Marie’s dress finally arrived with great ceremony. There were three assistants at the door. Two held the dress between them, as though they were carrying a fainting lady to a couch. The third assistant, a young boy, was carrying the crinoline hoops that went under the dress over his head, as though he were a bird in a cage. Marie had her maids hurry to her room to help her put on the elaborate dress. She spun around, making the hooped skirt spin, knocking a maid over. Marie knew she was going to cause a stir with this dress. She looked in the mirror and was pleased. She knew all the young men were going to want to dance with her. She sighed, thinking she would have to dance with Philip. And she was very uncertain how she felt about him.
When they were little, Sadie had confided many times to Marie that her brother was an idiot. Marie thought maybe he had changed. He must have something of Sadie inside him. She wondered if he would invite her to visit his home. And she could then look through Sadie’s old room and her things. Surely they had left the room as it was. She pictured throwing herself down on the bed and inhaling the pillow deeply. If she inhaled strongly enough, all of Sadie would come back to her.
She thought Philip must be receiving news from Sadie. He must have letters. She was very curious what Sadie was up to. She wanted to talk about Sadie with somebody. That she’d be able to talk to him about Sadie was an enormous attraction. She felt the physical sensation of doing something she wasn’t supposed to creep through her body.
* * *
Philip arrived at the Midsummer Ball feeling nervous, knowing Marie would be there. He was wearing a black tailcoat over a pair of white-and-blue-striped pants, and a white shirt with a starched collar and a bow tie. He had a top hat that looked as though it might topple off at any moment. He had read over his Guidebook for Manners. If you were polite and guided the conversation, you would be fine. A woman expected a man to have a strong sense of purpose and a career. He had examined the ink drawing of the man with a bow tie and a mustache on the cover.
He approached Marie and asked her to dance. Marie naturally accepted. As she was dancing with him, she began to notice a resemblance to Sadie in his face. It had never occurred to Marie that Sadie and Philip looked alike. But the more she looked at his face, the more she thought she could see similarities between Philip and Sadie. The more they moved about the room, the more she began to imagine she was in the arms of Sadie, and she adored that feeling.
* * *
The morning after the Midsummer Ball with Philip, Marie realized she got everything she wanted in life except for Sadie. When she was a young girl and first saw Sadie, she worried the other girl was unobtainable. She had been more surprised by Sadie’s friendship than any gift she had ever received. But the impermanence of friendship frightened her then. It was as though she intuited it could not last.
Marie had felt a nagging sense of guilt ever since her postcard had gone unanswered. Whenever the name Arnett came up around Louis, as it occasionally did since the father was in politics, Marie’s father got a disconcerted look about him, as though he were still wary of the Arnetts turning on them. So Marie never brought them up and therefore had no news of Sadie and no way of knowing what she was thinking or doing. This caused her to feel so ashamed about having blamed Sadie for the shooting of the maid.
Now that she had seen Sadie in Philip’s face, she could not stop thinking about her. For the rest of the week, Marie felt as though her life was meaningless. Although she was busy all day, she felt strangely unoccupied. Although she excelled at everything, she felt she had accomplished nothing, and really couldn’t do anything at all.
At the Sunday picnic, Marie walked over to Philip herself. A group of children with large hoops ran in front of her. She passed a table of elaborately decorated square cakes that seemed to resemble a miniature maquette of Versailles. She looked at him and announced, “You may court me, but only if you try to get Sadie back. I would like her to return to Montreal. I would like her as a sister-in-law.”
“I will try my best,” Philip said.
* * *
A few days later, Philip was standing in the office of Louis Antoine, seeking permission to ask for his daughter’s hand. Louis knew he should consider this younger man’s proposition with sensitivity and poise. But looking at Philip, he was filled with so much contempt. He knew the Arnetts were social climbers. And as a social climber himself, he would never marry his daughter to one.
Louis was blue blooded himself even though his family had lost all their money. He had always had the ease and confidence of someone from an upper-class family. This boy was crude. He was rough around the edges. It was Philip’s desperation that bothered Louis the most. The boy was so aware of all the advantages Marie could bring him, it would make it impossible for him to ever actually love her. There were so many things to love about Marie that had nothing to do with her wealth. She was intelligent. She was lazy, but when she put her mind to something, it was slightly perturbing how quickly she was able to master it. Philip would want to destroy all that.
“I can tell by your expression you already know my answer to that question,” Louis Antoine said. “Because you know as well as I do you are no match for my daughter. She needs someone with a sense of humor. We are a family that likes to laugh. And you are dour. And maybe that’s all right for some young women. But not for Marie. You’ll bore her. She likes to be entertained. She dragged me all over the continent when she was still a girl, just to see new things. You want a wife who will stay at home and make you look good. That’s not Marie. She will outshine you everywhere you go. And you will have to find ways to make her not glow so brightly. I love my daughter. Why on earth would I want her to marry you?”
“You are wrong about me, sir,” Philip answered, staring hard at Louis.
“I can read a man like you. You think you are complicated, but you are an open book to me. I know what happens on the next page better than you.”
Louis had held himself back from saying what he really wanted to add. Which was that the idea of the Antoines and the Arnetts united as a family was grotesque to him. He had paid Philip’s sister’s school fees for years and made financial contributions to his idiotic father’s campaign. He hated how they were still always somewhere in his life, lurking. They would occasionally stand in his way, making their presence felt, as though they were temporarily blocking the sun, and then move away.
He knew when Philip walked out of the room this affair was not over. He might be done with the Arnetts, but the Arnetts were not done with him. The Arnetts would never be done with him.
* * *
Louis spoke to Marie about it at dinnertime. She and her father sat at opposite ends of a ridiculously long dining table. They would summon the waiter to them, whisper a message in his ear, and have him walk over to the other person to deliver it. They had found this great fun. Tonight, Louis was not in the mood for play.
“The Arnetts are going to bring up that ugly mess again. They are going to have me by the tail. They are going to pull every trick they have out of their hat. Honestly, it’s going to be a travesty. I don’t even know if I can eat tonight. The whole business is making me nauseous.”
“Tell them I will let Philip court me, but I want them to bring Sadie back.”