The Luxe (28 page)

“I
T 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.

D
IANA 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 be
low 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.

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.