Part Three: Gwen

Now that she mentioned it, he supposed that the thing he felt was anger, an emotion he was fairly unfamiliar with. Something was pounding in his temples, there was a constriction in his throat, and his heart was hurrying uncomfortably. His hands dropped from her shoulders and went into his pockets, and he took a turn around the room, trying to assemble himself into his usual state of inner law and order. At last he spoke from the other side of the room, and his voice was as slow and gentle as ever it was.

“What I’m trying to figure out,” he said, “is what the hell kind of a fellow did you think you were in love with?” And when she did not answer, her face hidden by her shielding hand, compassion overtook him and he went to her, lifted her off her feet in one swift compelling movement, and sat down with her on his lap in Johnny’s capacious old Boston rocker.

Patiently and in silence he coaxed and wheedled and was firm, until she relaxed against him, obedient and content. “Now, don’t think I’m not sore at you, because I am,” he said then, while his thin, strong fingers cupped her chin. “But I’ve got the habit now, so I’m askin’ you again. I know that crowd down at City Hall and they’ll marry us tomorrow. Will you come quiet, or must I drag you?”

10

SUE hurried through the April sunshine towards Sedgwick’s office, the telegram in her handbag and chaos in her mind. But there was one clear, recurrent idea: Thank goodness I came home from England. Thank goodness I’m here now to—well, to what? What was she going to say to Sedgie to resign him to this new wrongheadedness of Fitz’s, marrying a girl nobody in Williamsburg had ever heard of, a girl they weren’t going to understand at first, a girl who had red on her mouth? How could she now explain her own failure to mention Gwen when she returned from New York at Christmas time, which had arisen mainly out of her uncertainty

what to say and Eden’s hope that there was nothing in it anyway? And how could Fitz have done such an inconsiderate thing, without warning, behind everybody’s back, as though—as though he was afraid to let them know in time?

Weddings were sacred in the family, like coming-of-age parties.

Everybody had to be there, everybody had to toast the bride, there had to be presents, and speeches, and all your friends at the church, and her father had to come and give her away—Who was Gwen’s father?

Married Gwen yesterday. Bringing her with me arriving Friday.

Counting on you to break it gently. You know how lovely she is.

Love. FITZ.

But he shouldn’t have done it like that, with a telegram. He should have taken her to Eden, she should have come down to Williamsburg for a visit with his people. Fitz knew better than to marry anyone that way, no matter how much they were in love….

For all her deep affection and her obstinate pride in him, Sue had no inkling this time of why Fitz had done what he did. She did not guess the sudden near panic which had possessed him at the idea of coming home to Miles’s party with war in the air and nothing but a musical comedy in his hands, even though it had got as far as going into rehearsal next week and might make him thousands of dollars. The miracle of Gwen seemed to Fitz the answer to all his deficiencies in the eyes of the family. With Gwen beside him he could face anything. They none of them would have anything like Gwen to show, at Miles’s party. Gwen was his own, she had chosen to love him instead of Johnny, and so he had a wife now, and they were partners in his music and were going to be famous and make money.

He had no doubts at all that she had only to smile at them with her honest, shining eyes and maybe sing one song to his new piano in the drawing room in England Street, and they would all take her to their hearts at once, for this was no Lisl Oleszi, fair and cool and haughty, speaking with a German accent and looking down her high nose at her husband’s country cousins. This was Gwen, who had never had the right sort of family life, and who needed piteously to feel that she was safe and cherished and didn’t have to worry any more about people like Fagan or about finding

money for Pa. To Fitz, who had always been a little off the beat in his relationships and had never gone quite the way he was expected to, and had always kept his own diffident counsel, it was a new and intoxicating experience to share his life with someone who was so passionately sure he was right as Gwen was, so completely uncritical, so warm and quick and worshipping. Fitz had been lonely all his life, and was only just beginning to discover what he had lacked. Gwen had become for him the answer to everything, the sum of all delight. Fitz was headlong in love.

But Sue, mounting the dingy stairs to Sedgwick’s office over the bank, knew only that poor Fitz had done it again, and again it was up to her to smooth his way for him somehow and make them all see that his judgment was always fundamentally sound and that he had never been a fool about women, whatever else they might say, and she had seen the girl herself and noticed that she was pathetically in love with him…. But as Eden said when the telegram came, why, oh, why had they neglected to mention the little singer Fitz had brought to Cabot’s house last December? It was as though they had all avoided the subject, and that made it ever so much worse now, as though they had deliberately conspired with Fitz against his parents—

And then Sedgie was so glad to see her, as he always was, and as always she felt herself a traitor to be on Fitz’s side, and found it hard to begin.

“Brace yourself, Sedgie. Fitz has got married.”

“Fitz! ”

“Now, wait, it’s not as bad as you think, honey, I saw her when I was there, and she was in love with him then fit to break your heart. I didn’t mention it to you all because Fitz didn’t seem to notice how she felt, and I

—well, I thought it might not come to anything—”

“When did he marry her? How did you hear? Who is she? ” They were lawyer’s questions, sharp, crackling, to the point.

“He married her yesterday, and sent me a telegram. She’s coming with him on Friday.”

“Who is she?,” he repeated, for she had skipped that one.

“She is a singer, Sedgie—an awfully pretty girl. She’s a Yankee, of course, but that doesn’t matter any more, does it! He brought her to the house in New York while I was there, and she sang some of his songs at a ball and made a great hit. Eden says she is going to sing the leading role when Fitz’s musical comedy is produced next month.”

“Did Eden know he was going to marry her?”

“Oh, no, Sedgie, you see—now, honey, Eden feels terrible about this, that’s why I came here to talk to you alone. You mustn’t blame Eden, when you see her. Fitz isn’t living at their house any more, you know, he took a room because he wanted to be like the other reporters and live on his salary.

Cabot’s raised him, too, did he tell you? He gets thirty-live a week now, and if the show is a success it will make him lots of money.”

“But—do you mean to say that this girl he has married is an actress? ”

“Well, yes, dear, in a way. That is—she sings. ”

“How did he meet her in the beginning? Has she got people? Were her parents at the wedding we weren’t invited to?”

“I don’t know.”

Sedgwick stared at her hopelessly. There seemed to be so much that she didn’t know.

“Does she earn her own living? What sort of home does she come from?” he asked then.

“Well, I did hear something about a brother who had died, and so Fitz and Johnny Malone helped her along till she got another job. She—maybe she lived alone, she’s been earning her living as a chorus girl with the Weber and Fields show.”

“Oh, my God!” Sedgwick threw himself into his chair with a groan and put his head in his hands.

“Now, you’re not to take it like that, Sedgie, she’s not—not at all the way you might think. She’s only eighteen anyway, and Eden says Cabot said she’s not had much time for sin.”

Sedgwick raised his head.

“What does Cabot think of her?”

“I just told you, Eden says Cabot seemed quite taken with her and thought she might be the making of Fitz.”

“Mm-hm. But does Cabot know Fitz has married her?”

“N-no, you see, Cabot was in Washington.”

“Quite so!” said Sedgwick with irony.

“Eden is afraid you may feel she should have been more watchful. But after all, Fitz is a grown man and when he telephoned from the office on Monday morning to say he would have to take a later train, she thought

nothing of it, because she’s so used to Cabot and Bracken always being detained.”

“What did he say in the telegram? Did you bring it with you?”

She handed it to him silently, and he tossed it down on the desk when he had read it.

“Poor Melicent!” he said. “He’s hiding behind your skirts, as usual!”

“You mustn’t say that, Sedgie, it was natural for him to tell me first because I had seen her, and he thought I could explain right away so you wouldn’t—wouldn’t feel—”

“What is there to explain, except that Fitz has been hooked? And serve him right at his age!”

“Sedgie, wait till you see her, please! She’s a nice girl, I’m sure she is, and you mustn’t make her feel unwelcome when she comes.”

“But heavens above, Sue, an actress! She doesn’t belong here at a family party! What about the girls?”

“I think you are being very stuffy and old-fashioned,” Sue said firmly.

“Gwen is only a girl herself, and not half as impudent and worldly wise as Virginia, if you ask me! I intend to do everything I can to make her feel at home here and see that she has a good time, and I sincerely hope that you and Melicent will do the same. Fitz has married her, they’re in love, and I can’t believe you will be so stupid and silly as to make them unhappy by being angry about it. And anyway, it’s too late!”

Sedgwick sighed, and looked at her across the desk with a rueful smile.

“You’re right, as usual. I’ll kiss the bride if she’s painted an inch thick.

It’s no use expecting Fitz to do anything the right way, but I can’t seem to learn that. If you say she’ll do we must make the best of it, I suppose. But it’s hard on his mother.”

“Sedgie. There’s one thing more I want to say.”

“Yes, my dear? What’s that?”

“Don’t for one minute think he—well, had to marry her.” Sue’s hazel eyes met his levelly, but her cheeks got rather pink. “I know your son, if you don’t, and Fitz isn’t that kind of person. I don’t think she is either. It’s an honest marriage, Sedgie, because they want to be together. You must believe that.”

Somewhere at the back of Sedgwick’s consciousness a weight was lifted. He came around the desk and took one of her hands and turned it

palm up in his and kissed it.

“I’m glad you said that,” he said. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Sue.”

11

BUT it was Melicent’s place and not Sue’s to welcome Fitz’s bride when he brought her home. So Gwen faced a stranger when Fitz said, “Mother, this is Gwen,” and then, when Melicent had kissed her dutifully and in silence, Fitz added with noticeable pride, “And this is my father.”

Gwen knew by now that Fitz idolized his father, who was all the things a Sprague should be, and the face she raised to Sedgwick was full of childish appeal with terror at the back of it. Gwen was quite literally frightened stiff.

No amount of kindness from Eden or bluff encouragement from Cabot while she was just Fitz’s protégée could give her confidence now to confront this large, impressive, surprised unit known as the Family. She expected that they would be hostile and unfriendly, considering her an interloper, which she undoubtedly was, and it was agony to her to anticipate that through her Fitz might be hurt by the people he loved. She felt instinctively that they were too well-bred to snub her outright, or to disown Fitz, or make any sort of a scene. But she had no hope of being accepted as one of them, and all her defences were braced against condescension or coldness or sarcasm or just plain despisement, any one of which would boomerang Fitz and make him an outsider henceforth, like herself, to his own flesh and blood.

Therefore the look she gave Sedgwick was truly piteous and he thought with astonishment, “Why, she’s scared to death of me,” and his kind heart acted before his head and he took her by the shoulders—she held herself like a princess, anyway—and said, “Well, my dear—it’s not a den of lions you’ve come to.” And while he kissed her cheek he heard her whisper,

“Thank you, sir.” Then it was Phoebe’s turn, and Phoebe said, “Oh, Fitz, she’s beautiful!” and they could all laugh at that, and presently Gwen found herself alone with Fitz in the room he had slept in all his life, and he was saying, “There, it wasn’t so bad, was it!”

She turned in his arms to look at the late afternoon sun streaming in the double window above the April garden—white curtains, chintz-covered

armchairs, rich old rugs on a dark polished floor, gay flowered wall-paper, a spacious four-poster bed with a frilled tester and hand-made counterpane—

Fitz’s bedroom seemed to emphasize and epitomize more than anything else the gulf between his secure, dignified background and the sordid surroundings of her own scant nineteen years.

“Fitz, I don’t belong here. I had no idea it was so beautiful. I’m sure to do something to make you ashamed. How long do we have to stay?”

“Why, honey, what on earth ails you like this? You belong where I am.

We’ll go back to New York the first of the week, but I—sort of wanted you to like it here.”

“Oh, I do, it isn’t that, but—”

“Well, then,” he said matter-of-factly. “How about takin’ off your hat and hangin’ up a few things and makin’ yourself at home? Last time I slept here I didn’t know there was such a person as you in the world. Gives me kind of a funny feeling.”

The hard clasp of his arms reassured her again, and she raised her face to his kiss. Maybe she was from the wrong part of town, maybe she had slept in bureau drawers and trunk tills in the corner of cheap railway boarding-house rooms on tour with her parents who snored exhaustedly in the one bed, and meanwhile Fitz was growing up in this elegant serenity. Maybe she wasn’t what the family wanted for him, but she was what he wanted, and she loved him more than anyone possibly could who had always been accustomed to his gentle ways, and when they were alone together she never had any doubts at all….

“Mm-hm,” he murmured, as though she had spoken, holding her. “That’s the way I feel too, but I reckon we’ve got to start thinking about changin’

for dinner pretty soon.”

She sighed. More family, and dinner at the Day house across the way.

Cabot Murray was arriving from Washington this evening, with his discerning eyes that looked right into her and his embarrassing familiarity with all the things no one else knew about her—for sure. He had told her to stick by Fitz because she would be good for him, but now he would think she had taken advantage of that conversation in the library. And she knew that one did not take advantage of Cabot Murray with impunity.

“Fitz, do you think my dress will be all right tonight?”

“Sure. Aunt Eden bought it, didn’t she?”

“Yes, but—for me to sing in.”

“You’re goin’ to sing to ’em tonight, honey, after dinner.”

Gwen gave it up. It was still hard for her to understand that families dining alone together at home should put on their best for each other.

“And now,” Fitz was saying as he rang a bell by the mantelpiece, “you’ll have to get a going-over by Mammy. She raised me, and she owns me, so you mustn’t mind anything she says. She’ll help you unpack and change your dress, and if there’s anything you want just say so and she’ll fix it.”

Gwen stood still in the middle of the room staring while Fitz was enfolded and exclaimed over by a small wizened coloured woman in a starched white turban. She saw that he bent and kissed the withered black cheek, and that he submitted patiently, even gaily, to being patted and stroked by the gnarled black hands, seeming almost as happy at the reunion as his old nurse was. Past surprise, docile and smiling and silent, Gwen allowed herself to be hugged in her turn and gave her cheek to be kissed, noticing that Mammy smelled only of soap and that real tears shone in the wrinkles round her eyes.

Then the old woman stood holding both her hands and peering up at her with wise, twinkling eyes that queried her inmost feelings until Gwen felt naked in her conscience and thanked her stars that it was clean, and her love for Fitz flamed up into her face in a scarlet blush, denying that she had married him for any other reason. Mammy nodded, and patted the hands she held, and her smile was a benediction.

“Dat’s good,” she nodded. “Dat’s mah lamb. He be all right now he got you.”

Fitz came and put an arm around each of them, linking them to himself.

“She’s a Yankee gal, Mammy. Makes her feel kind of strange down here.

We’ve got to find ways to show her she’s come home.”

“She know dat,” said Mammy, holding Gwen’s hands. “In her heart, reckon she know, fast enough. She get used to our ways in no time. Dark hair an’ a red mouth—dat’s de kin’ ob wife foh mah boy. He safe wid you, missy, I kin tell!”

It was the thing Gwen so wanted them all to know—that Fitz would be safe, that she would love him always. This old black witch had seen it, and perhaps the others would too, in time.

“I’ll do my best, Mammy,” she said, as solemnly as she had spoken her marriage vows.

Later they all walked through the warm April dusk to Ransom Day’s house, which shone with lights, and there was Fitz’s cousin Sue saying,

“Welcome to Williamsburg, honey,” with both hands outstretched. Then Gwen was presented to a very old gentleman who, with an apology, did not rise from his easy chair by the fire; and this was Grandfather Day who, Fitz had told her, had been on General Lee’s staff during the war. Gwen, having a deep, unselfconscious reverence for old age, said rather breathlessly, “I never knew a grandfather before. I have been looking forward to you, sir.”

And she bent down swiftly and kissed the fragile hand he held out to her.

The family was touched, but at the same time her impulsive words raised new questions in their minds. No grandfathers? No people? But what sort of upbringing had she had?

Fitz’s Aunt Eden came next, with a warm kiss, and his cousin Virginia, whose merry brown eyes were curious but friendly, and her sister Marietta who had married the Princeton professor; Cousin Dabney Day was next, the one who had lost a leg in ’64, but you’d never know—a great handsome man still, bringing forward his wife Charlotte, who was as pretty as could be; and their daughter Belle, with two babies and a husband, and her brother Miles, whose birthday it would be tomorrow, a tall, grave, charming boy—

all kissing kin, they told her, gallantly exercising the privilege, while Fitz never let go her hand for fear she was nervous, as he led her from one to another and spoke their names so that she could fit them into the family pattern he had painstakingly explained to her on the train coming down.

And he noticed as the ordeal went on that her fingers were cold and damp in his, and clung convulsively, and he thought, Stage-fright—like when she sings—I suppose it does look like rather a mob when you’re not used to it.

And the Family in its collective mind was thinking, She’s dressed all right, anyway, nothing flashy—Fitz has got himself a beauty, at least—I do believe she’s got red on her mouth—lovely eyes—she’s shy, poor thing, I never thought an actress would be shy—well, it could have been much worse—wait till Cabot comes, he knows more about her—what will Cabot say, when he finds her here as Fitz’s wife….

They were all unconsciously reserving judgment until after Cabot gave them their cue, quite forgetting that once Cabot himself had been an

outsider, viewed with dismay and apprehension when Eden had insisted on adding him to the family, back in the days of the war. Now they counted on Eden’s Yankee husband to resolve most of their problems and difficulties—

a virile, knowledgeable, up-to-date man he was, with worldly experience where they, in this timeless backwater, had none—a hard man to hoodwink, unlike simple-minded Fitz, a man who must have formed his own opinion of this actress girl, and who would have strong views on her place among them. She had, of course, gone to his house in New York, but only, they understood from Eden, as a paid entertainer, not as a guest. They were sure they could tell by Cabot’s attitude when he arrived exactly what sort of person she was. And Bracken’s too, in a lesser degree. Bracken knew what was what.

They had finished dinner before Cabot came, and Gwen had sung them some of Fitz’s songs, standing straight and slender and brave against the piano while he played. The family watched and listened wonderingly. She was actually going to sing these songs on the stage, in a theatre, within a few weeks’ time. Marrying Fitz had not stopped her being an actress. She was going to go right on singing for money, as his wife. They had somehow supposed that she would retire from the stage. And what about Fitz’s home, what about his babies? Had he thought about that? Didn’t he mind having an actress wife, who would have to spend all her evenings away from home, in the theatre, being stared at and admired by thousands of people who had paid to see her? And could he keep other men from—well, from making advances, to a woman who was on the stage? And yet—even the least perceptive of them had noticed by the time dinner was over that Fitz was different, and not one of them but recognized the change as an improvement. Where he had been listless and lazy and indifferent, remote, on guard, defensive, uncommunicative, and exasperating, now he was lively, confident, mature, one of them as he had never been before, with some of the true Sprague sparkle and dash. Fitz had found himself, up North.

Melicent, who knew that his music was better than it had ever been, and Sedgwick, who liked his new air of authority and peace of mind, exchanged glances more than once. Whatever it was, it had done him good. She had been right, to suggest that Fitz should go to New York with Cabot. She had saved him from himself, when nobody else knew what to do. But it was Sue

who had talked him into going. Sedgwick’s eyes sought her out across the room while Gwen sang, and she looked back at him, the dimple showing at the corner of her mouth, and nodded. Fitz was going to be all right now.

It was late evening before Cabot came, and they had almost given him up. They all converged on him, laughing and crowding for their turn to be kissed, until at last with Eden in one arm and Virginia in the other he turned and saw Gwen by the piano. She, like the rest of them, had been awaiting his verdict, and she stood looking back at him tensely, her head a little down, her red mouth tightly closed, her brows drawn level. There was an instant’s pause, for his surprise. Then he left his womenfolk and came towards her across the carpet.

“Now, don’t tell me, let me guess,” he said quietly as he came. “My crazy loon of a nephew has had the luck to marry you!”

His towering height and broad shoulders hid her from the rest of the room and only Fitz saw the way both her hands went out to him, the way her eyes filled with grateful tears as she whispered, “You aren’t angry? I was afraid—” But they all saw Cabot take her into his bear’s hug and heard him say, “God bless you, my dear, I’m delighted! Maybe now he’ll amount to something!”

They all breathed easier after that. Until they heard Cabot’s news, that is.

He had apparently been stopping at telegraph offices all the way down, and he told them quite simply, with no flourishes, that war with Spain was now only a matter of hours. Earlier in the week Congress had passed resolutions demanding that Spain’s rule in Cuba must cease, with noon of Saturday the twenty-third as the dead-line for Spain’s acceptance of the ultimatum. The document had been sent to President McKinley, who had deliberated a whole day and finally signed it and sent a copy to the Spanish Minister in Washington. That evening Señor Polo y Bernabé had asked for his passports.

Eden was first to speak in the silence that followed Cabot’s words.

“Oh, Lordy, not again!” she sighed. “It makes me feel lost and lonely and childish, the way I felt last time, after they fired on Fort Sumter!”

And Sue asked timidly, with a glance at Sedgwick, who surely wouldn’t have to go this time.

“Will we send an army to Cuba, Cabot?”

“If they don’t clear out peaceably, and they probably won’t. There will be a call for volunteers, of course. We haven’t enough regulars even if we called them all in from the West. Roosevelt talks of a regiment of volunteer cavalry, the pick of the country. If only I were ten years younger…”

“Where’s Bracken, Cabot?” Eden asked quietly.

“Coming up by way of Hampton Roads. I expected to find him already here. He’ll show up any minute now, I should think. What I’d give to be in his shoes! He’ll see all the fun, I’ll put him ashore with the first troops to land in Cuba, he’s had about enough of that dispatch boat, I gather!”

“I suppose it’s better than having him in the army,” Eden reflected, and Cabot glanced at her uneasily, well aware that bullets make no distinction between a Special Correspondent and a soldier.

A big tray of coffee, hot chocolate, and whisky was brought in by Pharaoh, and the maids followed with another of cheeses and a third of sweets. Belle’s babies and Grandfather Day had long since gone to bed and Virginia and Phoebe had begun to yawn when Bracken arrived, wearing riding clothes and a broad hat, with a yellow silk handkerchief knotted around the open throat of his dark blue flannel shirt. They all fell upon him, the warmth and excitement of their welcome complicated by their desire for more news. Bracken had it. But first he must kiss Gwen resoundingly and remark that Fitz had certainly not lowered the family standard of good looks when he chose a wife. Then he relaxed his long, weary body into a chair and waited for the hot coffee his mother prepared with loving care.

“Well, children, the balloon is going up,” he told them, his eyes very brilliant in his tanned face, as his gaze locked intimately with his father’s.

“The Fleet is on its way from Key West this very minute to blockade Havana. A flying squadron will base at Hampton Roads to patrol the Atlantic Coast and head off the Spanish Fleet if they try to come at us up here.”

“Do you mean they think Spain will attack us?” cried Virginia, and her brother glanced at her under a slanting brow.

“Spain is supposed to have a nice little fleet,” he said noncommittally.

“Run by a man named Cervera. Until we know exactly where it is and what he plans to do with it, this is going to be a very naval war.” Again he looked at his father. “I would like to get aboard one of those battleships off Havana,” he said, and Cabot nodded.

“I’ll see what I can do about it,” he said.

“Somebody else can have the damn’ dispatch boat for a while, begging everybody’s pardon for language,” Bracken announced. “I’ve done my time on her. Hang Johnny for enlisting, he’s just the man I want to take her over.

Young Wendell has her now while I’m away, but he’s only a cub, he can’t do it all alone for long. Tampa is going to be Army headquarters, as you probably know,” he added to Cabot. “Why don’t you come down there and see the fun?”

“I might,” said Cabot, and his eyes glinted.

“That volunteer cavalry regiment you mentioned, Uncle Cabot,” Miles said in his unemphatic way. “Could I maybe get into that?”

“Oh, no!” cried his mother quickly. “You’re too young!

But, “I’ll see what I can do about it,” said Cabot again, and Dabney nodded at him gratefully.

“I’ll take your little old dispatch boat,” somebody said, and they all realized incredulously that it was Fitz. “I’ll never be as good as Johnny would, but I reckon I can stay afloat.”

There was a thundering silence. Bracken broke it, sipping his coffee.

“Nice to keep it in the family,” he observed. “You’re hired, Fitz. As of Sunday morning, when I start south again.”

12

TOGETHER in their room that night, Fitz said apologetically, “Maybe I shouldn’t have spoken up like that, without talkin’ it over first with you—”

“Oh, but I was proud!” Gwen assured him, and she didn’t look hurt or sad, but only rather excited. “It was the right thing to do, Fitz, the other boys will be in it and I’m glad you’re going to run the boat, it’s better than enlisting.”

It occurred to Fitz that some girls might have cried or reproached him for volunteering to risk his neck like that after only a week of marriage. But not his girl. Whatever he did, his girl would always back him up.

“Supposin’ I hadn’t offered to take over the boat,” he said, pursuing this idea. “Would you have been disappointed?”

“Well, it would have to be up to you, Fitz. I don’t suppose the boat is going to be any picnic, with a real war on. It’s hard to go back to New York

without you and start the show, but—I still think it was the right thing to do.”

“And if I’d done the wrong thing,” he insisted, “would you have told me?”

She looked at him gravely, pausing in her undressing with a petticoat in one hand. Her hair was a little loosened, her eyes were sleepy.

“I’ll never have to tell you what’s right,” she said then, after considering the remote possibility he had mentioned. “It’s something you’ll always know better than I do, I guess.”

“Well, I dunno, seems like most of the time I’m gropin’ round in the dark,” he ruminated. “For instance, I hate having you go back to New York alone. Would you any rather let the show go hang and stay here with the family while I’m away?”

“Stay here? Oh, I couldn’t do that, Fitz, I’ve signed a contract! If I walked out on them now up there I’d never get another job in show business as long as I lived.”

“’Tisn’t absolutely necessary you should, you know. You’ve got a husband to support you now, remember?”

She shook her head.

“I’ve got to think of Pa,” she reminded him. “With what I earn in this show if it’s a success I can lay up a year’s keep for Pa if I’m careful.”

“Now, look, honey, when I married you I took on your Pa too, see? You can have all my salary while I’m gone, and if you lived here—”

Gwen was still shaking her head.

“He’s not your responsibility. I wouldn’t feel right for him to cost you money. Besides, the show will keep me busy and I won’t have so much time to eat my heart out for you.”

“Well, if you want it that way—” he murmured, reflecting that she would be bound to find Williamsburg dull anyway, after New York. She’d have more fun in New York doing the show and earning good money. He could never expect her to give up the stage, especially if this show of theirs was a hit..

Some time later, lying very still in the dark beside him, Gwen spoke again.

“Fitz.”

“Mm?”

“Will the family have to know about Pa? Couldn’t we just say I had to go back on account of having signed a contract and wanting to help out with your show? They might not understand—they might think Pa was a real loony, and he’s not, it was just that fall. I mean, it’s nothing that might come out in our children, I wouldn’t want anybody to think it was hereditary—”

“Sure, we can just say the show can’t go on without you,” he agreed.

“The only question that’s botherin’ me is, how am I goin’ to get along myself?”

Bracken sought out his parents in private the next day and handed Eden a folded piece of note-paper.

“I don’t want to sound melodramatic,” he began rather gravely for him.

“But I’ve written down there the address of Dinah’s brother Archie, and if anything should happen to me in this silly war we’re starting I want you to write him just how it was, and ask him to tell her the best way he can. Not that I expect it to be necessary. But Scovel damn’ near got shot against a wall when they caught him, and from now on it’s going to be open season on American journalists in Cuba. They blame the American Press for starting the war, and they consider every correspondent a spy, and they’re not far wrong, at that. Your own dispatches are your death warrant if you’re caught with ’em on you.”

“Then I hope you’ll be very careful to swallow yours, my dear, the minute you’re caught,” Eden said with a brave smile, to show him she knew there was nothing for her to be anxious about. And Cabot said that swallowing Bracken’s dispatches would be certain death for anybody, which wasn’t really a very good joke, as he knew very well, and then there was a little silence.

“You wouldn’t care to tell us about your Dinah?” Cabot suggested delicately, for they knew only that she was the still unconscious cause of the shift in divorce proceedings to the English courts, that she was very young and an Earl’s daughter, lived in an enormous Georgian house near Farthingale, and had hair almost the same colour as Eden’s. Beyond that Bracken had never gone, and they had as usual respected his silences and promised themselves that Eden would get a look at her during the summer and then things would be clearer. But now Eden’s sailing would be

indefinitely postponed on account of the war, and Dinah remained a mystery.

Bracken walked over to the window and stood looking out into the garden, his long, picturesquely clad body sagging a little as he realized anew that he was not spending Easter in Gloucestershire this year, but far otherwise. Easter had become a sort of anniversary in his mind, with associations as important and personal as birthdays.

The disinclination to speak of Dinah which had plagued him so long was still there. But now, with so much uncertainty before him, the yearning to see her again and the need to share with someone his intense preoccupation with her rose up and choked him. Standing at the window with his back to the room, choosing his words, controlling his voice to an unemotional monotone, he began.

“It is very important, I think, that Dinah shouldn’t know just yet how I feel about her,” he said carefully. “Especially in case I don’t come back from Cuba in a position to—carry out my plans for her. She was sixteen last September and compared to Virginia is young for her age. If she should never see me again she will forget me and, presumably, make a good marriage and have some sort of life of her own. That is why I am not leaving a letter for her. I won’t have her saddened by the loss of anything but a strange, brief friendship. Archie would be the one to handle that.”

“Yes, dear, but there won’t be any need for Archie,” Eden remarked firmly as he paused. “Go on about Dinah.”

“It’s difficult,” he admitted after a moment, staring through the window, his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know why, but it is. I have been in love before, more or less, I don’t have to tell you, and we’ve always joked about it in a normal sort of way—except in the case of Lisl, there wasn’t anything funny about that, was there! This thing with Dinah scares me. I have no choice. I am possessed. I didn’t see it coming, there was no beginning, there is no end. Dinah is mine, it is impossible to imagine that anything can prevent me from marrying her. That is why I have forced myself to consider the alternative, and provide for it through Archie.”

“Does she—has she noticed the same thing?” Eden asked gently.

“I can’t tell. It’s too soon. Well, yes, I can tell that she’s drawn to me, likes to be with me, counts on me as a friend. But you’ve no idea how circumspect I’ve been. I let her kiss me goodbye— let her, mind you! I stood

like a stump and felt her face against mine. It aged me by ten years, but I did it. She was crying—” He struck the window-casing beside him with his closed hand, ricocheted off it back into the room and faced them grimly, one eyebrow askew. “Don’t think I’m kicking about this job that’s ahead of me, because I’m not. I wouldn’t miss it for worlds. If I had got back to England before it started I should have had to leave there at once and go to Cuba, make no mistake about that. I suppose what really gets in amongst me is that I couldn’t bring her with me last autumn. Our times are out of joint, hers and mine. I have to wait. I have a long way to go yet, before I can get to Dinah. I’m going to get to her—somehow—some time. It has to be the longest way round, but Dinah is home for me, journey’s end, and all the rest of it. You won’t need that piece of paper with Archie’s address on it, that’s just a form of crossing my fingers.” He came and bent over his mother’s chair and kissed her lightly. “These red-haired women! he said.

“Once they’ve got you by the heart the devil himself can’t save you!”

When he had left the room Eden sat looking down at the paper she held: The Hon. Archibald Campion, — Half Moon Street, London.

“Virginia mentioned an Archie Campion,” she said thoughtfully. “He was the one she liked better than the Viscount who wanted to marry her.”

Cabot had not heard.

“I’m sorry for Bracken,” he said, as though speaking to himself, without meeting her eyes. “I ache for him, Eden. And it is singularly little use to remember that I myself had to go the longest way round to get you.”

Eden rose and laid her arms around his big shoulders and her cool cheek against his.

“I begin to think you have to earn it,” she said softly. “What comes too easily—remember Lisl—may not be worth having.”

Miles’s twenty-first birthday took place on Saturday with all the trappings—toasts, speeches, gifts, family jokes and ceremonies—

heightened and coloured in every instance by the knowledge that the country was at war and that after that one last day together the family would be scattered again, some of it in uncertainty and peril. For Eden and Sue and Charlotte the day held poignancy almost too sharp to bear without tears, for it roused their memories of other days when Cabot had come to say goodbye before catching the last northbound train out of Richmond in ’61; when Sedgwick rode with Jeb Stuart, and Dabney was brought back from

Drewry’s Bluff with a shattered leg. Oh, not again, they said to each other piteously with white, resigned faces. Not for Bracken and Fitz and Miles.

Not every generation, this agony of parting and waiting and picking up the pieces when it was over. Not for their sons, the same ordeal their lovers had miraculously survived….

But already Cabot had promised to lay Miles’s application personally before Theodore Roosevelt for the volunteer cavalry regiment. Already Fitz and Bracken were cheerfully accumulating the ominous paraphernalia of the tropics—nux vomica for fever, rhubarb pills for bowel complaint, talcum powder for saddle chafing, sun cholera drops for diarrhoea, acetate of lead for insect bites, vaseline for sunburn, quinine, calomel, mosquito-nets and abdominal bands—all the feeble, futile safeguards against unknown ills and emergencies. Cabot, an old war-horse smelling powder, was going with them as far as Tampa, that sultry, sandy city which was the bottleneck through which all traffic to and from Key West must pass. Some correspondents had been sweating it out there ever since the Maine went down, and more were arriving every day. Now that it had become Army headquarters, everything that happened would happen there, until the Navy had dealt with the missing Cervera and his fleet.

Eden was schooled to journalistic habits and viewed the preoccupation of her men philosophically. Sue thanked God many times a day that Sedgwick’s fifty-six years would keep him at home in Williamsburg this time. But Gwen—not even Fitz had any idea what Gwen was living through while the festivities of Miles’s birthday swirled around her.

Gwen could not remember another war, from which some men had returned more or less intact so that life could go on. She had grown up ignorant of the stoicism and heart-break of the ’6o’s, which were still woven into the everyday fabric of living in Williamsburg. For Gwen the departure of Fitz for the blockade waters between Cuba and Florida was cataclysm, holocaust, and the end of the world. But Gwen was not an actress tor nothing, and it was impossible to detect her inner panic and desolation. To Fitz she showed only her pride in him and her faith that he would be back safe in time to see the show in its prime. To the family she was the quiet, self-contained, rather mysterious girl who was going back to New York to sing Fitz’s new songs just as though nothing had happened, and they all thought it a little heartless and strange of her, though they

might have found it hard to say what else they would have expected her to do.

But Gwen, lying awake while the small hours of Sunday morning ticked away, was waiting in a kind of frozen patience for the end of the world.

Somehow she had got through the day with composure. Somehow she had shared without tears the loving tempest of Fitz’s farewell when at last they were alone together, and now he slept, still holding her in the hard, possessive circle of his left arm. She lay quiet, her head on his shoulder, more aware of the strong, steady beat of his heart than of her own.

Desperately she drew even now on her waning self-control, forcing herself not to clasp him convulsively and sob out her grief and terror while he was still there to comfort her. Even more than she needed the reassurance he would give if she woke him, she wanted him to have his rest, the last good sleep in a good bed he would get in nobody knew how long.

She had always fought her battles alone, and now she fought this one the same way, while dawn greyed the edges of the room—fought and fell back drearily into those last ditches of fortitude where there is nothing left but: I’ve had it—it’s mine for ever—nothing can take away from me what I’ve had—I can be thankful for that—I must be glad I’ve got it to lose…. And flinching closer to him in her extremity, she felt the instinctive jealous tightening of his arm as she stirred, and held her breath until she was sure he had not roused after all….

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