Are you sure this isn’t why you’ve been avoiding me?
Will
ELIZABETH HAD MANAGED NOT TO LEAVE HER ROOM all morning, and she was beginning to prefer the solitude. How close she had come to losing this luxury, a room of her own how close she had come to having to share with her sister and perhaps her mother as well was not lost on her. But every time Will entered her thoughts, she felt tortured by the fact that she had not yet told him. She could not bear lying to him and she could not bear to confess, so she avoided him altogether. She had tried to delay the inevitable by writing him a quick note, on her personal stationery, letting him know that it had been difficult to visit him and that she would come as soon as she could. She had left it on his chest of drawers while he was out on an errand three days ago, and had yet to receive a reply.
But the Hollands were always ready to receive visitors on Sunday, and she knew that she would have to emerge from her safe retreat soon. Her ladies’ maid was a silent and strange presence as of late, which Elizabeth resisted telling her mother because they had been close as children and because she did occasionally miss Lina and the way things had been then. So she arranged her hair by herself, in a neat chignon, and dressed in a white shirtwaist and a starched Dutch blue skirt. She could not think of putting on any jewelry the diamond on her left ring finger that she had kept turned to the palm side of her hand since Friday night added quite enough weight, all by itself.
Every inch of her body felt stiff and defensive rigid with the thought of Henry Schoonmaker, with the inevitability of her marriage to him. What a careless person he was proving to be. She knew already, from his drunken behavior at the dinner party on Friday night, that their life together would be an unnatural one, full of silent differences and alien nights. She could not even think of Will she was forcing herself not to. If she thought about him for even an instant, she might begin to melt; her whole self might just drain away. And what would become of her family then?
When she was ready to face the world, she pulled back her bedroom door. She paused at the sight of a gray scrap of newspaper falling to the ground. It was folded into a small neat square, and had been wedged into the bronze handle of her bedroom door. She knew immediately that this was Will’s reply, and so it was with trepidation that she bent to pick up the society page recounting of her engagement. Scrawled at the bottom, in Will’s handwriting, was an indictment veiled as a question: Are you sure this isn’t why you’ve been avoiding me?
The soft skin of Elizabeth’s cheeks burned as she read the note. Her stomach dropped and her heart began to beat at a frightful pace. She tucked the piece of paper in her pocket and tried to do the same with the emotion that it raised in her. But she could not stop the trembling of her chin, that familiar dryness in the back of her throat. She looked around, half-expecting to see Will waiting at the end of the hall, and then she hurried down the servants’ stairs in search of him.
When she was halfway down the narrow passage, the door from the kitchen opened, and she saw Claire take a few steps upward. The girl stopped when she saw Elizabeth.
“Miss Holland! What are you doing here?”
“Oh.” Elizabeth wavered on the stair. It took her several seconds to think of something to say. “I was just on my way to check on dinner, before joining my family for visiting hours.”
Claire backed up to allow for Elizabeth to descend. “Oh, you don’t have to do that,” she said as she reached up and took her mistress’s arm. “I will do it. You must go do your hostess duties. Now especially, because…” She broke off and shrugged. Elizabeth noticed the blush on Claire’s cheek and knew that she had been about to say something about the engagement, but must have remembered her place. Claire escorted her to the hall and drew back the parlor’s pocket doors for her to enter.
When Elizabeth stepped across the threshold, she saw her sister in her usual position: curled in the Turkish corner, with a volume of poems. Claire had dressed her quasi-respectfully in a dress of soft rose-brown seersucker, and it spilled over the pillows, calling attention to Diana despite all the treasures in that room.
“Oh, Elizabeth,” her mother said. Elizabeth turned and saw Mother looking in the armor of her fitted, embroidered, long-sleeved black dress quite fierce. She was sitting on a high-backed chair near the fireplace, which was not lit. “Mr. Schoonmaker Henry, that is has just sent up his card. I insisted that he have tea, but it seems that what he really wants is to take you for a ride in Central Park. Isn’t that right, Claire?”
Elizabeth turned slowly to look at Claire, who was still hovering in the hall.
“Oh yes, that’s exactly what he said,” she gushed. Elizabeth saw Diana’s eyes dart up over the pages of her book, before she hid her face behind it again. “He is waiting outside,” Claire went on, her voice growing more confident as she assumed her role. “And he appears most impatient. He won’t even come in.”
“Very good,” Mrs. Holland said.
Elizabeth stood still in the doorway, not sure whether to come in or go out. She watched her mother draw herself up, her stature and imperiousness growing in a matter of seconds. Elizabeth found herself craving some word of encouragement, but she had been trained as a child not to pull at skirts or go begging for affection, so she stayed put. “Since I must be here to receive,” said her mother, “and since your aunt Edith is not feeling very well poor thing, I think she is still recovering from the heavy food that Isabelle De Ford, I mean, Isabelle Schoonmaker, serves Will is going to have to go as your chaperone. He is getting the horses ready even as we ”
“No!” Elizabeth’s hands flew to cover her cheeks at the very thought of Will and Henry coming face-to-face. Her ears were full of noise, and every inch of her skin felt coated in a fine, cold sweat.
“What is the matter with you?” Mrs. Holland snapped. She turned her chin up at Elizabeth and set her hands firmly on the arms of her chair.
“I ” Elizabeth tried, but could not think of a reason not to go for a carriage ride on a perfectly lovely, late September day. She fingered Will’s note in her pocket and thought how wretched it was going to be to see him. “It’s just that I ”
“Just that you what? Really, Elizabeth, I raised you better than this. Your fiancé is waiting. Do not just stand there making yourself unworthy of him.”
“But I…” Elizabeth stammered. She saw the way her mother was looking at her and knew that she had no choice but to go. So she grasped out for the one thing that would give her strength. “I mean, since we are supposed to be very careful of appearances, maybe Diana could come with me?”
“No!” was the swift answer from Diana’s corner.
“But Diana, please?” Elizabeth said, resisting the instinct to stamp her foot.
Diana pushed herself up against the pillows and sighed in exasperation. “I’m not going to go on some long, boring excursion just because you’re afraid of your own fiancé.”
“Diana, you really are being ridiculous,” her mother said coldly. “Go with your sister before you make yourself utterly useless to me.”
“It’s not that I’m afraid of him,” Elizabeth said quietly. She looked up and saw that her sister was already standing up. She wore a wounded expression, and Elizabeth realized that her sister was going to accompany her, if only because she now felt wounded by their mother. “So you’ll come.”
“Yes, I’ll come,” Diana said darkly as she pulled at her dress, which had become twisted from lying down amongst all those pillows. “But don’t go thinking I’ll speak to anyone.”
“Girls,” their mother interjected, “you must both stop being strange it is unattractive. And don’t forgot your hats. It would be absolutely the end for me if you two came down with freckles at a time like this.”
Diana gave her mother a big, obviously fake smile and charged across the parlor. Elizabeth followed her into the hall, where she could see, through the glass pane in the oak front door, Henry waiting on the porch. He was wearing creaseless, tight-fitting black trousers and a high hat pushed back on his head. He was facing away, toward the little gated park. Elizabeth turned back to her sister, who was slouching and glaring. Even so, Elizabeth was glad she did not have to face Henry and Will by herself. She tried to give Diana a smile to show her gratitude, but found that smiling was, under the current circumstances, very difficult for her.
Claire appeared from the cloakroom with two wide straw hats. She put Diana’s on first, tying the thick white grosgrain bow under her chin, and then helped Elizabeth with hers. “Thank you, Claire.” Elizabeth’s voice quavered a touch as the maid tightened the bow. “And would you start a fire in the parlor before our return? I find it so strangely cold in there.”
Outside they were greeted by the clarity of a fine September day, the smell of cooking fires somewhere not far off, and the great expanse of blue sky, interrupted here or there by small puffs of cloud and crowded only occasionally by a building that rose over six stories high. Elizabeth felt almost heartened by the perfection of the weather, but that was before she saw Henry begin a slow turn, and before she heard the sound of the Hollands’ four black horses coming around the front. She was suddenly glad of her hat, which tipped forward to accommodate her bun in back, and so shielded her eyes. The only thing that kept her from fainting, right there on her own steps, was the fact that she couldn’t see the way Will was looking at her.
“Miss Elizabeth,” Henry said stiffly. Elizabeth extended her hand, and Henry leaned forward and kissed it. “Miss Diana, you won’t be joining us, will you?”
There was a pause, and Elizabeth hazarded a look to her right, under the safe shadow of her hat, to see what Diana was up to. “Well, I didn’t want to,” Diana replied rudely. “But it would pain me to be left out of a ride through Central Park on a day like today. Sometimes, fresh air and a natural setting are the only things that make living at all worthwhile.”
“Lucky me, two for one.”
Elizabeth thought she detected irony in Henry’s voice and disliked it. She took Diana’s arm for support, and they walked down to the street.
“May I help you up, Miss Holland?” Will offered with false formality.
“I’ve got it,” Henry said to Will. She wished for some way to sign to Will that she didn’t want Henry or his help, but then she felt Henry’s hand on her waist, and her whole body being lifted up into the carriage. She tried to calm her heart as she took the padded red leather backseat of the landau.
The balance of the carriage shifted as Henry sat down beside her, and Diana across from them. Then she heard a crack of a whip and the horses bolted into action. They were being pulled forward, and not at a leisurely speed. Elizabeth grasped the iron armrest with one hand and the brim of her hat with the other. She kept her head down, examining the straw weave that was shielding her eyes, and the rich blue of her skirt that stood up stiffly all around her. She listened to the heady traffic sounds the streetcars, the shouting from the crowds as they turned and went up Lexington Avenue, and tried not to think about what was going through Will’s mind.
“Why not take Fifth?” Henry called up to Will. “Ladies like that route, you know. That’s where they really get to show their dresses off.”
Diana snorted, but there was no sound from the driver’s seat.
“Hey, driver,” Henry said. “Fifth Avenue?”
“Don’t you read the papers?” Will replied in a voice quiet but intense.
“Sometimes.” Henry laughed. “But I try not to pay much attention.”
“Well, if you’d paid attention to the papers this morning, you would know that Fifth is a madhouse because of the preparations for the parade this weekend for the admiral returning from the Philippines. Admiral Dewey? He won the battle in Manila Bay?” Will laughed a sarcastic laugh. “You probably didn’t even know there’s a war on.”
Elizabeth kept her smile private under her hat as she listened to Henry’s embarrassed reply: “I did. I knew there was a war on. Lexington is fine.”
It was only once they were in the park that she managed to look up. She lifted the brim slightly with her hand and raised her eyes so that she could see Diana, who was staring petulantly into the distance. She didn’t know what she had been anticipating perhaps that if she dared look at Will, he would immediately begin loud accusations but she saw only the silent rebuke of his back. He was wearing the same worn blue shirt as always, with the sleeves rolled up, and his shoulders were thrown back in defiance. Elizabeth glanced quickly at Henry, whose arrogant face was pointing somewhere off into the leafy wilds of the park. She shifted her gaze back to Will and wished she could know what he was feeling.
The landau shook mightily as they went up and down the little hills of the park at a speed that caused several of the parasol-wielding ladies walking amongst the elms to turn and look. Elizabeth wished Diana and Henry were gone, just for a moment. She would touch Will’s arm, and he would know to slow down and relax. He would know that she loved him. These were the thoughts in her head, and so she did not at first register what Henry was saying.
“Miss Diana, I assume you will be standing by your sister at the altar?”
This caused an immediate wave of discomfort through Elizabeth’s body. The mention of an actual wedding was awful to her. It must have been to Will, too, because he cracked his whip again, which sent the horses dashing up a small stone bridge.
“No. Apparently, she and Penelope Hayes made a promise to each other as lasses of thirteen,” Diana said crossly. “But I don’t really care for that sort of thing anyway.”
As the horses hurtled down the bridge and picked up speed, Diana was forced to grab her seat to keep from falling out. She shrieked and moved her other hand from her hat to the railing.
Henry looked over in Will’s direction angrily. “What is your coachman doing?” he hissed at Elizabeth. “This hardly seems a pace suitable for women.”
Will clearly heard this comment, for he jerked at the reins and brought the horses swerving off the road and onto the lawn where, after a few breathless moments, they finally came to a halt. The landau jumped when they did stop, and Diana only managed to stop herself from bouncing out of the carriage by catching Henry’s outstretched arm.
“What the hell, man? She could have been killed,” Henry said, righting Diana and leaping to his feet.
“I’m fine, really,” Diana replied dryly.
The rough motion had loosened the ribbon of her hat, however, and at just that moment a breeze picked up and sent it flying off her head and across the lawn. The wind whipped at her hair as well, bringing a heavy gust of curls up and then down around her shoulders.
“Oh, my hat!” Diana cried, pushing the hair back from her face and pointing in the direction it had blown.
Elizabeth stood up and saw the hat cartwheeling across the grass. Henry, who just a moment before had seemed ready to fight Will, jumped down from the carriage and went running after it. “Hold on, I’ll get it!” he yelled, taking his own hat off as he dashed away.
“No, you won’t!” Diana cried, and before Elizabeth could stop her, she had jumped down to the grass. Diana pulled back her skirt and ran after Henry through a field of green dotted with men in straw boaters, picnicking with their wasp-waisted sweethearts. The men and women taking their leisure in the park that day obviously found the sight of a Schoonmaker and a Holland dashing after a runaway hat amusing. Elizabeth didn’t have time to feel embarrassed, however. Will had jumped down from the driver’s seat and was leading the horses back to the road.
Elizabeth turned and climbed down, being careful not to get caught in the moving wheels, and came around to Will just as he reached the road. When he turned to look at her, she was surprised to see not unspeakable rage, but a calm and determined expression. Then she noticed the great, sloppy bandage wrapped around his hand.
“What happened?” she asked, reaching for it without thinking.
Will shook his head and held the hand away from her. He blinked with the sun in his blue eyes. The light brought out a few red glints in his usually dark hair. He seemed to know already what he was going to say.
“You don’t want that,” he said in a low, controlled voice.
Elizabeth looked behind her. The weekend crowds didn’t seem to be paying attention, but she’d never spoken to Will this way in public, and it caused her lungs to swell with fright.
“I’m sorry, Will,” she said with feeling, “I am so sorry that ”
“Don’t be sorry,” he said, bringing his face closer to hers.
“But you’ve got to understand, it’s my family, we’re ”
“I don’t want to hear about your family. I’m leaving, Elizabeth. I’m sure you have your reasons, but if you stay here and marry that man, you will be sorry. I still want you to be my wife, Lizzie, and that can’t happen here. It could happen out West. That’s where I’m going.” He looked down but kept his hand on the strap to lead the horses. After a pause he took in a breath and brought his gaze back to hers. “I want you to come with me.”
Elizabeth brought her hands to her face. She couldn’t bear to look at Will, whose pale blue eyes were wide with the desire to convince her. An abject misery was constricting her throat and bringing a sting to her eyes, so she kept them hidden. She wasn’t sure quite what would happen to her if she looked right at him, but the feelings of helplessness and sorrow were already overwhelming. So she stood still and blind, in the middle of Central Park, with her palms pressed firmly against her eyes.