by Jane Smiley
But in fact, my station was clearly low and dipping lower.
Though he died owning a house, my father hadn’t made much of himself either in Ohio, where he’d gone after marrying Ella and where he’d met my mother, or in Quincy, where he had brought his many daughters to marry them off around the time I was born. He had no knack for farming— preferred a more convivial life than that, with theatricals and clubs and levees and daily social intercourse. Some years, he would broker some grain down the river or some cotton up; other years, he would have an interest in some dry goods or some horses to sell. The lot where he built his house came to him through a trade—a German man owned the lot but needed a quantity of barley to make beer, and my father happened to have an interest in a quantity of barley. The house itself got built in the same way, and it was a house with a pleasant air about it, because my father liked to make a good appearance above all things. But he was sixty-two when I was born, and the novelty of daughters had worn away long before.
My mother doted upon me—perhaps not so much at first, but more as I lived longer and longer and proved myself healthier and less likely to follow my mother’s other babies to the grave week by week and month by month. By the time I was four and had outlived them all, I could do no wrong in her eyes, nor could she do any wrong in mine. I was a good-tempered child, for I had my own way in everything, and she poured out on me all the love and attention she had stopped up over the years. I knew my letters at two, could read a newspaper and do sums at four, tell stories from the family Bible at five. She found me other books, with no discrimination of judgment or taste. It so pleased her to hear me read that she would listen to me read anything, thinking, perhaps, that the matter of the reading simply ran through me like water through a spigot. She sewed for me and tatted for me and cooked me special dishes, persuaded my father to procure me a pony, and altogether we lived like a potentate and her adoring servant, and it was a fine life for me, my delight and my due. But she was a shy woman and had few friends. Perhaps we were such friends to each other that she felt she needed no one else. And then there were Miriam, Beatrice, Alice, and Harriet, making their usual noise. That might have been enough for her. When I was thirteen, the cholera came up the river, and of all of us, only my mother took ill. She died within three days. She was forty-seven.
This time, my father, who was seventy-six, didn’t look around for a new wife, only for some place to put me, and that is how I went to Alice’s, where I was hardly a potentate but only one of many, and there I discovered my taste for that sort of freedom, the freedom of not being attended to. To my old bad habits of indiscriminate reading and stating my opinion whenever I desired to, I added new ones of wandering about, spending time at the river, avoiding housework, and improving my fishing and hunting skills with the help of Alice’s many sons. But I cannot say that Alice or her husband, Frederick, who had a small lumbering mill, or any of their sons was blessed with connections, either, so Harriet’s notion of my station was largely a fiction.
Frank said, "I got some money."
This was hardly unusual, as Frank was an enterprising young man, who, moreover, was as much master of his own time as any boy twice his age. I said, "How much do you have?"
"Four dollars."
Four dollars, on the other hand, was a considerable sum, suspicious in a boy.
"How’d you get that?"
"I only get to keep four bits. But I got it here in my pocket."
"How’d you get it, I asked you."
"Mr. Thomas Newton gave it to me. He told me to take it. You want to come with me?"
I didn’t answer anything, but he started walking down the creek, keeping in the middle and careful, I quickly saw, to refrain from stepping in any muddy spots. Frank pulled out the last of his seegar and stuck it between his lips, but he didn’t light it. We didn’t say anything. We passed the lower banks of the cow pasture, but the cows couldn’t be seen from the creek. Everything was quiet. We kept going until we came to a small cave, a spot that I knew Frank had explored extensively. We stopped, and Frank looked eagerly in. I did not. I could hear well enough: movements of some large body, audible only when they suddenly were stilled. I knew there would be a dark face in there. I didn’t have to see it. Frank picked up some stones by the creekside and heaved them idly into the water, the way a boy would do, aiming at this snag or that one. Then we walked on until we got to the next cow pasture, where we came up out of the creek and paused to pick mulberries. I said, "Well?"
And he said, "I left it under a rock."
"Did anyone see you?"
"Only the one that was supposed to see me."
We carried the mulberries home in Frank’s cap. Mulberries are funny. Most of the time they don’t taste like a thing, but these were sweet as could be. Harriet didn’t know whether to be pleased with the mulberries or angry at the stains all over our faces and hands. It was my responsibility to admonish him, she declared. But the fact was, I always seemed to let Frank do just what he pleased.
CHAPTER 3
I Improve My Friendship with Mr. Newton
The early training of New-England boys, in which they turn their hand to almost every thing, is one great reason of the quick perceptions, versatility of mind, and mechanical skill, for which that portion of our Countrymen is distinguished. —p. 165
NOW THE TIME CAME for the sale of my father’s house, of which I was to be a principal beneficiary. The house was on Seventeenth Street, a block down from Broadway, and luckily for all of us, a large piece of property very nearby happened to have been sold early in the year for a lot of money. Considerable building was going on in that section, and Horace had managed to interest someone associated with one of the lumber mills in my father’s house. My sisters, including Hannah and Ella Rose by letter from New York State, now began subtly to vie with each other to be the one whose husband was so prosperous that she, but she alone, could assign her share to me. Each sister was generous. Ella Rose wrote, "My darling Beatrice, I find it so sad to think of poor Papa and his little house on its little town lot, that I leave it to you to do as you please with my portion. It will hardly make a difference to Mr. Logan and me." Hannah followed some days later with, "Dear Harriet, This communication is only for you, my dearest and best sister, but I must tell someone in the family that Ella Rose can certainly not do without any small infusion of funds that might result from the sale of Papa’s very eccentric property. She wants only, of course, to do something for her beloved younger sisters, but as always she is sacrificing herself. I am pleased to say that my husband has had an exceptionally good year with his barrel workshop, and our sons, too, are prospering. Our youngest sister should be aided out of our portion. Knowing how anyone outside of the family must feel about the unusual nature of Papa’s architectural choices, I can only presume that the sum realized in the sale will be small to begin with."
Alice said, "Frederick’s business is fully capable of taking care of Annie, though I notice no one has even asked."
Harriet said, "It brings on a headache for me even to speak of it. I will happily resign my portion just to have the matter over and done with."
Beatrice’s opinion was a bit different: "I am happy, positively glad, without reservation, to add my portion to the poor girl’s, if that is what it takes to help her into some useful place and occupation. I am at my wit’s end with her."
Harriet added, "Ella Rose and Hannah may talk all they please about prosperous this and prosperous that, but some people aren’t so young as they once were and might be thinking of the future, if you ask me."
All considered it a favor of Providence that because of Miriam’s death no portion would go to "educating those little darky children, after Papa was a lifelong Democrat." They agreed that there’d been something unnatural about that whole business, but Miriam had never listened to reason and didn’t have sense enough to come in out of the rain, which meant that instead of pouring the fruits of her life of labors into the useless teachi
ng of those who couldn’t benefit from it, she should have established herself in a lucrative chicken and egg business. But thankfully, in spite of the tragedy of her early death, things had turned out well in the matter of my father’s political principles.
Taken all in all, they felt that this discussion was a credit to the family and further evidence that as a group, the sisters were superior to the more typical squabbling over estates that you saw everywhere around you. "Our mother taught us better than that," asserted Beatrice complacently, and the others agreed. They were referring to their own mother, not mine. "And you," said Harriet to me, "stand to profit. You should be mindful of how fortunate you are." I did, and I was.
Roland Brereton resolved the tangle, though of course with much d—ing to h— of the whole prolonged negotiation. He counted out the sum of money, picked up a handful of notes and gave them to me, then divided the rest into six equivalent portions. In my hand, I found that I held $472. Harriet said that she had to admire the way Roland always went to the heart of things, and that was the end of our father’s house. Even after Father had gone to live with Beatrice, for as long as he could he had walked to the house on fine days with his silver-handled stick and stood and regarded it from every angle, like a man wondering whether to purchase it.
The next time I saw Thomas Newton was at a dramatic exhibition at Danake Hall. My brother-in-law Horace had a fondness for every sort of singing or theatrical performance, but my sister Beatrice disapproved of the man who put them on, George Adams, who was called "Crazy Adams" by some. Even so, she let Horace escort Annie and me to the performance, because she had heard there was to be a demonstration of elocution edifying to young ladies, comprising in part a reading of the last scenes of Mr. Dickens’s Dombey and Son, wherein young Florence Dombey is reconciled with her father, and some other pieces of the same sort. A Mrs. Duff, all the way from New York, a woman proficient in portraying virtuous young ladies, was to act the part of Florence.
Since the episode with the money at the creek, my feelings about Mr. Newton had changed somewhat. I could not figure out how he had communicated with Frank, or given him the money, or even how he knew that Frank would know where the cave was. Obviously, Mr. Newton and Roger Howell had conspired together ahead of time, but Mr. Newton’s subtlety in these operations made me sense that there was more to him than met the eye. And then there was the generosity of the gift. Quincy was full of people who left out some biscuits or an old shirt or a worn pair of shoes, and knew when these objects had disappeared that some fugitive had been helped along the way. But the difference between giving away something easily done without and a not inconsiderable sum of money impressed me. And it was true as well that Miriam’s death had piqued my interest in her principles in a way that her example had never done. This time, when I espied Mr. Thomas Newton in the hall before the performance, I looked at him a little more closely, and I saw that he had two sorts of manners. When he thought he was unobserved, his glance was alert, his demeanor brisk and attentive. But when his friends drew him into conversation and introduced him to their acquaintance, he seemed to go almost dull, almost slack. He smiled enough, produced the expected responses, but his qualities seemed almost to disappear. This made me want some conversation with him, just to see whether I would have a similar effect on him, especially as I didn’t know whether he knew that I knew of Frank’s errand. And now that I thought of it, I did have some curiosity as to the outcome of that errand. It had been more than a week since we’d left the money beside the cave. It was so universally true that every fugitive emerged briefly from a mysterious realm, only to disappear again into the same mysterious realm, that people simply got out of the habit of wondering what became of them. And the fate of Dr. Eels was a lesson to all that the best way to leave something unsaid was to have it be unknown, as well.
I can’t say that Mr. Newton made his way toward me, or that I made my way toward him, attached as I was to Annie and to Horace Silk, but nevertheless, not long after I noticed him, I was introducing him to my companions. He asked Annie if she was fond of theatricals.
"Yes, indeed, sir! This is only my third outing, but I like it better than anything!" I could see my own astonishment at this reflected in Horace’s face. I had thought Annie preferred hemming handkerchiefs to every human endeavor.
"Then I will arouse your envy by telling you that before I left Boston, I saw Rachel as Adrienne LeCouvreur."
He pronounced the French words in a French way, it sounded like. But Annie, though she kept grinning, didn’t know who those people were. She said, "Sir, I am frankly envious of everyone you might have seen, especially in Boston." Her face was flushed as I had never known it before, and I doubt she even realized what she was saying, as she could not resist craning her neck to look toward the proscenium. Horace, too, was eager for the exhibition to begin, but Thomas Newton seemed almost indifferent to the activities at the front of the room. To me, he said, "The weather has cooled since last week."
"Still no rain, though. The creeks around my brother’s farm are very low, even for this time of year." This wasn’t actually true.
"Quincy has a noble prospect above the river. The Missouri shore by contrast seems quite low and flat."
"People here think we are uniquely favored and destined for greatness."
"Every town in the west believes the same thing."
"And Boston, your home?"
"Boston doesn’t believe such a thing. Belief implies the possibility of doubt. The greatness of Boston is a known fact, among Bostonians." He smiled. "My kin are from Medford. We resist the greatness of Boston with all our might."
The crowd was moved to begin to find seats, and Mr. Newton left us to rejoin his friends. He seemed to have reacted in no discernible way to the hint I had dropped, but I gave up thinking about it soon enough, after the curtain went up and Mrs. Duff came out onto the stage. She was a tiny woman, who soon entranced us all with her warm, melodious voice and her maidenly gestures. She was Florence Dombey to the life—unfailingly devoted, never as happy as when she was most useful, beautifully transfigured by the desire to give her filial love entirely to her father. I entertained myriad poignant regrets at my own useless selfishness and felt much chastened and revivified by the whole experience when the interval came. Annie was in tears. Horace was in tears. I wasn’t in tears, but beneath many layers of what I knew to be passing sentiment induced by the art of Mrs. Duff, I did feel a hard nub of fear. No one I knew knew what was to become of me, and I didn’t know, either.
At the end of the interval, Horace came inside with Thomas Newton, and they were talking about Kansas. The first thing I heard Horace say was, "... only another week, then?"
"The rest of my boxes should be arriving next Tuesday on the Amanda Lee. I’ve been waiting for them these two weeks."
I made myself very quiet.
"Now, Kansas," said Horace. "That’s wonderful country."
"You’ve been out there, then?"
"They say the land around the Marais des Cygnes is a blooming paradise."
"I’m eager to get there. My companions have been there almost a month now, and I haven’t heard from them. We bought land below the Kaw, or some call it the Kansas River, between Lawrence and Topeka. But they think I’m on my way, so they haven’t known where to—"
"If I were a younger man, or my wife were a younger woman—"
"They’re so occupied with building and getting things in order for the winter. As mild as it is there, you have to—"
"Quincy is no place for someone with real enterprise. A few men have everything firmly in their grip. It’s all very well for some to sit and wait, but—"
"The main thing is to ignore rumors and just wait and see what’s what when you get there. It certainly can’t be as bad as some say—"
"I wasn’t really cut out for a storekeeper. I was meant for a more active life than that, but—"
They paused, then glanced at each other and said in unison, "Well,
Kansas is a fine country!"
"Yes, indeed," said Horace, and Thomas Newton beamed.
They parted, to all appearances much satisfied with their conversation. I said to Annie, "Wouldn’t you like to go to Kansas? I would."
"Why?"
"I suppose because it’s dry and warm and open."
"People are always getting killed in the west."
"That’s not true—"
"Don’t you think Mrs. Duff is the most elegant lady you ever saw? And Mr. Duff makes me shiver."
"People are not always getting killed in Kansas more than anywhere else."
"I said, in the west. Mrs. Duff is from England."
"Annie, Horace said Mrs. Duff was born in Philadelphia."
"Then she’s been in England for a very long time. I’m certain of it. You should stop thinking about Kansas. You would be better off taking your money and going to England. Then when you came back, you would be so elegant that people would never stop looking at you."
"What money?"
"I know perfectly well that you have money from the sale of Grandpa’s house, and since you have it, I don’t know what you are waiting for. If I had it, I would board the next steamboat, and I would tell everyone on it that I was a famous actress, Mrs. Helen DuMont, fresh from an engagement in Saint Louis!"
"I’m tempted to give you some just to see you do it." I laughed.