The question, then, is what brought about this decisive event. What accounts for von Spee's inopportune arrival at the Falklands? Why did he order his ships to flee? How did so gallant and skilled an admiral, a man known for his precision, bring about the destruction of the German East Asiatic Squadron and turn, forever, the tides of the Great War?

--Fleet of Misfortune: Graf von Spee and the Impossible Journey Home

14th January 1912
Hertfordshire

My dearest Max,

I'm unsure as to where you are, but I'm sending this to Grete at Gjellerup Haus in the hopes she's had word from your household and will forward it.

Alice and I have found ourselves in quite difficult circumstances. One month ago Father passed on and I left my position in Lancashire immediately. Please don't be angry with me for not writing sooner. I needed time to determine in exactly what station this placed me and, I'm afraid to say, it's worse than I first suspected. How I should like to curse the textile industry and this endless muddle of strikes. The cost of Father's faith in English labour, it now appears, has been nearly his entire life savings. By my most modest calculations, the sum left can sustain Alice and me no more than six months. I cannot accept a new position unless I can bring her with me & even your extravagant letter of reference (indispensable demeanour? really, Max) cannot outweigh the obvious difficulty of Alice let loose in a respectable household. The solicitor, who looks to be younger than myself, seems convinced an impoverished twenty-two-year-old woman could not possibly tend to the needs of a nineteen-year-old. He "most emphatically advises," for Alice's welfare, for my own welfare, and for the good of the community, that I place her in one of the Crown's colonies at Bethlam or St. Luke's. Well, I, in turn, have told him in most unladylike terms that I should sooner lock myself away than Alice. Incarceration is the growing fashion these days. Even as I write this, the Feeble-Minded Control Bill is edging its way through both houses of Parliament. Progress -- that's what the doctors and the legislators like to call it. If it passes, I'm not sure what we will do. Alice has only me, now, and I cannot let her down.

I know we made no promises to one another. But all this past year I was happy so long as I dreamed I might see you again. What could be grander than to think of you giving up everything and coming for me? Forgetting your responsibilities, your life, arriving on my doorstep with a handful of lilies from your garden. How silly that hope now seems. Did you ever realize how childish I could be? But with Father gone, my sense of the world has darkened. I've lost the conviction that life eventually works itself out for the best.

I know your frustration at my position. I, too, wish things were different. But to be angry at my situation is also to be angry with Father. How can I blame him for trying to better our prospects? I hope you believe, as I do, that my education was a far more valuable gift than any investment. That I cannot do with it, as you have always wished, something more than help children conjugate verbs and crayon maps of the world, is simply the lot I have inherited. It is best that I accept it. Please don't think me weak for my resignation. I still share your spirit of fight, only I haven't the means to indulge it right now.

I am here in England and I've not had word from you for months. Your duties no doubt prevent you from writing, but no longer can I afford to hope you will one day appear at my door. We've always known you have obligations to your family & your career. What point is there in my wishing you will awake one day able to extract yourself from the life you've led for years? I understand clearly now that it will never happen -- I will never again see you.

I cherish the time we had together. Not for a moment do I regret our conversations on that shaded bench, the walks in the garden -- it still makes me laugh to think that you, of all people, know the name of every plant and shrub. Who would have suspected your love of nature? It's awful really; I cannot see a flower without thinking of you. But when you left, I could no longer stay in Strasbourg. I could not face your family alone, with only the faintest hope you might return for a day or two in several months.

I know you worry Alice will consume my life, and you think I must look after myself. And these past few weeks, in my mind I've listened again to all your arguments. But, dearest, I have to ask myself: what life? Alice is, in truth, the only companion I've ever known. For nineteen years she has been my life. To tend to her is to tend to myself. Please understand.

I suppose I must finally come to it: Professor Beazley (Father's colleague in the Department of Anthropology, and yes, the "jungle man" of whom I sometimes joked) has agreed to look after Alice and me. The University has granted him Father's position and he has made intelligent investments with his family's large estate (if only he could have advised Father) that should keep us quite comfortable. We are to be married within the month.

Will it really be so difficult to teach him a thing or two of charm? Perhaps a short lesson in the art of laughter? Never have I known a man so ill at ease; only reading and writing, and the occasional mapmaking, seem to relax him. Maybe if I constantly keep a book propped before him we might forge something of a normal house! No. Oh, Max, what is wrong with me? I shouldn't joke at his expense. After all, if he hadn't proposed -- well, Alice and I would soon be wandering the East End. Can I really ask for more?

Max, please do not imagine I've chosen Professor Beazley over you. I have simply chosen to care for Alice rather than wait for the impossible. I wish I could tell you this in person, but I haven't that luxury. Perhaps this will make things easier for you. Perhaps you've always known this would happen. Long before I did, I think you sensed there was little hope for us. But for me this marks a change, a painful awakening. There is no one but you to whom I can write, no one but you who would understand.

Isn't it strange? I will be a married woman by the time this reaches you.

Forgive me.
Elsa

Elsa sets her pen down, folds the letter, and tucks it between the pages of her morocco journal. Edward will soon be home. She will post it in the morning, after he has left for the university.

Behind the tall glass windows of the sitting room, dusk is falling. Elsa stands, strikes a match, and lights each branch of the candelabrum. The shadows move across the curtains, the burgundy wallpaper, the thick lacquer of the walnut armoire. From every corner, elegance gleams. And carefully, like a child cautioned against sudden movements, she gathers her black skirt and inches toward the divan. Elsa still cannot imagine this place as her home. It reminds her too much of the houses she has worked in, of the vast, chandeliered dining rooms, the cold carpeted entrance halls. In Strasbourg, in Max's house, she moved with even greater caution, always kneeling to straighten the corner of a rug, fluffing each gold-fringed pillow as she rose from the sofa, as though the prudence of her movements might make up for, or disguise, the negligence of her emotions.

As she settles on the divan, Elsa feels content with what she has written. Just the right balance of affection and firmness has been struck. She knows that the tone -- so much more adult than her other letters -- will surprise him. Now she is the one offering apologies. Max won't have expected her to end things; he has always known the depth of her feelings. But surely he will understand the circumstances. Even if it means upending his ideals about liberty, his belief that all objectives can be reached through ardor, skill, and determination. That was, after all, what he said he admired in her -- her ardor. And it was what she loved in him. But of what use is it now? For all his sympathy, Max has never known what it means to be trapped.

Elsa glances at her journal, the envelope's corner protruding from its pages. How odd that a few sheets of paper bear her decision, that at any moment she can hold them to the candle's flame, or never post them at all. But her decision is final, and has little to do with Max's knowledge of it. After all, it will be months before the letter reaches him. Perhaps it's for herself she has written, to understand once again her predicament, the unsatisfying idea of what now seems her future.

On the table beside her lies Edward's most recent book: The Indigenous Peoples of British East Africa. She extracts the ribbon marking her page and begins reading. The book so far engages her -- and how nice, finally, to have the luxury to read such a comprehensive study. Religious practices, domestic life, transfer of property: To each of these Edward has devoted a detailed chapter. Her father always praised his field research skills. The language, though, she finds too formal--A monthly ritual to grieve the dead allows adolescent members of the tribe to display emotion in the form of tears, yelps, or occasional song -- but she hasn't told Edward so. "It's engrossing!" she has announced across the dinner table, the white tablecloth stretched between them like a snow-covered boulevard. "Edward, you really have known such excitement! You've seen such wonderful places." And she has watched a brief smile nudge the reserve from his face: "I am delighted, my dear, that your attention is captured by those studies which have occupied the bulk of my days. The world is filled with other wonderful places ready for study. Perhaps someday you can share in my endeavors. Really, I am touched, in the utmost, by your interest in my work." It is, thinks Elsa, the least she can do. And how could she not be intrigued by such far-off lands, and the faint promise he might take her to one?

In the center of the sitting room's carpet, Alice is sprawled on her stomach, drawing pictures. Her stocking feet, flung up behind her, crisscross in distracted excitement. Her long brown braids, Elsa's morning handiwork, has already unfurled into a riot of curls. Every few minutes Alice leaps up and rattles a picture in front of Elsa: "Beazley," she announces with a smile. From years of hearing their father use that name, Alice cannot be persuaded to call him Edward. "Wonderful, dearest," Elsa replies. Then she straightens Alice's dress, tucking away the lacy edges that have crept up the bodice, the straps that have wandered out of place. A fortnight earlier, Alice lay slung across the chesterfield, her skirt twisted like a bedsheet about her waist, her stark white bloomers perforating the dark shadows of the room. When, having returned from the university, Edward stepped in to say hello, Alice's indecency startled him. She should at least prevent him further embarrassment. Now, beneath the fastidiousness of Elsa's hands, Alice squirms and sighs and huffs -- the opening notes to her temper's looming aria.

"Allie dear, I've an idea." Elsa whisks her expression into exaggerated delight. "Would you draw me another?"

Then Alice drops down, her black skirt ballooning, and begins again.

Of course, before Edward returns, Elsa will have to hide the drawings. They emphasize too strongly the hollows beneath his eyes, the crease of concern across his forehead; they will no doubt surprise him. "It's strange to say," Edward remarked several nights earlier, "but you do make me feel so much younger." He is fifty-five and has never been married. An elderly woman has kept house for him for years, but the presence of two new women in his home clearly unnerves him. Each day, he consults Elsa about the curtains, the wallpaper, and the house itself--We shall arrange everything to suit you, Miss Pendleton. (Please, she reminds him, try to call me Elsa.) Edward seems as uneasy in this house as she is. It belonged to his parents and fell into his hands as the only child when his father died. For the past fifteen years he has lived amid the brocade curtains and the china and the glistening cutlery of his childhood. But rather than growing accustomed to what has for so long surrounded him, he seems a guest in his own home. Only now, with the arrival of Elsa and Alice and their crates of pinafores and hats and yellow-back novels, does Edward realize he is not a visitor. He is the host, and his new role absorbs him. Anything Elsa touches or appears to avoid, he notes--The mahogany side table, I see, is not to your liking; of course it can be replaced easily enough. And perhaps you think the table linens should be a cheerier shade? -- as though women are yet another foreign culture of which he has embarked on a study.

Max is only five years younger than Edward, but having a family lent him a certain ease with women. With Max it was always, if not simple, at least relaxed. Sobbing, giggling -- nothing could unnerve him. Despite his inherent sternness, he always understood the language of affection.

Elsa knows, however, that at some point in Edward's past there was a woman. A third cousin from Dover? The niece of the Royal Geographic Society's president? She was never told the particulars; only her father's allusions to the fractured romance revisit her. "Old Beazley has suffered his fair share of amorous afflictions. Enough to send him all the way to the African continent. I've often thought the world would still be entirely unmapped were it not for the impetus of a broken heart." Edward himself makes no mention of it, and if this woman left any impression, it is only one of unease. How else to explain his discomfort with women? He is, after all, reasonably handsome. He carries himself with a stolid intelligence, harbors an intensity of introspection she remembers admiring as a girl. She had always thought him quite playful, much more so than her father; from his travels he brought them wooden dolls with seaweed tresses, rosewood boxes with golden keys; at the end of their puppet shows he would applaud wildly, once snatching the flowers from the mantelpiece vase and tossing them to her and Alice as they curtsied. But with each year that passed, as Elsa moved closer to adulthood, he seemed to grow suspicious of her, even mystified, and reserve, like ill-fitting armor, settled over him. The presents vanished; the laughter quieted. An awkward formality tinged his once-blithe greetings. And now all his actions seem studied: the hand rising tentatively to touch her shoulder; the brass knob of her dressing room door inching like the dial of a vault near its final number. Ill at ease -- her words to Max, emphasized for his consolation, were true. But is it fair, she wonders, to blame Edward for lacking the flirtations, the effortlessness, the experience, of a married man?

At least he wants to please her. She knows she can rely on his patience with Alice despite his clear distress at her behavior. Whenever Alice approaches, he steps back as though afraid. And the bloomer incident, for which he spent the whole evening spilling apologies--I am not accustomed to knocking. An old bachelor with old habits. I beg of you both to forgive me -- has caused him to rush past the sitting room whenever he hears Alice within, or to make enough noise as he approaches that any indecent exposure can be adjusted. But was she not honest in her characterizations of Alice? Did he think she was exaggerating? He must have seen some of her hysterics with Father -- he visited the house quite often while Elsa was abroad; Father said Beazley seemed fond of Alice. But Elsa also warned that she would not, under any circumstances, stand for Edward treating Alice as a dullard. Alice could read and write, could identify every country on the globe by its outline, could rattle off every species in Swaysland's guide to ornithology. Birds: They were Alice's true love. One of the first books Elsa read to her was Birds Through an Opera Glass, and ever since then Alice has asked for nothing but bird-watching books. When Edward proposed and invited her and Alice to move into the carriage house on his property until the wedding, one of Elsa's stipulations was that Pudding, the African Gray parrot their father had bought Alice for her birthday, accompany them.

"He's quite agreeable. In fact, he barely speaks," said Elsa, recalling the sad fact that Alice had been able to teach Pudding only a few words--bird, kiss, superior (their father's favorite adjective), and Alice -- the words Alice thought essential.

"My dear Miss Pendleton. I would never think to separate Alice from her beloved pet. I myself am quite fond of animals. And I have even lived amongst peoples who worship them as gods."

"I would just like for you to be perfectly clear," said Elsa, "as to Allie's situation before any permanent--" She stopped, not wanting to sound too distrustful, too calculating.

"Before arrangements are made?"

"Well, yes."

"I understand. Before you accept my proposal you would like to ensure Alice's protection. Yes, Miss Pendleton, I can ensure that."

His words calmed her, and Elsa was thankful he understood her fears; but she knew her demands were a performance. She was pretending she had other options, that she might, if Edward didn't accommodate her, refuse his offer.

"But it's much more than protection, Edward. It is respect I want to ensure. Alice is different, yes. Sometimes difficult to comprehend. But she's much more intelligent than you suppose. She understands and feels a great deal she isn't able to articulate in the way that you and I would. But she is really quite like us. Only her emotions tend to sometimes get the best of her." Emotions, Elsa did not say, that come in the form of fits.

"Some would say, Miss Pendleton, that emotions are the best of us. If it is respect you are concerned with, I assure you, Alice has mine. In toto."

"Are you quite sure?" But as Elsa said this she sounded, even to herself, too insolent.

Quietly, Edward offered, "Yes. . . . Quite sure." But the words were tinged with discomfort.

"Good," said Elsa. "Excellent. Yes. We are perfectly understood, then."

Elsa glances down at Alice, still sprawled on the carpet, drawing slowly. Her large brown eyes, inches from the paper, swallow each detail of the emerging image. "A delicate beauty" is how their father described her, her features chiseled, the bones poised beneath the skin at graceful angles. Her face was a pale oval framed by thick brown braids. Since infancy, Alice's behavior drew awkward stares in public. But when she turned sixteen, people began to stare before any peculiarity had revealed itself. Pulling open the heavy wooden door of their house in St. Albans, stepping into the bright morning sun, she could seem, for a moment, the loveliest of young ladies, mulling over, as she twirled her parasol, the gentle phrases she would use to decline her latest suitor. But then a curtain of dullness would descend. It was not idiocy, Elsa knew, nor was it a feebleness or weakness of mind; it was a disengagement. As Alice's lower lip slackened, her eyes would seem lost, as though staring inward at some private thought, some personal theater, for minutes, sometimes an hour, until something -- a spark in her mind, an abrupt noise beside her -- flashed alertness back into her face, and she reawakened, stunned and eager. It was at these moments hysteria seized her. As her mind bounded back to the scents and sounds of a simple room, to the sight of familiar faces, Alice would mark her return with a squeal or a jump, sometimes stomping wildly on the carpet as her heavy braids flopped and swung, as if to celebrate a distance traveled, a place seen that no one, even Elsa, could comprehend.

"Beazley!" Alice shouts again. In the dim room, her slim white hands, like two crescent moons, curl around the edges of the paper. In this picture, Edward's brows converge in a violent V of concern.

"Lovely," says Elsa. "Shall we make another?"

Elsa closes Edward's book. Through the near-black windowpanes she can see the streetlamps have been lit, a necklace of gold along the dark line of Heslington Road. Several bicycles whisk by, and Elsa sees a white Rolls-Royce glide to a stop in front of a house on the corner. In their father's neighborhood there was only one motorcar, that of Dr. Benthrop, who used it for emergency house calls. But their father, even when Dr. Benthrop offered him a ride, preferred his bicycle. It was one of his many theories -- an indolent body resulted in an indolent mind. When the Ladies Humbers were first sold, he immediately bought one for Elsa and one for Alice, and insisted they cycle thirty minutes each day. At first Alice refused to mount her bike. Not until Elsa, seventeen at the time, cycled around Alice in clumsy orbits would Alice touch the strange steel frame. It took six months of Elsa running alongside, one hand guiding the center of the handlebars, for Alice to keep her balance. What excitement, though, when finally Alice could ride. Elsa loved their outings, cycling along the narrow streets in the late afternoon, stopping at the chemist for Father, Alice placing the small pouch of sassafras root or bottle of wheat germ oil in her wicker basket. As they rode home, Alice would shout from behind "I'm after you!" and then Elsa would cycle faster, sweat prickling from the roots of her hair. The momentum delighted Alice, and when she finally dismounted -- cheeks flushed, eyes tearing from the wind -- she demanded to know when they could go again. Almost every afternoon they cycled like this. But when Elsa left to take up her first position in Heidelberg, their rides ended. Alice was despondent. And in a letter from her father Elsa learned that Alice, frustrated she was not permitted to cycle alone, had thrust a hatpin into the tires of Elsa's Humber.

In the distance, a church bell sounds six slow gongs. Alice, her crayon clasped like a scalpel, appears to make slow incisions in the paper. Alice needs her; of that much Elsa is sure. It would be unthinkable to leave her in another's care, to place her in a colony, away from the world. Too much like punishment for being different. And it would mean only that Elsa had not wanted the task of caring for her own sister. What she has chosen, a life with Edward where she can look after Alice, is best. And writing to Max, a necessity. Such is life, thinks Elsa. Such is fate. Choices are luxuries, and Max will have to understand that. How can I begrudge my own situation, thinks Elsa, with Alice here, a reminder, always, of how fortunate I am? I am fortunate, she tells herself. And a heavy-limbed resignation settles over her as she recalls the letter--Can I really ask for more? -- as though persuading Max of her acceptance has finally solidified her own acceptance. Once he receives the letter, it will all be over, those distracting months left behind. How many evenings of one's life could be spent lying awake in troubled speculation? Such nights were a symptom of a life without responsibilities -- a life that ended when her father died, when she returned home and stood in the cemetery, clasping Alice's hand. Only then did she understand how frivolous her former grief had been. As she stood before her father's coffin, her eyes refused to dampen. When it was time to say the final prayer, she fell silent. Weeks passed. She could not cry; she could not speak of her father. The loss had lodged within her for good.

Copyright © 2003 by Jennifer Vanderbes