Rumors l-2

by Anna Godbersen

  This was a rare point of agreement between Mrs. Holland and her younger child, and it was perhaps for this reason that Diana’s memories of Christmas were fond. It had been a day when she was encouraged to recite her favorite poetry, when her appearance only had to be good enough for the family, when neatly wrapped boxes of bright new things were exchanged, and when her father — having not been asked to spend time with anyone but those he most wanted to spend his time with — was in high spirits. Perhaps it was for this reason that Diana woke, on the twenty-fifth, looked down on the sun beating on the new layer of snow in the back gardens, and felt a breath of optimism.

  This despite the fact that she had been a very bad girl and still had no marriage proposal to show for it.

  The previous evening had given her only a taste of what she most yearned for, but she woke with a sense of pleasant anticipation, which the holiday always brought, and she found that it stayed with her even as she put on a dressing gown and pinned up her curls. Although Snowden’s presence at the Schoonmakers’, and that of the two large men who had trailed Henry, had made it impossible for them to spend even a few minutes in each other’s company, still, they had exchanged glances, and she had felt loved. She even wondered if Henry wouldn’t find some way to be with her again later that day. She went down to the parlor with the idea that she might spend a few minutes by herself by the tree, breathing in the pine, and if Claire happened by, she would ask her for a cup of chocolate. But when she entered the parlor she saw that the chocolate had already been made and that she no longer wanted to be alone.

  “Elizabeth!” she cried at the sight of her sister, sitting in her same favorite chair by the fireplace, which held a few modest flames. Her hands fluttered involuntarily to the lace that was buttoned close to her neck and all the way up to her chin. More sounds came out of her mouth, although they were more or less unintelligible, and then she ran to her sister’s side and threw herself down at her feet and rested her head against her knee. Diana closed her eyes and just let herself feel that her sister really was there, body and all. It was a struggle to contain the news of what had happened with Henry, because Will was there behind her, sitting on a tasseled ottoman, still holding the iron poker, and his presence made her feel uncharacteristically shy.

  “Diana!” Elizabeth brought her sister’s face up by the chin and looked at her. She bent and gave her a kiss on the forehead.

  “I can’t believe you’re really here!” Diana now acknowledged Will, whose long legs in their serge trousers jutted outward so that his elbows rested on his knees. It was funny, but not unpleasant, seeing him here amongst the crowded antiques and layered Persian carpets of their family home. They both looked thinner and like they’d taken a lot of sun. “But I’m so glad. Everything’s just a mess, Liz, and we need you, and I know it’s probably just terrible going all the way across the country and—”

  Elizabeth interrupted her with a smile and a gentle “Aren’t you going to say hello to Will?”

  “Oh, hello, Will!” Diana stood and went over to the family’s former coachman and kissed him on the cheek. “I know,” she said conspiratorially and felt her cheeks scorch a little. “And I think it’s terribly romantic.”

  “Did you ever think you’d see me in your parlor?” Will’s mouth was stern and his eyes very, very blue. His hair had grown longer since the last time she saw him, and the baby-roundness had been rubbed off his face somewhat. The green branches of the tree behind him made his hair look a little reddish by comparison, and over the mantel Mr. Holland’s portrait stared down at him.

  “Oh, of course I did! And…and…you must have been in here lots of times before, weren’t you? When we were little and—”

  Will kept the corners of his mouth down, but the joke had broken in his eyes.

  “Anyway,” Diana went on with a laugh when she saw that she was being teased, “I’m glad you’re here now. And you, Liz, you have to tell me what I can do, because things have moved so very quickly with Henry that it’s a little frightening and—”

  Patience had never been one of Diana’s virtues, and she was so eager to get her sister’s advice that she almost forgot herself and her shyness about Will in the moment. When Snowden came in through the pocket doors — which his men had not yet managed to oil, leaving them susceptible to loud catching in the groove — she quite remembered what she ought not to say. She spun away from her sister, and the pleasure drained clear out of her features.

  “Miss Diana,” he said mildly as he crossed toward their little group. “Don’t let me interrupt you.”

  “I…” The words stuck in her throat. Several irrational plans sprang to her mind: Maybe she could claim Elizabeth was someone else, and not the sister whose death she had so often lamented to her family’s guest. Or maybe he hadn’t noticed Elizabeth, and if Diana created some distraction, she might slip out of the room before he did. It was with this half-insane idea in her head that she went on, somewhat defensively: “You haven’t interrupted anything at all.”

  “Oh, no?” For a man to whom she had so repeatedly lied, he seemed neither outraged nor astonished by the sight of the dead Holland girl in their midst, a fact Diana, still so totally stunned by the whole situation, was more relieved than confused by. His gaze went from one sister to the other, but he waited patiently for an explanation, and this kindness only worsened Diana’s sense of having been caught in an enormous untruth. He must have also seen Will, but Diana was too terrified to look and see how he was handling this intrusion. Her fingers went to her reddening cheeks.

  “It’s only that I’m hardly dressed for company,” she stuttered, still avoiding a fact that was becoming more obvious as the seconds passed.

  “You must not stand on ceremony with me, who as you know has come to love your family as my own.” Snowden bowed his head a little in expectation and moved the heels of his scuffed, well-traveled boots together. Surely he must be feeling ill-used by this same family, who had so benefited from his largesse and who had misrepresented their woes to him.

  But of course, Diana had been the only one who had known their woes were a falsehood.

  Just when Diana was starting to feel a little desperate, wondering how she should handle this situation, Elizabeth stood behind her and came to her side. She placed a gentle hand on Diana’s shoulder, the touch of which seemed to encourage calm.

  “Elizabeth, she’s alive!” Diana said then, waving her hands as though the illogical nature of the event had just occurred to her. Maybe, she thought in a moment of pure lunacy, if she seemed to have just realized herself, he wouldn’t be so angry with her later. She punctuated this statement with a laugh that contained not nearly enough amusement and sounded unpleasant even to her own ears.

  “Yes,” Snowden replied. “I can see that.”

  A silence followed in which Diana fidgeted uncontrollably and then turned her vexed expression on her sister. Finally Elizabeth said, “I know it must seem very odd to you that I’m here, given the reports of my death.”

  “Odd,” Snowden repeated. His thin lips settled slowly around the word. “It’s not odd. It’s miraculous! I’m so pleased that I was here for this tremendous moment. I knew your father very well, Elizabeth, and I owe him quite a lot. I don’t know if Diana has told you…”

  Diana shook her head, feeling very ashamed. She found herself hoping that he wouldn’t mention to Elizabeth how indifferent to him she’d been, and how generally poor as a hostess. Elizabeth would never, after all, have let someone give the family so much without the return of great heaps of charm and attention. And what must he think of Will, standing back there behind Elizabeth, still in his workman’s clothes?

  “…but I have some small holdings of your father’s that have been wrapped up for a time — I won’t bore you with the details, but I have just recently been able to liquidate them, and I have come to help your family put itself back together. I hope you won’t find me overly forward, Miss Holland, if I observe that your fa
mily has found itself in financial straits and that such a situation ought to be corrected.”

  Elizabeth went forward to the place on the carpet where Snowden stood and took his hand. Her sister could sense, even looking at her back, that she had summoned all her old warmth and radiance. The sun coming in through the high windows shot through her pile of blond hair, illuminating it. When she spoke, it was with the sweet, low tone of a much older girl. “I thank you for that, Mr. Cairns. It is unbelievably kind. I know how much affection my father had for you, and I can plainly see how much you want to repay that. My whole family and I are deeply grateful.”

  “It is an honor.” Snowden held on to Elizabeth’s hand even as he made a little bow. “And I will continue my presumptuousness by telling you that my men have brought some presents that I would like very much to give you, and later on I hope you will allow me to provide your kitchen with what is necessary for a proper Christmas dinner.”

  Diana looked back at Will, who was standing at attention with his hands behind his back and whose shirt of blue and black plaid was a handsome contrast to his suntanned skin. All of her embarrassment and confusion must have been evident on her face because he winked at her in a way that momentarily alleviated her tension.

  “Oh, Mr. Cairns, such kindness.” Elizabeth’s hands remained in his, and her tone was full of honey. “I cannot imagine a better way to celebrate the holiday and—”

  Diana saw the figure in the hall around the time her sister stopped talking. Her gaze drifted, and she noticed that the woman watching them through the partially open doors seemed to have tried to do her hair, although the effect was messier than if she had simply left it down. The long nightgown, which was fitted in the bust and neck but flowed outward from the elbows and the waist, gave Mrs. Holland the look — it occurred to Diana, before the gravity of the situation settled in — of a rather mad member of a Greek chorus. She was small of body, but she was watching the scene with eyes that were large, the irises like black pools in a forest, and rimmed with alert anxiety.

  That’s what real surprise looks like, Diana thought to herself a little regretfully, just before she realized that she and her sister were going to have a lot to explain.

  Thirty Eight

  Grandes dames do not let go of their grudges willingly; I have known some to cherish a resentment for twenty years or more, against their rival social arbiters but also against their own sisters and children. Such is their privilege, though there are those of us who wake up on Christmas morning hoping that this year it will be a day of reunion.

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

  THE SILENCE MIGHT HAVE LASTED HOURS, ALTHOUGH it was difficult to be certain. Elizabeth realized that her mother was watching her from the foyer, and then, before anyone made a sound, there was time for her to recall all the things that used to be expected of her and to turn, slowly, to face the petite matriarch. She felt plainer and less adorned than she ever had. She was wearing the same worn dress — she had looked in her closet for something else, but all the old things were gone — and she felt denuded. Mrs. Holland’s mouth hung open, and she hardly seemed to be breathing as she remained in the doorway with a steadiness that, given her behavior the night before, Elizabeth would not have thought her capable of. She appeared to be using the moments of silence to check every inch of her daughter. When they were over, she took two long strides to the center of the room and pulled Elizabeth to her breast.

  “Oh thank God, thank God, thank God,” she repeated over and again.

  Elizabeth hadn’t been so close to her mother’s body since she was a child. The moment passed, however, and quickly. Mrs. Holland kept a hold on her daughter’s elbow as she stepped back. “Claire!” she yelled. The force of her voice somewhat calmed her daughter’s worries about her health. “Claire, come here!”

  Claire came hurrying in, her wide cheeks pink with exertion. She placed a hand on the stomach of her plain black percale dress with the wide boat neck and looked around the room. Elizabeth tried to smile at her reassuringly, and after Claire had looked back for a few long seconds, the tip of her nose began to turn red and her eyes started to well.

  “Claire,” Mrs. Holland said sharply. She kept one hand at her daughter’s elbow, and the other went to the back of Elizabeth’s head, where it rested, firm and loving. “Draw the curtains. Miss Holland has come back to us, as you can plainly see. You will be able to talk with her later. Mr. Cairns, forgive me, you will think us a very odd family. I do hope you will stay on for Christmas dinner. Diana—”

  Everyone looked at Diana, who brought her arms up over her laces, suggesting deep discomfort and a barely controlled impulse to go off and hide.

  “Yes?” Even in the morning with her hair hardly done and her face nothing more than washed, she shone with a loveliness that was new to her, more grown-up. She seemed to know what she had now.

  “Diana, you shall help Claire prepare luncheon for Mr. Cairns. You will see that he is entertained.” Mrs. Holland’s eyes flashed about the room, as though she were assessing the extent of her resumed authority. Claire had drawn the curtains, which brought shadows back into the room. It was now the parlor that Elizabeth remembered. Without the natural light you hardly noticed the missing Asian vases or the one or two landscapes that had been taken down from the walls. It was again the dense and richly colored collection of objects that had always represented the Hollands. “And you, Keller.”

  Elizabeth felt a little quickstep of panic. “Mother, he’s not to blame. He—”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Elizabeth.” Her mother’s grip on her head tightened, and she could feel the command to silence as though it were emanating through her palm. “I was asking Keller where he’s been. It’s been damned hard for me to find someone who knows as much about horses since you’ve gone,” she went on in Will’s direction, “and I frankly blame you that I had to sell them.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Holland.” Will looked into his old employer’s eyes as he might look on a frigid morning that there was no choice but to go out into. He moved his head just slightly but kept his gaze steady. “But you knew I couldn’t stay here forever.”

  He blinked, and then his gaze was on Elizabeth. She wanted to go stand beside him, to show everyone just how she felt, but she knew from the way he was looking at her that this was unnecessary.

  “Keller, we’ll discuss this at a later hour.”

  Mrs. Holland’s hand now went to Elizabeth’s wrist, and Elizabeth felt herself being drawn out of the parlor. From the four others there was plain silence. Elizabeth could only note the piney smell of the tree, the soft snap of the fire that Will had built that morning, and the faint and reassuring smile that he managed to give her before she was pulled from the room. Then she was going up the stairs. She felt the old fear of her mother’s temper, and was nervous about how she’d ever explain where she had been and what she had done. But her mother’s strong grip, which indicated how very much among the living she was, was some kind of consolation.

  They had just reached the second-floor landing when she saw her aunt Edith’s head emerge over the rail. “Elizabeth!” she shouted. She held on to the banister, but otherwise her body moved downward at a run. When she came onto Mrs. Holland and Elizabeth, she threw her arms around the younger girl. “How can this be?” she whispered, pulling back. Her cheekbones protruded, shiny and definite from her thinning skin, but she otherwise retained that Holland beauty she had been known for in her youth. Elizabeth looked into the small, round eyes and saw that she was overcome.

  “Perhaps we all should sit somewhere?” Elizabeth suggested, and then the two older women ferried her into the master bedroom. Elizabeth and her aunt went to the armchairs by the fireplace, and Mrs. Holland went to the window, where she pushed back the calico valance and peered down on the street. She continued to fuss with the lace undercurtains as she did.

  Words still had not presented
themselves. The Elizabeth whom she’d been taught to be was back with her now, and to such a girl as she had been there was no way to explain what had taken her west. But her aunt was urging her with a look. Her mouth flexed as though she might cry, and there were stars of light reflected in her eyes. The moments stretched out in front of them, and then Elizabeth saw that she would have to be the first to speak. Once she began, she found that she couldn’t stop.

  “I couldn’t marry Henry Schoonmaker. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t be married to him and I had to stop it. I love Will, Mother.” Elizabeth looked but saw no change in her mother’s expression. This revelation was apparently too much for Edith, however, who now lowered her eyes. “He had already gone when I realized it. That is, I knew I loved him already, but he was gone when I realized that I couldn’t live without him. That I couldn’t marry Henry. So I followed Will and I found him, in California. He was working in a shipping yard and saving money to lease a piece of land down near Los Angeles. He always works so hard for things, and he had saved a lot. Even from before, from out here in New York. He had a hunch there would be oil there, and now we’ve found it. Will says there’s so much of it we’ll be rich…and then we can help you, Mother. Will wants that too.”

  “Oh, Elizabeth.” Her mother let out a breath that might have sent a hot-air balloon soaring. “I had such hopes for you.”

  “I know.” Elizabeth’s eyes stung, and for the first time that day she found herself unable to look at her mother. She looked around the room, which she had barely entered since her childhood, with its imposing four-poster bed and flocked, wheat-colored wallpaper. The room was not large, and the women were situated close enough to each other that Elizabeth felt their discomfort and confusion almost physically. “I know you did.”

  “It sounds like one of your father’s schemes,” her mother went on dismissively.