Beyond the Mapped Stars

by Rosalyn Eves

  “Yes, sir,” he says, and turns his attention to his dinner, though he doesn’t eat anything more.

  * * *

  * * *

  After dinner, Alice wants to continue the painting, but Mrs. Stevens insists she let us go. We make arrangements to meet up again the next afternoon, and I accompany Samuel to the front door.

  “Walk with me?” Samuel asks, gesturing at the road before the house.

  A clear, glittering reach of sky meets my view. With a quick word to Alice, I follow Samuel outside.

  We walk for a little while in silence, but it’s the kind of silence born of long familiarity. When did I start to become so comfortable around Samuel?

  Finally, I say, “At dinner, you said you work with your father because you aren’t ambitious enough. What would you choose if you could choose to do anything?”

  Samuel scratches at his beard. “I try not to throw my heart after impossible things.” He gives me a sidelong look that I can’t read. “Mostly. I haven’t thought about it much.”

  “But when you have thought about it?”

  “I like the challenge of making new things. In another life, I might have studied engineering. But truth is, I like farming and carpentry just fine, so long as I can tweak things so that it is not always the same thing, time and again.”

  Samuel told me that he came to Denver to learn new woodworking techniques. “But your father doesn’t like your additions? Why?”

  Samuel sighs, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Pa doesn’t much like change. Learning new techniques when solid woodcrafting has served him well for decades seems foolish. I’m lucky he let me come. Just wish I could stay longer.”

  I halt, shock arrowing through me. “You won’t stay for the eclipse?”

  Samuel stops to face me. “I’d like to. Only I’m about out of funds. If I can find short-term work for a carpenter or some other work, I’ll stay.”

  I resume walking. It’s not like I’ll never see Samuel again. He’ll be back in Monroe when I get back. But I didn’t expect the thought of him leaving to feel so much like loss.

  Samuel keeps pace beside me. He slips his hand from his pocket and his fingers brush mine—I can’t tell if it’s accidental or not. But I don’t move away.

  “Whatever I do, I hope you see everything you want. This place suits you—you seem happier than you did before you went to your sister. Less weighed down.”

  “I’m doing something for me,” I say, smiling. “It’s nice. You should try it.”

  “I am doing something for me right now,” he says, returning my smile. He tips his head back, points upward. “There’s Vega of the Lyre. The star reminds me of you.”

  “You’ve been brushing up on your constellations,” I say, following his gaze upward. Vega is high overhead, twinkling bright. The fifth-brightest star in the sky.

  “Aren’t you going to ask why it reminds me of you?” Samuel stops staring at Vega to look at me. His face is full of starlight.

  Something inside clenches tight. I am not sure I want to hear his answer, so I try for a joke I think he would appreciate. “Because I’m not quite as bright as other stars?”

  But Samuel doesn’t smile. Still serious, he says, “Because Orpheus’s lyre was supposed to charm everyone who heard it.”

  Oh.

  I wish I could laugh at his line, turn it into a jest, but I can’t. I rub my hands against my arms, suddenly prickling with gooseflesh. “I should go back now.”

  And while Samuel doesn’t protest, even offers some light conversation as we walk, he doesn’t say anything else about stars.

  chapter twenty

  Wednesday, July 24, 1878

  Denver, Colorado

  Five days until eclipse

  As soon as my shift at the Trans-Oceana is over, I head for the Denver and Rio Grande station. I’m rather proud of myself, negotiating the streets of this new city without help. Perhaps, if I can find my way about Denver, I can find my way around cities even larger, even farther afield.

  I make my way to the corner office at the station, but a newspaper discarded across a seat snags my attention. Something about Mr. Edison. I unfurl the paper and read the blaring title: “Edison’s Go-By: How the Great Inventor, Who Will Not Visit Denver, Is Progressing.” The wounded dignity in the author’s tone makes me laugh—I didn’t realize how much the citizens of Denver were counting on Edison’s visit, until his determination to remain in Rawlins was absolutely confirmed.

  That train robbery has turned out lucky for me, in more ways than one. I’d never have met Mr. Edison without it. Or Alice and Will. Or Miss Mitchell.

  I continue to the office and ask the clerk, a thin-faced man with a long nose, if a parcel has come in for Miss Maria Mitchell. The clerk consults some sort of ledger, then disappears back into the room, nosing about among all the collected luggage. For a moment, I’m distracted, thinking of all the trunks and parcels crisscrossing the United States independent of their owners.

  The clerk returns. “There is, indeed—a long, narrow sort of box.”

  My heart leaps. The telescope. “Oh, this is wonderful! May I have it?”

  He squints at me. “Are you Miss Mitchell? Have you been deputized by her to take up the package? A note of some kind? We can’t just go handing out parcels willy-nilly to anyone who asks.”

  I falter. In Monroe, where everyone knows one another, such a thing as a note giving one permission to take up a package would be unthinkable. “Thank you for checking. I’ll inform Miss Mitchell at once.”

  I walk the long blocks to Dr. Avery’s home and knock.

  The honey-haired young astronomer, Miss Harrison, opens the door. Her eyebrows lift in surprise at my flushed face. “Yes?”

  “Miss Mitchell’s telescope has come,” I say.

  At that, her whole expression changes, delight chasing surprise across her features. “Please, come in,” she says, but she leaves me standing in the hall as she races back to the parlor. “Miss Mitchell! Miss Mitchell! The telescope is here.”

  I hear a muffled murmur of voices from the parlor, and then Miss Mitchell herself comes out into the hall, hands outstretched. She takes my hands up in hers. “God bless you, Miss Bertelsen. Now my heart can be easy. Do you know, this is the very same telescope that I used to discover my comet? It has been with me nearly my entire career as an astronomer.”

  Dr. Avery and the forthright Miss Culbertson crowd into the hallway behind her. Miss Mitchell turns to Dr. Avery. “Alida, can your man go to the station and fetch the telescope for me? Have him bring it to the field near St. Joseph’s home, where we mean to set up our eclipse site. I wish to ensure the site’s suitability as soon as possible. If it will not work, best to know now, when we can still scout out another.”

  “The station clerk won’t release the telescope without a note,” I say. “I tried before.”

  “Oh yes, of course,” Miss Mitchell says. “Emma, do fetch me a pen and paper.”

  Miss Culbertson disappears back into the parlor, and Dr. Avery heads down the hallway, presumably in search of her man.

  I wait, my entire body tense with a mixture of excitement and fear. Having accomplished my errand, I should go, but I can’t bring myself to. I want to know how this plays out. I want to feel a part of it, for a little bit longer.

  Miss Mitchell studies me, her eyebrows dark under her graying hair. “Would you like to come with us, Miss Bertelsen? We shall need two carriages at least, so there will be room.”

  Heat sparks in my chest, flaming out through my body. All at once, I’m conscious of every detail around me: the soft shushing of silk dresses that Miss Mitchell and Miss Harrison wear; the scents of roses and vanilla that fill the house, with a subtle undernote that I can’t place; the trilling of a sparrow outside; the faint breeze that curls through the hallway from an
open window nearby. Have I ever been so fully in my body, in my heart?

  “I should like that very much.”

  Miss Mitchell smiles at me, just as Miss Culbertson returns with writing equipment. “Good. Then that’s settled.”

  It’s not until I watch Miss Mitchell set pen against paper that I remember: I’ve promised myself to Alice for this afternoon, for another sitting. I haven’t got the time to go out to a field to set up a telescope and be back for my appointment. But if I refuse to go with Miss Mitchell now, I may never have another chance.

  I know I promised Alice I would not be late for a sitting again, and I don’t want to hurt her.

  But.

  This is the kind of opportunity I’ve wanted my entire life, since I discovered there were books about stars and people who studied them. Rebekka said there will always be babies needing care, and I can’t hold myself responsible for all of them. There will always be people needing things from me—paintings, domestic chores, things I haven’t begun to imagine. What is my duty to all of them? To myself? To put oneself first all the time is surely selfish and ungodly. But does it follow that one should never put oneself first?

  I’ve given myself this window, here in Denver, to see if astronomy is something I can make a life of, if maybe there’s another path than the one I always thought I was meant to follow. The path of a comet, flaming across the sky, can seem unpredictable—but comets orbit our world in fixed arcs. It’s just a matter of determining the trajectories. Maybe this is the trajectory my life is meant to follow.

  I have to take this chance.

  Alice will understand—in the same kind of situation, with an opportunity to study with an artist she admired, wouldn’t she do the same?

  I borrow some paper from Miss Mitchell and scribble off my own note. Turning to Dr. Avery, who’s come back to the hallway, I ask, “Can your man deliver this to the Trans-Oceana on his way into town?” Alice is known there and often stops by to visit her grandfather or her mother. They’ll pass the word to her.

  * * *

  * * *

  Perhaps an hour later, I stand on a field somewhere east of Denver, staring up at an overcast sky. Before me, the field stretches broad and empty. To the south sits a three-story brick building topped with a cross, a hospital run by Catholic nuns.

  Miss Mitchell’s students carefully unload the telescope boxes from the back of the carriage and begin to open them. I wander over to observe, but don’t offer to help, fearful of damaging the enormous metal and wood contraptions, gleaming even in the dull afternoon light.

  Miss Culbertson stands beside me and swipes a hand across her forehead, pushing a strand of dark hair away from her eyes. “They’re a fine sight, aren’t they? That one’s by Dollond and this one’s by Alvan Clark. Are you familiar with their work?”

  The way she studies me makes me uneasy, as though her hazel eyes see through me to the lie I’m trying to hide. “Not those, no. Nothing so fine. Just an old scope that my teacher happened to have. Much smaller, of course.”

  “I remember my first.” Miss Culbertson smiles, showing her teeth. “Telescope, that is.”

  Miss Harrison looks up at us. “Don’t let Emma rile you, Miss Bertelsen. She’s not so fierce as she seems.”

  Miss Culbertson colors, and I remember how she looked at Miss Harrison at the station, as though there were something important between them.

  I ask Miss Harrison what it’s like to study astronomy at college.

  “Oh, it’s marvelous—and the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I love the girls I study with, but the work demands a lot.”

  The freckled Miss Abbot says, “We certainly put in many late hours at school, watching the stars at night and then rising again early to study through the day.”

  “There’s not much leisure time,” Miss Culbertson says. “That can be hard on friendships—and beaus.”

  Miss Harrison says, with a slight, flickering look at Miss Culbertson, “There was a young man who wished to court me but would not wait for me to finish my studies.”

  Miss Mitchell steps away from the telescope and turns to look at us. “It is hard to strike a balance between one’s study and one’s private life, and many women find they are not cut out for serious science and return home to their friends and families to build a domestic life. There is no shame in that. I myself never married, and I do not see my family so often as I might like because of my teaching duties, but I have not had to sacrifice friends and family entirely.”

  “Per aspera ad astra,” I say.

  “To the stars through hardship,” Miss Mitchell says, smiling. “Precisely.”

  “But you mustn’t think it’s all hardship,” Miss Harrison says. “Studying astronomy is the best thing I’ve done.”

  Miss Mitchell continues, looking at me, “But I do think that those who feel called to this work must take it seriously. The woman who does her work better than every woman did before her helps all womankind, not only now, but in the future. But a woman whose work is loosely done, ill-finished, or not finished at all does wrong by herself and all other women.” Her eyes hold mine for a beat, then she turns to Miss Culbertson. “Come, Emma, help me fit this telescope to the tripod.”

  The patchwork clouds overhead permit only flashes of sunlight, but the clouds break just then, as if in confirmation of her words, and the little swath of grass we stand in illuminates like an angel has reached down and brushed against us. The grass is so bright in contrast to the still-dark clouds that it hurts to look at it. I look up at the distant mountains instead.

  I suspected that it might be difficult to balance the domestic life my mother wants for me with the study I want for myself. Now I know for certain. Miss Mitchell’s words echo through my head: A woman whose work is loosely done does wrong by herself and all other women. Samuel’s face flickers before me, and I hear his voice telling me he finds me charming. Something inside me wrenches.

  What is it that God wants for me? What do I want?

  Miss Mitchell’s students talk and joke around me as they fit the telescopes to their mounts, and then, one after another, we take turns sighting the telescopes—first on the far hills, then up at the sky at the angle of the possible eclipse. The words swirl around me, touching me yet somehow apart. But I don’t mind. I may not have earned my place among these women yet—

  But I want to.

  It’s late when we return to Denver—past suppertime. My stomach growls at me as I climb down from the carriage, and I think of the dinner probably waiting for me at the Stevenses’. Which then leads me to Alice, and the groveling I have ahead of me.

  But oh, it was worth it. My veins still buzz with the thrill of standing in that wide stretch of field, the darkened sky vaulting overhead, surrounded by some of the best female astronomers in the world.

  Miss Mitchell thanks me, again, for bringing word of her telescope.

  “I’m glad I could help,” I say.

  “Come visit me again after Dr. Colbert’s drawing class. I should like to know how you get on, and very likely we’ll visit our viewing site again. I think it will do nicely, but one can never be too prepared.”

  “I will,” I promise.

  * * *

  * * *

  The Stevenses’ house is ablaze with lights when I arrive, though the summer night is still bright, the sun lingering above the horizon.

  It’s time to face Alice.

  I let myself into the house, and pad down the lighted hallway toward the dining room, where I can hear the clinking of silverware. Peering around the corner, I see the Stevens family sitting at the table as usual, murmuring as a maid brings trays around the table. There’s no space set for me.

  Clearing my throat, I step through the doorway.

  Mrs. Stevens sees me first. “Miss Bertelsen! Alice was not sure if you would be joining us.
Shall I have the maid bring another place?”

  Alice glances up, her hand freezing on her knife. Her posture is stiff, her face tight with hurt.

  “I’m so sorry I was late,” I say to Alice, sliding into an empty spot beside her. “Did you get my note?”

  “What note?”

  “I had a note sent to the hotel for you, explaining that I had found Miss Mitchell’s telescope and had gone to take them word. They invited me to see the field where they plan to set up their equipment to view the eclipse.”

  Alice’s face softens a fraction. “I see. Was Mrs. Kendall there?”

  For a moment, I do not remember who Mrs. Kendall is—ah, Miss Mitchell’s sister, the artist. “No. She stayed behind with Dr. Avery.”

  But now Mrs. Stevens is frowning. “Do be careful, Miss Bertelsen. I’ve nothing to say against Dr. Avery, who is a very good woman, but you should know that there is some talk about the scientific women who are with her—it’s not natural for girls their age to neglect home and family for such study.”

  Mrs. Stevens’s advice is kindly meant, but it sends a creeping chill through me. Is she regretting letting me into her home? First the worry over my being Mormon, now this. Does she think I am neglecting my home and family to be here? I glance at Alice’s father and see a frown mirroring his wife’s.

  “I appreciate your concern, Mrs. Stevens, but you needn’t worry about me. It’s only a hobby, you know, and it was curiosity more than anything that took me out to their eclipse site. My interest isn’t serious.” These reassuring half-lies come easier than the ones I told Miss Mitchell.

  “Well, I’m very glad to hear it,” Alice’s mother says, slicing a bit of meat with a deft flick of her knife.

  Alice’s knife clatters onto her plate. “Only a hobby?”

  “Alice,” her father says. “Mind your tone.”