Afternoons with Emily

by Rose MacMurray

  Elena was delighted with our guest. She introduced my trustee to her bear (formerly Maple Syrup, now Zeus), and Mr. Daniels shook his paw. I saw that he had a natural ease with children; he neither patronized nor pretended an interest that did not exist. As they chattered comfortably, I wondered whether he had children of his own. As he reached for the teapot, I glanced down quickly at his left hand and saw that he wore no wedding band.

  After breakfast Elena took Mr. Daniels to the brook to visit her pool. Within the hour, Mary Crowell came, and we worked through the morning, answering Mr. Daniels’s questions and showing him the sketches and suggestions made by Ethan Howland, who, with the war over, was once again in private practice. Gradually, emerging from the collage of architectural renderings and printers’ passes, I could almost see the expansive shape of the life ahead for me. As Mr. Daniels listened intently to my presentation, again I thought I felt his respect — and my confidence swelled. It was a heady thing to have the money for a dream!

  In the afternoon Mr. Daniels and I were to meet with President Stearns; I suggested we leave well before the appointed hour so I could show him something of our community. As we made our way to the village center, we walked by The Evergreens and The Homestead, though the high hedges guarding Emily’s house precluded a good view. We went cross lots, three fields away, passing through stands of hemlock and yellow birch to West Cemetery on Triangle Street. There we began to talk about the role Amherst had played in New England’s history, and New England in our nation’s. Mr. Daniels observed that the headstones marking the remains of our grim Puritan forefathers didn’t look nearly as severe in death as he imagined they had in life.

  “Yes,” I said, “we New Englanders begin to enjoy ourselves only after we are dead.” We both laughed.

  By the time we passed the ivy-covered Johnson Chapel, one of the oldest buildings at the college, the late-day sun was bathing the facades of Morgan Hall and South College, and the Holyoke Mountain Range in the distance wore a rosy corona.

  During our meeting with President Stearns, I was a little distracted, once again, by Mr. Daniels’s steady regard across the conference table. But soon we were in deep discussion with that venerable educator. I was astonished to find that nearly three hours passed in his company! He had been impressed by my talk in the temple last month, and as I had hoped, he agreed to lend us a large former laboratory for our Amherst kindergarten. Our plans were now truly under way.

  In the evening we dined with the Crowells and some would-be kindergarten parents. There was good talk about education, and I was proud of my trustee’s intelligence and learning. Our glances kept intersecting as he studied me and as I tried to get a better look at him. I decided his fine eyes were more topaz than ocher.

  Mr. Daniels was supposed to take the morning train, but he lingered at breakfast, ill at ease. Finally he asked if he might speak to me privately.

  “I have a confession to make, Miss Chase,” he told me in the library. “I must tell you I was here under false pretenses.”

  I was startled by this admission. “You mean you’re not my trustee?”

  He laughed and held up a hand. “No, I’m surely that.”

  “Then whatever do you mean?” I settled into a chair by the window, gesturing to Mr. Daniels to take the seat beside me.

  “I came to Amherst in person because I’d already met you, and I wanted to know you better.”

  This explanation only confused me more. “If that is true, I’d remember it. When did we meet?”

  “In Lake Forest this June. I was so thin and weak after starving at Andersonville that the Farwells invited me to swim at their beach and get my strength back. When I changed in Davy’s room, there was your lovely portrait — very serious and earnest, with a column and some clouds.”

  “That must be Mr. Gardner’s pose.”

  “I knew your story very well, of course, and we had exchanged letters about the foundation — but seeing your face changed everything. You became a real person, and I found excuses to be in Davy’s room. I swam so often that the Farwells must have thought I had grown gills!”

  He chuckled at his own foolishness, and I realized the implications of this information. He liked what he had seen in that portrait! I felt a slight blush rise in my cheeks and hoped he didn’t notice. I certainly didn’t want him to feel he had embarrassed me.

  “When I was well again,” he continued, “I decided to come here and see if I could help you with the foundation. I could have sent someone else. That was how I deceived you, Miss Chase, and there! ” He slapped his thighs and stood up. “That makes me an honest man again! Now I’ll go to New York and talk to Alan Harnett, and see the property he has in mind. May I come back on Friday?”

  “You will be very welcome, Mr. Daniels.” And so he departed, leaving the house a little bit emptier.

  And so I began to set our plans in motion. Since President Stearns had agreed to lend us the space for our kindergarten, I decided it was only appropriate that he name the school. When I called on him with official papers, I asked him to do so. The mild, sad gentleman smiled at me from his tragic scholar’s face.

  “Your kindness does your father credit, Miss Chase. I would be obliged if you would call your school the ‘Frazar Stearns Center.’ My son loved all young children; I would like to hear their voices saying his name.”

  It was a fitting tribute, and one I was happy to make. He signed the papers with a flourish, and preparations could begin in earnest. I looked forward to being able to report this news to my trustee.

  On Friday, Mr. Daniels returned to Amity Street full of enthusiastic plans.

  “Alan Harnett and I got on like a house afire,” he exulted. We sat on the edge of the stage in the temple, eating apples. “He’s a splendid fellow; Mr. Jewett thinks the world of him. He found a house on Washington Square that is just what we need — a four-story brownstone, with a big walled garden for the children. It was very reasonable because it needs renovation, but you’ll have to remodel it for the school’s needs anyway. I think Ethan Howland should go to New York soon and make us some drawings so we can get started. We’ll need some big changes.”

  “Can we really pay for all this, Mr. Daniels?”

  “Easily. We’ll do our Amherst school out of accrued income and borrow from the trust to buy the house on Washington Square. We’re not going to stint ourselves; this ‘show window’ kindergarten is very important to us.”

  I noticed his easy use of “we” and “us” but said nothing. I also observed my pleasure in hearing him do so.

  “So I’ll go back to Chicago and talk to the bank and the other trustees — and draw up the papers. May I come to you again in three weeks, Miss Chase?”

  “Please do. Our autumn colors should be at their finest then.”

  “And one more thing — since we’ll be working together from now on, would you call me ‘Roger’?”

  “With great pleasure — and you must say ‘Miranda.’”

  When he was ready to leave in the morning, he seemed reluctant. “There is still so much to talk about . . . so much I want to learn,” he said. “I suppose it will have to wait until I come back to Amherst.”

  “That will be in only three weeks, Roger,” I reminded him with a smile. But when I walked him to the door and shut it behind him, three weeks suddenly seemed like a very long time.

  With Roger gone and Father resuming his teaching duties, I found a Monday to visit Emily. She was paradoxical toward the Frazar Stearns Center. She relished every detail involving gossip and personalities (“Stay clear of Rebecca Scott. She’s a stormy petrel!”) and yet was oddly uninterested in the big educational changes we were introducing. (“As long as everyone learns to read, I can’t see what all the FUSS is about!”) Yet she was sweetly generous about my pleasure in the ongoing work of starting our kindergarten.

  “Didn’t I tell you your TRUE CENTER was nearing? I just didn’t know what it would be!”

  We discus
sed the new First Congregational Church, a stylish Romanesque monster that was rising directly across Main Street from the two Dickinson properties, and of which Emily highly disapproved. The lovely old church on the green, so Greek and gracious, was to be unfrocked and deporticoed and given to the college to use for offices. She restated her rejection of the new shrine.

  “Austin took me out to the fence the other night,” she explained, “and I saw all the view I wanted to. What a SWARM of cupolas and minarets and slate EMBROIDERY! Father will dedicate it, of course, but without my presence. I don’t think God will be there either. He’ll never find his way in!”

  “Emily, you should have a Boswell!” I told her.

  “Should I, Miranda? Perhaps when I find my ‘manager,’ he will do that for me too.”

  I pricked up my ears. “Your manager?”

  “Manager, or agent, or whatever he will be called. Someone who won’t edit me, of course — just see my poems are printed EXACTLY as I wrote them. And do the arguing and bartering for me so I won’t have to HAGGLE.”

  “Who is he, Emily?”

  “Someone worldly, with a thick skin and a firm will. Someone tough! When I meet him, I’ll surely recognize him. Meanwhile, I spin my poetry and hope my diligence will turn flax to gold, as it does in any good fairy story.”

  It was one of the best afternoons with Emily I could remember in recent months. This time, as I walked home, I was pleased to be able to look forward to future visits with “the myth.” Perhaps she was capable of engaging in life beyond her tiny circumscribed space after all.

  I placed an advertisement in the Republican for a teacher “who loves to learn.” The first young woman who applied was very familiar. Her heart-shaped face, enlivened by cheerful brown eyes, her slim figure, her light brown hair, were all somehow known to me. How was this possible?

  “You’re wondering where we met.” She smiled. “You came to some of my classes in Springfield, when you were still at the academy. I remember you took notes on everything I did.”

  “Why — it’s Miss Randall!” I exclaimed with delight. “You sit with the children on the floor, and I’ve done so ever since!” I was overjoyed at this reunion.

  “First I saw your merry Leo alphabet and remembered your pretty name,” she related. “Then I read your inspiring article in the American Student. Now I hope you will consider me for the job in your school, when it opens.”

  “Miss Randall, I don’t have to consider,” I assured her. “The position is yours! I remember you as a truly gifted teacher, and it will be a privilege to work with you. I will ask Mr. Austin Dickinson to draw up your contract.”

  When Roger returned to Amherst, it was mid-October, and the Pelham Hills were aflame. He was entirely professional, with a large number of papers to explain to me.

  “Mr. Austin Dickinson expects us in his office tomorrow morning,” he informed me. “Your father will be witness. Then the foundation funds for the projects may be released.”

  That evening Ethan brought his building plans from Springfield, and he and Roger and I worked on them till midnight. I was fascinated by the new process of architectural adaptation. Should we build window seats for classroom storage? Did we really need that door?

  It was marvelous to be working alongside these accomplished men, my opinions and ideas respected. I knew that mine was a unique privilege — there were many women as educated as I who would never know such equality. At least, not yet.

  After the ceremonial signings at noon, Mrs. Austin entertained us with an elegant luncheon at The Evergreens. I could see she was very taken with my trustee and anxious to oblige him.

  “Isn’t there some way the Dickinsons can help the foundation, Mr. Daniels? We are Miranda’s particular friends in Amherst, you know,” she said, draping a paisley shawl loosely around her shoulders. Small diamond drops sparkled smartly from her ears.

  “Your family could assist us greatly by spreading news of the foundation around the Connecticut Valley,” Roger informed her.

  “Then we will do just that,” she declared, tapping him lightly on the shoulder. “I see this as a very local story: Miranda, an Amherst girl; Davy, a student at the college; and the center for our faculty children named for another Amherst hero. Everyone reads the Republican,” Mrs. Austin told Roger. “We will write our friend Sam Bowles and ask for his help.”

  In the late afternoon, Roger asked me a little shyly to walk with him under the new canopy of maple glories and birch woods. The slanting sun lit the sassafras and teaberry bushes along our path.

  “I want to tell you about myself, Miranda — about what has led me here to this beautiful place and to this important day.”

  “I would enjoy that,” I said.

  He took my arm and we strolled along a rutted path, crowned by a fiery display of leaves.

  “My parents were both from Portland, Maine,” Roger said. “My mother’s family was in lumber; Father was a lawyer. When I was six, Mother died. Father decided to make a fresh start, and he brought me to Chicago — which was not long before a fort and a prairie then, in 1840, but an expanding area. Chicago and I grew up together!”

  I smiled, enjoying the image.

  “I went to Harvard College,” he continued, “and then to Harvard Law School. I started practice with my father; we have our own firm — Daniels, Jones, and Sellers. Most of our work concerns real estate transactions — deeds and leases, the instruments by which property is conveyed.” Roger looked at me, I thought to see if I wished him to continue. I nodded, and he went on.

  “Chicago has grown so quickly,” he said proudly, as if the city’s accomplishment were his own; it was endearing. “It is lucrative work. For instance, the Farwells, who owned a good deal of the downtown lakefront, came to us for their contracts and advice. That was how our families met.”

  We continued to walk, and now Roger looked straight ahead, his eyes never straying toward me as they had earlier.

  “I married Cecilia Blake of Lake Forest in ’57, when she was twenty-two and I was twenty-three. We went to Italy on our honeymoon. Among her other talents, Cecilia was a pianist, and while we were there we were able, through letters of introduction, to meet a composer she admired. She had often played his Tuscan Concerto, and she was quite thrilled to be able to speak with him and even to play for him.”

  So that was it. Roger had taken me for a walk to confess that he was married. The size of my disappointment surprised me; I hoped I managed to conceal it. Then I remembered he wore no ring. Surely there was further explanation ahead.

  We had reached the rapids near Swift’s Bridge, and here Roger stopped speaking, staring fixedly into the water. Then he turned to me, his eyes dark with pain.

  “That is a memory I hold very dear, for it was one of the last times I saw Cecilia so happy — a beautiful young woman at the height of her life and talent and fulfillment, and yes, I will say it, her love for me . . .”

  His voice trailed off for a moment, then steadied. He seemed to have needed the time to gather strength to continue. “In Rome, Cecilia contracted brain fever. It was, is — for she didn’t die — a most terrible illness, and for weeks I thought she would not survive. She, we, endured days of burning fevers, delirium, and convulsions, for which the doctors could do nothing. At times she knew me, at times not, but always she begged me to stay with her, to save her from death. And I did, or the doctors did, although sometimes now I wonder if it was for the best. For eventually the illness affected her mind, reducing her to an infantile state from which she has never recovered. Her personality became that of a four-year-old whose most coherent utterance now is a childish voice asking for ice cream.” He drew in a deep breath. “And this from someone who had been the most beautiful, brilliant, and generous woman I ever knew,” he finished.

  I took his hand. “I am so very sorry,” I said, unable to be more articulate. This was truly a tragedy, and my mind, for a few moments, would not react. There was more in common between u
s than I might have guessed, for, like me, Roger had traversed peaks of pain. My heart went out to him — he was educated and established, a survivor of war, and yet . . . he was alone. Then I asked him where Cecilia was now.

  We started walking again. Roger seemed incapable of staying still as he related this terrible tale. “She stays with her parents and a nurse in Lake Forest. She vaguely remembers her house but nothing else. She recognizes no one. She may live another thirty years, but she will never change.” He took my arm to help me over a tracery of exposed roots crisscrossing the path. “When the war came, I enlisted; the Union needed me, and the doctors said there was nothing more I could do for Cecilia. Last spring, after Andersonville, I came back to Lake Forest. I found her in bed — she’s too heavy now to stand safely.

  “I had brought her a present — a yellow plush chicken. She grabbed it from my hand and hugged it to her enormous bosom, crooning, ‘Roger.’ For just a moment I thought she knew me; then I understood. She had named the chicken ‘Roger.’ ”

  We reached an overlook and saw the village commons lying low in the landscape. The tips of the trees in the hemlock forest were bending to the southeast, away from the prevailing wind. The sun was starting to sink into the Pelham Hills, and we turned to head back.

  “Is there any way I can help you?” I asked.

  “You have helped me already, my dear Miranda, by allowing me to unburden myself in this way. We have both known irretrievable loss — and we are both trying to go on living, despite our grief.”

  He had said nothing about the strong attraction between us. This was not conjecture; it was fact. I felt our extreme awareness at this very moment, in the tingling elbow he held so correctly. But I knew we would not discuss this, and I searched for a safe topic. “Please feel that you can always do so,” I said, hoping I did not sound too prim.

  “Thank you,” he said. “You are very kind.”

  But I did not feel kind. I felt lonelier than he ever could have guessed. I had family, a daughter, good friends through work — but no one who wanted only myself and my company, as Davy had.