On the Rocks: A Willa Cather and Edith Lewis Mystery

by Sue Hallgarth

  “Who now teaches literature at the university and whose brother is head of Harvard Law School,” Willa cut in, “and a member of President Hoover’s newly appointed Commission on Law Enforcement.”

  “Red hair and high jinks, that’s what Louise was. But now you are name-dropping. First my cousin and now Roscoe Pound.”

  Willa laughed, “Roscoe the Ridiculous, he was. Pompous prig. He took offense when he realized I was more interested in his sister than I was in him. I retaliated by lampooning him in the university magazine. That was the end of that. But it was also the end of Louise,” Willa adopted a rueful tone, “and of the world, as far as I was concerned then.”

  “The end,” Edith dead-panned.

  “Ah, youth! Ah, propriety!” Willa refused to be finished. Her hand fluttered to her forehead. Finally, she added, “How silly we all were.”

  Sabra Jane was laughing so hard her tea cup rattled in its saucer. Her face had turned a lighter shade of the reds in her shirt and hair. “I know the man,” she finally wheezed out. “Met him in New York. He was buying antiques. I’m an interior decorator. Specialize in antiques,” she caught her breath and began to speak more fluidly. “He never stopped being a prig, you know. Wears bow ties,” she giggled, “but then, what do you expect from Harvard Law.”

  “Exactly,” Willa punctuated the point and rose to offer more tea.

  “Those years in Lincoln were wonderful times,” Edith heard her own voice turn wistful. “So full of the future, of looking forward to great things. Especially for women,” Edith raised her cup toward Willa, “and, I suppose, especially for women from Nebraska. We could go to college. We could have careers. We could live in Greenwich Village. We could do anything, we thought.”

  “And we did. We did all of it,” Willa sat down again and reached over to pat Edith’s hand. “It just wasn’t as easy as we expected. Or as well appreciated.”

  “The Great War changed everything,” Edith nodded but found her glance resting on the steamer, the S. S. Grand Manan, crossing just beyond the entrance to Whale Cove at the start of its return voyage to the mainland. It was somehow soothing to have one’s eye surprised by the familiar passage. With Whale Cove fogged in that morning, Edith had missed its arrival. She paused now to follow its progress before picking up the strand of their conversation again.

  “The Great War, yes,” Willa repeated, her voice dropping. “It certainly changed our lives …”

  “Our expectations, our sense of ourselves,” Edith returned her attention to the women before her and picked up Willa’s thoughts, “our sense of each other …”

  “Our freedom,” Willa joined in, “to live as we chose … and with whom. But it was hard on men. It remapped their world,” she paused, “and ours, too.”

  “It still dominates the world,” Sabra Jane’s voice was firm, her nod grave. “Heroes, debts, reparations. That’s about all there is in the news these days.”

  “Along with rum runners, sensuality, and every imaginable machine. Radios, motor boats, airplanes, Zeppelins,” Edith agreed, “but the war years must have been difficult for you, too,” she turned to Sabra Jane.

  “They were and being on the farm didn’t help. I was already living in New York by then, but I went home every weekend and most of the summers. Everything we raised went for the war effort. My sister and I helped in the fields and knit socks and rolled bandages. And right along with everyone else, we waited for news about the boys from Ogdensburg.”

  Sabra Jane raised her cup in both hands and held it for a moment before taking a sip, “I wanted to go over and drive an ambulance, but my dad wouldn’t hear of it. My mother never stopped being afraid, and we, just none of us, ever talked about the future.” Sabra Jane’s eyes returned with her cup to the saucer still balanced in her lap. “Thank God my brother came home with only a slight limp. Shrapnel lodged in his knee. Two of his friends died of influenza on the ship over and a third fell at the Marne.”

  She glanced at Willa, and her eyes crinkled again, “I’ve read One of Ours, and I’d say you got it right, even for upstate New York. My brother liked it too, though he had a hard time when David died and then Claude.”

  “Thank you,” Willa was grateful for that kind of praise, especially when it came for the novel she privately called Claude’s story. It let her know she had been honest.

  Very few people besides Edith realized that Claude was actually Willa’s cousin, G. P., who fell at Cantigny less than a year after he shipped out. He died a hero’s death, which no one, least of all G. P., ever expected. And he died happy, happier than he had ever been in his life. No one expected that either, certainly not his mother, Willa’s Aunt Franc. She had been surprised by the final intensity of his life and devastated by his death.

  Claude’s story won Willa the Pulitzer, but it was heavily attacked in the press. The vehemence of the critics caught even Edith off guard. Women and veterans loved the novel, but the more it sold, the shriller the critics’ voices became. No woman, and especially not Willa Cather who wrote so well about the past and Nebraska, should ever take on what women can never experience or understand, the critics, all male, assured each other and the world. Miss Cather, they declared, should return to Nebraska.

  Bemused, Willa and Edith guessed that what really rankled was the subtle sureness of Willa’s bead on men. Men with women, men without women, men with men, men at peace, men at war, and men at sex. Especially men at sex. Men and sex, Willa and Edith knew the critics would never admit, were taboo for women writers, restricted to men who simply said the same thing over and over again and called it truth. Comstock had nothing to do with this. Lewdness was a side issue, though not everyone realized the difference. The offense by women writers was even worse when the men women wrote about were not very successful at sex. Willa regularly brushed up against that one. In O Pioneers! she drove Frank Shabata to murder and Emil Bergson to a suicidal tryst, she ridiculed Wick Cutter in My Antonia and toyed with Fred Ottenburg in The Song of the Lark, and she dared to suggest in her stories that mortal men might be terrified by an Aphrodite or Medusa. Then she not only unmanned Claude Wheeler in One of Ours, she turned him into Parsifal, a sacrificial savior.

  Perhaps Parsifal was a bit too gentle for modern heroics, Edith pointed out, and Willa’s subtlety lost on men enamored by Mars, however much they might hate war. That young Hemingway, for instance, they heard through Isabelle and Jan Hambourg, had been telling wicked jokes among their friends in Paris, claiming that Willa’s war experience came from watching Birth of a Nation. Willa and Edith had laughed when they read Isabelle’s letter, but they felt the ground tremble. They knew the herd was sniffing the air and starting to paw, maybe even beginning to circle. Unless Willa was very, very careful, there would be a stampede. Women should write about women, men were saying without saying, their undertone muted, serious, deadly. Women should write about what they know. Love. Children. Young animals. Beneficent nature. Women might pretend to write through men’s eyes, as Willa had done in My Antonia, but their subject had better stay female, and their eyes must never stray into the real world, the world of men’s experience.

  Willa and Edith knew the rules. They had grown up with them, like catechism. And when the fuss came, they rather enjoyed it. Willa never minded outright criticism. She had been a critic herself in her younger days and knew the game. What she hated, and said so, were the gushers, the I-just-loved-your-last-book dreamy-eyed wonders. Edith long ago learned to run interference, to hold that type of admiration at bay. Not because Willa could—and consistently would—be rude, but because people like that threw her too far off balance. Willa might be depressed for days. Twice she even tore up manuscript pages, vowing never to write another word if only gushers read them. Willa and Edith spent hours piecing the pages back together.

  IV

  BREAKFAST THE NEXT morning brought continued speculation among the women at Whale Cove. Willa and Edith donned their Wellingtons, slickers, and hats for the quarter
-mile trek from their cottage to the main dining room. Dew-proofing, they considered their morning attire. Neither of them was the least bit particular about clothes. Not like Winifred Bromhall, the lean Britisher who occasionally joined them at their table and, everyone said, looked just like Greta Garbo. Even less like Eloise Derby, whose several trunks arrived every summer from Paris weeks before she did. Eloise would unpack an outfit a day. Blue, all of them blue, the same color she insisted on for her room. But Winifred and Eloise were exceptions. That was one of the reasons Willa and Edith so loved Grand Manan. They could leave their own office and evening wear hanging in their New York closets, not even tempted, as they sometimes were for visits to Lincoln and Red Cloud, to drag their more stylish garments along for show.

  Soon after their usual fare—Willa’s standard breakfast consisted of cereal, sliced oranges, four strips of perfectly done bacon, toast, jam, and Sanka; Edith’s was a repeat, but she liked her bacon crisp and some days added an egg—Willa retreated to the attic room, and Edith walked into North Head. She wanted to hear the gossip first hand.

  THE previous summer Willa and Edith transported as much from their beloved Greenwich Village apartment as their cottage would hold. Construction on the Seventh Avenue subway had made Bank Street untenable and with housing still tight after the War, especially in the Village, they had not yet found another place they wanted to call home. For the time being, The Grosvenor, a well-appointed hotel near Washington Square where they secured a two-bedroom apartment, served as their temporary city residence. But Whale Cove was now their grounding place.

  In truth, neither of them ever missed New York in July, when sun-drenched buildings and heavy humidity carried the heat from one day right through to the next. By early spring every year, the sheer volume of New York—its numbers, its noise, its pace—increased at least tenfold. People poured out of doors and into the streets. As much as they both loved the city, Willa and Edith were always ready to flee by mid-May.

  For some years they had been undecided about where to spend their summers, the months Willa used and so desperately needed for her work. Circumstances in New York, even on Bank Street, had been barely tolerable in the summers before Willa became famous. After she won the Pulitzer, they simply had to get away—from business, from the city, from the public, from everything and everyone they knew. It was all just too much, too distracting. Willa needed room to ruminate. To roam, to feel free, to be playful, to engage in conversations and activities that did not drain but revived a tired mind, and at the same time to be deeply serious but never so serious that she lost perspective about herself or her writing.

  They considered joining Jan and Isabelle Hambourg, old friends from Willa’s years in Pittsburgh, in their villa on the outskirts of Paris, and they talked briefly about building a small place in New Hampshire with views of Mt. Monadnock or an adobe near Mabel and Tony Luhan’s in Taos. Those places and the people stirred them deeply, but they chose Grand Manan because it took them away from the world without putting them into a circle of temperamental, expatriated, or self-involved artists. That crowd might be pleasant for short dips, but they both felt the strength of its undertow. They wanted instead to be able to float leisurely or stroke as they pleased, and the women at Whale Cove granted them that.

  THIS morning, as Edith picked her way over the rocky shore on her way to Church Lane, the sky was absolutely glorious. Earlier they had seen the sun leap from the sea with great fanfare, feathering wisps of clouds a multitude of rose and gold. Now Sol sat lemon-crisp and satisfied, the sky around him clear, open, blue. Edith breathed deeply. She loved the fresh salt air. And except for the difficulty of navigating the huge expanse of well-worn rocks and shingle that made up the beach at Whale Cove, she enjoyed the walk to North Head. She preferred crossing the beach to Church Lane, which cut through the woods and delivered her into the village just below the Anglican church.

  Often Willa and Edith, instead of turning right onto Church Lane turned left, taking the path along the cliffs that brought them out of the trees at a formation called Hole in the Wall. Well known among picnickers and hikers, this leaning tower of rocks rose out of the cove to attach itself to Grand Manan through an arch spanning more than twice the length of several tall men. It was one of Willa’s favorite picnic spots. From there they looked back across the cove at the cottages or, with a glance to the right, took in the grandeur of Seven Days Work where volcanic rock had been pushed apart by igneous intrusions during the Triassic period to form the well-defined layers that gave the cliffs their name. From the top of Hole in the Wall, they could also look out to the open sea. Often after a leisurely lunch, they stayed for several hours watching for seals or whales swimming in the clear, green depths nearby. They were closer to the water here than at the cottage, and the outer ledges of Hole in the Wall provided comfortable bleachers for viewing. Edith wondered if anyone had been sitting there the previous afternoon and witnessed, as she had, Mr. Brown’s precipitous descent.

  Hole in the Wall

  WHEN Edith reached the North Head Bank, she turned in, hoping for a long chat with Mr. Enderby. He was a safe bet for news. Men claimed never to gossip, but Edith knew better. People always trusted bankers, and Mr. Enderby was a good listener. Edith considered him almost a friend. She was often in the bank transferring money or arranging for bills to be paid in the States. She handled all of their personal business, and by now Mr. Enderby knew what that was about as well as she did.

  Edith waited while Mr. Enderby counted the fistful of change Janey Dawson had stretched her full height to deposit in a small pile on his side of the teller’s cage.

  “My,” Mr. Enderby nodded approval, “you carried this a long way and kept it very safe. I’m proud of you.” His glance at Edith shared his amusement. “The coins are still warm from her hand,” he paused to fill out the deposit slip, “and a bit sticky as well.”

  Mr. Enderby’s smile was a special treat. He was a genial man. Janey was radiant in return, and after a slight curtsy and “Thank you” and “Good day, Miss Lewis,” to which Edith replied in kind, Janey opened the clasp of the little patent leather purse she carried draped on her arm and tucked the deposit slip inside. The purse, it seemed, was for paper, not coins. Then Janey ran out the door, forgetting all about manners and matters of finance, to join Jocko Winslow, just passing by with his black-and-white puppy.

  “Eric and Mary Dawson have got themselves a fine young one there,” Mr. Enderby observed after his own “Good day, Miss Lewis.”

  “Indeed they do. And well they might. Eric Dawson seems to be a fine young man himself.”

  “That’s certain, he is. Got himself an education and keeps up with the world. He loves the island, but he would do well anywhere and so will his daughter,” Mr. Enderby concluded his observations and turned back to Edith. “I understand you had occasion to make his acquaintance yesterday.”

  With no one else in the bank, Mr. Enderby was clearly prepared to spend whatever time necessary to hear the whole of Edith’s version of the previous afternoon. She began with Eric Dawson and moved backwards, then forwards again to bring him to the point where she could ask what more he had heard in North Head.

  Mr. Enderby cleared his throat. He approached every opportunity to impart knowledge with a gravity Edith relished. He reminded her of her father, an investment banker as familiar with a three-piece suit and watch fob as Mr. Enderby. Edith long ago learned to be patient with the need for authority and understood the terms of exchange. She had given Mr. Enderby her story. He would take the time he needed for his.

  “I understand you saw someone in a red shirt,” Mr. Enderby observed now, leaning against the polished wooden shelf at the rear of the cage, his left hand cushioning his back. His right hand reached forward to straighten the knot in his tie. He was waiting for Edith to answer.

  “Only his back,” Edith nodded.

  “Yes,” Mr. Enderby glanced down. His right hand brushed the front of his jacket. “Can
you be certain it was a him?” Mr. Enderby’s words came slowly, each one distinct. He returned his attention to Edith’s face, his eyes echoing his inquiry.

  Edith paused. “I saw only a back. And an arm. The right arm shot out in the air.” She made the gesture herself, bringing her arm quickly up from her side. Her hand passed in an arc across her midsection before flinging itself straight out, fingers extended. She looked at her hand and took a moment to feel the way her body had arranged itself, then she sought Mr. Enderby’s reaction.

  Behind his rimless glasses, Mr. Enderby’s gray eyes were squinted slightly and seemed a little out of focus. He was seeing Edith and the figure on the cliff at the same time, Edith guessed. She was working on that inner vision herself, trying to attach gender to the shirt. It was difficult. The distance had been so great. Had there been a hat? She couldn’t tell. Did the person wear pants? She thought so, dark pants, perhaps. She could not say for sure.

  It was as though her memory was playing tricks. She could surround that red shirt with a variety of costumes. All of them seemed possible. Her eyes must have been so attracted by the red they saw nothing else. And it happened so fast. When the man went over the cliff, she saw nothing else until he landed. No, that wasn’t true. She could distinctly remember shouting to Eric Dawson and waving to catch his attention. So fast it all happened, yet hours seemed to pass between the moment the man went off the cliff and the second he landed on the rocks below. She remembered his body slowing and seeming briefly to drift. Surely an illusion.

  “I thought it was a man,” was all Edith could affirm. “There seemed to be some sort of scuffle beforehand. I heard a shout.”

  Mr. Enderby took a step forward and placed both hands on the counter, then leaned against them. “Constable Daggett drove off for Seal Cove about half an hour ago. Said he wanted to talk to Sabra Jane Briggs. She’s the only person anyone remembered seeing in a red shirt yesterday.” Mr. Enderby pushed back to rock on his heels, then leaned forward again to add punctuation, “And Little John Winslow saw her standing outside the bakery talking to that man not more than two hours before he died.”