Emily's House

by Amy Belding Brown

  Truth is, I like nothing better than a secret whispered maid to maid over the back fence. But when your mistress tells you something shouldn’t be spoken of, there’s always a danger it might slip out when you’re tired or cross or have an extra pint at Christmas. I knew plenty of secrets from the folks I worked for—bits and pieces of talk—and I’d never shared a one. But those were things I overheard or guessed. I’d never had a mistress offer one. Like a temptation, it was—not to be trusted. Made me wary.

  I got on the floor and started laying her fire. “Now, who would I be telling your secrets to, miss? But if you can tell me, you can be telling your own sister, surely.” I was thinking she was too old for such foolishness, but I didn’t say so.

  “Don’t spoil my fun, Maggie,” she said.

  I looked at her over my shoulder. Her mouth was making a little pout. “What is it, then?” I asked.

  “Judge Lord has asked me to marry him.” Her eyes were sparking.

  I couldn’t think of one word to be saying. The Judge was at least seventy. “You’re jesting, surely,” I said.

  She shook her head. “I’m not.”

  “Did you give him an answer?” I lit the fire and stood up, wincing from the twinge in my right knee.

  “Not yet.” There was a wistful look on her face.

  All I could think of that minute was Patrick and all that time I’d kept him waiting for an answer when he proposed. How he wanted to take me to Brooklyn.

  “Will he be moving to Amherst, then?” I asked.

  She blinked. “I assume we’ll live in Salem.”

  I tried to imagine Emily moving to Salem. I feared it would be the end of her. In truth, I couldn’t picture her living anywhere but this house.

  “I’m thinking you’d not like it much,” I said. “Living in Salem. Away from your sister.” Didn’t try to stop myself saying what I was thinking, but soon as the words were out, it struck me I was talking about myself. All those foolish long-ago ideas about having a grand adventure when the good life was right here in front of me.

  “Father never wanted me to marry, you know.” She said it dreamy, like she was talking to herself. “But I think he’d understand. Judge Lord reminds me so of him.”

  “Surely not, miss.” I couldn’t think of any man more improper than the Judge. I’d heard enough to know he had a tongue on him would make a decent man blush. Seemed he thought nothing was more satisfying than being saucy. How in the name of Heaven could he remind her of the Squire? For all he’d vexed me, Mr. Dickinson had always been proper and dignified.

  “I fear he does.” She raised her eyebrows and gave me a quare smile. “Love reckons by itself alone,” she said as if that settled things.

  * * *

  Betty, it was, first told me Mabel Todd was making trouble in the Dickinson family. Seemed Ned, who was twenty-one now and feeling his oats, had gone sweet on her, and she was welcoming his attentions. She danced with him at Sue’s fancy parties, had long chinwags, and went for walks, just the two of them. The poor lad was head over heels. And small wonder, since Mabel was using every womanly wile to charm him. But then he found out his father was taking her for long rides in the country and reading her poetry and the two of them were putting their heads together over books of art and landscaping. Wasn’t long before Ned told his mother and word flew through town that Sue and Mabel had a falling-out.

  At Kelley Square we talked about it for weeks. Had a good laugh over how surprised Sue’s set was when she cut Mabel out of her circle. It was a blow to the ladies, for they admired Mabel, with her liveliness and cultured ways. But nobody was blaming Sue, for it was plain the sort of woman Mabel was. Liked beguiling a man, she did, crooking her little finger and seeing him come running. She didn’t seem to mind how old or young he was.

  Anybody could see things were heating up between Austin and Mabel. Mary said it was shocking the sinful things rich folks did behind the doors of their grand houses. I’d seen enough to agree.

  After a while Mabel went to Sue and they patched things up. Don’t know what Mabel said—likely said it was all a misunderstanding and her friendship with Austin was innocent—but for a time, Mabel was welcomed back to the Evergreens. She started paying special attention to Mattie, gave her piano lessons and took her for sleigh rides. Meanwhile she was doing all she could to stay friends with Vinnie, praising her cats and sending her notes and taking tea with her in the afternoons. It did Vinnie good—it plainly roused her spirits. I guess she was sometimes lonesome living with Emily. And no wonder—Emily kept herself to herself so much, always writing and reading and fussing over her plants.

  But Mabel didn’t mend her ways. Austin and herself kept meeting, ofttimes at the Homestead. Seemed harmless at first—Mabel would be chatting in the parlor with Vinnie, and Austin would stop by. He’d act surprised to see her and they’d chat for a bit. But then the two of them started taking walks in the garden or sitting side by side on the parlor sofa. She’d be throwing her smiles his way and he’d be watching her like she was a cake he couldn’t wait to eat. Before long they drew Vinnie into their scheming and the three of them worked out a plan to trade notes without Sue knowing. Sure, it sparked Vinnie’s liveliness. Anybody would think she enjoyed the trickery and scheming.

  I wanted no part of it and told Vinnie so. Said I wouldn’t deliver their notes. I pointed out Mabel was young enough to be Austin’s daughter and the pair of them carried on without a care for virtue or honor. But Vinnie just smiled and said true love was the only thing made life worth living and she’d not be the one standing in its way.

  After a while Sue figured out what was going on. Most wives aren’t eejits, after all. Betty told me Sue and Austin had a great row, roaring and shrieking and throwing things. Said Sue was raging so, she scratched gashes with her fingernails down the hallway wallpaper. Must have scared the children, especially young Gib, who wasn’t yet eight years old.

  I could see Emily was vexed with her brother. Every time Mabel and Austin met at the Homestead, she was downcast. She began sending notes to Sue again and soon they were going back and forth like old times. I was glad, for I never saw two people take more solace in each other’s words.

  * * *

  One spring morning Emily came into the kitchen, looking for all the world like she’d met a ghost on the stairs. When I asked what was troubling her, she shook her head and went into the dining room. I followed and found her fiddling with the vase of daffodils on the sideboard.

  “I had a dream,” she said in a quare, strange voice. “Or a premonition. I’m not sure.” She looked down at her fingers, then slid into a chair—the way she did it made me think of silk running through a lady’s fingers. “I was writing a letter when a dreadful feeling came over me. As if Judge Lord had died.” She took a fluttery breath, then waved her hand. “But it was probably nothing. A phantasm of fear, a wisp of dread.” She gave me a thin smile. “It went away.”

  “Likely it was last night’s sausage,” I said, knowing how fond the Dickinsons were of blaming their afflictions on digestion. Myself, I always suspect the Faeries might have a thing or two to do with troubles. Emily nodded in a muddled way and then stood up and went to the pantry to get flour and molasses for making gingerbread.

  Not twenty minutes later Vinnie came bustling in. “Emily, did you see this morning’s paper?” She was flapping it like a fan in front of her.

  Emily put down her measuring cup and wiped her hands on her apron. “How could I when you’re holding it? Tell me.” Her voice was raggedy.

  “Judge Lord—he’s very sick.” Vinnie stopped fanning and laid the paper on the table.

  Emily went ghost white and swayed on her feet just as Tom came in the back door, looking for a cup of tea. Sure, I thought she was going to faint. She looked at Vinnie, then at me, as if she’d lost every sense she had.

  “Miss Emily?” said Tom. />
  She swung around. And didn’t she run to him and press her face into his chest, like he was the comfort she was needing?

  “ ’Tis Judge Lord,” I told him. “He’s come down ill. It was in the paper.”

  Tom patted her back with his one arm. “He’ll be better, Miss Emily. Don’t be crying now. I wouldn’t see you cry.” Sure, there are few lads tender as Tom Kelley, more’s the pity.

  * * *

  The next day Emily asked if I’d pray for the Judge and I promised I would. But it fretted me. Should I say a rosary? I knew the Judge was Protestant and Protestants didn’t have much use for the Blessed Mother, though Emily kept a lovely picture of her that Sue gave her. I’d prayed for Protestants before—Emily and Mother Dickinson and Vinnie—but always in secret, with nobody knowing. This was the first time I’d been asked.

  Maybe I’d just say the Our Father. Protestants said it, though they stuck some words on the end. I turned the puzzle round and round in my head, like a riddle I couldn’t solve, until I finally decided to ask Emily herself.

  She was out in the garden. It had rained the night before and there was no sun to dry things out, so my shoes soaked through just crossing the grass. I found Emily on her knees, clearing sticks and leaves from the rose beds.

  I squatted beside her. “I’ve a question, miss,” I said. “About praying for Judge Lord. I don’t know what a proper prayer is for a Protestant. Is it allowed to pray the rosary?”

  She laughed. As if I’d just said the most comical thing. My face flamed hot and I rose up. But when I turned to go back to the kitchen, she grabbed my skirt. “I’m sorry, Maggie. I meant no harm.” But the laugh was still fairly bursting from her mouth and she was making a foolish face to keep it in. “Your question simply took me by surprise. And now I’m imagining what Phil would say if he knew rosaries were being said for him.” And she started laughing again, making a lie of her words.

  God have mercy, I was more than cross. “Miss Emily,” I said, yanking my skirt from her hand, “ ’twas yourself who asked me to pray for him. If you were jesting you should have made it plain.”

  She sat there on her heels, blinking up at me. I should have shut my mouth then and gone back to my work. But the fury was in me and I couldn’t contain it any more than Emily could her laughing. So I kept talking.

  “I know it’s common to correct servants and even shame us. We know to expect it and are used to putting up with it. But I won’t be suffering mockery of my faith. Or the place I was born,” I added. And didn’t I cross myself in front of her and turn on my heel and march straight back to the kitchen?

  Chapter Thirty

  I apologize.” Emily stood in the kitchen doorway, her cloak half off, her garden gloves smeared with dirt, and her hair coming out of its net. She was tattered as a wet dog. Sure, it wasn’t like her not to look tidy. She even slept neat. “Sometimes I don’t think of—” She stopped. “Truly, I don’t mean to be unkind.”

  I didn’t say anything at first, but I was thinking her mockery was beyond unkind. It was mean, a kind of heartless cruelty. The way folks treat an animal. In truth, though, she’d done it before. Why did it tip me into outrage this time when I’d borne it so many times in the past?

  “I can accept you’re my better in society,” I said, speaking slow, being careful with my words. “But before God we’re both the same. I have feelings and thoughts. Being Irish doesn’t make me an animal to be petted or kicked as you see fit.”

  All the color left her face. She pulled off her gloves and dropped them onto the table. “I’m truly sorry, Maggie. I feel ashamed to have treated you so. But I sincerely intended no insult to your faith. Your question simply surprised me. I don’t think of prayers the way you do.”

  Can’t deny it, her apology touched me. I put down the bowl I was holding. “How do you think of them so?” It was my way of making peace, I suppose—trying to find a path through the hurt.

  She shook off the rest of her cloak and draped it over a chair. “They’re not words to recite. Or things we say to God. I don’t think they’re words at all.”

  I frowned, wondering if what she was saying might be heresy. Sounded like it. But I stood there anyway, out of the long habit paying my wages.

  “Sometimes I go up to the cupola,” she said. “It’s quiet there—the sounds of the house and street are distant and soft. When I climb those steps I feel I’m leaving all my cares behind. And I just sit there. No words, no thoughts. Only light.” She sank into the chair. “That—to me—is true prayer.”

  I felt a flutter in my spine. “Sure, you’re making no sense,” I said. “I know what true prayers are—I say them every morning and every night. Just like attending Mass on Sunday. ’Tis an obligation. A duty.”

  She gave a little shrug. “I don’t believe prayer is a duty. It’s more of—” She stopped and opened her hands and I could see she was trying to think of words she wasn’t finding. It wasn’t like Emily, and I saw it worried her. Words were her treasure. She cast me a pleading look and what was left of my vexation melted just that fast.

  “Maybe you’re meaning an act of adoration,” I said.

  “Perhaps,” she said, nodding. “That’s closer. Yes.”

  “But there are words to be saying,” I said. “Like music, they are, to God. The Church gives them to us. To help us keep the tune.”

  Emily was staring at me in her quare way. I didn’t know what she was thinking. I picked up the bowl again.

  “I prayed a great deal during the war,” she said after a minute. “Formal spoken prayer. The way I’d been taught. But I don’t see that it did any good. It was such a distressing time. The dying just went on and on. There was no end to the blood.”

  I remember Patrick telling how he watched his friend bleed to death. I shook the thought away. Everybody’d heard terrible stories. Death was always in the news in those days—college lads who went off to war and came back in coffins. Farm lads who threw down their plows and volunteered, just to be shot to bits in terrible battles. Brave Irish lads whose bones were tossed into pits right on the battlefield. And saddest of all—the lads who came back with broken, mangled bodies, lost and restless in their minds.

  “I prayed and prayed in the midst of all that misery,” Emily said. “But it was as useful as a bird’s stamping on air. Maybe it was the wrong kind of prayer. Or maybe I was praying to the wrong kind of god.”

  Her words shouldn’t have affected me the way they did. Wasn’t it more heresy? But here came tears into my eyes and one was even running down my cheek.

  “So I stopped. Or tried to.” She sat at the table. Her voice was low, barely more than a whisper. “Eventually I came to understand— to experience—God as a great and holy silence. And the only response to that is wonder. Adoration, as you say.” She raised her face and gazed at me. Or through me—I wasn’t sure which. “Which is what my poems are, Maggie. If prayers need words, they are my prayers.”

  I looked back at her. She was waiting for me to say something but all I could do was nod and glance out the window.

  “I think it’s coming on rain again,” I said, and went to get more wood.

  * * *

  Emily changed that day. She never mocked me again. Nor any other Irish person, for that matter. And it seemed to me she listened closer when I was talking. Respected me more than before. She even asked me to call her Emily.

  “Miss is a title,” she said. “It doesn’t feel as if you’re talking to me. Couldn’t you see your way to simply using my name?”

  I thought about it a minute. I’d been calling her miss for years but all along I’d been thinking of her as Emily. I said, “I can try. Especially if you can see your way to calling me Margaret instead of Maggie.”

  She blinked. Then she laughed, a burst of gleeful knowing from deep in her throat. “That may be too steep a mountain to climb,” she sa
id when she calmed down. “Perhaps some things are best left as they are.”

  I saw the truth of it. And she never did call me Margaret. But the quare thing is, from then on I sometimes called her Emily without thinking.

  I thought a good deal on what she’d said about prayer and poems. There was something holy in her writings, hard as they were to understand. A sacred shine on them, surely. Instead of seeing her as one of the Faery Folk, I began wondering if she was something like a saint. To be sure, it was unlikely a Protestant could be a saint. But one thing I knew about saints—they weren’t always the folks you’d be expecting God to choose.

  At night I took to opening one of her booklets and reading her poems slow, one and then another. Like fireflies, they were—sparking in the dark. They made me think. They made me shiver and look at things and listen. They dazzled my heart. I saw what Emily meant about them being her prayers. God’s truth, they were becoming mine.

  * * *

  It was plain Emily was fretting over Judge Lord. And no wonder—he wasn’t a young man and healing is a chancy thing. But she was dragging herself through her days, her nerves stretched so tight they wore her out. I did what I could to ease her thoughts away from himself, but there was no taming her mind. It was wild as the wind itself.

  Praise God, it turned out Tom was right—the Judge didn’t die. The crisis passed and he rallied. By late summer he was able to be out and about.

  Outside the leaves grew bright and rattled in the trees. Inside Emily was more herself. We went back to our morning chinwags in the kitchen, talking about this and that, whatever struck our fancy. One day I asked if she’d ever answered the Judge’s proposal. She was in a playful mood, bending over the table kneading bread, and when she spoke there was a thrumming in her voice.