TWENTY-SIX

Four Trunks, Washington, D.C., August 1922

INTERVENE? HOW EXACTLY?” CHARLES ASKED, BECAUSE HE COULD see from the subtle pucker between Antoinette’s eyebrows that she had a very specific idea in mind.

“Is there no one you can call?” Antoinette asked. “Mackenzie King. Or President Harding. Or better yet, ask Harding to call Mackenzie King.”

Charles was startled by his wife’s suggestion that he use his political influence to achieve such a deeply personal objective. But this was Antoinette asking, his own conscience, his trusted and intimate soul mate, and so he paused to consider the ramifications.

“This is not really a state matter.”

“I’m not sure that’s true,” she replied with an unfamiliar tightness in her voice. “If you don’t get Elizabeth to Banting, I can’t get on the boat to Brazil with you.”

In their thirty-four years of married life the longest time they had been apart was in the summer when Helen was dying. That was only for five days at a time and, had they needed to, they could have gotten to each other within hours. He could not seriously consider leaving for a month or more to sail to South America alone. She knew this. The starkness of her ultimatum took them both aback.

When he had taken the oath of office as secretary of state in the wake of the worst war in history, his biggest fear was that he would not be up to the task. He set a high standard for himself and for how he would serve, but it was Antoinette’s support that allowed him to uphold that standard. Antoinette managed their home and family to perfection so that he could undertake the enormous workload that the office had required of him, beginning with developing a plan for world disarmament. She protected him from distraction and worry, safeguarded his social calendar, kept him fed, and saw to it that his wardrobe was clean and complete. She had always spared him from having to choose between his commitment to his family and affairs of state, even when Helen was dying. Now she was asking him to return the favor.

“If you had seen her come off that ship—,” Antoinette choked back a sob. They both knew that time was running out for their youngest child. A cold, an ear infection, a skinned knee—virtually anything could send her into her final descent now. She weighed forty-eight pounds. That was twenty-seven pounds less than she weighed three years ago.

“Still, I can’t call a president or a prime minister.”

“Why not?”

Hughes knew that if he were to call Harding, he would intercede. Harding was virtually incapable of saying no to his friends. When he was a boy, his own father once told him that it was good that he had not been born “a gal,” or else he would have been “in the family way all the time.”

“Well, let us say that I do call President Harding. Harding would call Mackenzie King and King would call Sir Robert Falconer. Falconer would call Banting, and Banting would see Elizabeth. But Banting has already told you there is no insulin to give her.”

“All I ask is that a meeting be arranged between Dr. Banting and Elizabeth. Then I will leave the matter to God. Whether Dr. Banting gives Elizabeth insulin or not is out of our hands, but we must arrange the meeting. That much we can and must do.”

“But the problem is one of shortage, is it not? If so, then if Elizabeth receives insulin it may be at the cost of another child’s life.” Antoinette stared back in silence.

Throughout his professional and personal activities, Hughes had been guided by integrity and impartial commitment to the public weal. He was universally recognized by both the powerful and the powerless as being someone who could be counted on to do the right thing regardless of any circumstances or personal stakes that might lead him to do otherwise. He keenly felt the gravity of the public trust and held it sacred and himself a servant to it. He knew that Antoinette felt the same way.

“Are you asking me to allow my heart to direct affairs of state? Are you asking me to use political power to achieve a personal objective? Didn’t you marry me because I am the kind of man who has not and would not make such an error?”

Antoinette stared back in silence. A hundred thoughts raced through her tormented mind. Was it an error to do everything, everything possible to save your child’s life? She was not sure she could live through the pain of losing another child. She wondered if she could love Charles if he didn’t do everything he could to spare her from this.

“If you are asking me to do this, I will consider it.” He held her gaze for a long time, watching her carefully. “Are you asking?”

“I am asking,” she said in a barely audible voice. And then she went to bed.

A stillness settled over the house, like the eerie hush in the eye of a storm. Charles sat alone in the dark. He tried to imagine himself calling President Harding. Was this a public official pulling the strings of privilege or was it a father doing all that he could on behalf of his daughter? Was his responsibility to the principles he had sworn to abide by greater than his responsibility to his daughter? One was broad, the other deep. Which was the greater good? What exactly would he say to the president? Even if he did place the phone call, would there be time to arrange for Elizabeth to be placed in the care of the Toronto doctor before the SS Pan America sailed for Brazil on August 24?

Three hours later Antoinette came downstairs to find Charles sitting in his study staring at a five- by- seven-inch hand- colored photograph. She had the sense that he had not moved since she left him to go to bed. The photograph was of the house where he was born. It was a modest, one-story home with green shutters and three steps leading up to a front porch that wrapped narrowly around one side. He stared into the image of his childhood home and sounded the depths of his soul for the familiar certainty of his father’s voice. He was looking for something that wasn’t actually contained in the image at all: an answer. What would his father say to Antoinette’s request?

If only there were a way to stroll up Maple Street, over the freeze- crazed cement of that familiar sidewalk, under the leaf-flocked, nodding boughs of maples and elms, and up the three steps to the porch. There his father would be slumped in the rocking chair, half asleep, chin turned to the side as if muttering a secret to his shoulder, a copy of Maimonides’s Guide for the Perplexed open on his chest. Ironically, this was one of his favorite books, and yet David Charles Hughes never seemed in the least bit perplexed.

The elder Hughes had undertaken his own intellectual education; he was studious, well read, and self-taught. He took a special interest in Latin and Greek. In his later years, he studied Hebrew with a rabbi. Charles often heard him quote a favorite line from the Talmud: “Save one life, and save the world.”

Antoinette had not been sleeping these last hours. She had not even changed into her nightclothes. She had been busy preparing four lists of clothing, toiletries, and sundries. In the morning she would ask the maids to ready four trunks. The first would furnish Charles with all that would be necessary for the two-week trip to Brazil to attend the Brazilian centennial. This trunk would include formal attire for shipboard dinners and centennial festivities, summer-weight touring clothes for sightseeing and business attire for state meetings. The second trunk was to be for Elizabeth, to supply her with all that she would need for her experimental treatment in Toronto, including the cornflower blue sweater that she had knitted while in Bermuda, film for her camera, stationery and her ever-expanding collection of books and scrapbooks. The third and fourth trunks would both be for her. One would prepare her to join her husband aboard the Pan America; the other would prepare her to accompany Elizabeth and Blanche to Toronto.

Antoinette stood at the door to her husband’s study. “You say you cannot call a president or a prime minister. Well, I have another proposal.”

Charles nodded. Antoinette took a deep breath.

“Insulin has been discovered by Dr. Frederick Banting at The University of Toronto,” she began. “The University of Toronto received a million-dollar grant from the Rockefeller Foundation,” she continued, studying her husband’s impassive expression. “We attended the same church as the Rockefellers. You served on the board of trustees of the church with both John D. Rockefeller and John D. Rockefeller Jr. You started the Sunday school class that John D. Rockefeller Jr. now teaches.”

“What of the impact on Elizabeth, years from now, knowing that her life had been spared at the expense of the life of another child?”

“Let Elizabeth live to grapple with that conflict.” She argued. “Let Elizabeth choose.” He shook his head. “God placed you in a position of influence.” She persisted.

“Because God trusted me not to abuse it.”

“God gave you legs, is using them unfair to the lame? Think of the parable of the talents. It’s a sin not to use the gifts God provides. Please think about it.”

“I will do nothing else but think about it.”

Antoinette went back upstairs to the bedroom. It was now nearly dawn. She might still get an hour or two of sleep.

Apparently Charles had meant what he said quite literally. When she dressed and came down the stairs the next morning, he was still staring into the photographic image, where the rocking chair remained motionless and empty on the front porch, locked in silvery emulsion. In busy-ness was salvation, at least that had always been his credo. It unnerved her to see him so still for so long, lost in the deep whorls of his bright and terrible mind.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Good morning,” he said. “Aside from the meeting with Banting, do you have any other requirements that must be met before you are free to accompany me to Brazil on the twenty-fourth?”

“Yes,” she said. “There must be some kind of two–way communication with Elizabeth while we are at sea. Morse code, radio telephone, wireless, carrier pigeon . . . something.”

This seemed to him completely outlandish. Even the secretary of state could not speed the pace of technological advance. But he only bowed his head.

“Is there anything else?”

“No.”

Charles Evans Hughes could not bring himself to call Rockefeller or Harding or Mackenzie King. But that day he did call President Falconer. They had corresponded a few times after Falconer had tried to arrange for Hughes to speak at Toronto. Hughes sat and stared at the telephone for an entire hour before lifting the receiver. In one sense, it was a phone call. In another, it was a shattering breach of moral code, an act the person he was could not possibly, would not ever perform. Except for one thing: Antoinette had asked him to.