Adelsverein

by Celia Hayes

  Magda set down her own sewing, smiling with great fondness. “He was very fond of a music hall song, one of those popular songs that they sing on street corners and music halls: ‘When you and I Were Young, Maggie.’ He would sing it and laugh, and then he would call me Maggie. ‘Let’s go up to the hill, Maggie, and look at the rusty old mill,’ he would say! He gave me a very precious gift, Lottie dear—one that I was so grateful to receive, although I never had a chance to thank him for it.”

  “What gift was that, Mama?” Lottie asked.

  “He showed me something of what it would have been like to grow old with your father.” Magda rubbed her shoulder. There was an unaccustomed ache there, another to add to the collection sustained by her many long years of life and work. “Enough of a taste to let me know that it would have been sweet, indeed.”

  Chapter Twenty-One: The World in a Grain of Sand

  Late in November, a letter from Anna arrived, along with a packet of American newspapers for them all and a smaller packet wrapped separately and addressed to Magda. “Do not let Mama read any of these,” Anna wrote. “She will in any case be distracted by the happy news of my condition. But a dreadful storm struck Indianola last month, leaving much of the city in ruins. Jacob and Elias were in the city during the storm with three wagons and teams, all of which are lost, together with one of their wagon guards. He was a young man with family in Indianola, not known to you and I and Papa, but recently hired. He felt obliged to see to the safety of his family in their house near to Powder Horn Bayou. Jacob urged him to remain within safety with them, in their lodgings in a house in the older part of town, which was on higher ground. At the height of the storm the wind changed direction, and all the water in the marshes and bayou behind the new town immediately rushed forth and carried all away into Matagorda Bay. Please assure Mama that my brothers remain safe and insist they were never in any acute danger, although the storm was quite violent. All the town is devastated. Papa has only lost three wagons, six teams of horses and a portion of fine goods stored in one of the warehouses near to the Morgan Line docks—but not nearly what has been sustained by our many friends within that town! Please, assure Mama as regards the survival of her sons—they are unharmed and quite unaffected.”

  “Sounds like a proper box-wallah!” Rollie Bertrand grunted when Magda read this portion of Anna’s letter aloud to him. They were sitting together on a stone bench along one of their favorite walks, near the cliffs by the ruinous Roman villa located at the point of the island. A crumbling wall at their back gave shelter from the cold breeze. Below the cliff at their feet the ocean sparkled as if strewn with millions of tiny silver sequins. At Magda’s look of puzzlement, he expounded, “Merchant-chappie . . .in trade. Always fussing about their accounts and shops.”

  “Fussing about our accounts and shops is what gave us our start,” Magda answered. “And continuing to do so is what keeps our children from suffering the sort of poverty we endured during the war.”

  “Ah, Maggie, you talk like a shopkeeper,” Rollie chuckled.

  She returned crisply, “I am a shopkeeper, Rollie—not a woman of leisure.”

  It did annoy her sometimes, Rollie’s blithe assumption that trade was vulgar, something that ought to be beneath her notice and concern; she who had always taken care of the shop and its accounts! She who had been genuinely fascinated by the intricacies of buying and selling, who together with Anna had helped Hansi spin his complicated web of commerce in cartage, cattle and land. She couldn’t fathom why continuing an interest in such matters ought to be dropped like an unfashionable garment once one had reached a certain level of prosperity. Such notions seemed to be an unspoken assumption in the social circle that Rollie and Princess Cherkevsky moved within. Privately Magda thought an elaborate disinterest in the means by which a fortune was made and maintained was a sure guarantee of returning to the mean degree from which a family had sprung. She refrained from saying so to Rollie. He was a dear man, but such matters were as far beyond his understanding as a liking for grand opera was beyond the comprehension of a Comanche Indian.

  But he did understand some things very well; Liesel’s fragility was one of them. Now he ventured, with a care which suggested that he had really considered the matter, “I suppose you will have to tell her a little at a time, Maggie. You can’t keep the whole of it from her—even if it is on the other side of the world. It will have made a great show in the newspapers and among your friends back there. It’s a bit much to hope that it will all be rebuilt by the time you return. But I’ve seen marvelous things done, after storms along the Bengal coast!” He patted Magda’s hands, where they held the letter in her lap, and added comfortably, “They’ll get cracking away, Maggie. They’re probably putting in foundations even as we speak. If there is still land to build on, they will have too much at stake in a place to move away. But still,” He squeezed her hands. His eyes were the same blue as the sea, guileless as a child’s. It was moments like this that he reminded her so piercingly of her husband. He continued, “I daresay it will be the boys that she worries about most. Once she hears of them, all else will be secondary, and you can let all the rest of it trickle out by drops.”

  “That is what I had thought to do,” Magda agreed. Doubtless, Anna was right. And Liesel would be more distracted by the news that Anna and Peter were expecting another child, a child that would be born soon after their return to the States. But Rollie’s advice was not only sensible, it confirmed her own thoughts on the matter. They sat comfortably side by side, their shoulders just touching, and watched the sea-birds wheeling in the crystal air. The curve of the Bay of Naples lay far distant and half veiled in mist. A sprinkling of islands trailed off the farther end, and at the nearer end the Sorrento peninsula reached out towards Capri.

  Magda’s thoughts were not on the view before her. Rather, she saw Indianola in her mind’s eye, that bustling wooden Venice set on its shell-sand spit between the bay and the bayou. So hard to think of all that, smashed into splinters by the sea. She could hardly bear to read the newspaper stores which Anna had sent to her. All those warehouses where she and Anna and Hansi had gone to buy goods for the store in that first year after the war, the Casimir House and the Morgan Line’s dock—all of it swept out into the bay, leaving it as empty as it had been when the Verein settlers had been landed there. It was a comfort to lean against Rollie, who was kind and sensible; sensible enough to know when not to talk.

  Presently, they heard Lottie and Sebastian’s voices at some distance. Lottie and Sebastian had gone a little farther into the ruins to look for an inscription that Sebastian claimed to have seen.

  “He’s a good lad,” Rollie suddenly remarked. “Doesn’t quite know what to do with himself. Younger son, y’know. Not interested in the Army. Doesn’t get good marks, so the Church is out. Told me himself he doesn’t want to fiddle around doing nothing in England.” Magda listened patiently. Having given her his advice, now he was working around to ask it of her. “He’s interested in this Western cattle business,” Rollie said at last. “Your little gel has told him this and that. He’s read some books about it.”

  “I’m not sure what he needs to know about it all would be in a book,” Magda replied. The Honorable Sebastian was a good lad but he was also only sixteen; added to that, he seemed younger, softer and less fully-formed than her sons had been at that age. At sixteen, Dolph had helped defend Friedrichsburg from the Hanging Band, had gone and joined Colonel Ford’s Western Cavalry. Magda could no more imagine Sebastian doing such things then she could imagine Mouse metamorphosing into a wolfhound.

  Rollie continued, “Thing is, Maggie—he’s m’ godson as well as nephew. And sole heir as well. I’ll do right by the lad, o’ course, in due time, but if he comes out to Texas when he turns eighteen, I’d like to know someone has taken him in hand, see that he starts off on the right foot.” He smiled sideways down at Magda, a glint of mischief in his eyes. “I know some of you colonials are a canny lot,
not beyond playing games on a young griffin, fresh out from home.”

  “Of course, I will recommend him to my brother-in-law,” Magda answered, swiftly, “or to my own son. You’ve only to ask.”

  “Thank you, Maggie.” He took her hands into his once more. After another comfortable silence, he added, “I’d like to think of him with something of his own that he can work at. He’s too serious a lad to waste away his days as a society drone. No better thing for him than for you and Mrs. Liesel to introduce him around, see that no one takes undue advantage. Hullo, boy—your ears must have been buzzing, we were just talking about you,” he added, as Sebastian and Lottie appeared on the path. Lottie’s hat hung by its ribbons and her hair was disarrayed from an encounter with one of those gnarled little juniper trees that grew all over the upper island.

  “Nothing bad, I hope, Uncle,” Sebastian answered with an affectionate smile.

  “No, Madame Becker has promised to take you in hand, if you should decide to go ahead with that cattle venture, once you’re of age. Time to stir the stumps, lad—that wind has a bite to it and I am sure the ladies feel the chill now.”

  “I’d like that, Marm,” Sebastian said quietly to Magda, as he helped his uncle rise from the stone bench. “It interests me, very much.”

  “I will show you some of my younger son’s letters,” Magda found herself saying. “He does the most amusing drawings, and that might give you a better idea than your books of what you would find—if you pursue this venture.”

  “Miss Lottie has already told me much,” Sebastian answered. His eyes went towards Lottie as he said her name with such affection. Magda looked between them, chilled by something that was not the wind, recognition that there were feelings between the two of them. Just so had Rosalie and Robert Hunter looked at each other on that long-ago morning, when Rosalie pointed him out to her sister from an upper window of Vati’s house. Magda had known at once that they were bound to each other with shining bands, bands that neither distance, war, nor death could never shatter. Just so now was her own daughter bound, and Magda felt suddenly old, as empty as a hollow tree, as empty as the shell of old mad Emperor Tiberius’ ruined palace, here on the cliff that overlooked the Tyrrhenian sea. In another year, Lottie would put up her hair and be a young lady. She would be courted, would marry soon after that, and Magda’s arms would finally be empty. The last of the children Carl Becker had given to her, the children she promised to care for, would have taken wing and departed the nest.

  “Mama, are you unwell?” Lottie asked with sudden concern. “You look chilled.”

  “The wind is cold, little miss,” Rollie answered. “It will affect those whose blood is thinned by having lived in hot climes, such as your dear mama.”

  “Oh, Rollie, please don’t be gallant and give me your coat again,” Magda begged. “You were in India as long as I have been in Texas, you should feel it just as much!”

  “I assure you, I do not,” Rollie insisted, but then he snapped his fingers. “Aha! I just had an idea, Maggie. It’s almost Christmas and I have a present for you. Better have the use of it today than wait until Christmas. We’ll stop at our digs and I’ll fetch it for you!”

  They walked sedately along the trodden path, through the scrub woods and tumbled ruins, back towards the close-packed houses and villas. At Rollie’s tiny bachelor cottage, hardly more than three rooms and an apron-patch of garden, Rollie went in, while they waited by the door.

  He emerged, unwrapping crackling brown paper from a length of brilliant fabric; a shawl of printed wool challis in rust red and gold, as light as feathers and as warm as an embrace.

  “Kashmiri weave, of course,” Rollie said, unfolding it. “Bought it years ago, meant to give it . . . to someone. Never did. But I thought the colors were a treat.”

  It was indeed a magnificent shawl, with a deep silken fringe and an intricate border of scallops and roundels, stylized flowers, in rust and gold, green and black. Rollie shook it out and with a flourish, settled it around her shoulders.

  “But Rollie—I cannot accept this, I do not wear anything but mourning,” Magda protested.

  Lottie said, “Oh, Mama, but it is gorgeous! Please, Mama—just this once.”

  “For me, Maggie.” Rollie drew it closer around her and lowered his voice. “I would like to see you in bright colors, just for this little while. Your dear old chap—I’ll wager that he would have liked that too. For us, Maggie—a bit of cheer on a winter day?” And he smiled at her with such sweet affection that Magda could not bear to cast a shadow on it by refusing his gift.

  “And you did wear it often, Mama” Lottie pointed out.

  Her mother admitted reluctantly, “But only at home, Lottie—in my own rooms. His gift was a private matter, something I preferred to keep to myself.”

  “It was not long after that . . .” Lottie began.

  Magda answered, “Yes . . .just before Christmas.”

  One morning, Rollie was unaccountably absent at the little table in the Piazzetta where they had become accustomed to meet for their morning coffee. Magda waited with mounting impatience, wondering if she should walk over to Rollie’s little house, or return to Princess Cherkevsky’s villa. Before she had completely made up her mind as to what she would do, with Mouse looking up at her with worried eyes—he was a creature of habit, was Mouse—her daughter emerged into the Piazzetta. Lottie stepped from the archway of the alley that led by the villa, hand in hand with Sebastian and followed by Irina. As soon as she saw their faces, especially the moment she saw Irina, who was never out of her room before 10:00 a.m., she knew what had happened, why Rollie was late.

  “It all happened quite peacefully, my dear.” Irina took Magda’s hand in own. Her hands felt like cold little claws, stiff and bent with arthritis. “Sometime last night. The boy says his face was quite serene, nothing of the bed disarranged, and he never heard his uncle cry out. He was just asleep, never to wake. Not such a bad way to go, I think—even for a soldier.”

  “He would have been surprised,” Magda answered. She was not as shocked or grieved as Lottie and Sebastian seemed to think she should have been. Neither was Irina. “Surprised and gratified to know that he was fated to live long. He told me of some of his alarms and hairbreadth escapes in India.”

  “There, you see?” Irina’s eyes lit, happily. “He might have preferred that, all the same. But still—a good man, and a good end. You are not distraught, my dear?”

  “No, I think not,” Magda shook her head. No, she was not distraught, but rather saddened for herself, at the losing of a friend and being deprived of his good company. “I feel rather as I did when my own father died—he also peacefully, after a long and useful life.”

  “Just so,” Irina nodded. “A good end, among good friends. Nothing better. I wonder what sort of funeral the boy has arranged? I expect he will be buried in the English cemetery on the mainland. He had lived here for so long. I can’t help thinking he would have preferred something very martial.”

  “A Viking boat,” Magda suggested, “with all his weapons and trophies around him, pushed out into the sea and set on fire?”

  Irina clapped her hands. “Oh, he would have liked that,” she agreed, laughing, “but I do not think the British Consul would have approved!”

  Magda uttered a small and wistful sigh. She pulled more tightly around her shoulders the brilliant Kashmiri shawl that Rollie had given her only a few days before. “I shall miss him, Irina. Somehow, there is not as much to savor of these places as there once was. I might almost wish myself at our home in Texas.”

  Curiously, at nearly that very hour, Dolph Becker was saying almost the same thing. He had left his uncle and his cousins in London, the town winter-dark and choking with coal fire smoke. He couldn’t stand cities; a city the size of New York or London made him feel as though he were choking on the air, on the constant noise and the inescapable presence of so many other people. It was, he reckoned, the exact opposite of Auntie Lies
el’s megrim about being out in the open, alone under the sky. She feared that so much, preferring to revel in the constant city bustle. The city oppressed him, made him long to be away. If it weren’t for the chance to look at fine blood-stock, he would have turned around and left for home as soon as Auntie Liesel was settled.

  “Don’t forget,” Uncle Hansi said, as he packed his single valise, “we must depart next week, if we are to be in Italy for Christmas. Where do you think to go, Dolph?”

  “Anywhere but here,” Dolph answered. “Someplace empty, and not too far away. I’ll be back in a week, Uncle—don’t worry about me.”

  “I wouldn’t stay awake for a moment,” Hansi smiled, a knife-edge smile. “What hazards could lay in wait for you, after trailing cattle in all weather for ten years, eh?”