by Gwen Bristow
Kessler gave him a smile and a slight formal bow. Elizabeth returned to the fire. “Now we’ll have a cocktail. Dick, will you bartend?”
Dick would; he was always glad of this to occupy him during his first minutes of encounter with a stranger. Everything became quite as usual. Dick mixed the Martinis, and as the war had reduced the number of their servants Cherry brought in the hors d’oeuvres. “These are liver-paste, Mr. Kessler, and these are smoked salmon, and these thingumbobs on toothpicks—I don’t know what they are, something she made out of an old lampshade.” But as Elizabeth and Kessler picked up their glasses and their eyes met across them, she felt another twinge of familiarity. “I have met this man before, I know I have, and he knows it too. Or doesn’t he? If he doesn’t, why is he looking at me like that? Maybe it’s just because I keep looking at him—for pity’s sake, I do believe I’m staring. Behave yourself, Elizabeth.” She was relieved to hear Cherry say,
“Have you ever been to the United States before, Mr. Kessler?”
He turned to her at once, and Elizabeth thought, “He’s as relieved as I am to have that look between us broken, or if he’s not, then I’m letting my imagination go haywire.” He was answering Cherry.
“Yes, Miss Herlong, but that was many years ago, long before this country was brightened by your existence.”
“Say, that’s very good!” Dick exclaimed with a grin.
Elizabeth flashed him a teasing glance. “You will, Oscar.” They all laughed, and Dick said to Kessler,
“You speak awfully well for a man who’s just been here once, and that so long ago.”
“It has been three years since I left Germany. Besides, I have visited England and Scotland. We have more chance to practice foreign languages in Europe than you have here.”
“Oh yes, of course you do,” said Cherry. “We don’t have any. We take French, and learn to say, ‘Have you seen the garden of my grandmother’s cousin?’ and then school is out for the summer and we forget it. At least, I always did.”
Kessler continued talking with Dick and Cherry. He asked them what they liked to study at school, and what they wanted to do when they had finished, so that they loosened up their company manners and began to talk readily. Their experience with representatives of the picture business had been that most of them were so engrossed by their work that they rarely attempted any conversation about anything but the picture they were working on now or the one they had just finished, and they had been prepared to sit in polite boredom. They were surprised and delighted to have a guest who took an interest in their affairs. At first Elizabeth thought it was very good of him to do so, and she wished more of their visitors were like this; then it occurred to her that Kessler was concentrating on the children in order to avoid talking with her.
He had drawn them out skillfully. Dick was telling him the rules of football, and Kessler had nothing to do but listen with the interested appearance of a foreigner who wanted to learn about a native institution. “Am I just seeing things that aren’t here,” Elizabeth asked herself, “or is it on purpose that he hasn’t looked at me once since that curious tense moment across the cocktails?” It seemed to her now that when their eyes had met and held each other so strangely it had been as though Kessler was about to say something, and at the last instant had caught himself back from saying it, grasping at Cherry’s question as a means of saving himself. She did not understand what it was all about, but at any rate the dissertation on football had given him time to recover his equilibrium, and he now turned to her with a calmness that made her almost believe all this was merely an exaggeration of her fancy, saying,
“Haven’t you three children, Mrs. Herlong?”
“Why yes,” said Elizabeth, “but Brian is only eleven, so he had his dinner early.” But she could not help asking, “How did you know there were three?”
“Mr. Herlong told me, and showed me a picture of you all. Brian isn’t asleep yet, is he?”
“I’m sure he isn’t. Do you want to meet him too?”
“I should like to very much, if it’s quite convenient.”
Elizabeth laughed a little. “Mr. Kessler, you should know it’s never inconvenient for a mother to display her jewels. Dick, will you run up and get Brian?”
“Sure, but you’d better warn Mr. Kessler that he’ll be all smeared with glue and bugs. Brian’s mounting butterflies, does it all day and night, and he’ll talk your ear off about them if you let him.”
“I should like that. Tell him to bring his specimens down and show them to me.”
“There are thousands,” Cherry warned, but Kessler showed no dismay. He only said,
“Then tell him to bring a few, and don’t make him brush his hair, or he’ll dislike me before he sees me.” He and Dick exchanged a look of understanding. As Dick went out Kessler turned to Elizabeth. “I hope I’m not upsetting a domestic arrangement, Mrs. Herlong, in asking that he come in. But your two older children are so entertaining that I couldn’t help wanting to see the other.”
“Aren’t you nice!” exclaimed Cherry.
“Thank you for saying so,” answered Elizabeth. “Of course, their father and I think they are, but we love having other people agree with us.”
“I’m sure other people do. You should be very proud, Mrs. Herlong.” He glanced around him. “When one sees a home like this, one knows who is responsible for it. I don’t mean the physical furnishings of your house, attractive as they are—I mean its atmosphere. It’s not by chance one achieves such confidence and vitality.”
He spoke sincerely, obviously meaning what he said. Elizabeth felt a glow of pleasure. It was like what she had felt when she sat on the balcony yesterday afternoon, before she heard the children talking in the den. She wondered what Kessler would say of them now if he had heard that conversation.
She said, “I hardly know how to answer such a compliment, Mr. Kessler. Has it occurred to you that perhaps we have too much confidence, a good deal more than is justified by the world we live in?”
“Oh yes,” he replied instantly. “That’s true of nearly all Americans—at least, it seems true to anyone who comes to the United States from Europe. But surely,” he added smiling, “you can’t hold yourself guilty when a man long surrounded by terror comes into your home and feels encouraged at the thought that this, and not the other, is the normal state of living?”
His words made her feel better than she had felt all day. Now that the two of them seemed to be back on a normal basis from which a friendship could be started, it occurred to Elizabeth that perhaps, Kessler, fresh from Nazi Germany but evidently not part of it, could tell Dick more clearly than she ever could something about the issues at stake in this war he was going to be asked to fight. Much as she loved Dick she could not disguise from herself the fact that he was more superficial than she would have liked him to be, so occupied with girls and football that he was glad to accept clichés that relieved him from being occupied with more troublesome matters. Dick was a nice boy, but mentally he was a rather lazy one, and neither she nor his father was quite capable of coping with him. Spratt was inclined to believe he would begin to take life seriously when the time came; Elizabeth thought the time had come for it. Sometimes it happened that a friend was better at this than the parents who had spent so many years being more indulgent than they should have been, or who at least had emphasized details of socially acceptable behavior at the expense of the much harder job of making a boy think for himself.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the opening of the door from the hall. Spratt and Dick came in with Brian, who had a glass-topped box of specimens under his arm. “This is Mr. Kessler, Brian,” Spratt said. “He wanted to meet you so he could know the whole Herlong family.”
“How do you do sir,” said Brian, all in one word, and held out his hand. Fortunately Kessler was sitting down instead of leaning on his cane, and so could
give him a handshake. Brian stood uncertainly, one foot curled around the opposite ankle.
“Your brother tells me you are interested in natural history,” said Kessler, “and I asked him to tell you I should like to see some of your specimens. Is that what’s in the case?”
Brian nodded. “Butterflies. Want to see them?”
“Look out,” warned Dick, and Cherry said simultaneously, “You don’t know what you’re getting into, Mr. Kessler.” Paying no attention to them, their guest already had his head close to Brian’s as they bent over the butterflies together. Dick poured a cocktail for his father, and saying, “You’ll need another one too, Mr. Kessler, if you let him get started,” he refilled Kessler’s glass. Kessler appeared to be deeply interested in Brian’s butterflies. Brian was chattering.
“…that blue one is easy to get, they’re everywhere except where it’s too cold for them. The name is Lamp—Lampides something, I forget, but I’ve got it written in my notebook. This is a monarch butterfly, they fly north in the summertime like birds. The copper and black one, you’ve seen thousands like it, it’s a viceroy.”
Spratt sat down by Elizabeth. “Good fellow, isn’t he?” he said under cover of the other dialogue.
“Yes indeed. But we mustn’t let Brian wear him out.”
“I think he likes it,” said Spratt. “One of these men who’s interested in everything.”
Elizabeth glanced at Kessler, almost ready to believe that her impression of self-consciousness on his part had been mistaken. Certainly their exchange of remarks before Brian’s entrance had not suggested it. When the maid came in to announce dinner neither Kessler nor Brian heard her. They were deep in conversation, Brian sitting on the floor with his case in his hands, this time listening instead of talking.
“… one of the ugliest objects in the world, but strangely fascinating,” Kessler was saying to him. “It looks like a man with his hands spread out, but they are tremendous hands, many times larger than his body. The first time you look at one you feel a cold shiver run down your spine.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” Spratt demanded.
Brian started and turned his head. “The skeleton of a bat. Mr. Kessler says if we can get hold of a bat he’ll help me mount the skeleton.”
“If your mother doesn’t mind,” Kessler amended.
“Of course I don’t mind,” said Elizabeth. “But Brian, Mr. Kessler is a very busy man, and you mustn’t use up too much of his time.”
“Mother, Mr. Kessler says I can come over to his house and we can take the bat apart there, and Peter can come too. He’s got time for it, haven’t you, Mr. Kessler?”
“I shouldn’t have offered if I hadn’t. Will you let him come, Mrs. Herlong?”
“Certainly, and it’s very good of you. Brian, we’re going in to dinner. Won’t you move so Mr. Kessler can get up from his chair?”
Brian scrambled to his feet. “Mother, couldn’t I come to the table?”
Recalling Brian’s usual eagerness to avoid company dinners, Elizabeth was astonished. Kessler had won him, evidently, as he had won the others. She let him come in, pausing to remind him in an undertone that he mustn’t monopolize Mr. Kessler’s attention. Brian nodded solemnly. As Kessler stood up, Brian watched the procedure with undisguised interest, for hitherto he had only seen him sitting down and had not been warned of all his new friend’s handicaps. Elizabeth felt a moment’s embarrassment, until she reminded herself that Kessler must have had to bear many stares from children and would understand that Brian did not know he was being rude. She was not sure she had been right in permitting Brian to bring a chair to the dinner table. Though she had planned the menu with special reference to his disability, Kessler might nevertheless be awkward about eating with one hand.
But she was immediately relieved. He was so skillful that she concluded he must have lost his arm many years ago to have learned so well to make up for the lack of it. But still, he puzzled her. He did not talk very much, though he listened to what was said and answered readily enough, but now and then he glanced at her and looked away, as though he could not trust himself to pay too much attention to her. Once, while Spratt was telling a studio anecdote, she turned to speak to the servant and had the feeling of somebody looking at her in the crowd. She turned back to the table, to find Kessler studying her with an expression she could not define. He shifted his eyes instantly when she saw him, so quickly that she might almost have doubted that he had been looking at her at all. When Spratt had finished his story, Kessler, as though to assure Elizabeth that his scrutiny had been an accidental glance that meant nothing, turned to her and commented, “How well Mr. Herlong’s secretary gets rid of nuisances like that. She is a very clever young woman—I suppose you know her, Mrs. Herlong?”
He did it so deftly that he almost erased her earlier impression. Elizabeth answered yes, she knew Lydia very well and thought Spratt was fortunate to have her. While she was answering she was thinking that there was probably nothing more to this than that Kessler like herself was plagued with a recollection of their having met before. She would ask him about it before he left, and get these cobwebs out of her head.
Except for her fancies, which she was inclined to call absurd, it was a very successful dinner. They all liked their visitor and he evidently liked them, and Spratt was glad to find his family and his friend getting along so well together. They had coffee in the living room. Over the coffee Kessler said to her, “Your household is exactly what I most hoped to find in this blessed country, Mrs. Herlong. I can’t tell you how much I have enjoyed meeting all of you.”
He spoke this with a simple friendliness, as though quite unaware that there had been any odd glances between them. Elizabeth said,
“Now that you know us, I hope you’ll come back to see us again.”
“Thank you,” he answered. “I should like to very much.”
That was all they said to each other. Spratt got up and suggested that he and Kessler go into the study and talk over their story problem. The children said good night with a cordiality very warm compared to their usual routine of politeness toward adult guests, and Brian went upstairs. A few moments later Pudge and Julia came to call for the two older ones. “Get through dinner all right?” Pudge asked with a sympathetic grin.
“Pudge,” said Cherry, as though conveying momentous news, “he was nice.”
Pudge scowled incredulously. “A refugee?”
“Sure,” said Dick, “but he’s okay.”
“Not a single remark,” Cherry continued, “about what a godawful country this is.”
Elizabeth could not help laughing, but she said, “You haven’t much tolerance, any of you.”
“We’ve got just as much as most of them deserve,” Dick retorted. “One foot off Ellis Island and they start weeping for dear old Europe. They give me a pain in the neck.”
“Yes, I know, Dick, and sometimes they give me one too. But they have gone through a lot, you know, and some of them can’t help being bitter. Mr. Kessler isn’t, as you noticed.”
“No, he’s different. I liked him. We’re going now, mother.”
“All right. Be back by eleven.”
Elizabeth went upstairs to say good night to Brian. He was enthusiastic about Kessler and the promise of help in mounting the skeleton of a bat. “You know what he told me about bats, mother? He said if we had ears as good as theirs we could hear a fly walking up the wall. He said a bat was one of the most mysterious creatures on earth, we just didn’t understand them a bit. That guy sure does know a lot.”
The initial sense of familiarity returned to tease her. But whether or not she already knew him, Kessler was a fine fellow, she reflected, and she was glad Brian liked him.
Brian turned over in bed. “Mother, I just thought of something. Peter’s a Jew.”
“So what?” asked Elizabeth.
/> “Mr. Kessler’s a German, and you know how they are about Jews. He said I could bring Peter, but I didn’t tell him—”
“If Mr. Kessler had approved of that sort of thing he’d have stayed in Germany, Brian.”
“Maybe Mr. Kessler’s a Jew,” Brian suggested hopefully. “Is he?”
“I don’t know, but you needn’t worry about it. He’s not stupid enough for that foolishness.”
“I guess not,” Brian said, relieved. “I sure do like him.”
“So do I.” She reflected that Kessler’s enjoyment of a happy domestic scene might mean he was lonely in a strange country. “Brian,” she suggested, “since we like Mr. Kessler so much, let’s prove it by doing something for him. Let’s ask his little girl to bring some of her friends over to go swimming.”
“Oh, rats,” said Brian. One thing he could not understand about his big brother was Dick’s liking for girls.
“Brian, suppose we had to pack up all of a sudden and go live in Germany. Wouldn’t you be glad if other children made friends with you instead of making you play all by yourself?”
“Well—do we have to?”
“Not at all, and Mr. Kessler doesn’t have to help you with the bat, either. Come on, Brian, be a sport. We’ll have a good party with lots to eat, sherbet and one of those big cakes from Delhaven’s, and all you’ll have to do is be polite. You can ask Peter over and she can bring her own friends.”