The Countess Garibaldi was making preparations for a dinner party. What this meant was that her servants were making the preparations, and she would claim the credit without lifting a finger. No, no, her manicurist was lifting her fingers as the countess reclined on a lounge in her boudoir, while her kitchen was roaring with activity downstairs, and her maids dragging mops over floors, and her footmen unboxing fine china, with her faithful butler helming these domestic maneuvers—for if the countess would not stir from her boudoir, she was still paying the bill, and her standards would be maintained.
There was, however, one wrinkle. The footman responsible for arranging the tablecloths and napkins made an unfortunate discovery, which he brought to the butler’s attention. The issue was a stain, but not just any stain.
Thankfully the butler was a man with much experience. He drew the footman aside before there could be any panic. What he wanted to know was how such a stain had been made.
But the footman could appreciate what this development meant. After all, who would not have been able to appreciate it? Nothing about the upcoming party could be substandard. Luminaries would be in attendance. One small trifle might precipitate ruin, and this stain was no trifle. The butler did not want to imagine what might happen were it not removed. But the footman could imagine what might happen, couldn’t he?
The footman could. Action had to be taken without drawing any attention.
Having consulted with his superior, the footman’s next measure was to attempt eliminating the stain through his own devices. He went into a washroom and scrubbed the soiled linen under a faucet. But the hot water would not help; nor would the scrubbing. The soap in the washroom would not help either. He tried using brushes. He tried using sponges. It was evident that an expert would be required.
The footman managed to corner a maid in the pantry whose discretion had been established on previous, happier occasions. She was mistaken to assume that such occasions would reveal their sequel now, though, and when she saw the stain her first reaction was to lunge for the doorknob, but the footman intercepted her. She had repaired textiles before; could she not orchestrate some magic with a hot iron or anything like that?
The maid knew that her greatest trial had arrived. She examined the fabric at arm’s length. Its defect was beyond her science, but she would wage whatever war she could.
The next sequence discovered the footman and maid in a sequestered laundry, where chemicals were arranged along the shelves, and tubs filled with lye stood on the floor equipped with corrugated boards. There was detergent encrusted in the drains and steam in the air, and in this laboratory every method was concocted to salvage the linen that human logic could devise. The result, unfortunately, was no better than the original problem, and when the maid outstretched it damply with her fingertips, it might have been a black spot on a bible leaf.
The footman began to manifest a more visible anxiety. The maid could not relieve him; the maid could not relieve herself; the maid at this juncture foreswore all involvement but the footman was desperate and dogged her for more aid.
In searching the closets, the attics, the cellars. The linen belonged to a set. Perhaps there was another duplicate stored somewhere.
They began to poke into every nook and cranny, plundering the upstairs and the downstairs, with the maid deeply regretting, as she unhinged the lid from a dust-covered trunk packed with lace handkerchiefs, that she had not married the local tinsmith as her mother had advised five years ago. The footman was meanwhile ransacking wardrobes and chests, diving into bureaus, turning out drawers from dressers. There were endless brocades, crochets, damasks, quilts, silks, and satins, but none matched the particular mode that the countess had selected for the party.
It was only after two hours had passed that the footman belatedly realized he had been abandoned. He was kneeling, sorting through a cupboard, when the maid didn’t reply to some question.
The sky was darkening outside the window. A grandfather clock chimed from the entrance hall. He felt that he had come to a crisis.
One final recourse presented itself. A shop down the street provided many household furnishings for the countess’s estate, including such fashionable wares as Sèvres porcelain. The footman did not obtain permission but departed unnoticed through a rear doorway and made as prompt a pilgrimage to the establishment as his legs could manage. He had, in his pocket, a watch, whose minute-hand he monitored with mounting agony until he stood outside the shop ringing the bell. He had to ring the bell because the door was locked at the day’s end, although he prayed he might still catch the clerk.
He caught the clerk. That wizened man looked like a miracle made flesh when he opened the latch. The footman did all that he could to explain the circumstance, extending the stained linen for the clerk to examine. He required the same fabric, the same cut, the same pattern, and he required it now.
But he could not get it now, for it wasn’t in stock.
It would have to be specially ordered—from France. The clerk could recall when the countess had first commissioned it. She had taken great pains to employ an exclusive manufacturer. Would anything else serve instead?
The footman repeated this miserable inquiry to himself on his return journey. The party’s theme would have to be altered, new colors chosen, different decorations selected, which would necessitate another conference with the butler. He would have to screw his courage to the sticking-place, and when he reentered the house he was prepared, but then he turned the corner and saw the butler in the dining room laying the silver.
He began to speak, but could not find his voice. The butler’s broad and black-jacketed back was like a malevolent field into which the world’s light had been drawn and diffused, and the footman could only tremble.
At last the butler reached one place setting and, glancing behind, glimpsed the footman, which was convenient because that place setting happened to be the very one wanting its linen. Had the footman fulfilled his duty in relation to a certain unmentionable setback?
There was commotion in the hallway before any answer could be given. Guests had begun to arrive and would need the butler’s attention. The footman would please see to it that the table’s final element was in order.
The footman, dreadfully, did see to it.
More guests continued to arrive, and when the Countess Garibaldi made her debut in the salon, then the evening had truly started. Her famous wit was on display, along with her famous beauty. Everything had been accounted for to the last detail, from the crystal to the curtains to the carpets. There were trays laden with caviars and canapés, and piquant music, and general mirth, for the company had been curated to ensure that everyone was both engaging and engaged. It was silently comprehended, amongst all those present, that a bright star in society had gained a new apex, and that the countess, when she laughed delightfully at someone’s anecdote, for example, was sitting at a heretofore unprecedented zenith. She had become what others wanted to become; more—by becoming it, she had herself created the demand.
Now there was nowhere to go but into the dining room, where the table was abundant with orchids, and art chiseled in ice, and a servant stationed to pull back each seat for every guest. It was at this fateful moment, while the countess was signaling for wine and the kitchen doors parting for the first course, that a minor poet happened to glance down and notice something… unpleasant.
It would be unmerciful to document what specifics were involved in the subsequent and immediate downfall suffered by the Garibaldi legacy. Suffice it to remark that the dinner party ended with catastrophe, that much sport was made in the papers, that ridicule engendered ostracism, that loans were called in with an efficiency verging upon brutality, and that fortunes and families were reduced into shambles in the aftermath.
When the scandal was traced, the footman responsible was met with such outrage, even from common people on the street, that he could never remove the stain from his own character, and concluded his days penniless in a garret.
The butler, whose senior role in household management was not inexcusable, delivered a guilty verdict upon himself with a pistol.
The maid could not be found, having fled the country while the party was still underway.
And as for the Countess Garibaldi, whose friendships had been dissolved as rapidly as sugar into absinthe, her ultimate disinheritance and excommunication imparted her with a wandering, distracted attitude. She was committed to a sanitarium and never appeared in the public eye again.