Fates and Traitors (14 page)

The good Mr. Simpson had immediately ordered the room cleaned and fresh linens put on the bed. After seeing to it that the ailing tragedian was washed, wrapped in a clean dressing gown, and fed a nourishing gruel, he kept vigil at his sickbed, trying to make sense of his confusing tales of his travels in California. Regrettably, Mr. Simpson wrote, “I could understand nothing but that he had suffered a great deal and had been exposed very much.”

There was no doctor on board. Mr. Simpson nursed Father as best he could, but he steadily declined, his speech barely intelligible, though he seemed to listen intensely when Mr. Simpson read aloud from the New Testament. His eyes grew dim with tears, his expression distraught, and once he tried to express his gratitude by weakly embracing Mr. Simpson as the kind man smoothed his pillow.

On the fifth day, at about one o'clock in the afternoon, Mr. Simpson asked Father what else he could do to ease his suffering. “Pray!
Pray! Pray!” he had replied, giving his benefactor one last beseeching look before he closed his eyes forever.

“Yes, yes—that was just what your father would have thought right to do when he knew, at last, that death would overtake him,” said Mother after Asia read Mr. Simpson's letter. “To endure patiently, to suffer without a complaint, and to trouble no one.”

Asia nodded silently, blinking back tears, but in the weeks to come, she would reflect upon her mother's words and bitterly mark that their troubles had only just begun.

•   •   •

T
he tolling of funeral bells had scarcely faded when the first creditors descended upon the household—first coming delicately, murmuring apologetic phrases, and then in a furious rush like a pack of greedy curs on a narrow bone. Father had died intestate, and his entire fortune amounted to less than five thousand dollars. Of that, only a few hundred were in cash.

“This is what genius and decades of toil have amounted to,” said Mother in disbelief as her daughters went over the figures in vain hope that she had made a mistake. “My darlings, my poor girls—I fear we have not been provided for.”

“We have property,” Asia said, though she could not prevent a note of fear from creeping into her voice. “We are not destitute.”

But the next day, spurred on by his vengeful mother, Richard Booth sued Mother for the entirety of Father's meager estate.

Mary Ann Booth had concealed some of his late father's assets from the assessors, Richard alleged, including his elaborate and costly professional wardrobe, a piano, and substantial reserves of cash. Every penny in cash was accounted for, she countered. Adelaide's settlement and the expense of supporting so many dependents had drained her late husband's accounts, and fellow travelers had confirmed that he had been robbed of all the gold he had acquired in California. As for the tragedian's extensive collection of stage costumes, Mother had sewn them with her own hands, and the appraisers had concluded that they rightfully belonged to her.

As the lawsuit dragged on, Asia marveled at her mother's public show of serene strength, knowing that the unexpected blow had come
just as the shock of her husband's death was receding, and the raw anguish of nascent widowhood emerging. Even after the state of Maryland ruled that the beautiful garments Mother had lovingly crafted for her husband were “personal apparel not to be accounted for in the estate of the deceased,” obliging Richard Booth to abandon his senseless lawsuit, Mother remained badly shaken, reeling from the double loss of beloved husband and provider. In a matter of weeks, her raven-black hair went ash-gray, her cheeks lost their rosy bloom, her voice grew distant, and her gaze seemed to fix on something longed for swiftly receding, like a ship disappearing over the horizon.

And even though Mother had not had to relinquish a single cent more to Richard or Adelaide, legitimate creditors relentlessly drained their portions from the little Father had left behind until, in the end, if his widow and children were not destitute, they were not far from it.

By the time the first buds of spring unfurled into pale green leaves on the trees lining Exeter Street, Mother had decided to rent out their Baltimore residence and move to The Farm. Into a drayman's cart went all their furniture, clothing, glassware, china, quilts, books, art, mirrors, and the marble bust of Shakespeare, but all of her husband's other personal effects—diaries, letters, memorabilia from his long and illustrious career—were banished to the cellar.

“Shouldn't we take this with us?” Asia asked, wrinkling her nose against the musty damp as she studied the carefully stacked, padlocked trunks in the flickering light of her mother's lamp. “We have plenty of room to store everything at Tudor Hall.”

“They'll be safe enough here.” Mother gathered her skirts in one hand, raised the lamp high, and began climbing the stairs without giving the precious collection a second glance. “It grieves me too much to look upon them now. Come, Asia.”

Wordlessly Asia obeyed, although she could not rid her imagination of vivid scenes of destruction—fire, flood, vermin, mold—that could consume the priceless artifacts before her mother could bring herself to retrieve them.

At The Farm, Joe and Ann had arranged the furniture and unpacked the family's belongings before their arrival, but even amid the trappings of familiarity, Tudor Hall felt strangely foreign and empty, so
new it still smelled of raw oak and fresh paint. Asia and Rosalie followed their mother as she wandered from room to room, adjusting a lampshade, moving a portrait from one wall to another.

Suddenly Asia was struck by an overwhelming sense that the elegant home would never truly be theirs, for the family it had been created for no longer existed.

When Wilkes and Joseph joined them after school closed for the summer—closed forever for the two brothers, as Mother could no longer afford their tuition—that strange sense of wrongness diminished somewhat, but Asia still felt it, like an unexpected draft in a room when all the windows were shut.

•   •   •

T
he Farm was their only source of income, as the payments on Tudor Hall, taxes, and legal fees would almost entirely consume the thirty-five dollars Mother earned in monthly rent from their Baltimore residence. Their only recourse, she concluded, was for Wilkes to become a farmer, with Joe Hall to advise him and manage the hired hands. Asia thought it was an enormous responsibility to place upon a fifteen-year-old's shoulders, but with June and Edwin away, Wilkes had become the man of the house.

Wilkes embraced his new responsibilities with his usual enthusiasm and good cheer, exultant to have escaped St. Timothy's forever. Earnest and attentive, he worked alongside Joe, tilling the fields, sowing wheat, corn, and rye. All summer long, warm sunshine and gentle rains nourished the crops, which flourished and grew, promising an abundant harvest. Asia was glad to see her brother thriving in his new role, not only for the sake of the family's finances but also because his happiness comforted their mother.

But their early hopes were spoiled in late autumn, when the crops were brought in, measured, and sold for a bewilderingly small profit. It marked a bitter end to a troubling season, for when Wilkes and Joe had hired hands to help with the harvest, Asia had discovered something new and distressing in her brother, a curious fixation on rank and place—instilled in him, no doubt, by the military regimen at St. Timothy's. Father had always been egalitarian, sometimes to a fault, a man of the people who would invite poor strangers off the streets of Baltimore to join the family at the dinner table, who could converse as easily with
a ditch-digger as a governor. But in Wilkes's heart, his pride had ever been at war with his love of equality and brotherhood, and somewhere along the way he had adopted the Southern notion that employers should not freely associate with their laborers.

On an ordinary day in Baltimore, his hauteur might have passed unnoticed, but not so in Bel Air at harvest time. There it was the custom for the colored freemen to eat lunch and dinner in the fields, while the Irish immigrants with their sunburnt faces and soiled clothes joined their employer and his family at the table in the big house. Wilkes was deeply uncomfortable with that arrangement, and on the first day of the harvest, he asked his mother, Rosalie, and Asia to remain upstairs while he dined alone with the Irishmen—a compromise, he called it, between his conscience and local tradition.

Mother looked taken aback. “Won't the men feel slighted?”

“How will you explain our absence?” asked Asia.

“Leave that to me,” said Wilkes, smiling reassuringly, so charming and confident that they acquiesced, bemused but trusting. Their father would not have hesitated to break bread with the workers in his employ, Asia reflected, nor would Grandfather Booth, with his deep admiration of the first American patriots, have given the matter a second thought. It was curious to see Wilkes departing from the example of the two men he most admired.

Shortly before noon, Asia, her mother, and her sister withdrew to their rooms upstairs, where they read or sewed as they listened to the sounds of chairs scraping, cutlery tinkling, and low voices rumbling in Irish brogues below. Eavesdropping from the top of the stairs, Asia heard a younger man inquire after the ladies of the house, and Wilkes reply with a light remark about indisposition.

As the days passed, the workers' inquiries increased in frequency and skepticism. “We need the hands for the harvest,” Asia warned her mother. “It would not do to offend them.”

“Let Wilkes manage them,” her mother replied, gazing out the window.

Asia realized that her mother was too deep in the throes of mourning to challenge Wilkes's newfound authority. Counting the days until the harvest would end, she resigned herself to the pretense that the ladies of the household were in the grasp of some dire chronic illness. It
was only later, when she went into Bel Air on errands, that she heard spiteful whispers and observed sidelong glances. When she mused about it to friends, they reluctantly admitted that the Booths were no longer well liked among the county's white laboring class, who muttered that the whole high-and-mighty family had dirty British blood mixed up with Southern notions, a foul brew indeed.

Asia hoped to shield her grieving mother from the ugly gossip, but some well-meaning neighbor must have warned her. The following year, in hopes of avoiding a reprise of the unpleasant drama, Mother rented the fields to a white tenant farmer rather than make Wilkes responsible for raising crops and managing laborers. He did not seem insulted that his mother had relieved him of his duties, but rather spent the spring and summer indulging in a gentleman's leisurely pastimes—riding, hunting, attending picnics, and cutting a dash with the pretty young ladies of Bel Air. Somehow Mother contrived to provide him with a swift new horse he named Cola di Renzi, a fine leather saddle, and money to spend at his favorite tavern in the village. When village life grew too constrained for him, Wilkes rode off to Baltimore instead, grinning merrily and promising to behave himself even as his eyes danced with eagerness to see friends and to pay court to whatever silly, pretty young belle had most recently caught his eye.

To Asia's great joy, despite his many other amusements, her beloved brother never neglected her. They spent hours strolling together through the forest where they had played as children, Wilkes marveling at the wonders of nature, Asia admiring and envying his unfailingly cheerful disposition, so unlike her own. They recited poetry and read books together, histories of the United States and other nations,
The Life of Algernon Sydney
, Plutarch's
Lives
and
Morals
, and the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. They both adored music; Wilkes played the flute, or they sang duets, accompanying each other on piano or guitar. A fearless, skillful rider, Wilkes declared himself determined to conquer Asia's fear of horses and teach her to ride, and in time she became quite a wild and daring horsewoman, able to keep up with him on swift rides through the dangerous and isolated countryside.

Throughout those joyful midsummer days, the wheat fields waved in the breezes, growing tall and golden as they ripened, but that year's harvest bewilderingly proved even worse than the one before. After
setting aside enough for the family and livestock for the winter, they discovered that they had nothing left to sell or trade for necessities they could not produce themselves. By late 1854, as frost settled upon the fields and snow began to fly, both food and money had become scarce.

“We've never had to subsist entirely off the bounty of The Farm,” Asia reminded Wilkes one evening as they walked their horses after a short, brisk ride. “I'm not so sure it can be done.”

“Oh, don't let us be sad,” Wilkes exclaimed, his hazel eyes shining with fond earnestness. “Life is so short, and the world is so beautiful. Just to breathe is delicious.” He inhaled deeply, throwing back his head and closing his eyes. “Go on. Try it.”

To humor him, and smiling in spite of herself, Asia obeyed, inhaling deeply of the cold, crisp air. When he teased her for an answer, she admitted that she did feel somewhat better.

Mother's genius with the needle kept them fashionably attired in their genteel poverty, concealing worn hems and threadbare elbows with a costumer's deft tricks, but keeping up appearances became an ever more difficult ordeal. Wilkes gallantly skipped meals so that his mother and sisters could eat their fill, and when they protested and tried to fill his plate from their own, he laughed, held it out of their reach, and declared that a friend had treated him to a hearty lunch at the tavern, or that he had stuffed himself with apples missed in the harvest while riding past an orchard earlier that day.

“I don't believe you,” Asia once retorted, hunger sharpening her temper. “How can you be so cheerful when you're surely as famished as the rest of us?”