Anna Godbersen - Envy

Her small body slumped against the window frame and she tried to imagine that all the pull she felt in Henry Schoonmaker’s direction could be formed into a tight ball of newspaper and casually dropped into one of those fires that tramps made on street corners in weather like this. It would smolder to ash, and then the soft snowflakes would fall on top, melting and disintegrating it to nothing. When Diana opened her eyes, she knew that her trick of the mind had failed. She made a little petulant noise—“Gah!”—and pushed herself away from the sill. Somewhere in the house, Elizabeth was moving from place to place like a ghost that had an axe to grind with the living, and their mother was clasping and unclasping her hands. Every being in No. 17 was distracted, and so it was easy enough for her to locate a wrap and slip out the front door unnoticed.

“Will you place the bet for us, Miss Diana?”

Hearing her name out loud, in a shadowy house of chance — over the constant noises of dice hitting hardwood and cards mid-shuffle and pealing laughter — caused an uncontrollable shiver up the younger Holland girl’s spine. But then she reminded herself that all eyes were on the clubs and spades, or the black and red wheel, and that even if they had been curious about her, she wore a cat-eye mask dripping with black jet beads. Grayson had handed it to her when he met her at the door of the Hayes mansion, just before he whisked her into a waiting coach. He had kept a sheltering hand on her as she placed her foot on the little iron step, and his physical closeness had not abated since they arrived at the gambling hall somewhere on West Twenty-third. She had been unnerved by this at first, but she had come to see that — despite the red velvet seats and the chandelier that hung over them like some vast, illuminated jellyfish — this room was very different from all the rooms she had been in before. No one here was in the least shocked that she was positioned on Grayson Hayes’s lap, or that his hand went back and forth across her knee.

“But I don’t know how,” she cooed, like some ingénue in one of those French novels that she kept under her bed. She had been watching the roulette wheel spin, and had by that time figured out how the game was played. But she enjoyed feeling his broad arms come around both sides of her as he whispered in her ear what to do. The low-lit room was reflected in the vast ormolu-encrusted mirrors, which faced each other so that the scene of black-suited men clustered at tables across the carpeted floor and, here and there, a woman like her whose hair was still covered by her evening wrap, repeated over and over again.

The place Grayson had taken her to was a short drive but a long way from Gramercy or Fifth. Diana liked the idea that this distance brought her far from Henry, too. Oh, he was still there, thumping in her head, but now there was also Grayson, who, while hardly the same man, was at least in the same category of man. They wore the same bespoke suits, for instance, and carried similar cigarette cases, and harbored like dishonest intentions, and anyway, every moment she spent with Grayson, he eclipsed the memory of Henry a little more, so that soon she was fully in the blooming moment of spinning wheels and whirring ceiling fans and cigar smoke thick and dusky in the air, and there was no past and no future and only the man whose barrel chest she leaned back into a little dizzily.

A waiter in a deep purple waistcoat paused to refill her champagne glass — she was unused to having her glass refilled so casually, or so often. Grayson whispered again in her ear, but she didn’t hear what he said, and was not bothered by the fact. She placed their bet.

“Are you sure?” She could hear that he was a little frightened and a little thrilled by where she had placed their chips.

She only nodded and winked at the croupier, who called out for the rest of the men crowded around their table to place their bets. Then he let the roulette wheel spin and the little white ball fly in the opposite direction, above the blur. She closed her eyes and imagined that she was floating, that she was unattached to everything in the whole vast universe. That Gramercy was gone and money a game that children played at. She would have to go back to that sad house and her own sad room, but not just yet. She would go later. When she opened her eyes again, the ball had fallen into a pocket.

She blinked and it was only a moment later that she realized that the pocket corresponded to the single number on which she had put every one of their remaining chips. All around them, gamblers gasped and clapped Grayson on the shoulder. She felt his hands tighten around her, one palm on her belly, and then he brushed his lips against her cheekbone.

“I can’t believe it,” he whispered. And then: “You must be my lucky charm.”

It took another few moments before she could believe it, either, and then she was able to finally take a breath. Perhaps it was the sweet fizz of the champagne, or this very foreign realm she had too easily slipped into, but she did feel, in that moment, anyway, very lucky, or very lovely, or whatever it was he had said.

She threw back her head and laughed, raising her small white arms into the air, full of some feeling approximate to joy.

My readers know that I am exceedingly honest, and that I strive to give every question its full and most accurate answer. Yet, there are some things that never go said, and that still each mother knows in her private way to do, in order to protect her young and innocent daughters from the harsh glare and opinion of the world. Try to think on such things only in the winter, and pray you do not have to keep too many secrets.

— MRS. HAMILTON W. BREEDFELT, COLLECTED COLUMNS ON RAISING YOUNG LADIES OF CHARACTER, 1899

ELIZABETH PAUSED AT THE DOOR. SHE HAD BEEN hoping that if she lingered before knocking, her slight shoulders might cease to shake. But she had been there some minutes already now, and she was no steadier than when she’d arrived. On the other side of the door was the morning room, where so much of the work of the house was done by the Holland women’s own hands these days. Her mother liked to crochet and worry there, crochet and worry, although when that lady went into the room after dinner she had still believed her greatest trouble was that her daughters had gone to Florida and back without securing marriage proposals. Elizabeth raised her fist to knock; she was going to have to tell her mother that there was something else to worry about, and better to do it before the physical evidence became overwhelming.

“Come in,” was Mrs. Holland’s sharp reply.

Elizabeth came around the cracked door. She had chosen an old dress of rich brown muslin, with a high waist and puffed sleeves, although inside she was all white fear. The gown was too large for her in some places and too small in others, and it blended with the dark stained wood of the room so that Elizabeth’s soft, pale heart of a face must have seemed almost to float as she leaned back into the door to press it closed. This invisibility did very little to alter the heaviness she felt within, for she was weighed down by all the things she had done and could not take back. She had meant to live only for the good of her family, but now she carried in her a stark fact that would make them suffer all over again.

“What is it?” The quality of Mrs. Holland’s black eyes changed when she saw her daughter; she brought her chin up and the skin of her throat tightened, for perhaps she already sensed some very large piece out of order. There was a fire going beside her, which flickered in her watchful eyes. She put down her hook and yarn and appraised her daughter, before gesturing gently that she should approach.

Elizabeth crossed the room and sank down beside her mother. The older woman’s face was hard as always, with its tough lines around the thin mouth, but she gazed at her daughter with an imperturbableness that had warmth deep at its core. “Tell me,” she urged.

And then Elizabeth did. Her confession came in tumbling breaths and was punctuated with little sobs. “Before Will…before he died, we were…as one, as man and wife….” She paused to put her forehead against her mother’s knee. There was some wetness on her lashes, and she did not want it seen. “And now I believe…I know.” She gulped air. “I know I am. In a family way.”

By the time Elizabeth raised her face up to confront her mother’s reaction, the lady’s expression had become implacable again. If she had been shocked or wounded by this final misstep of a once-prized daughter, she did not show it. There were many lifetimes of disillusionment behind her steady gaze, and she did not attempt to coddle her child.

“That is unfortunate,” she replied formally. “Though not wholly unexpected. I blame Will as much as I blame you.” She inhaled sharply, and moved her crocheting tools from her lap to the floor. “I told you that I would not force you into another unhappy engagement, Elizabeth, but I’m afraid this changes everything. You know this will be the end of us if anyone discovers it, don’t you? Yes?”

Elizabeth nodded unhappily, her pillow of blond hair bobbing with her.

“You will have to marry now, or, if you can’t manage that, we will have to take care of it. I know of a house where such things are done.” Now it was Mrs. Holland’s turn to be racked by a shudder, although it passed so quickly that if Elizabeth had blinked she might have missed it. She was glad she had not, for in that moment she knew how her mother really felt about this suggestion, even if she did find it so necessary.

“I will talk to my friends, the friends I have left, and see if there aren’t some possible suitors for you. Perhaps it can all be done quickly and quietly. But I fear it will be the other path, and for that, my child, I am very sorry.” She placed a small hand on her daughter’s head and sighed. “Go now. Get your rest. In the morning we will do what needs doing.”

Elizabeth nodded again, feeling strangely like a child even as one grew inside of her. She couldn’t bring herself to look at her mother again, and instead rose solemnly and turned to the door. She thought of all the things she had wanted to say — how sorry she was, what a disappointment, how she had meant for things to be now and why they had gone awry — but she found that she had no energy or will to explain herself. She went out into the barely lit hall, and then carefully one step at a time down to the second floor and her own bedroom, where there was no fire, but at least a space where she could be alone with her secret.

There she lay back against the mahogany sleigh bed with its white matelassé bedspread and let her arm drape over her face. She waited for her breathing to calm down, but it did not. She remembered for a moment how she had felt with Will — how safe and sure that he would always know what was right. But that was a precious thing that had been taken from her. She was alone now, and if there was a right thing to do, she could not see it. A month ago, all the correct behaviors had seemed possible. Her family had needed her so terribly badly, and she had planned to do everything for them. She had allowed Diana to go follow Henry Schoonmaker, and it only seemed to have caused her more harm, and since then the elder sister had been so absent. She had scarcely spoken to her younger sister since their return; she had been too absorbed in her own fears to see how Diana was holding up. And her mother — it was almost too much to think how far she had strayed from her mother’s expectations of her.