Anna Godbersen: Splendor

Elizabeth’s eyes opened suddenly; she was a little startled by where her thoughts had taken her. This mixture of bitter memory, current contentment, and ever-present guilt brewed under the former Miss Holland’s straw hat as their carriage drew out of the park and into an unexpected intersection. They were on the southern tip of the park, traveling past the Plaza and New Netherland hotels and across Fifth Avenue. Their home, a modest eight-room apartment in the Dover, was on the park in the Seventies, but she now saw that their driver was acting on instructions to go downtown. Her lips parted and her irises drifted in her husband’s direction. But he did not turn toward her, and she was not the kind of woman to question.

They headed down Madison, a fact Elizabeth apprehended with relief. She was less likely to be recognized here, and if she was, then she felt sure that it would be by someone with enough manners not to mention seeing the former virgin princess of elite Manhattan in a public place in her swollen condition. Fifth was where showy people built houses that looked like monuments to worldly accomplishment, so that they could be spied upon and spy back in equal measure. It was the place for people like the Hayeses, whose only daughter, Penelope, was her sometime friend, and who, given the choice, would always pick the dress most likely to draw attention to her person. Now Penelope was said to be such good friends with Carolina Broad, the heiress who in her previous life had been Elizabeth’s own lady’s maid. She was having a party tonight, which everyone had clambered to get invited to as though her pedigree were not make-believe, and which they were all probably getting gaudy for right now, back on that more strutting avenue and everywhere else. The cast members were all different from a year and a half ago, when Elizabeth was the debutante everyone wanted to know. It was dizzying, she reflected, how quickly the sets changed. But she was on Madison now, where the old families lived in handsomer, quieter houses, according to hallowed traditions and without such an appetite for exhibition. Elizabeth was relieved to have no parties to go to that evening, and felt at peace thinking what the plain brownstone faces of those houses signified.

“Isn’t that where the Harman Livingstons live?” Snowden asked her, after a prolonged silence, gesturing at a stone mansion on a corner. She smiled and nodded, for though she was sure her husband knew the answer, he was allowing her to play tour guide in her native city, and she was happy for the opportunity to accommodate.

“And there the Whitehall Vanderbilts?”

Elizabeth nodded again, and as they went farther she answered similar questions and even suggested a few points of interest on her own. It pleased her to be giving Snowden something, even if it was just little parcels of information, and her sense of enjoyment suffered only when she heard him say, “And there the Cuttings?”

“Oh, yes.” Elizabeth’s voice fell to a whisper, and she turned so abruptly to look that, for the first time that afternoon, enough light fell on her delicate features that she might have made herself recognizable.

For the only male heir of the Cutting shipping fortune was a boy named Teddy, who’d proposed marriage to her twice, when Will was still alive, without her or anybody else taking him very seriously. He was Teddy, after all, this friend who sat by her at her father’s funeral, and was of such a quiet, subtle nature that he was almost invisible to her when her head was so full of the strapping boy who’d lived in her family’s carriage house. That past winter, when she’d traveled to Florida with her old friend Penelope, Teddy had hinted at the feelings he still harbored for her, and she had hoped, during a brief window between the day she realized she was carrying a child and his enlisting in the army, that he might propose to her again. She had even, if she was being honest, yearned for a kiss or a little tenderness from him, but that was a desire she had since buried rather deep, and now had difficulty looking at straight on. After all, such longing meant the betrayal of not one but two husbands. Even if it hadn’t, Teddy was now stationed far away in the Philippines, and Gemma Newbold was said to be expecting a proposal from him upon his return.

“And that house…?”

Elizabeth blinked and tried to shake off the disorienting guilt. The house Snowden indicated was a well-appointed brownstone, three high windows across and four stories tall. It was elegant and understated and stood in the middle of the block on the west side of the street. Over the front door, there was a handsome fanlight of white and gold stained glass. They were in the low Thirties, not altogether far from the house on Gramercy Park where she had grown up and where her family still lived. She should know this house, and yet she didn’t.

“I’m not sure that I recognize…” Her brow furrowed, she turned toward him.

“I believe,” Snowden began, a smile creeping onto his face and his gaze now holding hers, “that is where the Snowden Cairnses live.”

“Pardon?” Elizabeth’s fingers rose involuntarily to cover her heart. Already she could feel gratitude spreading across her chest and edging out the dismay she’d so recently experienced. It was just the sort of house she would choose for herself: large but not ostentatious, serious and well built according to the old New York idea of gentility.

“The baby will be here soon,” Snowden said simply, “and I thought it was time my wife had a proper home.”

Elizabeth stared at the house where she would raise her child, becoming surer with each passing second that it was the perfect place. “Oh, thank you, Mr. Cairns, thank you so much,” she gushed when she was able. She blinked at him, still a little light-headed with incredulity. She was terribly lucky, she reminded herself, and should be more vigilant to not forget the fact. The sounds of traffic were growing louder in the late afternoon, and all around them the buildings took on a golden hue from the ripening sun. The very natural smile that the sight of this house had brought to Elizabeth’s face held. Then Snowden leaned forward and committed an act without precedent. He put his mouth against Elizabeth’s and kissed her.

There had never been any suggestion of romance between them, and the shock of the gesture changed the temperature inside of her all over again. Perhaps she looked as scandalized as she felt, because Snowden then patted her on the knee the way a grandfather might if she were a young girl up past her bedtime.

“We can move in as soon as you like,” he told her in a formal voice, before inclining forward and instructing the driver to take them back up to the Dover so that they could begin packing. He did not so much as look at her during the entire ride uptown, and by the time they arrived she was convinced that, if there had been anything lustful in that kiss, it was nothing more than her guilty, overactive imagination.

The situation in the Pacific is a stark one, for though the Spanish have been properly licked, the American commanders, before they attempted to hold provinces of 200,000 or 300,000 hostile inhabitants, had scarcely any idea of the size of the Philippine Islands. According to some experts, the American presence there is slightly over half the size it need be to secure the region. In light of this, it is especially heroic for blue bloods of our own city to be serving there, among them Mr. Teddy Cutting and Mr. Henry Schoonmaker, whose exact locations or regiments are naturally not disclosed for safety’s sake….

— FROM THE NEW YORK IMPERIAL EDITORIAL PAGE, FRIDAY, JULY 6, 1900

“THEY SAY THEY’LL BE CALLING TROOPS HOME SOON,” Colonel Copper said, leaning forward to refresh his drink from a wicker basket stocked with rum, mint leaves, and sugar. The basket sat on the polished blond planks of a large sailboat, a sailboat that Henry Schoonmaker was steering across Havana Bay. Henry was wearing a white linen shirt, unbuttoned to the sternum, and light-colored army-issue slacks; beads of sweat lazed on his skin. Stubble shaded the aristocratic line of his jaw, and his dark hair was pomaded into sections. When he had first volunteered, he’d been careful to always keep his face neatly shaven, but there didn’t seem to be much point anymore. “Home, and then on to the Philippines where they are really needed.”