Henrietta had found Dr. Feld first through finding among Clem’s papers a letter which he had written to Bryan Holt, trying, as Henrietta could see, to get the young scientist to help him devise a food cheap and nourishing that could serve as a stopgap until people became sensible enough, as Clem put it, to see that everybody got food free. There had been no time for an answer. Clem had died the week after he had written this letter. Ah, but in the letter she found her treasure, the voice of Clem, the words which she had longed to hear and yet which he did not speak to her because she had not allowed him to come back in pain. Here was the reward for her love, when she had denied even her crying heart. Clem knew he was dying, long before she had been compelled to believe it, and he had written to the young scientist:
“I am in some haste for I am struck with a mortal disease and may die any time. This does not matter. I have been very lucky. I have discovered a basic truth in my lifetime and so it will not die with me. What I have spent my life to prove will be proved because it is truth. Though I lie in my grave, this is my victory.”
Clem victorious! Of course he was, for who could destroy his truth? Here was the command she knew and prepared as of old to obey.
To Bryan Holt then Henrietta decided to go when she had given Clem’s few suits to the Salvation Army, and had found herself possessed of an astonishing amount of money in more than twenty banks in various cities where money had been paid into Clem’s accounts from the markets. His records were scanty but very clear indeed were certain notes on The Food, as he called it. The Food was half chemical, half natural, a final mingling of bean base with minerals and vitamins, which if he could get a chemist to work it out with him might, he had believed, make it possible for him to feed millions of people for a few cents apiece. This was the final shape of his dream, or as William had once called it, his obsession. It might be that the two were the same thing.
The first meeting with Holt had not been promising. Holt had not answered Clem’s letter because it sounded absurd. He was respectful before Henrietta’s solid presence, her square pale face and big, well-shaped hands. She had immense dignity. He tried to put it kindly but she saw what he meant. This young man was not the one she sought, but there would be another. Clem, though he had died, yet lived.
“Many people thought my husband was unbalanced,” she said in her calm voice. “That is because he was far ahead of his time. It will be twenty-five years, much more if we don’t have another war, before statesmen realize that what he said is plain common sense. There will not cease to be ferment in the world unless people are sure of their food. It is not necessary that you agree with my husband and me. I am come only to ask you questions about his formula.”
Bryan Holt wanted to get rid of her, though he was polite since he was almost young enough to be her son. So he said:
“I have a very fine scientist here working with me who has come from Europe. He will be more useful to you than I can possibly be.”
With this he had summoned from a remote desk a shambling old figure who was Dr. Berkhardt Feld, and so by accident Henrietta found her ally. When she had talked with Dr. Feld for a few hours she proposed to find a small laboratory for him alone, with an apartment where he could make his home. Then if he would teach her to help him, building upon her college chemistry, which was all she had, she would come to him every day and they could perhaps fulfill Clem’s life work.
To Dr. Feld this was heaven unexpected. None of Clem’s ideas were fantastic to him. They were merely axiomatic. It would not be too difficult to find the formula which Clem had begun very soundly upon a bean base, a matter perhaps of only a few years, by which time it might be hoped the wise men of the world would be ready to consider what must be done for millions of orphaned and starving.
“Then, then, liebe Frau Müller,” Dr. Feld said fervently, making of Henrietta as German a creature as he could, “we will be ready perhaps with The Food.”
The tears came to Henrietta’s eyes. She thanked Dr. Feld in her dry, rather harsh voice and told him to be ready to move as soon as she could go home and get her things.
That decision made, she began to clean away what was left in the house of all her years of marriage to Clem. Among the things she would never throw away was the red tin box of Clem’s letters and with them the old amulet which he had given her. It was still in the folded paper in which he had sent it to her. She opened the paper and cried out as though he were there, “I always meant to ask you about this!”
How much of him she had meant to ask about in the long last years she had expected to have with him, years that would never be! She cried a little and closed the box and put it into her trunk to go with her to New York. Someday, when she could bear to do it, she would read all his letters over again. So much, so much she would never know about Clem because he had been busy about the business of mankind!
On the night before she left, she invited Bump and Frieda to supper, that she might ask something of Bump. She did not mind Frieda, a lump of a woman, goodhearted, stupid and kind.
“I wish you would tell me all that you can remember of Clem when you first saw him on that farm. He never could or would tell me much about it.”
She soon saw that Bump could not tell her much either. “He was just about the way he always was,” he said, trying hard to recall that pallid, dusty boy who had walked into their sorrowful small world so many years ago. “The thing I do remember was that he wasn’t afraid of anybody. He’d seen a lot, I guess. I don’t know what all. But I always took it that he’d had adventures over there in China. He never talked about them, though. He pitched in right where we were. The Bergers never beat him up the way they did us. He even stopped them beating us, at least when he was around. When he decided to leave, the others were afraid to go with him. They were afraid of the Aid people catching them again and things were tough if they caught you. I was afraid, too, but after he was gone, I was more afraid to stay. I don’t think he was too pleased to see me padding along behind him, though. I’ve often thought about that. But he didn’t tell me to go back.”
There was nothing more, apparently. Clem’s outlines remained simple and angular. After Bump had gone she studied again the notes Clem had left about The Food. If she went on trying to do what he had wanted to do then perhaps she could keep his memory with her, so that she would not forget when she was old how he had looked and what had been the sound of his voice. …
It did not occur to Henrietta to find her family and tell them that she was in New York. She had not even thought to tell them of Clem’s death, but they had seen the announcement in a paragraph in the New York papers. Clem was well enough known for that. William had telegraphed his regret and Ruth had sent a floral cross to the funeral. Her mother was in England and it had been some weeks before a letter had come from her saying that she never thought Clem had a healthy color and she was not surprised. Henrietta must take good care of herself. It was fortunate there was plenty of money. If Henrietta wished, she would come and live with her, but she could not live in the Middle West. New York or Boston would be pleasant. Henrietta had not answered the letter.
Now that Clem was gone she was lonely again, but not as she would have been had he never come. He had shared with her and did still share with her in memory her alien childhood which no one could understand who had only been a child here in America. Without loving China, without feeling for the Chinese anything of Clem’s close affection, she was eternally divided in soul and spirit. It occurred to her sometimes in her solitary life that this division might also explain William. Perhaps all that he did was done to try and make himself whole. The wholeness which she had been able to find in Clem because they understood one another’s memories, William had found no one to share. Perhaps he could not be made whole through love. She would go and see Candace. Upon this decision she went to the laboratory as usual.
Dr. Feld, observing the large silent woman who worked patiently at his command, mused sometimes upon her remote
ness and her completion. She needed no one, even as he needed none. They had finished their lives, he in Germany, she—where? Perhaps in China, perhaps in a grave. What more they did now was only to spend the remaining time usefully. He wished that he could have known the man who had left behind him these extraordinary though faulty notes. She had told him that her husband had had only a few years of education and no training in science.
“His knowledge must have been intuitive, dear madame,” he had replied.
“He was able to learn from human beings,” she said. “He felt their needs and based his whole life upon what he found out. He called it food, but it was more than food for the body. He made of human need his philosophy and religion. Had you met him you would have thought him a very simple man.”
“So is Einstein,” Dr. Feld said.
They did not talk much. When they did speak it was about Clem or the formula. He explained the peculiar, almost atomic vitality of vitamins. “The source of all life is in the atom,” he said solemnly. “God is not in the vastness of greatness. He is hid in the vastness of smallness. He is not in the general. He is in the particular. When we understand the particular, then we will know all.” When he really talked he spoke in German. She was glad that she had taken German in college and had kept the language alive in her reading.
One summer afternoon she took off her big white apron and reached for her hat and coat. “I’m going away early today, Dr. Feld, to see someone I know.”
He looked surprised and pleased. “Good—you have friends, dear madame.”
So Henrietta went away and rode the subway uptown and walked to Sutton Place.
She found the doorway in a quiet street, in a row of black and white houses with white Venetian blinds. The slanting sun shone into the street with glitter and shadow. The door opened promptly and a little maid in black and white asked her to come in please, her voice very fresh and Irish. She followed her into a square big room, immaculate in white and gold. The maid tripped away. Henrietta sat in a vast gold satin chair and a moment later Candace came in, looking soft and still young, her eyes tender and her hair a silvery gold. Her full sweet mouth smiled and Henrietta felt a fragrant kiss upon her cheek.
“Henrietta, this is the dearest thing you could have done. I never expect any of William’s family to—Sit down, please, and let me look at you. I cried so when I heard about Clem. I ought to have written but I couldn’t.”
She was in a violet chiffon tea gown, long and full and belted with silver. She was very slender again and more beautiful than ever.
“Let me look at you,” Henrietta said. “Are you happy, Candy?”
Candace blushed. “I am happier than I’ve ever been in my life, happy the way I want to be happy.”
She put her hand on Henrietta’s. “When I was with William I was happy, too. It is so easy for me to be happy. But then I was happy mostly by myself. Now I am happy with Seth.”
“I know,” Henrietta said. She did not take Candace’s hand because she did not know how to do such things and Candace understood this and stroked her hand and took her own away again.
“I don’t blame William,” she said gently. “I won’t even let Seth hate him. William needed someone who could understand him. Seth and I of course have grown up in the same world.”
She smiled at Henrietta brilliantly and softly. “You must come and visit us, dear. We don’t live here much. We live at the old seashore house.”
“Where is Seth working?” Henrietta asked.
“He doesn’t work any more except on his plays,” Candace said sweetly. “He says William galvanized him in college or he never would have worked.” Candace laughed her rich youthful laughter. “Seth is so amusing. He says William shaped his life. First he influenced him to work for him and then he influenced him to work against him. Now, Seth says, he’s not going to work at all because he’s really freed himself of William. We’re both very wicked, I daresay.”
“It isn’t wicked to be happy,” Henrietta said.
Candace pressed her hand again. “How glad I am to hear you say that! I used to tell William so but he didn’t know what I meant. I tell the boys that now, but they’re William’s sons, too. They’re terribly proud of him.”
Henrietta said, “Tell me about yourself.”
Candace held up her hand. Her face so illumined from within, turned toward the door. “Wait! I hear Seth.” She rose and went to the door and called and he came.
Henrietta saw a tall, gray-haired man, with a handsome, determinedly quizzical face. He was the one she remembered and she put out her hand.
“How good of you to come,” he said. “Candy and I don’t expect favors.”
“I am fond of Candace. I wanted to see if you were good enough for her.”
“Don’t make up your mind at first sight,” he begged. “My weaknesses are so obvious.”
She smiled politely, not knowing how to answer nonsense and he looked at Candace.
“My love, I’ve had nothing to eat or drink since luncheon.”
“Oh—I’ll ring for tea.” Her violet skirt flowed across the silvery gray carpet and she pulled a black bell rope, hung as a decoration by the marble mantelpiece.
They had tea then, a happy plentiful affair at which Henrietta sat loyally silent and faintly smiling, enjoying the warmth of the web these two wove about them, into which they wrapped her, too. They were mirthful without cruelty, and gaily frank with her.
“Your mother, darling,” Candace said to her, “has been cultivating England, as you know. She’s used up all the available relatives—She’s simply astonished everybody. Seth, where’s the letter we had from Lady Astley?”
Seth pulled open the drawer of a mahogany escritoire, and tossed an envelope into her lap.
“You don’t mind?” Candace inquired, eyes brimming with laughter.
“I know Mother,” Henrietta said.
Candace opened the pale blue writing paper, and began to read aloud:
What we cannot understand here in England is why Mrs. Lane isn’t the mother of the President. I think she doesn’t understand it, either. She’s a joy and a treasure. She makes us laugh our heads off and then we can face these Socialists. Really, she’s a good sport—we like her. There’s something English about her if you know what I mean—something quite frightful. She’s so sure she’s wonderful. There’ll always be England and that sort of thing—and of course there always will. It’s wonderful to think that it’s in America, too. We’ll quite hate to see her leave. God help us, it’s odd, but the American Queen Mother hates Labor, too! She calls herself a Republican. William the Son is a Republican, she says. What’s a Republican, dear? Mind now and tell me when you write.
“How wicked we are to read this aloud,” Candace said looking with laughing rue at Seth, sunk in his chair and smoking his pipe.
“Nonsense,” he said. “Henrietta knows we like the old gal. God, how I envy the old! They had the world all straight, heaven and hell, God and the devil, peace and war, good and bad, moral and immoral, stuffed and hungry and rich and poor—” Candace joined in the chant. “Young and old—”
“Black and white—”
“Gold and silver—”
“East side, West side, and never the twain shall meet—”
“King and subject—”
“City and Country—”
“Capital and Labor—”
“Union and nonunion—”
“Capitalist and Communist—”
“White man, black man—”
“Stop,” Candace said, “we’re making Henrietta dizzy.”
“No, you’re not,” Henrietta replied. “You’re just making me laugh. Bless you both for being happy. Now I’ve got to go.”
They let her go, clamoring for her return, making her promise that she would come to spend a month with them at the seashore house. She would not, of course, but she could not tell them so, lest they keep her to make her promise, and then she went away, back to the
subway and downtown again to her little hole in the wall.
It was long past twilight. Dr. Feld might still be working but she did not go to see. When she shut the door upon that splendid foolish happiness she stepped from moonshine into darkness. She was so accustomed to loneliness that she could not quite understand why the loneliness was deeper than it had been before, since she had found out exactly what she wanted to know, that Candace was happy and that none of them owed a debt to her any more through William. Then she remembered that neither Seth nor Candace had asked her where she lived or what she was doing. It had not occurred to them. They were not cruel, they were not even selfish or unthinking. They were simply ignorant, Candace naturally, so, Seth perhaps willfully so. He had returned to the world into which he had been born, and Candace had never left it. For them no other existed. They had never known, could never know, what Clem had always known.
It occurred to her later, after she sat trying to study a chemistry text, that perhaps that was why Candace had never understood William. William knew, too, another world. She let the book fall to the floor and sat for a long time, pondering this astonishing fact: Clem and William, so utterly different, were alike!
William Lane was no longer a young man. When he saw his two sons, both married and with children of their own, his grandchildren, he felt alarmingly old. On the other hand, his mother was robust and alive, though in her eighties, and so he was still young. He had come to the point of being proud of her, though frequently irritated by her increasing irresponsibility. Now, for example, when Ruth was in such trouble with Jeremy, who had become a really hopeless sot, his mother was gallivanting in England. He complained of this to Emory who listened with her usual grace and then made a wise suggestion. He depended very much on her wisdom.
“Why not cable your mother to come home and live with Ruth?” Emory said.
Gods Men Page 47