A Veil Removed

by Michelle Cox

  She looked out the front window to distract herself. It was well past four o’clock and the sun was already nearly gone, but she could still see a figure she thought was Gunther, bundled up and shoveling the front steps of Philomena, his back to her. Finally, Lloyd appeared and put his hand on the handle, holding it there and seeming to enjoy the power he held as he stared down at Elsie, who sat looking up at him, eagerly waiting to be released. With a grin, he finally opened the door.

  As soon as he did so, Elsie popped out so quickly that she almost lost her footing on the slippery drive. Lloyd caught her arm and steadied her.

  “Careful, there,” he said, patronizingly. Elsie righted herself, Lloyd taking the opportunity to wrap his arm through hers again. “I’ll be sure to mention to the Exleys when I see them on Saturday next that you were feeling a bit under the weather and had to cut our outing short, shall I?” he said, bending near. “I’m sure your dear Aunt Agatha will be rather concerned.”

  “No, I’m perfectly fine,” Elsie said worriedly.

  “But you’re not, you see. You distinctly told me you were ill,” he said, his gaze steely. “Here. Allow me to escort you in,” he said, gesturing toward the mansion.

  “No, I’m fine. I’ll just go in now,” she said, trying to remove her arm from his.

  “Not at all,” he said, grasping her arm tighter and leading her down the walk. As they approached the front steps of the mansion, Gunther looked up and stepped aside as they passed. When they reached the beautiful stone porch, Lloyd finally released her arm and stood looking at her. Elsie looked down at the ground and then back up at him, wondering why he didn’t just go.

  “Thank you, Mr. Aston,” she finally said. “I enjoyed the aquarium.”

  “Aren’t you going to ask me in?” he said, nodding his head at the door.

  “I’m afraid I can’t. No . . . no men are allowed . . .”

  “My, that’s convenient, isn’t it,” he said, derisively, looking around as he did so. “Well, I’ll say good-night, then.” Slowly, he bent as if to kiss her cheek, but at the last moment he turned his head and kissed her on the mouth instead. Elsie stiffened when she felt his tongue thrusting against her lips, but she clenched her teeth shut. She tried to pull away, but he held her tight for several moments before he roughly let go of her. Horrified, Elsie wanted to wipe her mouth, but she refrained.

  “So long, Miss Von Harmon,” he said, smugly. “I suspect I’ll see you on New Year’s Eve at the Penningtons’, if not before.” With a grin he turned and walked down the steps, giving Gunther, who was still standing in the shadows, a wink as he did so.

  Elsie briefly caught Gunther’s embarrassed eye before she turned toward the door, discreetly wiping her mouth. To her surprise and despair, however, the door appeared to be locked. She hadn’t considered that Philomena would be closed, but that made sense, as the college was officially closed for Christmas and all of the girls, including Melody, had finally left. She was close to tears as she pushed on the handle again to no avail. Could she do nothing right? she thought miserably.

  “Here, let me,” came a voice from behind her. It was Gunther. “It sticks sometimes in winter. I keep meaning to fix it.” Elsie stood aside, and Gunther gripped the handle firmly and pushed the door with his shoulder. With a loud click, it opened heavily. “Here, come in, you are shivering,” he said. “It is cold, yes?”

  Elsie stepped into the warm foyer and felt an almost immediate sense of peace. She began to unwrap while Gunther shut the door behind her with a sharp shove. She let out a deep breath. The parlor off to the right of the foyer was dark except for a few low table lamps burning. There was no fire in the grate.

  “I am sorry,” Gunther said, following her gaze to the fireplace, as he removed his fogged spectacles. “I did not know anyone was coming. Sister did not say.”

  “No, you weren’t to know. I . . . I decided just now to come. Unexpectedly, you see. I . . . I was hoping I might study a little bit. My entrance exam is tomorrow,” she said, her voice dropping off.

  “Here, then, let me take your coat,” he said, reaching for it. “Come,” he said once she had reluctantly given it to him. He draped it over his arm and walked past her. “Come to the kitchen. It is warmer there.”

  “Oh, that’s all right!” Elsie tried to say, but Gunther didn’t stop walking. Elsie saw no choice but to follow him. They walked down a short hallway and passed through a swinging door into a marvel-ously old Victorian kitchen, which Elsie didn’t recall seeing on her initial tour of the grounds with Henrietta. The floor was tiled in tiny black-and-white hexagons, and the room as a whole was very bright and clean. The walls were tiled in white as well, though midway up there was a row of rectangular blue-and-white tiles depicting old world scenes such as old sailing ships, Dutch windmills, thatched cottages, and peasants bent over in the fields. In the middle of the room stood a large pine table, which obviously served as a workstation, with a multitude of copper pots and utensils hanging above it. Even the mullioned windows were tall and narrow in an antiquated style.

  Gunther hung her coat on a hook near the back door and took off his own things, hanging them next to hers. Beneath his coat he was wearing baggy trousers and a thick gray sweater, the sleeves of which, Elsie noticed, were a bit frayed. She could easily mend those, she thought to herself as she watched him walk toward the stove.

  “You need some tea, I am thinking, or you will not get warm. Sit,” he said, carefully putting his glasses back on. “You like tea, yes?”

  Elsie nodded as if in a daze and made a move to sit down before she remembered herself and stopped. “Oh, please don’t bother on my account!” she said. “I’m fine. Really. I’ll just sit in the library for a little bit if you don’t mind.”

  “It is no bother,” he said, smiling, as he filled the kettle now with water from an old-fashioned-looking pump. “I was going to make some, anyway. Sit,” he said again.

  After a moment of indecision, Elsie obeyed him and pulled out a chair.

  Gunther opened one of the cupboards. “I think there are some biscuits somewhere,” he said. “Just do not tell Sr. Alphonse.”

  “Who’s Sr. Alphonse?”

  “She works in kitchen here. But I help her sometimes, so she will not mind, I do not think,” he said, removing a tin. He opened the lid and put the container on the table in front of her. He turned back to the stove, then, lighting it for the kettle, Elsie studying him as he did so. He was just a little taller than she, with thick, blond, wavy hair and broad shoulders. His eyes, she observed, were the palest blue she had ever seen. They were like a slice of the sky. Unlike the first time she had seen him outside Melody’s room, he now had a close-cropped beard as well as a mustache. Again, she found it hard to guess his age.

  “Do . . . do you need some help?” she asked him.

  He turned to her with a smile. “No. I am doing it.” While the kettle heated, he opened a blue-and-white canister with a windmill on the front and scooped out some tea, which he added to a teapot. Then he reached into a cupboard and found the sugar bowl and a small brown creamer, which he slowly filled with milk. All of his actions, Elsie observed, were unhurried and patient. When he was finished, he came over and sat across from her, reaching for one of the gingerbread cookies as he did so. It struck her that he seemed very un-servant-like, though Elsie supposed that he wasn’t actually a servant. Aunt Agatha, she felt certain, would surely not approve of her sitting with servants, especially a male servant. For herself, Elsie normally felt uncomfortable sitting with any sort of stranger, male or otherwise, except for someone like Karl, of course, but there was something very nonthreatening about Gunther. He still reminded her of someone . . . perhaps one of their neighbors at their old shabby apartment on Armitage.

  “I am from Germany,” he said to her now. “You were wondering, no?”

  Elsie blushed a little. “Well, yes.”

  The kettle began to boil, so he stood to pour the water into a teapot, cov
ered it with a cozy, and brought it to the table with one cup, which he set before her.

  “Aren’t you having any?” Elsie asked before she realized what she was saying.

  “Do you wish me to?” he asked with a smile, and she suddenly felt she might cry, though she didn’t know why. Perhaps it was his kindness in offering to sit with her.

  “Well, yes,” she muttered. “If you . . . if you want to, that is. Aren’t you cold from being outside too?”

  “I am used to cold,” he said, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “But, yes, I will sit with you for little while,” he said, reaching for another cup.

  “Is it . . . is it cold in Germany?” she asked and immediately chastised herself for asking such a stupid question. Of course, it was cold in Germany!

  Gunther didn’t seem to think it stupid, however, and answered it eagerly. “Yes, very cold in winter. Like here.”

  “What is it like there?” she asked, but again regretted it, realizing that it might be painful for him to talk about, given the war and all. “I mean . . . what was it like before the war . . . or . . . Oh! I’m sorry! I’m always saying the wrong thing!” Her face was crimson now.

  “It is not wrong to ask about my country. I like to talk about it,” he said encouragingly. “It is nice to remember it. Parts of it.”

  Elsie smiled a little and was grateful when he continued on, as if sensing, perhaps, her discomfort and wanting to put her at her ease.

  “We lived just outside of Heidelberg. Near university. My mother kept what I think you would call a boardinghouse. Rented rooms. She was born and raised in England.”

  “That’s why you speak such good English,” Elsie observed.

  “Thank you,” he said with a deferential nod, adjusting his spectacles again.

  “What about your father? Is he English too?”

  Gunther took the cozy off the pot and poured the tea into their mugs through a tiny strainer. “No, he was German. He died. The war. He was an officer under the Kaiser. My parents met before the war. My father was often in England on business. He met my mother there. They moved to Heidelberg, and then the war came. It was terrible for them to be from opposite sides. They loved each other very much.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. My father died too.”

  “I am very sorry,” he said, and it struck Elsie that he seemed to really mean it.

  Elsie put her hands around the steaming cup, allowing it to warm her fingers. “Did you . . . did you fight too? In the war?” she asked, blowing on her tea.

  Gunther let out an unexpected laugh, causing her to almost spill the contents of her cup. “Fight in the war? I was only boy then. About eight or nine. How old do you think I am?”

  Elsie shrugged, but she couldn’t help but smile at the look on his face.

  “I was born in 1907,” he added.

  Elsie did a quick calculation and realized he was only twenty-eight. He looked and seemed so much older!

  “Germany is very beautiful,” he said. “Especially the south, Bavaria, where the family of my father is from. But much of the country is depressed.”

  “Is that why you came here?”

  Gunther hesitated. “In a way,” he finally said.

  “Oh, I’m sorry!” Elsie exclaimed. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “Things are very bad there just now. There was not much left for us, and I agreed to . . . help a friend. So I came here, to Chicago. It has been almost seven months. As you can see, I found work as verwahrer. Custodian? I think you call it,” he said after a moment’s pause.

  “Is . . . is that what you did in Germany too? Elsie asked, curious.

  “No,” he said, his eyes sad. “I was a teacher.”

  “A teacher?” Elsie exclaimed. “How wonderful! You must be very . . . very clever,” she said, feeling her self-consciousness creep up again. Awkwardly, she took a sip of her tea, which was finally cooling off a little.

  Gunther laughed. “I do not say clever, but there is a great need of teachers . . . and of schools. I was teaching at very low level. Teaching little ones to read and write while I studied at university for final degree. But then things happened that I did not anticipate, and we . . . we left. Now I work here,” he said, gesturing around the room with his hand.

  “Who is ‘we’?” Elsie asked. “Your mother?”

  Again, Gunther hesitated just a moment, and a shadow seemed to cross his face. “Yes, she came with me.”

  “But can’t you be a teacher here, too?” Elsie asked.

  “Maybe in time. But for now, I do not have proper papers. And I . . . I might have to go back.”

  “Oh,” Elsie said, trying for a moment to imagine what his life had been like. Bombs going off, no food, people dying. “Do you . . . do you have any siblings?” she asked, trying to think of something innocuous.

  “No, just me,” he said and took a large drink of his tea and avoided her eyes. There was obviously more to his story, but it might be painful, she realized, for him to talk about. No doubt he had lost other family members or friends in the war.

  A silence ensued then for several moments, during which Elsie chided herself for not being able to think of anything else to say. Perhaps she should just go to the library now—

  “And how about you? Do you have family?” Gunther suddenly asked, as if he, too, were trying to think of something to say.

  “Oh, yes,” Elsie said gratefully. “I . . . I live with my mother and my brothers and sister in . . .” she was about to say Palmer Square, but instead she said Logan Square. “There’s eight of us,” she said. “But my older sister is married now,” Elsie said, thinking how strange that still sounded and decided to leave out the part about her being fabulously wealthy. She wanted to explain about Eugene and the boys being sent to boarding school, but she stopped herself. She hated flaunting her new wealth and avoided it whenever possible. It was better to just remain silent, as usual.

  “Eight children?” Gunther exclaimed. “Then you are blessed!”

  Blessed? No one had ever put it that way before. Usually it was seen as some sort of curse or misfortune to have been saddled with so many mouths to feed. Also, it struck her as strange that he had said something vaguely religious.

  “Are you Catholic?” she asked before she could stop herself. “Oh, sorry. I mean—”

  “No, I am a Lutheran. But do not either tell this to Sr. Bernard,” he whispered and gave her a little wink, which caused her to unexpectedly laugh. Quickly, she covered her mouth with her hand, embarrassed.

  “What will you study? When you come here, I mean?” he asked her now.

  “I don’t know really,” she said with a small shrug.

  “Well, what is it you like most to do?”

  “Read, I suppose,” she said with a blush.

  “Ah! A student of literature, then, yes?”

  A smile escaped despite her best efforts.

  “What have you read?” he asked, intrigued.

  “Well, not much, really. I . . . I haven’t had a very good education. I had to quit school to . . . to work.”

  “Me too,” he said with a sympathetic smile as he gestured around the room. “What was your work?” he asked.

  “I was a seamstress.”

  “So was my mother. In a way,” he said with a smile. “Before things changed.” He took a drink of his tea. “Well, you must have some favorites,” he said, looking back up at her.

  Elsie wasn’t sure what to say. She tried to think of something simplistic, something a girl should say, but she couldn’t think. Her “filter” was apparently not working at the moment.

  “I . . . I like Charles Dickens,” she finally said tentatively, deciding at the last minute that it would take longer to fabricate something than to just tell the truth. She looked up at him again. He just sat there, studying her face expectantly, as if waiting for her to go on.

  “And Jane Austen,” she offered weakly.

  He nodded again. “Who else?”

&n
bsp; She paused to think. Normally someone would have spoken over her by now, but Gunther seemed genuinely curious as to what her answer would be. “Well . . . I . . . I quite like Wordsworth and Keats. And, well, Shakespeare, of course,” she said and looked at him nervously.

  “What is your favorite of his?” he asked, his blue eyes exceptionally bright.

  “Of . . . of Shakespeare?”

  Gunther’s eyes crinkled. “Yes, of Shakespeare.”

  Elsie considered. She should probably say something like King Lear or Hamlet, but she decided again to be honest. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” she said hesitantly.

  “Me, as well!”

  “You’ve . . . you’ve read Shakespeare?” she asked.

  “Some. Yes,” he answered, apparently not feeling any sort of slight that could have been construed from her question. “I have read some. Not as much as I would have liked. It was hard to get books. When I got to university, it was easier, but . . . then I did not have so much time.” His voice drifted off. “But Sister Bernard is kind,” he continued, brightly. “She lets me borrow any of the books I want here. She . . . she makes exceptions. For many things,” he said in a more serious tone.

  “What do you like to read?” Elsie asked, working up her courage.

  “Well, Shakespeare is good, yes,” he said, giving her a smile. “Of the English poets, I admire Tennyson very much, thanks to my mother. My favorites would be Rilke and Schiller, though, I am thinking. And Garborg. I also like some of the Russians, despite the war,” he said wryly. “Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Pushkin. You know them?”

  Elsie blushed red. “No, I haven’t . . . I have so much to learn. I know that,” she said, twisting her hands under the table.

  “But that is exciting, no?” he asked, his eyes bright. “To have so much ahead? So much to look forward to? It does not matter so much what is behind, does it?” he asked kindly. “Just what is ahead.”

  Again, she felt a warmth run through her, and she began to relax more. His face was so open, so . . . so encouraging, she decided. “Yes, I suppose you’re right,” she said, not being able to help yet another smile from escaping.