The dramatic loss of one of society’s rising stars is made doubly tragic by the fact that Elizabeth Holland was to have wed one of New York’s choicest bachelors this very Sunday. All who loved Miss Holland are said to be congregating at the home of her fiancé, Henry Schoonmaker, in a sort of vigil. The father of the ill-fated bridegroom, William Sackhouse Schoonmaker, has tripled the reward offered by Mayor Van Wyck for any information leading to the recovery of Miss Holland’s body. There has been much whispering about Miss Penelope Hayes’s attendance at these places, she being the last person to have seen Elizabeth alive, as well as a onetime paramour of young Schoonmaker.
— FROM CITÉ CHATTER, FRIDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1899
“IT IS SHOCKING, UNCONSCIONABLY SHOCKING, THAT there is no sign of her.” Henry’s father’s voice boomed through the drawing room of their Fifth Avenue home. “The mayor should be ashamed.”
Henry winced as his father made the gross connection between Elizabeth’s death and Mayor Van Wyck’s corruption and incompetence. He had to stand next to the man, however, and nod along. It was too tragic a time for Henry to risk being seen as cavalier, especially not when a reporter from the New York World was his father’s chosen audience. Not to mention, all of the Schoonmaker and Holland relatives and friends who had crowded into their home, to sob together and wait for any news of Elizabeth.
So Henry stood beside his father, looking slight and pale by comparison, and nodded. “No body,” the elder Schoonmaker went on, “not even a piece of clothing floating by the piers. For all we know, she could have been fished out by a tugboat crew and sold into white slavery. Every week, the papers bring stories of that ilk. And I hold the mayor fully responsible. He is just a shill for Tammany no reason for him to actually do something.”
“And you, Mr. Schoonmaker,” the reporter said, looking toward Henry. “Any thoughts on the rescue effort?”
There was nothing appropriate to say, and so Henry simply lowered his eyes. A moment passed before his father succumbed to the temptation to go on speechifying. Not even the death of his son’s fiancée, it seemed, could keep him from turning to the endless, dirty topic of New York politics.
“There’s a scandal coming,” Henry heard his father say.
“Just you watch. He’s all tied up with Consolidated Ice, and they’ve been buying up the competition, you know. Wait till they try and raise the price of ice and it’s only a matter of time before they do, maybe even doubling it the people will call for the mayor’s head. But oh, yes Elizabeth. The reward money Van Wyck’s offering for her body is so low it’s an insult. And my son, Henry…” Henry set his lips together as he felt eyes on him again. “Look at him he can barely speak, he’s so broken up about it.”
Henry was already moving away for fear he could no longer hide the disgust he was feeling toward his father. He wandered toward the lavish spread, set up for visitors, of sweet breads, coffee, cider, and a decadent quantity of fresh fruit. The heavy silver had been brought out and arrayed upon a coarse black cloth. Henry reached beyond the pile of black grapes for the cut-glass Scotch decanter, and refreshed his drink. For the last two days he had felt as though he were barely inhabiting his own body. All around him, the machinery of mourning was in motion. The heavy black fabrics in conservative cuts had come out, along with the gravest faces. No one looked at Henry directly. They skirted him at a distance and nodded their sympathy in his general direction. A few of the bolder or perhaps stupider of the young unmarried girls covered their mouths with their hands and shot flirtatious glances in his direction. He was too sad to look at any of them. He felt sad for Elizabeth, but also for Diana. He felt sad for the whole, twisted mess. It was impossible to stop thinking of that look that Elizabeth had given him on the corner of Broadway and Twenty-first that Wednesday morning before the world got turned on its head. Her face had been so melancholy, and she had looked at him with such weary intelligence that he felt sure she’d known every bad thing he’d ever done.
“You have my sympathies.”
Henry looked and saw the worn, once-handsome face of Carey Lewis Longhorn, the man the papers called the oldest bachelor in New York. He was in his seventies, and was famous for collecting portraits of society beauties. Henry was certain Elizabeth’s likeness was in his collection.
“Thank you, sir.”
“You’ll be all right, young Schoonmaker.” The old man turned his sad eyes away. Before leaving he patted Henry on the back and said, “I’ve always been.”
Henry loitered near the refreshment table, and gazed across the parlor to the area of the room that Elizabeth’s grieving relatives occupied. They had colonized several plush chairs and two paisley-printed sofas situated under a vast window. The Holland family seemed to have grown. What had always seemed to Henry a family of four was now a family of twenty or more. All of the cousins and aunts and uncles had stepped out of their private orbits, and now stood clannishly around Mrs. Holland and her one remaining daughter. The latter wore a short black veil that covered half of her face, and kept her gaze lowered so that it was entirely impossible to meet her eyes. Outside the rain was falling on Fifth Avenue just as it was everywhere, but Diana sat still and quiet and seemingly oblivious to the storm in the window frame or the storm all around her.
If in the last few weeks Henry had become ever more aware of the need to be a more serious kind of man, the last two days had made him one. The death of a girl from his own set in so illogical a manner alone would have been a cause to stop and reconsider. That it was a girl who he was to have been intimately connected with, and knew so little of, created almost unbearable guilt and anguish. Henry couldn’t help but feel that if he had somehow been more respectable all along, none of this would have happened. And still he had to fight himself not to look in Diana’s direction too often.
It was a kind of torture, to have her in his house and yet to be kept at such a distance from her. There were so many people crowding the parquet floor between them. She looked almost dainty in her black dress with the long, fitted sleeves, and her erratic curls hidden under her hat. Henry knew that she must be consumed with sisterly grief, and that the night they had spent together, trading secrets and kisses, must now be a corrosive memory to her. He longed to go to her and to know what she was feeling. He wanted to hear her voice assuring him that she did not blame him. That she did not hate him. But there was no way to draw her out from behind the wall of family that enclosed the Holland women, so Henry sighed and turned back to his drink.
“You look like you’re in need of a friend.” Henry took his eyes off his drink and saw Teddy Cutting. He peeked, and saw that Diana was refusing the food that one of her cousins was insisting she should eat, and then looked back at his friend. Teddy was wearing a black jacket and slacks, and in his lapel the white rose that many of the gentlemen were sporting. It had become the symbol of Elizabeth. Henry was not wearing one, but only because he’d put his coat down somewhere and could not be bothered to find it. No one was about to scold him for wearing only a vest and shirtsleeves and having unkempt hair on a day like today anyway.
“Yes,” Henry answered simply. He allowed Teddy to take his arm and lead him through the rooms, thronged with visitors, adjacent to the parlor.
“You look pretty shaken, friend.”
“I am.”
“We should go out and help. Be active. The men dragging the river can hardly have the spirit we would have. Perhaps we should round up the crew of the Elysian, and head out to see what can be done.”
“Perhaps,” Henry replied moodily. They slowed, in a room none of the other guests had yet reached, and Henry realized that it was the dark red room where his engagement to Elizabeth had been announced. He thought back to how squeamish he had been about the whole idea of Elizabeth Holland then, how the very word marriage uttered aloud had made his heart shrink. He remembered thinking that if somehow she were to disappear he would be free, and he despised himself for it now.
“I can hardly make myself want to do anything.”
“It’s so awful. So unbelievably awful.” Teddy sighed, and blinked eyes red with sadness and fatigue. “The world seems changed today, don’t you think? Do you remember how we talked at the racetrack?” He paused and shook his head with weary astonishment. “And now she’s dead.”
Henry remembered the things that he had said and could not look at his friend. He was only glad that Teddy had not been witness to the disconsolate expression that Elizabeth had worn on the day she died.
“Now you can go back to avoiding matrimony, and all the girls can go back to trying to bag you….” Teddy attempted to chuckle and then looked at his friend when he did not laugh. “I’m sorry I said that. I didn’t mean it. I’m just…shocked.”
Henry nodded and put his hand on his friend’s shoulder to let him know that he understood. He took a sip of his Scotch and sighed. “I keep drinking this stuff, but I can’t seem to get drunk,” he said quietly. “But thank you for talking to me. Just hearing you say anything is better than being alone in my head.”
Teddy nodded. “Anyway, we’ve got to do something. What do you say we join the rescue effort? It will take your mind off things.”
“Yes.” Henry used his fingers to get his hair back in place, and then attempted a smile in Teddy’s direction. “I’d like to do that. I would. It’s just that Elizabeth’s sister, Di…Diana. I’m worried about her is all, and I wouldn’t want to leave without ”
“Without what?” Teddy looked uncomfortable all of a sudden, and the can-do color in his cheeks faded.
“It’s just that I keep looking at her.” Henry turned back toward the room where all the mourners were collected. There were several rooms in between, but he could see through the series of doorways the windows at the end. He couldn’t see Diana at that moment, but he knew she was there amongst all those people. “And I keep wondering what she must be going through. She must be miserable. And I keep thinking how lovely she is, and that maybe in time ”
He broke off when he sensed Teddy’s discomfort. Maybe in time, he had wanted to say, he could marry Diana instead. Perhaps that would be the beginning of everyone being happy again.
“Henry,” Teddy said. He glanced over his shoulder and then looked back to his friend. “You’re experiencing the loss of something that can never be replaced. I can understand that you might want to try. But what you just suggested…just don’t say that again, to anybody. It’s not right.”
Teddy turned and began walking back to the main room. Henry, feeling stung and stupid, and wishing more than anything that he could turn his desire for Diana back into a secret, followed quickly behind.
“Teddy, I ”
“Henry, it’s all right, man,” his friend interrupted with a wave. A few seconds later, both their thoughts were broken by the cacophonous wailing that was coming from the great central drawing room. They moved forward slowly and saw, through the series of doorframes that separated them from that central stage of grief, the figure of a dark-haired girl sunken to her knees on the floor. Her black skirt made a cone-like poof about her lower body, and on her head rested a black velvet hat. There was no veil to cover her face, and so it was plain, even at a distance, that the loud crying was coming from Penelope Hayes.
“Let’s go down to the water to see what can be done,” Teddy said disgustedly.
Henry was revolted. He wished that somehow he could meet Diana’s eye for a moment so that he could communicate to her how false he knew all of Penelope’s hysterics were. He risked a glance at the Hollands’ encampment, and just then Diana, still squeezed between two black-clad matrons, raised her veil and looked at him. Her eyes were sad and resigned, and he knew that she recognized Penelope’s falseness, too. A man moved between them, toward Penelope, and for a second, Henry’s view of Diana was obscured. When the man had passed, Diana’s veil was back down, and Henry could not help but wonder if he would ever be able to gaze directly into her eyes again.