by Jane Langton
"All right. I understand all that. But now will you please explain what it was all for? Why did Howard Swan, of all the people in the world, think he had to kill Ernest Goss? And then why did he kill poor Alice? And why did he almost..."
"Oh, God, don't say it..."
There was a car coming. It contained Rowena Goss, out for a spin with her fiance. She started to slow down as she recognized Homer's car, but when she saw how he was behaving with that Morgan girl she frowned and speeded up again, with a disapproving crescendo from her exhaust.
"Well, where were we?" said Mary, sitting up and straightening her hair.
The nosepiece of Homer's glasses was resting on his ear. He put it back where it belonged. "You were asking about Howard's motive. I suppose you want me to tell you what it is that will turn an apparently just, honest and respected citizen, scholar and gentleman into a murderer—right? Well, my darling, what are the usual reasons why people murder other people? Revenge? Self-defense? Jealousy, greed, lunacy, hatred, sudden passion?"
"Oh, Homer, you know it wasn't any of those. The only motive he could possibly have had was the suppression of those letters. But that just doesn't seem a strong enough reason to me. Not for Howard."
"Just think about it." Homer leaned back, put his arms behind his head and closed his eyes. "First, let's go back a long way. A long, long way. All the way back to an engagement between a young Harvard senior named Howard Swan, who was majoring in literature, and a pretty young debutante at Miss Winsor's school named Elizabeth Matthews. Now Elizabeth had something she felt she ought to confide to her husband-to-be—something that was a romantic family secret. She thought it was her duty to let him in on the story of her sublime origin, the royal bar-sinister in her ancestral past. So she did. She whispered it tenderly in his ear. Then Howard, to her astonishment, far from being merely suitably impressed, urged her not to keep it a secret any longer. He recognized it for the bombshell it was, and he yearned to be the agent for the explosion. But Elizabeth wouldn't let him. No sir. I don't know whether she felt protective about the reputations of her great-grandmother and grandfather or whether she just didn't want her name bandied about as the descendant of any kind of illicit union, no matter how august. Anyway, my guess is that this was why they broke up. Elizabeth forbade Howard to use her secret and Howard was good and mad. 'Oh,' says Elizabeth, 'you nasty, nosy man!' 'Why,' says Howard, 'you selfish little stupid bitch!' So the engagement was off. And the next thing you knew the selfish little bitch had rushed into the arms of Howard's classmate from Concord, Ernest Goss. And you can be sure of one thing—Elizabeth never mentioned her glorious ancestry to Ernie when she was confiding to him her intimate little girlish secrets. Okay, then—all right so far? Well then. Take another look at Howard. Here he was, left alone with his conscience and this tantalizing delicious tidbit of historical gravy. So what did he do? He did what any well-trained student would do. He began searching for evidence to back up Elizabeth's bald statement of fact. Over the next twenty years he sought and studied and researched, poring over the journals and poems and letters of Thoreau and the letters and poems of Emily Dickinson, everything he could find that would give him a lead. It took him that long partly because he was thorough and partly because he didn't have much spare time, what with all the committees he was on and the organizations he was chairman of. But he stuck to it. And what he finally came up with in those notebooks you found is pretty solid-sounding stuff. Howard was darn clever. And his theory took care of some of the Dickinson mysteries pretty neatly. For example—you know how everyone who has looked into Emily's life agrees that somewhere around 1860 or '61 or '62 she must have gone through some sort of crisis of love and renunciation, and nobody is sure what it was..."
"Yes, and it was supposed to have started her writing a flood of poetry and it was also supposed to have made her begin to withdraw from the world and shy away from visitors. What about the theory that it was that Reverend Wadsworth in Philadelphia that she was supposed to be in love with? That's what most people say. And when he moved to California it was more than she could bear, it was almost like dying."
"But why? There she was in Amherst, and in those days Philadelphia would have seemed as far away as the moon already. What difference could it have made to her that Wadsworth left Philadelphia for California? Well, anyway—that's the way Howard reasoned. Emily's lover was not Wadsworth at all—it was Henry Thoreau. Of course, first of all he had to explain how they met. That was easy. Emily must have come to Concord to visit her cousins there, the Norcross girls, and she might very well have stayed in Henry's mother's boarding house, the way Ellen Sewall did, the girl he had loved before. And so, naturally, he took her out boating on the river, just the way he took Ellen, just the way he took Margaret Fuller."
"I love it. I can't help it, I love it. Oh, Homer, just think of the two of them (Henry Thoreau and Emily Dickinson!) out in the sunshine on Fairhaven Bay; just like us. I'll never look out from our front porch without seeing them there. And I've just thought of something else. Both of them were small. They were little people. Little homely people. Forgive me for saying it, but I think they must have made a charming pair."
"I know. It's pretty, it's all mighty pretty. There they were, the two of them, small in stature only, giants in every other way. And each of them beginning to recognize in the other an extraordinary and unique person, an opposite-sexed but true counterpart. After all, each of them was perhaps the one most worthy audience for the other then alive."
"So they fell in love. But do you think they could really have gone so far as to..."
"Well, read what Howard says. He makes it sound pretty plausible. He goes on and on about the powerful loving responses in Henry's journal, his appeals of affection to his friends, the depth of his reaction to the natural world around him. And all of this convinces him that Henry had a nature capable of passionate attachment. In spite of the coldness his friends accuse him of."
"Oh, that," said Mary scornfully. "That was just his New England mask for the strong feelings underneath."
"Listen. I wrote down some of it." Homer took a small notebook out of his pocket and opened it up. "All that a man has to say or do that can possibly concern mankind, is in some shape or other to tell the story of his love,—to sing; and if he is fortunate and keeps alive, he will be forever in love..." Homer put the notebook back in his pocket. "And as for Emily, do you remember how she scandalized her sister-in-law, even after years of retirement, by being discovered in the arms of a man? It was probably that old judge who loved her at the end of her life. Oh, it's reasonable, all right, the whole thing. And therefore, says Howard, the marriage of Henry Thoreau and Emily Dickinson in the flesh was a true marriage of the exalted spirit. Okay, let's say we accept that. Afterwards Emily went home again, gushing poetry, her true poetic self aroused and awakened, writing a masterpiece a day from then on. So half of the Dickinson mystery is solved—the reason for the spout of poetry. But what about the other half? Why did she begin to act like a female hermit, retiring to her room, refusing to see anybody?"
"Naturally," said Mary softly, "it was to bear Henry's child..."
"To do what? My dear, you scandalize me. Squire Dickinson's daughter? Bear an illegitimate child? Impossible! The affair must be hushed up. Emily must renounce her mysterious lover. The child must be carried in secret and delivered in secret and then turned over to the faithful stableman to be brought up as his own. And here's where the Matthews family comes into the picture. Richard Matthews and his wife had sixteen kids. The addition of one more would hardly cause a stir. And the fact that the child grew up with a mop of auburn hair like its mother's, and eyes, maybe, like 'the sherry in the glass that the guest leaves' wouldn't have bothered anyone. I caught on myself, finally, there at Amherst, to what Elizabeth's dark secret was. If you trace the Matthews name back far enough you come to the Richard Matthews who worked for Squire Dickinson and sired seventeen kids, one of whom, a son named (of all things)
Henry, was born only four months after his elder brother Frederick. Four months? There's a precocious embryo for you. So I made a wild stab in the dark and guessed that Elizabeth Goss regarded herself as the great-granddaughter of Emily Dickinson, which explained why she was mooning around in McLean Hospital in a white gown and wouldn't come out to see anybody. What I didn't guess then was that she also had grandiose ideas about who her great-grandfather was."
"What I love most about Howard's idea," said Mary, "is the fun he had with internal evidence—the symbolism and the images in Emily's poetry and letters. The way she called herself 'wife,' and the obvious Freudian interpretation of her poems about bees and flowers. Some of it was pretty strong stuff for a spinster, don't you think? Remember 'Wild night, wild nights'? And what about 'the wrestlers in the holy chamber' and her 'unique burden' that she wrote about—do you think she was really talking about pregnancy and childbirth?"
"Well, you've got to admit that it's all very ingenious. Poor old Emily. If all this happened in 1860 it was only two years before Henry was dead. So she lost him twice, once by renunciation and a second time by death. And thus, Howard says, began her preoccupation with her 'flood subject'—love seen through the barrier of death, the lovers reunited only in immortality."
"I believe it. I believe it all," said Mary. "It only puts me even more in awe of them. I'd like to think it was all true, and that they had each other, even if it was only for a little while."
"Oh, hogwash."
"What did you say?"
"My dear, there isn't a scrap of truth in it. It's all the purest, most delectable bunk."
"Oh, no, it isn't, it isn't. I refuse to give it up. Homer, please..."
"Look, my darling, in the first place those Norcross cousins of Emily's didn't even move out of Cambridge to Concord until after Henry was dead."
"They didn't?" Mary's voice shook with disappointment. "But what about Elizabeth's secret? Where would she have got the notion that she was descended from the two of them? I mean if there was no truth in it at all? And what about the stableboy, Richard Matthews? How did he get an extra child? That one that was born only four months after one of the others? And the red hair! Did you see that, in the black box in Elizabeth's room, in the envelope that was marked Great-grandmother's? How can you explain that away?"
"Oh, the hair. Do you honestly think Emily Dickinson was the only redheaded woman in her generation? And as for the stableboy's too many babies—damned if I know. Maybe his wife was wet-nursing it along with her own for some feckless relative, and then got stuck with it. And don't bother your head about Elizabeth's secret. May I remind you that she is now confined in an institution for the insane? Pure and simple old-fashioned delusions of grandeur. She was a nut. If you don't believe me, listen to this. I looked into what I could find out about her parents and grandparents, and I discovered that her father went to his grave claiming to be the Stuart pretender to the British throne. And her grandfather, the original Henry Matthews, you know what he did? Well, first he made a fortune in carriages and buggies, and then he died. But before he died he built himself a fancy Moorish mausoleum on which were inscribed these words:
HERE LIES ALLAH BEN BUDDHA,
THE TRUE MESSIAH,
KNOWN TO THIS WORLD AS
HENRY RICHARD MATTHEWS.
You can read it yourself in the cemetery there in Amherst."
Mary shook her head, covered her face with her hands and laughed. "Oh, no, no. All that lovely romantic story going up in smoke."
"Look, all you have to do is examine Henry's journal for the last few years of his life, when this great passion was supposed to have possessed him. Does he moon in his secret heart about love and longing? Well, does he?"
"No, no, I know. He goes on and on about tree rings and skunk cabbage and the height of the rivers after a rain. Oh, I know."
"Well, I call that pretty dry stuff for a man who was supposed to have met his Fate. And look—you talk about internal evidence—do you honestly think that any of Emily's poetry expresses the experience of giving birth to and then giving up a child? It expresses some other colossal experience, sure—one can't deny her some sort of excruciating personal knowledge of both love and death. But motherhood? No. And what about guilt? Don't you think a sensitive soul like Emily would have felt some sort of complicated kind of shame if she had been forced to drop the fruit of her love for Henry Thoreau into the lap of someone else? No, no, there's nothing like that in her poetry. And another thing—if Emily Dickinson was anything, she was honest, you agree? And don't you remember that she said somewhere, 'My life has been too simple and stern to embarrass any'? What does her white dress mean, anyway, if not purity, the bride of Christ, and all that? And anyhow, all things considered, I still can't see Henry Thoreau, that stiff and rustic gentleman, dallying with Edward Dickinson's daughter among the daisies. Those times were different, after all."
But that sounded familiar. Mary looked at Homer, unbelieving. It was what she had said herself, hadn't she? She had been talking to Charley Goss, a long time ago. (How long ago!) Men and women didn't have to be lovers, she had said. In those days the restraints were so universally accepted, the two sexes could be friends with each other. And then Charley had scoffed at her. "Listen, girly, men and women have only one relation to each other, and that's all they've ever had. Don't kid yourself." But now even Homer was saying that Charley was wrong...
"Well, all right. I give up. But I'm terribly disillusioned. It would have been so beautiful. And you know you still haven't told me how a man like Howard Swan could be a murderer."
"I'm getting to that. In my own mind it goes back to Henry Thoreau again, and to the fact that a sign of his greatness is the diversity of his influence. Look at Rousseau, for instance. You might call him the father of collectivism as well as the father of democracy. For every disciple Henry Thoreau has, you'll find a different image of the man. On the one hand we've got Teddy Staples, re-creating Thoreau the harmless naturalist and village eccentric. And on the other hand you've got Howard Swan. Remember what Howard was saying that night in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery when we thought for a minute he was Henry's ghost?"
"Yes, of course I do. It was something from Civil Disobedience, that part about any man more right than his neighbors being a majority of one already. I think I'm beginning to see what you mean."
"Civil Disobedience! There's another Henry Thoreau for you! The Henry Thoreau who wrote that glorious essay, that incendiary document, that ringing call to the just citizen to refuse to obey unjust laws, setting the individual conscience above rules and decrees—that Henry Thoreau is a far cry from the one Teddy knows. If God is on your side, that's all the majority you need. Shades of Robespierre!"
"But he was writing against slavery, wasn't he? God was certainly on his side there."
"Of course. I'm not denying it. But it's like all glorious ideas: it's dangerous when perverted. What it comes down to is, who says God in on your side? Howard liked to have things his way. 'Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.' That's what Howard was, all his life, a majority of one. He was influenced by the least attractive side of Thoreau's personality—the scornful side, what Walt Whitman found so disagreeable in him, his disdain for men. Henry disdained men by withdrawing from them. Howard disdained them by exerting power over them. God was on his side, naturally. If he couldn't get things his way by simply running them, as chairman, or president or moderator, he did it by bending the rules somewhat. You saw him make a sort of personal juggernaut out of that town meeting. And God was still on his side, even when the only tactic left was murder. And so he murdered Ernie to protect his child."
"His what?"
"His child. His manuscript. His masterpiece. His thesis. His life's work, his heart's darling, his bid for immortality, his great discovery. Here it was, almost finished at last, nearly done. He could see his picture in The New York Times, he could imagine the excitement, the controversy, the pr
aise of the scholar, the delight of the student, the enthusiasm of the popular press—all so near. And then what happened? Along came Ernie Goss, the great booby, with a screwy set of nutty letters that he swore he was going to hit the market with, right then and there."
"But what difference would that have made? Anyone could tell that Ernie's letters were forgeries. No one would have believed in them."
"That's right. No one would believe in them. Nor would anyone believe in another crackpot theory appearing on the heels of the first, invented by a close friend and colleague of the screwball—a theory attempting to establish the truth of precisely the same kind of scandal, involving some of the same parties—and with its chief evidence stemming from a statement by the wife of the donkey with the forged documents. A statement the wife would deny and disown."
"Oh, oh. Of course. Yes, I see."
"So Howard begged and pleaded with Ernie. He tried bribery. He even threatened violence. That was what you overheard the night of the dinner party. Then, when everything else failed, he thought he had no alternative but to silence Ernie by killing him. Howard was a clever fellow and he sat down and figured out an intelligent and daring crime, as intelligent and as daring in its way as the arguments in his manuscript. And then look how everything played into his hands. First of all Ernie himself misbehaved dreadfully, providing both his sons publicly with apparent motives for murder. And next morning, although Howard didn't hear about it until afterward, Philip practically killed his father himself in full view of half the town. And even the mixup about the flintlocks turned out to work in Howard's favor. There we were, too stupid to find the planted gun in the cider press, and there was Tom Hand, too stubborn to make cider with the apples Howard spirited onto the place in May. But then Charley, the poor fool, had to go and bury that musket, and Ernie himself led us all astray by gurgling 'musket' as he died."