Bitter Eden

by Salvato, Sharon Anne

  "I think the only solution for you is to take Callie with you."

  "Callie? Good Lord, Ma, she's just a girl. She wouldn't have any idea of how to care for Rosalind. Suppose something happened . . . went wrong. What could Callie do?"

  "A lot more than those ninnies you interviewed today, and what's more Callie would care. She'd love to go. It's written all over her face for those not too blind to see.

  Peter looked hopeful for a minute, then looked down at his hands, finally saying aloud what he loathed to think about. "You're wrong, Ma. Callie would never want to come with me . . . not after . . . not after what I did to the dog. She hated that • . . hated me for it."

  "Oh, Peter, will you never learn? She can overcome nearly anything if you give her the time. It is you who have not forgiven yourself, not Callie."

  He looked at Meg for a long time, then said, "Callie . . ." testing the idea.

  Meg smiled and patted his hand. "HI send her to you."

  "Outside, Ma. Ask her to meet me outside."

  Callie went hesitantly down the stairs. She and Peter had been cordial, but had had little to say to one another since the night Ugly had been done away with. She hadn't liked it being that way, but there was no taking back the things she had said to him, and there hadn't seemed a way for her to reestablish the friendship that had once been between them. She didn't

  know what she could say now. But what was worse, she knew that what she wanted him to say was beyond the realm of possibility. After the horrible things she had said to him, he'd never want her near him by choice. Nevertheless her heart pounded an erratic rhythm. She came to stand in front of him, her eyes wide and questioning.

  She was sixteen this spring. He looked down at her and saw cheekbones beginning to come into prominence. Her face was maturing and rapidly losing the overfished look of a child. Her eyes were deep and blue, still filled with the crystal-clear innocence that he had found appealing in the girl. In a woman, it made her tempting. He cleared his throat. He remembered her hurt fury when she had begged for Ugly's life. Had she forgiven him? She said she never would. He wasn't prepared for how much that hurt. When he managed to speak, his voice was thick and husky. "Could you see your way to coming to New York with us? I'd understand if you said no, but ... I hope you'll come."

  She stood before him, the wind blowing her hair and whipping color into her cheeks, speechless.

  He shifted his weight, gesturing helplessly. "You'd be Rosalind's companion. And then when the baby came . . . she'll need someone . . . say something, please."

  "I can't," she whispered and put her hands over her mouth.

  "Do you want to come with us?"

  She nodded deeply, laughing and crying at once. "I thought I'd die from the wanting," she whispered. "Are you sure? I think I'd go mad if you didn't mean it"

  "I mean it. Lord, do I mean it!" He grinned, taking a deep breath and laughing as he exhaled. "If you had

  said no . . . I . . . we might not have gone at all. I couldn't find anyone for Rosalind, and I thought . . " He stopped, let out a whoop, tossing his cap into the air. "We're going!"

  She stood where she was, hands still covering her mouth, laughing and crying. "We're going. We're going."

  Callie was still not certain she believed it would come true until that final morning when they went to the docks. She gazed at the masts, so many and so close that they blocked out the sky. They walked from the carriage to the Blackwall frigate that would carry them to America. Her stomach remained in a tight knot, tensed for disappointment when it came.

  "What's the matter with you, Callie? You're the eager one . . . why are you hanging back now?" Peter asked and gave her a gentle shove forward.

  "I still can't believe it. The ship is sure to vanish before my eyes. I know it will." She squeezed her eyes shut and quickly reopened them. She looked at Stephen, afraid to glance back to the ship. "Is it still there?"

  He took her arm. "Come along, you simpleton; it's there." He laughed. "You've got everyone on the dock looking at you."

  "Are they?" she breathed and craned around to see the smiling, work-hardened faces of the men near the customs quay staring at her. "Oh, Stephen, do hurry! Tve made a spectacle of us."

  The hard solid feeling of earth was left behind as they stepped onto the gangplank.

  Meg waved good-bye to her sons and Callie, waiting at the dock until there was no sight of them. They disappeared into the*mist and the distance. She stood for a long time wondering if she should not be experi-

  Sharon Salvato

  encing some guilt for the relief she felt when they vanished from sight. She felt nothing. Without a word needing to be said, Frank took her arm and helped her into the carriage.

  BOOK II

  Chapter 19

  Their first view of New York Harbor surprised them. It was a bustling, active port, as filled with ships and the evidence of trade as the British ports had been. Persuaded to come on deck, Rosalind stared agog at the activity on the dock below. Vehicles of all descriptions moved in a swift and busy tangle on West Street. Drays, expresswagons, butcher s carts, beer-skids, carriages, hansoms, trolleys, and garbage carts moved in all directions, their drivers all screaming to be heard above the roar of the dock. The waters were crowded with canal boats, freight ships being loaded and unloaded, barges and ferries taking on cargo and passengers and moving about the river in as frantic a bustle as the horses and carts moving on land. Grudgingly, Rosalind admitted to a stir of curiosity and excitement. "I told you you would like it," Peter said* "I would like anything that would relieve me of the taste of ship's food and the stench," she said, her eyes going back to the store fronts and the constant activ-

  ity of the street. "Anyway, appearances can be deceiving."

  He put his arm around her waist, squeezing her to him. "Say what you will. I don't care what changes your mind, as long as something does. I want you to be happy here." She glanced up at him, but he didn't give her a chance to say anything. He excused himself to go off to talk to a group of men standing on the quay. He was smiling broadly when he returned.

  "Come along; our cab is waiting.' 9

  Jauntily he told the driver to take them to the Saint Nicholas Hotel. "He's the patron saint of the city," he explained to Rosalind. "I thought it best we begin by getting on the right side of the patron. We may need his assistance."

  "Indeed," Rosalind breathed and looked from one side of the carriage, leaning across Peter to see from the other side of the street. "It is far more of a city than I had thought."

  Peter grinned, pleased. "That's more like it."

  "How was I to know what it would look like? Anyway it may still be nothing."

  Peter took her hand. "Not this time. You're free here, Rosalind, there are no taverns or Rufus Hawkeses or Mrs. Foxes with long nasty memories. You'll be happy here," he said in a low voice.

  Rosalind looked at him, thinking abou£ him rather than herself, and for a fleeting moment knew that he had understood her from the beginning. Then the moment passed and Rosalind's eyes went back to the busy, crowded streets that sped by through the window of her carriage.

  "When will we be seeing Sam Tolbert, Peter? Will he be meeting us here?" Stephen asked.

  "I'll send a message as soon as we're settled in the hotel. I thought we'd take a day or two to see the

  town. Well be doing a great deal of our business in New York. The more we know about it, the. . . . What are we stopping for?" Peter asked suddenly as the carriage halted at the intersection of Third Avenue and Fifteenth Street

  "What is going on?" Peter leaned out and asked the driver. "Why are we stopping?"

  "Nothing to alarm you, sir. Just a race."

  "Race? In the middle of the street?"

  "Yes, sir! You'll see it often on Third. It'll only hold us up for a moment."

  He pulled back into the body of the carriage, grinning at Stephen. "Did you hear what the man said, Steve? It's a bloody throughway and they use
it for sport. This is some town. Ill have to write to Frank about this."

  "Peter . . . look at the women," Rosalind said. Along the street were throngs of people, shops, restaurants, and oyster bars, all with counters full and doors opening and closing as people came and went. Many of them were women, well-dressed in gay vibrant-colored gowns, going about their business.

  Rosalind couldn't take her eyes from them. "They're dressed to the height of fashion, Peter. I've never seen such an array of color on ... I mean they must be ordinary people. There can't be that many nobility here, can there?"

  "None, my dear; we are as noble as the lot of them."

  "Are we truly?"

  "Truly," he said and took her hand. Impishly he looked at her and put her hand to his lips.

  She sat straighter, her chin going up just a bit. "We will do well here. I admit, Peter, I was wrong about coming here."

  Callie, Stephen, and Rosalind spent the afternoon in their hotel rooms. Rosalind, searching through her

  wardrobe, tried to select the most becoming gown that would still fit her, and Callie sewed frantically to let out seams and put in strategic tucks to accommodate Rosalind's cumbersome belly.

  "I do wish my time would come."

  It won't be long now," Callie said. "And you look lovely. You always do." She threaded the needle yet again.

  Rosalind looked into her mirror, studying herself disapprovingly from all angles. One dress after another she tried and rejected. Callie kept altering and sewing, and Rosalind disapproving. It took the entire afternoon for her to select the gown she would wear to dinner that evening.

  "You can hardly tell with this dress, can you?" she asked. "And if I wear my dark-blue cape—why, I wont look as though I am to have a child at all. Ill just look fat!" she fumed and tossed the cape onto the pile of clothes on the bed. "I shall have but one child," she said firmly. "One is all any woman should be asked to suffer. Months of looking so . . . pregnant women are not attractive. It is all talk. Something to say when no true compliment can be forthcoming." She walked to Callie, bowing awkwardly. "You are so radiant, Madame Cow. When will the happy event take place?"

  Callie giggled, and Rosalind frowned. "It is not funny. I didn't mean it to be funny at all. It is true! I wish I wasn't going to have this child."

  "Aunt Meg told me she felt like that with her first. Frank was more nuisance than joy while she carried him. Then she said the morning he was born and she first held him everything changed. Maybe it will be the same for you."

  "You are comparing me to Meg Berean? Dear me!" Rosalind walked grandly to the chaise longue, arrang-

  ing herself artfully over its curving surface. "You have managed to make a dull day intolerable. I think I had better rest before we go out. Bring me a wet cloth soaked in my violet water, Callie. I think you ve brought on one of my headaches."

  Callie continued her care of Rosalind throughout the afternoon. Her own unpacking went neglected. She was still wearing the same travel-stained suit when Peter and Stephen returned to the hotel to take them to dinner.

  Peter had scoured the city asking questions and talking to people. He already knew the location of the best oyster bars, the best restaurants, and had had his first conversation with the men who lunched daily at the Tontine restaurant to transact business.

  It has been an informative day," he said to Stephen as they sat down to wait for Callie. "We are going to have to learn a whole new language here, it seems. English alone will not suffice. There is quite a mixture of Indian and Dutch and German and Danish and other languages all combined to make up this American English. My tongue has been twisted around itself half the day."

  "But did you find out anything about the hop production?"

  "Certainly. We ve come at the most opportune time. A fortune can be made right now. There is a great demand for good beer and ale, and few able suppliers. And the Erie Canal opened just five years ago. With it the way to the West is clear. We can send hops to Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit ... all over. The brewery industry has been very slow in starting here, and production is low. It was made for us, Stephen. We have a wide-open field. Berean Brothers' Brewery is not so much a vision as we thought. It is very possible, and something that is needed here."

  "If it's so needed, why hasn't someone done it?"

  Peter shrugged. "Be glad they haven't. And there are many who are starting. We'll not be alone. We'll have to work harder and longer than our competition. But well succeed. There are plenty of raw materials. Can you imagine that hops grow wild along the Hudson Valley and yet no one grew them commercially until 1808? It is unbelievable."

  "Or maybe it is believable and we just don't know the reason. Perhaps it is not good land, or maybe the climate is wrong for hops."

  "Ahh, Steve, you're looking for trouble where none is to be found. There are hop gardens—yards they call them here—all over the northern part of the state, but they are small. They are still importing English hops. From what I've been told today, and I trust the information can be relied upon, the favored type of hop is Farnham. That's what we'll grow. And well not make the mistake of starting out small. We'll put everything we've got into it. We'll start with the idea th&t we will be supplying the hops for the brewery industry. Now that they have imported the Englishmen, they can refrain from importing the hops."

  "When can we see the farm? And where is this place, Peter? Is it in the midst of the hop country you speak of? I'll never get used to these Yankee names. Where are these counties?"

  Peter's eyebrows shot up as he grinned. "Watch your name calling. I was told today we would be Yorkers, not Yankees. Some kind of an old holdover, . . . Who knows, but these people may be as touchy as we are about the Kents and the Kentish. Scratch deeply enough and I guess we are all similar under the skin." Then, as Rosalind appeared: 'Whenever will Callie be ready? I am near to starving. What have you

  two been doing all day, Rosalind? Didn't she unpack at alir

  "I unpacked all my things. As you can see I am ready and just as impatient as you to be on our way."

  "Well, go see if you can help her."

  Til do no such thing. You'll have to hire someone. We cant manage here without help."

  Peter shook his head and got up to pace the room for the remaining fifteen minutes it took Callie to get ready. They dined at Fraunces Tavern. Peter had been told it was the best restaurant in town. Just as he had registered them in the hotel named after the patron of the city, so he would take them to the finest restaurants.

  Among the other things Peter had learned from his afternoon of talk and sightseeing was that New Yorkers above all else admired success and all of its attendant evidences. There was no point in attempting to achieve success when one could begin at that level with no class structure to bar one from it. Never would he enter the second-best restaurant when the first-best was open to him.

  The following day he took Stephen with him on his tramp through the city. Rosalind made her first trip to the shops that lined the streets, carefully garbed so that she was satisfied no one would know how close to her time she was. It annoyed her that her efforts resulted in making her look like a heavyset matron, but even that was preferable to the other.

  Friday afternoon Sam Tolbert took the steamship from Poughkeepsie to meet the Bereans in New York. Already feeling that he was an old, favored customer by virtue of the two days he had been in New York, Peter arranged for Sam to meet him and Stephen at the Tontine.

  Sam was a squat bull of a man. His manners were

  correct, but his voice and mannerisms made him seem as uncultured and rough-edged as the toughest of the laborers in Kent.

  Peter had seen him and another man come into the Tontine and talk to the headwaiter, but he had paid little attention. He didn't know what Sam looked like, but expected someone like the sleek, well-dressed businessmen Peter had grown accustomed to seeing on the streets. If nothing else Sam would be wearing fashionable clothes similar to those Peter had ordered fo
r himself the previous day.

  He was momentarily at a loss for words when that gruff, hearty man strode across the dining room, cheerfully and loudly prepared to introduce Peter to the glories of his land.

  Tm Sam Tolbert. This is my brother, Jack. Pleased to meet you, Berean," he said, and Peter shook the broadest, hardest hand he had ever felt.

  He introduced Stephen and all of them sat down to eat and talk. Sam expressed only delight when he found Peter already well-entrenched and by now fairly familiar and knowledgeable about the past, present, and probable future of New York.

  He laughed in his deep jovial way, clapping Peter on the back. "No need to welcome you then; you've already found your spot/'

  After they had finished their lunch, Sam said, "Well, what say we take a trip upriver and see the Grampe place. It seems to me you fellows are anxious to get started with this brewery of yours, and I can tell you now who is going to be your first customer." He laughed, thumping his chest

  "You don't have much to say," Jack said to Stephen as they boarded the ship.

  "Not much," Stephen agreed. Jack was slightly

  taller than Sam, but the resemblance between them was strong. Dark snappy eyes peered out from his sun-toughened face. Stephen smiled and looked away. Jack was as homely as a mud fence, but he had a rare, appealing quality. His eyes seemed to say there was fun and deviltry to be had just around the corner.

  "Have you seen any of the sights yet?" Jack asked.

  "Some of them. Mostly the monuments you have erected to the revolution. They are everywhere. Looks a little like we're still the archenemy," Stephen said, grinning.

  "Can't blame us now, can you, Stevie? You fellows gave us a hell of a time. We just got rid of you once and back you came again in '12. Maybe you're an advance invasion party right now, eh?"