Rumors

by Anna Godbersen

  The three of them went down the grand stairway in absurd lockstep, Henry fighting—not very successfully—his caged feeling. The shiny floors of the hall were almost all crowded out by the arriving guests, who filled the air with silly exclamations and loud prattle. Several of them turned, without much subtlety, to look at Henry as he passed. They went under the wide oak entryway and into the ballroom with all its paintings high on the walls. Henry felt the men fall behind him for just a moment, and that was when he caught a glimpse of her.

  She was a vision in a white gown, her dark hair forming a hazy halo around her rosy, heart-shaped face. Her long lashes fluttered to touch her cheeks, and then her eyes opened fully in his direction. Her small, round mouth flexed in an immediate and knowing smile. That’s the girl I’m going to marry, Henry thought. Then the shoulder of one of his father’s men obstructed his view, and he heard the other one say: “Mr. Schoonmaker wants you going this way.”

  Thirty Three

  Returned from Europe: Grayson Hayes, only son of Mr. and Mrs. Richmond Hayes, via Asia, the Pacific, and the transcontinental railroad. Young Mr. Hayes intends to stay at his family home, 670 Fifth Avenue, for the rest of the season.

  —FROM THE SOCIETY PAGE OF THE NEW-YORK NEWS OF THE WORLD GAZETTE, SUNDAY, DECEMBER 24, 1899

  PENELOPE CROSSED THE THRESHOLD OF THE Schoonmaker ballroom with all things necessary for a notable entrance. She wore a new dress from the Parisian couturier Doucet, who kept a dossier on her measurements and fabric preferences. It had arrived just that week, and it was made of a garnet-colored silk faille in rows of tucks and volants that brought it close to her body in the hips and ribs and flowed outward at the knee and was garlanded at the neckline and hem with yards of white point d’esprit. She was glad it was Christmas, if only for the excuse to return to her favorite shade. Her dark hair was done up with simple height, and it was ringed with real pine and pearls. And if her natural stature and glow were not enough to win attention, she had on her arm the returned prodigal, Grayson Hayes, the older brother everyone was always asking about.

  Of course, the entrance proved a useless and petty endeavor. Henry was nowhere to be seen, a fact Penelope grasped in a few unquiet moments.

  They glided into the room, in advance of their less comely parents, slowly, letting the light catch against the architectural planes of their faces. Penelope resented her brother, in a mild sort of way, for his prolonged absence and for taking some attention away from her. But she knew that everybody thought of her as the bright sibling, the sibling who would make a more brilliant marriage, the sibling who would propel the family name to new levels of social exclusivity. It was only that he had made himself scarce that made him so exciting now, and she was inclined to let him have his moment. She clung, sisterly, to his arm as they moved forward along the green velvet wall hangings.

  “Is that little Diana Holland over there?” Grayson asked in a low voice.

  “Little is the right word. Her sister may have been a prude, but at least she had the proper finishing and coming-out. Diana really is an untrained thing.” Penelope cocked an eyebrow and drew herself up to her superior height.

  “You know, I saw a girl who looked just like her sister on the train from California….”

  “Elizabeth Holland is dead,” she replied sharply. Only after she had spoken did the chill set in. Whenever she heard a rumor about Elizabeth being still alive, she felt a touch of fear that her former friend might be returning to New York to take away all the things that were rightfully Penelope’s. It was true that she had left with utter determination, although Penelope sometimes wondered how long a girl used to servants and satin underthings could last in the dusty West. But it was easy enough to dismiss what was written in the papers as fantasy, and harder to hear the observations of her always exacting brother.

  “I know, Penny, but this young lady looked uncommonly like her. And when I approached her, she dismissed the notion just the way you would. The way a girl from New York would. Whoever she was, she wasn’t western bred.”

  “Grayson.” Penelope’s voice had fallen to a gravelly whisper. “Not now.”

  “In any event,” her brother went on, his voice light with understanding, “her sister will be quite pretty when the edges come off.”

  Penelope might have sniffed, but she was distracted from her brother’s distressing comments by the sight of Mrs. Isabelle Schoonmaker moving toward them at a barely disguised charge. She was wearing a gown of gold lamé with a tremendous bronze bow at the neckline and a large sash of the same color demarcating her waist. Several peacock feathers bounced in her waves of blond hair. Penelope was pleased to note her friend’s approach, and was already planning a neat segue to Henry’s whereabouts, when the rosy hostess was intercepted midstride.

  “Mrs. Schoonmaker,” old Carey Lewis Longhorn was saying. He had stepped out of the crowd accompanied by a brunette whose broad back was turned toward Penelope. His companion’s hair was pinned to the back of her head in the shape of a big, wooden spoon. Mrs. Schoonmaker’s blue eyes rolled yearningly in the direction of the Hayes siblings; Penelope winked at her in sympathy.

  Penelope leaned in toward her brother’s ear. “Mrs. Schoonmaker and I have lately become fast friends.”

  “Is that so,” he replied dryly.

  By the time they arrived by the Hayeses’ side, Penelope had realized who Longhorn’s young friend was. She couldn’t help but huff a little at the sight of the Hollands’ old maid, her hair so clearly done by her own hand, and in the company of that randy old bachelor. She really was an idiot. If she went on being seen only with that man—and no doubt the likes of his famous friend, old divorced Lucy Carr, too—then people would begin to talk. And it would be the kind of talk that would doom her even more quickly than her plain face.

  “Isabelle!” Penelope cried, blowing kisses.

  “Penny!” Mrs. Schoonmaker rejoined. She looked at Grayson and turned a color of pink that brought out the turquoise in her eyes. “You know Mr. Longhorn, of course, Mr. Longhorn, this is Mr. Hayes and Miss Hayes. And Penelope, Mr. Hayes, this is Miss Carolina Broad of Utah, who is a new friend of Mr. Longhorn’s.”

  “Charmed,” Grayson said as he leaned forward and kissed “Carolina’s” gloved hand. “Mr. Longhorn,” he went on, “I believe you have the portrait Sargent did of our lovely Isabelle in your collection.”

  “Indeed I do.” Longhorn permitted himself a wink in the other man’s direction. “Although I have to say that she has only grown lovelier since then. Perhaps, if her husband permits, I will have another commissioned….”

  Mr. Longhorn continued praising Isabelle’s beauty, but Penelope was having trouble focusing on their little group’s conversational direction. She was doing her best to appear to pay attention, when Lina disengaged herself from Longhorn and moved in Penelope’s direction with a confidence of gait that she had not heretofore exhibited. Because—and only because—it was not currently in her interest to appear outwardly rude, Penelope allowed herself to be drawn away from the others and back into the marbled hall. Once they were out of earshot she resumed a cold tone. “I suppose you’ve got something to sell.”

  “Oh, no.” The former maid looked around the room and then directly into the other girl’s eyes. Eye contact, thought Penelope. How very novel. “Not in the slightest, although I do have a story to tell you that I think you’ll find very amusing.”

  Late guests were still trickling in at the entryway down at the end of the hall, and the air was colder here than in the ballroom. Isabelle’s intrusion had made Penelope forget, however temporarily, Grayson’s comment about Elizabeth, but now the specter was back. Penelope’s features hardened.

  “It’s about Henry,” Lina said. The clicks of the girls’ high-heeled slippers echoed in the hall several times before the former help made a needless clarification: “Henry Schoonmaker. You wondered out loud to me once why he wasn’t in love with you, and I think I might have an idea,” she went o
n baldly.

  Now it was Penelope whose arm tightened against Lina’s, and she drew her away from the entryway and across the gleaming, cream-colored floor. They moved along the walls, which were decorated in the richly colored tapestries of the ancestral home of some old, fallen European family, and out of earshot.

  “Yes, but it’s a rather personal story, and I really wouldn’t feel comfortable telling someone who wasn’t my friend.” The former maid paused for an effect that was not altogether necessary. “My very good friend. You are my friend, aren’t you, Miss Hayes?”

  Penelope couldn’t help but feel a little impressed by this. So Carolina knew there were more important things than money if she were going to make it in New York. “Yes,” Penelope replied slowly, trying not to seem too eager. After all, she didn’t yet know whether this information would be useful to her or not. “You are my friend. Though of course, my best friends are the ones with the best stories.”

  “Oh, I’m sure they are.” A waiter with a tray of hot-spiced punch in little crystal cups passed them, on his way from the kitchen to the main site of the party. Once he had passed, Lina took a breath. She seemed to be stitching the words together in her head. “You wanted to know why Mr. Schoonmaker doesn’t love you, and while I can hardly pretend to answer that, I can tell you where he woke up this morning and with whom.”

  Penelope felt a sudden rage burning at her ears and down her throat. She had to set her teeth to keep her temper from reaching the boiling point. Since she knew she could not then be trusted with words, she gave her new friend a look and waited impatiently for her to go on.

  “So, would you like to know?”

  “Yes.” Penelope had to close her eyes for a minute to disguise her seething. She needed to know who this person, whom Henry erroneously believed to have some quality that might recommend her over the girl in whose embrace he’d spent the entire summer of 1899, was. She needed to know now.

  “But I’ll need guarantees, specific guarantees.”

  Penelope’s eyes were tinged red, she knew, but she opened them and stared into Lina’s. Her pale green eyes were so open and steady, as though she really believed that whatever she was about to ask for could rival Penelope’s goal in importance. Penelope would have called her expression stupid, except that the girl seemed to have been clever again in collecting information. “What? Anything.”

  “I’ll need to be invited on your family’s days of course, and welcomed as your friend.” Lina spoke carefully, laying out a plan she had apparently spent much obsessive thought on. It was as though she were looking at sweets in a glass case and saying, I’ll take that, and that, and that. “And as your friend, I will be expecting to be invited to any balls that might also be thrown at the Hayeses’ house. And since our friendship is indeed so dear to both of us, then would I be too forward in expecting an invitation to stay in Newport during the summer season? And when there is a wedding”—Lina paused to smile confidentially at her new friend—“I would be so very honored to be among your bridesmaids.”

  “Yes, yes, for God’s sake. All of it. I promise that I will take you up.” Penelope’s throat was entirely dry, and she had to pause to swallow. She would have promised anything at that particular moment. “I will make you. Only tell me now.”

  Penelope became aware of the sounds of revelry back down the hall again as Lina paused to catch her breath, and then the horrid story came out.

  “He woke up in my former mistress’s house, in the room of her younger sister. With her younger sister. They were—”

  “How do you know?” Penelope’s voice was dark, her words strained and chosen for utility. She could picture this scene, of Henry and that impetuous little girl, and she was struggling not to.

  “Because my sister, Claire, who still works there, saw them. She walked in on them—”

  “That’s enough. I believe you.” Penelope closed her prettily painted lids and tried to regain herself. It was too idiotic to be believed, and yet it all perversely fit together. In one moment her body felt chills and in the next unbearable heat. “I cannot tell you now,” she pronounced slowly, carefully, “how very much I appreciate your sharing this with me. You have become a very close friend. You are always welcome at my home when we are receiving, and you can count on invitations to our gatherings and any weekend parties out of town we might hold. Now, however, as my friend, please go back and tell my brother and Mrs. Schoonmaker that I am not feeling very well and that I had to go to the ladies’ dressing room to regain myself. You’ll see my gratitude later.”

  Penelope kept her eyes shut and listened as Lina’s footsteps fell away. She sank a row of teeth into her plush bottom lip and turned her face to the wall. She rested her forehead against one of those precious tapestries, with their antique threads and grand depictions of the heroism of old. She raised her fist and pounded the soft side of it against the thick fabric five times until her heartbeats began to slow down.

  Thirty Four

  There are those girls who will choose friends only for the other girl’s brothers. One must be chary of such friends, but one cannot avoid them entirely—it is, after all, a very useful tactic that your daughter may someday rightfully employ.

  —MRS. HAMILTON W. BREEDFELT, COLLECTED COLUMNS ON RAISING YOUNG LADIES OF CHARACTER, 1899

  THE GIRL WHO RETURNED TO THE MAIN SCHOONMAKER ballroom was indifferent to the lack of ornament in her hair or relative sparseness of baubles on her person. She didn’t worry about the modesty of her posture or the kindness of her expression. She was unconcerned with whether she had been nice or not. She was not nice. She did not want to be like her childhood friend Elizabeth Holland anymore. She wanted to be like her new friend Penelope Hayes, and Penelope had promised to show her how. At least, she had promised to lend the glow of her presence, and to invite her along to all the right places, and that would be enough. That was really all she needed. When she reached the spot where she had left Mr. Longhorn, she saw that he had just engaged Mrs. Schoonmaker for a dance. She found that standing there patiently for the right length of time was sufficient to persuade Mr. Hayes to ask the same of her.

  “Carolina, are you and my sister very good friends?” he asked as they moved onto the dance floor. Lina’s dress, which she had charged to Mr. Longhorn’s account at Lord & Taylor, moved along behind her. It was made of a flattering navy that encased her arms and waist and was embellished at the bustline with tiny pearls that offered a pleasing contrast to the skin below her collarbone.

  “Yes, very good friends,” she answered. Having said it, she smiled. “Though of course we haven’t known each other long. I’m new to the city.”

  She had dreaded the idea of dancing, although she knew that if she really did begin traveling in the moneyed world, she would have to eventually. She had gone so far as to prance around her hotel room trying to remember the steps she had helped Elizabeth practice when she had first started lessons with the finishing governess. Carolina was surprised to find that now, with the glow of confidence that came from having new friends in excellent positions, it was easy enough to reference her western origins as an excuse for any lack of polish and allow herself to be led. When she was led, Carolina Broad danced just fine.

  “I hope you aren’t planning to leave us any time soon,” her partner said with an upward twist to his full, shiny lips. It occurred to her that this, her first dance at a society function, was with a bachelor close to her own age. How preferable that was—for the first time, anyway—to old Mr. Longhorn, however kind he had revealed himself to be.

  “Oh, I think not.” Carolina’s eyes grew wide, and she allowed herself to feel the full weight of her answer. The room, with its gilded decorations and painted faces, with its high laughter and low murmurs, with its bowers of pine and glittering Christmas stars, was circling around her at an exhilarating pace. That pace, she thought, could be the pace of her life. It would be a shame to leave the city now, she reasoned, when she was just getting somewhere.
Staying a little longer, and really polishing herself, would be the smarter thing to do. “I like it here, and anyway, where else is there to go?”

  Grayson looked into her eyes with perfect understanding. “Having spent some four years abroad now, I cannot say I agree more. And I’m glad you’ll be staying. If you’re a friend of Penelope’s, then there are some gentlemen to whom I will have to introduce you….”

  And later on he did. By the end of the evening her feet were sore from dancing, and her cheeks were permanently flushed from all the compliments she had received. She couldn’t help but think that if Will Keller had been there, she wouldn’t have noticed him in the crowd and that he would have seen clearly what an idiot he’d been for passing her up that night in the carriage house. For she had been partnered with Nicholas Livingston and Abelard Gore and Leland Bouchard, an heir to the Bouchard banking fortune, whose hand sat very low on the small of her back and who demanded several times to know when he would next see her out.

  Later, in the carriage on the way back to the hotel, Carolina would remark with full honesty that it had been a very merry Christmas indeed. The street ahead was covered in a layer of white that had only been disturbed by one or two vehicles ahead of them. The wide mansions, made of imported stone and festooned with all sorts of architectural flourishes, passed slowly as they moved up the avenue. Light flooded their entryways, and seasonal decorations could be seen in their windows. It seemed to Carolina at that moment that, if things kept going her way, Will would see her name in the paper for sure, and then he would have to come looking for her, instead of the other way around. She had to put her hand over her mouth to hide the smile, for she was thinking how bright the New Year would be.