He gave his testimony in as steady a voice as he could maintain, then midway through he found that he was crying. He was unearthing things that should never have come to light. He spoke of Clara throwing cutlery and breaking plates; of her sudden flaring anger that would catch him without warning. He told of her jealousy of Marion and how it had been wholly unfounded. There had been nothing improper in his conduct toward Miss Beckett in the summer of 1914. There had been no affair between them. He had not seen her after that, until he encountered her by chance at a hospital in Châlons. He had been in town to get supplies when a bomb struck a medical storeroom. He was helping to evacuate the patients from the building when they met, he said. He heard an approving murmur pass through the crowd.
And had he seen her since that time in Châlons? the lawyer asked. Edward saw the line in front of him between obfuscation and untruth. He stepped over it. In Paris he had met with her, in a public dining establishment, he said. They had met to discuss this impending legal action, and had parted civilly after about an hour. They had not seen each other since.
When he was finished speaking, he returned to his seat in the back of the court. He felt the stares of the audience follow him as he walked through the room, and when he glanced up, he found they were sympathetic. They had seen an honorable man falsely accused. That was what they wanted to see.
From the bench the judge was asking whether there were any more witnesses that the plaintiff’s counsel wished to call. The two men seated next to Clara put their heads together and spoke quietly. The elder of the two stood up.
“Your Honor, just this afternoon, we have received word,” he said, “that the witness we intended to call, Miss Mildred Aldrich, is unable to appear in court at this time. We move to have the proceedings adjourned until such time as she may be present.”
The judge considered this for a moment.
“Why is Miss Aldrich unable to be in attendance today?”
“She has been taken severely ill and has been confined to bed on her doctor’s orders. She has been forced to remain in Boston with her family.”
“Can you produce evidence of Miss Aldrich’s unfitness for travel?” he asked.
“We have written notification from her physician,” said the lawyer. He held up a single sheet of typescript.
“Approach the bench so I may examine it.”
The proceedings were adjourned. As the courtroom began to clear, Edward saw Clara talking intently with her lawyers; she was clearly upset. After a minute she turned away from them and left the room, while they continued to gather their papers together. He approached them tentatively.
“Excuse me.”
The elder of the two looked around, surprised.
“Major Steichen …”
“Miss Aldrich, can you just tell me, what does she have?”
The man went through his papers and found the doctor’s letter he had just presented to the judge. He got it out and reread it.
“Acute bronchitis,” he said.
“And where is she at present? I should like to go and see her.”
“She’s at her sister’s house,” the lawyer said, “but I shouldn’t think that traveling there would be a good idea. I believe Mrs. Steichen intends to go and see Miss Aldrich as soon as practicable. You might find it a little awkward to visit her just now.”
BOSTON—DREADFUL, GRAY place that it was, still full of dull late-winter snow; the streets that turned by the windows of her cab lined with pockmarked drifts: the dreary end of the season, the time when nothing has been promised yet and nothing renewed. Clara watched the cold city slide past, far, far too slowly, the minutes endless, the traffic signals all against them. How could it be taking so long? She checked her pocket watch. It had only been a few minutes. When they arrived at the address, she jumped from the cab and flung money at the driver, approximately the right amount, she hoped, and then ran up the stairs and hammered on the door. The housekeeper answered.
“I’m here to see Miss Aldrich,” Clara said quickly. “How is she?”
“Who is it, Agnes?” A woman came out the back drawing room and peered down the corridor. Mildred’s sister, unmistakably, for she looked just like Mildred only a little shorter, or so Clara thought until she approached and it became clear that this woman’s spirit had worn her face into quite a different shape from that of Clara’s friend. Her cheeks were drawn in sourly and her eyes bore a look of steady disapproval.
“Lady for Miss Mildred.”
“I’m Mrs. Steichen.” Clara came in past the maid without waiting to be formally invited. “You must be Mrs. Burke.” She held out her hand to the woman, who physically drew back from it as though it might sting her.
“Oh. You’re the one … Well.” The look on her face said, I know who you are, the cause of all the trouble. It said, I should have thought you’d be ashamed to come here, after all that you have done. It said, Don’t you think it would be better for everyone if you excused yourself and departed? What she actually said was much more delicately vicious: “I don’t really know that you should come in.”
For a moment Clara considered it. She had not expected such a prickly welcome, but, on reflection, it did not surprise her. She felt that in one way or another, she had always been greeted in this way, with disapproval, with voices telling her to restrain herself, to accept the world as it came, to stop being so noisy, so frivolous, so emotional. With the exception of a few people, the world had been mostly agreed that she should sit down and be quiet. One of those exceptions was, at present, upstairs in this very house. She would not leave without seeing her. She stood where she was. She kept her hand stretched out, insistently, in front of her.
Gingerly, Mrs. Burke took it in her own.
“Where is she?” Clara asked. “Is she well enough for me to see her?”
“She is upstairs. But she’s asleep, and I don’t think she ought to be woken.”
“Well, let me just look in on her, and if she’s sleeping, I’ll leave. I promise.” She started to climb the stairs without waiting to be given permission. “Which room is it?”
Mrs. Burke hesitated. That woman would dearly love to throw me out, Clara thought. Heavens, she would like to turn me out into the street when I have traveled all this way, and wasn’t that typical of the cold of these New Englanders, so high and mighty, so proud that they have been here, freezing, for more than three hundred consecutive winters. Fine, I’ll find it myself. She went down the corridor opening doors as quietly as she could, until at last she found one that opened into to a darkened bedroom. Inside, she could see the outline of a large bed pushed against one wall and, as her eyes accustomed to the dark, a figure propped up on the pillows. She paused, holding the door open, and stared through the gloom. The metallic odor of fever, of the body fighting itself.
Mildred seemed to be still, sleeping, so she started to withdraw.
“How rude. You just got here.” Her voice was rasping and weak, but it was unmistakable, and Clara thought how Mildred and her sister Mrs. Burke shared the same sternness, but with the difference that in Mildred it was animated by affection, by love of the world and the people around her, while in Mrs. Burke it was underlaid with fear.
She came to the bedside and stood looking down at the old woman where she lay.
“I am not leaving,” she said. “Shall I light a lamp?”
Mildred nodded. Clara felt on the wall and found the light switch. In the gold, electric light Mildred looked paler than Clara had ever seen her. Her skin was covered in a sheen of fever-damp and her breathing was audible. She did not sit up, or even lift her head. She just looked up from the pillow, her eyes steady and puzzled. Perhaps she is trying to figure out what has happened to her; perhaps she is confounded that she should be so sick. She could imagine Mildred talking to the disease, scolding it: An outrage! A woman can’t cross the ocean in peace? But in fact, she said nothing; she did not seem to have the strength for it.
“I came up from New Y
ork. I don’t even mind anymore if the case does not go in my favor. I only wish that you were well.”
Mildred took her hand and patted it. She coughed, a wet, strained sound, then took a slow breath with her eyes closed. Clara thought she might be going back to sleep after all. But then her eyes opened and she said, “But you were right.”
“What do you mean?”
“In Paris. I saw … together.” She was interrupted by another spasm of coughs, and when she finished, she lay quiet, absorbed in the work of breathing.
Clara leaned forward and said, “You saw them? Please, don’t try to speak. Just nod.” Very slowly, Mildred nodded. Clara sat up and looked away.
“Oh, God,” she said. “Oh, God. But how can it be proved without you? It must come out, how terrible he has been, how little he has cared. And you are so sick from your journey. You came all this way for me, to testify in the case, and now look what has happened. And all because of him! I am so sorry …”
“Stop,” Mildred said. She spoke with effort, but her voice was nevertheless firm and insistent. “You can’t undo it.” She turned onto her side underneath the covers, and looked at Clara.
“You can’t undo any of it. But you can decide what comes next. It’s only this you can’t choose,” and she raised her hand and tapped the covers as though to indicate … what? The comforter? The bed? Clara wasn’t sure what she meant by the gesture. She waited for Mildred to go on, but the old woman just lay breathing, recovering from the exertion of speech. Her words had been sharp, almost angry; they were a refusal to accept Clara’s apology of a moment before. She did not understand what they implied.
“What is? Mildred, darling, I don’t understand. Please help me to know what you mean!” Mildred had her eyes closed again. Clara thought, Please don’t go to sleep now. Mildred’s lips moved and she was speaking but so quietly now that Clara had to lean toward her just to hear.
“This part of life, the last part, you must do, but the rest is yours,” she said. “The past is set. For heaven’s sake, let it go.”
MILDRED DID NOT recover. Edward learned from her sister, after he sent several letters inquiring after her, that she had suffered a resurgence of her bronchitis from the previous winter during the boat trip from France, and deteriorated quickly after her arrival. She was laid to rest in Boston, without ceremony. The city was struggling to cope with influenza deaths and speed was of the essence.
The trial resumed, and the jury went into deliberations. They did not take long to return. They found the defendant Miss Beckett not guilty and fined Mrs. Steichen for court costs. After the foreman read the verdict, Edward saw Marion across the room, embracing her parents. Her family surrounded her, so he couldn’t even see her as they all but carried her out of the room.
On the other side of the aisle, Clara put her head down on the table in front of her and began to sob. Edward sat and watched her, her body bent and shaking, while all the people filed past him. He felt disgusting; he had lied and he could not undo it. The version of events that Clara gave was wrong, certainly; but in the end it was no more wrong than the one that he’d presented. At this moment they were, as Mildred had said to him, the same kind of creature, or if anything he was worse, for Clara at least believed her own side of the story. He wanted to go up and speak to her. Here they were, both left terribly alone to struggle with the devastation. They did not love each other anymore; but they had done so once. In this cold, clear space, their anger at each other might be rendered null by sheer exhaustion. They might find some small peace from looking each other in the face, from acknowledging one another to be there, to be real.
He walked toward the front of the courtroom and her hunched form. With her face pressed against her crossed arms, she had not seen him. A few feet from her, he stopped, intimidated to go on.
“Would you care to comment on the verdict, Major Steichen?” A notebook was thrust into his face and the man from the Post stepped around from behind him. “You must feel some satisfaction at seeing your accuser vanquished like this? Your innocence established? Your good name restored?”
Edward backed away from the man, but he pursued him down the main aisle. “Do you intend to remain in New York following the trial? How do your children feel about their parents fighting in the public eye?”
“Go away!” Edward shouted at him. “Can’t you leave me alone?”
“Hmmm,” the man said. “Irritable. Combative. Not really the behavior of someone whose conscience is fully clear.”
Edward turned and fled. The last thing he saw was Clara lift her head and, bleary-eyed, look after him, her expression one of immense and bewildering loss.
AFTER THE TRIAL Edward returned almost immediately to France to complete his tour of duty. He did not, anyway, want to stay in New York. It was not just the publicity, though that was unpleasant enough. Mary was back at school; Kate was still with Clara and hence, for the moment, out of reach. There was no one in the city whose company he really wanted right now apart from that of his children, and Marion.
Marion, of course, he could not see: his lawyer was clear on that point. If he intended to divorce, if he wanted a chance for custody of his children, he must avoid scandal or an appearance of scandal. Even though she was only blocks away from him at her parents’ house near Central Park, he must stay away from her. It made him absolutely furious, but he was caught. There was nothing he could do. He wrote to her explaining that he was leaving and that he could not come to her; he gave the reasons. Do you think, he asked, that when this is all concluded that we might meet again under other circumstances? In my mind’s eye I see you at your easel in my garden, and some days that vision is the sole thing that sustains me. Please, consider it. Please.
In Chaumont he finished his documentary work and then began the process of dismantling the Photography Division that he and Barnes had built. It was arduous work and boring, the logistics of sending men and equipment back across the ocean, but he did not mind that. It gave form and structure to his life where, left to his own devices, he would not have been able to keep going. Most of the time he felt a kind of dry, weary rage that spread out and covered the world like dust. He resented everything, strangers in the streets, houses with closed doors, the sounds of cars, people laughing. Then, in midspring, he received a letter from Marion. It was short and it told him what he already had come to expect:
Sometimes I can almost see it, the future that you imagine for us, but then my vision is obscured by the memories of those horrible days. I think that the trial has poisoned us for each other. When you look at me, you will always feel its presence, a heaviness weighing on us both; it has changed who we are for good.
Don’t forget what I said in France. I mean it no less now.
This was the final kick, the severing of his last link to the world of the living. He moved through the aftermath of the war automatically, performing his duties because there was no alternative. It has happened, he thought to himself on more than one occasion. I’ve become a machine.
In the fall, he was honorably discharged from the army, flung back out into civilian life, with a couple of suits of clothes and keys to his old house in his luggage. He went to Paris first, stayed in his old studio in Montparnasse, but the city was immediately abrasive to him now, too noisy. People were celebrating the coming of peace but it was with a desperation that rang false and hollow. It made him nauseous. He decided to leave and go back to Voulangis. But before departing, he would go finally to Rodin’s house in Meudon.
The last time he’d been there, it was August 1914, a lifetime ago. He’d arrived to find Rodin sitting out on the patio drinking white wine. They had talked about whether there was going to be a war. It was all anyone talked about during those last months. Edward remembered saying that he didn’t believe it was going to happen. Neither side had anything to gain from it.
Rodin hadn’t replied. He’d poured another glass of wine for them both, and offered Edward a sandwich.
&n
bsp; Now a ticket booth had been installed at the front gate. Inside, a bored-looking girl with short-cropped hair glanced up at him from a magazine she was reading. The house was a museum now, and that was good, Edward thought; that was what Rodin had wanted.
“Good morning,” Edward said to the girl.
“Good day, monsieur.” He smiled at her and walked through the gates.
“Monsieur?” the girl called after him. “Monsieur!” she was leaning out of the booth, her boredom transformed into irritation. “Entrance to the museum is twenty centimes.” She pointed to a sign below her window that stated the price in clear yellow lettering.
“I’m sorry,” he said, pulling the money from his pocket and putting the coins on the counter. “I was a good friend of Monsieur Rodin. I visited here so many times, it didn’t occur to me I’d have to pay.”
“Monsieur the Artist seems to have had a lot of good friends. None of them wish to pay the entrance fee.” Her mouth, a thin, sour line, hung on her face. Another patron trying to evade the fee. She scooped up the money and handed him a ticket.
“The grave is around to the back of the house, at the bottom of the property,” she said. “Follow the signs.”
Here it was: the house, still ugly; stout trees either side of the drive, their branches joined overhead; the white exhibition hall behind the house, the garden with its steps and levels. Rose’s greenhouses by the western wall. Everything was as he’d last seen it. The way the path crumpled unevenly underfoot, pushed upward by the roots of the trees. The view of the city from the garden steps.
He would turn the corner, and Rodin would be there, he was sure of it. He’d be sitting out on the sunken patio under the trees, reading the newspaper and surveying the morning. He would look up, shift his reading glasses down his nose and peer at Edward over their rim. And I’ll have to tell him, Edward thought, that I’ve forgotten those prints I promised to bring. Why didn’t I remember them? What excuse can I make this time? He felt irritated with himself. How could he have left them behind again?
The Last Summer of the World Page 33