Ahab's Wife (45 page)

A
FTER
A
HAB
blessed me and bade me farewell, I stayed up an hour in the cupola and watched with the telescope as the
Pequod
was towed out of the harbor. Then she unfurled her sails and moved away. With the glass, I could view his expressions to some extent, and I was surprised to see the hard, captainlike lines in his face. I knew them well, since I had sailed with him, but of the softer radiance that he offered me when we were alone together I saw not a trace. And how masterfully his feet came down upon the boards! All his movement, hands and shoulders as well as feet, had the gestures of an athlete or warrior.

The three officers—Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask—were familiar to me, as were, of course, the new harpooners, Tashtego and Daggoo. A few others I also recognized, but there were many new faces among the crew, and I supposed that there was often a shuffling of crew members among the various whalers. I had seen Ahab shake hands with someone I took to be either Captain Bildad or Captain Peleg, the principal owners of the
Pequod
. This man seemed of an age with Ahab, and equally able-bodied and energetic.

I recalled an item Crèvecoeur wrote of his Nantucket visit in the 1770s: “You will hardly find anywhere a community…exhibiting so many
green
old men who show their advanced age by the maturity of their wisdom rather than by the wrinkles of their faces….” Not that Ahab was an old man—his hair was more gray than white—and his body had a lean hardness to it, for all his gentleness with me, that carried no hint of aging. And his wrinkles were more a matter of facing into the weather than anything else.

After the ship was beyond the eastern horizon and after I had paced through my empty rooms many times and tidied my bedroom, I thought that I would cross the street (my spread clothes having dried out by the fireplace) and get some money of the judge. But who was the first person I saw when I stepped through my portico (houses of the Federal–Greek Revival style typically have recessed doorways, Ionic porticos, and granite steps, as well as the four end chimneys and squarish cupolas) but Isaac Starbuck, the gaoler, whom I had left for dead, his face and body covered by a sheet.

He was as startled to see me emerging from a fine house as I was to see him risen from the dead. We stuttered and stumbled with our speech till eventually we had communicated that when they bent his chest up to lift him onto the stretcher, he had gotten his breath again, and though weak and light-headed, he was quite all right,
and
(for
my
part) that I was now married to Captain Ahab and was a resident of the home between whose Ionic columns I was standing! The essentials having been exchanged, we said a hasty good-bye. On my part, nothing could have pleased me more than the enormous surprise of seeing that Isaac had survived and might now be hailed (I hoped) as the fireburnished hero he was. But I knew, for his part, that the surprise of my sudden marriage—he had not asked how it came about—surely left something of an ashy taste. Perhaps he felt as had Gulliver after his travels—that he was not quite the same person nor his home the same place, upon his return.

And I felt ashamed of having seen him shirtless, the little cloud of golden hair upon his chest, in his extremity, though of course when I was a cabin boy I had seen all manner of male nakedness, which, along with the crude language of sailors, I have not tried to report in my narrative. But on Nantucket, I was a woman and a young wife who felt embarrassment. (I smile now at that self who could blush and tremble before the conventional, in spite of the terrible experiences I had survived. The time has come when taking off my own clothing is a confident, unafraid act, the most natural way to meet the waves.)

Nonetheless, I proceeded to cross the street, employ the brass pineapple knocker (deciding in the act to purchase a similar one for my home to advertise my hospitality), and present Judge Lord with the paper Ahab had left with me. After the judge invited me in (and again I sat upon the velvet sofa, this time making more careful note of items in his parlor that found particular favor with me), he went to his desk and drew out certain other papers Ahab had left with him and glanced back and forth between them, to compare—I was sure—the signatures. His surprise at finding Ahab to be a providing husband had engendered something close to incredulity.

But very soon, he looked up over his spectacles, smiled, and said, “Captain Ahab has long needed a wife and a family, and I am glad that it is you.”

“Thank you.” I am sure I blushed.

“And so you received word that Kit—”

“Yes, that Kit—” I began.

“—is dead,” he finished. “And Captain Ahab, being due to sail, lost no time. Nor does he have time to lose, being a mature person. Even more so than I. But that's beside the point. The news about Kit came—?”

“Yesterday—oh, he's never never coming back!” I suddenly wailed. That yesterday inscribed the end of one life and the immediate beginning of another overwhelmed me.

“There, there,” the judge answered. “Perhaps it's for the best. Most decidedly it's for the best. You mustn't weep. You're newly married! Think, you're just across the street. You must take tea with me, Mrs. Captain. An old bachelor like me would be honored. And, why, it will be no time—two years or so, why, maybe less—till Captain Ahab will come sailing back. Now, dry your tears. Here's a hankie.”

He was so kind and so inept in his bachelor-but-dignified-judge way that I began to laugh as suddenly as I had cried. He tried to laugh along with me, but seeing nothing funny, he began to urge me not to become hysterical, but to calm myself. He rang furiously for his servant to bring us some tea. “And have you eaten, Mrs. Captain?”

“Not a bite.”

“Well, then. We must get some ballast in ye—as a seaman might say.”

And very soon I was eating buttered toast, followed by bacon, followed by fish, followed by oatmeal—all to ward off hysteria. And it worked very well. After a while, the judge took up business again.

“Did you read the letter that Ahab has addressed to me?”

Although it was merely folded and not even placed in an envelope, it had not occurred to me to read it.

“It says that you are to have a housekeeper. He suggests a Mrs. Macy.”

“My friend. I worked for her.”

“Captain Ahab says that I am to trust in your good sense about every financial matter—he has underscored ‘every'—and that if it should seem you are a little extravagant at first, I am to encourage rather than discourage you! What a remarkable instruction! Well, what are you going to do?” Looking a bit like Ben Franklin, Judge Lord peered at me over small spectacles.

Now there was a question. I didn't know what I was going to do, which I said. And so I changed the subject for a time and asked about the little black boy. The judge replied that he would send him to Maria Mitchell, the daughter of an astronomer and banker on Vestal Street, to be educated in whatever way she saw fit.

“She takes both boys and girls together in her school,” he went on, “and she will not object to a black child, being more liberal than even her Quaker forefathers.”

“Would the Quakers not admit the boy?” I asked.

“No. Not at their meetings. There are separate black churches here on Nantucket.”

“It's a bit disappointing,” I said, “about the Quakers.” I said it timidly, for I did not want to get in a dispute.

“They tried to make the Mitchells quit their piano,” he went on.

Then I bethought myself of the family around the piano that Kit and I had noticed when we walked to town together that last time on Christmas Day. That had been on Vestal Street. The memory made me sad, and I became quiet.

I must say that at this point the judge, too, became quiet, and though he did not know the cause of my quiet, he did not try to fill up the silence, as so many would have done, but waited patiently. “I think that I will use some of the money to travel back to my old home,” I said, and added, noticing his dismay, “After I furnish my new one. How long do you think it might take to furnish the house?”

“Did you know the house comes with a name?” First he told me it was Heather's Moor—for at its back, the heather-covered moor began and there were no more houses—and then he suggested that a month might be required to buy furnishings, if I was careful about my selections. “You might want to take the ferry for a short trip to Boston, to see what sofas and carpets and dishes they have there. And then come back.” He was so kind as to offer to accompany me. “And Mrs. Macy, too,” he added, with a bow to propriety.

To neither proposition did I give a definite answer, but I told him I much admired his furnishings.

Breakfast being over, he asked if he might be of any further service that morning. Rather to my own surprise, I asked him if he would mind to write to Charlotte out at the Try Pots and tell her the things that had happened. And to tell her I would not come out for my clothes
for perhaps a week (here my eye noted my own reflection in the cherry top of the butler's table that held my breakfast), there being no urgent need of reserve clothing and I having much to do in town (I admired a scallop shell cast into the top of the handle of my silver spoon), but if Charlotte should come in, she must be sure to call on me.

I did not stop to think that the judge had not offered to serve as my secretary, but I was new to such neighbors, and it would take me a while to learn their customary limits and habits. I did know that I was glad to have Judge Lord for a neighbor, and I left his portal with some definite intentions, namely, first to visit a seamstress, and also to purchase some fabric, which I myself would sew up. To make something new, instead of mend! My head quite sang with it. Would I buy a new needle? No, my needle was too good a friend, but perhaps a silver thimble. One with an ornate
A
nestled inside, in the cup of it—for Ahab!

As I paused to look across the street at my house, a very darksuited Quaker gentleman with a most stern countenance knocked at my door. Captain Bildad, or Captain Peleg. Whoever, he was much too somber for me this morning. I quite gave him the sly slip simply by staying on the judge's side of the street and walking toward the shops. After all, he didn't know me. I giggled with glee. Then I decided I would go give Mrs. Macy the news. And to think—I need not mourn Isaac, who, after all, was not dead.

C
OME TO PICK UP
your mending? Not married yet?” Again her laundry tub steamed before the fire, but this time it was already full of sheets, and a scum of soap floated on top.

“No, Mrs. Macy.” I tried to answer her first question.

“But your young man is up and about. Oh, I can see you're happy!”

“No.” (He was not my young man.)

“What! Not happy?”

“No—” I struggled to correct the misassumptions of her question.

“No, again!”

“No, I mean yes. Yes, I am happy. And married.”

“And a lovely golden fleece of a man.”

“No—”

“No?” She laughed. “You don't think him lovely after one night.”

“I only saw him this morning.”

“And you had no joy last night?”

“No. I mean yes. But not with Isaac Starbuck. With Captain Ahab!”

“Captain Ahab! Well, blow me down.” And she sank into the chair by the tub. “And you don't love the brave young man?”

“I'm delighted he survived.” I thought how last night I had repined that I had loved him too little as a valued human being.

“And so ye regret?”

“My only regret is for Captain Ahab—”

“That's my meaning—”

“That Captain Ahab has already gone back to sea!” And here I let out a little shriek followed unexpectedly by a flotilla of boo-hoos. “I'm so happy,” I sobbed, “with Captain Ahab.”

“But you ain't with 'im.” She rose from her chair and gestured for me to sit down. “That's just the problem. Now I've got it. You've come to the right place.”

And with that she reached into her cabinet, pulled out a lumpy, clanky bag, loosed the drawstring, and poured the contents into my lap. What an array of porcelain devices! Some artfully decorated with flowers painted on the china shaft, others with ships, and male torsos…the variety of sizes and shapes! Colors, too.

I was stunned.

“All under the covers, was it? Then close your eyes and just feel among them.”

I was speechless.

“Which most resembles your captain?”

Now I erupted in laughing, and she laughed with me, and I told her, politely, that I should not be wanting such. She looked at me as though she knew much more than I, but on the point of an essential difference between flesh-and-blood and detached china, I had complete confidence. I turned the conversation to tell her that Ahab had been very generous in his leaving: I had a new house to live in, and, unless it was too short notice, I would not be doing any more mending.

“And you're such a fine seamstress. 'Tis a pity.”

“Oh, I'll sew dresses for myself, and one for you, too, if you like.”

“Ah my dear,” she said, grasping my forearm, quite serious, “I've not had a dress made by any but myself since I was a girl.”

“Would you like one?”

“A dress made for me by a captain's wife!”

“By Una, whom you employed and who can never adequately repay you for that.”

“You are a dear,” she said, kissing me on the cheek.

I proposed that she come with me and select whatever fabric she wished, but she said she must tend to the washing to keep on schedule, and that we would do it later. “Besides, I must sit down and recuperate,” she said. “To think I really did bathe you for your bridal! And such a fortunate marriage.”

So I left Mrs. Macy and commenced my shopping myself. Nantucket had so much beautiful fabric; I began to quiver as I touched it. I could have whatever I wanted. What was to keep me from buying miles of cloth?

My own good sense. I knew full well how long it took to stitch a dress. From much experience, I knew what yardage corresponded to practical ambition. So I chose fabric for two dresses and for underthings and breathlessly watched the clerk flop off yardage from the bolts, pull a thread across, straighten the diagonal, and flash his scissors through the fabric. My parcel was heavy enough that I decided to carry it home before visiting the baker's and the meat shop, for I knew I could not always eat with the judge. Yet when I reached home, there was in fact a note under my door inviting me to lunch across the street. Blithely I went.

This time the judge had me into his dining room, where places were set on a mahogany table, and he served apple jelly and crackers and thin beef soup until the main meal was ready.

“You had a caller,” he said. “Captain Bildad.”

“I think I noted him knocking,” I said. “A rather dark captain?” I let my eye twinkle, for I felt that I had not just a neighbor but a friend in the judge.

“Indeed,” he answered, with a corresponding twinkle. “He asked about your furnishings, Ahab having told him the house was bare in most rooms. Did you see some furnishings you liked in town?”

I replied I had not, though I had pursued other objects. “Where can I buy a door knocker fashioned like yours, like the pineapple?”

“Ah, that's from Boston.”

“Boston?”

“Now, Captain Bildad tells me that he and his spinster sister will return and that they will personally help you buy; he is confident that all your needs can be met, with his guidance, by Main Street. He saw a black chair that he fancied for Captain Ahab.”

“May I ask about your sofa? Was it purchased on Main Street?” The sofa was not a frank red, but more a cherry color—a delicious, subtle color.

The judge was chewing, but he shook his head and simply said, “Boston.”

“And your lace curtains?”

“New York.”

I laughed, and so did he. “Would you rather have his guidance or mine?” He was all atwinkle, and we were not only friends, but conspirators.

“I think we'd better slip off to Boston this afternoon,” I said. “On the ferry.”

“You need a proper chaperone. None more proper than myself.” Mrs. Macy was forgotten. Besides, I knew she was busy.

 

A
ND SO
it was that Judge Austin Lord and I took the ferry around Provincetown and on to Boston. We chatted the whole way, till we were hoarse. He was full of gossip about all of Nantucket and filled me in on the Coffins and the Crosbys, the Hadwens and the Barneys, the Starbucks, Swifts, and Swains, all intermarried to each other and dominating Main Street. The triplet houses, three bricks recently completed by Joseph Starbuck for his three sons, had cost a scandalous amount, the three together requiring an outlay of over $40,000. I asked if Mr. Starbuck of the
Pequod
was of that family, and the judge said certainly he was, but very distantly, the Main Street Starbucks being whaling merchants, but not actually whalers, as was the first mate, who lived more humbly out at Siasconset or 'Sconset, as the natives called it. Isaac Starbuck, the gaoler, was yet another strain of Starbucks.

We were gone perhaps three weeks. The sight of Quincy Market
reminded me of how happy I had been seeing it for the first time with Aunt Agatha, Uncle Torchy, and Frannie. And how I had yet to face the terrible suspense of Frannie's illness. Then, when I admired the monuments, I hadn't known the
Petrel
existed.

In terms of Boston shopping, Judge Lord was as indulgent as ever my husband had instructed him to be. But I soon learned from a slight frown or lift of an eyebrow what my chaperon considered a good buy or a tasteful, well-made item. An expensive rug he actually urged me to buy, saying it was from India, while most people in Nantucket had rugs from China; and, further, that the pattern was rare—a kind of tree of life filled with birds and fruit. Yes, I wanted that. A tree of life.

It was a wonderful trip. Sometimes I regretted that neither Charlotte nor Mrs. Macy was there with me to share the excitement. I had written them both notes before I left home. Never again would I leave dear ones wondering what had befallen me. I knew too much now about how anxiety could wring the heart. In this mood, when I was alone in my hotel room at night, I dispatched additional letters to the Lighthouse and to my mother, telling them of my new, happy state, reminding them of what we had shared, and assuring them that I would soon come to visit.

Not only did we buy furnishings, china, and silver, but also books by the boxload. I told the judge to choose what he thought a well stocked library should have, and I myself chose many books—often they were by authors whom I had read perhaps in a single volume, but now I swept my hands over the Complete Works of such writers.

 

I
T WAS WHILE
I was at a bookstall that I fell into conversation with the remarkable woman writer Margaret Fuller. As we stood on the sunny street, she showed me engravings of great art works—of Leonardo's
Virgin of the Rocks
and
La Gioconda
—and invited me to attend one of her Conversations for Women. Surprised by her spontaneous and intense invitation, I regarded her more closely.

Quick in her movements and speech, she had large and dreamy eyes. Her hair, parted in the middle, was the most smooth and glossy I had ever seen. Her claret dress fit beautifully, and I thought her the picture of elegance. I was glad that at least I had been in Boston for a fortnight and was not totally unused to sophisticated fashion. Because I felt timid,
nonetheless, about accepting her invitation, I equivocated till I thought I might ask Judge Lord for an opinion.

He did not encourage me. But when I thought again on my own of Miss Fuller, her intensity and intelligence, I informed him that same afternoon that in fact I
did
intend to go. He but lifted an eyebrow. In some way, he seemed pleased that I had not taken his advice.

 

H
OW WISE
I was! At Margaret Fuller's salon, women talked of magnificent ideas, of poetry and art, of science and travel. Never had I heard such discourse among women. Not one word of family or home or food or even sewing. I interjected the question did they not think that quilting could be an art form and perhaps the only art available to frontier women, and several, including Miss Fuller, quite agreed with me, though not all. “Quilts don't last,” one said.
“Ars longa, vita breva.”
Though I did not know Latin, I surmised what she was saying. “Nor would a painting last,” I said, “if you covered yourself in bed with it. You might choose not to use a quilt, but simply admire it. Then I think it would last. My stitches would, I know.” I was sorry I was wearing a dress, tailor-made, purchased in Boston, and so could not display my own fine stitches.

“What then is the purpose or purposes of art?” Margaret Fuller asked the group. And we went on to discuss the question of utility and beauty. She was very versed in German views, and often she quoted Goethe, whom she herself had translated. Very considerately, though Miss Fuller quoted fluently in German, she always followed with a translation for those of us who did not understand the language. But at one point, I could not help myself from saying simply how beautiful the German was.

“Shall I quote you one of my favorite lines? It's from a song.”

We all waited, aglow. I felt so honored.

“ ‘Ich weiss nicht, was soll es bedeuten, dass ich so traurig bin.'
‘I don't know why I am so sad.' It's the first line from ‘Die Lorelei.' But the rhythm is so much better in German, isn't it?”

We all agreed that it was. I wondered if there was some particular circumstance making Margaret Fuller herself sad, but the question seemed too intimate to ask in a chiefly intellectual discussion. Suddenly she told me I might call her Margaret, as the others did.

We returned to the subject of beauty, and our leader mentioned that some of the oldest art was associated, perhaps, with religious expression. She mentioned cave drawings, and the idea that those people had worshiped animals.

My mind began to buzz with ideas, and I remembered my question in the Unitarian gathering about their intelligence and souls—those of animals, that is, not Unitarians—and as though she read my mind,
Margaret
went on to speak of Mr. Emerson, who was dissatisfied with the Unitarians and wanted a less conventional, more philosophical worldview, which was being called Transcendentalism. And again my brain buzzed with the idea that no matter how liberal, how radical an idea might seem, and certainly Unitarianism had seemed more free than Universalism to me, one's thought could always be more free, and freer and newer still. I was so excited I could not speak, and many of us were speaking at once, so ignited were we by the breadth and flexibility of Margaret's mind.

When it was time to go, I asked Margaret when the next Conversation would occur, and I felt much disappointed to learn it would not be for another week, at which time I would have returned to Nantucket. She was interested that I lived in Nantucket and asked if I knew Lucretia Mott, but I did not. She saw I was disappointed at not being able to come again, and she kept me standing, chatting, at the door, after the others had floated like bright bubbles, though they wore winter coats, down the street. That I was from the wilderness of Kentucky also intrigued her.

I cannot begin to say how much I admired her. Though I guessed her to be only eight or ten years older than I, I associated her with my mother and my aunt, and her erudition was far more dazzling.

At the hotel, I tried to convey to Judge Lord some of the breadth of Margaret Fuller's allusions, but he was not nearly so interested as I had expected another book lover to be. “I should rather have you, my dear,” he said, “describe to me exactly what you are seeing and thinking at this moment than listen to Margaret Fuller's dusty learning.” A bit of me was flattered, but in the main, I was disappointed and frustrated that I could not rouse the judge with my enthusiasm. I was sure that he was wrong not to value Margaret.

The next day being our last for shopping, we arose early, but as we
were going out the door, the desk clerk called that there was a note for me. It turned out to be an invitation from Margaret Fuller to spend the day with her in private conversation.