The Lost Prince (27 page)

But each time after one of her extraordinary predictions had come to pass, after he had carried out his part of the bargain, as she herself was recovering from and adjusting to the shock that it brought with it, he would approach her with more or less the same questions: How did you know this? How did you predict such a thing?

And each time she would give him an evasive answer, something like her standard “Intuition, Mr. Honeycutt, intuition,” and each time consider telling him the whole story, trusting him with the depth of her secret, she would invariably pull back from the idea, deciding once again that it was her fate to keep the secret of the journal to herself. And each time he asked and each time she pulled away with an evasion, she could see later with the power of hindsight how it chipped away at his goodwill and his willingness to continue in his role as her indispensable assistant and invaluable colleague.

She had not been good at reading potential catastrophe into his moods and mannerisms because—she reasoned afterward—he was always filled with nervous energy. That seemed his very nature. The strain came from those moments when he attempted to discover her secret. An incidence of this came in the fall of 1912, with details around the whole
Titanic
matter. Arnauld had been at St. Gregory’s for nearly two years by that time and was settling in. He seemed to enjoy teaching young boys, although Eleanor was not certain how long that would last, but his invitations to Harvard and the rowing on the Charles River appeared to be more deeply gratifying, as was his great friendship with Edith Hamilton, whom he had met through Eleanor’s planning, and his visits to various Boston homes.

All in all, Eleanor felt quite reassured, and relieved. Things with regard to Arnauld were going as they should. With all that she did in her high-profile external life as mother, wife, and community leader, Will Honeycutt like everyone else never even came close to guessing at the significant role she had played for years, putting in place the details that would lure this Viennese scholar to Boston, and then arranging things so that he would wish to stay. Her husband, Frank Burden, remarked on a number of occasions, “It is impressive to see the ease with which Esterhazy has fit in,” and Eleanor would breathe a sigh of relief every time she heard him pronounce it.

Nor could Will Honeycutt or anyone else guess at the other secretive activities that nonetheless laid upon her shoulders not-insignificant demands. On some matters she knew that she had no choice but to act, to do as the journal directed. But at all times, she depended on Will Honeycutt, her partner in logistics and business. And now he was gone.

She held Will Honeycutt’s sketchbook in her hands for a long time, reexamining each exquisite page, letting the significance of each sink in, trying to absorb the pathways into the unconscious the entries represented, trying to explore the world of dreams, allowing the pages to remind her of her own vivid dreams that had visited her since the awful moment of discovering the
Titanic
tragedy. Then she put down Will Honeycutt’s sketchbook, replacing it in its drawer, and picked up the black-covered notebook of her own that had been sitting on her desk, unused, for months. She opened it to the first blank page, picked up a pen, and began to write, recalling not a recent dream but one that had recurred from her childhood and had stayed vivid ever since.

THE LADY IN WHITE

W
ill Honeycutt’s departure had thrown Eleanor into a darker depression than one would have expected had she been able to share it with anyone. She went about her daily routine with outward poise and calm, but inside she was filled with anxiety and doubt. At times like these, her friend Jung would say, be especially mindful of dreams.

The black college notebook found among Eleanor’s papers contains a mixture of impressions of dreams and the beginnings of dialogues, all written in pen, in her careful handwriting, notations added in pencil. A number of the descriptions are of a recurring dream of her childhood, one she was especially eager to encounter now. In her writing she introduces the detail that a woman in a long white dress, a character identified as Eleanor’s late mother, sitting on a blanket in a large expansive meadow, a picnic basket beside her, invites young Weezie to come sit beside her. The first dialogue of real substance with this figure from her dreams is dated the day after Will Honeycutt’s departure, and obviously inspired by Will’s elaborate renderings of his own dreams. From her notes and stage directions added in pencil, it is possible to reconstruct the scene with a good deal of completeness.

“I don’t know what to say,” the grown Eleanor says, approaching the figure in white. “I am pleased and surprised that you have appeared in my dreams. Now, I hope that we may talk.”

“Of course, you may talk to me,” the lady in white says. “That is how things work. That is what I am here for.”

“I am new at this, and I don’t know where to begin. Are you real, or are you part of my imaginings?”

“I am both. I am both new information and what you already know, but are not aware that you know.”

“Do we begin with Vienna?” Eleanor says.

“That is a good place to start.”

“There is much I wish to say about Vienna. There is the journal.”

“But for now, mustn’t we concern ourselves with your present state of mind? I can see from your appearance that you have gone without sleep, and you have been distracted by the departure of your friend Mr. Honeycutt.”

“His leaving has upended my world. I have grown to depend on him to make the assigned tasks less onerous. And facing his departure leaves me alone again.”

“Reminding you of other losses.”

“That is so,” Eleanor says, amazed at how naturally the woman speaks of great loss.

“Do you know why he left?”

“Yes, he said I was too attentive to Arnauld Esterhazy. But I do not believe that I was. Mr. Honeycutt is a bit impulsive. He has projected much onto me, and that makes him vulnerable, beyond his own understanding. He was perhaps more in need of my attention than I knew. And when I could not meet his unrealistic demands, he overreacted and left.”

“My, that is a predicament,” the woman says.

“There is little I can do except be aware of his deficiencies.”

“But still his hasty departure leaves you in a state of seeming desperation.”

“You say ‘seeming,’” Eleanor says. “To me it appears as
real
desperation.”

“You are strong, my dear, like your mother and your father.”

“I have learned about my father,” Eleanor says, as if it is a revelation.

The woman smiles knowingly, without being ruffled. “You are strong like him. That is the gift. You now know, and you will always know, you are strong like him.”

“That is what you have come to tell me?”

“You have always had great power within, even when you were a little girl and suffered the greatest loss. You will manage now, and you will find help as needed.”

“But what of the journal?” Eleanor asks. “What of the need to have Will Honeycutt as my colleague years from now? That is what is foretold.”

“You need to have faith. I know that you believe that your actions are necessary, and they are, but meanwhile things will evolve as they should. That is my main message to you.”

“I do not always have that faith.”

“That, my dear, is completely natural,” the woman in white says. “You have not failed yet, have you? All has worked out, has it not? You face a dilemma that you can manage.” She laughs gently. “It is as if you are at bicycle pedals, and someone has attached an electrical generator.”

Now Eleanor laughs. “That sounds like something Will would devise. As I pedal, the energy is supplied for what needs to happen.”

“That is correct, my dear. You see, you are very wise in the ways of the world.”

“And I must keep pedaling or nothing will happen, even if it seems hopeless, as it does right now?”

“That is correct. You must keep going, and if you keep going, everything will happen as it should. It is a combination.”

“Free will and destiny.”

The woman looks for a long moment. “Oh my, you sound like your father.”

“You are here to tell me that, aren’t you?”

“Oh, my dear, I am here to show you what you already know. You are the one who will do the work. You are the strong one. I am only the helper.”

“And that is for always?”

“Always, of course. It is purely the nature of things.” She smiles. “Now, go home to Frank and your girls. They love you and need you. Go home and, for goodness’ sake, get some sleep.”

“And keep pedaling,” Eleanor says.

“And keep pedaling.” The woman in white stops for a moment to admire her daughter, and smiles again at what she sees. “You do it so well.”

And that is the end of the dialogue.

A HIGHER CALLING

S
he sat at her desk and tried not to notice Will Honeycutt’s empty desk on the other side of the room. But soon even her best intentions did no good, and she turned and stared at the empty space where his stack of books used to sit.

Suddenly, she was back running the old questions through her head. What had caused the precipitous eruption to a situation—not without its problems, granted—that seemed to have weathered all the storms and remained stable for so long? Was it something she had said or done? Could it have been avoided or was it inevitable? Did he really mean to give up his position to his cousin in Chicago? Was the other Honeycutt, the serious and businesslike T. Williams, really the one for the job in the first place and the gods or fates or whoever was controlling this whole thing simply making it possible to insert the right man? Was it all in fact just pure jealousy of the special place Arnauld Esterhazy held in all of her dealings? Was that it?

She began to wonder how she would ever get in touch with the second Will Honeycutt, and she was just about ready to find a Chicago telephone directory, when she heard the key in the lock and the door swung open.

Standing before her was someone who looked vaguely like her young, energetic colleague Will Honeycutt, only this apparition had deep shadows under his reddened eyes, and he had not shaved for a day or two. He did not see her at first.

“Oh,” he said, looking up with surprise. “I didn’t think you would be here so early.”

The distraught look on his face warded off any rush of relief she might have felt by seeing him. “I have been away,” she said. “I had to come early.”

“I forgot something,” he said. “I returned for it.”

“Your sketchbook,” she said. “It is in the drawer where you left it.”

“You saw it?” he said with apprehension.

“I did,” she said without apology, as if anything left behind was fair game. “I know it is private, but I did see it, and I am very touched and impressed by it.”

“It is my dreams,” he said apologetically now. “My dialogues.”

“I know. They are beautiful and complex and profound. I had no idea that you were such an artist.”

“You do not think it the work of a madman?”

“I do not. I think it is the work of a man who has had very profound encounters with his unconscious mind.”

Will Honeycutt looked down and said nothing. “I came back for the sketchbook, but there is more.”

“What, Will?” she said in little more than a whisper.

“I look awful,” he said. “It happens when I don’t sleep or eat or even go home for two days.”

She wanted to go to him, to hold him in her embrace for a long time, but she stayed in her chair without moving, holding her ground. She read the look of total resignation on his face and barely needed to say, “What is it?”

“There is a change,” he said quietly.

For a moment she continued trying to read the face of this young man she had come to know, she thought, so well. “Does this mean by chance that you are not going to New York with Jesse Livermore?” she said, cutting through the layers.

“No New York,” he said, now fighting for breath. “I have had a terrible time, wrestling with demons, I guess you would say. I know why I reacted as I did, and I am not proud of it. In fact, I fear I have been very dreadfully immature. I am ashamed—”