Matters of Honor

by Louis Begley

  Joanie and Millie took after their father. In consequence they shared with him, George, my father, and, it must be admitted, with me as well, the dirty-blond hair with curls that resisted both comb and brush, the wiry frame, no-nonsense legs, and a facial bone structure that made Mr. Standish and my father indisputably lantern jawed. Perhaps that was a deformation accentuated by age. They were nice women and, like their husbands, briskly polite and full of chatter. In rapid succession, they told me the ages and sexes of their five children, ranging from six to thirteen, as well as their summer arrangements. One set of in-laws had a house on the North Shore of Long Island, the other on the North Shore of Massachusetts. This enabled Millie to spend the last couple of weeks of June and all of July in Beverly, during which time Joanie had the use of the cottage on the Standish property. During the first week of August, Millie, her husband, and their children squeezed into the big house with the Standish parents, so that the whole family could be together. Then Joanie took over the cottage until it was time for the kids to go back to school, while Millie and her gang moved on to Syosset. Having duly mastered and admired these arrangements, I said I should find George and his houseguests, and moved on.

  They were in the library, Margot with her back to the fire. She said she was freezing; the hot bath hadn’t gotten the cold out of her bones. She wore a long velvet dress of vivid red and red silk shoes. I supposed Mrs. Standish must be pleased by her chic. Henry’s appearance impressed me. Archie had talked him into exchanging the double-breasted dinner jacket that had been his mother’s purchase at Altman’s for an ancient Brooks Brothers model from Keezer’s with peaked lapels of exaggerated width, rather like the one my father wore. It had evidently been treated by the original owner with loving care. They had also acquired a silk dress shirt that had turned dark ivory with age. As a final touch, Archie taught him how to tie his bow tie loosely, so that it drooped like a Confederate officer’s mustache. The jacket was slightly too big for Henry, enhancing the devil-may-care effect. His face was flushed—I supposed from champagne and excitement—and he gestured as he talked, making Margot and George laugh. I knew how conscious he was of the anomaly of his presence. Was that awareness contributing to his high spirits? Or was that how he overcame his anxiety? In either case he was managing just fine.

  I DID NOT OBSERVE Henry’s progress during dinner at the club. He and George and Margot were at Mrs. Standish’s table, and I was with Mr. Standish. As soon as the tables had been cleared, a stag line formed, and Henry and I and most of the other young men drifted into it. Older men remained with their wives and daughters or, if they too drifted away, it was in the direction of the bar. Mr. Standish was in the latter group. As soon as Henry realized that Mrs. Standish had been left alone—her daughters were on the dance floor with their husbands, and George was busy introducing Margot around—he hurried to her side. A moment later, they were on the dance floor. I would not have thought ballroom dancing had figured in Henry’s curriculum in Poland or Brooklyn, but Mrs. Standish’s face left no doubt that she thought he was a fine partner. His example inspired me not to wait until the set was over. I cut in as soon as the band had worked its way through “Tea for Two.” Unfortunately, the next dance was a rumba. My knowledge of the box step was too theoretical for spontaneity, let alone fun, and at first Mrs. Standish made an effort to lead that only confused me the more. We carried on grimly until she said she was thirsty and asked whether I would mind returning to the table and getting her something to drink. She longed to have a chat. Humiliated but grateful, I pushed my way to the bar. When I returned to the table with two glasses of champagne, I found that she and I were alone.

  She gave me a thin-lipped smile and said, How nice, now we can really talk.

  I had supposed that our subject would be Margot and perhaps some banalities about my parents. It wasn’t that at all. Her voice as light as a dragonfly skimming over water, she murmured, Your roommate is so charming. How interesting that you and George and he should be friends. I suppose you have known Henry for a long time.

  I said that we met for the first time in our dormitory room, the day my mother dropped me off in Cambridge. Our other roommate was someone I had also never seen before, the son of an army officer who had moved around a good deal because of his father’s transfers to new posts.

  Oh, said Mrs. Standish, how very interesting. You chose each other without ever having met!

  Now I knew what she was driving at. Stalling, I laughed and said we hadn’t done any such thing. The university housing office had played God and made all the choices. The marvel of it was that the three of us got along exceedingly well.

  Oh, said Mrs. Standish once again, more pensively. What an odd system! Come to think of it, perhaps it isn’t. I don’t suppose that Henry knew anybody at Harvard. Or am I wrong? Perhaps he already had a large group of friends from New York. He is from New York, isn’t he? I think that’s what he told me. Or was it George who said so?

  I didn’t want to correct her by pointing out that Henry lived in Brooklyn, so I said that she was quite right. Hoping to move the conversation into a broader channel, I said that the university in fact matched many more roommates than one would think. For instance, I was the only member of my graduating class at school to be going to Harvard, and I knew no one else except George who was going to be in the freshman class. As it turned out I had assumed correctly that he was already spoken for.

  He would have liked to room with you ever so much, Mrs. Standish assured me. You should have proposed it just as soon as you found out you were going. Or he should have thought of it. All of you are so brilliant and so completely scatterbrained! Jack and I are very pleased to see that you have become such good friends. We’ve always thought you should be, but of course one doesn’t want to interfere.

  I wasn’t entirely sure whether I should believe her but found it easy to say that I was very pleased too. That was, after all, the truth.

  It was Henry, however, who was on Mrs. Standish’s mind. How well that boy dances, she exclaimed. I haven’t waltzed in years. He made me quite dizzy. I believe that he told me he was Polish and came here with his parents after the war. That must account for the waltz and for that lovely little accent. I meant to ask him about it. Where did he prepare?

  The extraordinary thing, I said, was that for all practical purposes he didn’t. There had been one year in Poland, and two years in a high school in New York. It was all the fault of the war.

  How perfectly remarkable. Three years of schooling and then Harvard College. Those schools he attended must be very good. But yes, he is, of course, exceptional.

  Although this wasn’t a question, I answered, Yes, he is!

  She was clearly going to ask more questions, but Mr. and Mrs. Livingston, a couple no less exalted than the Standishes, sat down at our table, and I hurried off to get an eggnog for Mrs. Livingston. When we were alone again, Mrs. Standish asked whether White was a Polish name; the Poles who settled in Berkshire County all seemed to be called Kowak or Nowak. There are so many of them, she pointed out, in West Stockbridge they even have a Polish social club of their own. They are good workers, some of them, and serious churchgoers.

  The parents changed the name, I said, shortly after they arrived. They have adopted the English translation of Weiss.

  Weiss? she said. Jack guessed right away it was something of the sort, she continued. Oh dear, he thinks that Henry must be Jewish.

  It was impossible to play dumb. Accordingly, I nodded cheerfully and said that Mr. Standish had guessed right.

  Oh dear, she said. Of course it can’t be helped. He is a very nice young man.

  And very gifted, I interjected.

  She smiled gently and continued. There are a good many of them at Harvard now. That’s what Jack says. They’re even at Groton. That has made some alumni upset, for instance that dreadful man, Cousin Hoyt. How lucky we are that he has decided to live in Tucson. We never have to see him. Oh dear! Henry’s family mus
t be very nice too. He seems so very well brought up.

  Further discussion of this subject had to be suspended. Henry returned from the dance floor, bringing Margot.

  VIII

  SHORTLY BEFORE MIDNIGHT, the president of the club had the band play a fanfare to get the crowd’s attention and proposed a toast to our fighting men holding their own against Chinese human waves and their leader, General MacArthur, under whom he had himself had the honor to serve. Someone called for a minute of silence, after which the band struck up “The Star-Spangled Banner” and we all sang. Some people were crying. The band segued into “Some Enchanted Evening,” and dancing continued until it was time for whistles and other noisemakers, wishes, and embraces. All the while the band played first “Auld Lang Syne” and then “Green-sleeves” over and over. Mr. and Mrs. Standish began to say their goodnights. As I was thanking them, Mrs. Standish invited me to lunch. One o’clock, as always on New Year’s Day, she said. Oh my, we will have to soldier on even in this awful time for the nation, she said. It would be too depressing to cancel. And then she added, You really must stop calling me Mrs. Standish. It’s May. You may call Jack Cousin Jack, if you like, but he would prefer Jack, tout court. He has told me so. She offered me her cheek to kiss. Mr. Standish held out his hand and said, Quite right. You’ve just heard la patronne. Call me Jack! Best to the parents. Tell your old man about the toast. He’ll be happy to know a glass was raised to our boys in uniform.

  The dance floor was still crowded. Henry was dancing with Margot, and George with a girl I didn’t know. She wasn’t a Berkshire person. Feeling suddenly very sleepy, and not wanting to wait until they had finished, I caught George’s eye, waved farewell, and drove home. My parents were still out when I went to bed, and they were still in their room when I came downstairs in the morning. There was ample evidence, however, of their being at home. Odd pieces of clothing were scattered on the floor of the front hall and in the living room; my mother’s panties hung over the banister. On the kitchen table, I found the remnants of a meal they must have eaten after getting in late at night. It was my father’s firm belief that cheese and sausage consumed just before bed palliated the next day’s hangover. Seeing and smelling the stuff discouraged me from making breakfast, but I scraped their plates and put the leftovers in the fridge. My father’s Oldsmobile was in the driveway. He had not bothered to put it into the garage, but at least he hadn’t cracked it up. The key was in the ignition. Despite the bitter cold, the engine turned over on the third or fourth try. I let it idle for about ten minutes and backed into the garage. This would be my second good deed for the day. I scribbled a note reminding my mother that I was taking her station wagon and, unable to think of any other place that would be open, drove to the drugstore in West Lee for coffee and toast. I didn’t want to arrive at the Standishes’ too early or with an empty stomach.

  ONE LOOK AROUND the Standishes’ living room sufficed to confirm that this event was reserved for the crème de la crème of Stockbridge, Tyringham, and Lenox. I knew many of the faces, even if I couldn’t pretend to greater familiarity. No one but George, Margot, and Henry was roughly in my age group. Perhaps families were not necessarily invited as units, a circumstance that should have made me less queasy about being without my parents, who as the regulars would immediately realize upon seeing me, if they bothered to think about it, had always been excluded. But I remained uneasy, although I was grateful to be spared the embarrassment of greeting contemporaries and had no cause to complain about any lack of cordiality on the part of my hosts, or about the number of hands that reached out for my own as I crossed the living room. I found Margot in the library, on a window seat, face turned toward the Standishes’ back lawn, which was blindingly white under drifts of virgin snow. Beyond were lines of black pine, and farther beyond the white bulk of Monument Mountain. She seemed lost in thought and didn’t notice my approach. Perhaps because she wasn’t wearing lipstick, her face seemed smaller, less outrageous, and oddly sad. I said I hoped she had slept well and asked about George and Henry.

  Oh, she answered, just check the Ping-Pong table on the glassed-in porch over there. She gestured vaguely toward the side of the house. George is trouncing Henry. It’s sickening to watch. Why does Henry want to play with him?

  I said I could think of at least two reasons: to be polite to his host, who could never sit still, and to get good enough at the game to be able to beat him eventually.

  She shrugged and asked me to get her a drink. Not this ghastly stuff, she specified, pointing at my cup of eggnog, I’d like a bourbon.

  The previous evening’s manservant was again on duty and brought the drink on a small silver tray. As soon as he was out of earshot, I asked Margot whether she thought that he was the Standishes’ butler or someone hired for the occasion. You and Henry ask the same questions, she replied. Who cares? Judging by his clothes, I’d say he works here.

  We clinked glasses, she said chin-chin, and unexpectedly gave me a big smile, like the one I saw that first day in the Yard, though without lipstick. Then, without another word having been said, the smile vanished, and she went back to looking at Monument Mountain. I was going to ask whether something was the matter, but the manservant—I wondered what it was she saw in his clothes that marked him as the Standishes’ permanent employee—announced that lunch was served. Mrs. Standish, or May, as I was trying to think of her, directed us to our table. George and Henry were already there, as were the sisters Appleton, the elder of whom, Ellen, was the headmistress of a girls’ school in Brookline. I had a dim recollection that the other one, Susie, wrote children’s books that regularly won prizes. They were Mr. Standish’s cousins on his mother’s side and lived together in Boston, in a house on Beacon Hill. They also shared in Tyringham a Shaker house of great beauty that had belonged to their parents, where they spent summers and, out of season, long weekends and holidays. By putting the sisters with us, Mrs. Standish had achieved a balanced table without resorting to an equivalent of a children’s table or seating George and Margot away from Henry and me. But at what cost? The sisters had the reputation of being ferocious and unapproachable bluestockings, especially Ellen. Perhaps they would only speak to each other, and to George, because he was a relative. But I needn’t have worried. As soon as George had named the girls’ school in New York that Margot had attended, Ellen put to her a series of questions about the former headmistress and the programs in modern foreign languages and music. Margot hardly bothered to answer, speaking in negligent monosyllables. I wondered why she was sulking. Perhaps it was in order to bait George, but so far as I could tell he had been very attentive at the dance and was trying to be a good host at this table. I kept my eye on Ellen. It seemed impossible that she would tolerate disrespectful behavior from a girl who could have easily been one of her own charges. There was going to be an explosion, but what form would it take, the usual punishments, such as keeping Margot after school or sending her home with an unpleasant note, not being available? George should have been coming to the rescue, but he didn’t seem to notice anything amiss. Fortunately Henry was creating a distraction so surprising that I thought it might preserve Margot from the headmistress’s wrath. He had told me that he really liked the Standishes’ eggnog. Perhaps he had had one too many. That was, in any event, my explanation for the rather loud and peculiar conversation in which he engaged Susie. He wanted to know to what extent her stories had been inspired by the bodies of work of such writers as the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen. He expressed at length his surprise at her dislike of these authors and asked more questions, the result of which was that Susie acknowledged one influence, Louisa May Alcott. Henry confessed that he had never read Little Women—for a moment I had feared that he would try to fake familiarity with it—and declared that he would now put it on his reading list. Then, as though determined not to yield the floor, he began, without transition, a discourse on the subject of a Polish fairy tale about a certain Pan Twardowski, the noblem
an who sold his soul to the devil, lived like a king while the devil did his bidding, and in the end cheated the devil out of his due by fleeing to the moon. The figure of the man in the moon that you can see when the moon is full, he concluded, is none other than Pan Twardowski. He’s laughing his head off.

  A primitive retelling of the German Faust legend, observed Ellen.

  Henry blushed. Yes, of course, he answered, I should have said so right away.

  It was obvious to me and perhaps to everyone else as well that he had never considered the connection, and I wished he had simply said so. Susie decided to be merciful. But Ellen, dear, she said to the headmistress, isn’t it true that Faust-like figures exist in most cultures? Perhaps it isn’t a retelling at all.

  Most may be an overstatement, was the somewhat grumpy reply. How is one to know whether there is a Zulu Faust?

  With that, the headmistress turned her attention to Henry and inquired whether he was by any chance of Polish origin. She thought she was hearing a slight and very pretty Slavic accent, and added to that was his knowledge of a Polish fairy tale.

  It is a Polish accent, answered Henry.

  Really! And how did that come about?

  I was born there, in Poland.

  But you must have been very little when you left.

  That depends on how little I seem now. We left Poland three years ago.