He nodded, enjoying her smile. “How about that indeed. Having that map meant that when we finally launched the offensive we were in that much more command of the terrain. It was one less place they could surprise us. It was small, Sibyl, but it made a crucial difference.” He paused. “We retook the ridge. The offensive worked.”
He hesitated, looking at her. “He saved my life, Sibyl, and the lives of the men he was with. And he did it with honor. Selfless honor.”
She sat, digesting what Benton had to say, her sadness mingling with pride, and also with something else—possibly relief. Relief that Harlan was able to become, however briefly, the best version of himself. Relief that his life could have a pinnacle like that, a moment when he would always be his best, and happiest, self.
A footfall shook her out of her thoughts, and she found her father emerging from the inner parlor, Baiji perched on his shoulder.
“I see you’ve been entertaining our guest. A bit early, aren’t we, Professor Derby? A touch enthusiastic, perhaps?” Lan Allston smiled on them, and the smile broadened when he observed his daughter to be blushing.
“Surely you’re not taking the macaw in to dinner with us, Papa,” Sibyl protested, attempting to recover her decorum.
“Why not?” her father asked with a mock wounded cast. “He gets lonesome, sitting in the parlor all day long. Why can’t he have a change of scene once in a while? He’s very well traveled, you know. I picked him up in Shanghai.”
“Yes,” Sibyl said, rolling her eyes. “You’ve mentioned it. A time or two.”
As though aware that he was a subject of discussion, the iridescent blue parrot stretched out his wings like a gargoyle, opened his mouth, and stuck out his tongue.
“Very expressive,” Benton remarked, in the tone of a man who is being polite, but would prefer to keep his distance.
“He dotes on that bird,” Sibyl said. “None of us have ever understood it.”
“Not true,” Lan said, moving to the mantel and gazing up at the painting. “Your mother was always very understanding about Baiji.”
“She wanted to turn him into a hat,” Sibyl remarked aside to Benton, who hid a smile.
Lan Allston sighed, gazing up at the painting of his wife. “I’ve always been rather partial to this painting,” he remarked to himself. “She’s frozen in time, almost. Just how I remember her. Always young. Always about to speak.”
“Mother was always about to speak when she was alive, too,” Sibyl said, half-joking, and half sad.
“Well, that’s the real mystery of death, I think,” her father remarked, eyes exploring the painting. The bird seemed to be gazing up at the portrait, too, his wings shimmering and settling along his back. “Think of that young fellow who was on the boat with them. The bookish one.”
“Who?” Sibyl asked. She had taken Benton’s hand in hers and was toying with his fingers.
“The Widener boy. Harry. Whose mother gave the library to Harvard.”
“Such a generous gift,” Benton remarked, tickling Sibyl’s palm with his ring finger where her father couldn’t see. She noticed that he wasn’t wearing his wedding ring anymore. “I’m rather looking forward to seeing it when I get back to campus.”
Lan Allston said a thoughtful “Hmmmm” and turned to gaze on Benton and Sibyl. His eyes, usually so clear and blue, were looking more watery than Sibyl remembered. Her father was getting older, too.
“A wealthy young man from a good family,” Lan said. “Spent his time in leisured pursuits, collecting books, traveling the world. If he’d lived to be my age, that would’ve been the sum total of his life, you know. Family, of course, that’s important. Civic duties. Philanthropic pursuits. I’m sure he was a fine young man, and would’ve made a fine old man, too, no doubt. He would live to be old and distinguished, and he would die, and there would be a respectful obituary in the paper, noting all his accomplishments, and omitting any allusion to his myriad personal faults, whatever they may have been. Then his children would’ve helped themselves to a few of the tomes he’d worked so hard to assemble, probably looking for value over content. The balance would be auctioned off. And that would be the end of it.”
He paused, reaching up to scratch Baiji under the chin. The parrot seemed to smile, enjoying the scratch with lidded eyes. Sibyl and Benton exchanged a look.
“But consider this,” her father continued. “Because that young man died on Titanic, his name is now synonymous with the finest university library in the world. His study is preserved, just as it was, for time immemorial. His collection stays whole. He has left a legacy. In a way, that damned boat going down was the greatest thing that could have happened to him. For what he wanted to be.”
Her father smiled, his sad and stoic smile. Sibyl moved to stand next to him, threading her arm through his. There would be no need for Benton to tell him what had happened. He knew.
He had always known.
“Shall we go in to dinner?” she asked, rubbing her free hand on her father’s upper arm. “We can bring Baiji if you like.”
“Let’s,” the Captain said, moving toward the dining room at a stately pace. “Though we’re still short a few people, by my count.”
“I’m sure they’ll be along,” she said.
They made their way from the front parlor into the entry hall at the base of the stairs, Sibyl and Lan in the lead, Benton trailing behind. Then all at once there was a commotion from somewhere overhead, followed by a crash, and a whirring ball of activity came plunging down the front staircase at a run, skidding across the front hallway carpet and smacking right into Benton’s legs. The ball of activity recoiled, rubbing its nose and blinking, and then after a long and pregnant pause, it opened its mouth and started to wail.
“Good heavens, who’s this?” Benton exclaimed, surprised. He knelt next to the shrieking creature, who upon closer examination proved to be a little boy, about two years of age, with a fuzzy halo of blond hair, dressed in a navy sailor suit and small black boots.
“Oh, Professor Derby, I’m so sorry!” Dovie Whistler exclaimed, hurrying down the stairs and scooping the caterwauling boy up in her arms. Her hair was still cropped short, but her dress was a long, narrow column of buttercup yellow satin trimmed in lace, and her hair was held off her brow with a wide black band. “He’s got so much energy, but he’s so careless sometimes. Aren’t you, Lannie?”
The boy confessed to his carelessness with a fresh shriek, which Dovie quieted with some jostling of him on her hip.
“My word,” Benton breathed, peering at the little boy’s face, and seeing that his assumption was absolutely true.
“Say hello to Professor Derby,” Dovie prompted.
The ball of activity looked warily at Benton, red fist in mouth, and then buried his face in his mother’s neck.
“He’s shy,” Dovie explained, patting the whimpering boy’s back.
Benton’s gaze met Sibyl’s, his eyebrows shooting up. Slowly, Sibyl nodded, smiling out of one side of her mouth. Sibyl watched as Benton’s eyes then moved to Lan Allston’s face, and she saw that he found the old sailor so beaming with joy that whatever questions Benton might have thought to ask fell away as suddenly unimportant.
“I’m sure he’s famished,” Sibyl said. “And so am I. There’s no reason to wait, is there?”
“No reason at all,” her father said, taking her arm.
Epilogue
North Atlantic Ocean
Outward Bound
April 14/15, 1912
Eulah ran up laughing, Harry beside her, and collapsed in the chair next to her mother, out of breath, her cheeks pink from dancing. The two exchanged a quick electric look that Helen noticed with pleasure, and Harry seated himself beside his mother without a word.
“There you are!” Eleanor Widener exclaimed. “We lost sight of you. Must have been the crowd.” She arched an eyebrow at her son.
“Must have been,” Harry said, grinning.
Eulah reached a long arm
over the table for her glass of water, gulping it down with abandon and an aaaaaaaah of audible pleasure.
“Gracious!” Helen exclaimed, watching her daughter fan herself with the dinner menu and noting her rosy cheeks and the droplets of dew on Eulah’s upper lip. “Why, you’d think you were at a square dance. Eulah. Some restraint, please.”
Her daughter turned merry, sparkling eyes on Helen, who felt herself soften as she always did when her youngest daughter smiled at her.
“Oh, come now, Mother,” she said, twinkling. “There’s nothing better than dancing! Perhaps you should dance, too.”
Helen shook her head with a laugh. “Oh, I don’t know about that,” she demurred. “Dancing is for the young. But I don’t even need to, so long as I can watch you. Are you enjoying yourself, my dear?”
“Oh, yes!” Eulah exclaimed. She picked up the vanilla eclair that waited on her dessert plate and took a delicate nibble from the end. “Mmmmm!” she moaned with pleasure, rolling her eyes heavenward. “Mother! Try it. Just a little.”
“I couldn’t,” Helen said, brushing a wary hand over her stomach. “It was all too good. I mustn’t.”
She couldn’t believe Eulah managed to eat at all, given that she’d spent all of dinner being led from one side of the dance floor to the other. Occasional young men attempted to cut in on her and Harry. Once, when the entree was served, he laughingly surrendered her to a rival so that he could sit down to eat. She’d foxtrotted by as Harry chewed, mouthing “Help!” in the direction of their table. Harry waved at her with his fork, grinning, pretending not to understand. By the time the foxtrot segued into a waltz, Harry was back on his feet.
“George, he’s being terrible.” Eleanor laughed with the indulgent smile of a mother who thinks her son isn’t terrible at all. “You really must say something to him. Poor Miss Allston’s not getting a moment’s rest. She’s already missed the asparagus.”
“I don’t think,” her husband grunted, “there’s much to miss about asparagus.”
“Really, Helen,” she whispered aside. “He’s never like this. He’s normally a very well-behaved boy.”
Helen smiled beatifically, tapping her thumbs together in her lap. Her daughter spun by in the throng of dancers, hair falling loose over her shoulders, head tossed back, beaming.
When they finally regained the table, Helen looked over her daughter, noticing the falling down coiffure.
“Why, Eulah,” she said. “What can have happened to your hat? With my butterfly brooch on it, thank you very much?”
“Oh!” she gasped over Harry’s chuckling laughter. “My hat?” Eulah stared off into the distance, mouth twisted in a faux-serious smile. “My . . . hat?”
Helen shook her head, and nudged her daughter under the table with her toe. “Oh, for Pete’s sake. You didn’t lose it, did you?”
“Me? Never,” Eulah whispered back. Then she added, “Maybe,” and grinned.
The hour was growing late, and Helen noticed the crowd of diners beginning to thin. A few dancers still clustered at the end of the gallery, and men lingered over glasses of cognac while ladies in twos and threes picked their way back to the cabins. An eclair sat untouched on Eleanor Widener’s plate as she sighed, taking another sip of her wine.
“I think I’d best be getting to bed,” she mused to no one in particular.
“Are you all right, Mother?” Harry asked.
“Oh, yes. Just a slight headache, is all.” She drew her evening cloak over her shoulders with a yawn. “George? Do you suppose you and Harry could . . . ?”
“Of course, my dear,” George said. “As we all know, nothing will bring on a headache faster than an eclair in close proximity.”
Harry and Eulah exchanged another high-frequency look, and Helen had to bite the inside of her cheek to conceal her excitement. Harry stood as George helped Eleanor get to her feet, fussing over her chair.
“Well,” Eleanor Widener said, arranging her wrap and hunting about for her beaded pocketbook. “It’s been a lovely evening. Mrs. Allston, a pleasure as always.”
“Indeed,” Helen said. “I do hope we’ll see you in Boston one of these days.”
“Well, Harry might be going up for his reunion,” Eleanor ventured, with an eye on her son.
“Oh, I am,” he assured her. He looked directly at Eulah and said, “I am.”
“Why, that’s just next month, isn’t it?” Eulah exclaimed, and Helen kicked her under the table. She was as cunning in her dealings with men as poor Harley was at the card table. Really!
“I believe it is,” Harry said, taking his mother’s other elbow.
“We’d be so happy if you’d join us for supper while you’re in town, Mr. Widener,” Helen said with perhaps too much majesty. Eulah grinned at him and nodded, a strand of hair drifting into her eyes.
“I’d love to,” Harry said. George Widener made a show of rooting in his waistcoat pocket for his watch and consulting it with a weighty grunt.
“Ah,” Harry said, observing his father’s machinations. “Good night, then!”
“Good night,” Eulah trilled. While she watched the Wideners make their way through the dining room, Helen watched her watch them.
When they were out of sight, Eulah plopped back in her chair with a gasp and immediately set to wolfing her eclair with unconcealed delight.
“Well, that Harry fellow certainly seemed nice, didn’t he?” Helen said, launching a volley.
“Mmmhmmmm,” Eulah said, giggling with a mouthful of pastry. She grabbed up a hasty napkin to save her bodice from crumbs of chocolate.
“He certainly seemed interested in you,” Helen pressed. “Why, I don’t suppose I’ve ever seen a boy so keen on dancing with a young lady. Were you nice to him, darling? Were you careful to ask him about himself ? You didn’t just talk his ear off, I hope.”
“Of course,” Eulah said, enjoying taunting her mother with the possibility that she could have been anything less than perfectly nice. “He told me ever so much about his book collection, you know. He was after a particular volume in Paris, he said. Something called Le Sang de Morphée.”
“How very odd,” Helen said before she could stop herself. “Well, at any rate, he certainly seemed keen to visit us for dinner next month, didn’t he? So what do you think of that?”
Eulah leaned forward and took her mother’s hand in hers with a smile.
“I think,” she said, “that we should order some champagne.”
As she spoke, Eulah raised one long, white arm and gestured for a waiter. He swanned over with a smile and Eulah mouthed the words champagne, please, gesturing at her mother and herself. The man cast the briefest glance at his pocket watch and then gave Eulah a wide beaming grin and disappeared.
“Champagne!” Helen exclaimed, shocked and pleased at once. “But we should be going to bed, my dear. It’s late.”
“Nonsense. We have nowhere to be,” Eulah said, leaning one arm over the back of her chair, cocking her head to the side, and smiling with her eyes half closed. Her loosened pale brown hair drifted over her shoulder, and she tossed it back with a careless sweep of her hand. “Mother, it is quite possible that we are living at a magical moment. Have you ever considered that?”
“Why, whatever do you mean?” Helen simpered. The waiter appeared at their elbows, bending at the waist and presenting Eulah with the bottle, wrapped in a linen napkin and held so that she might view the label.
“Oh, dear. Do you know anything about champagne?” Eulah asked her mother. “I’m sure I don’t.” She looked left and right, possibly to see if there was some gentleman of their acquaintance whose opinion could be sought, but finding no one she turned to the waiter and said, “Oh, that will be lovely, thank you.”
“Very good, mademoiselle,” the man said with a nod. He turned away from them and released the cork with a festive pop. Some sweet froth spilled over the lip of the champagne bottle, and the waiter licked it from his thumb.
“I only m
ean,” Eulah continued as the waiter poured two tiny wide-mouthed glasses of sparkling wine for the two Allston women, “that time seems to move faster, somehow, these days, I think. Why, just consider your life, Mother. When you were a girl you couldn’t cross the ocean half as fast as we are right now. You couldn’t send telegrams halfway round the world in a matter of moments.”
Helen laughed. “But of course you could! Silly girl. I’m not as old as all that.”
Eulah grinned and took a sip of her champagne to show that her loose grasp of the facts would do nothing to dissuade her from the larger point she was making.
“Mmmm. Perfect.” She sighed. “Just perfect, thank you.” She paused, savoring it with her eyes closed. Then she continued. “Electric light everywhere you go. Automobiles simple enough that even women can operate them. Cars make every place that much closer to every other place, you know, because they’re so fast. The telephone. Why, you can talk to people across the city without even leaving the house. That brings people closer, too. In a little bit we’ll get our suffrage, too, you mark my words. It’s like the world is so eager to come into itself, that it’s all we can do to keep up.” She sighed, pleased. “I’m so fortunate to be young now,” Eulah mused. “Don’t you think so? I think about that all the time.”
Helen sampled her own glass and found its sweetish fizz to be, as her daughter said, perfect. Cold and sharp and wonderful. She took another, longer sip, and closed her eyes, relishing the bright floral flavor. How did Eulah know just what was required to make a moment unforgettable? It was a real skill her little girl had. She had a way of seeing right into the heart of a situation, and knowing it for what it was.
Helen let her eyes come to rest on her child’s face, full cheeked, blushing with life, a few rebellious strands of pale brownish hair sticking up comically into the air, like butterfly antennae. Before she could think what she was doing, Helen reached forward to cup her daughter’s cheek in her hand, brushing her fingers over the girl’s young skin.
“Oh, my dear,” she said, sighing. “Have you had a lovely time? I only hope that you have.”