Little Woman in Blue

by Jeannine Atkins

  “We can leave that behind us.”

  “Yes. I won’t write about you again.”

  May turned as John limped toward them. He said, “Anna is getting your mother to the door. I was asked to deliver their good-byes.”

  Louisa turned, spotted them, and hurried toward them. John apologized for interrupting, then said, “But I’m glad for a moment with you. I couldn’t find one at your fête, when you were surrounded by admirers. I wanted to give you something to celebrate your book.” He took a small box from his pocket. “Anna and I wanted you to know how proud we are. And grateful for all you do for our boys.”

  “Thank you.” May opened the box. The silver locket held a picture of Mother, which May lifted to her lips. “No one could work harder.”

  “Except maybe her girls.”

  May nodded, though that wasn’t how she wanted to be remembered. She hugged John, then watched him return to Anna. His fingertips were gentle on the small of her back, which was wider than it had been when they were first married.

  12

  THE GRAND TOUR

  Wind-filled sails snapped. Ropes thrummed. The LaFayette set out across the Atlantic. While Louisa, Alice, and others went below deck, May stayed by the rail, waving her handkerchief at John, who’d escorted them to the harbor. She’d said her farewells to everyone else back in Concord: kissing her parents, tucking tiny presents into her nephews’ jacket pockets, and telling Anna it must be her turn to tour Europe next.

  Now May watched John leave the wharves, passing a woman pushing a cart of lemons she’d been peddling to ward off seasickness. A boy turned with books he’d had on sale for the voyage, waving a copy of An Old-Fashioned Girl, Louisa’s latest novel, which had sold so briskly that she could not only afford to take this trip in luxury, but left plenty of money with the family. That must give her some comfort, May thought. She’d chided Louisa for worrying, but she, too, felt pangs at the thought of being so far from home for a year. Most of these thoughts disappeared as she watched the world around her turn blue with sea and sky.

  After the sun set, May made her way down the narrow stairs to the berth where Louisa lay in the lower bunk bed, wrapped in a red blanket. May picked up an invitation from the captain. “He’s hoping the esteemed penwoman will share his table at dinner. Aren’t you going to get ready?”

  “I can’t look at food,” Louisa moaned. “I wish the ship would stop rolling. You can go in my place.”

  May felt queasy, too, but she opened the trunk that balanced on top of Louisa’s and rummaged for a looking glass tucked away with her rolled and pinned clothing, guidebooks, a curling stick, a foot warmer, her portfolio, and the four bottles of champagne that Ellen had given her. May set some smelling salts and dried ginger near Louisa’s pillow. “How did women manage to fit in these berths when wide skirts were the fashion?”

  “At least hoops would help them float in case of shipwreck.” Louisa buried her face in the pillow.

  “I’ll bring you back a roll.” May lurched while climbing the stairs to the dining hall, which boasted rosewood paneling, crimson drapes, and ornate mirrors. The captain stood at the head of a table, which had rims around the edges to keep china from sliding off when the ship pitched. May offered Louisa’s regrets and introduced herself. He signaled to a servant who was collecting place cards printed with the names of others who must have felt seasick, too, and gave May the seat beside him.

  During the ten-day voyage, Louisa and Alice generally stayed below deck, nibbling crackers and sucking oranges. May read and sketched near the prow, enjoying a horizon that was entirely blue while listening to waves splash the hull and sailors sing while hoisting sails. On starlit evenings, she walked around the deck with the captain, whose white hair and beard contrasted becomingly with his tanned, weathered face. He told her about rumors of a war that might keep tourists out of Paris.

  In the morning, May passed on the news to Louisa. “It has something to do with the Germans.”

  “We must root for them. They helped us during our war, while the French sided with the South.”

  May was sorry not to go straight to Paris, but she wouldn’t waste time on disappointment. After the ship docked, she dashed around the harbor and found a ramshackle calèche pulled by two gray horses. She negotiated with the driver in flawed French but a confident tone. As he loaded the trunks, Louisa murmured about his flushed complexion and the bottle poking out of his pocket. She and Alice stepped inside the carriage, but despite their protests that it would be windy, dangerous, and unconventional, May climbed up by the driver. She didn’t want the sounds, sights, and smells of France to be blocked by a windowpane.

  As they bumped along Brittany’s dirt roads, the driver loudly recited poetry, claimed to be Victor Hugo’s best friend, and asserted that English ladies were divine, but cold. When he reached for her hand, May told him that American ladies were cold, too. She watched peasants tie up vines or carry baskets of leafy greens on their heads. Windmills spun on hilltops. Boys climbing cherry trees shouted greetings to the mademoiselle atop the carriage. She waved back.

  In the village of Dinan, they booked two rooms in a boarding house with a view of blooming linden trees and an old stone church with a picturesque steeple. The world seemed waiting to be painted. After drinking bowls of hot chocolate the next morning, May and Alice set out with campstools, paints, and easels to paint the church. When children left school for lunch, some stopped to look at May’s canvas, voicing strong views on colors. May wished she could paint the little girls with braids under round caps, wearing blue dresses and wooden shoes, who followed a nun.

  She liked painting en plein air, but she didn’t want to give up on portraits. Their landlady, who wore a linen cap with crisp folds and peaks and a white apron over an ankle-length blue gown, said she was too busy to pose, but she offered her son. Gaston sat for May wearing a bright shirt, buckled shoes, primrose-colored gloves, and a Breton hat with dangling ribbons and flowers. He was dark haired and wide shouldered. One afternoon, he attempted to show off by trotting away on his horse, but when he returned, May borrowed both his beribboned hat and horse. She galloped farther and faster than he had.

  May painted every day, but Alice more often accompanied Louisa strolling around the village, where women led cattle, tilled the soil around cabbages, tended grapevines, swept the stone streets, and mended cartwheels. Women ran almost all the shops and stalls in the marketplace, minding babies, chickens, ducks, sheep, and cows, sometimes all at once. Louisa said she was glad to spend time in such a place, and where no one had heard of the Alcotts. She even grew optimistic about her health after meeting a British doctor on holiday, who suggested that her pain might be caused by the calomel she’d taken to cure the typhoid pneumonia she’d contracted as a nurse. Apparently the medicine contained mercury, which never left the body and slowly spread its poison.

  Louisa took the iodine of potash he prescribed, and her color grew brighter and her voice regained more of its lilt. One afternoon, while she and May picnicked on black bread, sharp cheese, and strawberries nestled in cabbage leaves, she said, “I’m glad you suggested this trip. Alice has been a good friend to you. And kind to put up with an invalid like me.”

  “She adores you.” May wished she could tell her that Alice had insisted on her coming, and not the other way around, but confession seemed risky while sharing a small room in a foreign country. She satisfied herself that her lie had been worth it, if only for the doctor’s advice.

  After two months in Brittany, May said good-bye to Gaston, who was leaving to help defend Paris. More than all the talk she’d heard, the fact that a young man whom she’d seen do little but loaf was wanted by the military made her realize that the war wouldn’t end as soon as she’d hoped.

  “Empress Eugènie refuses to accept Chancellor Bismarck’s apologies. And I expect the armies have new weapons they’re anxious to try out,” Louisa said, stroking an orange cat that often visited their room. “I’m s
orry you won’t get to your museums.”

  “I suppose we’ll have to go straight to Rome, and see Paris on our way back.”

  “Alice wants to see her relatives in Rome, but I hoped we could go through Switzerland, and stay a while at Lake Geneva,” Louisa said.

  “Where you staged the proposal in Little Women?” May asked.

  “We pledged to forget about that book,” Louisa replied. “My doctor friend says the mountain air and juniper berry tea will do wonders for me.”

  “We’ll be introduced to other Americans, perhaps suitors. The people here aren’t the sort we came to meet,” Alice said.

  Along the way, they stopped at other villages, including one where they toured a great cathedral and May bought a pair of exquisite French boots. They rode a train past fields of poppies, honeysuckle, lavender, and wheat. In a pensione in Vevey, May was greeted as if she were the lady, while Alice, who wore her shabbiest clothes for traveling, was assumed to be a servant, and Louisa a prim duenna.

  At a long dinner table, they joined Americans and tourists and refugees from Paris and Strasbourg. Before long, rumors circulated that Louisa was some kind of American duchess, but only a few recognized her name. A girl asked her to write a verse in her memory book. Her mother spoke of being glad to give Little Women to her without having to fold over pages not intended for young eyes. Louisa couldn’t seem to keep away from the Americans, but May spent her time beating a Russian baron at croquet and pitching horseshoes with a troubadour or sketching him playing his guitar. She waltzed with the owner of a copper mine and a young Spaniard with titles, blue eyes, and a shaven head. She got the impression that he was likely to return to Spain to wreak havoc or be executed, but that was all right. She expected nothing from the flirtations and was just as happy strapping on a rucksack and hiking in the mountains, drawing edelweiss or goats and chamois grazing near chalets.

  ONE EVENING, SETTLING IN THEIR ROOM WITH WINE and apricots, Louisa remarked on how good Alice was to keep her company while May was sketching.

  “I know I said that Alice would be willing for you to come with us to Europe, but the truth is, she insisted on your presence,” May confessed.

  “I wondered when you would tell me.”

  “You knew?”

  “She mentioned it on one of our walks. Couldn’t you have just told me you needed me to come along?”

  “I’m sorry. I was wrong to lie. I hate to ask for so much, and be beholden. I suppose it’s how you felt owing money to Mr. Fields. I don’t mean to envy you, but it’s hard when you have so much of what I want. Even strangers love you.”

  “Gawking isn’t love.”

  “All that attention must feel like a hand on your shoulder, assuring you that you’ve done good.” May imagined that hand was as comforting as her sisters brushing her hair all those years ago.

  “Applause always ends. Then it’s me, pen, and paper.”

  “That used to be enough.”

  “Which is what I miss. I might never have written if I didn’t need to prove an Alcott could pay her bills. Poverty, people’s lack of faith in me, all the things that stood in my way kept me working, too. Here I am the renowned author I dreamed about when we were children, but the fantasy seemed better back when we played dress-up. You don’t know how lucky you are to be unburdened by fame.”

  “You mean no one expects anything of me. That’s a curse, too.”

  “I mean you can paint whatever you want with no one waiting to judge it. People can’t wait to compare whatever I write next with Little Women, and find it wanting.”

  “You forget that though I’m not the famous sister, I’m not quite anonymous either. People think they know me because they read your book. We have to move ahead. You wouldn’t want those old days back, being poor. I remember your old stories about Italian cads with gold rings and vials of poison. Why don’t you write again about palaces with towers and trapdoors?”

  “You forget I’m a proper children’s author now, renowned for my morals.”

  “I don’t forget anything. Lu, you’re rich and famous. You can do whatever you want. Why don’t you try something new? Maybe the story of a woman who does work she loves and finds romance, too.”

  “No one will believe that.”

  AROUND THE LONG TABLES IN THE DINING ROOM, guests gossiped about cheating carriage drivers and garlicky stews in Spain, the short beds in Germany, and the fires of twigs and vines that never truly warmed Italian hotels. Some French men complained about the revolution and the coffee.

  “There are troubles in Rome, too,” murmured a lady.

  “But Rome is where we mean to go next!” May put down her fork.

  “There’s always some sort of uprising in Rome,” Louisa said. “We’ll hope for the best, and that the mail gets through better than it does here. I know the trains must be used to transport soldiers, but you’d think there would be a place for a few mail sacks.”

  They began their journey south a few weeks later, stopping at an inn close to the Italian Alps. At dinner, an Englishman mentioned that the view from the St. Bernard pass was one of the finest in the world.

  “I’ve been reading about the army Julius Caesar sent there—”

  May interrupted Alice, before she had a chance to get to Napoleon’s troops. “How grand to climb one of these mountains!”

  “There’s a full moon tonight, so tomorrow you could leave before dawn and make the climb in a day,” the Englishman said. “Or some stay in a hostel at the peak where monks train big dogs to rescue mountaineers.”

  “The weather doesn’t look promising. Showers here in the valley can mean storms above, where there’s no place to hide from rain or snow,” the innkeeper said.

  “I don’t mind getting wet,” May said.

  “There’s more risk than getting wet. A dark sky makes it hard to see the edges of precipices,” the innkeeper warned.

  “May, you can’t go!” Alice said.

  “I’ll be careful. I’d love to get my first sight of Italy from high above,” May said.

  She arranged for a guide named Maurice. The next day, she woke well before sunrise, pulled on her boots, put a waterproof over her dress and pea jacket, and grabbed her umbrella and satchel. Rain fell as she and Maurice rode a carriage through the valley, under the light of a full moon. The rain pelted harder after the sun rose, when, having reached the hiking trail, May and Maurice left the carriage. They hiked up increasingly steep slopes as rain flooded the river by the narrow path, washing away much of the banking. May slogged through torrents of water and deep mud. Her dress sagged as she stumbled through the thick fog, sometimes feeling with her feet for the edge of the trail. Once she lost her footing and fell, but she caught herself before sliding over the edge.

  Maurice made the sign of the cross and said, “I’ve never been above the forests in such a storm. God willing we don’t get struck by lightning.”

  Thunder crashed. Cold water rose to their knees. May felt exhausted from bracing against the current, bearing the weight of her drenched clothing and satchel. At last they reached a hut near the steep slope before the summit. Other wet hikers huddled, cursed, cried, and prayed in the small refuge above the tree line. May was shivering, but she insisted that if she and Maurice were going to be soaked, they might as well be moving. Heading back down would be even more slippery and dangerous.

  Soon it grew so dark that she could see her feet only when lightning flashed. Hailstones beat down on her head and shoulders. She was scared but was also determined. She kept climbing, though her muscles burned and it was hard to breathe in the heavy rain and the thin air.

  At last they reached the peak. Monks carrying lanterns hurried out in the rain to usher them into the hostel, where May was offered a loan of spare dry clothes. She was too tall to fit any of the skirts they had on hand, but she overlapped several, leaving buttons undone, until the layered skirts reached a proper length. She fastened her velvet jacket and went downstairs for hot soup
, crusty bread, and red wine. After supper, she sat by a great open fire as a handsome priest regaled her with tales of terrible winters and just-barely-rescued travelers. St. Bernard dogs dozed by their feet, making a brown-and-white carpet, as he played a piano that he said had been a gift from the Prince of Wales.

  It was late when May retreated to her room. She slept soundly, and she woke while it was still dark to the sound of chanting prayers. The patter of rain on the roof had stopped. She put on her borrowed clothes and soaked boots and found a roll and flask of coffee left by her door. She pocketed the roll, hurried to the chapel for a quick but sincere prayer of gratitude, then walked out to the barren peak.

  As the sun rose, seven big, beautiful dogs bounded up, licked her hands, and sniffed her clothes, doing their job of checking to see if she was hurt. May watched thickening sunlight turn the mountains gold, pink, then stunningly white. Clouds drifted below her. Mist rose over cliffs and caverns and a faraway lake. Yesterday’s rainfall still splashed over rocks and paths. She could now see that one wrong step could have ended her life.

  She hid her face in a dog’s shaggy coat, then reached in her pocket for the pale brown roll she’d tucked away. She gave some to the dog and ate the rest. Her feet were cold in her soaked boots. Her neck felt chilled where it was touched by her hair that hadn’t yet dried. But even the ache in her legs reminded her that she’d said she could make it here, where she could see the country where she’d be going. One valley in Italy looked small enough to hold in her hand.

  13

  ROSES AND RAİN

  May, Louisa, and Alice bundled in blankets in a carriage pulled by horses trotting in and out of chasms, through stone tunnels, over rickety bridges, and along narrow, winding roads. May caught her breath at the sights of waterfalls cascading off ice. Wooden crosses marked sharp corners where carriages must have toppled into gorges. They stopped and stayed for a while in a town where May and Louisa shared a room with a view of a park and the back of a stage. They watched an opera from their window, while sipping Frascati and singing along. They traveled to Milan, where May found The Last Supper disappointingly dark, then to Florence, where Michelangelo’s David made her certain the trip had been worthwhile.