Louisa and the Country Bachelor : A Louisa May Alcott Mystery (9781101547564)

by Maclean, Anna

  We returned to the buggy, our lips and fingers stained purple, and Llew and Clarence began a heated and protracted conversation over geologic theory. If they had been small boys they would have already been pushing and shoving at each other. But they were men and fought with words instead of little fists.

  The sun shone; butterflies flitted past. Part of our trail led along the river and a section of ravine, and I composed in my head for my story of Kate and Mr. Windsor, noting the “rocky way, following the babbling brook that dashed foaming down the deep ravine, whose sides were ringed with pines and carpeted with delicate ferns and moss.”

  The spot Clarence Hampton had chosen for our picnic was a green meadow of wildflowers protected between two stands of old pine, and beyond the nearest stand was a rock cliff that dropped forty feet down. A small stream gurgled merrily through the meadow, and a grouping of sheep scattered here and there rendered the scene idyllic.

  “It is private land, but I’ve asked permission of the landholder,” Clarence assured us. “People in these whereabouts take their property rights very seriously. There is a path that trails halfway down to the bottom of the ravine, if you will risk it.” He himself took a book from his pack and sat down to read under a huge oak.

  The womenfolk, as Llew had termed us, began the task of spreading blankets and setting out plates of chicken and boiled eggs and preserved fruits and sultana cakes, no easy task, since we were all wearing our crinolines and full skirts and to tip those at any angle was to invite the wind to toss the whole kit over our heads—a most embarrassing situation, as I’m sure you can imagine. So carefully we leaned and turned and put out the picnic, ravenous after the long ride despite the berries. When the dishes were arranged we sat cross-legged under our full circled skirts, looking like exotic Buddhas balanced on muslin print lily pads.

  Llew and Clarence (who shut his book with an audible sigh) built a small fire so that we might have tea or coffee if we wished, quarreling over the proper way to circle the pit with stones and the correct method of laying the branches and kindling, each insisting his way was more efficient.

  We ate splendidly and far too much, and then napped. Before sleeping I composed in my head, recording the details of our journey, for I had decided that the story of Kate Loring and Mr. Windsor would be set in just such a journey up a mountain, beside a babbling brook:

  “This stream reminds me of your style of woman, Miss Kate,” said Mr. Windsor, as, leaning on the rude railing of the bridge, he glanced to Kate, who stood erect, on a projecting crag, with folded arms, and the red light streaming full upon her thoughtful face and gleaming eyes.

  WE AWOKE TO the sounds of screaming.

  I sat up first, pushing away the straw hat I had placed over my face to keep it from sunburn. But the sun was strong and had dazzled my eyes through the hat, and at first I could see nothing but round explosions of brilliant light. When the dazzle passed I looked in the direction of the scream, the cliff’s edge, and saw a man, flat on the ground, reaching his hand over the cliff. Another man held his feet to keep him from going over, and three young women—the source of the screaming—swirled in panic about them.

  “She’s fallen over the cliff!” yelled the man holding the ankles of the other man, for by then I had screamed myself, raising the alarm among my own group, and was running toward the cliff edge to give assistance.

  “Helen!” one of the terrified young women yelled. “Hang on, Helen!”

  “I am,” came a calm voice from beyond the rim of the chasm. “Don’t carry on so, Myrtle. You’ll set my teeth on edge.”

  “Well, you’re the one who fell over,” said the creature I guessed was Myrtle, who, dressed in pink gingham with several bows in her hair, pouted.

  “Can you reach her?” I asked, kneeling next to the first man in the human ladder. I looked over the edge to see how far Helen had fallen, terrified of beholding some bloodied, bone-broken vision, a feminine version of Ernst Nooteboom, although the voice coming up over that cliff edge had argued against such a vision.

  I looked over, and a perky face with a snub nose smiled up at me, just inches away.

  “You must be Miss Louisa Alcott,” she said pleasantly. “I recognize that day gown from a description I have heard.” Well, so much for my pondering on how thorough the gossip of Walpole was.

  “I am. I gather you are Helen?”

  “Helen Kittredge,” she said with a nod. “I would extend my hand, but as you can see it has a previous engagement. Do not tug so, Walter; you will separate my hand from my arm.”

  Walter was the boy who struggled with both his hands to hold one of Helen’s, to keep her from falling farther into the chasm. I inched closer to the edge and saw that she stood on the large jutting rock onto which she had fallen. I also noticed that there were no other footholds between her and a fall of forty feet, and that the rock seemed to be loosening under her weight, for it tilted a little even as I watched.

  “Hold her tight, Walter,” I said. “Llew, bring the rope that tied our picnic basket!”

  Llew, already right behind me, ran for the rope and was back in less than ten seconds, so quick was his pace.

  “Helen,” I said, forcing a calmness I did not feel, “can you take this rope with your free hand and tie it about your waist?”

  “I think so,” she said, and now I heard fear in her voice. She struggled for some minutes with this chore, and when the rope was around her we all held our breath, for the most dangerous moment had arrived: She must balance on that small, rocking foothold, release her other hand from the safety of Walter’s grasp, and tie a secure knot.

  But she tied the knot quickly and with such efficiency I deemed her to have some knowledge of amateur sailing.

  “Ready,” she said, smiling up at me once again.

  “Then we will pull, and you must push yourself away from the edge so that you are not injured on the rock,” I explained. “Push out with your foot and hold the rope with your hands.”

  A moment later Helen was resting at the cliff’s edge, and though she laughed, her face was uncommonly pale.

  Walter raced to the stream to bring her a cup of water; Myrtle offered her smelling salts.

  But Helen would have nothing to do with such ministrations and instead sat up and offered her hand to me.

  “Now we are properly introduced,” she said.

  “What are you doing here?” The male voice behind me was unsuitably harsh to address a young woman whose life had just been endangered.

  I turned in surprise. Clarence Hampton stood there, glaring. “This is private land.”

  “And not of your ownership,” said the young man named Walter. He rose from his knees beside Helen and glared back at Clarence. The two men were dressed similarly, in country tweed trousers and jackets and shirts loosened at the collar, yet there was such a striking difference between them I thought how little of our nature is revealed by clothing. Walter seemed boyish and trembling with the shock of this escapade; Clarence was chilly, aloof, indifferent to all but his own rights.

  “It so happens this property is my godfather’s, and I and my friends come here often. I turn your question back on you, sir,” Walter replied. “Why are you here? Though I must add, Miss Alcott, I am grateful for your assistance.”

  We are here because for some reason Clarence Hampton did not wish us to be near his own campsite, I thought, waiting to hear his response.

  “My mother secured permission for a picnic from Giles Cavendish,” Clarence said.

  “Then your mother is Mrs. Tupper,” said Walter. “Godfather couldn’t remember what day he gave permission for. Believe me, I would not have intruded had I known this was the day. I have no desire to make your acquaintance, sir.” Walter turned on his heel and walked off to where his friends awaited, near a path that must have led to his godfather’s country home, and that rudely turned back said much about what the native Walpolians thought of those newcomers, Ida Tupper and her son.

&n
bsp; “Isn’t this silly?” Helen said brightly. “Boys can be such imbeciles. Walter! Come back! It is too fine a day to end with a quarrel. I fell over a cliff and was rescued! Can you imagine a finer outing? We must write a play about this!”

  Walter studied his boot tips, and his companions looked at us from over fluttering fans. The second young man, still nameless to me, had been silent all this time. Now he walked over to Llew and extended his hand.

  “I am Thomas Kittredge, and I am pleased to meet you. You are from Michigan, I understand?”

  “I am studying there.” Llew shook his hand with great enthusiasm. Thus was the ice broken and the quarrel ended. Helen’s group, added to our own, created a party of some dozen people, and we had no trouble finishing the remains of Ida Tupper’s picnic hamper.

  Clarence continued to glower and sit somewhat at a distance from us. I had recently reread Miss Brontë’s ardent romance, Wuthering Heights, and it occurred to me that Clarence would make a fine Heathcliff: dark, brooding, inscrutable, solitary. Heathcliff had been a man of mystery, of unknown origin and parentage. He had also been passionate. There was the difference. Clarence sat aloof from us, indifferent to the considerable quantity of feminine charm present at this picnic. Sylvia, Helen, Anna, Myrtle—none seemed to stir his interest.

  “How came you to fall over the cliff?” Anna asked our new friend, when the last of the shortbread and strawberry jam had been consumed.

  “I was chasing after a piece of paper and did not watch my step,” said Helen, blushing. “I prefer to think I am not usually of such clumsiness. I have studied ballet with Dame Petrovia of Paris.”

  “You had six lessons when she visited last summer,” clarified her brother, Thomas.

  “Seven, and she pronounced I had an uncommon gift for the lyrical,” retorted Helen, again sticking that short and rounded nose into the air.

  “Are you theatrical?” I asked.

  “I am. And I have heard you are, as well. You must not blush, Miss Louisa. Small towns do gossip, as you know, and I have already heard that you are a writer and friend of the theater. I have been hoping to make your acquaintaince, and I offer you a proposition. Indeed, one could say our partnership was destined, considering the drama of our meeting.” Helen leaned forward and gave me a wink, the sly gesture contrasting strangely with her cherubic face and girlish curls. “Write us a play. We will produce it here in Walpole.”

  “Do!” cried Anna and Sylvia simultaneously. “Louy, remember the fun we had in Concord with our theatricals?”

  “I will try,” I agreed, testing my own enthusiasm for the project.

  This is what those who do not attempt to create with the pen do not realize: The muse cannot always be coerced. Say you want to write a play, and the imagination settles itself instead on a long poem, or series of letters. I was reluctant to take time away from my elves’ stories and “The Lady and the Woman.” But I could turn my hand to a script for a theatrical performance. “I will try,” I repeated.

  “It is settled,” said Helen. “We will meet this next Thursday evening at six o’clock for further discussions. For rehearsals we will use the attic at my home, Elmwood. We are on the west side of the Common. You will have no trouble finding it.” Again, that tone of a queen used to having her orders obeyed unquestioningly and promptly. She reminded me of my younger sister, May, also of cherubic face and tyrannic disposition.

  “Settled,” said Sylvia. “In an hour we must start home. What shall we do meantimes? Walk the path to the bottom of the chasm?”

  Helen shivered. “I think not,” I said. “We’ve had enough exercise for the day, and it is still a long journey home. Why not a game of cards?”

  “Splendid idea,” said Thomas Kittredge.

  “Shall we play whist?” I directed this question to Clarence Hampton. “Abondance déclarée?”

  Clarence looked surprised.

  “Whist?” I repeated.

  “I don’t know the game,” he muttered.

  THE FAIR WEATHER of our picnic day was followed by two days of a grimly determined rain that saw my entire household, including myself, bound indoors. I discovered myself one afternoon spending an entire hour watching the house cat (for all country homes come equipped with a friendly mouser) similarly cabin-fevered, spring upon its own tail. Remembering my pledge to attempt a script for the amateur theatrical society of Walpole, I fled to my leaky cabin to see if a story for a small group of actors might arise from my sodden imagination.

  Pen in hand, I wrote opening lines. Angelo, did you see the mist coming over the moor? Did you hear the hounds bay? and They say the casket would not stay sealed—only to cross them out in frustration. No romance sprang to mind, only a tragedy. Over and over again my mind returned to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the story of the prince who so hates his stepfather that the play ends with hardly a living person onstage. And such thoughts led me to think about Clarence Hampton and his stepfather, Jonah Tupper.

  Murderers, I deemed, must be fine actors, since their survival depends on mixing into the populations of their community.

  And then I remembered something that my beloved friend, Ralph Emerson, had once said: “Men are what their mothers made them.” Perhaps if I knew more about Ida Tupper, I would know more about her son, Clarence Hampton. Perhaps then I would know the fate of Jonah Tupper. Somehow I believed Ernst Nooteboom, the healthy young man who had somehow fallen over a cliff in his town shoes, was connected to the two others.

  I picked up my pen once again, this time to make a list rather than invent a story. I must learn where Ida Tupper had lived before settling in Walpole. I already knew she was a Unitarian, which knowledge was necessary for my plan, since I would need to write to her former parishes.

  DESPITE THE RAIN, there was a fair in Walpole that afternoon, a small group of “travelers”—Irish immigrants who wandered from village to village, setting up their striped tents to tell fortunes and mend pots. They had set up in a marshy pasture next to the river. The women of this encampment were barefoot and much begrimed; their children were wiry and muddy but very gleeful. I sensed I would find the merry Ida Tupper there, and I did. She was sitting under a tent awning awaiting her turn with the fortune-teller.

  “Why, Mrs. Tupper! What a surprise!” I said.

  “Louisa! I am going to have my future read. What do you think of that?” she gushed like a schoolgirl. Her hair was more flamboyantly padded than ever, her gown was a determinedly youthful pink, and she smelled strongly of Hungary water. How does vanity affect a mother? I tried to imagine my childhood with Abba occupied most of the morning arranging her hair and spending the household pin money on fortune-tellers. Such a challenging scene defeated my ability to imagine it.

  “Mrs. Tupper, I want to thank you for the picnic you arranged.” I sat on the stool next to her.

  “Why, Louisa, it was my pleasure. It is good for Clarence to be with other young people. He has become quite unsociable this year. Such a moody young person. What do you think the fortune-teller will see for me?”

  “Lemonade,” said Clarence Hampton, arriving with a glass in one hand and his umbrella in the other. As usual, he was dressed in polished boots (in a cow pasture!) with lace frothing at his throat and wrists, though most young men those days wore simple collars and cuffs. Does vanity ever lead to violence? I wondered. Narcissism. Ralph Emerson had been particularly fond of the classical tale of Narcissus and had told it over and over, about the boy who could only stare at his own reflection. That fable had ended badly, I recalled.

  “Are you here to have your fortune told?” Clarence asked. His right eyebrow lifted, and there was a suggestion of a smile on his mouth, as if he thought the idea humorous.

  “Are you?” I asked.

  “A man’s destiny is what he makes of it,” he said.

  “Really, Clarence!” said Ida Tupper. “You seem to think that there is no mystery, no romance to life.”

  Clarence’s gaze grew hard. “Mystery? Romanc
e? I thought you more practical than that, Mother.” He turned away and stalked off through the crowd.

  “Children,” said Mrs. Tupper, sniffing. “I wonder sometimes if they are worth the pain of bringing them into the world. Oh, excuse me, Louisa. I shouldn’t speak of such things to you, you being unwed and such.”

  “It is quite all right, Mrs. Tupper. I know a little about childbirth.” Last winter I had assisted in a home for unwed mothers. But this seemed a promising venue for our conversation, so I pursued it. “You must have been quite young when Clarence was born.”

  “A mere slip of a girl,” Ida agreed. “My husband, Mr. Hampton, was an older gentleman. We were very happy together. He adored me, the sweet man. He passed over when Clarence was fourteen.” She wiped away a tear. “His death was such a shock. So unexpected.” Ida blew gently into a handkerchief. “I warned Billy to let the handyman take care of the roof, but he would attempt it himself. He fell, and left me with a boy to raise on my own.” She blew her nose heartily into her flimsy lace handkerchief.

  “My deepest regrets,” I said. “I hope you had your family there to comfort you.”

  “No, Mr. Hampton and I had a house—oh, ever such a nice house it was, in Weymouth. Before that I lived in Manchester with my family, the Wattles. I come from good people. But they have all passed away, and so I was quite alone when I mourned my dear Billy. Alone, and in a town that was so unfriendly. You know how these small towns can be, Louisa. So Clarence and I moved to Worcester.

  “Oh, how happy I was there!” She sighed, her tears for Mr. Hampton forgotten. “I met Mr. Sykes there—he was a lawyer, widowed—and he said, ‘Ida, if you don’t marry me I’ll just jump off the bridge!’ So I did, of course. So strange,” she mused, growing thoughtful.

  “Why was it strange?” I asked.

  “Because he did drown, after all. He would go swimming too soon after lunch. He was a sporter, you see, and swam every day. He always said a brisk swim would keep him healthy forever. He took Clarence swimming with him.”