Echo House Read Online Free PDF Page B

guess that's how it worked out, good for them, good for me. You know the story about the expert mimic? The one with the repertoire of a hundred voices in a dozen languages and in due course he forgot his own voice. He forgot what he sounded like and couldn't remember even in his dreams at night."
    Alec said, "Dad, your face—"
    "You never knew this, so I'll tell you now. Constance was determined that I take my father's place in the Senate, and when the time came put forward my own candidacy for President of the United States. She bought a little farm in Maryland so that I'd have a State to run from. That was her great dream, the ambition that would cancel her husband's lust for second best, the disaster that brought such shame on Echo House. And until that night in the Observatory, her dream was my dream, too."
    "Honestly, you don't look well."
    "But I've sold the farm, so you don't have a State. You'll have to make your own plans."
    Alec was silent.
    "You know about the Rubicon, Alec. It's only a little stream, even when Caesar crossed it. Only a few yards wide and a few feet deep, so narrow :n places you could jump across. The Rubicon makes the Potomac look like the Amazon." Then Axel threw back his head and laughed loudly, tapping the stele with his cane. "Do you know what she gave me that night for a birthday present?"
    Alec shook his head. He had no idea. His father was sputtering with laughter, his face ghostly white except for the livid scar. He reached to touch the stele, tracing the engraved rose with his fingernail.
    "A pretty little nineteenth-century print," Axel said. "Not rare. Not valuable. You've seen it many times. It's in the Observatory next to Sylvia's merry satyr. A pastel, Constance's dream come true: the doge's palace at Venice in the early morning sunshine." And then Axel's smile vanished and he added, "The next day my father gave me his most prized volume, a signed first edition of
Democracy.
Some day it'll be yours."

PART I

1. The Girl on the Bicycle
    A XEL BEHL and his son dined alone on Thanksgiving Day, 1947. Sylvia Behl had vacated in August, living in Europe, people suspected, though no one knew for sure except possibly Axel, and no one dared ask him. Sylvia was gone. Sylvia was a closed subject. She had written no one, not even young Alec; at least that was the rumor, and people who knew Sylvia believed it. She was a woman who burned her bridges.
    The community understood. Sylvia was beautiful and high-spirited and, after 1944, Axel was neither. He admitted to Billie Peralta that his life might not be worth the effort it took to live it. However, the understanding did not include sympathy, for Sylvia was a handful, sharp-tongued, temperamental, opinionated, and slow to fit into the milieu. In fact, it was generally agreed that she had never really tried, an awkward situation all around, because everyone was so fond of her gallant husband. And the boy was a standout, the sort of well-mannered intelligent boy who was a pleasure to have to dinner. The community tended to take the long view and concluded that Sylvia's desertion was probably for the best. A Washington homily fit the situation: "That which must be done eventually is best done immediately."
    So this was the first Thanksgiving without Sylvia, and a desultory affair it was, despite the best efforts of the kitchen staff; but since they were French the meal had a saucy quality that owed more to Périgord than to the federal city. After preparing dinner, the servants had been given the evening off, leaving only Axel and Alec at home, picking through the spicy dinde with its tangled collar of green beans and au gratin potatoes and pureed mushrooms and foie gras; but no stuffing or cranberry sauce or pumpkin pie or the creamed onions that were Sylvia's specialty. Father and son sat in silence, listening to the clock tick.
    Axel had turned down half a dozen well-meant invitations from friends to come up to New York or down to