D—
I am so sorry I wasn’t able to
visit you yesterday or the day before.
My father has placed me on house
arrest. I would have written sooner,
but even my correspondence is being
monitored. Will you come tonight?
Nine o’clock, the same place as before.
—HS
“WHO IS THE NOTE FROM?”
Diana, who was sitting too close to the fire in her family drawing room, raised her eyes as though she were coming out of a daytime sleep. For a few moments her thoughts had been entirely elsewhere, further uptown, in the greenhouse where she’d once spent the night, in that perfect presence. The most exciting presence she’d ever known. Her lids fluttered and she realized that the side of her body facing the flames had grown hot and red. She folded the note hastily and put it in the pocket of the honeydew-colored dress she had worn only the week before. The dress, which had been a witness to feelings entirely opposite of what she was experiencing now, had been her mother’s decision that night and this evening, as well.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” she told Snowden, who was sitting across from her in a dull black jacket that seemed deliberately chosen to accentuate his less urban qualities. “What were you saying…?”
“I was saying that the ways in which I am prepared to help you and your family are not a charity…” Snowden went on, looking vaguely pleased with himself. It was a point he seemed at pains to make, and to which Diana was surely obliged to listen, as she feared Edith, stationed in the near background and pretending to read from a book of sermons, might remind her if her attention lapsed. For he had bought more wood than they could burn all winter, and stocked the pantries, and erected in the corner of the room a Christmas tree that brought a sense of festivity to the Holland house that would have been unthinkable the day before. “Your father and my business interests were of course entangled, and our holdings in the Klondike were for a time difficult to decipher….”
Diana smiled mistily and focused her eyes on the dust brown collar of Snowden’s shirt so she would appear to be paying attention even as she allowed her thoughts to drift. She had been dreamy and agitated since their guest had arrived, trying not to seem rude or dismissive but unable to banish the image or idea of Henry for even a moment. Of course, when he had not come to visit on Wednesday and then again on Thursday—as he had so clearly promised on Tuesday night—her yearning had grown and she had not been able to eat, and by evening she had felt tingly and weak. It had been a sweet, almost unbearable state of confusion. She was certain that this time she had not misjudged Henry, however, and his note—which had been delivered by some anonymous man, just as darkness was falling, and then brought to her by a distracted Claire—had finally vindicated this assumption.
She was lucky in a way that Snowden was there, because all of his projects to make the house better kept her busy and prevented her imagination from wandering too far in any direction, although she did not in truth want to be distracted.
“What a time we had on the Klondike, though…” Snowden was saying.
She did not ask herself why Henry’s father had put him on house arrest. She only imagined that he must be experiencing a kind of torture, as she was, and that his intentions and desires were also shifted to the greenhouse with the simple brass frame bed. Diana wondered if there were a way to calculate this division of self—what percentage of her body and spirit was there in the drawing room of No. 17 Gramercy Park South, what percentage was transported to that perfect place with the arched glass ceiling where she was close enough to Henry that she could smell his clean, faintly cologned skin. Certainly more than half. The arrival of that note, which was now safely hidden in her pocket, had so captured her senses that she could almost feel the delicate play of Henry’s fingertips along her arm.
“Of course, that was only one of our adventures. We went looking for fortunes in South Africa and Cal-ee-for-nye-ay.”
Diana shifted in her seat and nodded vaguely. This weak attempt at humor did not please her. Meanwhile, the line of Henry’s chin was as clear in her mind as the white line of the mantel on which Snowden rested his stubby elbow. She could see the exact shade of his eyes, although she would not have been able to answer whether Snowden’s were blue, green, or brown. The objects in the room she occupied—a room she had seen daily for all of her life—were indistinct, but she was already mentally mapping the route she would take out of the house, the route that would take her to Henry. She had already planned what she would wear and what she was prepared to give him.
“Diana, are you well?”
“Yes,” Diana answered, startled. She decided she should appear convincing and so reiterated the sentiment. “Very well.”
“Good. You looked faint for a moment, but if you are feeling well, then there is something your mother and I have discussed. We have talked about how well I knew your father, his affections and hopes for his daughters—hopes that now fall exclusively on you. We have discussed what Mr. Holland thought appropriate and true, and we decided that at this juncture it would be wise to show the world how lovely—and how well—you are. We shall dispel the rumors about the Hollands having to hide in poverty. You and I will thus have dinner tonight at Sherry’s, with your aunt Edith as chaperone. The world will see how beautiful you look—have I told you, by the way, how beautifully you wear that dress?” Snowden reached inside the breast of his jacket and removed a small oblong box. “It will go very well with this, don’t you think?”
Diana watched as he pulled back the black velvet lid and revealed a delicate pearl choker that, on another day, she might have readily agreed would go very well with her dress.
“But—tonight?” she started, her cheeks slackening. She was all of a sudden back in the parlor with all the dark woodwork and the olive-colored walls. Her skin was being scorched by the fire, and, try as she might, she could not recover her flight of fancy. She was only, horribly, here. A quiver of disappointment shot through her. Tonight she was supposed to be with Henry, in his greenhouse, but she would not even have time to send him a note explaining her absence.
Snowden, if he noticed, was not deterred. “Yes—has there ever been a more perfect time for it? The reservation is for nine o’clock,” he said as he moved to hook the double string of pearls at the nape of her neck. Diana’s face was cast into shadow as Snowden’s torso moved in toward her and she took the opportunity to grimace for all the things she would miss. The pearls were cold against her skin, and the clasp made a sound of sick finality as it snapped shut.