It is well known that a man, when wooing a lady to be his wife, must first win over the females she most confides in her friends, of course, and her sister, if she has one.
— MAEVE DE JONG, LOVE AND OTHER FOLLIES OF THE GREAT FAMILIES OF OLD NEW YORK
THE HOUSE HAD GROWN SILENT. THERE SEEMED TO be nothing happening not even in the kitchen, where dinner should certainly have been being prepared. Diana moved through the house on light feet, humming a tune in ragtime to herself, listening for some sign of life. It occurred to her that perhaps Mrs. Faber, having got wind of the disastrous state of the Holland finances, might’ve packed up the staff and run off to join the circus, maybe, or to open a brothel in San Francisco. It seemed inconceivable that, set free in this way, the housekeeper would still want the company of dull old Mr. Faber. Diana crept through the back servants’ hall without meeting a soul and into the cloakroom, which was at the end of a long foyer. She felt like she was seeing everything anew. She was poor; she had nothing, and thus, she realized with delight, she had nothing to lose.
She looked at the fur coats and velvet evening wraps hanging along the walls and realized they would have to go. She glanced behind the door for her French lieutenant’s coat that she would find a way to save but instead saw a foreign hat. She plucked it from the wall and placed it on her head. It would have been far too large for her except for the fact of her curls, which added enough volume that it fit almost perfectly. Diana turned to the cloakroom mirror and decided that she looked sort of bohemian when she put on the right accessories. Then she peeked out of the cloakroom door and into the long hallway and saw the figure of a man in a black coat, his back turned toward her.
Diana slipped silently down the hall in his direction. When she was a few feet from him, he must have heard her because he turned. His features were set with a look of exasperation. It took her a moment to fit the man’s name and face together, though she knew them both. The face was aristocratic and stretched with an air of entitlement, the shifting of a pronounced jaw, the roving of worldly dark eyes.
“Oh…I know you,” she said, and then smiled, because she was surprised at herself for thinking that he was actually delicious-looking even though everyone else thought so, too.
“You’re Henry Schoonmaker.”
“Yes,” he said, glancing at her head, and then meeting her eyes again.
“Do you like my hat?” she asked, touching the brim and watching him. She had heard all about the wild young Schoonmaker while she was in Saratoga. Even Aunt Edith had gossiped about him. Apparently, he raced those dangerous four-in-hand carriages and drove motorcars and moved restlessly from place to place and girl to girl. It had sounded to Diana like he lived the sort of far-ranging life she would lead if only the world would let her.
“I do like the hat, although I would question your use of the word my,” Henry said sharply. Then he winked, which made Diana even more aware of her heart’s rapid tempo.
“What are you going to do?” she asked, putting a hand on her hip and lifting her chin proudly. “Call the police on me for trying on your hat?”
Henry’s mouth opened with a rejoinder, but he was cut off by the sound of approaching footsteps within the parlor, which reminded Diana that despite the quiet, there were still people all over the house, listening and breathing and thinking in rules. And according to the rules, she was not at all where she was supposed to be.
Diana was about to slip quickly away when she looked at Henry and decided that she wasn’t done with him. She grabbed his hand and pulled him into the parlor on the east side of the house. The lesser parlor, her mother called it, because it was where they kept the lesser art. It used to be the ballroom, back when their father was alive and they still gave entertainments that involved dancing, but it had been rechristened sometime last spring. All the nice things had been moved to the parlor where they received guests, leaving this room with a vaguely shabby appearance. Diana took a mental note of the fade on the upholstery so that she could give her nightly diary entry a touch of ambience. When they were on the other side of the oak door, she reluctantly let go of his hand. She looked up at the great canvases above, with their dark, roiling seas. They seemed to Diana like an approximation of her own feelings at the moment.
“What are you doing in my house, Henry Schoonmaker?” she whispered. Diana could hear her sister in the hall. She was using her stuck-up, authoritative voice, asking Claire how she could possibly have misplaced Mr. Schoonmaker’s hat.
“I’m not entirely sure that’s your business,” Henry told her.
She frowned at his answer. It was possible, though unlikely, that he had come to see Elizabeth. Perhaps he had taken that bit about her beauty in the papers for the advertisement it was. Or, Diana wondered, perhaps he had caught a glimpse of the younger Holland sister over the summer and his curiosity had been building ever since. That would be something. And then it occurred to her that he was likely here, and looking so serious, because her family owed his family money, which was dreary, but she had to admit more realistic. Noting again the worn cushions, Diana realized that she was now in a rather vulnerable position facing someone as wealthy as a Schoonmaker. Then she realized something else: He was admiring her with his eyes.
“The famous Henry Schoonmaker,” she said, bravely holding his gaze. “The one who can’t sit still and breaks hearts all over the place. Well, that’s what they say, isn’t it?”
“Why do you girls always love gossip so much?” he asked in reply. She was close enough to smell him. He smelled like hair pomade and cigarettes and just slightly of women’s perfume, or so it seemed at that moment. She looked up at his amused face, and he whispered, “Do you think all the stories about me are true?”
“If the stories are true, then you are a very interesting person.” She smiled, tucking her lower lip under her teeth.
“Well, I deny them all categorically.” He shrugged before continuing: “Except the one about me liking pretty girls, which is more or less true. But how old are you, anyway? You can’t have been out in society very long at all. Look at you, you’ve probably never even been kissed, and you’re ”
“I have too been kissed,” she interrupted, the way a child would. She felt her cheeks flush, but was too thrilled at being right where she was to really mind.
“Not very well, I’d bet,” Henry replied with an arch of his eyebrow.
Out in the hall, Claire was reporting to Elizabeth that Mr. Schoonmaker’s hat was indeed quite gone, and then Elizabeth was expressing her displeasure at the poor quality of service in the household.
Diana looked around at the taxidermy buck heads on the wall and the old heavy furniture. There was a great tin vase full of cabbage roses that were wilting with neglect, their petals browning and falling to the floor. The curtains were drawn, which seemed somehow appropriate. She returned her eyes to the lank figure of Henry Schoonmaker, very real before her, and felt a lovely kind of pain shoot through her chest. There were so many things he knew that she didn’t. She could tell by the way he stood that he was older than she was and he had done things she could never do. She wanted to take him upstairs and lock the door and make him tell her everything.
“Truly kissed?” he asked, lowering his eyebrow, which somehow implied even greater skepticism. He leaned closer, his breath warm on her ear as he reached for the hat. For a moment, everything was still. His body was so close to hers that she felt they were already touching. And then, as he gently took the hat from her curls, he turned his face just enough to brush his lips across hers. Her chest rose and fell. The touch of his mouth had been electric.
He was looking intently into her eyes, the corner of his mouth resisting a full smile, and then he leaned in again, bringing his mouth flush against hers. That was it, Diana thought. That was how this was supposed to feel. It was supposed to go all the way down to your toes and make them dance, just a little bit.
Henry drew his lips away and winked at her, his eyes lively and knowing. Then he put his hat back on his head and stepped into the hall without another word.
“Sweet ladies, it seems I got lost on the way from the cloakroom to the door,” Diana heard him say. There was laughter in his voice and she knew that even though he was speaking to Claire and Elizabeth, he was sharing a secret joke with her. “Good afternoon.”
“Good afternoon,” Diana heard a miffed Elizabeth say. Then the door sounded and he must have been gone. Diana, still listening from inside the lesser parlor, was consumed by the thought of what she had just done. I just kissed Henry Schoonmaker, she thought, repeating it over and over in her head. I just kissed Henry Schoonmaker.
It was later, after Diana had successfully tiptoed back to her room undetected, that the mysterious package arrived. Claire stood there demanding to know what it was, and Diana had been tempted to open it immediately. She and her maid had often whispered secrets about boys, and traded fantasies to each other that involved ocean liners and heirs to the thrones of small European countries. But something about this was too real to share, so she apologized to Claire and hugged her and asked to be alone.
She listened for Claire’s footsteps away from the door and then shimmied the round gold-embossed box top open. Nestled inside the charcoal-colored velvet lining was a very familiar hat, and a note:
Keep it. It looked so good on you I can’t stand the sight of myself in it anymore…nor the thought of the context in which I shall have to get to know you better.
HS
She read his note maybe two hundred times trying to make sense of it. The thought of the context in which I shall have to get to know you better? What could that possibly mean? Then she put the hat on her head and felt dangerously in love with someone she hardly knew.