by Linda Wolfe
Their progress was slow. The roads were still so muddy that it wasn’t until ten o’clock at night that they finally arrived at Mercy’s farmhouse, which was silent and dark by then. Astonished that she had the strength, for she had not been to bed for two nights, Lucretia pounded and pounded on the door until at last someone heard her. It was her night-capped brother-in-law, who dazedly lit her way in and awakened the entire family. Minutes later she was hugging and kissing her sister and a rash of little nieces and nephews she’d never seen, and Mercy was bustling around the kitchen setting out a midnight supper.
The whole family joined in the feast, and Lucretia told them about William’s death. But she didn’t mention her new husband. She wanted to talk to Mercy alone about that—that and the fact that she needed Mercy to come to Andalusia. She waited, patient now, till her brother-in-law and the children had eaten their fill and gone back to bed, and then she began telling her sister about Lino. She told Mercy how wonderful he was and how fortunate she felt to have found him. She told Mercy he was smart and rich and kind to her children. Then finally she asked Mercy to come back to Pennsylvania with her and look after her school and property while she and her wonderful new husband went to Mexico to obtain his fortune.
The child-burdened Mercy listened enviously to Lucretia’s romantic tale, and when it was done she said yes, she’d go to Andalusia. She’d take the littlest children with her, and be ready to leave in three days’ time.
Planning, the two sisters stayed up until sunrise, when finally Lucretia excused herself and retired. But although it was now three nights since she’d last lain down in a bed and experienced the comfort of sheets and a plump quilt, she did not rest long. By eleven in the morning she was up and, with a manic energy, penning another letter to Lino. She wrote it as quickly as she could—Mercy had told her that if she got her letter ready swiftly, one of her nephews could take it into Syracuse and get it onto the afternoon mail coach. She called Lino “my pretty little husband.” She told him she’d be with him in a week. She cautioned him to “be careful, my dear, and not spill and so lose our precious love” and, referring for the first time to her children as his children, too, asked him not to “let our children see the nonsense I have written.” Then she paused. Outside, her nephew was already waiting with his horse hitched. He was snapping his whip impatiently. The way young men did when they were kept waiting. The way Lino did when he was kept waiting. It was time to stop writing. But she couldn’t resist adding a few more endearments. “Goodbye, goodbye, dear Lino,” she closed, “Goodbye. It seems a long time to wait till next Wednesday, before I meet the fond embrace of him who is so dear to me, as is my young General Esposimina.”
The reunion between Lucretia and her young general the following week was not altogether blissful. At first Lucretia was ecstatic to be with him again. But her mood was somewhat dampened when she learned that Lino had given William’s books to his friends from the Spanish ministry—“as a memento,” he put it—and by the discovery that her silver spoons were missing.
“The black woman took them,” Lino said, blaming the disappearance of the silverware on Ann, who was no longer employed at the house. “I followed her to Philadelphia and accused her,” he went on. “She acknowledged the theft, paid me in part, and promised to pay the rest.”
Lucretia accepted this explanation and in the next few days threw herself into preparing for her trip to Mexico. She sorted through her clothes, the flat, narrow shoes that pinched her toes but made her large feet look uncommonly graceful, the lace-up corsets she needed to wear under Esther’s elaborate dresses if she was going to achieve the wasp-tiny waist the seamstress insisted on, the dresses themselves, so full-skirted and balloon-sleeved they looked like something that might be useful in a shipwreck. Would they be in style in Mexico? She supposed so. Dresses just like them were being shown in the latest issues of the new fashion magazine, Godey’s Lady’s Book. So were fanciful hats in shades of sea-green and lilac. She had her lilac-trimmed turban. She’d take that. And maybe her velvet cloak.
When she wasn’t packing, she was giving last-minute instructions to Mercy about the school. There’d be two new girls this autumn—Mercy should treat them less sternly than the returning girls or they might get homesick and ask to be withdrawn. She shouldn’t neglect the weekly exams, or forget to give the medals to those who scored highest—it was the best way to make the girls proud of their accomplishments. She should be sure to assign readings in all the subjects promised by the school’s advertisements—Lucretia had shown Mercy all her preferred readings, hadn’t she?
On the third day after her return, when she had gone over and over with Mercy the things she expected her to do, Lino announced that he ought to be attending to a chore that he and Lucretia had agreed needed to be done: selling the horse and carriage to raise money for their honeymoon trip. He could do it that morning, he said. He’d drive into Philadelphia, and take little Lucretia along for company. If he got a good price for the horse and carriage, he’d sell them right on the spot, and if he sold them, he and the child would take the boat home.
Lucretia approved and helped her daughter get dressed for the excursion. Lino hitched up the horse, kissed her goodbye, and then, to her surprise, asked her to give him her watch.
“But you have William’s already,” she pointed out.
Lino said yes, but that he wanted something of hers to remind him of her while they were apart. In exchange, he would give her a memento—a pretty gold chain he’d received as a gift from one of his friends.
Lucretia, touched by his sentimentality, handed him her gold watch, and let him fasten his chain around her neck.
That evening little Lucretia came trudging up the hill from the steamboat wharf. She was alone, and in her hand she clutched a letter addressed to her mother. It was from Lino. He’d just learned, he wrote, from a note given to him by the Mexican consul, that his old friend Casanova, the man he and Lucretia had tried to see at Joseph Bonaparte’s, had died suddenly in Maryland over the weekend and, before expiring, left him forty-five thousand dollars. The bequest was waiting for him in Baltimore, and he was going down there immediately to pick it up.
Aside from this untoward news, the letter was filled with extravagant expressions of love. Lino couldn’t write English, but he’d located a bilingual scribe and dictated his sentiments to him. “My Beloved Wife,” he’d dictated, “Consider my situation since my arrival in this city. The first news I get is the Death of my friend, then I am obliged to be separated from you.… But I pray that [the Lord] will sustain [me] in all my troubles and allow me to Return into those kind and endearing loving arms of thine. Oh! My Dear wife how is it possible that Lino could survive the loss of one so loving and so dear to his bosom should he meet with the misfortune of losing you.… I would first see the sun stop its Carrier through this wide world, and be plunged in the most green or blackest gulphs that demons could invent, than have it said that I should Repay you with ingratitude.”
Lucretia, although startled by the letter, felt deeply sorry for her unfortunate husband. He’d lost his sister just a while ago. Now the poor man had lost his dear friend Casanova. She pored over his melancholy words, reading them again and again. She even read them aloud to Mercy, who declared Lino’s letter to be an admirable piece of writing.
The following day Lucretia went to the Andalusia post office to see if there was any more mail from Lino. The postal clerk checked but could find no letter, and Lucretia returned home disappointed. However, increasingly addicted to self-deception, she refused to entertain the notion that her ardent new husband might be neglecting her, and instead began to worry that his delicate health might be adversely affected by his loss. After a few hours, she became so sure he was sick that she considered going down to Baltimore to look after him. But she was low on cash—she’d given Lino whatever money she’d had about the house before he left—and finally, deciding not to join him, she sat down and wrote to him again.
She addressed the letter to Lino in care of the general post office in Baltimore, and on the envelope she painstakingly printed a long row of asterisks, twenty-seven in all, with a note saying, “Those stars represent Abby Ann’s kisses, sent to you, my dear, all given to me without stopping.”
Lino had, in fact, written to Lucretia a day after telling her he was going to Baltimore. He’d sold the horse and carriage, receiving forty dollars for them, and used some of the money to book passage on a steamboat downriver. He’d boarded the boat, found a man willing to translate his words into English and write them down for him, and dictated a second letter to his bride, swearing that he’d be home soon and would never again absent himself from her. But either he or the scribe must have delayed in mailing the letter, for four days after the date on which it was composed, Lucretia still had not received it, and as those long days without word from Lino wore on, she became thoroughly convinced that nothing short of his being desperately sick could explain his not having written.
On the fourth night without word from him, in the sweltering darkness that kept her tossing and turning on her sweat-drenched mattress, Lucretia decided that, strapped for cash or no, she had best go down to Baltimore to look after her new husband. At three in the morning she climbed out of bed, borrowed money from Mercy, and, at the first signs of dawn, hurried out of the house to catch the early morning stagecoach into Philadelphia. She would pay a call on the Cuestas, she planned. Perhaps they had heard from Lino. If they hadn’t, if there was no news of him at all, she would take the steamboat down to Baltimore.
The city was in the grip of a heat wave that morning, the thermometer already reading close to a hundred degrees. Tropical temperatures had arrived earlier in the week, but it had been uncomfortably hot all summer, and Philadelphians by the hundreds had been fleeing the torrid town. Many had flocked to the nearby New Jersey seaside resorts of Cape May and Long Branch, where both men and women could swim in the sparkling surf, albeit at separate hours, others had opted for more luxurious and distant retreats, traveling south to the little Allegheny town of Sweet Springs to cool themselves in mountain air or north to New York’s Niagara Falls to enjoy its solemn rocks and mighty rush of waters.
The Cuestas had gone to see that spectacular waterfall. Lucretia didn’t know this. She was sure she would find them at home—Lino had said that just a few days ago he’d received the news of his friend’s death from Colonel Cuesta. Descending from the stagecoach, she proceeded on foot to Cuesta’s house, regretting as she dodged bright stabs of sun that came slashing through the poplars that she’d let Lino take the horse and Dearborn. Without them, she’d not be arriving in the high style with which she’d first visited the consul. Indeed, she’d not be arriving in any style whatsoever, for her clothes were plastered to her body and the once-tight little curls of her upswept hair were hanging limp.
At the Cuestas’ home she received the news of their absence. “They’ve gone to the Falls of Niagara,” a servant told her.
Herself feeling the effects of the heat wave, she accepted that news without much surprise. But then the servant volunteered that the Cuestas had been gone for quite a while.
He must be mistaken, Lucretia said. Colonel Cuesta, she pointed out, had given Lino a letter at the beginning of the week.
The servant shook his head. “Señor Espos y Mina has not been here for a long time.”
Then why had Lino said he’d been there? Lucretia wondered, and if the Cuestas had been gone for a month, where had Lino stayed when he went to Philadelphia after their wedding? At the LeBruns? At the United States Hotel? It was a favorite haunt of literary men and military officers and once, one gaudy clandestine night while William was still alive, Lino had taken her there. But if he’d stayed at the hotel, or anywhere else, why hadn’t he mentioned that he hadn’t stayed with the Cuestas? Her stomach began to churn as if she were still on the Syracuse mail coach.
A few moments later she took leave of the Cuestas’ servant and set out to make inquiries about Lino at the LeBruns’ and at the hotel. The merciless midsummer sun was fiercer than ever, and the streets almost deserted. She tried to cool herself, stirring the air with her fan as she strode, but she quickly became drenched with sweat, and when she passed the dark, welcoming entrance of Watkinson’s tailor shop, she decided to go inside for a bit and refresh herself.
The tailor greeted her effusively, and before she could speak, surprised her by saying he’d driven out to Andalusia a few days ago to pay a call on her.
She told him she hadn’t known, that she’d been up north visiting her sister, and she apologized for not having been available to receive him.
“I went to inform you that Mina was ordering too much clothing,” the tailor said. “I thought it my duty to inform you of this.”
His duty? Lucretia was puzzled by his words.
Then all too quickly the tailor was explaining them. He hadn’t wanted to make Lino a summer suit he’d requested, he was saying, because he hadn’t wanted her to feel obligated to pay for yet another suit. “It would be,” he was saying, “like taking the bread out of your children’s mouth.”
Lucretia paled, but Watkinson didn’t notice. “I think your Señor Lino is as great a scoundrel,” he confided, “as ever lived.”
Lucretia mustered whatever dignity she could and said, “I hope not, Mr. Watkinson.” But within her, she could once again feel her stomach turning over and over.
“I sent to the consul’s to inquire respecting him,” Watkinson chattered on. “The consul said he knew nothing of him, and knew neither him nor his father. He said”—Watkinson hesitated for a moment and then plunged ahead—“he said that he believed Señor Lino to be an impostor.”
Lucretia stared at him, and this time Watkinson noticed the effect his words were having on her. She looked, he would later recall, as if she had received an injury, as if his words had physically struck her. But she didn’t acknowledge the hurt with her words. She thanked him, said merely, “You have acted perfectly right.”
Then she stumbled out of the shop.
Once she was on the street again Consul Cuesta’s assessment of Lino kept reverberating in Lucretia’s ears. She tried not to credit it. Lino was incapable of insincerity, she told herself. Lino was incapable of inflicting on her the pain his being an impostor would produce. There must be some mistake. Still, some part of her must have known that what the consul had said might be true, for she abandoned her search for her missing husband and instead of proceeding to Baltimore went straight back to Andalusia.
When she reached home she began to go through Lino’s belongings, searching his pockets, rifling through his bureau drawers, flipping through his mail. On the bedroom mantelpiece an unopened letter caught her eye. It was addressed to Lino in her care, and it bore the return address of the United States Hotel. She ripped open the envelope—her distressing day in Philadelphia had made her feel no qualms about reading Lino’s mail—and found inside a bill directed to the attention of “Mr. Amalio.” The bill said:
July 8 to 9, 1831
Board for self and 2 ladies
$3.00
Use of a private parlour
$1.00
TOTAL
$4.00
July eighth. That was when she’d reached Syracuse after traveling, sleepless and starved, for thirty-six hours. July ninth. That was when she’d staye
d up for yet another night, trying to prevail upon her sister to come to Andalusia—so that she could go to Mexico with her pretty little husband.
When she read the bill, Lucretia’s eyes filled with tears. Lino, she would later say, had left the bill instead of a dagger to pierce her to the heart.
Lino continued to write to Lucretia. He wrote to her from Baltimore, telling her that a provision in American law was preventing him from claiming the money Casanova had left him, so he was going down to Washington to seek the assistance of “his excellency the President,” who he was sure would receive him. He wrote to her from Washington, telling her that Jackson had indeed received him, not just once but several times, and that he’d visited him both alone and in the company of a friend, an English duke. On one of these visits, he said, the president “expressed great desire” to meet Lucretia, and he’d promised the great man he’d present her to him “speedily.”
His letters were as flowery as usual. “I find your presence so necessary to my happiness that to be without you even for a short period is insupportable to me,” he wrote in one. “As often as I remember your caresses my heart is afflicted,” he wrote in another. “My blood is frozen with the most withering ice, and my eyes pour forth at every moment the most soul-shed tears.” In a third he declared, “When I left Baltimore I really thought that I should lose my senses. My soul poured forth showers of tears. I looked upon the sky that stretched itself over Pennsylvania and I re-echoed in my heart the sweet name of Lucretia Esposimina.… Dear Lucrecia [sic], there is neither day nor night of pleasure for me when away from you. I neither eat, drink, or sleep. All is melancholy in my soul. I fear that I shall be hurried to the grave ere I see you and fold you in one long embrace.” So effusive was he when composing this particular letter that the bilingual scribe to whom he was dictating his words appended his very own postscript. “The translator of the above,” wrote the scribe, “cannot close his duties without expressing the hope of one day beholding a lady capable of inspiring such ardent affection as that betrayed by the foregoing letter—indeed he almost regrets having undertaken so dangerous a task [as] he fears that he has already received by contagion the passion expressed by the writer of this letter. He mentions this in hopes that the lady will find in it an excuse for the tremulous motion of his hand in writing the translation. He is the lady’s slave.”