No Greater Love (23 page)

“Okay, okay, I apologize.” Phillip drove the car to chauffeur Becky, but whenever it was free, Edwina was teaching George how to drive. At fourteen, he was remarkably good at it, and he was a little less mischievous these days, and she noticed that he was starting to keep an eye on the ladies. “Phillip is dumb to get stuck with
that girl,” he announced one day as they were driving along with George at the wheel, while Phillip was back at their familiar camp, keeping an eye on the younger children.

“What makes you say that?” She wasn’t sure she disagreed, but she was curious as to why he thought so.

“She likes him for all the wrong reasons.” It was an interesting observation.

“Such as?”

He looked pensive as he took a turn expertly, and Edwina complimented him on his driving. “Thanks, Sis.” And then his thoughts returned to Becky again. “Sometimes I think she just likes him because of Papa’s paper.” Her father owned a restaurant and two hotels, and they were hardly destitute, but the Winfield paper turned a far bigger profit and had much more prestige. Phillip would be an important man one day, just as their father had been. She was a smart girl, if she was looking for a husband. But Phillip was still awfully young to be thinking of marriage, and Edwina didn’t think he was, at least she hoped not, not for a long time.

“You could be right. But on the other hand, your brother is an awfully handsome guy.” She smiled at George and he shrugged disdainfully, and then glanced at her thoughtfully as they drove back toward the house.

“Edwina, would you think I was terrible if, when I grow up, I didn’t work at the paper?”

She was startled by his words, but she shook her head slowly. “Not terrible, but why wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t know … I just think it would be boring. It’s more for Phillip than me.” He seemed so serious that Edwina smiled at him. He was still so young, and only months before he had been totally wild. But recently he seemed so much more grown up to her, and now he had decided that he didn’t want a career at the paper.

“What is ‘your’ kind of thing then?”

“I don’t know …” He looked hesitant, and then glanced at her, prepared to confess as she listened. “One day, I think I’d like to make movies.” She looked at him in astonishment, and then realized that he meant it. The idea was so farfetched that she laughed at him, but he went on to explain just how exciting it was, and then he went on to tell her all about a film he had seen recently with Mary Pickford.

“And when did you see that?” She didn’t recall letting him go to the movies recently, but he grinned broadly at her.

“When I cut school last month.” She looked horrified and then they both started to laugh.

“You’re a hopeless beast.”

“Yeah,” he said happily, “but admit it … you love me.”

“Never mind.” She made him turn the wheel over to her again, and they drove home easily, chatting about life, and their family, the movies he was so crazy about, and the family paper. And as they reached the camp and she stopped the car, she turned to look at him with surprise. “You’re serious, George, aren’t you?” But how could he think seriously about anything? To her, they were the dreams of a baby.

“Yes, I am serious. I’m going to do that one day.” He smiled happily at her. She was his best friend as well as his sister. “I’ll do it, while Phillip runs the paper. You’ll see.”

“I hope one of you runs the paper anyway. I’d hate to hang on to it for nothing.”

“You can always sell it and make a bundle,” he announced optimistically, but she knew only too well that it wasn’t as easy as all that. The paper had been having some labor problems recently, and some profit troubles
as well. It wasn’t the same as when the owner was actually running the paper. And she had to keep it alive for three more years, until Phillip finished Harvard. And right now, three years seemed like a long time to Edwina.

“Did you have a nice drive, you two?” Phillip smiled at them as they returned. Teddy was asleep in the hammock under a tree, and Phillip had been having a long, serious talk with Fannie and Alexis.

“What were you all talking about?” Edwina smiled happily as she sat down next to them, and George went to change into fishing gear. He had a date to go trout fishing with one of their neighbors.

“We were talking about how pretty Mama was,” he said quietly, and Alexis looked happier than she had in a long time. She loved hearing about her, and sometimes at night, when she slept in Edwina’s bed, she would make Edwina talk for hours about their mother. It was painful at times for the older ones, but it kept her alive for the little ones, and Teddy loved to hear stories about their father.

“Why did they die?” he’d asked Edwina one day, and she had answered the only thing she could think of.

“Because God loved them so much he wanted to be closer to them.” Teddy had nodded, and then looked at her with a worried frown.

“Does he love you too, Edwina?”

“Not that much, sweetheart.”

“Good.” He had been satisfied and they’d gone on to talk about something else. And it saddened Edwina to realize that Teddy had been so young when they died, that he would never know them. But Alexis still had memories of them, and Fannie did, a little. It had been more than two years since they’d died, and for all of them the pain had dimmed a little. Even for Edwina.

“Did you pick up a newspaper today?” Phillip asked casually, but Edwina said that she hadn’t had time, and he told her he would buy one when he went to visit Becky.

He had been intrigued weeks before by the assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne, and had insisted several times to Edwina that the event had much broader implications than people suspected. He had gotten very involved in politics in the last year, and was talking about majoring in political science when he went back to Harvard.

When he found a newspaper that afternoon, he was stunned to discover that he’d been right. It was a copy of the Winfield paper, the
Telegraph Sun
, and it ran a banner headline.
EUROPE AT WAR
, the paper said, as people gathered around and stared. The assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife at Sarajevo had given the Austrians just the excuse they wanted to declare war on Serbia, and then for Germany to declare war on Russia, and within two days, Germany had declared war on France and invaded neutral Belgium as well, and the day after that the English declared war on the Germans in return. It seemed like utter madness, but in the space of a week almost all of Europe was at war with each other.

“What does this mean for us?” Edwina asked as they drove back to San Francisco a few days later. “Do you suppose we’ll get into it as well?” She looked at Phillip with concern, but he smiled and was quick to reassure her.

“There’s no reason why we should.” But Phillip was fascinated with all of it, and he devoured everything he could find to read about it. Once back in San Francisco, he went straight to his father’s paper. And when Ben turned up there too, they spent hours dissecting and discussing the news in Europe.

For the rest of the month, the war news seemed to be the center of every conversation, with Japan getting into the war against Germany, and the German air strikes on Paris. Within a month it had become a full-scale war, as the world stood by and watched in amazement.

He was still fascinated with it when he left for Harvard in early September, and at each stop along the way, he bought the newspapers and talked to people on the train about what he’d read. He had a youthful zeal about it all, but his interest in the war made Edwina more aware of it too. She read up on everything so she would know what they were talking about when she went to the paper for her monthly meetings. But she had her own problems, too, with unions causing trouble at the paper. There were times when she wondered if she could hang on to the paper for the next two and a half years. Waiting for Phillip to finish his education now seemed endless. Her decisions at the monthly meetings were cautious as a result. She didn’t want to take any chances and jeopardize anything, and no matter how criticized she was for her conservative decisions, she knew there was nothing else she could do for the moment.

In 1915, as Phillip struggled through his sophomore year at Harvard, the Great War grew more intense, and the German U-boat blockade of Great Britain began. She was still able to get mail from Aunt Liz from time to time, but it was becoming increasingly difficult. Her letters always had a sad, plaintive tone. She seemed so far away now to the children and Edwina. She was someone they had seen a long time ago, and whom they felt they didn’t really know. She was still nagging at Edwina
to
put the rest of her parents’ clothes away, which she had finally done long since, and sell the newspaper and the house and come to live at Havermoor with her, which
Edwina would never do, and didn’t even bother to mention in her letters.

The Panama-Pacific Exposition opened in San Francisco in February, in spite of the war, and Edwina took all the children to it. They had a marvelous time and after that they insisted that they wanted to go every week. But the most exciting thing of all was that in January long-distance telephone service had been established between New York and San Francisco, and when Phillip went there to the city to visit friends, he asked permission to make a call to San Francisco, promising to reimburse them.

The children were all at dinner one night when the phone rang, and Edwina thought nothing of it as she picked up the receiver. The operator connected it, told her to hang on, and then suddenly she was speaking to Phillip. The connection wasn’t great, and there was lots of static on the line, but she could hear him, and she waved to all the children so they could hear him too. Five heads clustered as one and each shouted a message into the phone, as he listened and then he sent them all his love and said he had to get off. It was an exciting change for them, and it made him seem a little less remote as they waited for him to come home from Harvard.

At Harvard, Phillip was invited to a ceremony that was difficult for him and brought back some of the painful memories that had been beginning to fade. Mrs. Widener invited him to the dedication of the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library founded in her son’s name. They had last met on the
Titanic
, and Phillip remembered him well. He had gone down with his father, and he had also been a friend of Jack Thayer’s. It was a sad reunion when they all met for the dedication, and Jack and Phillip chatted for a while, and then drifted
away. It was strange to think that they had once been in the same lifeboat, and for a day or two the local papers wanted to interview Phillip as one of the survivors, but eventually, much to his relief, they forgot him. They had all lost too much, and too much time had passed now to want to talk about it anymore. He wrote to Edwina about seeing Jack Thayer again, but she didn’t mention it when she wrote back. He knew that with her as well it was a difficult subject. She seldom spoke of it anymore, and although he knew she still thought of him, she almost never talked of Charles. It was still agonizing for her, and he suspected that it always would be. Her life as a young girl had ended that night forever.

But the real blow came in May. Phillip was on his way across the campus when he heard it, and for a moment he stopped, thinking of an icy night almost exactly three years before.

The
Lusitania
had been sunk, torpedoed by the Germans, and the world was stunned. To all appearances, an innocent passenger ship had been attacked, and she had gone down in eighteen minutes, carrying with her 1,201 people. It was a brutal blow, and one that Phillip understood all too well. All morning, as he thought of it, he thought of his sister, and how hard the news of it would hit her. It was too close to home for all of them. And he was right. When Edwina heard, she closed her eyes, and walked all the way home to California Street from her father’s paper. Ben offered her a ride when he saw her go, but she only shook her head. She couldn’t speak and it was almost as though she didn’t see him.

She walked slowly home, thinking, as Phillip had, of that terrible night three years before and all that it had changed for them. She had wanted the memories to fade, and they had, but the loss of the
Lusitania
brought them all back with a vengeance. The memories were all
too vivid again, and all she could think of were her parents and Charles as she walked into the house. It was as though she could see their faces again through a mist of tears, as she said a prayer for the souls on the
Lusitania.

And as she remembered back to three years before, she could almost hear the band on the
Titanic
playing the mournful hymn just before the ship went down. She remembered the icy wind on her face, hearing the terrible ripping, roaring, tearing sounds … and never again seeing people she had loved so much and lost so quickly.

“Edwina?” Alexis looked frightened when she saw her sister’s face as she walked through the front door, and carefully lifted her veil and took her hat off. “Is something wrong?” Alexis was nine years old by then, but Edwina didn’t want to remind her of their own loss, and touching the child’s face gently with her hand, she only shook her head, but her eyes told their own story.

“It’s nothing, sweetheart.” The child went back outside to play, and Edwina stood watching her for a long time, thinking of the people they had lost, and now those who had died on the
Lusitania.

Edwina was quiet all day, and Phillip called her that night, knowing how she would have felt when she heard the news. “It’s an ugly war, isn’t it, Win?”

“How could they do a thing like that?… a passenger ship….” The very thought of it made her wince with remembered pain.

“Don’t think about it.” But it was impossible not to think about it. Thoughts of the
Titanic
kept drifting into her head … the night of the ship going down … the screech of the lifeboats being lowered … the wails of the people in the water as they drowned. How did one forget memories like that? When did it ever go
away? She had begun to think it never would, as she lay in bed that night, thinking of her parents, and Charles, and the lives she had led with them, in sharp contrast to the life she led now, alone with the children.