Anna Godbersen - Rumors

“Schoonmaker!”

Henry’s eyes moved across the faces of the people massed on the sidewalk and the paraders all around him until his gaze settled, happily, on the face of his old friend Teddy Cutting. Next to Teddy was his younger sister, Alice, who was fair like her brother, with the same gray eyes, which were now focused shyly on the ground. Henry had once kissed her in the garden of the Cuttings’ Newport cottage, and she hadn’t been able to look at him straight since. She was the youngest of Teddy’s sisters, Henry believed, although he could never be sure, as Teddy was the only son among several siblings. To Henry this had always been telling: Teddy was the kind of man who had too many sisters.

“Miss Cutting,” Henry said, taking her gloved hand and kissing it. “It is always a pleasure to see you.”

Teddy gave him a warning look. “You look like you’ve had about enough.”

Henry smiled with his characteristic charm at both siblings, and said, “I’m full to the gills.”

“Let’s go, then.” Teddy reached out and put a hand on Henry’s shoulder. He had been one of Henry’s chief sympathizers since the unfortunate events of October. “I know of a lunchroom near here.”

They said good-bye to Alice, who joined a group of young women, and then they moved into the crowd of common people with their faces lowered. The shininess of Henry’s black top hat and the superb cut of his wool coat would have given them away as members of the city’s elite, as would the rich brown check of Teddy’s vicuna jacket, or the stamp of the Union Square milliner on his brown bowler. Still, they made no eye contact with the people in the crowd, and when they emerged onto a side street they hailed the first hackney they saw.

Teddy’s lunchroom was clean and bright, with a floor of small white octagonal tiles and convex mirrors lining the walls. They sat at a small round table made of sturdy dark wood, and they ordered the German beers that arrived in tall glasses with wedges of lemon. Henry felt quiet after several very public hours, and he was grateful that his friend waited to speak until after they had each sipped.

“How are you bearing it?” Teddy asked, placing his glass back on the table. He had taken off his hat, and his blond hair was brushed neatly to the side. At Henry’s wary smile he went on. “I can barely listen to your father’s speeches, and I’m not even related to him. I mean, he hardly knew Elizabeth and then to use her death that way, for political purposes—” Teddy broke off, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Let’s not talk about that.” Henry took a long pull of his beer and then found that he didn’t feel quite so dark anymore. “It’s all hypocrisy and misery if we go that route, and who wants that?”

“Fair enough,” Teddy said, returning his smile. “We’ll just be happy we’re free of ridiculous parades then, and be done with it.”

They clinked their glasses and drank, and in the brief silence that followed, Henry found himself wondering how to open a topic that that they had discussed only briefly more than two months before.

“You are really going to have to find a way to put Alice at ease,” Teddy offered before Henry could speak. He was trying to give Henry a disapproving look, but he couldn’t help a waver of a smile that his friend’s old effect was still at work even in gloomy times. “She gets quiet every time she sees you.”

“Your sister’s too good for me,” Henry replied with a laugh. “She’ll see that soon enough, and the problem will be solved.”

“She won’t want to hear it,” Teddy answered heartily, “but I can’t say I disagree with you.”

Henry paused to drink, and when he placed his beer back on the table he met Teddy’s gray eyes. “You know, my official mourning period is almost over.”

“I know. Thank God.” Teddy drank, and shook his head. “It’s been dull out in the world without you.”

“We have fun.”

“Yes.” Teddy’s eyes shifted and a memory passed in them. “We’ll have a dinner at Sherry’s, or maybe a hunting party up in Tuxedo.”

Henry twirled his top hat in his lap. “I think I’m going to go to the season’s opening at the opera. Even my father likes the idea — the better to drive home his point about Van Wyck’s poor handling of Elizabeth’s death, when there are sure to be newspaper people around. It’s Roméo et Juliette, you know.”

“Well, we’ll have to plan something for afterward, then.”

“Yes.” Henry looked at his hat and began to twirl it the other way. He brought his eyes back up to Teddy’s and returned to the subject he’d so wanted to raise. “There’s something else.”

Teddy had a fair and distinguished brow, and it rose now, ever so subtly.

“At some point, my father will want me to start thinking about another engagement….” Henry paused to clear his throat. “And the girl I find myself thinking about is Diana Holland.”

Their glasses were empty, and one of the waiters in long white aprons appeared to remove them. Teddy asked the man to bring more, and then turned a pained but stern expression on his friend. Henry rarely thought of Teddy as older than himself, but he was reminded of the two years that separated them now.

“That cannot be.” Teddy kept his voice low and looked around to see that nobody had heard.

“But why?” Henry could not hide the exasperation in his voice. “You know Elizabeth was even less interested in me than I was in her. All those rumors about their money, about it being gone — that must have been the reason she accepted my proposal. She couldn’t even bring herself to smile at me. And Diana will be in just the same position as her sister, and, unlike her sister, she has a chance of being happy with me. I would be happy with her.”

“You know society will not allow it.”

Henry shook his head and cast his eyes about the busy lunchroom. “They will forget.”

“I don’t want to know what has happened between you and the younger Miss Holland.” Teddy paused as their drinks were delivered, and took a quick sip before continuing. “But if you really care for her, and you seem to, then you must stop being so stupid. Her sister was your fiancée, and she has died under circumstances that none of us begin to understand. Circumstances that you yourself suggested might have something to do with her impending nuptials. Diana may be infatuated with you now, but when she grows up, when she understands more about death and family, when she understands how much she has betrayed Elizabeth by taking up with her former fiancé, it will destroy her. And you know perfectly well how often people will remind her. Society does not forget.”

Henry was taking long sips of his beer and trying not to be angry with his friend for speaking negatively of an imagined future that he had promised himself indulgently during the worst moments of the last few months. He had sat across from Diana in her family’s parlor during those first weeks of mourning and imagined the time when she would meet his eyes again, and that eventually all the misery would pass and they could really be together. Diana was the only girl he’d ever met who inspired him to imagine himself as a married man.

“She will come to hate herself, and you too.” Teddy shook his head.

For some reason this brought Elizabeth’s pitiable visage on the morning of her death back into Henry’s mind’s eye, and he began to think of the part his skirt-chasing — however ardent — had played in what she had done next. His fiancée had then seen him with her little sister; perhaps that had been the single event in ending a bright girl’s will to live.

“Let’s go,” Teddy said gently.

Henry finished his beer, and he placed a bill on the table. He had brought the topic up to Teddy once before and subsequently longed to have said nothing. There wasn’t a thing left to say now.