by Echo Heron
I, too, have caught glimpses of him that disturb. He’s nervous at times, rushing here and there and doing errands and chores that sometimes would best be left undone or at least done in a more serene manner. Other times he seems drained of all liveliness, his eyes half-cast and his tongue clumsy. K.W.
June 26: Mama is fretful that Clara hasn’t set a date for the wedding. Clara jokes that it will probably take place on her way to the barn to milk the cows. I pray she isn’t thinking of elopement—that would hurt us all. K.W.
June 28: After dinner Edwin, boasting of his excellence at Seminary College, engaged Rev. Cutler in a long discussion on doctrine and scripture. Being a fine theologian, the Reverend caught him at every vagary and flimsy assertion. Poor Clara blushed to her roots, but said nothing. K.W.
July 1: Rev. Cutler and I took Clara and Edwin to the train. They travel first to Cleveland to visit Aunt Kate and Uncle David. After that they’ll take a short sightseeing trip to Lake Geneva and then home to Tallmadge, though still no date has been set for the wedding.
The moment Edwin was out of sight, the sky brightened as if a dark cloud had lifted. There is something false about him. His eyes are too close, and they dart about in a suspicious manner, as though searching for an escape route. I see no warmth between him and Clara, let alone fire. We all quietly despair. K.W.
Lake Geneva, Wisconsin
Clara believed the trouble started the moment they stepped off the train. By all appearances it didn’t seem possible that any sort of problem could exist, it being one of Lake Geneva’s blue-sky days, when everything is possible and life is lived in the moment. Beautiful in their white linen finery, they drew smiles from the people they passed. From the way he nervously played with his watch fob when asking for separate rooms, one might have concluded they were newly wed, were it not for his unhappy countenance.
Clara retired to her room, while they waited for the porter to deliver their luggage. An hour later, she was roused from her nap by the sound of a heavy fist assaulting the door. In the hall she found Edwin in a sweat-soaked undershirt, gripping the arm of a young Negro porter.
“Tell her!” Edwin roughly shook the boy. “Tell her at once, or I’ll whip your hide!”
“Yers an’ da Mistah’s bags dey gone on the train, Ma’am.”
She looked from Edwin to the porter. “Our trunks are gone? Where?”
“Yas’m,” the porter nodded, “Dey gone to Chicaga. The bag car man, he clean fergit to puts ’em on the platform. Owie! Youse hurtin’ mah arm, mistah.”
“Let him go, Edwin,” Clara said wearily. “It isn’t his fault and abusing the child isn’t going to help anything.”
She looked down at the boy. “When will our trunks be delivered?”
“Maybe tomarra.” The porter gave Edwin a sidelong glance. “An’ if ah don’ git back right away an’ tell ’em to wire Chicaga, maybe not then neither.”
Edwin yanked the boy off his feet and shook him until his head wobbled on his thin stalk of a neck. “Don’t you get sassy with us, you insolent good-for-nothing. I want our bags delivered within the next hour or I’ll … I’ll call the police. I’ll have the whole damned lot of you arrested for robbery!”
“Stop it, Edwin!” Clara pulled at his arm. “Didn’t you hear what the child said? There’s nothing to be done about it until they get word to the trainmaster. We’ll just have to make do in the meantime.”
She dug in her pocket and handed the porter a quarter. “Thank you for letting us know. Now run back and tell the stationmaster to wire ahead. Can you do that?”
The boy wiggled free of Edwin’s grip. “Yas’m, ah do it right away.”
Edwin collapsed in on himself with a cry of misery. “My powders and tonics are in the trunk. I can’t get by without them. I’ll be sick.”
“Surely the chemist here can supply you with similar remedies, at least enough to get you through until your trunk arrives.”
“No drugstore will have what I need,” Edwin said, his jaw twitching spasmodically. Without another word, he went into his room and slammed the door behind him.
An hour later, Clara found him on his knees retching and shivering. He was deathly pale and soaked in sweat. He refused to talk to her except to ask for more blankets and a damp cloth. She stood by helpless until she couldn’t stand it any longer and reached for the bell pull. “I’m going to send for a doctor, Edwin. You’re beginning to frighten me.”
Eyes blazing, he turned on her in a fury. “Don’t you dare call anyone! The last thing I need is some pompous charlatan prodding and poking about my person. Just leave me alone. I can’t—” He doubled over, choking.
She rushed to him, but he pushed her away. “You can’t help.”
“But there must be something I can do,” she cried. “You don’t realize the seriousness of your own situation. If you won’t let me call the doctor, then at least let me run a hot bath for you.”
Without waiting for his consent, she stepped into the bathroom and filled the tub. She rummaged through the cabinets until she found a tin of bath salts and emptied the contents into the steaming water. When she returned, Edwin was sitting on the edge of his bed, crying.
“Take your bath,” she said in a voice that left no room for argument. “Come to my room when you’ve finished. I’ll leave my door ajar. If you need help, call out. I’ll hear you.”
She returned to her room and tried to read, but her mind kept wandering back to his first few days Tallmadge. He had grown so strange. It was more than prenuptial jitters. There had been times when she thought he might have been having some sort of mental collapse.
He was suddenly standing in the doorway, his skin still red from the near-scalding water. Handsome, aloof, he leaned against the door staring back at her with steady eyes.
“You’re right about finding what I need at the chemist’s. I thought I’d take a stroll through town and check in at the drugstore.”
She rose, her book falling to the floor. “Give me a moment to change into a fresh jacket and button up my shoes. We still have a few hours before dinner, and I could use a good walk. We’ll both need toothbrushes and toothpowder, but—”
“No! You stay here in case there’s news of our trunks. I’ll buy what we need.”
“But the boy said—”
“I know what the boy said!” Edwin barked. “I prefer you stay here. Please don’t argue with me on every little point. It grates on my nerves.”
Beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead, and the idea crossed her mind that he was on the brink of delirium. She opened her arms to him. “Please dearest, let me come with you. You aren’t yourself.”
He surprised her by falling into her embrace and burying his face in her neck. She could feel his thin body shaking under his coat. She held him as she would a wounded child and stroked his hair. “You’re going to be fine, darling,” she murmured. “You’re under great strain, what with the wedding and beginning a new business venture. Try to think of good things. After we’re married, we’ll be free to …”
He pulled out of her arms and shoved past her into the hall. “I’m going to find a chemist. I’ll be back soon.”
Before she could utter another word, he raised his hand in farewell and was gone.
She noted the time. If he had not returned in an hour, she’d go searching for him.
And search she did—down every street and alleyway and every inch of lakeshore that was accessible by foot. She urged herself to keep going through the night and into the next morning, until her feet felt like two blocks of wood. If the opportunity had presented itself, she would have sold her soul for a bicycle and the ability to ride it.
When she finally dragged herself up the hotel steps and into the lobby, people turned to stare at the disheveled woman splattered with mud, who bore the appearance of one not quite sound of mind.
The Diary of Kate Eloise Wolcott:
July 13: Received a telegram from Clara. Edwin was taken ill at
Lake Geneva with a severe disorder of the nerves and has ‘disappeared.’ Emily cannot travel, due to her hypochondriacal obsession with her bowels, and I’ve been ordered to stay and care for her (what joy) and the farm. Rev. Cutler must remain with his congregation, so it’s left to Mama to take the train to Wisconsin first thing tomorrow morning. This event comes as no surprise to any of us. I admit to expecting worse. K.W.
Lake Geneva’s Constable Pratt was a big man with receding, wavy hair and a face that fit the image of the naval officer he claimed to have once been. “My search party has been at this now for four days, ladies,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back as he gazed out the window. He seemed to have trouble looking at Clara or Fannie, preferring instead to address distant space. “Short of dragging the lake, we’ve done about everything we can.”
“Yes, Mr. Pratt you have,” Clara said. “And I’m grateful for the time and effort you and your men have spent searching for Mr. Waldo. If only we could have gotten an earlier start.”
She bit her lip, remembering the hours they’d wasted interrogating her. When she first went to them, the constable and his men showed no interest whatsoever in Edwin or his perplexing behavior. Their only concern was in knowing why an unmarried woman was traveling unchaperoned with a man who wasn’t her husband or a blood relative. When she didn’t answer to their satisfaction, they automatically assumed foul play and asked her point blank if she had reason to want Mr. Waldo ‘out of the way.’ She’d protested, but they’d kept at her for hours. As far as she could tell, their main objective was to create a scandal or a sensational tale of murder to thrill the townsfolk and bring in more tourist trade. It wasn’t until she threatened to have Mr. Tiffany contact his good friend, Wisconsin’s Governor Scofield, that they began their lackluster search for Edwin.
The young officer standing by the door came to his superior’s defense. “I hope you appreciate, ma’am that it’s impossible to drag a lake that has over twenty miles of shoreline and is one hundred thirty-six feet deep.”
“I would never have requested that the lake be dragged,” Clara said, raising an eyebrow. “Mr. Waldo is much too self-absorbed to even think of destroying himself.”
The two men exchanged glances that indicated they were just as sure he was not.
Fannie coughed and rose gracefully from her chair. Everything about her spoke of her genial nature; she could have been at a garden party instead of in a cheerless police station surrounded by disagreeable and incompetent men.
“I do hope we haven’t stepped too far out of line, Mr. Pratt, but my daughter sent a telegram to Pinkerton’s Detective headquarters in Chicago yesterday asking for assistance in finding Mr. Waldo. They have already dispatched one of their detectives, so if you would be so kind as to return our photograph of Mr. Waldo, I will arrange to have copies made.”
Mr. Pratt gave a stiff nod to the young officer. Within seconds, the officer returned with the photograph and handed it to Fannie. Unable to look at the likeness of the man who had betrayed her daughter, she dropped it into her purse.
“You’re wasting your money hiring private detectives, Ma’am,” Pratt said. “They aren’t going to do anything different than we did.”
“Perhaps,” Clara said, “but while you’re waiting for Mr. Waldo to surface, so to speak, kindly supply the Pinkerton’s detective with any information you’ve collected thus far. Hopefully, he’ll find a lead.”
At the station door, Mr. Pratt stared hard at the street as if checking for criminals who might be lying in wait. “You shouldn’t allow yourself to hold out much hope, Mrs. Driscoll. I’ve seen this before in young fellas. They get themselves all wound up and ask some gal to marry ’em then they fall to nerves and … and … then they—”
“… Throw themselves in the lake?” Clara took her mother’s arm. “That might be true for some, but as I’ve said, Mr. Waldo would never do that, considering he doesn’t know how to swim.”
The Diary of Kate Eloise Wolcott:
July 19: No word of Edwin. Mama and Clara will arrive in Chicago tomorrow. They plan on staying in Oak Park with Rev. Cutler’s sister, where they’ll wait for the detective to contact them. K.W.
July 26: No word. K.W.
August 1: Clara’s telegram arrived. Edwin traced to Dubuque, Iowa, where he bought a pair of shoes—hopefully ones he can run in. K.W.
The hammock swayed as Clara stared through the branches of the oak trees. From the kitchen, the sound of her mother and Susie Cutler putting up green tomatoes provided a momentary distraction from the barbed thoughts that left her without sleep or appetite.
It was the matter of Edwin’s trunk that upset her. Each night she’d lain awake staring at it as if she half expected it to tell her the reasons for his desperate flight. Several times she’d gotten out of bed to circle the thing, her desire to know what was inside battling with her moral code. In the end, it wasn’t much of a fight—her need for the truth outweighed her anxiety about actually finding it.
Her hatpin was handy in springing the lock. As the trunk swung open, the queer smell of his Chinese pipe tobacco assaulted her nose. His shirts and collars were in perfect order, as were his shoes and extra pair of linen trousers.
The shiny brass pull knobs on the four small compartments proved too enticing. She pulled open the top drawer and found an uninteresting pair of gold cufflinks and an inexpensive watch fob. The second was crammed with vials of black pills that she assumed were the ones he took to calm himself. She hesitated before opening the third drawer, wondered what her mother would think if she were to discover her firstborn involved in such a nefarious task, then slid it open.
Instead of socks and garters, she found three jars of white powder. On top lay a lock of hair bound by a green ribbon. Gingerly, she picked it up between two fingers and examined it. It was too blonde and over-treated to be his mother’s or his cousin Irenie’s. She sniffed it and wrinkled her nose—it reeked of cheap perfume. She dropped the thing back into the drawer and slammed it shut. Whatever was in the fourth drawer no longer mattered. She reset the lock and the next morning sent the trunk on to his parents.
Fannie came out to the porch carrying a tray of lemonade and cookies. “Come have some lemonade, dear. Susie is going upstairs to take a short nap, so it’s just us.”
Clara climbed the veranda steps and plunked herself down in a green wicker chair that squealed under her weight. “How could he have done this, Mama?”
Fannie handed her a glass of lemonade. “Obviously, Mr. Waldo was stricken down by some sort of brain fever, since no one in his right mind disappears without leaving a note. I honestly can’t imagine what could have gotten into the man to do such a thing to his family. His poor mother must be beside herself.”
Clara jiggled her glass, making the chipped ice clink against the sides. “I don’t know how I’m going to face anyone ever again.”
“When you overcome the shock of this calamity, you’ll be surprised at how warmly your friends will receive you. I’m sorry, dear, but you must have noticed that your betrothal to this man was met with less than enthusiasm.”
“I thought you were happy for me.”
“I was only happy because you were, but in my heart I’m glad the thing has turned out as it has. I never believed you and Edwin were meant to be husband and wife. He didn’t seem to be an elastic being who could throw off cares or be buoyant. He seemed more the type of man who would settle gravely down and allow the worries of life to encrust him with so thick a covering that he’d lose interest in the active world. I feared he’d soon fall victim to depression and erratic behaviors that would vex you.”
Fannie lightly patted her hand. “I doubt Mr. Waldo would have provided you with one moment’s joy or peace. You would have spent the rest of your life constantly wanting of him that which he was unable to give. Why, even Emily thought he was—”
Clara slapped the table. “I don’t care what Emily thinks. Emily doesn’t like anybody.” She cover
ed her face as misery seized her. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I feel like such a fool.”
“You’ll survive,” Fannie absently stirred her lemonade. “Mr. Waldo isn’t the end of your world, nor is this the end of your loving soul.”
Clara shook her head. “I’ll never again place my trust in any man.”
“You mustn’t limit yourself in that way, Clara. There are good men who can and will be as devoted as your …”
Clara silenced her mother with a look. “If you mean to use my father as an example of devotion and love, please don’t. He was the worst disappointment of all.”
Fannie drew back, “How can you say such a thing?”
“Because it’s the truth. He was an impenetrable man, who paid little attention to his daughters except to scorn them.”
Fannie started to protest, but Clara shook her head. “The night Josie was born, Kate and I were in the barn hayloft making straw necklaces for you when father and Uncle Walter came in, I suppose seeking refuge from the houseful of women.
“We thought it would be great fun to eavesdrop, but instead of happy talk about the new baby, father was full of complaints about being saddled with useless girls. If I recall, his actual words were: ‘If a man’s life is measured by his issue, then I’m a failure.’
“Those words changed my life; I was determined to make him proud of me. I always worked twice as hard at everything I did, even after he died.”
Despite her mood, Clara suddenly laughed. “Do you remember how you always hung my drawings in your sewing room? Every poor soul who called was ushered into ‘Clara’s Gallery.’ If they didn’t respond enthusiastically enough, you’d prompt them until they did.”
“Not much prompting was ever needed. You were accomplished even then.”
Fannie took Clara’s hand in hers. “You shouldn’t judge your father so harshly, dear. It’s true that he wasn’t generous with his affections, and perhaps he didn’t give praise as often as he should have, but he did love you in his own way.”
