THE WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH COMPANY
TO: William S. Schoonmaker
ARRIVED AT: The Schoonmaker House
416 Fifth Avenue, New York
2:00 p.m., Monday, July 9, 1900
Mr. Schoonmaker — Humbly to inform that I am sending Henry back to New York today on special mission. Please understand this was necessary. I will explain more fully in a long letter. Your friend — Col. Copper
MONDAY AFTERNOON WAS THE TIME WHEN elegant people dropped by the Schoonmakers’ Fifth Avenue mansion to utter polite nothings and view the expansive luxury amidst which its denizens lived. In the hour before the public was known to be welcome, the family gathered together, alone, so that their patriarch could be sure they all looked their parts. Penelope emerged from her quarters tentatively on the Monday following her reentry to society, and descended toward the main part of the house with a touch of caution. The mood behind her alabaster oval of a face was a mixture of defiance and trepidation. Henry had abandoned her to a crushing boredom, but some of the stuffier people had not taken her appearance in public very well. The papers were not commenting on the minor scandal yet, but if she continued to behave this way, they would. As everyone who knew her was well aware, Penelope was no fool, and she was acutely cognizant of how closely related were her social stature and her married name.
“Ah, Mrs. Henry,” called the butler, as she approached the drawing room. “Mrs. Henry” was what the staff called her to distinguish her from the senior Mrs. Schoonmaker, and, Penelope couldn’t help but feel, to subtly put her in her place. “These came for you,” he informed, in a discreet tone, as he gestured to the marble tabletop. Her eyes darted. There, erupting from a huge gilt-inlaid vase, were hundreds of pillowy magenta peonies — so many stems, they seemed likely to overwhelm their container.
“Oh!” she exclaimed; the flowers constituted such a gorgeous still life that her façade instinctively relaxed.
“From the prince of Bavaria,” the butler went on, averting his eyes, “who is currently a guest at the New Netherland Hotel….”
“Oh,” she repeated, though this time in a different tone, as she put her fingertips to the satiny petals clustered together. They were just like her: dramatic and rare and impossible to look away from, although frail, in their way, and she knew in an instant that the prince had recognized all these qualities in her person. The defensive foreboding she had so lately felt began to fade, and, as she experienced the sudden pleasure of being in the presence of beautiful things, her own high sense of self-regard came flooding back. She was still plenty alluring, those flowers reminded her, still capable of attracting a very fine species of man, no matter how poorly Henry treated her.
“Thank you, Conrad.” She twisted the black agates set in white gold at her wrist. Like all the pretty things she had been given as a bride, it was from the elder Mr. Schoonmaker, whose money was old and greatly augmented by his youthful ventures in railroads and real estate and other areas that ladies like Penelope were raised not to be curious about. Her stepmother-in-law had once told her that a woman had the most fun after she was married, when no one cared very much about her purity anymore, and, staring at the breathtaking arrangement that her loveliness had garnered, she felt ready to finally accept this as the truth. Before — when she was cooped up in the house, or having to be constantly vigilant of her husband’s questionable fidelity — she had been dubious. But now she saw that there were plenty of thrills to be had even with Henry away. Or — she amended her train of thought, thinking of the way the prince had admired her on Carolina Broad’s dance floor—especially with Henry away. She gave herself a private, mischievous smile as she checked her simple, upswept bouffant in the walnut-framed hall mirror, and then turned in the direction of her in-laws.
“What a joy it will be to have all my family together again, under one roof…,” William Schoonmaker was saying as she entered the grand first-floor drawing room. He was not a small man, and all of his considerable size was richly garbed. Every detail of him commanded attention, but she was having difficulty feigning deference, or even paying much attention, at the current moment. Why should she, when she had so recently captured the attention of a prince? “…And just in time for the Family Progress Party’s ball.”
The only family whose progress old Schoonmaker was really interested in was arranged across a vast drawing room, reclining on the silk upholstered Louis Quatorze pieces, each at a safe distance from the colossal mahogany mantel where the patriarch stood surveying them. Isabelle, the second Mrs. William Sackhouse Schoonmaker, was closest, her elbow rested against the scroll end of the chaise longue she occupied. Her hair was girlish yellow and her cheeks a healthy pink, not unlike her dress, which ballooned in the sleeves but grew narrow in the wrists, and the chief feature of which was the giant satin bow across the bust. Facing Isabelle was Prudence, her stepdaughter, disappearing into her customary black silk dress with its priestlike white trim. Beneath them stretched the plum-and-ochre Hamadan carpet, upon which lounged Robber, Penelope’s Boston Terrier, who everyone ignored. After crossing the threshold, Penelope chose a settee, walked to it, and quickly arranged herself so that the turquoise silk upholstery was obscured by waves of dress. She wore a voluminous skirt of salmon crepe de chine and a high-necked shirt of darkest gray with tiny iridescent lines across the chest; it puffed at the shoulders and grew narrow in the sleeves. A golden afternoon light fell across the Schoonmakers from the high windows that faced Fifth Avenue, lending a kind of splendor to all the marble statuary interspersed through the room, as well as the polished mahogany furniture, and the folds of the ladies’ heaping skirts, which rose in gorgeous glittering crests and fell to shadowy canyons. Several servants wearing velvet livery emblazoned with the Schoonmaker crest were quietly posted in the margins of the room, where they could best be ignored, should anything be required.
Penelope let her made-up lids fall for a moment, and when she’d opened them again the bright blues of her eyes were refocused on her husband’s father. “Which ball?” she asked blandly.
“Oh, Penny, you remember,” said Mrs. William Schoonmaker, her voice a touch reprimanding. The chumminess between the senior and junior Mrs. Schoonmakers had slipped somewhat, ever since the junior had been less than helpful in facilitating the flirtation between her brother, Grayson, and Isabelle, who was in fact his same age. What she had failed to appreciate was how crucial Grayson had been to Penelope’s scheme of ruining Diana Holland’s reputation and stepping on her heart. Anyway, it was long ago, and none of it had gone as planned, and Grayson was back in London now, still irritatingly heartbroken over little Miss Holland and working for their family’s firm there, and so the icy tone her stepmother-in-law employed was simply overkill. “The Family Progress Party ball, next Friday, when William’s candidacy for mayor will be announced,” she finally declared.
“And where the public will first get to see a reunited Mr. and Mrs. Henry Schoonmaker,” the candidate concluded, with what Penelope supposed was an attempt at a friendly smile. If that farce of a kindly expression was intended to soothe, it sorely missed its mark; the long summer of entertainments she’d been imagining for herself had just been snatched away with a single sentence.
“What?” she snapped. Her face had fallen; she couldn’t help it. She was again picturing Henry the last time she saw him, in his smart soldier’s jacket and leather gaiters over polished black boots, completely indifferent to her suffering as he walked out.
“Show it to her,” her father-in-law commanded, and then one of the servants came forward from the wall. Dutifully Penelope took the telegram and read what was written there on the yellow form, before placing it back on the silver tray. “You see?” Schoonmaker the elder went on. “Soon you will have your husband back.”
Her eyes took in the telegram — already she could see just how it would happen. Old Schoonmaker would arrange for the less serious papers to write of Henry as though he really had behaved bravely in battle. The less serious papers were, of course, the ones her closest friends and most cherished rivals read, and they would all be congratulating her when they saw her next, for having such a very fine specimen for her mister, and for having him home in one handsome piece. But for Penelope, now quietly radiating hatred from her position on the settee, nothing could be more inopportune.
Penelope glanced up after a pause and offered her in-laws a supremely fake smile. She knew that if people were whispering about her, she should be grateful at the prospect of having the shelter of a husband’s presence again. Yet she was unable to muster any sentiment of that kind. She liked to be always winning, and it seemed a long time since a game had gone her way.
“To the Schoonmakers!” William was saying now, lifting his afternoon bourbon so that the ice rattled and caught the light. “And to the Family Progress Party,” he added. Penelope could not suppress an eye roll, although she was not alone in this, for Isabelle had recently stopped pretending to be interested in her husband’s political ambitions — except when it allowed her to be snappish with her daughter-in-law. “And to the young couple who may now return to the important business of furthering our great line….”
Bitter as it was for her, Penelope knew that this moment required a bereaved aspect, and so she did allow a little color into her cheeks and a light furrowing of her high, fine fore head. A tense silence filled up all the empty space in that opulently cluttered room. Old Schoonmaker appeared to regret the hurtful line he’d taken. Every one of the Schoonmakers knew it had been a hostile gesture on Henry’s part, to leave when his wife was in a family way; to reference it now was thoughtless at best. But in the bloodless way of their people, the conversation would pause only long enough for the discomfort to dissipate. Then the family would return to a safe topic. Penelope blinked furiously, and then her eyes swept toward the other members of the household, who stood still and glistening in their bejeweled setting, like some very grand, very dishonest portrait. The injuries the Schoonmakers had brought on her were suddenly too much to bear.
“You must excuse me,” she announced uncivilly.
Then she found herself a little shocked again, for as she rose and strode toward the door, not one of them moved to stop her. Not one asked if she were all right, if she were feeling weak, or if her melancholy had returned to her. This realization made her move faster, until her heels were making a rapid click against the hardwood at the border of the drawing room. By the time she passed into the hall, her teeth were set together, and the length of her spine had seized. Her eyes had grown wild — it was almost difficult to focus — but then she settled on the butler, coming toward her from the direction of the foyer.
“Mrs. Henry—” he began, but was cut off.
“Ah! Good.” Penelope’s voice was shrill, but that didn’t bother her particularly. The important thing was that she was heard back in the plush quiet where the three remaining Schoonmakers doubtless persisted in uttering a deafening nothing. “My husband is coming back, as you know, but it will be necessary to set up a separate bedroom, as I am still much too weak to have my bed invaded. Make it far away from mine, perhaps on the east side of the house. Please have his luggage put there, and kindly inform the staff that I am not to be told of his doings. You can have the prince of Bavaria’s gift put by my dressing table now.”
Then she turned and walked with haughty fire back to her own quarters. Having been robbed of her first prospect of a good time in months smarted, and she was not about to make it easy for anyone even slightly complicit in the humiliating captivity her marriage had become.