Belle Cora: A Novel (92 page)

Aboard the
Nebraska
, officially I had a stateroom to myself, and Jeptha shared a berth with Edward, but when we were under way, Jeptha would come to my room in the late hours. Outside our berths, the three of us spent much of our time together, feeling almost like a well-off family on a vacation abroad.

For Jeptha and me it was like a honeymoon in reverse, undoing—by a different route and much more quickly—our voyage from New York to California in ’49. Once we were a hundred miles from California, Jeptha seemed to throw off all caution and held my hands and draped his arm around my shoulders in full view of the other passengers. One day, when there was music and others were dancing on the deck, the former Baptist asked me to teach him to dance. For Jeptha to show himself so openly infatuated with a woman some of the passengers surely knew as a madam struck me as extremely rash, but I could not bring myself to tell him to stop. “We’re going to have to go back,” I whispered when the band played a waltz, but he only gripped my hand tighter and pulled me up. “We shouldn’t; it’s too risky,” I said, and he gave me a peck on the cheek right there on the deck, in front of everyone; because it was in front of everyone, the little kiss was like strong drink to me, making me woozy and confused and happy.

Neither Jeptha nor Edward agreed with me about Frank, so we avoided speaking of him. We talked about the Civil War, by comparison a neutral topic. Lately, Edward was hinting that he might enlist in an Eastern militia. I did not think he was serious, but in case he was, I made many arguments against the plan.

I told him that, first of all, there would be no war. This was the general belief in the spirit world, which had access to the secret counsels of both sides. So I had learned in a letter from Agnes, who had it from her dead son Jonathan. (I believed in the spirit world when it suited me.) If the spirits should prove to be in error, Edward would be of more
use in California’s militia, ready to repel a Confederate attack on the treasure ships.

WE WERE ON THE TRAIN
crossing the Isthmus of Panama when we heard of the firing on Fort Sumter. Newspapers passed from hand to hand. All the Americans on the train felt suddenly very serious and important. We were of varying sympathies and origins; arguments erupted, and one saw right away from the speech of various Prussians, Frenchmen, and Englishmen what their countries’ attitudes would be.

The captain of our next ship decided to skip New Orleans, which was a relief to me, because I had always associated New Orleans with Charley and I knew that being there would make me feel sad and angry. Then we skipped Baltimore, too, since the situation in Maryland was uncertain at that time—if it did not secede it was expected to be a scene of fighting. I was pleased with this, too, since it meant that Jeptha would have to take a different route to Ohio, and he would be with me longer.

As the
Nebraska
pushed its way into the lower bay, the day was as clear as it had been when Jeptha and I had left on the
Juniper
twelve years earlier, and we could all see that New York City had not stood still. There was twice as much of everything—piers, clipper ships, steamboats, people. When we disembarked, all was pandemonium. The walls of the warehouses on the East River wharf were covered with posters calling in giant capital letters for
VOLUNTEERS
and announcing a
MASS MEETING IN UNION SQUARE
. Several men who had commanded at Fort Sumter would speak, along with about twenty others, among them “Colonel E. D. Baker, Senator, of California.” The hack driver, while bringing us to a moderately priced hotel, told us that a Baltimore mob had attacked federal troops who were on their way to protect Washington. In the hotel lobby, a boy sold us a
New York Times
, in which we learned that Robert Godwin—my brother!—was the secretary of the Union Defense Committee, which had organized the meeting to be held in Union Square the next day.

We spent the night in a New York hotel and attended the meeting—along, it is said, with two hundred thousand others, pressed at every side by sweaty, agitated strangers’ shoulders, necks, and faces, so that letting go of each other’s hands would mean being pulled farther apart, to be
inexorably moved to the place where our section of the crowd meant for some unknown reason to head; to imagine how long it would take to get out of here, should it be necessary, was to feel the stirring of panic. We caught only the occasional glimpse, heard only the odd shout, from the men at the speakers’ stands. It didn’t matter. The point was proved: we were many. At least, that is how I remember it over half a century later, now that the generals have died and been replaced by bronze statues, the battlefields are cemeteries, and the tombstones are green with lichen. It was proved in Union Square that day that the North had an overwhelming numerical advantage in human flesh, as well as in telegraphs, railways, ships, and factories. I was a speck among specks carried forward by a great wave, and I knew that there was indeed to be a war. The forces that decide these things had decided.

I held on tight to Jeptha, and just before the movement of the crowd dragged Edward from us, we agreed to meet near the bronze statue of Washington, which now held the flag that had recently flown over Sumter. When we met Edward again, he brought news that the Union Defense Committee had its headquarters at the Metropolitan Hotel, where Colonel Baker was recruiting for a regiment consisting of men from California, and Robert Godwin was there. Edward and Jeptha decided that they would visit and announce themselves to him.

On the last leg of our journey, when we were not discussing my son, Frank, or the brewing war, Robert had been a frequent topic of conversation. Edward and Jeptha meant to meet him—there was never any question about it—but what of me? Ten years ago, on learning what his sister had become, he had wept. Sorrowfully but adamantly, he had decided for the sake of the family name to cut off all ties with me and never to speak of me, and generally, as the song has it, to turn my picture to the wall. He had not even bothered to make a vow of it—it was to him so obviously a necessity, he could not conceive of the circumstances that might persuade him to change his mind. Should I try? How would I feel if I made the attempt and failed? We discussed this, Jeptha, Edward, and I. We discussed it several times without reaching a conclusion. Jeptha said he would make arrangements to have me brought to our hotel while they went to the Metropolitan, and at last, impulsively, I decided. “No. Let me come.”

We walked there in the mire of Broadway. When we were a block away from the Metropolitan, it started to rain, and I remembered the rain long ago, when I was small, when we were on our way back from our visit to the roof of my grandfather’s warehouse on Pearl Street, the day Lewis dropped the stone that killed a pig. I told Edward: “I don’t care if I see Baker, but bring me to Robert. Make Robert acknowledge me.”

At the Metropolitan, a suite of rooms was being used by the Union Defense Committee. Many people were coming and going, and there, as big as life, sat Colonel Baker, at a long table in a crowded, busy room full of flags and brevets, papers and ink bottles, and patriotic civilian volunteers. He rose and bowed. He was about to introduce me to the men around him when I pre-empted him quickly with the name Arabella Dickinson, and he took the hint, that I was not Belle Cora here. I could tell that he was puzzled to see Jeptha, whom he knew as the pastor of a Unitarian church, a man unlikely to be seen with me.

At our request, Baker sent a man to a nearby room to fetch Robert, with instructions not to mention me, but to say that Edward Godwin and Jeptha Talbot were waiting to see him. A moment later, Robert came out, smiling broadly and stepping quickly. When he saw me his pace slowed; the smile vanished. But what could he do? His brother Edward was there, and Jeptha, whom he knew to be a Unitarian minister, apparently not afraid to be in my company; and his problem was made more acute by the fact that his pretty wife was there, too, showing men where to sign and encouraging them with her admiration. He had never told her what had become of his sister, and he didn’t want her ever to find out. He introduced me to her—as his sister Arabella—with sickeningly false cheer, all his movements a little delayed, his eyes looking in slightly the wrong direction, as if he were being operated on strings, his own clumsy marionette. He must have felt as if he were exposing her to some terrible contamination. The idea of his wife even occupying the same room as a whore was hideous to him.

Her name was Amanda. “But we’ve met,” she said, looking from me to Jeptha. “We met at your grandfather’s house. Shortly before the two of you were married and left for California.” I remembered her, the lucky girl with the easy life who could make light of murder. Her face was a little broader and her skin was not as smooth, but she was still pretty, dressed
quietly, with red, white, and blue ribbons in her hair and a flag pin on her white pelerine. “We were talking about the murder at the Bloomingdale Tontine, which was never solved. Jeptha was there, and also your cousin Agnes”—here there was a split-second pause, and a subtle change of pitch, as she reflected that the subsequent course of events might have been painful for me. “And then we had our own excitement. I’ll never forget that night.” Her look was gentle. “And later—I’m sorry—we heard that you and Jeptha were … no longer together. And”—her glance shifting between me and Jeptha—“and—how do things stand now?”

“We’re all friends now,” said Jeptha.

“I’m so glad I’ve married into an interesting family. Come to dinner. You and Jeptha and Edward.”

“Oh,” said Robert, looking at me with panic.

“How kind of you,” I said. “We’d be delighted.”

“But we’re very busy now, and Arabella can stay in town only a short while,” said Robert.

“She said she’d be delighted. That means she has time. I know I have time. If you don’t, we can spare you. It needn’t be fancy—you don’t mind if it’s just what our cook can do on short notice?”

“Of course not,” I replied.

Robert’s house was in Brooklyn. We all took the ferry there the next evening, and spent the night, and stuck to the stories we had agreed on.

TWO DAYS LATER, EARLY IN THE MORNING
, Jeptha and I walked to Chambers Street, where there was now a railroad depot. We stood in line together, and he bought my ticket, and then, because we were early, we wiped the soot off a bench on the platform and watched the southbound train disgorge a crowd of passengers. I was excited by the prospect of the journey, and I enjoyed the freedom of being out in public with Jeptha. My mind raced, and I commented on the little dramas of arrival: this one disembarked alone and was met by a passionate family; those gentlemen came as a group of revelers and left together; that lonesome fellow had been stood up. All the while, Jeptha held me around the waist; when I looked back at him, he had been looking not at the scene I was describing but at my face. When my train came, he got on with me and stayed until the last minute, kissing me with such tenderness and for such a
long time that when he released me I laughed and said, “I’m only going to Livy, Jeptha.”

I took the train to Albany and then to Rochester, and from Rochester I took a stagecoach south. In Patavium, I rented a gig and drove it myself to Melanchthon’s farm. I passed hilly pastures and wrinkled fields, and I was there. There was now a second farmhouse, forty yards from the old one.

When I had last come here, it had been to leave Frank, and I had been pushed and pulled by the memories of Jeptha and my shame in the town. I didn’t feel that this time. That old Livy of regret and nostalgia was not a real place on earth anymore, but a place in my memory. All I could think of was that I was about to see my son.

With mounting excitement, I brought the gig into the barn myself and wiped down the horse. When I walked out, I encountered the hired girl, a stranger to me, who took my portmanteau and went in to announce me. Anne, stout and gray-haired, pulled me into the house and embraced me: “I would never have asked you to come, but I’m glad you did.” Frank, she told me, was in town, at the livery stable, where he had been working since the end of Livy’s four-month school term, and she observed in a way that was neither doting nor judgmental, “Frank works hard when it puts money in his pocket.”

She took me to Melanchthon, who sat in a wicker chair on the back porch, watching two yellow wasps drink from a puddle of cider. Half of his face drooped like a sack. “Melanchthon,” his wife said, “it’s Arabella! Arabella has come all the way from California to visit us!” He turned his face to me, pursing his wet lips asymmetrically, and Anne said that he was happy to see me. I kissed his damp brow, patted his shoulder. Shooing the wasps and wiping away the cider puddle, Anne told him in a cheerful voice that they would be having bread pudding with dinner. She gave him some good news about the weather and a field and a fence; when the porch door had closed behind us, she said that she had always known this might be the price of marrying a man already middle-aged, and that she had not really been taken by surprise.

“Daniel and Susannah will eat with us,” she said, and sent the girl to tell them. “Do you still cook? Will you help me?” I said I would, and we worked in the kitchen, which had been improved since I had been here last. There were two cooking stoves, running water from a cistern,
a big steel meat-grinder, and numerous wax-sealed glass jars in which seemingly every product of the farm had been jammed, jellied, potted, or pickled.

In my letters, I had always maintained the pretense that my money was from my marriage to a banker (now deceased), but I assumed that Anne knew everything. I spoke generally of life in California, and she spoke about matters here.

She chose her words carefully, and I knew that I was supposed to read between the lines. Susannah, whom I remembered as my little friend from my first years here, had married Daniel, a good fellow, who now ran the farm. Unfortunately—and I had best avoid the subject—Susannah had so far been unable to conceive, and probably this was why she doted on Frank. She loved Frank to idolatry, without understanding him at all, and it was painful to watch how hard she tried to bind him to her, since it was all in vain and done so badly. At every turn she opposed his wishes. “Frank is sharp as a tack,” Anne said, chopping walnuts with machinelike speed. “I don’t worry much about Frank. But Susannah will never make him into a farmer.”