Envy - Anna Godbersen

Twenty Nine

DIED, Longhorn, Carey Lewis, Saturday evening after a short illness. The last of a great family and a notable man about town. He left no survivors, but a great fortune. Services will be held today at his residence in the New Netherland Hotel. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Society for Young Girls Orphaned by Fire.

— FROM THE OBITUARY PAGE OF THE NEW YORK IMPERIAL, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1900

THE VIEW FROM THE NEW NETHERLAND WAS stark and entirely lacking in reassurance. Carolina remembered spending many evenings looking out at that huge swath of park, with its wealth of trees, imagining that it was the backyard of her benefactor, and therefore very nearly hers. When she’d closed her eyes, she had believed that if she fell back into it, it would catch her gently, the way a featherbed might. The truth of the matter was as unadorned as all those bare branches down there, as simple as the ice gray sky. None of it belonged to her, and whether or not it had ever belonged to Mr. Longhorn didn’t matter now. He was gone and he couldn’t help her anymore. With that in mind, she turned from the window.

“Miss…Broad.” The second syllable was pronounced with great skepticism, the way an anarchist might have used the phrase “Newport cottage” when referring to those sixty-four-room mansions that faced the Rhode Island shoreline. Carolina blinked furiously. Mr. James wore thick muttonchops and large black lapels and was shaped like a pear. He had a manner that might have unnerved generals; it certainly unnerved her.

“Yes?”

“A word about the jewels.”

Over his massive shoulder, she could see the last mourners taking leave. Robert stood — sadly, but also warily — by the table of cold cuts and pickles, which had lain out for several hours now and just barely been picked at. There had been few visitors, most of them women who had once upon a time hoped for the crown of Mrs. Longhorn, and this only increased Carolina’s suffering. For he had asked her so plaintively to stay with him, and she had shaken him off and left him to die alone.

“The jewels, Miss Broad?”

Carolina batted the moisture away from her eyes and tried to look wounded. She felt wounded, but still there was this urgency to put on a face that could be clearly read as dolorous. “What jewels?”

Mr. James waved a stack of receipts at her. “Seems Longhorn purchased a lot of jewels over the last six months of his life.” His eyes widened threateningly. “Those belong to the estate.”

“Mr. Longhorn purchased a lot of jewels over his lifetime,” Carolina snapped back. She was experiencing a tingle of dread, but still her voice was hard. “You can’t hold me accountable for all of them, and anyway, the ones he bought with me in mind were gifts.”

“They were on loan to you,” Mr. James returned firmly. He waved the receipts. Across the room, blue afternoon light played against the finials and crests of antique furniture and washed out the gold threads in the upholstery. “We own them.”

“I wonder how you’ll get them, since he gave them to me.” There was nothing Carolina could do about the insolent look on her face. The anger had come back, the way it always did when she knew something was going to be unjustly taken from her and that there was nothing she could do to stop it. It had not served her well as a child or as a lady’s maid, and it was unlikely to serve her well now, but it was a reflex she could hardly control. “Or perhaps you’re planning on dragging every woman Longhorn ever took a grandfatherly interest in into court.”

“I highly doubt you want to go to court, my dear.” Mr. James’s lips were full and moist, and though her ire was strong as ever she found she had to look away from him. “And my people are over in your rooms now, packing your things. They’ll put what you need in some of the bags nobody has any use for. The jewels we will be taking custody of — your maid told us where they would be.”

The volume of her black skirt, with its tiered ruffles below the knee, made her instinctual response to this undetectable: She stamped her foot — twice, silently — against the polished wood floor. All the guests were gone now, and across the room men from Mr. James’s office were moving to wrap up what finery remained and cart it off. Soon all the parties, the whole life Mr. Longhorn lived there, would be scrubbed away. She saw clearly what she had half-consciously feared during her train journey: This game was over. She saw, too, why Mr. James had been so conscientious in seeing her to the graveyard; so that he could have his staff go through her things while she watched, through a black net veil, Mr. Longhorn being lowered into the ground.

“I don’t think this is how he would have wanted it,” she said quietly. It was the truth, though she knew very well that it mattered not at all to the gentleman lawyer.

“Well, if you like, you may come hear the will being read next week. Maybe there will be some special compensation for you. But if you ask me — and I am usually paid quite handsomely for advice of this kind — I’d say you’ve gotten away with quite enough already.”

Carolina left the New Netherland carrying far fewer possessions than she’d arrived with and badly in need of some company. Neither Penelope nor Leland would do, and not only because both were still in Florida. The former was pledged to help her, but she was still not exactly the kind of friend you wanted to show your weaknesses to; and the latter could never know how dependent on Longhorn she had been — she wouldn’t allow that. He knew of course that the old man had looked after her, but she had explained that this was because Longhorn and her father had been great friends, and that she lived off her own inherited income. As she left the hotel and watched her two beaten black trunks loaded into a hansom cab, she couldn’t help but think of the one person in New York who knew perfectly well what she was.

She gave the driver a downtown address and refused to look out the window as they passed out of the charmed avenues and into the dingy old world. Outside it was all hum-drum skyline, a gaggle of disappointing faces, a barrage of bold advertisements trying to convince everyday New Yorkers that their lives really would be different if they bought some cheap hair product or other that she now knew to be beneath her. There was no answer when she rang the bell on that faraway street, which she had visited only once before, and so she paid the driver a little extra out of her dwindling cash, and sat waiting in the seat with her black silk ladies’ top hat tipped forward over her profile.

They had taken many of her gowns away and most of the jewels, although there were a few items that fit her so perfectly that even sour Mr. James saw no point in stealing them. She still had her pride and her name, she told herself as she bent forward over the hard seat — however serendipitously come by, it was hers now. But even that small gift seemed to diminish as she waited and waited on the cobblestone street. The driver was growing impatient, she knew, and she wondered if maybe it wasn’t time to move on, when the face appeared in the glass.

“Miss Carolina Broad!” he said, as though there were no one he would rather have happened upon. Her face turned hopelessly to sunshine. She couldn’t wait, as she knew a real lady would, for the driver to come around and open the door for her. Already her gloved fingers were pressing down on the handle and she was spilling out onto the street.

“Tristan!” she cried as she threw her arms around his neck. “And to what do I owe this honor?” he asked, as he pried her away just enough to get a look at her.

“Oh, Tristan, it’s the most terrible…” she began. Now that she was with someone who’d always looked at her with such gilded intention and given so freely of his advice, she believed she might be able to let her guard down. Even though the air was still biting — Tristan’s neck was protected by a thick, brown scarf — she began to feel a little warm. She wanted to show him all the sadness and anxiety and indignity of the day, and was grateful to him for even small things, like the fact that he knew her name.

“Will you come up for some tea?” he interrupted, after a good deal of babbling on her part.

Carolina let her sage-colored eyes roll ashamedly to the ground. “I have a few bags…” she said in a more tentative tone than before. The last time she’d been without a home, she had felt stupid and cloddy. She was only a little surprised that this time she was able to wear her distress like loveliness, and she imagined that she must be as delicate and fine as some rose petal veined with color that has just been picked off by the breeze.

Tristan’s body was lean and strong, and he moved with assurance and purpose. She couldn’t help but take a little pleasure in the fact that he was now instructing the driver to help him with her bags, and leading them up the narrow wood floors to the small flat he kept. It seemed neater and more welcoming this time, and when she felt the strong blast of the radiator she realized how cold she had been.

Tristan tipped the driver and gave Carolina a devilish smile as he took her coat from her. She had meant to mention, somewhere in all this, that she had met Leland Bouchard and was in love with him. But she hadn’t done so by the time he put on the water and poured her a spot of brandy to warm her up. Then it felt too late, and anyway, the natural thing to do when he turned and gave her well-fitting black silk dress an appreciative look was to lean forward, put her hand into his wayward blond hair, and press her lips against his.

Thirty

My Di—

I am thinking of you always,

and when we’ll be together.

How soon that will be.

But in the meantime, keep your

wits about you, and act like

everything is normal.

Love,

H

THE WATER WAS FINE, THOUGH DIANA WASN’T, AND she swam out without looking back. The women in hats and stockings clinging to the rope that extended out to sea took no notice of her, and went on shrieking as though the ocean contained some perpetual surprise. For Diana, there were no surprises — the ocean went up and down, it carried you in and out. She felt soothed, a little, by the repetitious rocking, although she had an almost inexhaustible need for solace just then, which no act of nature could fulfill. Three days had passed since she had seen Henry on the balcony with his wife, and she had kept quiet since then, and thrown all of Henry’s notes into the waves. It had been an awful thing to lose Henry the first time, to matrimony, but to discover what a false front he was capable of was another kind of blow, and it had left her almost speechless. Then there was the fury with herself — for she had known what Henry’s love was, and still she had gone back to suffer a little more at his hands.

She floated on her back and paddled aimlessly, and the shouting from shore grew indistinct. The beach cabanas and umbrellas were far away, and the hotel, with its place settings and carpets and lawn games and bicycles, farther still. Grayson was sitting in the sand, waiting beside her wicker chair, but he wasn’t in much of a mood for high excitement, either. He followed her dutifully, but some of the recklessness had left him, and he seemed to have run out of things to say. Whenever she turned to him she was met only by great, sad, yearning eyes. Meanwhile, Henry seemed to believe everything was as it had been between them, and she was playing along with his game. Diana had directed whole scenes in her head, imagining what it would be like to confront Henry, and all the witty, devastating insults she would hurl at him. But another part of her wondered if she would have the chance. Perhaps he would go on sending her little notes forever, never noticing how hard her heart was to him, and the only difference would be that they would have returned to New York and she would have to put them in the fire.