The Americans Read online

  Still, it wouldn’t hurt to have a conference with Theo Payne and once again urge him to enliven the paper’s news columns.

  The scaffolding on Bedloe’s Island slid astern. Gideon’s mood remained as gloomy as the day. On every front, the Kents seemed to be suffering setbacks.

  Eleanor had abdicated any responsibility for the family’s future. She and Leo were only interested in their profession. This winter they were working as members of Mrs. Drew’s troupe at the Arch Street Theater, Philadelphia.

  Carter was roaming the West. Since bolting from the train in North Platte the preceding year, he had communicated with Julia just three times. He’d written the first letter on the unused portion of his train ticket. The other two letters, equally short, had been mailed from small towns in Texas. All summer long, Julia had kept telling her husband that Carter could take care of himself. He knew she didn’t quite believe it.

  Will had taken the news about Carter badly. Gideon believed that the abrupt changes in Will’s behavior last year had come about partly because of Carter and partly because of Dolores Wertman, the red-haired girl who lived farther down Beacon Street.

  In the spring, right after Carter’s -departure, Will had seemed to come out of himself, to grow more cheerful, gain new confidence, throw off his dependence on his stepbrother. Not coincidentally, he’d been calling on Dolores Wertman at the time.

  Gideon and Julia had been pleased to see Will taking interest in a girl. Even the arrival of the letter on the rail ticket hadn’t appeared to hit Will very hard; Dolores Wertman occupied all his attention.

  Then, during a July heat wave, the girl’s father had been felled by a stroke. He died two days later. The death immediately plunged the family into a financial crisis; Wertman had mortgaged himself heavily to expand his ice business. The Beacon Street house and its furnishings were the first things sold to settle the dead man’s debts.

  Impoverished overnight and ashamed of it, Dolores Wertman had moved away without giving Will a forwarding address. Within a few days, the boy reverted to his old self, hesitant and humorless. He began to talk about nothing but Carter’s absence. To. speculate endlessly about Carter’s whereabouts or state of mind. The summer of ’85 had not been a good one for Julia, but it had been even worse for Will. Gideon had suggested the European tour as an antidote. But it had done nothing to restore Will’s spirits.

  Now the family was home. Matters held in suspension during the trip had to be taken up again. Will’s future, for one. But perhaps discussion of that subject might be just the thing to prod the boy out of his despondency, Gideon thought. Certainly he didn’t know where else to begin.

  Despondent himself, he left the rainy deck in answer to the gong signaling the last breakfast sitting.

  ii

  In the first-class dining saloon, Will sat by himself, fiddling with an untasted croissant. At sixteen, he was growing taller, slimming down.

  He wasn’t happy about much these days, but he supposed he was happy to be home. He’d found the European trip a bore. Except, of course, for the periods when Uncle Matt traveled with them. Uncle Matt was full of racy stories about his colleagues, their misadventures and their mistresses. Many of Uncle Matt’s closest friends had been christened “impressionists” after an 1884 exhibition of their work. Will’s uncle had gone to some pains to explain that term to his nephew. He drew small, quick sketches to show how a human shoulder—or a cathedral such as Sacré-Coeur on Montmartre—never looked the same from season to season, or even hour to hour. To the eye of the trained observer, different kinds of sunlight—summer and winter, morning and afternoon—created distinctly different visual impressions of any subject.

  It was this observed reality which was the true reality, Uncle Matt insisted. Reality was not the skeleton and muscle structure, or the architectural design, which your brain told you was always there and always constant beneath the shifting light. In their paintings, he and his friends attempted to capture not a textbook reality, but a higher, purer one—the impression of a sunlit moment forever caught on canvas.

  But even artistic theory painlessly presented by a laughing, raffish and wondrously likable uncle was no substitute for the things that were suddenly missing from Will Kent’s life. First Dolores had moved away and then the fact of Carter’s disappearance had hit home. He lost the girl he loved and then he lost the confidence Carter had instilled in him for a time. When he was courting Dolores, he seldom heard Margaret Kent’s voice hectoring him from the past. Now he heard it often.

  And he fretted constantly about the promise he’d made to Carter. He loved his stepbrother and wanted to keep the promise. But he was listening to Margaret’s voice again. He didn’t know whether he’d ever amount to—

  “Good morning, Will.”

  Will glanced up. Gideon slipped into the chair opposite him. “Morning, sir.”

  The two table stewards appeared and hovered, all smiles at this last meal. Before the morning was over, they’d receive their tips for service on the crossing.

  The senior steward inquired about Julia. Gideon said, “She won’t be joining us, Guy. She’s a bit under the weather:”

  “Very sorry to hear that, sir. May I suggest our kippers this morning?”

  After Gideon had ordered a large breakfast and sipped some hot tea, he said to Will, “Did they take the trunks out of the stateroom yet?”

  Will nodded. Drizzly fog pressed against the huge saloon windows. The Cunarder was backing and turning in preparation for entering her slip. Will glanced at his father apprehensively. What was on Gideon’s mind? Something of importance, certainly. He recognized the set of his father’s mouth, and a certain purposeful glint in his eye.

  The senior steward served Gideon a thick golden crescent of melon. The dining room was unusually noisy. Buzzing with the conversation of people about to arrive home.

  Finely dressed people, too, Will observed. The kind of people you saw only in the first-class section. In contrast to the splendid morning outfits of the men seated at nearby tables, Gideon’s suit struck Will as plain and drab.

  Gideon finished another bite of melon. “When we’re back in Boston, we must give some thought to your future. As young as you are, you can still enter Harvard if you can pass the entrance examinations.” Will grimaced at the reference to his age. He liked to be taken for older than he was.

  Gideon went on, “I’m sure you can do that. The Latin School’s given you excellent preparation. Besides—you’re a smart young man.”

  Will said nothing. Gideon’s smile quickly faded. Once more he grew businesslike. “Naturally you’d take a general course of study at first. But it isn’t too soon to consider the various careers open to you.”

  Silence again. Perhaps it was that rebuff that goaded Gideon into going farther than he’d intended. “I do expect you to choose a career, you know. A life’s work—”

  Will looked at his father. “Somehow I thought managing the family financial interests might be enough.”

  “Absolutely not. Our money is managed by the Rothman Bank. I’ll permit no son of mine to live off an inheritance and do nothing else.”

  Gideon’s anger brought a resentful look to Will’s face. “Do you suppose there’ll be any news of Carter waiting for us?”

  Gideon whacked the tablecloth. “Don’t change the subject, young man.” The hovering stewards exchanged looks. “I know you’re upset about your stepbrother dropping out of sight. But it does no good to mention it a half a dozen times a day. I’m sure Carter’s all right.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You won’t help him by worrying. Stop it, if you please!”

  Instantly, he was sorry he’d been so sharp. He apologized. Will sat motionless. Gideon drew a long breath.

  “I suppose I should explain why I reacted so strongly to your suggestion of a moment ago. I mean about making a career of managing the family’s affairs. As I’m sure you realize, there is a long-standing tradition among the Ke
nts. A tradition of serving others in some way. Managing family assets doesn’t qualify. Many other things do, however. Being a journalist, for example.”

  “I don’t want to work for your newspaper, Papa. Or for Kent and Son, either.”

  Gideon’s lips compressed. He was clearly restraining his temper. “I can understand your wanting to strike out on your own. Read the law, perhaps—”

  “That doesn’t interest me either.”

  “Then what does?”

  “Nothing I can think of.” Will rose. “Excuse me, sir.”

  He left the table and hurried from the saloon. Gideon shook his head and swore softly. The years were passing. In another forty-eight months, he’d reach that symbolic age which had by now become an obsession with him. He was rapidly approaching the end of an average lifetime, and he was no closer to finding someone to whom he could give the mantle of family leadership. Will, his best hope, was rejecting all appeals that he think constructively about the future.

  It made Gideon sad and furious at the same time. He would have run after his son and forced him to finish the conversation except for one factor—the dislike he’d seen in Will’s eyes as they spoke.

  All sons resented their fathers to a degree. But Gideon feared Will’s animosity had somehow gone beyond normal bounds.

  iii

  During the debarkation, into the customs shed, Will deliberately separated himself from his parents. They were waiting a hundred feet farther down the boat deck.

  He planted his elbows on the damp rail and gazed at the pier below. Rather than leaving the vessel en masse, passengers were summoned to customs in groups. The first group of men and women were moving down the gangway into the shed, where each of them presented a passport— a large, unwieldly sheet of parchment covered with official seals and bearing a few descriptive phrases inked in an elaborate hand.

  Will was some distance above the pier, but even so, he was able to see the great profusion of diamonds and other gems worn by the women leaving the liner. First-class passengers, obviously. How insignificant, even dull, Gideon and Julia looked by contrast. Julia wore no jewelry except her rings. Her clothes were colorful, but in good taste. Her gored skirt of burned orange velvet, seven feet in breadth, was conservative in comparison with some of the styles and hues visible to him.

  And Gideon’s wardrobe was nothing short of drab, today and every day. Of course Will knew his parents were rich. But they didn’t show it in an unmistakable way. They weren’t interested in letting the world know they were important, as Carter said you must.

  Will still hadn’t figured out how he’d fulfill the promise to Carter. But he was positive of one thing. Being as unassuming as Gideon and Julia was not the way to go about it. The people he must emulate were the more typical first-class passengers—gaudy, rich, and proud to have others know it.

  He cupped his chin in his hands and gazed down at those splendid people with undiluted admiration. When the signal sounded for the boat deck passengers to disembark, Gideon had to call his son three times.

  iv

  After selling his upper Fifth Avenue mansion, Gideon had never entertained another thought of owning property in New York. Yet business often required his presence there. His answer to it was to rent a large suite in the old, prestigious Fifth Avenue Hotel. The hotel was located on the west side of Madison Square, which was still the cultural and commercial hub of the city that was rapidly expanding to accommodate new waves of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe.

  Gideon kept the suite year round. The cost was exorbitant: two thousand a month. But having the suite gave the Kents a comfortable, homelike base when they were in town. Gideon also liked the suite because he could look across Madison Square and see the mansion Amanda Kent had occupied during the last years of her life. The original dimensions of the residence had been remodeled out of existence. But there was a house, large and neo-Gothic, on the site. In this decade of swift change, with America losing its rural orientation and becoming an industrial colossus, Gideon found it reassuring to have a sense of his own family’s past. Of course, when he dwelled on that past these days, it prompted thoughts of the future—and he was face to face with his problems again.

  After leaving Julia, Will, and their small pyramid of luggage at the hotel, Gideon proceeded downtown to the Union’s offices on Printing House Square. There he spent an hour sorting through a couple of hundred letters that had arrived during his long absence. Many went unopened but not the one from Theodore Roosevelt, which spoke enthusiastically of Roosevelt’s ranching activities out West.

  Next Gideon went into a meeting with Theo Payne, his senior editorial men, and the heads of the related departments such as production and circulation. Gideon listened to a summary of the Union’s financial position over the last few months, to several complaints about rising costs, and to pleas for a new Hoe press as well as a retail price increase of a cent a copy. He promised to consider acquisition of a press, but refused to raise the price of the paper.

  “You don’t charge more when you’re in a circulation war with Joe Pulitzer. I’d lower the price if I could. Since we can’t afford that, we’ll hold the line.”

  There were disgruntled looks but no arguments. Payne then took over, highlighting for his employer several foreign and domestic stories which in his opinion bore watching. In May, Pierre Lorillard would be opening Tuxedo Park, his 600,000-acre planned community for the rich.

  Gideon reacted with skepticism. “You think a walled compound where the rich can hide constitutes news, Theo? I don’t.”

  “Then you don’t understand the significance of Tuxedo.”

  “Oh? Enlighten me.”

  “In my opinion Tuxedo is the first concrete manifestation of a trend which has been developing for a number of years. The well-to-do have sustained the cities in the past, but they are no longer willing to do it. They’re starting to pull out. Flee to the suburbs. They’re tired of rubbing elbows with all the Italians and Hungarians and Greeks and Russians and Poles pouring off the boats. If the trend continues for any length of time, our cities will be in a hell of a fix.”

  A moment’s reflection convinced Gideon that this editor might be on to something. The wealthy were developing private vacation enclaves all along the Eastern seaboard. More and more of their sons were attending exclusive private preparatory schools, and living in privately maintained dormitories at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Older American families, conveniently forgetting that they too were the children of immigrants, no longer wanted to associate with newcomers.

  Gideon urged Payne to send his best man to cover the official opening of Tuxedo, scheduled for Memorial Day.

  Payne touched on several other topics, saving until last the one which might be the most explosive. In May, American labor unions were planning nationwide demonstrations on behalf of an eight-hour day. The editor wanted a special appropriation to send teams of writers and artists to several major cities, in case the demonstrations led to violence.

  “If we get one gusher, as it were, it will more than compensate for the entire cost of the drilling program.” Payne covered his mouth and emitted a gentle belch, which suggested he’d fortified himself with more than facts before the meeting.

  Gideon wasn’t enthusiastic about the suggestion. “In other words, we’ll be banking on trouble. Hoping for it the same way we did in ’77, when I went to Pittsburgh and got shot.”

  “You got shot because Tom Courtleigh was after you,” Payne replied. “Besides, anticipating trouble is less opprobrious than creating it, don’t you think? Joe Pulitzer isn’t above the latter. Your trouble, Gideon, is that you’ve never stopped being disappointed over one fact.”

  “Which is—?”

  “Peace and morality don’t sell newspapers. Do I get my special appropriation for the teams?”

  Gideon sighed. “All right.”

  The meeting broke up at eight-thirty. Gideon caught a hack on Park Row and reached the hotel a few
minutes later. He’d had no dinner but he had no appetite. He discovered his son sprawled in front of the parlor fireplace reading a letter.

  Will barely nodded to his father. Gideon’s return greeting was equally brusque. He threw off his overcoat and went to find his wife.

  The sound of splashing led him to the suite’s imposing bathroom. In a large marble tub, Julia lay up to her neck in perfumed suds.

  He peeled off his jacket, threw it aside and knelt beside the tub. He received a damp kiss from Julia as he rolled up one sleeve, then picked up a sponge floating on the surface and began to scrub her back with slow, languid motions. It was one of their companionable rituals; she scrubbed his back when he bathed.

  “You don’t have to do that, dear,” she said. “You look exhausted.”

  He finished scrubbing and rested on his haunches. “The meeting was tedious. The World is steadily whittling away at our circulation.”

  “A challenge like that used to spur you to work twice as hard.” She touched his wrist. “Not that I’m urging you, mind. It’s time you relaxed a little.”

  “Relaxed?” He uttered a humorless laugh. “I just came home from a European vacation. I’ve got to deal with my son, Julia. I’ve got to take him in hand. After Carter left, I decided the boy needed more attention. Now I think I was wrong. I’m afraid I’ve been guilty of coddling him. He needs toughening.”

  “You used that very word a couple of years ago.”

  “I remember. I’m sorry I didn’t pursue the idea. Will needs to stand on his own feet a while. Find out what the world’s really like. Maybe then he’ll accept his own lot with more enthusiasm. He’s an intelligent boy, but so far as I can tell, absolutely without ambition. He can shoot passable golf out at Brookline. He can ride a horse and play a good game of lawn tennis. He can read a chart aboard Auvergne, and he’s even learned to be a pretty fair four-in-hand driver. We’ve given him all the social graces and somehow failed to give him much substance.”