Tempting as it may be, you must never allow your daughters to chaperone or discipline one another. Such arrangements have always proved a recipe for mischief.
— MRS. HAMILTON W. BREEDFELT, COLLECTED COLUMNS ON RAISING YOUNG LADIES OF CHARACTER, 1899
DINNER HAD BEEN CLEARED AND PORT WAS being served in the front drawing room when the sisters Holland were finally able to separate from the rest of their family for a private moment. Like the well-trained hostess that she was, Elizabeth glanced back over her shoulder to be sure that there was contentment amongst her guests. They were lit by the low bluish glow from the gasolier — for it was not a new house, and though Snowden insisted they would soon update it for electricity, the time in which to do so had not yet presented itself Inwardly, Elizabeth preferred the old way of illuminating a room, for it was subtle, almost ghostly, compared to what an incandescent bulb would provide. Dogwood erupted from tall bronze floor vases, and by the fireplace, Snowden spoke of serious things with Mrs. Holland, no doubt regarding the oil wealth of which his wife had until recently been ignorant. He had been extremely busy all day — dealing with Will’s property was apparently a time-consuming en deavor, and he had only returned home just in time to greet their guests.
“You look like a pretty Spanish boy,” Elizabeth whispered with affectionate disdain, as she drew her fingers across the dark hair that was almost long enough now to cover her sister’s neck. It had been tamed and made to appear straight by some rather masculine hair product or other, and the new arrangement lent a special mystery to Diana’s deep brown eyes.
“Well,” the younger Holland sister returned with a devious little smile, “I do now know a lot about pretty Spanish boys.”
“Oh, Di.” Elizabeth tried to sound disapproving, but her relief at having her sister home was so overwhelming that she suspected her original intention was drowned out. The younger was wearing a pale yellow lace confection that made her skin appear all the browner; Elizabeth stood beside her in baby blue seersucker that enforced a rather severe silhouette despite her newly large bosom and belly.
“Oh, Liz, not really. I mean, I might have, except that Henry was all I could think about the whole time I was away, and when I found him he so fully eclipsed my life, I don’t know if I would have noticed pretty Spanish boys if I were standing in a room full of nothing else.”
Diana’s voice was so loud, so rash — it tried her sister’s nerves. Elizabeth’s blond head swiveled, fearful of being overheard, but her mother and aunt and husband were engaged in conversation across the room, and the servants who waited upon them were too far away, even if they had wanted to listen in.
“You cannot speak like that,” she whispered.
“But it’s the truth!” Diana emitted a giddy laugh, and slid her arm around her sister’s engorged middle.
“But he is a married man, Diana, and you are in a very vulnerable position. We have risked too much as a family already, and we are lucky to still have our good name. Mother wanted me to speak to you about—”
“Yes, she told me. She wants you to talk some sense into me, and hopes that perhaps a little decency will rub off, if only it’s you doing the admonishing.” Diana’s sigh as she rested her head against her sister’s shoulder was sweetly exhausted, amused. “But she’s a fool for encouraging anything of the kind. Who are you to tell me not to risk everything for the man I love?”
The brown eyes of the elder Holland girl glazed, and she found herself silenced by this logic. She stared out the front windows. The air was still and damp, and the street lamps illuminated the hot darkness in yellow cones. Mrs. Holland had secured a new driver — that, too, was probably the product of Snowden’s secret dealings — and the young man was leaning against the old coach wearily. He was not as broad as Will had been, and certainly not as alert in his waiting. But the very thought that this boy slept in the same old loft as Will, which she had crept down to on so many evenings, made her heart feel weak. Diana was right; she was in no position to admonish anybody.
“Do you really love him?” Elizabeth knew Diana loved him, of course — she had known since the brief, strange period when she herself had worn Henry Schoonmaker’s engagement ring. What she meant was, did her sister love Henry as she had loved Will? Did she want the balance of her days to be about nothing but him? Once — just after Will’s death — she had clung to the notion that Diana’s feelings for Henry might be that profound, that such emotion was indeed still possible in this world, after all the horrors. She wanted to believe this now more than ever.
“Yes,” Diana whispered, and for once her voice was serious. “Oh, yes, sometimes so much, it hurts.”
“Ah,” Elizabeth replied, her voice growing small with memory. “That’s what it’s like.”
“I never knew I could love so much!” Diana went on, the giddiness creeping back. “And we will be together. He will find a way to leave Penelope. Only it may take a little while. But I have never in my whole life been so sure of something being so right, and I—”
“No.” Elizabeth’s eyes were still glazed, and her heart had begun to thud. She spoke like a woman in the thrall of a vision. The well-appointed room behind her, with its blond wood accents and black trim, its polite occupants, its purposeful arrangement, ceased to matter. “You won’t be with him that way, by letting time take care of it, by waiting and believing.”
Diana turned up her rosy heart-shaped face at her sister. “But—”
“He loves you, doesn’t he.” It was not a question, and Elizabeth nodded in confirmation of her own statement. “Then you must leave.”
“Leave — where?”
“New York.” There was a swelling in Elizabeth’s throat, which she tried not to give in to. All of her floundering had become raw for her again, and for a moment she would have given anything to be back in California, when she could still retract her foolish insistence that they return home. “The one thing I did wrong was come back here. All that fierce propriety — they would never allow a boy like him to love a girl like me, not in this gilded cage of a city.” Elizabeth paused, and met her sister’s eyes. “It won’t be so different for you, Di.”
A silence hung between the sisters. It was possible that Elizabeth had never spoken so forcefully in her whole life. She did not care who heard her, though it didn’t matter particularly, as Mrs. Holland and Edith and Snowden had gone on talking all the while, anyway.
“Oh, Liz,” Diana whispered after a moment.
Elizabeth shook her heard firmly, her fair brows taut, her small, round mouth cinched tight, and stared at the boy out there in the purple midnight. He looked ready to nod off against the worn black leather side of the carriage. “If you love him: leave. They’ll never let you be together here.”
The profound loneliness of the new house on Madison had not been evident to her until her remaining family members had filled it with their same old voices and poses and affectionate little sayings, and then returned home together to Gramercy Park. They had been gone for many hours, but Elizabeth had indulged emotions she had not intended to, and was having trouble sleeping. In the middle of the night, she found that her eyes were wide open, and that she was hungry, and that she desperately wanted to eat bread slathered in sweet butter. Apparently her attention was easily diverted, however, because by the time she climbed down the stairs, clinging to the banister to steady her unwieldy form, she had forgotten about food. By the time she finally stepped onto the first floor, all she could think of was the card perched on the pink marble-topped cabinet by the door. Snowden must have come in too hurriedly that evening to have even glanced at his mail.
Her moody fixation with that afternoon’s visitor revived, and in her restless early-morning state she felt an extra, ticking urgency. She paused with her hand in the small of her back, and would have reached out to where the folded piece of paper still stood, like a tent on the marble, except that she noticed something else.
A blue box of very particular proportions and color sat beside the note, and she knew in an instant that it was a silver baby’s rattle from Tiffany & Co. She knew because she had — in her previous life — ordered this particular gift for the children of several of her older, married cousins. The darkness within ebbed for a moment, and she let her fingers run along its edge, thinking how kind it was of Snowden to have known her well enough to guess how much she would appreciate this particular item. He was kind, of course he was, and she should stop slandering him in her mind. But then she set the box down and picked up the piece of paper anyway.
Mr. Cairns, Please stop avoiding me.
I know what you did in the Klondike,
and if you don’t up my payments I will be
forced to make your actions public.
Sincerely, O.L.
Elizabeth placed the note back on the marble top, just exactly as it had been, so that nobody would know it had been read. The word Klondike had a terrible significance for her; it was where her father had died. He had enjoyed traveling to exotic locations and speculating far and wide, and he had never cared much if the world considered him a smart businessman or not. That was how he had met Snowden in the first place.
Snowden, her husband, who had known to purchase for her a silver Tiffany baby rattle. She stepped back from the note, ashamed of herself. The stairs and halls surrounding her were dark and empty, and she was relieved that nobody had witnessed her trespass. For the lesson was clear — one did not poke around at night, not unless one wanted to see ghosts.