Splendor l-4

by Anna Godbersen

  She wished Claire still worked there — she would call for her, and the redheaded maid would help her undress, and they would discuss love and destiny and other topics they secretly suspected they knew nothing about. She did consider calling Gretchen, the new maid, because the buttons that ran from her tailbone to her neck were complicated and hard to reach. But everything was irrevocably altered now — she was more alone than ever — and in the end she undid the buttons herself and laid the garment across the chair by the carved vanity, where angels and lilies emerged from stained wood around an oval mirror. There was a silver case secreted amongst the perfumes and powders on the table, and she took a small cigarette from it now and lit it with a match. She lay down on the floor in her white cotton bloomers and bodice, which were decorated with pale blue ribbon, placing beside her the glass ashtray which she had taken as a souvenir from Señora Conrad’s. She rested her head against one palm, and inhaled and exhaled lazy, contemplative puffs in the direction of the plaster filigree on the ceiling.

  Just to find Henry — to know him just a little better, to make herself his beloved — she had traveled a great distance. Now, with a few lucky strokes, he was all hers, and not just in some secret, insupportable way. He wanted to marry her. So why did her throat grow tight at the thought? She wondered if it wasn’t some malign element in her personality that sought out what was difficult and couldn’t help but take umbrage with anything that came easily. Maybe her dramatic streak was leading her to trouble, and making her suspicious of a great bounty.

  She smoked another cigarette and then another until her mouth was dry and her chest hurt. When a small pile of burned tobacco and ash had collected in the glass tray, she stood up and went to the bed. She pulled out the case that was still ready for departure, and in which she kept a few items of clothing and a very magical bowler, and removed her journal. Sighing loudly, she flopped down on the white matelassé bedspread. For a moment she felt very juvenile, and a little silly, for spending her afternoon like this, when somewhere out in the city her wealthy lover was making monumental decisions that would later on affect the doings of hundreds, maybe thousands, of men. But once she began scribbling words she didn’t stop until she had filled pages. She began:

  What kind of Mrs. Schoonmaker would she be? Vicious, frivolous, or too soon in the grave? Would she be vain, or happy, or quickly forgotten? Not by the gossips or the quick to judge, of course, for they have the longest memories, and they are the record keepers of our kind.

  Thirty Seven

  The person who advised that it is always best to tell the truth undoubtedly led a very sound life, although it is difficult to imagine that he would have lasted very long in a society like ours, where appearances are so savagely maintained.

  — MAEVE DE JONG, LOVE AND OTHER FOLLIES OF THE

  GREAT FAMILIES OF OLD NEW YORK

  BY THREE O’CLOCK CAROLINA HAD REMOVED THE veil, although she still wore the white dress that had been the pricey product of a week’s frenzied labor. She had stopped worrying about rumpling the back, and had sat down in the comfortable stuffed chair that Buck had placed in her dressing room that morning. There was a polished silver tray with sandwiches and tea, but she had not touched them. She could not think about consuming anything. She had often heard of delicate ladies suffering from complete lack of appetite, but she had never before this experienced anything of the kind. All her uneasy thoughts gravitated toward Leland, wherever he was. When they were alone, she had begun to explain who Tristan was, with the half-formed notion that she could serve him just a sliver of the truth and smile contritely and hope for his forgiveness. But before she could help it she had told him everything, down to her real name, her place of birth, her real family, her former position as a lady’s maid, her meeting with Longhorn. He had listened carefully and taken everything in, and then he’d told her, in a calm voice, that what he wanted was to be alone and walk. But he would come back. He had promised to come back.

  A few hours ago she had feared some small embarrassment of wardrobe or wording. She could not have anticipated anything as mortifying as what had come to pass, and yet, in the event, she found that she thought only a little about the contempt of her well-heeled guests, or of the scandalized reports that would no doubt run in the papers the following day. If she could, she would have traded the whole of Longhorn’s estate for the assurance that Leland still loved her. She would have given away her house just to know what block he was on at that very moment.

  The loneliness of waiting was more profound than any she had ever known. It occurred to her that maybe her sister was close by, that perhaps Claire, with her reserve stores of reassuring goodness, would make soothing company until her groom’s return. But along with the cool cleanness of confession had come the realization that asking one’s natural-born sister to play a silent maid on one’s wedding day was a very callous thing to do, and that she deserved none of Claire’s comforts anymore.

  There was no urge to cry. As desperately as she wanted some piece of Leland, there was another part of her that had become quiet and settled during her hours of waiting. Since she had become Carolina Broad, her every minute had contained a lurking paranoia that she might somehow betray her past and her secret, cloddish, low-born self. But now she had revealed those things to the only person whose opinion really mattered to her anymore, and that fact — while horrid — made her feel that she might, at last, be able to put her feet up.

  The room was small and quiet, but the ceiling soared, and there was something cathedral-like and hushed about the space. She ought to pray, but she didn’t know how. Yet, even with no prostrations on her part, Leland kept his promise. He walked back into her dressing room presently — far less animated this time, and with an ashen complexion. She gazed at the deep black jacket he wore and the fine weave of his dress shirt, which, even wrinkled and smeared with blood, hung handsomely on his large frame.

  For a while neither spoke. She stood, all of the fabric and lapidary detail rustling as she brought herself upright. The noises her finery made seemed especially loud in the monkish silence of that room, between those two souls. The man who should already have been declared her husband looked at her with pale blue eyes, but perhaps it was painful for him to do so, for he quickly averted them.

  “Carolina—” he began, just as she blurted:

  “I am so sorry—”

  “Don’t be.”

  “What?” Her heart, and all the other delicate tissue within her, swelled upward, as if with a summer breeze.

  “I understand,” he went on, sounding quiet and defeated and keeping his eyes on the floor. “I understand why you lied about who you were. Who you are. In a way I think it was quite audacious of you, really, to put those ninnies on and make them think you were just as grand as any of them.”

  “You do?” she whispered, stepping forward, listening to the stiff petticoat brush against the stone. The shadows on his face were driving her mad, for she wanted nothing so much as a clear vision of him and the chance to show him her full, true self.

  “Yes. But of course none of those people ever really impressed me particularly, and I never cared for their parties and clothes and conversation all that much. I guess I always knew you were different from them, and that’s what made me want to have you. I’ve been walking for hours asking myself, if you had told me from the beginning that you were a maid, and not an heiress, would I have fallen in love with you in the same way?” Now he did finally bring his face up, so that the natural light of the high window could fully illuminate his features, so that his eyes were cast directly at her. “I think I would have, Carolina. I think I would have loved you anywhere.”

  Her lips parted and a noise unlike any she had ever heard — something between a gurgle and a wail — came up from her throat. She wanted to be able to say something back to him just as beautiful as what he’d said, but there were now tears brimming on her lower lids, and even if there hadn’t been, there was no possible way wor
ds could have approximated the magnitude of her feelings at that moment. Already she was picturing a very small ceremony, perhaps onboard a ship, as she and her husband sailed away from the city and its vitriol. She stepped forward and reached for his hands.

  “I wish you had told me from the beginning. Or once we had gotten to know each other a little.” His hands gripped hers, and squeezed. Then he let them go. “But that you called yourself an only child, when you have a sister. That you pursued Longhorn’s friendship for financial gain — even if only in a small way. That you grew up right here, so close to me, and thought you could conceal the fact over a whole lifetime together. You lied to me for too long, and I don’t believe I’ll ever be able to forgive you that.”

  “No…please!” she gasped. In seconds it had all gone to pitch inside. She threw herself forward, reaching for him, and he took her up and let her rest her face against his chest. The tears were a flood now and the sobs rocked her whole body. She was soaking his shirt, but she couldn’t care about that anymore, and he didn’t seem to mind. When her emotions were somewhat less violent, but no more bearable, he began to rock her. “But I love you,” she wailed in that stupid, futile way of hers.

  “I loved you, too,” he said, and then for a long time they stood there, silent, as they were.

  She was glad of his arms around her, but she sensed that already the quality was different. As long as he let her, she went on pressing her face into his chest and tried to store up whatever comfort she could, for she knew the devastation, within and around her, was only just beginning.

  Thirty Eight

  Hysteria is a condition very common in women of the upper classes; the symptoms include nervousness, an inclination to fainting, shortness of breath, insomnia, irascibility, and a tendency to cause trouble. Quacks will prescribe sensory deprivation and all manner of doodads. The best cure, in fact, is heavy consumption of rich foods and several hundred hours in bed, after which the delicate flowers of teatime will come back in as vigorous a state of health as ever.

  — WOMEN’S SUPERIOR HOME HEALTH MANUAL, 1897 EDITION

  THERE WERE NO MORE ANGELS FOR ELIZABETH, not even in the cloudy waters of deepest sleep. In her few conscious moments, she whimpered and prayed and begged. She had tried to pretend to herself that it was all a delusion, and believe that Snowden really only did care that she got her rest. But then she saw the cruel calm with which he put her down again and again, and she remembered that he had killed with awful calculation before. This fact she knew with some frightened, primal certainty. Perhaps her father had given a fight, and she knew that Will had faced his death with the same dogged bravery as he had everything else in his short life. She would be easy for Snowden — he would make it seem that she had died giving birth, and then the heir to everything the Hollands had would be his to control. For why would anyone doubt that it was not his child, once she was turning slowly to dust below the ground and could no longer speak?

  It was well past midnight when her eyes flew wide open, and she found consciousness upon her like a frost. There was no way for her to know what day it was. Her heart, which had suffered such abuse already, was now churning like some heroic machine. The memory of a few very hard facts came first, and then sensation followed, all the way to her fingertips and toes. She was thirsty and hungry and would not have minded an encouraging smile from just about anyone, but she needed nothing so badly as she needed to be out of that bed and out of that house.

  Everything was blurry, indistinct, bruised. She blinked hard, trying to make out the contours of the room, trying to think what was best for her to do. But she knew she wouldn’t get many chances like this one, that it must have been some oversight that she was allowed to wake now, and that her husband was not given to many of those. In her dreams, Teddy had come to save her, but in real life he had made it to the door and his profound sense of decorum had blinded him to her situation. All she could think was: the stairs, the door, the street. Then she brushed aside the heaping covers and stumbled forward on trembling feet.

  She had always stepped lightly. It was one of the pretty things that used to be written about her in the society pages. She moved with such grace on the dance floor, one wouldn’t even know she was there, except that of course one could never take their eyes off her. That was how Elizabeth Holland had been, and she found those qualities served her well now as she moved like a ghost into the hall.

  There was a touch of moonlight coming through the fanlight above the front entry. Everything else was a spreading darkness. Perhaps, she thought as she came onto the second-floor landing, her training to become a very marriageable debutante would one day make her a great cat burglar, too. But this was a whimsical direction, and her situation was very grave, and she wondered what that clear, cloying stuff that Snowden soaked his handkerchief in before smothering her mouth and nostrils was, and whether it didn’t make her a little daffy besides causing her to fall asleep.

  This distracting notion allowed her pulse to slow just slightly as she came, almost, to the top of the stairs. Then she heard the creak of a board not far below her, and all of her instincts lurched. She knew it was Snowden, though she could hardly see anything. A trace of moonlight caught in the bottle of clear liquid he was carrying. So it was only his being a little late in coming to put her down again that had allowed her this opportunity. The vileness of his intention swept over her. The man whose home she’d promised to make for the rest of her life, before God and everybody, was engaged in nothing less than the extermination of her family. She had never experienced rage of the kind she felt now. It coursed through her like electricity.

  In her mind’s eye she saw Will just before he was gone, his face so full of fear and confusion, his whole body traumatized with pain. As Snowden was nearing the top of the steps, his movements slowed, perhaps because he had only recently woken up. She could make him out now, his eyes cast down but his purpose plain in his limbs. He hadn’t noticed her — but then she hadn’t so much as dared inhale since hearing him on the stair. His breath was full and even, like that of a man who slept soundly in a soft bed. He still had not seen her as she took hold of the banister. That she was there, upright and watchful, didn’t fully occur to him — his eyes growing popeyed at the sight — until after she put her arms forward and pushed hard against his chest.

  There could never be a contest of strength between these two. He was solid, and she was practically a wraith, unbalanced by her immense belly. Was it her rage that gave her such force, or some mother-wolf instinct, or had God’s hand worked through her in that moment of peril? Later, when her body was no longer so storm-tossed by terror and emotion, she would come to see that it was Will who had been there, in her, like the winged angel she’d dreamed about, protecting her one final time.

  The impact of that push was sudden and great. Snowden’s slippers skidded against the step, and then his arms wheeled. The whites of his eyes grew huge, and he looked at the small, blond thing he had so easily kept subdued for many days now. But it was too late for him; the earth pulled him down hard, and not in any kind way. He hit the bottom of the stairs with a thud and a bone-snapping crack. After that Elizabeth took several quite audible breaths and still felt no kind of calm. She placed her hand on her belly, to try and stop the trembling there. The rest of her was a lost cause.

  Then she tiptoed forward, to see what she had done.

  Thirty Nine

  …and can’t you just imagine those women glaring at us for sport, calling me the second wife and criticizing my hostessing style? It’s not a game I have any interest in playing, or a place I have a taste for anymore. I can’t be without you, but I can’t stay here. Come to Paris with me. I will wait for you on the pier for the noon ship tomorrow. With all the adoration my beating heart is capable of,

  — D.H.

  HENRY HAD STAYED UP ALL MONDAY NIGHT GOING over documents having to do with his father’s railroad interests, but by the time the first peachy hint of dawn was spreadi
ng from the corners of the sky, he and Mr. Lawrence had cleared the matter up satisfactorily and he was ready to address some paperwork of real importance. He was anxious about Diana — it was now more than a day since she’d run away from him, and he was eager to show her that everything was over with Penelope officially, legally, and in every other way. The staff had reported that Mrs. Schoonmaker had not come home the night before, or shown herself today, and his lawyer was ready to draw up divorce papers on the grounds of adultery. It could be kept out of the columns, Lawrence assured him, especially if it was done hastily and while the ghost of William Sackhouse Schoonmaker still held some sway over the city’s newspapermen.

  A footman brought him the letter just as he and Lawrence were getting into the particulars. He glanced down at it, and knew immediately from the lovely looping scrawl who had written these pages.

  “When did this come?” he demanded.

  “Yesterday, Mr. Schoonmaker.”

  “Why was it not brought to my attention sooner?” He had not realized with what force he was speaking until he saw the trepidation in the young, thin face.

  “We thought you were busy…. We—”

  “Never mind,” he said. “It’s done now. Don’t worry,” he added, trying to sound a little kind. He was overtired, and the staff couldn’t help but be somewhat confused and intimidated by him now. His features had hardened with fatigue, and his lean frame was down to a white collared shirt tucked into dark slacks; his jacket and waistcoat were somewhere, but he had, in the last few days, stopped thinking so much about his clothes. He was carrying himself differently; he knew he walked through the many halls of that house with a proprietary attention that he had not formerly possessed. “Don’t think any more of it. You may go.”