Anna Godbersen: Rumors

It was almost a new year, and everything was in front of them. They were going off to make their way, and this time with the assurance that everything was all right at home and with the blessing of the bride’s relations. She was a bride, Elizabeth thought as Will’s large hand gripped her small one, pulling her through the crowd toward the train shed with its arched ceiling of glass and iron. He looked back at her and smiled — for no particular reason, she supposed, or maybe because of everything — and she couldn’t help but laugh. She tossed back her head with the laugh, and the hood of her cloak fell down. She reached up and touched her head, because she had placed her hat in its traveling case and her hair was only covered by a small amount of ornamental lace. She let go of Will’s hand and stopped, so that she might put her hood back in order. That was when she heard her name — her old name, the way it used to be said — and turned.

“Miss Holland, Miss Holland!”

She looked, her face still smiling, her heart full of elation. Then she remembered that she was not supposed to be seen. The crowd was parting and there were several blue uniforms stepping toward her. She felt Will’s hands on her from behind, one on her ribs and the other on her shoulder. She could smell his clean skin, with its faint whiff of Pear’s soap, as his cheek touched hers.

“Run,” he whispered. “You’ve got to run. Just run for the train. I’ll be right behind you.”

It was then that she realized that she should be afraid. Right afterward she was. She could feel the fear, cold in her throat and all down her spine. Then she turned again for the platform where the crowd was still thick, and she ran into it. There were bodies all around her, but she pushed through. Her feet and her panic carried her forward until she heard shouting, growing louder and fiercer with each word.

“Halt!” she heard.

“Stop!”

“Don’t move!”

She kept running until she heard the shots. They were so loud that for a minute she thought they must have happened in her ears. They were horrible and repetitious and they lasted far too long. When they were over, she could barely breathe. Everyone around her had frozen. She turned again, slowly this time, and began to move back down the platform, where there was now shrieking. She was indifferent to her backward fallen hood, and she could not have gotten her hand off her open mouth for anything in the world.

She was moving faster now toward the place where she had last touched Will. It was with a wretched apprehension that she came on him again. He was on the ground now, and his shirt was all torn apart. Everywhere there was his gleaming, gushing blood. The blue uniforms were still there, this time behind a wall of raised guns. She could already smell the blood, even before she fell down next to him. Even before she began to choke on the odor and on her own tears.

“Will,” she gasped.

His eyes had been closed, and then they opened, and she saw that they were pale blue and filled with fear. They searched for her and then he grabbed at her hand. She knew that he saw her, and she could see that the fear had gone out of his eyes.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you,” she answered.

“I love you,” he repeated with the same pained steadiness.

There was nothing for her to do but repeat it. “I love you,” she repeated over and again. She would never know how many times she said it. There must have been only a few seconds she was by his side, though she would never be sure. She was so full of disbelief that they seemed impossible moments out of time. She remembered seeing his eyelids fall closed again, and that was when she felt hands on her. Her dress was all soaked in blood, and she felt too weak to say anything more. She was being carried away, by those rough male hands, through the crowd. She heard her name — the way it used to be — repeated over and over again by the massed people around her.

They were asking her if she was all right. They wanted to know what had been done to her. But her vision had started to fail, and she felt limp all over, and then everything went black.

THE WILLIAM S. SCHOONMAKERS

REQUEST THE PLEASURE OF YOUR COMPANY

AT A VERY SPECIAL OCCASION

TUXEDO PARK

DECEMBER 31, 1899

SIX O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING

BY SUNDAY PENELOPE’S BODY WAS SO RIGID WITH expectation that she could hardly smile. There had been so much preparation, and she hadn’t slept more than an hour the night before. The dressmaker from New York was still adjusting the dress that morning — her mother’s dress was now embellished with new pearls and old lace as it hadn’t been before, and of course it fit better in the torso and trained more at the back. The bridesmaids’ dresses were the ones from Isabelle’s wedding, also hastily redone. It was a shame that she couldn’t have a new design from Paris made especially for her to emphasize her finest features, and that the whole wedding party wasn’t in the latest and best. But none of that mattered now. The wedding guests were assembled, and the tables were set, and the Hollands had most definitely not been invited for the greatest wedding of the year. “The last great wedding of the 1800s,” to borrow a phrase that Buck had repeated to several newspaper reporters. In the New Year, Penelope thought with a flutter of her jet-black lashes, she would be Mrs. Schoonmaker, and Diana could call on her all she wanted.

Now she could feel the moment — right there, in front of her, down a straight and petal-strewn path — when it would all be done. The menu had been settled and the decorations done according to Buck’s ruthless specifications. The invitations, which had gone out the twenty-eighth by special delivery promising a top-secret wedding of the best people, had proved a powerful lure to New York society. It had been a dull week, because of the holiday, and they were all just sitting around until the New Year passed so that they could travel to more exotic ports in Italy and Egypt. But this was an unanticipated thrill. Today they had traveled to one of their hideaway haunts to witness the union of two of their proudest names, and tomorrow they would be beset by all the uninvited for anecdotes of the Schoonmaker-Hayes nuptials.

The unlucky were at parties in Lakewood and Westchester, planning to celebrate the New Year as best they could and hoping for telegrams filling in what they had missed. The lucky invitees were out there in their rows, waiting. Penelope’s face was done and her waist corseted and her legs hidden by tiers of ivory chiffon. Lace erupted from the V-neck of the dress, and her arms were decorated in tiers of lace bells. There were flowers on her wrists and in her dark hair, and pinned to her white bonnet were yards and yards of Valenciennes lace. Already the music was beginning. She looked at her bridesmaids — cousins of hers and Henry’s, quickly assembled, as well as poor Prudie, looking quite uncomfortable in a pastel shade, and, as promised, Carolina Broad wearing a very proud expression indeed, and seeming somehow richer — but still could not bring herself to smile. When it was all over, then she would smile.

Buck was there in a dark suit, looking a little sleep deprived and moving, despite his girth, with characteristic grace. He had lined the girls up and was waiting to give them the cue to leave the ladies’ dressing room and walk down the aisle. They were all — all but Prudie — giddy that they had been chosen and nervously anticipating their chance to go. Penelope didn’t want to meet any of their eyes. She was just waiting for the moment when that last pale blue train had disappeared out of the door and it was her turn. Finally the eighth and last went and she was able to take a breath. She turned to Buck and paused as he checked her face to make sure it was perfect. He brought her veil down and fussed with it for a moment. Then the muscles of his face relaxed into a smile for the first time all day.