The End of Innocence

by Allegra Jordan

  The dance that night was an elegant affair. Japanese lanterns glowed a mellow orange all along the driveway to the mansion. Servants assembled trays of delicacies on the closely cropped grounds by the kitchen. Smoke from spits roasting lamb and beef drifted lazily in the air. Boys cranked ice cream machines under bunting-hung windows. Young women in white pinafores carried silver trays stacked with pastries into the house. Children ran across the lawn in a pack, carrying sparklers toward the bright white lattice gazebo, which stood at the edge of the Concord River. In spite of their misgivings, all of Boston’s top society had turned out this evening for such a party, crowding the receiving line by the time seventeen-year-old Helen Windship Brooks and her parents reached their hosts.

  Helen was a slender girl with a pretty smile, large blue eyes, and a sharp tongue. Boston attributed her spirited opinions to her mother’s side, which had produced generations of unflinchingly frank women who seemed to live forever. Her charm and steadfastness were attributed to her father’s family, which had produced generations of men bred to withstand the onslaught of Windship-like women. Brooks men tended to live only into their early sixties.

  On that cool August evening, Helen stood prettily by both of her parents in the receiving line at the Darlington mansion. Like most of the unmarried girls there, she wore a simple dress of white silk. Her adornment was a matching white silk purse and a white satin ribbon wrapped around her dark hair, worn tonight in a severe knot. Mr. Brooks insisted that Boston encouraged and approved of this temperate style. She thought it made her look like George Washington and that Boston approved because Boston didn’t change, not even for war.

  And there was little hope of Boston changing now. She looked down the receiving line. No one even seemed to notice there was a war going on. Men in black or white jackets and two-quart hats stood talking in a circle. The ladies were dressed in immaculate silk gowns in the colors of the Boston fashion season: white and gray, brown and black—the colors for every season, at least as far back as Helen could remember. And if anyone wished to peacock, she could expatriate to New York. That was how they’d lost Aunt Adèle.

  Colonel Darlington stood erect on the red-carpet dais at the top of a set of wide, polished steps, his eyes smiling as he greeted them. Standing beside him was his wife, Bertha, dressed in reliable Boston brown. She was a good Christian woman, prone to gossip, and when she smiled, her penciled eyebrows nearly reached her hairline. Above her was a sign that read Rights for women, Boston’s other poor, downtrodden majority.

  The colonel kissed her mother’s gloved hand. “Enchanted, Mrs. Brooks—”

  “Merriam Brooks! Have you heard the good news?” interrupted Mrs. Darlington. “Frank Adams and Caroline Peabody are to marry!”

  Helen stiffened as her mother nodded, pretending to care.

  “And I see you’ve brought Helen!” Mrs. Darlington’s eyebrows cocked. She placed her fleshy hand on Helen’s upper arm. “Helen, I won’t mention the fact that you’re not engaged, but Robert Brown is here and available to dance.” Her pink cheeks looked like tiny polished crab apples. Helen turned to see that her mother and father had been accosted by another couple, abandoning her in the receiving line.

  Helen felt her face go hot. “Thank you,” she said, looking down at the edge of her white slippers.

  Mrs. Darlington’s hand tightened on Helen’s arm. “I hope you’ll return for the Harvest Festival next Saturday. We’ll have an event to raise money for voting rights. We’re having young ladies get in a motorcar and race, and your mother said you’d volunteer to drive.”

  Helen blanched. “I’m not sure I’d like to do that, Mrs. Darlington. I don’t know how to drive.”

  “Nonsense, Helen,” Mrs. Darlington replied. “I’m surprised she didn’t tell you herself. It will be good for you.” Mrs. Darlington nodded and elaborated on this plan and others that might be of use in procuring a husband under circumstances that were, she sighed, not ideal. Mrs. Darlington whispered, “If the newspapers had not made such a fuss over your mother’s arrest last week, and if your mother would stop talking about”—Mrs. Darlington blushed—“you-know-what, then things could return to normal and you could once again look for a husband.”

  Helen’s heart sank as she walked into the mahogany-paneled ballroom. She had an idea about what everyone assembled there might be thinking. Namely, that her mother, recently jailed for distributing information and actual devices for family limitation by mail, was too busy solving the world’s problems to properly raise her daughter.

  A few might also affirm that it was understandable, given the circumstances, that Frank Adams would choose to marry Caroline instead of her. This Helen knew to be entirely unfair. The sins of the mother were now on her child as well.

  But no news of war halfway around the world would change the fact that here, in Middlesex County, Helen’s future was bleak.

  Helen sniffed. Things must be better in more sensible areas of the country—maybe Nebraska or Iowa, she thought.

  Athens on a hill. Indeed.

  * * *

  Helen watched her mother, a humorless woman with a hawklike nose, walk over to the head table to help count the contributions. They hadn’t discussed next week’s festival, whom Helen was to marry, or Helen’s general state of mind. And they’d most certainly not spoken of the unpleasantness during the past week.

  In truth, Helen had barely seen her mother since March. Mrs. Brooks had spent the summer with Margaret Sanger in New York to learn how to provide health care for the women of the tenements. There she wrote, published, and distributed information about preventing pregnancy, tracts intended for the poor of New York’s Lower East Side. The federal government had recently indicted both women and several of their friends under the Comstock Act for violating postal obscenity laws. This had prompted Helen’s father to demand his wife’s return to Boston while she awaited trial. But as soon as Merriam returned to Boston, she began to mail this type of information from their parlor, leading to a second arrest on the steps of Boston City Hall for violation of the state’s postal obscenity laws. This time the news made the pages of the Boston Evening Transcript. Only the eruption of war in Europe had been able to push it off the front pages.

  Helen wished they could just leave the dance. The people might look elegant, but they lacked any semblance of grace. At least, toward her.

  She watched her mother, clad in a gray silk dress that nearly matched her lips, stand at the contributions table with the proud air of a woman used to carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders.

  Helen’s father, Jonathan Brooks, on the other hand, who rarely carried more than the weight of a good history book in his hands, looked longingly in a different direction, toward a group of his friends standing by the drinks. He shifted restlessly in his starched collar and black jacket and looked as if he were a bit embarrassed by the entire evening. He had made the case just that morning that he preferred to sit in his study with a new book, The Mechanics of the Horseless Carriage.

  It wasn’t, Helen knew, that her father was against merriment. It was just that he had all the friends he needed and didn’t think he’d like anyone he’d not yet met. She, on the other hand, liked very few of the people she’d met and looked forward to meeting new ones at college in the fall.

  Helen glanced farther around the room. Caroline and Frank, the newly engaged, stood nearby in a circle of admirers close to the musicians. Not far away, in the corner, she spied her longtime friend, the broad-shouldered, dark-eyed Robert Brown, nodding while escorting a great-aunt to a seat near the window. He could not stand dances, she knew, and he had told her he’d been mortified by his mother’s interference regarding their future prospects together. Not that his protests mattered.

  “Father,” asked Helen, as he stood beside her at the edge of the ballroom, “don’t you think it’s a bit untoward to have a celebration like this when the wor
ld is in such peril? The British are being blown up and here we are at a party.”

  Her father opened his mouth, only to think better of it and shut it quickly. His eyes dulled. “Helen, try to imagine yourself having a good time. That’s what I am doing.”

  “Perhaps we could leave?”

  “I tried to negotiate that into the agreement I made with your mother this morning. We must stay. The ties that bind and all.” But his weary face, with its widening whiskers and graying hair, spoke what he wouldn’t say aloud.

  They stood in bored silence for a good ten minutes, watching the scene before them. When a person came by to greet them, Mr. Brooks would give a nice smile and engage in brief small talk about the weather or how Harvard, his own alma mater, was predicted to do in the annual football game against Yale. In those short exchanges Helen would dutifully nod in feigned interest, feeling each time as if she were a hypocrite. None of these people had paid a call on their family since her mother’s arrest, and several had been too busy with other things to even inquire as to how they were managing. She especially had a hard time even choking out words of greeting to Mrs. Peabody, who had been exceptionally vocal at church in her concern for community decency standards.

  About the time Helen had become convinced that the evening was to be borne in silence, Robert Brown walked to her side. He’d been dismissed by the great-aunt, who was now talking with the couple du jour, Caroline Peabody and Frank Adams.

  As Mr. Brooks hailed a waiter with a tray of scotch whiskeys, Robert bowed to Helen. Except for their eyes, they could have been cousins. Outsiders had, at times, mistaken them for brother and sister, given their similar coloring, height, and demeanor.

  “Your mother made you come tonight?” she asked.

  “I asked if I could work on the new car instead, but she’d have none of it. She said I was to get married and that this dance might be my last chance.”

  “She shouldn’t despair just yet, Robert.”

  “She’s probably justified in my case. I brought a book to horrify her,” he said with a slight smile. “I intend to start reading after I ask if you are indeed leaving for Radcliffe tomorrow.”

  “If only it could have been tonight.”

  He swallowed to keep from smiling again, and, as he did, his white bow tie bobbed at his throat.

  Helen hid her own smile. He looks so awkward dressed in his white tie and black tails, she thought. He belonged on a train off to Colorado, to ride horses in the valleys or to hike among shimmering aspens. He’d always talked of big skies and wide spaces when they were children; dances to him were forced labor. But he had always been dutiful, and this she respected.

  He leaned toward her and, while looking out to the crowd, whispered, “Caroline is always at her worst when she thinks she’s at her best,” he remarked slyly.

  “Her best? I’m not certain that state exists.”

  “Come now. Christian charity—”

  “Begins at home? With our mothers?” she asked with a wicked smile.

  He gave a cough. “They may have too much charity,” he said in a tone that suddenly turned as exasperated as she’d heard it in some time. “Mine has just taken in a young girl from Vermont to live with us while she studies. Meanwhile your mother has vowed to save the world, one pauper at a time. It’s a sickness of some sort. Some days I pray that God will save us from Boston women as they rule the world—”

  “That would give them too much credit,” she interrupted coldly. He nodded sympathetically and they fell into silence again.

  “Jonathan!” a man’s deep voice called from across the hall to Helen’s father. Helen and Robert looked up to see Colonel R. E. Harris walking over to them, seemingly embarrassed by the number of his well-wishers and hangers-on. A military doctor, Harris was built like a bulldog and topped with curly dark hair surrounding a rapidly balding pate. He’d always been kind to Helen since she was a young girl, and she was delighted to see a real military man, someone who could not have been around to witness the news of her mother’s fall from grace.

  “Harris! Good to see you!” exclaimed Mr. Brooks, clapping him on his shoulder as Robert Brown excused himself at the insistence of the great-aunt, who motioned to him from across the room, her teacup apparently empty.

  Dr. Harris bowed slightly to Brooks and Helen. “Jonathan, your latest book is just the thing. I finished the chapter on the Battle of Pharsalus while on the train from Washington. I loved it! Losing Pompey was quite the tragedy for Rome,” he said, shaking his head. “Helen, how much of that book did you write?”

  Helen blushed at the praise. “I was only the proofreader.”

  Her father shook his head. “She’s my right hand and I’m sorry to lose her to college.”

  “Or worse—to one of these ruffians at this dance tonight!” Dr. Harris gave a hearty laugh.

  Helen blushed deeply again.

  “Let’s discuss something else. Harris, is there a new dreadnought in the Charlestown Navy Yard?”

  “Yes! She’s a great new ship! What guns, my friend,” he said, his eyes lighting. “The secretary of war is considering naming it Pennsylvania.”

  “Damn!” said her father. “I had money on the Massachusetts. Why the Pennsylvania if we’re doing all the work?”

  “You know how political these things can become.” Harris looked around and leaned closer. “You wouldn’t believe its guns’ range.”

  “Pennsylvania could use some innovation,” said Brooks with a sour look. “I’m glad the country has bought them a boat. Any other news?”

  “Well, I read that the opera company is stranded over in Europe and won’t be back for the start of the season. Everyone seems to be stranded somewhere, with the shipping lanes a mess as they are. And yes, I almost forgot! Sir Artemis Horn will be speaking at the Geographic Society in Harvard Hall next Tuesday. And Wigglesworth didn’t invite us! Claimed limited seating.”

  “What?!” asked Mr. Brooks.

  “Positive. We’re sans billet.”

  “This requires liquid,” said Brooks decisively. “Helen, Harris and I need to repair to the bar to discuss this matter. Why don’t you go congratulate Miss Peabody? You know, Harris, she’s marrying Frank Adams.”

  “You don’t say. Now that is news!”

  “Yes, I do. Come, Harris, let’s commence and not hold Helen up further.”

  Helen felt chuffed as she walked over to a small gilt chair by the wall—abandoned and exposed. She certainly would not congratulate the young woman who had stolen Frank from her side. Caroline had never wished her well and had envied every prize Helen won at the women’s academy they attended together. Caroline once assured Helen that though Helen was smart with books, she preferred to be smart with hearts, the better trophy.

  To be fair, Frank was willing to be stolen. She’d known Frank all her life but remembered the moment he had changed from a boy into a young man with whom she could see herself spending the rest of her life. Two years ago, he asked to dance with her at a fall dance and she lost her heart to him.

  He was always the perfect gentleman. He never said anything untoward or opinionated. He was perfectly reserved, just like her own father. And that perfectly suited Helen, who wanted anything but her mother’s zealous nature.

  Maybe too reserved, she realized now. Had he even admitted he loved her? He was kind. He was attentive to her at every gathering. She thought he had in so many looks or dances or smiles. Her parents were certain many times that he would propose, as was she, but he never did.

  Had she imagined it all with Frank? She remembered her excitement as Frank had come to the house that past March, she thought, to declare himself. But it was just as her mother left for New York. The family was all outside. Frank looked nervous. He never explained why he had come that day to pay a visit to Helen’s family. He made pleasant conversation, tipped his hat, and
left. Then she’d begun to notice his distance at church in April, about the time rumors of Mrs. Brooks’s New York work had begun to circulate.

  And there had been signs at the last dance too. She thought Frank would dance with her but was called away by her father for a moment as the music began. When she returned she found Caroline in Frank’s arms on the dance floor. She remembered the toss of Caroline’s curls and a beautiful laugh.

  It was a fact too terrible to admit. Helen had seen evidence of their growing interest over the summer but had chosen to ignore it. Lose Frank to the vindictive and beautiful Caroline?

  Now the truth was right before her. Both her mother and Frank slipped away from her, and her life would now move along a different path.

  As the evening wore on, the room grew hotter and so did Helen’s temper as friends and acquaintances continually snubbed her and her family. Didn’t her mother realize how the arrest affected her daughter? Did she care that her daughter’s heart was broken?

  Helen stiffened in her seat as Frank and Caroline greeted her. Frank’s blond hair was immaculately groomed, his starched smile as crisp as his collar. Caroline was four feet eight inches of sunshine, her waist cinched into a tiny dress that fell to the floor in half a dozen satin layers. She resembled a doll of fine porcelain, with the same vacant stare.

  “I understand that congratulations are in order,” said Helen, trying to keep up appearances.

  Frank thanked her, nodding uncomfortably and looking away, mumbling that they would send out engagement notices shortly.

  Caroline giggled. “I know that the post office is quite busy with your mother’s business—sending all of those packages. I hope you don’t miss our invitation,” she said with a cherubic smile.

  At that moment, all Helen could think to say was “I think you are a horse,” but that lacked any sort of elegance.

  Frank turned a bright pink. “Caroline—”

  “I was only teasing,” said Caroline. “Helen knows that. How is your mother?”