The End of Innocence (17 page)

Merrimack Hill

The glow of the vespers light through the rain could not sustain the even-tempered facade that Helen's father attempted to project to the world. He had been curt with Mr. Choate, whose news had not been kind. Charles Archer would not allow Mrs. Merriam Brooks to come home. Archer was in an ill temper himself, his son having been expelled just that morning from Harvard. Beat another student, especially a German, all you want, but do not cross Copeland, was the lesson Harvard administered. Charles Archer, whose consent was necessary for a bail agreement for Mrs. Brooks, was in the process of attempting to find a Red Cross post in the Mediterranean for his son and could not be bothered with the likes of Mrs. Merriam Brooks today, or any other official business.

Her father had made Patrick apoplectic when he yelled at the chauffeur for not having the car ready to take him to City Hall that morning. The ride had been canceled later due to Choate's advice that the presence of angry husbands would only reduce the likelihood that cooler heads would prevail in the delicate negotiations required to get Mrs. Brooks back to her house. Patrick, in a fit of Irish pique, developed a pain in his back of unknown origin and indeterminate duration. He retired to his quarters at midday and refused to leave.

Finally, Mr. Brooks thundered at the new cook, who had changed dinner menus at the last minute. The metal skewers of venison had a sesame sauce to which he was allergic, and he fumed that any Boston cook should know brown sauce, not sesame sauce, belonged on venison. Helen tried to mediate after her father took a cold leg of duck into the study. But the cook, who was actually French, was a temperamental man. He insisted his food had brought life to the dead, made lame men walk, and helped the blind to see. The cook would have none of it, and, his temper getting the best of him, refused to work again until his honor had been satisfied. He walked out the front door. He stood sulking under a side awning as the rain dripped overhead, a cigarette his only comfort.

Helen looked around the empty entry hall, its wide polished pine floors and ornate moldings. It felt antiseptic and cold from its thick Turkish carpets to its landscapes hung precisely just so. No dust collected in any of the corners, around the feet of the grand staircase, under the marble hall table, or even around the brass umbrella bucket. The cut glass around the front door was shined and even the padlock on the white painted oak doors of her mother's parlor gleamed with new brass.

There was no comfort here after all. Wils was leaving soon and she missed him dreadfully. The little time they had left was running out. Helen sighed and closed her eyes. She wished she could be in Cambridge with Wils. She missed him dreadfully and had conjured up several schemes to get back to Cambridge to no avail. Her father had been on the telephone the entire day, leaving her no chance to speak with Wils or make arrangements to get into town.

For Helen, it was pure torture until she finally realized there was nothing to be done about it. She looked around and then walked upstairs, deciding that the time had come for her to exchange her wool dress for a cotton nightgown. She would escape to her soft bed with a book about a queen of England or France or Italy—someone with more problems than she. She loosed the navy ribbon, letting her hair fall to her shoulders, and walked up the steps, defeated.

And so, with the cook angry, Mr. Brooks frustrated, Patrick with the vapors, and Helen retiring, it was perhaps not the most propitious of times for Mr. Wils Brandl to make his first call upon Merrimack Hill.

The rumble of a car in the drive at that hour was not Helen's concern. A knock on the door came as she reached the top step. She looked down into the foyer to see who it was, but the cut glass around the large door obscured her view of the visitor. There being no servant about that her father had not angered, she sighed, turned back down the steps, walked to the door, and opened it.

Wils Brandl looked up at her from the top of her granite steps, under the cover of a dark umbrella. His spectacles were spattered with droplets and his blond hair damp. Rain dripped all around him.

“My love,” she said, stunned.

“I heard just today about your mother,” he said quickly. “I went to your hall and they said you were gone. I called Peter at the crew club. He gave me directions to your house,” he said. “I came in the rain.”

“Peter gave you directions?” she asked.

“He knows,” he said. “And approves,” he said as she laughed in delight. He walked into the hallway and took one of her hands in his.

“
Mein
Gott
, Helen, I can't leave without seeing you again. My lawyer's called. Two days from now I must sail.”

“No!” she said defiantly. “I won't let you!”

A smile burst forth upon his lips. “My love commands me to stay?” He pulled her into his arms and kissed her, still in his wet raincoat. “Then I wasn't dreaming?” he said softly, as he felt her shiver under layers of white silk.

Heavy steps came into the hall. “You there!” came a gruff voice.

“Father, it's—”

“Another young man? How many are there, Helen?”

Wils stepped back. “I'm Wilhelm von Lützow Brandl.”

“Helen, this is not the boy from the Harvest Festival.”

“The man from the festival was a mistake, Father—he actually kissed me there against my will.”

Mr. Brooks glowered at Wils from the top of his blond hair to the laced brown leather shoes. “And how do we know Mr. Brandl is not a mistake as well?”

“He is most certainly not. Father, I'm going to marry him,” Helen said before Wils could open his mouth.

“What?! Treason!” he spluttered. He turned to Wils. “I regret that I must ask you to leave this very minute.”

“Your daughter, sir, I have asked her to marry me,” Wils explained quietly.

“Helen, he's German.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Son, aren't you about to leave for war? What business have you asking
anyone
to marry you?”

“Father, he informed me of this as well, but I love him and I wish to marry him.”

Jonathan Brooks turned to his daughter and pursed his lips. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. When he opened his eyes after a moment he attempted a controlled tone.

“Mr. Brandl, this is a very difficult time for our family. So I don't care if you're Otto von Bismarck himself, you must leave this minute. I have a wife in jail and I'll have you know I would not be averse to joining her by taking desperate actions against suitors who do not know when to leave!”

“Father!”

Wils drew himself up and gave a quick nod. “I am sorry about your wife's situation, sir. I would gladly render any service to your family for the sake of your daughter. That's one reason I drove here as well.”

“You help me?” said Mr. Brooks with a sneer. “How could you possibly help me?”

“I have a very good lawyer, sir, Robert Goodman. Perhaps he could help your wife?”

“You know Robert Goodman?”

Wils nodded.

“That's a thought,” her father replied in a softer tone. “I hear he may be more helpful than our Choate, who is more a banking man.”

The three stood there in silence for a moment, neither man turning to leave or backing down.

After some time Wils said, “I apologize for the lateness of the call. May I call on Helen tomorrow?”

“You may call on her when Helen's mother is back in the house. But not tonight. There are too many things going on.”

“Father, please let him stay,” she begged, fear in her eyes as he turned to go. “He's leaving for the war.”

“You love me, Helen.” Wils smiled. “And that is enough for now.” He looked up with a bow of his head at Mr. Brooks. “Sir, may I return tomorrow?”

“If her mother is at the house.”

Wils bowed his head slightly to both of them, picked up his umbrella, and left.

“Wils!” she called, following him out the door past her father. She caught him at the bottom of the steps and encircled him with her arms. He embraced her, his slender girl who smelled of lilac. No father, no matter how angry, could pry this hope from him. Mr. Brooks rolled his eyes at them from the top step but refused to step out into the weather.

“Helen, come in from the rain,” he called.

“Wils, come back and see me before you leave,” she said.

He smiled broadly and spun her around. Then he put her down carefully on a step and held his umbrella aloft over the two of them. “Your father will not—” he said, looking up to the towering figure of Mr. Brooks, silhouetted by the hall lights. “Talk to him tonight.” He gave her the umbrella and ran to the front of his car to crank the engine. It gave a few coughs and started.

“Father!” she pleaded. “Please!” The engine started outside.

“Tomorrow,” her father said. “Let us return to this in the harsh light of day.”

Wils stepped up to the driver's seat. “Miss Brooks, you'll see me again at first light,” he said.

She would take tomorrow, and whatever he could give her, she thought. She wished only for him.

“Come in, Helen,” called her father as the car rumbled toward the front gate. But she stood watching Wils as if she were a sentinel.

The car suddenly stopped and its lights went dim in the distance. Helen squinted and saw Wils running back through the rain.

“Sir, two of my four tires have been punctured.”

“What?” asked Mr. Brooks. “How?”

“I have no idea. Do you sprinkle nails in your driveway?”

“I certainly do not. Was the steering off when you drove out here?”

“Not at all. My car is of the finest make. It drove well all the way here.”

“Mr. Brandl, you drove in on two flat ties and didn't notice anything?”

“Mr. Brooks, I assure you the tires were in perfect order. But they must have somehow gone flat. May I use your telephone to call the mechanic?”

“The mechanic shops are closed,” said Brooks. “We'll call Patrick.”

“He's ill,” said Helen, her eyes lighting up.

“There are spares in the barn.”

“Patrick has the key,” she countered.

Mr. Brooks frowned, shrugged, then finally seemed to give up. “I can't fight both City Hall and my own household. Come in, Mr. Brandl. Have you had supper?”

“No, sir,” he said.

“Ah, right. Well, I'll see if I can call the cook back. He's a testy sort. It's a good thing he didn't meet you either—he despises Germans and anyone who doesn't agree with him. He went outside to pout after I didn't appreciate the venison he cooked tonight. If you can stomach venison with a sesame sauce, it's all yours. Other than that, there's a bit of roast duck left from lunch.” He reached his hand down to shake. “Jonathan Brooks, Helen's father. Pleased to meet you,” he said begrudgingly.

Helen smiled at her father, who was attempting to act the role of host.

“Yes, sir. I'm Wilhelm Brandl, at your service,” Wils said, accepting her father's proffered hand. Her father stopped.

“There's to be none of this looking at Helen this evening, Mr. Brandl. I know that Harvard gave up compulsory prayer, but that does not mean we've abandoned our morals altogether at the Brooks house. Helen is retiring and will not be down the rest of the evening.”

“Father—”

“Good night, Helen.”

Wils looked up, his eyes smiling at her. He nodded. “Good night,” he said quietly. He turned to Mr. Brooks. “You were saying, sir.” And without another look at Helen, Mr. Brooks led Wils down the hall to the study.

As they turned to the library, she heard her father ask, “Would you say you were a Goethe German, or say more of the Nietzsche type?”

“Goethe, definitely Goethe.”

“Bach?” asked Mr. Brooks, eyeing him closely.

“Beethoven too.”

“Well, that makes a deuce of a difference. Not that the German romantics didn't have their own problems. So how is your lawyer these days?”

Helen heard the door close to the study. Euphoria ran from the tips of her toes to the far reaches of her fingers. She glided up the steps, spun around on the landing, and practically floated to the soft bed in her room.

He came to her!

While armies clashed in faraway lands, her mother was in jail, and her father railed, he had come! The world kept turning, but he had stopped for her.

She got up and danced over to the window to close her curtains for the night, thinking that love was color and music and all that was wonderful. As she looked out to the lawn she caught a glimpse of a figure walking in the rain.

It seemed, for a moment, to be the cook, and he was carrying what looked to be a skewer and a mallet in his hands. Implements that might puncture a young man's tire. She blinked and the figure was gone. She wondered if she'd imagined it.

Helen dressed quickly the next morning, pulling on a soft sweater and hooking the buttons along her dark skirt. She gathered up her hair with an ebony comb, put on her short calfskin boots, grabbed a shawl, and went downstairs, eager to see Wils.

The foyer was quiet, the parlor locked. She stepped up to the front door and opened it. The rain had stopped and the sky was now clear and chilled. Wils's car remained at the drive near the gate.

She closed the door quietly and walked to the study to find him. The morning newspaper lay on a table, illumined by a warm blaze from the brick fireplace. Its headline brought ill news of the war. Earlier in the month, the tide of the war had seemed to hang in the balance, the Germans now desperate in northern France. Two million men in France pushed them back from Paris, past the Marne and then to the Aisne. The numbers of dead were incomprehensible.

The reports were now of a reckoning in Antwerp, and a new call came from the British army for recruits. The Reims Cathedral had been shelled, Lille was under siege, but Louvain looked to fall. The muddied, flooded plains of Belgium had begun to pull hundreds of thousands of men toward it—British, Irish, French, Indian, German, Moroccan, Austrian—like the undertow of an ominous wave.

But that was not all. She looked with disgust at the picture on the front page. Standing in Scollay Square was the golden-tongued Charles Archer, rallying a crowd of angry men in hats and coats to send more supplies to Europe. The story said that if elected to Congress, Archer promised to crack down on German spies in Boston—working in hotels, driving taxis, teaching and studying at colleges. He urged them to join the Patriots' League; to conserve sugar and wheat, which could be exported to troops overseas; to volunteer for the ambulance corps; and above all, as distasteful as it might be, to keep a close eye on anyone who might be sending information to the kaiser. It was their duty now. And anyone who wasn't with them—the unions, the suffragists, anyone who put themselves above others—those people represented a danger to the fabric of society that could not be ignored.

Such ill tidings
, she thought, shaking her head.

She turned the page and found the news: “Mrs. Merriam Brooks to be arraigned today, again.” The picture showed Mrs. Merriam Brooks waving an actual contraceptive device above her head in protest. Archer was quoted as saying that he found her work repugnant and that, if elected, he'd urge that people like Merriam Brooks should be put in jail no matter what rank they held in society. The caption of the picture said that Brooks was now considered a flight risk and that she would be incarcerated until she stood trial.

Helen heard footsteps from the garden and looked up to see Wils walking outside beyond the study's windows, under the canopy of late-blooming wild roses.

He wore a dark sweater of Peter's and his wrinkled trousers from the night before, the hems damp with dew.

She beamed, put the paper down, and ran out to him. He gathered her in a warm embrace. It felt wonderful to be close to his heart.

“You were walking?”

He took her hand in his. “I couldn't sleep and I didn't wish to disturb you.”

“Disturb me? When we've so little time? Let us not waste it on trivialities.”

“All right, madam,” he said with a big smile. “I accept your guidance.”

“So you survived my father?”

“I asked him last night for your hand,” he said, kissing her hand. The telephone rang in the study.

“What did he say?”

“He said you'd do what you want. Thus, do you still wish to be my wife?” His eyes would not let her go.

“I've not changed my mind.” She smiled as she reached up to him on her tiptoes to give him a brief kiss. “What did my father think?”

“Another kiss first,” he teased. She obliged.

“Yes, well, despite his American prejudices against nobility, I think he was impressed by the title. And he seems to think that it doesn't matter what he says, but that you will take your own counsel. Oh, and he really liked the idea that our library has a whole section on naval warfare, and we have translators nearby at the university who will help him read through any book in a language he can't read.”

She looked askance. “Were the books for him a fair trade or some type of consolation prize?”

Wils looked puzzled. “The latter, of course.”

They heard the sound of footsteps inside. Helen instinctively pushed back from Wils and smoothed her sweater.

“Let us go inside.”

They stepped into the study to greet her father. His briefcase rested at his feet, his suit was of the most serious gray, and he was pulling on his gloves.

“Good morning, Wilhelm. Good morning, Helen. I must leave you two here with Cook this morning. Choate says the deal's back on. Patrick's driving me to City Hall to pick up your mother. I'll be back this afternoon and we'll see that the tires on your car are fixed so that you will reach your boat on time.

“You mean a lot to Helen, Wils, and she means a lot to me. If these were ordinary times, I'd insist on dropping you off in Cambridge. But as these are extraordinary times, Helen, I trust that all will be well in my absence and that you will not tell your mother I left you chaperoned by a French cook who I suspect harbors a romantic heart beneath that Gaulois temper of his.”

“Thank you, Father,” she called to him as he rumbled out the front door.

The house was still again.

“Helen, as you know, I am leaving. I hate that it's just when I found you. May we spend today outside in beauty?” He offered her his arm, and they walked together, past the garden and into the wood. He didn't care where. Anywhere—it didn't really matter.

They followed a path deep into the property, beyond a grove of sugar maples that stretched out across an entire meadow. Their path was covered in the confetti of leaves and the ground was damp from the prior day's rain. The moisture wicked into their shoes and clung to the hem of Helen's dark skirt. In quiet conversation they passed the edge of the old stone wall with its piles of red and orange leaves gathering along its base, and went to a place where they could not be seen or heard by another mortal, or found by the world, until they wished to be.

The canopy above was filled with the bright leaves of aspens and birch trees waving gently and floating downward like ticker tape from a parade. Raindrops still clung to the silvery threads of spiderwebs stretched across crooks in trees, which glistened in the morning sun. She pulled her shawl tighter as they walked to an old bridge, under which rolled a stream, swollen with rain. Occasionally her foot would stumble and he would reach his arm around her, touching her, if only for an instant, to help set her right again.

He stopped in a grove of golden birch trees, tall and slender, their branches creaking in the soft wind, the bark slashed and peeling. One of their fellowship, fallen along the path many years ago, now provided a shelter and seat for myriad seedlings and other travelers in these woods, both great and small.

“Here,” she said softly. “Here.”

The wool wrap fell to the ground as he stepped to her. She gave a nervous laugh, and, as she did, he pulled her closer and finally kissed her deeply.

As he did, she quickened and thanked God for a few hours to be surrounded by his warmth.

It was Wils's touch she desired—so rich and complex and deep. She reached her arms around his neck. He swung her into his arms and lifted her against the fallen tree. There he stroked her hair, kissing her temples, her chin, the white of her throat.

She cupped his earnest face and brought her eyes to his, searching—for what, he did not know—then kissed him again. Her warm breath inflamed him with an unbearable sensation of desire and hope.

He stopped suddenly. “Your mother and father will kill us—”

She shook her head and touched her finger to his mouth again as she had weeks ago at their first study group. He stopped. There was no hint of the young girl he'd first seen at the party so long ago.

“I will not live without you in my world. I am your betrothed, your wife, Wils Brandl. I can't explain it”—she brushed her hair over her shoulder as she struggled for words—“but I want to feel as close as I can feel to you. I want your joy to be mine, and mine yours. I want to remember every bit about you, even those I don't yet know, so that no war nor distance nor time apart can take you away from me.”

He smiled shyly as her meaning dawned on him. “I would love to make love to you, Helen, but only if you are absolutely certain this is what you would wish. You and your happiness are my priority. I could not, would not, do anything to threaten that or our long-term happiness. Will you—would we—regret this tomorrow? This evening? I have craved intimacy with your heart more than anything else. But now that I have that, I'd never want to do anything to jeopardize it.”

She looked at him and smiled. “Oh, Wils, why do we have such feelings if even we, two people committed to a lifetime together, can't realize them?”

“Passions are seldom that logical.” He smiled.

He hugged her and she put her head on his shoulder.

“What do you want, Wils?”

“Me? I love being here now. And if this is all there is, I count my blessings. Of course, I am a man with desires; I can't deny that nothing would make me happier than being one with you if you believe in your heart, that tomorrow and the next day and years from now you would be happy with your choice. But above all, I love you.”

She sat up and looked at him.

“Dearest Wils, I can't think this is wrong. I want to be fully with you as a wife. It would give me such beauty and solace during the long weeks and months when you are no longer by my side.”

“You are sure?”

“Yes, my love, I am.”

He kissed her tentatively and then more passionately as he tentatively slid a hand under her sweater. She fumbled at the buttons of her skirt. Eventually their clothes fell to the ground. He felt her shiver, as he laid her down gently, beneath a bower of golden leaves and white-barked trees.

Her body rose to him as he reveled in her soft skin. He whispered her name, kissing her as he shifted his weight onto her. They clung to each other on a makeshift bed of sweater and shawl until they were spent, and the shadows of midday clouds fell upon them.

For the lovers, there were no battles overseas, no violent protests, no meddlesome parents or cousins. It was only the two of them, and the calm understanding that they were no longer alone. They had been transformed by something bigger than themselves, something that no army—no war—could ever interrupt.

* * *

Helen and Wils returned to the house slowly, lingering in the woods as the sun began to recede. Occasionally he would stop along the wooded path and raise her hand to his lips. She'd return his smile or press his hand.

The house was empty and they went straight to the kitchen, ravenously hungry. There was no cook still, but they found a pot of soup and a round of wheat bread and sat at the thick wooden table, laughing and talking about anything and nothing at all.

It was near midafternoon when the telephone rang. Wils watched the flow of her skirts against her legs as she crossed the room to answer it.

A look of pain shot across her face.

“Helen,” he said, standing up. “What is it?” Her lips trembled as she handed him the phone.

“Your lawyer. You are to come to the harbor right away.” She smoothed a lock of his hair away from his forehead as he spoke to Mr. Goodman. He hung up the phone and pulled Helen to him.

“We've no car. You can't go,” she protested.

He shook his head. “I gave my word. Jackson's family has struck a deal involving their cargo ships. All of the clearances have gone through. I don't know when the next one might be allowed out. It's part of the agreement for clearing my name with the local authorities.”

“But you did nothing wrong.”

“They'll let me leave and, well, dearest Helen, don't cry now.”

He touched her face. A tear fell on his hand, and he put it to his lips and kissed it.

“The war will be over before I get there.”

“That's a lie,” she said.

“Pray it's not. And then I'll return and we will have a proper ceremony.”

“I don't need one.”

He smiled kindly. “My mother needs a ceremony, and I suspect so does yours. We'll have a gold carriage draw you to our chapel.”

“A chapel?”

“Yes.”

“You'll return?”

“All the kaiser's men couldn't stop me.”

They stood in silence, clinging to each other. Suddenly the clock tolled three.

“I know of a car we could use,” she said in a mournful tone.