Envy - Anna Godbersen

There was the sound of feminine voices, very faint, from adjoining rooms. Elizabeth clutched her hands together, loosened them, and then tightened her grip. It was so strange that she should have ended up here — she who had been so admired for her dress and manner, and then later on, during nights she would have given anything to live again, so well loved. She didn’t know what to make of it, of all the turns of fate, or the room she was sitting in, with its offensive finery and false air of normalcy. It would have been difficult for her to say with certainty who she was anymore.

Once upon a time, she had been a girl who lived for her family, and its own particular idea of what was correct and beautiful. She had failed at that but found a better ideal to pursue. And now that something better had been taken from her in a blast of gunpowder. Without Will, every footstep was tentative. Even the borders of her body felt somehow hazy and indistinct, and perhaps that was a blessing, because whatever was going to happen to her next was not something she wanted to feel. She sensed a gale of sorrow coming upon her, and she shut her eyes and willed it to pass. The skin of her forehead folded at the center and she prayed that Will was in heaven, looking down on her, and that he would help her not to cry.

What would he think of this room, with its neatly framed pictures of women wearing unsmiling faces and their staid best? How many girls, she wondered, had sat in that room before her, feeling somewhat calmed by the similarity of the environs to their own homes, wanting it all to be over so they could go to balls again and be proposed to and have everyone see them as they always had — as good, pure girls who were born to marry well, in ceremonies that depicted them as blank slates. They were all hypocrites, every last one of them, she realized. The girls in their white dresses and the men who put them on pedestals but still brushed up against them when they danced. And not least her own mother, who had told Elizabeth she had “always thought better of her,” but would have been pleased to do something as venal as marry off her child for money.

The only person Elizabeth had ever known who was not a hypocrite was Will. She felt the hard stone in her throat and brought her hand up to her belly. It was stunning that she should have to suffer this way for love, and that the punishment should be so bodily, so humiliating, so absolute.

“My dear,” said a woman as she came around the screen.

The light was low, but the suddenness with which Elizabeth’s eyes opened caused her to see spots. A little moisture had collected along her bottom lids. The woman was dressed in black velvet and was full in the chest and in the face, and she smiled at Elizabeth the way a person does before they demand payment. Perhaps, Elizabeth wondered for the first time, she was not being forced to suffer. Perhaps this wasn’t another tragic twist of fate.

Suddenly it began to occur to her that what grew inside was the last thing Will had given her, and she could not possibly be ashamed of that. He had been her husband, she reminded herself.

“I have to be going,” she said as she stood. She was fatigued but not in the least ready to sleep, and she felt blearily capable of anything, just as one does after staying up all night.

“But my dear, your condition—”

Elizabeth backed toward the door. “I’m sorry,” she said. Her voice had grown loud and clear. “But that was all a mistake.”

The house was dark when she crossed the threshold, but no sooner had she removed her cloak then she heard the rattle and creak of the parlor pocket door and saw her mother come out of the darkness.

“I would have thought they’d keep you all night,” she said, and though her words were harsh there was something strained in her voice.

“No.” Elizabeth tried to catch her breath and let her eyes adjust to the lack of light. It was good to be inside; although the real chill had gone out of the weather and she had sensed a moisture in the air and the return of rain as she climbed the steps. “I couldn’t stay there.”

“What do you mean you couldn’t stay there?”

Mrs. Holland stepped into the foyer, bringing with her that smell of ash that follows all clothes that have lingered by a hearth. Elizabeth could see her face now, and she recognized in the older woman’s expression the same nervous indecision that she had been experiencing not an hour before. But for Elizabeth, the nervousness was gone, and she felt in its place a strange fortitude.

“I am going to have a child,” she answered calmly. “Will’s child.”

Her mother made a noise as though she had been hit in the stomach and all the breath had gone out of her. “You will ruin us,” she said. But she did not say it harshly, and somehow when the phrase was in the air, it sounded like not such a bad fate after all.

Elizabeth discovered that she was smiling. She kissed the little lady on either cheek and said, “Good night.” Then she turned and walked up the stairs to her bedroom. She hadn’t the faintest idea what she would do in the morning, but she knew that for the first time in many days she would sleep through the night.

Forty Three

The last will and testament of Carey Lewis Longhorn will be read today at the New Netherland Hotel, where the late Mr. Longhorn resided for the last years of his life. Though he was a bachelor, many a society lady will mourn the loss — some of them, of course, hope that today his largesse will live on.

— FROM THE SOCIETY PAGE OF THE NEW-YORK NEWS OF THE WORLD GAZETTE, FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 1900

“MISS BROAD, WHAT HAS BECOME OF YOU?”

Carolina, or Lina, or whoever she was now that all of her dignity had been scrubbed off her, stepped into the lobby of the New Netherland where she had once been so grand. Her coat dripped a little onto the shiny mosaic floor, and though she had planned to appear slightly less wrecked at this moment, the first familiar whiff of the perfume and coffee, and the sight of Mr. Cullen, the diminutive clerk who had so often handed her the key to her room, brought tears to her eyes, and before she could even begin to explain, she was wailing like a baby.

“There, there, Miss Broad,” said Mr. Cullen, as he removed the rain-soaked coat from her shoulders. “Did you get caught in the rain?” he went on dubiously as he examined the coat, which had in truth spent all night inches from the downpour, and now smelled unmistakably of the street. He gestured to a bellboy, and when the offending garment was out of sight he placed a hand on Carolina’s shoulder and said, “We will send that to the cleaners and see what can be done. But my dear, you are freezing. We must get you warm and into some dry clothes.”

Carolina put her face into her hands and nodded vigorously, although she had not yet found a way to stop crying.

“Do try to contain yourself, my dear,” Cullen went on as he drew her into the office. “You are here for the reading of Mr. Longhorn’s will, aren’t you? Surely the old gentleman must have left you something….”

Carolina pushed her hand against the underside of her nose, wiping away the snot, and tried to believe this. In truth, she didn’t hope for much anymore, and had only come to the hotel because she had woken up in a doorway and had no place else to go. She could see, too, in Cullen’s face that he was only trying to make her feel better, and this was such a rare kindness that it took all her will not to begin crying again. He called one of the housekeepers, and had her find Carolina a dress, and only when she was properly put together again did he himself escort the young lady to the suite where she and Longhorn had spent so many evenings, talking over what his youth had been and what hers then seemed to promise.

Mr. James, the lawyer, was sitting at a wide table and he looked up at Carolina in a way that made plain how unwelcome she was. Luckily, Cullen was still there with her, and he walked her to one of the chairs that had been set out, and only once he was sure that she was solidly placed in her seat did he leave her side. There were a few other women, occupying chairs and crying theatrically into their hankies. Lucy Carr was among them, but she would not meet Carolina’s eyes.

“Welcome, ladies, gentlemen…” Mr. James began, before coughing rather disgustingly into his hand. A preamble followed that Longhorn’s former favorite could hardly listen to. This was a document that the old bachelor had ordered drawn up when he was contemplating his own end, and she had failed him so miserably there. She was still enduring the consequences of that selfish decision, and she suspected she would endure them for a long time to come. Most of the beautiful objects in the room had been wrapped up, she observed, and the life had gone out of it.

“To my second cousin, Mrs. William Barre,” Mr. James was saying. That lady gasped a little and sat up like a rod. “I leave all my large silver platters and one thousand dollars.”

Mrs. William Barre then loudly praised Longhorn’s generosity, even while looking slightly disappointed.

A series of small bequests followed, to which the people in the chairs made tepid responses. Carolina couldn’t expect anything from the old man — she had known him only a few months, and had failed him when it most mattered — but still she couldn’t help but think how much more five thousand dollars would mean to her than to the Society for Young Girls Orphaned by Fire, which had been her former benefactor’s favorite charity. She too was an orphan, she thought as she dabbed her eyes.

Then she heard the words that let her know it was the end, and she stood to leave.

“And the remainder of my estate,” Mr. James was now saying, somewhat reluctantly, “including all of my holdings in real estate, stock, business, and cash, I do leave to my dear friend, who gave me such joy in the final chapter of my life, Miss Carolina Broad.”

Everyone in the room gasped and turned to look at the girl who already appeared headed for the door. For a moment, Carolina thought that she had been called out for bad behavior or some other infraction against good taste, and her eyes roved back and forth from the women assembled there to the lawyer. Then she saw Lucy Carr smile at her, and she knew that her fortunes had turned around again. She was still cold, and it would take several hours before she began to really understand how utterly her life had been transformed. But already a sense of safety was returning to her limbs, and the women who had come with hopes of their own crowded around her to wish her all the best. Longhorn had seen promise in her youth after all, and oh, with what infinite kindness, what eternal magnanimity had he gone about ensuring that that promise would be fulfilled.

Some hours later, and outfitted from the wardrobe that had been rightfully restored to her, Carolina arrived at a west side address of no particular distinction and instructed the hansom to wait in the street. The rain had finally stopped and you could feel the coming of a kinder season in the air. Still, she pulled her coat — the old broadtail one, which Longhorn had purchased for her in the springtime of their friendship — close around her shoulders as she crossed and approached the stoop.

The housekeeper, when she opened the door, did not at first have anything to say.