Police precincts all over the city have reported anonymous tips from people who claim to have seen Elizabeth Holland in all sorts of places: a Ludlow Street butcher’s, on the Brooklyn Bridge, driving a hansom across the park in jodhpurs and top hat. This sheds even more doubt on the ludicrous rumors that she is still living.
—FROM THE FIRST PAGE OF THE NEW YORK IMPERIAL, DECEMBER 31, 1899
AT GRAND CENTRAL THERE WAS AN AIR OF motion and confusion, and everywhere were men and women in their heavy winter clothes laden down with the impedimenta of travel. The waiting room of the station, with its rows of long, polished benches, were thronged and the sounds of delay announcements and cries for lost family members filled Will’s and Elizabeth’s ears. It was not, in fact, a slow day for travel, as Snowden had insisted it would be: Men who worked in the city were hurrying home to their families, and those who had come on benders and run out of money before the great New Year were heading away in shame. Meanwhile, revelers from the outlying boroughs were flooding the city. Good-byes had taken longer than they should have, and now they had to hurry. They had been warned by Mrs. Holland to be discreet, to do nothing that might call attention to them, but Will and Elizabeth Keller now found that in the rush of arrivals and departures they were all smiles and could not help grasping each other’s hands.
It was almost a new year, and everything was in front of them. They were going off to make their way, and this time with the assurance that everything was all right at home and with the blessing of the bride’s relations. She was a bride, Elizabeth thought as Will’s large hand gripped her small one, pulling her through the crowd toward the train shed with its arched ceiling of glass and iron. He looked back at her and smiled—for no particular reason, she supposed, or maybe because of everything—and she couldn’t help but laugh. She tossed back her head with the laugh, and the hood of her cloak fell down. She reached up and touched her head, because she had placed her hat in its traveling case and her hair was only covered by a small amount of ornamental lace. She let go of Will’s hand and stopped, so that she might put her hood back in order. That was when she heard her name—her old name, the way it used to be said—and turned.
“Miss Holland, Miss Holland!”
She looked, her face still smiling, her heart full of elation. Then she remembered that she was not supposed to be seen. The crowd was parting and there were several blue uniforms stepping toward her. She felt Will’s hands on her from behind, one on her ribs and the other on her shoulder. She could smell his clean skin, with its faint whiff of Pear’s soap, as his cheek touched hers.
“Run,” he whispered. “You’ve got to run. Just run for the train. I’ll be right behind you.”
It was then that she realized that she should be afraid. Right afterward she was. She could feel the fear, cold in her throat and all down her spine. Then she turned again for the platform where the crowd was still thick, and she ran into it. There were bodies all around her, but she pushed through. Her feet and her panic carried her forward until she heard shouting, growing louder and fiercer with each word.
“Halt!” she heard.
“Stop!”
“Don’t move!”
She kept running until she heard the shots. They were so loud that for a minute she thought they must have happened in her ears. They were horrible and repetitious and they lasted far too long. When they were over, she could barely breathe. Everyone around her had frozen. She turned again, slowly this time, and began to move back down the platform, where there was now shrieking. She was indifferent to her backward fallen hood, and she could not have gotten her hand off her open mouth for anything in the world.
She was moving faster now toward the place where she had last touched Will. It was with a wretched apprehension that she came on him again. He was on the ground now, and his shirt was all torn apart. Everywhere there was his gleaming, gushing blood. The blue uniforms were still there, this time behind a wall of raised guns. She could already smell the blood, even before she fell down next to him. Even before she began to choke on the odor and on her own tears.
“Will,” she gasped.
His eyes had been closed, and then they opened, and she saw that they were pale blue and filled with fear. They searched for her and then he grabbed at her hand. She knew that he saw her, and she could see that the fear had gone out of his eyes.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you,” she answered.
“I love you,” he repeated with the same pained steadiness.
There was nothing for her to do but repeat it. “I love you,” she repeated over and again. She would never know how many times she said it. There must have been only a few seconds she was by his side, though she would never be sure. She was so full of disbelief that they seemed impossible moments out of time. She remembered seeing his eyelids fall closed again, and that was when she felt hands on her. Her dress was all soaked in blood, and she felt too weak to say anything more. She was being carried away, by those rough male hands, through the crowd. She heard her name—the way it used to be—repeated over and over again by the massed people around her.
They were asking her if she was all right. They wanted to know what had been done to her. But her vision had started to fail, and she felt limp all over, and then everything went black.