by Oak, B. B.
“How lovely, Mrs. Swann!” I said. “Thank you for going to all this trouble.”
“No trouble at all, I assure you, my dear. Now sit down and I shall pour out the tea.”
“I’ll call Noah to join us. Is he in the kitchen?”
“I do not think these young ladies would appreciate his presence at table,” Mrs. Swann stated most emphatically.
Ignoring her objection, I sang out Noah’s name, but got no response.
“He must be off on one of his secretive walks,” Mrs. Swann said. “Do not concern yourself about the lad. I shall put aside some sweets for him, and he can eat them in private as he prefers to do.”
It was true enough that the boy does not like eyes upon him as he eats, and I realized, had he been home, I would have caused him more embarrassment than pleasure by insisting that he join us.
There was a knock on the front entry door, and Mrs. Swann hurried off to answer it. A moment later she led Justice Phyfe into the dining room. He did not bother to wait for an invitation from me but took a seat at the head of the table. Mrs. Swann was quick to set a cup and saucer and plate of puffs in front of him.
“Why thank you, madam. You are the very essence of hospitality,” he said.
“It is always a pleasure to wait upon a fine-looking man,” she replied.
Phyfe’s daughters giggled, and he tried to hide his blush by stroking his muttonchop whiskers. “You are quite the flatterer, Mrs. Swann,” he said.
“I only speak the truth,” she declared most fervently.
He bit into a puff and rolled his eyes in ecstasy. “What angel on earth could have baked such heavenly pastries as these?”
Mrs. Swann lowered her eyes most demurely. “I am no angel, sir.”
“Pray tell me how you made such light and airy tidbits as these, Mrs. Swann, so I can duplicate them at home for our dear papa,” Beatrice demanded. “Did you use chocolate or cocoa?”
“Chocolate,” Mrs. Swann quickly replied.
“Really? But how did you keep it from oiling?”
Mrs. Swann did not reply so quickly this time. Instead, she raised her finger to her lips and shook her head.
Beatrice’s plump little mouth turned down in a pout. “You do not care to share your culinary secrets with me?”
“I hardly know you, my dear.”
Justice Phyfe smiled approval. “Mrs. Swann is teaching you a lesson in manners, Beatrice. You are presuming too much familiarity with her. Before she feels free to share any secrets, we must become more intimately acquainted with her.” The look he gave Mrs. Swann across the table boded his intention to do just that.
He regarded me with less benevolence and proceeded to interrogate me about my training as a professional artist. His questions indicated that he doubted I had any. I took no offence for it is sadly true that art academies both here and in Europe do not accept women. I informed Phyfe, however, that I had been trained by one of the most respected American portraitists abroad, namely Ellery Bell, my own father. I went on to describe how I had served as his studio assistant in Paris for over ten years, stretching his canvases, mixing his paints, and taking instruction from him. I did not add that by the time I was twenty I had become so skilled that I was completing much of Papa’s work for him, whilst he went off to pursue other passions. Nor did I mention that I learned far more from Papa than technique. Along with teaching me how to paint portraits, he had taught me how to drum up paying subjects.
Of course I appreciate the part Mrs. Swann played in obtaining my current commission. If not for her, I surely would have lost Phyfe’s good will and patronage. It is clear that he is quite taken with her, but what is not clear to me is why. I should think Mrs. Swann’s boldness would be off-putting to him for he is clearly of the opinion that women should govern their tongues and be submissive. And it cannot be that her great beauty blinds him to her brash temperament for in truth Mrs. Swann is a most homely woman. She has neither the delicacy of facial features nor the slight, willowy form men profess to admire in a female. Men! They demand us to be one thing and then desire just the opposite. I reckon it is Mrs. Swann’s originality that attracts Justice Phyfe. Or could it simply be that he is a lonely widower on the prowl? If so, I need not worry about Mrs. Swann’s vulnerability. If there is any woman who can defend herself against untoward advances, it is she.
After Phyfe and his daughters departed, I offered to help with the washing up, but Mrs. Swann insisted upon doing it herself.
“After all, that is my job now,” she said.
“We have not even settled on your wages yet, Mrs. Swann. What compensation do you require?”
“All I require is what you have already given me, a comfortable place to live and your pleasant company, my dear. Pay me with kindness and affection, and we shall all be happy. Now go back to your work whilst I see to mine.” With that she commenced clearing the table.
I returned to the studio to evaluate the sketches I had made of the three Phyfe sisters. A short time later I heard a crash in the kitchen and went to investigate. I found little Noah standing on a stool in front of the soapstone sink, dishcloth in hand and tears in his eyes. On the floor around him lay the pale blue fragments of my grandmother’s cherished Wedgwood teapot.
“Never mind,” I told him. “That pot can be easily replaced.” Some would say it is wrong to lie to a child, but in this case I think not. He did look so upset over the mishap.
As we picked up the broken pieces together, I asked him where Mrs. Swann was. His enunciation is so poor that I could not understand the boy. Nor could I understand why Mrs. Swann had let him wash the delicate china instead of doing it herself. She was nowhere to be found on the first floor, but when I went upstairs I saw that her bedchamber door was closed. About to rap upon it, I hesitated. Perhaps a violent headache had come upon her. I decided to let her rest. I shall let the matter of the teapot rest too. It is broken beyond repair, after all, and nothing can change that.
ADAM’S JOURNAL
Wednesday, December 8
Up at first light. Got a good fire started to warm the kitchen for Gran and Harriet and took off on patient calls before they awoke. Kept the gig top down to see the sunrise. Napoleon’s breath burst out his mouth in heavy plumes of vapor as he pranced down the long lane to the road, his hooves crunching through the thin white ice coating the frozen puddles. He seems content enough to have me at the reins now, but he must miss Doc Silas. God knows I do, even though we hardly ever agreed on medical treatments. As devoted as I was to the old doc, I could never have shared a practice in Plumford with him. Better to have honed my skills in Boston. And Boston is still where my ambitions reside.
But not my heart. I looked back at the rambling homestead where I had been raised, set halfway up the side of the broad hill, smack-dab in the middle of a hundred and fifty acres of meadow, pasture, woodland, and orchard. The sun was just coming up behind the hill and cast golden light upon the old house and the string of attached barns and sheds that had been added over the decades as necessity dictated. This is where I belong, thought I; this is where my true heritage lies. Whoever my father might have been, I know for certain Tuttle blood runs through my veins. And Tuttle Farm is where I can always find peace and refreshment.
When we reached the road I gave Napoleon free rein, and we glided past the shorn hay and corn fields at a good pace. The Assabet danced between its frost-lipped banks as the gig rumbled over the bridges, and I began to sing over the rumble, as if all were well with the world.
But then I passed the Wiley homestead and was reminded that all was not well. Ezekiel and Solomon were out front, butchering a hog not a dozen yards from their well. Ezekiel knows better than to do this. I have told him that butchering so close to a well will pollute the water with animal seepage and make it unfit to drink. But no doubt his brother insisted upon doing it there anyway for the sake of convenience. Ezekiel nodded as I passed, and Solomon only glared. Close by their bloody labor Mrs. Wiley was
making soft soap. She stood over a roaring fire ladling scoopfuls of potash into an enormous kettle in which thick slabs of fat sliced from the hog were being boiled down. She might well have been a wraith as she squinted through the thick smoke at me. Poor woman. Two daughters dead within six months of each other. And a brother-in-law from hell.
My first call was to the Gray farm. Mr. Gray’s wound is draining well. No smell of infection or visual evidence of it. Charged Mrs. Gray to alert me immediately if there was. But as each day passes there is less likelihood that I will have to amputate. My next call was at the Yates’s farm, where I found the babe I delivered last week in blushing health. Halleluiah!
Rode out to the Herd farm after that to see how their grandson Billy was faring. Farmer Herd informed me that my young patient had been moved to the barn so that he could breathe in the cows’ health-inducing exhalations. Herd had learned of this advanced therapy from a train conductor whilst at the Concord depot loading his milk cans for Boston this morning. The conductor claims his very own father was cured of Consumption as a boy in Prussia when he was moved into the cow house. Did not know whether to laugh or weep when Herd told me this. Did neither, of course, and spent a good half hour trying to induce him to move Billy back to the house where humans rather than bovines could look after him. Doubt I would have managed to persuade him if his wife had not taken my side. She knows best how to talk sense into that stubborn codger. Indeed, he would be dead now if she had not convinced him to allow me to cut off his badly infected finger a while back. She had made sure to keep Billy warm under a pile of quilts during his barn visit, so I don’t think any further harm came to him there. He is wasting away at a rapid rate, however, and I doubt he will survive the winter. Herd will no doubt blame me for interfering with his cow cure, just as Solomon Wiley blamed me for interfering with his vampyre ritual. Who else but the doctor is there to fault when galloping Consumption claims life after life?
Better that than faulting the patient, however. On Sunday I heard a visiting preacher claim from the pulpit that Consumption is a spiritual rather than a physical malady, brought on by the sufferer’s lack of faith. I could not refrain from shouting “Hogwash!” loudly enough to be heard throughout the Meetinghouse. I shout the same when I hear medical men put the blame on their patients—he or she overindulged in food or drink, or didn’t exercise enough, or danced too much, or rode in a cold carriage, or practiced solitary sex! Excuses abound, and none make sense to me. Neither does the latest scientific theory about the illness. Although I have seen tubercules upon the lungs of Consumption victims during autopsies, I cannot credit that these tubercules accumulated there because the heart of the deceased was too weak to pump cleansing blood through the lungs to wash them away. What causes these nodules? The disease seems to run in families. Is it hereditary? If so, I fear for Julia. There is a history of Consumption in the Walker family that goes back generations, and her own mother died of it.
Left Billy settled back in his room, cheeks flushed with fever but resting peacefully enough, poor, exhausted lad. He is so frail and thin his shoulder blades look like bird wings. Passed Tuttle Farm on my way to town and turned off for a quick cup of coffee. Gran was not in the house. Nor was she in the barn, dairy room, or chicken coop. Harriet was nowhere to be seen, and neither were any of the winter farmhands. Or even the dog. With a murderer possibly still at large in the area, I started getting mighty anxious. Finally went down to the root cellar and felt great relief to discover Gran there, working in the light of a tallow candle. She sat on a stool, brushing aside the layer of hay on the dirt floor to inspect her store of turnips, carrots, parsnips, radishes, and potatoes. Her hands are always moving. As a boy when I came in from the cold she would not just hold my hands to warm them but pat and clasp and caress them till the cold was gone. Now her keen, commonsensical mind and plain speech soothe my mind like her hands warmed me then.
“No one is about the farm,” I said.
“Sent the men up to the east woodlot to cut trees.”
“And where is Harriet?”
“Sent her to town to stay with friends until all this vampyre flummydiddle ends. I reckoned it was time for Harriet to leave when I asked her to kindly fetch me some turnips up from the cellar and she refused to do it. Never before has that dear girl refused me a favor, so I knew something was amiss. Sure enough, she was all of a biver concernin’ the vampyre. She’d gotten it into her head that he might be sleeping down here during the day. Why a vampyre might choose the Tuttle root cellar as his daytime lair she could not tell me, but her fear was real enough.”
“I suppose girls are prone to such imaginings.”
“Not just girls. Men too. My farmhands told me only an hour ago that they will be stopping their work well before sunset to avoid walking home in the dark.”
“Because they fear this so-called Night Stalker?”
“And all his minions! They have heard talk that Witiku has risen from his grave and brought upon the Consumption plague to create a vampyre army.”
“I cannot understand how Solomon Wiley has managed to get people to believe these wild fantasies.”
“Well, I ain’t one bit surprised,” Gran said. “In a way it is a comfort to credit some evil as the cause for all the suffering going about. Evil can be stomped out.”
“How? By digging up corpses and mutilating them? There is only one evil that needs to be stomped out, and that is ignorance.”
“You are right, of course, Adam. But that don’t mean folks will listen to you. They may even turn on you for tryin’ to reason with them. You might well end up the lightning rod for all their pent-up anger and frustration. Better to let them take it out on the dead.”
“No, I will not stand for that,” I said. “Better to stand up to Solomon Wiley.”
“That will not be so easy to do, my boy. He is building up a mighty big following,” Gran said. “By latchin’ onto that old Injun legend he is dredgin’ up old fears.” She gazed at the shadows the flickering candlelight cast upon the stone walls. “When I was a bit of a girl my grandfolks scared us with stories about Witiku. Threats of him stalkin’ through the night lookin’ fer white children to feed upon could make us nigh hysterical.”
We fell quiet. I set myself down on a keg containing fermenting pear perry, and Gran busied herself for a time retying and rehanging strings of pole beans and peppers from the roof beams. “How goes it with you and Julia?” she finally asked. “Must be upsettin’ to have her back in your life again.”
“She may be back in Plumford,” I said, “but I am determined not to let her back in my life. My heart is shut tight to her now.”
“Because she went and married somebody else?”
“Need I a better reason than that? I thought she loved me as much as I loved her, Gran. Instead she forgot all about me less than a month after we parted.”
Gran held her candle close to my face and must have seen the hurt in it, for her own face sagged in sorrowfulness. “How can you ever forgive me, Adam?”
“It is Julia I cannot forgive.”
“Then you are blamin’ the wrong person, my boy. I am the one at fault for not tellin’ you who yer real father was.”
“You need not keep tormenting yourself about it, Gran. In the end you did tell me.”
“Too late! Julia had already sailed off.”
“How were you to know she would act so rashly?”
“She would not have done so if she had knowed you two have no blood connection.”
“I am sorely tempted to tell her so now.”
“Don’t do it, Adam. It would only cause her pain of mind.”
“Good!”
Gran tutted. “I never heard you sound spiteful afore, Adam.”
“You never heard me lie before, either.”
“What lie have you told me then?”
“That my heart is shut to Julia. In truth, it is still an open wound.”
Gran took my hand and rubbed it. “I wish
to heavens she had never come back here.”
We said nothing more about Julia. Best to stop writing about her, too. Better yet, I should stop thinking about her. That was hard enough to do when an ocean separated us. But now I am plagued by the alluring sight of her every damn day.
JULIA’S NOTEBOOK
Thursday, 9 December
I went to Daggett’s store this forenoon to see if my order of art supplies had arrived from Winsor & Newton. Alas, no. But to compensate for this disappointment there was a post from Lidian Emerson communicating her intention to call on me with Henry tomorrow afternoon.
Heading back home across the Green, I noticed Harriet Quimby, Granny Tuttle’s ward, coming toward me. When she noticed me too, she veered off in another direction, but not one to be snubbed so easily, I took chase after her.
“Good Day, Harriet!” I called out as I caught up with her. “How pleased I am to see you again.” When she turned to face me I saw from her expression that the pleasure was not mutual. I looped arms with her anyway, and we fell into step. “You are well, I trust.”
“I am very well, thank you,” she replied with stiff politeness, but did not inquire as to my own health.
I ignored this rebuff. “And I pray Granny Tuttle is well, too.”
“Mrs. Tuttle is not your granny,” Harriet said huffily.
“But she is Adam’s,” I said. “And he is my cousin. Hence, she and I are related in a way.”
“No, you are not,” Harriet insisted. “That your mother’s brother was married to Mrs. Tuttle’s daughter does not make you her kin.”
“You are right about our family connection, or rather the lack of one, Harriet,” I allowed, not wishing to renew our acquaintanceship with an argument. “But I have known Gran—that is, Mrs. Tuttle since I was eight years old, and always heard Adam call her Granny. So that is how I came to think of her. Not that she ever gave me leave to call her that. She is no more fond of me than you are.” I laughed.