Matters of Honor

by Louis Begley

  IT WAS VERY COLD on New Year’s Eve, the temperature hovering in the low teens, and Henry had trouble finding a parking place. After a while we gave up and looked for a garage. The first few we saw were full; finally we got into one between Lexington Avenue and Third and, shivering in the glacial wind, walked west to Park Avenue, and then south on the avenue until we reached the Hornungs’ building at the corner of Seventy-fourth Street. This is it, said Henry with a quietly satisfied proprietary air. It’s an amazing place.

  We left our overcoats in the lobby, in care of two somber white-haired ladies, and got into the elevator. Henry had prepared me for the phenomenon of its door opening directly into the foyer of their apartment, and the party at the Standishes’ had familiarized me with the phenomenon of men serving in white gloves who offer a glass of champagne and exchange it for a full one as soon as it’s empty. But nothing in Henry’s description had led me to anticipate the brilliance of the chandeliers or the massed flowers—orchid plants of astonishing colors and shapes and cut flowers—or, for that matter, the number of guests, many of our age, children of family friends, I supposed. Margot led us to her parents, who had stationed themselves just beyond the entrance of the living room. Except for being in black velvet, Mrs. Hornung was as I remembered her. Her husband, tall, stooped, and black haired, with a tiny black mustache, reminded me of Harry Levin, a professor I admired, who taught the Jacobean drama and Shakespeare courses I had taken. I did not suppose that Mr. Hornung would be likely to pass, even if he had taken the trouble to change his name to Horne. It was clear to me from the smile with which he greeted Henry, and their animation when they talked, that Henry was in the Hornungs’—or anyway Mr. Hornung’s—good graces, far more so than he had given me reason to think. An older couple was waiting their turn behind us; I got out of the way, and Henry and Margot followed. We looked at the paintings. Teniers the Younger’s landscape of a village with an inn and peasants was, according to Margot, the best work they had on the wall. Her great-grandfather, who had been in the lumber trade in Russia, bought it at an auction, the sale of a Russian prince’s collections. The great-grandfather’s own collection, by the time he died, was also princely but he had four sons among whom to divide it, and her grandfather’s share was divided on his death among her father and his brother and sister. The uncle and aunt and their children were killed by Germans, she added coolly, and their paintings and antiques were stolen. They were stupid not to listen to Father and leave when he did. Father did in the end get some of the family’s art back and gave the best pieces to the museum in The Hague.

  I could sense Henry’s impatience as I listened attentively but in silence: he wanted a clear sign that I was impressed, as impressed as he on the first visit to the Hornungs.

  Only in part to satisfy him, I said, Margot, these are magnificent paintings and magnificent furniture. You are lucky to have grown up with them around you.

  Before she could answer, an old man, completely bald and wearing heavy black-rimmed glasses, came up. While she was introducing Henry to him I glanced in the direction of the piano, the pianist who had been playing Gershwin having just started a tune I didn’t recognize. Leaning against the piano, I saw Wilmerding. He saw me too—perhaps he had been staring at us—and after a wink in my direction he gave a silent Bronx cheer. He then continued staring right through me, as though I weren’t there. I had never paid attention to Wilmerding’s appearance other than to note that his ears stuck out at almost right angles and that he wore clothes that looked as though they had been made by an English tailor. Now I saw a resemblance between him and a photograph I had seen of a young, smirking D. H. Lawrence with just a trace of a mustache, before he had grown his beard. A great anger welled up in me, making Wilmerding’s presence in the room intolerable. I walked over to him and said very quietly, Fuck you, Wilmerding. Was that for Henry or me or for both of us?

  He didn’t answer and continued to stare into the distance, his expression unchanged. My champagne glass was full. I threw the wine in his face. He tensed, opened and closed his mouth, and then deliberately dried his face with a handkerchief he took from his breast pocket. I wanted a pretext, however slight, to beat him, and particularly to punch him hard in the mouth, those very white even teeth. But he remained completely still. It didn’t seem that anyone had paid attention to us. I stomped hard on his foot with my heel and walked away.

  Margot and Henry were in the library. She was laughing over something, and said something to him, at which he laughed too. I was glad to see them together. My anger had left me. I wondered whether Wilmerding had been so passive because people thought I was a brawler.

  Margot said, Let’s get something to eat. There was a buffet supper on the table in the dining room. She and I went ahead, with Henry following. You should perhaps get some champagne first, she whispered. I saw you emptying your glass.

  XX

  MRS. WHITE took to telephoning me after the Christmas visit. I told her it reminded me of my freshman year. The first call was to thank me for my thank-you letter, which I had written as soon as I got back to Cambridge. She wanted me to know that all mothers should have sons like me, so polite and so able to express themselves. Then she segued into questions about Henry. Was he working hard? Was he perhaps working too hard? Did I think he looked well? Was he getting enough sleep? Flippant answers on the order of “I am not Henry’s keeper” no longer tempted me; I reassured her as best I could without overstating wildly my knowledge of Henry’s day-to-day activities. I did, I believe, beg her to understand that for various reasons I too was working very hard and had little time for seeing even my closest friends. She wasn’t discouraged and subsequently called without advancing any pretext: she would simply say that she wanted to talk about her only son. Was he really doing well? Occasionally, I was able to demonstrate knowledge of the basic facts. Thus I congratulated her on the news that one reader of Henry’s senior thesis, John Younger, a distinguished Latinist, was submitting it, with a strong recommendation that it be published, to the Journal of Roman Studies. It was an unusual honor. The thesis was an analysis of Horace’s use of Greek prosody; Henry referred to it when we spoke as an idiot savant’s delight. Younger owed him one because in the end Henry made good on his promise and put Plautus on in the Lowell House dining room. But not all Mrs. White’s uncertainties and fears had been unfounded, and I had to commiserate with her about her son’s disappointments. Henry said it was too bad that he didn’t get a Rhodes, though in truth he had given up on it: he wasn’t an athlete, and he hadn’t done well at the final interview in New York. The harbor view from the law firm’s reception room, the collection of Delft plates on the walls of the conference room, and the imperturbable sly elegance of the four men weighing his candidacy had cowed him. He felt incapable of speech. They bore in with questions about his name, Poland, where he and his family had been during the war, and so on, not out of sympathy but to be sure that nothing had remained concealed. He returned to Boston with two of his classmates who had also advanced to final interviews. It turned out that all three had been asked which is better, The Marriage of Figaro or The Magic Flute, and why. One of them said that it had to be Le nozze because of Cherubino, while the other claimed to prefer the Flute for two reasons, the Queen of the Night’s arias and the men’s ensembles. They laughed their heads off at their own cleverness. As for me, said Henry, all I could think of was that one could no more say that Hamlet is better than The Tempest or vice versa. The truth is I haven’t been to either opera. All my father ever wants to go to is Puccini! Far more bitter were the successive announcements of the other grants for study in England or for travel. One after another, they were distributed, and Henry received nothing. He told me one evening that he had objectively considered the winners, all of whom he knew, and couldn’t call them unworthy; they were all very good, but he was no less good, perhaps better. Apparently, something had tipped the scales against him every time. What was it? he wanted to know. I said I couldn
’t tell him. It was fabulous to have done so well. He had been running a race without having trained. Particularly in classics, for which he had almost no background.

  Nonsense, he told me, I did plenty of Latin while we were hidden in Krakow. There’s nothing wrong with my Latin or Greek or with any of my other subjects. When the measure is quantitative, I win. When the measure is who they like, I lose. They don’t like me. I’m different. I don’t look the way they look, I don’t talk the way they talk, and I don’t play the games they play. They’d rather not have me around. They win: I’ll get out of their hair. Out of everybody’s hair!

  He told me his plan: first the army, then law school—at last a decision, he added snickering, that will make my parents happy, though maybe there will be a battle over not asking for a deferment so that he could finish law school before military service. That didn’t matter; his mind was made up. Besides, he had already volunteered for the draft. His physical was scheduled for the week before Commencement, in South Boston. I asked whether he was sure about law school. He shrugged. There was also the question of the summer. If he could get his parents to pay, he would go to Spain and Italy, with Archie. You could join us, he said, for the Italian part in August. The Ardennes are not on the itinerary.

  He said those last words calmly, but I sensed the bewilderment and hurt that lay behind them. Right after the spring break, late on a Friday evening, Margot’s housemother, checking the register and then Margot’s room, discovered that she had not signed in as having returned to the dormitory and indeed wasn’t there. She reappeared only the following morning. The investigation wasn’t arduous: Margot admitted that she had spent the night at a hotel in Boston with a man. Although she was due to graduate in two months, and had not lied to the housemother when questioned, the administrative retribution was swift and final. She was expelled. Henry said that she had told him already that Saturday evening that she was in trouble but didn’t want to discuss its nature. After she had been notified of the administration’s decision, she called asking whether she could come to talk to him at the house. She had once told him that she liked being naked in his room; this time too she let her clothes drop to the floor, keeping only her slip, but she bit her lower lip and shook her head violently when he asked her to come into the bedroom. She sat down instead in an armchair in the living room, wouldn’t allow him to touch her, and, only when he was in the other chair, told him that a man called Ross, a business school friend of Etienne’s from Hartford, had invited her to dinner at the Ritz. They drank martinis and then a bottle of wine. The meal ended. He paid, and without having made any sort of pass at her, not having even held her hand, he said, Come up to my room. I don’t know what got into me, I did what he said. I should have known it wouldn’t be worth it.

  Then she asked me to get in bed, so we could say goodbye nicely, Henry continued, but she wouldn’t go all the way. She said the time wasn’t right. I know what got into her when she went with this guy Ross. She’s a slut.

  I remained silent.

  You’re surprised, said Henry. I was too. After she’d gotten dressed and I had signed her out she told me that this had to be the end, we couldn’t go on as before. Why, I asked, and said that I would walk her to the dorm. She nodded but didn’t answer. Neither of us spoke again until we had crossed the Common. My head was swimming. It occurred to me along the way that our accounts were nicely balanced so long as she had Etienne and I had Madeleine. This Ross fellow had thrown everything out of kilter. At the same time, why should an immoralist like me care? Who’s to say that the day after she left for New York I wouldn’t try to screw the first Radcliffe girl who would let me? The difference is that I knew about Etienne and now Ross, while she couldn’t know about Madeleine. I was tempted to tell her, but something held me back. I asked her once again, Why? Are you going to break off with Etienne? She answered, Yes, I’ve already written to him about Ross. I put the letter in the mailbox on my way to see you. Good God, I cried, will you please explain yourself? She nodded and told me that everything around her had become impure. She was up to her armpits in mud with Etienne, with me, with everyone else. She was going out of business. But I didn’t need to worry about Bayencourt. She hadn’t said anything to Etienne about me, and wasn’t going to. We stopped at her door. She gave me her cheek to kiss. There’s been nothing since.

  There was, however, more to come concerning Bayencourt during the reading period. Mr. van Damme’s secretary wrote to confirm the date of Henry’s arrival. But Henry now told me that he couldn’t bring himself to go. It was all too tied up with Margot. Also, absurd though it was, he couldn’t get out of his mind Margot’s having called the relationships with Etienne and himself impure. What would she say about Madeleine? Two days later, he wrote to Mr. van Damme telling him that he was about to be called up by his draft board and couldn’t make plans for the summer. That’s stretching the truth a little, he told me, considering that I had volunteered and don’t really have to report before October. But these are details, he said. I’ve also written to Madeleine. A nice letter, saying that I hoped I’d be sent to Europe after basic training.

  So far as I was concerned, the academic year had ended. Most seniors, however, wouldn’t be leaving until after Commencement in the first days of June. I found it odd not to be graduating with Henry and George and the other men with whom I had been a freshman. However, I was still in Cambridge, staying at Madame Shouvaloff’s because my suite would be used by some alumnus returning for his reunion and later by summer school students. In fact, my plan was to remain until some time after Dr. Reiner’s departure on his sacrosanct vacation. I hoped I could finish my book while I was still under Madame Shouvaloff’s roof, so that in the fall I could show Archie MacLeish a completed draft. At Henry’s request, Tom Peabody got me invited to the Commencement lunch for graduating seniors and their families in the house courtyard. We were an incongruous group at table: Henry and Archie and their parents, and Tom and I. The master joined us between the main course and dessert. Waving away Tom’s offer to yield his own chair or to bring another one, he squatted beside Mrs. White and told her in a whisper loud enough for everyone at the table to hear that Henry was quite the brightest diamond in the diadem of his house, as well as a source of immense pride to him personally. The encomium the master delivered after dessert, when he handed Henry his diploma, was if anything more appallingly unctuous. When the applause subsided, Mrs. White, a luminous version of Scarlett O’Hara under her huge white hat, leaned over as far as her hat allowed and spoke into my ear. I am so upset, she said, about Mrs. Palmer and the general. I almost died when the master didn’t say anything about their son. They must feel terribly humiliated. I glanced at Mrs. Palmer who looked more than ever like a visiting nurse. She had finished her chocolate parfait and was placidly eating Archie’s. As for the general, he had his own view of things, including, I supposed, Archie. When I chatted with him over sherry before lunch he said that Harvard students looked to him like an effete lot, and Commencement seemed an anemic sort of event. You fellows haven’t got the sort of spirit one takes for granted at the Academy; you don’t measure up to our good cadets. Mark my words, Standish: Dien Bien Phu has fallen, the Frenchies are kaput. You know what is going to hit the fan.

  There was a general movement to get up from the table. I pulled out Mrs. White’s chair, told her once again that she looked beautiful, and assured her that she needn’t worry about the Palmers. I have to, she replied, I worry about everything. Tell me the truth: Do I have a wonderful son?

  Mrs. White upstaged her husband constantly. He didn’t seem to mind, but the result was that I hadn’t spoken to him. To make up for it, as we said goodbye I ventured that he must be very proud of Henry. Mr. White smiled happily and said, yes, he was, especially since Henry had finally decided to go to law school. You know, he added, I studied law and could have been a lawyer. I assured him that Henry had told me his story.

  Then you know how it is, he said. Nothing has wo
rked out for my wife and me the way we expected, the way our parents intended. Now we have one hope, that Henry will make something of himself, that he will be really successful and happy. I have worked hard to give him the opportunity.

  I nodded. He took my hand, pressed it in both of his, and then, after a tiny delay, reached up and kissed me on both cheeks.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon squiring Cousin May around the Fogg and showing her the glass flowers in the Peabody Glass Museum while George and his father attended a function at the final club to which they both belonged. Then George and I packed most of his belongings into Cousin Jack’s station wagon and a few odds and ends into George’s Mini and they drove off to Stockbridge. The next day, Friday, I had my session with Dr. Reiner to look forward to, and then another on Monday, and da capo. My portable Olivetti and my manuscript were waiting in the attic bedroom at Madame Shouvaloff’s. I would get to them after dinner. Tom Peabody had invited me to dinner with him at Henri IV. He was spending the summer doing research at Oxford, and I wouldn’t see him again until the fall.

  George had taken a summer job at the bank but would live at home, in Stockbridge. His father didn’t disapprove of his decision to become a lawyer but wanted him to know enough about the family business to be able to step in if necessary. Unlike Henry, George had already applied to Harvard Law School and been accepted. And he was not going into the army, having been classified 4-F. To our general amazement, the army physical detected a congenital defect in his heart valve that his family doctor—the same as ours—had missed. I was planning to be in Lenox for a part of August. My mother had written to let me know that my father wasn’t well and came as close as her nature allowed to demanding that I come home.