Rumors

by Anna Godbersen

  Diana frowned at the curious formality of his phrasing and took a step backward. Henry had had several lovers, by his own admission, and Diana felt herself suddenly to be one of many. She wasn’t even sure anymore if she could technically be called one of his lovers. “Is this because of Penelope?”

  Henry’s brow relaxed and he almost smiled. “No…not at all. Why would you…? No.”

  Every word was a struggle for breath “Then why…?”

  “I meant all those things, Di.” Henry reached and took her hand, which did nothing to bridge the already impassable distance she felt between them. He was a charmer—of course he would try out all his charming gestures on her now. “It’s not Penelope. It’s not any other girl. But it would be wrong. You might think you wouldn’t care about the impropriety now, but I was your sister’s fiancé. And your sister”—here he closed his eyes and swallowed—“is dead.”

  As Henry trailed off, his friend Teddy Cutting appeared in the corridor. He had been Elizabeth’s friend, too, Diana knew. His blond hair was parted at one side and slicked to the other, and he came upon them slowly and with a look of concerned disapproval in his face.

  “But…” Diana stopped herself and the flicker of a smile was put out on her face. But Elizabeth isn’t dead, she wanted to tell Henry. She would have liked to shout it. She couldn’t, of course—she had promised her sister that she wouldn’t tell. Telling would ruin everything for Liz.

  It was the entr’acte, and now there were dozens of men wearing their black waistcoats passing through the halls on visits of all kinds. Their cigar smoke had filtered out with them. When she felt Henry withdraw his hand she knew there was nothing else for her but retreat. She turned quickly enough, she hoped, that neither man saw the fallen expression on her face.

  Diana walked as proudly as she could in the direction of the Newburg box, though she knew already her capacity for smiling was entirely gone. The dress swerved behind her; it had so recently seemed to make her beautiful, but now it was an enormous encumbrance. Weeks of heightened anticipation had been decimated in mere moments, but as she took her seat she felt mainly stung.

  Later, at night, in her own room, with the salmon damask darkest in the places from which pictures frames had disappeared, she would see how far this unraveled all her hopes, all the assumptions on which she had based her idea of the future. Only then would she begin to feel so awful and desperate that it was as though, curiously, an enormous cavity had formed within her that could never possibly be filled.

  For now, sitting in the opera house, numb to the vibrations of the music, she thought of her mother, and lowered her eyes, and hid her wounded pride. She murmured demurely, just as Mrs. Holland would have liked, for Mr. Newburg and Mrs. Gore and all the rounds of guests who came to their precious opera box. On stage Roméo began to sing, “L’amour, l’amour!” but her enjoyment of the music was entirely gone.

  Eight

  Men at the opera are always promiscuous with their visiting of other people’s boxes. It is one of the things that make such evenings tolerable.

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

  HENRY HAD WATCHED DIANA’S STUBBORN LITTLE walk as she went away from him before, but he did not find any humor in it now. There had been other women, too, who had walked away from him, but at that point Henry had always already become bored with them and found his gaze focused in some new, more desirable direction. He didn’t want to look away now and so remained still, experiencing a sensation of loss that was new to him, and pitiful. He was grateful that Teddy, still at his side, allowed the moment to come to its sad end without words. The taste in his mouth was unbearably bitter.

  Men in high collars and white tie were emerging from the boxes, and he realized that they must have reached the entr’acte. The men were off to find themselves a drink or perhaps a female companion whose delicate feelings, moved by the sweep of music, left her open to sweet-talking advances.

  “Shall we?” Henry said, turning and meeting Teddy’s sea gray eyes.

  “Shall we what?” Teddy answered.

  There was a certain involuntary violence to the shrug of Henry’s shoulders that followed. He had never in his life experienced such a disconnect between the thing he wanted to do and the thing that he did do; for him his desires had always been a kind of moral compass that led him happily, unquestioningly, to ever more fantastic locations. He was not, like the stage hero, a lover of love. He had sought novelty and good times from his affairs. But in Diana he had found an object for his affections who was earthly beautiful but still light as air. She was as quick and ever changing and as game for anything as he was, but he had dismissed her, and she had not done anything to protest.

  “To the bar?” was his eventual answer, and Teddy, like the old friend he was, led him there. The little bar was tucked in the back of the gentlemen’s smoking lounge, and old Sam with the drooping mustache waited there under the globe lights in his paisley waistcoat and black bow tie to give refugees from the chatter and surveillance of the boxes their much-needed respite.

  “Two whiskey and waters,” Teddy said as they approached.

  “No water for me.”

  “All right, Mr. Schoonmaker,” Sam answered, with a knowing look. “Mr. Cutting, should I charge this to your box?”

  “Yes, Sam, thank you.”

  They leaned against the bar, and when their drinks came they raised them up. Henry sensed that Teddy wanted to say something, and after he’d placed the glass down on the bar and gestured for a refill, he turned to his friend. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  Teddy ignored the irritation in Henry’s voice and responded with characteristic mildness. “You did the right thing.”

  Henry nodded stiffly, conveying neither conviction nor disagreement. He would have to take Teddy’s word for it, since he himself had little to no experience with doing the right thing. He knew it didn’t feel good, though. Doing right was supposed to be its own reward, that was what his governesses always told him; it was supposed to fill one with inner light.

  “It’s a simple thing for a man to forget his nature,” Teddy was saying, “to get lost in the present and forget how he was, and how he will be. But I know you, and I’m here to remind you what you’re like. You lose interest, Henry. Whatever you feel for Diana now, the chances that it will fade…and what will be left of her spirit when it does…you could ruin the Hollands, Henry, if you’re not careful.”

  Henry acknowledged Sam as his glass was refilled. “You don’t know that.”

  “No, I don’t,” Teddy said. He was rushing his words, and Henry knew that he felt bad. He was trying to justify it for both of them. “But I’m being cautious for you. You might think it could be all fun and games, but the way you’re connected…She’d need more from you than the random girl who catches your eye. There will be others, Henry, and if we were betting on it, my money’d be on your attention span for women growing shorter and not the other way around.”

  Henry drank. He couldn’t argue with this, because it was speculative, and for a moment it even gave him heart. Indeed, his attention to any particular girl was famously short, and soon enough the rotten feeling he was currently experiencing would wane. There would be other distractions, and his life—the one he’d had before he became engaged to Elizabeth Holland—would resume. But, like the suggestion that he had done right, this line of thinking led nowhere, and he was left with the same desire to go to Diana and tell her he’d been an ass, that he hardly knew himself, that she had to forgive him, and a million other little thoughts that popped into his head.

  “Elizabeth had restraint, but Diana’s too hot. If you make her love you, Henry, there’s no telling—”

  “Teddy, can’t we just…” Henry interrupted, gesturing at the refilled glass at his elbow. It was his third or his fourth, he couldn’t remember anymore.

  “Yes.”

  They clinked classes dully and then fin
ished the drinks in silence. The third act had already begun by the time they stumbled back to Box 23. The visiting between the boxes was in full swing, and no one was pretending to listen to the music anymore, except perhaps Diana Holland, situated with the Newburgs, whose box was in the middle of the grand horseshoe of boxes, on the first tier, where all the people like them sat. She inclined forward slightly, her shoulders uneven, her lips slightly parted, and she gazed at the singers on stage as though they were the ones responsible for crushing her heart.

  Teddy was sitting behind Prudie and dutifully trying to make small talk, which was what Henry had told him he should do before they left the gentlemen’s salon. Prudence had recently turned seventeen, and it hadn’t made her any prettier—her appearance as well as her manners suggested many hours spent out of sunlight. Her replies were largely composed of single words, and Henry wondered if he had encouraged this particular conversation as some sort of punishment for Teddy. If his friend thought so, he certainly didn’t show it, and when he leaned back into his chair, he turned to Henry and said lightly, “Your sister does know a lot about the stage.”

  Prudence turned her feral, dark eyes at Henry, making sure he’d caught that last bit.

  Henry, who was having trouble focusing his eyes after the whiskey, murmured his assent. Then he looked across the great auditorium and saw Penelope Hayes. She was looking at him with a whisper of a smile, and when she saw that his gaze had fallen on her, she raised her eagle feather fan to the level of her eyes and beat it several times. He looked beyond her, down the wide vista of boxes, where ladies in pairs whispered to each other behind fans or peered through opera glasses while their male escorts, standing behind, offered dry asides. They were looking at him, he felt, scrutinizing him to see whether he looked sad enough about Elizabeth, wondering how broken he was, how long until they could again return to the epic topic of who would marry into the Schoonmaker fortune.

  Henry raised his hand in what he intended as a sarcastic gesture, and called out “Hello!” loud enough for the Schoonmakers’ neighbors to hear. It was a cry for something Henry could scarcely begin to identify, but it didn’t really matter, since onstage the performance continued, and in the seats around him there was only silence.

  Nine

  Won’t you pay a visit to my box tonight?

  —P

  “WAS THAT FOR ME?” PENELOPE WHISPERED. SHE didn’t waste time turning toward the person for whom her question was intended. She looked instead across the opera house at Henry, who had just called out a hello loud enough for all the people in private boxes to hear. He’d slumped back into his chair now and, as his gaze was focused on the arms he’d folded across his chest, there was no way to determine whom he’d meant to address.

  “Perhaps,” Buck answered. He was sitting in the seat just behind Penelope, to the right of her grandfather Ogden, who could no longer hear well enough to appreciate the music, but whose eyesight was sharp enough—when he wasn’t drowsing—to comment authoritatively on all the best bosoms in the house. He had never bothered learning the table manners of the Manhattan upper class, despite his lifelong effort to join it, but he had seen that the fault was corrected in his son. Richmond Hayes, Penelope’s father, had been a quick study in business as well as personal comportment, which was why he stayed in the inner box at the opera—or better yet, in the gentlemen’s smoking room—and kept his eyes to himself.

  “No, it wasn’t—you’re a horrid yes-man,” Penelope lashed back affectionately. “He’s just giving everyone something to talk about.”

  “Is that what you children call it these days?” said Mrs. Hayes, who sat beside her daughter along the rail. For a moment Penelope just looked at her mother in surprise—she was usually too concerned with what other people were doing to listen in on her daughter’s conversations—but then the older woman’s opera glasses were back to her busy little eyes, and she was again looking for some glimmer of scandal out in the audience. Penelope reflected for a moment on the unfortunate number of chins possessed by her mother, on the lackluster quality of her hair that was the result of many years of dyeing it, and on the garish appearance of her too-made-up face.

  “Giving all of them something to talk about, I should say.” Penelope lowered her eyes and tried to force a blush. Her skin had the sheen of china naturally, and embarrassment was not a feeling easily induced in her, but after a few moments she managed something like a petal shade to rise in her sharp cheekbones—not much, but enough, so that if the right matron were looking through her eyeglasses at just that moment, she’d see how ashamed young Miss Hayes was of her grotesque mother. Or the right gossip columnist, for that matter. Then she twisted around and directed her words into her fan. “Buck, could you do me an itty-bitty favor?”

  “But of course.”

  She had written the note hours ago—in fact, she had written it four times, trying to make sure that the paper looked casually ripped enough, that her penmanship was clear enough not to be misunderstood while still suggesting spontaneity. As she had pressed her pen down to produce each letter of those nine little words, she had thought of him. Now she palmed it, and reached behind her to take Buck’s hand in hers.

  “Please take this to Box 23,” she whispered.

  Buck inclined his head gently and rose up behind her. Just before he blocked her view of the doings in the inner box, she saw a young man in a black jacket and wing collar enter. She knew it was Henry, come to save her the trouble of sending Buck around with notes, and the skin of her shoulders tingled. But then a second passed and she saw clearly that the features above the little white bow tie belonged—horribly—to Amos Vreewold.

  “Mr. Vreewold,” Buck was saying. “I have a few visits I have to make. Please take my seat and keep Miss Hayes company.”

  Amos shook Buck’s hand, and then refocused his slightly downturned eyes on Penelope. He was tall and possessed of a prominent nose that swelled at the center. His dark hair never seemed to agree on quite which direction it was going. There had been a time—a long time ago, it seemed now—when he and Penelope had occasionally disappeared behind trees at garden parties together, and so there was plenty of reason for him to be looking at her that way, as though her demure posturing were for his own particular amusement. Still, his familiarity irritated her; she extended her arm in his direction.

  “Miss Hayes, it is always a pleasure,” he said, bending to kiss her hand. He sat down behind her, with a flourish of tails, in the seat where Buck had so recently been. “Mrs. Hayes, you are looking lovely this evening,” he added, though she was wearing a dress of red satin that, in her daughter’s and everybody else’s opinion, clung unflatteringly to an excess of flesh.

  “Thank you, Amos,” Penelope’s mother said, without looking away from her opera-glass view. “Is that stomacher on your mother made of real diamonds?”

  “Oh, yes,” he answered, managing somehow to keep his smirk brief.

  Penelope pitied herself that her new persona did not allow for public rudeness to her mother and smiled dewily up at her visitor. “Mr. Vreewold, whatever brings you to our box?”

  “Why, you, of course. I haven’t seen you out and looking so beautiful since the unfortunate events of October.”

  “No, I suppose you haven’t.”

  “You must have been very stricken—that’s what they all say.”

  “Well,” Penelope turned her eyes back to the stage in a delicate, pained sweep. “I was.”

  “If you are ever in need of someone to remember Elizabeth with…”

  Penelope manufactured a little choking sniff. “Thank you.”

  “I hear other things, as well….”

  “Oh?”

  Penelope managed to keep her head steady and her gaze on the stage, though she could not help a little shine coming back into her wide blue eyes.

  “Yes, all the girls are talking about it. About how brokenhearted Henry is and how melancholy you are, and how it would be the perfect end in
a novel if you were to end up married to him. My sister has sent me round to find out of it’s true.” He leaned forward here, and spoke the next bit into her ear. “I was hoping not.”

  Penelope brought her fan up over her smile and hoped that the warm feeling of triumph that this had provoked in her was not somehow evident in her posture. “Of course not,” she replied in a lowered voice. “It is awfully inappropriate of you to talk so soon of any romance concerning Henry Schoonmaker.”

  Here her mother’s small eyes shifted in her daughter’s direction, and Penelope experienced a moment of conflicting emotions. For she knew that this rumor, so satisfying to her ears, was also satisfying to her mother’s sense of social ambition, and she found herself inwardly joyful and irritated over the same tidbit.

  “All right, then. We’ll talk of something else,” Amos answered mildly as he leaned back in his seat without the smallest sign of discomfort. And then he did: of hunting dogs and notched lapels, which only reminded Penelope why she had tired of him in the first place. As he droned on, as her mother winked her little eyelids mercilessly at anyone who met her stare, Penelope saw, in the far corner of her vision, that Buck had entered Box 23. She innocently raised her glasses to her face. It was the first time she had indulged the impulse all night, and it took her a few moments—in which she was terrified she’d miss everything—to find the pertinent box in the magnified view.

  Then she had Henry very close indeed, framed in a black circle. She watched him greet Buck with characteristic aloofness. Her view was too narrow to know when the note exchanged hands, and Henry must have maintained a straight face as he opened it, because even when he lowered his gaze, he registered no change in expression. But she knew when he realized who its author was, because at that moment he looked up and directly at her.

  Penelope let out a tiny involuntary gasp and dropped her opera glasses into her lap, which did nothing to prevent her viewing what happened next. Henry raised his hand to dismiss Buck without even looking him in the eyes and then, his gaze still focused on Penelope, he shook his head twice slowly. He might as well have ripped the little note to shreds. It felt as though he’d slapped her in the face.