The Wapshot Chronicle - John Cheever [41]
“Thank you, Leander.”
“And other things, too. I’ve always been dutiful towards you. I would have gone to Spain and killed Sastago if you’d asked me. There’s not a hair on my body that has not turned white in your service. So why do you devil me?”
“Moses has to go,” Honora said.
“What?”
“Moses has to go out in the world and prove himself. Oh, it’s hard for me to say this, Leander, but I think it’s right. He hasn’t raised a finger all summer except to indulge himself, and all the men of our family went out into the world when they were young; all the Wapshots. I’ve thought it over and I think he’ll want to go but I’m afraid he’ll be homesick. Oh, I was so homesick in Spain, Leander. I’ll never forget it.”
“Moses is a good boy,” Leander said. “He’ll do well anywhere.” He straightened up, thinking proudly of his son. “What did you have in mind?”
“I thought he might go to someplace like New York or Washington, someplace strange and distant.”
“That’s a bully idea, Honora. Is that what all the trouble’s been about?”
“What trouble?”
“Are you going to sell the Topaze?”
“The D’Agostino boys have changed their minds.”
“I’ll talk it over with Sarah.”
“It won’t be easy for any of us,” Honora said, and then she sighed. Leander heard the tremulous sound, shaken and breaking like smoke and seeming to arise from such a deep base of the old lady’s spirit that age had not changed its tenderness or its purity, and it affected him like the sigh of a child.
“Good night, Honora dear,” he said.
“Feel that lovely breeze.”
“Yes. Good night.”
“Good night, Leander.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Moses’ career at college had been unexceptional and—but for a few friendships—there was nothing about it that he would miss; not the skimmed milk on his porridge or Dunster House upended like a sow above the threadbare waters of the Charles. He wanted to see the world. For Leander the world meant a place where Moses could display his strong, gentle and intelligent nature; his brightness. When he thought of his son’s departure it was always with feelings of pride and anticipation. How well Moses would do! Honora had tradition at her back, for all the men of the family had taken a growing-up cruise—Leander’s father included—rounding the Horn before they shaved, some of them, and on the homeward voyage lewdly straddling the beauties of Samoa, who must have begun to show some signs of wear and tear. Sarah’s habitual reliance on sad conclusions—life is only a casting off and we only live from day to day—helped her to bear the pain of having her first born plucked from his home. But where did all of this leave poor Coverly?
The relationship between the two brothers had been stormy until a year or so ago. They had fought bare fisted and with sticks, stones and iceballs. They had reviled one another and had thought of the world as a place where the other would be exposed as an evil-tempered fraud. Then all this bad feeling had turned to tenderness and a brotherhood had bloomed that had all the symptoms of love—the pleasure of nearness and the pain of separation. They even took long walks together on the beach at Travertine, airing their most intimate and improbable plans. The knowledge that his brother was leaving gave Coverly his first taste of love’s dark side; it was gall. He didn’t see how he could live without Moses. Honora made the arrangements. Moses would go to Washington and work for a Mr. Boynton who was in some way indebted to her. If Moses had any regrets or hints of regrets they were lost in the confusion of his feelings