Homeland

by John Jakes

  66

  Julie

  AT THE END OF the summer of 1895, Julie sailed home from Europe with her little dog Rudy. She’d lost fifteen pounds. Her face was chalky. She had a nervous, distracted air, and she seldom smiled.

  She’d finished the tour much as she’d begun it; like a sleepwalker. Pork Vanderhoff had arranged for Cook’s to book all the hotels, all the railway tickets, all the excursions in old cities, all the guides who shuffled her about from cathedral to palace to spa to the inevitable tourist shop where the guide coincidentally seemed acquainted with the proprietor. On these junkets—everywhere, virtually, except to her bedroom—Julie was accompanied by a dough-faced nurse-chaperon her father had hired after interviewing a dozen candidates. The chosen woman was Belgian. She had six sisters, all but one a nun. She felt she’d misspent her own life with a husband, and talked about little else.

  Julie arrived in Chicago no wiser, no stronger of will, than she had been when her father and mother shipped her off. No wiser, no stronger—but fully as resentful.

  The very day she came home, she ran to the whitewashed message stone by the stable. It was gone; all the stones were gone. Dug out, the soil raked and smoothed for narrow flower beds. She felt abandoned. For a moment she almost hated Paul.

  Two weeks later, with Pork and Nell absent from the house, she rang Ilsa Crown on the telephone and invited the somewhat startled lady to be her guest for tea.

  On a chill, blustery, rainswept September afternoon the women met at a table secluded behind artificial palms in the fashionable Rose Café of the Hotel Richelieu on Michigan.

  “It is very kind of you to invite me,” Ilsa said with a polite smile. She was a woman of obvious warmth and excellent manners. A woman without pretense or, apparently, any need for it; she made no attempt to minimize her accent. Julie couldn’t understand her mother’s continuing hatred of Mrs. Crown.

  Ilsa continued, “We have seen one another at public functions but have never been introduced. Is there some special reason you wished for us to meet?”

  “Yes, I confess there is.” The bald waiter glided to the table with his order pad. “Tea for both of us, Victor. A plate of finger sandwiches, too.”

  “Very nice,” Ilsa murmured. Victor left. On a small dais across the room, a string trio scraped away at “I Don’t Want to Play in Your Yard.”

  Julie found it hard to smile, but she did. Her cheeks were white as the napkin she was twisting in her lap. Cramps were torturing her. She’d fought her way out of bed to keep the appointment. It was the first day of her monthly trial.

  “Have you any word of your son, Mrs. Crown?”

  “No. The police have largely abandoned the case. We have used a firm of private detectives, with no success.”

  “That’s so sad.”

  “Yes—well—one must bear it. I have faith that Joey is alive and well, perhaps in the West.” She made no reference to the envelope with its token of wheat.

  They chatted of less painful things while waiting for their tea. Ilsa mentioned the renewed outbreak of war in Cuba; the rebels had resumed their fight for independence several months ago. Julie said she knew little about world affairs. Ilsa asked her opinion on possible candidates in the 1896 presidential election. Julie said she had no opinion. Literature, then? Had she read The Prisoner of Zenda? Yes, in Europe; she’d enjoyed it immensely.

  What about Mr. Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, just published? Julie said she wasn’t familiar with the book. Ilsa explained that although it wasn’t a smashing best-seller, it was earning the praise of a small number of discerning readers, and of many critics who hailed it as a little masterpiece. “I’ve not read it yet myself,” she said. “I can’t pry our copy away from Joe.”

  Victor arrived pushing a silvery trolley. He poured Earl Gray from a pot heavily decorated with silver grapes. Julie toyed with a tiny triangular sandwich from which all the crusts had been cut. “I’ve only heard of the book. My mother’s friends told her it was ugly. We usually have nothing in the house but romantic novels. Mama prefers them.”

  “I see.” Ilsa was unfailingly polite, but Julie could tell that she had disappointed her guest. A cramp made her catch her breath. She pushed her cup and saucer aside. Even the soothing tea refused to go down easily.

  “Mrs. Crown, may I speak candidly?”

  “Of course, my dear.”

  “I invited you here to ask about your nephew.”

  “Pauli?” Ilsa seemed to sag a little. “I’m afraid Pauli moved out of our house some time ago. Shortly after Joe Junior left. Pauli’s departure was a direct consequence of that. I was aware that you were acquainted with Pauli, of course.” She had the decency to stop there, with no reference to Radigan’s Hotel.

  The cramps kept coming. They were so terrible, Julie almost gasped aloud. “I really did care for him, Mrs. Crown. I still do. Do you know his whereabouts?”

  “Regrettably, I don’t. Nor does anyone in our household. I had a telephone message from him several months ago. I believe he was in Chicago at the time, but he didn’t say so. I’ve heard nothing further. Of course”—she paused as if reluctant to complete the thought—“there is always the possibility that he has returned to Germany.”

  “Oh, no, he wouldn’t, not when the two of us felt so strongly about one another.” Julie bowed her head and put her hand to her eyes. “He wouldn’t.”

  “My dear, I didn’t mean to upset you. I personally think it unlikely that Pauli has left the country. It’s just that we lack information, so we can’t entirely discount the idea.”

  Julie took her hand from her tear-streaked face. Victor rushed to the table, alarmed by his customer’s distress. Ilsa Crown assured him all was well. As soon as he left and the ladies at nearby tables stopped staring, she reached across the table to clasp Julie’s hand.

  “Juliette, I think I failed to realize the depth of your feeling. Pauli was—is—a wonderful boy. I am so sorry I don’t know where he is.”

  “I wonder why he’s left no messages for me.”

  “It could be that he doesn’t know how. I have the impression your parents would not welcome any communication from someone named Crown.”

  “He’d know how to get in touch if he wanted to, there are ways. Paul’s clever.”

  Ilsa sat stoically, saying nothing. Julie’s chin came up. In spite of her acute pain, she managed an air of brittle cheer. “Well, at least we have settled that question, haven’t we? Paul’s gone. And he didn’t say where I might find him. Nothing to be done, is there?”

  Nell took her daughter aside the following Monday, into the mansion’s music room. Ferns and green plants growing in great stone urns beneath a skylight filled the room with a woodsy aroma. Julie sat at the grand piano, idly picking out a scale. Nell paced back and forth, mysteriously cheerful and excited.

  “Your father wants me to break the news, he said it’s time.”

  “What news, Mama?”

  “There is a gentleman who wishes to call on you, Juliette. A gentleman with serious intentions.”

  Julie’s head snapped up, her eyes huge as some trapped forest animal’s. The chatter and bustle of servants came softly through the open doorway.

  “Who is it?”

  “A very eligible widower. You’ve met him, although perhaps you don’t recall him well. His name is William Vann Elstree.”

  “The department store family?”

  “Yes. His wife passed away over a year ago, in the prolonged heat wave. He declared his feelings in Wiesbaden and asked your father’s permission to call. We insisted he wait a suitable interval and he was most agreeable.”

  Feelings of terror and confusion churned through Julie. Nell rushed to the piano, hands clasped joyously. “Mr. Elstree is somewhat older than you, but he’s a model of courtesy and gentility. So well bred, well mannered—”

  “Mama,” Julie began, preparing her defense.

  “And of course he’s enormously wealthy.”


  “Mama, I don’t wish to quarrel with you, but—”

  “We simply can’t go through this again, Juliette. I’ll not tolerate it. Nor will your father.” All at once Nell smiled sweetly. “If you aren’t yourself, if you’re slipping again, perhaps we need to consult Dr. Woodrow—”

  “No!”

  “—possibly consider another month or two at the Mountjoy Hospital in Cleveland—”

  “No, Mama, no!”

  Nell began to chafe Julie’s hands, stroke her thick dark hair. “Then do be more rational, dear. And please, please, don’t think me unkind. What I want most in the world are two things. Contentment for this household and for you. I want to see you wed to the right kind of man. I want that before I go to heaven.”

  Julie cried; she couldn’t stop. But Paul was gone, what did it matter? “All right, Mama. All right. All right.”

  “Are you saying Mr. Elstree may call?”

  “Yes, Mama, he may call, why not?”

  Nell stepped back; triumph put a glow in her eyes. “Thank you, my dear. By saying that you make me exceedingly happy. I think you will make yourself happy in the bargain.”

  Nell patted her hand once more, then left the room. Her step was brisk. She was smiling.

  67

  Paul

  IN CUBA, FIGHTING BETWEEN the insurgents and Spain raged across the island. In Germany, a canal opened from the North Sea to Kiel Harbor on the Baltic. In the Transvaal, relations between the Boer farmers and the British government worsened. In England, the aesthete Oscar Wilde, linked to a male lover, launched a court action against the lover’s father, the Marquis of Queensbury. In Russia, Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake ballet had its first complete performance, in St. Petersburg. In France, the brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière perfected a machine capable of both exposing and projecting sequential pictures on a moving strip of celluloid (“I imagine your friend Shadow’s agog over that,” Wex remarked to Paul. “Yes, and feeling the hot breath of competition on his neck, too.”). In America, football players at Latrobe, Pennsylvania, took money to play “professionally,” Secretary of State Olney invoked the Monroe Doctrine against Britain, a Dublin-born musician named Victor Herbert conducted the famous 22d Regiment Band (formerly Gilmore’s), the “Silver Wing” in Congress asserted its independence from the regular Democrats, and a gentleman named King C. Gillette announced his invention of a new-style “safety” razor.

  But in Chicago in that autumn of 1895, world events, national events, everything, paled beside a sensational murder trial. One Herman W. Mudgett, residing in an ornate three-story house on Sixty-third Street under the assumed name Dr. H. H. Holmes, was accused of as many as fifty murders and mutilations within the past three years. Police investigators tore apart “Holmes’s Castle,” and every newspaper described and diagramed its labyrinth of rooms where, it was discovered, killing and torture—and madness—had reigned amid the comings and goings of unsuspecting neighbors.

  Wex and Paul rushed down to Sixty-third and Wallace on a Sunday, as many other enterprising photographers were doing. They took pictures of the exterior of the fantastic wooden house with its towers and numerous bay windows blocked on the inside with sheet iron. After spending all day at his job, Paul worked for hours every night, helping Wex print and mount the souvenir photos. Wex hired three neighborhood boys to roam the downtown hawking them. Sales were poor; too many competitors had the same idea.

  In the midst of this, an emergency took Nancy Logan from the laundry. At harvest time, Nancy’s mother fell off a McCormick reaping machine she was driving and broke an ankle and a hip. “Ma will be laid up for months. Somebody’s got to cook for the men.” Paul carried Nancy’s grip to the Dearborn Street station.

  “I don’t mind leaving the laundry,” she admitted. “Or Chicago, it’s a hard town. Dirty and dangerous—all this mad doctor stuff, it’s scary. I’ll miss you, though. If I hung around I might make you forget that other girl. I’m stubborn when I want to be.” A few tears came.

  “I’ll probably marry some dull farmer boy from down home. But I’ll always be in love with you.”

  Nancy jumped up on tiptoes, holding both his arms tightly. “I’d do anything for you, Dutch. If you ever need help, come find me. You better kiss me before I bawl.”

  At least twice a week Paul walked by the Vanderhoff mansion in the chilly autumn twilight. He saw no sign of Julie and assumed she was still abroad. He continued to daydream of a job with Colonel Sid Shadow while continuing to practice still photography.

  Wex criticized the pictures harshly, often sarcastically. Refusing to be whipped by it, Paul kept shooting. Finally he developed and printed a portrait he liked: a street woman in a head scarf standing beside a pushcart of wilted flowers. Light from above fell onto the left side of her face, illuminating her skin like a plain cut by dozens of dry creeks. The light flecked her left eye, and the effect was a telling sadness; a silent story of resignation to poverty and failure.

  “That’s good,” Wex said when he saw it. “In fact it’s better than good. You’re catching on. You’ve developed an eye. It’ll serve you just as well with the living pictures, I suppose,” he added with one of his characteristic sniffs.

  During October, equipment began to disappear from the Temple of Photography, a piece at a time. Then Wex sheepishly asked Paul for a small loan. Though Wex didn’t say so, Paul assumed it was for the back rent. He brought the money home from the savings bank without a question. The second time Wex asked, assenting to it reduced Paul’s small account to zero.

  A collector came around on the first of November; Paul heard loud voices behind a closed door. The collector stormed out. A day later, in a trash box, Paul found some slips with odd names penciled on them. Wex wasn’t paying overdue rent after all, he was placing bets. The season meetings in Chicago had ended, so he must be wagering at tracks somewhere else. Perhaps down South. Paul asked one of his good customers, Madame Camille, whether this was possible.

  “Honey,” the madam said, “wonderful inventions like the telegraph and long-distance phone wires are good for a hell of a lot more than saying happy birthday, granny, how’s your lumbago? You mean to tell me you’ve never been in the betting parlors around here?”

  “No, they don’t use laundry, I don’t know about them.”

  “Keep it that way. You go in those joints regularly, you’re on the road to the poorhouse.”

  So the disease that afflicted Wex hadn’t abated. It saddened Paul. He said nothing. He owed Wex a lot. He trusted him to pay back the loans.

  One evening over a typically meager supper, Wex said, “Dutch, when did you arrive in this country?”

  “The ship docked in New York on the first day of June, three years ago. Why do you ask?”

  “Citizenship. After five years you’re entitled to go before a district or circuit judge and declare your bona fide intention of becoming a citizen. For you that means year after next. Wait two more years, you can take the oath.”

  “Oh yes, I’ve already considered it. There are terrible things in America, which I never expected. This mad doctor and his butchery—never did I hear of such crimes in Germany. But there are wonderful things here too. A chance to work in an exciting trade, for one. With that, and an American wife, I’ll want to be a citizen.”

  “Is Vanderhoff’s daughter home yet?”

  “I don’t think so. I have passed by the house a few times without seeing her. I haven’t telephoned or written letters. I don’t want to embarrass her. I also don’t want to visit the county jail again. I’ll get in touch, don’t worry.”

  Wexford Rooney the photographer was not entirely unknown to the city’s better element. He had a reputation as a good journeyman, if not a very suave or polished one. So he got the occasional wedding assignment, or did group portraits of the members of a lodge.

  His political connections were not solely with the Democrats of the First Ward; he knew a few minor Republicans too. When a society photographer was sud
denly taken ill, one of the Republicans sent for him to photograph a Saturday afternoon reception being given by Mr. and Mrs. Potter Palmer. The guest of honor was Marcus Alonzo Hanna of Ohio, said to be the gray eminence of the Republican Party; the man who would name the Republican candidate for President next summer.

  Wex was in a transport of excitement. He nicked his face three times shaving. He was ironing a shirt as Paul left for work. When he came home in a hack at dusk, his attitude was quite different. He seemed glum, nervous. Paul was sitting at the table in back with a bottle of Crown lager and the Tribune. He was puzzled when Wex didn’t speak, only nodded, and then began to putter at the stove with his back turned.

  “How did it go?”

  “Oh, fine, fine,” Wex said, still facing away. “Mr. Palmer tipped me extra. I must get right to work developing and printing the pictures tonight.”

  “Did the guests treat you well?”

  “Oh yes, they were very kind. Very posh crowd.”

  “Mr. Rooney. Something went wrong. What is it?”

  Wex turned then and removed his spectacles, looking sad.

  “I saw someone you know. The young lady.”

  Paul jumped up. “Julie? She’s back?”

  “She returned in late summer. I asked to be certain.”

  “Tell me how she looked.”

  “Oh—beautiful. Very beautiful, just as you said. She’s a proper young woman. Well behaved.”

  A silence then; another anguished look at his pupil. “She didn’t attend the party by herself.”

  “Of course, I would assume her parents also—”

  “That isn’t what I mean. She had an escort.”

  Paul lowered the beer bottle to the table. “I don’t believe you.”

  “I’m sorry, it’s true. She came with William V. Elstree, the department store heir. He’s a widower now.” He sniffed. “Not a young man.”