Splendor

by Anna Godbersen

  “It doesn’t matter, anymore, Lizzie. He’s gone, and thank God. I don’t know if I will ever forgive myself for waiting so long to come rescue you….” He nodded firmly to himself, as though dismissing a futile line of thought. “But what matters is that you, and your child, are all right.”

  Outside there was the chirping of birds, a horse’s hooves against the pavement on the other side of the park, a low rumble of traffic from the avenues.

  “When I came back, and heard you were married…that, too, was something I thought I’d never forgive myself for. I realized how foolish it was to think I could make myself into the man you wanted by going all the way around the world. I belong here, anyway, and I think, in my way, I can lead a noble life in the place I was born. I will, no matter—” Teddy broke off, clearing his throat. His face had grown slack and pale, and Elizabeth realized he was nervous. Meanwhile, the blood just below her skin had begun to hum. “But the surest way I know my life will be noble is if you would agree to be my wife, and to be with me for all the rest of my days.”

  The dainty manner of speaking that Elizabeth had recently assumed abandoned her now, and her mouth quivered in a little circle. “You don’t want me,” she whispered. She had meant to say something more articulate and persuasive, but the threat of tears was too great.

  Teddy’s reply was rushed, nervous: “We are neither of us new, Elizabeth. I assure you that I am not as perfect a gentleman as some would have me, either.” He squeezed his eyes shut, as though he was allowing some excruciating pain to pass. When he opened them again, his voice was steadier and he met her gaze. “But I have never for a moment wavered in my belief that we would make each other very happy, and I swear to you, with my whole being, and no matter the circumstances, I do absolutely want you.”

  Now it was Elizabeth who had to look away. The sight of Teddy’s earnest eyes, the sincerity with which all of him addressed her now, was too much. It caused a tide of emotion within her; it created almost too much feeling. She wanted to tell him nothing but yes, but her sense of propriety, never flagging, reminded her there were a few more things he deserved to be told. “You know Cairns wasn’t my child’s father. I was never…with him that way.”

  “I know. I knew you wouldn’t have married, like that, so suddenly, to someone merely convenient, if it hadn’t been a desperate situation. And I realized, a long while ago, that there must have been more to your kidnapping than was reported in the papers.”

  Elizabeth bent her head. She didn’t want to tell Teddy the whole story, but somehow she sensed that he was her friend, too, that he would understand. “His name was Will Keller; he was my father’s valet and coachman. I fell in love with him when I was a young girl and I had to be with him. It was impossible here, of course, so we went to California.” It was strange, after so much secrecy, to say these facts out loud. This was her history now, she realized; soon it would be in the past. “My father knew all along, I discovered, and he had tried to arrange something for us to live on. If my family hadn’t pulled me back…,” she trailed off as Teddy brought her hands firmly into his grasp.

  “Lizzie, I have loved you a long time.” The intensity of his gaze told her no more information was necessary. “I will always love you.”

  In the time it took him to speak these words, her whole face had become wet with tears. Her nose glistened with moisture, and she would have wiped it, but she didn’t want to let go of Teddy’s hands even for a second. “I was thinking, if the baby is a boy, that I’d like to call him Keller. Could we do that?”

  Finally a smile broke Teddy’s serious aspect. “Keller Cutting? I think it would be a very handsome name for a boy—or a girl. You know, when I picked out the rattle for you, I couldn’t help this feeling, that no matter who your husband was, or how sorry I felt for myself that I couldn’t have you, that it was a fine thing to see you become a mother, and that I was going to enjoy sending gifts to your child for many years.”

  “The rattle from Tiffany? You sent that?”

  He nodded. She opened her mouth to tell him what she had previously believed, but the joy in this realization—that it was Teddy who knew her so well—was too natural to require explanation.

  “When we were in Florida,” she went on, crying and laughing at once, “I wanted to kiss you so badly. It was only that there were so many complications, I felt so guilty over everything, and my life seemed so…” There were a hundred things she wanted to tell to him, but all of a sudden, in her rush of words, she realized that there was only one that mattered. “I love you,” she whispered.

  “You have no idea how long I’ve waited to hear you say that.”

  He pulled a monogrammed handkerchief from his coat pocket and tried to wipe away some of Elizabeth’s tears. Then he took her face in his hands, and brought it close to his. She gazed at him, seeing in this fractional moment of pause all the years when he had longed to do exactly this. She felt weak with the sweet expectation of a first kiss, and after that a whole life together. Their breath mingled, in the summertime hush, and then he turned his chin and touched his lips to hers.

  Forty Four

  A girl who has lost her reputation will, eventually, be let back into the fold of society’s little gatherings and grand showy parties, but she will never be allowed to forget her transgression, lest younger ladies fail to understand her cautionary tale and be tempted to repeat her mistakes.

  ——MRS. HAMILTON W. BREEDFELT, COLLECTED COLUMNS ON RAISING YOUNG LADIES OF CHARACTER, 1899

  THERE HAD BEEN DAYS, AND MAYBE EVEN WHOLE years, when it had not occurred to Diana that she lived on an island. The pier that jutted off Eighteenth Street and into the Hudson was not so far from the house she was born in, and yet the breeze, the salt air, the shouting, the heavy traffic of luggage and crates, the hundreds of passengers moving up the swaying planks, seemed another world entirely. No wonder, she thought, as she looked out on the Hudson—so populated with barges and tugboats and skiffs on a cloudless July day—she had felt trapped there; old New York was hemmed in by water on all sides, and it was only when a girl ventured to its borders that she saw how vast was the landscape over the high walls.

  A thin, khaki coat, belted at the waist, protected her from the wind and half covered her long, dark skirt. She wore a black bowler of magical significance, and she carried her little case in one hand and the booklet with her second-class cabin ticket and brochure and passenger list in the other. She had booked passage with her own money, which she had earned while traveling, and from selling news to Davis Barnard. Grass, her writer friend, had given her the names of friends to call upon in Paris, and of several hotels where she could live cheaply upon her arrival. Barnard had encouraged her to send him items, and promised that once she had established connections in her new city, she could write a weekly “Letter from Paris.” She was glad of the coolness rising from the water, for it numbed her a little; if not for that, she might have begun to really feel the fear and anticipation of leaving so much behind.

  She had put letters in the mail to her mother and aunt and sister; they would receive them tomorrow, or the following day, and hopefully they would understand what she had to do. Henry, she knew, had already received his letter, for she had delivered it yesterday in person, climbing the imposing stone steps of his monolith of a house, a kind of final act of improper behavior in her short career as a marriageable girl of old New York. It stung that he had not come for her sooner, but she had the gift of imagination, and some remote part of her knew that any second he would appear, each strand of his dark hair in place, walking at a fast, urbane gait, whispering an apology to her about all the loose ends he’d had to tie up before he could leave his old life behind, and then drawing her under his wing and up the plank.

  All the while, the great iron hulk rose many stories above her like some monster of the deep, its impenetrable black walls, the white paint above, all the portals and ropes and smokestacks up higher. Pretty soon they would be shouting for a
ny lagging passengers, and then she really would be leaving for good. It took her breath away, the impossibility of this leap, and yet she couldn’t believe it. She wouldn’t really believe it until she was on deck, and the water between her and land was too much to swim.

  She turned on the weather-beaten pier and let her eyes drift across the great collection of people who had arrived with all the trappings of travel, and all those who had come to bid them bon voyage. There was so much excitement and trepidation and sorrow in those faces—round, long, fat, youthful, or worn. There was such a concentration of waiting and expectation. She saw a man, striding through the crowd, his black jacket unbuttoned so the waistcoat was visible beneath it, his hair brilliantined to a fine sheen.

  Her lips parted and then a smile broke, as their eyes met. The fixated quality of Henry’s gaze indicated he had seen her a long time before she did him, and in a moment all her fear was gone and she knew she’d been right. Of course he had come. They were going to Paris together, and she need not worry or fret. Above them, benevolent clouds moved swiftly and silently over a concentrated blue. The shouting and movement continued all around, as though there was nothing remarkable about these two people, meeting this way, in front of a steamer bound for Europe. By the time Henry reached Diana, she was beaming. He took the ticket from her and put it in his jacket pocket. Then, wordlessly, he reached for her gloved hand and sank down on one knee.

  “I have not behaved as I should have—not this week, not ever. But neither have I ever met a girl I loved so much as you, and if you would agree to be my wife, I promise that I will spend the rest of my days correcting those original failures.” He looked up at her, his dark eyes—which were sometimes so hard to read—full of sincerity. There was no smile on his face. It was all a very serious variety of desire. In a few moments he presented a small box. “Diana, will you marry me? Stay here with me and be my wife? I promise, there shall be a proper engagement, and a great church wedding, and they can say whatever they want, damn them, but I will stand by you. Never again will I take your affections for granted.”

  Then he drew back the lid of the box, and Diana saw the ring he had picked. It was not like the one he had given her sister, or the one that Penelope wore in some sad pretense of a romantic engagement. It was shaped like a flowerhead with a giant sapphire at the center of a ring of diamonds set on a delicate yellow gold band. There was a femininity to it, but it was also bold and defiant, just like her. She knew that Henry had thought about her carefully as he made his choice, and this softened the tightness in her shoulders. Her lungs billowed with sea air. But in the next moment she heard the commentary that would soon begin, from women who called themselves her mother’s friends, or from Penelope loyalists, or from any number of people with too much time on their hands. “Who does she think she is wearing a ring like that?” they would say, for as long as she wore it, which would be forever if she and Henry wed.

  Forever, Diana thought, as though learning the word for the first time. Without waiting for a reply Henry removed her glove, stuffed it into the pocket with her ticket, and slipped the ring onto her finger. He stood and placed his hands on her neck so that his fingers thrust into her curls. She closed her eyes, and felt all of her swoon a little with the idea of Henry coming for her this way, persuading her to be his. His lips met hers in another few seconds, and the old magnetism between them came back in a rush, and she felt herself begin to give in.

  They might have gone on like that, kissing on the pier, despite the height of the sun and the number of people about, had not the wind picked up. But it did, knocking the hat off her head, rearranging her rich brown hair, and carrying the bowler sailing. She gasped unhappily. It was Henry’s hat, and he had given it to her when they had only just begun to play little games with each other, before they had come to truly love each other. The loss of that talisman was momentarily excruciating.

  “My hat!” she said, her brows drawing together disappointedly.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll get it back for you.” She gazed up at Henry’s face in profile, at his long jaw and defined cheekbones, as he gave the crowd and the docks a serious look to determine what had become of the wayward item. The way he stood, his appearance—so like a man that all of New York envied and desired—made her heart beat several times too fast. The anxiety of losing the hat faded; she was shocked by how quickly. A sheen came over her brown eyes, as though she might cry, and yet she was not remotely at risk of shedding tears.

  “No,” she said, grabbing his hands and holding them.

  He gazed down at her and for the first time a smile began to spread, as though she had just said something secret and a little bit naughty to him. “I should let it go?” he asked.

  “Yes.” She smiled back at him, feeling the warmth of a small and private moment. “Yes, let it go. But no—no I can’t marry you. Not here, in New York, like this.”

  “What?” the happy expression fell, immediately, from his face.

  “Oh, Henry.” The traces of a smile were still visible on her lips, but she could no longer look him in the eye. The certainty of what she had to do had come quickly, before words capable of explaining. “I wasn’t threatening to leave because you hadn’t made a romantic proposal. What courtship could ever be more romantic than ours? It’s that if I married you I would always be the compromise second wife, the one ladies warned their daughters not to become.”

  “What do they matter?” Henry’s voice was quick with urgency. “What can their thoughts possibly matter when I love you so well and need you by my side? My life is different now—I have responsibilities in this world that I must meet—and yet I don’t know how I’ll meet them if you are not behind me, my wife. I don’t care what they say or do.”

  She nodded and pretended to consider. If there were onlookers, neither she nor Henry would ever have known. “It’s not that I care what they say, and I know you do not. But I don’t want to live in a place where all I can hear is the whispering about what a little tramp I am. They don’t matter so much, except that they are New York, the people we would have to dine with over and over again, and their way of thinking is so impoverished, and being among them makes me sad. I want to hear other noises, other voices, I want to look down vistas that…,” she trailed off, for the crooked streets of ancient cities overwhelmed her thoughts, and she knew that the man before her could not see them. She bit her bottom lip and batted back her lashes and met Henry’s eyes. “I want to go to Paris.”

  “Then I shall go with you,” he replied, but she could see this was just what he felt he ought to say.

  “No, Henry. You belong here.” She removed the ring from her finger and placed it in his palm. Then she took the ticket and glove from his pocket. That golden quality, which had always marked him as rakish and lucky, abandoned him now, and she realized she’d struck him dumb. This was just as well, for she craved no more inducements. There was only a long solitary path up the ramp, and then the sensation of a whole building coming unmoored beneath one’s feet. “Don’t worry,” she went on. She gave a little laugh that was made husky with sadness and wisdom. “You will fall in love again. Only know that wherever I am, I will always have the marks of you on me. You were my first love.”

  “But—”

  Her arms clasped each other around his neck, silencing him, and the kisses came in sudden, intense bursts. They were soft and moist and repetitious, as though both were trying to drink something in for the final time, and might have gone on indefinitely had not the crew started shouting for any last passengers. Then all around them loved ones erupted in shouts and cheers to their husbands and children and friends high up on the saloon deck, and Henry and Diana were engulfed in confusion and movement. There was nothing more to say, so she clutched his hand and whispered, “Good-bye.” Then she picked up her suitcase and ran for the plank before they took it down.

  Forty Five

  I have seen it often: For many couples, all the golden splendor of a marriage occ
urs after the love has been lost.

  ——MAEVE DE JONG, LOVE AND OTHER FOLLIES OF THE

  GREAT FAMILIES OF OLD NEW YORK

  TO HER HORROR, PENELOPE WOKE TO THE VIEW of her own white-and-gold bedroom. She was at home, or whatever the Schoonmaker mansion was to her now. She wasn’t sure how she had come to be here, and the mental task of retracing her steps contained no small amount of dread for her. Someone had taken her hair down and her corset off, she discovered, as her hands moved over her person. There was a small egg-shaped bump on the side of her head, under her undone dark locks, which was tender to her fingertips, and when she rolled over to better see her environs she noticed the ivory skirt she had been wearing earlier cast across a chair. That was the skirt she’d selected to meet the prince of Bavaria, when she had still believed he would make her a princess. Oh, God, she thought, the prince of Bavaria. Then a wave of revulsion came over her as she remembered how publicly pathetic she had been. On the side of her bed Robber, her Boston Terrier, sat panting, his beady black eyes cast up at her as though in accusation.

  “Shut up,” she said, throwing back the blankets and wheeling her legs overhead and then bringing them down hard on the floor. The animal, frightened, went skittering forward across the carpet. She was dressed in a thin white silk chemise and her wedding rings. Her dark hair, without restraints of any kind, fell almost to her waist. She was thirsty, and for once in her life, felt more fear than hate. “What’s to become of us?” she asked Robber self-pityingly. But he was now half-obscured behind a hassock; at least he too seemed scared, although not as much as their desperate situation warranted. Penelope walked forward through the room—really it would be more accurate to say she stumbled, for she felt a little dizzy after her fall in the hotel, and her legs were bandy—searching for something to quench her thirst.