he isn't sure if he's being called upon to deem her pretty or not; instead he responds, "I quite like your little house," and finds it not so much a lie as an envious admission.
"My relations despise it, of course." She steps past him, closer to the fireplace, and takes a seat on one of the long sofas, gesturing him into the armchair nearest. "I ought to despise it, really, but it's rather delicious to have it all to myself and I find that pleases me enough to outweigh any objections."
"Do you like so much to be alone?"
"As long as my friends keep me from feeling lonely," she says, giving him that curious look again. "I once thought that to be alone was the very worst thing in the world, but in the course of my life I've found there are worse things." Dan shifts in his chair a tad uncomfortably, not sure he likes her tone. She may notice his expression, for it's with a much lighter voice that she adds, "Dorota will bring the tea presently. I hope you weren't waiting long."
"No, not too long," he says. "Though I thought for a moment you'd forgotten me. I suppose you were busy with Mr. Bass."
She half-smiles, drawing his attention to the soft red of her mouth. "Mr. Bass insisted upon showing me a number of houses. As I said, no one likes my choice; they don't seem to realize that if I'd wanted to live on a fashionable street I would have chosen one."
"Oh?" He sits forward slightly. "And why don't you?"
"I am trying very hard to be different than I was," she says. The statement ends up being left at that, because Dorota brings in the tea before the Countess can elaborate. She picks up one of the small, pretty cups, holding the saucer carefully in her other hand. "You must help me, Mr. Humphrey; I fear I've been away so long that I've forgotten all the rules, and learned the wrong ones in their place."
He laughs very softly. "I'm not certain I'm the man for that job," he says. "Anyone will plainly tell you that I'm not always best at things like that."
"But you were once new to this world, as I am new to it now," she says. "And I can see you observe everything, don't you?"
Dan colors faintly, obscurely proud. "I like to think that I am observant, yes."
"So you'll explain these things to me. You'll tell me all I need to know." She sets her cup lightly on the table at her elbow before picking up a cigarette case, taking one and then offering to him.
"Forgive me, Countess, but I feel you understand well enough without me." He leans forward further, tilting into the light she holds out for him and exhaling smoke as he shifts back. "Understand better than me, I would hazard."
"Ah, then we can both help each other," she says.
He very much wants to say Perhaps you ought not be seen wandering around with Chuck Bass but he bites it back.
"There are plenty of people who can tell you what to do," he says instead.
She leans forward to flick cigarette ash carefully into a dish and, as she does so, moves into the glow of the fireplace, which suddenly ignites her, catching in her hair and lashes and the pearls at her throat. It edges her dark curls and heavy braids with golden brown, softens her tired pale features and makes them gleam. It's brief, the work of a blink, and then she shifts out of the light again.
"You mean my aunts? Granny? Yes, I suppose so. But they're rather cross with me right now, you understand, for wanting to set up on my own – Granny especially. She wants me with her, but…" She gives him another small, enigmatic smile. "I need to be free."
The simplicity of the statement and the gentle honesty of her tone touch him; he feels an answering wistfulness in himself. "I can understand how you feel," he murmurs. "Still, your family is surely better able to advise you than I. They can show you the way, all that." Hadn't she learned from her family in the first place, all those years ago?
"Do you think New York such a labyrinth?" she muses. "I remember it straight up and down, like Fifth Avenue, with big honest labels on everything. I always liked it just for that. It was so orderly, so neat; you always knew exactly where you were going."
He wonders if she is playing a game with him. Her words seem earnest but in Dan's ears they ring hollow and false. "Everything may be labeled – but everybody is not."
"Ah." Madame Grimaldi leans back in her chair, turning to gaze pensively into the fire. "Yes. That I've learned well, unfortunately." She looks back at him and he notices that while the firelight has warmed her cold complexion, it has left her eyes darker than ever. "There are only two people here who make me feel as if they understood what I mean and could explain things to me: you and Mr. Bass."
Dan involuntarily wrinkles his nose at the joining of their names, privately repulsed, but swallows the feeling quickly. She must have lived so close to immorality for so long that she still breathed more freely beside it.
"I understand," he says, "Truly, I do. But don't dismiss your family, your friends – they want to help you."
"I know, I know," Madame Grimaldi says with a slight nod, grounding out her cigarette with a sudden impatience. "But it's only on the condition that they don't hear anything unpleasant. Aunt Lily put it in those very words when I tried to – Does no one want to know the truth here, Humphrey? No. No, I know they don't. They want me to pretend as I have my whole life, but I find that now I –" And she cuts herself off just as her voice breaks, hands coming up to cover her face.
Instantly, he is on his feet and at her side, reaching unthinkingly for one of her hands. He holds it between his own as though trying to warm her, kneading reassuringly. "Blair, don't," he says kindly, "Blair, it's alright –"
Her face is caught in a sob that doesn't quite break through, her lips pressed together hard and eyes shut as she holds it back. She doesn't make a sound and after a moment her face smoothes again. She pulls her hand away. Her lashes are wet but no tears stain her face.
"I apologize," she says, using the very hand he'd been holding moments before to wipe gently beneath her eyes. "I lost myself for a moment."
"No, it's alright…" he says again. He feels the need to put distance between them then, and so he stands, pacing a few feet away. Seeing her tears has unsettled him, as though he peered through a keyhole into a scene that was not intended for his eyes.
He had called her by her given name – done so twice, and she had not seemed to notice.
There is the lucky interruption of Dorota at the doorway, making some announcement Dan cannot translate. The Countess replies in the same language, nodding, and lifts her fine slender fingers to run over her hair, making sure each and every strand is where it ought to be. That calm, contemplative mask slips over her features once more.
And, moments later, Aaron Rose enters arm in arm with a bright-faced young woman dressed head-to-toe in canary yellow with furs positively dripping off her.
"My dear Countess," Aaron says, "I've brought a new friend of mine to see you – Mrs. Ivy Dickens. She wasn't asked to the party last night, and she wants to know you."
The usually sullen Aaron is in surprisingly good spirits, seeming to match the nature of the lady beside him, who holds out a yell0w-gloved hand to Madame Grimaldi. "Of course I want to know you, Countess!" Dan notices some rather bold feathers pinned in her coppery hair. "I want to know everybody who's young and interesting and charming. And Mr. Rose tells me you like music – so you must come tomorrow evening to my house to hear Sarasate play! You know I've taken over Sundays in New York – it's the day they've all forgot and I make sure to always have something going on! Come and be amused, one and all, I say!"
The Countess merely blinks at the deluge of information, amusement curling her mouth. Dan thinks he spots something disdainful in arch of her eyebrow and wonders if she recognizes the oddness of the couple standing before her, or knows that Aaron Rose is taking quite a liberty showing up here with that woman. But despite the haughty edge to her smile, the Countess' eyes do reveal a genuine enthusiasm, even excitement.
"How kind of you to think of me," she says. "Please, do have a seat."
Dan exits not long after, glad of the intrusion and only wishing it had come a little earlier. He begins the long walk home in the chill night air, hands in his pockets and thoughts scattered, travelling a million paths in his mind but reaching no destinations. As he passes the florist from which he sends Serena's daily flowers, he realizes that the task had somehow slipped his mind this morning and he steps inside to undertake it now.
He writes a little snippet of poetry on the back of his card, as he is wont to do; nothing of his own devising, only a quote that had recently sparked thoughts of Serena. As he waits for an envelope, his eyes light upon some yellow roses gleaming in the corner of the shop, their curving petals like little flames amongst their darker rose cousins. He makes his mind up to send them to Serena instead of the customary lilies of the valley, but then decides not to. Impetuously, he has the clerk put the roses in another box pinned with another envelope on which he writes Madame Grimaldi's name.
He does not leave his card with the roses.
The following day he and Serena free themselves from familial obligations and abscond to the civilized wilds of the Park. Dan very much likes the Park in winter, the stark outlines of the trees against the pale blue sky and the white frost decorating the walkways. Serena is a bolt of summer in the dead of winter, her cheeks flushed pink and flowers woven into her hair in her customary way. Dan was never one for attention, but the appreciative looks she earns as they walk are well deserved and please him.
"It's so lovely to wake every morning to find your flowers waiting," she says, hand curling around the crook of his arm. "It's like you're there with me."
Apologetically, he says, "They came late yesterday. I hadn't time in the morning –"
"But you remember every day and that's what counts," she says. "It means so much more than if you'd just given a standing order. I know every day you're thinking of me." She nudges him slightly. "I know that's what Nate did with Penelope – they came daily at the appointed hour, like the post."
He smiles a little at that. "I… Yesterday, when I sent your lilies, I also had some flowers sent to Madame Grimaldi. Some yellow roses. Was that right?"
Serena beams at him and his uncertainty flickers and fades like a blown-out candle. "Very!" she says. "How very sweet of you. Anything of that kind delights her. Though I'm surprised she didn't mention it at lunch today – I know she received some peonies from Mr. Bass and violets from Cyrus Rose, a whole hamper of them."
He purses his lips. "I imagine mine were overshadowed by Bass'." But then he recalls that he had not left his card and regrets having spoken of them at all. He debates telling her about his visit, knowing it would seem odd if Madame Grimaldi had mentioned it and he had not – but odder still if she had not and he does.
Dan changes the subject neatly to their engagement, as just that morning Serena's mother had vexed him greatly by convincing her daughter of the necessity of a long courtship.
"You know Mother," Serena says. "She wouldn't be happy until I agreed, and she wouldn't allow me a moment's peace either."
"You only make my case for me," he says, taking her hand in his. "Wouldn't you like to be free of all that, finally? To strike out on our own?"
He can see both yearning and hesitancy in her eyes, and he knows if Serena only felt she could refuse her family, they'd be married already. "What, shall we elope?" she teases.
Dan, however, is serious. "If you would."
Serena laughs, tilting up to press her lips to her cheek, both of them cool from the winter air. "Oh, Dan, you do love me. I'm so happy."
"Then let's be happier," he urges. "Your parents have given in to your every desire since you were a little girl, and you were never much concerned with pleasing them before."
But he can see her tiring of the conversation. "We can't behave like people in novels," she chides fondly and it almost wounds, the comment so direct as to be cutting. She squeezes his hand. "Did I tell you I showed Blair my ring? She thought it impossibly lovely, and you know she's very discerning – she hardly likes anything unless she's chosen it herself."
Dan wakes late on Tuesday morning, already in a sour mood thanks to the previous evening he'd spent at the club with Nate. He wasn't a regular attendee of the club, finding it monotonous, but since his engagement he was beginning to venture there more often. The chatter was the same every time he went, whatever new scandal that was occupying their time; it was only a changing of names and situations, but the same critical pronouncements. Yesterday it had been the appearance of Miss Eva Coupeau on Fifth Avenue in a small lilac brougham that was so clearly the mark of Chuck Bass that he might as well have had his name painted on its doors. The idea of a woman like that allowing herself to be seen on a fashionable street at the fashionable hour had shocked them near to silence. Near to, mind.
After that the conversation turned to the little Sunday soiree at Mrs. Dickens' and Dan pointedly excused himself for the night.
So he isn't thrilled to find Jenny harping on it that very morning.
"She was at Ivy Dickens' on Sunday!" Jenny exclaims as Dan makes his way downstairs. She has that look on her face that is half outrage and half excitement, which she often wears after spending an evening with her friends. "She went there with Mr. Rose's son and Mr. Bass!" Her tone demands that they share her horror.
"Who is this?" Dan asks, still tying his tie and stilling as his mother reaches over to help.
"Your friend," Jenny accuses. "Countess Grimaldi."
"She isn't my friend," he says snottily, annoyed. "Anyway, before she was married, I remember you being very upset that she wasn't your friend."
Jenny reddens. "Mother."
Mrs. Humphrey smiles. "Truly, I don't see the harm. She's only being friendly, and I imagine she could use all the friends she can find."
This good-natured response does little to pacify Jenny, who is silent with fury for a moment that none of them recognize how shocking this is. Dan is aware that she's only parroting the things she's heard from everyone else but it bothers him nonetheless. Once Jenny had admired Blair, and continued to do so even after her return – until Jenny had been informed that she was no longer supposed to. Now she spouts the silliest accusations with ease.
Dan takes advantage of the calm in the storm to ask, "And where is Dad this morning?"
His mother averts her eyes. "I believe he was caught up at the theatre last night; he should be home for supper."
It all conspires to make him rather vexed. By the time he departs he is both impossibly annoyed and nearly an hour late. Normally no one would mind, but today Dan is immediately summoned into the office of his future father-in-law, William van der Woodsen, a partner of the firm.
Mr. van der Woodsen is an agreeable sort of man, charismatic to a fault, and much of his good humor can be found in his daughter. Despite this, Dan has never liked him. "Don't look so sullen, my dear boy," he says, looking up from some papers as Dan enters. "I haven't called you in to dismiss you."
Dan suspects he would be privately grateful if that had been the reason he was called in. Law had never been his calling, nor did he think it ever would be; however, as he'd grown more serious about Serena, he'd realized that he would be less likely to win her family's consent as an aspiring novelist than a lawyer like her father. He had to have a serious enough profession counterbalance his family's frivolity, his father's amusing theatre career and mother's constant crusading. So here he is.
Mr. van der Woodsen leans back in his chair, surveying Dan. "It's a family matter," he says in his blunt way. "Lily's mother informed me of it yesterday. The Countess Grimaldi wishes to sue her husband for a divorce."
Dan bites his tongue. "I'm not sure why you're telling me," he says.
Mr. van der Woodsen raises an eyebrow. "Well, my boy, I have been told by everyone from the Great Celia on that you are the best choice for dealing with the matter. They've all named you."
"Me?" Dan repeats flatly. His displeasure stems from two points: that the Rhodes family thinks it fair to involve him in this, and that he's only got himself to blame for it. He has openly positioned himself as the Countess' defender whether he intended to or not.
Mr. van der Woodsen goes on to explain that the entire family is, of course, opposed to the divorce; after all, the Countess is here and her husband all the way in France. There is nothing he could do to her now that she is safe with her family. He's already returned about as much of her money as he ever will. She claims she does not want to marry again. There is nothing to be gained from a divorce.
Dan is handed a packet of papers, but he doesn't look at them. "I don't understand," he says. "Her uncles ought to be handling this. You ought to be handling this."
"In view of your alliance with our family and your place in the firm, it is only natural to have you also look over the case," Mr. van der Woodsen says easily. "Have a look at the papers. And then we shall talk."
Dan returns to his desk to do as he's told. The growing intimacy and fondness Dan had felt while sitting by the Countess' fireside was rather spectacularly smashed by the interruption of Aaron Rose and Ivy Dickens, and he's found in the days since that he remains indifferent to her. She knows very well how to care for herself, as she's shown time and time again, and clearly doesn't need to look for guidance when she does whatever she likes regardless. She ought not to have brought private matters to Dan's attention in the first place, and he resents being involved again now.
The papers are not what he expects – not entirely what he expects. There are letters dealing with financial matters, that sort of thing, and then a letter from the Count to his wife. It is barely a page in length, but despite that it manages to do a lot of damage.
That short letter is all it takes to restore Dan's compassion. He remembers the secretive sight of her tears, and her voice that just barely shook. He remembers the whispering that follows every step she takes, remembers Jenny's childish change of opinion, remembers Blair saying, "They want me to pretend as I have my whole life."
He'd known just what she meant, hadn't he? Dan had learned it the hard way, had been forced into the lesson. Pretending was the only way to survive here. The rules of the game were so entrenched in day-to-day life that one often ended up playing without realizing, only noticing later how very by the book their lives had been. Dan can admit, if only to himself, that he's not as singular as he imagines himself to be. He may have started out in the world differently than the other boys his age, but he's ended up crossing the same bridges to the same ends.
Are they not all as guilty as the Countess, in their own way? Dan had had a brief infatuation in his youth with a governess who had been sent away upon the discovery of it, and he'd felt such guilt at the thought of having ruined her – but ruined her how? She had only done what he had done, and he had faced few consequences for it. Most young men his age had similarly short-lived affairs and all lived to tell the tale, all leaving behind a young lady who would be picked to pieces because she ended up not being the type of girl one married – only the type of girl one enjoyed and then pitied.
Dan can imagine how a woman, intelligent and sensitive and terribly, terribly lonely, might turn away from her promises. He can imagine it very easily.
Dan rises and returns to the office. He purses his lips and says, trying not to sound sharp, "Alright. If you wish, I shall speak to Madame Grimaldi."
Mr. van der Woodsen has expected this, of course. He smiles. "Thank you, my boy. Your influence will do a world of good in securing things for us all."
"Securing things?"
"Yes," he says, "In convincing her to drop the whole silly matter. As I explained, there's no point to it, nothing to be gained. She'll never get a dollar more from him. As it is he's acted generously; he might have turned her out with nothing."
Dan must reluctantly accept the truth of that. "But surely, if there was ever a case –"
"And of course you've considered the consequences of her going through with it."
He pauses. "You mean the threat in her husband's letter." He shakes his head. "Merely angry words, vague insinuations."
"Perhaps," he says. "Either way, it would lead to quite a lot of unpleasant talk. Not just for her – for all of us."
"Unpleasant," Dan mutters venomously.
Mr. van der Woodsen observes him coolly for a moment. "Divorce is always unpleasant. Don't you agree?"
Again, with reluctance, "Yes." But he is not yet so easily swayed. "I cannot pledge myself to your cause until I've spoken to the Countess and heard her side in the matter."
Dan sends a message requesting an audience with her, which she grants for that evening. Her penmanship is distinct and purposeful, but her response is dashed on the back of Dan's note as though in a great hurry. The stark differences in their writing amuse him briefly.
For once in his life Dan is punctual, ascending the steps to the Countess' door not a minute after the agreed-upon time. Dorota ushers him in with a pleasant smile, reaching for his coat and hat, for which Dan thanks her – and then his gaze falls upon the overcoat already waiting in the hall, distinct and expensive, and the silk opera hat sitting besides it with the telltale initials CB visible on the lining. Bass.
Dan is infuriated, anger sparking as quickly as it usually does with him. Of all people to be present, it would be Bass. The man seems to go everywhere Dan does, only Bass is always two steps ahead.
In the sitting room, Chuck Bass leans against the mantelpiece with a cigarette in one hand, dressed in one of his ridiculously flamboyant suits – a velvet jacket this time, with piping at the lapels and a peony tucked in the buttonhole. His vest underneath is brocade. The Countess sits demurely on a sofa, resting one elbow against its curved arm.
He looks absurd, Dan thinks resentfully. Though Dan cannot deny that there is something that ties them together visually – the peony on his jacket echoes the great score of them arranged on the table behind her, obviously a gift. Her dress mirrors Bass as well, red velvet with black fur at the neck and wide sleeves, so that when she lifts her arm the sleeve falls back and reveals bare skin to the elbow. A gold bracelet hangs from her thin wrist. There is something provocative about the combination of her concealed throat and naked arms, about fur worn inside a heated drawing room; and the red brings out the natural flush of her cheeks and lips, sets off her dark hair and eyes. He cannot imagine Serena in the garment, even despite her somewhat untraditional style of dress.
Madame Grimaldi smiles at Dan when she sees him, extending a hand as though she expects him to kiss it.
"Three whole days at Skuytercliff," Bass remarks with obvious distaste, naming the Roses' country home. "You best take every manner of amusement you possess up with you, for you'll find none there."
"Oh, I believe I'll be fine," she says. "I never minded a bit of quiet, and Mr. Rose was kind enough to come and invite me himself. He wanted to make up for his son's behavior the other night, though I found Aaron perfectly agreeable. Granny says I really must go."
"Granny would," Bass says. "I say it's a shame. You'll miss the little dinner I was setting up for you, with Campanini and Scalchi and all sorts of wonderful people."
She gives him a somewhat doubtful look, and then her eyes slide over to meet Dan's briefly. "I'd be almost tempted, were I not already engaged," she says. "Aside from the other night at Mrs. Dickens I've not met a single artist since I've been here."
Dan's heart gives a little jump in his chest. "Artists?" he interrupts. Were Bass not here, he would be glad to tell Madame Grimaldi of his own somewhat stalled artistic endeavors. "I could bring some to see you if you'd allow me – some painters, or poets."
"Painters?" Bass scoffs. "Are there painters in New York?"
The Countess smiles with that touch of old condescension. "That would be lovely. But I was thinking more of dramatic artists – singers, actors, musicians. My husband's house was always full of them."
She says the words so simply, as though there is not a single dark thought in her heart relating to them. As though she did not intend to risk her reputation by divorcing the man.
"New York is dying of dullness," Bass says. "And when I try to liven it up for you, you run off for three days. Put withered old Rose off a week – come, have a good time."
Dan feels set apart from the both of them suddenly, in his dull suit with his dull taste. He knows in some places, perhaps where the Countess comes from, painters and poets and novelists are sought after, respected; in his youthful fancies he'd dreamt of disappearing to some such place where his father's name and the origin of their fortune didn't matter quite so much. It's a silly thought. Dan is here, ultimately, and this is where he's chosen to stay.
"May I think it over?" she says. "I'll give you word tomorrow morning." Her tone is pleasant but overall edged, as though short on patience.
"Why not now?"
"Because it is late," she says. "Because I have little interest in committing myself on such short notice. Because I gave my word to the Roses. Take your pick."
Bass frowns at her. "Do you consider it late?"
"Yes," she says, "I still have to talk business with Humphrey." The dismissal in her voice is obvious now and it clearly doesn't sit well with Bass, who is unused to being dismissed.
"Then I suppose I must take my leave of you, Countess." He kisses her hand before he goes, with barely a word of goodbye to Dan.
Once he is gone, the Countess turns to Dan with a more open smile than she had given Mr. Bass. "You know poets, then? You care for such things?"
Dan pauses, unsure as to the nature of his hesitancy except that his desire to write has become so private, and almost embarrassing. "Immensely," he says finally. "If I could have my way, I… I would count myself amongst their number."
Her eyebrow raises, intrigue written on her face. "Oh?"
"I once wanted to write," he says, finding it easier to phrase once planted firmly in the past.
Her slight smile returns, more kind than he can recall it. "Ah, I remember now," she says. "You were always scribbling, weren’t you?"
"Yes," he says, surprised that she remembers.
The last time he'd been in her drawing room, Dan had noticed the spines of her many books and found names he knew and liked – Thackeray, Browning, Swinburne, Wilde. Their interests, he imagines, are not all that dissimilar.
She confides, "I used to care immensely too. But now I want to try not to. I want to cast off my old life and become just like everyone else here."
Dan's brow furrows. With conviction, he tells her, "You'll never be like everyone else."
"Don't say that," she exclaims, a genuine scolding. "If you knew how I hate to be different!"
There it comes again, reconciling the woman he has come to know with the girl he'd happily forgotten. She hardly could have been considered different, then.
Looking away now, grown serious, she reaffirms, "I want to get away from all that."
His hesitancy returns and, at length, Dan says, "I know. I've spoken with Mr. van der Woodsen. That's why I'm here – he asked me to speak to you. I'm in the firm."
The Countess stares at him for a moment and then her expression clears. "You mean you can mange it for me? I can talk to you instead?" Her relief is evident. "Oh, that will be so much easier."
Her honest confusion and reassurance leads him to believe she'd only mentioned business to do away with Mr. Bass, and the thought pleases him. But he sobers again as he reminds himself of his task.
"I am here to talk about it," he says, sounding awkward and uncomfortable to his own ears.
Madame Grimaldi studies him. "You know about my husband – my life with him?"
Dan nods.
"Then – Well. What else is there? I'm a Protestant – our church does not forbid divorce in such cases."
Dan often feels as though he is yanked in two opposing directions – back into the poor past he hardly remembers, forward into the respectable life that has been carved out for him. He remains unsteadily in the middle of these two points, helpless to choose between them. In his heart, he hates her husband. He does not wish for her to be tied to him any longer. But he wants also to protect her, to protect Serena, to live up to the promise he has made to the Rhodes that he will be the right sort of man, the man they have decided he shall be.
"I looked through the papers you gave to your uncle," he says. "You know… Of course you know...that if your husband chooses to fight the case as he threatens to –"
"Yes?"
"He can say things that might be –" Dan clears his throat. "That might be unpl– might be distressing to you, and he might say them publicly, so they might harm you even if – No matter how unfounded they are."
She is quiet, a look on her face like she has swallowed something unpalatable. She is quiet for such a length of time that Dan is compelled to look away from her pale, distressed face and focus instead on her hands, the slim fingers and oval nails. She wears only one ring, a small unobtrusive ruby shaped like a heart – and no wedding ring.
Finally she murmurs, hopeful and defeated at once, "What harm could such accusations do me here?"
Here, he thinks bitterly, here in heaven.
"New York society is a very small world," Dan says quietly. He remembers a talk his mother had given him once when he was a great deal younger. "And it's ruled by rather old-fashioned ideas – particularly about marriage and divorce. The legislation may favor divorce but social customs don't… Especially if – Despite how the woman might have been treated, if she has – If there are any offensive insinuations –"
She gives him an indignant look, a flash of the old Blair Waldorf, but her heart does not seem to be truly in it.
"My family tells me so," she says, corrects, "Our family. For you'll be my cousin soon." The look she gives him then is almost searching. "And you share their view?"
The room feels as though all the air has been driven out of it. Dan chafes under the obligations hanging silent over them. He wishes for fresh air instead of this small, stuffy, overheated room.
He does not answer her straight. "What would you gain that would compensate for all that wretched talk?"
"My freedom," she says sharply. "Is that nothing?"
"Aren't you free now?" he asks softly. "Now, with the Atlantic between you? You're free, you're safe – no one could touch you. Is it worth it to risk all that when the outcome may be incredibly painful? Think of those vile newspapers. Think of all those awful girls you grew up with who are now awful wives, and all their awful gossiping relations. It's stupid and narrow and unjust – but one can't make over society."
"No," she murmurs.
He wonders at the truth of the letter's contents. Only she would know and, that brief flash of affront aside, she has done nothing to confirm or deny them. He finds he does not hold it against her either way, not really, but without a firm way of disproving it she would be torn to shreds. Which she knows – she knows very well.
"I'm only doing as you asked," he says, feeling desperate to defend himself now that his choice has been made. "I'm showing you how they'll think of it – all the people who are fondest of you: the Rhodes, the Roses, the van der Woodsens." And all those who are not quite as fond of her. "If I didn't show you honestly it wouldn't be fair of me, would it? It would be leading you blind into disaster."
Quietly, she says, "No, it wouldn't be fair."
She stands, moving to the mantelpiece with her back to him, gathering her thoughts. She takes out a cigarette but does not offer one to him. He stands too, feeling discomfited and dismissed.
She turns suddenly, a harder look in her eyes. He is reminded of the first night at the opera and her blank, protective mask. "Very well," she says firmly. "I will do what you wish. What you all wish."
The capitulation is unexpected. Dan finds himself reaching for her hand, the one with the small ruby ring. "I only want to help you," he insists.
"You do help me," she says. "Now goodnight, cousin."
He bends to kiss her hand, the skin warm despite her coldness. She pulls back, repeats pointedly, "Goodnight," and Dan turns away unwillingly, leaves.
Dan does not see the Countess again for two weeks.
It is a crowded night at the theatre, but Dan doesn't much mind; his appreciation and enjoyment for the theatre is equaled only by his hatred for the opera. Thanks to his father's connections in that world, he is almost always guaranteed a seat wherever he chooses and it's something Dan has no trouble taking advantage of. He's been in and out of theatres since his boyhood, weaving around backstage and through the orchestra, first in little nowhere places and then the Bowery and then Broadway.
He often concludes that he prefers those so-called 'lesser' establishments, but he would never turn down a night of Shakespeare, even if the crowd around him must be the elegant sort.
The play tonight is a comedy, which Dan could sorely use, one of the better ones performed by one of the better English companies. There is palpable enthusiasm in the audience that he catches easily, soothing the restlessness that has plagued him for weeks – if only for tonight, at least.
Normally Dan has ears only for the play's wit and little patience for secondary couplings, but tonight he finds himself uncommonly bothered by the plight of little Hero; the scene of the arrested wedding, in particular. Agitation slices through his newly returned good humor. He isn't entirely certain why; there is, of course, something in the image of a woman torn down by slander that calls to mind Madame Grimaldi's troubling predicament, but the Countess is no soft-voiced ingénue, crying pretty tears at cruel fate. And that matter has been resolved already; no one had allowed Dan to forget that he'd been the one to resolve it.
He'd received such adulation from Serena's family but it only made him feel sick, unable to shake the sense that he'd only condemned the Countess somehow, despite opinions to the contrary.
"I was sure the old boy would manage it," Serena's father said proudly, and from the Great Celia, as they jokingly called her, had come congratulations too. "What nonsense it all was!" the great lady had said. "Wanting to pass herself off as Blair Waldorf and an old maid when she has the luck to be a married woman and a Countess!"
His enjoyment spoiled, Dan rises to leave as soon as the curtain falls on Beatrice's spitting anger. When he turns to face the side of the theatre and the boxes dotting its wall, he sees the very lady of his thoughts sitting amongst the Basses, Tripp Vanderbilt, and his wife. She is a remarkable figure sitting there silent and wan, only enforcing his connection of her with that heartbroken bride on the stage. He has been avoiding her. Though their eyes meet briefly, he would be content to continue to do so; however Mrs. Bass spots him also and gives him a wave of polite invitation that Dan cannot ignore.
Once in the box he makes brief conversation with Mrs. Bass, then Tripp and his wife. As they fall into other topics with each other and Dan falls silent, Madame Grimaldi glances back at him and speaks.
"Do you think," she says, "that if Beatrice's lover had sent her yellow roses, she might not have been so cross with him for so long?"
His heart seems to contract painfully in his chest. After their discussion he had sent her roses again, again neglected to include his card with them. Since she had never mentioned them, he assumed she did not know they came from him.
But she is clever, he's always known that.
He has the sudden memory of younger days, before he'd quite made his mark and before Blair was made a Countess. It was an impression only – a ball, he thinks, and her in ochre, laughing at a young man who'd asked her to dance. At the time he'd thought how cruel, how vicious, all these wealthy, careless girls.
He isn't sure where the thought originates. Her expression now is intent and untroubled; she is in no way making a spectacle of him.
"I think it takes a great deal more than flowers to win a girl like that," he says.
"A girl like what?" she asks, curious.
He thinks on it. "A girl of great conviction, I suppose."
She smiles, rare and lovely. "Yes," she agrees, "But I don't think they do any harm either."
He returns the smile without being able to help it. To his surprise a pink flush creeps into her cheeks. She adjusts her gloves. "What do you do while Serena is away?"
"I stick to my work," he says, "And try very hard not to cry from the tedium."
It had been a week earlier that Serena and her family took their customary trip down to St. Augustine. They were, the four of them, unable to stomach the entire stretch of a New York winter and so would enjoy the first frost before running off to more agreeable climates. Serena could not blossom without the sun.
The Countess still smiles, but with a great deal less warmth than before. "I suppose you already know, but – I have done what you wished." A moment's pause and she corrects, "What you advised."
The change in topic seems abrupt to him. "Yes, I did hear," he says.
"I wanted to say that I do feel that you were – that you were right," she says. "And I'm appreciative of your taking the time to help." She gives a little nod, then raises her opera-glass to focus back on the stage.
Dan is faintly perplexed but sees their conversation is at its end, so he stands and finally departs.
Only yesterday he had received a letter from Serena in which she repeated her appeal that he be kind to her cousin. Though she doesn't show it, Serena had written in her pretty looping cursive, she likes you – even admires you. I don't think anyone really understands her, not Granny or Mother. I love her more dearly than anyone in the world, excepting you, and sometimes even I don't understand her. But I can see that she's lonely and unhappy and perhaps a little bored – I think she's used to lots of things we haven't got, wonderful music and authors and all the clever people you admire. I can see that you're almost the only person in New York who can talk to her about what she really cares for.
Such a letter was breathlessly long for Serena, who usually has little patience for more than a quick sentence or two. He thought it impossibly dear of her to worry, and to unburden herself to him. He took her plea seriously enough to override his own unease, and it was with that in mind that he endeavored to be a better friend to the Countess, if he could. He had not done so the night he advised her, nor at the theatre; but seeing her walking down Fifth Avenue the following afternoon, letter fresh in his mind, he quickens his step so he can fall in with hers.
He worries briefly that he may only be giving the club tonight's talking point, but surely there is nothing scandalous about walking down the street with one's own cousin.
"Countess," he greets, giving her a slight bow and tip of the hat.
She smiles, not so much in surprise as fond recognition. "Humphrey."
"Enjoying a walk in this fine weather?" he asks, gesturing at the frost on the ground and gray skies above.
"Ah, that's just an additional joy," she says. "I was rooting around the shops for a bit and now I must return home to dress for supper with Granny. I suspect she's attempting to pilfer all my evenings so I don't do something else to offend God and Christendom."
He gives a surprised little laugh. "Only looking out for you, I imagine."
"Yes, so she imagines too."
Dan puts his hands his pockets, an unfortunate and boyish habit he has been so far unable to break. "You were shopping?" This with some faint bemusement; he doesn't know why she wouldn't send her maid to do it for her. "What were you after?"
"Ephemera," she says. "Paper, ink. Some new books." With a charming touch of embarrassment, she adds, "I became rather distracted at the milliner's and lost nearly an hour. Do you think me vain?"
His first curiosity is in her choice of literature, and in the idea of going out just to pick up a few books. When he'd been younger every book he'd received had seemed the most impossibly wonderful gift; now that he can afford to, he has them shipped by the crate from London. But he attends to her query first. "Vain? Why, yes, I couldn't deny it; to look at hats is the more conceited action one can engage in, an absolute sin."
"You're having a joke at my expense," she says, a mixture of amused and admonishing. "You don't know how very constrained I was being. There was a time I would have bought the whole shop, with a new fleet of dresses to match and a fistful of jewels."
"I know," he says. "I can recall." He thinks again of her in the ochre dress. "I confess sometimes I think you must be an imposter, when I hold the picture of then and now in my head at once."
Her brows drawing together slightly, she says, "What do you mean?"
"Well, Blair Waldorf would certainly not accompany me down the street in broad daylight," he says. "Nor think me easy to talk to – nor talk to me at all, in fact."
"Do you find her so entirely gone? Not a bit of her left in me?"
"I couldn't say. But you are changed, and there's no denying that."
Her gaze turns introspective. "Changed, yes," she says. "I was a silly girl then. My father acted as though I hung the moon and somehow I believed him. I was too caught up in dreaming. I still believed in fairy tales." She smiles at him again but it's nothing like the first; it has no hint of feeling, it's pure artifice. "'Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching.'"
He recognizes the quotation immediately, regretting that he ever broached the subject. "Not entirely gone," he says then, firmly. "She's there in that queenly way you lift your brow and that certainty of attitude, the way you carry yourself with such assurance."
That very delicate blush rises once more, a wintery pink dusting her white cheek. "Ah, that's the writer then," she says. "How often is he allowed to speak?"
"In your meanness too," he adds in good humor. "He's allowed out every other weekend at midnight if he's very good, and sometimes at Christmas too."
"I should like to meet him more often," she says. "It's a pity to keep him hidden away. I wonder that you got into the law, it seems so ill-suited."
"We all do what we must," he says lightly.
Understanding crosses her features briefly. "Indeed we do," she says. "I believe your street is here – I'm down a ways still."
He glances up at the street sign, having not even noticed where they we going. He returns his gaze to her with a smile. "I hope Mrs. Rhodes' meal is to your liking," he says playfully, as they both know Mrs. Rhodes has the worst cook in all of New York.
"I shall have her invite you too," she warns, "And I'll enjoy every minute you suffer."
"I expect nothing less."
Once they take their leave of each other, Dan spends the afternoon searching fruitlessly for yellow roses. He considers a replacement but decides nothing else would do as well, and so sends nothing except a note by messenger asking that he might call on her the next day. However, there is no response that night, or the morning after. Three days pass before he hears from Madame Grimaldi, three days of increasing mortification – he'd spoken too freely with her, made her reveal too much. The letter is dated unexpectedly from Skuytercliff.
I ran away, begins the brief missive, the day after our walk, and these kind friends have taken me in. I wanted to be quiet and think things over. You were right in telling me how kind they are; I feel myself so safe here. I wish that you were with us.
The tone of it surprises him. It seems to possess that omnipresent sadness of hers, which he'd thought seemed recently soothed. What was she running away from, and why did she need to feel safe? He worries there was some threat from abroad that sent her into hiding, but perhaps she's merely being overdramatic in her epistolary prose the way some are. Perhaps she only wanted to avoid a week of dinners with her grandmother.
Dan is disappointed to find her gone, but then he remembers that that very afternoon Nate had extended an invitation to spend the weekend at one of the Vanderbilt country homes on the Hudson, a few miles below Skuytercliff. Dan had refused originally but reconsiders now; Nate made sure to express that Dan was always welcome, were he to change his mind. So Dan sets aside his plans to enjoy a quiet Sunday with his newest shipment of books, sending off a note to let Nate know that he will be joining them after all.
Part Four
Dan, Blair, Serena. Appearances by everyone.
9303 words. PG.
A re-working of Wharton's The Age of Innocence.
Summary: Dan often feels as though he is yanked in two opposing directions – back into the poor past he hardly remembers, forward into the respectable life that has been carved out for him. He remains unsteadily in the middle of these two points, helpless to choose between them.
Part One
Part Two
Note: I've been kind of terrible about posting lately, but hopefully this'll make up for it because it's stupidly long. And, as ever, some direct plagiarism of Wharton with dialogue and occasional lines of prose.
The Countess had said after five and Dan follows her instruction almost too well, climbing her steps so long after that the hour has nearly changed to six.
He is surprised at the neighborhood she's chosen upon leaving Mrs. Rhodes', having assumed that if she were planning to relocate, it would be to somewhere just as lavish. Her house is nice enough from the outside, cared-for and neat, but nowhere near the caliber of her grandmother's house, or the home she had grown up in. It stands out amongst the shabbier surrounding homes, so he imagines some dusting-off had been done to it for her sake. Just down the way he recognizes the home of an artist formerly in Dan's acquaintance, a young woman and her sister whom he hasn't spoken to since his family moved up in the world.
In fact, the Countess' new neighborhood is the very like the one Dan's family had left behind so many years ago – a little run-down but still charming in its way, housing the less well off, the eccentric, the artists. Once Dan had looked forward to calling himself one among their number, but he's since put his efforts toward becoming a more respectable sort of man.
It is strange to reconcile haughty Blair Waldorf with this neglected corner of New York. Perhaps her French husband has left her with less than Dan thought.
Dan is ushered into the house by a foreign maid who speaks to him in an unfamiliar language that is beyond his abilities of comprehension. Still, despite the barriers of communication, she is pleasant and kind-faced as she takes his coat and waves him on to an empty sitting room. Despite his own lateness, the Countess has yet again done him one better: she is apparently not yet home herself. He frowns, standing uncertainly by the threshold. It's another minor annoyance on top of a day of them.
He had lunched with the Rhodes and, after that, gone on at least half a dozen more engagement visits to various families, smiling half-heartedly as the same conversations were enacted over and over again. There was cooing over the ring and questions about the date of the ceremony (Dan pressed soon, I hope, which Serena's family sidestepped expertly), the length and locations of the honeymoon. It was terribly tedious but Dan had consigned himself to a lifetime of it, starting as soon as Serena would have him.
He had intended to tell Serena of his planned visit to the Countess Grimaldi's but they hadn't had a private moment to spare, and he knew better than to mention the Countess in mixed company. Besides, he really needn't mention it at all; had Serena not urged him to be kind to her cousin? He was merely following her request.
Upon reminding himself of that, his irritation fades somewhat and he allows himself a proper look around the room for the first time. The décor is rather haphazard but nonetheless charmingly arranged; little bits of her show in pale blue silk tacked up over the discolored wallpaper and the small porcelain figurines scattered here or there. Above the mantle she has an arrangement of painted silk fans and single blooms in delicate vases, quite a change from the overstuffed bouquets favored by everyone Dan knows. Then, on the wall opposite, there is a collection of startling little paintings that seem French in color and scope, but are alien to him. His mother is something of an art connoisseur and she has passed her passion for it down to him; Dan has an extensive knowledge of art and makes a point to stay on top of all the latest news relating to the topic. He is opinionated on the subject, often to the point of condescension. Yet these paintings are new to him, excepting one or two that he only half-recognizes from having read about them; it makes him almost resentful. Not having had much opportunity to travel, Dan hasn't seen as much art up close as he'd have liked to.
His discomfort is compounded by the unexpected emptiness of this peculiar little house. He begins to regret that he did not tell Serena he was coming. He realizes it's probably very suspicious for him to be waiting here alone; suspiciously intimate, at any rate, though Dan is usually not one to worry about things like that. Or he wasn't, before his engagement.
He wonders that the Countess summoned him with such command and then forgot him so entirely. Should he continue to wait? Had her invitation not been genuine?
Just as he moves towards the door, intending to leave a note with the maid and then depart, there is the clatter of a carriage out on the street. He hears it roll to a stop in front of the house, then the door of the carriage creaking open. Dan steps closer to the window, twitching the curtains aside and peering out in time to catch Countess Grimaldi stepping down onto the street, aided by none other than Chuck Bass.
Dan frowns.
Bass says something to Madame Grimaldi, holding her gloved hand in his own, and she seems to nod before pulling away. Bass gets back in the carriage; the Countess moves briskly towards the steps. Dan pulls away from the window, letting the curtains fall back into place.
Upon stepping into the room, the Countess appears not at all surprised to find Dan waiting. "How do you like my little house?" she asks, shedding all her outside layers and handing them off to the maid who appears silently at her shoulder – gloves, bonnet, cloak, all set aside. "It's not the finest or the prettiest but I think it suits me, really."
Before he can help it, he says, "Are you saying you're neither fine nor pretty?"
She pauses and looks at him, the barest of curves tilting her mouth. "That will be all, Dorota, thank you," she says to the maid, but her eyes remain firmly on Dan. "Well, Mr. Humphrey, what do you think?"
For a moment he isn't sure if he's being called upon to deem her pretty or not; instead he responds, "I quite like your little house," and finds it not so much a lie as an envious admission.
"My relations despise it, of course." She steps past him, closer to the fireplace, and takes a seat on one of the long sofas, gesturing him into the armchair nearest. "I ought to despise it, really, but it's rather delicious to have it all to myself and I find that pleases me enough to outweigh any objections."
"Do you like so much to be alone?"
"As long as my friends keep me from feeling lonely," she says, giving him that curious look again. "I once thought that to be alone was the very worst thing in the world, but in the course of my life I've found there are worse things." Dan shifts in his chair a tad uncomfortably, not sure he likes her tone. She may notice his expression, for it's with a much lighter voice that she adds, "Dorota will bring the tea presently. I hope you weren't waiting long."
"No, not too long," he says. "Though I thought for a moment you'd forgotten me. I suppose you were busy with Mr. Bass."
She half-smiles, drawing his attention to the soft red of her mouth. "Mr. Bass insisted upon showing me a number of houses. As I said, no one likes my choice; they don't seem to realize that if I'd wanted to live on a fashionable street I would have chosen one."
"Oh?" He sits forward slightly. "And why don't you?"
"I am trying very hard to be different than I was," she says. The statement ends up being left at that, because Dorota brings in the tea before the Countess can elaborate. She picks up one of the small, pretty cups, holding the saucer carefully in her other hand. "You must help me, Mr. Humphrey; I fear I've been away so long that I've forgotten all the rules, and learned the wrong ones in their place."
He laughs very softly. "I'm not certain I'm the man for that job," he says. "Anyone will plainly tell you that I'm not always best at things like that."
"But you were once new to this world, as I am new to it now," she says. "And I can see you observe everything, don't you?"
Dan colors faintly, obscurely proud. "I like to think that I am observant, yes."
"So you'll explain these things to me. You'll tell me all I need to know." She sets her cup lightly on the table at her elbow before picking up a cigarette case, taking one and then offering to him.
"Forgive me, Countess, but I feel you understand well enough without me." He leans forward further, tilting into the light she holds out for him and exhaling smoke as he shifts back. "Understand better than me, I would hazard."
"Ah, then we can both help each other," she says.
He very much wants to say Perhaps you ought not be seen wandering around with Chuck Bass but he bites it back.
"There are plenty of people who can tell you what to do," he says instead.
She leans forward to flick cigarette ash carefully into a dish and, as she does so, moves into the glow of the fireplace, which suddenly ignites her, catching in her hair and lashes and the pearls at her throat. It edges her dark curls and heavy braids with golden brown, softens her tired pale features and makes them gleam. It's brief, the work of a blink, and then she shifts out of the light again.
"You mean my aunts? Granny? Yes, I suppose so. But they're rather cross with me right now, you understand, for wanting to set up on my own – Granny especially. She wants me with her, but…" She gives him another small, enigmatic smile. "I need to be free."
The simplicity of the statement and the gentle honesty of her tone touch him; he feels an answering wistfulness in himself. "I can understand how you feel," he murmurs. "Still, your family is surely better able to advise you than I. They can show you the way, all that." Hadn't she learned from her family in the first place, all those years ago?
"Do you think New York such a labyrinth?" she muses. "I remember it straight up and down, like Fifth Avenue, with big honest labels on everything. I always liked it just for that. It was so orderly, so neat; you always knew exactly where you were going."
He wonders if she is playing a game with him. Her words seem earnest but in Dan's ears they ring hollow and false. "Everything may be labeled – but everybody is not."
"Ah." Madame Grimaldi leans back in her chair, turning to gaze pensively into the fire. "Yes. That I've learned well, unfortunately." She looks back at him and he notices that while the firelight has warmed her cold complexion, it has left her eyes darker than ever. "There are only two people here who make me feel as if they understood what I mean and could explain things to me: you and Mr. Bass."
Dan involuntarily wrinkles his nose at the joining of their names, privately repulsed, but swallows the feeling quickly. She must have lived so close to immorality for so long that she still breathed more freely beside it.
"I understand," he says, "Truly, I do. But don't dismiss your family, your friends – they want to help you."
"I know, I know," Madame Grimaldi says with a slight nod, grounding out her cigarette with a sudden impatience. "But it's only on the condition that they don't hear anything unpleasant. Aunt Lily put it in those very words when I tried to – Does no one want to know the truth here, Humphrey? No. No, I know they don't. They want me to pretend as I have my whole life, but I find that now I –" And she cuts herself off just as her voice breaks, hands coming up to cover her face.
Instantly, he is on his feet and at her side, reaching unthinkingly for one of her hands. He holds it between his own as though trying to warm her, kneading reassuringly. "Blair, don't," he says kindly, "Blair, it's alright –"
Her face is caught in a sob that doesn't quite break through, her lips pressed together hard and eyes shut as she holds it back. She doesn't make a sound and after a moment her face smoothes again. She pulls her hand away. Her lashes are wet but no tears stain her face.
"I apologize," she says, using the very hand he'd been holding moments before to wipe gently beneath her eyes. "I lost myself for a moment."
"No, it's alright…" he says again. He feels the need to put distance between them then, and so he stands, pacing a few feet away. Seeing her tears has unsettled him, as though he peered through a keyhole into a scene that was not intended for his eyes.
He had called her by her given name – done so twice, and she had not seemed to notice.
There is the lucky interruption of Dorota at the doorway, making some announcement Dan cannot translate. The Countess replies in the same language, nodding, and lifts her fine slender fingers to run over her hair, making sure each and every strand is where it ought to be. That calm, contemplative mask slips over her features once more.
And, moments later, Aaron Rose enters arm in arm with a bright-faced young woman dressed head-to-toe in canary yellow with furs positively dripping off her.
"My dear Countess," Aaron says, "I've brought a new friend of mine to see you – Mrs. Ivy Dickens. She wasn't asked to the party last night, and she wants to know you."
The usually sullen Aaron is in surprisingly good spirits, seeming to match the nature of the lady beside him, who holds out a yell0w-gloved hand to Madame Grimaldi. "Of course I want to know you, Countess!" Dan notices some rather bold feathers pinned in her coppery hair. "I want to know everybody who's young and interesting and charming. And Mr. Rose tells me you like music – so you must come tomorrow evening to my house to hear Sarasate play! You know I've taken over Sundays in New York – it's the day they've all forgot and I make sure to always have something going on! Come and be amused, one and all, I say!"
The Countess merely blinks at the deluge of information, amusement curling her mouth. Dan thinks he spots something disdainful in arch of her eyebrow and wonders if she recognizes the oddness of the couple standing before her, or knows that Aaron Rose is taking quite a liberty showing up here with that woman. But despite the haughty edge to her smile, the Countess' eyes do reveal a genuine enthusiasm, even excitement.
"How kind of you to think of me," she says. "Please, do have a seat."
Dan exits not long after, glad of the intrusion and only wishing it had come a little earlier. He begins the long walk home in the chill night air, hands in his pockets and thoughts scattered, travelling a million paths in his mind but reaching no destinations. As he passes the florist from which he sends Serena's daily flowers, he realizes that the task had somehow slipped his mind this morning and he steps inside to undertake it now.
He writes a little snippet of poetry on the back of his card, as he is wont to do; nothing of his own devising, only a quote that had recently sparked thoughts of Serena. As he waits for an envelope, his eyes light upon some yellow roses gleaming in the corner of the shop, their curving petals like little flames amongst their darker rose cousins. He makes his mind up to send them to Serena instead of the customary lilies of the valley, but then decides not to. Impetuously, he has the clerk put the roses in another box pinned with another envelope on which he writes Madame Grimaldi's name.
He does not leave his card with the roses.
The following day he and Serena free themselves from familial obligations and abscond to the civilized wilds of the Park. Dan very much likes the Park in winter, the stark outlines of the trees against the pale blue sky and the white frost decorating the walkways. Serena is a bolt of summer in the dead of winter, her cheeks flushed pink and flowers woven into her hair in her customary way. Dan was never one for attention, but the appreciative looks she earns as they walk are well deserved and please him.
"It's so lovely to wake every morning to find your flowers waiting," she says, hand curling around the crook of his arm. "It's like you're there with me."
Apologetically, he says, "They came late yesterday. I hadn't time in the morning –"
"But you remember every day and that's what counts," she says. "It means so much more than if you'd just given a standing order. I know every day you're thinking of me." She nudges him slightly. "I know that's what Nate did with Penelope – they came daily at the appointed hour, like the post."
He smiles a little at that. "I… Yesterday, when I sent your lilies, I also had some flowers sent to Madame Grimaldi. Some yellow roses. Was that right?"
Serena beams at him and his uncertainty flickers and fades like a blown-out candle. "Very!" she says. "How very sweet of you. Anything of that kind delights her. Though I'm surprised she didn't mention it at lunch today – I know she received some peonies from Mr. Bass and violets from Cyrus Rose, a whole hamper of them."
He purses his lips. "I imagine mine were overshadowed by Bass'." But then he recalls that he had not left his card and regrets having spoken of them at all. He debates telling her about his visit, knowing it would seem odd if Madame Grimaldi had mentioned it and he had not – but odder still if she had not and he does.
Dan changes the subject neatly to their engagement, as just that morning Serena's mother had vexed him greatly by convincing her daughter of the necessity of a long courtship.
"You know Mother," Serena says. "She wouldn't be happy until I agreed, and she wouldn't allow me a moment's peace either."
"You only make my case for me," he says, taking her hand in his. "Wouldn't you like to be free of all that, finally? To strike out on our own?"
He can see both yearning and hesitancy in her eyes, and he knows if Serena only felt she could refuse her family, they'd be married already. "What, shall we elope?" she teases.
Dan, however, is serious. "If you would."
Serena laughs, tilting up to press her lips to her cheek, both of them cool from the winter air. "Oh, Dan, you do love me. I'm so happy."
"Then let's be happier," he urges. "Your parents have given in to your every desire since you were a little girl, and you were never much concerned with pleasing them before."
But he can see her tiring of the conversation. "We can't behave like people in novels," she chides fondly and it almost wounds, the comment so direct as to be cutting. She squeezes his hand. "Did I tell you I showed Blair my ring? She thought it impossibly lovely, and you know she's very discerning – she hardly likes anything unless she's chosen it herself."
Dan wakes late on Tuesday morning, already in a sour mood thanks to the previous evening he'd spent at the club with Nate. He wasn't a regular attendee of the club, finding it monotonous, but since his engagement he was beginning to venture there more often. The chatter was the same every time he went, whatever new scandal that was occupying their time; it was only a changing of names and situations, but the same critical pronouncements. Yesterday it had been the appearance of Miss Eva Coupeau on Fifth Avenue in a small lilac brougham that was so clearly the mark of Chuck Bass that he might as well have had his name painted on its doors. The idea of a woman like that allowing herself to be seen on a fashionable street at the fashionable hour had shocked them near to silence. Near to, mind.
After that the conversation turned to the little Sunday soiree at Mrs. Dickens' and Dan pointedly excused himself for the night.
So he isn't thrilled to find Jenny harping on it that very morning.
"She was at Ivy Dickens' on Sunday!" Jenny exclaims as Dan makes his way downstairs. She has that look on her face that is half outrage and half excitement, which she often wears after spending an evening with her friends. "She went there with Mr. Rose's son and Mr. Bass!" Her tone demands that they share her horror.
"Who is this?" Dan asks, still tying his tie and stilling as his mother reaches over to help.
"Your friend," Jenny accuses. "Countess Grimaldi."
"She isn't my friend," he says snottily, annoyed. "Anyway, before she was married, I remember you being very upset that she wasn't your friend."
Jenny reddens. "Mother."
Mrs. Humphrey smiles. "Truly, I don't see the harm. She's only being friendly, and I imagine she could use all the friends she can find."
This good-natured response does little to pacify Jenny, who is silent with fury for a moment that none of them recognize how shocking this is. Dan is aware that she's only parroting the things she's heard from everyone else but it bothers him nonetheless. Once Jenny had admired Blair, and continued to do so even after her return – until Jenny had been informed that she was no longer supposed to. Now she spouts the silliest accusations with ease.
Dan takes advantage of the calm in the storm to ask, "And where is Dad this morning?"
His mother averts her eyes. "I believe he was caught up at the theatre last night; he should be home for supper."
It all conspires to make him rather vexed. By the time he departs he is both impossibly annoyed and nearly an hour late. Normally no one would mind, but today Dan is immediately summoned into the office of his future father-in-law, William van der Woodsen, a partner of the firm.
Mr. van der Woodsen is an agreeable sort of man, charismatic to a fault, and much of his good humor can be found in his daughter. Despite this, Dan has never liked him. "Don't look so sullen, my dear boy," he says, looking up from some papers as Dan enters. "I haven't called you in to dismiss you."
Dan suspects he would be privately grateful if that had been the reason he was called in. Law had never been his calling, nor did he think it ever would be; however, as he'd grown more serious about Serena, he'd realized that he would be less likely to win her family's consent as an aspiring novelist than a lawyer like her father. He had to have a serious enough profession counterbalance his family's frivolity, his father's amusing theatre career and mother's constant crusading. So here he is.
Mr. van der Woodsen leans back in his chair, surveying Dan. "It's a family matter," he says in his blunt way. "Lily's mother informed me of it yesterday. The Countess Grimaldi wishes to sue her husband for a divorce."
Dan bites his tongue. "I'm not sure why you're telling me," he says.
Mr. van der Woodsen raises an eyebrow. "Well, my boy, I have been told by everyone from the Great Celia on that you are the best choice for dealing with the matter. They've all named you."
"Me?" Dan repeats flatly. His displeasure stems from two points: that the Rhodes family thinks it fair to involve him in this, and that he's only got himself to blame for it. He has openly positioned himself as the Countess' defender whether he intended to or not.
Mr. van der Woodsen goes on to explain that the entire family is, of course, opposed to the divorce; after all, the Countess is here and her husband all the way in France. There is nothing he could do to her now that she is safe with her family. He's already returned about as much of her money as he ever will. She claims she does not want to marry again. There is nothing to be gained from a divorce.
Dan is handed a packet of papers, but he doesn't look at them. "I don't understand," he says. "Her uncles ought to be handling this. You ought to be handling this."
"In view of your alliance with our family and your place in the firm, it is only natural to have you also look over the case," Mr. van der Woodsen says easily. "Have a look at the papers. And then we shall talk."
Dan returns to his desk to do as he's told. The growing intimacy and fondness Dan had felt while sitting by the Countess' fireside was rather spectacularly smashed by the interruption of Aaron Rose and Ivy Dickens, and he's found in the days since that he remains indifferent to her. She knows very well how to care for herself, as she's shown time and time again, and clearly doesn't need to look for guidance when she does whatever she likes regardless. She ought not to have brought private matters to Dan's attention in the first place, and he resents being involved again now.
The papers are not what he expects – not entirely what he expects. There are letters dealing with financial matters, that sort of thing, and then a letter from the Count to his wife. It is barely a page in length, but despite that it manages to do a lot of damage.
That short letter is all it takes to restore Dan's compassion. He remembers the secretive sight of her tears, and her voice that just barely shook. He remembers the whispering that follows every step she takes, remembers Jenny's childish change of opinion, remembers Blair saying, "They want me to pretend as I have my whole life."
He'd known just what she meant, hadn't he? Dan had learned it the hard way, had been forced into the lesson. Pretending was the only way to survive here. The rules of the game were so entrenched in day-to-day life that one often ended up playing without realizing, only noticing later how very by the book their lives had been. Dan can admit, if only to himself, that he's not as singular as he imagines himself to be. He may have started out in the world differently than the other boys his age, but he's ended up crossing the same bridges to the same ends.
Are they not all as guilty as the Countess, in their own way? Dan had had a brief infatuation in his youth with a governess who had been sent away upon the discovery of it, and he'd felt such guilt at the thought of having ruined her – but ruined her how? She had only done what he had done, and he had faced few consequences for it. Most young men his age had similarly short-lived affairs and all lived to tell the tale, all leaving behind a young lady who would be picked to pieces because she ended up not being the type of girl one married – only the type of girl one enjoyed and then pitied.
Dan can imagine how a woman, intelligent and sensitive and terribly, terribly lonely, might turn away from her promises. He can imagine it very easily.
Dan rises and returns to the office. He purses his lips and says, trying not to sound sharp, "Alright. If you wish, I shall speak to Madame Grimaldi."
Mr. van der Woodsen has expected this, of course. He smiles. "Thank you, my boy. Your influence will do a world of good in securing things for us all."
"Securing things?"
"Yes," he says, "In convincing her to drop the whole silly matter. As I explained, there's no point to it, nothing to be gained. She'll never get a dollar more from him. As it is he's acted generously; he might have turned her out with nothing."
Dan must reluctantly accept the truth of that. "But surely, if there was ever a case –"
"And of course you've considered the consequences of her going through with it."
He pauses. "You mean the threat in her husband's letter." He shakes his head. "Merely angry words, vague insinuations."
"Perhaps," he says. "Either way, it would lead to quite a lot of unpleasant talk. Not just for her – for all of us."
"Unpleasant," Dan mutters venomously.
Mr. van der Woodsen observes him coolly for a moment. "Divorce is always unpleasant. Don't you agree?"
Again, with reluctance, "Yes." But he is not yet so easily swayed. "I cannot pledge myself to your cause until I've spoken to the Countess and heard her side in the matter."
Dan sends a message requesting an audience with her, which she grants for that evening. Her penmanship is distinct and purposeful, but her response is dashed on the back of Dan's note as though in a great hurry. The stark differences in their writing amuse him briefly.
For once in his life Dan is punctual, ascending the steps to the Countess' door not a minute after the agreed-upon time. Dorota ushers him in with a pleasant smile, reaching for his coat and hat, for which Dan thanks her – and then his gaze falls upon the overcoat already waiting in the hall, distinct and expensive, and the silk opera hat sitting besides it with the telltale initials CB visible on the lining. Bass.
Dan is infuriated, anger sparking as quickly as it usually does with him. Of all people to be present, it would be Bass. The man seems to go everywhere Dan does, only Bass is always two steps ahead.
In the sitting room, Chuck Bass leans against the mantelpiece with a cigarette in one hand, dressed in one of his ridiculously flamboyant suits – a velvet jacket this time, with piping at the lapels and a peony tucked in the buttonhole. His vest underneath is brocade. The Countess sits demurely on a sofa, resting one elbow against its curved arm.
He looks absurd, Dan thinks resentfully. Though Dan cannot deny that there is something that ties them together visually – the peony on his jacket echoes the great score of them arranged on the table behind her, obviously a gift. Her dress mirrors Bass as well, red velvet with black fur at the neck and wide sleeves, so that when she lifts her arm the sleeve falls back and reveals bare skin to the elbow. A gold bracelet hangs from her thin wrist. There is something provocative about the combination of her concealed throat and naked arms, about fur worn inside a heated drawing room; and the red brings out the natural flush of her cheeks and lips, sets off her dark hair and eyes. He cannot imagine Serena in the garment, even despite her somewhat untraditional style of dress.
Madame Grimaldi smiles at Dan when she sees him, extending a hand as though she expects him to kiss it.
"Three whole days at Skuytercliff," Bass remarks with obvious distaste, naming the Roses' country home. "You best take every manner of amusement you possess up with you, for you'll find none there."
"Oh, I believe I'll be fine," she says. "I never minded a bit of quiet, and Mr. Rose was kind enough to come and invite me himself. He wanted to make up for his son's behavior the other night, though I found Aaron perfectly agreeable. Granny says I really must go."
"Granny would," Bass says. "I say it's a shame. You'll miss the little dinner I was setting up for you, with Campanini and Scalchi and all sorts of wonderful people."
She gives him a somewhat doubtful look, and then her eyes slide over to meet Dan's briefly. "I'd be almost tempted, were I not already engaged," she says. "Aside from the other night at Mrs. Dickens I've not met a single artist since I've been here."
Dan's heart gives a little jump in his chest. "Artists?" he interrupts. Were Bass not here, he would be glad to tell Madame Grimaldi of his own somewhat stalled artistic endeavors. "I could bring some to see you if you'd allow me – some painters, or poets."
"Painters?" Bass scoffs. "Are there painters in New York?"
The Countess smiles with that touch of old condescension. "That would be lovely. But I was thinking more of dramatic artists – singers, actors, musicians. My husband's house was always full of them."
She says the words so simply, as though there is not a single dark thought in her heart relating to them. As though she did not intend to risk her reputation by divorcing the man.
"New York is dying of dullness," Bass says. "And when I try to liven it up for you, you run off for three days. Put withered old Rose off a week – come, have a good time."
Dan feels set apart from the both of them suddenly, in his dull suit with his dull taste. He knows in some places, perhaps where the Countess comes from, painters and poets and novelists are sought after, respected; in his youthful fancies he'd dreamt of disappearing to some such place where his father's name and the origin of their fortune didn't matter quite so much. It's a silly thought. Dan is here, ultimately, and this is where he's chosen to stay.
"May I think it over?" she says. "I'll give you word tomorrow morning." Her tone is pleasant but overall edged, as though short on patience.
"Why not now?"
"Because it is late," she says. "Because I have little interest in committing myself on such short notice. Because I gave my word to the Roses. Take your pick."
Bass frowns at her. "Do you consider it late?"
"Yes," she says, "I still have to talk business with Humphrey." The dismissal in her voice is obvious now and it clearly doesn't sit well with Bass, who is unused to being dismissed.
"Then I suppose I must take my leave of you, Countess." He kisses her hand before he goes, with barely a word of goodbye to Dan.
Once he is gone, the Countess turns to Dan with a more open smile than she had given Mr. Bass. "You know poets, then? You care for such things?"
Dan pauses, unsure as to the nature of his hesitancy except that his desire to write has become so private, and almost embarrassing. "Immensely," he says finally. "If I could have my way, I… I would count myself amongst their number."
Her eyebrow raises, intrigue written on her face. "Oh?"
"I once wanted to write," he says, finding it easier to phrase once planted firmly in the past.
Her slight smile returns, more kind than he can recall it. "Ah, I remember now," she says. "You were always scribbling, weren’t you?"
"Yes," he says, surprised that she remembers.
The last time he'd been in her drawing room, Dan had noticed the spines of her many books and found names he knew and liked – Thackeray, Browning, Swinburne, Wilde. Their interests, he imagines, are not all that dissimilar.
She confides, "I used to care immensely too. But now I want to try not to. I want to cast off my old life and become just like everyone else here."
Dan's brow furrows. With conviction, he tells her, "You'll never be like everyone else."
"Don't say that," she exclaims, a genuine scolding. "If you knew how I hate to be different!"
There it comes again, reconciling the woman he has come to know with the girl he'd happily forgotten. She hardly could have been considered different, then.
Looking away now, grown serious, she reaffirms, "I want to get away from all that."
His hesitancy returns and, at length, Dan says, "I know. I've spoken with Mr. van der Woodsen. That's why I'm here – he asked me to speak to you. I'm in the firm."
The Countess stares at him for a moment and then her expression clears. "You mean you can mange it for me? I can talk to you instead?" Her relief is evident. "Oh, that will be so much easier."
Her honest confusion and reassurance leads him to believe she'd only mentioned business to do away with Mr. Bass, and the thought pleases him. But he sobers again as he reminds himself of his task.
"I am here to talk about it," he says, sounding awkward and uncomfortable to his own ears.
Madame Grimaldi studies him. "You know about my husband – my life with him?"
Dan nods.
"Then – Well. What else is there? I'm a Protestant – our church does not forbid divorce in such cases."
Dan often feels as though he is yanked in two opposing directions – back into the poor past he hardly remembers, forward into the respectable life that has been carved out for him. He remains unsteadily in the middle of these two points, helpless to choose between them. In his heart, he hates her husband. He does not wish for her to be tied to him any longer. But he wants also to protect her, to protect Serena, to live up to the promise he has made to the Rhodes that he will be the right sort of man, the man they have decided he shall be.
"I looked through the papers you gave to your uncle," he says. "You know… Of course you know...that if your husband chooses to fight the case as he threatens to –"
"Yes?"
"He can say things that might be –" Dan clears his throat. "That might be unpl– might be distressing to you, and he might say them publicly, so they might harm you even if – No matter how unfounded they are."
She is quiet, a look on her face like she has swallowed something unpalatable. She is quiet for such a length of time that Dan is compelled to look away from her pale, distressed face and focus instead on her hands, the slim fingers and oval nails. She wears only one ring, a small unobtrusive ruby shaped like a heart – and no wedding ring.
Finally she murmurs, hopeful and defeated at once, "What harm could such accusations do me here?"
Here, he thinks bitterly, here in heaven.
"New York society is a very small world," Dan says quietly. He remembers a talk his mother had given him once when he was a great deal younger. "And it's ruled by rather old-fashioned ideas – particularly about marriage and divorce. The legislation may favor divorce but social customs don't… Especially if – Despite how the woman might have been treated, if she has – If there are any offensive insinuations –"
She gives him an indignant look, a flash of the old Blair Waldorf, but her heart does not seem to be truly in it.
"My family tells me so," she says, corrects, "Our family. For you'll be my cousin soon." The look she gives him then is almost searching. "And you share their view?"
The room feels as though all the air has been driven out of it. Dan chafes under the obligations hanging silent over them. He wishes for fresh air instead of this small, stuffy, overheated room.
He does not answer her straight. "What would you gain that would compensate for all that wretched talk?"
"My freedom," she says sharply. "Is that nothing?"
"Aren't you free now?" he asks softly. "Now, with the Atlantic between you? You're free, you're safe – no one could touch you. Is it worth it to risk all that when the outcome may be incredibly painful? Think of those vile newspapers. Think of all those awful girls you grew up with who are now awful wives, and all their awful gossiping relations. It's stupid and narrow and unjust – but one can't make over society."
"No," she murmurs.
He wonders at the truth of the letter's contents. Only she would know and, that brief flash of affront aside, she has done nothing to confirm or deny them. He finds he does not hold it against her either way, not really, but without a firm way of disproving it she would be torn to shreds. Which she knows – she knows very well.
"I'm only doing as you asked," he says, feeling desperate to defend himself now that his choice has been made. "I'm showing you how they'll think of it – all the people who are fondest of you: the Rhodes, the Roses, the van der Woodsens." And all those who are not quite as fond of her. "If I didn't show you honestly it wouldn't be fair of me, would it? It would be leading you blind into disaster."
Quietly, she says, "No, it wouldn't be fair."
She stands, moving to the mantelpiece with her back to him, gathering her thoughts. She takes out a cigarette but does not offer one to him. He stands too, feeling discomfited and dismissed.
She turns suddenly, a harder look in her eyes. He is reminded of the first night at the opera and her blank, protective mask. "Very well," she says firmly. "I will do what you wish. What you all wish."
The capitulation is unexpected. Dan finds himself reaching for her hand, the one with the small ruby ring. "I only want to help you," he insists.
"You do help me," she says. "Now goodnight, cousin."
He bends to kiss her hand, the skin warm despite her coldness. She pulls back, repeats pointedly, "Goodnight," and Dan turns away unwillingly, leaves.
Dan does not see the Countess again for two weeks.
It is a crowded night at the theatre, but Dan doesn't much mind; his appreciation and enjoyment for the theatre is equaled only by his hatred for the opera. Thanks to his father's connections in that world, he is almost always guaranteed a seat wherever he chooses and it's something Dan has no trouble taking advantage of. He's been in and out of theatres since his boyhood, weaving around backstage and through the orchestra, first in little nowhere places and then the Bowery and then Broadway.
He often concludes that he prefers those so-called 'lesser' establishments, but he would never turn down a night of Shakespeare, even if the crowd around him must be the elegant sort.
The play tonight is a comedy, which Dan could sorely use, one of the better ones performed by one of the better English companies. There is palpable enthusiasm in the audience that he catches easily, soothing the restlessness that has plagued him for weeks – if only for tonight, at least.
Normally Dan has ears only for the play's wit and little patience for secondary couplings, but tonight he finds himself uncommonly bothered by the plight of little Hero; the scene of the arrested wedding, in particular. Agitation slices through his newly returned good humor. He isn't entirely certain why; there is, of course, something in the image of a woman torn down by slander that calls to mind Madame Grimaldi's troubling predicament, but the Countess is no soft-voiced ingénue, crying pretty tears at cruel fate. And that matter has been resolved already; no one had allowed Dan to forget that he'd been the one to resolve it.
He'd received such adulation from Serena's family but it only made him feel sick, unable to shake the sense that he'd only condemned the Countess somehow, despite opinions to the contrary.
"I was sure the old boy would manage it," Serena's father said proudly, and from the Great Celia, as they jokingly called her, had come congratulations too. "What nonsense it all was!" the great lady had said. "Wanting to pass herself off as Blair Waldorf and an old maid when she has the luck to be a married woman and a Countess!"
His enjoyment spoiled, Dan rises to leave as soon as the curtain falls on Beatrice's spitting anger. When he turns to face the side of the theatre and the boxes dotting its wall, he sees the very lady of his thoughts sitting amongst the Basses, Tripp Vanderbilt, and his wife. She is a remarkable figure sitting there silent and wan, only enforcing his connection of her with that heartbroken bride on the stage. He has been avoiding her. Though their eyes meet briefly, he would be content to continue to do so; however Mrs. Bass spots him also and gives him a wave of polite invitation that Dan cannot ignore.
Once in the box he makes brief conversation with Mrs. Bass, then Tripp and his wife. As they fall into other topics with each other and Dan falls silent, Madame Grimaldi glances back at him and speaks.
"Do you think," she says, "that if Beatrice's lover had sent her yellow roses, she might not have been so cross with him for so long?"
His heart seems to contract painfully in his chest. After their discussion he had sent her roses again, again neglected to include his card with them. Since she had never mentioned them, he assumed she did not know they came from him.
But she is clever, he's always known that.
He has the sudden memory of younger days, before he'd quite made his mark and before Blair was made a Countess. It was an impression only – a ball, he thinks, and her in ochre, laughing at a young man who'd asked her to dance. At the time he'd thought how cruel, how vicious, all these wealthy, careless girls.
He isn't sure where the thought originates. Her expression now is intent and untroubled; she is in no way making a spectacle of him.
"I think it takes a great deal more than flowers to win a girl like that," he says.
"A girl like what?" she asks, curious.
He thinks on it. "A girl of great conviction, I suppose."
She smiles, rare and lovely. "Yes," she agrees, "But I don't think they do any harm either."
He returns the smile without being able to help it. To his surprise a pink flush creeps into her cheeks. She adjusts her gloves. "What do you do while Serena is away?"
"I stick to my work," he says, "And try very hard not to cry from the tedium."
It had been a week earlier that Serena and her family took their customary trip down to St. Augustine. They were, the four of them, unable to stomach the entire stretch of a New York winter and so would enjoy the first frost before running off to more agreeable climates. Serena could not blossom without the sun.
The Countess still smiles, but with a great deal less warmth than before. "I suppose you already know, but – I have done what you wished." A moment's pause and she corrects, "What you advised."
The change in topic seems abrupt to him. "Yes, I did hear," he says.
"I wanted to say that I do feel that you were – that you were right," she says. "And I'm appreciative of your taking the time to help." She gives a little nod, then raises her opera-glass to focus back on the stage.
Dan is faintly perplexed but sees their conversation is at its end, so he stands and finally departs.
Only yesterday he had received a letter from Serena in which she repeated her appeal that he be kind to her cousin. Though she doesn't show it, Serena had written in her pretty looping cursive, she likes you – even admires you. I don't think anyone really understands her, not Granny or Mother. I love her more dearly than anyone in the world, excepting you, and sometimes even I don't understand her. But I can see that she's lonely and unhappy and perhaps a little bored – I think she's used to lots of things we haven't got, wonderful music and authors and all the clever people you admire. I can see that you're almost the only person in New York who can talk to her about what she really cares for.
Such a letter was breathlessly long for Serena, who usually has little patience for more than a quick sentence or two. He thought it impossibly dear of her to worry, and to unburden herself to him. He took her plea seriously enough to override his own unease, and it was with that in mind that he endeavored to be a better friend to the Countess, if he could. He had not done so the night he advised her, nor at the theatre; but seeing her walking down Fifth Avenue the following afternoon, letter fresh in his mind, he quickens his step so he can fall in with hers.
He worries briefly that he may only be giving the club tonight's talking point, but surely there is nothing scandalous about walking down the street with one's own cousin.
"Countess," he greets, giving her a slight bow and tip of the hat.
She smiles, not so much in surprise as fond recognition. "Humphrey."
"Enjoying a walk in this fine weather?" he asks, gesturing at the frost on the ground and gray skies above.
"Ah, that's just an additional joy," she says. "I was rooting around the shops for a bit and now I must return home to dress for supper with Granny. I suspect she's attempting to pilfer all my evenings so I don't do something else to offend God and Christendom."
He gives a surprised little laugh. "Only looking out for you, I imagine."
"Yes, so she imagines too."
Dan puts his hands his pockets, an unfortunate and boyish habit he has been so far unable to break. "You were shopping?" This with some faint bemusement; he doesn't know why she wouldn't send her maid to do it for her. "What were you after?"
"Ephemera," she says. "Paper, ink. Some new books." With a charming touch of embarrassment, she adds, "I became rather distracted at the milliner's and lost nearly an hour. Do you think me vain?"
His first curiosity is in her choice of literature, and in the idea of going out just to pick up a few books. When he'd been younger every book he'd received had seemed the most impossibly wonderful gift; now that he can afford to, he has them shipped by the crate from London. But he attends to her query first. "Vain? Why, yes, I couldn't deny it; to look at hats is the more conceited action one can engage in, an absolute sin."
"You're having a joke at my expense," she says, a mixture of amused and admonishing. "You don't know how very constrained I was being. There was a time I would have bought the whole shop, with a new fleet of dresses to match and a fistful of jewels."
"I know," he says. "I can recall." He thinks again of her in the ochre dress. "I confess sometimes I think you must be an imposter, when I hold the picture of then and now in my head at once."
Her brows drawing together slightly, she says, "What do you mean?"
"Well, Blair Waldorf would certainly not accompany me down the street in broad daylight," he says. "Nor think me easy to talk to – nor talk to me at all, in fact."
"Do you find her so entirely gone? Not a bit of her left in me?"
"I couldn't say. But you are changed, and there's no denying that."
Her gaze turns introspective. "Changed, yes," she says. "I was a silly girl then. My father acted as though I hung the moon and somehow I believed him. I was too caught up in dreaming. I still believed in fairy tales." She smiles at him again but it's nothing like the first; it has no hint of feeling, it's pure artifice. "'Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching.'"
He recognizes the quotation immediately, regretting that he ever broached the subject. "Not entirely gone," he says then, firmly. "She's there in that queenly way you lift your brow and that certainty of attitude, the way you carry yourself with such assurance."
That very delicate blush rises once more, a wintery pink dusting her white cheek. "Ah, that's the writer then," she says. "How often is he allowed to speak?"
"In your meanness too," he adds in good humor. "He's allowed out every other weekend at midnight if he's very good, and sometimes at Christmas too."
"I should like to meet him more often," she says. "It's a pity to keep him hidden away. I wonder that you got into the law, it seems so ill-suited."
"We all do what we must," he says lightly.
Understanding crosses her features briefly. "Indeed we do," she says. "I believe your street is here – I'm down a ways still."
He glances up at the street sign, having not even noticed where they we going. He returns his gaze to her with a smile. "I hope Mrs. Rhodes' meal is to your liking," he says playfully, as they both know Mrs. Rhodes has the worst cook in all of New York.
"I shall have her invite you too," she warns, "And I'll enjoy every minute you suffer."
"I expect nothing less."
Once they take their leave of each other, Dan spends the afternoon searching fruitlessly for yellow roses. He considers a replacement but decides nothing else would do as well, and so sends nothing except a note by messenger asking that he might call on her the next day. However, there is no response that night, or the morning after. Three days pass before he hears from Madame Grimaldi, three days of increasing mortification – he'd spoken too freely with her, made her reveal too much. The letter is dated unexpectedly from Skuytercliff.
I ran away, begins the brief missive, the day after our walk, and these kind friends have taken me in. I wanted to be quiet and think things over. You were right in telling me how kind they are; I feel myself so safe here. I wish that you were with us.
The tone of it surprises him. It seems to possess that omnipresent sadness of hers, which he'd thought seemed recently soothed. What was she running away from, and why did she need to feel safe? He worries there was some threat from abroad that sent her into hiding, but perhaps she's merely being overdramatic in her epistolary prose the way some are. Perhaps she only wanted to avoid a week of dinners with her grandmother.
Dan is disappointed to find her gone, but then he remembers that that very afternoon Nate had extended an invitation to spend the weekend at one of the Vanderbilt country homes on the Hudson, a few miles below Skuytercliff. Dan had refused originally but reconsiders now; Nate made sure to express that Dan was always welcome, were he to change his mind. So Dan sets aside his plans to enjoy a quiet Sunday with his newest shipment of books, sending off a note to let Nate know that he will be joining them after all.
Part Four