Rumors (23 page)

T
HE SILENCE MIGHT HAVE LASTED HOURS, ALTHOUGH
it was difficult to be certain. Elizabeth realized that her mother was watching her from the foyer, and then, before anyone made a sound, there was time for her to recall all the things that used to be expected of her and to turn, slowly, to face the petite matriarch. She felt plainer and less adorned than she ever had. She was wearing the same worn dress—she had looked in her closet for something else, but all the old things were gone—and she felt denuded. Mrs. Holland’s mouth hung open, and she hardly seemed to be breathing as she remained in the doorway with a steadiness that, given her behavior the night before, Elizabeth would not have thought her capable of. She appeared to be using the moments of silence to check every inch of her daughter. When they were over, she took two long strides to the center of the room and pulled Elizabeth to her breast.

“Oh thank God, thank God, thank God,” she repeated over and again.

Elizabeth hadn’t been so close to her mother’s body since she was a child. The moment passed, however, and quickly. Mrs. Holland kept a hold on her daughter’s elbow as she stepped back. “Claire!” she yelled. The force of her voice somewhat calmed her daughter’s worries about her health. “Claire, come here!”

Claire came hurrying in, her wide cheeks pink with exertion. She placed a hand on the stomach of her plain black percale dress with the wide boat neck and looked around the room. Elizabeth tried to smile at her reassuringly, and after Claire had looked back for a few long seconds, the tip of her nose began to turn red and her eyes started to well.

“Claire,” Mrs. Holland said sharply. She kept one hand at her daughter’s elbow, and the other went to the back of Elizabeth’s head, where it rested, firm and loving. “Draw the curtains. Miss Holland has come back to us, as you can plainly see. You will be able to talk with her later. Mr. Cairns, forgive me, you will think us a very odd family. I do hope you will stay on for Christmas dinner. Diana—”

Everyone looked at Diana, who brought her arms up over her laces, suggesting deep discomfort and a barely controlled impulse to go off and hide.

“Yes?” Even in the morning with her hair hardly done and her face nothing more than washed, she shone with a
loveliness that was new to her, more grown-up. She seemed to know what she had now.

“Diana, you shall help Claire prepare luncheon for Mr. Cairns. You will see that he is entertained.” Mrs. Holland’s eyes flashed about the room, as though she were assessing the extent of her resumed authority. Claire had drawn the curtains, which brought shadows back into the room. It was now the parlor that Elizabeth remembered. Without the natural light you hardly noticed the missing Asian vases or the one or two landscapes that had been taken down from the walls. It was again the dense and richly colored collection of objects that had always represented the Hollands. “And you, Keller.”

Elizabeth felt a little quickstep of panic. “Mother, he’s not to blame. He—”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Elizabeth.” Her mother’s grip on her head tightened, and she could feel the command to silence as though it were emanating through her palm. “I was asking Keller where he’s been. It’s been damned hard for me to find someone who knows as much about horses since you’ve gone,” she went on in Will’s direction, “and I frankly blame you that I had to sell them.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Holland.” Will looked into his old employer’s eyes as he might look on a frigid morning that there was no choice but to go out into. He moved his head just
slightly but kept his gaze steady. “But you knew I couldn’t stay here forever.”

He blinked, and then his gaze was on Elizabeth. She wanted to go stand beside him, to show everyone just how she felt, but she knew from the way he was looking at her that this was unnecessary.

“Keller, we’ll discuss this at a later hour.”

Mrs. Holland’s hand now went to Elizabeth’s wrist, and Elizabeth felt herself being drawn out of the parlor. From the four others there was plain silence. Elizabeth could only note the piney smell of the tree, the soft snap of the fire that Will had built that morning, and the faint and reassuring smile that he managed to give her before she was pulled from the room. Then she was going up the stairs. She felt the old fear of her mother’s temper, and was nervous about how she’d ever explain where she had been and what she had done. But her mother’s strong grip, which indicated how very much among the living she was, was some kind of consolation.

They had just reached the second-floor landing when she saw her aunt Edith’s head emerge over the rail. “Elizabeth!” she shouted. She held on to the banister, but otherwise her body moved downward at a run. When she came onto Mrs. Holland and Elizabeth, she threw her arms around the younger girl. “How can this be?” she whispered, pulling back. Her cheekbones protruded, shiny and definite from her thin
ning skin, but she otherwise retained that Holland beauty she had been known for in her youth. Elizabeth looked into the small, round eyes and saw that she was overcome.

“Perhaps we all should sit somewhere?” Elizabeth suggested, and then the two older women ferried her into the master bedroom. Elizabeth and her aunt went to the armchairs by the fireplace, and Mrs. Holland went to the window, where she pushed back the calico valance and peered down on the street. She continued to fuss with the lace undercurtains as she did.

Words still had not presented themselves. The Elizabeth whom she’d been taught to be was back with her now, and to such a girl as she had been there was no way to explain what had taken her west. But her aunt was urging her with a look. Her mouth flexed as though she might cry, and there were stars of light reflected in her eyes. The moments stretched out in front of them, and then Elizabeth saw that she would have to be the first to speak. Once she began, she found that she couldn’t stop.

“I couldn’t marry Henry Schoonmaker. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t be married to him and I had to stop it. I love Will, Mother.” Elizabeth looked but saw no change in her mother’s expression. This revelation was apparently too much for Edith, however, who now lowered her eyes. “He had already gone when I realized it. That is, I knew I loved him
already, but he was gone when I realized that I couldn’t live without him. That I couldn’t marry Henry. So I followed Will and I found him, in California. He was working in a shipping yard and saving money to lease a piece of land down near Los Angeles. He always works so hard for things, and he had saved a lot. Even from before, from out here in New York. He had a hunch there would be oil there, and now we’ve found it. Will says there’s so much of it we’ll be rich…and then we can help you, Mother. Will wants that too.”

“Oh, Elizabeth.” Her mother let out a breath that might have sent a hot-air balloon soaring. “I had such hopes for you.”

“I know.” Elizabeth’s eyes stung, and for the first time that day she found herself unable to look at her mother. She looked around the room, which she had barely entered since her childhood, with its imposing four-poster bed and flocked, wheat-colored wallpaper. The room was not large, and the women were situated close enough to each other that Elizabeth felt their discomfort and confusion almost physically. “I know you did.”

“It sounds like one of your father’s schemes,” her mother went on dismissively.

There was the suggestion of a reply on Edith’s lips, but in the end she said nothing.

Mrs. Holland let go of the valance, and when she spoke, her voice was bitter. “You could have married anyone.”

“I might have,” Elizabeth carefully corrected her. “But when it came to it, I couldn’t.”

“I see.” Her mother turned away from the window and looked at her for a long, sad stretch. The dust was streaming down, visible in the light. “Oh, Elizabeth,” she said finally. “To have you back and find that it isn’t you.”

“But it is me, Mother, and we’re going to be rich again. We all are, because of Will.”

Mrs. Holland was unmoved by this. She had begun shaking her head back and forth, and her hands were working together nervously. “It’s all too wild, Lizzie. I don’t know where you got the idea that you can just do as you please. Running off. Do you know what you’ve done to this family? Do you know what you’ve done to me?”

Elizabeth’s voice might have been coming from the other room. “I do know.”

“Well, you’re not going back to California, not as I live and breathe. You’re not seeing Will Keller again—”

“Louisa.” Edith could not bring her eyes to meet those of her sister-in-law, but the tone of her voice signified real conviction. “My brother always liked the boy, and anyway, you know nothing good ever comes of separating lovers.”

Elizabeth was fairly certain the word
lover
caused as much discomfort to her mother as it did to her. The pause that followed was so long, however, and the change in her mother’s
face so significant that she wondered if they hadn’t touched on some corner of family history that she wasn’t privy to.

“Oh!” her mother said after a time. She put her hands over her face, and her shoulders fell. “Oh, Elizabeth.”

Meanwhile, downstairs, the Holland house was thrown into movement. Diana was relieved to see that Snowden didn’t seem to have noticed that he had been so calculatedly deceived. “What a miraculous day this is,” he said as Diana descended the stairs from her bedroom, where she had changed from her dressing gown into a skirt patterned with many stripes of horizontal green, and a black chiffon shirtwaist. “How lucky I am to be here for Miss Holland’s return.”

“And how lucky we are to have you here to celebrate with us,” Diana said. She was still feeling a little guilty over her falsehood, and so was trying to be especially respectful of him. “It wouldn’t have been much of a celebration without you,” she added, truthfully, since his entourage had made itself busy carting in the necessary foodstuffs for a proper Christmas feast. They were all over the house, shaking out old linens and polishing what silver was left. They crisscrossed the floors with new candelabras and vases and chair cushions.

“Since your mother and sister are busy, perhaps you could
consult on the dinner menu with Miss Broud and me before it is finalized?” He paused and gave her a shy smile. “As long as we’re waiting for the others for luncheon.”

“Of course, Mr. Cairns—” Diana broke off when she saw a figure through the door glass. Her body grew buoyant and inclined in his direction when she realized who it was. “Mr. Cairns, would you excuse me just one moment?”

“Of course.”

Diana walked quickly to the door and went out onto the enclosed filigreed-iron porch where Henry stood, three steps up from the street, in a black coat and hat. She pulled the door behind her, but when she looked back, she saw that Snowden had not moved from the place in the middle of the foyer.

“We’re being watched, Henry.” She tried to speak with composure and not to smile too much. The air came right through her thin shirt and chilled her skin. “So don’t do anything rash,” she added with a wink, and so playfully that she might almost have been encouraging the opposite.

“I have to talk to you,” he said. He was looking at her intensely, and his eyes were round with feeling. They were worried, sleepless eyes. She had found their separation to be so agonizing that it was almost a physical affliction, but now she saw that for Henry it had been much worse. She had heard that lack of gratification could be very hard on men, and she supposed that explained the difference.

“I can’t
now
, Henry,” she replied. She felt naughty, just standing with him this way in public, and she thought that she could hear his pulse even with so much space between them. It was getting harder by the second, standing right in front of him and not reaching out to touch his face. “There’s such news, and the house is full of activity. I will be missed now.”

“But Diana—” Henry took a step toward her, and she almost moved in to kiss him despite everything. But Snowden was still there in the hall—she could feel his eyes on them. She knew that she would betray herself some way if she went on talking to Henry, so she stepped away and put her hand on the door handle.

“Henry, come later. Come tonight. But if you stay now, you will only get me in trouble!” she hissed. Then she drew back the door, so that he would be unable to say more. He did go on looking at her, however, his dark eyes searching her with so much desire that she felt a little weak. That look made her feel so delightful that she couldn’t help but hold it a few seconds too long, before she stepped up and back into the house, ready to deceive Snowden a little more.

Several hours and a lot of talk later, Elizabeth emerged from Mrs. Holland’s bedroom and saw that Will was waiting for
her. Not in a place where he might have heard the conversation, but near her bedroom, so that she would know he was there when the discussion was over. They met in the middle of the hallway, where she took his hand and brought him into the servants’ stairs. It was all darkness there, and the ceiling was low. This was the path she had always taken to visit him, when desire had first begun to outweigh consequences, and before any decisions had to be made.

“What did she say to you?” Will asked finally.

“She gave us her blessing.” Elizabeth’s breath was broken, short, and loud in her own ears. There was so much relief to be found in seeing her mother alive, in seeing the family provided for by some act of providence, but she had also found it exhausting being so truthful in this house where she had once lied so impeccably. What she and Will did next was going to be real in a way it hadn’t been before, because she had proclaimed her intentions out loud. She pressed her forehead against his.

“Oh.” Will’s tone was as full of gratitude as if he had used actual words of thanks.

“Yes.” She was becoming aware of the salty liquid from her eyes and from her nose, collecting above her top lip. “She gave two conditions. The first was that we were to be married.”

Will pulled her tighter. She felt almost crushed against him, which was just as she wanted it.