I wanted to cry out against his thinking that way. I thought he had stopped it. But my protest would have had an ugly note of self-interest in it.
There was also the problem of the family and the railroad. It was very important for him to hold their coalition of shareholders together for the next six or eight months while he showed them that he could withstand the titans of Wall Street. A marriage that some might disapprove could shake their confidence in him when he needed it most.
“Do you understand?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
There was a falling note in my voice, caused not by his realism but by the impossibility of ending my deception now. Put in the context of what he had just been saying, the truth would have been catastrophic. At least, so it seemed to me then, as I thought of how it might part us and how unbearable that had become.
He thought my sadness was caused by his realism. He stopped dead in the sand and seized my hands. “My God,” he said. “I sound like I consider you a block of preferred stock. I’m a monster without a soul. I’ll get the local parson down here and marry you tonight.”
“No,” I said, terrified at the idea of marrying him without removing the deception and even more terrified of telling him on such short notice. “I won’t let you do it. Your promise is enough for me, if it takes two years to fulfill.”
He started to brush aside my objections. “For your mother’s sake,” I said. “She received me in the house with courtesy and trust. I understand—I truly understand—her prejudices.”
We had lost all track of Rawdon. He came rushing up to us at this moment, a piece of driftwood shaped precisely like the body of a woman in his hand. “Look at this,” he cried, then stopped, open mouthed, when he saw that beneath our cloaks we were holding hands. Instantly he began reciting to his wooden woman.
“Why should I leave the world behind
For the soft hand, the dreaming eye,
The crimson lips, the breasts of snow—
Is it for these you’d have me die?
O woman, though you shame the swan,
A wise man taught me all he knew.
I know the crooked ways of love.
I shall not die because of you.”
“Where did you learn that?” his father said.
“From Miss Stark.”
“It’s part of the game of poetry we play when he goes to bed nights,” I said. “It’s Irish, from the sixteenth century.”
“He’s too young for that kind of poetry,” Jonathan said. “Give me that thing.”
He took Rawdon’s driftwood woman away from him and flung it far out into the freezing water.
“That’s mine,” Rawdon said. “You have no right to do that. I wanted it.”
“Now, now.” I said. “You’ll find another piece just as interesting.”
He shot me a look of genuine dislike, the first such expression I had seen in months, and ran off toward the house.
“I hope you’re teaching him some English poetry, too,” Jonathan said as we walked back toward the house.
“Oh, yes,” I said. “That’s part of his daily lessons.
We’ve done two plays of Shakespeare in the past week. On Monday we’ll read some of Dryden. The Irish poetry is just by the by, recited for the fun of it.”
“I don’t like much poetry,” he said, “especially those little tinkling meters that Poe and Longfellow use. Or Shelley, for that matter. But I liked that fellow Walt Whitman. Have you read any of Leaves of Grass?”
I had to confess I had not heard of him.
“His poems march,” Jonathan said. “He marshals words like an infantry general.”
“Tell me your favorite,” I said.
He considered for a moment and looked past me at the limitless sea.
“What we believe in waits latent forever through all the continents, and all the islands and archipelagos of the sea;
Invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light, is positive and composed, knows no discouragement
Waiting patiently, waiting its time.”
“How lovely,” I said, the words striking me as almost a paradigm of my own life.
“He wrote that to a failed revolutionary,” Jonathan said. “But it’s equally true for others, I think.”
“My God,” I murmured, almost overwhelmed.
I trembled on the brink of telling him everything. By this time we were approaching the house, and Rawdon stood on the steps, glowering. I realized he was jealous. He frankly expressed it a few days later, when his father had returned home for his week of business. We played our usual game of good-night poetry, but after his third kiss he clung to me and asked, “Do you love me?”
“Of course I do,” I said.
He released me and fell back on his pillow, glaring. “You really love Father. I can tell.”
“I love you both. Each in a different way. I love you as if you were my own son. I love him as—a friend. He’s been so good to me. He’s given me a home, a welcome in your country. Think of what that means to me, who has no mother or father, nor great fortune.”
“I want you to love me, not him.” he said. “If you love him, he’ll hurt you, he’ll kill you, like he did my mother.”
“He will do no such thing. Your father is done with killing. He wants nothing but peace and happiness for us all, above all for you. Isn’t it proof of his love, the way he comes down here to see you each weekend?”
“Not if he comes to see you,” he replied.
“He comes to see us both. Does he shun you or show any dislike of you?”
He was silenced but not satisfied. I should have realized his hostility once aroused was liable to awaken his old habits of stealthy observance. I should have warned Jonathan and myself that we were under surveillance. But the flurry of direct protest seemed to subside and be virtually forgotten in the excitement of the next weekend, when his father arrived with a thrilling new toy, which was considerably more than a toy—the Myriopticon. It consisted of a series of brilliantly colored pictures that unrolled off a drum onto a screen, behind which a glowing lamp was positioned. The first series told the history of the Civil War. With each picture was a text, designed to be read by a master of ceremonies.
Rawdon loved it, particularly when I insisted that he be the master of ceremonies. He stood beside the crank, reading the text, while we gazed at the spectacular panorama of Bull Run.
“Next we present you with a very spirited scene in the first Battle of Bull Run, fought on the twenty-first of July, 1861. The Union forces under General McDowell were defeated, and history says they fell back to Centerville, but many of the soldiers, either from the apprehension that the Centerville hotels were full, or in consequence of the impression that Washington was in danger, hastened immediately to the defense of that important strategic point.”
This was the general tone of the text, heavily ironic and semihumorous. Jonathan Stapleton laughed heartily at some of the sallies. It was another encouraging sign that the war was loosening its grip on him. He even contributed some humorous stories of his own from the vagaries of camp life between the battles. I was sure it was good for Rawdon, too, hearing his father laugh and joke about an experience that the boy had contorted into a nightmare in his vivid imagination.
When the March wind ceased to howl, and the snow vanished from the beach and the ice from the bay, we began to play another new game, which had less historic significance but was even more enjoyable—croquet. Rawdon was ecstatic. The game, like the Myriopticon, was sweeping the nation. The newspapers were full of stories about it, and he immediately wanted to know if Jonathan was going to let me pin up my skirt to my ankles, so I could use the pendulum stroke. It seems that there was a curmudgeon of a father from Fall River, Massachusetts, who became very upset when his daughter adopted this tactic and trounced him. He said it was unladylike and only permitted her to play again when she promised to let down her skirt and limit herself to the outside stroke�
��which meant he beat her handily with his pendulum stroke.
Jonathan smiled across the room at me. “Miss Stark is an independent American woman. I have no control over her skirt,” he said.
With my skirt pinned and the pendulum stroke available to all, we were soon in fierce contention on Kemble Manor’s front lawn. Neither Rawdon nor I could match the fine ruthlessness, the cold-eyed strategy, Jonathan brought to the game. He trounced us again and again. We would be on the brink of victory, in perfect position before a wicket, when he would appear to smash us back a hundred yards without a blink of remorse.
“I’m beginning to sympathize with Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee,” I said, when he performed this destruction on me for the tenth or eleventh time.
He finally relented and played with deliberate carelessness to let me beat him. Rawdon cheered for me and cried, “Just like the young lady of Dedham.”
“Who is she?”
He proceeded to recite one of the numerous limericks croquet had inspired.
“There was a young lady of Dedham
Who walked all the way to Needham
For a game of croquet
With an aging roué
Who swooned when she bet him and beat him.”
Jonathan’s good humor vanished. “What do you mean by that?” he said.
“Nothing,” Rawdon said, looking honestly puzzled.
“Miss Stark is not the kind of young lady who plays games with aging roués. Do you know what a roué is?”
Rawdon shook his head. He was growing more and more upset and angry. “Surely then there was no insult intended,” I said. “I think we’re all getting croquet nerves.”
This was a popular term of the day. The papers were full of stories about arguments over croquet in which men had bashed each other over the head with their mallets. At that time it was hard to find two people who could agree on the rules.
Later that day, we went for a walk on the beach, leaving Rawdon behind to work the Myriopticon for the Littlepages, who were fascinated by it. “I think we should resume our earlier roles of governess and employer,” I said. “Your conscience is troubled by our present arrangement.”
“Is yours?”
“I would never have entered it in the first place, if it were.”
“My conscience is troubled,” he said ruefully. “Not because God disapproves. I’ve long since decided he has very little interest in our concerns. It’s because I disapprove of my own conduct. I want to make you my wife.”
He pointed to three or four sailboats scudding across the bay on the brisk April wind. “Our isolation is ending. Soon you’ll see fifty or a hundred boats out there. All the country houses around here will be opening up. Friends will be coming to visit. But the situation at home is worse than ever.”
He talked of the bitter quarrels he was having with certain members of the family who controlled a large number of shares in the Camden and Amboy.
“My trust in you is absolute,” I said. “Tonight will be the last of the full moon. Let it be our last night together until you’re free to speak for me.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know whether I can do it. When I have you in my arms—even when I think of you there—the world has a center. It makes sense. Take that away and it becomes a set of random pictures on a Myriopticon, a ridiculous contemptuous tragicomedy.”
“I feel the same way,” I said, “but we must make the experiment.”
That night was strange and wonderful. We were both filled with an eerie sense of parting, not for a time, but forever. I don’t know why. I suppose it was only natural for two people who had come to regard their midnight meetings as the essence of their lives to wonder if even a temporary cessation might produce unexpected results in the deep inaccessible regions of the heart. I had said my trust in him was absolute, and it was, but it was a trust in his word, his promise, which I knew was as true as the steel in the tracks on which his steam engines ran. I did not trust what could happen to alter that promise, especially when I had yet to reveal my deception.
I saw our parting as a step to the revelation. I had no intention of confessing everything I had done, but I also had no intention of apologizing for Bess Fitzmaurice, the Fenian girl. I wanted to make my statement an act of pride, not something whispered in the dark, with eager breasts and thighs offered as consolation for his possible disappointment. If there was disappointment or prejudice or shame, I wanted it faced in daylight.
“Why am I so afraid?” I whispered to him, as the moon dwindled to a last golden patch on the ceiling. “I’ll never lose you. No matter what happens, we’re part of each other forever.”
“Yes,” he said. “Forever.”
How lovers adore those words. How indifferent the world is to them.
If It Ain’t the Fenian Girl
For several weeks, all went well. The spring weather had something to do with keeping our spirits high. Kemble Manor’s gardens were a riot of roses—white, red, yellow. Jonathan Gifford, the Revolutionary proprietor, had apparently been a great fancier of them and imported exotic varieties from all over the world. Mingling with them were the wild blaze roses of New Jersey. Rawdon got out his small sailboat from the boathouse and cruised about the bay, meeting several boys about his age, whom he invited back for endless games of croquet on the front lawn. We older folks treasured the garden, with its roses and statues of American presidents and Greek and Roman gods. Beyond it, through a wood, the land broke into a small cove, perfect for swimming and meditating.
We had expected Mrs. Stapleton, Jonathan’s mother, to visit us, but she was making her own recovery from grief and announced that she was inclined to visit friends in Newport and wanted to take little George with her. Jonathan agreed, so we remained our triumvirate at Kemble Manor. The world lapped around us like a rising flood. A delegation of New Jersey war veterans came to ask General Stapleton to make the principal address at their Fourth of July picnic. He was inclined to say no, until I talked him out of it. He had a dread of notoriety, a dislike of taking credit for his achievements, which was incomprehensible to me. I suspect it was a fear of ending like his father, a mere politician. He was determined to reserve an interior part of himself free of every sort of compromise. I urged him not to be so literal about it, to wear a mask of the politician, the friend of things as they are. I could see that the deception troubled his proud spirit, but he agreed to try it.
Another delegation came to ask him to be one of the guests of honor at the opening of the new race track at Long Branch. He had no scruples against horse racing. Converted by my philosophy, he said yes. It was to take place on the fifth of July and was, the chairman of the delegation assured him, to be a gala affair. “We expect twenty thousand people from New York,” the chairman boasted.
Suddenly the reluctance was all on my side, but I could say nothing. I had no desire to encounter any New Yorkers, especially when they were almost certain to include well-heeled politicians and public figures like Dick Connolly and Bill Tweed and William Roberts. Long Beach at that time was just emerging as a summer playground of the rich. Hotels were being built at a rapid pace, gambling houses were opening, and the racetrack was supposed to offer the final attraction to round out a resort that would attract millions of New York dollars to New Jersey.
Jonathan spent the last weeks of June laboring over his Fourth of July speech. He delivered it beneath a huge tent at the site of the Revolutionary battle of Monmouth CourtHouse. He was not a great speaker, but it was a strong, manly address, a soldier’s speech. It was also a young man’s speech, charged with a vision of a hopeful future. He asked his audience to connect in their minds the sacrifices of the men of the Revolution who had fought and had died at Monmouth with the sacrifices of the men who died for the Union. Were these sacrifices in vain? he asked. Sometimes it looked that way. It looked as if they had died for an America dominated by corrupt politicians and get-rich-quick millionaires from Wall Street.
But
this was not necessarily the case. Death had long since disbanded the army of the Revolution. Victory in the war had disbanded the army of the Union. But the spirit of that army, its courage and devotion to its dead, must never disband. It must remain a living, united thing, as they marched together into the new America that the war had created. In some ways this new America was a bewildering land, a kind of wilderness. But Americans had fought and won in the wilderness before. They must be prepared to fight now, against new enemies, confident that a nation worthy of the heroic dead would emerge from the confusion.
The applause stormed over our heads for a full five minutes. Rawdon and I were seated in the first row. Behind me I heard a heavy-set man say to a friend, “There’s our next governor.” Never did I feel more totally American. I had helped to give strength to Jonathan’s proud voice. I had rescued his tormented spirit from despair. My pride, my hope, never soared higher.
That night, I waited until the house was silent and dark, then rose and boldly entered his room. He was sitting by the window, looking out over the sea. “I must kiss you again,” I said. “I must give vent to the pride and joy that are bursting from me.” I sank down beside him and placed my head on his knee. I felt his hand on my neck, in my hair.
“Amo, amas, I love a lass, as cedar tall and slender,” he whispered.
“Yes,” I said. “Tonight we must break our monastic rule.”
I wanted to enter and be entered, to be one with him in the deepest most absolute way that is given to us. I sensed his greatness emerging from the battered, scarred trunk of his spirit, as a great tree in the forest struggles back to life from a lightning stroke.
Other nights, other times, we loved from different reasons, out of need, then out of pleasure of touch and stroke, next out of almost gluttonous delight in each other. That night we went beyond pleasure. We touched joy. A spirit of mutual purpose, mutual admiration, suffused our flesh and made us truly the center of a world. I cried out, I could not help it, when at last I felt his deep pulsing release in me. For the first time I understood why the old poets spoke of love as a kind of death, a holocaust of the spirit, an obliteration of the self. I was him, blending lips and thighs, hopes and fears, pasts and futures.
A Passionate Girl Page 50
