No man ever believes his depiction in the press to be accurate.
—SOCIETY AS I WROTE IT, BY “THE GAMESOME GALLANT,” DECEMBER 1899
SATURDAY WAS THE DAY BEFORE CHRISTMAS EVE, and it passed quietly for smart New York. The sun went down early and, for Henry, it was as though daylight never happened. He brooded all night in his own room, slept fitfully but late, and by five o’clock darkness had completely fallen. It seemed one continuous night, for here he was again, in the same drawing room with the same people. There were a few extras, too—Lucy Carr and Mr. Gore. Apparently, Isabelle couldn’t go without entertainment for two nights together and had put her foot down, since ordinarily old Schoonmaker would not have let a divorcée into his house twice in one week, and especially not at the same time as a man who was seen so regularly without his wife. They were playing bridge, the four of them—Mrs. Schoonmaker, Mrs. Carr, Gore, and Penelope Hayes, who was watching Henry, bird of prey–like, without ever seeming to turn her eyes in his direction.
“Bridge,” said Henry without moving his nose too far from his waiting cognac. “Isn’t that one of the unladylike pursuits?”
“Only when you do it in large parties or the big hotels or in foreign places,” replied his father, who had been sitting next to him getting red-faced on his son’s favorite after-dinner drink and saying very little.
“In other words, only when you get seen?”
“Exactly. Not everybody is so pathologically seen as you, my boy.”
Henry nodded and drank. He tapped his fingers on the ormolu-encrusted arm of his chair and considered the fact that if he had not been seen on one recent evening in particular, he would be free to go find out exactly what had happened between Teddy and Diana. Instead, he sat in the parlor of his family’s Fifth Avenue mansion, growing older by the minute just like everybody else.
He could hear, in the adjoining galleries and parlors, the servants preparing for the Christmas Eve party Mrs. Schoonmaker was planning—she had complained of the ruckus, and of the strain the preparations put on her nerves, several times already. It occurred to Henry that he was sitting in that same enfilade of rooms where his engagement had been announced, some months before, and it seemed to him that from that original act of cowardice came all his current misfortunes.
“Miss Hayes is such a lovely good girl.” His father took a drink when he had finished speaking but did not otherwise pretend that this was a random observation.
“You didn’t used to think so.”
“Tragedies change people.” Henry’s father shifted his bulk in his antique chair, which sighed, and moved his snifter from one hand to the other. “Some people,” he added pointedly.
Henry took a bitter sip and propped his head against his fist, shifting his body as he did away from his father’s. He looked across the floor, the polish of which was obscured by the dark carpets, at Penelope, who was posed against the little card table in her pale yellow dress with the gold beading around the bustline. Her dark hair was swept up into a high sculpture, and the glow from the next room gently outlined her long, curved neck. He had kissed that neck, but he felt very far away from a desire to do so now. It was arched just so for him, he knew, but also for his father, and this thought gave him a deep feeling of disgust.
Henry’s attention was sharply diverted when the butler appeared in the door and announced a name that had been much in his thoughts. Before the final syllable of the name “Teddy Cutting” had been uttered, Henry was out of his chair and across the floor. He met Teddy as he entered, looked him in the eye and stated a sharp and simple: “You.”
“Hello to you, too,” Teddy replied with mild amusement. “I was just dining at Delmonico’s. Everybody missed you.”
“I’ve got to talk to you.” Henry’s eyes flashed around the room even as he roughly linked his arm through Teddy’s. To his great irritation, Teddy released himself and moved to the card table, where he made his hellos. Only after he had gone around the circle did he allow himself to be drawn forward into the galleries. He wore a bemused twist to his smile and a dinner jacket that Henry noticed as being distinctly borrowed from his own style. His blond hair was darkened with the pomade that held it parted on the side.
“I saw the paper,” Henry hissed when they were out of earshot from the others. The walls of the room were deep red, and copper pots in the corners overflowed with ferns.
“What paper?” Teddy asked. He was maintaining a stance of vaguely amused innocence that did nothing to calm Henry’s ire. He tapped his top hat, which he was still holding, against his thigh as though he were bored. “It’s really a shame you’re on house arrest so soon after you ended your mourning period…” he went on. “The fellows miss you.”
“The paper with the item about you and Diana Holland.”
“What are you talking about?” Teddy said, halting by a marble nymph and finally looking his friend in the eye.
“That ‘Gallant’ column,” Henry replied hotly. “The one that mentioned you being intimate with my—with the young lady with whom you thought I shouldn’t be engaging in a romantic relationship at this particular historical moment.”
Teddy paused and his gray eyes shifted back toward the room where the others were laughing over something or other. All amusement had washed out of his face. He tapped his foot against the parquet floor and considered for a moment how best to reply. “Oh, Henry, you can’t believe—” He broke off, shaking his head. “That thing that had Florence so upset? Did you read what it said about her, Henry? How could I have been concerned about what it said about me, when…”
Henry’s face was stuck in a furious frown. His rage had built up without his control, and it had no route of escape. Teddy was watching him in that quiet, serious way he sometimes had late at night after too many drinks had been spilled, and Henry could almost see his own frightful visage reflected in his friend’s. The fun that was being had down the corridor of rooms seemed a thousand miles away.
“I didn’t notice about Florence,” Henry said finally. His throat was tight.
“Henry…it was arranged by my sister’s mother-in-law and Mrs. Holland that I would escort Diana to a little dinner. I enjoyed her company very much, just as I always enjoyed her sister’s, but you know there is nothing between us.” He kept on with those eyes, and Henry felt his rage subside an inch. “Don’t make yourself ridiculous with accusations,” Teddy concluded sharply.
“All right, all right.” Henry sighed and covered his face with his hand. He was about to ask why then, if there had been nothing between his friend and Diana, she had not come to him last night, but stopped himself—not because he was afraid of shocking Teddy, but because he felt suddenly protective of her again. And of her sister, wherever she was, guarding her secret just as he should.
“You love her,” Teddy observed quietly.
Henry replied with an uncharacteristic lack of irony: “Yes.”
Teddy’s eyes shifted to the plaster interlacing that decorated the ceiling in curlicues. “Lord, you never make it easy, do you.”
“No.”
“You are aware of that.”
“Yes.” Henry paused. He had known Teddy a long time, but he had never had a conversation with him quite like this one. “But I’ve never felt like this, either.”
His friend regarded him. Moments passed, and for the first time Henry was afraid to hear his friend’s assessment. “You’ll have to get her, then.”
Henry let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “I can’t even leave the house.”
Only now did he move his hand from his eyes, and saw that his friend was nodding. Teddy touched his arm and leaned in for a view of the room where a fire was crackling and cards were being loudly played.
“Your father’s gone out for a minute,” Teddy observed.
The two men looked at each other and then turned and started back toward the others at an inconspicuous pace.
“What a bore he is,” Teddy mocked, with a little jab in Henry’s direction, when they were again beside the card table.
“Oh, I know!” Isabelle spoke with enthusiasm but barely glanced up from her hand. Cards were, as his father had observed several times—erroneously, in the son’s opinion—her only vice.
“I rather like our new Henry,” Penelope said in a soft voice that, if Henry had heard it from behind a door, he would have sworn belonged to some other girl.
“I’m going to bed,” Henry went on, trying not to betray the new energy that was already making racehorses of his thoughts.
“And I’m going to see what the city at night has to offer a young man like myself.”
Both men stepped away from the marble-topped table across the deep purple carpet. The light from the fire played across Penelope’s slim, yellow torso and on her stunned features.
“Good night to both of you then,” Mrs. Schoonmaker said, only now turning her focus away from the cards. She shot a look at Penelope. “Apologies from Mr. Schoonmaker; he was called to the club unexpectedly. Some political bore or other.”
“Good night,” chorused the others.
The two men walked toward the door. Once they were out in the hall, Henry turned to his friend as though he were bidding him farewell. Teddy risked a look backward and nodded as he handed Henry his hat. The two men shook hands and then walked past each other, Teddy moving in the direction of Henry’s rooms and Henry, the hat pulled down over his face, toward the Cutting carriage that was waiting by the curb.