Painting the Light

by Sally Cabot Gunning

  Ida ordered all her old favorite Parker specialties: the scrod, the rolls, the Boston cream pie. Henry followed suit and added a bottle of wine. Ida was glad when he bypassed any business talk and asked instead, “How does the city look to you?”

  If he’d asked her earlier that afternoon Ida would have answered, “Wonderful.” She might have talked of that ease she felt seeing houses and shops in orderly rows, not darting about over every hill and cartway. Now she could only think of that mournful walk home from the museum. She pushed—again—to bury the day’s sorrow.

  “Wonderful,” she tried anyway.

  “And what of the traffic?”

  “Oh come, there’s hardly any left, what with these underground trains. And I do love the electric trolleys—no manure to step around. I walked all the way to Beacon Hill and didn’t stop once to clean my shoes. But what of you? Did you succeed in your errand?”

  “I did, to the extent that I would call it success. I’ve retained an attorney who specializes in divorce. He’s prepared me for the road ahead. I’m ready now.”

  “Good.” Ida held up her hands. “I don’t mean to say—”

  Henry ignored the backpedal. “And you?”

  And there was Mr. Morris, again. But if she spoke his name she would lose herself, lose the night, lose it all. Ida gripped the edge of the table. “I stopped at the museum today and got reminded of how far we’ve traveled, what distance remains.”

  Henry looked at her blankly. Ida thought of attempting to explain about the life class but hesitated. She might not flinch at sketching a nude man, but how to explain that burning desire to another man, so close across the table, even a fully clothed one?

  “Have you heard of the sculptor Anne Whitney?”

  Henry shook his head.

  “She entered a blind contest to design a sculpture of Charles Sumner. She won the contest, but when the committee discovered she was a woman they refused to give her the commission. It was inappropriate, they said, for a woman to sculpt a man’s legs.”

  Henry cocked his head. “Through his clothes?”

  “Through his clothes.” Encouraged that Henry hadn’t blinked there, Ida pushed on. “And today I saw a class full of women sketching a male model from the nude. You see, don’t you, that if I wish to advance in my art I must be here, in this city?”

  “If you wish to paint nude men.”

  “Michelangelo dissected corpses to teach himself how to sculpt the human form. If I want to be the best, if I want to earn those commissions from the society men and women who have the money to buy my portraits, I need to keep studying the human form. I need to keep learning.”

  Henry nodded. It was a nod, a look, of such new understanding that Ida kept on. And after all, there was only one subject to go on with now.

  “I found out today my teacher killed himself in despair over a destroyed work. He worked so hard to teach me. He encouraged me. He—” Ida broke off. “I must become the best painter I can to honor him.”

  “I didn’t know your teacher,” Henry said. “But I imagine he might say to you now, if he could, better you paint to honor yourself.”

  And yes, of course, that was just what Mr. Morris would say. Who was this man who seemed to know Ida far better than she knew herself? Ida pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. She straightened her shoulders. She leaned forward. “I want to show you something. In my room.”

  16

  Ida set the reticule on the bed and sat beside it, in wait for the knock on the door. Henry hadn’t walked with her to the elevator; she imagined him sitting at the table and pondering the proper amount of time before he followed her, and she was surprised by how long he chose to wait. He would not compromise her. And yet when she opened the door to him she saw at once that he felt the raw possibility of her invitation, their location; they stood several feet apart but she knew—oh, she knew—that if she took a single step closer there would be no one that night in the room down the hall.

  Ida turned away with effort; she walked to the bed and upended the reticule, letting the gold nuggets spill out in whatever direction they chose. “I found these hidden behind a closet wall.”

  And there it all went. Just as Ida had watched it come into his face, now she watched it go, watched the face close and heat and cool until it ended tight-lipped and pale. He crossed to the bed; Ida picked up the nugget she’d shown Greave and handed it to Henry.

  “I found an assayer’s card in Ezra’s desk and came here to ask him what it was worth. Not knowing where it came from—or how—I didn’t feel easy showing it around the island. The assayer offered ten dollars for that one in your hand, but I didn’t take it; I didn’t trust—”

  “And this was your personal business.”

  “I should have told you of the discovery, I know. I just didn’t—” Ida waved her hand over the scattering of stones. “I just didn’t. I’m sorry.”

  Henry weighed the rock in his hand. “You were wise not to take his ten dollars—you could double that at least. And you were wise not to dance these rocks around the island.” He tossed the nugget back on the bed.

  “You think they were stolen?”

  Henry said nothing.

  “If you think to save my husband’s reputation in my eyes, don’t take the trouble. I think they were not his by right. He’d come home from Duffy’s and empty the coins and bills onto the kitchen table where they’d sit all night, even all day, the door wide open, but this he hides behind a secret panel in the closet. I think they were either stolen or salvaged and hidden from Mose, which is the same as stealing, only worse, because Mose was his partner. His friend. And if that were the case, half of this belongs to you.”

  Henry held up his hands. “You don’t know that, Ida. Maybe this was Ezra’s half of a salvage job and he wanted to keep it separate, a nest egg for you should something happen to him.”

  “And not tell me it was there? I could have lived a hundred years and never found it; if I hadn’t knocked the trunk into the wall—”

  “Maybe he planned to tell you and never got the chance. You told me once you didn’t like him much. I’ll tell you now that I didn’t like him much either, especially not of late. But that doesn’t mean we can assume we’re looking at ill-gotten gains.”

  “Then why did you tell me it was a good thing I hadn’t flashed that gold around town?”

  “I have no idea why I’ve said anything I’ve said tonight. You sprang this on me and I’m tired and we have to get to the salvage office early if we want to make our train. I’m going to bed. Meet me in the lobby at eight?”

  Ida nodded, watched his stiff back as it went out the door. She sat motionless on the bed pondering her mistakes, one made, one not made; first, she’d concealed the gold from Henry, and once he saw she had done so he pulled away. That was the mistake she’d made. The second mistake, the one not made, had only been prevented by the first one; if she’d trusted Henry, if he hadn’t pulled away, if he’d taken a single step toward her, she would have done the wrong thing. She, Ida Pease, freshly widowed, would have done any and every wrong thing, and not because she’d been pressured into it as she had been with Ezra, but because she wanted to. With a married man.

  Ida got up and went to the window. Outside, a splash of light from the Horticultural Hall painted the sidewalk. Ida had forgotten the other reason she was here in Boston: Julia Ward Howe. She checked the time. The lecture would be nearly over, but if nothing else, the hundred-yard walk might still her mind.

  The crowd had already begun to flood the streets when Ida arrived, Howe just collecting her papers and preparing to exit the stage; Ida looked at the shrunken form, the snow-white hair, and realized with shock that the woman who had spoken so eloquently and so long for abolition and suffrage was now old. And yet not old. Instead of the traditional black worn by women lecturers she was clad in white cashmere, and when she looked down at Ida from the stage her gray eyes were as keen as a heron’s as it scanned the marsh f
or fish. Those eyes reminded Ida of the commotion when Howe chose to use the moniker Mrs. Julia Ward Howe over the usual Mrs. Samuel Gridley Howe, of the fuss again when she traveled to Europe alone, of the courage it took to tour the country lecturing to audiences that could not all be considered friendly.

  “Good evening,” Howe said. “What did you think of my little speech?”

  “I missed it, I’m afraid. I came from an appointment.” When Howe said nothing Ida blithered on. In town this night only, settling my husband’s estate . . . so sorry to miss . . .

  Howe tucked her papers into her satchel and took the three steps from the stage down to Ida’s level. “I worked long and hard on a bill guaranteeing a widow half her husband’s estate. How did you fare in your settlement?”

  “There should be a fair divide.” If half of nothing was fair.

  Howe studied Ida for a second. “I was looking through my old journals last week in preparation for this speech tonight. I came upon the single sentence I wrote the day after my husband’s funeral. ‘I begin my new life today.’ You see some of what I’ve been doing with that life. Would you like to vote?”

  “I would.”

  That same nod again. “Then read. Educate yourself. Prepare. Fight. It will come.”

  “I do read. The newspaper. Other—”

  Howe didn’t wait for what other things Ida read. “Women have been voting in Wyoming since 1869. Since that date there has never been an embezzlement of public funds, or a scandalous use of funds, or a single case of graft. Would you like to know why?” Again Howe didn’t wait for Ida. “A Wyoming senator explained it to me. The politicians learned early on that if they wanted the woman’s vote they could never put up a candidate that wasn’t of sound moral character.”

  “If Wyoming can, why not—” Ida stopped.

  “Massachusetts? Exactly. Miss Anthony was once given an enamel pin of our nation’s flag. Every year that a state adopts women’s suffrage she changes one of the enamel stars to a diamond. I want Massachusetts to have a diamond in that flag. I’m an old woman. You’re a young one. Will you help yourself to your own freedom?”

  Ida wanted to explain that she’d been exiled to a small island in the Atlantic Ocean, that she now lived isolated and helpless, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the words in front of the force that was Julia Ward Howe. “I will,” she said.

  Howe thrust a small square of pasteboard into Ida’s hand. “My card.” She was so tiny, and yet her presence dwarfed Ida, her royal air making Ida feel like a child. But Ida wasn’t a child. She was an artist.

  “May I ask . . . has anyone ever painted you?”

  “Many times. I was even sculpted in Rome. Apparently I sit well.”

  Yes, she would sit well, Ida thought, but there was more to her than the sitting: the strength shining through the stillness, the enthusiasm for life and work radiating outward, the eyes suggesting a secret core that only a good artist might capture. Ida took the card the woman offered her and slipped it inside her glove against her racing pulse.

  “I hope you get to vote,” Ida said.

  “I won’t,” Howe said. “But you will.”

  He was late. Ida stood in the foyer feeling conspicuous and out of place, more than one pair of eyes cast her way in speculation; that annoyed her and also the fact that she’d slept poorly, then ended up oversleeping, and had rushed madly to make it to the lobby in time. So many ghosts had haunted her night: Mr. Morris, of course, but Ezra too, and then there was that something that had sprung to life and then died between her and Henry. Just as Ida was about to ask the desk to place a call to his room, he came barreling out of the elevator tweaking at his tie.

  “Good Lord, I’m sorry. It was a bad night. I overslept. I do hope you weren’t waiting long.” He led them outside and into a hack, Ida making no objection although again she’d have preferred the walk, but there was something about the musty, creaky vehicle that brought Boston home to her even more than the walk might have done. The air lay heavy between them with unsaid words, no doubt reproach on Henry’s side, but as Ida had no excuse for keeping the gold a secret, she in her turn had nothing to say.

  They remained silent until Henry shot forward in his seat, pointing. “There! That car! A Stanley Steamer. It will be the end of my business.”

  “How? I see one car and dozens of carriages.”

  “It will be the other way around soon.” He sat back and they returned to silence until they arrived at the address on Washington Street.

  Henry fitted a hand under Ida’s elbow to help her over the filthy gutter and onto the sidewalk, but it seemed to Ida he made a point of letting her go the second she landed safely on the other side. Ida looked around. Ezra’s next-door neighbors had been a grocer and a print office, but Henry had already looked several doors past them and pointed. A bicycle shop. He walked toward it as if in a trance and Ida followed; the row of bicycles was dazzling, but Ida’s eye locked on the far wall of the shop where the bicycling attire hung—men’s and women’s. She reached for what appeared to be a shortened skirt, but when Ida pulled at the skirt it revealed itself to be bifurcated, like wide-legged trousers. She took it from its peg and peered at it inside and out until Henry motioned to her from the door, tapped his watch, mouthed the word train.

  Ezra and Mose’s office turned out to be a box of a room littered with dust squalls, old newspapers, and a handful of books stacked on the corner of the single desk. Henry opened the file cabinet while Ida looked over the books, picking a small pocket atlas out of the stack. She tried to remember what Ezra had ever said about his Boston office—terrible chair . . . half-blocked view . . . noisy neighbors . . . He’d complained of heat in summer and chill in winter, but no wonder, since the tiny stove probably burned through coal faster than they could lug it up the stairs. Ida pulled her coat tight around her, thrust her hands in her pockets, and pondered how bare and forlorn the place seemed, but with its usual occupants dead, how else could it seem? She tried to imagine Mose at the desk and Ezra poking through files as Henry was doing now . . . or wasn’t doing. He stood in front of the window staring out.

  “Well?” Ida asked.

  Henry turned around. “I see nothing worth saving.” He swung his arm wide to encompass the office proper. “You?”

  Ida wanted nothing but to leave the place and told Henry so.

  17

  What a difference, the going from the coming! How easily they’d sat and talked—or not talked—on the way into town, how stiffly they sat and not talked now! Ida could source its root in her failure to tell Henry about the gold, and perhaps she should have apologized again, but she could also think Henry might be a bit more understanding. At one point he seemed to lift his eyes to her as if about to say something that would start them again, but his eyes skated away. Ida contemplated what she might say to start the talk, but she felt so weighed down, so dull. She blamed Mr. Morris for some of that weight, but not all.

  They suffered a stilted parting at the dock; Ida trudged up the hill, feeling friendless, to find Lem just coming out of the barn and Bett leaping frantically against the wall of her pen. Ida opened the pen door and allowed Bett to press against her, to push her nose into Ida’s hand, to race around her in circles. When Bett tore off, Ida turned her attention to Lem but saw that his attention hadn’t yet left what he’d been doing when she arrived; even now he stood half-turned toward the barn.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “First lamb.”

  Ida dropped her carpetbag and hurried into the barn. Lem had housed ewe and lamb in one of the empty stalls and the ewe stood happily munching as the lamb sucked. Ida heard Lem shuffle in behind her. “It was so small I thought there was another one stuck in there, but she was just early. I penned her so I could watch her a day or two.”

  “I’d planned to be here for this.”

  “It’s early. Like I said. It’s all right. Everything’s all right.”

  But it wasn’t. Ida felt it a
nd didn’t know why she felt it—that this creature had begun its existence while she was away was of no consequence to any of them; she’d arranged for Lem to be on hand and he had been, yet she felt so betrayed—so betraying—as if she’d violated some silent covenant she’d made with her flock. Ruth’s flock. Ida stood and watched as mother and lamb settled into the hay to nap. She could see the rise and fall of the lamb’s round, full belly; if she did indeed lose four lambs, she vowed this one would not be among them.

  “How was Boston?” Lem asked. Ida looked over at him, thinking there was something more than casual interest in the tone, but his eyes were fixed on the sheep.

  “Changing,” Ida answered. “Electric trolleys. Underground trains. I even saw an automobile. And a lot more people.”

  “Tell them to stay there.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll be joining them as soon as I’m able.”

  Lem looked at her then. “I hope not till we’re through lambing.”

  Yes, there was something in his tone, some echo of Henry and bicycles and Boston or some other transgression he had yet to name. “Would I be so upset over missing this birth if I were going away before the rest of them came?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you’d be, Ida. If you’re all set I’ll be off now. A warning—they like to arrive near daylight. Look for the enlarged udder, a swayback once the lamb has dropped, restless circles, lying down, getting up—”

  “It’s not my first lambing season, you know.”

  “It is though, isn’t it? The first one that’s your responsibility. Call me when they start to go.”

  Ida pointed to the pair in the hay. “What do I owe you for this?”

  “No charge.”

  “Why not?”

  “You asked a neighbor to watch the farm. You didn’t hire the farmhand to watch it.”

  “Lem—”

  “Next time you call, the hand will be out, don’t you worry.”