Those Harper Women (18 page)

“What about you and me, Arthur?”

“Well, there was Papa. Then there was poor Mama. And—”

“You mean Papa ran us all the way he ran his plantations and his mills,” she said. “And you found out that there were some people who didn't let themselves be run that way.”

But he changed the subject. “I love Hannele,” he said. “We're really very happy. We get along fine. We're as happy, I guess, as any other couple. It's a good marriage. But—”

“But
what?
”

“You mustn't ever tell her, Edie,” he said. “But after I was patched up, you know, and waiting in the hospital, and they'd offered me a discharge—well, I didn't have to take it. I had a chance to re-enlist—in an administrative capacity, and, well—suddenly, the Army
meant
something. Nothing else meant anything. And I decided all at once that re-enlist was what I was going to do. I was going to stay in the Army—for good. I was going to say the hell with everything else!” He looked at his sister, his eyes bright.

“Really, Arthur?”

“Yes. I had it all figured out. I knew Hannele would never understand. Can you see Hannele as a career Army officer's wife? Having tea at the Wives' Club?” He chuckled softly. “No, I knew she'd never go along with it. It would mean leaving Hannele and the children.”

“Which of course you'd, never do.”

“No!” he said. “That's not the point. I could have done it, I would have done it. And do you know something?” He hunched forward in the wicker chair, his face eager and intent and assured, and she had a sudden glimpse of how he must have looked in command of his battalion. “Do you know? Call me a bastard if you will, but once I'd made up my mind that I was going to do it I don't think I ever felt so happy in my life. Why, it was as though half my life had been submerged someplace, and I'd suddenly come up for air!” Slowly, the wicker creaked as he sank back into his chair again. He took a swallow of his drink.

“And yet you changed your mind,” she said.

“Yes. Of course. I couldn't do it. I had to come back. I couldn't chuck everything and begin a whole new life.”

“No,” she said.

“But it wasn't because of Hannele and the children.” He looked at her. “It was because of me. What I am.
I couldn't do it, Edie!
”

“I understand,” she said, “but I still don't see why you say the Army saved your life.”

“It taught me that another possibility existed. Just knowing that—helps.”

She nodded.

“Funny, isn't it,” he said, “the way things tie you down? You stick to the pattern that was cut out for you. Harper Industries, Incorporated. Harold Harper, President. Arthur Harper, Secretary-Treasurer. That was the way the old man planned it. Harold was to be whiz kid. I was to be the assistant whiz kid—the pattern. But of course you managed to escape it, Edie.”

“Oh, Arthur,” she said. “You know better than that. I didn't escape anything. The pattern was for me to be exactly what I am.”

He stared into his glass. “Well, perhaps you're right,” he said. “What an incredible guy the old man must have been. I was always too scared of him ever to get to know him. I suppose you knew him better than anybody. From hardware to sugar to steel mills. What do you suppose his secret was?”

“Faith in himself,” she said. “All the gall in the world, and a child's faith in himself. The only thing he never realized was that that faith could be broken, just like a child's faith can be broken, with a snap of the fingers.”

“Yes.”

“He believed he could be a king. Do you remember nineteen ten?—no, you'd have been too little. That was the year he was invited to Berlin to meet Kaiser Wilhelm. He came home from that visit, and he kept saying ‘Kings know my name—just think, kings know my name!'—like a little child.”

“You're awfully charitable about him, Edie—considering.”

“I keep his portrait, don't forget,” she said. “I've grown accustomed to him.”

Sitting there on the veranda that evening, she had felt a warm flood of affection for Arthur. They were two old gray people now, and all the signs of brotherness and sisterness had blurred with the years, and yet there was still a tight and tender bond between them. Poor little Arthur, the baby they had never bothered to tell anything—thirteen and a half years younger than she, the youngest of them all—he had always had to account for himself to an elder. First to Papa, now to Harold. Nobody had ever quite trusted his judgment or believed anything he had to say. Sitting there opposite him she was grateful for the few times she had been able to defend him. She watched him as he stood up and walked across the veranda, with that heavily uneven gait, to freshen his drink. There was the time, for instance, right after he came home from the Army when a woman in Italy had written the family a letter accusing Arthur of being the father of her bastard child. Arthur had denied the charge and, of course, Harold hadn't believed him. But Edith had believed him, and had persuaded Harold that the woman only wanted money. So finally the letter was ignored, the woman never wrote again, and that was the end of it; there was no scandal.

He came back, carrying his drink, and sat down again. He cupped his glass in his hands. “You see,” he said quietly, “if I had re-enlisted back there, Hannele would have known why. That was the real trouble. She would have known I was running away from her and the children. I didn't have the—the reasons Charles had when he went off to war.”

“
Charles
' reasons?”

“Yes. In his case, it was something inside him, something personal—pride, duty to his country. Charles went into the war because he believed in what America was fighting for. Good reasons. But I just wanted to get away, by nineteen forty-four, and there was another woman.”

Edith closed her eyes briefly.

“I don't know whether you remember, Edie. There was an Italian girl who wrote—later—”

“Yes,” she said. “Indeed I do.”

“Well—” he said. He took a sip of his drink. It was growing dark. The wind had changed, and a cool breeze was blowing off the shore, rustling the fronds of the ferns in their hanging baskets on the veranda. It was a clear night; the lights of St. Thomas were coming on below.

“Arthur,” she began, “in Charles' case—” (She had been about to say “In Charles' case, he wanted to get away from me.” But she had not said it, not so much because it would have been a betrayal of herself, but of Charles as well, and of Arthur's dream about them both.)

Arthur was saying, “Yes, my case was different. Her name was Estella. She was—”

But he left that sentence unfinished too, which was just as well. He sat there, a little drunk, the lights from inside the house falling on his gray hair, on the tips of his polished shoes. Somewhere between the comical appearance of what we are, Edith thought, and the sublime shape of what we dreamed of being is where the truth about our character lies.

“Damn lucky the old man was dead by the time that happened,” Arthur said, “Can you imagine the hell he'd have raised? Remember that Danish boy you wanted to marry—before Charles?”

“Andreas Larsen.”

“I don't remember much about it; I was pretty small. The old man threw him off the island, didn't he?”

“Andreas came back. Did you know that? He came back—years later.”

“But you must remember,” Andreas said to her slowly, “that those were very demoralized times on this island.”

He returned to St. Thomas in the spring of 1950, and it was several months after Edith learned that he was back before she actually saw him again. She truly thought he might have forgotten her. But he hadn't, and one afternoon he came to call. She saw him walk into the garden, the sun flashing on his white hair. She saw him without shock or surprise or feeling, and recognized him. He was still Andreas, only grown old.

“But I still don't understand how he did it, Andreas,” she said.

“I don't like to speak ill of your father,” he said carefully. In fact, this was really the only new and different thing she noticed about him: a certain slow and cautious way of speaking.

“Oh, gracious!” she said. “Don't expect me to care if you do!
De mortuis
, indeed! Let the old tyrant have it.”

“And it's important to remember,” he said, “that besides being a demoralized period, life on this island was not like life in other countries.”

She nodded. “Nor has it ever been, nor is it now.”

“It wasn't that there was no such thing as justice. But justice was always outweighed by power.” He spread his palms open. “And your father was more powerful than mine. It was as simple as that.”

“But
how?
How did he do it?”

“It was a threat.”

“What kind of threat would make you all leave like that? Your father wasn't a cowardly man. Nor were you, as I remember.”

“He left with pride, Edie. We all left with pride.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Your father came to my father's office that afternoon,” he said. “Your father made my father a very simple proposition. My father had just started his insurance brokerage business, if you recall. He had several good clients—planters whose crops he was insuring. They were friends of his. Your father said that I was to get off the island. If I didn't go, he said, he had people who would see to it that my father's clients' fields were burned, and my father would be ruined.”

She said, “Oh, no.”

“It was winter, and the cane was ripe.”

“He couldn't have got away with it,” she said. “Someone would have stopped him.”

“But that wasn't the point, Edie. Yes, someone
might
have stopped him, but that wasn't what concerned my father. He assumed, you see, that he was dealing with a madman.”

“A madman—”

“We discussed it then—my mother, my father, and I. We tried to weigh the possibilities. I was for staying and fighting it out. There might be a way to stop your father—possibly. But there were other considerations. It wasn't our own lives and futures we would be risking. It was the lives and futures of my father's clients. These people counted on him to protect them. What if even one field was burned? Your father had been known to get away with worse than that. Could my father take a chance? He went up to his room for a while, to decide what we'd do. Whatever we did, he said, we'd do together. He was up there for about an hour. When he came down, he said, ‘I have decided that we would not wish to live any longer in a place where such things can happen.' I confess to you, Edie, that when I heard him say those words I agreed with him. I was very proud of him.”

She nodded. The day seemed to have become uncomfortably close. She sat there, thinking, and the heavy air swarmed with sounds. A fly batted against a window screen somewhere; a butterfly with dusty wings lighted on a lily in the garden, delicately invaded its corolla, and the lily nodded while Andreas and Edith faced each other on garden chairs. “Well,” she said at last. “I've often wondered if you blamed me, Andreas.”

“Why should I blame you, Edie?”

“Just for being Papa's daughter, I suppose.”

“No,” he shook his head slowly. “If I blamed anyone I'd blame myself—for falling in love with you the way I did.” He smiled at her.

“What an extraordinary thing to say.”

His eyes traveled away from her. “You have a beautiful garden, Edie,” he said. “A beautiful house.”

“It—suffices.”

“And your mother? How is she?”

“Pretty well. She lives very quietly now. She's built a new house up on the road to Ma Folie. The old house burned, you know.”

“She must be getting on.”

“Eighty-five.” (Her mother was to die the following summer).

“I have a wonderful wife—Sigrid,” he said. “You'll meet her. And we have two grown sons. The elder isn't married yet—no time for it, he says. Not until he makes a million
kroner!
But the younger boy is married, and his wife is going to give me my first grandchild in June.”

“How wonderful.” A copy of
Town & Country
lay on the garden table, and Edith picked it up. “I just ran across a picture of my daughter in this magazine,” she said, flipping the pages. “Ah, here it is—that's Diana, the one in the long gloves. I don't know who those other people are.”

“Handsome.”

“I have a little granddaughter—Leona. Let me show you a picture of her.” She fetched it for him.

“Very pretty,” he said, smiling, holding the picture.

“Fourteen—already very vain, I'm afraid.”

“She looks like you.”

“Oh, Andreas!” she laughed. “No.”

“But she does.”

“And this is Charles, who was killed in the first war.”

“A very handsome man.”

“Yes.” He returned the pictures. “And what else have you done all these years?” she asked.

“Well, my mother and father stayed on in Copenhagen,” he said. “They're both buried there. In nineteen thirty-nine, when the pact with Germany was signed, some Danes thought Hitler would keep his promises, but I did not. I took Sigrid and the boys to England—two months before the Nazis invaded us. I went into business there—insurance still. When the war was over, the boys went back to Denmark, but Sigrid and I stayed on in London. You see, Edie, despite everything I've always been very fond of islands.” He rose a little stiffly from his chair to go.

“Everything except English weather,” he said. “When you get to be my age, you begin to want a little sunshine. So we decided to come back.”

They stood at the edge of the garden, suddenly a little hesitant and awkward. It was as though they had taken separate paths, and met at the end of a peninsula, and all the ground behind them had washed away.