The Luxe

by Anna Godbersen

  “What a sullen little pair,” she whispered. Elizabeth realized with an unpleasant jolt of humiliation what her aunt was mumbling about, and that her words were audible from across the room.

  Elizabeth turned to Henry, her heart thumping with embarrassment, but he hadn’t seemed to have heard. He was examining his cuff links, which were also gold and also engraved with his initials. She might have thought about what a negative sign of his character this was, but she was too busy looking back at her aunt and trying to determine whether she was going to keep on muttering mortifying things. Elizabeth decided she couldn’t take the chance and stood.

  “Mr. Schoonmaker, it looks like a lovely day and I confess I haven’t been out all morning. Would you like to take a walk around the park?” Elizabeth saw Claire blushing out of the corner of her eye and realized she was supposed to have waited to be asked. Her thoughts were so scattered that her manners were failing her, but that of course was not a thing she could explain to Henry. “I meant, if you…”

  But Henry had already stood and extended his arm to her. “All right, then.”

  Outside, the day was bright and cooler than she had imagined. A fall-like breeze swept up from the East River and cleansed the air. Elizabeth felt her shoulders relax a little as she took in the leafy smell and the rich blue of the sky. Gramercy was a wonderful repose just off a noisy, dirty stretch of Broadway, hush with the gentility protected for generations by the Holland family and their ilk. Elizabeth tried to tell herself that that age wasn’t lost, that it had not been replaced by an era of craven excess to which she did not belong. Inside the vast iron gates of the park, nannies were chasing children still wearing patent leather shoes and bows from church. Carriages circled the square, the horses’ hooves clicking against the street. Her grandparents had bought one of the lots around the park when there was nothing built up this far north on Manhattan, and her father had grown up in No. 17. This was the Hollands’ little corner of the world; it was unbearable to her that it might not always be.

  But that was just more selfishness, she reminded herself. She looked at the elegant wrought iron, those stately brown town houses facing one another across the park, all that healthful shade, and her heart began to drop as she imagined her poor mother brought low. A whole future spread out in her mind, of small, dirty rooms haunted by the mocking laughter of her former peers. The family legacy would be dashed, of course, and here she was, helpless to stop any of it, keeping her posture straight and exchanging platitudes with a well-brought-up boy who would no doubt prefer to be out chasing the skirts of her more giving European counterparts.

  Still, she walked along with Henry, saying one or two things about the quality of air and sunshine that particular day. She repeated her tale of the rough transatlantic crossing, which did not seem to interest him. They moved at a slow, indifferent pace around the park. They strolled along the west side, past No. 4, the house built by James Harper, the well-known publisher. There were two iron mayor’s lamps in front, which had been installed there when, during a second career in politics, he had held that office. They turned onto the north side, and then Henry stopped and turned to her. “My father has planned a dinner party.”

  “Oh? How lovely,” Elizabeth replied. Henry began walking again, his arm linked with Elizabeth’s. She realized that she was holding her elbow tensed against Henry’s so that they barely touched.

  “Yes, I’m sure Mrs. Schoonmaker will see that it is.”

  “I hear that Mrs. Schoonmaker always throws lovely dinner parties,” Elizabeth said, even though Mrs. Schoonmaker was a girl barely older than Elizabeth herself, with half the talent for domestic oversight. “They always get such nice write-ups, at any rate. I wish I could attend, but I’m sure it is a very exclusive list,” she added.

  Henry emitted a mirthless chuckle and gave the wrought-iron fence a knock with his fist as they glided by it. Elizabeth waited for him to say something more, and when he didn’t, she felt herself growing angry. If he had come to visit her, why was he being so cruelly silent? And of course he had no way of knowing that her family was in crisis, but it was, and really, hadn’t the thought entered his mind that she had better things to do than walk around silently with a boy who clearly wanted to be elsewhere? She was reminded of some vague impression from her childhood, of the Schoonmaker boy who was two years older than she and always smirking and who didn’t seem to care about anything.

  “I guess you know what the dinner is for,” Henry said, giving Elizabeth a cold stare.

  She shook her head petulantly. It occurred to her that Henry might be drunk. She glanced around her, as though for a familiar face to agree that all of this was very strange, and very rude. But there were only children and nannies calling to one another. Everybody she knew was hidden behind closed doors, and whatever happened next, she would have to deal with it herself. “No, I don’t know what the dinner party is for.”

  “The dinner party,” he said, pronouncing the words with derision, and rolling his dark eyes at the sky, “is for our engagement.”

  “You mean…the engagement of you to…me?”

  “Yes,” Henry replied with moderate sarcasm. “The muchlauded engagement of Miss Elizabeth Holland to Mr. Henry Schoonmaker.”

  And then she felt like the ground beneath her was crumbling away. She was hit by the nausea and light-headedness of looking down from a very great height. As she tried to keep herself upright, she couldn’t help but picture Will kneeling, so loving and hopeful, in the simple, mote-filled morning light. What a contrast he was to cold, stiff Henry, whose flatly handsome face was staring at her now.

  “Oh,” Elizabeth said—slowly, and stupidly, it seemed to her. “I…had no idea that was what the party was for.”

  “Yes, well, it is, and so I suppose I should tell you that I would be very honored if you would be my wife.” Henry’s lips curled around the word wife, as though he were unsure of the pronunciation.

  “Oh,” Elizabeth said again. She tried to regain her breath—she wondered, briefly, if she would ever be able to speak again. She saw a whole other life laid out for her, every day more alien than the next. There would be a ceremony. She would have to promise things before God. There would be sleeping in the same bed as Henry Schoonmaker, and waking up with him. And someday, she supposed, though she found it hard to imagine, there would be little children that were half her and half Schoonmaker.

  Only that morning Elizabeth had fantasized about marrying Will. Will, whom she knew and loved. She tried to think what it would mean to Will, but the image she could not banish from her mind was that of her mother’s face when she delivered the news that she would not be able to marry one of the wealthiest young men in Manhattan, because she was in love with the coachman.

  Elizabeth closed her eyes for a brief moment, imagining the consequences of accepting Henry’s proposal—if she could call it that. She was shocked by what she saw: her life as a Schoonmaker looked quite…grand. She pictured her mother’s face, which had as of late been so scrunched with worry and gray with sleeplessness, uncreased and glowing with pride. Diana’s cheeks flushed as always and free of grime. She saw herself doing what was easy and natural to her—being gracious and admired and well dressed. In this future, her family was wearing clothes no one could laugh at. Elizabeth looked down, surprised by the sudden, peculiar feeling growing from the pit of her stomach and spreading across her breastbone. It wasn’t happiness, but it was something like relief.

  “How very…” Elizabeth stumbled over her words, not knowing what form they might take until they came tumbling out of her lips. “How very…very, very kind of you, Mr. Schoonmaker.” She forced her face to contort into something resembling a smile. It became easier as the seconds passed, for out of all her warring emotions, a sense of gratitude seemed to be winning the match. “Thank you.”

  Then Henry, taking that as a yes, which it was, picked up Elizabeth’s arm and walked her back to the house. For a minute she thought she saw
Will, crossing in front of the house, and nearly panicked. She remembered how carelessly she had declared Henry Schoonmaker a cad the night before, and felt ashamed of having her arm linked with his now, while their relationship progressed recklessly from one minute to the next. Then she realized it was just one of the Parker Fishes’ coachmen out on an errand, and was thankful for the first time in her life not to catch an unexpected glimpse of the man she loved. Of course she would have to tell him, but not now. Not yet.

  “Mr. Schoonmaker,” she said, as they crossed Twentieth Street. “Do you think we could keep this a secret…until the dinner party I mean? Just so everything doesn’t go topsy-turvy at once?”

  He nodded in agreement, as though he liked the idea, and then they proceeded up the stairs. She tried to let as little of her body touch his as possible, and promised herself she would tell Will soon. Tomorrow.

  “And you can call me Henry,” he said flatly as they paused on the iron porte cochere. “We are engaged.”

  She was unable to smile at this. She was too busy wondering if Will might still love her when she was a Mrs. Schoonmaker.

  Ten

  It is well known that a man, when wooing a lady to be his wife, must first win over the females she most confides in—her friends, of course, and her sister, if she has one.

  ––MAEVE DE JONG, LOVE AND OTHER FOLLIES OF THE GREAT FAMILIES OF OLD NEW YORK

  THE HOUSE HAD GROWN SILENT. THERE SEEMED TO be nothing happening—not even in the kitchen, where dinner should certainly have been being prepared. Diana moved through the house on light feet, humming a tune in ragtime to herself, listening for some sign of life. It occurred to her that perhaps Mrs. Faber, having got wind of the disastrous state of the Holland finances, might’ve packed up the staff and run off—to join the circus, maybe, or to open a brothel in San Francisco. It seemed inconceivable that, set free in this way, the housekeeper would still want the company of dull old Mr. Faber. Diana crept through the back servants’ hall without meeting a soul and into the cloakroom, which was at the end of a long foyer. She felt like she was seeing everything anew. She was poor; she had nothing, and thus, she realized with delight, she had nothing to lose.

  She looked at the fur coats and velvet evening wraps hanging along the walls and realized they would have to go. She glanced behind the door for her French lieutenant’s coat—that she would find a way to save—but instead saw a foreign hat. She plucked it from the wall and placed it on her head. It would have been far too large for her except for the fact of her curls, which added enough volume that it fit almost perfectly. Diana turned to the cloakroom mirror and decided that she looked sort of bohemian when she put on the right accessories. Then she peeked out of the cloakroom door and into the long hallway and saw the figure of a man in a black coat, his back turned toward her.

  Diana slipped silently down the hall in his direction. When she was a few feet from him, he must have heard her because he turned. His features were set with a look of exasperation. It took her a moment to fit the man’s name and face together, though she knew them both. The face was aristocratic and stretched with an air of entitlement, the shifting of a pronounced jaw, the roving of worldly dark eyes.

  “Oh…I know you,” she said, and then smiled, because she was surprised at herself for thinking that he was actually delicious-looking even though everyone else thought so, too.

  “You’re Henry Schoonmaker.”

  “Yes,” he said, glancing at her head, and then meeting her eyes again.

  “Do you like my hat?” she asked, touching the brim and watching him. She had heard all about the wild young Schoonmaker while she was in Saratoga. Even Aunt Edith had gossiped about him. Apparently, he raced those dangerous four-in-hand carriages and drove motorcars and moved restlessly from place to place and girl to girl. It had sounded to Diana like he lived the sort of far-ranging life she would lead if only the world would let her.

  “I do like the hat, although I would question your use of the word my,” Henry said sharply. Then he winked, which made Diana even more aware of her heart’s rapid tempo.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked, putting a hand on her hip and lifting her chin proudly. “Call the police on me for trying on your hat?”

  Henry’s mouth opened with a rejoinder, but he was cut off by the sound of approaching footsteps within the parlor, which reminded Diana that despite the quiet, there were still people all over the house, listening and breathing and thinking in rules. And according to the rules, she was not at all where she was supposed to be.

  Diana was about to slip quickly away when she looked at Henry and decided that she wasn’t done with him. She grabbed his hand and pulled him into the parlor on the east side of the house. The lesser parlor, her mother called it, because it was where they kept the lesser art. It used to be the ballroom, back when their father was alive and they still gave entertainments that involved dancing, but it had been rechristened sometime last spring. All the nice things had been moved to the parlor where they received guests, leaving this room with a vaguely shabby appearance. Diana took a mental note of the fade on the upholstery so that she could give her nightly diary entry a touch of ambience. When they were on the other side of the oak door, she reluctantly let go of his hand. She looked up at the great canvases above, with their dark, roiling seas. They seemed to Diana like an approximation of her own feelings at the moment.

  “What are you doing in my house, Henry Schoonmaker?” she whispered. Diana could hear her sister in the hall. She was using her stuck-up, authoritative voice, asking Claire how she could possibly have misplaced Mr. Schoonmaker’s hat.

  “I’m not entirely sure that’s your business,” Henry told her.

  She frowned at his answer. It was possible, though unlikely, that he had come to see Elizabeth. Perhaps he had taken that bit about her beauty in the papers for the advertisement it was. Or, Diana wondered, perhaps he had caught a glimpse of the younger Holland sister over the summer and his curiosity had been building ever since. That would be something. And then it occurred to her that he was likely here, and looking so serious, because her family owed his family money, which was dreary, but—she had to admit—more realistic. Noting again the worn cushions, Diana realized that she was now in a rather vulnerable position facing someone as wealthy as a Schoonmaker. Then she realized something else: He was admiring her with his eyes.

  “The famous Henry Schoonmaker,” she said, bravely holding his gaze. “The one who can’t sit still and breaks hearts all over the place. Well, that’s what they say, isn’t it?”

  “Why do you girls always love gossip so much?” he asked in reply. She was close enough to smell him. He smelled like hair pomade and cigarettes and just slightly of women’s perfume, or so it seemed at that moment. She looked up at his amused face, and he whispered, “Do you think all the stories about me are true?”

  “If the stories are true, then you are a very interesting person.” She smiled, tucking her lower lip under her teeth.

  “Well, I deny them all categorically.” He shrugged before continuing: “Except the one about me liking pretty girls, which is more or less true. But how old are you, anyway? You can’t have been out in society very long at all. Look at you, you’ve probably never even been kissed, and you’re—”

  “I have too been kissed,” she interrupted, the way a child would. She felt her cheeks flush, but was too thrilled at being right where she was to really mind.

  “Not very well, I’d bet,” Henry replied with an arch of his eyebrow.

  Out in the hall, Claire was reporting to Elizabeth that Mr. Schoonmaker’s hat was indeed quite gone, and then Elizabeth was expressing her displeasure at the poor quality of service in the household.

  Diana looked around at the taxidermy buck heads on the wall and the old heavy furniture. There was a great tin vase full of cabbage roses that were wilting with neglect, their petals browning and falling to the floor. The curtains were drawn, which seemed somehow appr
opriate. She returned her eyes to the lank figure of Henry Schoonmaker, very real before her, and felt a lovely kind of pain shoot through her chest. There were so many things he knew that she didn’t. She could tell by the way he stood that he was older than she was and he had done things she could never do. She wanted to take him upstairs and lock the door and make him tell her everything.

  “Truly kissed?” he asked, lowering his eyebrow, which somehow implied even greater skepticism. He leaned closer, his breath warm on her ear as he reached for the hat. For a moment, everything was still. His body was so close to hers that she felt they were already touching. And then, as he gently took the hat from her curls, he turned his face just enough to brush his lips across hers. Her chest rose and fell. The touch of his mouth had been electric.

  He was looking intently into her eyes, the corner of his mouth resisting a full smile, and then he leaned in again, bringing his mouth flush against hers. That was it, Diana thought. That was how this was supposed to feel. It was supposed to go all the way down to your toes and make them dance, just a little bit.

  Henry drew his lips away and winked at her, his eyes lively and knowing. Then he put his hat back on his head and stepped into the hall without another word.

  “Sweet ladies, it seems I got lost on the way from the cloakroom to the door,” Diana heard him say. There was laughter in his voice and she knew that even though he was speaking to Claire and Elizabeth, he was sharing a secret joke with her. “Good afternoon.”

  “Good afternoon,” Diana heard a miffed Elizabeth say. Then the door sounded and he must have been gone. Diana, still listening from inside the lesser parlor, was consumed by the thought of what she had just done. I just kissed Henry Schoonmaker, she thought, repeating it over and over in her head. I just kissed Henry Schoonmaker.