The Lost Prince (28 page)

She cut him off. “Did you consult your Democritus about this?”

The question, intended lightly perhaps, caught Will Honeycutt by surprise. He did not look at her, trying to hide what looked from the outside
like embarrassment. Eleanor was stepping over a line in asking the question. “No,” he said suddenly, looking into her eyes and finding no sign of anything but respect. “William James.”

“Oh my, Will, I think you had better sit down.” She gestured toward the chair at his former desk and smiled in a concerned way that erased all doubt.

Reading the smile, Will Honeycutt walked to the desk chair and sat, issuing a huge sigh of relief. Then he looked back to her. “He appeared in my dream last night, and I entered a dialogue—” He stopped, seeing the stunned look on her face. “I mean I began writing, and he spoke to me. It was a great relief.”

“And…,” she said hesitantly. “And what did Dr. James say?” There was now a hush in the room.

“He said that I most definitely needed to stay with you,” he began, feeling his way cautiously, “that you needed me, that you were answering to a higher calling, one I could not understand. And that I had a role to play.”

Eleanor looked at him with a reverence in her eyes. “And what is that higher calling?”

“I do not know. He would not say. He just said that it was beyond my knowing, and that I needed to return to your cause and to serve without question. He said that you had spent enormous effort bringing about the work we do here and getting Arnauld to come to Boston, and now it was of ultimate importance that he wish to stay, and that I could be of service in that cause. He said it needed to be for me a holy mission and that I should put aside any petty concerns of my own.”

“Oh my,” Eleanor said, and then was silent for a moment.

“And he said more,” Will Honeycutt continued, still cautious.

“Yes?” she said again, in little more than a whisper.

“He said that I would have an important part to play in the story later, and that I needed to be patient and not expect to understand, to stop being so demanding.”

She remained silent for a long time, looking away, but feeling his eyes on her. “Oh my,” she repeated, shaking her head slowly. “That is very much to consider, isn’t it?” Slowly, she looked up, collecting herself, and a gentle smile came to her lips. “Does this mean that you will be moving your things back into the desk?”

“If I am allowed.”

“I would be greatly honored,” she said.

“Then it will be so. I have informed Jesse Livermore.”

“Honored and relieved,” she added. “More than words can express, actually.”

Will Honeycutt looked down at his feet. “I am too,” he said. “Actually.”

She said nothing for a long moment. “I should have been more attentive—” she began softly.

“None of that is important now,” he said abruptly, cutting her off. “I know my role now.” Then upon thought, he added, “I am certain of it.”

“Can you live with what is?”

“I can,” he said, his eyes downcast.

She looked at him until his eyes met hers. “Do you have any idea how important you are to me?”

Will Honeycutt said nothing. “Perhaps,” came out finally. He was looking down, giving the matter thought. “Yes,” he said, gaining conviction. “Yes, I think I do.” Then he added, “William James has told me.”

She paused and stared again. “Good,” she said with her famous
well that settles that
certitude, and then rose and moved back toward the office cupboard. “Here,” she said, opening the cupboard door and removing a cardboard box. “There is something I wish to show you.”

The box was sealed with paper tape, and she opened it with a pair of scissors from her own desk. He watched, without moving, as she withdrew from the packing material a pair of crystal glasses. “I requisitioned these, I believe they say in the military.”

“From the New York hotel,” he said with a smile, “ten years ago.”

Eleanor nodded. “I packed them away in this special box.” She placed the two glasses on the table and then dug further into the packing. She withdrew a bottle of red wine. The label was familiar to both of them, the now-twenty-year-old bottle of Château Mouton Rothschild. “Will you sit down?” she said.

There was a plan for contingencies on Acorn Street, one rarely employed, but put in place if Eleanor needed to stay overly long at a meeting, and Rose knew exactly what to do. For once the needs of her family were not foremost in Eleanor’s mind in this late afternoon; in fact, they were far from foremost in her mind. “Do you recognize the wine?” she said calmly to the disheveled man in front of her.

“How could I not?” he replied.

“I have been saving these for the right occasion,” she said. Her smile was warm and gentle. “I believe we have arrived at that occasion.”

The disheveled Will Honeycutt looked back at her with epic relief on his face. And then she dug down into the packing and found the last items, which she began to withdraw. “There is something more.”

Will Honeycutt saw what she withdrew, and a huge smile broke out on his face and the shadows seemed to disappear from under his eyes. The items were a pair of familiar, thin Cuban cigars, which she laid carefully beside the two glasses, then held up and examined. “This time I think we shall forgo these,” she said.

Will Honeycutt looked enormously relieved. “I take it that this means that I have not ruined everything,” he said.

“I’d say that you most definitely have not,” she said, taking on a feigned seriousness, allowing for a dramatic pause. “You did come close, I will admit.” And she began opening the bottle. “But you have not.”

Neither spoke then as Eleanor opened the bottle with a corkscrew she had pulled from the box, and then after she poured two glasses, she rose and brought him one of them, then held up hers to his. “I do hope that our expensive claret has not turned to vinegar.” Then they said nothing, but her eyes held his for a long moment, allowing him to read in hers whatever intimacy he needed in that moment of communion.

“Now,” she said, returning to her desk chair. “I would like you to show me the sketchbook.”

“I did not mean to leave it behind. It is very private.”

“It is extremely moving, Will. I know it is very private, but I am glad that I had a chance to see it, and now I look forward to reading through it with you.”

He moved toward her, overcoming any hesitation. “I would be honored,” he said with a smile.

“And then I need to tell you about Arnauld,” Eleanor said.

SOMETHING UNPREDICTABLE

T
here is no record of how much of the story Eleanor told Will Honeycutt that day, but it is certain from what follows that she withheld parts at that time. The whole of Arnauld Esterhazy’s story can be pieced together, with some interpreting, from the letters and journals, and it is as follows.

Life for him changed forever one spring morning in 1897 in his native Vienna, at age eighteen, when he saw an attractive young American woman—a “compellingly attractive bright-eyed goddess,” he would write later—standing beside his childhood friend Alma Schindler in a public park near the Hofburg, where he was meeting a group of friends to take in an afternoon in the Wienerwald. “Arnauld, there is someone I would so like you to meet!” Alma, ever the perverse matchmaker, exclaimed loudly so that he had no choice but to look directly into her beautiful face and hold out his hand. “This is Miss Putnam,” Alma continued. “She is visiting us from Boston.”

And so, in that one fateful moment, the young American woman from Boston extended her hand in what was for her a most natural act and for him a total disruption of equilibrium. “I am happy to meet you,” she said cheerfully, as if the meeting were nothing more special than a dozen others she had made with the same outgoing smile—“outgoing and totally captivating” was how the later description went—since her arrival in Vienna on a secret mission to write something of significance about music and cultural life for the
New York Times,
to be published under a pseudonym.

And, his fate sealed, Arnauld had met the love of his life, the woman he would compare over and over again to Dante’s venerated Beatrice. “I hope you are enjoying our city” were the inelegant words out of his mouth, and rather than reply with something equally perfunctory, she held his hand for just an extra moment and said with great earnestness, “Why, yes I am, and you are kind to wish it. I have found my new Vienna friends to be gracious and generous with their time.” She looked over at Alma, who smiled happily. “Perhaps you will join us on one of our regular outings.”

“Oh, you would love having Arnauld all to yourself,” Alma said to her new American friend without an ounce of sarcasm. “He is the one full of historical knowledge. Our great teacher,” she added, now teasing a bit.

“That makes it easy,” Weezie Putnam said then. “We shall invite you along from now on. I am much in need of history lessons.”

The die that was cast with the handshake had now rolled fatefully, and Arnauld found himself on many occasions not only in the presence of this distinctively beautiful woman, but being asked question after question about history and local customs. What is the origin of the term
Biedermeier
? How many languages are official in the empire? Is Beethoven still being played in the symphony halls? Does one ever see the empress in Vienna? Arnauld seemed to know the answer to everything. The more he answered, the more her questioning persisted.

From time to time, Alma, ever the provocateur, would smile at her creation. “I have given you an assignment, Arnauld,” she said, now definitely teasing. “You have become Miss Putnam’s private tutor.” And she smiled her wry sophisticated smile. “And I think she is quite sweet on you, my friend.” Then she sat back and enjoyed seeing her sensitive young Viennese friend blush.

And Arnauld remembered the morning of the first meeting sometime later, when the older American visitor first came into that same park by the Hofburg and he heard him give his name, Mr. Truman, and heard Miss Putnam—for some mysterious reason—give hers in return as Emily James. Why she had done that he had no idea, and, his encounters with her never being of a sufficiently candid nature, he never asked. But he did notice that there was an immediate attraction between these two Americans, an older man and a younger woman, a fatal attraction he was to learn later.

The older American’s attentions began to draw Weezie Putnam away
from the group of friends, a fact that made Arnauld more sad than envious. He liked this man Truman from the very first, although he was of another generation and his reasons for being in Vienna were not altogether clear; in fact, he remained throughout something of a mystery. Arnauld even found himself on occasion sitting in conversation with the man in the presence of his old friend Ernst Kleist and his artistic crowd at the Café Central. But again, his conversations were never candid enough for him to query the man about his intentions, and Arnauld did admit to feeling a bit protective of Miss Putnam as he saw this Mr. Truman, from San Francisco he said, moving closer and closer to her. And then they both began appearing less in public, causing Kleist only to smile knowingly.

“You need not worry, Arnauld,” Kleist said, but Arnauld guessed that his friend’s idea for what should cause worry was quite different from his own.

The older American and Miss Putnam were seen at the opera together and out walking in the Prater and waltzing at the Sperl. And Alma too only smiled and patted his arm when Arnauld asked if she was concerned, and he knew that Alma’s standards—and experiences—also were far different from his in these matters. “Someday you will have your own affairs of the heart,” she said, smiling, again with nothing ironic in her voice. “You will learn to trust the feelings.”

So Arnauld tried not to notice and decided to enjoy the moments when Miss Putnam was beside him asking her endless questions, and to enjoy the occasional times when he found himself alone or in a small café group with the older Mr. Truman.

There was even a time, near the fateful end, when he sat alone in the Café Central and the American visitor joined him. For some reason he could not explain, Arnauld began divulging his despondency over his intense attraction to the very woman to whom his listener had quite obviously become attached. Rather than take offense or chide him in any way, the older American took him into his confidence and in the calmest and most reassuring voice told him something quite extraordinary, that he knew with some assurance that Miss Putnam did indeed hold him in the highest regard and that rather than retreat or cease his attentions, Arnauld ought to press on with confidence, assured that the future held for him a certain brightness and fulfillment. The calm reassurance, coming as a complete surprise, especially considering what was about to transpire, had
such a powerful and lasting effect on Arnauld that he committed himself, pretty much then and there, to a life course of total devotion to this beautiful woman, whom he continued to call his Beatrice.

Then shortly after his surprisingly poignant conversation with the American, the tragedy struck.