TEN
BEATRICE
New York City
February 1915
My nephew had been shot.
We learned of it in a letter Victor wrote after the fact, in which he assured us his wound was minor. The bullet passed clean through. Still, the incident terrified his parents, and the strain was evident at rehearsals in the Della Robbia Room, where Miss Sloane attempted to herd a hundred children in hoopskirts and powdered wigs into some semblance of order.
My brother-in-law and playwright was a highly emotional man in the best of circumstances—sensitive to light and sound—and I worried his patience might snap when my seven-year-old son Ashley whooped around his table with a toy tomahawk. “Watch my war dance, Uncle Jack!”
“How did I ever let you talk me into this?” Jack groused at me.
“Oh, come now, my dearest,” said his wife, Elizabeth, giving me a conspiratorial smile. “You jumped at the chance.”
Of all my husband’s quarrelsome siblings, his eldest sister, Elizabeth, was my favorite. Having walked with a limp since childhood, she had the air of a tragic heroine from a bygone era who swooned over brooding Victorian poets. Certainly she’d swooned for Jack Chapman—a man who took brooding to a masochistic art form, having once mutilated his own arm to punish himself for committing violence upon another man in jealousy. Long-suffering Elizabeth was patient with her husband’s eccentricities, and with mine. She’d been the first to accept me, even when her pearl-clutching sisters exploded in a fit of pique.
For shame, Willie, you’ve lost your wits!
—to take a chorus girl for a bride. We’ll never live it down.
—to thumb your nose at the world by marrying a scandalous woman!
Elizabeth convinced the family that Willie and I were a match made in heaven, and I felt a twinge of regret to have disappointed her. And a little guilt too, over having let my nephew enlist. Jack and Elizabeth had made peace with Victor having signed up to fight, but a thread of tension had pulled between us, and Jack’s dark gaze was tortured with anxiety. “We want to get Victor out of the trenches,” he said, quite suddenly.
“Out?” I understood; as a mother, of course I did. But Victor wasn’t a child and had pledged himself to fight. I feared there was no way out but victory, death, or desertion.
“We hope something can be done,” my sister-in-law explained. “He’s meant to be more than cannon fodder.”
Influential as my husband’s family might be, I thought the Chapmans quite naive about their influence over the matter, until my sister-in-law said, “Willie has a plan.”
“Is that so?” I asked, trying to hide my irritation that my husband was in communication with his sister while not sparing a line for me. My curiosity was also piqued by the unlikely notion that Willie—who thought war made boys into men—might try to shield his nephew. “What does he have in mind?”
“There’s a plan for a volunteer American flying corps,” Jack said. “We want Victor transferred into it.”
Goodness. An entire unit of American pilots could have the greatest impact on the public mind here in the States while telling the world whose side we were really on. I was dubious that aeroplanes were less dangerous than the trenches, but at that point in the war, many people thought so, including my in-laws. “Have you consulted Victor? Young men pride themselves on their independence.”
“That’s why we’re going to France to convince him,” Jack said. “We’re booking passage on the Lusitania.”
I simply could not think of a worse idea. Even if the Chapmans made it without being sunk, they weren’t worldly people. They were still suspended in another time, reading Shakespeare to each other by candlelight and occasionally complaining about the innovation of electric lights. Jack’s mental health was fragile, and Elizabeth’s physical health was delicate. The last thing either of them should do was attempt a voyage over a war-ravaged sea, much less attempt to navigate a war zone on their own. “Are you sure that’s wise?”
Jack said simply, “I can’t bear it anymore. My boy being there, me being here . . .”
I felt his pain, and for a moment even wondered if I ought not offer to take the Chapmans back to France myself. A thought still lingering on my mind when, later that afternoon, Miss Sloane asked, “Do you think that reporter, Mitzi Miller, had a point?”
I took umbrage. “A point about how women should go into the trenches to demand soldiers stop fighting?”
“No, that’s a harebrained fantasy,” Emily replied, restoring my faith in her sanity. “I mean the part about being willing to risk their lives, while we sit here safely performing plays and sending parcels.”
Still stung by the reporter’s accusations, I argued, “But surely we’re more useful here.” Between ticket sales for The Children’s Revolution and weekly fundraising balls, we’d raised a staggering amount of money for the cause. “Besides, I hardly think the French Foreign Legion would accept women in their ranks.”
Emily sharpened her pencil. “No, but the American Relief Clearing House needs help distributing the kits in France. So I’ve come to a decision, quite by impulse.”
“Impossible.” In the months we’d been working together, I’d never known her to act upon a single impulse. “You decide nothing without a list of pros and cons.”
“Of course I made a list! Which is why I can say with complete confidence that we’ve raised enough to send a fully outfitted ambulance to the front lines. And I want to take it there.”
It was not often that buttoned-up Emily Sloane surprised me, but yesterday she’d purchased a tube of lipstick from Elizabeth Arden’s Red Door salon, and today she was talking about going across an ocean filled with submarines. Now she said, “We believe America ought to come to the aid of her allies. Whatever else our play is meant to do, it’s also meant to drum up support for the idea that America should enter the war. But if you and I aren’t brave enough to cross the ocean, how can we convince anyone else to? I’m going back.”
“Quite impossible,” I said, pointing at her with an imperious index finger. “In the first place, it’s too dangerous. In the second place, I need you here. And in the third place, this suggestion does great damage to our friendship, in which hitherto it has been my role to propose outlandish schemes. I refuse to be the sensible one. This is all very upside-down!”
“I am being sensible. If one of us must risk our life, I’m the logical choice. I’m a spinster, whereas you’re a wife and mother of two.”
She made a good argument, though no one ever told a brave husband and father that he must not risk his life. Men like my husband were allowed—nay, encouraged—to do great deeds. No one ever asked Willie, But who’s looking after the children when you’re gone?
As if snatching my thoughts from thin air, Emily straightened her spine. “I am a fit and determined twenty-five-year-old, and if I were a young man, like your nephew, you’d encourage me.” I hadn’t encouraged Victor. Once he’d made his decision, however, I’d considered him to be the model of gallantry and virtue, the very pride of the family! Perhaps sensing she had the better of me, Emily said, “Excepting my gender, I challenge you to articulate a single reason I should not go back to France and pursue my destiny.”
My eyes narrowed as something clicked into place. Destiny was a word women seldom embraced except in reference to romance. And I felt a flare of victorious pleasure. “Oh, well done, Emily Sloane. I almost believed you to be driven by pure patriotic gumption. Then I remembered the lipstick.” Before she could purse her guilty red lips, I accused, “Far be it from me to say a woman cannot be driven by patriotism alone, but you have a secondary motive, my friend. You’re hoping to rendezvous with my nephew.”
She puffed up with offense. “Insulting and outrageous!”
“I know you’ve been exchanging letters with him.” I felt smug and self-satisfied that my matchmaking had borne fruit. News of Victor’s wound must have pushed her into realizing her true feelings and—
“I am fond of your nephew,” she said, flushing from red to purple. “But—but if you must know—I’ve formed an attachment to a French officer.”
A French officer? I was at once shocked and deflated. “Do tell . . .”
“You know him. We took tea with his mother and sister before the war.”
I felt my eyes bug. “The Baron de LaGrange?”
Drat. The very tall bachelor baron was stiff competition for my nephew, indeed. Miss Sloane already had money, after all; what she didn’t have was Old World prestige, and a Frenchman with even a minor noble title could give her that.
“Lieutenant LaGrange is a wonderfully interesting man,” she said. “With interesting ideas about technology. He believes France must have an air corps and intends to join.”
Only Emily Sloane would find herself enraptured by a man who wrote to her of technology. Thus, I realized my efforts to match her with artistic Victor had always been doomed. Sourly, I complained, “Aeroplanes are diabolical inventions.”
“Which is why we need men heroic enough to fly them.” Emily’s decidedly stiff upper lip quivered on the word heroic.
Oh, dear. She was quite gone for the man. I supposed that was all the more reason for us to save the world before this war chewed up a whole generation of gallant young men like my nephew and her French baron.
“Patience, darling!” I said, pins between my teeth, trying to keep Billy from squirming away. “Don’t you want to look fetching onstage as Lafayette? I need to fix the button on your uniform.”
With the curtains of the Century Theatre set to rise, my son trembled with stage fright. “But I c-can’t do it.”
I put away the pins and took his shaking hands in mine. “It’s only a case of nerves, darling. It happens to everyone.”
Miss Sloane was trying to quiet the child performers, and if my son didn’t lead them onstage, The Children’s Revolution would be a catastrophe. Hell’s bells, what would my husband say to encourage him? Probably he’d regale our son with tales of meeting Butch Cassidy, or tell him how he once charged up San Juan Hill dodging a hail of bullets. Those were the sorts of things that inspired boys. I had nothing comparable to offer. I could only say something that would have helped me as a child. “If you go out onto that stage tonight, you’ll look back with pride to have been of real service at so young an age. And you’ll know you’re a person of consequence, no matter who your mother and father might be.”
Billy looked hopeful. “What if I forget my l-lines?”
“You won’t. That’s why we practiced. You’re going to be marvelous!”
Fortunately my youngest—freckled, precocious Ashley—all but vibrated in eagerness to perform his part . . . which helped his older brother muster his courage. The musicians took up their instruments as the cream of New York society settled in for a show, then Billy blew out a breath and stepped onstage. I watched, heart in my throat, only to realize Miss Sloane was watching me.
“It’s too late to tell me this was a mistake,” I whispered.
“I was going to tell you that I wish I’d had a mother like you.”
I leaned my shoulder against hers in fond appreciation—and for support when Billy spoke his first lines. Oh, he stuttered, but it was scarcely noticeable, and the audience loved every minute! I stood in the wings, basking . . . and that’s when I saw him.
“He’s here,” I whispered urgently, tugging Emily’s sleeve.
“Who?” she asked.
“The president!”
She gave a dubious little snort, because neither of us esteemed the bespectacled Woodrow Wilson and his feeble administration, but that wasn’t the president I meant. I pointed to the colonnaded balcony, where sat our fiery Theodore Roosevelt—the former president and the man who might soon be president again. My heartbeat quickened, knowing his presence at our play would be understood by everybody as a stamp of approval.
At intermission, the crowd jumped up, clapping. And I thought my sons might perish of excitement when Roosevelt came backstage, press agents in his wake. “Dee-lightful, Mrs. Chanler,” the former president said. “There aren’t enough plays for children that teach American history.”
“Quite so, sir,” I said, flattered but never flattened by the attentions of any man.
An awestruck Emily Sloane, however, babbled incoherently. To put her at ease, Roosevelt continued, “Lafayette’s career is a lesson in international morality, which is in short supply these days. You ladies are doing important work at the Lafayette Fund, and I’d like to help.”
Emily was so nervous that several pieces of paper slipped from her hands. While she fumbled to retrieve them, I said, “Marvelous, sir! I’ll be happy to put you on the committee of your choice.”
“Good. Put me to work.” Roosevelt gave a grin that was all teeth. “Say, I haven’t heard from Willie in ages. How is the old boy? I hear he’s going on a trip to Scotland for hunting hounds. Glad to know he’s back on his feet after that injury. Fall from a horse, was it?”
Furious that the former president knew more about my husband’s health and whereabouts than I did—not to mention being unable to explain the accident—I gave a practiced little laugh that could’ve meant anything. “You know Willie . . .”
Photographers drew near, flashlamps firing. “Speech, speech!”
The former president pointedly ignored this, turning to the adoring children gathered at his knee. “I want to thank you for your war relief work. I wish adults did as much as you.” He patted little heads and started to take his leave, then changed his mind. “There is something I wish to impress on you children. That is to never be neutral between right and wrong. Never oppress anybody, or allow anybody to be oppressed. Always stand for what you believe is right, and never flinch in the face of any odds.”
Never be neutral between right and wrong. There it was. The quote that would make the papers. Words aimed straight at his rival and my critics. Miss Sloane said we needed the attention of important political men—well, we had it now. So much for Mitzi Miller’s biting society column. This was going to make the national news above the fold.
In the main foyer—after receiving rounds of adulation and bouquets of flowers—as Miss Sloane and I walked the marble halls between rows of elegant hanging lanterns, she asked, “You knew Roosevelt was coming, didn’t you?”
“I only hoped. It’s why I cast Roosevelt’s grandnephew as one of the militiamen. I guessed the former president would be champing at the bit to vent his political spleen, so I gave him a stage upon which to do it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to disappoint you if I was wrong, and I wanted the pleasure of seeing your astonished expression if I was right.”
“Beatrice,” she said, “this is going to touch off a real discussion in this country about our neutrality policy . . . People underestimate you.”
I smiled. “Something we have in common.”
Just that moment, my sons came up the stairs, and Billy was beaming. “President Roosevelt shook my hand!”
“I saw that, darling,” I said, kissing the top of his head. “And I saw him whisper something to you too.”
Billy nodded. “He said: I hope you will grow up to be as great an American hero as your father and your cousin Victor.”
Billy actually gulped.
It’d been hard enough for him to walk in Lafayette’s shoes. To think my son must also live up to the reputation of an absent father’s long-ago battlefield exploits . . . and his cousin in the trenches, well, how could a stuttering boy imagine he might measure up? I never wanted my boys to believe that heroism was only about fighting. I wanted them to know bravery could be found in working to make a difference, whether on a stage or by risking themselves over a mine-laden sea. I wanted them to look for courage not just in their father’s example, but also . . . in mine.
I had other reasons, of course—the Lafayette Fund, the Chapmans, Miss Sloane—but it was this that decided me.
Damn the torpedoes; I was going back to France.