“I am a rather prominent woman.”
And I knew I was doing important work in New York, but I hated to know that I’d missed our American general Pershing’s flower-strewn entrance to Paris. I hated more to have missed the iconic words uttered when the general and his staff visited Picpus Cemetery and paid tribute.
Lafayette, we are here!
I knew, even then, that these words would live forever in the history books, and I wanted to weep with frustration that I’d not been there to hear them. Fortunately, I had Max to comfort me, and he asked, “Why not bask in the satisfaction of knowing those words might never have been spoken but for you?”
* * *
—
Parties. Social calls. Afternoon teas. I made certain Furlaud met everyone who was anyone. The Chapmans remembered him fondly as the French officer who had helped facilitate their visit with Victor. My society friends received him warmly because Allied officers were especially praised. When he walked the streets in uniform, complete strangers approached, offering encouragement. After a few weeks, I jested, “You’re such a celebrity, I dare not be seen with you in public.”
But he knew the real reason I must be at least a little circumspect about our appearances together. This was not France, after all. An open love affair was still a scandal in New York City. “Why don’t we go somewhere else? Your boys want to see Fort Ticonderoga. We can make a weekend of it.”
On a warm summer day, Max pulled up in a brand-new Ford Model T touring car, and my children piled in the backseat for a leisurely drive. They showed off their Lafayette buttons, and Max indulged them with the greatest patience. Later, when my little rogues played on the battlements, he said, “I really do think they’re wonderful children.”
I stretched on the picnic blanket. “I like to think so. Though I suppose every mother does.”
Max stretched his legs next to mine. “You’ve brought them up to be interested in the world.”
I was risking my place in that world to be with him, but I didn’t want to care. I didn’t want to care about anything but the way I felt when we were together. “I think it’s a good thing for children to have a mother who is interested in something other than tatting and tangoing. How can a mother influence her children in good things if she doesn’t know them?”
Max nodded. “But you’ve also instilled them with character.”
I liked that he spoke of my boys’ knowledge and character, rather than looking for deficiencies. He said nothing of Billy’s stammer, nor Ashley’s rambunctious nature.
“You’re a good mother, Beatrice.” He plucked at a blade of grass. “In my youth, all I wanted was to escape family expectation. There would be time enough for children later, I thought.” His blue eyes glistened with intense feeling. “Now, here I am, a man of nearly forty, in love for the first time.”
I startled. No, that couldn’t be true. “For the first time?”
He nodded. “Whatever I thought was love before you, was nothing.”
Oh, be still my heart. I wished I could tell him that he was the first man I ever loved, but that would be a lie. Instead I said, “I’m deeply honored. I love you too. I love your generosity, your pertinacity and charming personality. I love that you’re so calm and steady.”
He squeezed my hand. “With you, my darling girl, I could be happy to buy the first little white house I saw—like that one there, over the bluff—and devote myself to you and make your family mine.”
Make your family mine . . .
It was too soon to make such plans, but he was so earnest, so tender, so loving . . . and I could not discourage a soldier from the dreams that might comfort him at the front. “And what would we do there in that sleepy little house?”
“Put a few logs in the grate, read stories to the children, sleep in a feather bed, safe and sound. I could build you a trellis for your garden or shelves for your kitchen pantry, and you could cook me a cassoulet like my grand-mère’s.”
I laughed, amused by this portrait in which I decidedly did not fit. “I don’t cook; I have people for that.”
“And I don’t know any carpentry. For you, I’d learn.”
“Why, I had no idea you were so enterprising . . .”
But just as I worried that in such future plans as these, I would feel like a firefly imprisoned in a mason jar, he stood, then pulled me to my feet, guiding me to the automobile. “This is yours, you know. I bought it for you.”