I saw him before I entered the room, his dark hair and sunburned face peeking through the fringes of the parted doorway curtain. It was the strange young man I had encountered at the forest campsite. He was better groomed, of course, with a clean shirt and stock, dark jacket, and his dark hair brushed back from his bronzed forehead. His back and shoulders seemed not quite so rounded, and he carried himself with self-assurance. His green-and-gray needlepoint waistcoat set off his green eyes very smartly. He would have caused quite a stir in what Sylvia and I termed the “meat market” afternoon socials of Boston, where mothers displayed their marriageable daughters.
I paused. It happened, in that pause, that I overheard a bit of conversation. Is it my fault if people will continue private discourse even after they hear a tread at the threshold?
“You should never have married him,” muttered this young man, making fists that he held at his sides.
“You've seen his postal cards; you know as well as I, there's been no harm,” Ida Tupper whimpered.
“That is not good enough. Tell me theâ”
But just then Sylvia came into the hall with the clattering tea tray, and Ida Tupper and this young man stepped apart from each other and assumed neutral expressions.
“Louisa, my dear,” said Ida Tupper with forced good cheer. “Come in, come in.” She invited me into Abba's parlor as if it were her own. “Meet my son, Mr. Hampton.”
Clarence Hampton and I stared at each other in amazement.
“The running fairy,” he said.
I thought it wiser not to exclaim, “My weeping tramp!”
“You have met?” Mrs. Tupper asked, her voice high with surprise and a little distrust. I have often remarked that tone of voice in mothers who have sons of a marriageable age when those sons are smiling in a friendly manner at a young single woman without fortune or prospects of oneâa woman such as myself.
“We have, ever so briefly,” I admitted. “Please have a chair, Mr. Hampton, and don't stand about so formally.” He sat. Mrs. Tupper looked pale and trembled slightly; she seemed afraid of Mr. Hampton, whose teeth were clenched and whose eyes flashed angrily whenever he looked at his mother.
Sylvia gave me a knowing glance and sat next to me on the faded settee. She looked longingly out the window to where Benjamin and Eliza were admiring Father's vegetable patch.
“Please meet my friend, Miss Sylvia Shattuck,” I said.
Sylvia gave Clarence Hampton a forced smile, which he returned with a curt nod. He seemed in an unsociable mood. Had he come to tea simply to quarrel with his mother?
“Clarence has been on a trip, haven't you, dear?” said Mrs. Tupper. She had dressed in dark blue that day, with skirts so fully crinolined they puffed and billowed like high seas on a stormy day. Her hair had been pulled back into a snood decorated with glass pearls, and she had rubbed rouge into her lips and a little stove black into her brows. She looked pretty, in a bold sort of way.
“Just as you say, Mother,” said he of the flashing green eyes and clenched jaw.
“His avocations often take him afield,” she continued, fussing with the knitting in her lap. She had taken to carrying it about constantly, but never seemed to make much progress with it. “Like his stepfather. It is my misfortune to surround myself with men who must wander. Except for my dearest brother, of course, who is completely housebound.” She sighed heavily, and I'm sure would have shed a tear if I gave her my full attention. I did not.
“Are you also a man of business?” I asked her son.
“I am an amateur scientist,” said Clarence Hampton. “An undergroundologist.” He did not look at me when he spoke; I could tell he remembered our earlier meeting and was ashamed of it. He had been drunk; he had cursed and wept. Why?
“Ah,” I exclaimed now with interest. “The new science of geology.”
“Some call it that, though the name will not hold. No, it will be hereafter referred to as undergroundology,” Mr. Hampton asserted with masculine confidence, and finally raised his eyes to meet my glance.
I had a tart retort on the tip of my tongue for Mr. Hampton, my own impression that most people will not prefer a science with six syllables to one with four, but at that moment Uncle Benjamin ambled in, wearing his red fez cap and tapestry slippers, as usual. He had added an embroidered robeâArabic, I think it wasâto his ensemble, and he looked, for all the world, as if he belonged to some eccentric gentleman's club and was costumed for the Fourth of July parade.
“Benjamin, Benjamin.” Mrs. Tupper sighed, shaking her head so that the pearled snood swung with disapproval.
“My dear?” Uncle asked, genuinely puzzled by Ida's criticism. “Louy, pour me some tea, if you will.”
“Were you speaking of geo . . . of undergroundology when I first entered and brought your conversation to a close?” I asked Ida Tupper.
She began trembling once again. Her son laughed most oddly.
“Yes, in a way,” he admitted. “Shall I tell them, Mother?” He rose and stationed himself before the fireplace, as if to begin a lecture.
“Do behave, and if you can't, then leave us,” said Ida Tupper.
He gave her a look that . . . well, if any of my family had given me such a look I would have turned to salt.
“It seems we are not to speak of it now,” said Clarence Hampton, sitting down again.
Uncle Benjamin came into the parlor with his spyglass jutting from his pocket.
“They are disrupting the raven population,” he said. “Down where they ceased laying the train tracks and left the earth gashed, there was an old rookery down there, and now the birds are showing up everywhere.”
“I hope they don't roost in the chimney or the attic,” said Ida Tupper. “Clarence, you must go up there with boards and nails and make sure there are no holes.”
Clarence nodded and stared out the window. Sylvia passed him the plate of biscuits, and he took one without even looking at her. Eliza's housekeeper had said he was fast, but he seemed oddly immune to my friend's appeal. His obvious indifference seemed even stranger, since his mother knew of Sylvia's wealth and certainly had passed that information on to her son.
Abba came in carrying a second pot of hot water for the teapot and announcing that her rhubarb had just come to a simmer and must be stirred, so she could not join us. She left as quickly as she had entered, with a briskness of step that bespoke dallying.
“Rhubarb preserves,” said Ida Tupper. “It's ever so long since I've had them. Wonderful blood tonic. I wonder if they are carried in town? I was doing my shopping this morning, and stopped in to pay my respects to my father-in-law, though he never returns the courtesy. I could have asked about rhubarb.” She barely took a breath between such disparate topics as ravens and roosts and relatives. “He has made a bid on Lilli Nooteboom's lot. Do you think she will sell, Benjamin?”
“I hear the Dutch are stubborn,” answered Uncle. “Ida, you mustn't think of financial matters; it will bring on the migraine.”
“You are right, Benjamin,” she answered meekly. “I have a husband and son and brother to think about such matters for me. I think women who understand money are so masculine.”
Clarence Hampton made that odd laugh once again.
“Mrs. Tupper, how is your brother's health today?” I asked, wishing I could redirect the conversation to the science of geology and knowing she would not allow it. Etiquette was quite strict on what was permitted for discussion in the parlor and what was not. Talk of the new science, like politics, like finance, was reserved for other areas of domestic life, for that magic hour when the men rose from the table and went to the porch or to the den with their brandy and cigars. Oh, how I envied them that hour.
“Poor, poor man. He is not better, Louisa, thank you for asking. He is much in need of nursing. In fact, I should be going now. It is time for his afternoon bowl of broth, and he will take it from no hands but my own.” She rose with much fussing and smoothing of skirts and patting of curls into place. “Come along, Clarence, since you are not in a social mood.”
Clarence woke as if from a dream. His gaze lingered on Sylvia in belated acknowledgment of her. He rose and took her hand, placing a kiss on the fingertips. Sylvia blushed.
I saw mother and son to the door.
“Forgive me if I seem indiscreet, but it seemed to me you were in a moment of discord when I arrived in the parlor,” I said to them. “Is there a matter in which I may be of assistance?”
Mr. Hampton gave me a long, steady look. The fire in his eyes calmed; his face grew composed, almost masklike. “I had just told Mother I had entered an arrangement to collect fossils for private collectors,” he said. “She disapproves.”
“Hardly the work for a gentleman,” she added. “All that digging. He will ruin his hands.”
“Oh, families are just horrid!” Sylvia exclaimed when I returned to the parlor. “How mean of Confucius to say that filial piety is the root of humanness.” She stomped from the room.
Uncle Benjamin stared after her, amazed. “What a strange girl. Have I offended her?”
I gave him a quick hug. “Not you,” I said. “She has developed an aversion, I think, to teatime, since it often seems to produce bachelors along with the tea tray.”
“Well, she'd be better off not thinking of Clarence Hampton in that way.” Benjamin stood and tapped his walking stick on the floor for emphasis.
“Why do you say that, Uncle?” I asked.
“He's even stranger than Miss Sylvia, a real handful, coming and going at all hours, mucking about on the mountain digging for fossils instead of taking up a real career. Amateur scientist. I never. But his mother won't say a word against him, even when he sulks all day. I suspect he's jealous. That young man cannot abide it when his mum caters to another. She's warned me. He had tantrums as a tot.”
So Clarence was one of those men who required all their mother's attention? How had he felt when his mother had married? What were the relations between Clarence and his absent stepfather?
“I've seen a tintype of Mr. Jonah Tupper, Ida's husband,” I said. “He seems young.”
“He is,” Uncle Benjamin said. “A callow youth. Ida and Jonah met at the Fourth of July celebration last year. She and her brother had taken a house for the summer, for the country air, she said. Well. Jonah and Ida are young. They eloped. Louy, promise you'll never elope. It shames the family.”
“I promise,” I said, refraining from pointing out that Ida, the “young” bride, already had a grown son at the time of her elopement.
I sipped my tea. It had gone cold. I drank it anyway.
“Ida made a bad choice,” Benjamin continued. “Young Tupper turned out to be a scoundrel, up and left. Wouldn't be surprised if he has a girlfriend or two in other counties. My dear, I shouldn't be speaking of such matters with you. Abba would be furious with me. You are much too young.”
“I am grown and I have heard sadder stories in Boston.”
“Young Jonah packed his valise and travel samples in November, and hasn't set foot in Walpole since. Have you ever seen the samples they make for bells? Tiny, dollhouse size, but the sound is . . .” Uncle rambled on, and I followed my own train of thoughts.
“Did Clarence and his stepfather get along?” I asked. Uncle stopped in midsentence. He had still been speaking of bells.
“No. Clarence seems to get along only with pretty young women.” Uncle Benjamin sighed. “He's helpful for chores and mending the steps and suchâthat is, when he's down from the mountainâbut a moodier young man I've never known. He kicks cats, and you know what I think of men who kick cats. You've met Clarence, my dear,” Uncle said, “and if you have an ounce of sense you'll keep clear, and your friend will, as well.”
“We will stay clear, thank you,” I said.
“Clear of what?” asked Father, who came in just then, mindless of time and wondering when tea would be put out.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Confrontation in the Forest
PROMISES ARE DIFFICULT to keep, though I broke my pledge to Uncle to “steer clear” in a form neither of us anticipated. Curiosity about Mr. Hampton's campsite, and its proximity to that place from which Ernst Nooteboom had fallen, led to another unexpected encounter with Clarence Hampton.
Friday of that week I finished my morning run in the ravine with considerable energy still left. I thought often of Mr. Nooteboom and regretted his untimely demise in such a beautiful place. But it was beautiful, and if one avoided places where death had occurred . . . well, there would be few places we could inhabit in this world.
The evening before, Ida Tupper had come over for another knitting lesson from Abba, and had said something about being lonely because Clarence had taken the barge up to Charleston for some supplies not available in Walpole. She expected him to be gone several days, for he would probably do some fossil digging there, as well.
I used the opportunity of his absence to hike up the ravine to his camp. I hid behind thick trees for several moments, watching for signs of occupation and activity. There were none. The stone-ringed campfire was black and damp-looking; the blankets that would have been airing in the sun, the pots, all the detritus of human activity were out of sight, probably stored inside the brown oil tent while their owner was away. I came out from behind my tree and approached the tent.
Boldly I pulled the flap and, on my knees, peered inside. I remembered my childhood yearning to be a boy as I studied that tidy interior, with the brightly striped camp blankets folded over a thin mattress made of straw, the shining pots hanging from a chain, clanging in the slightest breeze, the lantern next to the mattress, and the pile of books there, waiting to be read. How lovely to sleep in the open, undisturbed except by the call of the owl or the nightingale!