Thoreau in Love (26 page)

“I just learned you were here,” said Henry when Beatrice appeared. “I came as soon as I heard. I hope you don’t mind.”

“I’m thrilled,” said Beatrice. Her parents and brother had already returned to town, which Henry assumed meant he should leave, but before he could say anything, Beatrice said, “Because I didn’t hear any more from you, I didn’t want to presume anything.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve been terribly busy.”

“You don’t mind that I go to church, do you?”

Before Henry could answer, Beatrice said, “Join me for tea.” Henry loved how Bea’s mind jumped here and there and that she always had something to say. At tea, Beatrice made Henry laugh with her irreverent talk about President Tyler and how incredibly stupid he was. Henry held his end by recounting his visit with Henry James, though he didn’t mention meeting up with Ben. And after they’d filled their bellies, Bea said she was sorry that Henry had missed meeting her brother. Henry said, “Yes, from what you say, I look forward to meeting him.”

“Oh, do you want to see how he looks? Daddy had us sit for Daguerreotypes. What an awful experience. They strapped us in so we wouldn’t move. They’re in his library. We’re not supposed to go in there, but no one’s here except Herbert and Harriet and they would never tell on me. Come.” Beatrice took Henry by the hand and tiptoed through the halls, as if her father was skulking around somewhere. The Daguerreotype of Robert certainly made him look beautiful. After a moment to collect his saliva and then his voice, Henry said haltingly, “He’s very, handsome.”

“More beautiful than handsome,” said Beatrice. “He’s so delicate. I can’t wait for you to meet.”

Still at a loss, and transfixed by the Daguerreotype, Henry said, “Yes.”

“Oh, we have to go or I’ll miss my boat. Come on, let’s race,” said Bea, and she tore off to the front hall, calling, “Herbert, Herbert, the carriage, quick. Herbert.”

Bea won, and teased Henry the whole carriage ride down to the lower dock, where she boarded the steam ferry for her return to Manhattan. The carriage of course waited for Henry, though he’d said he’d be fine walking back. And so they set off, Henry walking, Herbert driving the carriage beside him, or Henry walking and the carriage going just ahead to let someone by, until Henry relented and got in. At first he felt a fool sitting in the magnificent, upholstered carriage as if it were his, but as they rose up the road, Henry got to like the bit of luxury, and thought, Wouldn’t it be nice.

Yes, he ruminated, as they passed a dozen ruminants scattered on the spring green hillside, Bea and I might make a smart couple.

A dirty workman moved to the side of the road to let the carriage pass and tipped his cap. Henry, startled, nodded back. And thought how strange it was that this man, twenty-or-so years his senior, would gesture his respect to ostentatious wealth when he knew nothing about the occupant or by what means he’d attained the wealth. Agitated, he leaned out the window and asked Herbert to please stop. Herbert of course did, and Henry got out onto the dirt road, thanked him for the ride and said he wanted to enjoy the lovely day. “I’ll be fine, don’t worry about me,” he felt he needed to add.

The carriage took off, leaving Henry with the disturbing thought that he was no different from the workman who’d tipped his cap. “I hate money. That’s what it’s all about. If you have it, you’re respected. If you don’t, you’re not.” He angrily tramped up the road, missing the sights he normally so loved. “I don’t want my life to be about money. There must be a way to live without money. And live. And be fruitful.”

After such an eventful week, life, as it does, slowed to mundane. Ben and Bea were across the water. None of the hoped-for letters arrived: not from Stearns in Germany; not from John Neal, saying he’d awoken in the night realizing he’d made a stupid mistake; not from Ben, though he really wasn’t expecting one from Ben. Not knowing what else to do with it, he sent “The Landlord” to the
Democratic
Review
, as well as a review of a book Emerson had recommended.

“A Winter Walk” was no longer creative eureka but the daily working out of details, the digging deeper into the hard-packed ice and snow. Henry loved the work, but every day it seemed more snow piled up in the Concord he wrote about. It covered the narrow lanes, the bare fields and the frozen rivers, and it fell hard on the lonely churchyard where his brother was buried. Drifts hid the woodland paths, and as Henry trudged through the deep snows of Concord, he wondered always if the particular path he’d chosen would ever get him to wherever it was he was going.

After the musicale, Susan stopped playing the piano. When Henry told her he missed hearing her practice and asked why she wasn’t playing, she waved off his concern and said, “I need a break from the piano.”

“Really?” said Henry, his heavy nose dipping in doubt. “You seemed to get such joy from it. Why would you ever want a break from joy?” Susan grimaced painfully, pushed back her hair. “I wish you hadn’t asked, Henry. I know you appreciate my playing, but apparently no one else does. Several times while you were out I sat down and tried, but I couldn’t play any of the pieces I know. The notes, yes, I could play all the notes, but none of my heart was there.” She shrugged her small shoulders. “Maybe I’ll play again. I hope so. But for now, I can’t.”

“I hope so too. When you were playing you seemed so alive, so excited by life. It was the first I’d seen that great Susan spirit since you were in Concord.”

“I could say the same about you, Henry. You’re not nearly so carefree as you were in Concord or on that boat.”

“No, I’m not, am I?” And then, figuring he only had this one moment of peace and quiet with her, Henry asked why Susan had fled Staten Island so soon after the birth of baby Charles.

“Can’t you see? Haven’t you noticed? I thought you prided yourself on how well you took note of your surroundings.” Pandora’s box flew open. “Do you think I was born to this? Do you think this is what I wanted when I married William? Being left every day in this wasteland with three screaming children?” Her anger took Henry aback, and he sat silently while she went on. And on she did go, to a place he’d never been before, a place where he was sure few women dared venture. “I love them, Henry. I love them dearly, but you say you want truth. That you believe truth is everything. Well, Henry, the truth is, I wish I didn’t have children. I never wanted children. Why I don’t know. I just never did.

“William didn’t either, or so he said at the time.” She looked wistfully out the window. “William was so different than the other men I knew. Cosmopolitan. He’d studied in Europe, traveled. He talked about returning to Europe and living the intellectual life of a philosopher-poet. He danced like a dream. You saw that. We used to dance every week. Now it’s more like once a year. I didn’t know his dancing days were finished, that he was tired of his studies, tired of his travels. We used to discuss books, the newspapers, politics, the rights of women. And what life would be like without having children. We talked about slavery, abolitionism, God, whether there’s an afterlife. Now we talk about the children we weren’t going to have, and about you. Rather, William talks and I listen. He has become the same stern father he once rebelled against.

“Aside from you, Henry, and you and I hardly talk anymore, who else is there around here? Mary, bless her heart, saves my life, but she can barely read or write. The wet nurse? And you’ve met the neighbors. Mr. Albert? Even Madame Grymes. Some days she’s all that stands between me and madness, but given my druthers, I would happily say good day and never see her again.”

Henry snickered.

“And I know you look down on me for the way I pander to the nabobs from Manhattan, but they’re all I’ve got—unless I want to pass my time with an old sea captain or his blithering wife. Staten Island is a far cry from Manhattan.”

Henry was so taken by Susan’s outpouring that he didn’t know what to say, so he sat quietly nodding. And Susan went on. “William loves it out here. Well of course he loves it, he’s never here. The children aren’t running around him all day. And when I have people in to visit, for a musicale or supper, as you saw, he complains about everything.

“Why did I go to Concord? Because it was either that or disappear from the face of the earth. And believe me, I know how people judged me, abandoning my newborn.”

“It took great courage,” said Henry. “Not to leave a newborn, but to stand up to society and say, I left my newborn.”

“Even Lidian was scandalized. Waldo had to talk her into letting me stay.”

“Lidian thinks everything’s a scandal, except the fact that she takes opium.”

“Lidian? Laudanum?”

“It’s how she escapes from the fact that her husband doesn’t love her. That’s why she always has that lovely smile on her face.”

“Perhaps I should try it.”

“Perhaps I should too,” said Henry, and he and Susan laughed at the awful truth of their lives. “Of course,” Henry went on, “I’m no one to talk. I’m always wishing I could be as strong, smart, talented, as happy and sociable as other people.”

“Oh, Henry, you’re so much your own person. I’ve never met anyone more forthright, more firm. You stand up for what you believe in. You stand up to William. You do. You did it about church. About the children. Which reminds me: Would you consider having Mary sit in on your lessons? She so wants to learn to read properly, and to divide and multiply.”

“Gladly,” said Henry.

“She’ll be thrilled.”

Willie stamped in, demanding attention.

“Henry, would you mind. . . ?” said Susan, touching her forehead.

“Not at all. Come, Master Willie, let’s go outside.”

“I don’t want to go outside.”

“You know what?” said Henry, grabbing Willie and slinging him over his shoulder as if he were a sack of flour. “I don’t care what you want.” Willie screeched, “No, no, put me down,” but Henry didn’t put the wriggling dynamo down till they were partway up the hill in the back yard. “I don’t want to go up the hill, I don’t want to go up the hill.”

“We’re going up the hill, and you’re going to walk.”

“I’m not allowed up the hill.”

“You’re allowed with me.” Henry held Willie’s little hand tight. Willie screamed “No!” and fell to the ground, and Henry dragged him up the hill until Willie, realizing he wasn’t going to get his way, said, “Okay, okay, I’ll walk.”

When they reached the summit, Henry turned the grass-stained, pouting boy around. In the clear distance beyond the Snuggery and the cedar forests sloping down the hill, ships with white sails splashed blue ocean, while in the Narrows to their left dozens of vessels departed or made for port.

“Boats!” Willie cried in wonder.

“Ships, actually,” said Henry. He helped Willie scramble up the elm near the summit. Straddling the lowest limb, they watched through the nearly bare branches a fully rigged clipper ship racing south on her way to China.

“Isn’t that beautiful, Master Willie?”

“When I grow up, I want to be a sailor,” Willie said excitedly.

“See that little ship with the two masts? That’s a schooner, like the one your mother and I sailed on.” And after a moment, “Where I met Ben.” And he thought, The sails of those ships are so like our dreams: filled with our hopes, glorious to behold and wanting for nothing as they pull us along with their promise.

Sunday dawned bright and mild, and as they did each morning and evening, boom, boom, boom went the cannon from the battery in Manhattan, and just when it seemed they were finished, their echoes were met with volleys from the forts in Brooklyn and Staten Island, ka-poogh, ka-poogh, ka-poogh, the concussions ripping the air. Henry, too, caused quite a stir when he descended the stairs in his Sunday best and announced that he was taking Beatrice to church. Mr. and Mrs. Emerson flushed with pleasure, thinking their battle won. Then Henry let loose his own cannon, informing them that they would be attending the services at St. John’s on Bay Street.

“You can’t go there, Henry,” Susan exclaimed. “And certainly not with Beatrice. The repercussions we’ve had. If Dr. Schramm had known, he wouldn’t have brought them along to our musicale. He didn’t know.”