Splendor l-4

by Anna Godbersen

  When the footman was gone, he stood and spread the pages out against the massive dark-stained wood desk with the simple bucolic imagery carved on its hefty sides. His father had bought it at the auction of the contents of some English lord’s country seat; in its previous life, it was the great bulwark peasants had had to face when they came to pay their tithes. His father always liked to keep in mind the piece’s history, and to see to it that when associates and underlings and rivals came to visit his offices, they felt a little peasantlike, too. In the last few days, Henry had come to really know this section of the house for the first time and had discovered to his surprise that he felt at ease there.

  My love, how do I begin? read the first line of her letter, after which tumbled unwieldy paragraphs of yearning and fervent feeling. Despite the desperate situation she was laying out in words, he found himself smiling. She was such a vivid, passionate little thing. There was so much emotion in every remote part of her, in each drop of her blood. She loved him — so said all of the sentences of her letter, even if they purported to be an ultimatum. There had been so many moments, over the course of the previous year, when he had fumbled hopelessly in the case of Diana. But there had been a shift inside him, and he was able to read her arguments and pleas without his confidence flagging even slightly. This he could make right.

  When he finished reading, he folded the pages of her letter and put them away in the top drawer of the desk. He hated himself for being unsure, for not acting sooner. Now he understood why she had run from him in the park — it was because he had been beastly. He had presumed that he had Di’s affections, rather than asking, humbly if she would be his wife. How he wished he had shown her, clearly, what a transformation he had undergone. In this sad, hectic week he had glimpsed the man he would become — a man she would be proud to call her husband. Lawrence — sitting in one of the black leather and wood chairs, which his father had acquired at the same auction, down near the corner of the mighty desk — glanced up. His eyes were watery and wrinkled, and he was waiting in a pose of expectation, as though acutely sensitive to some coming order.

  Henry strode across the room to the large, square windows that looked down from on high at the most famous avenue in the city. There was nothing doing at that hour, except in the sky, which was growing brighter with every passing moment. He stood pensively, his feet spread apart, and watched the day beginning. Presently he placed a cigarette between his slender, patrician lips, hesitating some moments before striking a match. Afterward, smoke curled up in his line of vision, blending with the smoke from all the fires that were being lit in that hour in all the best kitchens of New York.

  “Mr. Lawrence,” he said after several moments of quiet reflection. “How soon can the divorce papers be ready? Could we perhaps serve Mrs. Schoonmaker this afternoon?”

  “I see no reason why not,” the lawyer replied.

  “Excellent.” Henry dropped his cigarette on the floor and stubbed it out with his toe. “In that case will you send someone to call Tiffany? They’re going to have to open early for me today….”

  Forty

  Mrs. Snowden Cairns has been known for a weak constitution since the days when she still went by the name Elizabeth Holland. Of course she has not been seen out since it was reported that she was in a family way — but even her best friends, like Miss Agnes Jones, have not glimpsed her, and one wonders if her frail life can survive any more disruption….

  — FROM THE SOCIETY PAGE OF THE NEW-YORK NEWS OF THE WORLD GAZETTE, TUESDAY, JULY 24, 1900

  DAYLIGHT HAD BECOME SHIMMERINGLY VISIBLE IN the fanlight over the front entryway of the Cairns house. Soon the morning deliveries would begin to arrive, and outside, there was a summer day in the making. Halfway up the steep staircase that ran along the north-facing wall, Elizabeth Holland sat, frozen and shivering despite the heat, and incapable of going up or down. At the bottom of the stairs lay the lifeless body of her second husband, his head bent away from his body at a horrific angle. Ash blond hair fell from her bowed head and all around her shoulders. Both her hands were placed over her protruding belly, as though to shield her unborn baby from seeing, for the first time, what ghastliness the world was capable of.

  For a girl who was raised for the exclusive purpose of appearing lovely and exercising correct behavior, she’d done some bad things in her life. But nothing had shut her down like this. Her hands, her will, had snuffed out a human life. She knew that soon one of Snowden’s men, or his housekeep er, or another person who might pose a threat to her, would come along. But to run from that place, to do anything, was to acknowledge her unspeakable act. And so she sat, rocking, and the hours passed.

  She was so distraught, so curled in on herself, that she barely noticed the sound of the door opening. Once she had, she realized that the unidentifiable noise she had been only dimly aware of for the preceding minutes must have been the doorknocker, and someone taking it in his hand.

  “Why — Elizabeth…”

  The gentleness with which her name was pronounced was so like a much-needed caress, that by the time she had lifted her head and met the eyes of Teddy Cutting, her own were filled with tears. He was wearing a fitted navy blue jacket with brass buttons up the front and black trousers; his soft face was torn open with a mournful kind of yearning. There was a pistol at his hip, in a leather holster — it was so odd, seeing something like that, on her decorous, fair-haired friend.

  “Oh, God,” he said, glancing at the broken body lying between the bottom step and the ornately patterned carpet. “I’m too late.”

  “No,” she whispered. He was just on time, she wanted to tell him, but the words wouldn’t come. He hurried toward her, stepping over Snowden and taking the stairs two at once. She tried to stand up, so as to better greet him, but her legs were faulty, and in another moment she had collapsed into his waiting arms. She allowed all of her weight to fall against him and found that he supported her completely. “You knew,” she whispered eventually.

  “The other day, when I came to visit. I saw that you were asking for help,” he began, almost apologetically. He rested a palm on the back of her head and secured her around the waist with the other arm. So drained was Elizabeth, she believed she could have fallen asleep, just like that. “I could smell the ether in that room, which I felt sure you didn’t need or want. But your hus”—his voice broke over the word—“husband was so vigilant at your bedside, and I feared that if I went to your mother she would not believe me. After all he was your hus — your husband, and why should I know any better?”

  He shook his head, lines deepening on his brow. Elizabeth knew she should say something, but speech was impossible for her, and in a moment he continued.

  “But days had passed. I couldn’t sleep I was so worried. This morning, I still didn’t know what to do, but I knew I couldn’t go another day without coming for you. So I decided I would talk to your husband myself and try to take you away without causing a scandal. But I called the police and told them to come in a little while, in case…I wasn’t successful.”

  Teddy adjusted his stance on the stairs, leaning back against the wall so that he could better hold Elizabeth. She wanted never to move from her resting place against his chest. She sighed, and pressed closer. It was strange, she recalled, and awfully irregular, to stand there letting some gentleman acquaintance hold one up. But she couldn’t care about a thing like that at a moment like this, when everything was grotesquely on its head, and anyway, manners had already been the cause of far too much pain and misunderstanding between her and Teddy.

  “But I should have been here sooner. Before this…before…what did happen?”

  Elizabeth’s brown eyes widened as she tried to think how she might possibly explain. She looked up at Teddy, whose face was as smooth as always, and you might have almost thought he was still a boy of sixteen, if it weren’t for those creases above his brow, and his height, and the gun at his hip. “It seems impossible, but—” she began.
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br />   “You don’t have to,” he interrupted, gently, when she hesitated.

  But she wanted to, and might have gone on to explain, had not the knocker sounded against the door again. They were both paralyzed by the noise.

  Presently the squat figure of Mrs. Schmidt, still in her dressing gown and moving on sleepy feet, emerged from the rear of the house and swung back the door. Two men in police uniform were visible just outside, their brass badges gleaming on their chests. Mrs. Schmidt stood away, and the officers removed their hats and stepped across the threshold. Then the faces that express welcome and grateful greeting fell, as they took in the strange tableau of the lady of the house nearly hanging from the arms of Teddy Cutting, at the middle of a flight of stairs — her hair a wreck, her body swollen with child — and her husband’s body smashed at its foot.

  “Oh!” Mrs. Schmidt exclaimed, her hands flying over her mouth. “Mr. Cairns!”

  “What’s this?” said the first policeman. “Someone’s done a murder.”

  Elizabeth shuddered, not so much because the officer was searching for a culprit, although that thought did occur to her, but because his face was the face she had seen just before she was forced to bed. It was that boyish face, cratered by some childhood illness, which had, in a matter of seconds, unraveled all the horrors that had befallen her over the last year. The face was even more abhorrent to her now, and she held on to Teddy. His grip on her grew firm. Then he began slowly moving them down the stairs, supporting her all the way.

  “Mrs. Cairns has had quite a shock,” Teddy said once they had stepped gingerly over Snowden. The dead man’s chest was against the floor, but his head was still turned up, his face frozen in that final moment of shock. “I’m afraid I am to blame. I came to visit the lady this morning, and Mr. Cairns refused to let me see her, and she is such an old friend of mine you see, and there was a bit of an argument I’m afraid, I really don’t know how it happened, and then the old boy just lost his footing and—”

  The officers and Mrs. Schmidt stared at Teddy, confused and disbelieving. He had never been much of a liar, Elizabeth reflected. The policeman she recognized from the day Will died glanced from the dead body, to the fibbing gentleman with the fine way of talking, anger taking hold of his expression. But of course he was angry — he had been trying to extort money from a man who was no longer capable of writing checks.

  “Did you try to embrace his Mrs. before or after you shoved him down the stairs?” the policeman snarled. He took a step in Teddy’s direction, reaching as he did for the handcuffs at his belt. “I’m going to have to take you in, sir.”

  “You’ll do no such thing.” Elizabeth could not stand on her own, but her voice had all of a sudden become strong and clear and fine. “You won’t come one step closer to him.”

  The policeman’s brow soared, and he addressed her contemptuously: “He’s a murderer, Mrs. Cairns. You may not think that people like you can be arrested, but I assure you, that is not the case.”

  “My husband fell accidentally,” she went on, keeping her words even and calm no matter how her heart raced. “This is not a matter the police need concern themselves with. It is a sad fact, nothing more. You will speak no further of what you have seen here. I am sure you won’t, because otherwise I will be forced to contact your superiors and tell them how you were blackmailing my husband. I will see to it that your career is ruined. And I won’t stop there. Because you perpetrated a far greater crime, which I was also unlucky enough to be witness to.” Here her voice grew low, and she found it necessary to let her eyelids droop. “Remember that boy you gunned down in Grand Central? For your own profit? If you ever bother me or Mr. Cutting or any of our family again, I will see that you are tried for the murder of William Keller.”

  There was such a wild beating in her chest now, she felt sure everyone could hear it for five blocks. Her features, like those qualities of her personality that refined people used to always praise, were diminutive. But in that moment, she knew that all the ferocity and agony that had been trapped within her since the dream-shattering violence of New Year’s Day was bold on her face. “I loved that boy you killed, and if you think that I am too proper to say so on the witness stand, to tell everyone what he was to me, and what you did to him, you will find that you are dead wrong.”

  There was not a shard of regret or remorse in that horrible face. The policeman stared at her for another moment, and though she could see he didn’t like what she’d said, he eventually gestured with his chin to the other officer, and then they backed out of the room in defiant silence. She knew she had only a little of this resolve, this fighting stance, left, and so — still hanging from Teddy — she turned to Mrs. Schmidt. “I am going to go home now. When I come back, or when I send somebody in my place, you will be gone. Is that clear?”

  Mrs. Schmidt had the kind of solid face that has been so marred by hard things that it no longer betrayed fear or intimidation. But she nodded, and Elizabeth knew that she understood what she was accused of, and that she would cause no more trouble. Then Elizabeth turned her chin up toward Teddy, expectantly, as though he were her husband instead of the man who lay a few feet from them. “Will you take me home?” she said.

  The fine, architectural planes of his face crumpled a little at the simple intimacy of her statement. His eyes were tender with concern. “Yes, Lizzie, I’ll take you home,” he answered.

  She went forward, her body propped against his, but found that she had spent all her strength. Her legs trembled and she sagged against him.

  “Don’t,” Teddy almost whispered. Then he bent and scooped her up, carrying her in his arms away from the sordid scene and into a bright new morning.

  Forty One

  When the Lucida sails for Europe today, it will have amongst her saloon passengers Mr. and Mrs. Reginald Newbold, their guest Jenny Livingston, the prince of Bavaria and his retinue, the painter Lispenard Bradley, traveling in a party with the Abelard Gores, and the countess de Perignon and her daughter, who are said not to have enjoyed our shores as much as they had hoped….

  — FROM THE SOCIETY PAGE OF THE NEW-YORK NEWS OF THE WORLD GAZETTE, TUESDAY, JULY 24, 1900

  “I DO HOPE IT WON’T BE A BOTHER,” MRS. HENRY Schoonmaker said with uncharacteristic contrition. She let her eyes dart about the high entryway of the Schoonmaker mansion for perhaps the final time, her red mouth crookedly smirking on one side. The bother she was referring to were the eight or nine trunks packed with her best clothing and jewels currently blocking the way to the main hall. It was only early that morning that she had finally left the prince of Bavaria’s bed, and she had taken the opportunity to make herself lovely for him again. She had bathed and changed with the assistance of her maid, and now stood, fresh and clean and tall in a fitted ivory jacket and matching skirt, her long neck encased in baby blue lace, her dark hair done up and mostly covered by a broad straw hat, prettily festooned with fake sparrows. “I have arranged for Mr. Rathmill, who is my family’s butler, to have them picked up shortly.”

  The Schoonmakers’ butler nodded coldly.

  “Good-bye, then,” Penelope concluded as she pulled on her gloves. She had been trying not to be difficult, for even though she and Henry desired the swift annulment of their marriage, one never knew how families would behave in a situation like this one, and there were several hundred items that she would really rather have at the Hayes house if any trouble began. But the day was advancing and her goodwill had run out. She walked through the front door and descended the limestone steps without looking back.

  Girls like her were not supposed to ride in hansom cabs, but this was an awkward period when she could no longer use her husband’s stable and did not yet have the use of her lover’s coach. Anyway, she was not a debutante, but a married woman who had seduced a prince. And surely he would be her husband in time for Christmas in the Alps. Right there on Fifth, in front of passing carriages full of spying eyes and wagging tongues, she flagged one down. Then
she asked to be taken to the New Netherland.

  As she entered the lobby of the hotel, with its gleaming mosaic floor, its aroma of flowers and tea, the bellboys in Royal blue uniform darting from one end to the other, she couldn’t help but think how she might one day return to stay there — she would be a little older then, vastly more soignée, and in possession of a new title or two — and experience a flood of memories of her first love affair of any real importance. Because it was clear to her now, from her elevated position, that Henry had only been a kind of practice for her.

  “Madame, may I help you?”

  Mr. Cullen, the slight concierge, was gazing up at her. He gripped his hands behind his back, and it struck her as peculiar that he had approached her, in the midst of the hushed busyness of that lobby, when he surely knew that she had stayed there the previous two nights, if only so that he could be discreet about it.

  The oddness evaporated into her smile, however, as she pronounced the words, “I am here to visit the prince of Bavaria.”

  For a moment there was no reply, and so she decided to specify. “Frederick.”

  Mr. Cullen took in a breath. “The prince is no longer a guest at the hotel, Madame.”

  “You must be mistaken,” Penelope replied, confidence and irritation mingling in her tone.

  “Quite sure, Madame, but his valet is over there….”