…and can’t you just imagine those women glaring at us for sport, calling me the second wife and criticizing my hostessing style? It’s not a game I have any interest in playing, or a place I have a taste for anymore. I can’t be without you, but I can’t stay here. Come to Paris with me. I will wait for you on the pier for the noon ship tomorrow. With all the adoration my beating heart is capable of,
— D.H.
HENRY HAD STAYED UP ALL MONDAY NIGHT GOING over documents having to do with his father’s railroad interests, but by the time the first peachy hint of dawn was spreading from the corners of the sky, he and Mr. Lawrence had cleared the matter up satisfactorily and he was ready to address some paperwork of real importance. He was anxious about Diana — it was now more than a day since she’d run away from him, and he was eager to show her that everything was over with Penelope officially, legally, and in every other way. The staff had reported that Mrs. Schoonmaker had not come home the night before, or shown herself today, and his lawyer was ready to draw up divorce papers on the grounds of adultery. It could be kept out of the columns, Lawrence assured him, especially if it was done hastily and while the ghost of William Sackhouse Schoonmaker still held some sway over the city’s newspapermen.
A footman brought him the letter just as he and Lawrence were getting into the particulars. He glanced down at it, and knew immediately from the lovely looping scrawl who had written these pages.
“When did this come?” he demanded.
“Yesterday, Mr. Schoonmaker.”
“Why was it not brought to my attention sooner?” He had not realized with what force he was speaking until he saw the trepidation in the young, thin face.
“We thought you were busy…. We—”
“Never mind,” he said. “It’s done now. Don’t worry,” he added, trying to sound a little kind. He was overtired, and the staff couldn’t help but be somewhat confused and intimidated by him now. His features had hardened with fatigue, and his lean frame was down to a white collared shirt tucked into dark slacks; his jacket and waistcoat were somewhere, but he had, in the last few days, stopped thinking so much about his clothes. He was carrying himself differently; he knew he walked through the many halls of that house with a proprietary attention that he had not formerly possessed. “Don’t think any more of it. You may go.”
When the footman was gone, he stood and spread the pages out against the massive dark-stained wood desk with the simple bucolic imagery carved on its hefty sides. His father had bought it at the auction of the contents of some English lord’s country seat; in its previous life, it was the great bulwark peasants had had to face when they came to pay their tithes. His father always liked to keep in mind the piece’s history, and to see to it that when associates and underlings and rivals came to visit his offices, they felt a little peasantlike, too. In the last few days, Henry had come to really know this section of the house for the first time and had discovered to his surprise that he felt at ease there.
My love, how do I begin? read the first line of her letter, after which tumbled unwieldy paragraphs of yearning and fervent feeling. Despite the desperate situation she was laying out in words, he found himself smiling. She was such a vivid, passionate little thing. There was so much emotion in every remote part of her, in each drop of her blood. She loved him — so said all of the sentences of her letter, even if they purported to be an ultimatum. There had been so many moments, over the course of the previous year, when he had fumbled hopelessly in the case of Diana. But there had been a shift inside him, and he was able to read her arguments and pleas without his confidence flagging even slightly. This he could make right.
When he finished reading, he folded the pages of her letter and put them away in the top drawer of the desk. He hated himself for being unsure, for not acting sooner. Now he understood why she had run from him in the park — it was because he had been beastly. He had presumed that he had Di’s affections, rather than asking, humbly if she would be his wife. How he wished he had shown her, clearly, what a transformation he had undergone. In this sad, hectic week he had glimpsed the man he would become — a man she would be proud to call her husband. Lawrence — sitting in one of the black leather and wood chairs, which his father had acquired at the same auction, down near the corner of the mighty desk — glanced up. His eyes were watery and wrinkled, and he was waiting in a pose of expectation, as though acutely sensitive to some coming order.
Henry strode across the room to the large, square windows that looked down from on high at the most famous avenue in the city. There was nothing doing at that hour, except in the sky, which was growing brighter with every passing moment. He stood pensively, his feet spread apart, and watched the day beginning. Presently he placed a cigarette between his slender, patrician lips, hesitating some moments before striking a match. Afterward, smoke curled up in his line of vision, blending with the smoke from all the fires that were being lit in that hour in all the best kitchens of New York.
“Mr. Lawrence,” he said after several moments of quiet reflection. “How soon can the divorce papers be ready? Could we perhaps serve Mrs. Schoonmaker this afternoon?”
“I see no reason why not,” the lawyer replied.
“Excellent.” Henry dropped his cigarette on the floor and stubbed it out with his toe. “In that case will you send someone to call Tiffany? They’re going to have to open early for me today….”