The Americans Read online

  Gently, she said, “You’re being very hard on your own son.”

  “On myself! I’ve raised him. Or rather, I stood by and let Carter serve in my place. Will acts more and more like a swell every day. Let him start debauching shopgirls and he’ll be a perfect candidate for society with a capital S.”

  At the end of the vehement speech, Julia nodded. “I agree. We don’t want that. But do you really think you can jolt him out of this phase merely by finding some way to— toughen him, as you put it?”

  “I think it’s worth trying. I have an idea about the way to do it, too.” Bitterness crept in. “Naturally I can’t guarantee the results, having made a botch of fatherhood most of my life.”

  Again she patted his hand. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself, dear. Sometimes your expectations are much too high.”

  He pulled a face. “Theo said the same thing a couple of hours ago.” He snatched a heavy towel from a solid brass ring in the wall.

  He was drying his hands when Julia said, “I got a letter from Carter. It was in the batch Miss Vail forwarded here from Boston.”

  Gideon looked hopeful until he saw her expression. She climbed from the tub, her diminutive body still firm and trim. He wrapped the towel around her. “Where is Carter?”

  “Someplace called Texarkana, on the Texas border.”

  “Do you have the letter in here?”

  “Will has it.”

  “So that’s why he looked so glum when I walked in.”

  Gideon pivoted and returned to the fireside. Will had laid the letter down and was staring into the flames. I mustn’t be angry with him, Gideon thought. I’m responsible for this. I sent his best friend away.

  He picked up the letter and read its three short paragraphs. Carter was working as a swamper in an establishment he euphemistically termed a parlor house. He didn’t care for Texarkana, and had made no friends save for an agreeable young nigra who plays the piano and composes lively tunes. His name’s Joplin.

  Like the piano player, Carter was thinking of quitting and moving on again.

  I can’t seem to find a place I want to stay, or anything I’m happy doing. But I am in good health and earning my own keep, so that should set your mind at rest. I will write again if I ever have something worthwhile to report—which by now I am beginning to doubt. My regards to Gideon, and a special hello to little brother.

  C.

  Gideon shook his head, speaking half aloud. “He sounds miserable.”

  “He isn’t the only one,” Will said. He rose and walked out.

  An hour later, Gideon finished a long letter to Theodore Roosevelt.

  CHAPTER II

  ELEANOR AND LEO

  i

  LEO GOLDMAN’S INDEX FINGER moved across the purple bruise under his left eye. He said to Gideon, Julia, and Will, “By some wondrous chemistry which only a mob possesses, my father—a hapless, harmless little Jew who’d done nothing but travel to Philadelphia to see his son and daughter-in-law perform—was transformed into an anarchist. Those four hooligans looked at him and saw some invisible brand that said, I was in Chicago. I threw the bomb.”

  Leo’s shoulder lifted in weary disdain. Eleanor, seated next to him, laid her hand on top of his. The gesture did little to alleviate the bitterness in Leo’s dark eyes.

  From all around the dining saloon of Auvergne, lamps cast a rich light on the dinner table, and burnished the half-inch bands of gold that decorated the edges of each piece of the china service. In the center of the plates and saucers, there was an additional decoration, also in gold: the Kent and Son emblem, the stoppered, partially filled tea bottle.

  Auvergne’s triple-expansion engine throbbed softly. She was making about eight knots, Gideon reckoned. Her top speed was fifteen. It was late May, a peaceful, moonlit evening with only a light chop on the Atlantic. Eleanor and Leo had come up to Boston for a short holiday between shows, and the family had embarked on a cruise around Cape Cod and down through Muskeget Channel into the open sea east of the village of Siaconset on Nantucket Island.

  Eleanor squeezed Leo’s hand again, then took up the story. “Papa Goldman had just stepped into the alley for some air after the performance. That’s where the hooligans saw him, and attacked. Leo heard him yell, charged into all four and drove them off.”

  Again Leo’s finger ticked against the bruise. “And earned in the process this decoration for valor. Plus a few others, which politeness prohibits me from showing you. Maybe they’re decorations for stupidity. Only a thin-skinned Jew would take on a quartet of bully boys from the Delaware River docks. Eleanor didn’t approve.”

  “No, but it was necessary.” She sounded dubious.

  Gideon said, “Damned unfortunate business.” In more ways than one. Evidently his daughter wasn’t finding it as easy to avoid anti-Semitism as she’d expected. “Your father wasn’t hurt, was he?”

  Leo shook his head. “Just ruffled a little.”

  “Feeling has been running high in Boston, too. Just last week, on the Common, a Jewish woman was mauled and pelted with rocks.”

  “It’s no wonder, Papa,” Will blurted. “I don’t mean to insult you, Leo. But everyone knows the Jews caused the strike at the McCormick plant. And started the riot.”

  Leo’s hand clenched around his napkin. Gideon was growing pale. He saw Julia’s glance of warning and did his best to check his temper. It was hard. Lately his son’s behavior had become intolerable. Thank heaven Roosevelt had finally sent an affirmative reply to the letter Gideon had written in March.

  Julia tried to reprove her stepson gently. “I don’t believe you have your facts in order, young man. The Union reporters who were in Chicago said no one knows who threw the bomb in Haymarket Square. It’s likely no one will ever know. The situation was extremely confused.”

  Undaunted by the correction, Will said, “Yes, but eight men were arrested and charged. Some of them are Jews, aren’t they?”

  “May I ask what that proves?” Eleanor asked.

  Gideon’s voice was heavy with irony. “Why, it proves the Jews are responsible, just as he said. Everyone knows that if a man worships at a synagogue, ipso facto, he’s an anarchist.” Will began sulking as his father went on. “These days, Eleanor, your brother has the answers to everything. I’m sure the professors at Harvard can’t wait to partake of his vast knowledge when he enrolls this fall.”

  Julia tried to change the subject. “Will’s already passed the examinations—did we tell you?”

  “No, you didn’t,” Eleanor said. A distinct lack of enthusiasm was evident when she added, “That’s very nice.”

  Anderson, the young blond steward, came in to clear the dishes and serve lemon ice and macaroons for dessert. Gideon kept glowering at his son. He’d hoped Leo and Eleanor’s brief vacation between plays at the Arch Street Theater would be a pleasant one. Will was doing his best to see it turned out otherwise.

  Desperate for advice—or perhaps just sympathy— Gideon had discussed his son with Verity Pleasant only a couple of days earlier. Pleasant had a boy about Will’s age. He reassured Gideon that his son, too, often made outrageous statements which he expected everyone to accept without question.

  “And he gets mad as a hornet if I don’t. Arguing is one of the major sporting activities of young fellows that age. It’s part of a lad’s pulling away from his parents and discovering who he is and what he thinks.”

  “Well,” Gideon grumbled in reply, “I wish to hell my son would make the discovery, because the exploration’s driving us crazy. Were you and I that obnoxious when we were his age?”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  Gideon shook his head. “I don’t remember.”

  Pleasant smiled at that. “Neither will he.”

  Will’s attitude—and the mention of the Haymarket—had destroyed the good mood that had prevailed during most of the dinner. These days the nation was talking of little besides the Haymarket. On the first of May, nearly four hundred thousand working
men across the country had begun demonstrating for the eight-hour day. On May 3, police guarding Cyrus McCormick’s reaper plant in Chicago had fired on men demonstrating there. One picket had been killed, several others wounded.

  The following night, May 4, trade unionists had staged a protest rally in Haymarket Square. Socialists and anarchists were known to be among the organizers of the affair. As soon as the speechmaking was over, two hundred policemen had moved in to disperse the crowd. Someone had flung a cast-iron dynamite bomb.

  After the explosion, guns appeared on both sides. When the shooting ended, seven Chicago policemen were dead from the bomb blast, ten or eleven civilians from the gunfire, and dozens on both sides were injured.

  Thanks to Theo Payne’s planning, the Union had been able to print dispatches describing the riot a few hours after it took place. Gideon still squirmed at capitalizing on mayhem to sell papers, though.

  As Will had stated, eight men had been charged with being ringleaders of the riot. Gideon’s reporters said there was no concrete evidence against them. Still, the eight were behind bars. And even the most responsible public officials were calling for them to be swiftly tried and hanged.

  At the bar of public opinion, they had already been convicted. More irresponsible elements were demanding the arrest of union leaders, as well as mass deportation of all “Jews and Socialists” within the labor movement. Because anarchists, some of them European Jews, did operate behind the cover of the movement, and attempt to direct it, all of the movement’s members—but especially the Jewish ones—had been tarred with the Haymarket brush. Gideon wasn’t surprised his son had picked up the misinformation he’d stated as fact.

  He simply didn’t know how to deal with Will any longer. Despite the boy’s one concession—listless acceptance of his parents’ wish that he enter Harvard—disharmony ruled their relationship. Will alternated between arrogance and timidity. The former was probably a device to conceal the latter, Gideon suspected. Understanding Will’s turmoil didn’t make it any easier to endure, though. Gideon was desperate. Roosevelt was his only hope.

  Anderson brought in coffee and a dish of peppermints. The steward was one of four Scandinavians who constituted Auvergne’s permanent crew. The others were Captain Erickson, Mr. Wennersten the engineer, and the deckhand Nyquist. Yachtsmen had the pick of available seamen because they paid top wages. Scandinavian sailors were generally considered the best in the world.

  The smiling steward poured the coffee from a silver pot Gideon had purchased from a descendant of Philip Kent’s friend Paul Revere. Julia, meantime, drew Eleanor and her husband into conversation about Mrs. Drew’s theater. Over the rim of his cup Gideon studied his daughter. She professed to be happy with Leo. Undoubtedly she was—in some ways—but he’d detected certain signs suggesting that happiness wasn’t total.

  She looked fatigued. Shadows showed beneath her lovely brown eyes. She never looked that tired simply from working on a role—a personation, as some actors called it. He must speak to her, father to daughter, and find out what was troubling her.

  Leo spooned up lemon ice. Slowly the strain left his face, replaced by that wonderfully impudent grin Gideon remembered from the first night they’d met. Leo had been a street boy then, running newspapers from Park Row in order to earn a few pennies for his family. Somehow Gideon found it within himself to forgive Will’s wild pronouncements, and speak to him in a friendly way.

  “Apart from being a purveyor of the truth about the Jews—”

  Julia stiffened slightly. Will eyed his brother-in-law, ready to defend himself. But Leo leaned back in his chair, relaxed and cheerful.

  “—what’s your ambition? Business? The law?”

  “Papa’s mentioned law,” Will said. The cocksure pose vanished in an instant. “I don’t think I have the head for it.”

  His favorite reply, Gideon thought. “I can’t.” He fervently hoped the coming summer might change that.

  Leo lit one of the relatively new cigarettes which Gideon disliked. Eleanor said to her brother, “But what do you want to do after you finish at Harvard?”

  Will’s answer was a shrug. Still irked by his earlier remarks, Eleanor flared. “You can’t be serious. Isn’t there anything you want out of life?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” Will shot back, smiling in a cold way. For a moment he looked years older than his years. “I want to have a lot of money—and I want people to know it.”

  Eleanor looked stunned. “Good Lord,” she breathed. “How idealistic.”

  “Now, sweet, don’t be cutting,” Leo said. “That’s my ambition too.” He spoke with increasing cynicism. “Let me give you one bit of advice, Will. If you want to realize your ambition, never become an actor. Your sister and I work like the very devil. We perform every night of the week. But we’re still thought of as luftmenschen. That means people without an apparent means of support. Once, I was sure I’d be out of that category by this stage in my life. I was counting on making my fortune in America. I’m sorry to say the goal has thus far eluded me. If you can make a lot of money on your own, do it and don’t apologize.”

  Eleanor’s fatigue-shadowed eyes searched her husband’s face, sharing his disappointment. Gideon had heard the same sort of remarks from Leo before. Leo had failed to realize the ambition he’d set for himself when he was a young immigrant boy carrying newspapers. Perhaps the ambition was an unrealistic one, especially after he decided to be an actor. Yet all the rational explanations in the world couldn’t prevent him from occasionally becoming embittered.

  With a pointed glance at her brother, Eleanor said to Leo, “But at least you aren’t so—so hard about what you want.” Will ignored her, gazing at a brass porthole surrounded by polished mahogany paneling.

  “You have to be hard about certain things in this world, my dear,” Leo replied. “Standing up for yourself, for one.”

  He turned toward Gideon and Julia. “Eleanor and I have frequent disagreements on that subject—”

  Gideon glanced at his daughter; she avoided his eye.

  Leo went on. “For a while she convinced me to ignore the slights. Turn away from people who do or say things to show they don’t like Jews. I went along. But when someone attacks your own father, you change your thinking. I refuse to turn away any longer.”

  He patted Eleanor’s hand to show he harbored no ill feelings. But there was no mistaking the anger in his eyes.

  Or the sadness in hers.

  ii

  While Anderson cleared the table, Julia took Leo to the piano to choose some music. Leo enjoyed singing almost as much as Gideon did.

  Without bothering to excuse himself, Will disappeared, presumably headed for his stateroom. Eleanor and her father strolled out to the starboard rail. Leo went on deck only when necessary. He had never learned to swim. Deep water terrified him.

  Smoke streamed from Auvergne’s rakish stack amidships. Astern, a wake was faintly visible in the black sea. A canopy of stars spread overhead, and off the bow, a few lights twinkled in Siaconset.

  Gideon leaned on the rail next to Eleanor. He lit a cigar, savoring a moment of silent companionship. He was calmed and renewed by the sea and the yacht’s soothing rumble.

  He loved Auvergne. Of course the New York Yacht Club didn’t consider the eighty-five-foot vessel to be a yacht at all. That prestigious club pretended that boats under a hundred and fifty feet didn’t exist.

  Gideon berthed Auvergne at a public slip in Boston. He’d been told privately that he stood no chance of being admitted to the New York Yacht Club because of what he’d done to Ward McAllister. So he’d applied for membership in the American Yacht Club when it was organized at Milton Point on Long Island Sound in 1883. He wanted to be able to dock at the club when he steamed down to the city on business.

  He’d received one blackball, which denied him membership. He was sure the blackball had been dropped by his old acquaintance Jay Gould, who had himself been blackballed at the N.Y.Y.C. Gould ha
d founded the A.Y.C. to retaliate.

  For all the attendant social difficulties, Gideon had never regretted purchasing the yacht. He could have afforded a much larger and grander vessel—something close to Gordon Bennett’s Namouna with its fifty-man crew, $2500 a month payroll and annual maintenance burden of at least $150,000. But this small, fast Herreshoff boat was perfectly adequate. It had three staterooms, a saloon, and a well-equipped galley. It took him wherever he wanted to go, in comfort.

  He broke the silence by saying, “I’ve been anxious to speak to you a moment, Eleanor.”

  She rapped her fist on the smooth teak rail. “I wish you’d speak to Will instead.”

  “I don’t blame you for being angry with him. He insulted Leo. If he weren’t so blasted big, I’d turn him over my knee. I will say this in his defense, though. I think he’s just going through a phase. One he’ll grow out of, I hope. He sustained a great loss when Carter vanished. He depended on Carter for most of his opinions—and for encouragement in almost everything he did. Adolescence is a wrenching experience in its own right—as you perhaps remember.” Eleanor managed to smile.

  “I’m working on a solution to your brother’s problem. But that isn’t why I wanted to talk with you.”

  From the galley came the muted sounds of dishes being stacked, crystal clinking in a washtub, the black iron griddle of the wood stove being scraped down. The deckhand, Nyquist, and perhaps even Mr. Wennersten would be helping Anderson clean up. Auvergne had that kind of crew.

  Through an open porthole they heard Leo say, “That one! It’s one of my favorites.”

  “Mine too,” Julia said. She began to play. Leo’s strong baritone rang out.

  The young folks play by the little cabin door—

  All happy, all merry, all bright—

  The sound of Leo’s voice brought another smile to Eleanor’s face. Then she asked, “Talk to me about what, Papa?”