Splendor: A Luxe Novel (9 page)

No matter how little he had liked Colonel Copper up until that moment, it was nothing compared to the file://C:\Documents and Settings\nickunj\Desktop\book.html 10/28/2009

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hatred he now felt as he watched the contortions of the man’s face. His confusion over the second form under the blanket, and his subsequent surprise at finding Henry not alone, gave way—too slowly, and accompanied by a series of facial ticks—to lurid realization.

For the subsequent wink alone Henry could have killed him.

“Is something the matter?” he asked, after several moments in which the colonel stood mute, but apparently quite at ease, his eyes big as saucers.

“Ah—Schoonmaker!” The colonel boomed. The soft body beside him went tense at the sound. “I was worried because you’ve been absent since Friday, but now I see you were busy taking my advice!”

“Can I do something for you?” Henry prodded.

“You missed reveille,” the colonel replied, mock-sternly.

“I thought—”

“Ha! Don’t worry yourself, my boy….” The colonel leaned against the doorframe. The daylight behind him illu minated Henry’s twill jacket, which hung from a hook on the wall, as well as his second pair of trousers and shirt. Diana’s clothes, muddy and wet after their hurried trek away from the poet’s house, were in a heap on the wooden chair. “It has been lonely without you, though, with nobody but the uneducated classes to talk to. Of course, there will be no race this afternoon, owing to the storm, but I thought perhaps we could discuss…”

Henry watched him warily, and tried to make the face that would encourage the colonel to go away with maximum expediency. He seemed to have succeeded, for the colonel winked, muttered good-bye, and dragged his boot against the floor. If Henry had hoped that the man would disappear before really glimpsing Diana, however, he was soon disappointed, because she emerged slightly from his embrace then—showing, in the process, more of her naked back than he really felt comfortable with.

“Hola,” said the colonel, his pronunciation stilted.

“Hello,” went Diana’s dry reply.

“You’re…an American girl.” The obnoxious cheer had disappeared suddenly, and whatever replaced it sent Henry spiraling to new depths of dislike.

“And if I were?” Diana ducked under the covers and pressed herself into Henry’s chest again. Both of his arms covered her instinctively, but this gesture did nothing to head off Colonel Copper, whose brown leather boots—adorned with utterly superfluous silver spurs—were now striding noisily across the floor.

He carried himself more sharply now, more like a military man than ever before, and when he reached the narrow, metal-frame bed in the far corner of the room, he stuck out his chest as though he had just taken part in a twenty-one-gun salute.

“And not just any American girl.”

Henry watched immobilized as Diana slowly pushed back the covers and hazy layers of sleep, and turned to look at the colonel. If she appeared a little shocked it was no wonder, for no matter how many countless rules of decorum she had broken to be in that bed at that hour, so far from home, it was doubtful she had ever seen a man be so forward and boorish at her bedside. As far as Henry knew, he was the only man who had ever been in Diana’s bedroom at all, and the widening milky whites of her eyes conveyed that the part of her that was raised by a mother always mindful of propriety was still alive inside.

“What does it matter?” she asked, trying to sound a little ribald.

“Oh, God—” The colonel took a step back. He met Henry’s eyes. “I know her.”

“No.” Henry was relieved that the colonel had ceased his leering, but he distrusted whatever it was that had caused the change. “No, you don’t.”

“Yes. Yes, I remember her quite distinctly.” The colonel was wagging his finger now. His voice had grown stuttering and obsessive, as though he were repeating information he had recorded in rote fashion in his daily journal. “She was at the party given for Admiral Dewey at the Waldorf-Astoria back in September. She was wearing lavender and she danced with Mr. Edward Cutting. I am sure, because I suppose I jotted it down. And I am doubly sure of it, because this morning when I was reading the social notes—it is the only way to know where in the world one’s friends are—I saw a little section about how she was wearing her hair in a most peculiar short style, and you, miss, are the first girl I have ever seen file://C:\Documents and Settings\nickunj\Desktop\book.html 10/28/2009

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with hair like that! The only trouble is,” he went on, working his hands together, “you’re said to be in Paris….”

“You must have me confused,” she returned with a brave giggle, but her heart wasn’t in the lie, and Henry knew there was going to be trouble. The hours spent sitting a few feet from a torrent, smoking and waiting and telling each other stories of where they had been, were still with him, but he sensed there would be no more like them.

“Schoonmaker, what kind of an operation do you believe I’m running here? Do you find it farcical what I do? You can’t bring a girl like her into a barracks, not a girl who is supposed to be attending balls in Paris or New York, a girl people are going to come looking for!” Even now, Henry did not experience his superior pulling rank with him. Colonel Copper only paced the room, straightening his jacket nervously. He wasn’t angry—he was afraid of losing some imaginary stature, and that boded worse.

“They’ll come looking for her,” he went on, more to himself now, “but it’s my neck they’ll want. They’ll say I was running a high-class brothel down here and I’ll be ruined. She’ll ruin me. It won’t stand, no, no, no, it won’t stand.”

Diana’s expression had grown quizzical. She was asking Henry, silently, what he made of it. He wished he had reassurances for her, but all he could think to do was to reach for the blanket, pull it over her and hold her as tight as possible. It was plain to see that Colonel Copper’s reaction was bad. What he’d seen frightened him, and he wasn’t going to be able to sit still until he had done something about the debutante who’d snuck into the barracks like a camp follower. Her smile fell a little, and then they both turned their faces back in the direction of the colonel.

“No,” he concluded, more decisively this time as he turned his gaze on the lovebirds. Morning light washed away the details of the simple room, as well as the older man’s face, and there was almost a tinge of elegy in his words. “It will not stand.”

Ten

THE WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH COMPANY

TO: William S. Schoonmaker

ARRIVED AT: The Schoonmaker House

416 Fifth Avenue, New York

2:00 p.m., Monday, July 9, 1900

Mr. Schoonmaker—Humbly to inform that I am sending Henry back to New York today on special mission. Please understand this was necessary. I will explain more fully in a long letter. Your friend—

Col. Copper

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MONDAY AFTERNOON WAS THE TIME WHEN elegant people dropped by the Schoonmakers’

Fifth Avenue mansion to utter polite nothings and view the expansive luxury amidst which its denizens lived. In the hour before the public was known to be welcome, the family gathered together, alone, so that their patriarch could be sure they all looked their parts. Penelope emerged from her quarters tentatively on the Monday following her reentry to society, and descended toward the main part of the house with a touch of caution. The mood behind her alabaster oval of a face was a mixture of defiance and trepidation.

Henry had abandoned her to a crushing boredom, but some of the stuffier people had not taken her appearance in public very well. The papers were not commenting on the minor scandal yet, but if she continued to behave this way, they would. As everyone who knew her was well aware, Penelope was no fool, and she was acutely cognizant of how closely related were her social stature and her married name.

“Ah, Mrs. Henry,” called the butler, as she approached the drawing room. “Mrs. Henry” was what the staff called her to distinguish her from the senior Mrs. Schoonmaker, and, Penelope couldn’t help but feel, to subtly put her in her place. “These came for you,” he informed, in a discreet tone, as he gestured to the marble tabletop. Her eyes darted. There, erupting from a huge gilt-inlaid vase, were hundreds of pillowy magenta peonies—so many stems, they seemed likely to overwhelm their container.

“Oh!” she exclaimed; the flowers constituted such a gorgeous still life that her façade instinctively relaxed.

“From the prince of Bavaria,” the butler went on, averting his eyes, “who is currently a guest at the New Netherland Hotel….”

“Oh,” she repeated, though this time in a different tone, as she put her fingertips to the satiny petals clustered together. They were just like her: dramatic and rare and impossible to look away from, although frail, in their way, and she knew in an instant that the prince had recognized all these qualities in her person. The defensive foreboding she had so lately felt began to fade, and, as she experienced the sudden pleasure of being in the presence of beautiful things, her own high sense of self-regard came flooding back. She was still plenty alluring, those flowers reminded her, still capable of attracting a very fine species of man, no matter how poorly Henry treated her.

“Thank you, Conrad.” She twisted the black agates set in white gold at her wrist. Like all the pretty things she had been given as a bride, it was from the elder Mr. Schoonmaker, whose money was old and greatly augmented by his youthful ventures in railroads and real estate and other areas that ladies like Penelope were raised not to be curious about. Her stepmother-in-law had once told her that a woman had the most fun after she was married, when no one cared very much about her purity anymore, and, staring at the breathtaking arrangement that her loveliness had garnered, she felt ready to finally accept this as the truth.

Before—when she was cooped up in the house, or having to be constantly vigilant of her husband’s questionable fidelity—she had been dubious. But now she saw that there were plenty of thrills to be had even with Henry away. Or—she amended her train of thought, thinking of the way the prince had admired her on Carolina Broad’s dance floor—especially with Henry away. She gave herself a private, mischievous smile as she checked her simple, upswept bouffant in the walnut-framed hall mirror, and then turned in the direction of her in-laws.

“What a joy it will be to have all my family together again, under one roof…,” William Schoonmaker was saying as she entered the grand first-floor drawing room. He was not a small man, and all of his considerable size was richly garbed. Every detail of him commanded attention, but she was having difficulty feigning deference, or even paying much attention, at the current moment. Why should she, when she had so recently captured the attention of a prince? “…And just in time for the Family Progress Party’s ball.”

The only family whose progress old Schoonmaker was really interested in was arranged across a vast drawing room, reclining on the silk upholstered Louis Quatorze pieces, each at a safe distance from the colossal mahogany mantel where the patriarch stood surveying them. Isabelle, the second Mrs. William Sackhouse Schoonmaker, was closest, her elbow rested against the scroll end of the chaise longue she occupied. Her hair was girlish yellow and her cheeks a healthy pink, not unlike her dress, which ballooned in the sleeves but grew narrow in the wrists, and the chief feature of which was the giant satin file://C:\Documents and Settings\nickunj\Desktop\book.html 10/28/2009

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bow across the bust. Facing Isabelle was Prudence, her stepdaughter, disappearing into her customary black silk dress with its priestlike white trim. Beneath them stretched the plum-and-ochre Hamadan carpet, upon which lounged Robber, Penelope’s Boston Terrier, who everyone ignored. After crossing the threshold, Penelope chose a settee, walked to it, and quickly arranged herself so that the turquoise silk upholstery was obscured by waves of dress. She wore a voluminous skirt of salmon crepe de chine and a high-necked shirt of darkest gray with tiny iridescent lines across the chest; it puffed at the shoulders and grew narrow in the sleeves. A golden afternoon light fell across the Schoonmakers from the high windows that faced Fifth Avenue, lending a kind of splendor to all the marble statuary interspersed through the room, as well as the polished mahogany furniture, and the folds of the ladies’ heaping skirts, which rose in gorgeous glittering crests and fell to shadowy canyons. Several servants wearing velvet livery emblazoned with the Schoonmaker crest were quietly posted in the margins of the room, where they could best be ignored, should anything be required.

Penelope let her made-up lids fall for a moment, and when she’d opened them again the bright blues of her eyes were refocused on her husband’s father. “Which ball?” she asked blandly.

“Oh, Penny, you remember,” said Mrs. William Schoonmaker, her voice a touch reprimanding. The chumminess between the senior and junior Mrs. Schoonmakers had slipped somewhat, ever since the junior had been less than helpful in facilitating the flirtation between her brother, Grayson, and Isabelle, who was in fact his same age. What she had failed to appreciate was how crucial Grayson had been to Penelope’s scheme of ruining Diana Holland’s reputation and stepping on her heart. Anyway, it was long ago, and none of it had gone as planned, and Grayson was back in London now, still irritatingly heartbroken over little Miss Holland and working for their family’s firm there, and so the icy tone her stepmother-in-law employed was simply overkill. “The Family Progress Party ball, next Friday, when William’s candidacy for mayor will be announced,” she finally declared.

“And where the public will first get to see a reunited Mr. and Mrs. Henry Schoonmaker,” the candidate concluded, with what Penelope supposed was an attempt at a friendly smile. If that farce of a kindly expression was intended to soothe, it sorely missed its mark; the long summer of entertainments she’d been imagining for herself had just been snatched away with a single sentence.