At the bottom, we were full of our triumph and excited. The steamboat was as pretty as a bridal cake. I dismounted and felt strange and short as we walked toward the landing. I was sorry to be covered with dust.
“Lean down,” David said.
When I bent over, as though he had read my thoughts, he wiped my face with his handkerchief. I could have whispered to him, You are not alone in your infamy, as he cleaned my face. But without my having spoken, the handkerchief was gathered back into his hand, stuffed into a pocket. Quickly, he turned to unstrap my roll from Milk’s rump. “Get out your ticket money,” he told me, and leading Milk along on the dock, her feet clopping on the planks, he escorted me to a man who had emerged to accept my passage.
With my ticket in one hand, David looked up at me and offered to shake hands. I sank down on my knees on the boards of the dock and insisted on embracing him.
“David, I meant to tell you last night,” I whispered. “Then I grew afraid. I was afraid you would not tolerate what I have done in my life.” I could feel the eyes of the ticket-taker watching us curiously—a woman down on her knees whispering in the ear of a bearded dwarf.
I pulled back to see what impression my words had made; the triumph left David’s face.
“I wanted to respond to your—your trust,” my whisper whisked on, “but I could not.”
David’s face infused with beauteous hope, he looked across the narrow space at me, his lips parting in surprise. Lovely as art, lovely as Susan showing me the indentation in the palm of her hand. What was that hope?
“I am a cannibal,” I whispered. “In the strictest sense of the word.” No matter if it be in a loving face, when lips reveal teeth, when your lips reveal teeth, I think, “How strong? how sharp?”
“How?” he asked, looking straight across with his amber eyes, level, into my eyes. They were the last part of his face to lose the sudden softness I had seen.
“At sea. In an open boat.”
He seemed stunned. I stood up, stepping awkwardly on my hem.
Suddenly, before I got my balance, he embraced me, around the thighs, as a child might hug his mother. He looked straight up at me, his beard pressed against my dress. “I forgive you,” he said in his mellow male voice that seemed to blend God and nature. His short arms were strong as tongs about my legs.
“And I you,” I replied.
Then I crossed the gangplank.
STENCILED on the white-painted side of the boat, in red letters outlined in gold, was the name of the paddle wheeler: the Lorelei.
David Poland and I had had our good-bye, and I did not prolong it by standing at the railing. When I got inside, I sat down on the nearest chair. I could feel the great heart of the boat, driven by steam, thudding under my feet. How many times, I asked myself, must I tell and be forgiven? Charlotte, David. My own heart thudded in time to the engine. Not my friend Judge Austin Lord (too much of mischief and high jinks in our gossip), not Margaret Fuller (too high in seriousness and philosophy), not my mother (for us had been communion, and communication was lesser). How was it the heart decided whom to tell? My own physical heart rushed away from the moment of my telling David. I thought of Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, with his glittering eye, compelled to tell his guilty tale to the wedding guests, to anyone. I was not like that. Yet sometimes, as with Charlotte and David, my soul would have shriveled if I had not confessed. And to Ahab? Ah, he knew. He knew without having to be told.
The sound of wood gliding through water came to my ears—I was leaving Kentucky—and I thought of the Ancient Mariner’s message: “He prayeth best who loveth best all things both great and small.”
I should have quoted that to David when he was sharing his ideas about big and little. It was not transfer of coin that connected us, but life, and our need for compassion. I felt stunned, as though I had kissed him full upon the lips, so intense was the intimacy of our parting.
The Lorelei: Appropriate for a riverboat. Margaret Fuller had told me that along the course of the Rhine River, they had named a dangerous boulder the Lorelei.
David was standing on the dock, probably puzzling over the name of my boat as she worked her way upstream against the current.
Ich weiss nicht…I don’t know why I’m sad. I’m going home.
CHAPTER 97: In the Cupola
NOT WISHING to frighten the housekeeper, I knocked at my own Nantucket door. What a glorious sound—the heavy brass pineapple, clunking against its plate.
The door was opened almost at once, not by my yellow-haired housekeeper, but by my former employer, her sister.
“Mrs. Macy!”
“No,” she said, but I ignored her reply.
“Mrs. Macy, how wonderful to see you! And where is Miss Sheffield?”
“Not with us anymore.”
“You don’t mean she’s died.”
“In a manner of speaking, Miss Sheffield don’t exist.”
“Mrs. Macy, what do you mean?”
“I’m not Mrs. Macy.” She beamed.
“Why of course you are,” I said, beginning to feel anxious. She and her sister did resemble each other—both covered with freckles—but this was the laundress.
“You can’t expect us at home to sit still just because you go traipsing all over the country,” she said tartly.
“But who are you except Mrs. Macy herself?”
“The upshot of it is, Miss Sheffield is now Mrs. Hussey of the Try Pots, and I am now Mrs. Mustachioed Captain. Just like you!” She laughed and drew the shape of imagined mustaches under her nose.
“Ahab is not mustachioed! But you’ve married the master of the Camel!” We both laughed, and I proceeded to hug her well. Even with my arms about her good neck, I grew sober and drew back. “But what has happened to my friend Charlotte of the Try Pots? to Mrs. Hussey?”
“There’s a new Mrs. Hussey, and she was the old Miss Sheffield.”
“What has happened to my Charlotte?”
“Well, that is a story you need to sit down for. I hope it won’t be upsetting to you. It wouldn’t upset me. No, not with a captain for a husband, which is what I have. And what you have. Don’t be forgetting that. But come sit in the parlor before the fire, and I’ll bring you some China tea.”
I sat down on my silk-upholstered parlor chair as though I were sitting on a basket of eggs. Did all these fine things belong to me? Perhaps they belonged to Mrs. Macy now. She seemed to be in charge. And I was filled with apprehension.
When Mrs. Macy reappeared carrying the tea tray, I asked her forth rightly: “Charlotte has not died?”
“That I can’t tell.”
“Mrs. Macy—”
“No longer Mrs. Macy—”
“My dear friend, certainly you can tell if a person is dead or alive?”
“It’s usually easy enough, yes, if you’re looking at the person. But even there a mistake can be made. We made it—you remember—after the fire, and we thought Isaac the gaoler to be dead, but in fact, he got up and is the father of a fine, golden-haired boy—Oh, Lord,” she said, “where is your baby?”
Here I bit my lip, and tears of both grief and frustration swam to my eyes. “My baby died.”
She grabbed her apron to her eyes and instantly had a cry. I sat waiting, as though, again, I were stunned by my own news. Finally, she peeped over the top of her apron—I had never seen it so wrinkled—and said how sorry she was. She soon followed up her heartfelt condolences with hope: “You shall have another sweet babe. Make no mistake about it. When Captain Ahab comes home, we’ll keep him here till the deed is done, even if I have to swim underwater and bore holes in the Pequod.”
I sat quietly. She sniffled a few times, drank some tea, and then continued, in quite a different tone.
“About Charlotte Hussey. She told me once that she had loved Kit Sparrow, what was your former husband, from the first moment she saw him, though they were both but children. Then when the news came back the Sussex had been stove by a whale and
all hands lost, she married Mr. Hussey, the first Mrs. Hussey having died of natural causes, and I was as glad as any to see Charlotte pickup her life and go on. Then you and Kit came back, married. You know how that was.”
I nodded, remembering the first time I had seen Charlotte’s merry face materialize from the steam of the chowder pot, and her amazement at seeing not a ghost, but a living Kit.
“I really don’t know how that was for Charlotte,” Mrs. Macy went on. “I expect no one knows, unless maybe she told you, seeing as how you were friends. She was a dear girl, and she never placed blame where it was unwarranted.”
“Was?”
“I only mean during the time I knew her. She’s gone now.”
“But, please. What do you mean by gone?”
“Well, Mr. Mustachioed Captain of the Camel—I should call him Robert Maynard now, and I am Mrs. Maynard, if ever you should wonder what to call me—he arrives at Straight Wharf with a letter addressed to Charlotte Hussey, and clear as can be the return name on the envelope of Kit Sparrow. Not usually running out to Nantucket, and being all unfamiliar with the populace here, he—Captain Maynard—asks where to find Charlotte, and whoever that was he asked sees the return and says that Kit Sparrow is dead. So they take the letter to the judge.
“Now I can’t say under what law he acted, but Judge Across-the-Street he takes it upon himself to open the letter and read it. Then Judge says not a word to anybody, but he sends for Charlotte Hussey. What was in that letter exactly, I do not know. None of us knows. Except the man over there across the street, and his lips are sealed.”
A slight smile crept to my mouth. I could have bet Mrs. Macy—Mrs. Maynard—that before sundown I would know.
“Go on,” I urged.
“Well, that night, slick as a greased pig, Charlotte Hussey disappears. My captain claimed that somebody came down and put her on a little sloop. He thought it might be the judge, but the judge is the Judge Lord, not to be questioned, and you’re the only person I’ve even told what Captain Maynard told me. This is an island, Una, and the talk can twist round and round till there’s a whirlpool in the washtub. That’s not good for Nantucket, and I tell Captain Maynard that this is my home, though he may come and go as his work takes him, but I won’t have my home all stirred up over something he might have seen.”
“Where did Charlotte go?”
“Well, nobody knows. At least nobody tells. A couple of months pass. Poor Mr. Hussey is crying into the chowder so bad no salt is needed. And he’s run off his legs, for the new inn is three times as busy as the old place out Madaket Road could have ever been. About this time, another letter comes, shipped from Boston, but no return address on the outer envelope. It’s addressed to the judge.
“He opens it and calls a group into his parlor to hear what it says. It’s from Charlotte—”
“She’s alive!”
“Well, at least at that time. I’ve not seen her since. She may be dead now, and that’s why I can’t say straight up if she’s alive or dead, murdered by Indians. But the letter, like I said, is from Charlotte, and the judge reads aloud that Charlotte says she is gone forever, and that the judge is to grant Mr. Hussey a divorce for desertion! If that don’t beat all.” She finished her tea.
“I wonder what the letter from Kit said.”
“I wouldn’t hurt you for the world. You were as sweet and faithful to him as a woman could be. But you see, they had all that growing up together. Well, nobody knows, except the judge, but some speculate that Kit asked Charlotte to come to him someplace out beyond the Great Lakes, and she’s done her best to find him.”
“It seems possible,” I said, shaken. “Mrs. Macy—Mrs. Maynard—forgive me, but I need to rest.”
“Well, there’s just a bit more.” She stood up. “I introduced Mr. Hussey to my sister, your housekeeper, and he married her. They say her chowder tops even Charlotte’s, and hers topped the Mistress Hussey’s before her. Not trusting your silver and fine china to just anyone, I moved in myself to keep house.”
As quickly as I could, after expressions of appreciation, my brain dizzy with Mrs. Maynard’s recital of how names and identities had shifted, I retreated to my room, which was sparkling white and cozy as it had been on my stormy wedding night. My own room! I did get it back, despite Rebekkah Swain’s pronouncements.
As I lay on the bed, I thought he had wanted her instead of me. A bitter tear squeezed from each eye. Kit could have sent for me. But I was married now, and I would not have wanted to leave Ahab or my home to live with Kit among the Indians. But Charlotte chose it. I was sure she had. Then let her choose it, and let him choose her!
I would miss my friend, though. Had she guessed that I knew all along that Kit was not dead? Probably not.
Did the judge guess that I had misrepresented the facts? I heard Mrs. Maynard slip out the front door, and, rather faintly, I heard the brass clap from across the street of the judge’s pineapple knocker. After perhaps ten minutes, scarcely time at all either to rest or collect my thoughts, my own pineapple clanged away, and I wearily sat up, put on my shoes, straightened my hair, and went to greet the judge.
He was all smiles and happiness to see me, but he immediately exclaimed, “How tired you look!” and asked if he should return later. “I’ve brought you a basket of jams,” he quickly added.
How elegant he looked! Like a younger Benjamin Franklin, I noted again, bald dome but his straight side hair fell only to his jaw and not his shoulders. Austin Lord wore gray trousers and coat, cut from cloth of such tight and expensive weave that the color had no power to proclaim its drabness. And he wore a quilted vest of sky-blue silk, crossed in front by a silver watch chain. He was slimmer.
I escorted him to the dining room and put down place mats and dishes for us. How unfamiliar these dishes were. Haviland china be decked with flowers and ribbons. I felt almost afraid of them.
“I saw some Irish porcelain-paste dishes when I was in Boston,” he said. “They are so thin they make this look like frontier crockery.”
“These are dainty enough,” I said shortly.
“Mr. Hussey has twice brought me money—your return on the Try Pots. He prospers, Una. And you with him. But the business would have gone to rack and ruin if he hadn’t remarried.”
“My dear friend,” I said, and I actually reached my hand out to him. “Don’t fiddle-diddle with me. Mrs. Macy—the new Mrs. Maynard—has half diddled me to death with her equivocations and misunderstandings. In heaven’s name, what has happened?”
“Kit wrote to Charlotte. He didn’t ask her to come, but she determined to travel west. There was no stopping her. Finally, I gave her some money—some of mine and some of yours, since you have prospered so handsomely—to help her travel—and I wanted a financial collaborator in speeding them west. Who better than you?”
It pleased me that the judge used his position so freely, in behalf of friendship.
“Kit’s letter was mostly a sweet reminiscence of their childhood together,” he went on. “Charlotte took the letter with her.”
“And she herself has written back. Has she found him?”
“Well, not exactly.”
“What do you mean?”
“She didn’t write back.”
“Mrs. Macy—Maynard—said there was a letter to you, from Charlotte.”
“Try this guava jam, Una.” He put a smear of the ruby stuff, quite seedy-looking, on a biscuit and waited for me to try it.
I did. “Delicious. But do we have something less fancy—domestic strawberry?”
“The best. Made from the plainest Quaker strawberries.”
“I discern that you are rather proud of yourself. And not over jam exotica. What news was in the letter Mrs. Maynard said you received from Charlotte?”
His face turned red. “My dear, no one reads me as you do. I am delighted that my dear young neighbor has come home. Also, Una, I’m very sorry about the baby.”
“My mother died, too,” I
said petulantly. I felt like a child who was not getting her way fast enough.
“Oh,” he gasped, and then stammered, “So sorry…” He waited a moment, then went on, “Well, the letter. I wrote it myself, to myself.”
“You did what?” I could only stare; he blushed all over his bald head. “Suppose she returns, no Kit at all, and her husband has gone and married the third Mrs. Hussey?”
“Well, Charlotte did leave Mr. Hussey. She should have sent such a letter. She should have legally released him. He was crying so hard—”
“I know, that the chowder needed no salt. Mrs. Maynard told me.”
“Una.” He was suddenly serious. “If you could have seen Charlotte that night. She was a woman on fire. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that she will look forever for Kit. Never again will she believe that he is dead. She would have to see his body herself.”
My head whirled. “She might not be able to tell, even then. You can’t always, you know.” I remembered Isaac Starbuck, apparently lifeless, lying on the ground before the burning house.
The judge regarded me anxiously. “She said that you had a husband, that you were going to have a baby. She said that you would not begrudge her Kit.” There he stopped, for he was truly curious about my reaction.
“She’s right.” I looked at my judge and smiled.
Austin Lord was my friend; he respected my judgment in spending my money and in deciding to travel as I wished; but he was the judge in Nantucket and not just “my” judge, as I liked affectionately to think of him. As we allowed a pause in our conversation, I contemplated him. His wealth and power were like polish on his being. He glowed with it. When I first came to him, I had been poor and my husband had been an outlaw and insane.
“So what are you thinking now?” he asked me as he sipped his tea.
“How is it,” I asked, “that we have become friends? My station was abject. I came to you with a plea. I suppose had Ahab not, by chance, bought the house across from yours, we would not have become friends.”
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