New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [342]
“He really wouldn’t like the party, Charlie,” she said. “But let’s do something even better. Ask him to come to dinner with us, just a family dinner, where we can get to know him better, and talk.”
A week later, Edmund Keller, suitably attired in a dinner jacket and black tie, came to call at the house. When Charlie had first suggested he come to a party at his parents’ house, he’d been a little uncertain. He remembered that Rose had once referred to his views as socialistic at a luncheon—though it had been said during an argument, and was years ago anyway—so he’d assumed that she didn’t much care for him. But the pressing invitation he now received to a family dinner seemed to indicate that there were no bad feelings at all.
He wasn’t a fool, but the world in which Edmund lived operated in a slightly different manner from Rose’s. It had not occurred to him that if Rose Master invited him to a family dinner, it was not a compliment at all, or an expression of friendship, but a signal that she didn’t wish him to meet her friends. He walked quite contentedly, therefore, unaware that he was an undesirable.
The first thing that happened was that he met Charlie and his father in the courtyard. They were dressed for dinner, but William was about to put the car away. They spent a most agreeable few minutes discussing the Rolls-Royce, and then William asked him if he’d like to come out for a quick spin. Keller politely wondered if they’d be keeping his hostess waiting. Knowing that, for all his wife cared, Keller could have driven to Maine, William assured him it was all right. So they drove all the way down Fifth to Washington Square, then circled round, came up Sixth, back along Central Park South, past the Plaza Hotel, to Fifth. William clearly enjoyed driving his car, and he gave Keller a lively explanation of its technical merits. They got back, descended in the elevator to the garage, and then, cheeks flushed from the night air, joined Rose in the drawing room. Moments later, dinner was announced.
They ate in the dining room. All the leaves of the dining table had been removed, so although the dinner was formally served, they were quite intimate. He sat between William and Rose, with young Charlie opposite him.
The conversation was easy. He told Rose how much he admired the car, then Charlie introduced the subject of Theodore Keller and his photography, and the splendid photograph of Niagara Falls that William’s grandfather had commissioned. Theodore Keller was in his late seventies now, and when the old man finally departed, Edmund explained, he would be the custodian of all his father’s work. “It’s quite an archive,” he remarked. This led to a discourse on the Civil War, and then the conversation turned to the present war with Germany.
William and Edmund discussed whether the convoys would be able to get past the enemy submarines in the Atlantic, and they all wondered how long the war would last. Then Keller remarked that, as well as its terrible cost in human lives, the war was also a cultural tragedy.
For no sooner had the United States entered the war against Germany than an ugly anti-German hysteria had begun. Anything that sounded German was now suspect. German-language journals were being closed, while in Britain, Keller pointed out, even the Lord Chancellor had been forced out of office because, in an unguarded moment, he’d remarked that he still loved German music and philosophy.
“What about me?” he said. “My family were German, and I’m certainly not going to stop listening to Beethoven or reading Goethe and Schiller because of the war. That would be absurd. Why, I even speak German.”
“Really?” said William.
“Yes. My father could hardly speak a word, but a few years ago I got interested in German literature and wanted to read it in the original, so I started taking lessons. I speak it almost fluently now.”
From there the conversation turned to the temperance movement, which had been becoming increasingly strident recently.
“I hate those people,” Charlie declared with passion. His father smiled and