Harvard Yard (Peter Fallon)

by William Martin

Victor took another sip. “What did she say?”

  “She left the room. Went off and cried. She’s in love with you, Victor.”

  “She’s a wonderful girl.” Victor handed the flask back to Jimmy.

  “Your grandfather doesn’t think so.”

  “My grandfather?”

  “He came to Memorial Hall yesterday. Found me in the kitchen. Promised to pay my tuition if I saw to it that you and Emily stopped seeing each other.”

  “Why . . . the old bastard,” said Victor. “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him to go and fuck himself.”

  Victor had to smile. He could not imagine anyone saying that to his grandfather.

  Now Jimmy took a step closer to Victor. “But here I am, saying what he wanted me to say, all on my own.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “If you love her, stop, because it won’t work. If you’re using her, stop, because I’ll kill you.” And Jimmy Callahan walked off into the shadows.

  The elms were dying in Harvard Yard. The leopard moth blight had attacked in 1909. Two years later, the famous Class Day Elm in front of Holden Chapel was dead, and half the trees, seemingly as permanent as Harvard itself, were gone or pruned so drastically that they looked like amputees, their hacked limbs sprouting sad leaves that gave little shade and less inspiration.

  Across this sad space marched the Class of 1911 to their commencement in Sanders Theater. All the Wedges attended—Victor’s mother and stepfather, his two aunts, his grandparents. As they paraded back through the Yard to a luncheon in University Hall, Grandfather Heywood hobbled along beside Victor.

  “It’s a proud day, Victor,” he said.

  “Yes.” Victor walked slowly so the old man on his cane could keep pace. “Though I wish the trees were alive.”

  “Some change cannot be stopped. But some can.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The greater changes in the country. The mingling of classes, creeds, races. You know, President Lowell joined our Immigration Restriction League because he agrees.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Victor with a touch of sarcasm. “The help is the help.”

  “To have order in society, there must be a chain of being,” said Heywood. “On the battlefield and in the bedroom. You can’t have the rabble overturning things. So we control immigration and see that we don’t marry beneath us.”

  Victor stopped and looked at the old face, heavy, drooped, reddened by the bright sun. “I won’t marry beneath me, sir. No matter who I marry . . . when I marry.”

  Heywood waved the rest of the family on, then said, “Your father would tell you that it’s time for you to put off boyish enthusiasms and consider your future.”

  “I have, sir. You know that. I start in the accounting offices in September.”

  “That can wait.” The old man smiled and took out an envelope and put it into his hand. “A steamer ticket. A year in Europe did marvels for your father. He saw the sights. Met the right people. I want you to do the same.”

  “Do you want me to meet people, Grandfather, or leave them behind?”

  “Just go. You’ll see things clearer when you come back.”

  iv

  Victor Wedge was not so much in love with anyone that he would turn down the grand tour, but he did not leave until September, after the second Harvard-Boston Aeronautical Meet, during which he paid a hundred dollars to fly in a Blériot monoplane.

  Then he took a month in France. He was in Bavaria for Oktoberfest. He reached Rome in time for a Boston Protestant to hear Christmas mass in St. Peter’s. He spent January skiing in the Alps, February in Spain. And at every stop, he followed his grandfather’s prescription. He saw the sights, both simple and grand, and he met the people, especially the right people, because in every European capital the Wedges had friends and business associates who saw to Victor’s comfort, entertainment, and female companionship.

  In late March, he arrived at last in the land of his ancestry and made the pilgrimage to Stratford-on-Avon.

  After visiting Shakespeare’s birthplace and the site of New Place, he walked up the street to Harvard House and signed his name in the guest book set aside for Harvard men. Then he toured the rooms, peered through the wavy old glass, ran his hand along the ancient adze-hewn beams. He had found one of the taproots of American civilization, sunk in the same sacred earth that formed Shakespeare, for in this house, Robert Harvard had courted Katherine Rogers.

  Then he went north to the Lake District, where Wordsworth and his friends had found their inspiration. He climbed the Grisedale Pike. He sat at the head of Derwent Water, at the spot that Ruskin had called the most beautiful view in the world. He felt as if he were taking a grand survey course in English literature. So after Shakespeare and the Romantics, he should have gone back to London and visited some Dickensian slum.

  Instead, he hiked west across the greening hills, following the ruins of Hadrian’s Wall until he reached the Northumberland village of Barrasford. In the churchyard, he found a grave: REVEREND ABRAHAM WEDGE, 1702-1782, A MINISTER OF GOD, LOYAL TO HIS KING.

  A mile beyond, Victor came to Townsend House, an ancient half-timbered manor presided over by Mildred Dunham, Lady Townsend, a wizened old widow with a cynical laugh, a grouchy staff, and a powerful taste for port.

  That night, over a dinner of spring lamb and mint jelly, she told him stories passed down to her, of Reverend Wedge and Lydia in exile. Then, she filled her port glass for the fourth time, took him into the library, and showed him the table at which John Singleton Copley was supposed to have painted them.

  “The painting hangs in my grandfather’s dining room,” he told her.

  “Does it indeed?” Then she pulled down an ancient volume with a flaking binding. “This is the very book that was on the table before them. The granddaughter was reading Love’s Labours Lost to the reverend while Copley did his work. She left it as payment for Townsend hospitality.”

  Victor opened the book and saw two signatures on the endpapers. He did not recognize the first name—Burton Bones—but beneath it was “Ex Libris Lydia Wedge Townsend.” And beneath that, the inscription: “To Lord and Lady Townsend, We leave this gift, left to us by an old actor born Benjamin Wedge, as thanks for your hospitality. Your loving American daughter-in-law, Lydia.”

  Victor could see Lydia before him, reaching out of the past. Then he turned to the title page and saw that it was a quarto, printed in 1598. “I would like to buy this from you, if I might, Lady Mildred.”

  “Buy it?” The old woman seemed insulted. “I shall give it to you. If I could find the reverend’s old commonplace book, which is buried somewhere in my attic, I’d give you that, too. But be satisfied with this.”

  The next morning, he offered to pay her again, believing that it had been the port speaking the night before, and she reiterated. “It belonged to your ancestor.”

  “But it’s very valuable.”

  “I have no children. What my greedy nieces and nephews don’t know won’t hurt them. So take this back to America.”

  “And she just gave him a quarto of Love’s Labours Lost. Isn’t that so, Victor?”

  “She gave it to me because it was inscribed by two of my collateral ancestors,” said Victor. “One was a minor female poet, the other apparently an old actor.”

  Harry Elkins Widener looked at the other gentlemen around the table. “I scour Europe for rare books, and he comes up with a treasure worth tens of thousands just by visiting some distant relative.”

  “Distant in time, space, and blood.” Victor wrapped his hands around his snifter. “Rather distant between the ears, too.”

  The other gentlemen all had a chuckle at the expense of Lady Townsend.

  Outside, the stars glittered coldly, and RMS Titanic sliced through a calm sea at twenty-two knots.

  In the first-class smoking lounge, Victor Wedge basked in the sound of sophisticated laughter, the taste of good brandy, the smell of fine cigars.
This, he knew, was where he belonged, aboard the most luxurious vessel ever built, passing witticisms on topics great and small. This was why his grandfather had sent him on the tour—to remind him of his place on the great chain of being.

  On boarding, Victor had gone over the passenger list and had found that the ship was like a floating Harvard Club. A good contingent of the best people, as his grandfather would have said, all of them connected by interest, income, breeding, background.

  The night before, he had dined with family friends from Boston, the Pratts—George, ’90, his wife, their two young sons, and their eleven-year-old daughter, Katherine. Tonight, he was socializing with the Wideners of Philadelphia, beginning with a dinner in honor of Captain Smith and finishing now with brandy and cigars.

  Harry Elkins Widener stood and said to the other gentlemen, “You’ll excuse Victor and me for a few moments. I must show him some of the treasures I’ve collected on the trip. Then we’ll be back for bridge.”

  Taking their brandies in hand, the two young men sauntered down to B deck and Widener’s luxurious stateroom.

  Though he had graduated in 1907, a few months before Victor arrived, they had hit it off immediately. Widener was a fine fellow all around, Victor had concluded, and plainly handsome—hair parted in the middle and slicked to the sides, orderly features, white tie and tails. A pity, Victor thought, that so few single women were aboard, for two such dashing young men as Harry and himself could cut a wide swath.

  But Harry seemed more interested in books than in women. “Look here,” he said, taking a small dispatch box from the safe in his sitting room. “A first edition of A Tale of Two Cities. Mint condition, pages uncut, and—what’s best—it’s signed by Dickens.”

  “Marvelous. Marvelous novel, too,” said Victor.

  Next came a thin pamphlet. “Heavy News of an Horrible Earthquake in the City of Scarbaria. It’s from 1542. The only one in the world. I also sent back a complete first edition of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall and a Second Folio, which is not as valuable as the first that I bought a while back—”

  “The First Folio brought a record price, didn’t it?”

  “The most ever for a Shakespeare. But here’s the real treasure of this trip.” And like a little boy pulling a favorite toy from the bottom of his chest, Widener produced a small, nondescript brown book. “The 1598 edition of the Essaies of Sir Francis Bacon. Extraordinarily rare. More valuable than that quarto of yours.”

  “Really.”

  “Bernard Quaritch found it. Finest antiquarian in London, Quaritch.”

  “I’ve heard of him.”

  “He asked me if I should like to have the book shipped home with some of my other purchases. I said, ‘No. I’ll take it along. If the ship sinks, the book will go with me.’ Quaritch laughed and said I was going on the Titanic, which, of course, is—”

  At that moment, the light fixture above them rattled and the brandy in the snifters sloshed back and forth. And from somewhere forward came a low but unmistakable groan, like a giant piano string plucked and vibrating against the side of the ship.

  “What’s that?” asked Widener.

  “Good God!” Victor looked through the window, across the B deck promenade. Something was scraping along the side of the ship, something white.

  Widener looked over his shoulder. “Good God!”

  They rushed up the staircase to the first-class promenade deck and hurried to the stern as a mountain of ice, towering as high as the ship itself, receded into the darkness.

  “Good God,” said Widener again.

  A dozen other gentlemen had come out of the smoking lounge, while down on the fantail, third-class passengers, mostly immigrants in rough clothes, had set up an indistinct chattering. But they were all talking about the same thing.

  “A bloody big growler,” said George Pratt of Boston.

  “I know I called for ice”—Mr. Carter of Philadelphia looked into his tumbler—“but this is ridiculous.”

  “Well, she steams on,” said Archie Butt of Washington. “She can’t have sustained much damage.”

  “Indeed not,” said George Widener, Harry’s father. “I’m going to bed.”

  Someone suggested they return to the bridge table, and Victor said he’d play.

  But Widener said he was going to turn in, too. “Enough excitement for one night. See you in the morning, Wedge.”

  “Yes. Good night.” Victor was looking down at the crowd of immigrants who had come out onto the stern deck. Though it was bitterly cold, a dozen of them—Italians and Eastern Europeans and Irish—were starting a game of soccer, using a chunk of ice from the berg. It looked like more fun than four-handed bridge.

  Victor was glad it was so cold, or he might have been tempted to join them. But he would be gladder still for another brandy.

  As he turned to go back inside, the engines stopped.

  Less than half an hour later, Victor Wedge was telling himself to act as his grandfather and his late father would have expected.

  He had gone calmly to his cabin and put his topcoat on over his evening dress, then his heavy cork life jacket over his topcoat. Now as he stepped into the C deck companionway, he bumped into the Pratts, all five of them. They were hurrying along a deck that was now canted slightly forward, tilted slightly starboard, and packed with passengers, some of whom were putting on their life jackets and doing as they were told, others of whom were spending more energy complaining to the stewards about the inconvenience.

  “Come with us, Victor,” said George Pratt. “We’ll be your family tonight.”

  “Thank you.”

  And the little girl, Katherine, slipped her hand into his. Then Victor stopped. He had not been acting as calmly as he thought.

  “What is it?” asked Katherine.

  “I have to go back to my room. There’s a book I’ve forgotten.”

  “What book could be so important?” George Pratt called over his shoulder.

  “A quarto”—Victor released Katherine’s hand—“of Love’s Labours Lost.”

  “We’ll see you on the boat deck then,” said Pratt, “and hurry.”

  It took Victor just moments to retrieve the book, but it was enough time to lose the Pratts. He went along the companionway to the grand staircase and looked for them, but there were scores of families gathering under the great skylight, lining the steps, crowding the vestibule that opened onto the boat deck, and raising a din of nervous conversation.

  Then a male voice—very calm, very controlled, entirely British—ordered women and children to the lifeboats, causing the din to rise suddenly in pitch and volume, like a crosscut saw working smooth wood suddenly striking a knot. It was not a sound of panic, thought Victor, but of annoyance.

  Stepping out onto the boat deck, however, Victor realized that this was far more serious than a series of precautions. He was struck first by the ferocious roar of steam venting from the stacks. And in the frantic movements of crewmen uncovering lifeboats, he saw fear. Then a white rocket shot startlingly into the sky and exploded above the ship.

  Victor told himself again to do what would be expected of him. He helped put ladies aboard lifeboats on the port side. He lashed deck chairs together to form a sort of gangplank, so that when the list from starboard over to port grew more pronounced and the boats swung farther out over the water, passengers could climb from the A deck windows into the boats. And he told himself that if he remained calm, he would survive.

  But when he began to notice second- and third-class people pressing upward onto the boat decks, he realized that there were not enough boats for everyone. By then, the roar of the steam had stopped, and the sound of ragtime from the ship’s orchestra provided strange accompaniment to the shouts of the officers, the creaking of the davits, and the cries of families separated.

  Victor decided that it was time to consider his own survival—calmly, of course. No bad form allowed. So he made his way aft, away from the rising water, away from the cr
owd, over to the starboard side, near the stern, where the sense of panic was more controlled, and lifeboats were taking men aboard, especially men in expensive overcoats.

  “Victor!” Widener was standing near a boat.

  “Where are your parents?” asked Victor.

  “My mother went onto one of the port boats. My father’s—”

  “Here.” Mr. Widener stood at the rail with Mr. Thayer of Philadelphia.

  “Do you have your book?” asked Widener.

  Victor slapped his pocket. “Right here.”

  “I have Francis Bacon,” said Widener. “I wish to God I’d brought the other two.”

  Victor noticed three women coming along the boat deck. He said to Widener, “By the time they load those ladies, you could go and be back.”

  “I’ve been thinking to stay with the ship, Victor.” Widener paused for a moment and said, “But if you can, hold the boat—”

  “There’ll be no holdin’ anything, sir,” said First Officer Murdoch, who was in charge of the loading on the starboard side.

  But Widener was already disappearing into the first-class stairwell.

  “Harry! Wait!” shouted Victor.

  Just then, a dozen people from third class, eight men and four women, came clamoring from somewhere, shouting in their brogues and accents and foreign tongues.

  Seeing them, Murdoch shouted, “All right! Lower away.”

  “Let us on!” cried an Irishman. “There’s room.”

  Victor said, “Wait for Widener.”

  “No more waiting,” cried Murdoch, looking down the canted deck. “We’re running out of time.”

  “Here now!” screamed another Irishman. “Take the women, anyway.”

  “All right,” shouted Murdoch. “But only the women.” And he showed them the pistol in his hand. “Women only.”

  Victor watched the four women climb aboard while the men, by hand gestures and eye contact, told one another that they would rush the boat. Victor put himself behind Murdoch, in a position to fight them. But they made no move.

  Once the women were aboard, Murdoch looked at George Widener and Mr. Thayer, as if offering them the chance to climb aboard, but neither of them moved. They were true to their class, thought Victor, and acted like gentlemen.