Rumors

by Anna Godbersen

  Lina’s lips hung open slightly and she took these words as though they had been a physical reprimand. She was indeed a very stupid girl. “I was only trying to help,” she said faintly.

  “Oh, tsk, tsk,” Buck admonished from the background. “You were trying to sell something, dearie.”

  Lina felt so miserable and confused, there in the middle of that once-again hostile room, that she was almost grateful for Penelope’s next stroke.

  “Rathmill!” she called. Lina turned and saw the butler appear in the doorway. “Miss Broad was confused about whom she was calling on. You can show her out now.”

  The butler understood the implications perfectly, crossed to the helpless girl in the lesser shade of red, and took her by the arm. Lina went without protest, hanging her head on the long walk back across the floor.

  “That was unpleasant,” she heard Buck say as she was pulled forcibly into the hall. “And just when you were about to go out.”

  Lina closed her eyes as the butler drew her roughly toward the front entrance. She had so recently crossed its black-and-white-checked floor in hope and trepidation, but she returned to it with all her hopes dashed. Penelope was right: She was a stupid girl who would never find her way.

  Fifteen

  It is no surprise, given her popularity as a debutante, how lively the new Mrs. Schoonmaker’s Mondays are. One can count on seeing everyone one might want to see there….

  —FROM THE SOCIETY PAGE OF THE NEW-YORK NEWS OF THE WORLD GAZETTE, MONDAY, DECEMBER 18, 1899

  THE SECOND MRS. SCHOONMAKER WAS KNOWN not only for her Mondays but also for her Louis Quatorze, which was a mix of her own collection of antique furniture and that of the first Mrs. Schoonmaker. Isabelle was known for her miniatures as well, and for her facial features, which were diminutive and exquisite, and of course for the company she kept. Lydia Vreewold and Grace Vanderbilt—who were of the same generation and shared some of the youth and vivaciousness that characterized their hostess—were sitting on a little settee upholstered in pale turquoise silk and discussing the clothes they planned to buy in Paris that spring; James De Ford, Isabelle’s younger brother, was standing by one of the tall windows that looked out onto Fifth Avenue and listening to the painter Lispenard Bradley pontificate about nudes. (The second Mrs. Schoonmaker was further known for having somewhat irregularly allowed an artist or two into her circle.) Penelope Hayes—dressed impeccably in a dusky pink silk day dress, a new set of tiny dark bangs just intruding onto her high white forehead—stepped into this scene of superior furniture and celebrated names.

  “Penelope, my dear, you look good enough to eat,” Isabelle said, lacing her arm through that of her guest and steering her across the carpeted floor, which was populated by gleaming chairs and various marble statuary and a few top-notch people, comfortably positioned for conversation. Penelope wouldn’t have disagreed, though she was satisfied in the event to lower her eyes and murmur a shy thanks. She looked around—subtly, her face turned toward the dark purple patterns of the Hamadan carpets—with the idea of seeing Henry.

  “Poor Henry,” Isabelle went on, apparently sensing in which direction Penelope’s thoughts were running. “His father was furious with him over that little outburst at the opera. Which is so silly! Weren’t you and I and everybody else dying for a little diversion at precisely that moment?”

  “Oh, I probably was, though I can’t remember the outburst you speak of,” Penelope replied, trying to edge a little bit of chumminess into her shy tone. She took her hostess’s small, soft palm into her own and leaned toward the older woman intimately. “Was Mr. Schoonmaker terribly harsh?”

  “He was. There was so much yelling when poor Henry got home.” Isabelle lowered her voice to a confidential pitch as they moved slowly and regally toward the tea things.

  Several of the guests had taken notice of the new arrival, but Henry, reclining on a chaise longue in the corner by himself, was looking rather moody and staring at the ceiling. He had not noticed Penelope, a fact that she comprehended with a slight tickle of rage in her throat. “He’s quite worried that Henry’ll do something that might make the family look bad now, when he’s just received so much enthusiasm for his mayoral campaign,” Isabelle went on in the same tone. “But of course, most of the support has come because of sympathy for Henry, losing Elizabeth and all…so it’s a fine line for Schoonmaker—he can’t punish him too much.”

  “No, I suppose not.” They had arrived at the refreshment table, and Isabelle wasted no time in putting a small collection of petits fours glacés onto a small plate. Penelope allowed herself a long, unabashed look in Henry’s direction, which he did not return. He was wearing the usual black jacket and slacks, and the skin around his eyes, which were pretty in an almost feminine way, was touched by a purple fatigue.

  Isabelle poured tea for both of them, examining her new friend as she did. She brushed a golden curl away from her eyes and lowered her voice. “Schoonmaker has actually been rather gentle, compared with his usual fury. I think Henry has such a long face because of how terribly he’s taking Elizabeth’s death.” The ladies took their teacups and moved toward a set of chairs by a window, which would allow them to appear with the full benefit of the afternoon light; Penelope and Isabelle comprehended the advantage of this spot with unspoken collusion. “You know, I think when a man loses a wife it’s less of a blow, because he has already had a little bit of life with her. But to lose a fiancée is like having a meal presented to one and then whisked a way before even a single bite can be had….”

  Penelope nodded compassionately, although she felt certain that Elizabeth was not a dish Henry would have ordered in the first place. Isabelle sighed and put the little sea-foam green pastry half into her mouth, her eyes rolling to the coved ceiling as she did. “It seems that Henry was greatly matured by the loss of his fiancée,” Penelope said delicately, if completely disingenuously, looking over her teacup to confirm that the subject of their discussions had still not looked in her direction.

  “Oh, I should say so, though Schoonmaker doesn’t think so at all.” Isabelle leaned forward and put a hand on Penelope’s arm. “He is petrified that at any moment Henry might cease to appear sad about the whole miserable affair.”

  “That’s rather mercenary.” Penelope felt that the new her would react in this way, though as soon as the statement had escaped her mouth, she wondered if it might sound critical of her future family-in-law. It wasn’t easy, trying to make friends as a Little Miss Goody Two-Shoes.

  “Oh, yes, of course that’s a terrible way to put it. Especially since you were such a particular friend of Elizabeth’s.” Isabelle put the rest of the petit four in her mouth remorsefully and swallowed it. “It’s such a pity for Elizabeth, too, and for her family. What a thing it would have been for them if she had married Henry. Have you heard the stories about their situation?”

  Penelope nodded gravely, keeping her smile safely at bay. She had almost put the pathetic visit from the Hollands’ old maid out of her mind but recalled it now with a certain satisfaction. There was nothing so richly pitiful as the help turning against their employers.

  “But of course, it would have been quite the thing for Elizabeth to have been Mrs. Henry Schoonmaker, too. A good married lady she would have made.” Isabelle sighed and put her empty plate down on a small, marble-topped table with an exuberantly curved base. Then she leaned back against her chair and turned her face in Penelope’s direction. A girlish color had come into her cheeks, and where there had been concern in her eyes before, now there was a gleam of mischief. “You know what they say, that a lady’s life really doesn’t begin until she’s a married woman? I had no idea how true that was until I was married.”

  “Really?” Penelope responded with a matching sparkle in her eye. She had always felt a little sad for Isabelle, who seemed like fun, and who had had so many beaux as a debutante—including, Penelope believed, her own brother, Grayson—for being married to a controlling, humor
less old man. She was glad to hear that being Mrs. William Schoonmaker was not as suffocating as she had imagined. “But I’m so afraid that marriage will mean I must always do only what my husband wishes, and that doesn’t sound terribly fun.”

  “Oh, no, my dear, you must stop thinking that way. Once you are married, no one can suspect you of anything.” Isabelle followed this statement with a long wink and then a pause, in which she rearranged her hands and watched Penelope with cautious eyes. Penelope felt herself to be on the receiving end of the kind of evaluation of which she was ordinarily the author. It was as though Isabelle were trying to look through her. “You know…I always thought Elizabeth would have made a lovely Mrs. Henry Schoonmaker, just as I said…but she wouldn’t have been my first choice for a daughter-in-law.”

  Penelope could not help but spread her plush red lips into a full smile at this statement. She looked away, so as not to seem too eager, and rested her pale fingers on the shiny oak finial of her chair. “What sort of daughter-in-law would you have preferred?”

  “Oh…” Isabelle shifted thoughtfully in her chair. “One who wasn’t so very…very good, I suppose. Elizabeth would always have been checking in on the linens and chiding me for being rude to some old bore—don’t you think so?”

  Penelope nodded, perhaps a little too quickly.

  “Not to speak ill of the dead,” her hostess went on. “But someone a little…a little more like you would add to the Schoonmaker family in the way that would most please me.”

  The pair looked at each other for a long moment, a glimmer of understanding on both their faces.

  “Now, tell me what has become of your brother? We do miss him in New York….”

  “Oh, Grayson?” Penelope smiled and complied, giving her hostess as much information on her older brother, who had been seeing to the family business abroad for some years, as she possibly could. The two ladies continued to engage each other in affectionate conversation, their long silk skirts adjoining on the carpet, until the butler appeared in the doorway and announced Teddy Cutting’s name. At this point both Isabelle and Penelope looked up and watched with interest as he crossed to Henry and began to talk to him in hushed tones without bothering to take a seat.

  “How rude of Mr. Cutting not to greet you first,” Penelope murmured.

  “I quite agree with you,” Isabelle answered, sounding not offended in the least, “though I suppose it is Henry’s home too.”

  Meanwhile, Henry had stood; something, apparently, had been agreed upon.

  “Oh, Mr. Cutting!” Isabelle cried. Everyone in the room turned to look, a fact to which their hostess appeared entirely indifferent. She had taken Penelope’s hand again, as if to imply that this was all for the younger woman’s benefit. “I’m sure you aren’t going to leave without greeting me!”

  The attention of the room was now fixed on the pair of chairs by the window; Penelope leaned forward so that the late-day sun would illuminate her best angle. She watched as Teddy, remaining awkwardly in his spot, adjusted his jacket so that it hung just so on him. It had already been hanging just so. The moment lengthened, and Teddy looked to Henry as though he might know what the appropriate thing to do was. But Henry—to Penelope’s mute fury and suffocating disappointment—closed his eyes in impatience and turned toward the ornate oak door frame.

  Penelope barely registered Teddy as he moved, with some embarrassment, to his hostess and greeted her with a kiss on the hand.

  “My apologies for not coming to you immediately, Mrs. Schoonmaker,” he said. The contractions around his gray eyes indicated he was sincere.

  Had Penelope not been so stunned by Henry’s continual lack of interest in her, she might have wondered why Isabelle’s eyes had become dewy and flirtatious in the presence of boring old Teddy, and if this was perhaps all she’d meant when she said married women had more fun. But for Penelope, at that particular moment, Henry’s baffling indifference was all-consuming.

  “Miss Hayes,” Teddy was saying, “it is a pleasure to see you as well.”

  “Oh, hello, Teddy,” Penelope answered, extending her hand so that she could feel the soft impress of his lips through her glove. “Where has your friend gone to?”

  “Oh, Henry? Some of us are off to race four-in-hands in the park, and Henry has agreed to come along. He has just now gone to give his instructions to the stable.”

  Penelope could only manage to maintain a faint smile while Teddy exchanged a few obligatory niceties with Mrs. Schoonmaker. Then he took his leave and with it any hope of seeing Henry for the rest of the afternoon.

  “You see,” Isabelle said, once again taking Penelope’s hand. “Henry is so curiously devastated by Elizabeth’s passing. It reveals itself most especially in the deterioration of his manners.”

  Penelope would not before that moment have credited any of Henry’s inexplicable behaviors to Elizabeth’s death, but she found herself wondering if this could in fact be true now. Isabelle, as her tone and winking glances indicated, was fast becoming her ally, and she apparently believed it to be the reason. Penelope closed her eyes and remembered Elizabeth, so cold and determined as she’d laid out the plan that would remove her from New York and Henry’s attentions forever. It had not been something she would have previously thought Liz capable of, and that was the least of what Penelope had been surprised by that day. She had had to confront several holes in her knowledge of the world, and she supposed that late in December, in the Schoonmakers’ drawing room, there might still be one or two things she was wrong about.

  “But don’t worry,” Isabelle was saying. “We will make him see that although Elizabeth had her charms, there are other ladies who would perhaps be a more ideal match for him.”

  Penelope nodded and gave her the smile of a confidante. She found that she no longer minded the idea that Henry’s enduring melancholia might have something to do with the fact that Elizabeth was dead, because if that were so—if Henry was too depressed over Elizabeth’s “death” to see that Penelope was the girl for him—it was based on a misconception that she herself could easily dispel.

  Sixteen

  It is not unheard of for bachelor twosomes to keep one or more young ladies up in the air for years and then wed titled British girls with fine houses and deficient bank accounts whom no one has ever seen before….

  —MRS. L. A. M. BRECKINRIDGE, THE LAWS OF BEING IN WELL-MANNERED CIRCLES

  “ARE YOU ENJOYING YOURSELF, MISS HOLLAND?”

  Diana looked up from the oyster-colored sofa on which she had arranged herself and into the eyes of Teddy Cutting. Her elbow rested high on one of the three mahogany crests of the piece of furniture’s arched back, and her milky skin glowed in the rose-colored light emanating from a nearby lamp. The walls of the room were a deep plum, and the mood was that of the pleasurable sleepiness that always follows a long meal. Diana, cinched into ivory chiffon, looked very bright in the dark room and low light. Her dress collected in many folds to a V-shaped point both at its neckline and in the back and her skirt overflowed the seat. She was lovely, as everybody at the Ralph Darrolls’ small dinner party had noticed, but she knew this was of no particular interest to Teddy. He had mentioned her sister seven times over as many courses.

  “Very much,” she answered with a flirtatious smile; she had not given up her goal of appearing beautiful to the man she couldn’t help but consider Henry’s proxy. It was like some wound that she could not help but pluck at.

  “I’m glad—may I sit with you?”

  “Yes.” Diana was in fact genuinely glad for Teddy’s company. Though his presence held no romance at all for her, she had discovered that evening that she did like him. There was something in his sincere gray eyes that suggested a vast sadness and sense of guilt for the absurd good fortunes of his life. This was not a sentiment Diana shared—she could not stop herself from feeling unlucky—but she found it interesting. “Your sister’s home is very fine,” she went on.

  Florence Cutting, Teddy
’s oldest sister, had become Mrs. Darroll only a month ago. She was currently sitting near the fire talking to a man who was not her husband and looking rather larger than she had at her wedding.

  “That is not the kind of conversation the Diana Holland I know makes.” Teddy smiled. “But yes, it is very fine. Of course, it was my uncle’s house before, and he gave it to them at the wedding, furniture and all, so I can’t say Mrs. Darroll has had to do much.”

  “Still, I’m sure she’s given it her own touches. She looks beautiful—you can still see it even under all that jacquard. I suppose you will be an uncle in under half a year?”

  “Ah, that is the Diana I remember,” Teddy replied, now disguising his smile with a sip from his snifter. “But I am not going to respond to such a supposition.”

  “Tell me how Henry is, then.” The pain and pleasure of saying his name out loud were almost equally intense.

  Teddy’s smile faded, and he looked at her with the same concern he had shown when they’d discussed her mother’s grief over dessert. A lamp with a hand-painted porcelain shade lit up his blond hair from behind, casting shadows under his facial features. “I saw him this afternoon.”

  “And he is well?”

  “He doesn’t seem terribly happy,” Teddy answered stiffly.

  “I imagine you mean he takes my sister’s passing harder than I do?”

  “He takes it hard,” Teddy said, looking at her and then looking away. “Though I’m sure it cannot be as difficult for him as it has been for you.”

  “No.” Diana paused and placed her hands in her lap. She decided that she might as well ask the questions that came into her head, since the worst Teddy could do in response was not answer them. Still, she had to summon some courage to say, “What was he doing?” and even so her voice came across a little plaintive.