world would wonder why it did not live in the eternal splendor of these first families of Elm County.
I recognized many among them, and remembered even some to whom there was no introduction, remembered them by some stray remark or act. And then there were those whom I knew quite well, men like my old tutor, Mr. Fields, whom I spotted walking alone in the parade. He seemed to be studying the crowd, and when he saw me, he offered a small, thin smile and tipped his cap. I hadn’t seen him since our last lesson so many years ago, though I know now that our ending, on the tail of Ursa Minor, was itself a sign. I looked over to see if Maynard had seen Mr. Fields, but he was hypnotized by the glamour, his eyes wide as dreams, a toothy smile spreading across his face. He was not like them, and I can remember feeling ashamed for my part in this. I had done my best for him that morning, fitting him into his clothes, but between his proportions and his habit of pulling at his waistcoat and collar, no ensemble ever properly fit. Still, he was so very happy to be there. All year he’d nursed his indignities, but now he hoped, through his merits as a sporting man, he would be returned to the fold. They were his people, his by regal blood, and so there he stood before that parade, with no power to distinguish his own place in it. He pulled at his shirt collar again, laughed loud, and then waded out into the slow parade of Quality, all moving toward the races.
* * *
—
Maynard sighted Adeline Jones, whom he’d once wooed, as much as Maynard had ever wooed anyone. I had heard that she’d quit Elm County, quit all of Virginia, for a lawyer up North. But the races had brought Adeline back, I assumed, if only to take in the changes in her old home. She was a kind woman, and Maynard had always taken this kindness as an invitation to her affections. Now he angled his way through the crowd, waving his hat, and approaching her said, “Hey there, Addie! How are you this day?”
Adeline turned and greeted Maynard with an edgy smile. They talked for a few minutes and then started walking again with the processional, Adeline ill at ease, and Maynard excited to have attached himself to someone. I shadowed them from the edge of the avenue, as all the other tasking men shadowed their charges, watching at a distance as Maynard grew more excited in conversation and Adeline’s tolerations were taxed. But she bore it well, as the ladies of Quality were trained to do. Her mistake had been appearing here without a gentleman at her side, one who could shield her from Maynard’s conversation, which was now so boisterous that I could hear it above the din of the crowd. He was going on about Lockless, about its prosperity and charms, about her mistake in not succumbing to them, and he did this in tedious jests that were only lightly concealed boasts, and Adeline was forced to bear all this with a smile.
When they reached the racetrack, I watched as she was at last rescued by a passing gentleman, who extended his hand to Maynard and then quickly, sizing up the shape of things, rushed her away. Maynard paused at the gates, and then looked up into the stands to the jockey club, just beginning to fill with subscribers, where he’d once held forth but had been unceremoniously ejected. I walked closer now, with Adeline gone, then stood off to the side and looked to Maynard, who was now lost in a world of painful longing, for race-days past when he was welcomed, or at least allowed, among the gentlemen of the county. And then I saw the insult compound as Maynard’s eyes shifted from the gentlemen to the area demarcated for the ladies of Virginia, so that they need not suffer the gambling, coarse talk, and cigars of the men, and in that region I saw Maynard’s intended, Corrine Quinn, who seemed to have suffered nothing in her standing for her association with Maynard. And Maynard was no longer smiling, for he felt himself henpecked. There was his future wife, elevated to a standing higher than his own.
I peered into the ladies’ club as subtly as I could to get a better look