Matters of Honor

by Louis Begley

  And how do you feel about her, I asked, about Madame van Damme?

  Madeleine? It’s all so preposterous. Just saying her name fills me with happiness and gratitude, but I can’t really think that I love her. Surely she doesn’t love me. If I didn’t know that it had happened, I wouldn’t believe that it had. Why did she choose me? Do you realize that she must be four or five years older than my mother? She never told me her age, but I am pretty sure that’s right given what she was doing during the war. She will be in Boston at the end of the month, staying at a hotel. She’s coming alone, for some Wellesley alumnae business. Can you imagine it? A whole week.

  XVI

  SOME TIME LATER, Henry told me gravely that Madeleine had arrived in Boston. For several days he was not to be seen in the dining room at dinner, and he didn’t stop by my room as was his custom.

  An unpleasant incident occurred more or less at that time involving Margot. Rehearsals of Ubu were in progress and whenever we spoke Henry said he was pleased with the cast, especially the pompous sophomore, who had turned out to be a friend of Ralph Wilmerding’s. Henry thought he was “quintessentially ubuesque.” There was a good deal of interest in the production, and while the other roles were never easy to fill, he had many candidates to choose from. A big problem he faced was Margot’s determination to play la mère Ubu. Remembering our earlier conversation, and the suggestion I had made, I said that was splendid, for once proof that telepathy can work.

  Yes, Henry said, I also thought it was a great idea at first, but she doesn’t know how to project her voice and can’t be heard. The acoustics at the Fogg are terrible, because of all that stone. I don’t know whether she can overcome it.

  A week or so passed before we talked again about the play. Henry came to my room after a rehearsal. He threw himself into an armchair and told me that he had bad news about Margot. After he had gotten the actor playing Ubu to work with her on her breathing, he told me they had a special rehearsal at the Fogg, just the three of them, and it was no better. That was, he thought in retrospect, the time to tell her nicely that he would have to replace her, but he didn’t; the prospect of directing her was irresistible. He let matters more or less slide until this afternoon’s important full rehearsal when, in the presence of the entire cast and Bob Chapman, the tutor helping him with technical aspects of the production, and with Wilmerding and Scott Allen watching from the side, he suddenly blew up. He was standing where the last row of seats would be, Margot was in the midst of one of her big speeches, and he mostly couldn’t hear and when he did hear he couldn’t understand, although he knew the lines by heart. Suddenly, without any forethought, he found himself yelling at her: You sound like a debutante at a freshman smoker! Stop speaking through your goddamn nose! Even as he yelled, he heard Wilmerding and Allen snickering. Then Wilmerding stood up to applaud—you couldn’t tell whether he was applauding him or Margot. The situation was so ghastly that Henry didn’t even notice Margot stride across the space that was cordoned off as the stage until she stood before him shouting—this time projecting so well that no one present could fail to hear—I’ve had it with you, you bastard. Then she slapped him hard across the face, first one cheek and then the other. He just stood there, silent, while she stomped off.

  How could I have let things slide so badly, how did I lose control? he asked over and over, shaking his head in disbelief. I know I’ve been tense, I know that I’m behind in my work, I know that I’ve spent too much time with Madeleine, and I know that Margot’s been frustrating, but how I let such a thing happen is beyond me. I guess it was saying that she spoke through her nose that got her, he said. She’s very sensitive about it. Still, it wasn’t the end of the world.

  I replied that Margot evidently thought otherwise.

  He nodded and pointed to the red marks on his cheeks. Somehow, they got through the rehearsal, with him reading Margot’s part. Afterward, Bob Chapman and he walked back to the house. On the way, Chapman told him not to take what happened too hard. You’ll both get over it, he said, and the play might be improved because Margot isn’t right as mère Ubu, unlike Jackson as Ubu—that role was made for Wilmerding’s blowhard friend, it fits him like a glove. At the same time, Chapman said I should learn a lesson: one should look for ways to turn a liability into a strength. I might have taken advantage of Margot’s snobby elocution and made it into another incongruous facet of Mrs. Ubu’s grotesque personality. At least I might have tried to. This advice, given so calmly and discreetly, really hurt more than the slap and made me feel boorish and stupid, but I was grateful for it.

  He looked utterly wretched and asked whether I had any liquor in the room. In fact, there was some sherry left in the bottle George had given me for my birthday. I poured a drink for each of us. Henry finished his, looked at his watch, and asked to use the phone. I supposed he was going to call his mother so I went to wash my hands and afterward, to give him more time, stayed in the bedroom putting away the shirts that had just come back from the laundry. I was surprised to hear, instead of a Polish conversation, Henry saying that he would like to speak to Margot. A moment of silence followed. The girl on bells at Margot’s dormitory must have been looking for her. Then Henry spoke again, saying a rather cheerful Hello, Margot. The bang of the receiver being slammed down on the other end was so loud that I heard it from the bedroom. Henry hung up too, very gently, and addressing me said, I don’t know what to do now, she won’t speak to me. I’ve got to fill that role. That can’t wait and I’ll have to manage it one way or another. But that she should be so angry, that I should have lost her, is more than I can bear.

  It was seven. I said we should go to dinner. Most people had already eaten, and we were able to have a table to ourselves. I told him I couldn’t understand how he had those feelings for Margot and could continue whatever he was doing with Madame van Damme. He told me he didn’t have an answer; he was utterly confused.

  IT WAS A MYSTERY to me what made Henry think he could stage and direct a play. His experience consisted of nothing more than being taken to Broadway shows by his parents, an imposition he complained about as yet another effort to infantilize him. Nonetheless, if I hadn’t known him well, I wouldn’t have suspected that every step he took was improvised. His self-assurance was impregnable. He replaced Margot as la mère Ubu with a Radcliffe freshman, a Walküre with a voice to match. A week later, after the dress rehearsal, Chapman gave the cast the victory sign. The enthusiasm of the audience at the premiere was such that the director of the Fogg agreed on the spot to two more performances to take place the following week.

  There was a party afterward given by Mr. Ryan, an economics tutor affiliated with the house, and his wife, who had painted the play’s only backdrop, a curtain held aloft on two poles at each end. The cast and everyone connected with the production, as well as their friends, were invited. The Ryans lived at the corner of Brattle and Fayerweather streets. It was a beautiful night in March. Although it wasn’t especially cold, George had gotten his car so that as soon as Henry was ready, we could drive him there. Archie came with us. Practically everyone must have already arrived. One could hear the roar of the guests from the street. We were quickly separated, and I didn’t see George again until Bob Chapman’s toast, for which someone managed to quiet the crowd. As soon as he had finished, Henry made a toast and offered his thanks without, it seemed to me, omitting anyone. We got back to the house very late, and I was surprised when Henry followed me to my room. He sat down and asked: Did you notice Wilmerding and Allen? What about them? I answered. Neither came to the party, he said, although they were both at the play. I don’t understand those two.

  XVII

  SUCCESS, observed Tom Peabody, having made sure that Wilmerding and his two sidekicks with whom we had just had lunch were out of earshot, ah success. It’s hard to earn and harder to wear gracefully. Inde ira et lacrimae.

  We were lingering over coffee in the house dining room. Henry had been at lunch with us as well, but
had left abruptly in the middle of the meal. I asked Tom what he meant by the English part of his aphorism; I understood the Latin.

  It’s simple, he answered, I would have thought you could figure it out. Henry’s sudden blaze of success doesn’t suit Wilmerding. Ergo, it doesn’t suit Wilmerding’s disciples. Henry should have pleaded with Wilmerding to take ample credit for Ubu; in fact, he should have forced it on him. Now the harm is done. Are you ready for another old saw, ira furor brevis? Not this time. Hell will freeze over before Wilmerding relents.

  I protested, telling Tom that I knew for a fact that Wilmerding had done nothing to help out with the production, although he had been given every opportunity. The same was true of his pals, Thatcher and Burlingham. Hot air: that was all.

  Tom waved that aside. I don’t doubt it, he said, but it doesn’t matter. Never ask someone to help unless you really want him to help and you think he will. Otherwise, you’re asking for trouble. And if you fall into that trap and you happen to be dealing with someone like Ralph, you had better pretend that he has been immensely helpful. Better yet, indispensable. As it is, Wilmerding feels slighted and will make your friend Henry pay for the insult. Of course, he might have turned against Henry whatever he did. They all think he’s too big for his britches.

  I asked whether, as a practical matter, there was anything Henry could still do to repair the damage.

  Do now? Probably nothing. He can hope for the best and not expect much. It wasn’t very smart to try to worm his way into Wilmerding’s circle. He did that, you know. I observed it with interest because I was in a way an accessory to the crime. He’d see me at Ralph’s table and ask whether he could join me. After a while, he began to act as though he were entitled to be there and didn’t need my presence as a pretext. That’s when Wilmerding began his cat-and-mouse game with him, a game designed only to humiliate, because Wilmerding is a house cat and doesn’t eat mice. If you know him well enough, you will realize that if Ralph chooses the game, he wins. It doesn’t matter whether it’s chess or checkers or who remembers more dates of famous battles or how many rounds Joe Louis went with Tommy Farr. I don’t know whether Wilmerding and Henry have actually played, but if they have I’m sure Wilmerding won. Then Henry came up with a game of his own: putting on a play no one had ever heard of with no opportunity for Wilmerding to beat him. That left only one solution. The banishment of Henry! For the sake of the established social order.

  Having said this, Tom folded his napkin and got up. I followed him to his entryway. Before he went in, I said, I want to ask a question: What do you really think of Wilmerding and company?

  Tom raised his eyebrows. Not much. But as undergraduates go, they’re decent company: good-looking, well dressed, reasonably civilized.

  But in relation to this case, I insisted, to what they’ve done.

  They’ve been rough with him, he replied. But don’t worry too much about Henry. I suspect that he’s very resilient.

  After lunch I recalled incidents that Tom’s remarks illuminated for me in retrospect. It was a fact that only one Parnassian—Jack Merton—as well as Tom Peabody, of course, had come to the Ryans’ party for Ubu, although all were invited and I had heard Henry repeat the invitation the day before the premiere. Also, very recently I had noticed on several occasions at lunch and dinner that it was difficult for Henry to get a word in edgewise: whatever he said, Wilmerding or Allen would break in and, speaking more loudly than he, take the conversation in some other direction. This was to some extent how they normally behaved. They were enamored of clipped private jokes and anecdotes that were sometimes difficult to decipher. But at this last lunch they had been openly brutal. Wilmerding had ignored questions Henry addressed to him—rather than answer he turned away and spoke to Thatcher or Burlingham—and Allen had once or twice imitated Henry’s accent in answering something he had said.

  I didn’t doubt that Henry knew what was happening, and in the days that followed my talk with Tom I took to waiting for him at the door of the dining room so that we could sit together, or, if he had arrived before me, I joined him at whatever table he happened to have chosen. I didn’t think that he would again attempt to scale Parnassus, though I was reluctant to be the first to mention the change in his and Wilmerding’s relations. It wasn’t long, however, before Henry asked whether I could explain what he had done to Ralph and the rest of that crew.

  I seem to have become public enemy number one, he said, and I don’t know what crime I have committed.

  Although I had come to believe that Tom was right in everything he had said, I didn’t have the heart to repeat his words to Henry. I avoided the question partially, telling him that with the exception of Merton, they were pretentious second-raters unable to accept the success of anyone who wasn’t a charter member of their club but came into daily contact with them. I added that I had become tired of seeing them at lunch and dinner. That at least was absolutely true.

  Nothing more was said at the time. A couple of days later, he asked me out of the blue whether I had imagined that Ubu could turn into such an albatross.

  I shook my head.

  It has, he said, most probably because it has been such a success. If it had fizzled some might have snickered but no one would have really cared. Instead it has made trouble. Not just between Wilmerding and me—by the way there may be more to it than my success, but I can’t put my finger on it. But the classics department too has its nose out of joint. A couple of old fogies claim that my having staged such a play is a sign that I’m not serious. A self-respecting classicist, they say, if he were to do any such thing at all, would have chosen a Greek or Latin text instead of some French drivel. They wouldn’t have even noticed that there had been a production of Ubu if there had been less talk about it.

  The following week he reported that he was pretty sure of having placated both the department chairman and the professor with whom he was reading Greek tragedies. He told them about the coincidence of his reading Plautus in the library of a château in the Ardennes awakening the interest of the director of the national theater of Brussels, and the rapprochement the director had made between Plautus and Jarry.

  Name-dropping clinched it, he added, brazen name-dropping. Denis van Damme, Ardennes, a French château, a Belgian industrial fortune. They began to regard me with a certain new respect. Unfortunately, I made them a foolish promise that I will live to regret. I told them that if work on my thesis permits, I’ll stage a Greek or Latin play next spring.

  In all likelihood, he could have skipped that commitment. A few days later he learned that the election to the national honor society had taken place and that he was one of the handful of juniors chosen. Over dinner at Henri IV, where Archie and I took him to celebrate, Henry refused to be congratulated. For one thing, when he told his parents his mother said, That’s all you have to tell me? What’s so good about being one out of eight? You aren’t at the head of your class?

  Besides, he said, this election is based on arithmetic; they take the juniors with the highest grades. Nobody needed to vote for me because he liked me. It would be fun to be elected to something just once because everyone thinks I’m such a nice guy.

  DR. REINER AND I were going through another crisis at just that time. I had begun a novel for my creative writing course and it was going no better than my analysis. There were days when I could manage at most a few lines. And I was spending more time with George, not only because I liked him but also because he did not try to involve me in problems that couldn’t be solved. We would have a meal, drink a beer, chuckle over Berkshires gossip, and say goodbye. I had spent only one week in Lenox during the past summer, most of it playing tennis on the Standishes’ court. I hadn’t gone home for Christmas, and I wasn’t planning to go at Easter. George was my source of news. I had no doubt that I hurt my parents’ feelings by staying away. But their silence—my mother had stopped writing to me—and my Christmas present, three pairs of thick wool socks and a pair of red flanne
l pajamas out of the L. L. Bean catalog, left no doubt in my mind that they considered me damaged goods. Which was more to blame: the beating I had received in New Orleans or my subsequent nervous breakdown? I also thought it possible that, after all those years of bringing up somebody else’s kid, and putting a more or less good face on it, they’d had enough. A Standish trust was paying my way. I was off their hands and out the door. Good riddance to a bad job. Dr. Reiner showed no interest in these speculations; he said, We’re not here to discuss current events.

  Had I been less absorbed by these personal worries I might have realized how isolated the collapse of the relationship with Wilmerding had left Henry. If you crossed off Wilmerding and his companions, he had no friends apart from Archie, George, and me—an odd situation for an undergraduate so accomplished to find himself in just in the second half of his junior year. I should have once again made an effort to have meals with him regularly. But I was skipping more dinners and lunches than I ate, and almost never went to breakfast. The hours kept by the muse and the house dining room staff did not overlap. So it happened that I wouldn’t spend an evening with Henry until after the Easter break. We went to an early show at the University Theater and then sat up talking in my room.

  I saw Madeleine in New York, he told me. She timed her trip so that I could be there.

  Is it possible that I said something as stupid as, Did you have a good time? It didn’t matter; he could hardly wait to tell me. She is fabulous, he said, I am beginning to believe that she may be in love with me. Anyway she really wants to be with me. Just think—we had three nights together. Then she went back to Brussels and I took the subway to Brooklyn.

  I was intrigued and asked whether he had actually slept at her hotel. He laughed and said, Yes, at a very big hotel she had chosen on purpose, the Waldorf-Astoria. It was so big that even if someone she knew happened to be in the lobby there was little likelihood of that person’s realizing that he was with her unless she took his arm, which she was careful not to do. They were together all the time, even when she went shopping, except for two lunches, when she had to meet the wives of her husband’s business friends. That Mr. and Mrs. White could have survived the news that their only son was staying at the Waldorf with a woman more than thirty years older didn’t seem likely. I asked him how he had managed to get that past his parents.