But her heart dropped, and her limbs went slack with disappointment.
The nobody was gone—he had disappeared into the ship too soon to witness her triumph—and there was just the hole of an open doorway where he had been.
Four
By the morning of the Princess’s second day at sea, the humiliating incident by the map room was to Vida nothing more than an amusing anecdote. By the second evening it seemed an odd aberration in an otherwise thrilling journey. And by the third morning it had become for her a neat lesson in never doubting oneself. She was on a quest, and any quest comes with little ups and downs. Perhaps her parents were still nervous about the propriety of her behavior, about her reputation being ruined. But they could not argue with the proof of Fitzhugh’s interest. By the third afternoon of their journey, Vida had collected the following evidence that she was well on her way to a proposal:
ONE note from the famous Fitzhugh Farrar, on a gold-embossed card that bore the logo of the Farrar Shipping Line and a little illustration of the Princess herself, and upon which was written in elegant script what a pleasure it was to have danced with her. (How giddily she and Nora had discussed it when it arrived! She did hope the couple in the next cabin didn’t hear them, as that sort of girlish enthusiasm really was not the image Vida was trying to project.)
TWO invitations to dance, on the second night after dinner. One might have been taken as an obligatory gesture, since their names had been associated in the columns. But two, Vida thought her parents and everyone else would surely understand, meant that she had become a fixture in his thoughts, that by the third evening he would dance with no one else, unless not doing so would make him seem rude. And the two dances didn’t really convey the attention he had lavished on her. For all last night, from across the ballroom, his eyes had searched for her with such intensity that she forgot the other girls who (as that mysterious nobody had truthfully pointed out) were always trying to throw themselves in his way from every corner.
THREE minutes of thrilling conversation, that morning after breakfast, when he was passing through on his way to meet with the ship’s captain—not thrilling precisely because of anything that was said, but rather because of the way he looked at her, as though there was nowhere else he would ever want to look.
And lastly, and most crucially:
FOUR more days on board the ship in which to make Fitzhugh Farrar fall so madly in love with her that he would not tolerate the prospect of continuing on to Australia without her. She wanted to be at his side when Honolulu came into view, and for Dame Edna and everybody else to remark how quickly she had won this supposedly unattainable bachelor.
But just now, on the third afternoon of their voyage, there was only the endless expanse of ocean, and the cool whip of wind on her face as their floating fortress moved steadily in the direction of that grand (and very socially acceptable) future. Vida had gone with her parents to the lido deck on the very top of the ship, where on warmer days the first-class passengers sunbathed and swam in the swimming pool, to tally all these proofs of Fitzhugh’s affection. Once they were convinced, Mother and Father’s conversation pivoted to prattle about the ship’s amenities, much as they might turn over the china at a new acquaintance’s home.
“I suppose it’s all right,” her father said about something or other.
“The food is good,” Mother replied. “For being prepared at twenty-one knots per hour.”
To which her father exclaimed, as though this were some sort of scandal: “The food would be good anywhere, my love! Mr. Selvedge told me the chef is quite famous in Paris, and was employed for a time by the great Sarah Bernhardt. The man is an artist.”
A part of Vida’s brain listened to her parents’ small talk. But another part was focused on the other first-class passengers, strolling on deck or lounging nearby; on the sweep of her petal-pink dress spread over the deck chair and onto the polished boards of the deck itself; and the angle of her hat which, while protecting the pale perfection of her skin, still showed just enough of her face that if Fitzhugh were to come passing by he would see her immediately from her best angle.
A couple were ambling toward her in the direction of the bow. Her blood quickened. For a few seconds together her eyes were sure the man was Fitzhugh. The woman on his arm was uncommonly beautiful. Her dress was a shade of blue similar to the wide sky that went on forever and ever behind her. A broad hat decorated with little white flowers topped her head. Ropes of blond hair were twisted around her neck and down her breast, like a maiden in a fairy tale. Her mouth was a small red fruit and her eyes were wide lavender lakes. Vida’s heart sank a little with this sight, and even when her eyes adjusted and she realized it was not Fitzhugh, but merely a man very like him, she still felt a little helpless over how much she had cared.
“Striking similarity, don’t you think?”
Vida had been staring, she realized, and was so focused on the passing couple that she had not noticed Dame Edna arriving on the chair beside her.
“My, you do pop up,” Vida said before she could think better of it.
“Get used to it, dear. If you want to move in the best circles, that is. I long ago mastered the art of arriving in silence. One does overhear such things that way.”
The columnist, too, wore a hat, an impressively ribboned and bedecked thing of vivid green, and her coat was also of her signature color. As Vida took in the coat, she became aware for the first time that the air had a little freeze to it.
“Recognize him, my dear?”
“Oh!” Vida’s heart lightened as she came to understand. “That’s the brother, isn’t it?” She sat up and watched as the figure of Fitzhugh’s older brother, Carlton, ambled along arm in arm with the woman in blue. “And his wife, Camilla.”
“Yes. Pretty, isn’t she?”
“Very,” Vida replied, although it wasn’t really Camilla’s prettiness that concerned her, but what kinds of leisure activities she enjoyed and how Vida might sort of accidentally come across her, and become friends with her, thus making her conquest of Fitz all the more inevitable. Plus, when they were sisters-in-law, Vida wanted to be sure she was invited to all the best parties. “What’s she like?”
“Oh, she’s even fancier than he is, if you can imagine it. She’s an Astor on her mother’s side, and her father’s family, the Joneses, own half the copper mines in this country, and have been deciding who is and isn’t invited to things for half a century. Their wedding was one of the most anticipated matches of the decade—they were married in Grace Church, and it was a frenzy among New York society to be invited. Many who weren’t are still bitter.”
“And what sort of secrets do you have on her?”
The couple had disappeared between one of the ship’s mighty smokestacks, and Vida’s parents were on to discussing the comfort of the beds in the first-class cabin, the relative virtues of the sheets and softness of the pillows.
Dame Edna tilted her head and her mouth flexed in amusement. “I do have a little story, though you may not wish to know it.”
Vida hoped her face didn’t reveal how much she did in fact wish to know it. “Tell me,” she breathed. “I will be ever so much in your debt.”