Private Life (11 page)

several times during the day and made sure that Aurelius had plenty of hay to keep him

warm, and that his blanket was properly adjusted. The cold made Lavinia feel old and

lonely--she started talking a bit about Margaret's father. It was the death of Lawrence that

"did him in," she said. What had happened to Ben hurt him, but that was the dangers of

boys, dangers he well knew. He had had no chance to save Ben when the boys brought

him home from the railyard. Lawrence lingered for weeks, though, and Dr. Mayfield had

thought that if he were only better educated, or more experienced, or more inventive, he

might somehow preserve him. Afterward, he went to his patients as he always had, but

with new self-doubts. "When someone died, he knew he had done something wrong, and

when someone lived, he felt that nature had prevailed. Nature, I told him, is what kills

them, but that's how it got to be. I dreaded that something would happen, and then it did."

Lavinia sighed. Margaret listened and made her own sympathetic sighs, but her memories

of her father were dim, and entirely overlaid by the cacophony of subsequent events. She

remembered him more as a doctor than as a father, a tall, respected man who looked at

her in a judicious, discerning way, to be sure that she was healthy and clean. When

Lavinia chatted and reminisced about her childhood, and the boys, and her first years in

town with Dr. Mayfield, how appealing Lawrence and Ben were, so healthy and active,

and how she used to sit in the parlor and laugh at their antics when the doctor

roughhoused with them, rolling them over and tickling them, turning them upside down

in gales of laughter, making them run about and pretending to jump out and catch them,

carrying them on his shoulders, it seemed to Margaret that she was peering through

windows into bright, appealing rooms where everyone was merry and full of life. The

people in the rooms of Lavinia's reminiscences were strangers to her, and Margaret could

not get in. Anyway, it was painful to think of Lawrence, of her hand moving upward into

his grasp, of herself sitting on his shoulders with her fingers twined in his hair, of his

saying, "You hungry, baby?" Had he said that? She seemed to hear his voice, boyish but

kind, saying that.

And then, the next day, the coldest day of all, Mrs. Early came in a sleigh she

hired from the livery stable and took them off to her house for supper and to stay the

night.

There was a fire in the kitchen, a fire in the parlor, and a stove in the library made,

not of metal, but of stone of some sort. The library was warm in every corner, which

seemed like a miracle to Margaret and Lavinia. With the gas lit everywhere, the rooms

glowed, and Margaret's limbs seemed to warm and soften and stretch. Her very skirts lost

their chill stiffness. Carpets and drapes seemed to envelop her, to give her the cozy

comfort that a baby might feel when snug in his cradle. The library was two walls of

books, floor to ceiling, in English, French, German, books Mrs. Early and Mrs. Hitchens

had bought, but also books the sons had brought home or sent home. It seemed to

Margaret that a door had opened, and rooms she thought she would never enter were hers

to walk about in.

Mrs. Early held up a lamp, and they idled down the rows, looking at the titles: Mr.

Verne in English and French
(Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Le Tour du

monde en quatre-vingt jours, Sans dessus dessous)
, Mrs. Gaskell
(North and South)
, Mr.

Surtees
(Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities)
. She was just taking down this last and opening

the cover when a deep voice behind her said, "Try this one, Miss Mayfield."

"Oh dear," said Mrs. Early. "No telling what he's giving you." But she laughed.

Margaret hadn't realized that Captain Early had entered the room, but now he

placed a tome in her hands. It was a book called
The Hound of the Baskervilles
, from

England, and brand-new. She had heard of Mr. Conan Doyle, but never read anything by

him. The book wasn't terribly long, and when she opened it, the first thing she saw was a

picture of a large dog.

Mrs. Early said, "Is that some mathematical treatise, Andrew?"

Andrew said, "Certainly not," and went over and sat down in one of the chairs

beside the stove. He at once picked up a book of his own. Margaret pretended to look at

the one he had handed her, but really she looked at him. He was even taller than she

remembered from that day with the bicycle, but his suit of clothes was neatly tailored and

his face was attractive in its way (she thought of her own face and tried to compose it-not "glare," as Mercer said), with pale whiskers and a large but straight nose. He

conformed himself a bit to the chair, and took on a quality of lengthy grace. His hair was

fair, neatly cut and combed. Only Robert Bell and the president of the bank bothered to

comb their hair. Every other man took his hat off and put his hat back on ten times a day,

and that was that. Captain Early read calmly, then looked up and said, "Perhaps you

haven't seen a stove like the one in this room, Miss Mayfield. It is of German design, and

remarkably efficient. You may be familiar with the writings of Mr. Twain. He

commented favorably on German stoves some years ago. We have had this one since I

sent it home from Berlin."

"The door for putting in the wood is very small," said Lavinia.

"It uses very little wood, and it hardly has to be attended to at all," said Mrs.

Early. "It is quite an innovation."

There was a moment of silence, then Mrs. Early said, "My son has an eye for

innovation."

Captain Early nodded, looked at Lavinia and Margaret in a serious way, and then

went back to his book.

He was like the person she had met bicycling, but he was unlike him, too. In her

appreciation of the book, which she now opened, Margaret saw that perhaps she had

taken an unreasoning dislike to the man. Even so, his presence had an odd effect on her-it was as if something around her, some field or edge, were impinged upon or dented by

the same thing, but much more powerful, around him. It was a relief that he was sitting

across the room.

The first line of the book he had handed her was "Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was

usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was

up all night, was seated at the breakfast table." She felt a palpable pleasure upon reading

this, compounded of the promise inherent in the everyday scene and the comfort of the

room she was in, the gaslights on, the curtains drawn, the chairs and the carpet so rich

and clean. There would be supper, and an entire night of respite from the exterior cold.

She looked at Captain Early again. He was quiet and relaxed, and then he felt her gaze,

and looked up and smiled. She dipped her head.

After a delicious supper, the captain and Margaret read a little longer while

Lavinia knitted and Mrs. Early did embroidery. Mrs. Hitchens had coincidentally set off

for Minnesota at just the wrong time, and was stranded in Chicago, but she was staying at

the Palmer House Hotel.

Captain Early remarked, "The floor of the barbershop there is tiled in silver

dollars, you know."

"My land!" exclaimed Lavinia. "How much could that possibly cost?"

"Thirty-six dollars per foot, or eighty-six hundred forty dollars, given the size of

the room as I estimated it just by looking," said Captain Early promptly.

"Such an extravagance!" exclaimed Lavinia.

"It's a very elegant hotel," said Mrs. Early, complacently. "I'm quite certain that

Helen will be comfortable there until they clear the snowdrifts from the lines."

That night, as they prepared for rest (three steaming hot-water bottles carried up

ahead of time to warm the feather comforters piled on the bed), Lavinia said, "He seems

to have quite a stock of information. And he's not bad-looking, all in all."

Margaret didn't say anything.

"He did smile at you, Margaret, dear."

"Was I glaring?"

"Why, no. You never glare."

"Mercer told Elizabeth that I glare and make jokes and so fellows are afraid of

me."

"She repeated that?"

"I overheard it."

"We never overhear good of ourselves, and that's a fact."

"But maybe sometimes we overhear what we need to know?"

Lavinia didn't answer that, but said, "Of course, you are a quiet girl. Everyone

knows that. But Captain Early looked at you several times. Four times. Once for quite a

spell."

"As if he were calculating my dimensions?"

"Rather like that, yes. But that isn't necessarily unfavorable."

They didn't say anything after that, but each of them saw what the other was

seeing also--that this third bedroom was furnished in the latest style, that the comforters

were made of satin, and the sheets of linen, and the washstand of mahogany, and the

draperies of velvet, and the carpet of thick wool, that the room was quiet and readily

conducive to a peaceful rest. Heretofore, Lavinia had upheld the Bells' house on

Kingshighway as the most elegant house she knew, and John Gentry's farmhouse as the

most comfortable, but from this house, all questions of expense had been banished.

They had a pleasant breakfast in the morning, but Captain Early was not present-he had stayed up studying the heavens until almost dawn, taking advantage of the clear

weather, and was still abed. They went home that afternoon.

They did see Captain Early one more time before he went away in the spring to

take up a position at the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. Lavinia, a woman who

did seasonal cleaning for them, Esther Malone, and Margaret were out in the side yard,

washing all the sheets, towels, blankets, curtains, and petticoats from the winter.

Margaret was stirring the clothes in the hot water, and Esther and Lavinia were feeding

them through the wringer. They had already wrung out the less soiled items and hung

them up to dry, when Captain Early, dressed informally in a floppy hat, light-colored

loose trousers, and muddy boots, walked by, carrying a stick. He stopped and stood for a

moment without speaking, then greeted them.

"I've been down to the river," he said.

The Missouri River was three miles and more from where they stood, so that

qualified as an active morning's excursion, Margaret thought.

"It's somewhat higher than I expected it to be, but I understand that the snowpack

upriver was greater than I had heard."

"Goodness," said Lavinia.

"Even so, there's no danger here," he went on. "That's my guess. But it's an

educated guess. What will happen below St. Louis, though, I don't like to think of."

"That's always ...," began Lavinia.

"It's well known that the levee system is jerry-built below Cairo, but people in

general, not just in Missouri, live with their heads in the sand. Not only officials.

Officials aren't entirely to blame if the citizenry is itself indifferent or uneducated. I don't

mind levees per se, but I've got my doubts about willow mats. And about dredging, too, I

must say."

"They're dredging the river?" exclaimed Lavinia. "Around here?"

"No, ma'am. I was referring to the lower Mississippi." He fell silent, and seemed

to watch them, passing his stick from hand to hand. Finally, as Margaret pressed the

clothes down with her paddle, he said, "Did you know that the Romans cleaned their

clothes by having slaves walk about upon them in vats of human urine? Urine was a rich

source of ammonium salts and was sold and taxed in Roman times. I often think we

moderns could take that as an example of how we could make better use of our own

products."

Lavinia said, "No doubt that is generally true." She coughed, and maintained a

personable smile. After a bit, Esther muttered, "Well, is he going to be helping us, now?

What's he standing about for?"

Finally, he said, "Miss Mayfield. I hope you will feel at liberty to borrow more

books from our family library. I can recommend two in particular. One is one I have been

reading myself and have now finished, entitled
Visits to High Tartary, Yarkand and

Kashgar
, by Mr. Shaw. It has very nice drawings of Central Asia. I've set it out for you.

And another is
Dracula
, by Mr. Bram Stoker, who is a friend of my brother in England.

He runs a theater, and is a very able man. You enjoyed Mr. Holmes?"

She stopped pushing her paddle. "Yes, I did."

"Mr. Stoker is rather more daring than Mr. Conan Doyle, both in his formulation

of the story and in his sensational effects. Good day." He tipped his hat and walked on.

Esther looked after him, then said, "You may say what you like, that he's a genius

and all, but if I am asked, I will say that he's a strange one."

"But harmless, I'm sure," said Lavinia, with a glance at Margaret.

Margaret herself said, "There's nothing wrong with wanting to know things."

"Certainly not," said Lavinia. "The Mayfields have always been interested in

knowing things. A man with some ambition, like your father, is much more eligible than

a man who is content with what he has already."

It was perfectly clear to Margaret that Lavinia had made up her mind that Captain