With the passing of William S. Schoonmaker, the city has lost one of its most esteemed merchant princes. Barely more than half a century in age, Mr. Schoonmaker made prodigious gifts to many of New York’s finest institutions, and was a fixture on its social scene. He is said to have left his second wife, née Isabelle de Ford, with whom he had no children, and his daughter, Prudence, each an amount of $100,000, which, while certainly a handsome inheritance, is nothing compared to the rest of the estate, which will go in its entirety to his only son, Henry.
— FROM THE FRONT PAGE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES,
FRIDAY, JULY 20, 1900
“THANK YOU, GENTLEMEN.”
Henry stood on the threshold of the Schoonmaker mansion, his hands thrust in the pockets of his black trousers, and his face drained of color by the events of the week. His father had left holdings far vaster and more complex than he could possibly have imagined, and he had spent many days trying to come to understand them. It seemed to him that his father owned a not insubstantial slice of everything in the city, and maybe in the nation. They were all his now, as was the house with the theatrical limestone steps stretching down below him. It was twilight, and the carriages of many of his father’s associates waited by the curb in a deceptive quietude. These men had come to see what it would mean, for them and their interests, this calamitous, startling event.
“Thank you, Mr. Schoonmaker,” each replied, one after the other. They gave him sympathetic pats on the back and handshakes as they moved, in a stream of dark bowlers and jackets, through the entryway and down to their waiting driv ers. He was beginning to be able to match their faces to their names.
“You have put their minds at rest,” Jeremiah Lawrence offered, from Henry’s side, once the others were out of earshot. The lawyer’s sleeves were rolled to his elbows, as though they had been shucking corn all this time.
“They think I am too young.” Henry sighed. He, too, had done away with his jacket, and now wore only his black waistcoat over an ivory dress shirt with an undone collar. The night was muggy, lavender, and he could hear the cooing of an especially loud pigeon, fluffing his feathers and rubbing his wings together somewhere overhead.
“Yes, they thought you were a puppy when they arrived. You surprised them, I think. Your seriousness, your attention to the details of the estate — they were impressed.”
“I surprised them by being there at all,” Henry remarked dryly.
Lawrence laughed, and rested a hand against Henry’s black jacket. “Well, they know you didn’t have to be. You could have absented yourself from these proceedings, and you would still be a very rich man tonight.”
“That thought had occurred to me,” Henry confessed, “but I suppose we all have to grow up sometime, don’t we?”
“No.” It was Lawrence’s turn to be wry. “Not all of us do.”
For the first time that day, a kind of smile came to Henry’s face.
“Your father always thought you would have a good head for business, though,” Lawrence went on, growing serious again, and assessing Henry as though he were not a man of twenty-one. “I think he would be pleased with how you are conducting yourself.”
This notion was no less shocking to Henry today than it had been yesterday, on the tongue of his stepmother. Since then he had replayed countless arguments with his father, searching for hidden clues, and though he could detect a kind of harsh affection in some of his memories, it still baffled him. But the week following a man’s death did not seem like the time to question his secret trust or magnanimity, and Henry had told himself that he might as well see if Schoonmaker the elder had been right to believe in him. “So it was not some oversight that I was the chief beneficiary of his will? He was always threatening to cut me out, I half thought he already had somewhere along the way.”
“Your father did not make oversights like that. He did not make oversights at all.” Lawrence chuckled. “Nor will you; I will make sure of that, though I expect in time you will be after me about my failures of attention. But these have been long, hard days for you. The old man’s legacy has been well taken care of. We should give it a rest and pour ourselves a drink.”
Perhaps the emotions of an entire staggering week showed in Henry’s finely chiseled features then, for Lawrence quickly changed his expression.
“I mean, of course, you should have a drink, young man. With your friends, or your Mrs….”
Henry’s eyes drifted as Diana entered his thoughts. They had exchanged a flurry of notes but had not seen one another since gazing from a distance after his father’s burial. Frequently he found himself picturing those shining eyes and that twisted little smile, and yet he felt a kind of quiet orderliness settling within him and all around. To his surprise, these days of responsibility, the answering to people and finding that they listened to him, had a rigid rightness to them. He didn’t want to disturb this feeling, which was a new one for him; he did not, just then, relish any thrills.
“You would be as good a companion as any,” Henry returned, after a pause. They had begun to walk slowly across the marble floor of the main hallway, which was washed with golden light from the chandeliers hanging above. Behind them, a footman sealed the door. “It’s only that I don’t feel much like celebrating.”
“No, sir. Of course. I’ll just put things away in the office so that we can pick up again tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Lawrence.” Henry bowed his head appreciatively, and took the lawyer’s hand, shook it firmly. When the older man had disappeared, he began to slowly walk the halls and stairwells of the house, not knowing quite what he should do. He could be anywhere, he knew, and yet these were his walls, his roof. As he ambled past the grand parlor, where Mrs. William Schoonmaker had long been known to welcome her visitors on Mondays, he heard the quiet sobbing of his father’s young widow.
“Isabelle…,” he said, crossing to the settee where she curled, under layers of black crepe, her face hidden in cushions. He knelt by her side and rested a hand against her shoulder and thought, not for the first time that week, how she seemed to have grown smaller over a very short period.
“Oh, Henry.” He could only see half her face, for she covered her mouth as she turned frightened eyes upon him. Her gloves were stained dark by her tears and running nose, and her eyes were swollen and red with sorrow and self-pity. “What will become of me?”
The blond hair that she always kept so elaborately curled was pulled back severely under a black widow’s cap. He realized, seeing her in mourning garb in the place where she had collected clever people and amusing anecdotes, that she had been diminished, perhaps forever; that she feared a permanent loss of status. Remembering how repeatedly he had pushed his father, how continually he had infuriated him until the end, he felt a pang of guilt. He had never coveted responsibility of the Schoonmaker fortune, but, for better or worse, he had it now.
“It is an awful period,” he began slowly. Reassuring was not his most natural mode, but he felt that he must say something. “But you will see, in time, you’ll hold your Mondays again, you will wear fine dresses in colors other than black. You are Mrs. William Schoonmaker, and you must carry on, just as I must.”
Her pupils moved rapidly back and forth. She sniffled, and tried to dry her cheek with the back of her hand. “I can stay here?”
“Of course.”
“You will maintain the house?”
“I think father would have wanted that.” She nodded emphatically. “I certainly do,” he added softly.
Her face crumpled, and she pulled her gloves off, yanking each finger with a touch of aggression, and cast them aside. Then she rested her little palm against Henry’s cheek.
“He was right about you, you know, Henry,” she said when the risk of a fresh cry had passed. “Now, will you be a darling and help me to bed?”
Once Henry had seen his stepmother to her suite, and called for her maid to undress her, he went to the room that used to be his study, where his own monogrammed stationery was kept. It was next to the room that he used to sleep in, but which now belonged to Penelope, and so was naturally done up in white and gold as though Marie Antoinette had outfitted it for her children. There was no light from under her door, as there had not been for some days. The servants told him, in their most circumspect tones, that since Tuesday his wife had been coming in late, sleeping through the morning, dressing and then going out again. They made concerned and loyal faces at him, but for Henry this was only another sign that his life was adhering to some perfect, as yet invisible design. He turned on a lamp and searched out a monogrammed piece of card stock. Then he wrote a quick note—My Diana, when can we meet? — and went to find someone to deliver it.