All Bedlam Courses Past (part thirty-two)

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Two

Avarice Creeping On

(part thirty-two)

“Well, there’s a nuisance for you. He promises to tell and doesn’t. Seems to misapprehend the nature of affairs altogether, my poor old cousin. And your cousin can’t tell you any of it.”

“You were fond of your brother. And something Mr. Sartain calls a tragedy.”

“My brother, Miss Gremot, went down to New Orleans to meet a young lady, and met with the malaria instead. Bad luck for the Everard clan. I’ve thought fairly often that had been our only chance.”

Thacker, at the Cookesville depot, cradled her bag, waggish in clearing space for a grand ushering forward. He touched his hat to everyone, and everyone eyed, or avoided eyeing, Élucide’s traveling costume.

Carolina Melvin had done her a tour de force in rose and gold. The skirt introduced cornered pleats—to anyone’s knowledge unseen in Cookesville. The jacket sleeves were demi-gigot, buttoned from elbow to glove. The hat was freshened with summer chiffon; the shoes were vanilla and saddle, laced with blue ribbon.

(The blue, per Godey’s, that “touch” a fashionable woman will add to express her charming whimsy.)

Glad rags and new intrigue left Cookesvillians short-leashed and circling…as Thacker (writing the Vanguard’s “Valley Eye” column) could easily drop names.

Mr. Ryan-Neville is leaving us, for a short trip south.

A local charitable lady is looking rosy-cheeked, coming home from a stay at the hot springs, down Van Buren way.

This train made only the connecting leg to Owensboro, the luxury car coupled to two coaches…and losing some dignity hauling a flatbed of lumber. But Uncle George, like a man with a frisky team, liked having it out for exercise. Élucide and Thacker and a few of the Columbia’s guests had the La Farge skylight, the plush sofas, the chestnut paneling, the bar, its waiter, and the car porter, to themselves. They had fans overhead, but Indiana was in the heat of the year, Kentucky and Tennessee more southerly yet…

Her shoes, she thought, were the worst of the culprits.

“Will you have an ice, Miss?” Thacker asked.

To the waiter she said, quicker than her escort could presume: “Lemon.”

She was miffed with Thacker, the mood grown since those ushering ways had begun to wax. Guiding touches, officious intermediations…

He would carry on like that, since her father had given him license. Thacker was thorough enough, even, to laugh at her clothes in lieu of Papa; to do this behind a private smile.

But a smile of only Thacker-caliber. She felt she would forgive him…once.

37

Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part thirty-three)

(2023, Stephanie Foster)