Anna Godbersen: Rumors

“They will stop calling brides beautiful after today — you have simply set the standard too high,” he said.

Then she smiled too, a broad, triumphant smile that she knew she would somehow have to do away with before she walked down the aisle. She had not yet succeeded when she heard the first notes of the music that always introduced the bride. Buck told her to go, and she did.

All of the faces in the room turned to her. Penelope could see them through the scrim of lace, their mouths forming wide, appreciative circles, their hands clasped to their breasts. She had no idea whether she was walking slow or fast. She could scarcely hear the music. The distance to the altar was impossible, and yet she knew she would be there very soon. Henry was still and miserable looking in his shiny black tails, but he would see the genius of all her planning soon enough. He would remember how perfectly suited they were to each other, and see that Diana Holland had been nothing more than a passing distraction. When she reached the altar, she noticed that a few faces had turned away from her. Inexplicably, they were looking back in the direction from which she had come.

By the time the reverend began the ceremony there were murmurs across the ballroom of Tuxedo. She noticed that Henry’s face turned several times to the place at the back of the room from which all the low voices were emanating. That was when Penelope reached for Henry’s hands. The reverend hadn’t arrived at that part yet, but it showed her impatience, and he responded by speeding up the service. Penelope’s heartbeat was so wild in her chest that she scarcely noticed how unresponsive — how cautious — Henry’s palms were.

Penelope had never paid much heed to premonitions, but she knew in a cold, settled way that what the assembled guests were talking about was Elizabeth Holland. She was back, and they were all wondering if Penelope wouldn’t want to know before she promised to have and to hold her friend’s former fiancé forever more. Penelope stiffened and waited for the rings to be exchanged. In her mind she dared all the busybodies in the audience to interrupt her wedding. They were cowards who lived by a code, as she knew well enough. Penelope bargained that if she stood still and left the rumblings unacknowledged, then the crowd would feel they had to as well.

As soon as she felt the precious metal slip over her left ring finger, she said, “I do,” and then, without waiting for Henry to respond, she pulled back her veil and stepped toward him. He had said, “I do,” she was pretty sure, although it hardly mattered. Nobody ever remembered the details of weddings, and anyway what was important was that she had moved in toward him and put her mouth to his. The touch of his lips was as light and unresponsive as his palms, and still it made her heart swoon a little to think that she was kissing Henry, and that Henry was her husband.

Then they both turned back to that room, done up in sprays of white flowers and pearl-colored bows. There was a long, awkward pause. Penelope saw her mother’s social secretary standing nervously at the back of the room, her hands clutched together. The diamonds in the crowd twinkled and eyes blinked. Then she saw Buck step in front of the social secretary, as though to blot her out of everybody’s mind. He began to clap.

Then all the faces of the crowd turned, slowly at first and then faster, toward the bride and groom. Some of them began to clap and some of them began to stand. It took only a few moments for conformity to sweep the assembled, and then they were all clapping. It was as though all the best people in New York had momentarily forgotten and had now been reminded that this was a beautiful and touching event. Tears followed for some of the older matrons. She had their attention and knew that right then she was the star of their stage.

The world was steady again, and she dared to take deep breaths. Everyone was clapping and saying how beautiful they were and what a perfect couple and how it just showed you that true love did exist. Her eyes had grown moist, and she looked out at all the guests, who were standing, and she felt full of gratitude that they had all been witnesses to her triumph.

Elizabeth Adora Holland has been discovered alive. It seems that she was kidnapped by a former coachman of the socialite’s family. The young man evidently became obsessed with her when he worked for the Hollands and was planning on taking her to California with him. She had not, as was previously feared, been sold into white slavery. The young man was killed when he tried to abscond with the lady in what became a violent scene in the Grand Central Station. Miss Elizabeth Holland was returned to her family and was still in too great a shock to be interviewed today.

— FROM A SPECIAL EVENING EDITION OF THE NEW YORK IMPERIAL, SUNDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1899

IT WAS WELL PAST MIDNIGHT — THE NEW YEAR HAD come, and in the Hollands’ home the wailing had stopped. The women sat at the great worn, wooden table in the kitchen, and all around them was a devastating silence. The kitchen was not a room any of them had ever spent much time in, but it seemed the most secretive place they could go. It was where they were least likely to be found. That night was the first time Diana had seen her mother prepare broth, which she did assuredly, before placing it in front of her elder daughter. She had insisted at several points throughout the night that Elizabeth drink it, and Elizabeth had a few times brought the bowl to her lips. But she did not give the appearance of drinking any, and the level of liquid in her bowl never went down. Diana watched her sister, who was slumped against the table. She had wept so hard it seemed impossible that she had not wrung out everything inside her.

It had been too much for Edith to take, and she had gone to her room so that her nieces wouldn’t see her cry anymore. Diana herself felt empty. She could not imagine an end to the emptiness. It seemed to her as though everything that was good and true had been blasted out of the world. All those things had been crushed, destroyed, made to disappear.

“Elizabeth, you must eat. You must try to sleep,” her mother said. Diana couldn’t remember the last time anyone had spoken. It could have been hours, or it might have been seconds. The cacophony of chimes and noisemakers, of revelers in the street leaving Midnight Mass or the Hungarian Peasant Ball at Madison Square Garden, had died down in the meantime.

When the policemen had brought Elizabeth home, proud and triumphant of what they had done, Diana had taken her upstairs and washed her in the bathtub. Elizabeth couldn’t then do anything for herself, and there was little she could do now. Her hair had dried, and even though she was wrapped in a blanket, she shivered. She took a long time in responding and when she did she managed only a flat “I can’t.”

“Elizabeth,” her mother went on slowly, “you might not be able to now, but you must soon. Everyone knows that you have returned, and they won’t understand that you loved Will. They can’t know it.”

Elizabeth’s brown eyes moved very slowly to meet her mother’s. She blinked and her dry lips dropped open but she didn’t say anything. Diana wished that she could make her mother stop talking. She knew, even now, that Mrs. Holland was incapable of not considering her social position.

“They think you were kidnapped, Elizabeth. That’s what they’ll believe, and we can’t contradict them. This family has suffered, my dear. We have suffered too much. We will lose everything if they know what Will was to you…what you were to him. What you did. Do you understand me?”

Elizabeth looked blankly at her mother. Her eyes moved, slowly, until they met Diana’s. The sisters stared at each other for a few moments, and Diana set her lips together at the thought of their mother’s cold practicality. The younger girl’s brows moved toward each other and she shook her head just slightly to let Elizabeth know how she felt about all that. “She understands,” Diana said finally, speaking for the sister she knew could not speak for herself.