The Golden Cup

by Belva Plain

  “War,” Paul said simply.

  Dan’s voice boomed. “Let them bleed themselves to death over there. We’ll stay out of it.”

  “It won’t work that way, Uncle Dan. The whole world will be in it, if it comes.”

  “Nonsense! The laboring classes everywhere will refuse to fight. Why should a wage earner go to war to save his boss’s investments?”

  “It’s not that simple. When the bands play, people don’t think. They wave their little flags and run alongside, like children following the circus parade.”

  “Such cynicism isn’t like you, Paul.”

  “Realism, Uncle Dan.”

  Alfie said, “If war does come, I agree with Paul that we’ll be in it. Can you imagine what fortunes will be made?”

  Dan shot him a look of outrage.

  “I meant,” Alfie said, “or I didn’t mean, that anyone would really want the money that comes from human blood. Who could?”

  “Plenty of people,” Dan answered. “Jingoes don’t talk about that side of war, do they? Jingoes like Theodore Roosevelt. Only ‘foolish idealists’ hope to eliminate war, he says. ‘Cowards and physical weaklings,’ he says. Well, I’ll stand up to him or any other warrior type when it comes to weakness and cowardice!”

  Freddy remarked softly, “There’s something to it, all the same.” His long fingers played delicately with the stem of a goblet. “What Roosevelt means is, one ought to be ready to die for principles. Some wars have to be fought.”

  His words astonished everyone. The slight frame, the slight stoop of the shoulders, the way the hair swept back from the fragile blue-veined temples, none of these fit the words.

  Dan answered succinctly, “Rubbish.”

  Alfie thought of something. “Wait a minute, Dan. I should think you’d be a Roosevelt Progressive. Economic democracy and all that.”

  “True. But I don’t trust him on the war issue. So I’m taking Wilson. What about you, Paul?”

  “Not sure yet. Roosevelt or Wilson. I fight that out at home, because naturally the family’s for Taft.”

  Dan shook his head. “I’ll tell you one thing. If I were young, they wouldn’t be able to make me bear arms. I would go to jail first. I would not fight,” he said, striking his fist on the table.

  “Well, I would,” declared Freddy, with equal emphasis. “I would be ready when called. Maybe, if I were needed, I would not even wait to be called.”

  Leah, who sat across from Freddy, sparkled with admiration. Her round eyes widened, and her lips parted.

  Dan shook his head. “Freddy, you may be seventeen, but I tell you, sometimes you talk like a not too bright child.”

  “Let’s hope these are all only words, only something for interesting conversation.” Mimi’s smile went around the table, making peace.

  Emily and Angelique looked their approval of this tact; Mimi had spoken like a hostess of experience, taking charge.

  Alfie added heartily, “Have a wonderful time, Paul, and think of us while you’re drinking wine on the boulevards. We’ve never been, Emily and I. How about we set our sights on a trip, Emily? No use waiting till we all need wheelchairs. How about year after next, and no fooling? Meg will be eleven, old enough to enjoy the sights. Let’s see, that will be the summer of 1914.”

  On that note, they all pushed back their chairs and left the dining room.

  Not without some difficulty, Alfie had finally gotten a fire started in the parlor.

  “The wood’s green, that’s what’s wrong,” he apologized as the flames sputtered, sending a waft of bitter smoke into the room. “Open the doors, clear the air,” he directed.

  French doors led to the terrace. Paul opened them and stepped out into a clear night. The moist winds, a refreshment after rich food and warm rooms, sponged his face. He stood still, letting it blow over him. From the dark woods at the foot of the hill a choir of peepers trilled without cease. There must be dozens—hundreds—of them, hailing the spring, he thought. And a sweet nostalgia surged through him. He wished Mimi had followed him outside to hear them, but she caught cold easily and it was still chilly.

  Presently he went back in. The room was now clear of smoke and the fire had taken hold.

  Alfie surveyed the comfortable semicircle of sofas and chairs.

  “Oh, I’m learning,” he said, pleased with the crackling yellow flame. “I’m learning country ways pretty well, don’t you think so, Emily?”

  Emily smiled assent.

  “I’ve studied a lot about cows, got three Jerseys in the barn to start with. I’ll show you all the new barn tomorrow morning, if you don’t sleep too late. I never do. Don’t like to miss country life sleeping.”

  Two red setters settled down next to Alfie. He stroked them, then lit a pipe.

  The country gentleman, Paul thought kindly, yet with slight humor, remembering the somewhat irresponsible boy-uncle. Landed gentry. I daresay it’s Emily who’s responsible for a lot of it. If Alfie didn’t have to make money, he would be content just living like this. He should have been born into the British squirearchy. He even looked the part, fresh-faced and ruddy. Some people really did miss being born where they belonged: artists were born into commercial families and radicals were born to aristocrats. I? Where do I belong? Don’t know, Paul thought critically. No sense wasting energy trying to figure it out, since I am where I am.

  Then something else occurred to him. “Have you made many friends in the neighborhood?”

  Emily did not answer. She was doing needlepoint, while Meg, in smocked organdy, took instruction beside her.

  Alfie said, “Well, it’s only been a year. Far apart as we all are around here, I don’t think most people even know we’ve come yet.”

  They know you’re here, all right, Paul thought. They knew you were coming before you even moved in. The only Jew for twenty miles around, I’ll wager.

  Meg spoke suddenly. “Yes, they do. They do and they don’t like us.”

  “Why, Meg!” cried Emily, laying her work down. “That’s not a nice thing to say. I’m surprised!”

  “You always tell me something’s not nice to say. You said that when I didn’t get into Miss Allerton’s Sunday dancing class, and I was upset.”

  “The class was overfilled.” Alfie spoke in haste. “Your mother was right. You shouldn’t go around spreading false tales.”

  “It wasn’t false!” Meg was at the edge of tears. “The class wasn’t full. I told you so. Janice’s mother told her they didn’t take me because I’m—we’re—Jewish, and Janice wasn’t supposed to tell, but she did.”

  Despite her even tone, Emily was uncomfortably flushed. “I really don’t know whether that’s true, Meg, and if it is, it’s wiser not to talk about it.”

  Alfie made a deprecating gesture. “I don’t for one moment believe it’s true. The world’s changing, all that nonsense is”—he sought a word—“medieval, that’s what it is. You’ll be in that dancing class next season, you’ll see I’m right.”

  “Well, they don’t like us here either,” Meg mumbled.

  “That’s enough, Meg,” commanded Emily, obviously too disturbed by the subject to allow another word.

  And Meg, being well brought up, subsided, but not before Paul’s sympathetic glance had met hers. The child’s more realistic than Alfie is, he thought. And he felt himself to be a good deal older than his cheerful uncle.

  A hush of embarrassment fell temporarily upon the room. Then an auto passed outside, chugging up the hill. Emily put her work down and went to the window.

  “Now I wonder who that can be? It’s too dark, I can’t see.”

  “It’s probably that farmer down by the pond. He’s the only one around here who has an auto,” Alfie explained. “Of course, the summer people all have them; you need one to get to the New York train.”

  “The summer people. Exactly. A rich man’s toy,” Dan said. “Let me tell you, if anything is going to bring about the socialism that you people all dread, it is th
e automobile. It creates unsurpassed envy.”

  Leah had been unusually quiet all day. She senses the atmosphere in the house, Paul thought, and knows she is expected to be demure. Now she spoke.

  “But, Uncle Dan, suppose they learn to build them cheap enough so everybody can have one? Then that would make life better!”

  At home and at ease, Leah’s remarks were usually exclamations; her opinions were discoveries.

  “Everybody to have one?” Dan countered. “Don’t you realize that half the people in this country haven’t even seen an auto? And you talk of owning one? Don’t talk about things you don’t know the first thing about, Leah.”

  Paul defended the girl.

  “She’s right, Uncle Dan. It’s beginning to happen already. We’re not talking about my Stevens Duryea, or a Renault. I know the flivver looks like a buggy without a horse, and it’s ugly as a coal stove that needs polishing, but already it will get you where you want to go for only three hundred ninety-five dollars.”

  “That’s still a good deal of money,” Dan replied dryly, “a whole lot more than most people can afford. More than I can lay out comfortably, I know that.”

  He is so irritable tonight, Paul thought, wondering why. There was a subtle atmosphere of dissension in the room.

  And Alfie, not usually aware of subtleties, must have felt it, too, because he said briskly, “What we need before we go to bed is some entertainment. How about some of your poetry, Meg?” And he informed the gathering, “Meg has been writing some beautiful poems.”

  The child’s face clouded. “I don’t want to.”

  “Oh, come on,” Alfie coaxed. “You’re always so shy, Meg. Come on.”

  The child, in spite of being eight years old and large for her age, shrank on the sofa, becoming smaller and younger. She appealed to her mother.

  “Do I have to?”

  “Yes, of course, if your father asks you,” Emily replied, not looking up from the needlepoint.

  Resigned, Meg asked whether she should read or recite from memory.

  “Oh, recite!” Alfie told her heartily.

  Neither one of them has the least understanding, Hennie thought, and was pierced with memory, seeing herself in the awkward girl, who, standing now with one foot turned in, jutting elbows, and hands folded on her stomach, began to chirp a rhyme about a family of rabbits.

  Emily leaned toward Hennie to whisper.

  “We’re trying to make her more confident. She’s too self-conscious, and so sensitive. You know, she cries when we have to go back to the city in September! She worries about her rabbits.”

  Self-conscious! Why shouldn’t she be? She doesn’t belong anywhere and you’re not helping her, Hennie thought crossly.

  In a certain sense, although for different reasons, they reminded her of the way Dan was with Freddy. Oh, not all the time, but often enough! And she hoped Dan wouldn’t ask Freddy to play the piano; the tension, when Freddy hesitated, was too painful; if he did finally play, he would go on too long, and it would be excruciating boredom for Alfie and Emily, who did not care about music. Oh, she hoped Dan wouldn’t ask!

  Fortunately he did not. The clock ticked through desultory conversation; Emily laid the needlepoint away; the evening ended. Alfie opened the door to let the dogs out, so that the scented air flowed in and lured them all outside.

  Peepers had ceased. High up, the swaying top of an ancient copper beech etched a pattern against a glitter of stars. Underneath, the earth, rank with leaf mold, lay in dark blue shade.

  Mimi was the first to speak. “I’m going in. I’m so fearful of pneumonia since mother’s had it.”

  Then Alfie called to the dogs, and all said good night. Only Leah resisted.

  “You can all go in, but I’m going down to the pond to see the light on the water. It’s too wonderful to waste time sleeping. Didn’t you say so, Uncle Alfie? Who’ll come with me? Freddy?”

  “It’s pitch-dark,” Dan grumbled. “You’ll break a leg falling over a rock.”

  Leah laughed. “Don’t worry. I’m like a cat. I can see in the dark.”

  For an instant, Paul’s eyes met Dan’s frowning ones; then Dan’s went blank and Paul looked away. For a moment they stood watching Leah move off down the slope with Freddy following and disappear among the trees. Then they, too, went inside.

  On their last night, upstairs in the black walnut guest room, Dan slung his shirt onto the bed, muttering.

  “What a nuisance to have to change for dinner! Thank goodness we’re going home in the morning. Tell me why one has to change one’s clothes to eat …” He dropped a collar stud and bent to search for it under the bureau. “Oh, I hate dressing up!”

  It was a family joke, the way he fussed about clothes. On the other hand, Freddy had packed carefully for this weekend; he always had liked to dress. He had never been a messy, careless small boy. Hennie could well remember his little striped jacket, his bow ties, and cloth-topped button shoes and how he’d always said he liked the smooth feel of new cloth.

  Before the mirror now, she regarded the brooch at the neck of her crackling taffeta waist. It had belonged to her grandmother Miriam and sparkled nicely.

  Dan studied her. “You’re a good-looking woman, Hennie.”

  “Am I?”

  “I always tell you you are.”

  Yes, and I always feel and act surprised. I should take it for granted, the way Dan does his looks.

  Already in bed, he was stretching; the muscles moved under his milky skin. He didn’t age, and she wondered whether he would still look like that when she was a flabby old woman.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked, for he was frowning.

  “I was thinking that maybe Freddy should go to Europe with Paul after all.”

  “You can’t have changed your mind!”

  “Maybe I have.”

  “Well, we’ve lived all these years ourselves without seeing Europe.”

  “True, but you have to admit it’s an opportunity for him.”

  “I don’t know what I think about his going, especially with Paul.”

  “Why especially with Paul? That surprises me.”

  “You know I adore Paul. He had my heart before I had Freddy, and he still has it, but—he’s a sybarite.” She hesitated. “A rich man’s son, an art collector. I don’t know that it would be good for Freddy, giving him expensive tastes.”

  “He has them already,” Dan said darkly. He paused, then seemed to be choosing his words with special care. “I’ve been thinking, too, maybe Yale would be a good thing for him, after all.”

  She had been brushing her hair. Now she put the brush down and stared at Dan.

  “I can’t believe what I’m hearing! Why on earth do you think it would be good for him?”

  “Oh, a new environment,” Dan said vaguely.

  “My God, you sound like my mother!”

  “Well, she could possibly be right, once in her life, couldn’t she?”

  “I can’t get over it! You, in agreement with my mother! And you never approved of private education! City College, you said. Free education. It’s what you believed in.”

  “I still believe, but—”

  “But what?” demanded Hennie.

  “I just think maybe it would be better, that’s all.”

  “I feel as if you’d struck me on the head!” Then she thought of something. “Where will you get the money? You surely won’t accept Paul’s?”

  “What do you think I am? It’s Werner money, no matter that Paul says it’s his own. No. I’ll take Alfie up on that offer he made tonight. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll take a five thousand payment on my vacuum tube, assuming Alfie can do what he said. I’ve a couple of other things on the fire besides.”

  “All of a sudden, all of this at one blow! You’ve been doing a whole lot of thinking, keeping it from me.”

  “No. I decided everything right now, tonight. I think it would be good for Freddy, that’s all,” Dan repeated.
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  “Why? What’s wrong with home all of a sudden?”

  “If I tell you, you won’t like it.”

  “Tell me. I hope it’s not what I think it is. You’ve been listening to my mother about Leah.”

  “I haven’t spoken one word to your mother! Can you imagine me going to Angelique for advice? I reached my own conclusions.”

  “About Leah?”

  “About Leah.”

  “Oh, my God! That poor child!”

  “Leah is no child, take it from me. I see things in her that you don’t and probably can’t see.”

  “What can’t I see, in heaven’s name?”

  “That she’s a rascal. Mark my words.”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about! Poor little thing … you make me furious. Sometimes you say the most unfounded, unreasonable things.”

  “Remember, it takes a rascal to recognize another one.”

  “That’s disgusting, Dan. She’s a good girl. I know, I’m with her all the time. Besides, since you’re so concerned, let me remind you that Freddy’s out of the house all day, besides being too busy with his studies anyway to bother about anything else.”

  “Oh, Hennie, you’re an innocent, like your son. You don’t see how her eyes say ‘come on’?”

  “I hadn’t noticed,” Hennie said coldly.

  “You wouldn’t notice, my dear. Not you.”

  “And just what do you mean by that remark?”

  “Why, even Emily knows more about people, about sex, than you do.”

  “Emily? The cool and proper Emily?”

  “Don’t you believe it. Emily’s a lusty woman.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I can tell. I know a thing or two about women. Things their clothes can’t hide. You might say I’m gifted that way.”

  Hennie stared at him. You’re hurting me, Dan, she thought. Maybe it’s foolish of me, but you hurt me when you talk that way.

  “Don’t look so wounded! You take everything I say so seriously!”