Maiden Flight (12 page)

The moon shone all the time Harry was here—a bright, Christmassy moon, like the Star of Bethlehem, streaming through the windows in the “blue room” while we spooned like a pair of young lovers. I hardly slept a wink those three nights. How sweet it was to have Harry so close to me and to give something of myself to him. We snuggled together
in the big chair and he slipped his hand down where I love to have it and held it against me. It was so good to feel it there. It seemed to stop a sort of aching. Harry was so dear—
so
dear! I wasn't afraid of anything with him. I knew he would never be anything but delicate and that we would never get common with each other, no matter how completely we let the bars down.

That Christmas would have been perfect bliss if only I hadn't been so uneasy in my mind about Orv. Try as I might, I couldn't
force myself to tell him about Harry and me—and I will never, ever let him know how long ago I decided to move to Kansas City. That's one secret I will guard to my dying day. I started several times to talk to him about being married, but I couldn't get anywhere when I saw the look on his face. It's what I call his “little boy look”— the pathetic, appealing look he always gives me when anything hurts him. It nearly breaks my heart. I couldn't bear to make trouble for him, for I knew that he would be so absolutely alone without me.

Harry tries hard to sympathize, but he simply can't imagine how inseparable the relation has been between Orv and me. Up to now, our interests and our friends have been together always—just exactly as much as a husband's and wife's are. It felt like the most natural thing in the world to be wearing the solitaire ring that he gave to me when I graduated from Oberlin—as if I was “his girl.” Orv is like a boy in some ways—like all men, I think. He has worked so hard, risked so much, accomplished so much. Just at the time Harry asked me to marry him, Little Brother had a wearing, hard fight on his hands and needed me more than ever. It was wonderful to be needed, in a way, but at the same time I felt as if I were in chains—and I wasn't sure I had the strength to break loose.

How can I ever explain all this to Harry? His feelings about his sister can't be compared with Orv's feelings about me. They haven't lived together all their lives, shared everything all their lives, enjoyed everything together, endured everything together. It wasn't just Orv who depended on me—I didn't know how
I
would ever be satisfied away from
him.
He never went anywhere without me, except for some affairs for the men. He never considered anything without asking what I thought about it, just as any
good husband would do. Always everything that interested Will and Orv interested me, and they took up all my interests in just the same way.

But what if I'm wrong? I might be mistaken, and that's a fact. What if Orv doesn't need me as much as I think he does? I can only judge his feelings by my own. I hardly know what I would have done if he had told me that he planned to marry someone and was going somewhere else to live. I can just imagine what Orv must have thought of my proposing to go off—at
this
stage of the game. On the other hand, I sometimes wonder if he didn't suspect something and wasn't much disturbed by it. It seems unlikely that he had plans of his own, but maybe he hadn't thought of marrying because we had each other, and if I left him, he would find someone else.

It's a queer thing about love. Everybody knows the more you love, the more you
can
love. I loved Harry more because I loved Bubbo so much, and I guess I loved Bubbo more now that I loved Harry so much. Sort of a polygamist attitude—the more, the merrier! Sometimes I had a wild hope that we could all be together—that maybe, some day, Orv could come and live with Harry and me in Kansas City, and then I'd not have a trouble in the world. I could do everything they
both
wanted. I could be with Harry alone a lot and still not make Orv feel left out. Little Brother is so companionable, so quiet and gentle—surely, I told myself, Harry wouldn't mind.

Living as a threesome never would have worked, of course. It was just another one of my fairy-tale schemes. On top of everything else, the
Star
was put up for sale in early 1926, and it seemed probable that Harry would not want to stay on in Kansas City after
the paper changed hands. We had spoken once or twice of the possibility of his moving east to do his writing. If he did want to try his luck in Washington or New York, I was in favor of making the change sooner rather than later, while he was still in his prime. I had always thought the
Star
might be bought by someone with such an entirely different idea of a newspaper that Harry wouldn't be interested in staying with it. But that didn't matter. We weren't dependent upon any place or anyone for our real happiness, as long as we had each other.

It was beginning to feel as if we were all characters in a drawing-room comedy—or perhaps a Shakespearean tragedy would be closer to the mark. There Katharine and I were, two star-crossed lovers, young at heart but growing longer in the tooth with each passing day. We couldn't even call ourselves masters of our own fates: my happiness lay in Katharine's hands, and our happiness lay in Orville's. Then, just as we were all hunkering down for a long, hard slog, the future of the
Star
was suddenly cast to the winds as well. I can still picture the scene at the office when we got the news of Laura Kirkwood's death that February. Everyone knew what that meant: her father's great creation, the “Daily William Rockhill Nelson,” would be consigned to the auction block and all of us on the staff would be sold down the river, like chattel.

Against the odds, the paper won a new lease on life. Mrs. Kirkwood was less fortunate. She had everything to live for, but threw it all away on drinking, horse racing, and high living. So much for the privileges of the leisure class. Toward the end, Mrs. Kirkwood
seemed to have lost all interest in life. Somehow she had persuaded herself that her husband had stopped loving her. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that she deliberately drank herself to death in that hotel room in Baltimore. And to think that only a few months earlier she had been trying to throw me together with one of her widowed lady friends. I expect I should be grateful to her. After all, it was her well-intentioned matchmaking that finally pushed me into Katharine's arms.

Katharine was all for cutting my ties to Kansas City and moving east, or even living abroad for a time. But I had invested too much of my life in the
Star
to walk away without a fight. A few men on the paper reckoned we had a shot at buying it from the Nelson estate. The other bidders had deep pockets, but we pooled our resources, secured a bank loan, and pulled it off. Katharine practically begged me to let her put in some of her own money
.
She had a sizable nest egg that her brother Will had left her, as well as some property and other investments, all more or less safe and sound. But I wouldn't hear of her taking such a gamble with her life savings. As she often reminds me, money is important in its place, but its place isn't above everything else.

Katharine seems content to be cutting our pattern according to our cloth. But it's no use denying that in the eyes of the world she took a step down when she came to live with me in Kansas City. I almost hated to disabuse her of the illusion that Colonel Nelson had left me a small fortune in his will. I was making less than ten thousand a year when we were married and had nothing in the bank to speak of. Katharine once told me that Orville was worth some five or six hundred thousand dollars. They both lived comfortably on his savings, had a large house and servants, entertained
lavishly, and traveled as much as they cared to. Who was I to ask her to give all that up and leave one of the most distinguished men in the world to become the wife of an obscure midwestern newspaper editor?

No sooner had Harry left that Christmas than Kate started acting on edge again. Once or twice I feared she was close to breaking down. She even paid a department store bill with the wrong check—that wasn't like Swes at all. When I questioned her, she dismissed it as “just some trouble in my upper story.” Ha! The constant stream of letters from Kansas City—two or three a day sometimes—should have opened my eyes sooner. But the bits that Kate read out loud to me sounded innocent enough. One day she had her nose buried in Harry's essay on the founder of the
Star.
The next thing I knew, the paper was for sale and the staff was moving heaven and earth to raise the money to buy it. Swes even talked about chipping in some of her own savings. She said it would be a safe investment—in the newspaper and her sweetheart both, no doubt!

Harry has been a friend to us through thick and thin, but he never was as hard-boiled as Kate made him out to be. No, he needs a woman's companionship and support as much as any fellow does. The signs were staring me in the face all along: the stacks of letters and telegrams; the flowers he sent every year on Kate's birthday and Valentine's Day; the surprise visits when he just “happened” to be passing through town. It's not as if it was the first time my sister had turned a man's head. Young Lieutenant Lahm
was mighty chummy with her when I was laid up in the hospital after my accident. Gentlemen admirers were forever giving her boxes of candy or bouquets or fancy tea sets. That ornithologist fellow, Frank Chapman, inscribed several of his books to her. And then there was Stef, always showering her with presents—books, pictures, even sculptures.

Swes is a handsome and intelligent woman, beyond a doubt. I don't wonder that men like Harry and Stef are attracted to her. No man could ask for a better friend, a better helpmate, a better, more loyal sister. Love is a different proposition, however. Willie Baxter learned that lesson soon enough when he lost his heart to Lola Pratt at the tender age of seventeen. You have to hand it to Booth Tarkington—he understands a thing or two about relations between the sexes. Follow your head, not your heart, and you won't go far wrong, that's always been my motto. If Will and I had frittered away our time chasing skirts, I reckon I would still be selling bicycles down on South William Street.

I was sure crazy after Harry went away that Christmas. I can't imagine now how I got into such a state. My thoughts were like the monkey's tail, going around and around. I was in such a peck of trouble and such a peck of happiness, all mixed up together, afraid to enjoy the happiness that Harry offered because of the specter of Orv in the background all the time. The harder my darling boy pressed me to make up my mind, the more confused and frantic I got. I was in the vicious circle—not free to love him as I might, not free
not
to love him. I almost despaired of finding a way out.

Harry will never know how my conscience fought with my feelings. I had finally begun to realize what our loving each other meant for Orv. The thought of what was coming stabbed me day after day when I thought what the house would be to Little Brother without me there. I dreaded what I had to go through—and what he had to look forward to. The tears were very near the surface all the time. Even if I had known what to do about Orv, I would have had bad moments over making the plunge into marriage, because I knew there would be no going back. Whichever way I looked, a door seemed to slam shut in my face.

To make matters worse, the fate of the
Star
was hanging in the balance, and Harry's future along with it. I had long felt that the life of the paper, under the old management, was very uncertain. And I was as full as Harry was of utter amazement at the selfishness of the Nelson family. Most people who do big things, as Mr. Nelson did, are very selfish. But not to leave so much as a penny to any of the people who had worked with him and for him—for him, in the sense of devoting themselves wholeheartedly to his plans and profit and pleasure—that was cruelly selfish. Imagine deserting the men who had been with the paper so long and made it what it was,
especially after not letting them have any credit before the public.

Thinking only of one's family is a very common weakness. It was disgraceful for the name of Mr. Nelson's son-in-law to appear at the top of Harry's editorial page—as if he had the least thing to do with what went into it. As close as our family has always been, I have less and less admiration for “family spirit.” No doubt Mr. Nelson thought his daughter would outlive all of his old associates—at least the years of their activity in any work. Laura Kirkwood was naturally a fine woman, but someone with her lack of
self-control should not have been in the position of running a newspaper. She had grown too used to the loyalty and ability of the staff to get its true value. Harry was devoted to the Kirkwoods, but if you ask me, they owed a good deal more to him than he did to them.

My blessed boy deserves everything that's coming to him. How good it is to see Harry reaching independence while he is still young enough to enjoy it. I believe I have sort of an obsession about that. I want him to be free from worries of all sorts—not just financial ones. He's had so much anxiety in his life. It will be lots of fun to watch our pile getting bigger and bigger, until finally we can snap our fingers at everybody! I grow more determined every day to do as I please. What I want most of all, for both of us, is peace of mind. I don't have to compete with other women in clothes and such like, but I do have to have some feeling of security. I don't want to be dependent on
anyone
when I'm old, any more than I want Harry to be.

My dearest! I want to be so much to you to make up for all the time that is gone—for all you have suffered that I couldn't help, for everything that has troubled you since you were a child. We'll finish up life with as near a perfect love as we can make it, won't we, dear? And we'll be so gentle with each other and so tender and loving. We have nothing behind us to be sorry for and such a chance for the future—all so full of promise because we understand so much more than most people can when they are married and we both realize the possibilities and want to do so much for each other. Oh, my boy—I do want to satisfy you—be everything you want me to be that I can be—a sweetheart, friend, companion, helper—everything that you can wish!

All that long winter and spring, Harry was a pillar of strength—which is a sight more than I can say for myself. Little Brother was bound to catch wind of our plans in time, whether I told him or not. All our friends in Oberlin seemed to know about the letter Harry sent me at the Faculty Club in November—I must say Frannie Lord didn't act so very surprised when I finally divulged our secret. We figured out that it must have been someone in President King's office who gossiped to Mrs. Hemingway in Kansas City—who naturally broadcast it to the world. And then there was that corker of a letter from Doctor Dick: “If only you lived in Kansas City and could adopt the best white man on earth—his initials are H.J.H.—then my happiness would be complete.” Talk about dropping heavy hints—
that
one landed like a ton of bricks!

Fancy—I still hadn't told anyone the most important news I ever had to tell. I hadn't even told Lorin yet, partly because I dreaded it so and was on the verge of tears all the time, and partly because it wasn't easy to get a chance to talk to him alone. To think that he and Orv actually spoke about the wedding that spring and neither of them said a word to me. I didn't know anything at all about that until months later. They were both waiting for me to say something first!

Carrie was good as gold—carrying my letters to Harry to the post office, taking confidential phone messages, and generally running interference with Orv. But I could see that it was pointless trying to keep our plans from him much longer. I was more and more afraid that I would slip up and call Harry “dear” in front of Orv or one of our friends. That would have been a mess! And I was positively paralyzed with fear that Little Brother would hear the news from someone else, which would have been even worse.
Finally, I couldn't stand the strain any longer. I broke down and told Harry that
he
would have to talk to Orv—all by himself.