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

by Maclean, Anna

  After Clarence had stormed out, I whispered something to Anna, whose back was turned to me. She did not respond. “Oh, Anna,” I said, putting my hand on her shoulder and turning her around to face me. “How bad is it?”

  She saw at once that I had discovered her secret.

  “Not very, Louy. Now, you are not to worry. Don’t tell Abba. Not just yet. She is so happy in Walpole. Let her enjoy this summer. You promise me, Louy?”

  I kissed Anna’s smooth brow and thought back over the past weeks when I had thought my older sister was preoccupied or in some state of mind that disallowed full attention to conversation. She had not been hearing us.

  “I promise,” I said, “though Abba has probably already noticed and has not found the proper moment to bring it up.”

  “Let her find the moment. Now, Mrs. Malaprop, you are required in the stage area of the attic.” Anna, with her resolute smile, gave me a little push and propelled me back into the clearing between the trunks and baskets.

  A LETTER ARRIVED from Detroit in response to my telegram. Sylvia was with me the afternoon I picked it up at the post office, and she caught her breath when she saw the return address.

  I tore it open and read the two lines it contained. Father O’Connor of the parish of the Immaculate Conception was, indeed, planning to order a bell for its new construction, but had not yet done so. I admit to much confusion over this matter, Miss Alcott, he had written. I know nothing of the bell nor of the personage you refer to as Mr. Jonah Tupper.

  “He’s not in Detroit,” I told Sylvia. “Nor has he been, I would guess.”

  “Then where is Jonah Tupper?” she said.

  “That is the question,” I agreed. “I fear the worst. Too many lies have been told; too much is being hidden.”

  BUT I COULD not dedicate myself fully to those lies and mysteries, because on a fine Saturday afternoon, exactly as promised in her earlier correspondence, Fanny Kemble arrived in a blaze of glory.

  Uncle Benjamin, agog to meet the famous actress, had rigged out and polished his old, rarely used brougham and hired a team and driver from the town stable for the day, so that we might meet her at the train stop and not require her to finish her journey by public coach. The old brougham, charmingly equipped with brass lanterns, yellow silk cushions (now somewhat moth-eaten), and a canvas frieze of cherubs painted on its interior top, held only four, so Uncle, Abba, and I went, leaving room for Fanny on the return. We left Lizzie, Sylvia, May, Llew, Ida Tupper, and Cousin Eliza fuming in Uncle’s best parlor, each convinced she or he should have had a place in the coach; only Father and gentle Anna had expressed contentment to let others have a carriage seat.

  In our haste and anticipation we three of the arrival deputation were early, and so waited half an hour in the afternoon heat, gazing out over fields and pasture and that strange gash in the earth where the tracks abruptly ended. Abba brought out her knitting and finished a stocking, while Uncle Benjamin read from a volume of poetry. I paced outside the carriage thinking of Mrs. Roder’s white, square-framed boardinghouse, and wondering if Lilli was hemming linens or whatever her sewing task for the day was. I wondered who her secret beau was, and if she had one at all.

  It was breezy that afternoon, so I took off my straw hat for fear of having it blown away. The wind clawed at my skirt, making it difficult to walk. I had a presentiment of evil despite that musical, strangely ebullient chugging sound of steam-driven wheels grinding over steel tracks. The noise grew to a roar as the train approached, its steam billowing against the blue sky and green fields. When the train ground to a stop, a black-suited conductor jumped down and unfolded the metal steps; six passengers alighted, including our own Fanny, who had brought not one maid, but two, as well as a footman whose sole task seemed to be carrying around her little spaniel. The servants would have to follow on the public omnibus. Fanny traveled with enough trunks to clothe the entire village; Walpole would talk about her visit for months.

  She was dressed entirely in white linen embroidered with vines; her summer boots were white leather, and the plume in her hat was white. “Isn’t it divine? Parisian, of course,” she greeted me, twirling so that we might better admire the costume. “I thought white linen would do well for a country week.” For Fanny, any city smaller than London or Rome was bucolic. She had once described Boston as “quaintly rustic.”

  Uncle Benjamin, hat in hand, gallantly dropped to one knee (emitting a worrisome groan of pain as he did so) and kissed the diva’s white-kidskin-gloved hand. I felt queasy whenever I saw Fanny’s white gloves, for I was in terror that I would inherit a pair or two and then be required to wear them. What can one do when gloved in white? Very little, I suspect, other than proffer one’s hand for adoration.

  “I have driven through thunderstorms and blizzards to be at your Boston performances,” Uncle Benjamin said, panting from exertion.

  “Then you shall be rewarded, sir.” Fanny solemnly placed her hand onto his right shoulder, knighting him. “Will you take tea with me tomorrow?”

  I wondered what Ida Tupper, who needed to be the center of all conversations, would think of this. There might be some stormy tea hours ahead.

  “IS SHE HANDSOME?” asked Llew once we had left Fanny at her inn and returned home to Abba’s supper of fish stew—again!

  “I think we should go back to eating only vegetables,” said May, dipping her spoon into the thick yellowish broth. “I’m tired of fish.”

  “The most beautiful woman in the world,” I said in response to Llew’s question, “next to Abba.”

  “Maybe only of her generation,” Llew said. “There are younger persons possessing much greater beauty; I’m sure of it.” Gallantry must have been in the air that day. Llew took my hand in his own and kissed it quickly, when he thought the others were busy with their meal.

  But May saw and dropped her spoon on the floor in shock. I hastened to crawl under the table to pick it up, to hide my burning cheeks.

  We gave Fanny a day to settle into her rooms at the inn and rest from the journey, and during that day only Abba and Uncle Benjamin were allowed to visit: Abba because she was full of common sense about such things as unpacking and moving furniture, for hotel rooms were never arranged to Fanny’s liking, and Benjamin because she had accepted him as her rustic knight.

  When Mrs. Tupper heard that her cavalier was paying homage elsewhere, her merry visage darkened visibly, and then quickly brightened again. “Oh, well.” She sighed. “I know Benjamin will not desert me for long.” She was standing at her back door holding a pair of knitting needles borrowed from Abba, for she had lost the first pair. A six-cent pair of needles gone, and not even a single stocking to show for it, I thought. Not so much as an “I’m sorry” from this lax student of the knitting arts.

  “Perhaps Mr. Tupper will return home soon, and you will not be so lonely,” I suggested, baiting her for information.

  “Perhaps, though Clarence thinks his stepfather will be away longer than usual. Abba, could you show me again how to make that seed stitch?” Mrs. Tupper asked.

  ON THE SECOND day, as promised, Fanny arrived at our humble cottage for supper. And what an arrival! All of Walpole must have lined up to watch as the world-famous Fanny Kemble made her stately way from the inn to our little cottage.

  Fanny had dressed in her “rustic” white linen suit with a very large hat adorned with a dozen or so white plumes that bobbed at each step, and to contrast with her immaculate suit she carried a blue basket filled with bright red cherries. Her two maids followed behind, each carrying a brown-wrapped package—books, we would discover, one for each of us, chosen by Fanny herself. Her footman followed the maids, and he had in tow a very, very large turtle pulled on a cart, and on that same cart a cage of live pheasants.

  “Oh, my,” exclaimed Abba, opening the door to this exotic vision.

  “Oh, my!” exclaimed May, running out to examine the turtle. “Is it to be a pet? Has he a name?”

  “I rat
her thought he was for Sunday dinner,” said Fanny, laughing. She handed the huge basket of cherries to Abba. “Mr. Tupper wished to carry them himself and said he was coming this way, but I thought they made an interesting prop for my entrance.”

  “Oh, my,” said Father, disapproving as he looked over Fanny’s shoulder at her entourage. “Fish, yes. Turtle, no. And as for those birds, you might as well set them free at this moment. They’ll not be butchered in my house.”

  Fanny sighed. So did Abba, I admit. She’d had roast pheasant as a girl and would not have minded renewing that acquaintanceship. The cage was opened as Father requested, and the startled birds danced about in the front garden for quite a while before taking advantage of their freedom and winging off into the dusky sky.

  Fanny’s huge audience of Walpolians applauded, and the pretty actress curtsied.

  “Surely you don’t expect the turtle to fly off,” said May, still hoping she might have acquired a new pet.

  “I must think about the turtle,” said Father, ascending into his transcendental mist.

  Chaos took over our blue parlor, and it seemed to protest the arrival into its modest measurement of a dozen people, including the Alcotts with Llew and Sylvia, Uncle Benjamin and Cousin Eliza, and Clarence Hampton and Mrs. Tupper. Even Cousin Frank, who had so far spent the summer repairing roofs and henhouses, had made an appearance, looking somewhat harried but handsome, with his hair slicked down and his best jacket dusted and pressed off. I had wished to invite Lilli, but Abba had wisely said it was too soon for her to attend supper with such a crowd; she was still in deepest mourning.

  May and Lizzie wanted all the news of Boston, Sylvia and Anna wanted the news of Europe, I wanted the theater news, and Llew wished to know if any new papers on geology had been printed at Harvard. We quite overwhelmed Fanny, who grew stumped when it was time to answer Llew’s question.

  “Let me see,” she said, holding her chin in one elegant hand, a cordial glass in the other, for we were in the parlor having sherry before dinner. We did not normally have sherry before dinner or any other hour of the day, but this was a special day. “Ah, yes,” she said with gravitas. “I did attend one meeting of the Harvard Geological Society where they decided that it was not true that the moon was made of green cheese.”

  “Mr. Willis might well believe the earth is made of cheese, if it be evolutionary cheese,” said Clarence Hampton.

  “Mr. Hampton would believe people were made of cheese, if it said so in scripture,” Llew retorted.

  “Gentlemen,” warned Abba. “The purpose of any study should be to bring us closer together, not push us farther apart. There are already issues enough in the world to estrange friend from friend and brother from brother.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Father.

  Llew and Clarence looked daggers at each other.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Potatoes Are Requested

  ABBA LOOKED WONDERFUL the night of our dinner with Fanny. She had brushed her gray hair smoothly into a silk snood and pinned a new lace collar onto her old bombazine dress. I studied her closely that evening, for I was close to finishing my story of “The Lady and the Woman” and sought exactitude of gesture from my muse.

  Anna, who followed the conversation by watching our faces, now rerouted us into discussions of the novels being published that summer and who was reading what. Lyman Beecher’s daughter, Harriet Stowe, had published Uncle Tom’s Cabin two years before, and the book was flying off the shelves and still the center of most literary discussion. The lamps were lit as darkness fell, and our crowded parlor was lively with animated shadows.

  “Mrs. Alcott, do sing for us,” said Fanny.

  “Yes, Abba, yes!” we agreed. Lizzie quietly took her place at the piano.

  “My voice is quite gone,” protested Abba, but she smiled with pleasure at being asked. There sat Abba in her old bombazine with an apron now tied over it, for every ten minutes she had jumped up and gone into the kitchen. Beloved Abba could have been a concert singer. Instead, she fell in love with a philosopher and gave him four daughters and all her heart.

  “Please, Mrs. Alcott,” said Fanny in a voice no one could resist, and to add to her plea she knelt before Abba in supplication. She was, after all, theatrical.

  “Lizzie, do you remember the chords for ‘Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms’?” Abba asked.

  “I do.” And to prove it, Lizzie played the opening bars. When she started the second time, Abba joined in and sang those lovely old lyrics with a voice as strong and true as an angel’s. “ ‘It is not while beauty and youth are thine own, and thy cheeks unprofaned by a tear, that the fervor and faith of a soul can be known, to which time will make thee more dear!’ ” she sang, looking at Father and trilling the final dear with so many grace notes we thought she must surely run out of breath. But she did not. The song died away as gently as it had started.

  Llew cleared his throat and gave me a glance. Mrs. Tupper was, for a change, speechless. Clarence Hampton made a point of appearing unmoved by such sentiment, but his eyes had reddened, and I wondered if his conscience smarted.

  Dear Fanny rose to her feet and applauded. “Mrs. Alcott, I’ve not heard a finer voice in this country or Europe!”

  “Perhaps you would honor us with a declamation,” Mother suggested.

  “Well,” said Fanny. “I think I could get through a speech or two without much trouble. How about Gertrude from Hamlet?” (Reader: I had asked in advance for this particular section. The play’s the thing wherein to catch the conscience.)

  “Excellent,” I said. “Mr. Hampton, you can read from Hamlet’s role to complete the scene.” I gave Fanny the book carried in my pocket.

  “Charming,” said the actress when she and Clarence stood face-to-face. “I see from where Louisa has opened the book that we are to begin in the scene after Hamlet has murdered Polonius.” She paused, and I saw all her concentration move inward, searching, and then as her energy moved out again it was as if she were a different person, a woman who had seen much of life and understood none of it.

  “ ‘O Hamlet! Speak no more. Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul; And there I see such black and grained spots as will not leave their tinct.’ ”

  Fanny’s voice was always thrilling, deep and lovely and rich, but for Queen Gertrude she made it higher-pitched, the voice of a woman who denies her own maturity until too late. I could not help but look in Ida Tupper’s direction. Confusion showed on her face, and I suspected she was unfamiliar with any Shakespeare except King Lear.

  Clarence cleared his throat. His face turned sullen and angry, as I imagined Hamlet’s would have looked. “ ‘Nay, but to live in the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love over the nasty sty—’ ”

  “ ‘O! Speak to me no more—’ ” began Fanny.

  “No more indeed,” said Abba, rising hastily.

  “What is an enseamed bed stew’d in corruption?” asked May.

  “None of your concern. Louy, I do not like this choice of yours,” Abba chastened.

  “Perhaps it is inappropriate,” agreed Fanny. “Though I must say, Mr. Hampton, even your abbreviated reading surprised me with its authenticity. You might have a future as a tragedian.”

  Clarence Hampton returned the volume to me. “Is there a future for villains? Ask Miss Louisa what she thinks.”

  Fanny stared at him, then at me, and I could not tell what she was thinking. “Well, since I have warmed my throat, I will do a little speech for you. Lady Macbeth,” she announced.

  “The spot speech!” cried Lizzie with delight, pulling her ottoman closer to the hearth, where Fanny stood.

  Fanny drooped her head, as people do when much aggrieved in their minds, indeed just as Clarence often stood. She pulled loose one of her prettily dressed side curls and loosened the lace jabot of her dress; she pulled up her sleeves to reveal her arms all the way to the elbows. She closed her eyes and took a
deep breath, which she held for a very long time. When she opened her eyes again she was Lady Macbeth, sleepwalking, much disturbed in mind over the blood she had caused to be shed.

  “ ‘Out, damned spot! I say! One; two: why, then, ’tis time to do’t. Hell is murky!’ ” Her voice began as a quiet growl; it rose to a shriek with the word hell. Fanny—rather, Lady Macbeth—turned and faced Clarence Hampton and cast her gloomy gaze upon him. “ ‘Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?’ ”

  Clarence blanched.

  “ ‘Do you mark that?’” I said, for I knew this scene and could cue the lines for Fanny.

  “ ‘The Thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now? What! Will these hands ne’er be clean? . . . Here’s the smell of the blood still; all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh! Oh! Oh!’ ” And with the final oh Fanny collapsed onto the carpet, sobbing.

  “Oh, don’t cry so,” said Lizzie, her own eyes brimming. “Fanny, here, let me help you up.”

  When Fanny raised her face, we saw that she was laughing and quite gay!

  “Tears and laughter are so close they can substitute one for another onstage,” she said. I would remember that.

  Supper began with steamed clams, progressed to oyster chowder, and moved on to a baked halibut. We wondered if Abba weren’t perhaps feeling a little unsound. She hummed as she passed around the plates and hugged Father, who seemed somewhat stupefied by so much company and so much food. His blessing before dinner had been unusually brief:

  “Bless the roof that protects the family beneath it.”

  “Hear, hear,” answered Uncle Benjamin, raising his wineglass. “Though in a heavy storm the roof leaks somewhat in the southeast corner.”