On my last day Sofya and Luba accompanied me to the Nikolayevsky railway station. I was planning to leave the way I came via France and beat the war if it started. I wore my newest acquisition, a famous Orenburg shawl of goat hair and silk, so thin and finely woven it would pass through a wedding ring, yet large and warm when shaken out to full size.
We rode down fashionable Nevsky Prospekt, a second carriage following with valet and two house servants. The street looked abandoned, as the September streets often did in Paris, with society away. But as we neared the station the real St. Petersburg emerged, the streets teeming with beggars, panhandlers, chimney sweeps, and women in vivid peasant dress. Men huddled in groups, holding up hand-lettered placards and red flags that said Surrender your guns, bourgeois! and All land for the peasants. It sent my heart pounding while Sofya and Luba barely noted it.
According to the newspapers, the people’s rebellion was gaining momentum but the Streshnayvas and friends adopted a curious denial of the flames rising around them. The tsar seemed oddly disconnected from his people and the tsarina showed no love of them at all. Surely the royal couple would save themselves in case of a successful revolution, but what would happen to Sofya? I suggested they repair to Paris and ride this all out, but my suggestions fell on deaf ears.
Luba and I sat facing Sofya, little Max dozing on my lap. I would miss my godson, almost as much as his mother. The carriage bounced, he shifted closer to me and I felt his cheek. Such a handsome baby, indulged at every cry by all adults and dressed in pleated Irish linen, Belgian lace, and cashmere. His diapers came by post from a convent in Lyon, made of French cotton flannel with the edges basted in silver thread, and were affixed around his royal loins with golden safety pins. His name and the year were even embroidered into each one, Maxwell 1914.
How Max had grown in the short time I’d been there. At two months old, he was already less a newborn and more a robust child, and on his sweet head had sprouted wispy, white-blond curls.
The coachman navigated the missing cobblestones, which made our passage slow.
“Have your traveling papers?” Luba asked. “Passport?”
“Leave Eliza alone,” Sofya said. “She can manage herself.”
I was happy to spend more time with Sofya’s ten-year-old sister Luba. How much she had matured since our time in Paris two years earlier. A handsome child with quick, bright eyes and a ready smile, she’d inherited the refined look of her father, but none of his careful restraint. Blessed with remarkable charm for a girl her age, her intellect far exceeded my own, but she was not off-putting as some child savants can be. The name Luba means “love” and the child personified the word.
I rested my injured hand on the seat beside me. Still wrapped in white bandages, big as a catcher’s mitt, it throbbed as we arrived at the station. Sofya smoothed her skirt. “I wish you were not leaving so soon.” She looked out the carriage window, eyes pooled with tears. Sofya was good at everything but farewells.
I passed the baby to Luba and moved across the carriage next to Sofya. “Please don’t be sad, dear. Would you ever consider another trip to the States? We can meet in California this time. I have a travel specialist who can arrange it.”
“I would love that. Can you send us the name?”
“Of course.”
She held me close, her chest heaving with silent sobs, and then handed me a slip of paper. “I’ll write every day—letters sent by Father’s Ministry mailbag should still get to you fairly quickly in New York. And if you ever need me immediately, call our number here in the city or in the country, there’s a telephone at the general store in Malinov. The proprietress Mrs. A. makes sure we get messages.”
“If the mood hits her,” Luba said.
Sofya removed the glove from her right hand and we made the sign of the cross over each other, as Russian friends did.
“I’ll miss you, my dear,” I said, my own eyes tearing.
Sofya handed me a tiny, bright blue charm. “I want you to have this to remember me by.”
I took the charm, a tiny enamel telegram in French blue.
“It opens,” Luba said.
I lifted the tiny flap of the charm, which revealed the French phrase Ne m’oublies pas!
Don’t forget about me.
Luba leaned in and looked closer at the little telegram. “Father’s first ever gift to Mother.”
“I can’t take this, Sofya.”
“Promise you’ll think of writing to me every time you look at it.”
The coachman tapped the ceiling above us with his stick. “Hurry, madame. You will miss the train.”
I slipped the charm into my pocket and stepped out of the coach, into a raucous ocean of Russian mothers and children, men and boys, most unkempt and dressed in little more than tatters, some taunting the well-to-do travelers that tried to navigate around them. Even in the short time I’d been there those gathering on the streets had grown more confident, cocky almost, as a group somehow. I held my bandaged hand to my chest as the valet led the way and two other fellows followed with my trunk.
A sudden darkness fell upon me. Would the Streshnayvas be swept up in this dreadful tidal wave one day? I’d arrange a trip for them to the States as soon as I returned. That would solve the problem.
At the station door I turned one last time and watched the carriage rumble off, swallowed by that angry sea.
* * *
—
I MADE IT SAFELY home to New York in August, just as Germany declared war on France and poured into neutral Belgium and Russia mobilized. How I kicked myself for not bringing Sofya and her family out of Russia with me. With the war on it would be harder for them to leave.
Henry and Caroline met me at the ship with a great spray of pink roses and spirited me home to the apartment. How lovely it was to feel terra firma and hear the sounds of New York: our big American horses clopping about the city and so much English spoken, all cocooned from the troubles of war-torn Europe.
I kept Sofya’s little blue charm with me at all times for it calmed me to feel it smooth and cool in my hand as we read the war news pouring in from Europe. We followed every new development, but soon Henry and I became preoccupied with our daughter Caroline’s terrible cough, for which Dr. Forbes suggested a respite from the Southampton salt air. Henry pounced on this opportunity to hire an energetic, young real estate agent named Noel Bishop, and we prowled the hinterlands of Connecticut for a country home. Mother’s people, the Van Winkles, had been up in Litchfield County for years, but it seemed a pointless pursuit, motoring about, peering into ramshackle estates, Mother in tow.
We drove up through the Nutmeg State to Bethlehem, winding down country roads on an unseasonably chilly, early September afternoon in our convertible Packard Phaeton, top up. Mother’s fresh-scrubbed driver Thomas Whitmarsh manned the wheel, splendid in his navy blue uniform, posture erect.
Mother sat in the back with me, and Caroline sat between us on the persimmon leather seat, arms linked in ours. Having come straight from school, Caroline wore her Chapin uniform, black stockings, a white cotton blouse with a sailor-style collar and dark green tie, topped with a light green tunic.
Henry sat up with Thomas, Noel between them on the wide seat. Alert as a ship’s captain on the lookout for icebergs, Henry scanned the countryside, his arm and cigar out the window.
“Bethlehem was first inhabited in 1734 by pioneers,” Noel Bishop said. “Soon after, young Joseph Bellamy ended up conducting the first theological school in America at the house we’re about to see.”
As we glided over gently rolling hills passing farm after farm, Henry said, “One feels a certain freedom up here.”
Mother smoothed Caroline’s hair. “Some are more suited to the farmer’s life than others, I suppose.”
Henry flicked his ash and a shower of orange sparks flew past m
y window. “I confess I’d like to till the earth a bit.”
“Must be in the blood,” Mother said. “Of course, all those Louisiana plantation people once owned their fellow human beings.”
“Henry’s uncle owned the slaves, Mother. In 1860. Are you forgetting your own grandparents owned fellow humans? In South Carolina I—”
“I’ll never forget Charleston,” Mother said, tugging on one glove.
How many times had she told us the story of her mother taking her eldest sisters to witness the terrible slave market there? They spoke with a young mother who’d just watched her husband and children sold and led away in chains, which seared a staunch abolitionist streak in Mother and her seven siblings.
Henry turned to us in the backseat with a smile. “You’re not still holding that against me, are you, Mother?”
Mother tucked a stray lock of hair behind Caroline’s ear.
As if sensing familial discord was about to hurt his sale, young Noel sat up straighter. “We’re coming into Bethlehem now.”
We slowed to a crawl and slid under great arches of ancient oaks and elms, past the village green with its army of spring grass already thick as the bristles on a boar’s head brush. It was a pretty little village, with a town center so small one could send a rock across it with little trouble.
“Up on that rise is Bird Tavern,” Noel said, holding out an arm in the direction of the commanding colonial home on the gentle rise just off the green. “It was once a stop on the underground railroad.”
Mother perked up at that.
“Just to your left, that Federal house you’ll see as we pass the green is our destination.”
Caroline squeezed my hand tighter. “I see it. I can already tell I’ll like everything about it.”
Though dusk was falling, there was enough light to see up the gentle slope to the wood facade looming above us. It was painted an unbecoming shade of yellow, its shape marred by various verandas and outcroppings.
Thomas had barely stopped at the curb before Caroline, Henry, and the agent unfolded themselves from the car and sprinted up the hill. They ran under the porte cochere and disappeared through the front door.
Mother and I remained in the car.
“It’s a wreck, Henry!” I called out the window after them.
Mother craned her neck. “That porte cochere isn’t original to the house. I’m sure the outhouse is.”
I touched Mother’s sleeve. “Must you bait Henry, Mother? Hasn’t he proven himself by now? He lives to please us.”
Mother turned to face me. “This place is quite a project.”
“I was immensely lucky to meet Henry. He’s spontaneous and colorful and dedicated to seeing the world with me.”
Mother kept her attention on the house so I played my trump card, her words. “And after all, Mother, aren’t the principles of good breeding found in generosity?”
Mother patted my hand. “He’s a fine man, dear, and seeing the world is an admirable pursuit.”
“If I could sprout wings, I’d be gone again today.”
“But ‘though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.’ ”
“Can you just say what you mean, Mother?”
“Just remember to appreciate your own backyard.”
* * *
—
THOMAS PARKED AT THE side door of the house and after a suitable interval to show her displeasure, Mother agreed to let Thomas help us out of the car. We stepped onto a side porch, under a Chippendale trellis, heavy with an ancient wisteria vine thick as an elephant’s trunk, and entered the house into a small dining room. The empty house had a musty smell, which came from being closed up too long, layered with that New England–house scent of beeswax and honesty.
We walked about the dining room, a plain space with so many doors it recalled the theater set of a French comedy, and then wandered into the living room with its small fireplace and steep staircase rising from the front door.
Mother opened a window and the scent of fresh-mown hay wafted in. “This old place has potential, actually.”
“So does the tomb of Queen Tiyi, but would you want to live there? Besides, there is nothing to do up here.”
“It’s the country, dear. That’s the point.” Mother stepped to the front entry. “What a lovely staircase for Caroline to walk down on her wedding day.”
Energetic young Noel came in pursuit of us. “Theological students lived here while Reverend Bellamy grounded them with preaching instruction.”
I shook the banister and it wobbled. “Too bad he didn’t preach indoor plumbing. It’s like the Dark Ages.”
We stepped back through the dining room to the kitchen, trying to shake Noel, but he stuck with bird-dog zeal. “The young seminarians lived dormitory-style on the third floor. It’s been used to store apples but it could be put to better use.”
The kitchen floor sagged as we stepped onto it. “Careful, Mother, these floorboards are worn through. I can see the cellar, here.” A deep, white porcelain sink stood on one wall, and long glass-fronted cabinets down another.
Noel followed. “It just needs a woman’s touch. The Hulls have enjoyed it here, left a few bottles of wine in the root cellar. This place can be your Alamo. Papers say if the war ever makes it to our shores they’ll have us all talking German.”
“Perhaps then we’ll have the stomach to join the fight,” I said.
Mother stepped through the doorway and swatted a cobweb away. “If those Huns make it to Bethlehem, Connecticut, we’ll have worse problems.”
Mother bent and peered up the dining room chimney. “You’ll need to bring staff up, dear.”
“No maid will set foot up here. And who would dress Caroline?”
We stepped out the back door to the yard. Mother ran one hand down the trunk of a massive maple tree and waved toward a stand of lilac bushes. “Lilacs grow like weeds here. Nothing lovelier. And you can plant a garden.”
I laughed. “Wouldn’t that be a sight? Me in overalls and a straw hat.”
Caroline ran to us, one hand to her ribs. “Thomas and I found grapes growing on the arbor, so warm and sweet. And you should see the barns, Mother. Father says they could hold any number of animals. Horses, cows.”
“Animals require hours of care.”
Caroline stood her ground. “I’ll do it.”
“You say that now, but when your friends call, Peg will be stuck with it.”
Caroline sulked and Mother wrapped her arms around her. “Animals can be of tremendous comfort, dear.”
“Don’t wish a little dog on us, Mother. Another clubwoman with her flat-faced Pekingese? That would be the death of me.”
Henry called out from the west barn and Caroline hurried out. I followed across the side lawn in the direction of three large, white barns, which faced one another around a grass courtyard. I looked across the meadow, which was peppered with rows of the gnarled, flowering apple trees of an aging orchard. It stretched out to the road beyond, Munger Lane, bounded by the sort of lichened, blue stone wall one sees crisscrossing all of Litchfield County like a Chinese jump rope.
I stopped and watched Caroline run toward the far barn, hair long and blond, caught up in a scarlet ribbon. At eleven years old she was all arms and legs.
“Father, there’s an old schoolhouse back here,” Caroline called out from behind the barn. “With its own stove.”
Henry shouted to her from the barn door. “We can move that out to the meadow for a playhouse. Would you like that? We’ll fill it with Shakespeare for you.”
Caroline ran off through the orchard. “Most definitely,” she called back over her shoulder. “ ‘Joy’s soul lies in the doing.’ ”
I stepped into the low-ceilinged barn and inhaled the scent of hay and cedar c
hips. Sparrows chirped in a nest in the loft and two rows of abandoned horse stalls lined the walls. I stopped at the sight of Henry in the barn, standing on the hayloft ladder brushing a beam with his finger.
“Look. In the old days, they counted bales of hay here with chalk.”
“It’s getting dark, Henry.”
He climbed down off the ladder and walked to me in the clothes I’d laid out for him that morning, his tweed jacket and flannel trousers, in the colors of the Scottish Hebrides, russet, teal, and tawny sage, as if made for him with his strawberry-blond hair and grand mustache.
“They were horse lovers,” I said.
Henry took me in his arms and pulled me close, the sweet scent of him puffing up from the warmth of his chest. It was his favorite, Sumare, a woody fragrance with just the right amount of pine, and it mixed beautifully with the musky scents of the barn.
“Oh, you’re right, Eliza, this place is a wreck.”
I slid my arms about his waist. A ray of light from the hayloft fell across his flushed cheek. “Gentleman farmer suits you.”
“We should scrap the whole idea.” Henry kissed me, long and deep, transporting me to our honeymoon on the French Riviera, color-blind Henry emerging at breakfast, so proud of his wide, blue Cote d’Azur trousers, red beret, striped pink Riviera shirt, and lavender Basque espadrilles.
I held one cheek to his shirtfront and felt his lungs expand.
“It would take so much work,” he said.
“This place is not so bad, I guess.”
“Oh, it isn’t practical.”
“There’s an orchard,” I said. “You do like preserves.”
“But you’d prefer a Tuscan villa. Though this is a lot easier to get to.”
There was a reason Henry had become such a rising star at Poor Brothers. He had all the qualities that made a man successful back then: ambition, boldness, and a flair for sales.
Lost Roses Page 5