She sat down on her green chair. The doctor had given her many bouquets of flowers, and a book. The book was in English, so she couldn’t read it, but it was prettily bound in dark green, with gold-stamped covers. And he’d given her a gold watch, which she kept in a small wooden box. She took it out to look at it. On the back was an inscription: Ma cher Marie, from your Thomas.
It should have been “chère.” The mistake made her feel superior. She traced the words with her finger: real gold. She held it to her ear to hear the tiny, impossibly rapid ticking. It was Swiss, from her country. Fast, reliable, perfect.
She was a good woman, honorable, but her life had split in two. This part was none of the captain’s business: she had her own life now. A doctor, a man of importance, was in love with her. He was ready to change everything for her. He was ready to leave his wife. She was powerful, she exerted an irresistible spell over him. The captain had nothing to do with this. She thought again of Joan of Arc, who was becoming an old friend.
* * *
WHEN SHE CAME HOME from school the next morning he was there on the sidewalk.
“Take me inside,” he said.
“It’s not good today,” she said.
“Take me inside.” His face was red. He glared at her, furious. She led him up the steps.
Inside she went into the little study off the dining room.
“Tell me what he said to you.”
“Who?” she said, though she knew.
McDow gestured with his head. “Him,” he said. “The captain. Le capitaine.”
“I’ve told you,” she said.
“Tell me again.” McDow stood with his legs spread, his head thrust forward.
“He say I cannot see you again,” Hélène said.
“But you are seeing me again,” McDow said, grinning. His teeth were bright with saliva. There was a small gap between the two front ones. “Why is that?”
“I do what I like,” Hélène said, tossing her head like Joan.
He walked up and down, looking at the books. He put out his hand and ran his fingers along the spines.
“Captain Brains,” he said. “Captain Braggart. He’s no more a captain than I am.” He turned to look at her. “He has no business telling you what to do. I’ll see what he says to me.”
“You must not speak to him,” Hélène said.
“I’ll decide that,” McDow said, raising his voice. “If he thinks he can tell me what to do I’ll fix him. I’ll take care of his business.”
“Business?” she asked. “At the newspaper?”
“I’ll take care of him.” McDow glared at her.
She frowned. There were so many English words she didn’t know. “‘Take care of him?’” she repeated. Il le gardera?
He nodded.
31.
March 8–11, 1889. Charleston
SHE RECOGNIZED HIS footsteps on the platform before she saw him. She watched from the window, and when he appeared she gave a little wave. When he reached her car he stepped inside, and then he was with her, his lovely smell, starch and wool and delicious skin.
“You’re here,” he said.
She took his arm and they walked toward the station. Beside them the train panted heavily.
“The children are mad with excitement,” Dawson said. “They’ve made you a surprise. You’ll have to act astonished.”
“I will be,” she said. “I don’t know what it is.”
“You’ll see.”
“I missed you all.” Now it seemed impossible that she could have left them, even for a day.
He put his gloved hand over hers, and she felt a flush of affection, and admiration for his elegant gloves, his polished boots, his lustrous new overcoat. Gratitude for his meeting her, taking charge of her luggage. For the way he put his hand over hers.
The day was cool and overcast, so the top was up on the phaeton, making a dim little private space. Dawson drove. Sarah talked in snatches, telling him things she’d forgotten, or were too digressive or complicated to put in the letters. Dawson listened. A fresh breeze moved against their faces. Clouds moved swiftly overhead, like big dim landscapes shifting across the sky.
“Now tell me about the children,” Sarah said. “Tell me everything that happened while I was gone.”
“Ethel has a new friend,” he said. “Who has special boots. Warrington plans to be an explorer.”
“An explorer! He wouldn’t survive for a moment. With his chest.” She made a clicking sound. “I should never have gone away. What else? Has Hélène been helpful?”
Hélène had been helpful, he said. “Can you do something about Jane’s boots? They creak like a sailing ship.”
“Jane’s boots?”
“They’re so noisy,” he said. “They drown us out at the table. Buy her some new ones.”
“If I bought Jane new boots the others would have tantrums,” Sarah said. “Celia would quit.”
“But do something about the boots, for my sanity.”
Near the corner of King and Calhoun Streets Chief Golden was walking with another officer. Dawson reined in the horse.
“Chief Golden,” Dawson said, “I wonder if you’d be able to stop by my office later this afternoon.”
“Is it urgent?” Golden asked. “Would tomorrow afternoon be all right instead?”
“Exceedingly so,” Dawson said. “Thank you, Chief.”
He lifted the reins. As they drove off he apologized to Sarah for the interruption, but didn’t explain.
At Citadel Green there were children running in ragged circles. They were chasing a lean spaniel, who dodged and spun, his tongue hanging out. In one corner stood a cluster of palmettos, dark corrugated trunks and shaggy heads. As Dawson drove past, he nodded to them as though they were friends.
“Why do you like palmettos so much?” Sarah asked.
“I’d never seen any before I came here,” he said. “They were so exotic. It always tickled me, to think this was my new country. They reminded me how far I’d come.”
“We should have one,” said Sarah. “I’ll give you one for your birthday. It’ll make you a real Charlestonian.”
“Aren’t I already?” he asked. “Twenty years.” He thought of Courtenay’s note.
“That’s not so long, here. There are people who think of us as newcomers.”
“Everyone in America is a newcomer.”
“True. But some families have been here for several hundred years.”
“Ah, now you’re condescending,” he said. “Because my family made the unforgivable error of not coming here two hundred years ago, when yours arrived.”
“All I mean,” she said, “is that people in Charleston go back a considerable while.”
“Going back to the war is sufficient,” said Dawson. “I think we’ve established our credentials here.” He tapped Brownie, who swung into a slow jog. “But all right. Let’s send for the tree man. Let’s order a palmetto. While we’re at it, let’s replace the trees we lost in the earthquake.”
Sarah looked at him. “Is this the moment?” she asked. “Can we afford to spend money on new trees?”
But he couldn’t afford to believe that the way he’d always lived was over.
“Exactly the moment,” he said.
* * *
SARAH’S TRUNK STOOD OPEN. The air bloomed faintly from the sachets tucked along the sides, sweet and sharp, clove and citrus.
Dawson settled into her striped slipper chair, which was too small for him.
“You’re going to break it, you know,” Sarah said.
“I’ve sat in it for years.”
“It’s stayed the same size,” she said. “You’ve grown.”
“Only more prosperous,” he said comfortably. “Now, tell me all. Tell me about Jem’s new wife.”
“Frances,” she said. “She’s very nice. She has big eyes and big cheeks. I like her. She’s sweet to Jem.”
“And what about him? Is he going to try farming again?”
She didn’t want to talk about Jem’s plans. “What’s the children’s surprise?”
“You’ll see,” Dawson said.
“Is it a flower?” She turned to him, smiling.
One afternoon he’d come home to find the children hovering on the verandah, Bruno beside them open-mouthed, wagging. As he started up the steps they started calling out. “Papa, look around! Look around!”
“What am I looking for?”
“Just look!” shouted Warrington. At the top of the steps was a century plant, an aloe, meant to bloom every hundred years. But apparently it had chosen that moment. Its spiky leaves were dotted with red berries.
Dawson clapped his brow, beneath his hat. Warrington hopped on one foot. Bruno opened his mouth, shifting from foot to foot in his excitement.
“Good heavens,” Dawson said.
“The century plant has flowered!” shouted Warrington. “Amazing!”
“A miracle!” said Ethel, then clapped her hand over her mouth, remembering: “miracle” was only to be used about the Church.
They had taken the buds from a red pepper bush and set them along the fleshy spiny leaves of the plant.
Dawson laughed, and the children came to stand on either side of him. He put his hands on their small warm heads. He felt their fine scratchy hair, the heft of their skulls, their heat.
“Remarkable!” he said. “I never thought I’d live long enough.”
Now he laughs, remembering.
“No,” he says. “Not a flower.”
Sarah smoothed the wrinkles from a dress and carried it to the armoire. As she opened the door the shadowy interior appeared. Was it a man, crouching inside? Black jacket and striped trousers, a hat balanced at the top. Her breath caught for a moment.
“That’s the surprise,” Dawson said. “It’s meant to be me. They thought you’d be surprised to find me in your closet.”
“But you’re sitting here,” she said. “How could I think you’d be in there at the same time?”
“I cannot explain the reasoning processes of your children.”
“My children,” said Sarah. She took down the hat; the man disintegrated.
“Tell me more. How is Miriam?” Dawson asked. She was a favorite of his.
“She wants to become a stenographer.” She said the word “stenographer” like “murderer.”
“Good for her!”
She turned. “How can you say that? It’s so unseemly.”
“People from good families do all sorts of unseemly things,” he said. “Miriam married a man who drinks.”
“Which I begged her not to do,” said Sarah tartly, as though that proved her point.
“But now she’s shed him,” he said. “She’ll have a good life on her own. This will make her independent.”
“So you think she should do it.”
“I think it’s perfectly sensible,” he said. “I have a stenographer. It’s the way of the future.”
“Spending her day in an office full of men. Taking money for her work.”
“You took money for your writing,” said Dawson. “So does George Eliot.”
“I needed the money,” Sarah said. “And no one knew it was me.”
“So does Miriam need it. And a great many people knew it was you,” Dawson said. “You were quite popular, Mr. Fowler.”
Sarah said nothing. She’d been secretly flattered that her thoughts should have reached other people’s minds.
“Women should earn money if they need to,” Dawson said. “Why not?”
“Miriam wants to send Lucille to the conservatory in Ohio, to study voice.” Sarah looked at him. “I’m afraid you’ll be asked to pay.”
“I’m very fond of Miriam,” he said.
It pleased him to pay for education, as his aunt Dawson had done. He’d sent money home for Tessie’s tuition. After the war it had been his turn, and he’d helped out the Raines family for years. He’d sent Nathaniel’s granddaughter, Susan, to college. He wondered what the Oberlin tuition was.
O’Hare’s long face came suddenly into his mind, with an expression so challenging it was as though he’d spoken out loud: he’s leaving for the World. Dawson felt the silver knife twist.
“What is it?” Sarah paused, holding a stack of shawls.
“Siegling turned me down for a loan,” he said.
“Is he mad?” she asked. “It’s his paper, too. How can he consider letting it fail?”
It was the first time she’d used that word. She thought it possible, then.
“What would you think of moving to St. Louis?”
She set the shawls in the armoire and turned to look at him. “St. Louis.”
He handed her the letter. “It’s an honor to be asked. I don’t know what he’d offer.”
She read it. “So you could walk away from all this. If it’s a good offer you could pay off everything and walk away.”
“Would I like being an employee?” he said. “After owning my own paper for twenty years?”
“You could ask for an interest.” Sarah sat down on the bed. “Make it part of the negotiations.”
“Yes,” said Dawson. He steepled his hands and set them against his lips. “I thought I’d made my life here.”
“We all thought that,” she said. “We can all make them somewhere else. I thought I’d made my life in Baton Rouge.”
“You wouldn’t want to leave this house,” he said.
“Frank,” she said. “Wherever you want. Really.”
Dawson rubbed his face. “It would mean I’d failed here.”
“It would not,” Sarah said. “Any more than it meant you’d failed in London before you came here. Or failed in Richmond before you came to Charleston. It would just be part of your career.”
“I think O’Hare will quit,” he said. “That will make three.”
“Ingrates!” Sarah said. “Especially O’Hare. He owes everything to you. Walk out on all of them. Siegling, Swinton, O’Hare, all of them. Where would they be without you?”
“St. Louis is more German than French,” he said.
Now Sarah looked doubtful.
“German language, beer companies. Big dark stone buildings.”
“You didn’t tell me that,” she said.
They stayed upstairs all afternoon. Later, when the office called to ask when he was coming in, Dawson said, “In the morning.” He didn’t want to see O’Hare. He got back into bed and drew the covers over them both.
* * *
MOST SATURDAY MORNINGS Dawson went to the office, but that day he told the children he’d stay at home to fix the telephore, a contraption he’d set up the week before. It was a cross between a telephone and a funicular. He’d strung a rope from the front porch of their house to the back porch of the house on the corner of Bull and Rutledge, where little Marie Lafitte lived. Dawson had attached a basket to the rope, and all week the children had hauled it back and forth, sending notes and calling out to each other what was in them. Now the children wanted a bigger basket.
“You shall have it,” Dawson said. “I’ve got a new rope.”
“I’ll tell Marie,” Ethel said, sliding off her chair. “May I be excused.” She was already gone.
“Put on your bonnet,” Sarah said.
“There’s no sun!” Ethel said.
“There’s always sun,” Sarah said, “and you only have one complexion. You mustn’t get freckles. I don’t want you looking like a servant.”
Warrington set his napkin in the ring. “May-I-be-excused,” he said, all in one word.
“You may,” Dawson said, and they vanished.
“Put on coats,” Sarah called.
The second-floor balcony looked out onto Bull Street. Dawson knelt by the railing and began drawing in the old rope, hand over hand, to find the splice. Bruno stood beside him, wagging his heavy tail. Hélène was in the doorway, watching.
The air was cool, but spring was making itself known in Charleston. The a
ir was freshening, the lawn starting to turn bright. The tight-fisted buds were starting to open their fingers.
The Lafittes’ house stood on the corner, facing Rutledge. It stood side by side with the doctor’s, both houses backing onto the Dawsons’ front drive. The children were already out on the Lafittes’ porch. They leaned over the railing, calling.
“What?” Dawson put a hand behind his ear.
“We want it strong enough to carry a basket!” called Ethel.
“A mascot?” he called back.
“What did you say, Papa?” called Warrington.
“Eh?” called Dawson.
“Food in a basket.” Ethel set her hands at her mouth like a megaphone.
“Send Bruno?” asked Dawson. “As a mascot?”
The children fell about. Warrington shouted, “Bruno!” Hearing his name the dog pushed close, stepping on Frank’s legs. Dawson asked Sarah to coil the new rope, which lay in a thick brown snarl by the door. Sarah tried to lift it, but it was heavy and she was afraid she’d hurt her back. She turned to Hélène, who was crouching, for some reason, in the doorway. When Sarah asked for help, Hélène moved grudgingly forward. Still crouching, she began to coil the rope.
A fence ran along the Dawsons’ driveway, marking the property line. Beyond it were the back gardens of the houses on Rutledge. In the back of the McDows’ yard, near the fence, stood a man holding a watering can. He was still, his eyes raised, fixed on the Dawsons.
Hélène crouched, trying to coil the rope without being seen. She didn’t want McDow’s eyes on her. She could see from his posture he was in a state. He was staring up at them. He held the watering can like an axe. Fear quickened her heartbeat. She tugged at the heavy coils.
She looked up, hoping McDow hadn’t heard. But he called her Marie. She stayed crouched.
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