Rumors

by Anna Godbersen

  “Mr. Cairns, how lovely that was,” her mother was now saying. The obsequiousness of which she was sometimes capable had crept back into her voice. “How fortunate we have again been made by your presence. It seems you will surprise us with some new, secret ability on every new day of our acquaintance.”

  “I am honored to do it. But now you must excuse me—I have some small business to attend to, and I’m sure your family wants a few moments of privacy together.” Snowden took Will’s hand and shook it and then turned to Elizabeth, where his small eyes briefly lingered. She couldn’t help but marvel at how lucky they were to have met Snowden, and at how naturally kind he was. She felt as warmly toward him at that moment as though he were part of the family. “My congratulations to both of you, Mr. and Mrs. Keller.”

  When he left the room, his men followed him, and then the Hollands were alone again, illuminated by the dappled light that was filtered by the lace curtains. Most of the original paintings were gone, but there were still a few grand depictions of roiled seas on the wall. The parlor retained the aura, which Elizabeth remembered it having when she was a little girl, of being the place where obscure, grown-up things occurred. Claire went to prepare tea and cake, and Elizabeth sat down beside her mother on the small settee.

  “When Snowden returns to Boston, he will have the certificate drawn up and sent to you in California. It is less likely to be noticed if he does it there. Oh, Elizabeth,” she whispered, placing her hands on her older daughter’s cheeks, “I will miss you, I will miss you. But you must go soon. The longer you stay, the more likely it is that you will be discovered. And you know it will be the end of this family if you are.”

  Elizabeth nodded and held her tears. She might have told her mother how much it meant to her that she had been married before the family, but in the end she decided it was unnecessary. There were a few days left of the year, and she would spend them in the company of those she loved most. They would eat meals together and get used to the idea that she was Mrs. Keller. Then, on New Year’s Eve, which Snowden had advised would be a slow travel day and the time when they were least likely to be noticed, she and Will would collect all their things in two small suitcases and say good-bye to Gramercy a second time, and to New York forever.

  Forty Two

  The announcement this morning, in a one-line item in the World, that Miss Penelope Hayes is engaged to be married to Mr. Henry Schoonmaker is a lovely bit of news. Of course, given the report that the engagement ring young Schoonmaker gave to his previous fiancée, the late Elizabeth Holland, has resurfaced, we cannot help but wonder what will happen if the lady who used to wear that ring should resurface as well….

  —FROM THE SOCIETY PAGE OF THE NEW-YORK NEWS OF THE WORLD GAZETTE, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1899

  THE HALLS OF THE HAYES MANSION ECHOED AS Penelope ran through them, her small dog pressed to her chest. She was so close to everything she wanted, and yet she could sense all the insidious forces poised to take them away from her. Her long shadow fell across the black-and-white-tiled floor as she moved, under the impossibly high mirrored ceilings of the first floor of No. 670 Fifth Avenue, that redbrick-and-limestone colossus that few would feign call a home, and which was capable of spooking even a girl as self-possessed as Penelope on her rare vulnerable days. The rumors about Elizabeth’s return had ruined her sleep, and the image of Henry and Diana together had destroyed what should have been perfectly lovely waking hours. When she saw the English butler in the front vestibule, she paused and went breathlessly to him.

  “Rathmill,” she said. She was aware that veins had emerged on her white neck, but she couldn’t help it. The beady black eyes of Robber, her Boston terrier, went all around the room in a kind of terror. “Where are my parents?”

  “Mademoiselle Penelope, I believe they are in the drawing room having their tea. Would you like me to—”

  “No, no,” Penelope interrupted. She deposited the wiggling body of her dog into Rathmill’s not-quite-ready arms. “I’ll do it.”

  She walked away from him, toward that epic curve of marble stairs that would bring her to the second-story drawing room where her parents took their private tea. On the first step she paused and rested her hand on the cool balustrade. “You can tell my mother’s social secretary that she will be needed very shortly, however.”

  No one had helped Penelope in achieving her not unreasonable desires, except perhaps Isabelle Schoonmaker, and so Penelope felt no compunction about directing her wrath in all directions. Mr. Rathmill, the butler, had been of especially no use. He had served several titled British families before he came to the Hayeses, and he knew, as the young lady of the house knew, that they were the kind of family that needed an English butler to teach them class. He was always giving them snide little looks, which her mother was too dense to notice, but Penelope saw them and understood.

  Isabelle, for her part, could not have been more delighted with the announcement of the engagement, but every little gift she gave her future stepdaughter-in-law, every time she squealed in joy and winked with knowing excitement, seemed a mockery of Penelope. She had what she wanted, but she had bullied her way in, and didn’t even have a ring yet to show for all her trouble. She had been so clever and so conniving for Henry’s sake and for her own, and he couldn’t even appreciate it. There had been no romantic gestures from Henry, no illicit glances. Penelope felt as lonely as she’d ever felt, and might have even wondered if there was any point to it anymore if it weren’t for her pride.

  But her pride was considerable. It was pride that kept her moving up the stairs, drawing back the gunmetal gray silk skirt that she wore with the black organza puff-sleeved blouse. She strode into the small, second-story parlor, which faced the avenue, like all the rooms they used frequently, without trying to disguise her distemper. Her parents were sitting by the fire, with its majolica-tiled mantel, and her brother stood not far off, by one of the two life-size cloisonné peacocks, smoking a cigarette. All three turned stupidly to look at her.

  “Ahh!” she cried out in frustration.

  The room, with its heavy purple and cold brocade, was a dark place, and this should have flattered Mrs. Hayes, but did not. That lady’s corpulence was bedecked in green and white tarlatan, trimmed with black lace, and her dark hair was restrained with green ribbons. It was hardly seemly for someone her age, as the Hayes siblings might have amused themselves by noting in lighter times.

  “What is it?” Evelyn Hayes said, setting down her teacup with a rattle. “Don’t make that face—it will leave permanent lines.”

  “We thought you would be so happy now that you’re engaged to the Schoonmaker boy.” Richmond Hayes’s voice was not without a touch of recrimination, and he switched the cross of his legs after he spoke. He couldn’t be called tall, when you considered the height of his two children, and his features were framed by a dark beard and mustache, over which peered small eyes that never lost sight of their owner’s self-interest.

  Penelope fell back into the cream-colored sofa with the kilim pillows and slumped, her ears falling to her shoulders and her chin almost reaching her chest. Grayson turned slowly and rested his hand on a polished cherrywood screen before exhaling smoke.

  “What does Penny want?” His words were heavy with sarcasm, and he looked at her the way he might have when they were children and Penelope was throwing one of her not infrequent tantrums.

  “I don’t want to live in this awful house anymore,” Penelope spat out—cruelly, considering the money they all knew Mr. Hayes had sunk into the place. “I hate everybody.”

  “Why?” her brother asked, the same amused smile on his face. He took a last drag and flicked his cigarette into the fire. “When we all want the best for you.”

  “We are all so proud of you, Penelope, making such a brilliant engagement.” Her mother winked at her daughter and tried to look encouraging. “Before your brother has even proposed once. We were all hoping he would come back lord of some manor or other,
but this has not proved the case.”

  Grayson rolled his eyes and let his arm fall limp off the screen. He sighed audibly and moved, at a slow, urbane gait, to the sofa where Penelope slouched. He crossed his legs, dressed in pin-striped suit pants, and rested his elbow on his knee. His waistcoat had been made in London, and was of pearl gray silk. “Come now, dear sister,” he implored in the same tone. “Tell us what will make you feel better.”

  Penelope looked at her brother, whose hair was pomaded and parted down the center so that it rose stiffly, back from his forehead on either side. She herself had not had the patience to let her maid treat her hair that morning, and so it was frizzier than usual. She paused to vainly brush it back from her face. Then she looked at her father, whose face had assumed that resigned expression it always did just before he wrote a very big check. Penelope felt calm all of sudden—or at least, calmer than she had all day.

  “I want to have the wedding now.”

  “Now?” her mother sputtered.

  Ever since Grayson had told her about seeing Elizabeth on the train, she had known that she had to do something, fast. It hardly mattered that Henry didn’t love his previous fiancée—if she came back to New York, they would all wonder whether he should marry her still, and it wouldn’t matter at all that Penelope was engaged to him now. Their wedding would be postponed indefinitely, and public opinion would turn against her. Penelope pushed herself up straight and placed her hands in a neat cross on her lap. She looked at each member of her immediate family, and tried to seem a little modest. All of the mad fury she had recently experienced had been replaced by a pure focus on making everyone awed and jealous of her. “Well, before the end of the year.”

  “Penelope,” her father put in sternly, “we haven’t a place reserved, or a minister. We haven’t asked anyone to save the date.”

  “But you’re Richmond Hayes! You can get a minister, and everyone will want to come to my wedding. And anyway, Mrs. Schoonmaker already said that we could use their place at Tuxedo to have a party to really celebrate the engagement. Why not just make it the wedding? We’ll have the invitations handwritten tonight and sent out tomorrow! Oh, please, Daddy!”

  Her parents appeared too stunned to deny or affirm her request. They looked at each other a little nervously across the gold tea service. It was Grayson who spoke first, and he now spoke in a reasonable tone devoid of irony. “Why not? It will be such a surprise, and that will create envy and excitement, and everyone will be falling all over themselves to make sure they are invited. It will remind all society what this family has become, and what sort of displays we’re now capable of. I think old Schoonmaker will like the idea too. Did you see that bit on him in the paper today? Seems he passed out some bad turkeys at that parade of his, and a few slum girls have fallen ill.” Grayson chuckled and lit another cigarette. “That’s the kind of tragedy that begs for a distraction,” he declared in his father’s direction.

  “But what will you wear?” Mrs. Hayes asked, her round face still open with confusion.

  “I’ve always wanted to wear your dress,” Penelope lied sweetly. “We can have it made over so that it fits me in a few days.”

  “Oh!” Mrs. Hayes smiled a little at this. “Well, why not? Don’t you think, Mr. Hayes, that this might be the best thing?”

  “If it’s a surprise, and out of town,” Penelope went on, assuming correctly that if she kept talking, her father would lose the conviction behind any of his objections and grow bored with the whole back-and-forth, “then there won’t be all those unpleasant crowds and police barricades. There won’t be endless newspaper articles for months before, about all the bridesmaids and what shade they’re wearing. It will be much more elegant, don’t you think?”

  Her father examined his daughter for a moment and then shrugged. “If that’s what you want, and you think the Schoonmakers will agree.”

  “Oh, yes. It’s just perfect! And I know they’ll agree.” Penelope stood now and clasped her hands. The excitement had come into her mother’s face now—she had several new jewels that she had not yet gotten to show off, as her daughter knew well enough. Grayson gave his sister a look of tickled admiration. “You’ll go tonight, won’t you? We all will, to tell the Schoonmakers the plan. And then tomorrow Henry and I, and his family, and all of you, can go up to Tuxedo and begin preparations. That way, we won’t be bothered by all the hubbub!”

  By hubbub, Penelope meant to imply the columnists who so exhaustively documented any wedding of remote social importance. Her parents were sensitive to how things were done, of course, and they could be persuaded to do anything that might avoid ridicule and social censure. But the hubbub Penelope was in fact thinking of was the kind caused by the Holland sisters. Once she got herself and her fiancé out of the city, then she would be able to sleep a little better. She would be that much closer to what was rightfully hers being hers—according to society and the public and, soon enough, God, too.

  Forty Three

  Dear Diana,

  I once gave you a piece of jewelry

  inscribed For My True Bride,

  and I feel the same now as then, if

  not more so. I know it must be

  difficult for you to believe, but what I

  am about to do is loath some to me.

  Trust me when I tell you she left

  me with no other options…

  HENRY DID NOT LOOK TO SEE THE CITY GO BY, and when the Schoonmakers’ private railway car did emerge in the suburbs, he found little of interest in the rivers and icy landscapes that passed. He was not leaving willingly. He was leaving mechanically, which was the way he did everything these days. He had dressed by rote, in high white collar and black jacket, and he had combed and slicked his hair in the same habitual manner. This was the same manner he had used in writing notes to his friends, asking them to be his groomsmen, and to his usual salesman at Tiffany, who had arranged for the rings. The refrain in his mind was a kind of habit too. He told himself over and over that he was doing the good and heroic thing and that his actions would save Diana from certain ruin.

  Now, as the train drew him closer to Tuxedo and a fate he found miserable while not yet being able to imagine, he tried to compose a letter that might explain what he had done. Diana must have heard by now. They would all be talking, and her mother would no doubt weigh against her daughter’s former fiancé for getting engaged again so quickly, without any knowledge of how painful and humiliating the news would be to her other child. He couldn’t stand the idea of Diana hearing from someone else. He would have liked to have held her and shown that it was all for her protection, but he doubted she would want that anymore. He’d never done anything heroic before, and he was unpleasantly surprised by how lousy it felt.

  He’d written the letter a hundred ways in his head. He had explained that marrying Penelope was the only solution and the easiest one, that it would give Diana a second chance that circumstances made impossible for him. In one moment, he resolved to tell her that they would always be lovers, and in another that he would leave her alone so that she could have other, grander loves. He drew himself as a valiant savior and Penelope as girl made of pure evil, but he had ceased believing any of those things. There was no way to make sense with words of what had happened.

  His bride-to-be was coming for him down the aisle of the train, resting her hands on the velvet seats to steady herself, but beaming with such confidence that she hardly seemed to need to lean on anything. She had been on the other end of the private car with the little girls who were going to distribute rose petals at the beginning of the ceremony, showing off her new diamond to them. She was wearing a white cashmere coat with a high collar, and her lips were painted the red of pomegranate seeds. Henry watched her coming toward him and crumpled the letter he had been writing to the girl he’d called his true bride. There was nothing more to say.

  Forty Four

  Police precincts all over the city have reported anonymous tips
from people who claim to have seen Elizabeth Holland in all sorts of places: a Ludlow Street butcher’s, on the Brooklyn Bridge, driving a hansom across the park in jodhpurs and top hat. This sheds even more doubt on the ludicrous rumors that she is still living.

  —FROM THE FIRST PAGE OF THE NEW YORK IMPERIAL, DECEMBER 31, 1899

  AT GRAND CENTRAL THERE WAS AN AIR OF motion and confusion, and everywhere were men and women in their heavy winter clothes laden down with the impedimenta of travel. The waiting room of the station, with its rows of long, polished benches, were thronged and the sounds of delay announcements and cries for lost family members filled Will’s and Elizabeth’s ears. It was not, in fact, a slow day for travel, as Snowden had insisted it would be: Men who worked in the city were hurrying home to their families, and those who had come on benders and run out of money before the great New Year were heading away in shame. Meanwhile, revelers from the outlying boroughs were flooding the city. Good-byes had taken longer than they should have, and now they had to hurry. They had been warned by Mrs. Holland to be discreet, to do nothing that might call attention to them, but Will and Elizabeth Keller now found that in the rush of arrivals and departures they were all smiles and could not help grasping each other’s hands.

  It was almost a new year, and everything was in front of them. They were going off to make their way, and this time with the assurance that everything was all right at home and with the blessing of the bride’s relations. She was a bride, Elizabeth thought as Will’s large hand gripped her small one, pulling her through the crowd toward the train shed with its arched ceiling of glass and iron. He looked back at her and smiled—for no particular reason, she supposed, or maybe because of everything—and she couldn’t help but laugh. She tossed back her head with the laugh, and the hood of her cloak fell down. She reached up and touched her head, because she had placed her hat in its traveling case and her hair was only covered by a small amount of ornamental lace. She let go of Will’s hand and stopped, so that she might put her hood back in order. That was when she heard her name—her old name, the way it used to be said—and turned.