Anna Godbersen: Envy

Penelope did not look after her host as he left. She stared straight ahead and reminded herself what a lucky thing it was that he was not a gossip and that he wouldn’t be searching for signs that Mrs. Henry Schoonmaker’s marriage or friendships were not what they seemed. For a moment she reflected on how to avoid such a mistake again, and then she turned toward Henry.

His dark eyes were focused in the direction of the huge windows and the night scene they held, and they looked less glassy than before. There was something almost like clarity in his face when he turned toward his wife, and when he spoke, it was deliberately.

“Promise me,” he said, meeting her gaze, “that if someone brings up the Hollands again you’ll take me home.”

The new dressing room on the second floor of the Schoonmaker mansion, which had until recently held Henry’s collection of unread first editions, was dark. Once she had been undressed, Penelope sent her maid away, instructing the girl to shut off all but one of the lights before she left. Penelope stood, looking into her full-length triptych mirror with the polished cherrywood frame, and let her head rest back on her neck. It was only in September that her family had moved into its Fifth Avenue mansion, an event that was widely understood in the press as a declaration of the Hayeses’ presence in society, and now half a year later she was living at an even better address, with an older family, on a more established section of the avenue.

She let her head sway back and forth, and as she appraised her reflection she thought — as she had thought before — how perfect she and Henry looked together. For they were both tall, both dark-haired. They had the same long limbs and the same haughty posture. There were times when she wondered if they didn’t look like each other, if God in his infinite wisdom had not created them out of the same impeccable stuff so that they could recognize each other when they met. She was not wearing any of her lingerie, which was very fine and which had been handmade in France. She was wearing stockings and a black shirtwaist and nothing else. From the next room she could hear Henry’s rising, whistling breath, and hoped that he was not snoring, that he had not fallen asleep.

She did not wear lingerie, because lingerie had already failed. What she wore now had a special significance for her — for both of them. She had answered the door wearing the same thing last June, the first time she invited Henry to the Waldorf-Astoria, where she and her family had lived while their house was being constructed. He hadn’t left until the following morning, by which time she had already imagined herself as his bride.

She put out the last light, and stepped past the aubergine damask — covered screen and into her bedroom. It had been Henry’s room originally, but she had banished the black leather club chairs and hunting trophies to the basement when she moved in. The broad, simple tables, which he had vaguely protested were from Great Britain and possessed historical significance, had been given to the servants. The room was now all white and gold and rococo, and the edges of every piece of furniture curved voluptuously. A waterfall of white and gold brocade descended from the high canopy at the head of the bed, and under it, on the ivory bedspread, lay Henry, with his hat and shoes still on. His hat tipped slightly over his eyes, and his legs were crossed at the ankles.

“Henry.” Penelope kept her voice soft and rested a hand on her hip. He took a breath and stirred just enough to shift the hat on his head. In a moment it tumbled, softly, onto the plush white carpet.

“Henry,” she said again. “Henry!”

He sat up then, his eyes a little wild with surprise. His dark hair had been neatly pomaded to the right earlier in the evening, but it was now sticking up in various places. He pulled at his white tie, which came undone in his hand. For a moment he looked at her, and she felt the old tingling warmth.

She crossed to him, her high-heeled slippers sinking into the carpet, and sat down on the edge of the bed. She reached up and took hold of his tie, then gently pulled it off. It fell soundlessly to the floor beside his hat, as she let her fingers glide from the point of his chin down his neck and to the first button of his shirt. She had succeeded in undoing one when he pushed away from the plush bed, and rose unsteadily to his feet.

“Henry?”

“Good night,” he answered, pausing only to pick up his hat and tie as he walked into the adjoining room, where he sometimes took his tea, and to the black leather sofa with the piles of kilim pillows in its corners.

Penelope threw herself back against the bed and exhaled hotly, feeling — in her shoulders and all over — an aching for something just the slightest bit beyond her reach. Her disappointment was monstrous and her pulse quick, and she could not stop the fearful thoughts about what might come to pass if the news got out that this was how every night of her short married life had ended.

We are all eager to catch glimpses of Elizabeth Holland, so lately returned to the realm of the living, but it is like trying to see some especially rare royal. Though her younger sister was seen out at the Leland Bouchard ball last night, the elder Miss Holland remained behind closed doors. Does her mother fear future kidnapping attempts? Have the young lady’s delicate sensibilities been so flattened by the violence she was witness to in the Grand Central Station? Or is there some great secret that the public is being shielded from? We remain curious as ever.

— FROM CITÉ CHATTER, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1900

A FIRE HUMMED IN THE DRAWING ROOM OF THE town house at No. 17 Gramercy Park South, which had provided shelter to three generations of the Holland family. It was easy to hear the snapping of kindling in the flames, because the occupants of that room were uncommonly quiet. They had settled into three of the several somewhat-the-worse-for-wear bergère chairs — which were arranged across the room at seemingly random distances from the hearth — after breakfast. Mrs. Holland sat closest to the warmth in her black crepe dress with the high neck and narrow-buttoned wrists; her elder child, Elizabeth, sat not far off. A book was open in the girl’s lap, but she did not read. Snowden Trapp Cairns, who had been a business associate of the late Mr. Edward Holland and who had so often lately made himself their savior, lounged to her right. A portrait of Elizabeth’s father peered down at them from above the fireplace, with an expression perhaps more skeptical than sage.

“It looks strange that you weren’t in attendance at Mr. Bouchard’s last night.” Mrs. Holland did not look up when she spoke, and the lines around her mouth grew taut. She had been reading the morning papers with her usual fierce attention. Diana had been at the ball — she’d returned after Elizabeth had gone to bed and had not as yet emerged from her room. Their aunt Edith, who had chaperoned, hadn’t yet made an appearance in the parlor that morning, either. “It would have been a lovely evening, and you might have danced some. Anyway, your sister cannot represent this family alone.”

Elizabeth’s gaze rose slowly from the flames to her mother, who still held the folded broadsheet in her hand. In contrast to the orange hearth, she looked almost blue in that light of early day. Elizabeth opened her mouth, although not to speak. She knew that she had done the older lady much harm, for Mrs. Holland, who was born Louisa Gansevoort, had been a stern social arbiter before the series of tragedies that had begun to befall their family over a year ago. They had lost their patriarch and then their money, and soon after that Elizabeth had followed her heart — which had not been easy, given her impeccable training as a debutante — and run away with her father’s former valet. When she closed her eyes she could almost feel her face against Will’s clean, bare skin.