Faithful

by Janet Fox

  “You’re sure to have a fine time. It’s filled with wonders, Margaret! That’s what it’s called—‘Wonderland’! Of course, the Indians had a different view of it—they said it was like white man’s descriptions of hell, all boiling and steaming and bubbling . . .”

  “John.” My father nodded in my direction.

  “Oh. Well, Charlie.” He waved his hand over Papa’s plate of trout and his own venison stew. “Maggie’s a big girl now.” Uncle John glanced at me, then down. “Well, anyhow. You’ll see, Margaret.”

  “Yes.” Papa smiled. “We’ll be on the train into Yellowstone in the morning.”

  “So we’re going into Yellowstone?” I asked, tentative. I looked at my uncle, busy with his stew. “And then?”

  “And then everything will fall into place.” Papa drank his claret.

  I reached my hand to Papa’s arm. “Doesn’t Uncle John have . . .”

  Papa shot me a harsh look and I withdrew my hand. Here we were, so close, and yet Papa was still keeping me in the dark.

  “We’ll retire early. The train leaves at nine sharp.” He gave me no opening for further questions, and Uncle John still wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  My room in the hotel looked out over the town of Livingston to the mountains that sat now in shadow. I closed my curtains and drew a hot bath.

  I settled into the steaming water. When I lifted my arm the water ran down in thin ribbons. We’d arrived in Montana and Uncle John had news. But the news clearly wasn’t for my ears, at least not yet. The nagging suspicions that had been troubling me since we departed home came to a point: it was clear Papa was hiding something from me. Maybe he now knew that Mama was dead and he hadn’t had the courage to tell me. Or maybe he knew that Mama was alive but in such an awful state . . .

  After her tea with Mrs. Delaney, Mama had reverted into a deep depression. She withdrew from me and Papa and took again to walking along the Newport cliffs alone. Her depression was worse than before, although how much worse hadn’t been clear to me until later.

  I slipped deeper into the bathwater, trying to clear my mind of terrible thoughts. Edward. I’d think about Edward.

  I’d think about that night last summer when he filled my dance card. When he kissed me. The night of Mary’s ball and the dress with the red sash. I closed my eyes and let my mind drift back to the happier moments of that evening.

  The intense heat of that late August afternoon had been building toward a storm. Low, rolling breakers swelled to foam-topped monsters crashing on the shore. As the festive mood at the ball grew the wind picked up and rain spattered fat drops until the wind swelled to a howl. Servants ran from room to room until all the doors were closed and all but a few windows shuttered.

  We gathered at the last unshuttered window to watch. The fairy lights hanging from trees and bushes swung, trembling, then were stripped from the branches and shattered by a gust. Rain came in sheets. The wind shrieked like a phantom and Mary’s father sternly ordered us away from the glass. Just afterward, the great oak at the bottom of the garden swayed and toppled with a thunderous crash.

  The electric lights flickered and went out. The ball was illumined only by candles, but the revelry was undimmed. Edward held me close as we danced, and then, during a fevered waltz, pulled me behind the stairs.

  “Now I have you,” he whispered.

  “Do you? Are you sure?”

  He tightened his arms around me and pressed his body against mine. “You are so beautiful,” he breathed into my ear. His hand pressed the red sash at the small of my back.

  I felt weak, and my hands gripped his jacket as if it were a life vest. I was in grave danger of floating away.

  He lifted my chin, and I let him kiss me, my lips burning and my breath stopped. The layers of fabric that separated us crushed and melted and the laces of my corset strained.

  I sighed in my bath. Such a brief, sweet moment, that time with Edward. If only I could have all of that happiness again. I lifted my arm again out of the bath and stared at it, at the tiny hairs and the streaming water. My mind drifted to the possibility of Uncle John’s news, and then there was no helping where my memories went next. For just at the moment Edward had been kissing me under the stairs, Mama had turned my life upside down.

  Mama had gone to Mary’s ball, too, despite her sunken looks and silence. Papa had insisted. He thought she needed the social interaction. He was wrong.

  Edward and I were still locked in our embrace when we heard a scream. There was a commotion at the door to a small sitting room, and I realized what was happening. The storm: I had seen Mama retreat to the safety of the sitting room when the storm hit. Mama hated thunder and lightning; she had a deep-seated fear of it. I could remember the feeling of bile rising in my throat, even now, nearly a year later.

  At the time, I prayed that she had just been hiding from the noise, that something worse hadn’t happened. Edward’s arm circled my waist until we pushed through the crowd into the room. But once we could see her there, his arm dropped, and he slid back, abandoning me.

  I was alone, as if on a cliff edge; I was alone facing my worst nightmare.

  My mother, sat on the floor. Her hair hung loose past her waist, and she’d removed her gloves, which lay on the floor next to her, white and long like a shed skin. She held her diamond hairpin in her right hand and her arms were slashed, blood dripping in red splotches on her white silk gown.

  My legs went rubbery; I couldn’t move.

  The sitting room was a gallery filled with ugly oil paintings. Bulging eyes in fat, powerful men. Narrow eyes in lean, overdressed matrons. They stuck in my mind like glue and formed a hideous backdrop to my nightmares, to my mother’s breakdown. The other guests around me stared at my mother with mingled horror and fascination. One woman leaned heavily on her companion. “She cut herself! Right in front of me! I was trying to rest when she began ranting about terrible things and then she stabbed herself! I think I shall faint!”

  Papa pushed through the crowd that was now growing at the door. “Anna! Anna, for God’s sake!” He reached her side and bent to her; she stared at him in horror. I was rooted to the spot, my limbs numb.

  “No!” Mama screamed, thrashing against his grasp. “Not you! Don’t take me away! Not again!” Mama twisted away from Papa, her dress falling from her shoulder. She held her hairpin up like a weapon against him. Gasps came from every corner. “Keep away from me! I want to stay!”

  I could not watch her, lost as she was in that dark nightmare. My eyes drifted up away from Mama, anything to get away, to look away. My gaze locked on a painting of a doe, wide-eyed and openmouthed, caught in the strangled moment of death from a hunter’s bow.

  With a soft cry, a woman to my right fainted against her companion and I felt the world shrink to a pinpoint, the far end of a telescope. A semicircle of space opened around me, and I knew I could not escape. I was involved; it was my mama there on the floor. I saw those around me stare, at me, at Mama. Eyes widened in horror, gloved hands covered mouths, someone whispered, “Scandalous.” Another, “Unacceptable.” Edward stepped farther away from me and I could feel the distance between us gape.

  I was ashamed of myself and of her. I was at the very edge; she had toppled over, too far for me to reach. I couldn’t help her; I could only watch her fall away.

  Dr. Fortner stepped into the room. His familiar physician’s voice broke through the gasps and whispers like a balm. “Excuse me. Let me through.” He knelt next to Mama. “Now, Mrs. Bennet. Let’s not have any more of this, shall we?”

  For an instant I feared she would repel him, too, like she had rejected Papa. But she looked at him, stunned, then she slumped and he took her gently, easing the sharp pin from her hand. He lifted her to her feet, bracing her body against his. The throng made a passage for them as he took her from the room.

  Eyes in the portraits lining the walls, eyes of long-dead children, of decrepit old men, of sharp-as-pin women, eyes of dying animals, eyes
of the living people in the room, all of them watched me.

  Papa bent like a tired old man, picked up Mama’s gloves, and followed her out. The crowd finally dispersed, whispering, brushing past me, casting sidelong glances but never looking me in the eye.

  When the room had nearly cleared, Edward returned to my side and I felt his embarrassment even more keenly than my own.

  “Maggie?”

  My throat burned, my legs shook, my gloved hands clutched at the red sash tied around me, constricting my breath. “I suspect I should go,” I said, and left him there in the sitting room.

  The walk to the front hall felt miles long. Hundreds of eyes followed my back and I heard their whispers following me. Those whispers followed me still.

  I’d heard from Edward again after Mama disappeared, and he seemed to show genuine concern. But I couldn’t be sure. I couldn’t know for sure. He didn’t stand next to me on that knife edge in Mary’s parlor when I needed him most. He slipped away that evening, slipped home to New York. I waited the year to finally put everything behind me and start fresh. I waited for my season that had now arrived to make myself new. I waited for Edward to come back so that we could start over.

  And now I lay in a bath of rapidly cooling water in a primitive western town, risking my clean start with Edward, unsure of Papa’s truthfulness.

  I could have been in Newport with Edward and Kitty preparing for my debut, starting my life over, a life without Mama. I had been so sure of Papa only a few weeks ago. Hadn’t I told Grandpapa as much? I lifted my arm out of the water, all goose bumps now.

  I hardly knew what to think in this moment. The mix of emotions and memories was overwhelming. How could I doubt Papa when he was all I had left until we found Mama? My confusion must have been a result of the exhaustion of this cross-country train trip.

  I rose and dried myself and slipped on my nightgown. My inlaid jewelry box nested among my linens, and I opened it and lifted the handkerchief so carefully tucked at the bottom. The lavender of Mama’s perfume was preserved in the close dark of the box, and I leaned over to breathe it in. Beneath the handkerchief was the cameo, which I had not yet worn on this trip; my mama’s cameo, sacred to me. Beneath the cameo was a square of folded paper that I left untouched.

  My fingers traced the cameo’s face. Crafted of rose-and-cream shell and encased in a circlet of gold, it was the profile of a woman with a dreamy look. Though I’d often looked at Mama’s cameo, I’d never realized the meaning of the image. The woman was a maenad, crowned with grape leaves, a wild woman. I remembered my Greek myths and saw the cameo anew. A bacchante. The bacchantes tore men apart; they killed for pleasure; they killed in an ecstasy of desire. They were wild.

  I closed the box and placed it on the dresser next to the pitcher with its tiny blue flowers. Forget-me-nots.

  I whispered prayers for Mina and Mama, for Papa and Uncle John. I thought of Edward, and felt my stomach tighten. Edward. I imagined him with Isabel. Worse yet, a sudden impression of Edward with Kitty sprang unbidden to my mind and my eyes filled with tears.

  I dimmed the light and pulled aside the curtain, stepping away from the window, afraid to look to the street below. The farther streetlamps of Livingston shed a yellow glow and here and there light shone from windows.

  I was lost and on the edge again. After I’d been so sure of things, the ground underneath my feet quavered. I had had enough of Papa’s surprises. If Mama was here, he should tell me. And if Mama was not here, there was still a chance that she would return home to Newport and be waiting for me. Waiting to help me start the rest of my life.

  I pictured her dripping with seawater, wrapping herself in a great warm blanket the color of seaweed, her wet hair in a long plait. I’d see her first, from my shingled tower with its long view, for I would steel myself to look. I’d stand there on watch even if it made my stomach clench and my legs go numb. And when I saw her, I’d run down the broad stairs and take her hand and not let go. Never let her go again. No matter what anyone said about her or about me. Together we’d prove that they all had small pinched minds and we’d rise above them and I would marry a great love and Mama and I would stand together at the edge of things and it would be all right.

  I stood in the dark room shivering. I could dream.

  But I wasn’t sure I had that kind of courage, and proper young society women were not rebels. Proper young women did what was right and obeyed their fathers. Proper young women had seasons and debuts and were carefully courted. Proper young women held everything deep inside and smiled politely all the while. Proper young women weren’t bohemian. They didn’t wear red silk sashes and gallop about on horseback.

  The mountains beyond the glass were invisible but they loomed high in my imagination and I felt the terror of the unknown, of edges over emptiness. I yanked the curtains shut, threw myself under the quilts, and lay in the shadowy darkness until the night chill and exhaustion stilled my mind and forced my eyes shut.

  Chapter SEVEN

  June 18, 1904

  But hush! What are our poor words in the presence of these nobler secrets of the wrestling and mounting spirit!

  —Lady Rose’s Daughter, a novel by Mrs. Humphry Ward, 1903

  IN MY DREAMS, I REMEMBERED THAT DAY. MAMA HAD asked me to promise.

  You have to promise me that you will not talk about this with your father.

  Why not, Mama? You haven’t yet kept your own promise and come back to me. Why should I keep mine to you?

  But something—her disappearance, my sense of duty, my love for her, something—made me feel that this promise was sacred. I held that sacred trust for my mama. As the red light of dawn pushed fingers through my drapes and the forget-me-not pitcher reflected pink, I shivered in the bed under the mountainous quilt, waking in slow dream-time.

  “This way!” blustered my uncle hours later “Train’s due shortly!”

  We left the comfort of the balcony over the Murray lobby, where upper-class passengers waited for the train to Gardiner, and made our way across the dusty road, followed by the porters. A fresh wind snapped the flags on the pole, and I snatched my hat before it took flight. My other hand gripped my wool cape against the bitter chill. I was grateful for the shelter when Uncle John ushered us into the depot.

  Two dozen tourists were already gathered inside. We settled on oak benches; the windows rattled against the gusts. I tucked stray strands of hair back up under my hat and fixed the pins. I’d rarely felt such biting wind, even on the Atlantic cliffs in spring.

  Papa sat on the bench opposite me, gazing up at the high ceiling and stroking his mustache with two fingers. His wedding band glinted on his left hand. He caught me watching him and gestured at the book I held. “Are you enjoying it?”

  “It’s lovely. I’m on page ten.” I picked up the book and pretended to read.

  Over the top of my book, I glanced around the waiting room. On the streets outside I’d seen plains-dusted cowboys. But in the depot we might as well have been at home in Newport.

  Traveling couples were attired in fine worsted and cheviot, in excursion suits and tweed coats. Ladies’ maids and butlers attended their patrons. Small children milled about, restrained by nannies; the few older children were composed and prim. These were certainly not the orphans of Omaha.

  Papa’s voice intruded. “It’s a fine day, don’t you think, Margaret? Wonderful day.”

  I rested the book in my lap. I wanted to ask Papa right now—I wanted to stand up and shake him and make him tell me the truth, tell me what he knew about Mama—but I restrained myself, biting my lip. Proper young women. “It’s fine. Splendid.” I folded my hands. “I love the breeze.”

  He smiled, recognizing my sarcasm, lifting one corner of his mouth. “True, the wind is a bit brisk.”

  Uncle John laughed. “That’s Montana. You have to put up with gales! Blue northers in the fall and chinooks in the winter—it doesn’t matter, from north or south, the wind here’ll take your hat to
the poles!”

  “Charming!” I smiled at my uncle. He smiled back at me, but his cheer faded fast, and he looked away. Whatever he knew about our trip, he was not about to reveal it to me.

  “The sun is bright in this clear air.” My father shielded his eyes against a beam of light.

  I shifted impatiently. Small talk about the weather, my book, anything except the one subject I wished to discuss. I leaned against the hard oak bench, my back stiff with frustration. “Papa—”

  He interrupted me. “Not now, Margaret.”

  “Maggie, we’ll be in Yellowstone soon enough,” said my uncle. He managed an awkward smile at me before he stood and walked away.

  Papa gazed after him and would not meet my eyes. I shut my book and attempted to divert myself by watching the other arriving passengers.

  A boisterous and jovial crowd of middle-class travelers bustled into the depot. After another minute the door slammed open again and two men pressed inside. The wind behind them ripped through the waiting room, kicking up bits of paper and dust and forcing those nearest the door to hang on to hats and coattails. The second man—young, maybe a little older than me—shoved the door closed.

  The older man wore a rough wool coat and carried a canvas pack; the younger man—the son, I decided, since they looked alike—a plaid wool shirt. I watched the younger man. My eyes were drawn to him.

  He was tall enough to look over his father’s shoulder. He had a kind of presence; he looked amused by something, like he was on the verge of a smile. His hair looked like it had been cut with a razor, but he had a strong jaw and broad shoulders. I squared my own, feeling a little blush creep up my neck. He was nice looking, or would have been if he’d been properly dressed. Put him in a suit, or even pressed trousers, and he would have made even self-possessed Kitty swoon.