The Lost Prince

by Selden Edwards

  “Well, it is located in the Financial District. Most cities have such markets in out-of-the-way places, but New York’s is right in the heart of things, where it has been for decades. There are booths on the street where you will find diamonds and jewels of all shapes and sizes, quite a show. You will find this office in the midst of it all.” He pointed to the card. “I suggest you travel there immediately. You will want to go there yourself, but take a man with you, of course.”

  “I shall go alone,” Eleanor said with conviction.

  So, her prized possession in hand, Eleanor headed off to New York on the first train of the following morning, alone. As she sat by the window, watching Massachusetts and then Connecticut roll by, she did her best to overcome the natural nervousness that such a monumental transaction brought with it. The whole business of this unique piece of jewelry brought back painful memories of the extraordinary circumstances in Vienna by which this treasured object had come to be in her possession. Keeping the ring was out of the question. Using its sale to raise monies to establish the fund she was required to begin was not only judicious, but her obligation. As with so many monumental transactions now and in her future, she hoped that what she was doing was right, in keeping with the journal’s very general instructions.

  Arriving in New York a little after noon, she found her way to the given Maiden Lane address, and did indeed find, as Jackson Peard had described, the small office of a jeweler named Constant Auger in the midst of what looked like hundreds of small booths, all dealers of stones and jewelry, which she, a woman alone, had hurried past to arrive at the prescribed door. The waiting room was decorated with a few large prints of European estates, and many glass cases, all filled with sparkling diamond jewelry. She sat for a time before a short and officious woman came out to greet her. “Mr. Auger will see you now,” she said. “You will follow me.” She ushered Eleanor into a small office where two men stood beside a table, obviously waiting for her. “This is Mr. Auger,” the woman said, and an elegant European-looking gentleman took her hand, and the woman left the room.

  “This is my client,” the jeweler said. “He is from Chicago and has a keen interest in European objets d’art.” Her eyes turned to the man from Chicago, who showed no interest in shaking hands. “He has been greatly looking forward to this meeting,” Mr. Auger continued, “and to seeing the object.” From the two men’s comfort with each other, Eleanor assumed that this was not their first business together.

  Eleanor took the offered seat as the two men sat behind the table. She opened her purse and withdrew the handkerchief-wrapped object, handing it to the man from Chicago, who took it and eyed it reverentially for a moment before carefully lifting the folds. She watched his face with care as he pulled away the fine linen wrapping. “My, my,” he said, examining it with care, then shifting his attention to the handkerchief, as if he knew exactly what he was looking for. He then handed both the ring and the linen to Mr. Auger beside him, who showed nothing in his face and began examining it with a magnifying eyepiece. He remained silent and passed the ring back with only the hint of a nod.

  “The empress’s seal,” Mr. Auger said, examining the handkerchief again, and the other man nodded his satisfaction, again ever so slightly. “That is certain.”

  “Authenticated?” the man from Chicago said, clearly taking control. The jeweler nodded. “You know this item’s significance, I assume,” he said, looking directly at Eleanor.

  Eleanor nodded. “I do,” she said without hesitation. “Yes.”

  “Mayerling,” he said. “Frightful business. Young Rudolf, the crown prince, and his wife struggled in marriage. He became irritable, drank too much, took opium, and sought consolation with Vienna’s young women, even fathered an illegitimate son, they say. Add to that the dreaded affliction of venereal disease. Then the murder and suicide, all by his hand.” Then he examined the ring for a moment. “All increasing the value of this ring, I imagine you have been told.”

  “Yes,” Eleanor said. “I have been told.”

  “And people in Boston tell us that this object is very dear to you for emotional reasons also,” the man from Chicago said without looking up.

  Eleanor nodded again. “That is correct,” she said.

  “And it is our understanding that you have not revealed how you obtained such an object,” the man from Chicago said.

  “That is true,” Eleanor said. “I have not.”

  “You understand that in such a matter, we must know.”

  Eleanor stood firm. “I understand.”

  “And?” the man from Chicago said.

  “And circumstances forbid my telling.”

  “We hear that you are a very headstrong woman, Miss Putnam,” the man said.

  “That may be,” she said, “but circumstances do forbid me.”

  Mr. Auger was about to speak, to explain perhaps the importance of full disclosure in negotiations such as these, and the man from Chicago held out his hand. “It is a personal matter, I gather,” he said.

  “It is, one of a most personal nature.” Eleanor was looking him straight in the eye. “Yes.”

  The man from Chicago then looked over at the jeweler, who gave a slight nod. “It was obtained through legal means, we can assume?” he said. “Improbable, but legal.”

  Eleanor did not flinch. “Yes, you have my word on that. This ring came into my hands through completely legal circumstances.” The man from Chicago was quite obviously taken by the directness of this woman’s manner. “Improbable, but legal,” she repeated, “a gift from a cherished friend, making it difficult to part with.”

  “But you would part with it?” the man said.

  “I would,” she said, “under the right conditions.”

  “Would the sum of five thousand dollars constitute the right conditions?” he said.

  Eleanor tried her best to show no surprise; she simply nodded. “I think that would,” she said.

  “A deal-ending bid,” Jackson Peard called such a move in preparation for this meeting. “Ready yourself. You will be doing business with a wealthy industrialist, a man who never wishes to be outdone or outbid. If he wishes to go forward, he will do what is necessary to take what he wants off the table.”

  “I would like, then, to take this very special item off your hands.” He held the ring and its handkerchief out toward her.

  “That would be possible,” Eleanor said, again trying not to show any of her relieved surprise.

  “We have an agreement, a most discreet one?”

  “We have an agreement,” she repeated with conviction, “and, yes, a most discreet one.”

  “That is good,” the man said, and both men nodded their satisfaction.

  “And may I hold it one last time?” Eleanor said, and she took the ring into her hands and closed her eyes, allowing herself to be carried back for just a moment to the time at which she had acquired it, feeling the strong pull of complete love and gratification, afraid for just an instant that once back there she would not be able to return. Then she opened her eyes, snapped back to the present, felt her fingers tight on the ring for one last time, and reached out, giving it over to the man from Chicago, never to see it again.

  So almost as soon as she had arrived in New York City, Eleanor Putnam the neophyte jewel seller was heading home with a five-thousand-dollar bank draft—a small fortune—for her fund, the Hyperion Fund, she knew she must call it. “Hyperion, one of the mythic Titans, lord of light,” a classics-professor friend of William James told her one night at a Harvard Club supper party. “He was one of the precursors of the Olympian gods and goddesses, from prehistory. One of the forebears of it all.”

  3

  MRS. FRANK BURDEN

  Also during that time immediately after her return from Vienna, the newly rechristened Eleanor had begun to seek the company of Frank Burden, the promising young banker and hero of countless athletic events during his school days. Since no one in Boston knew what had transpired in
Vienna, the association seemed perfectly natural within the city’s well-established social order, an eventuality even, considering the affinity of the attractive couple’s two families and the fact that they had known each other all their lives and had both just returned from Europe, where it was known they had spent some time together. No one realized the degree to which the eventuality was in fact another result of Eleanor’s strong determination, pursuing what she knew was meant to be. She had to marry Frank Burden in order for the future to be the future. She knew that plain and simple, and falling in love or being in love had nothing to do with it.

  Frank was a very forthright and purposeful young man, intelligent, self-assured, and talented in the areas where a banker should be, and he carried himself now with the confidence of one who was formed in such a mold. What was most comforting about Frank Burden was his absolute commitment to “things as they are now and ever shall be,” a phrase he used with regularity. “Frank does not like change and did nothing to promote it,” one of their common friends said years later. He was not at all introspective and had very little interest in engaging meaningfully with those who were. He knew of the works of Freud and Jung and William James and their kind, especially later, but he said simply that he did not wish to “engage the world at their level,” keeping to himself mostly the fact that he saw little or no value in that manner of engagement. “I am very literal,” he would say with pride, “and I wish to remain that way.” Changing Frank Burden was not part of Eleanor’s destiny. In fact, from what the journal told of the necessary future, he was to remain pretty much as he was, unchanged, all his life.

  Frank had actually asked for Eleanor’s hand before their time in Vienna, it was known, and although Eleanor had not responded then or immediately after their return, they both moved forward, it seemed, with certain assumptions, Eleanor leading the way. Over the weeks following their return, with no actual commitment yet, Eleanor made a number of requests that Frank Burden granted without hesitation.

  “Frank, I would like to accompany you to Trinity,” she had said in the first weeks. “It would be good for both of us.” And he nodded agreement, knowing full well, as did she, what would be assumed by such a public change in their lives, her sitting at his side at Trinity Church on Sunday, up front in the Burden pew.

  Eleanor and Frank both attended Trinity Church by family tradition going back generations, but arriving together and sitting side by side was as good as an announcement of their intentions. And Frank, who had recently been appointed to the finance committee of the vestry, a position formerly held by his father and before that his grandfather, agreed to join also the charity committee, a surprising addition to his involvement in the church, and the statement of his willingness to be part of the church’s activities in the poorer quarters of the city, a sign perhaps of the influence of the community-minded young woman he had begun sitting beside on Sundays.

  Frank also agreed to take part with her in a number of other charitable activities, including those connected with the Boston hospitals. “We can always use a man of finance,” one committee member at the Boston Lying-In Hospital said to the staunch young banker, as he appeared at one of their meetings for the first time. Those who had known Frank Burden well would have noticed the change in attitude brought about by his open and willing association with Eleanor Putnam and might have concluded that he was, for some reason, doing penance.

  Another change of habit at this time in his life was his accompanying Eleanor to lectures at various museums and even an alumnae event at her all-female Smith College. “Such visits to a women’s college will do a man good,” Eleanor said lightly, “in case he finds himself raising daughters.” And indeed after his daughters were born, he even made statements, admittedly mild ones, supporting women’s suffrage. And once, a few years later, Frank Burden would stop conversation at the annual Symphony Ball by announcing loudly, “By the time my daughters reach adulthood, they will be voting.”

  Of any dark part of their history together there was simply no mention. Eleanor had chosen to move ahead with her steely resolve, and Frank went about his business with characteristic rectitude, establishing himself in the banking world, especially in areas of international finance, as a young man of promise. Of course there was never any mention of why it would be unwise for him to set foot on the Continent or to go anywhere near Austria or Germany or, more specifically, Vienna. He made it clear to anyone who asked that, for the time being, he would not be returning to Europe. No one at his bank noticed any sudden discomfort and reluctance when associates brought up the subject of European travel, an area in which he had in the past shown great enthusiasm and had in that same past established considerable expertise. He simply made it clear that travel would be the province of others at the bank and that he was going to stay home and mind affairs in Boston for a while. Eleanor was helpful in this regard.

  “It is really quite simple,” she was heard to say. “Frank and I have declared a five-year moratorium on personal travel,” she said. “It is very natural. There is so much to concentrate on at home.”

  But then, of course, no one knew the full story of their relationship, nor would anyone ever, save two people. In Eleanor’s extraordinary destiny, marriage to Frank Burden was just what had to happen.

  From the moment of her return, she shared this part of her life, concerning Frank Burden, with her godfather, William James. During her childhood time at Winsor School in Boston or at Smith College or now upon her return from abroad, William James always made it clear that he enjoyed her discourses on her various adventures. Now, more than ever, she enjoyed sharing with her wise godfather her goals and ambitions for her life in Boston. “You seem to have found with Frank a mature compatibility that serves both of you well,” Dr. James observed. “It is very satisfying to watch.”

  “We are very different,” Eleanor said, “as if we are of different temperaments.”

  “Different temperaments can make for good marriages,” he said.

  “That will be so in our case,” she said, and Dr. James smiled knowingly and nodded.

  “You, my dear, will make it so.” On many occasions the great professor had told her of the high regard he had for her powerful resolve. He who had known well Eleanor’s late parents observed often how the daughter had inherited the mother’s “strength of character,” as he called it.

  Dr. James had also known Frank Burden in his recent athletic days at Harvard and had been impressed by how Frank and a group of American college students had traveled to Athens and participated very successfully in the first modern Olympic Games, a few years before in 1896. “Frank is very steadfast,” Dr. James said.

  Oblivious to most of the way he was being perceived, Frank, having recovered from whatever it was that had subdued him upon his return from Vienna, went about his life with that characteristic steadfastness and began gradually regaining all of his former energy and vigor. The eventual announcement of his forthcoming marriage, by the time of its arrival a surprise to no one, was greeted with universal approval throughout Boston. Those close to him had observed that he had gotten through a mysterious rough patch, a very uncharacteristic period of uncertainty and doubt of unknown origin. And Eleanor, ever silently at his side when he appeared in public, had received much credit, although not as much as she secretly deserved. “It is estimable,” a colleague at the bank said years later, “what the support of a good woman can do for a man.”

  Frank and Eleanor emerged in the new century as leaders in many areas of Boston society, especially those having to do with service to the arts and to the city’s needy. In short, Eleanor Putnam was seen as a very positive addition in the life of promising young banker Frank Burden, providing what he needed to ensure that things in his world progressed exactly how he wanted.

  And she asked him, in those days directly after her Vienna sojourn, as she called it, to handle her family investments and inheritance at the time of her father’s death. She found herself now
with responsibility for a small endowment in stocks and bonds along with the house at 6 Acorn Street, the house where she had grown up, and Frank agreed to oversee it all. “Women do not need to worry about finances,” he said to her. “That is what a good marriage is for.” He knew nothing then or later of the inner workings of the Hyperion Fund, which Eleanor knew she was intended to handle entirely on her own, independent of her husband.

  And so, in a few short years following their return from Vienna, Frank and Eleanor established an equilibrium as one of the highly respected marriages in Boston, well documented in the social columns of the Boston newspapers and well received in the discussions of the professionally successful and the well-to-do when they discussed such things. Few, if any, knew the degree to which both Frank and Eleanor needed time to recover from what had transpired in Vienna and how after a few years they had successfully done so.

  Overtly, one fact was clear to all: Frank Burden was now totally devoted to his wife and dependent on her for the strong family and social life he had around him, exactly how he thought things should be, “now and forever in Boston,” as he liked to say. Years later, in summing up Frank Burden’s life, a close friend would observe, “In Eleanor Putnam, Frank was getting exactly what he wanted. She ran a beautifully organized home, arranged the family’s social schedule, saw to all the necessary involvement in the cultural life of the city, presented him with three gifted and successful children, allowing Frank to worry about little more than his very active and demanding life at the bank. Who would not have envied him that?”

  This stability at home allowed Frank to become “one of the most prominent bankers in this city that prides itself in great banking,” the friend said. “None in Boston could imagine a better life partner for Frank Burden than Eleanor Putnam, or a better financial advisor than young Frank himself.”

  Frank eventually proposed again, and this time Eleanor accepted, and their plans of marriage had gone exceedingly well, initiated primarily by him it appeared, and had resulted in a wedding date in the fall of 1902. “We shall need to wait for the Jameses to return from England,” she said. William James and his wife, Alice, were in England with his brother Henry for over a year during that lengthy courting time, and it was he who would be giving her away. And, not coincidentally, the necessary postponement of the wedding date, waiting for the Jameses to return, would allow her time to pursue the next rather arduous assignment from her Vienna commitment, which she kept in deepest secrecy.