Anna Godbersen - Envy

“What is she doing here?”

Diana Holland could not possibly have heard her, but still she looked up from her place by the fire and her old aunt Edith, who was apparently the best she could do for a chaperone, and looked directly at Penelope. There was no smile on her face, and in her eyes a certain veiled challenge. She was wearing a pale green dress, the color of melon, which Penelope distinctly remembered her wearing on more than one occasion during the fall season.

“I invited her,” Grayson said.

“My God, why?”

“Because you asked me to—” He broke off and his eyes glazed dreamily. “And because I’m beginning to think I might be in love with her.”

When Penelope saw the expression on his face, and the puppy-dog look in his eyes, she felt the full crushing weight of his idiocy. What was it about that short creature with her wild hair and spurious air of purity, and why would anyone, much less two men, love her, and to such disastrous ends?

They could linger on the threshold no more, and she felt herself pulled by his arm, which was — even after this latest betrayal — still linked to hers at the crook of their elbows. If her mother hadn’t been there searching out compliments about their enormous house, or her father muttering into his drink, or the elder Schoonmaker looking judgmentally at all the objects in the room, she would have pointed out to Grayson that his was a desperate situation, or insisted that they had made a deal he could not back out of. But there was the low hum of people greeting each other in the evening, and Penelope reluctantly assumed the smile of a gracious daughter and new wife as she went forward into the room. She had never hated the word love quite so much as at that moment.

Now old Schoonmaker, who had just arrived, was saying something kind to Diana, and Henry, who had paused at the arm of Mrs. Hayes, had turned to stare. He was only there, Penelope knew in a glance, because of the intentions he’d declared that afternoon, and he was only waiting for the moment when he had his father to himself. His neck was twisted for a better view, and lamplight played against his clean-shaven throat. For once, there was nothing inscrutable about his black eyes. The way he was looking at her made Penelope want to shriek and throw something. She would have liked to charge across the room and pull the humble ribbons from Diana’s hair. She could have proclaimed to the whole room that these Hollands, with their superior poverty and their old-fashioned airs, were in fact two perverse girls — one of whom had given away all to another woman’s husband, while the other had quite possibly conceived a bastard. But just as the tide of fury was rising within, a perfect solution crested in her consciousness.

Grayson was moving like a man possessed through the exclusive gaggle of people, but Penelope was quick enough on her feet that she made her presence at his side appear very natural. She followed close behind him to the place where seemingly all eyes were focused. She followed him all the way to Diana.

“Miss Diana, I am so pleased you were able to attend,” he said.

“I am very glad to have been invited,” she returned. Penelope noted the tone, and deduced that there was a private joke between them, and then Diana turned her pointed chin and gave the older girl a jaunty smile that in private might have been an invitation to a slap. But Penelope’s idea was a good one. She felt no need for violence anymore, and instead smiled back at the little twit and waited until Rathmill, the butler, appeared from the dining room and announced that dinner was served.

“May I escort you?” Grayson asked Diana. She smiled and they moved together, Grayson in his black tails and Diana in her tiered dress, leaving behind the lady that he had entered the room with.

Penelope looked around affecting an expression of helplessness, knowing full well that everyone had already paired up. Then she met old Schoonmaker’s eyes. He was a large man, his face a bloated version of Henry’s, although the dark eyes and hard jaw were still intact. He offered his arm, and they took a step in pursuit of Grayson and Diana. Behind them came Henry and Isabelle, and then all the rest.

“Don’t they look handsome together?” Penelope whispered airily, gesturing with her chin at her traitorous brother and the petite tramp.

“I suppose,” William Schoonmaker, ever the discriminator, answered.

“Oh, you must agree, on a night like tonight, you could almost imagine such a couple on the altar.”

Schoonmaker made a vague grunting noise, of neither agreement nor disagreement.

“But don’t worry, Father,” she went on, her voice growing more delicate and feminine even as she added volume. She had never called him “Father” before, but it seemed to her like a nice touch. “I am not one of those women who, once wed, can think of nothing to do but make matches. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the pastime! Perhaps just a little less than other ladies. But the real reason is, I fear I will be not much in society this summer and fall, and after that I believe there will be a new addition to our family.”

Penelope phrased this with quiet care, and at the precise moment she knew those within earshot would understand her meaning, Old Schoonmaker’s face lit up as though she had just told him she’d found a cache of Standard Oil stock in his safe, and his response was so voluble that she knew there would be toasts. She would have loved to see Henry’s face then, but the thing to do was to keep controlled and go on facing her husband’s father with that aura of angelic magnificence.

The full genius of her coup was only just occurring to her — soon everyone would know how tightly bound she and Henry were — and she could not resist the satisfaction of glancing away once or twice, to observe how the younger Holland sister’s shoulders had jumped and locked together, and also the stricken expression she now wore. She had the look of a starving rabbit run out of her hole by a fox. That one hurt, Penelope knew, much more than anything Grayson could have engineered for her.

It is difficult for the once poor to ever play truly rich. But this is a city full of those who will try.

— MRS. L. A. M. BRECKINRIDGE, THE LAWS OF BEING IN WELL-MANNERED CIRCLES

DARKNESS FELL QUICKLY ALL OVER MANHATTAN, and those who could huddled near a fire. There were waifs in doorways who would not make it through the night, though Carolina was not like those unfortunates, and for plenty of reasons. She was wearing a coat of brindled otter fur, which she had borrowed temporarily from the divorcée Lucy Carr, and even as she stumbled through the anonymous and gloomy streets, she knew that she had been chosen for a destiny that had far better lighting.

This had not, however, been the opinion of Mrs. Portia Tilt. The western lady had imagined a more modest future for Carolina, one that involved remaining in the shadows whenever handsome or rich people, or those with fine names, were about. She had imparted this opinion to her former social secretary with particular vehemence and an articulateness that she had not heretofore exhibited, late on the previous evening when Carolina had returned from an hours-long cab ride without a destination. It was lucky that the Tilt staff was an unhappy one, and the head housekeeper had seen to it that the fired employee had a bed for the night. But in the morning there was nothing more they could do for her, and so Carolina had taken up her little suitcase and gone out into the city.

The sun had still been high then, and the memory of Leland, and the kindness in his pale blue eyes, still fresh. All of Carolina’s self-regard had been renewed, and so while she might have gone back to Tristan’s she did not seriously consider it. The kisses they had shared seemed tawdry now, and the ways that he had helped her inexcusable. It had been a moment of weakness, she told herself, something she had done to survive, and then she thought of it no more. Meanwhile, she carried with her all the true ingredients of her career — her height, her carriage, and her taste, which was not innate but had been one of Longhorn’s many gifts to her. All she needed was an inconspicuous job, only for a little while, and then she would find a way to be herself again. She had managed thus far — why should this crater be any different from any of the other holes she had clawed her way out of?

There had been several places she had considered going in and asking for employment, although in each of them the idea of Carolina Broad and where she had come from stood in her way. First there had been the ladies’ tearoom, where she had imagined for herself an office in the back overseeing the décor of the place and scolding the waitresses for their slovenly appearance. But then she had seen, through the wide windows, the girls in their uniforms, like a little herd running scared, and the prospect that the owner might make her wear one of those black-and-white getups had caused her heart to sink. Later, passing a newly opened hotel, she’d wondered if perhaps she could dust the rooms of wealthy visitors when they were empty. But she knew there would be more than dusting, and that if she were lucky enough to acquire a job like that, it would come with the title of maid. Bile rose in her throat at the thought of that terrible word.

It was only now that the color had gone out of the sky and she seemed to be the only female left on the streets that she began to wonder if a tearoom or a hotel wouldn’t have been a good place for her after all. Just for a day and a night. Maybe they would have had a cot where she could have slept or a place for her to put down her small suitcase. Maybe Leland would appear there by chance, in the morning, his chin freshly shaved against his stiff, new collar, and upon seeing his love in such duress, would spring into action. Maybe he would even carry her out, like a princess in a bedtime story. Carolina pressed her teeth into her bee-stung bottom lip at the thought of it, but then she opened her eyes and saw the cobblestones and pools of water ominous in the night, and all her nice fantasies flagged and the desperate ones began to loom.

She couldn’t help but think sorrowfully of Longhorn, who had protected her so gallantly and who had made so many of her evenings comfortable and light. The world outside was a very harsh place, and her chin trembled a little to think how furious he would be to see her thrown into it. But here she was now, with nothing to do but trudge on. She did so, stepping forward along the pavement, but she came down on something soft. Squealing followed, first from the rat underfoot, and then from her own throat when she jumped back and felt the little creature crawl across her other foot and skitter off into the gutter. “Oh,” she said, feeling the shudder up to her shoulders. After that, coat or no coat, she was chilled to the bone. She hurried now, and the next time she saw light spilling from windows onto the sidewalk, she went and pressed her nose into the plate glass.

Inside, young women with clean faces were bent over tables piled with lustrous materials. They ran their fingers over seams and brought dresses and skirts and little jackets under the arms of churning sewing machines. They were all bathed in a modern electric light, and for a moment, out in the cold, Carolina thought it actually might be nice in there. Moving between the tables was a full-bodied woman with reddish hair fading to gray, arranged in a fan above her head. She bent to see what the younger women were doing, occasionally pausing to undo their stitches. Carolina craned her neck to look up at the sign above the door, which read, MADAME FITZGERALD, DRESSMAKER, and then took a deep breath and opened the door.