She spotted her mother, walking beside Rachel Shapiro, holding a banner between them. Elsa waved, trying to get their attention, but they didn’t see her through the crowd. She began to walk on the sidewalk parallel to the march, glancing through the line of onlookers to keep in step with her mother. After a few blocks, Elsa felt as if she was a part of the march. She may not have participated directly in the suffragists’ cause, but this was her success too. She had fought for this in her own way, through her ambition and tenacity.
Elsa was less afraid than just a short time ago when she left Dafne at the apartment. She might soon lose her position with Dafne, either because Dafne no longer wanted her or couldn’t afford her, or—the thought came to her for the first time—because she no longer wanted to work for Dafne. Whatever happened, she would be fine. She didn’t need Dafne. That tenacity that had brought her this far would bring her even further, even if she no longer had a penny to her name.
The march led downtown. Everything was so familiar, yet also so changed. Elsa had mixed feelings about New York City. She didn’t have many good memories here. But being here had taught her priceless things about herself. With everything this city tried to throw at her, for all the times it tried to break her, she had succeeded. She had mastered this place. Whatever it threw at her next, she would take it in stride.
Feeling strong, Elsa allowed herself a moment to indulge her dreams. It had been a long time since she’d done so. For a few years, in Lindenhurst, she felt her dreams had come true and did not think much about the future. After coming back to the city, everything started changing at a rapid pace. It was all her emotions could do to keep up. Recently she had felt she was hanging on to what she had achieved, rather than hoping for more.
She did have more dreams, ones she had not let herself indulge. The feeling of love, which came on her so suddenly before Glenn left for the war, opened new doors in her heart. The serving life was not the final goal, it never had been. What had become of those dreams she and Sonja talked about that day at Ellis Island?
Even in their tragedy, she found that she envied her sister, with the fullness that her children brought her. She envied the bond Sonja shared with Christof, that they could face their tragedy together. Elsa wanted the kind of love that would last through everything.
For the first time, she let herself imagine Glenn as that partner to her. She imagined children with him as their father. It was a foolish dream, but she did not push it away from her mind. She allowed herself the enjoyment of the fantasy.
After all, she thought, looking back at her mother, with Rachel and the other suffragists, where would they all be if a few women had not allowed themselves a foolish dream? It was foolish for them to have believed they could beat the factory bosses and make reforms, but they did. It was foolish to believe they could win the vote—the right having to be voted on by men—but here they were, celebrating that victory.
When the parade ended, Elsa slipped through the crowd and found her mother. Nina was overjoyed to see her there. They walked back to Nina’s apartment in the Lower East Side and made dinner together.
Elsa told her mother what she had done for Sonja and Christof. She would have preferred not to tell—and your heavenly father who sees in secret will reward you—as the scriptures had taught her. But she knew her mother had been worried and she looked so relieved after Elsa told her. Giving her mother that relief was itself a part of her charitable duty. With that strain soothed, Nina talked all evening about the march and the victory of suffrage.
Elsa loved hearing her mother’s enthusiasm. When she visited her mother last year with Glenn, for the first time after returning to the city, she had noticed how much she had aged in their years apart. Now she seemed younger, more energetic. She still worked at the same job, but had found another purpose. Elsa also supposed that Nina’s mother’s instinct was awakened by Sonja’s recent plight. She had always fought to protect her daughters. If Elsa ever found herself in need, she had no doubt her mother would be there for her again too, in any way she could.
Elsa spent the night with her mother and took an uptown train in the morning.
Back at the apartment, she found Dafne in a panic. Dafne had never been alone overnight before. Elsa thought it might have done her good. She could see from the disaster in the kitchen that Dafne had tried to cook for herself. Her bedroom was a complete mess too, with clothes and toiletries strewn about.
Dafne apologized for her outburst, explaining that a message from her parents had upset her. Elsa listened understandingly and forgave her. They embraced. But one more measure of trust had been lost between them.
Elsa resumed her work, cleaning the kitchen and preparing for the coming day. Her tasks were familiar, but it felt different. She felt a fresh independence after yesterday. Even the act of giving away her savings seemed to free her from reliance on it. She would serve Dafne to the best of her ability. She did love her mistress. But she no longer had any illusions that this would last forever. When the change came, she would be ready, and she would succeed again, just as she had done before.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Price of War
Glenn had heard of Floyd Gibbons long before the famous reporter visited the front lines. As one of the first American officers to see action, Glenn had been sought out by Gibbons for an interview.
Floyd Gibbons was as much a soldier as a reporter. They said his pen was his weapon, with which he drew fire from his enemies and fired back through the sentiment of the people he influenced. Glenn knew he had come to Europe as soon as the United States declared war. When his ship was torpedoed by a German U-boat off the coast of Ireland, he wrote a fantastic account for the stateside newspapers. He was on hand to greet General Pershing and the first American soldiers.
Sitting in Floyd Gibbons’ well-outfitted tent, a safe mile behind the reserve trench, Glenn enjoyed his cup of tea for the first time since arriving in France. He’d had tea but hadn’t enjoyed it. There was plenty of tea in the camps . . . as long as you didn’t mind a little dirt in the water, or leaves that had already been brewed twice, or the taste of tin from the army cups. Gibbons had new tea imported straight from England, served in porcelain cups. He even had fresh milk.
Glenn had looked forward to this interview, but hadn’t anticipated what he felt as he sipped his tea. The lack of fear was incredible. He now realized that for weeks, every single moment had been colored by an immediate and crippling fear of death. Even at the reserve trench, the fear was constant. As long as he was within shelling range, every moment could be his last.
They sat in padded folding chairs at a folding table, all perfectly designed for the nomadic comforts of a war correspondent.
“Tell me a thrilling tale about the battles you’ve seen,” said Gibbons.
Glad for the opportunity, Glenn related the story of Christmas morning, with the emotional singing across no-man’s-land. He told every detail he could recall. Gibbons listened respectfully but without eagerness. Glenn didn’t perceive the reporter’s ambivalence until he was finished. Only then did he notice that he hadn’t written a single word on his pad.
“You’re not interested, are you?”
“Sure I am.”
“Has somebody already told you about it?”
“No.”
“What, then? Don’t people back home want to read about this sort of thing . . . humanity in the midst of the carnage?”
Gibbons sighed. “As I said, I am interested. It is a beautiful story. But I cannot write about it for the American people.”
“Why not?”
“Captain, I don’t want to stifle your enthusiasm, but I must be honest with you.” He paused. “You and I know this war in all its terrible truth. I understand why you grasp at the good in the midst of the evil . . . even the good of the men on the other side. But I am a soldier, just like you. If I write this story, I am striking a blow for the enemy. To people back home, the Germans must appear evil,
even inhuman. Once folks stop believing that, they will begin to doubt the war. Do you have any idea how important the support from home is to winning a war?”
“No.”
“It is everything. Germany will lose this war, and let me tell you why. After three and a half years, Germany is starving. You think things are bad here in France. Imagine a similar state, but with a complete naval blockade against them. Not only are the Germans limited to the resources they can get from their own land and the small area they have conquered, they have no one to harvest those resources. All the men are either dead or shivering in that trench over there. The soldiers still have meat while the citizens try to make soup from the bones. The people are beginning to hate Kaiser Wilhelm for what he’s brought upon them. Soon the people will pull Germany down from within. It happened last year in Russia. It happened in Austria. It’s happening right now in Turkey. So now those poor soldiers who sang with you on Christmas don’t even have the support of their wives and mothers.
“Meanwhile, in the States, civilians are volunteering to sew uniforms and build weapons. Families are proud to buy liberty bonds to pay for the war, and let me tell you, war costs a lot of money. Do you think German families are buying war bonds right now?”
Glenn sipped his tea in silence, already anticipating his grim walk back toward the battle lines. Gibbons continued.
“Sentiment and propaganda are the most powerful tools of war. Germany has lost its power to use them, for the reality has become brutally obvious to its people. But our people believe every word I tell them. The food, supplies and fresh men coming from America is the only hope the Allies have. It is the work of men like me to keep that flow coming across the Atlantic. Meanwhile, Germany is headed for the same fate as Russia and Austria. If the American people feel the agony of the German people, or the humanity of the German soldiers, they will doubt. Now do you realize why I cannot print your story?”
Glenn’s face fell. He didn’t know what to think.
“Cheer up, Captain.” Gibbons stood up and clapped him on the back. “That’s the price of war, my friend. Be inspired by the people who stand behind you. Anyone who fights in this war begins to separate the men from the idea. But remember, you are fighting against an idea—the imperialism of Germany. Those soldiers across from you may not themselves be evil men, but they are tools of evil and must be brought down. You are protecting your friends and family back home, as well as the French and British, from the encroachment of this evil. At the same time, you are helping to bring the promise of the American idea here to Europe.”
Glenn left the tent in despair. He had come hoping to show his homeland a light in the midst of the darkness—proving there was hope even for the men in the jaws of death. Now he was being told to forget that small light of hope.
Gibbons was right . . . he was merely the tool of an idea. And what kind of idea? It was America as a shining beacon that would first sweep away evil, then starvation and poverty from war-torn Europe.
Glenn began to see clearly America’s role in the world after the war. Gibbons said that Germany could no longer win. But neither could France or England. Only America could win now. With its economy still intact, all of Europe would rely on American resource and philanthropy in the postwar era. The economic invasion would be much more effective than the military one Germany had attempted.
But the war had to be painted as moral in order to win the support of the people. Floyd Gibbons probably understood that reality even better than President Wilson.
Glenn wondered whether there had ever been a moral war.
As he walked back toward the reserve trench, the familiar fear crept back into his body. He felt it in his blood, his muscles, his gut. It made it difficult to think about anything else, but Glenn had to keep thinking. It was what kept him human.
He shouted a silent prayer at heaven as he reached his post. How could God allow civilization to so thoroughly rend itself apart? How could God take away hope? Losing hope was worse than death. Even a sign of humanity such as the music of that Christmas morning was stifled and silenced.
Dafne watched the luster of New York fade away in the winter of 1917–18. The United States had only sent a handful of divisions to France, but two million draftees had entered military training, mostly in the Deep South. Toward the end of winter the deployments would begin in earnest, with ships sailing almost daily out of the New York Port of Embarkation on the Hudson River and from Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn. There was an urgent need for fresh bodies in France.
The New York City that Dafne had come to love so dearly was hibernating. It irked her that everyone felt the need to suffer in support of a war three thousand miles away. She was willing to do her part and live simpler. But there was no reason for the city to go to sleep. Even the women stayed home now.
It shouldn’t have been so dull. Most of the soldiers returned to the city for a night or two before sailing. They were never recognizable or memorable except for their new, sharply pressed uniforms. But despite the soldiers, the city had no energy. Dafne hoped Hal would let her know when he came north before deployment.
Each evening at about six o’clock, Dafne grew restless. She would dress up, make a few phone calls to encourage her friends to come out, then either go out by herself for a drink at one of the hotels or put herself to bed early. By the end of winter she felt lonely and depressed.
Her own family’s finances were tightening. Her father’s practice had suffered badly in the buildup to the war. Anti-German sentiment forced him to abandon many long-term clients. As the war began, he managed to get some new work with the government, thanks to his knowledge of German legal matters, but his income wasn’t nearly what it had been. She didn’t want to think about the cost of housing for herself and Elsa here in New York, but she knew it was a significant drain. She feared being asked to return to Lindenhurst.
Thelma Sanderson called Dafne when she returned to the city in February, having spent Christmas and January with her family in Lindenhurst. Having a friend reach out to her for a change made Dafne’s week. They had tea together the next day at the Carlyle.
Dafne sat down, beaming at her friend. It was so good to see Thelma, who looked beautiful and wise to her. She clutched her hand.
“I’ve missed you, dear. I’m so glad you called.”
“Poor Dafne. You must be so lonely. Does Hal write you?”
“He only wrote me once. His camp is in Kentucky. I wrote him every week at first, but I stopped. I don’t know. Maybe once he’s in France he’ll write. For all I know he’s there already.”
Thelma smiled compassionately.
“It’s even worse because I know Elsa gets letters from Glenn.”
“Oh, my dear, I’m sorry. That must be so hard.”
“I don’t blame him for writing her. They became good friends, and I don’t think it goes further than that. But it’s tough. I feel like when I lost Glenn, I started to lose Elsa, too. I don’t think she ever forgave me for what happened. Elsa and I used to be able to talk about anything. Something’s changed.”
“You really love that servant of yours, don’t you?”
“I do.”
Without having realized she was on the verge, Dafne started to cry. Thelma slid toward her and wrapped her arms around her, stroking her back. Dafne’s head sank onto Thelma’s bosom.
After a few minutes, Dafne sat up with a sniffle. She took a handkerchief out of her purse to wipe her eyes. She smiled shyly. “I’m sorry. I can’t help it. I’ve been very emotional.”
Thelma placed a hand on her leg. “Don’t apologize, love. I know. I’m here for you. Whatever you need.” She looked deeply into Dafne’s eyes. “Anything you need . . . call me.”
Dafne put her own hand on top of Thelma’s and squeezed it gratefully. “Thank you.”
When their tea came, the conversation lightened. Thelma told Dafne about her two children. Her husband Michael was at a camp in South Carolina. He had been writing, bu
t still not as often as Thelma thought he should. Dafne bemoaned the slowing nightlife of the city. After tea they agreed to go to a dance together the next night. Even if there were no one to dance with, they would get dressed up and have fun together.
Dafne took a cab home. The postman was arriving just then and handed her a letter. It was for Elsa.
She didn’t have to look at the return address to know it was from Glenn. At first glance it was obvious the letter had been sent from abroad. That handwriting was familiar; it had penned sweet notes to her in the early days. Now it wrote out Elsa’s name.
Going inside, she sat on the couch with the letter in her hands. It had strange stamps and blue markings. She wished it were hers. She didn’t know whether she wished Glenn were still her man or not. She missed their times together more than she missed him.
Where was he? Was he in danger? She still cared for him. And where was Hal? Would she see him when he came through the city? Would she even know when Hal finally sailed? The loneliness was unbearable.
She who had lost two men to the war didn’t even have the comfort of one who remembered her. She laid Elsa’s letter on the counter. It would be obvious when Elsa found it that Dafne had seen it.
Dafne had lost more than her two men to this war. She was also losing Elsa. Their friendship was fading. It had been the two men that came between them, certainly. But as time passed, Dafne realized that Elsa had become more precious to her than either Glenn or Hal had been. Even though Elsa was with her every day, Dafne felt that she missed her. What would she do if Elsa were really taken away from her?
Despite her loneliness, Dafne cheered herself up by anticipating the dance the next night. Later that evening Thelma called again and suggested they make a whole night of it, with dinner at the Carlyle before the dance at the Biltmore.
Love of Finished Years Page 22
