Voyage Out: The Complete Series

Chapter 2-2

“Yes, mother.”

“And you will have Charlotte for company.”

“Charley? Charley’s back?”

“According to her aunt, yes.”

Poor Charley. I could not imagine how put out she must have been to be recalled back to New York on a matter so frivolous as a holiday to foreign shores to hunt for a husband.

“Charley’s really coming? For the same reasons?”

“Charlotte is accompanying you on the Grand Tour, yes. As to how she will discharge her responsibilities, that I cannot say. I don’t imagine that Meredith Elyot will be able to impress upon her niece the gravity of what is appropriate to her position any more than she has done for over a decade. I am sure Charlotte will send the young men there on a merry dance as she has done here in New York and New England. Certainly it is a comfort to know that the two of you will have friends there to rely upon such the Hartleys and Matthias Vandermeer.”

I knew Charley—that is, Miss Charlotte Grace Elyot Masterson of Montrose, Park Avenue, New York—from an early age when, despite our contrasts in temperament and character, we became—by a mere coincidental social and geographic propinquity—friends. Our families inhabited the same circles and we went to school together. The customarily sheltered manner of life I had known before Charley gained new vistas when she beckoned me to that secret trapdoor leading to all the enviable freedoms that being the daughter of a loving and progressive-minded father who had frequently been called away on business and, later, the ward of an indulgent spinster aunt could offer. As a child, I was timid in unfamiliar company. I became less so in Charley’s company and as I grew older, but my admiration for Charley’s insouciance, the way she met the world as an equal, never expecting anything more or less, had never diminished. It was this quality of fearlessness which brought Matthias into our sphere.

Charley and I had never been especially naughty, willful, or troublesome as children, but we had chafed, as all children seem to do, at the restrictive regime of school and private tutors. When not attending to our routine lessons, Charley and I had liked to escape adult supervision to go exploring in Central Park. There had been a great deal to explore and not enough afternoons to devote to it. The Terrace, the Mall, Promenade and Menagerie were lovely but they had been, more often than not, like public thoroughfares full of common crowds and bustle where there was always a high probability that some passing acquaintance might recognize us and report us to our respective families. Our preference had been to find the quieter patches of wilderness in Central Park (which would have met parental disapproval if they had known of it) although we liked visiting the Boathouse just as well where we were always assured of some interesting activity to watch on the water. Anything that promised an escape from our sequestered privilege held a will-o’-the-wisp attraction for Charley.

We had been coming back one afternoon from watching the sailing of model boats in the fountain, walking towards the Plaza Entrance at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street through a leafy corner of the park, when we saw two older boys circling around a lanky boy, taunting and pushing him about. The boy had been, physically, as large as his tormentors, but he had evidently been pacific in nature and had not fought back. Charley had frowned thunderously and stomped over, shoving the nearest bully away from the boy and planting herself in front of him, daring the bullies to come at her and provoke the condemnation and consequences which befell those who dared to touch a young female, especially one who was clearly of genteel upbringing and possibly a daughter of the privileged Manhattan haut monde. The pacifism in the boy had vanished at the sight of Charley. He immediately straightened up to his full height and tried to step protectively in front of her—which exasperated Charley no end. The bullies—their faces vaguely familiar as the pompous cousins, Henry and Miles, of the Calverts of Washington Square—had sniggered at their jostling but loped away. After they had gone, the boy said to Charley: “Thank you, but you shouldn’t have interfered,” to which Charley had replied, coldly, unable to hide her annoyance, “You’re welcome,” and turned to walk away.

The following afternoon, we had again been walking through that section of Central Park and heard the sounds of a scuffle: it turned out to be the same boy and his bullies. This time the fists had come out and were flying all over the place.

“The i***t,” I heard Charley mutter.

“We should call a policeman,” I urged Charley.

Charley agreed but she only nudged me to go. “Hurry,” Charley said, walking towards the fight.

When I returned with a reluctant, disbelieving policeman, it was to find that the fight had broken up, the two bullies rolling on the ground clutching themselves in pain, and Charley bickering with the boy at a rapid clip. The police officer’s disbelief had vanished at once. He sternly reprimanded all three boys for disrupting the peace with their ungentlemanly behavior—their parents were to be informed and whatever punishments they deemed fit to be dealt out would be awaiting each of the participants when they returned home—but he had been all solicitous sweetness towards Charley, coddling her with all the concern due to a damsel in distress and insisting on escorting us back to her aunt’s house. Charley had fairly bristled in mutinous silence.

“What happened?” I asked her afterwards.

“The i***t spotted the police officer coming before any of us and took the blame on himself,” she said.

“Charley, you—you didn’t! But the other two went along with the story—why didn’t they—?”

“And let the world find out they were beaten by a girl?” Charley said, a smirk finally dimpling her cheeks.

About a week later, we saw the boy again: he was alone, walking through the park untroubled by bullies. He stopped when he saw us, regarding us with his tawny amber gaze but remaining silent as if uncertain how to greet us without causing offense.

“Where are your friends?” said Charley.

The boy smiled slowly, uncertainly. “Haven’t made any yet,” he replied.

Charley could be intimidating but she was also fair-tempered. She held out her hand. “I’m Charley Masterson. This is Lucia Bernhardt.”

We shook hands.

“Matthias Vandermeer,” the boy said. “Pleased to meet you both—Miss Masterson—Miss Bernhardt.”

“Charley. Lucia,” said Charley. “Pleased to meet you, too, Mr. Vandermeer.”

The boy smiled. “Please, Matthias.” Then: “‘Charlie’?”

“Charlotte,” Charley conceded.

“Why were those boys picking on you, Matthias?” I asked. “Are you still in a lot of trouble?”

Matthias shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

“The Calvert boys are still in a lot of trouble.” Charley offered this sliver of intelligence with a twinkle of delight. She had made detailed inquiries. Matthias graciously accepted this offering in the friendly spirit in which it had been given.

“Maybe you should pick a different route to walk next time,” I suggested.

“A driver used to drop me off at school at first and collect me afterwards but I prefer to manage on my own.”

“Where are you headed?”

Matthias told us.

“That’s a long walk.” Charley was practical-minded. The discussions which preoccupied New Yorkers regarding which were or were not the fashionable residential streets, and cataloging the residents of those streets accordingly in the natural hierarchy of New York’s cosmos, sailed past her ears, exciting barely a ripple of attention.

“I don’t mind it.” Matthias looked at us and very cordially thanked us for taking the trouble to help a stranger.

Charley held back a snort. “It would have saved a lot of trouble if you’d fought back the first time,” she told him. “You seemed quite capable of it.”

“But it wouldn’t have been a fair fight.” Matthias grinned suddenly. “They can’t even stand up against a lone girl.”

Charley rolled her eyes and called Matthias an i***t, but allowed him to walk with us all the way to the heroic statue of General William Tecuseh Sherman designed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens marking the Plaza Entrance where she coolly invited Matthias to tea and gave him her Aunt Merry’s address on Park Avenue.

We saw Matthias from time to time during term when he came to meet us outside Miss Spence’s School after our classes or when he came to call on Aunt Merry (always bearing roses which closely resembled the cosseted blooms in Montrose’s rose garden) and when he joined our rambles through Central Park, lending us his knightly protection and the benefit of his experience and navigational skills in penetrating the Central Park wilderness as well as expanding the boundaries of our regular walks to encompass many delightful afternoons exploring the Metropolitan Museum, the many bridges of Central Park, and the Lake.

Matthias did not drop the acquaintance when he attained his majority and went off to college, where his universe must surely have expanded, nor during his later college years when he was apparently summoned, but he declined, to leave permanently for Europe (an invitation, Matthias dismissed vaguely, to join a financial establishment based in London with branches in several capital cities), preferring to remain in New York. We were thankful but could not understand his attachment to the world which, on the whole, continued in its shabby disregard of him for reasons beyond our fathom and, frustratingly, even beyond the explanation of the gossips. His surname—for surely none of the stigma attached to Matthias himself—attracted disdain and closed doors but Matthias had long stopped caring.

When Matthias grew up into a towering Viking-framed giant, his formidable physical presence warded off much of the ruffian persecution he had been subjected to as a boy but he never really left his fighting days (and Charley’s trailing righteous indignation) completely behind. Matthias had never been a brawler. He had beautiful manners, a cool, steady head, and a bottomless font of affable restraint. Matthias may have grown intimidatingly big and powerful but he was without a mean bone in his body. There had been only two occasions on which he allowed himself to be provoked into using his physical advantage over others. The more recent occurrence had been against my former fiancé.

On the morning of a golf game planned with Charley and Matthias at the Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, Charley’s blithe natterings about who was going to win the forthcoming game while she was picking through the golf irons were interrupted by a sharp intake of breath when I had accidentally spilt juice on my sweater and Charley discerned angry purple tracks of bruising on my arms and collarbone which I had tried to hide. Charley was on her way to confront the vile, good-for-nothing excuse for a man, a golf club still gripped in her hand, when Matthias waylaid her and dragged her back, locked her in her room and put Aunt Merry and me outside to stand guard, while he took himself off alone to find Nate Knowle. Nate was given a sound and thorough thrashing.

The other time occurred at the Lloyd-Chase house party held on the eve of an intercollegiate game between Yale and Dartmouth to which we had been invited by Gideon Harford, one of the many sons of Aunt Merry’s society friends whose previous attentions had been (very civilly) ignored by Charley.

Charley had been if not precisely smitten then at least a little bit taken with the undeniably flattering renewed attentions of the newly minted star sophomore football quarterback that all the girls had been swooning over all summer. It had been very unlike her. She had been unimpressed at first but his persistence and charm had worn down her scoffing. It had been her second frothy saccharine romance (a nascent “understanding” with a West Point cadet of the previous summer had shriveled up and died in a fiery irreconcilable “misunderstanding” within the space of a day ending in that cadet being kneed in the unmentionables), of which Charley was sure she would be thoroughly ashamed when she came to her senses, but her humor did not shield her from the devastating rage and self-loathing when she found out, via an accidentally overheard conversation, that nailing the uppity, untouchable Masterson girl had been the subject of a frat boy wager. Gideon Harford and several of his team players had been benched for a full season afterwards and his nose never grew quite as straight as it had once done.

Nate Knowle and Gideon Harford and his drinking buddies had learnt that there were consequences to making a girl cry.

Charley had been furious over the overheard conversation, but she had been even more furious with Matthias for getting himself into trouble for engaging in fisticuffs for no good reason.

“Why were you crying?”

“I don’t need Matthias to beat up every jackass who Matthias thinks is insulting my honor. He—”

Her blotchy cheeks and smoldering red eyes gave the lie to her words. “Don’t be specious, you were upset. He saw you crying, Charley. You can’t cry and not expect Matthias—”

“I wasn’t crying! I wasn’t upset! If he hadn’t weighed in and gone berserker on Harford and his cronies, I would’ve taken care of it and Matthias wouldn’t be moldering in lockup, waiting for—” Charley stomped her foot in frustration.

“What else did they do, Charley?”

Charley stilled in her umbrage for an infinitesimal moment. “Else?” she echoed.

“You never cry, Charley. You don’t care about what others say about you. You have an even temperament as hard to ruffle as Matthias’s. What else did Gideon Harford and his friends do?”

“Nothing that required Matthias to—”

“Charley.”

Charley’s mouth compressed into a pale, thin line. “This uppity, untouchable Masterson girl will continue to hang around with the Vandermeer riff-raff, even if he is an i***t, and the jackasses will rue the day that they—”

“They said that about Matthias?”

“They said a—you won’t tell Matthias, will you?”

“No, of course not.”

“Those damned jackasses haven’t grown up one bit, Lucia.” Hot, enraged tears once more carved a path down Charley’s cheeks.

“Well, if you had tried to take them all on by yourself, it would’ve made Matthias even more—”

“I wasn’t planning to physically assault them. I do have some sense of proportion.”

“Then what...?”

“I went into the powder room to pull myself together...and found a bottle of Ex-Lax purgatives in the cabinet. I was going to put some in their beers when they weren’t looking. Harford would’ve gotten an extra special helping if Matthias hadn’t come and rescued him.”

“Oh, Charley, if you had—I almost feel sorry for them.”

“I don’t,” Charley said grimly.

Matthias was steadfast, good-natured, considerate and solid. Every year, he kept to our friendship, always ready to attend on us or help when called upon, sometimes (“meddling” according to Charley) when he was not. New York had not changed as Matthias had grown up: it did not treat Matthias as kindly as he treated her, and a great deal less kindly than Matthias deserved. Despite this, even during the periods when he was studying or traveling abroad, he faithfully dropped in on us, always bearing roses and confectionery, to visit and appear at the events on the social calendar for which he had received requests, instructions or orders to attend from Charley and me in addition to the formally issued invitations, some of which Charley and I had had to resort to extraordinary Machiavellian subterfuges to obtain beneath the noses of the social arbiters. The nameless something continued to stalk Matthias with animus. Malice is a very small town.

It was perhaps inevitable, but nevertheless a horrible shock, when Matthias finally left for Europe. Undeterred by the distance of an ocean, Matthias remained entwined in the fabric of our lives. Mentions by Charley’s Aunt Merry, gifts arriving like clockwork on special occasions, regular correspondence, and seeing him at remote intervals at the Hartleys’ family engagements, however, only made his absence more keenly felt.

“It will be good to see the Hartleys and Matthias again,” I told my mother and went to start packing.