Belle Cora: A Novel

by Margulies, Phillip

  I have wondered, from time to time, how accurate that list was.

  LXIV

  Frank Moody

  c/o Melanchthon Moody

  Sawmill Road

  Livy, New York

  March 3, 1861

  Mrs. Arabella Dickinson

  Post Office Box 28

  San Francisco, California

  Dear Godmother,

  Forgive me if I get right to the point as I am poorly educated with no graces. I have just found out that you said you would pay for me to go to the Pearson Academy. I should be writing you from there now. Instead, I was not even told of your offer. Anne knew that if she asked me I would want to go, so she didn’t tell me. Now the cat’s out of the bag everybody here agrees that it is a good idea for me to go. They’re dying for me to go, except Anne. She says I’m too young and won’t be liked which is nonsense. She’s the only holdout, but she’s the boss now. She as good as owns the farm. Melanchthon can’t even sign his name anymore. Daniel and Susannah are for me going, but they don’t dare cross her.

  It’s like death here. I wish you had never brought me here. I know I’m an orphan, Godmother, I guess I would have been worse off in an orphanage. Or if those good people, my parents, the sickly mechanics, had lived to raise me to be like them, then I’d really be in a fix! So maybe I should be grateful. But Godmother please don’t leave your good deed unfinished. You put me here. Now I need you to get me out of here. Whatever power you have over them, use it.

  Sorry it’s not a nicer letter. I’ll write you another one full of thank yous and cheer when I’m in a better mood.

  Yours truly,

  Frank

  No, it wasn’t a very nice letter, but I loved it. It was bracing, it was thrilling to have my son, whose last word to me had been his very first word, suddenly appealing to me, surly and forthright, as a third party in the middle of a family argument, bold enough and clever enough to track me down. I remembered the passionate letter I had once written to my grandfather, begging him to take me away from the very same place, and the patronizing reply that I had received. Frank was not going to get that kind of answer. He was luckier than he knew.

  At the little table in the cottage where I would make Jeptha eggs and toast and bacon and coffee, I had put the letter into his hands and watched him read it. When he put the letter down and dipped the end of his toast into the yolk of the eggs, I asked if he did not think it was remarkably intelligent, and if Frank did not seem like an unusual boy. After a telltale hesitation he replied, “Yes.” After a while he added, “He doesn’t write like an orphan.”

  “No, he doesn’t,” I said proudly. Then I saw that he had not meant it as a compliment. “What’s wrong with that? You don’t expect him to sound like one of the orphans in your asylum?”

  He looked at me awhile. “No. Of course not. Still, I would expect him to sound like a country boy—who with other children might talk disrespectfully about his elders out of their hearing, but would never write in that vein in a letter to a grown man or woman. A country boy with such manners would be horsewhipped every single day. If Frank isn’t, maybe it’s because Anne has been his sturdy shield, but it hasn’t done his character any good.”

  “It’s absurd for you to conclude all that from one letter. He’s angry. They lied to him. And he’s writing to me. He knows instinctively that he can share these thoughts with me and I won’t judge him. Even if he thinks I’m his godmother, his blood tells him there’s more between us. Where he says, ‘It’s death here,’ I know you never felt that way about Livy, but you and I are different that way. Frank is my son, and he’s more like me.”

  “Of course,” said Jeptha soothingly. “It’s just one letter. And he was angry.”

  For days, and then for weeks, I thought of nothing but Frank’s letter—I thought of it while I bid on linens and china at the auction houses; when I went to the theater with Jocelyn and Lewis; when I presided over the ball I held each spring. I thought of it while all around me men talked of the election of Lincoln and the breakup of the United States—which must be saved at all costs some (including Jeptha) said, or which had gotten too big anyway others said (I was with that group)—and the inevitability of war and the improbability of war. That was the year when news from the East came halfway by telegraph and the rest of the way by Pony Express in a mere ten days, and it seemed as if the States had drawn closer to us at the very moment they were falling apart.

  I decided that to help Frank I must go myself. I wrote ahead to tell Anne I was coming and began my preparations immediately. To my surprise, Edward and Jeptha announced their intention to come along. Edward would visit Robert and his family. Jeptha would accompany me as far as Baltimore and then go on to Ohio to visit his mother and father, who was ailing. On the way, the farther we got from California, the more freedom we would have to be together and stroll on the deck together and stay in hotels together without damage to his reputation or his livelihood.

  And so, one sunny day in the first week of April, not quite a month after Lincoln’s inauguration and two weeks after his speech about graves and hearts and hearthstones reached San Francisco, we all went up the gangplank of the North American Steamship Company’s S.S. Nebraska.

  LXV

  THE NEBRASKA WOULD TAKE US TO PANAMA. We would go by rail across the isthmus, and another ship would take us to New York after a stop at New Orleans, now a foreign port, and another in Baltimore. It would take three weeks.

  Amid the usual commotion—the fluttering flags, busy porters, handshakes, embraces, and last-minute panics—I felt emotions appropriate to a forty-niner who has prospered in California. I looked back to the shore. Where there had been water there were now theaters, hotels, and banks. Montgomery Street, formerly on the beach, was four blocks inland. Where shacks and tents and crawling bedraggled humanity had swarmed the hills there was now a mighty city, its roofs and chimneys daubed with the fool’s gold of morning sunlight, each edifice raked by the shadows of its neighbors; and from the deck of the Nebraska my eyes sought the roof of my current parlor house on Pike Street, and the roof of my old parlor house on Dupont Street, now a legitimate boarding house, and with effort, elsewhere in the town, bits of my boarding houses and my laundry, and several sandy acres on California Street Hill that also belonged to me and might be valuable one day. I could see the American Theatre, where Mrs. Richardson had initiated the chain of events that turned us both into widows.

  I had left the management of the parlor houses in the hands of Georgette and Mrs. King. Niobe and two women who have had no other part in this narrative looked after the boarding houses and the laundry. They were all diligent, and liked me as much as was consistent with fearing me.

  Lewis was not with us: he had gone to Nevada Territory, where silver had been discovered; Jocelyn had gone with him. Agnes was not with us, of course; a year before, she had divorced Jeptha and gone to live with a friend, also a spiritualist and freethinker, in Monterey. There she worked as a schoolteacher, two or three men there wanted to marry her, and one she liked very well, but still she hesitated. Was Jeptha, then, at last free to marry me? No. A sickly wife had never been the only obstacle to our union. Jeptha was also the pastor of his flock, the head of the Orphan Asylum, and the moving spirit behind the Drunkard’s Asylum, the Mariner’s Hospital, and other civic projects and worthy charities that would be deprived of his guidance as soon as it became known that he had associated himself with Belle Cora, the notorious madam. We would have to leave California and start over. And he still had his old objection to living off my earnings.

  Aboard the Nebraska, officially I had a stateroom to myself, and Jeptha shared a berth with Edward, but when we were under way, Jeptha would come to my room in the late hours. Outside our berths, the three of us spent much of our time together, feeling almost like a well-off family on a vacation abroad.

  For Jeptha and me it was like a honeymoon in reverse, undoing—by a different route and much more quickly—our
voyage from New York to California in ’49. Once we were a hundred miles from California, Jeptha seemed to throw off all caution and held my hands and draped his arm around my shoulders in full view of the other passengers. One day, when there was music and others were dancing on the deck, the former Baptist asked me to teach him to dance. For Jeptha to show himself so openly infatuated with a woman some of the passengers surely knew as a madam struck me as extremely rash, but I could not bring myself to tell him to stop. “We’re going to have to go back,” I whispered when the band played a waltz, but he only gripped my hand tighter and pulled me up. “We shouldn’t; it’s too risky,” I said, and he gave me a peck on the cheek right there on the deck, in front of everyone; because it was in front of everyone, the little kiss was like strong drink to me, making me woozy and confused and happy.

  Neither Jeptha nor Edward agreed with me about Frank, so we avoided speaking of him. We talked about the Civil War, by comparison a neutral topic. Lately, Edward was hinting that he might enlist in an Eastern militia. I did not think he was serious, but in case he was, I made many arguments against the plan.

  I told him that, first of all, there would be no war. This was the general belief in the spirit world, which had access to the secret counsels of both sides. So I had learned in a letter from Agnes, who had it from her dead son Jonathan. (I believed in the spirit world when it suited me.) If the spirits should prove to be in error, Edward would be of more use in California’s militia, ready to repel a Confederate attack on the treasure ships.

  WE WERE ON THE TRAIN crossing the Isthmus of Panama when we heard of the firing on Fort Sumter. Newspapers passed from hand to hand. All the Americans on the train felt suddenly very serious and important. We were of varying sympathies and origins; arguments erupted, and one saw right away from the speech of various Prussians, Frenchmen, and Englishmen what their countries’ attitudes would be.

  The captain of our next ship decided to skip New Orleans, which was a relief to me, because I had always associated New Orleans with Charley and I knew that being there would make me feel sad and angry. Then we skipped Baltimore, too, since the situation in Maryland was uncertain at that time—if it did not secede it was expected to be a scene of fighting. I was pleased with this, too, since it meant that Jeptha would have to take a different route to Ohio, and he would be with me longer.

  As the Nebraska pushed its way into the lower bay, the day was as clear as it had been when Jeptha and I had left on the Juniper twelve years earlier, and we could all see that New York City had not stood still. There was twice as much of everything—piers, clipper ships, steamboats, people. When we disembarked, all was pandemonium. The walls of the warehouses on the East River wharf were covered with posters calling in giant capital letters for VOLUNTEERS and announcing a MASS MEETING IN UNION SQUARE. Several men who had commanded at Fort Sumter would speak, along with about twenty others, among them “Colonel E. D. Baker, Senator, of California.” The hack driver, while bringing us to a moderately priced hotel, told us that a Baltimore mob had attacked federal troops who were on their way to protect Washington. In the hotel lobby, a boy sold us a New York Times, in which we learned that Robert Godwin—my brother!—was the secretary of the Union Defense Committee, which had organized the meeting to be held in Union Square the next day.

  We spent the night in a New York hotel and attended the meeting—along, it is said, with two hundred thousand others, pressed at every side by sweaty, agitated strangers’ shoulders, necks, and faces, so that letting go of each other’s hands would mean being pulled farther apart, to be inexorably moved to the place where our section of the crowd meant for some unknown reason to head; to imagine how long it would take to get out of here, should it be necessary, was to feel the stirring of panic. We caught only the occasional glimpse, heard only the odd shout, from the men at the speakers’ stands. It didn’t matter. The point was proved: we were many. At least, that is how I remember it over half a century later, now that the generals have died and been replaced by bronze statues, the battlefields are cemeteries, and the tombstones are green with lichen. It was proved in Union Square that day that the North had an overwhelming numerical advantage in human flesh, as well as in telegraphs, railways, ships, and factories. I was a speck among specks carried forward by a great wave, and I knew that there was indeed to be a war. The forces that decide these things had decided.

  I held on tight to Jeptha, and just before the movement of the crowd dragged Edward from us, we agreed to meet near the bronze statue of Washington, which now held the flag that had recently flown over Sumter. When we met Edward again, he brought news that the Union Defense Committee had its headquarters at the Metropolitan Hotel, where Colonel Baker was recruiting for a regiment consisting of men from California, and Robert Godwin was there. Edward and Jeptha decided that they would visit and announce themselves to him.

  On the last leg of our journey, when we were not discussing my son, Frank, or the brewing war, Robert had been a frequent topic of conversation. Edward and Jeptha meant to meet him—there was never any question about it—but what of me? Ten years ago, on learning what his sister had become, he had wept. Sorrowfully but adamantly, he had decided for the sake of the family name to cut off all ties with me and never to speak of me, and generally, as the song has it, to turn my picture to the wall. He had not even bothered to make a vow of it—it was to him so obviously a necessity, he could not conceive of the circumstances that might persuade him to change his mind. Should I try? How would I feel if I made the attempt and failed? We discussed this, Jeptha, Edward, and I. We discussed it several times without reaching a conclusion. Jeptha said he would make arrangements to have me brought to our hotel while they went to the Metropolitan, and at last, impulsively, I decided. “No. Let me come.”

  We walked there in the mire of Broadway. When we were a block away from the Metropolitan, it started to rain, and I remembered the rain long ago, when I was small, when we were on our way back from our visit to the roof of my grandfather’s warehouse on Pearl Street, the day Lewis dropped the stone that killed a pig. I told Edward: “I don’t care if I see Baker, but bring me to Robert. Make Robert acknowledge me.”

  At the Metropolitan, a suite of rooms was being used by the Union Defense Committee. Many people were coming and going, and there, as big as life, sat Colonel Baker, at a long table in a crowded, busy room full of flags and brevets, papers and ink bottles, and patriotic civilian volunteers. He rose and bowed. He was about to introduce me to the men around him when I pre-empted him quickly with the name Arabella Dickinson, and he took the hint, that I was not Belle Cora here. I could tell that he was puzzled to see Jeptha, whom he knew as the pastor of a Unitarian church, a man unlikely to be seen with me.

  At our request, Baker sent a man to a nearby room to fetch Robert, with instructions not to mention me, but to say that Edward Godwin and Jeptha Talbot were waiting to see him. A moment later, Robert came out, smiling broadly and stepping quickly. When he saw me his pace slowed; the smile vanished. But what could he do? His brother Edward was there, and Jeptha, whom he knew to be a Unitarian minister, apparently not afraid to be in my company; and his problem was made more acute by the fact that his pretty wife was there, too, showing men where to sign and encouraging them with her admiration. He had never told her what had become of his sister, and he didn’t want her ever to find out. He introduced me to her—as his sister Arabella—with sickeningly false cheer, all his movements a little delayed, his eyes looking in slightly the wrong direction, as if he were being operated on strings, his own clumsy marionette. He must have felt as if he were exposing her to some terrible contamination. The idea of his wife even occupying the same room as a whore was hideous to him.

  Her name was Amanda. “But we’ve met,” she said, looking from me to Jeptha. “We met at your grandfather’s house. Shortly before the two of you were married and left for California.” I remembered her, the lucky girl with the easy life who could make light of murder. Her fa
ce was a little broader and her skin was not as smooth, but she was still pretty, dressed quietly, with red, white, and blue ribbons in her hair and a flag pin on her white pelerine. “We were talking about the murder at the Bloomingdale Tontine, which was never solved. Jeptha was there, and also your cousin Agnes”—here there was a split-second pause, and a subtle change of pitch, as she reflected that the subsequent course of events might have been painful for me. “And then we had our own excitement. I’ll never forget that night.” Her look was gentle. “And later—I’m sorry—we heard that you and Jeptha were … no longer together. And”—her glance shifting between me and Jeptha—“and—how do things stand now?”

  “We’re all friends now,” said Jeptha.

  “I’m so glad I’ve married into an interesting family. Come to dinner. You and Jeptha and Edward.”

  “Oh,” said Robert, looking at me with panic.

  “How kind of you,” I said. “We’d be delighted.”

  “But we’re very busy now, and Arabella can stay in town only a short while,” said Robert.

  “She said she’d be delighted. That means she has time. I know I have time. If you don’t, we can spare you. It needn’t be fancy—you don’t mind if it’s just what our cook can do on short notice?”

  “Of course not,” I replied.

  Robert’s house was in Brooklyn. We all took the ferry there the next evening, and spent the night, and stuck to the stories we had agreed on.

  TWO DAYS LATER, EARLY IN THE MORNING, Jeptha and I walked to Chambers Street, where there was now a railroad depot. We stood in line together, and he bought my ticket, and then, because we were early, we wiped the soot off a bench on the platform and watched the southbound train disgorge a crowd of passengers. I was excited by the prospect of the journey, and I enjoyed the freedom of being out in public with Jeptha. My mind raced, and I commented on the little dramas of arrival: this one disembarked alone and was met by a passionate family; those gentlemen came as a group of revelers and left together; that lonesome fellow had been stood up. All the while, Jeptha held me around the waist; when I looked back at him, he had been looking not at the scene I was describing but at my face. When my train came, he got on with me and stayed until the last minute, kissing me with such tenderness and for such a long time that when he released me I laughed and said, “I’m only going to Livy, Jeptha.”