Anna Godbersen: Rumors

And so while Diana supported her sister’s quest for true love, and while she remained desperately curious about it, she also couldn’t help the feeling that one of its unintended consequences was her own exposure to a matrimonial campaign of which she was neither the ideal nor the intended subject.

She maintained her sad eyes as she skated along with Percival, through the crowds of happy people in bulky coats, betting that if she continued to look abject he would continue to be foiled in his attempts to talk to her. It was with her heart-shaped face and shiny dark eyes focused downward that she first noticed the crack in the ice.

“I’m sorry to have made you think about Miss Holland again,” Percival said haltingly as Diana pulled him to the side of the hole along the pond’s edge. Already she could feel the dampness of his palm seeping through her knit glove. She could not help but compare him to her bachelor of choice — who was in every way Percival’s superior — and this only strengthened her desire to snatch her hand back. “You don’t seem so very much like her, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t deserve as much sympathy as anybody.”

“Oh, it’s quite all right.” Diana quelled her irritation at this comment by reminding herself how insignificant his chances of ever escorting her anywhere again were. Her dissimilarity to her sister had not of course prevented him from surreptitiously glancing over her entire form several times. She made two strong pushes against the ice. As her speed increased, the deadweight that was Percival Coddington jerked along behind her as they circled the rink. She turned her face shyly in his direction, and attempted a slow, inviting smile. “Surely you can go faster than that, Mr. Coddington.”

Percival’s father had been an industrialist and his mother the plain and consumptive third daughter of a branch of the Livingston family. It was apparent to anybody who cared to pay attention that their eldest son had come by his personality matrilineally. Since Percival had inherited his father’s fortune, he had distinguished himself neither in business nor in society, though he was known to collect the weaponry of foreign cultures. He was not known for being courageous, however, or particularly light on his feet. As Diana moved forward, her awareness of the squealing children and far-off music, of the trees and the sky and even the cold began to fade. She was moving around the rink with purpose now, and she could feel warmth growing in the muscles of her calves as her skates moved against the ice. They were approaching the crack again now, and she could see the dark water through it.

Diana gave Percival one more faint smile, took two strides forward, and then jerked her hand back. She disguised the intent of this motion by turning on her skates and making a little ta-da flourish with her arms as she began to skate backward. Percival looked at her through pinched, far-set eyes, and for a minute he seemed impressed by Diana’s trick. But soon he was wheeling his arms in an attempt at balance, and it became apparent that he did not know to turn. His skates kept him moving in the same line, and when he saw the direction in which they were taking him his face froze in terror. Diana did not wait to witness Percival’s inevitable fall. She continued to move smoothly backward through the crowd, her glossy brown curls blowing forward across her small, pointed chin as she did.

When she heard the cries for help and saw the crowd rush to the place where the fissure in the ice had been, she knew Percival would be all right. She put her knit-gloved hand over her face and allowed herself a giggle. She felt much lighter on the ice now, and very pleased with herself for showing Percival that, even if she was not quite as marriageable as her sister, still she was not for sale. A brief bath in freezing water would remind him that he was quite far from deserving any Holland girl for a bride, and she was only sorry that Henry Schoonmaker was not there to appreciate the orchestration of this quite deserved comeuppance.

It had been over a month since she’d spoken to Henry. He, too, was in mourning for Elizabeth, and though his engagement to her had never been a love match, he did not know that she was alive. For him her death was real, and very sobering. But Diana was the one he truly loved. At least, that was how it had seemed to her, a month ago, the last time he’d paid her mother and her aunt Edith one of those melancholy visits where nobody said a word as they sat and grieved and looked into their lukewarm tea. He must love her still. Diana was sure of it.

She reached the edge of the pond and took a few choppy steps to a wooden bench. The crowd had formed a dark wall around the place where she’d let go of Percival’s hand. Beyond them the landscape was still and white, with the Dakota apartment building rising sternly over the trees. She bent and unlaced her skates with nimble fingers, and before she had even removed them from her feet a boy emerged from a nearby hut with her black leather boots. She reached into her coat pocket to find him a tip, but he must have been eager not to miss any of the action across the ice, because he didn’t even wait for it. No one could resist disaster, she supposed.

She had just secured the boots when she noticed a man who had departed from the crowd and was sailing across the ice in her direction. He was wearing a Russian fur hat and a camel-colored suit that didn’t look entirely warm enough for a day spent on ice, and he was skating forward with his hands behind his back, which struck Diana as rather jaunty — almost like a pose Henry would assume. When she realized that his shoulders were too wide to be Henry’s, that his figure was somewhat more filled out, she felt all the crushing sadness of being woken suddenly from a pleasurable dream.

When he was a few yards away, the man came to a halt, lifted his hat, and tipped his head in her direction. Diana found his appearance, his broad cheeks and sharp nose and brow like some great crouching woolly spider, familiar; his hair was dark and cut close to his head, and he had a certain attentive manner about the eyes. He replaced his hat high on the back of his head and said, “I fear your escort is not going to be able to take you home.”

“Oh?” Diana answered innocently. “I suppose that’s what all the hubbub is about.”

“I’m Davis Barnard,” he went on, accepting her comment at its face value and offering his hand. “Would you like a ride?”

“Oh…Mr. Barnard.” As she pronounced the name, a host of associations came to her. “You write the ‘Gamesome Gallant’ column, don’t you?”

Her new acquaintance smiled faintly and nodded. When he was done changing into his shoes, they walked to his waiting carriage in silence. Diana knew that it was bad form to accept rides from gentlemen she barely knew, but she considered herself unconventional, and anyway, she’d always wondered what a newspaper man looked like up close. It was only once she was situated under a blanket on the leather seat that he began to explain himself.

“You know, I was always a great admirer of your sister, the elder Miss Holland…” he began, as the horses moved forward and jerked the carriage into motion.

“Yes, I remember.” Diana knew she should not go on, but did. “You wrote such pretty things about her. Mother always liked that.”

“It was a tragedy,” he said, which forced Diana to assume the stricken face she had worn so often in the last few months. “I find it very hard to write about your family since your sister’s death.”

Diana, not knowing what to make of this, remained silent. “But I still read everything, of course. That piece in the Gazette today, for instance, speculating about—” Here he broke off and looked to Diana for her reaction.