CHAPTER 34
The gown for the Les Mysterieuses ball progressed daily toward what Alice and Constance had envisioned. Alice had Constance in the sewing room constantly for fine adjustments in the fit. Though Alice never mentioned it, Constance’s fairly straight figure, narrow hips, and small bustline presented a challenge, much like her own. Not to their design vision, but to the current demands of popular fashion, to which the gown must adhere. The swan neck S shape was de rigueur. Constance’s natural shape was definitely not that of the Gibson girl rage. The gown would need ruching for augmentation at the bosom, but the small bustle would serve at the hips. Though this contorted image was touted to represent a “new” woman, supposedly a freer one, the unnatural corseting required was hardly synchronistic with the ideals of suffragist-oriented women like Dorothea Richard. In fact, such corsets had the potential to do actual damage to the ribs and body. However, beauty trends tended to be dictated by reasons that, at the natural level, had little to do with actual beauty. And women tended to follow them.
Alice had arrived at a resilient recognition of this truth. She had spent the bulk of her life on a Midwestern prairie farm. Along with her mother, she had worn clothing that fit her body and not the reverse. Clothing that had not interfered with milking or churning, chasing the hens or gathering eggs. Her skirts had been wide enough that when she mounted a horse, she could throw one leg over, remain modestly covered, but ride like the boys. No corsets or lacing had interfered with her freedom. No one had cared the size of her waist as long as she could help plant the corn and hoe weeds. Beauty had emerged from her mother’s fingertips, her nimble use of needle and bright-colored thread. Beauty had lain in what sort of stitch could marry two scraps on a quilt and what other stitch mirrored a rose or a thorn or the seeded center of a sunflower.
It was only with the shock of her arrival in Chicago, her work at Carson Pirie Scott & Company, her initiation into the fine details of women’s fashion that she had grasped the stringent burden on women of adherence to whatever stereotype might be considered beauty at the moment. Carson’s had presented her a mandate that as their employee, even though she generally worked out of sight, she had to adhere to the current vogue. To uphold the fine image of the enterprise. She was not to betray their image.
Alice remembered her first corset fitting, the corsetiere she had visited at the store’s insistence. She had grown up working with measurements. Alice and her mother had worn nothing they did not make. She knew how to do this. Yet apparently not. Alice’s humiliation at disrobing for this woman only increased as the session continued. The corsetiere measured not only around her at every imaginable circumference but also every vertical curve from shoulders to knees. Knees? How could that possibly apply? Yet it did. Something to do with adjusting the posture. Now, of course, she comprehended how that step worked, but at the time she simply had difficulty standing still. The corset interested her not in the least, but she was immensely curious as to its construction: fifty empty channels through which slender bands of whalebone would be fed, all these intricate dimensions not just to rearrange her shape but designed specifically for her shape. The precision of the process fascinated her, though she felt no inclination to ever make such a thing herself. The perfection of the process intrigued her: the planning, the measuring, the challenge of assembling all these pieces, and then the ornamentation—ruffles, rosettes, ribbons—all to disguise what was deemed a necessity. This was like her crazy quilts, hers and her mother’s, all those fragments of fabric coming together into something practical, then decorated in such a manner that its practicality took second place. Only the corset was to confine her, make her acceptable to a world where she was a stranger. Those quilts had been to warm her, comfort her with the sense of home and belonging.
The thought of belonging brought her back to the work at hand. She took a deep breath. Everything necessary to enhance Constance’s shape would be accomplished. The corset would diminish her waist, but not to that of a maiden. Constance had borne three children, after all. However, it would make a considerable difference. They had adjusted each fragment of fabric and trim. The gown would fall perfectly from that corseted waist. Extravagant Juliet sleeves augmented the illusion of a small waist even more. Additional rows of compact ruffles added generosity to the bosom of the corset, and Alice had cut the bosom of the gown generously, with almost undetectable gathers along each side to amplify the volume. Analee had beaded the dove at the center, from which flowed the expanding lines of pearls around the bodice. That embellished open-winged bird would further draw the eye, adding to the illusions of ample bosom and tiny waist. The mysterious court attendant at this historic ball would be of no boyish shape, but as womanly as the next. Then would come her mask and the challenge to make her visibly invisible.
Constance and Alice had not discussed a design for the veil and headpiece, but Alice had her ideas, and Analee conspired with her to bring them to fruition. The veil must conceal Constance’s identity without appearing to do so overtly. It must simply enhance the beauty of this gown.
*
Constance slept poorly. Dreams she had no memory of woke her more than once. Unable to find a comfortable position, she took the extra pillow and wrapped her arms around it in something akin to an embrace. She nestled her face against it as she had once nestled her babies in her arms, inhaling their soft, clean milky scent. David was gone. Her grieving would never end. Now her girls were in danger. All because of Benton. Was the Black Hand simply using these messengers to frighten her? Or was their threat against her children meant to leave her no choice but to submit to their extortion? At some point she dozed off again.
“Mama, Mama.” Maggie was shaking her. “Mama, I have a bad dream.”
Constance came alert, awake, on guard.
“A bad dream? What did you dream, Maggie?” Constance rolled over and lifted the child into bed, a warm, beloved child in lieu of that pillow. But a child with nightmares, a child who was afraid.
“I don’t know, Mama. Just make me scared.”
“You can stay with me, baby.” Constance ran her fingers through the tousled curls and shifted her weight to embrace Maggie fully. “Shh. Now, you go to sleep.”
Sleep evaded Constance. Pulgrum’s failure to capture this threatening man had shaken her. Who could have predicted that crash of falling lumber on the dock? At precisely the wrong moment. The fleeing of that man. And to return and find he had seized one of her girls, touched her, terrified her. Now here was Maggie in her bed, fearful of bad dreams. And she beside her daughter, horrified of much worse things than dreams.
Constance’s fear had drained from her any trust of Pulgrum and his detectives. And had dampened her faith in Dorothea. She would raid her trust and pay off these thugs. Would the trustees allow her to withdraw such a sum? Whatever it took to protect her girls, she would do. She had lost one child to Benton. Money was nothing more than money. She could not lose another child. She could not let her girls be injured. Or terrified. She must take care to protect herself in the bargain. Her girls could not lose their mother. Though they might regardless. Though Pulgrum might arrive at her door any day with a warrant for Benton’s murder.