FOUR
BEATRICE
Paris
July 1914
When going to war, one should begin with a new hat.
For gentlemen, a helmet is best. For ladies, something more magnificent is required. Thus, I had donned a glorious ostrich feather–plumed cartwheel, attracting stares when I swept into the lobby of the American Hospital in Neuilly. There hadn’t been time to meet with my personal vendeuse, of course, but a stop at the milliner’s had been a necessity. I couldn’t very well fight for my marriage wearing last season’s draped silk toque!
My husband’s telegram had said very little. Only that after having hurt his leg in France, he’d require surgery. The newspapers were no help either. Each told a different story about my husband’s injury. Fiery automotive crash. Trampled by racehorses. A duel gone horribly wrong. With a man as famously reckless as William Astor Chanler—millionaire soldier-adventurer—nothing beggared belief. And, of course, Willie liked to keep the world guessing, me along with it.
For my part, I took the telegram about his impending surgery as the sign I’d been waiting for to do something about the state of my marriage, so I’d boarded the first steamship for France. Unfortunately, much of New York high society did the same every summer, which is why I was recognized at the hospital reception desk. A rather awestruck American gentleman with a walrus mustache doffed his cap. “Hello, my dear! Why, I haven’t seen you since your days on Broadway . . .”
I didn’t remember him, but I had many admirers in those days, so I batted my eyelashes in the way that used to make men quiver, and twirled my lace parasol in satisfaction when it had the desired effect. “You were wonderfully funny,” the old gent continued. “What was that song? Rhoda and Her Pagoda . . . Marvelous musical comedy. You were brilliant in that role.”
“Yes, I was, wasn’t I?” I leaned in to confide, “But now I’m playing the part of Mrs. William Astor Chanler. My most challenging role to date!”
The gentleman guffawed.
I’d said it only partly in jest. After all, I’d married an Astor. As everyone knew, the Astors’ grand ballroom had a capacity of four hundred people, and if you weren’t one of those four hundred, then you weren’t anyone. Thus, transforming myself from ambitious actress into high-society maven fit for a descendant of America’s first multimillionaire was my greatest theatrical achievement. And now it was time for a second act. “I’m here to visit my husband in the hospital, you see . . .”
“How is the old chap?” asked the gentleman, his mustache twitching with curiosity. “We’ve all heard about the accident. Damnable thing. Boxing match, was it?”
I had no choice but to smile mysteriously. “Something like that.”
“Well, I wish your mister a speedy recovery.” He reached inside his coat pocket for a notebook. “I say, though, would you mind—my granddaughter collects autographs.”
I’ve always found the lure of appreciation irresistible, but then the old gent put a dent in my pride. “I’ve heard you’re dabbling in sculpture these days . . .”
Dabbling. That’s what everyone thought women did. Not wishing to make the usual self-deprecating remark, I signed with a flourish, then extricated myself quickly. “So sorry to rush off!”
Truthfully, I was in a rush, because I didn’t want to give myself time to think better of my decision. I was going to tell Willie that after five years of living separate lives, I missed him. I still loved him. And I meant to take care of him after his surgery until he was well again. After that, well, I’d give up my respectable life in New York and live with him as a vagabond if that’s what he wished. From now on, if the boys and I must follow him into the desert sands of Libya or up the snowy summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, well, then that’s what we’d do. Because a family ought to be together.
I rehearsed this speech as I marched to my husband’s private hospital room, my high-heeled lace-up boots tapping on the tile floor. And my heartbeat quickened in anticipation of how surprised Willie would be by my unexpected visit. I didn’t expect him to apologize for his long absence and neglect. William Astor Chanler was not the sort of man to smite his brow and cry, Forgive me everything, my darling. Let’s devote ourselves to marriage and try, this time, for a little girl to add to our growing brood.
No. That sort of thing happened only in maudlin plays. Not even the good ones. Willie was of that older generation of men who loathed to reveal a weakness; he’d have to be on his deathbed before he uttered the words forgive me, so my expectations on that score were low.
But even with well-managed expectations, I was still caught unawares when I pushed open the door to find my supine husband with a young lady, her hands stroking his cheeks.
I froze. The young lady had Gibson girl hair and an hourglass figure perfectly suited to her ridiculously impractical hobble skirt, which forced her to take dainty, mincing steps of retreat. Meanwhile, Willie wore a bashful flush of scarlet upon his neck, obviously trying not to glance at the open doorway, where the young lady lingered far too long before finding the grace to flee.
It might be serious, then, I thought.
A harlot would’ve made herself instantly scarce. Harlots, like actresses, plied a trade. I might’ve understood a harlot. I might’ve forgiven a harlot. A mistress was an altogether different sort. Torn between wanting to stab my husband with my lace parasol and bursting into tears, I did neither. I was, after all, not a naïf. I knew how the world worked. Women of society did not cause scenes over infidelity. That would be considered quite lowborn. And because my husband was quite highborn, he could make my life a misery if he wished to.
I knew the rules of the game. In high society, a husband could keep a mistress while the wife kept his name. And his money too. I should be glad of that, even if it wounded me to think that after being pursued by so many men, I should now be rejected by the only man I ever really wanted. What I did next—what I said next—might ruin everything if I wasn’t careful, so I couldn’t allow a crack to show. Fortunately, I was still an excellent actress. “How did it happen, darling? I’d like to know how bad it really is.”
Willie didn’t seem to know if I was asking about the young lady or his elevated leg. Deciding he’d rather talk about the latter, he thumped his thigh just above his knee with the kind of bravado for which he’d earned his fame. “Which story would you like better, Beatrice? An old injury from the Spanish-American War? Maybe a bear trap. Perhaps a mysterious flare-up of a disease I picked up years ago exploring Zanzibar?”
“The unadorned truth will suit me.”
“Since when?” Given the twinkle in his dark eyes, I didn’t know if he was flirting, trying to bait me into a quarrel, or both. That sort of game used to make for an intoxicating cocktail when we were younger and our tempers sizzled with passion. In the early days of our courtship, we amused each other with the seemingly infinite variety of shapes we could take on at a whim—actress, sculptress, patriot, writer, adventurer, soldier, politician. Oh, the outrageous tales we spun! Both a little reckless and wild, we used to quote from Much Ado About Nothing.
Let me be that I am and seek not to alter me . . .
But of course children alter everything. And now, after ten years of marriage, he was using our old game to put a barrier between us.
You left me to gad off on adventures, I wanted to say. You left me alone with two small children and a flotilla of judgmental in-laws, and now you might’ve taken a mistress. Surely I have some right to know what the devil you’ve done to your leg . . .
I advanced on him, ready to open fire, but then I noticed how shockingly thin he’d become. He had the pasty pallor of morphine—eyes bloodshot with pain—and I began to fear. “Tell me how dangerous this surgery is.”
He shrugged. “They hoped to mend the shattered bone, but the doctor today discovered a blood clot, and if they don’t take it out, it’ll stop my heart.”
I sank down onto the chair at his bedside, nearly upending the candlestick telephone there. I was still angry, but this man was the father of my sons. That trumped my jealousy of the Gibson girl, who had hopefully minced off to put the final nail in the coffin of someone else’s marriage. “You should’ve told me how serious your injury was. Thank goodness I took the first steamer.”
“There was no point worrying you. You shouldn’t have made the trip.”
Oh, that stung. “I know you like your independence, Willie, but doesn’t a man need his family when he’s in poor health? The boys would like to see you.”
We exchanged several minutes of conversation about the children, during which he showed a more genuine interest than expected. I sometimes had to remind myself that Willie and his siblings had been orphaned young and left to raise themselves at the family estate, rather like a pack of very rich and spoiled wolf pups. He hadn’t any example of parenthood after which to model his fathering. And now he said, “You shouldn’t have taken them out of school.”
“It’s summer, darling,” I reminded him. “Besides, I’ve always loved France. The quaint bistros. The orchards and vineyards made a splendid romantic playground for us, don’t you remember?”
It seemed important to maintain a steady flow of chatter and remind him of happier days. To remind myself that I was still his wife. Because if I was no longer that, then who would I be?
Ours, after all, had been a love match.
I’d been onstage playing in San Toy when I noticed Willie in the front row. Those intense dark eyes. That boyish face. His gleaming devil-may-care smile. I’d danced that night just for him.
He’d come back the next night. And the next. But despite having the swagger of the big game hunter he was, it took Willie five performances before he worked up the nerve to introduce himself backstage. Then I couldn’t get rid of him. Not that I’d wanted to. Remembering it now made my heart squeeze so painfully beneath my lace shirtwaist, it was difficult to breathe, and I did not think it was the pinch of my whalebone corset. The truth was, I had loved William Astor Chanler. I had loved him for himself and not his money, and I loved him still.
The trouble was that at the moment, I no longer wished for him to know it.
I turned, pretending interest in the newspaper, which was opened to an article about the recent assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his poor wife, for whom I felt enormously sorry. What, after all, had she done to deserve it but marry above her station? Waving at the headlines, Willie said, “That’s another reason you shouldn’t have come.”
I narrowed my eyes in alarm. “Why—you didn’t have something to do with it, did you?”
He actually grinned. “I’m a sharpshooter, Beatrice, but even my aim’s not so good that I can shoot an archduke in Sarajevo from a hospital bed in Paris.”
It really wasn’t such an outlandish thing for me to have asked. After all, many men fancy themselves to be of world consequence, but my husband actually was. Willie had been funding, arming, and even riding into battle alongside freedom fighters of various nations before I’d ever met him. Like his friend Theodore Roosevelt, Willie had fought heroically in the Spanish-American War. He’d also tried to overthrow a dictatorship in Venezuela, and had personally led cavalry troops in the Italo-Turkish War. He lived by the philosophy that Americans ought to help those who wanted a say in their own governments. When you have a philosophy like that, you’ve got to put up or shut up. That’s what he told me when he invited Sun Yat-sen onto our yacht for a chat about overthrowing the Qing dynasty.
Since then, I’d simply come to accept as a matter of course that if a revolution broke out in the world somewhere, Willie might be involved. Now, with mounting anxiety, I said, “I noticed that you didn’t actually answer my question. Even if you didn’t shoot the archduke yourself . . .”
My husband looked amused. “I had nothing to do with it. I don’t even wish I did. It was a damned fool thing to do, one that could cause a war between Austria and Serbia.”
His tone carried the additional implication that I had been a damned fool for coming to Europe under such circumstances. In my defense, I said, “Well, I couldn’t have known someone would be assassinated when I boarded the ship, and I’ll be sure not to visit Austria or Serbia until this blows over.”
“The danger is wider than that region,” Willie said, and I knew that once he started lecturing there was no stopping him. “We’re all dancing on a delicate spiderweb of alliances these days. Tug one thread and it could unravel. If either Germany or Russia intervenes, the fight could spread across Europe.”
Willie was always thinking ten moves ahead on the international chessboard with a brilliance that bordered on paranoia. It helped him relive his glory days as a congressman and a Rough Rider. Made him forget that he was now nearing fifty and that his glory days were over. In fact, I was beginning to suspect the mystery about his leg was just a ruse to keep anybody from realizing he was getting old.
Perhaps he had tripped over a curb like an ordinary mortal and it was to put me off the scent that he finally said, “It isn’t anything serious with the girl, you know . . .”
“Oh, well then, I feel so much better!”
In response to my sarcasm, Willie smoothed his bedsheet. “I have vices, but I’m not a fool.”
Neither was I. Unlike his famously loony brothers, Willie didn’t have a weakness for women, but I doubted he’d been celibate in the years we’d lived apart. Until now, I simply hadn’t wanted to know . . .
As if reading my mind, he said, “I’m not bedding that little chippie.”
I should’ve felt more relieved. Why didn’t I? Perhaps I didn’t believe him. Or perhaps it was simply less painful to think Willie had succumbed to temptations of the flesh than to accept that he found my presence so tiresome that he preferred to keep an ocean between us.
“She was caressing your face,” I pointed out.
“She was studying my face.”
I gave a delicate snort.
“She’s an artist,” he said. “Mr. McAdams is making a bust of me, and she’s his assistant.”
At hearing this, a new and more powerful surge of anger sent me shooting to my feet. “You commissioned someone else to sculpt you?”
Willie held up a hand to fend off my tirade, but I jabbed a finger into his palm, quaking from the heels of my boots to the tip of my ostrich plume. “See here, Willie Chanler: I studied under Victor Salvatori. My pieces are on display at the National Academy of Design! I carved a four-hundred-foot bas-relief frieze in the lobby of the Vanderbilt Hotel for you—”
“I convinced you to do it!”
“That’s not the point. You know how important sculpture has become to me since leaving the stage. When we married, you promised I wouldn’t be just one more society lady who plays bridge-whist and attends tango teas.”
“You’re the Queen of the Social Register, and you love every minute of it.”
Again, that damnable smile of his. All confidence and smolder. I simply refused to let it make me soft in the head. “Be that as it may, you posing for some other artist is like taking out an advertisement to denigrate the talent of your own wife.”
“Then maybe it’s time we let more people know we’re separated.”
His words were such a slap to the face that I blinked. Years before, we’d come to an amicable arrangement to live apart, but since then we’d enjoyed more than a few reconciliatory trysts. Besides, I’d come to fight for my marriage, and I wasn’t ready to surrender. “I’m still your wife,” I snapped, wondering why the devil he wanted a bust carved of himself anyway. Busts were for posterity. Busts of living people seemed pretentious and—
“Oh, Willie . . . you’re frightened about the surgery, aren’t you?”
“I’m not frightened of anything.”
I used to believe that. Now, staring at his jutted chin, I wasn’t sure. I was frightened for him and knew I must retreat before I let it show. “Well, you obviously need your rest. I’ll bring the boys in the morning.”
“I’d rather you didn’t. Little boys don’t relish hospital visits. Take a trip to Le Touquet and rent a cottage on the beach. Keep them active; toughen them up a bit.”
“Ah, the Roman father speaks.” This was, after all, an old quarrel. “Shall I leave our boys on a windswept crag and see if they survive?”
His brow furrowed. “Stuff them with pralines and petit fours if you want, but don’t bring the boys here tomorrow. Or the next day, or the day after that. It’s going to be a difficult surgery, and the recovery will be worse. Do you think I want my sons to see me like this? I don’t.” I was too dumbstruck by this outburst to interrupt, which may have encouraged him to add, “And tell the Chapmans not to visit me either.”
The Chapmans—his sister Elizabeth, her husband, Jack, and our nephew Victor—wouldn’t like this news, and I was indignant that Willie expected me to deliver it. “Is there anyone else in the family you’d like me to wound for you?”
His expression softened. “In a month or two when I’m back on my feet, we’ll have a family reunion. I’m confident you can enjoy France without me in the meantime. Tell the boys their father loves them.”
With that, I understood myself to be dismissed. My husband wished to face this dangerous battle without me. Or perhaps with the curvaceous sculptor’s assistant. Either way, I wasn’t wanted, so I rose, intent upon escape from abject humiliation.
That’s when he caught my wrist. “Bea . . .” He stroked the place where my glove gave way to the skin of my arm. “You still have the prettiest, most expressive blue eyes . . . bluer than Capri’s grotto on a sunny day . . . astonishing, really.”
He hesitated, as if he meant to say more. I hoped he’d changed his mind and would ask me to stay . . . but he only said, “I look forward to seeing those baby blues again when the morphine isn’t clouding my head, and then we’ll discuss important matters.”
“Your uncle is impossible,” I said, fanning myself against both marital outrage and the summer heat of the outdoor café of the Ritz, where ladies in silk hats gossiped and bewhiskered gentlemen hid behind newspapers. “Absolutely impossible.”
My nephew Victor folded his farm-boy frame into one of the bistro chairs and chuckled indulgently. “I’ve long wondered how you put up with him.”
What choice did I have? I had, after all, married up. Even if my married life was an insufferable farce, I’d be expected to put up with everything short of divorce—even by my favorite nephew.
At the age of twenty-four, Victor had the kind of sensitive, artistic nature that meant the world was going to chew him up and spit him out if he didn’t have a worldly champion. That had always been me—I’d been the one to steer him to study architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris when his parents suggested a career in watercolors wasn’t the best path for a Harvard graduate.
I simply adored Victor and didn’t even count it amongst his faults that he worshipped my husband and tended to take his side. “You must realize Uncle Willie has always been like this. It’s family legend that he’d never come home crying with a black eye as a child. He’d just crawl off into a dark corner like a wounded animal.”
“Well, I’m happy to let your uncle Willie lick his wounds.” Especially since I needed to crawl off somewhere to lick my own. I’d stayed in Paris until my husband was out of surgery. Now that his condition was stable, I was eager to join my little cherubs at the beach, where I’d sent them with their governess. And I intended for Victor to come along.
When he balked, I wiped lipstick I’d left on his cheek when I kissed him in greeting and reminded him, “No one stays in Paris in August. And you’re looking so dapper in that gray flannel and boater that you’re sure to make a splash with my lady friend.”
Victor, who had been perusing the menu, lowered it to peer at me. “What lady friend?”
“The one who will be joining us shortly for tea.”
Victor groaned. “You’re matchmaking again, aren’t you?”
“Of course I am.” Until I could do something about my own love life, I might as well meddle in someone else’s. A dreamy sort like Victor needed a practical wife to manage things—and I had just the girl in mind. “You’re going to adore Miss Sloane. A most charming creature, pretty in a natural way . . . a modern girl, just your age, here in France on business for her father.”
I’d met Miss Sloane at a charity gala in New York when some self-important socialite snubbed her. I’d taken her under my wing ever since. As the heiress to the W. & J. Sloane rugs and furniture fortune, Miss Sloane was often spurned in our circles for being New Money, but since my nephew was Old Money, it would all even out.
Still, Victor looked skeptical. “Why, pray tell, is this paragon still unmarried?”
“Because she was sensible enough to wait for you, darling!”
In truth, the Sloane family name had been tainted by scandal since the sensational divorce of Emily’s parents attracted the poisoned pen of Edith Wharton in mockery. In the divorce settlement, Emily’s mother had faced a choice between keeping her children or her lover.
She’d chosen the lover.
Poor Emily Sloane—deprived of a mother since the tender age of six—could scarcely have entertained the idea that true love was possible, but I felt confident Victor could change her mind.
Practical-minded girls adore sensitive, poetic young men, after all . . .
Now, through the crowd, Miss Sloane approached, and though her hat was two seasons old, she’d dressed sensibly for the heat in white chiffon. By way of greeting, she waved her newspaper and said, “The world has gone mad!”
Ignoring the bold headlines and the danger of war they portended, I said, “Miss Sloane, I don’t believe you’ve met my nephew.”
Having stood to greet her, he now tipped his hat. “Victor Chapman.”
“Emily Sloane,” she replied, displaying no apparent distress to be seen without a speck of rouge by an eligible bachelor.
Victor cleared his throat. “I hope you don’t mind my joining you for tea. My aunt Bea is—”
“Positively dying of thirst.” While my nephew held out Miss Sloane’s seat and summoned a waiter, I smiled. “Isn’t this a magnificent hotel? I adore the classical style. Which reminds me—did I mention that Victor is studying to be an architect?”
“How interesting,” said Miss Sloane.
She did not sound at all interested.
And my nephew looked as if he wished to kick me under the table.
Relieved at the arrival of cold lemonade, I took a long drink. Then Victor had the good grace to ask the dark-haired, sloe-eyed Miss Sloane about her visit to Paris. And with an elfin grin she told him, in rather dizzying detail, about her efforts to purchase fine carpeting and antiques for lavishly outfitting a new steamship under budget. When the idiosyncratic young lady began rattling off figures, I interrupted. “Goodness, this lemonade is refreshing in such hot weather. I was just telling Victor he should join us at the beach.”
My nephew cleared his throat again. “And I was just about to tell Aunt Bea now might not be the best time for Americans to leave Paris.”
Now I wished to kick him, but Miss Sloane finally gave him her full attention. “I did hear that Paris troops are confined to barracks . . .”
Victor shrugged. “All I know is Austria has declared war on Serbia, Russia is mobilizing, and France—”
“Oh, not to worry, darlings!” I broke in. “All the powers of Europe can’t go to war over the shooting of one measly archduke.”
I’ve never been so wrong about anything in my life.
For by the time we started on strawberry ice cream, the clocks had chimed four, and the bewhiskered gentlemen in the café began clustering together under the string lights, murmuring almost in concert.
I squinted. “What in the blue blazes?”
We didn’t have to go far to learn what was happening. Outside, French soldiers tacked up mobilization notices and youths flooded the streets waving the tricolor, yelling, “Vive la France!”
“The ambassador says there’s no cause for alarm,” my husband said without preamble, having rung me up at my hotel straightaway. “The steamship lines are canceling sailings, but Americans will be able to leave at some later date.”
At some later date? There were worse places to be stranded than Paris, but I felt a powerful maternal pang. “I need to get the children—or have their governess bring them back from the beach.”
“Not possible,” Willie said. “There isn’t a cab, carriage, or train compartment anywhere in France that isn’t ferrying soldiers. Worse, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a merchant who will accept a letter of credit. I’ll send my man over with some gold coins, but the boys are better off where they are; what you need to do is go directly to the embassy and apply for an emergency passport.”
I didn’t remember Americans needing a passport in France before. How serious this all was becoming. I might still want to throttle my husband, but there was no one’s advice I’d rather have with danger in the air. That Willie had called me straightaway had to mean something, didn’t it? Or maybe I was grasping at straws.
In any case, I did as I was told.
The sidewalk was overrun by a shocking number of people watching cavalry officers in shiny crested helmets riding their whinnying chargers down the Champs-Élysées. Then followed men carrying coats folded in the bandoulière style. These were sons, husbands, and fathers; their mothers, wives, and daughters trailed after, not wanting to lose sight of them. I knew that if not for Willie’s leg, he might’ve been marching to war with them . . .
By the time I reached the American embassy, I felt swept up in the emotions of it all, nearly weepy, and not just because the line of American tourists was already fifty-deep. Some clutched jewels they hoped to pawn if the embassy couldn’t cash their letters of credit, and I began to feel true alarm.
In line, I spotted Miss Sloane, who had stopped at a bakery, and she offered me a pastry from the box. “I’m worried for my lady’s maid. She’s of German birth.”
“For goodness’ sake, don’t tell anyone else that,” I replied, tearing into a croissant. “Should I feel guilty enjoying these? They’re a Viennese invention, and since Austrians started all this . . .”
It was my way to make light of bad situations—to make people laugh when I wanted to cry—because I’d learned young that pity has a half-life. That’s why hats and humor had become my armor.
Fortunately, Miss Sloane was not put off by my irreverence. “You might as well enjoy the croissants now. The bakers are being regulated to guarantee a bread supply. I suppose we’ll only be able to eat boulot and demi-fendu.”
“If we can afford them,” I mused.
Emily took a deep breath. “I don’t know whether to be terrified or exhilarated. I’ve never been without money a day in my life. Have you?”
I was nearly upset enough to tell her the truth. Fortunately one of Willie’s friends at the embassy recognized me and waved us to the front. But even when I was at the head of the line, Miss Sloane’s question still echoed in my mind, dredging up memories I’d taken care to bury.
“Name?” asked the officious clerk who was typing up information for the emergency passports. The question seemed simple. But names had never been a simple matter for me. I was still Mrs. William Astor Chanler—but after my confrontation with Willie in his hospital room, I was more aware than ever that it was yet another name that could be taken from me.
“Beatrice Winthrop Chanler,” I said. It still sounded as nice as the day I made it up.
The clerk suspected nothing. He didn’t even look up from the typewriter. “Birth date?”
I was tempted to say, Just see Who’s Who. I’d gotten away with that before, but given the serious circumstances, I chose a date close enough to the truth not to shatter my vanity. “May 7, 1883.”
Then the clerk asked, “Occupation?”
And that was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Perspiration pooled between my shoulder blades as I wrestled with an answer. I wasn’t a stage actress anymore. And since Willie and I didn’t live together, I couldn’t say I was a housewife. Perhaps I was simply a mother, but at the moment, my boys were too far away for me to comfort them, and I felt rather a failure at mothering too. Truly, I hadn’t expected an emergency passport application to bring about an existential crisis, but how precisely was a woman in my circumstances to answer such a question?
The clerk blinked vapidly. “Most women leave it blank.”
“Oh, do they?” I held the brim of my daisy-ornamented picture hat against a growing wind. “I daresay women keep ourselves more occupied than most men. I’ll have you know that I am a sculptress.”
It wasn’t the only thing I was, and certainly not the only thing I wished to be, but at the moment it was the only identity to which I could proudly lay claim, so I said this with the greatest hauteur of which I was capable . . . which made it more irritating when the visionless functionary simply granted the emergency passport with a stamp.
That errand complete, I wanted to set out straightaway to get my children. Unfortunately, Willie was right; I couldn’t hire a motor or carriage, nor even buy one. Even the bicycles were gone. Everything had been requisitioned. Everything. Worse, all the lines to the northern shore had been cut, so I couldn’t get a call through. In the space of days, my concerns had gone from marital trouble and idle matchmaking to worrying that my shy, stuttering, ten-year-old Billy and my precocious seven-year-old Ashley might be trapped between advancing armies. The fear was eating me alive.
Barging into my husband’s hospital room, I demanded to know, “What’s America going to do about this?”
“Nothing,” Willie said. “President Wilson just declared neutrality. He could nip German aggression in the bud—make America a real player and save lives—but he’s a lickspittle.”
I shared his opinion but didn’t have the chance to say so, because he fumed, “I told you not to come back until I was on my feet. I was quite explicit with my orders against hovering at my hospital bedside.”
My husband’s leg was now in a wire cage, and he looked feverish, so I dabbed at his forehead with a cold cloth. “Fortunately for you, I’m not a soldier to be ordered about.”
“Wives are also supposed to obey. It was in the vows.”
“Oh, are we going to be sticklers about our wedding vows now?”
He flushed, probably thinking I was referencing the forsaking all others bit, but I was thinking more about until death do us part . . .
“What do you want, Beatrice?”
“I’m worried about the boys.”
“Then you shouldn’t have brought them into a war zone.”
I scowled. “It wasn’t a war zone when I brought them here, and you shouldn’t have told me to send them to the beach. I’m not leaving until you think of a way to get them back. Because if you can’t rescue our boys, William Astor Chanler, then there’s really no point in being you.”
It took him two weeks. Two weeks in which he pointedly did not wish to discuss our marital situation. Two weeks in which he revealed to me a certain fatalism that he said he’d picked up fighting with Arabs. He spoke of unavoidable destiny—but I’d always made my own fortune. So I took to sketching him in his hospital room, portraying him as two-faced Janus, one half light and the other dark, until the morning he tossed a letter into my lap. “Here. Take this to the embassy. I’ve called in a favor to get the boys.”
With a cry of relief, I abandoned my sketchbook, leapt up, and threw my arms around his neck, kissing his cheek. He didn’t seem to mind. In fact, his smile was wry. “Maybe there’s still some point in being me, after all.”
The next day the ambassador’s town car was put at my disposal—Stars and Stripes fluttering on the front fenders as the driver took me up the coast. I’ll never forget my anxiety as we tried to get past the horse-drawn supply wagons that clopped along behind the allied British Expeditionary Force. When we finally pulled up to the cottage where my boys were staying, I called to them frantically, and they came tumbling down the sand-swept stairs, leaping into my embrace. I kissed their little heads, and they tasted like salt from the sea. I stroked their sunburnt cheeks and squeezed them as if I could never get my fill.
We returned to Paris just long enough for the boys to see their father—oh, let Willie rail against me for bringing them to the hospital, there was no time to argue, for the kaiser’s forces were now within sixteen miles of Paris, and I meant for us all to leave France as a family. Once the boys had kissed their father, I sent them to wait in the hall and whispered, “This war is a disaster! The Allies are losing.”
“Yes, and I don’t want you caught in it,” Willie said. “I’ve arranged for the family to take the last civilian train out of Paris.”
I nodded gratefully. “Where can we get you some crutches? Or will you have to be carried?”
“I’m not going with you.”
I startled. “Are you too ill to be moved?”
Willie sat upright on the hospital bed. “To the contrary. I’m almost good as new. In fact, as soon as this cage is off my leg, I’m going to the front to take a look at the fighting for myself.”
“Willie, there are rules against civilians doing that.”
He grinned. “You know that rules don’t apply to me.”
I didn’t grin, because as usual, my husband did whatever he wanted, and all family responsibilities were left to me. I wanted to break his other leg to keep him from going to play at the front lines while leaving me to get our children to safety, but I didn’t argue, because the barbarians were at the gate and our marital problems seemed small in a world at war.
It was my nephew who escorted me and my little entourage onto the crowded train. We were a party of five, including the governess. And I was incredibly relieved to see Miss Sloane waiting on the platform with her lady’s maid, a single suitcase between them.
“Thank you for getting word to Miss Sloane,” I told Victor. “You’ve put my mind at ease and increased your romantic prospects.”
“I doubt there’s going to be anything romantic about this trip,” he said. With passengers packed like sardines, it was to be a grueling journey—one made worse when we realized that we were going north. Not away from the fighting, but toward it.
When I learned this, I asked, “Good heavens, why?”
“The conductor says it’s military reasons,” Victor replied. “The train has government officials on board and must make a flying trip to Amiens before returning south again to Bordeaux.”
Something about the sight of so many blue-uniformed soldiers and grim public officials put Victor in a melancholy mood. “To think that at school, I frittered away extra hours with no-account pastimes . . . but with the war on, every single one of these Frenchmen seems to have a real sense of purpose.”
Miss Sloane nodded sympathetically, though she had the no-nonsense bearing of a woman who had never frittered away an extra hour in her life. “I suppose a terrible clarity must descend when your country and loved ones are in danger.”
Terrible clarity indeed, I thought as I fashioned a bed for my exhausted children on a train bench, making a pillow with my traveling coat. This was the first hardship my sleepy little darlings had ever endured, and I felt miserably guilty for having exposed them to it. Much more so when, after many hours, we witnessed a scene straight out of hell.
The train station in Amiens was overrun with wounded soldiers fresh from the battlefield. Some screamed on stretchers; others lay unmoving, possibly dead. And I realized with growing horror that many weren’t soldiers at all, but civilians. Our train car had to be swapped out, so we were forced onto the platform, where soldiers rushed past, some limping, some collapsing in a heap of blood-soaked bandages.
The governess and I did our best to shield my boys. I pulled their little faces against me while Victor used our luggage to build them a little fortress that blocked their view. “Now, keep guard, boys, stay at your posts,” he said.
How grateful I was for his help, and I wondered where Miss Sloane had gone. I turned to see her giving water to a wounded English soldier. “What happened to you, sir?” she asked.
“Germans came at night into the trenches, miss. My entire regiment was wiped out but for seven of us. They killed even those who surrendered.”
I didn’t have the words to express my naive shock at such uncivilized behavior, even in war.
“Not even the worst of it,” said a bandaged private with a musical Welsh accent. “German troops pushed refugees ahead of ’em on the attack. Imagine hiding behind women and children and still calling yourself a man.”
I realized now just how many children were amongst the wounded. I caught a glimpse of a girl in a polka-dot dress that had been stained by her own blood, and as a Red Cross nurse worked over her, I couldn’t seem to look away. My God, how did these little ones get caught up in the fighting? I didn’t want to believe the kaiser’s troops were so cruel, but the soldiers all had stories of brutality to tell. What’s more, they all insisted they were going back into the fight as soon as they got patched up. “We have to stop the Huns, no matter the cost. These people have no defense but us.”
This heroic sentiment made it impossible to complain about thirst or hunger or exhaustion. Not when I saw so many wide-eyed, shivering, and traumatized children. A soot-stained lad in a newsboy cap huddled by the tracks, and another boy with a bloody eye dragged a sack almost as big as he was. Then I saw her. I saw Minnie in a tattered dress, clinging to a broken doll, tears streaming down gaunt cheeks. I blinked, startled, but when I opened my eyes again, she was gone . . . and in her place was a little lost French girl.
I was suddenly desperate to take all these children away from this place, take them with us on the train, but the conductors weren’t accepting anyone not on the manifest. This wasn’t my war—I wasn’t even a citizen of this country—yet it filled me with an overwhelming sense of shame to save my own skin while abandoning these innocents. One glance at Miss Sloane, and I knew she felt the same way. Victor, even more so. While he helped the conductor load our luggage, I called to him, “Don’t forget your bag.”
That’s when he told me, “I’m staying behind.”
My heart seemed to stop inside my chest. “What?”
There on that ghastly train platform, Victor set his square jaw. “I’ve decided to enlist in the French Foreign Legion.”
Grabbing his arm, I cried, “Don’t be rash! At least talk to your parents . . .”
Victor slung his bag over one shoulder. “I know what they’ll say. They’ll say that as an American I haven’t any duty to fight. They’ll say I have my studies—”
“All important points!” I argued.
“Aunt Bea, look around. Some of these children are younger than your boys. They’ve just seen their homes blown to smithereens. I don’t think God would wish me to turn a blind eye. Uncle Willie would enlist, if he could.”
“Well, he can’t,” I said sharply. My husband was a hardened adventurer with an even harder head to keep him safe. Victor was a sweet boy, a student, entirely unprepared for military life. I tried to make him see reason. “If you’re determined to enlist, there isn’t any hurry. Why not make sure your affairs are in order?”
“I only need to make sure that you’ll be all right without me. That you can get the boys to Bordeaux and onto a ship back home.”
Never before had I so wished to play the helpless damsel in distress.
Before I could, Miss Sloane replied, “Mrs. Chanler is quite a capable woman, and I’ll help her every step of the way.” I saw admiration shining in Miss Sloane’s dark eyes, and much to my dismay, I was sure Victor saw it too. Now there wasn’t any talking him out of it.
Only when the train was whistling did I accept there was nothing to do but shower my nephew with kisses. Boarding that train without him, I was beside myself with worry, guilt, and pride.
How was I ever going to explain this to my in-laws? I didn’t know if they would understand Victor’s decision. But I did. I looked out the train window at these refugee children, frightened and homeless and hungry . . .
I knew what that felt like. I knew all too well. I’d hidden the scars of my childhood away deep, where no one could see. Yet this scene of war had somehow ripped the old wounds open again. I’d clawed my way up from nothing so no child of mine might ever suffer. These refugee children weren’t mine, but they belonged to someone. I had to do something for these brave young men and these orphaned children, because if I couldn’t help them, then what was the point of being me?
“We need to do something,” I was saying to Emily Sloane, my eyes on the giant funnels pouring a steady stream of smoke overhead.
The war had been our only topic of conversation since our frantic rush to board a vessel leaving France. And as we sailed toward New York’s harbor now, our thoughts were still with those we had left behind in the conflict. “If America won’t send soldiers to help, we can at least send money. We’ll need some manner of charitable foundation.”
Miss Sloane delighted me by agreeing enthusiastically.
“And we’ll need gentlemen on the board, or no one will take us seriously,” I said, removing my gloves as we sat down for coffee together in the stylishly appointed café. It was strictly for passengers traveling first class, and its velvet curtains, wood paneling, and opulent decor—supplied by W. & J. Sloane—gave the impression of a fine hotel. “We’ll also need to give our charity a romantic, patriotic name.”
“I don’t see what could possibly be romantic about war.”
“Most people can’t,” I said. “War is a grim business Americans would like to stay out of, if Wilson’s declaration of neutrality is any indication of the public mood. To get them to care, we must appeal to the emotions. Love, hate, patriotism . . .”
I took her notebook and wrote: The Lafayette Fund.
Miss Sloane stared uncomprehendingly. “Lafayette? The revolutionary hero?”
“Precisely.” I explained, “In the most powerful social circles, the Founding Fathers are revered more than Christ. You can’t swing a beaded handbag in Mrs. Astor’s grand ballroom without hitting a Daughter of the American Revolution, primed to opine in worshipful ecstasy about Washington, Adams, or Jefferson. They’ll open their wallets for the far more romantic figure of Lafayette, French foe of tyrants and kings . . .”