"Rumors" - читать интересную книгу автора (Godbersen Anna)

Eight

HENRY HAD WATCHED DIANA’S STUBBORN LITTLE walk as she went away from him before, but he did not find any humor in it now. There had been other women, too, who had walked away from him, but at that point Henry had always already become bored with them and found his gaze focused in some new, more desirable direction. He didn’t want to look away now and so remained still, experiencing a sensation of loss that was new to him, and pitiful. He was grateful that Teddy, still at his side, allowed the moment to come to its sad end without words. The taste in his mouth was unbearably bitter.

Men in high collars and white tie were emerging from the boxes, and he realized that they must have reached the entr’acte. The men were off to find themselves a drink or perhaps a female companion whose delicate feelings, moved by the sweep of music, left her open to sweet-talking advances.

“Shall we?” Henry said, turning and meeting Teddy’s sea gray eyes.

“Shall we what?” Teddy answered.

There was a certain involuntary violence to the shrug of Henry’s shoulders that followed. He had never in his life experienced such a disconnect between the thing he wanted to do and the thing that he did do; for him his desires had always been a kind of moral compass that led him happily, unquestioningly, to ever more fantastic locations. He was not, like the stage hero, a lover of love. He had sought novelty and good times from his affairs. But in Diana he had found an object for his affections who was earthly beautiful but still light as air. She was as quick and ever changing and as game for anything as he was, but he had dismissed her, and she had not done anything to protest.

“To the bar?” was his eventual answer, and Teddy, like the old friend he was, led him there. The little bar was tucked in the back of the gentlemen’s smoking lounge, and old Sam with the drooping mustache waited there under the globe lights in his paisley waistcoat and black bow tie to give refugees from the chatter and surveillance of the boxes their much-needed respite.

“Two whiskey and waters,” Teddy said as they approached.

“No water for me.”

“All right, Mr. Schoonmaker,” Sam answered, with a knowing look. “Mr. Cutting, should I charge this to your box?”

“Yes, Sam, thank you.”

They leaned against the bar, and when their drinks came they raised them up. Henry sensed that Teddy wanted to say something, and after he’d placed the glass down on the bar and gestured for a refill, he turned to his friend. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Teddy ignored the irritation in Henry’s voice and responded with characteristic mildness. “You did the right thing.”

Henry nodded stiffly, conveying neither conviction nor disagreement. He would have to take Teddy’s word for it, since he himself had little to no experience with doing the right thing. He knew it didn’t feel good, though. Doing right was supposed to be its own reward, that was what his governesses always told him; it was supposed to fill one with inner light.

“It’s a simple thing for a man to forget his nature,” Teddy was saying, “to get lost in the present and forget how he was, and how he will be. But I know you, and I’m here to remind you what you’re like. You lose interest, Henry. Whatever you feel for Diana now, the chances that it will fade…and what will be left of her spirit when it does…you could ruin the Hollands, Henry, if you’re not careful.”

Henry acknowledged Sam as his glass was refilled. “You don’t know that.”

“No, I don’t,” Teddy said. He was rushing his words, and Henry knew that he felt bad. He was trying to justify it for both of them. “But I’m being cautious for you. You might think it could be all fun and games, but the way you’re connected…She’d need more from you than the random girl who catches your eye. There will be others, Henry, and if we were betting on it, my money’d be on your attention span for women growing shorter and not the other way around.”

Henry drank. He couldn’t argue with this, because it was speculative, and for a moment it even gave him heart. Indeed, his attention to any particular girl was famously short, and soon enough the rotten feeling he was currently experiencing would wane. There would be other distractions, and his life — the one he’d had before he became engaged to Elizabeth Holland — would resume. But, like the suggestion that he had done right, this line of thinking led nowhere, and he was left with the same desire to go to Diana and tell her he’d been an ass, that he hardly knew himself, that she had to forgive him, and a million other little thoughts that popped into his head.

“Elizabeth had restraint, but Diana’s too hot. If you make her love you, Henry, there’s no telling—”

“Teddy, can’t we just…” Henry interrupted, gesturing at the refilled glass at his elbow. It was his third or his fourth, he couldn’t remember anymore.

“Yes.”

They clinked classes dully and then finished the drinks in silence. The third act had already begun by the time they stumbled back to Box 23. The visiting between the boxes was in full swing, and no one was pretending to listen to the music anymore, except perhaps Diana Holland, situated with the Newburgs, whose box was in the middle of the grand horseshoe of boxes, on the first tier, where all the people like them sat. She inclined forward slightly, her shoulders uneven, her lips slightly parted, and she gazed at the singers on stage as though they were the ones responsible for crushing her heart.

Teddy was sitting behind Prudie and dutifully trying to make small talk, which was what Henry had told him he should do before they left the gentlemen’s salon. Prudence had recently turned seventeen, and it hadn’t made her any prettier — her appearance as well as her manners suggested many hours spent out of sunlight. Her replies were largely composed of single words, and Henry wondered if he had encouraged this particular conversation as some sort of punishment for Teddy. If his friend thought so, he certainly didn’t show it, and when he leaned back into his chair, he turned to Henry and said lightly, “Your sister does know a lot about the stage.”

Prudence turned her feral, dark eyes at Henry, making sure he’d caught that last bit.

Henry, who was having trouble focusing his eyes after the whiskey, murmured his assent. Then he looked across the great auditorium and saw Penelope Hayes. She was looking at him with a whisper of a smile, and when she saw that his gaze had fallen on her, she raised her eagle feather fan to the level of her eyes and beat it several times. He looked beyond her, down the wide vista of boxes, where ladies in pairs whispered to each other behind fans or peered through opera glasses while their male escorts, standing behind, offered dry asides. They were looking at him, he felt, scrutinizing him to see whether he looked sad enough about Elizabeth, wondering how broken he was, how long until they could again return to the epic topic of who would marry into the Schoonmaker fortune.

Henry raised his hand in what he intended as a sarcastic gesture, and called out “Hello!” loud enough for the Schoonmakers’ neighbors to hear. It was a cry for something Henry could scarcely begin to identify, but it didn’t really matter, since onstage the performance continued, and in the seats around him there was only silence.