The Last Summer of the World

by Emily Mitchell

  “Well, we are here to prevent that,” Edward said.

  “Yes. It is good to see Americans in uniform in Paris.” Amélie reentered and set a tray with two glasses and a jug of blackcurrant cordial on it.

  “Thank you,” Mildred said to her. “Will you sit with us?

  “Later, I will come back,” Amélie said. She smiled at Mildred and went out.

  “I am only sorry,” Edward said, when the door closed behind her, “that I didn’t arrive in time to see Rodin. I wanted to show him that I came back to fight. I wish I had at least made it to his funeral.”

  “In a way, you were lucky you missed it. It was a disgusting affair,” Mildred said. “All government men, talking about defending Alsace-Lorraine, fighting to the bitter end. Half of them never even knew him when he was alive, and the other half did, but never cared about his work until after he was famous. So many vultures.”

  “I still wish I had been there.”

  “Yes. I understand that. It is hard not to be able to pay your respects, especially to someone who was so dear to you,” she said.

  “And Rose gone too. So close together.”

  “A lot of people were sick this winter, including me …”

  “I didn’t know. What did you have?” he asked. “Are you recovered?”

  “I caught a bronchitis and yes, officially, I am well again. In truth”—and here she lifted the cane to illustrate—“it turned me into an old woman, and I have not turned back. I’m not nearly as steady as I used to be. I haven’t my former strength. Don’t get old, Steichen, if you can help it: it has very little to recommend it.”

  “I’ll try to remember that,” Edward said.

  “Anyway, the fuel shortages were the worst since ’14. Rose used to let the fires go out all over the house, except the one in the studio. Then she’d sit in the cold until he was ready to come in for his supper. Did you know that she and Rodin were finally married a few weeks before she died?” She shook her head. “Clara always used to admire the way Rose sacrificed for Auguste. But I don’t know. There is such a thing as sacrificing too much.”

  Edward shifted in his seat uneasily. The mention of Clara’s name recalled to him the purpose of this visit. He didn’t want to poison the conversation by bringing up the difficult past. For a moment he considered saying nothing about the lawsuit to Mildred, and just enjoying the short time they had together. What good could she do anyway?

  She was looking at him, her sharp eyes seeing into his silence.

  “I have not had a letter from her in some weeks,” she said. “But the last I heard from Clara, she was doing fine. She is good at her job for Liberty Loan. She leads the choir. You can ask about her if you want to. You needn’t stand on ceremony with me.”

  “Actually, I do want to talk to you about Clara,” Edward said slowly.

  “Go ahead.”

  “I got a letter from Marion Beckett before I left St-Omer. It was the first I’d heard from her in four years.” Mildred looked noticeably surprised. She only let the expression stay on her face for a moment, but he caught it and understood. She thinks that we were lovers, he thought. She’s heard Clara’s version of events and believes it.

  “What did she have to say?” Mildred asked. So he told her. About the letter, and the lawsuit it described. He saw Mildred’s face grow grim as he spoke. She looked away from him, her eyes cast down.

  “She will not win it,” she said when he was finished. “She will only bring herself to grief. Poor child.”

  “Poor child?” Edward said, incredulous at where her sympathy lay.

  “Yes. That is what I said. She is a poor child, for all that it’s her own wild temper that causes her to suffer most. Some women are never very good at being wives; I claim to be among them. Clara got worse at it the harder she tried. But you were no help to her.”

  “I didn’t do the things that she accused me of before the war. She was mistaken, and then she wouldn’t listen to me when I told her she was wrong.”

  Mildred snorted in frustration. “Oh, God. I don’t know which of you to believe. I care for you both, and it is hard enough to see you causing each other pain without having to decide who is right.” She stood up and paced to the window, then turned to look at him, her back to the glass. “Don’t ask me to choose,” she said. “I will choose Clara if I have to because she does not have the friends and chances you do. But I will hate to do it.”

  “You don’t have to decide who is right,” Edward said. “Even if you don’t believe me, please, if you can, persuade her not to drag this matter into court. It wouldn’t do her any good, even if she could win. It will hurt Kate and Mary as much as it hurts me. You know that. Just write to her; that is all I ask. She may listen to you.”

  Mildred’s lips were a tense line. Slowly, she began to nod.

  “All right,” she said. “Of course. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thank you,” Edward said. He felt exhausted.

  They remained silent for a few minutes. Mildred returned to her seat by the fireplace, her cane clicking on the floor with her steps.

  “You know, I used to see Clara often when I lived in Huiry,” she said at last. “She would ride over the fields between there and Voulangis, whenever she had tea or coffee, or chocolate. Her sister, Lottie, would send her those things from America. It was strange and sad to see her and Kate without you and Mary. Kate seemed to be coping with all the changes she’d been through. At first she was afraid of the soldiers—even ours. She’d hide when they came into town on their way to the front. But she had friends among the children in the village. She read a lot. I used to lend her books whenever I visited, and she’d finish them before I could even choose which ones to give her next.

  “Clara, too, seemed to manage quite well by herself at first. She was sad and sometimes angry. But the work of the household seemed to solace her, and she played music everyday.

  “Then they passed the law in ’16 that banned foreigners from traveling outside our communes. They made us register at the mairie and get papers from the garde champêtre to travel. And Voulangis is on the other side of our commune line, so going to see each other became much more difficult. It was ridiculous. I had to submit an application just to go four miles down the road. And you know how long it takes papers to get processed in those local offices.

  “When America entered the war, they finally relaxed the travel restrictions. I went up to Voulangis soon after. Clara told me then that she was planning to leave. She’d had enough of living with the shortages and the isolation. She wanted to go home. She talked about going back to her father’s house in Missouri, staying there until she could find a job. Something in her aspect had changed and … I don’t know …”

  “What?” Edward asked.

  “Hardened. Yes, that is the right word. Three weeks later they went back to America. I am glad that they left when they did. It was no life there for a child or for a young woman alone.

  “I didn’t see them again … Wait, no, that isn’t quite right.” Mildred put her hand to her forehead, as though trying to draw out the memory. “I saw Kate once more, briefly, just before they left. She drove over one morning in the dogcart. She brought a suitcase, which she said contained a few valuables. She didn’t want to leave it in an empty house for the soldiers to damage, she said. She asked me if I would take care of it until someone could return to collect it. Actually, just before she drove away, she said, ‘If Papa comes back here, please give this to him.’”

  “She said that?”

  “Yes, I remember it quite clearly. It seemed important to her.”

  Edward put his face in his hands.

  “It is just hard for me to believe,” he said, “that Kate is old enough now to make the drive from Voulangis to Huiry on her own. The last time I saw her she was six years old. Now she’s ten.”

  Mildred said: “Living as they did made her act old for her age. But even so, with children, four years is a long time.” />
  In the darkness behind his closed fingers, Edward tried to picture the girl who was grown-up enough to drive, to say the self-possessed things that Mildred had related, but was still also the shy, melancholy child he remembered. The beautiful life they had in that house—he could almost reach through the glass of the present and touch it. And yet here he was getting news of his daughter, secondhand and two years late, trying to put together the pieces of her life like sections of a puzzle. It was only by chance that he had even learned this much—if his men had arrived on time, he would have missed this too.

  “The case she left,” he asked, uncovering his eyes and looking up, “do you still have it? Can I get it from you?”

  “I left it stored in my house in Huiry when I left and came up to Paris. I haven’t done a very good job of looking after it, I guess.”

  Edward shook his head. “I’m sure you had enough to worry about when you moved here.” They lapsed into separate silences again.

  “My God!” Mildred said suddenly. “To think I introduced you and Clara.” She started to shake, and for a moment Edward thought she was crying; but she wasn’t. She was laughing. He looked at her, shocked.

  “I know,” she said, “I know, I shouldn’t laugh, it’s not the time for it, but if I ever, ever say I’m going to try matchmaking again, you absolutely have to stop me.”

  At the Piano. Paris, 1902. Platinum print.

  ALL EVENING PEOPLE have been asking Clara to play, and it is really becoming most tiresome. Just a couple of pieces, they say, just the Chopin that you played for us last time, please. We won’t even ask you to sing.

  But she tells them, no, she is resting her voice, and anyway she isn’t inclined to play this evening, because she practiced all day. It is Lottie and Mildred who are the most insistent, and their hostess, a woman called Judith, whom Clara doesn’t really like much, but who is rich and might buy some of Mildred’s photographs, so they have to be nice to her. She tells them they must stop pestering her at once and let her enjoy the party in peace. Then she laughs to show that she doesn’t really mean it, and that she is just pretending to be annoyed.

  This is her very first summer in Paris. She and her sister Charlotte are traveling with Mildred Aldrich, the noted photographer and writer. She likes the way this sounds: noted photographer. Far better than saying famous photographer. That is really much more vulgar. When her own career gets started, she decides, she wants to be known as the noted concert pianist and coloratura soprano Clara Smith.

  She and Lottie met Mildred in New York this past spring, quite by accident. To earn money, they had been giving music lessons and, ever so occasionally, taking in sewing work to add a little to their income. Mildred had come to their small apartment to drop off a dress to be altered, and while she was there, she heard Clara practicing in the other room. As Lottie told it later, she stopped dead in the middle of discussing a hemline and listened silently until Clara finished playing. Then she applauded slowly.

  “Who is that?” she’d asked Lottie. “And where can I hear a concert?”

  “Only in this apartment,” Lottie replied. “It is my sister and she has no professional engagements yet.”

  “Well, I had better find another dress that needs hemming,” Mildred said, and stayed for supper.

  Soon they all became fantastic friends, and when Mildred decided to go to Paris that summer, she invited Lottie and Clara along. She would be their chaperone, she said, rolling her eyes and pronouncing the word “chaperone” as though no one could imagine such a ridiculous, old-fashioned notion. The appropriate letters were nevertheless sent to their father, who gladly gave his permission, so long as they were to be looked after by such a pleasant and obviously respectable lady. They bought their tickets for the packet the same afternoon they got his reply.

  To Clara, everything about Paris is delightful. All the women are elegant and their clothes are so beautiful, even more than in New York. She and Lottie have met so many people since they arrived she can hardly remember all their names, and they have gone to more parties than she can count. Mildred knows everyone here, everyone who matters, that is, everyone who cares about music and art and things like that. In Paris people drink red wine and have the most marvelous conversations about ideas, important and sophisticated conversations, not like people at home in Missouri, who never seem to talk about anything except each other. Or like father, who just worries about his patients all the time, whether they can afford to pay him, whether he will make ends meet himself. On the boat on their way over here, she had imagined telling people in France that they were from New York or New England or else that they were descended from Elizabethan courtiers or exiled Russian aristocrats. Something a little more urbane, at least, than being daughters of a country doctor from the Ozarks. But when she mentioned this idea, Lottie had frowned and said that she wasn’t ashamed of where she came from and Clara shouldn’t be either. Besides, Mildred already knew where they’d grown up, so in addition to being wrong, Clara’s suggestion wasn’t even practical. Clara pointed out to her that she hadn’t been saying they should do it, only thinking that it would be fun if they could transform themselves into new people for the summer. Really, Lottie could be such an old stick-in-the-mud, never wanting to try anything new or daring. She should have expected her to say something like that.

  Mildred has taken them to Notre-Dame and St-Chapelle and to the Louvre. On Monday they will go to see the palace at Versailles. She has read about it in their Baedecker, about the hall of mirrors and the secret passage where Marie Antoinette escaped from the angry crowds during the Revolution. She is looking forward to it immensely.

  Tonight, they have come to an apartment in the Latin Quarter, which belongs to this woman Judith Cladel, for a party in honor of Mildred’s visit. The rooms are full of people, and some of Mildred’s recent photographs have been hung on the walls of the parlor. Some of the guests are people Clara and Lottie have met before. There is a couple who have recently arrived from New York, a man called Alfred, who is a photographer, too, even more famous than Mildred and whose mustache droops down and covers his entire mouth. He is awfully serious and impatient with people, especially with his wife, Emmeline, who couldn’t be more different from him if she tried. Emmy is so gentle, moves and speaks so slowly; her attention wanders. She is forever apologizing and asking people to repeat themselves because she got distracted halfway through what they were saying. Clara thinks secretly that she is not especially clever. But she is very nice.

  There are younger people, too, although here even the old people act like they are young. This man Arthur Carles, who is a painter. And a Spanish girl, Mercedes de Cordoba, who sings, like Clara, although she is a mezzo, not a real soprano. Arthur is always following Mercedes around, looking mournful and love-struck while simultaneously trying to pretend that he is not following her around and that he just happens to turn up by accident wherever she is. Then there is another American girl, Marion Beckett, who Lottie discovers from Mildred is only sixteen, though she seems much older. She has, Mildred says, remarkably enlightened parents who have sent her to Paris to study painting and to live with her unmarried aunt for the summer. Both Clara and Lottie like Marion best of all the people they have met. She is so sensible in her opinions and intelligent that sometimes, Lottie says, she seems older than they are, not younger. Clara agrees. Marion is a delightful girl, pleasant and thoughtful, though it is a pity she should be so plain. She’s all orange hair and freckles, and much too skinny, no figure to speak of. They like Mercedes, too, though they don’t think so much of Arthur, who is well-meaning but clumsy, always knocking things over, or saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, or raising his voice much too loud so that everyone can hear him and not each other.

  For example, right now, just as Lottie and Mildred promise they won’t ask Clara to play the piano for them ever again, at least not this evening, Arthur’s voice sounds from the front hallway so loud that you’d think he was a carnival ba
rker, not a party guest.

  “Here he is!” he shouts. “Finally. We thought you’d never get here.”

  “My God, the world must be ending right in this apartment,” murmurs Mildred, making both Lottie and Clara stifle giggles behind their hands. From the direction of the entrance hall come sounds of less raucous greetings, the shuffle of coats being removed. Judith bustles over, and they hear a high-pitched cry of delight, “Chéri, so beautiful,” and then Mildred, smiling, stands up, as though she’s figured out who’s just arrived.

  Judith comes around the corner first, carrying an enormous bunch of yellow roses, which Clara does not think go very well with her pale skin. In fact, they make her look rather sallow. Then Arthur comes in with his arm around the shoulders of another young man, who is slender and tall, with dark hair and wide-set blue eyes.

  “Here he is!” Arthur repeats. “I told you he’d make it. Didn’t I tell you?”

  Mildred goes over to this new arrival and takes both his hands: “Naturally, my dear, you are late for my big night. And naturally, I forgive you.” She kisses him on both cheeks.

  “I’m sorry,” the young man says, “I only just got back from London this afternoon. The show went marvelously. Two of Alfred’s pictures sold right away. Is he here? He’ll want to know what happened.”

  “He is here, and I’m sure he’ll be through in a second. But before you two start being unsociable and talking shop, you must let me introduce you to everyone.” She puts her arm through his, and, wresting him bodily from Arthur’s grasp, brings him over to where Lottie and Clara are standing on the far side of the room.

  “Steichen,” she says, “this is Charlotte and Clara Smith. They are my traveling companions this summer.”