Anna Godbersen - Envy

“Of course,” she said in a new tone. It was the sound of weakness feigning strength, but it fooled neither party about what had just transpired. Carolina was no longer Elizabeth’s subordinate, and she had a piece of gossip on her once again. “Won’t you come in? Perhaps you would like to sit with me, at my table, where I can be sure that you are getting the best of everything?”

Carolina, who could hear the strain in Elizabeth’s voice, lifted her arm and waited for the other girl to take it before nodding her assent. “That would be perfectly lovely,” she said, her blood pumping triumphantly as they walked into that festive room. It was full of well-heeled guests and brightly shining serving trays laden with rich, aromatic food, which she might once have carried in from the kitchen, but which she would now allow to be presented to her from the left so that she might take whichever portion she pleased.

I have heard from a special source that a luncheon will be held today at the Hollands’ house, and that Penelope Schoonmaker is among the guests. In society there will always be fans of low entertainment who hope for a fight between ladies, and that element has predictably been talking up some feud between Miss Elizabeth Holland and the former Miss Hayes, since both girls were at one time engaged to Mr. Schoonmaker. It seems they will be disappointed, if the ladies are meeting so cordially as all this, at the first social gathering the Hollands have hosted since the death of Mr. Edward Holland, over a year ago….

— FROM THE “GAMESOME GALLANT” COLUMN IN THE NEW YORK IMPERIAL, SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1900

DIANA HOLLAND CAME DOWN TO HER MOTHER’S luncheon a little late but fully prepared to hear all about Eleanor Wetmore’s romantic travails. She had colluded with Claire and had her place card switched so that she was sitting next to Eleanor, the better to glean information from that girl, and also conveniently so that she would not be seated too near Penelope. She wore a dress of thick cotton with a looping red and white pattern on it and a neck that rose just an inch above her clavicles; her head of curls framed her face with their natural architecture. She arrived on the first floor with a thoughtless stride, but found herself shocked still, her plum mouth opening slightly, when she saw the figure on the other side of the front door’s glass pane.

By the time conscious thought returned to her she had already crossed to the entry and placed a palm against the glass. It was as though she had been pulled there by some magnetic force. She closed her eyes, because she knew they had taken on the wide, innocent longing of a little girl’s. When she opened them again, they shone with a harder quality. Henry, however, had not gone away, and so in a few seconds she twisted the knob.

“What are you doing here?” She kept her voice low and unfriendly, and her body partially obscured by the door.

“I believe I was invited.” There was that jocular, entitled tone that had served him so well in his twenty years. He must have known it was a mistake, because he closed his dark eyes and shook his handsome head. She was surprised how handsome that face was to her now, when she looked straight into it at close range. A lot of time had passed since she had been this near him.

“I suppose you are here to meet your wife,” she quipped, almost just to distract herself from the line of his jaw. “She’s here.”

“No…” Henry stopped shaking his head. A moment later he let his gaze — so tentative, so full of desire — meet Diana’s. “No.”

“No what?” She relaxed her grip on the door and let it open just a few inches wider. The park was quiet behind them, the naked branches of trees reaching up hungrily toward the white sky. All of the coachmen kept their noses in their newspapers and studiously ignored the two people on the stoop.

“No, I didn’t come to see my wife.” He paused and pressed his fingers to the place on his forehead just between his brows. “I wasn’t going to come at all. But then, the idea of being in the same room as you — I’m sorry. I sound like an ass. I hadn’t anticipated that I would actually be able to talk to you, like this, so close. You will probably leave any moment now and I won’t have said any of what I want to say to you and…Oh, God.”

Her heart, the damned thing, had begun to race, and she only hoped that the rapid inflation and deflation of her chest wasn’t visible beneath her fitted bodice. She knew that she should do what Henry expected her to do and walk away. Then he could ring the bell, and Claire could show him in more formally. But instead she stepped out onto the stoop and let the door close partially behind her. “What did you want to say?”

Henry took off his hat and held it pensively between his hands. “Well, it’s like I said in my letters….” His sentences were broken, as though he were having trouble drawing breath. “Didn’t you read my letters?”

For a moment, all of Diana’s emotions had been under siege, but that was now replaced by a simple, simmering irritation. “No,” she said. She began to notice the chill air. “I burned them.”

Henry let out a breath and a sound approximately like “Oh.” He looked at Diana for a long time, and while she recognized some great emotion in his face, she couldn’t be certain if it was sympathy for what he had done to her, or self-pity for what he himself had lost.

“Henry,” she said after a while. She was trying to sound tough and impatient, but she knew that vulnerable desire to be wooed was still brimming in her tone. “They’ll be wondering where I am.”

Henry glanced to his left, where the windows of the parlor were, and took a step closer to make sure that he was out of view. She noticed the apparatus of his throat working beneath the soft skin, which his valet had no doubt shaved an hour or two ago. “If I could just have one more minute of your time, Miss Diana.”

She looked behind her, as though a whole crowd of snoops had gathered, but there was no one in the foyer. “All right,” she said.

“I don’t love Penelope, I never did.” For the first time during their interaction, his body was completely still. Not even his eyelids flickered. “There was never a time I really thought I would marry her, and when I did it was all to protect you.”

Diana’s arms moved involuntarily over her chest. The cold was at her ears now, but she had never seen Henry’s face so sincere — she felt a little warm noting that.

“She found out about that night…in your room…and what occurred between you and me. She told me that if I didn’t marry her she would expose you. I tried to explain it all to you….” He trailed off, perhaps realizing that none of that mattered now. “You were all I thought of the whole ceremony, and ever since. Protecting you and your good name.”

Diana’s good name had never seemed so useless to her. She pressed her fingertips into the rough door, and wondered if he wanted her to thank him. Many things had changed in her over a matter of minutes, but she had not begun to feel grateful.

“My letters were to explain all that to you, and to tell you how sorry I am that this is what has happened.” Henry turned his hat in his hands but went on looking at Diana in a way that made her want to crawl into his arms and stay there forever. She was surprised at herself, and a little angry, for still having feelings like that. “I don’t love her, Di.”

She closed her eyes and rumpled her brow. “You certainly have all New York fooled,” she said, rather unconvincingly.

“I don’t even go to bed with her.”

She opened her eyes then, the thick lashes fluttering back from her rich brown irises. “Never?” she whispered.

Henry shook his head and watched her. “How could I, when you’re the one I want?”

It was as though she had been pushed forward, through the breeze, on a child’s swing. Her lips parted, and a thousand thoughts clamored for articulation on her tongue. She wondered if maybe Henry would kiss her, quickly enough that nobody would notice, but then the moment broke.

“Diana?” a voice called from the foyer.

Her mind rushed with fear and she swallowed hard before turning to see her sister just beyond the door. “Oh, Liz. I was only…” Her eyes flickered between the man in the black frock coat and Elizabeth’s tired eyes. “Mr. Schoonmaker is here.”

“Well.” Elizabeth’s pale, heart-shaped face was framed by the cracked door. “We are all waiting for you. Have him come in, and take his coat, for goodness’ sake.”

She gave Henry a serious look, and then turned away, leaving her sister alone with him once more. A silence followed, and eventually Diana asked, “Are you coming in?”

“No…” Henry’s dark brows drew up and closer together. “I don’t think I could stand it.”

She nodded.

“I am leaving Tuesday. Teddy and I are going to do some fishing. Tell them I was called away to get my luggage and plans in order, if they saw me. And if they didn’t, don’t mention my coming here at all.” He paused and put his hat back on his head. “Penelope invited herself along, of course, and now she plans to invite Elizabeth. I think she wants to create the illusion that they are still friends.” Henry was babbling now, saying words that implied his departure even while he stayed put. He went down a few steps, looked at his shiny dress shoes, and then back up at Diana. “Would you come?”

“Where?”

“To Florida.”

She looked nervously over her shoulder. “But how would I…?”

Then he grinned at her, and for a moment the bad weather broke. She felt that old giddy lightness, as though she were capable of anything — it was the sensation he used to give her, just by being in her general vicinity. “You are very clever, and I’m sure you will find a way.”

He lifted and then lowered the brim of his hat, before turning and walking briskly to his waiting carriage. She brushed the curls away from her face and tried to feel a little calm, but all her cool distance had left her. When she finally returned to her family’s gathering, her whole body was at an entirely different temperature.

A young lady’s most natural ally is her sister, although sometimes our own relatives are as inscrutable to us as an antipodean.

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

THE PLATES BEARING HALF-EATEN TIMBALES OF chicken were being removed from the right-hand side of the Holland family’s guests, to be replaced — Elizabeth knew very well, for she had overseen the menu — by filet of beef with asparagus. She had also arranged the silver loving cups with brightly colored winter branches, carefully inscribed their guests’ names on place cards, and helped Claire with the steaming of the old damask table linens. The money that Snowden had given them — it was their father’s share of a claim they had jointly owned in the Klondike, or so he had insisted — had enabled them to hire a new cook for the occasion. Elizabeth had worn the dress of her mother’s choosing, an iridescent navy with tiny buttons drawing the fabric close to emphasize the thinness of her neck and wrists, but not her torso or arms, and she had managed to meet their guests with something like the welcoming mien expected of one of the old Dutch families’ eldest daughters.