by Gwen Bristow
Since Margaret’s party was going to strain their already overtaxed problem of household help, Spratt suggested that he bring Kessler over that evening, leaving him there while he drove Margaret and some of the other guests home, and then that he, Kessler, Elizabeth and the two older children go out for dinner. Elizabeth agreed gladly. She had managed to keep servants so far, but she wanted to give them no grounds for complaint. The party went very well, for Margaret was not shy among friends of her own age. They played in the pool, gobbled sherbet and cake without noticing that war exigencies had made it impossible to get ice cream, and were happily tired when they were finally coaxed back into their clothes and their parents began to arrive to take them home. Margaret came over to Elizabeth.
“Thank you for the party, Mrs. Herlong. We had a very good time.” She spoke with careful politeness.
“I’m so glad you enjoyed it. We want you to come over often—tell your father I said so.”
Margaret was evidently glad to hear this. “Thank you, I’ll tell him. Mrs. Herlong, may I pick one of those purple flowers on the fence?”
“Why of course, But the stems are strong—wait a minute and I’ll get a pair of scissors.” When she brought the scissors Margaret was waiting. “We can cut a lot of them if you like,” Elizabeth offered. “There must be thousands of blossoms here on the fence.”
“The yellow ones are the same sort of flower as the purple ones, aren’t they?”
“Yes, and the deep orange ones too.”
“The dark ones have yellow centers. That’s pretty. What do you call them?”
“Lantana.”
“Lantana,” Margaret repeated. “I’ve seen a lot of them here, but I never knew the name. They bloom all the year round, don’t they?” She gathered the bouquet into her hands. “You must like flowers,” she suggested, looking around, “you have so many of them.”
“I do like them. We used to have some beautiful beds there on the other side of the pool, before we put in the Victory garden. You enjoy flowers too, don’t you?”
“Oh yes.” Margaret nodded vigorously. “Do you like to put them under a microscope and see how they’re made?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever done that. Where do you have a microscope? At school?”
“No, at home. My father shows them to me. He knows all about flowers. We put lots of things under the microscope at home and we look at them. It’s fun.”
“Your father certainly knows a lot. But he was some sort of doctor in Germany, wasn’t he?”
“Not exactly a doctor. He worked in the laboratory. But my real father was a doctor.”
“Your real father? Isn’t Mr. Kessler your father?”
“Oh no,” said Margaret, her blue eyes serious across the lantana. “My real father died. And my mother too, and I was very sick. That was a long time ago when I was little. But I remember being very sick, and before I was well we left the hospital, late one night, and we rode a long way in an automobile in the dark, and I started to cry. I don’t cry now, I’m too big, but I was little then and I cried, and he—you know, my father, Mr. Kessler—he said he would give me something to put me to sleep so I wouldn’t be so tired, and he did, and I went to sleep, and when I woke up he told me I was his little girl now. That’s how he got to be my father.”
“I see,” said Elizabeth. Not wanting to push Margaret into details of what might be a Nazi atrocity better forgotten, and which was none of her business anyway, Elizabeth went on, “I’m sorry your real parents died. But isn’t it fortunate you could get another father right away? And such a fine father, too. You must love him very much, don’t you?”
“Yes, sometimes I don’t remember at all that he isn’t my real father. I like him better than some girls like their fathers. He plays with me.”
“You must have a lot of fun together.”
Margaret nodded. She had begun to tell more details of their games when they caught sight of Kessler and Spratt walking down the driveway toward the back lawn. As she and Margaret went to meet them Elizabeth watched Kessler’s slow limp and the wise, kindly expression of his features, and thought what a battle such a man must have had to show no evidence of resentment toward life for what it had done to him. No wonder Margaret liked him better than some girls liked their fathers. She was a fortunate child to have such a guardian.
Margaret had run ahead of her. As Elizabeth met them she was talking to Kessler.
“We had the best time! I can swim all the way across the pool, the short way, not the long way. And look, these are named lantana and they grow on the fence.”
“I should have warned you,” Kessler said to Elizabeth, “that Margaret would demand a sample of anything she saw that was unfamiliar to her. Either she was born inquisitive or I’ve infected her with my own curiosity.”
“I like children who ask questions,” Spratt commented. “How are they going to learn anything if they don’t?”
“Margaret’s been telling me,” said Elizabeth, “how you encourage her with a microscope.”
He laughed, and then said soberly, “I’m glad she enjoys that. In these days—or for that matter any days—we can’t foretell what children are going to live through, but we can be pretty sure it won’t all be pleasant. But nobody is utterly desolate if he’s learned to appreciate the world around him.”
“That’s a good reason for knowing something about science,” Spratt approved. “Not that I know much about it myself.” He began to chuckle at a sudden recollection. “That reminds me—a couple of years ago when Elizabeth and I were in Chicago we went to the Field Museum of Natural History and looked at the dinosaur skeletons. I’d never thought much about dinosaurs, but we were reading in the guidebook how these creatures had ruled the earth for a million years, which is a lot longer than human beings have ruled it, and all of a sudden I burst out laughing, because it occurred to me right there, ‘Who the hell does Hitler think he is?’”
“We laughed all the way back to the hotel,” said Elizabeth. “It was the first time either of us had ever thought Hitler was fundamentally funny.”
The garden had grown chilly. Spratt gathered up Margaret and several others whom he had offered to take home, and Kessler said he would occupy himself with a book while Elizabeth changed for dinner. She went through the den, where Dick sat by a table agonizing over his lessons. Dick was evidently in the throes of struggle. His papers strewn on the floor and table, he sat holding his head between his fists, his hair wildly rumpled and his forehead wrinkled with anguish. Elizabeth paused at the door.
“What’s the trouble, Dick?”
He groaned without looking up. “Mother, did you ever get through physics?”
“Not very gloriously, and I’m afraid I’ve forgotten most of it.”
“I liked physics in high school.” With an effort Dick untangled his hands from his hair. “I still like it, but every now and then you get a problem that simply will not make sense—” He shook his head, looking at her through a fog.
“I wish I could help you!” Elizabeth exclaimed.
“Oh, I’ll get it. It’s always the same. You can’t do the problem—you try everything and you can’t make it, you go nuts, and then you see some tiny little detail you’ve already seen a thousand times but you never noticed it, and there it is, click-click like a safe opening, and the answer is so simple you want to kick yourself around the block for not having seen it in the first place.” He laughed at himself. “Then when you go to school the next day you say, ‘That third problem was a humdinger, wasn’t it?’ and the dumbest guy in the class says, ‘Why, that’s the only one of the whole bunch I could work.’”
Elizabeth laughed too. “I remember it used to be like that with Latin translations. Why don’t you stop till after dinner? We’re going to Romanoff’s.”
Dick gave his head a violent shake as though to stir up his brain. “
Think I will. Evening paper come? I’ll read the funnies.”
“It should be here. I’ll see.” She went out to the front lawn, Dick following her. In front of the house Spratt and Kessler were shepherding the little girls into the car. Dick picked up the Hollywood Citizen-News from the grass and moodily began to open it. Black war-headlines went across the front page. Elizabeth glanced around, thinking how little Beverly Hills had the look of being in a country at war. The dancing flowers, the damp odor of grass, the noise of carpenters repairing the house across the street, all seemed so ordinary. Margaret, about to get into the car, paused and looked up at Kessler.
“Why do you see those men hit with the hammers before you hear them?”
He smiled at her. “We always see things before we hear them, because the noise comes to us by sound-waves and the sight by light-waves, and the light-waves get to us faster.”
Margaret frowned, puzzled.
“I’ll explain it better when I get home after dinner, if you’re still awake—” Kessler had begun to say, when Dick shouted, “Holy Jerusalem!”
He had shoved the paper untidily under his arm and was laughing at their astonished stares.
“It’s that physics problem. It’s about sound-waves and I was figuring with the speed of light. Oh, such a dope, such a dope—thank you, Margaret!” He was off into the house.
Elizabeth explained what Dick was talking about. As the children drove off with Spratt she was wishing her own problems had so ready a solution. That was why physics and mathematics were such satisfying studies, the answer was there to be found, no matter how hard you had to look for it you knew it was there all the time, and when you found it there was no doubt of its being right. She waved goodby to the children, and Kessler expressed thanks for Margaret’s happy afternoon.
“Are you tired?” he added. “Wouldn’t you like to rest for a minute before going up to dress?”
“I’m not really tired, just a bit breathless. But it might be pleasant to sit down for a minute or two. What shall we do?”
“It’s about time for a news broadcast.”
“I’m losing courage to listen to the radio,” Elizabeth confessed. “All it brings is news of more calamities.”
For an instant Kessler did not reply. She had said nothing to him about her dread of Dick’s going away, but she saw him give a glance toward the house and suspected that he had guessed it. Leaning heavily on his cane, he turned back to her, saying, “Mrs. Herlong, will you forgive me if I tell you something?”
“Certainly.” Then, as she saw the gentle gravity of his eyes, she added, “If it’s a rebuke, go ahead. I deserve it.”
“Yes,” answered Kessler, “you do.” He smiled, and went on. “Mrs. Herlong, talking about one’s personal problems is unforgivable unless one has learned something from them that is worth passing on. You and your family are so kind about ignoring my handicaps that I feel almost unkind to refer to them. But I have learned something from them.”
“Yes, go on,” she said earnestly. “I know you’ve had to face life in a way that I haven’t. Tell me.”
“It’s simply this,” said Kessler. “There is a rigorous joy in facing a battle even when you have very little chance of winning it. The worst experience on earth isn’t tragedy that comes from outside. That may be dreadful, and it frequently is, but it’s almost pleasant compared with the experience of being ashamed of yourself.”
Elizabeth lowered her eyes. They showed her his thick right hand grasping the cane, and she looked up again. “You can tell me that better than anyone else I know,” she said in a low voice, “because—well, you’ve never said anything to me about your past life, and I’m not asking you, but I know you aren’t referring only to physical distress. Such a disaster as yours doesn’t just change your bodily powers, but everything else. You had to face spiritual tragedy as well, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And you did face it,” she went on. “Instead of becoming resentful and bitter, you became so wise and kind and understanding that everyone who sees you feels the presence of a great man. You have suffered terribly, but you have no reason to be ashamed of yourself.”
“Neither have you, Mrs. Herlong.”
“How do you know?”
“You haven’t told me anything about your past life either,” he returned smiling. “But as soon as I came into your home the first time, I knew I was meeting a mature and courageous woman. It’s impossible for anyone to live as long as you have—”
“Forty-four years,” she said with a little laugh. “I’m not sensitive about the passage of time.”
“Very well, it’s impossible for anyone to live forty-four years without experiencing a good many unpleasant events, things you either have to face or run away from. When you meet a woman whose husband adores her, whose children are intelligent and uninhibited, whose domestic affairs run like invisible clockwork, and who goes about with a serenity suggesting that all these things just happened that way—you can be sure that she achieved it by meeting each crisis as it came. Some people’s lives are like wastebaskets, so cluttered up that nobody can find anything there but trash that should have been disposed of long ago.”
“I have tried to keep things clear,” she answered simply. “I can’t say I’ve always been successful. But looking back, I can say I’ve tried.”
“When I left your home that first evening, I told you that being there had made me very happy. Perhaps you thought I was too intense in what I said. But I had seen so much clutter, so much wretchedness that could have been avoided, that it did make me happy to see so much unobtrusive richness of living. I had hoped I should find you like that.”
“You had hoped? Why did you care what you’d find?”
He bit his lip as though he had said too much. But he answered, “Was it too much to hope for? I had left a continent full of torture and despair, for one thing; for another, I liked and admired your husband, and he had shown me your photographs. You have a good life, Mrs. Herlong, because you have made it a good life. Don’t lose it now by being afraid.”
“How can I help being afraid?” she exclaimed. “Yes, I have a good life. I’ve said so myself a thousand times. And I have worked for it. As you said, there are plenty of occasions in anybody’s experience when he’s tempted to sit down and quit trying. But when you do achieve a good life, when you feel that now at last you have what you want and can enjoy having it, and then when you see it about to be blown to pieces by circumstances you aren’t responsible for and can’t control—how can you help being afraid? I’m sick with fear. I look over it all—Spratt bothering about his pictures, Brian with his bats and bugs, Cherry excited about a party dress, Dick struggling with his lessons, and I think, ‘How much longer?’ I love them so, I’ve been so proud to know I was important to them—but now!” She stopped. “Why on earth am I talking to you like this? It’s the first time I’ve been so frank about it to anybody.”
“You couldn’t talk to anybody who’d be more interested,” Kessler answered. “It’s good now and then to confess our fears. Of course you’re frightened. You see the war coming closer, and you don’t know what it may bring—”
“I do know,” she interrupted sharply. “I don’t live in a tower looking down on two conflicting ideologies! Oh, it may be a noble struggle, fought for a better world, but I don’t see it that way and I can’t. I don’t see it in terms of anything but my son.”
“I wish to God there were something I could say to you,” he told her in a low voice.
Elizabeth had clasped her hands and was moving them against each other restlessly. “I don’t know why I feel so much like talking to you. Maybe it’s just that if I don’t talk it out pretty soon I don’t know what will become of me. Do you mind listening?”
“I want to,” he answered, with such simple sincerity that she could have no doubt of his symp
athy. He hesitated an instant, then asked, “Can we sit down, Mrs. Herlong?”
“How stupid of me!” she exclaimed. She hurried to lead the way to two deck chairs placed on the lawn, at the side of the house. Cherry had left a sweater on one of them, and Elizabeth put it on, for the evening chill was blowing in from the sea. “We aren’t just courteous about not noticing your limitations, Mr. Kessler,” she remarked as they sat down, “we’re usually not even aware of them.”
When he answered it was in a matter-of-fact voice. “This is one of the things I found hardest to get used to,” he said. “I mean, asking for a chair. I had always been so healthy that I was the one who had to be reminded not to expect too much of other people. Please don’t be embarrassed—I’m not.”
“Are you cold?” asked Elizabeth.
“No. What was it you wanted to tell me?”
“I’m glad it’s getting dark,” said Elizabeth. “Talking in the dark is easier for some reason. It’s about the war, about feeling it coming close, about this unbearable sense of helplessness. I’ve always thought of myself as a rather strong person, one who could take things as they came and go on somehow. But this time I feel beaten before I start. My husband is afraid of what we’re up against too, but he’s taking it much better than I am. You see, there’s a difference: when you don’t know what you’re facing, and when you do.”
She heard Kessler move his cane against the grass, but he did not answer. She went on.
“I can’t tell him. In fact, I don’t want to tell him—why should I? But I’m shaking with terror because I’ve had a tragedy of war before. And if it should happen again like that—when I say I’d rather die than get another of those telegrams from the War Department, I’m not speaking lightly.”
