Harry glanced at her, amused. “Not just Ben but also his mother. Are you going to try to get on her good side?”
“Why would I need to? Stop being cheeky. Oh, Harry, you have to defend yourself.”
Getting up, he took his books and walked over to where Esther was sitting by the window in the leather armchair. He sat on the low footstool by her side, and, looking up at her, said, “But it’s so much more fun when you come to my Pyrrhic rescue, Esther. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Patting his head, Esther laughed. She had a good, hearty laugh, like a man’s—though she herself was nothing like a man. She was subdued and proper, never flirtatious or coquettish, but what reduced her occasional severity and gave her an ephemeral air was her skin: it was the color of parchment because she never went in the sun without a parasol, even on Revere Beach. Her translucence made her seem fragile, but despite her narrow bone structure, her thin face and nose, her slender slits of eyes, Esther was tough and strong. Her voice was the genteel voice of a well-born woman who was aware of her position, and yet its alto pitch made it sound as if she could swear like the sailors on the Long Wharf. She didn’t swear, of course. But Harry knew what she was capable of, should she so choose. “Let’s have it, Esther. What will it be about today? My future?”
“Yes, and no. Your and Alice’s future.”
“Ugh.”
Alice was the only child of Orville Porter who owned the Massachusetts East Timber Company, which supplied Herman Barrington with lumber for most of his construction projects. Alice was sporadically enrolled at the Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women, which had a few years earlier begun offering university-level instruction to women, though without the attendant Bachelor of Arts degree. It had also renamed itself Radcliffe College, after Ann Radcliffe, a colonial philanthropist. When they first met, Ben had mentioned to Alice that Harry’s family were also colonial philanthropists, to which Harry said, how philanthropic could they have been? They still have all of their money. This made Alice laugh. So though Alice wasn’t swayed by Harry’s position in life, she was swayed by Harry.
They started dating, cautiously. That was two years ago when he was a sophomore; now he was entering his fourth and final year, and it occurred to him that they were still dating, cautiously. They were both still young, he reasoned, Alice barely twenty-one. Also, he had a few poorly developed concerns about their mutual suitability. He was bookish, while she was very much her father’s daughter, going on river drives up north to inspect lumber, walking in her thigh-high waterproof Wellingtons on the logs, wielding her branding axe and searching for imperfections. Did Harry really want Alice searching as assiduously for his? The fallen trees had no chance under her stern boots. She was known for limbing and debarking them herself. Mostly he felt he was not good enough for her, and it was only a matter of time before she discovered it.
“Don’t worry,” Harry said to his sister. “I have everything in hand.” He looked down at the books on his lap, one of them a book he was thinking of doing his senior thesis on next year, a short story by Edward Everett Hale. Under it was volume four of the ten-volume History of the United States by George Bancroft, which he was supposed to be reading for his advanced seminar, but wasn’t.
Harry didn’t tell Esther how just last week he overheard from the open bedroom window his father and Orville and Irma Porter below on the lawn discussing the topic of their children. They talked of the proper way to do things in Boston: a family heirloom ring, a formal announcement, a modest but well-publicized engagement dinner, followed by a long, productive period during which Harry graduated and settled on a career, while Alice methodically planned their extravagant and very public nuptials. A high society ball, a fancy affair, the wedding of the new century. The way the three parents extolled the romance of it, Harry himself was drawn in.
Esther leaned into him. “He plans to ask you point blank when you intend to honor him with grandchildren.”
Harry whistled. “Isn’t that putting the cart before the horse?”
“He will ask you to put the horse before the cart.”
“At Sunday dinner? Well, better perhaps than the usual.”
“If by better you mean more mortifying, then yes. Why put poor Alice on the spot like that?”
Harry rubbed her hand. “Don’t fret, Esther. Look forward to the plank walk. I do.” They sat side by side for a few minutes. Esther seemed restless. “What’s the matter with you today?”
She shrugged. “Do I look nice?”
“As always.” And she did, with a bow in her ruffled peach blouse, a camel-colored skirt, subdued beige high-heeled pumps. Her fingernails were buffed and shiny, her makeup was light, she even wore lipstick. Esther always tried to look especially attractive on Sundays. She just seemed more anxious than usual today. “What? Tell me.”
“Nothing.” She sighed. “I think Father might be bringing someone for dinner. He told me to dress up a little.” She waved Harry off. “I don’t want to talk about it. How was your week? What are you reading? For school?”
“Yes, because you know me, school’s the only time I crack a book.”
“You know what I mean.”
“It does happen to be for a seminar I’m taking. Colonial America. Visions and Dissertations.”
She was distracted. “Did you and Ben work last week?”
“All week. The boats never stopped coming. Father is going to have to do something, convert one of his other buildings perhaps. We’re out of room. We rented the last two apartments Friday.”
“Talk to him about it at dinner. How is Ben?”
“Ben is, as always, fine. Soon you will see for yourself how he is.”
She stared out the window.
Presently a carriage pulled up and a youngish man popped out, not Ben. Esther sat up straight, emitted a small sound of distress and got up. “Put away your book, Harry. Someone’s here to see you.”
He glanced outside. “To see me?”
“Well, who is that man?”
The young clean-shaven gentleman was nervous and portly as he lumbered through the gate and to the portico.
“He looks as if he hasn’t started shaving yet,” Harry remarked.
The doorbell rang. “Louis, the door!”
Louis Jones, their butler, the man who ran the house, had been with the Barringtons since before the Civil War. They were supposed to call him Jones, but throughout their childhood they called him by his first name because that was what his mother had called him, and they couldn’t alter this when they got older. Louis and Leola were escaped slaves who made it to Boston in the late 1850s. They were hired by Harry’s grandfather and lived in the back of the house in the servants’ quarters, working for three generations of Barringtons. Leola died at eighty-seven a few years ago. Seventy-two-year-old Louis was almost completely deaf but pretended he wasn’t. “I hear the doorbell, you impertinent children. I’m right here.” He moved slowly, hobbled by arthritis and cataracts, but still retained his sharp tongue, his sharper memory and his shock of white hair. Esther and Harry joked that if he weren’t careful, the rest of Louis would soon turn white too. “I’ll drop dead before that happens,” Louis would retort.
“Who do you think that is?” Harry said to Esther with a glint in his eye as they stood in the doorway studying the young man at the front door.
“How should I know?” Under her breath she tutted.
At the back of the house, a heavy door creaked open and Herman Barrington’s firm footsteps echoed down the hardwood, darkly paneled center hall. “Elmore!” they heard him say. “Come in! How are you? Thank you, Jones. Would you please fix the creak in my office door, it’s getting