Rumors (9 page)

T
HE DINNER ELIZABETH SERVED THAT NIGHT
would be far superior to the scarcely touched beans of the previous evening. For one thing, there would be real meat—steaks bought that day in town—and potatoes roasted in a pan over the fire and Waldorf salad. She had gone and purchased these items herself, that afternoon. She’d purposefully avoided the post office, which had previously been her single, obsessive destination.

“Did you get a letter today, Mrs. Keller?” they had asked her at the general store. They believed that she was Will’s wife, which was what she had told them to explain her presence out there alone with two men, and they knew how frequently she asked if there was anything for her or her husband in the mail. She didn’t like this lie—it was against everything she had been brought up to believe to live as man and wife without being married—but it was preferable to publicly appearing to do so.

“Oh, no,” Elizabeth had replied, blushing under her hat. “I’m just here for groceries today,” she added softly.

The other reason was that Will was going to help her with the cooking, which he seemed to know something of, since his living quarters had been so close to the Holland kitchen and because, when he was thirteen and growing so quickly, it had been necessary for him to become good friends with their cook and learn from her. It was Will who insisted they should celebrate. Finding oil meant that soon they would be living at a whole new level, and this made him feel much better about spending some of his savings to have a real dinner. Elizabeth had gone to pick up those necessary things while he and Denny began to put together their makeshift rig, trying to make it just as safe and effective as one of those huge ones the big oil companies used.

On the long walk back to the cabin, she had reflected on Will’s ability to save. He was always working hard, she knew that, but it was an irony she could not fail to appreciate that he had accumulated money while the family that employed him frittered theirs away. And then he had worked to save more while he waited for her in San Francisco. There was money for steak, when it was called for, and she mused in a far-off way about how Will, not Henry, would have been the better person on whom to pin the family’s hopes for salvation.

That hardly seemed to matter anymore, though. Now that she saw how assuredly Will would make her rich again, she found she didn’t even need it. She knew what money
would mean for her mother, for the rest of the family, but for her it no longer held any power. It almost made her laugh—she found herself smirking as she pulled back the canvas flap that served as a door to the cabin—how much she had worried over losing her dresses and her objects and all her trinkets and jewels. Now that they were gone, she never thought of them.

She continued thinking about all that constituted the boy she loved until he returned, his eyes bright with excitement and his whole body animated with the work of the day. There was that usual smell of sweat and soap when he came through the door, and a new one—it was something like sulfur, and it reminded Elizabeth of intense industry and all the other things he was cut out for.

“Lizzy,” he said. He took the paring knife with which she had been removing the skins of the potatoes out of her hand and laid it on the table, and then his arms took her up. After the kiss he met her eyes, and his lips were drawn back so far it was impossible to think he might ever frown again.

There was a new shine there and a new buoyancy in his step that reminded her of that time in their lives when they first admitted they were in love. That it was not some childhood game in which they imagined being married as grownups but something far more real. That was when she had ordered a delivery entrance installed between the kitchen and
the carriage house so that she could slip down to see him at night. Neither of them had yet turned sixteen, and the complications of their situation had not fully dawned on them.

“Where’s Denny?” She rested her head on his chest and took in a warm breath. He was holding her to him with his hand and had turned to assess what still needed to be done for dinner.

“I sent him into town for whiskey.” Will picked up a piece of chopped apple from the table and put it in his mouth.

“Oh, I could have gotten that!”

“A real lady, buying alcohol like any roustabout?”

Elizabeth pursed her lips. “I’m not sure they have those scruples out here,” she said.

“No, but you do.” He swallowed the apple and then gently tapped her nose. There had been moments since Elizabeth’s arrival in California when she felt self-conscious about all her old manners, which were more difficult to discard than the desire for things or the instinct to marry where money already was. But then there were moments like these when Will put her at ease and when she knew that all the things that constituted her self were as sweet to him as he was to her. He kissed her forehead, and then they continued to work at the celebration dinner without words in the flickering lamplight.

It was into this pleasant silence that Denny Planck returned. Elizabeth turned and acknowledged him with a small
smile and nod as he came through the door and thought, as she often had before, how he might be handsome if it weren’t for the skin of his cheeks, which were pitted with smallpox scars, and his somewhat oversize ears. For his height gave him natural advantages, and there was a sweet willingness to follow others in his brown eyes. He was heavier than Will and less articulate, but Will liked and trusted him, and that was enough to make her like him, too.

“Smells good,” he said with a grin.

“Denny!” Elizabeth’s laugh rang out. “We haven’t even started cooking yet.”

Will went over and threw an arm over his friend’s shoulder. Elizabeth wasn’t sure she’d ever seen her sweetheart in such a state of conviviality. There was confidence in his every movement and a looseness in his limbs.

“Looks good, then,” Denny replied, wearing the same grin. “Here,” he went on, removing a bottle wrapped in paper from the crook between his arm and his side. “I brought the whiskey.”

“Bravo!” Will took the bottle and unwrapped it and threw the paper into the fire. Grabbing three of the little mismatched mason jars, which had once held small amounts of jam or sardines, he poured them each a finger of brown liquid. Then he passed the jars around and raised his high. “To our success!”

They clinked their glasses and drank. Elizabeth had been known to drink a moderate amount of champagne at balls in New York, but she had never tasted whiskey, and it burned her tongue. She didn’t mind, though. It all felt like part of the lucky new sunlight that had fallen on them.

“To our success,” Denny seconded as he placed the little jar back on the table. “Oh, and Will, there was this for you at the post office. They told me Mrs. Keller”—here Denny winked in a way Elizabeth would have preferred he’d not—“might have missed it on her earlier foray into town.”

Elizabeth pretended to go back to mixing together the walnuts and apples and celery in the chipped blue tin bowl as Will set down his glass. He moved away to rip open the sealed yellow telegram, and she turned to watch him even as Denny sat down at the table and picked up a handful of walnuts, which he began shoveling into his mouth. She wanted to stop wondering what the contents of the telegram said, but found that she couldn’t bring her attention back to the salad. After a moment, Will looked up at her and she saw that the celebration had gone out of his face.

“Oh, Liz,” he said.

“What is it?”

Will looked at Denny, who was absorbed in pouring himself a second glass of whiskey, and back to Elizabeth. He tilted his head toward the door, indicating that she should
follow him. “Denny, we’ll be right back, all right?” Then, summoning some of the previous gaiety: “Slow down with the whiskey or we won’t have anything left to celebrate with.”

Denny acknowledged this comment with a laugh, and then they left him and went out into the darkness. They walked for several moments, away from the low light of the cabin, before either of them spoke. All of the orange had gone out of the sky while Elizabeth had been inside, and where the purple up above had turned to black, pins of light had started to emerge.

Will’s voice was the first to break the quiet. “I knew this would happen,” he began quietly. “I just didn’t think it would be so soon.”

“What did it say?” The look on his face provoked a feeling of dread, and she could barely even whisper now.

“It was from Diana. She says she needs help, and that your mother is not well.”

Elizabeth felt the cold sweep over her body. “Is it serious?”

Will shook his head firmly. “It just says that she’s ill, Lizzie. It’s pretty brief, and you know your sister isn’t a realist. There’s no way to know exactly what’s happening.”

All of a sudden Elizabeth flashed on a vision of her mother, broken and bedridden. The thought of her so reduced was more terrible and heartbreaking than she could have begun to anticipate. “I have to go to her.”

Will’s eyes were wide and watchful as he nodded. “I’ll go with you, then.”

Elizabeth put her hand over her mouth and tried to keep herself from crying. There was that bruised feeling in her chest that always preceded tears, but she told herself that would be very selfish, that her mother was too far away to see how she felt and she would only be crying over her own guilty behavior. “Oh, Will. The oil.”

“It’s been there a long time.” A smile wavered on his lips, and then he reached out for her. She felt the whole spread of his palm against the small of her back; his other hand lightly brushed the hair back from her face. “It will be there when we come back. The train leaves San Pedro at noon tomorrow.”

Elizabeth let her body relax into his. All of her fears for her family, which she had been keeping at bay, were back with her now. She wondered if she would be able to sleep that night, or any night before she was with them again. She tried not to think the worst, but already her fretful imagination had gotten away from her.

“A
T LEAST YOU LOOK VERY WELL,” AGNES JONES
said, with a furtive look at the dark green velvet jacket that Diana was wearing. This was a non sequitur as far as Diana was concerned, as there had been no mention of what exactly Diana’s appearance was a silver lining to. Previously they had been talking about the weather, which was bright and brisk. If she had not been annoyed, she might have considered that Agnes was politely alluding to the continual disappearance of objects from the Holland parlor, or the recent untoward rumors about Elizabeth, or the lack of a fire going even when there were patches of ice on the sidewalk.

“Thank you,” Diana replied, haughtily arranging the lapels of her jacket. It was voluminous in the upper sleeves and narrow at the wrists and waist, and the color brought out the russet tones of her dark curls. She had bought it yesterday, with her gossip earnings, and though even a ready-to-wear piece was an extravagance that she could hardly justify, it was turning out quite useful in an unheated house. She needed it
to make her feel better in more profound ways as well, which was not something she expected her guest to understand. Agnes, Diana thought rather ungenerously, knew nothing of the sorrows of beautiful girls. “As do you.”

Agnes shrugged modestly. She was wearing a walking dress of moth brown cheviot that did not fit her right in the least and a bonnet that entirely overwhelmed her square little head. Diana noted these facts without remorse. Agnes had been one of Elizabeth’s friends—a pity project of Liz’s, really, as Agnes had had an unfortunate beginning in life and was now an orphan of minor financial independence—but none of the other Hollands had ever had the patience for her. She still insisted on coming by for tea even after the Hollands had suspended their “day” for visitors, a few weeks after Elizabeth’s passing, ostensibly because it reminded her of her lost friend. Even before Mrs. Holland had turned ill, she’d taken to hiding upstairs on these occasions.

“This room isn’t the same without Elizabeth,” Agnes presently observed. She cast her eyes over its oak pocket door and wainscoting, its embossed olive leather paneling, its scattered antique chairs. The room was more sparsely furnished than before, it was true.

“No, nothing ever will be,” the younger Miss Holland replied with an impatient wave of her hand. The girls had finished their tea, which Diana had made herself to save Claire the trouble. She had steeped it perhaps a little too long, and
the strength of the tea, combined with her utter lack of appetite over the last few days, had given her the jitters, which had the not unexpected side effect of making her conversation more flip than usual.

“I must be going,” Agnes went on after a pause.

“Yes, I guess you’d better.”

At the door, Diana managed to feign a little politeness and urge her guest to come again. Elizabeth would have liked it, she told herself, which was more or less true. Then she turned, into the dark foyer, and looked down at the unpolished silver tray on the floor—the ornate piece of furniture that it used to sit on was apparently another casualty of the Hollands’ current lack of funds. There were a few cards there. She picked them up out of a vague curiosity—after all, if she were to keep doing business with Barnard, she would have to pay more attention to the comings and going of the sorts of people who left cards—and came to a stop at the one with Teddy Cutting’s name on it. She turned it over and saw the words:

Miss Diana,

I am sorry to have miss ed you,

but it has all been arranged

for Monday night. I will

come by in my carriage

at seven o’clock for you.

Yours, Teddy

Diana had always found Teddy rather dull—he was the sort of boy who worshipped sweetly pale things like Elizabeth—but he held a special interest to her as one of Henry’s particular friends. It drove her up to the second floor, holding her long black skirt back from her quickly moving feet. She rapped twice on her mother’s door and then entered without waiting for an answer. Since Diana had last peeked into the room, the white curtains had been drawn down from the canopy, and the heavy chintz drapes of the north-facing windows had been closed. This change in atmosphere did not deter Diana, who continued on to the bed and perched on the white matelassé bedspread.

She wasted no time before saying, “Mother, I’m glad to hear you’re feeling better.”

Mrs. Holland, whose head was resting on a pile of pillows and whose shut lids were veined with blue, paused a moment before replying: “I am not feeling very well at all. I have been worrying about you all night—where did you run off to yesterday morning?”

“I only went out for a little air,” Diana said in a moment. She wondered if telling her mother the truth—that she had been sending a telegram to her living, breathing sister—would have alleviated all of the gloom.

“After what happened to Elizabeth, one would think you would be a little kind and wouldn’t give me so much cause to worry.”

She opened her eyes then and gave Diana a look that was very difficult to meet. The daughter held it as long as she could, and then moved her hand across her face to tuck a few hairs back into their upward arrangement. “Sorry, Mother,” she answered grudgingly. “But what does this note from Mr. Cutting mean?”

“Ah, Mr. Cutting…” Mrs. Holland’s eyelids drooped closed again. “Well, my dear, since Mr. Newburg and Mr. Coddington do not seem to have taken any interest in you, I thought you might do well to see one of Elizabeth’s old friends, and it happens that Mr. Cutting was looking for a young lady to accompany him to a dinner that his married sister is giving this evening.”

“How did you arrange…?” Diana began, mystified. At that particular moment she wasn’t sure whether to believe in her mother’s illness or not.

“You have not forgotten who you are, I hope, Diana.” Here Mrs. Holland’s eyes opened as she turned her face at such an angle that what light there was in the room caught against the underside of her sharp chin. “Who
we
are.”

Her gaze fell to the fitted waist of the new jacket, and for a moment Diana’s breath caught at the thought that she was about to be asked where it had come from.

“I’m sorry it has been so cold, Diana,” her mother nearly whispered. “Claire told me that the firewood deliveries have stopped, and I have given her funds to pay the bill.”

With that her eyes closed again and Diana took her leave. As she returned to her room she could not help but wonder what this Teddy business meant. It was curious and inscrutable news, and what it indicated about her mother’s state was even more obscure. Clearly Mrs. Holland had been out of bed the day before and with enough of her old influence to arrange for her daughter to be escorted for an evening by one of New York’s most eligible. But that she had looked at the brilliant green of Diana’s jacket and felt sympathy for her daughter’s being cold rather than growing suspicious over an unfamiliar piece of clothing was strange and alarming. That was not Louisa Gansevoort Holland at all. Ordinarily she was an obsessive cataloguer of material goods. That something new and fine had escaped her notice did not in the least bode well.

Diana sat in the gold wing chair in her room, unsettled and a little restless. She pushed her head back into the chair’s cushioned upholstery and ran her fingers along its mahogany arms contemplatively. After some thought, she came to the conclusion that there was nothing to do but choose a dress
impressive enough to catch Teddy’s eye. That was the way to make use of the evening. He would have to more than notice her—he would have to be taken in by her beauty. Then he would feel compelled to immediately describe it, in lavish terms, to his friend Henry.