Rumors l-2

by Anna Godbersen

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

  THEY’D WOKEN UP IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE — well, in an oil field, which looked on the face of it very much like nowhere — but by late afternoon Elizabeth and Will were moving steadily northward to San Francisco in a first-class car. There had been several delays at the station in San Pedro, and for a time Elizabeth had given up hope of her pulse returning to a normal rate. The first-class car had been Will’s idea. It was an extravagance she wasn’t sure if they could afford — how deep could his savings run, anyway? But he’d insisted that this was the way to celebrate the imminent change in their lives. Elizabeth might have protested more strongly, except that her worries lay elsewhere.

  “Where do you think we’ll be by tomorrow?” Will asked, taking her hand, as their car hurtled through the middle of California.

  “I don’t know.” Outside, the sun was going down. Elizabeth pushed her head back into the red velvet cushion of the car and shifted her gaze from the rapidly changing landscape in the window to Will. The names on their door read elizabeth and will keller, and they were keeping up the ruse of being a married couple so that they could share a berth without suspicion. He had apologized to her, once they’d taken their seats, and promised that he wouldn’t make her lie about something that important much longer.

  “I slept all the way cross-country last time,” Will said. She winced to think what must have been on his mind during that trip, even though his tone was a happy one. He was worried about her, she could see that — his light blue eyes were wide and observant against his sun-darkened skin. “I plan to take in more of the view this time.”

  Elizabeth pressed her palm into his and tried to smile. They were both wearing their coats for the first time since they’d left New York — this despite the heat of the railway cars — because she believed it made them look more put together. She felt a little ashamed to be tawny and dirty, so simply dressed, amidst all these trappings of travel gentility, but at least she could believe that her fellow travelers were merely rich and not yet distinguished by taste or class. Still, Elizabeth would have done anything to cover the yellowing her seersucker dress had taken on. In Will’s case, however, the black smears on his serge trousers seemed to garner as much murmured admiration as his fitted brown coat.

  Three chandeliers illuminated their car, and a carpet ran down its center. They were on their way to New York, and the air around them was all warm and perfumed, but still, Elizabeth’s mind was restless.

  “We’ll be with them soon enough,” Will told her gently, as if reading her thoughts.

  Elizabeth nodded and rested her head against his shoulder. What Will said was true, but it did little to comfort her, because the question that had interrupted her sleep the night before was not how soon she could be with her family, but what she could do for them once she arrived.

  Will believed that they were sitting on vast wealth, and she believed him, but she knew it would take time and effort to turn that into cash. Her family needed money now, or preferably yesterday. But Elizabeth owned something that could be turned into cash, though she could hardly think of it without a sheen of sweat collecting on her brow. That thing was Henry Schoonmaker’s engagement ring, a Tiffany diamond set in gold.

  The ring was in her pocket, wrapped once in tissue paper and then in newspaper and then finally in a piece of canvas. She hadn’t yet told Will that she had brought it with her from New York. It was such a talisman of her past betrayals, she didn’t even like to think of it. But she reminded herself that it might do her family a world of good — it might hire the necessary doctor, or put Diana in the right dress — and she had already been selfish enough. She would feel better, she told herself, once it was out of her hands and she had its worth in bills.

  She had a plan for that, too — she knew that the train was to stop in Oakland for several hours, to pick up new passengers and cargo. There were places near the station where things could be pawned, as Denny had told her once. She would slip out on some excuse and would be done with it quickly.

  “If you don’t stop making that distraught face,” Will said, interrupting her agitated planning, “I think I might start to cry.”

  She leaned into his shoulder and told him she would try. Her eyelids were heavy, and in a moment they fell closed. She let the train’s northward movement rock her, and Will, too, and in a little while she did manage — however briefly — to let her family’s troubles fade from her mind. As she fell into sleep, she told herself that she was capable of executing her plan. It was would be easy, and then she would be able to repay her family for all the distress she had caused.

  Eighteen

  Everyone knows a girl who made a good start to her social career and became compromised by being seen too often alone in the company of gentlemen or perhaps going too many times out of that hallowed sphere in which our young goddesses are meant to walk…. If she plans to live a long time in society, a girl cannot be too careful which streets she strolls upon and in whose homes she is a guest.

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

  “WHERE ARE YOU GOING?”

  Diana turned slowly from the front door and looked back into the afternoon shadows that fell across the foyer behind her. She felt a small tug of conscience as Claire came forward in her simple black dress. Claire was her friend, after all — her best friend, she might have even said on some occasions. The maid was looking tired and a little worried now, and though Diana would have preferred her to be neither of those things, the guilt she was feeling was more likely based on the fact that the next words out of her mouth were going to be a lie.

  “Outside for a little air.” Diana thought she managed to sound breezy enough.

  “But it’s freezing outside, and from the way the sky’s looking there may be hail and—”

  “I’ll bring an umbrella, then.” Diana looked into Claire’s wide, fair face, which was framed in reddish hair, and tried to look like someone above questioning.

  “I won’t be able to make a fire, though, when you get back, since we’ve got no firewood, and if you should catch a chill…”

  So her mother hadn’t managed to give Claire the money to keep the cold out.

  “Dear Claire,” Diana said, releasing the brass doorknob for a moment and moving toward her friend. She took Claire’s hands in her own and kissed her on either cheek. “Order the firewood.”

  “But they said they won’t defer payment any longer and that—”

  “Tell them we shall pay on delivery. When I get back I will have money for them….”

  She smiled, kissed the other girl’s milky forehead, and hurried out the door and down the stone steps to the street. “But you must wear a warmer coat!” she heard Claire exclaim as she hurried east.

  Diana did not turn to acknowledge this last admonishment, even though she knew Claire to be correct on her final point. Clouds were forming ominous slate gray armories in the sky and she had not, as promised, brought an umbrella. There were still coats in the house, of course. Her mother had not yet stooped to selling off their wardrobe. But Diana was on a particular mission, and she wanted to look a certain way. She was wearing the new green velvet jacket that fit her so perfectly, and a long skirt of houndstooth check with black buttons that brought the fabric close to her hips. She was walking at a determined gait that would not have won the approval of any society matrons, and repeating to herself, Davis Barnard, 155 East Sixteenth Street, Third Floor. The wind was sharp and icy, but she hardly thought of it. Her skirt fluttered behind her as she went.

  The building was a plain four-story apartment house with a brown face and two unblinking windows per floor. There was no answer at first, and as Diana stood still on the pavement the cold started to set in. The address hadn’t meant anything to her before a few days ago, but, as she waited, it occurred to her that it might have significance for others. Indeed, fo
r all she knew, the ladies passing in their cold-weather hats and plain skirts were fully aware of the meaning of No. 155 East Sixteenth Street. This thought made her uncharacteristically self-conscious, and she pulled her conspicuous green coat close to her body as though it might somehow disguise her. Elizabeth would have thought of this possibility. Elizabeth would have considered who might be watching, instead of charging ahead on a whim.

  “Hello down there!”

  Diana craned her neck back and looked upward. She kept her hand on the straw top of her brimmed hat and squinted — for even a moody sky contains some light — at the head of Davis Barnard protruding from a third-floor window.

  “Ah, Miss Truscott!” he called.

  She spun, looking around her, but there seemed to be no other girls interested in that particular window.

  “I mean you,” Mr. Barnard went on, in a somewhat more circumspect voice.

  “Oh,” Diana said, turning her gaze on the third floor again. “I wanted to come up,” she added simply.

  “Of course.”

  A few seconds later a key attached to a large silver ring came clattering to the ground, and then Diana let herself in and climbed the stairs to the little apartment inhabited by the writer of the Imperial ’s society page.

  “Miss Holland,” Mr. Barnard said, ushering her in, “how bold you are.”

  “If you’d thought I was a priss, I doubt you would have approached me in the first place,” Diana replied, fixing her hands in the pockets of her skirt and looking around her. She took in the long and slender room and noted that its twilight blue paint had been applied some time ago; its walls were dotted with framed prints, and the floor was covered with layers of carpets. A cut-glass punch bowl figured prominently on the cabinet, the table was a mess of papers and notebooks and books, and the daybed seemed to have taken on a similar desk-like function, save that there were more pillows involved. “So this is what they mean when they say ‘bachelor apartment.’”

  “Oh, yes, I am the ne plus ultra of bachelors.”

  Diana’s cheekbones tinged red at the sound of a phrase she didn’t recognize. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Davis smiled where he might have laughed. “It means I have achieved the most profound degree of bachelorhood.”

  “Is that so?” Diana replied aridly. She moved to the table and drew her fingers across the spines of a pile of books.

  “Ah, I did not say the ne plus ultra of playboys or the ne plus ultra of roués. Only of bachelors, and you can see that my room will give you plenty of testimony to that end.”

  Diana nodded, understanding but not wanting to seem too friendly, and moved closer to the fireplace, which was roaring cozily and decorated with a pair of boxing gloves strung up like Christmas stockings.

  “Would you like some coffee?”

  “Please.” Diana turned and observed her host, whose appearance was somewhat more rumpled than when she had met him out in the world. He wore a salmon-colored shirt under a dark gray vest, the forward curve of which suggested good living on the part of its wearer. A belly was contained there, like the back of an upholstered chair that has been a little overstuffed. His dark hair was cut so close to his head that it seemed to form three separate sections, one on the top and two on the sides, and below the unique brow was the same attentiveness in the eyes that had first tempted her to entertain his suit.

  “How do you take it?” he asked as he poured the dark liquid from a silver pot on the side table.

  Diana bit her lip. She was a tea drinker, most days. “However you do.”

  “Well, then.” Davis reached to the shelf above him, where several bottles crowded out the reflection of a long, thin mirror, and he took down a decanter of brown alcohol, from which he poured a shot into each of their cups. “Please sit, Miss Diana,” he said as he handed her one of the cups and perched on the edge of the daybed.

  She settled into the cane-backed chair and put her hands against the warm sides of the white cup. The sting of whiskey mingled with the steam of the coffee in her nose. Even on that historic night in Henry’s greenhouse, Diana had not felt quite so conscious of breaking the rules as she did now. Mother would die if she knew I was here! Diana thought, before realizing that that particular phrase wasn’t so amusing, given her mother’s current state of health, and banished the small smile that had crept onto her face.

  Perhaps Davis sensed that her thoughts had turned to the impropriety of her visit, for he went on to say, with the same sly expression: “I never thought I’d see a Miss Holland here in my rooms.”

  Diana shrugged evasively and took a sip of the heady coffee. Then she met his eyes and, letting her moods break across her face like fast-moving weather, smiled. “This is the best coffee I’ve ever had,” she said gaily. “Anyway, I haven’t come to talk about me. I have something to sell.”

  “Oh?” The dark brow jutted upward, before Davis tilted his coffee cup and drained it. He placed the empty cup on the edge of the cluttered table and crossed his wrists on his knee. “What is it?”

  “Well,” Diana began, switching the cross of her legs and rolling her warm brown eyes to the ceiling, “If I were the writer, I’d phrase it thusly: ‘The new Mrs. Ralph Darroll was seen giving an intimate dinner party in her new home on Madison Avenue, a gift from her paternal uncle for her marriage just last month, and is reported to already be wearing dresses in the style they call empire.’”

  “I think I see your point.” Davis paused and knit his fingers together so that he could rest his chin on them. “But it’s a little subtle for the common reader, don’t you think?”

  This stung slightly, as Diana had been working out the wording all morning, but, not to be hindered, she pressed her hands into her thighs, exhaled, and tried again. “Then what if you added: ‘Could it be for the same reason that good Empress Josephine favored the style? In which case, there may be a Ralph Jr. in less than half a year.’”

  “Very good, Miss Di. I see you’re a fan of my columns.”

  Diana smiled happily at the compliment and chose to ignore its second half. She looked at the old family daguerreotypes on the mantel, and then let her eyes fall on a vellum-bound book of poems on the edge of the table nearest her.

  “I’ll run it this week,” Davis told her. Diana’s gaze snapped back to her host. She wasn’t sure why this news gave her such pleasure, but she found herself clapping her hands together like a giddy little girl.

  “It’s at the same rate,” Davis, his dark eyes ever watchful, continued. “Of course, I could double your money.”

  “How?” Diana asked, lowering her hands and trying to look like a person who drove a hard bargain.

  “The readers of the ‘Gamesome Gallant’ column are always interested in the doings of the Hollands, and surely they’d like to know what Miss Diana Holland was doing at the Ralph Darrolls’, when by all societal measures she should be in black at home, still mourning for her sister, or perhaps tending to a mother whom people say isn’t well….”

  Diana had to look away from Davis. She had never been a good girl, and yet sitting in this small, cluttered room, drinking whiskey in her coffee, and telling secrets about her people was beginning to feel something like exposure. But it was also, in its way, exhilarating. She stood and walked to the window, with its faded velveteen cushions and old lace curtains, where she paused to let the last of her coffee burn a streak down her throat and into her stomach.

  “You’re a very special source to me,” Davis went on in a more serious tone. “I’d never write something about you unless you allowed me to. And I know your mother is very old-fashioned. But I also know you’ve been out with three gentlemen in hardly more days, so I think she’s got an objective that wouldn’t necessarily be impeded by my mentioning your name….”

  Of course Diana, looking down on the huddled crowds who were now leaving work en masse and traveling home wrapped in their bulky dark garments, was not wondering what her mother would think when
she saw the item. She was imagining Henry, reading about her with his friend, ideally turning purple with rage and then, perhaps, challenging Teddy to a duel. Oh, she wouldn’t want anybody getting hurt, of course, but there was nothing like a little chest-beating to remind a man where his true feelings lay. Not that she even knew exactly what to think of Henry, if he cared more for Penelope than for her, but she did want him to regret losing her. She wanted his regret to equal hers. She wanted it to be greater.

  It occurred to her, standing at the edge of that little room and looking down, selling observations that were supposed to evaporate in the air so that they would be laid down in print instead, that she was no longer an innocent. She was always doing this of course, feeling one day that she was experienced and then waking up the next and realizing how naïve she had been. But she was pretty sure she had now crossed some line.

  “I think that would make a very interesting item, Mr. Barnard,” she said, turning away from the window and perching against the sill. “And if you’ll pour me a little more of your magical coffee I’ll tell you how I’d put it.”

  Davis gave her his crooked smile and went back to the cabinet.

  Diana looked across the warm little oblong room, which she had decided fit perfectly her idea of a literary garret, and sighed contentedly. “I’d begin: ‘The enchanting Miss Diana Holland was seen chatting intimately….’”

  Nineteen

  It is common knowledge that at every dinner party ever given since the dawn of time, the guests have been sat such that the sexes alternate: male, female, male, female, etc. This is the way nature intended it, and it has allowed many a happy hostess to claim some kind of credit in the forming of romantic alliances that otherwise outshine them.