Belle Cora: A Novel (56 page)

It was a fine day at the beginning of May, pleasant to walk in except for one moment of foul odor when a wagon passed carrying away the offal of the streets, which were being cleaned and strewn with lime to keep off the cholera. On West Fourth Street, two men, each in the humiliating costume of the sandwich sign, had gotten into an argument, waving their fists at each other, and a crowd was collecting at the prospect of combat between gladiators dressed in wooden armor.

The western sidewalk on Sixth Avenue, outside Jefferson Market, lay permanently in the shadow of wooden awnings, and there were produce wagons labeled with the names of towns to the north and west. Sawdust covered the floor of the indoor market. Jeptha, not noticing us yet, stood between a barrel of ice, several cages of dispirited chickens, and a coffee-and-pie stand, telling a couple of pushcart men what Jesus had done for them. Something about his stance, and the way a shaft of light from a high window hit a portion of his face, the way a lick of his black hair fell over his forehead, and his expression as he spoke to the men combined to produce in me a sharp, sudden stab of carnal need. When we got close, we were both shy and awkward. I introduced Jeptha to Monique and Ann; we all went together to a nearby oyster saloon, and Monique and Ann left with the understanding that they would return in a half-hour.

In the oyster saloon there were many men but few women, none like me, and I attracted the glances of the clientele. I gave Jeptha my cheek to kiss, and his sweet musky odor, special to him, brought a pang of memory as surely as a whiff of mown grass may conjure some lost moment of a childhood summer. I asked him what he thought of New York, and he looked around at the pandemonium of the oyster saloon and said that in a day here there was raw material for a lifetime of philosophy. We talked about the places he had visited since his arrival. We were polite and distant. There was a wall between us. It was his object to keep it there, and my object to break it down.

A waiter came and went. We each had soup with crackers. I began to remove my gloves. I saw him glance at my hands. Because of this, I took the gloves off extra slowly, and made a big show of putting them safely aside. I lifted the spoon very slowly to my mouth, and I opened my mouth slightly, but I didn’t sip; I put the spoon back in the bowl. I said, “You can’t marry her. It’s impossible.”

He looked levelly back at me. “You know we can’t talk about that.”

And though I was sure we
had
to talk about it, there was something in the speed of his response that encouraged me. It was as if a second before there had been twenty yards between us, and now he was right there, and five years had fallen away.

I shook my head. “I see how you are with her. How she plays the naughty child and then you scold her and she’s contrite. So you think that you see through her saintly pose. That’s her cunning. She lets you see her most trivial crimes. You feel agreeably superior to her. But in this sort of thing, Jeptha, almost anybody is your superior.”

He dipped his head in a way that said he grasped my point—honest men are not the best judges of deception—without conceding its truth, and changed the subject: “I was glad to see you reconciled with your grandfather after all these years,” he said, and asked me a series of light questions about my grandfather and the California Missionary Committee. I was supposed to show my good breeding by letting him lead me into small talk.

I let this go on for a little while. Finally, I said, “Jeptha, is it your plan to tear my heart out with politeness? Do you know what it does to me for you to talk to me as if we are a couple of old friends who have grown apart?”

He became serious. “You’re right to rebuke me. I apologize.”

“As to a stranger you jostled in the street.”

He sat silent for a while and responded: “I’d just better say what I came here to say. It’s about what happened in Livy.”

The wrong he thought he had done me. I had wanted to know this ever since my visit to Livy, and now that I was about to learn it I was afraid, I didn’t know why; maybe I was afraid that it would amount to less than I had hoped it would. After a pause full of the clinking of silverware and china and the voices of other patrons, I said, “All right.”

“You know that William Jefferds died recently—that is where Agnes and I met again, at his funeral. I was given his books and papers. He left me a note, amounting to a confession, and your letters to me, which he had never sent on as you had asked. That was the subject of the confession. Until then, I never knew what had happened to you. He did not want me to know. He did not think it was in my interest to know.”

My hand covered my mouth. It was only because I didn’t want people to stare at us that I did not put my head in my hands. Then I had a thought: “Did you read my letters and Jefferds’s confession before or after Agnes got you to promise to marry her?”

“Please don’t put it that way, and what does it matter?” he asked. “I told you. That’s all decided.”

“Oh dear—that means
after
.”

Gently: “It means it would be wrong for me to answer.”

I looked down for a few seconds, gathering my thoughts, and then, feeling sure of myself, feeling right, I lifted my head and watched his face to assess the impact of my words. “My darling, all those years when you thought I had betrayed you, did you ever wish you had acted differently? Did you ever, even with your wife beside you, wish it had been me, even with the crimes you thought I had committed? You did. I know it. Because you love me, Jeptha, through and through, down to your feet. I’m an arrow in your heart, and you will never get me out; and I’m the same way about you.”

“This has to stop,” he said hoarsely.

“Just imagine how it has been for
me
. I was innocent. I suffered unfairly. I suffered more than you can know. I’ve thought of you every day. Alone, without you to guide me, I’ve wandered down strange paths into terrible places. I’ve been in danger. I
am
in danger. But you can keep me safe now if you will. You can fix everything.”

He stood up from his chair. “I can’t listen to this. If this goes on, I’ve got to leave.”

“She
tricked
you. If you’ve read my letters, you know what she did. She’s as responsible in what happened as Matthew.”

He stood indecisively, sat down again, and shook his head. “I did read your letters. You said you’d heard, from Titus, that Agnes spread a
rumor about you and the Harding brothers—a rumor that came to my ears (though I never believed it in its worst form, but never mind, what I believed was bad enough). So I talked to Titus. He said you came to him to tell him what Matthew had done, he remembered that day clearly, but he was sure he never accused Agnes of spreading that rumor; he said you must have misunderstood him. That kind of gossip can start so easily, anywhere. I would revile Agnes if I believed she had done what you say. She didn’t do it. She couldn’t have done it.”

“Do you remember when Lionel and Becky died, Jeptha? And we nursed you? And afterward, Agnes pretended to be sick herself, and how it tortured her mother?”

He shook his head, not to deny the truth of what I said, but to deny that it would convince him.

I felt like a regiment that repeatedly attempts the storming of a citadel. Within the citadel was a prisoner, wishing himself free, wishing I would succeed.

Just to keep him here while I recouped my forces, I asked him about the ship to California. What was its name? The
Juniper
, said Jeptha. And what was the route? After rummaging in his coat for pencil and paper, he drew a map. It would go south from New York, he said, and cross the equator. It would stop for provisions—and, probably, repairs—in Brazil, and stay there a week, maybe more. It would go south even farther, and around Cape Horn, where it would be very cold and stormy, and then north, with a stop in Valparaíso, Chile, and north again, till it arrived in San Francisco, a dirty little village which was growing very fast now. And what were the accommodations like? I asked. Very primitive, cramped, and crowded. And how long would the journey take? I asked him. “It depends. Four months with good luck and a skillful captain. Seven months if there are a lot of problems.”

Staring at my palms, I pictured it. I pictured them together on deck, against the rail, one of his arms wrapped around her shoulders, and the other stretched out to indicate some interesting sight. I grieved, and then, thinking more, I rejoiced.

“Four to seven months,” I said, raising my head and looking at him. “And you think you can spend all that time, in crowding and discomfort, with a woman you don’t love? You will live that lie, you who live for
truth, you who hate lies so much that when I say you don’t love her you cannot bring yourself to tell me you do, and I’ll bet you haven’t told her either?”

We were silent. I took a sip of my soup, and he took a sip of his, but the soup was quite cold, and we weren’t hungry, so we stopped. I wiped my mouth with the napkin and asked, “What would you have done if you had gotten my letters?”

His head inclined and righted itself. “It’s idle for me to say. I would have come to Livy. Beyond that … it was Jefferds’s belief that whatever happened then would have been the ruin of all his work on my behalf. He sat on your letters. I married Grace. The life you and I would have had together, whatever it would have been, it didn’t happen. It can’t happen. I can’t make it up to you. We’re different people now.”

“I am not different,” I said—a giant lie, yet there was truth in it. “And you are not different. Not in any way that counts to me.”

“I have given her my promise.”

“Your promise. Well, if it’s a matter of law, you promised me first. In ’43. Let her sue if she thinks she has a case. We’ll be in California.”

He gave me a sad smile. “California? Arabella. California? You want to be a missionary? Bring souls to Jesus? You?”

I felt closer to him at that moment than at any time during this conversation, and I waited, and then, in a small voice, I said, “I have a soul, don’t I, Jeptha?”

He shut his eyes.

“For you, Jeptha, I can do it. I can be a missionary’s wife and helpmeet. I will not disgrace you. I will make you happy by day and by night.” I reached across the table and stroked his cheek, and his head jerked slightly from the surprise of it, but he did not pull away, and I could almost hear the blood rushing around his body, upriver and downriver, on many errands.

We talked a little while longer after that, but I was no longer advancing my cause, so I sighed and stopped. All in all I thought it had gone very well, and I had a general idea of what was needed now.

I WENT BACK TO MY HOUSE ON MERCER STREET
. When I got there, Sean was waiting for me with a message from the dress shop. We climbed
the stairs to my room, and I stood watching him eat peanut brittle, and then I read the note.

I sat down at my desk and thought, feeling trapped and raging at my fate: was it all impossible, everything I had planned, was it all to fall apart because of this mindless beast who had already done so much to wrench my existence out of its proper shape? It was an insult to me, to have so unworthy a foe. Sean was still in the room, and, showing more emotion before him than perhaps I should have, I got up and paced, sometimes putting my palm on my forehead, or covering my mouth with my hand, and somewhere in the middle of all this, even then I did not know when, I decided what I must do. I sat down and wrote a few versions of my reply. I asked Sean, “Why do you think he brought the note there? Why didn’t he bring it here?”

“He thinks you’re living there now to fool your folks.”

“You’re sure?”

“He said so. He saw me; he knows what I do: he said, So she’s running the house by messenger.”

“Very good, Sean.”

I gave him a letter to take to Jack Cutter.

I told him to meet me at the Bloomingdale Tontine tomorrow, and I did not sign my name. After Cutter wrote back agreeing to the terms, I used Sean to send a couple of other messages, because I had no intention of meeting Cutter unaccompanied. That evening, I took a hack up to the tavern; my companion was a short but brawny little Englishman who was called Tom London to distinguish him from three or four other, equally unpleasant Toms who frequented the Almanack Dance Hall in Five Points. I wore a hat and silk kerchief that covered up most of my face; to the tavern proprietor I am sure I looked like a woman misbehaving in the usual way. I brought a change of clothes and had London do the same, to confuse witnesses. If escape proved necessary, we would do so by a second-story window, using a rope I had brought in my bag.

I made these preparations not cold-bloodedly but in a constantly changing state of mind, one moment strengthened by hatred for Cutter, and the next wishing I could hate him more, so that I would seem more human to myself; it horrified me most of all that I was about to do something I could never tell Jeptha. There were many things I could never tell him, but this was of another order, this would be in a special locked chamber of its own. I was not sure I would have the courage to go through with it, and I almost hoped that I would not. I made it clear to Tom London that he would get the same pay in any case. It might not even be necessary. That depended on Cutter.