Society is too shocked to speak. Its members are too aggrieved to be seen on Fifth Avenue, or to throw the entertainments they are famous for. And today will mark the lowest day our city has seen in some time, for Miss Elizabeth Holland’s funeral will take place at ten o’clock this very morning at the Grace Church.
— FROM THE “GAMESOME GALLANT” COLUMN IN THE NEW YORK IMPERIAL, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1899
DIANA HOLLAND HELD STILL AS CLAIRE CAREFULLY brushed and separated her hair for braiding. It was simpler than she usually wore it, but it was going to be covered by a hat, and anyway, it hardly seemed to matter anymore whether she was pretty or not. Her face had grown puffy and then gaunt in a matter of a few days. Over her shoulder, in the mirror, she could see that the milk-colored face of her maid showed almost as much wear from crying as her own. “It will be all right,” Diana heard herself saying, although she hardly believed it.
“Oh, Miss Diana,” Claire said, wrapping her arms around her mistress and squeezing her. “You poor dear.”
Diana smiled faintly and let herself be coddled. “It’s just still so hard to believe,” she said, once Claire had resumed braiding her hair.
“I know. I know. But today you will lay her to rest before God, and then slowly it will become real.”
Diana drew her fingers along the tender skin just below her eyes, hoping to somehow make it look fresher. She had spent several days now in a prison of grief, surrounded by cousins and uncles and aunts. Their speech was always short and woeful, their food plain and miserly, and they moved between the Schoonmakers’, who held a daily reception in the dwindling hope that some information on Elizabeth or her corpse would arrive, and the Hollands’ own Gramercy drawing room. She would not have been able to escape the memory of her sister even if she had felt right about doing so.
Diana had done a wretched thing. She had known this on the day of Elizabeth’s death, but the knowledge had grown in her, putting down roots and crawling up her spine ever since. She deserved to look plain. She hoped that she did.
“All right, you’re ready now,” Claire said. She had fixed the hat and veil so that Diana’s puffy eyes were obscured. Diana stood and allowed her maid to check all the fastenings on her dress. It was one of the black serge ones she had worn while mourning her father, and it was extremely plain, with no trimming or color anywhere. The waist was corseted, and her torso sloped into its narrow confines.
“I wish you were coming with us.”
“I know,” Claire said, putting an arm around Diana and walking with her to the door. “But there is the meal to be prepared for later, and who knows how many will come all of the Hollands surely, and poor Mr. Schoonmaker and his kin, and your cousins on the Gansevoort side, and…”
Diana leaned her head against Claire’s shoulder, and as they walked down the stairs she continued to list all the things that would have to be done around the house before the funeral was over. It was soothing in a way to listen to this enumeration of ordinary things. When they reached the door to the parlor, Diana smiled and kissed Claire on the cheek and then went in alone. The furniture was draped with dark fabric, and the air was filled with the heavy perfume of the hundred or so bouquets that were crowding into the already densely packed surfaces of the Holland home. Bad weather had come to stay, it seemed, and the light that reached indoors was diffuse and moody.
Several of her relations, in their black outfits, acknowledged her with sympathetic eyes. Diana tried to look appreciative, but she was impatient for the ceremony to be over. The grief she was experiencing was of a most private, self-loathing kind.
“Oh, Di…Di!” Diana turned sharply and saw Penelope approaching at a hustler’s pace. She looked shockingly beautiful in her black dress with its exquisite lace trimming and richly textured skirt. Her blue eyes were as fresh as after a dance, and her head was adorned with the thickest clump of ostrich feathers that Diana had ever seen. She was suddenly reminded of the word Henry had used to describe her. Savage. “Oh, Di, how can you even stand today?” she gasped as she reached out for Diana’s black-gloved hands.
“How can you?” Diana’s tone was cool, and she drew back as she said the words.
“Well, I can’t, of course.” Penelope still had the conviction of her performance in her posture, but she had given up the quavering-voice part.
“Oh, yes. Right.” Diana tried to keep her voice from rising, but she felt nothing but disgust for Penelope’s fraudulent grief. Clearly, she was pleased by the turn of events. Already she was dressing up, in the vain hope that she might attract more attention now that her rival was gone. It was insulting that she should even think she was welcome in the Hollands’ home. “Everybody knows how famously aggrieved you are, Penelope,” she continued in a low, hateful voice. “We have all seen your tears. Why don’t you quiet it down a little, so the rest of us can have some peace?”
“But, Diana,” Penelope said, so quietly and intensely that no one else could hear, “I am sure I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
“You’re a liar.” Diana was glad for her veil. It muffled her voice and disguised the emotions now coloring her cheeks.
“You’re such an obvious fake,” Diana added in a sharp whisper that was loud enough for Aunt Edith, standing only a few feet away, to hear.
Aunt Edith murmured to the Gansevoort cousin she’d been talking to, excusing herself. Within seconds Diana’s mother was at her side. Penelope was still there before her, staring with wide, mocking eyes. But Diana’s mother took her by the elbow, waved apologetically at Penelope, and pulled her daughter back into the hall. The pocket doors were drawn closed behind them.
Diana listened for her mother’s rebuke but felt the sudden sting of a slap. She winced, more from surprise than pain. “What was that for?” she gasped.
“Diana, please, today will you be good? I cannot stand any more incivility. You are all I have. You must learn to uphold this family’s name.” Her mother’s voice was slow and fatigued, and she implored Diana with red-rimmed eyes. Diana saw in a moment that her mother’s whole world had come apart and that she could barely hold herself up. “Please do not disappoint me on the day we say good-bye to Elizabeth.”
Diana bowed her head at her mother resignedly.
“Thank you. Now go into the lesser parlor, and when you are feeling all right, you will come back and join us for the cortege. You are clearly too agitated to be around people.”
Diana wished she could say something reassuring, but she only managed a nod before she entered the room on the other side of the hall. The room she saw was completely changed. The walls were bare, and all the old hand-painted vases, all the trinkets and statues, had disappeared. The paintings that she had looked at, that day when she had first met Henry Schoonmaker, with their turquoise seas and black skies and desperate cases, were gone. There was not even a wilting bouquet left to decorate the room. Her poor mother she’d sold everything. Diana sat down heavily on one of the old settees, and began to realize that whatever happened next to the Hollands was not going to be romantic at all.
There were footsteps in the hall the Hollands’ guests were leaving. They must have forgotten about her, for no one stopped to tell her it was time. She could hear them proceeding on noisy feet from the hall into the street on their way to the funeral. Penelope was one of them, pretending to be overwhelmed by her misery, the thought of which made Diana draw her hands back into tight fists. She took a deep breath and loosened her hands. She would have rather gone anywhere besides the church, but she couldn’t hide from what she’d done.
The cold air touched her as soon as she stepped out of her family home. It was early in the year yet for such a chill, and even the park seemed to have taken on the dolorous quality of a more advanced season. Gazing at the glum day, so overcast it was almost black-and-white, she felt more alone than ever.
Up ahead, there was confusion on the curb. Her relatives and family acquaintances were trying to clamber up into their carriages with some dignity and were having a hard time of it without raising their voices. She looked up and saw that her own family’s brougham, with Mr. Faber in the driver’s seat, had already pulled away.
It was then that she felt the tug at her elbow. She turned to see that a boy had arrived at her side, as though from out of nowhere. He was the kind of thin that could not have seen food in several days, and his coat was patched all over.
“Are you Miss Diana Holland?” he asked, squinting at her.
Diana nodded cautiously. She could hear the last of the carriages departing, and wondered for a moment if she should chase after them.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes,” Diana replied indignantly. She noted the pair of horse-drawn hansom cabs loitering down the street, and told herself that they would bear witness if anything were to befall her. “Of course I’m sure.”
“Don’t look at me that way,” the boy said seriously. “I was told that it was very important that I not give it to the wrong person.”
“Give what to the wrong person?”
The boy shook his head. “First you have to answer the question.”
“What question?” Diana’s eyes widened at the absurdity and impudence of this exchange.
“The question about the Vermeer that your father gave to your sister, Elizabeth….”
There was some instinct in Diana so deep that it overrode the gravity of the day and her sinking, guilty spirits. “He gave that painting to me!”
The boy narrowed his eyes and assessed her, before breaking out into a grin. “That’s just what she said you’d say.” Then he reached into his pocket and drew out a letter. It was in a square yellow envelope, and Diana saw her name scrawled across it in handwriting she knew very well indeed. “Where did you get that?” she breathed.
“In Chicago. I got my fare here in exchange for delivering this to you to the girl who would insist the Vermeer had been hers.”
“Thank you,” she said softly as she ripped open the envelope, and read with frenzied, darting eyes the letter within.
My dearest Di,
Please forgive me for the scare I’ve given you, and know how much I miss you. What I’ve done I had to do, because I am in love with Will Keller. I’ve loved him always and finally realized that marrying Henry Schoonmaker would mean a lifetime of regret. You were right that it would have been a loveless marriage, and while I hardly know how I’ll find Will, I now know that I must try.
I am sure this must be very shocking, and I can only explain quickly: Penelope assist ed in making it look like I’d had an accident so I could leave without it causing a scandal, but she had her own reasons for being so helpful. Diana, she wants Henry for herself, and she seems bent on getting him no matter the cost.
Di, I know about you and Henry, and you needn’t worry. I’m not angry, and I understand. But be wary of Penelope, be discreet, and don’t let anybody find out about any of this. You’re the only one who can know that I’m alive.
The whistle’s blowing, I must send this off. But be careful, and remember what I said about Penelope. I promise more news soon.
With love,
Elizabeth
When Diana finished reading, her headache had evaporated and a warmth was spreading across her chest. So she had been wrong. Elizabeth was the romantic sister, the one harboring a great love. She was the one who had stepped out of her life for an epic adventure.
Diana looked up at the sodden trees quivering in the breeze and felt reborn. She did not have to go on turning her eyes away from Henry forever. Elizabeth was alive Diana had not driven her sister to the unspeakable. The world was still lying in wait for her. She gave one more grateful nod toward the boy, who was already wandering in the direction of Broadway. She tried to make herself look like a girl with a funeral to go to, but she couldn’t help it. A radiant smile had spread naturally across all of her face. She took a breathless step forward and extended her arm in the air to hail a hansom cab downtown.