Envy - Anna Godbersen

“Oh!” Diana found she remembered how to smile again. There were great, bulbous clouds in the sky, but they were moving quickly, and in a few hours, perhaps, there would be only infinite blue.

Nineteen

It is all very well for Miss Elizabeth Holland to be traipsing around again. Or is it? She has suffered many traumas in the last year, and we can only speculate that her presence in Palm Beach this week is an indicator of how desperately her mother wants to make a match. That might also explain the young lady’s enduring friendship with Mrs. Henry Schoonmaker, who would seem to have stolen her beau….

— FROM THE SOCIETY PAGE OF THE NEW-YORK NEWS OF THE WORLD GAZETTE, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1900

BY FIVE O’CLOCK THE LIGHT HAD BEGUN TO FADE in Palm Beach, although the humid air had lost none of its heat. The guests of the Royal Poinciana had undergone their fourth change of clothes and were gathering in the Coconut Grove for tea and cake topped with coconut shards. It was a quiet hour out on the grounds of the hotel, where two people who had dressed independently but seemingly with the same idea in mind walked under a canopy of trees. High above them palm fronds drooped like the great lazy wings of prehistoric birds, as the sounds of canaries punctuated their silence. There was also the sound of gravel underfoot, although quietly and occasionally, for they were moving at an easy pace.

“I am glad you felt well enough to walk,” Teddy Cutting said eventually. Like his companion, he wore simple white linen. His button-down shirt was tucked into slacks, and his only ornaments were the gold cuff links at his wrists. Elizabeth wore a white shirtwaist and skirt, and there was just a hint of gold on her too, in the form of a chain and cross around her neck.

“I am as well,” she replied with a hint of gracious embarrassment.

She had not been a very good party guest thus far, and she had hoped to help her sister so much more than she’d been able. The motion sickness she’d felt on the train had stayed with her when they arrived, which surprised her, for proximity to the seashore had always been soothing — indeed the quiet breezes did, at this moment anyway, have a calming effect.

“I’m not much fun!” she exclaimed, trying to laugh a little. “I suppose I haven’t been myself for a long time.”

“I imagine it must have been a terrible year,” Teddy ventured politely, in the way he had been brought up to. He watched Elizabeth with his serious gray eyes, and she knew that he wanted to say more but did not know how. “I am sorry we have not been able to talk as we used to. I have not been a very good friend to you.”

“Oh, Teddy!” Elizabeth surprised herself by emitting a very natural, ringing laugh. Somehow it was all she could do when faced with such a straightforward characterization of recent events. “It has been a very hard year. But you’ve been the perfect gentleman, as always.”

Teddy shook his head and looked at the arch of green above them. “That never seems to do anybody very much good, does it?”

They took several steps in which neither of them spoke. Elizabeth wondered what he could possibly mean by that, and then she asked him as much.

“During your engagement to Henry…” he began, but was unable to finish.

There was a delicate anguish in his expression, and as Elizabeth watched him she marveled at how like her former fiancé he was in appearance, and yet how different the effect was. For Teddy was tall as well, and he had the strong, slender features of American nobility. But where there was a perpetually amused carnivorousness about Henry, there was a subtle constancy to Teddy. She remembered now what a good friend he’d been once upon a time, for though he’d flirted with her and commented on her beauty, he had also posed philosophical questions that he had mulled during his coursework at Columbia, and was always curious about her opinions. When her father had died he had taken her for carriage rides in the park and sat patiently by her and never expected her to make any kind of conversation.

“I knew it wasn’t a good match,” he said finally. “I might have done something.”

“What could you have done?” Elizabeth replied lightly. “I accepted his proposal after all, and I knew better than anyone.”

Teddy’s arms were clasped loosely behind his back and he glanced at her when she spoke. “You never loved him?” he asked with sudden seriousness.

“It’s not a secret anymore that my family has fallen on hard times.” Elizabeth spoke cautiously, choosing each word before she uttered it. “What I did — what I would have done — was all for them.”

“Henry is my friend, but I am glad you did not marry him. I had feared for you that it would be a loveless marriage. Not that I am implying there was anything good about your…ordeal. But if there was something good…” Teddy’s voice had grown low and rushed, as though he had unexpectedly sailed into uncharted conversational waters, and was astounded by the new view. When he returned to the usual fine spun formality she felt a little sad. “I hope you don’t think I am being too personal.”

“Oh, no. In fact…” Elizabeth found herself struck by the uncharacteristic compulsion to confess everything. And though she knew Teddy had loved her once upon a time and that he had believed the lie in the papers about her “rescue,” she felt somehow that he might understand about Will and the great lengths she had gone to be with him. “Last fall, when I was…kidnapped…Well, that wasn’t exactly how it…” Elizabeth glanced at Teddy, at his expression composed of nothing but kindness and concern, and stopped herself. She had wanted to be known completely, but the full weight of her deception descended, and her upbringing got the better of her. Now she was formal again, too. “Someday I would like to tell you the whole story, Teddy. But it was partially my fault, you see, because I knew I couldn’t be in a loveless marriage, as well.” She laughed lightly and, thinking of Will’s callused hands and his skin turned brown by the California sun, added: “Even before my ordeal, I knew that Henry wasn’t the man for me. He is practically more delicate than I am!”

She had come to a halt on the walk. Teddy took a few more steps, realized she was no longer at his side, and turned to look at her. The leaves overhead cast shadows across both their faces, and out on the water the blaze of evening sun was doubled and elongated by its reflection. His gray eyes grew round and he took a step toward her, as if he was thinking of kissing her. Stranger still, she found herself imagining the soft pressure of his lips against hers, but then her eyes closed and she hoped that Will wasn’t watching her from above. She remembered how jealous he used to be and all the tortures she had put him through, and turned her face away demurely.

Then she forced a bright tone and changed the subject: “How is Henry?”

Teddy let out a sound that was not quite a laugh or a sigh. “I know she’s your friend, but I don’t understand it,” he said, gauging Elizabeth’s expression to see if he had offended before pushing on. “It’s like he sold his soul one night when he’d had too much to drink, and now the devil lives in his body. I don’t think he’s even in love with Penelope! She was after him shamelessly when we all thought you were…gone, you know, and he wasn’t the least bit interested. I might even say he was disgusted, if it didn’t so contradict what happened next.”

“I think she might have been the one to sell her soul at a steep price,” Elizabeth replied quietly. She was thinking of what Diana had told her, about how Penelope had blackmailed her way to the altar, and felt a little sad realizing that Henry had not confessed this to even his closest friend.

“She wanted to marry him very badly?”

“Oh, yes, before even—” Elizabeth stopped herself and smiled at Teddy. She still felt uncomfortable being a gossip, even if Penelope was the object of the loose talk, and anyway, she knew that down that route lay her own deceit. But she was pleased to hear that, in Teddy’s estimation, too, Henry did not love his wife. The idea that her sister and Henry might still prove a great love story lifted her spirits.

They started off walking again, although they drew closer together now. They moved easily by each other’s side, their slender, white-clad limbs carrying them forward in neat tandem. They looked at each other, one after the other, but grew bashful and turned away. She glanced up again, the light dappling both their faces. She blinked, and Teddy returned her smile, which was very natural and based on nothing in particular, or maybe everything. For the first time in months she believed her life could be long and not all clouded over with misery.

“Don’t worry, Liz,” he said. “I won’t make you talk about any of that anymore, or anything that makes you even a little uncomfortable.”

Then he took her arm, imbuing her with a lacy sensation of well-being, and they walked on below the soaring palms. Perhaps, she mused, the thick, clean air in Florida had been good for her after all.

Twenty

A SOCIETY BRIDE’S INSECURITIES!

BEAUTIFUL HEIRESS FEARS SHE WON’T

HOLD HER HUSBAND’S ATTENTION,

WORRIES THE SERVANTS WILL NOTICE

A SPECIAL REPORT BY THE “GAMESOME GALLANT”

PALM BEACH, FL — Here in Florida, we have been the witnesses of some very surprising developments: Even Mrs. Henry Schoonmaker suffers from the paranoias that prey on all married women — namely, that their husbands may lose interest in them. It seems that she clings to her brother, Mr. Grayson Hayes, in case her new husband abandons her on the dance floor, and is in fact so insecure on this point that she will not travel without that gentleman….

— FROM THE NEW YORK IMPERIAL, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1900

FOR PENELOPE, THE SECOND DAY IN PALM BEACH began auspiciously enough. She pushed her black silk sleeping mask up on her forehead and saw that the maid had come already and drawn open the French doors so that a little bit of ocean breeze permeated the rich surroundings of her suite. After dinner the night before she had washed her hair, and it hung now like a dark question mark over her pale shoulder. The champagne-colored sheets were smooth against the skin of her arms — they were much finer than the ones the Schoonmakers used, and she made a mental note to find out where they came from. Most important, her husband was by her side, and though he was still asleep, and snoring quietly into his plump down pillow, it was the most intimate they had been since their marriage. She hesitated to wake him just yet.

She closed her eyes and rolled into the soft space just next to him on the bed, but she was careful not to come too close. She wanted him to stay there, just like that, awhile longer. He was warm, and she could sense the quiet working of his body even though he was wrapped up in bedding. If she moved too quickly she might frighten him, and she knew he might sleep for a good while yet.

“Mrs. Schoonmaker?”

She cracked one eye open and glared at the girl who had come through the door. It was her maid, in her starched black-and-white uniform, and though her mouth was forced upward into something like a smile, the effect was more akin to distress. Penelope unlaced the sleeping mask and tossed it onto the floor, so that the girl had to tiptoe forward and bend over to pick it up. That was when Penelope noticed the newspapers that were folded under the girl’s arm and remembered that she had instructed her to bring all of the Schoonmakers’ clippings to her room personally every morning. Penelope knew that distance was the true engine of desire, and had hoped that in her absence all New York would again grow jealous of her many, many possessions.