Free The Little Book by Selden Edwards Page B

Vienna long?”
    “Indefinitely,” Wheeler said. “I seem to be between projects.”
    “Good reason to join us on our excursions. We as a group seem to be between projects ,” she said, with an obvious appreciation of the phrase and the idea.
    The artistic young man moved back near them and hung on the edge obtrusively, obviously wanting to be introduced to Wheeler, not because of anything about a new man in the park, but because of his fascination, it seemed, with anything connected with her. The young woman disregarded him at first, then added as an afterthought, “I would enjoy introducing you to my friend.”
    The young man, caught in the act of fawning, looked sheepish, then approached Wheeler. “Arnauld, this is Mr. Truman,” she said graciously. “From San Francisco.” The young man held out his hand and looked up earnestly. His grip was more solid than Wheeler expected. “This is my Viennese friend,” she said, “Arnauld Esterhazy.”

8
    A Strong-willed Child
    We know from her own diary entries that exist from the time that Weezie Putnam had been taken by the older American immediately, in an alarming, and certainly a disarming, manner. There was something in his eyes, she wrote later, an intensity and kindness, that brought a flushed warmth to her face from almost the moment she had seen him walking toward her across the park. And when he approached and took her hand in formal salutation, she felt a rush of emotion that she could not explain. Perhaps that is why she came up so quickly with the invented name.
    It was not new. She had used the fabrication Emily James a number of times over the past few years, whenever she felt the slightest bit daring and wild, or a need for anonymity. And she certainly could not use her other more public pseudonym, her nom de plume, her Smith College friends called it, her George Sand, her George Eliot. Nor did she wish to explain to this man she had hardly met how that assumed masculine identity was responsible for bringing her from Boston to Vienna in the first place.
    Any such reflection as to why she was here brought her inevitably to the fateful meeting with Miss Hewens, her former headmistress at the Winsor School for Girls in Boston, who had invited her into her oak-paneled office during Easter time of her senior year in college and suggested rather pointedly that Weezie think of travel.
    Miss Hewens knew her family well and knew Weezie well, knew many of the family secrets, and—we can conclude—had not made the suggestion lightly. “Weezie, dear, you really ought to think of going abroad after graduation. With your love of music, you must journey to the source. Perhaps we could find you a pension in Paris or Vienna.” When Miss Hewens spoke, her girls listened. She was much more than a headmistress to each of them. She was their senior European history teacher, a mentor, a friend, a confidante, and in Weezie’s case, a trusted advisor. For Weezie, Miss Hewens was a substitute for the mother who had died when she was eight, the wise and patient grandmother she had wished for, the close friend who could see beyond the superficial to the essence of being twenty-two, optimistic, and full of energy to do something special with life, even something radical. Miss Hewens eyed her carefully on that afternoon and as always chose her words with unmistakable care. “We would all like to see if perhaps a young woman using a certain pseudonym mightn’t be able to write something of significance.”
    The sudden mention of the pseudonym made Weezie blush. Until that moment, she had thought, naïvely so, that no one at home in Boston—let alone her former headmistress and someone so close to her family—had known of his existence or, more importantly, his identity.
    The idea of a masculine pseudonym had come to life one giddy evening in a Smith College sitting room. “I think it is stuffy rubbish,” Weezie had declared. “With all the venturesome modern music being