Rumors

by Anna Godbersen

  “Miss Holland, Miss Holland!”

  She looked, her face still smiling, her heart full of elation. Then she remembered that she was not supposed to be seen. The crowd was parting and there were several blue uniforms stepping toward her. She felt Will’s hands on her from behind, one on her ribs and the other on her shoulder. She could smell his clean skin, with its faint whiff of Pear’s soap, as his cheek touched hers.

  “Run,” he whispered. “You’ve got to run. Just run for the train. I’ll be right behind you.”

  It was then that she realized that she should be afraid. Right afterward she was. She could feel the fear, cold in her throat and all down her spine. Then she turned again for the platform where the crowd was still thick, and she ran into it. There were bodies all around her, but she pushed through. Her feet and her panic carried her forward until she heard shouting, growing louder and fiercer with each word.

  “Halt!” she heard.

  “Stop!”

  “Don’t move!”

  She kept running until she heard the shots. They were so loud that for a minute she thought they must have happened in her ears. They were horrible and repetitious and they lasted far too long. When they were over, she could barely breathe. Everyone around her had frozen. She turned again, slowly this time, and began to move back down the platform, where there was now shrieking. She was indifferent to her backward fallen hood, and she could not have gotten her hand off her open mouth for anything in the world.

  She was moving faster now toward the place where she had last touched Will. It was with a wretched apprehension that she came on him again. He was on the ground now, and his shirt was all torn apart. Everywhere there was his gleaming, gushing blood. The blue uniforms were still there, this time behind a wall of raised guns. She could already smell the blood, even before she fell down next to him. Even before she began to choke on the odor and on her own tears.

  “Will,” she gasped.

  His eyes had been closed, and then they opened, and she saw that they were pale blue and filled with fear. They searched for her and then he grabbed at her hand. She knew that he saw her, and she could see that the fear had gone out of his eyes.

  “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you,” she answered.

  “I love you,” he repeated with the same pained steadiness.

  There was nothing for her to do but repeat it. “I love you,” she repeated over and again. She would never know how many times she said it. There must have been only a few seconds she was by his side, though she would never be sure. She was so full of disbelief that they seemed impossible moments out of time. She remembered seeing his eyelids fall closed again, and that was when she felt hands on her. Her dress was all soaked in blood, and she felt too weak to say anything more. She was being carried away, by those rough male hands, through the crowd. She heard her name—the way it used to be—repeated over and over again by the massed people around her.

  They were asking her if she was all right. They wanted to know what had been done to her. But her vision had started to fail, and she felt limp all over, and then everything went black.

  Forty Five

  THE WILLIAM S. SCHOONMAKERS

  REQUEST THE PLEASURE OF YOUR COMPANY

  AT A VERY SPECIAL OCCASION

  TUXEDO PARK

  DECEMBER 31, 1899

  SIX O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING

  BY SUNDAY PENELOPE’S BODY WAS SO RIGID WITH expectation that she could hardly smile. There had been so much preparation, and she hadn’t slept more than an hour the night before. The dressmaker from New York was still adjusting the dress that morning—her mother’s dress was now embellished with new pearls and old lace as it hadn’t been before, and of course it fit better in the torso and trained more at the back. The bridesmaids’ dresses were the ones from Isabelle’s wedding, also hastily redone. It was a shame that she couldn’t have a new design from Paris made especially for her to emphasize her finest features, and that the whole wedding party wasn’t in the latest and best. But none of that mattered now. The wedding guests were assembled, and the tables were set, and the Hollands had most definitely not been invited for the greatest wedding of the year. “The last great wedding of the 1800s,” to borrow a phrase that Buck had repeated to several newspaper reporters. In the New Year, Penelope thought with a flutter of her jet-black lashes, she would be Mrs. Schoonmaker, and Diana could call on her all she wanted.

  Now she could feel the moment—right there, in front of her, down a straight and petal-strewn path—when it would all be done. The menu had been settled and the decorations done according to Buck’s ruthless specifications. The invitations, which had gone out the twenty-eighth by special delivery promising a top-secret wedding of the best people, had proved a powerful lure to New York society. It had been a dull week, because of the holiday, and they were all just sitting around until the New Year passed so that they could travel to more exotic ports in Italy and Egypt. But this was an unanticipated thrill. Today they had traveled to one of their hideaway haunts to witness the union of two of their proudest names, and tomorrow they would be beset by all the uninvited for anecdotes of the Schoonmaker-Hayes nuptials.

  The unlucky were at parties in Lakewood and Westchester, planning to celebrate the New Year as best they could and hoping for telegrams filling in what they had missed. The lucky invitees were out there in their rows, waiting. Penelope’s face was done and her waist corseted and her legs hidden by tiers of ivory chiffon. Lace erupted from the V-neck of the dress, and her arms were decorated in tiers of lace bells. There were flowers on her wrists and in her dark hair, and pinned to her white bonnet were yards and yards of Valenciennes lace. Already the music was beginning. She looked at her bridesmaids—cousins of hers and Henry’s, quickly assembled, as well as poor Prudie, looking quite uncomfortable in a pastel shade, and, as promised, Carolina Broad wearing a very proud expression indeed, and seeming somehow richer—but still could not bring herself to smile. When it was all over, then she would smile.

  Buck was there in a dark suit, looking a little sleep deprived and moving, despite his girth, with characteristic grace. He had lined the girls up and was waiting to give them the cue to leave the ladies’ dressing room and walk down the aisle. They were all—all but Prudie—giddy that they had been chosen and nervously anticipating their chance to go. Penelope didn’t want to meet any of their eyes. She was just waiting for the moment when that last pale blue train had disappeared out of the door and it was her turn. Finally the eighth and last went and she was able to take a breath. She turned to Buck and paused as he checked her face to make sure it was perfect. He brought her veil down and fussed with it for a moment. Then the muscles of his face relaxed into a smile for the first time all day.

  “They will stop calling brides beautiful after today—you have simply set the standard too high,” he said.

  Then she smiled too, a broad, triumphant smile that she knew she would somehow have to do away with before she walked down the aisle. She had not yet succeeded when she heard the first notes of the music that always introduced the bride. Buck told her to go, and she did.

  All of the faces in the room turned to her. Penelope could see them through the scrim of lace, their mouths forming wide, appreciative circles, their hands clasped to their breasts. She had no idea whether she was walking slow or fast. She could scarcely hear the music. The distance to the altar was impossible, and yet she knew she would be there very soon. Henry was still and miserable looking in his shiny black tails, but he would see the genius of all her planning soon enough. He would remember how perfectly suited they were to each other, and see that Diana Holland had been nothing more than a passing distraction. When she reached the altar, she noticed that a few faces had turned away from her. Inexplicably, they were looking back in the direction from which she had come.

  By the time the reverend began the ceremony there were murmurs across the ballroom of Tuxedo. She noticed that Henry’s face turned s
everal times to the place at the back of the room from which all the low voices were emanating. That was when Penelope reached for Henry’s hands. The reverend hadn’t arrived at that part yet, but it showed her impatience, and he responded by speeding up the service. Penelope’s heartbeat was so wild in her chest that she scarcely noticed how unresponsive—how cautious—Henry’s palms were.

  Penelope had never paid much heed to premonitions, but she knew in a cold, settled way that what the assembled guests were talking about was Elizabeth Holland. She was back, and they were all wondering if Penelope wouldn’t want to know before she promised to have and to hold her friend’s former fiancé forever more. Penelope stiffened and waited for the rings to be exchanged. In her mind she dared all the busybodies in the audience to interrupt her wedding. They were cowards who lived by a code, as she knew well enough. Penelope bargained that if she stood still and left the rumblings unacknowledged, then the crowd would feel they had to as well.

  As soon as she felt the precious metal slip over her left ring finger, she said, “I do,” and then, without waiting for Henry to respond, she pulled back her veil and stepped toward him. He had said, “I do,” she was pretty sure, although it hardly mattered. Nobody ever remembered the details of weddings, and anyway what was important was that she had moved in toward him and put her mouth to his. The touch of his lips was as light and unresponsive as his palms, and still it made her heart swoon a little to think that she was kissing Henry, and that Henry was her husband.

  Then they both turned back to that room, done up in sprays of white flowers and pearl-colored bows. There was a long, awkward pause. Penelope saw her mother’s social secretary standing nervously at the back of the room, her hands clutched together. The diamonds in the crowd twinkled and eyes blinked. Then she saw Buck step in front of the social secretary, as though to blot her out of everybody’s mind. He began to clap.

  Then all the faces of the crowd turned, slowly at first and then faster, toward the bride and groom. Some of them began to clap and some of them began to stand. It took only a few moments for conformity to sweep the assembled, and then they were all clapping. It was as though all the best people in New York had momentarily forgotten and had now been reminded that this was a beautiful and touching event. Tears followed for some of the older matrons. She had their attention and knew that right then she was the star of their stage.

  The world was steady again, and she dared to take deep breaths. Everyone was clapping and saying how beautiful they were and what a perfect couple and how it just showed you that true love did exist. Her eyes had grown moist, and she looked out at all the guests, who were standing, and she felt full of gratitude that they had all been witnesses to her triumph.

  Forty Six

  Elizabeth Adora Holland has been discovered alive. It seems that she was kidnapped by a former coachman of the socialite’s family. The young man evidently became obsessed with her when he worked for the Hollands and was planning on taking her to California with him. She had not, as was previously feared, been sold into white slavery. The young man was killed when he tried to abscond with the lady in what became a violent scene in the Grand Central Station. Miss Elizabeth Holland was returned to her family and was still in too great a shock to be interviewed today.

  —FROM A SPECIAL EVENING EDITION OF THE NEW YORK IMPERIAL, SUNDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1899

  IT WAS WELL PAST MIDNIGHT—THE NEW YEAR HAD come, and in the Hollands’ home the wailing had stopped. The women sat at the great worn, wooden table in the kitchen, and all around them was a devastating silence. The kitchen was not a room any of them had ever spent much time in, but it seemed the most secretive place they could go. It was where they were least likely to be found. That night was the first time Diana had seen her mother prepare broth, which she did assuredly, before placing it in front of her elder daughter. She had insisted at several points throughout the night that Elizabeth drink it, and Elizabeth had a few times brought the bowl to her lips. But she did not give the appearance of drinking any, and the level of liquid in her bowl never went down. Diana watched her sister, who was slumped against the table. She had wept so hard it seemed impossible that she had not wrung out everything inside her.

  It had been too much for Edith to take, and she had gone to her room so that her nieces wouldn’t see her cry anymore. Diana herself felt empty. She could not imagine an end to the emptiness. It seemed to her as though everything that was good and true had been blasted out of the world. All those things had been crushed, destroyed, made to disappear.

  “Elizabeth, you must eat. You must try to sleep,” her mother said. Diana couldn’t remember the last time anyone had spoken. It could have been hours, or it might have been seconds. The cacophony of chimes and noisemakers, of revelers in the street leaving Midnight Mass or the Hungarian Peasant Ball at Madison Square Garden, had died down in the meantime.

  When the policemen had brought Elizabeth home, proud and triumphant of what they had done, Diana had taken her upstairs and washed her in the bathtub. Elizabeth couldn’t then do anything for herself, and there was little she could do now. Her hair had dried, and even though she was wrapped in a blanket, she shivered. She took a long time in responding and when she did she managed only a flat “I can’t.”

  “Elizabeth,” her mother went on slowly, “you might not be able to now, but you must soon. Everyone knows that you have returned, and they won’t understand that you loved Will. They can’t know it.”

  Elizabeth’s brown eyes moved very slowly to meet her mother’s. She blinked and her dry lips dropped open but she didn’t say anything. Diana wished that she could make her mother stop talking. She knew, even now, that Mrs. Holland was incapable of not considering her social position.

  “They think you were kidnapped, Elizabeth. That’s what they’ll believe, and we can’t contradict them. This family has suffered, my dear. We have suffered too much. We will lose everything if they know what Will was to you…what you were to him. What you did. Do you understand me?”

  Elizabeth looked blankly at her mother. Her eyes moved, slowly, until they met Diana’s. The sisters stared at each other for a few moments, and Diana set her lips together at the thought of their mother’s cold practicality. The younger girl’s brows moved toward each other and she shook her head just slightly to let Elizabeth know how she felt about all that. “She understands,” Diana said finally, speaking for the sister she knew could not speak for herself.

  “Good. I don’t want it to be this way, my dearest, but that is how it is.” Mrs. Holland put her small, lined hands on the table and pushed herself upward. “We will shelter you for a while, but soon enough you will have to see people. You will have to seem happy that you are home. It is a lucky thing we are a polite society—no one will ask you what you have endured. But you must not give them reason to wonder.”

  Diana watched her sister, whose hair was undone and who seemed dead to every comment. How little everything that had ever happened to them mattered now, Diana thought. Their mother smoothed her black dress with her hands and sighed.

  “I will not force you to marry again, my dear Elizabeth,” she went on. “In any event, Henry Schoonmaker is by this time already wed to your friend Penelope Hayes. It happened very quickly and quietly this same evening. What a strange, strange day it has been.”

  Diana heard the news of Henry’s wedding with something like neutrality. Of course in a world of arbitrary and horrific murder Henry would choose a girl like Penelope. It would have shocked her beyond breath if someone had told her he was not now to marry Penelope, and it seemed almost a blessing that it should be over so quickly. She flinched, even so, and only hoped that Elizabeth hadn’t noticed. She had enough worries already without thinking of Diana’s heartbreak.

  “I must sleep,” their mother concluded suddenly. She pulled back her skirt and walked toward the door without meeting their eyes. “See your sister doesn’t stare at the wall all night, Diana—you must get her into bed someh
ow,” she added as she passed through the door.

  They listened to the creak of the stairs above them as their mother retreated to her own room. Diana closed her eyes and exhaled. She was exhausted, but among the many things she could no longer imagine was sleep. She guessed Elizabeth couldn’t, either. When she opened her eyes, she saw that her sister was looking right at her, and there was something new in her expression. Diana blinked and then, when she saw that the new intensity had not faded, she went to Elizabeth and sank down on the rough wood planks beside her and leaned against her lap. She threw her arms up around her sister’s waist.

  Elizabeth’s face, which had still been touched by the sun when she arrived in New York, had now gone entirely white. She was so lacking in strength that it seemed a moderate gust could have blown her away. There was nothing to say, Diana knew, but she felt that if she clung to her, then that human warmth might bring her a kind of comfort. She closed her eyes and tightened her embrace.

  They sat like that for a while, and then Elizabeth said, “Did you really love Henry?”

  Diana was so surprised to hear her sister speak a full sentence that she did not at first realize what was being asked.

  “Did you love him the way I loved Will?” she asked.

  The younger Holland sister would not have guessed that these questions, at the slightest examination, made her heart flutter and yearn, or that the idea of Henry, once it was in her thoughts, made her not angry or despondent but instead full of an undeniable desire. This longing was the first emotion she had been able to feel since she had heard about the awful thing that had happened to Will. She knew if she could satisfy that feeling in any way, no matter what it did to her dignity, she would.