12
GREAT EXPECTATIONS AT STEINWAY HALL
The telegram arrived by breakfast the next morning. The telegram, and then the trouble. Just four clipped lines: DUCAL BALL—CARMICHAEL HALL—EIGHT SHARP TONIGHT—CHARLES ELIOT ATTENDING.
The telegram’s meaning had been conveyed clearly enough, at least to Laurie: Grandfather Laurence wanted Laurie to represent the family at the famed Carmichael-Carlthorpe Ducal Ball. Beyond that, the details didn’t matter; clearly some Carmichael or another had sent a telegram to Mr. Laurence via his solicitor—the only way the old man received telegrams—after the curtain had fallen on Verdi.
“We can go? The four of us?” Meg was nearly bursting with the news. A society ball, especially this society ball, would be worth the trip from Concord alone.
But Jo was angry. It was amazing, she thought privately, how quickly a certain set of people could make the rest of the world fall in line. Even people as powerful as the Laurences. The speed implied some urgency, whether due to the proximity of the event itself, or the desirability of Laurie’s attendance. Which of the two it was, Laurie was too much of a gentleman to say, which only made Jo more cross as the morning progressed—not that she would admit it. Not to him.
“If you need to go, just say it,” Jo said, pacing about the drawing-room of the boarding house.
“It’s just the bit about Charles Eliot,” Laurie said glumly.
“Yes, about this Mr. Eliot—why does your grandfather care if he’s going to be at a ball?” asked Meg.
“You know how my grandfather feels about my going to Harvard.”
“Of course I do,” said Jo.
“Of course we do,” Meg repeated.
“Eliot’s the new president. Only just arrived.”
“Oh.” Jo sank into the hard cushion of the nearest wing-chair. “Well. That clarifies things. Is he friends with Mr. Laurence?”
“They’re not close. All Grandfather’s said to me is that Eliot’s threatening to abolish the Greek requirement, which would put poor Brooke out of half his line of work.”
“Really? I can’t imagine you’d be too put out by that, yourself.”
“Of course not. It’s ancient Greek. But still—Brooke.”
“Well, what does Brooke expect you to do? Go argue on behalf of studying ancient Greek, in your atrocious ancient Greek?”
“Brooke? Of course not. Though he’s said he’s going. I suspect he wants to make his case in person, or else gape at old Hat again.”
Meg looked pale.
“Well, then?” Jo asked. “What’s the problem?”
Laurie sighed, sinking into the arm-chair next to Jo. “I expect Grandfather just wants me to go to the ball to act the fine gentleman. You know, sort of play the game a bit. Make an impression on him.”
“Is that important?”
“Yes? No? How should I know? It’s important to my grandfather, so it’s important, right? Isn’t that what you say when you’re arguing his side of everything? Which, by the way, you seem not to be doing at the moment?”
Jo sighed. “Laurie. Surely your grandfather won’t expect you to miss this. It’s Charles Dickens. He hasn’t been to the States since before the war.”
“I know, but my grandfather sent direct orders.”
Jo was starting to see that arguing was pointless. “Fine. Go to your ball. Go hobnobbing and Harvarding about with your fancy society friends. Meg and I will go to see Dickens.”
“Jo.” Meg made a noise of despair. “Truly, it’s why I came. But—a ducal ball? After you’ve written so many imaginary ones, in all our little plays? How can we miss the very thing itself?”
“I suspect we shall manage,” Jo said, irritated.
Meg was less resolved. “If we go to Dickens, we’ll miss the ball. And if we go to the ball, we’ll miss Dickens.”
“That is, generally, how the laws of the physical universe seem to work, yes. One place, one time,” Jo answered, wryly.
Although normally an audience with Charles Dickens would have been the most exciting thing Meg had ever witnessed, it did not compare to a true society ball, apparently.
One where Mr. Brooke would be in attendance as well—as Jo would have predicted.
“How are we to decide?” Meg looked distraught.
The idea that there was even a decision to be made was baffling to Jo, who was hurt her sister would prefer Brooke’s company to her own—hurt that she would abandon her, hurt that their childhood game meant somehow less to her.
Jo changed tack. “Meg, you wouldn’t make me go alone? And have Laurie waste the ticket?”
“Of course not, Jo. No self-respecting Pickwickian would do that.” Meg looked truly distressed.
“Jo,” Laurie groaned. “It’s not the ticket I’m worried about, you nincompoop. I’m not going to leave you unchaperoned at night in New York City.”
“Our chaperone? Is that what you think you are?” Jo laughed.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“You don’t think we can handle ourselves at a literary event? Which one of us, might I ask, is the author here?”
“Jo, don’t be like that,” Meg chided. “Laurie is trying to be a gentleman.”
“Laurie is a gentleman,” said Jo. “He will go off to his gentlemanly world—to the uppertens—and you and I will go off to ours, Meg. We shall all be alarmingly fine on our own, and possibly a good sight less dull than we might be in some other people’s company.”
“Jo,” Meg said. A warning: Meg was letting Jo know she was close to crossing the invisible line between her usual teasing and true disrespect.
Laurie bowed his head in mock supplication. “Your company is never dull, Miss March. I might go so far as to say upperones.”
The compliment was lost on her.
Jo glared. “And yet oddly enough, Mr. Laurence, I, for one, am finding this whole morning to be exceptionally tiresome.”
When she stalked out of the room, her volume of Great Expectations in her hand, he knew better than to stop her.
JO AND MEG, Laurie and Brooke had negotiated a truce as they slipped across the cobblestones of Fourteenth Street, where Steinway Hall and Charles Dickens awaited. The agreement was thus: Laurie, Meg, and John Brooke were to accompany Jo to the Dickens event, then all but Jo would travel together to Carmichael Hall. Once there, Laurie would send the hired carriage back to Steinway Hall to await Jo at the close of Mr. Dickens’s appearance. Jo would make her own way back to their rooms in the carriage and then send it back to the Ducal Ball for the rest of them.
Jo could not contain her excitement, could hardly stop talking, could barely catch her own breath—all to the continual amusement of Mr. Brooke and Meg. “Can you imagine it? That we are seeing this inconceivable spectacle with our own eyes?”
“I’d rather witness it through your eyes,” Laurie said with affection as he pulled her just out of the path of a passing carriage, though Jo hardly noticed.
As they crossed Fourteenth Street, the atmosphere was that of a great carnival, or a festival, Jo thought. The air was electric, wild with excitement. A throng of readers had camped out on blankets, forming a long line that snaked all the way from the entrance to around the block. From the look of it, readers had come out by the thousands.
“Look at them, Laurie. All those readers!” Jo was breathless. She pulled her cape around her shoulders. Underneath she was wearing the well-cut dress Niles had sent to her at Orchard House, in congratulations for the success of her publication, as if it held some badge of writerly authority stitched into its hem. She barely even noticed how glum Laurie’s mood grew as they came to the entrance. He said little, dutifully tramping next to her, his hands stuffed into his pockets.
“Mr. Snodgrass! Are you quite delirious?” Meg called from a few paces behind, where she and Mr. Brooke lagged.
“Quite beside myself, Pickwick,” Jo shouted back. “Quite.”
But even so, she found herself increasingly nervous with every step, as if she herself would be performing on the stage that evening instead of Dickens, which was also ridiculous.
Now she looked over at Laurie, who had taken her hand to pull her through a particularly clogged corner. “I wonder if he’ll read from Great Expectations or something new. Something unpublished?”
“This way. Watch the step,” Laurie said, looking back to catch sight of Mr. Brooke and Meg behind them before shrugging at Jo. “You mean like his overdue sequel?”
“Teddy!” Jo hit him with her fan. “You mustn’t spoil tonight! This is very important.”
“You don’t have to tell me, Jo. I’m the one who got the tickets, remember?”
“I do! And I will be forever in your debt, Theodore Laurence. Josephine March in the presence of Charles Dickens himself. I could die, Teddy.”
“This was supposed to be our grand finale, the culmination of Pickwickery years in the making, the greatest night of the whole trip!” He was cross, indeed—probably because they were in sight of the main doors now.
“Must you really go, Teddy? I’m bereft that you and Meg aren’t getting to see him.”
“Do you imagine I’d miss it if I didn’t, Jo?”
Now they stood side by side in the great throng of book-clutching readers nearest the entrance.
Jo nudged his shoulder, and he nudged her back, finally smiling. “Oh, I’m just sad I’m missing the chance to sit by the side of the beloved authoress Josephine March, even if her curls do still smell like the fireplace poker.”
She sniffed. “Chestnuts, actually.” She turned to look, and sure enough, Meg was holding a paper cone full of them, Mr. Brooke still putting away his coin purse. I wonder how many lessons those cost, Jo thought. She didn’t even want to imagine the price of the tickets.
“You have your tickets?” Meg asked, offering a chestnut.
Jo waved it away with the slender envelope, which she clutched so tightly her fingertips were starting to lose sensation. “Glued to my hands.”
“Don’t lose sight of them. Not in a crowd like this,” Mr. Brooke said.
“I won’t.” Jo leaned to kiss Meg’s cheek. “Have fun at your ball—but no duels, fisticuffs, or revelations of long lost and perhaps previously shipwrecked siblings, please.”
“Those only happen at your balls, Jo.” Meg teased.
“Mine and Roderigo’s,” Jo said, a wicked twinkle in her eyes. Then she turned toward the entrance—
Laurie looked suddenly concerned. “I don’t know, do you really think you’ll be all right if we go? You’ll wait right here until the doors open?”
“Yes, Grandfather.” Jo smirked. “We’ve already been over this. I promise, I won’t wander off and I won’t speak to strangers.”
“Don’t be flip, Jo,” said Meg. “You are taking a chance, being here alone.”
“With affection, I can take care of myself,” Jo said, exasperated.
“With affection, when you say with affection it means with irritation,” Laurie snorted. “And I didn’t say you couldn’t take care of yourself, did I, Miss March?” Now he winked. “Maybe I’m just worried for the strangers.”
Jo pointed. “Now. Go!”
And with a squeeze of his arm and a quick wave to Meg, Jo was off.