It has become widely acceptable to be late, a new social phenomenon I frown on intensely. A true lady always arrives at precisely the promised hour.
— MRS. HAMILTON W. BREEDFELT, COLLECTED COLUMNS ON RAISING YOUNG LADIES OF CHARACTER, 1899
IT WAS NINE THIRTY ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, AND Elizabeth found herself stopped on Broadway, in the middle of all the morning bustle, her limbs paralyzed by hopelessness. All the chaos the horse-drawn delivery carts, the trolleys, the yelling of drivers, the sounds of carriage wheels against the battered pavement, the throngs of pedestrians ceased to exist in her mind. The scene she had just witnessed was not, after the evidence she’d seen the night before, a surprise, but the emotion it awoke in her was startling.
The hooded figure of her younger sister had already disappeared down Twenty-first Street. The sight of Diana, on a Manhattan corner so early in the morning, had confirmed all of Elizabeth’s suspicions. But she remained strangely stuck to her spot, watching the person who had been left behind. He had stepped down from his buggy, and was just standing there on the curb. She couldn’t be sure, because she had always been the one doing the running away, but she was nearly certain the forlorn way Henry was looking down Twenty-first Street wasn’t so different from the way that Will must have looked every morning when she turned her back on him and went into the house.
Elizabeth had barely managed to sleep the night before, and still she had risen from bed without the slightest idea how she could subdue Penelope, how she could save Diana, or how she could possibly resign herself to marrying the loathsome Henry Schoonmaker. She had tried to dress herself with some determination, in the same dress of blue-and-white seersucker she had worn the day he had proposed, and because she sensed the weather was about to change, a camel wrap with a hood and flannel lining. Once she was dressed she still hadn’t known what to do, and so she had decided to walk, all the way up Fifth Avenue to face Penelope. Every member of the household was employed in some wedding-related task or other, and in the few moments when her opinion was not required she had managed to slip out the door.
Last night she had come to the conclusion that her fiancé was the most licentious man she had ever met. But his appearance now dispelled that belief. She stood there watching him a moment longer, in his simple black suit, with his face overcome by loss, and felt sure that he was not trying to take advantage of Diana. He actually did love her sister, and though she couldn’t totally explain it, she had the growing conviction that her sister loved him in return. Elizabeth had been wrong. Her anger had dissolved in seconds.
A high, black coach, with men in work clothes standing up on the back, paused between Henry and Elizabeth, considering how it should enter the fray on the wide thoroughfare. When it had passed and her view opened up again, Henry had turned and was looking in her direction.
Henry lowered his head, but kept his eyes, full of remorse and resignation, looking directly into her own. She could see now that he was not so unlike her that he was willing to marry for some reason having more to do with family and duty and class than love, but that his heart lay elsewhere. He took off his hat and tipped it gently in her direction. She bent her head slowly in reply, to let him know they understood each other, and then turned away and moved northward into the crowd. She had an appointment for which she could not be late.
Everything was different now, but still as impossible as it had been before. Elizabeth realized with sadness how easy everything would be if she simply did not exist. She no longer needed the forty-block walk to the Hayes mansion to figure out what to do. In an instant she had realized what that single devastating thing was.