Anna Godbersen - Envy

By the time Elizabeth raised her face up to confront her mother’s reaction, the lady’s expression had become implacable again. If she had been shocked or wounded by this final misstep of a once-prized daughter, she did not show it. There were many lifetimes of disillusionment behind her steady gaze, and she did not attempt to coddle her child.

“That is unfortunate,” she replied formally. “Though not wholly unexpected. I blame Will as much as I blame you.” She inhaled sharply, and moved her crocheting tools from her lap to the floor. “I told you that I would not force you into another unhappy engagement, Elizabeth, but I’m afraid this changes everything. You know this will be the end of us if anyone discovers it, don’t you? Yes?”

Elizabeth nodded unhappily, her pillow of blond hair bobbing with her.

“You will have to marry now, or, if you can’t manage that, we will have to take care of it. I know of a house where such things are done.” Now it was Mrs. Holland’s turn to be racked by a shudder, although it passed so quickly that if Elizabeth had blinked she might have missed it. She was glad she had not, for in that moment she knew how her mother really felt about this suggestion, even if she did find it so necessary.

“I will talk to my friends, the friends I have left, and see if there aren’t some possible suitors for you. Perhaps it can all be done quickly and quietly. But I fear it will be the other path, and for that, my child, I am very sorry.” She placed a small hand on her daughter’s head and sighed. “Go now. Get your rest. In the morning we will do what needs doing.”

Elizabeth nodded again, feeling strangely like a child even as one grew inside of her. She couldn’t bring herself to look at her mother again, and instead rose solemnly and turned to the door. She thought of all the things she had wanted to say — how sorry she was, what a disappointment, how she had meant for things to be now and why they had gone awry — but she found that she had no energy or will to explain herself. She went out into the barely lit hall, and then carefully one step at a time down to the second floor and her own bedroom, where there was no fire, but at least a space where she could be alone with her secret.

There she lay back against the mahogany sleigh bed with its white matelassé bedspread and let her arm drape over her face. She waited for her breathing to calm down, but it did not. She remembered for a moment how she had felt with Will — how safe and sure that he would always know what was right. But that was a precious thing that had been taken from her. She was alone now, and if there was a right thing to do, she could not see it. A month ago, all the correct behaviors had seemed possible. Her family had needed her so terribly badly, and she had planned to do everything for them. She had allowed Diana to go follow Henry Schoonmaker, and it only seemed to have caused her more harm, and since then the elder sister had been so absent. She had scarcely spoken to her younger sister since their return; she had been too absorbed in her own fears to see how Diana was holding up. And her mother — it was almost too much to think how far she had strayed from her mother’s expectations of her.

She drew her hand over her forehead and looked listlessly toward the window. The snow had stopped at some point during the night, and there was now a clear view of the half-moon in the sky. She wondered if Will could see her now, and she felt guilty all over again, not just for her family but for the days of ease and happiness she had experienced in Florida. The memory made her wince, and she wondered if she weren’t being punished for it; if her current predicament weren’t somehow retribution for having, for a moment, slipped back into the old subtle pleasures of the life she’d been born to, with all its soft texture, its politeness, its oblique glances.

Then her breathing did finally begin to relax and she blinked in the darkness that was now cut with white moonlight. She was thinking of Teddy again, and his presence in her mind made her wonder, however briefly, if maybe her situation weren’t so fraught and impossible after all.

In New York nowadays one is always hearing about new women whom one is supposed to keep an eye on. The latest of these is Mrs. Portia Tilt, whose husband’s fortune is in coal or some such, and she seems to be throwing a lot of parties. Reader, dear, you know I have ever been the skeptic, and with my skeptical eyes, I will be watching.

— FROM THE “GAMESOME GALLANT” COLUMN IN THE NEW YORK IMPERIAL, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 1900

CAROLINA KNEW IT WAS HER DESTINY TO SEE LELAND again, although she would have been hard-pressed to explain how that would ever come about. Luckily, thoughts of the man she had imagined close to a proposal in Florida were all in her head, and so there was no need to make any of it logical to anybody else. She tried not to dwell too carefully on her current circumstances, either, which were a million miles from just a week before. She was wearing a plain black dress again, though this one at least had a high, stern neck and some attempt at ornamentation around the chest. She had lived for a few days in one of those rickety places downtown, and now she had her own room — close to the servants’ quarters, in another woman’s grand home. There was nothing about this new situation that made Carolina feel even a little bit grand.

“Miss Broad.”

“Yes?” Carolina’s eyes fluttered innocently, and she knew that her face assumed that serviceable, cowlike expression that it had worn so often in her years as a lady’s maid. Her voice became suddenly girlish too, like that of a woman who has not yet learned to ask for what she deserves. “What is it, Mrs. Tilt?”

“Miss Broad, you need not look so frightened!” Portia Tilt was already a little drunk, and it did not do kind things for her garishly done-up face. She was smiling charitably at Carolina, but only because she now felt more powerful than her. It was quite evident that the western transplant, upon whom Carolina had not wasted even a minute of thought when they’d crossed paths at Sherry’s, liked having someone whose name had been in all the columns to boss around. “I was only going to tell you that you are welcome to play bridge with the guests if you like. You will have to borrow against your wages if you want to bet, but maybe you’re a good player and will come out ahead.”

Carolina blinked her wide-set, sage-colored eyes. She nodded a little dumbly, and then let her gaze drift so that she could see through the satinwood doorframe. Arranged at little French antique card tables were people who once had been her peers. They had all dressed in their finest to see this new Tilt woman, just as they had once done to meet the Broad heiress. She recognized, for instance, Mrs. Carr’s high trilling laugh, although she would have been aware of that lady’s presence at the Tilt town house anyway, for Carolina had handwritten her invitation. Mrs. Carr never turned down an evening, which was one of the reasons that Carolina — in her capacity as Mrs. Tilt’s new social secretary — had recommended her as a guest. A woman beginning her career must take friends were she can, Carolina had advised tactfully, although she would do well not to exclusively associate with divorcées as her reputation grew. It had pained Carolina to give away such wisdom, but then she no longer had very much to barter.

“No, thank you,” she said quietly. “I’d rather not tonight.”

Mrs. Tilt shrugged her shoulders, her indifference to Carolina’s suffering exaggerated by the vast heaps of red satin ribbons that crowned her lace sleeves. Yellow curls sat above her undistinguished face, catching the light of the chandelier. Mrs. Tilt’s social secretary had held that title only three days by then, and already she resented everything about it. She loathed it, in fact, and feared that others would get wind of this indignity, which was the true reason — although the idea of borrowing against her wages certainly was humiliating — that she preferred not to play bridge that night. Longhorn had taught her, and she was in truth a canny player, but the idea of being pitied by Lucy Carr was too much for Carolina, and so she hung back against the doorframe as Mrs. Tilt swept forward into the room and took her place beside Tristan.

He looked up briefly at Carolina, causing her to draw backward into the hall, where she was invisible and could only see a sliver of the goings-on in the Tilts’ second-floor card room. It had been Tristan’s suggestion that Carolina take the social secretary position, and also he who had planted the idea in Mrs. Tilt’s mind. That lady swerved past the salesman now, planting a red kiss on his cheek as she made her way to the adjacent high-backed chair, which was covered in new grass-colored jacquard. It was a gesture that was meant to mark her territory, Carolina knew, but she didn’t mind particularly, even though she had allowed Tristan to kiss her twice. She saw now that he was like an illusionist who captivated women with a little sleight of hand, and once she had seen the mechanism, it had lost all power for her. The kisses had only been accepted in loneliness, she told herself, and there was no reason Leland would ever have to know.

Now the chandeliers — far smaller than the ones in Leland’s home — bathed society guests in twinkling light, and the smell of cigarettes was sickly sweet in the air. Carolina closed her eyes, and remembered how she had been a prized part of similar circles in rooms that smelled like this one. That she should be hiding in the hall, in a house like this — too far west and too far uptown to have any real importance — made the skin under her collar burn. The house of a woman, moreover, who didn’t think twice of baldly touching her lowborn lover in the house that her husband’s millions had afforded her. It was the kind of behavior one would have thought more rightly at home on a Nevada ranch.

A waiter was passing her, into the card room, a carafe of white wine in his hand, and she reached out and tapped his arm.

“Webster Youngham prefers red.” She had seen this same man unwittingly pouring the great architect white earlier, and knew that he would not accept another invitation if things were not done more correctly. He was a very entitled gentleman, and rightly so, or at least that was what Mrs. Carr always used to say. The waiter nodded and retreated. A moment later, he reappeared with a bottle of red.

“Pour from the right,” Carolina added, before the man crossed into the card room. It had been a kind of instinct, and she felt immediately angry with herself and Tristan and Portia Tilt for having put her in a situation where she might again act so slavishly over someone else’s desires. She let out a breath of embittered air and turned in a hurry from the irritating scene. Mrs. Tilt wouldn’t be needing her anymore, and it was just as well to wallow in her room as right there. The self-pity that Carolina felt in that moment was of an irascible and overwhelming nature; if some little bird had suggested that her life was far more comfortable here than at the Hollands’, or than it would have been on the street, she would have shot it down.

She strode forward on the oak floors, not bothering to step lightly in her high-heeled slippers. She was too good to make herself quiet for anyone, to hide, or to look after stray waiters who had not been given proper instructions. She was very nearly mouthing these facts to herself when she heard her name, spoken with what she would have formerly believed was the correct stress and reverence.