I wished that Heaven were real to me, and wondered why it was not, to me
or any contemporaries I knew. The Victorians had been able to leave
things to God—or the next generation. But the sound of guns and the
knowledge of the immediacy of death and the desire to live as swiftly as
possible, in the little time that youth and capacity to live swiftly,
lasted—had got between that next generation and any whispering of
angels. Perhaps that was it—it did not matter why, really—we had to
get on without Heaven as best we could.
* * * * *
Nellie had found a way of changing the subject again.
“Patricia, I wish you could advise me. I’ve done something I think is
very wicked.”
She had never done anything more wicked in her life than beg a
prescription from father, for wine to use in making _sauce madère_.
“What is it, Nellie?”
“I’ve taken out naturalization papers.”
I did not see why that was wicked, but I thought it surprising; because
father had tried for years to get her to become an American citizen,
since she had lived in the United States most of her life, and had
bought property here with her savings. She had always refused. “Forswear
my allegiance to the crown my brother died for?” (that was just about
her phrase,) “never!”
“How did you happen to do that, Nellie?”
She reached for a box, that held money, a rosary, a prayer book, and
snapshots of her nieces in Canada. She extracted after some search, a
newspaper picture of Al Smith, coming out of a Cathedral after his
daughter’s wedding. She showed it to me.
“There,” she said, “doesn’t he look like a good pious father and
husband? The doctor says he’ll be running for President next year, and I
got naturalized so I can vote for him! He looks like an honest
Christian, and I thought I should.”
She sighed a little. “I do feel dreadful though, because it’s as if I
were throwing my allegiance in the face of my brother and that friend of
his, in the picture over there. It makes them seem away off somewhere.
That I should live long enough to give up my allegiance to the crown—
Do you know, Patricia, if it had been in the Old Queen’s lifetime I
could never have done it.”
“Nellie, Nellie,” I said, “the story should be captioned ‘Queen
Victoria’s Death Gains Al Smith One Vote.’”
She did not understand me, but she smiled. “Now don’t you be making fun
of me, child; it was a great difficulty I had, deciding. You go to bed,
and rest, and I’ll send that Little Nellie up with your breakfast in the
morning.”
* * * * *
I had a week-end of conversation with father about Massachusetts
politics, and about his difficulties with the real-estate on which he
depended for a competence, now that he was old, and retired from active
practice; a week-end of too many and too elaborate meals thrust at me by
Nellie, who produced in swift succession every dish I had been eager for
when I was young.
Sunday afternoon (it was Nellie’s “day out” and Father was resting), I
sat by a window of the long livingroom, and read “Vanity Fair”
(Thackeray’s not Condé Nast’s), and had tea; and watched the dark grow.
From that window I could look down the slope of Milton Hill, and see the
reflection of the sunset dim on the icy river.
Roger had taught me to skate on that river, a lifetime ago, or the day
before yesterday; some indeterminate time past. I thought about the
Heaven that Nellie was so sure about; and tried to imagine Roger going
on to be a statesman of some other country beyond that winter sky
outside. It seemed conceivable. Perhaps it would seem realler some day,
if I grew to be very old.
Meanwhile there was New York and the advertising business.
While a cab waited at the door, and I said “good-bye” to father, who was
not well enough to go to the station, and to a wet-eyed Nellie, who
urged me to write him more often, I wished I did not have to leave him.
Families—strangers who knew one well when one was a child.
In the cab, I lighted a cigarette, and wondered if Lucia’s train from
Portland would connect with the five o’clock to New York.