Mr. Emerson's Wife

by Amy Belding Brown

  He sighed and returned to the other side of the table. “Unfortunately, several dates have already been set, and we’re hardly in a financial position to forego the income. Especially with a new child coming.” He studied my waist, as if trying to determine the character of the infant beneath the layers of cloth and skin.

  “Then I will pray to deliver this child on one of those rare days when you are at home.” I took a step backward, edging away from the dining table and its glut of papers.

  He braced his hand on the table. “Bitterness does not become you, Lidian,” he said quietly, and returned to his work.

  He was right. Bitterness did not benefit anyone, neither its object nor its carrier. Yet I did not take criticism easily, even when it was well-intentioned, and I did not believe that Mr. Emerson’s was. I watched him shuffle his papers and thought again of the confession I had never made, the revelation of my encounter with Henry. How close I’d come to telling what had happened! And how abruptly my resolve had vanished in the face of the reminder of his relationship with Margaret! Since that evening, I had not once considered divulging the truth. It had remained buried in me like a boulder in a field, to be unearthed only by some future tilling—a tilling that I now believed would surely break the plow.

  I did not tell Henry of my condition. I did not have to, for within a few weeks the town gossip reached his ears. He came to me one afternoon while the children were napping and I was reading in the parlor after a morning of baking.

  He did not sit near me as was his habit, but took a seat across the room beside the window. For several moments he did not speak, but fumbled with his jacket cuff, which I could see needed mending. “I’ve heard you are soon to be the mother of another child,” he said finally. “I wanted to know—to ask—” He faltered, stopped, cast a pleading look in my direction as if I might help him, but I said nothing except to confirm the news with a nod.

  “I’ve been wondering—” Again he stopped and his right hand rose to pull briefly at his ear. “Considering what happened—the events—” He heaved a great sigh. “I cannot help but wonder”—and here his voice dropped to a whisper—“if the child is mine.”

  I closed my book and set it carefully on the table next to me. “The child is Mr. Emerson’s,” I said. “I’m certain of it.”

  His relief was palpable. The burden rose from his shoulders, a smile flooded his face and eyes—and I felt a responsive pleasure in having bestowed this gift. Yet I also detected a flicker of mute disappointment that flashed across his pupils as briefly as a falling star—a sorrow I did not wish to consider at that moment. The lie of my certainty was so easily given, so readily received, it seemed to have a weight of its own. And because it sprang from love, it seemed to me to be true. Truth, I suddenly realized, was more malleable than I had imagined. At times the truth of love could have such gravity that it made the truth of mere fact weigh almost nothing.

  25

  Peculiarities

  Everything in the Universe goes by indirection.

  There are no straight lines.

  —RALPH WALDO EMERSON

  From the moment I assured Henry that Mr. Emerson was the father of my unborn child, I endeavored to believe it. It became a kind of creed for me, a warranty of virtue. I rose each morning and fastened myself into my determination as routinely as I bound my hair with combs and pins beneath my cap. I reminded myself that a single encounter in a chilly hayloft was unlikely to beget a babe, especially for a woman my age. The child was almost certainly my husband’s. I recalled the many weeks it had taken to conceive Wallie—all the nights I had submitted to Mr. Emerson’s intimate touches and long, damp shudders as he lay upon me, with no fertile result. Children did not generate instantly in my womb—they had to be coaxed into life. If I believed with sufficient resolution, it would be true.

  I greeted Mr. Emerson with a cheerful smile no matter his mood, and refrained from complaining of the dyspepsia of pregnancy. On those occasions when he asked after my condition, I assured him that his child was growing well.

  Yet I was unable to dismiss the possibility that Henry might be the father. And our ongoing association did nothing to eliminate the thought. Henry frequented Bush daily and often took meals with us. He was forever borrowing books from Mr. Emerson’s library. There were many afternoons when I looked into Mr. Emerson’s study to find Henry standing before the wall of books, his head bent over a volume. Once, something in the innocent cast of his face moved me so deeply that I stepped into the room and spoke his name. He closed the book, as if I’d startled him in some nefarious act, and his eyes slid away from me in a manner that was almost shy. I felt a wave of tenderness that was both protective and passionate and reached to clasp his hand. He flinched as if burned. I recalled how he’d commented, that night when he held me in the hayloft, on the unusual heat of my skin. He insisted that he always knew by touching a latch whether or not I had recently opened a door. It was something I’d not been aware of until he told me. Neither my husband nor Lucy had mentioned such a phenomenon, but Henry’s senses were keener than others. Perhaps he alone could detect my strange heat.

  He took a step back and gave me an apologetic smile. “You startled me,” he said, but his voice was strained.

  “I’m sorry.” I turned and left the study, and it seemed to me that I left an awkward silence in my wake that was amplified by the hiss of my slippers on the carpet. A few moments later, from the sanctuary of the parlor couch, I heard Henry quietly open the front door and go out.

  On certain other occasions a similar tension rose between us, when the air became unexpectedly charged. But mostly Henry came and went as before, making repairs, displaying his woodland treasures, engaging Mr. Emerson in long discussions of poetry and philosophy, and taking the children for afternoon rambles through the fields.

  The one change so conspicuous that even Mr. Emerson noticed was that both Henry and I avoided the barn. I stopped collecting the eggs, but set Nancy to that task. Henry no longer carried broken tables and chairs to the barn, but repaired them in the yard or in the storage room above the parlor. When, over a dinner of beef and biscuits one February afternoon, Mr. Emerson remarked that I no longer appeared to derive pleasure from my chickens, I replied that their location was inconvenient. “A small chicken house near the back door would be much better.” I cut a slice of beef so thin it slipped between the tines of my fork. I did not look at Mr. Emerson nor at Henry, who was sitting to my left. “A low structure like Sarah Bartlett’s that will not dissipate the heat. It takes the comfort of the hens into account, and she assured me they reward her by laying eggs of a remarkable size and quality.”

  Mr. Emerson chuckled. “I fear you have more concern for your hens’ comfort than for your husband’s time. What lecture do you propose I cancel so that I might build this fine chicken palace?”

  “The hens’ comfort provides your own, Mr. Emerson,” I snapped. “Or would you wish to serve our guests flat cake and eggless puddings from now on?”

  “I’ll build it, Waldo.” Henry reached across the table for a platter and took a third biscuit. “It’s a simple enough task for me, and the world ought not to be deprived of your wisdom on a flock of hens’ account.”

  Mr. Emerson and I looked to perceive if he spoke in jest. But he was busy buttering his biscuit and the telltale prankster glint was missing from his eyes.

  “Thank you, my friend,” Mr. Emerson said, putting down his fork. “I believe you have rescued my marriage once again.”

  Within the week Henry had constructed a fine shed for the chickens by the kitchen door—three feet high and ten feet long, with tiny windows and an ingeniously contrived roof that folded back on its hinges for ease in collecting the eggs. Mother Emerson—usually the last to applaud Henry’s efforts—praised its advantages. The hens took to their new quarters immediately, as if grateful to be free of the cavernous barn.

  The barn, of course, still loomed behind the house, casting its shadow
over my garden. And over me, for each time I ventured outside I could not prevent my gaze from flying up like a swallow to the window that provided the hayloft with its only light. By the end of February I could bear it no longer. At breakfast I begged Mr. Emerson to walk outside with me a moment before closing himself in his study.

  “Is this some new health practice?” he asked as he followed me out the east entrance. “Are cold baths no longer sufficient?”

  “It’s the barn,” I said, indicating its large shadow. “Look how it blocks the light. I want to tear it down and build another over there.” I pointed to the far end of the yard.

  Mr. Emerson straightened from inspecting the twigs on a lilac bush and, clasping his hands behind him, frowned at me. “Surely you know we cannot afford such a project, Lidian. Just a few weeks ago you acquired a new chicken house and yesterday you informed me we need a new parlor carpet. Now you desire a new barn? It would be easier to move the garden.” He turned to look about him. “Besides, I thought when you laid out the garden you took the barn’s shadow into account.”

  I could not deny this, and in other circumstances I would have relinquished the contest, yet in this case I was desperate to change his mind. “Since you are so concerned with economy, Mr. Emerson, I would think you’d at least consider what an unfortunate waste of space the loft represents. There’s nothing but moldering straw up there.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  I remembered the Wheelers’ upstairs hall in Plymouth, where I had spent so many festive evenings. “It could be made into an excellent dance hall.”

  “A dance hall!” Mr. Emerson’s lips creased with distaste. “I cannot dance a step as you well know. What would I want with a dance hall?”

  “There’s the pleasure of our guests to consider,” I said, aware of the sharpness in my voice, but unable to bridle it. “Not everyone likes to spend all their waking hours in conversation.”

  “Our guests come from great distances to participate in our conversations. There are dance halls all over New England, if that’s the wisdom they seek.”

  I took a moment to subdue my temper before I replied. “Surely you can’t deny that the loft could be put to better use than it is now.”

  He shrugged, but I sensed he was considering my words. He walked away from me, then turned at the bottom of the garden, and came back. “Perhaps a meeting hall or a schoolroom.” He looked at the barn. “We could engage a teacher for the girls and invite other children to join them.” He faced me again, nodding. “I rather like that. It would give them an opportunity to study the classics, learn Latin and Greek.”

  “It’s a fine idea.”

  “Fine?” He smiled. “You surrender your dance hall so easily?”

  “It’s not an unmerited surrender. Your idea was the better one.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Then there will be no more argument from you? No suggestions for improvement?”

  I raised my chin. “An argument is only necessary when you think wrongly, Mr. Emerson.”

  And he laughed, as I had known he would.

  THOUGH I FELT a keen relief in knowing that the hayloft would be transformed, I also experienced an unexpected sadness. Was there a part of me that wanted to sustain—or even repeal—my sin? I prayed earnestly that God would cleanse me. But my prayers were not answered. They seemed to fall like flecks of chimney soot, crusting on the blackened grate, defiling the hearth of my soul.

  Soon after our discussion in the garden, my husband asked Henry to undertake the renovation of the hayloft, but Henry demurred, claiming engagement in his father’s pencil-making business. So two carpenters from town were hired and for a month the sound of hammerblows accompanied the birdsong from the trees. At the end of four weeks, Mr. Emerson insisted that I inspect the room. “A preventative,” he said. “So you’ll have no cause to quarrel with the work when it’s done.”

  I was more than four months gone in my pregnancy, and not eager to climb the narrow stairs built against the barn’s west wall, but one Sunday afternoon I complied with my husband’s wish. I climbed the stairs slowly, my heart racing, not because of the effort but because of the trepidation I felt. At the top, I steadied myself by clasping a beam and waited for a wave of vertigo to pass.

  The straw had all been cleared away and new floorboards laid. A small stove stood against the east wall. The beams and lath were still exposed, for the walls and ceiling had not yet been plastered. The lath made light crosses of wood against the outer wall. My gaze moved slowly, almost reluctantly, to the circular window. Beneath it, in the spot where I had lain with Henry, stood a small wooden chest. I stared at it in horror, for it resembled a child’s coffin. I stood frozen, my hands pressed to my belly where my unborn child waited in darkness.

  All the rest of that day I was filled with a nervous unease. The vision of the child’s coffin was a terrible omen, and I feared not even prayer would safeguard my coming babe. Instinctively, I sought comfort from my husband, and when I heard his buggy pull into the yard that evening, I went to the door to wait for him while he bedded the horse. The clouds of the day had drifted away late in the afternoon, and the sky was clear. A full moon had risen and no doubt it reflected off my white nightgown, presenting a ghostly image. As Mr. Emerson came out of the barn, he stopped in midstride and stared at me, his arms loose at his sides.

  “Lidian?” I heard the worry in his tone, but it did not occur to me that I’d alarmed him until he began to run. He had a trundling gait when he ran, a way of throwing his arms from side to side as his legs moved forward, resulting in an appearance of recklessness, a clumsy disregard for his own safety.

  “Are the children ill? Is Mother unwell?” He stood below me on the bottom step. “Has something happened to Elizabeth?”

  I shook my head. “No, everyone’s fine. We’re all quite well.”

  “Thank goodness! You frightened me. You look”—he stopped, and rubbed his chin with his fingers—“Your appearance—something in your posture—reminded me of the day Charles died. When I came back from that lecture in Salem, you were waiting at the gate with Mother’s note.”

  He looked at my hands, and my eyes followed his, as if we both expected to find a letter clutched in my fingers. “No,” I murmured. “It’s nothing like that.”

  He came up the steps and stepped past me into the entry. “What is it then? Something’s amiss or you would not greet me this way.” He took off his hat and hung it on its peg.

  “You can’t believe it’s from concern for you?”

  “I’d first require a reason for the change.” He smiled—not at me, but at the doorway to the dining room, as if some appreciative audience crowded the darkness there.

  His words stung and the impulse to confess my fears vanished in that instant. He watched me a moment, as if waiting for a response, but when I volunteered nothing, he moved past me and started up the stairs. “It’s late. I must go to bed.”

  The small lamp on the table against the wall cast a flickering, yellow light on the ceiling and banister. It made my husband’s face appear sickly and drawn. The creases at the corners of his mouth looked lined in charcoal.

  He’d started up the stairs but he stopped on the third step and turned. “Are you coming, wife?” He emphasized the last word, as if leaning on it, and I felt a dark, watery swirl of guilt twist behind my forehead and with it came a vision of Henry lying naked on moonlit straw. I squeezed my eyes shut to erase the picture. Would I never be free of that image?

  My husband resumed his climb—his tread on the stairs was heavier than usual, as if he bore a terrible weight. I opened my eyes and looked up. His back and shoulders sagged wearily; I saw the deep fatigue in his slow ascent. A wave of pity bowed my head. The sad compromises of our marriage, I realized, had cost him as dearly as they had me. I took the lamp and followed him up the narrow stairs to our chamber.

  MORE AND MORE my fear was that the child in me would be stillborn or delivered sickly and fail to thrive.
Or worse still—be born a monster. I’d heard of infants whose limbs were twisted into useless shapes or whose lips were so deformed that they could not suck.

  Lucy reminded me that I’d tormented myself over these things before. All women did. It was as natural as birth itself. The child would be fine, she assured me. In fact, my excessive anxiety presented the greatest danger to the babe’s well-being. She added sternly that I ought to look to my nourishment—she’d noticed that I’d been eating poorly again, and it would not do. I must eat for the child’s sake if not my own.

  Mr. Emerson chided me as well. Though I tried, I could not conceal my worries from him. I fretted, moving about the house in a frenzy of activity that I hoped would distract me from all memory.

  “You must stop this!” he said, as I passed him once in the hallway. He grasped my shoulders and pressed me firmly into a chair in his study. “Your imagination is too active, Lidian. You must seek to control its excesses.”

  Only I knew that my fears were not excessive. I could not convince Lucy or my husband of their merit, for they knew nothing of the guilty reason for my dread.

  And what of Henry? Did he perceive the demon that possessed me that spring as I swelled like a ripening pumpkin? Did he observe me with his uncommon scrutiny and guess my foreboding?

  If so, he didn’t make his thoughts known to me. That spring he seemed infected by a particularly cheerful spirit and filled his conversation with plans for mountain travels.

  “I’m going on a walking trip through the Catskills,” he announced one April afternoon when he stopped by to return a book of Mr. Emerson’s. “Ellery Channing will be my companion.”

  “Ellery!” I grimaced. I’d not liked the man from the first and Henry knew it. “Why not Edward Hoar or one of your more amiable friends?”

  “More amiable than Ellery?” His gray eyes glinted merrily. “Surely you know I don’t choose my friends for their amiability. Else how would I have chosen you?” And he surprised me by leaning close—his face moving so near mine I could smell his breath. I had only to incline my head slightly toward him and our lips would meet. I felt faint. I reached out to steady myself and his arm went around me instantly. I gratefully leaned against him as he guided me into the Red Room, where he settled me on the long sofa there.