Private Life (12 page)

Early was not only an excellent prospect, but also a promising one. That he was neither

attentive nor comfortable she put down to his eccentric education and his universealtering occupation. Every so often, she would make some unexpected remark that

indicated to Margaret that she was saying much less than she was thinking--one of these

was "When all is said and done, my dear, a busy man leaves his wife considerable leeway

to follow her own impulses." Another one was "I always thought a masculine presence in

the house had a warming effect." Another: "Look at Robert! Not the most promising

specimen at first, but thriving now."

Margaret began to have a fated feeling, as if accumulating experiences were

precipitating her toward an already decided future. Once, shortly before Christmas, there

was both a heavy snowfall and a long freeze, and Margaret took Lawrence to ice-skate.

That fall, she had the boys with her quite often, because Beatrice was again with child

and not feeling well ("The sure sign of a girl," said Lavinia). Everyone in town younger

than sixty congregated on the ice, which was in a low-lying lot south of the town square

and not far from the hotel. She saw Captain Early as soon as he arrived, and well before

he saw her guiding Lawrence with two hands along the edge of the ice. She watched as

Captain Early strapped on his skates, which made him even taller, and affixed his top hat

more firmly on his head (still taller), and sailed among the other skaters like a schooner

among sloops (she had yet to see, except in pictures, either a schooner or a sloop, but they

were naval, he was naval--it was a good comparison). And then she felt a sort of pleasing

dread as he skated toward her. He took off his hat, and his smile was as big as she had

ever seen it. In order not to glare, she kept her gaze on Lawrence until she had made her

own face welcoming. He said, "All factions foregather upon the glazed surface."

"You've

returned."

"Time has stopped, indeed, Miss Mayfield."

She said, "Pardon me?"

"I was assaying a little joke. My responsibilities in Washington have to do with

ascertaining the exact time, for naval purposes, by measuring the progress of the stars.

While I am here, therefore--"

They smiled together. She said, "This is my nephew Lawrence. He's doing quite

well today."

Captain Early clapped his hat back on his head and seemed to collapse, but in fact

he was only squatting down to speak with Lawrence, who quailed, though he was

normally a rowdy boy and not easily daunted. Captain Early's voice seemed to surround

them. "Two plus two!" he demanded.

"Four," said Lawrence. His own age, thought Margaret.

"Three

plus

three!"

"Six." (A softer voice.)

"Four plus four!"

"Eight." (Very quiet.) This one Margaret was surprised the boy knew.

"Five plus five!"

Something inaudible emerged from Lawrence. She bent down and said, "What do

you reply to Captain Early?"

Lawrence now yelled in the defiant manner she was more familiar with, "I said

'Enough!'"

Captain Early barked out a laugh and said, "Indeed, ten is often enough." He

laughed again, and Lawrence laughed with him, his sassiness fully restored.

Then Captain Early shook her hand heartily, and skated away. She watched him

in the crowd. Most people stared at him. He exchanged greetings with a few, but no

lengthy conversations. One or two people looked from him to her and back again.

Later that week, Lavinia and Margaret were invited to the Earlys' for supper. The

horse and the sleigh came for them. Once again the house was warm, and once again the

supper was very good, and just a little more festive. Mrs. Hitchens nodded agreeably and

said, "Yes. Oh, yes, indeed," every time Captain Early spoke. But this time Captain Early

didn't speak much. He complimented his mother on the supper, told them that the

exposition was still behindhand, and allowed as how some of the athletic performances

scheduled to take place that summer, at the Olympic Games, which had been moved from

Chicago to St. Louis, could well be "enlightening." Mrs. Hitchens asked what the

Olympic Games were, and they were told that these were a competition between amateur

athletes from all parts of the world.

"Don't you remember?" said Mrs. Early. "They had them in Greece several years

ago, and then in Paris."

Lavinia and Mrs. Early discussed Christmas greenery and scarlet fever, and

Margaret told how Aurelius had finally died--"a blessing not to go through the winter,"

said Lavinia, and possibly Beatrice would send them another horse, "but horses are such

a bother," and everyone nodded, including Captain Early, who said, "Everyone will have

an automobile soon enough," and Lavinia said, "Can you imagine?" Margaret could tell

Lavinia was uncomfortable, because her tone of voice got suspiciously brighter each time

she spoke, and then she said, suddenly, "You know, Margaret here once witnessed a

hanging. A public hanging. But she doesn't remember a thing about it."

"Indeed!" said Mrs. Early, but gracefully, as if Lavinia were still talking about

Aurelius.

"She was five, or almost. It was the day Elizabeth was born. Her brother

Lawrence took her. I don't know what he was thinking."

"I remember that," said Mrs. Early. "It was quite an event. The last time in this

town for such a thing, thank goodness."

Captain Early said nothing for a moment, then, "That was the week John and I

went upstate to look for geodes. We took the train to Hannibal and then trekked up to

Keokuk."

Mrs. Early said, "You should see the boxes of rocks in the cellar. I'm sure there

are diamonds in there somewhere."

Captain Early said, "I sometimes feel as though I remember everything." He said

this in such a somber voice that Lavinia immediately added, "Margaret has such a good

habit of looking on the bright side of things."

This was when Mrs. Early, who was sitting catty-corner to her, momentarily put

her hand over Margaret's and gave a squeeze. The older woman's hand was warm, and

she said, "That is a personal quality that I've always appreciated."

But it was not a lively supper. Captain Early went back to Washington soon after,

and Margaret had the distinct feeling of staring into her own future, the same feeling she

had had so long ago, at the Fourth of July parade where John Gentry had fallen off his

chair and Robert Bell had seen his possibilities expand. The play had begun. The

customary ending was promised. Her own role was to say her lines sincerely and with

appropriate feeling. At her age, she thought, she should know what those feelings were,

but she did not.

As if to answer this question, Lavinia made sure Margaret was ever helpful that

winter and spring. If people were down with any sort of fever or pleurisy or rheumatism

and couldn't do for themselves, Margaret was the one who carried the baked beans to the

house or did the extra housework or went uptown to the store for provisions, especially if

the ill person was a maiden aunt or a widow or an impoverished woman of any sort. She

quilted at the church with ladies who had time on their hands, making rough comforters

to be handed out to those who couldn't afford their own. Lavinia's constant topic of

conversation was the misfortunes of these women, and the greatest of these was finding

themselves alone and unprotected in a world everyone acknowledged to be

unsympathetic and even dangerous. Every time Margaret settled into a chair and opened a

book, Lavinia wondered aloud whether Beatrice needed a hand, and maybe Margaret

should walk over there ("The fields are quite hard with this frost") and stay for a few

days, doing laundry. Margaret's future, as a result, seemed to narrow to a point, and the

point was this room, where they were knitting in air so cold that they could see their

breath by the lamplight.

Mrs. Early sent them things: dishes of brandied plums or a mincemeat pie. She

sent them oranges once, and books, of course, and special tea from Ceylon or China. She

came by and read them parts of the captain's letters, which they could see were lengthy

and neatly written. He had a good command of language, and liked to walk, so she often

read them his descriptions of his perambulations in Washington and Virginia--"Beloved

Mother, Here in Washington, the winter is well advanced, and spring at hand. I went with

Wilson Sunday into Rock Creek Park. The grass was up, in the tenderest threadlike

shoots, and the air was fragrant with moisture rising from the earth as we strode across it.

Wilson showed me where he uncovered a hand-ax and some spear points, demonstrating

to all and sundry (or those willing to accept the truth) that America has been peopled for

many thousands of years, just as Greece and Egypt have. The evidence is, of course,

fascinating, but I could not keep my eyes or my mind off the dogwood, which is in

flower, and the violets and toadflax." Margaret had to admit that there was something

wonderfully elegant about such outings, something far, far away from the sighs and

heavy fabrics of the quilting circle.

The Louisiana Purchase Exposition opened later in the spring, and everything in

the world was changed by it, but Lavinia and Margaret did not make their first visit until

the beginning of June.

Truly, it was not like anything Margaret ever saw before or afterward. It had been

promised that they would get the whole world into one end of Forest Park, and it seemed

as though they succeeded. Dora spent the entire summer at the exposition, supposedly

writing about it for various papers near and far, but really, she told Margaret, she could

not bear to leave, even when the weather was hot and the crowds were pressing and the

roads (miles and miles of them) dusty. Mrs. Bell had a proprietary pride in the fair, and

would hear nothing but praise for the beautiful trains in the Palace of Transportation, the

astounding electrical display in the Palace of Electricity and Machinery, the thrilling pipe

organ in the Festival Hall, or, for that matter, the contortionist outside of Mysterious

Asia. The world was jumbled together, with the Irish Village right beside the Tyrolean

Alps, but they got used to that. After three days, they went, dazzled and bewildered, back

to stay with Elizabeth in Kirkwood, and then returned home, only to go back to the

exposition in July, when it was much hotter but there was even more to look at. It was

then that they met Captain Early, who was staying in St. Louis with his mother and Mrs.

Hitchens, and "doing the whole thing."

The first day, they ate ice cream in the Tyrolean Alps; the day after that, they

looked at the sculptures in the Colonnade; the day after that, they watched an athletic

contest. Captain Early was in his element, and seemed eager to squire her about and show

her every mechanical miracle on display. The contortionist and the pipe organ were not

nearly so much to his taste as the
Moving Picture in Hardware
, or the ladies making

corsets by machine, or even the enormous teapot. He was mildly diverted by the display

in which criminals were measured, part by part, in order to demonstrate their criminal

tendencies, and, indeed, he did take her to the Human Zoo, where all the races of man

were shown off (and Geronimo was there, too). He was more animated than Margaret had

ever seen him. He took her arm and hurried her here and there, but also was attentive to

all of her possible desires--would she care for more ice cream, or for a sausage wrapped

in a bun, or for some cherries? He seemed as unaffected by the heat as he had been

unaffected by the cold on that strange winter day of their first meeting. Margaret saw now

that he was not exactly like other mortals--he knew more, saw more. His mind worked

more quickly and surveyed a broader landscape. Others stared at the three-thousandhorsepower steam turbine and the two-hundred-kilowatt alternator nearby, even removed

their hats in awe, but Captain Early laughed aloud with delight at the two machines. He

seemed positively joyful as dusk fell. He took Margaret's elbow, halting her on the path,

and then he gestured with his arm, and electrical lights lit up all around the park, as if he

himself were sparking them. Margaret gasped.

That was what won her in the end. Captain Early knew all about electricity, and it

seemed to her, as he spread his arms and raised his hat off his head only to put it back on

and laugh, that he was presenting her with a hidden and powerful force, asking her to

observe and embrace it, while everyone else seemed capable only of gawking. And she

did think, just then, that if it was meant for a man and a woman to share something with

each other that they did not share with anyone else, then, somehow, for Captain Early and

herself, this was it, the strange effervescence of the impending twentieth century, of

bright light beginning in one place and instantly being in another place in a way that you

did not sense with a candle or even a star.

As she felt this, they walked on. He was careful to anchor her hand on the sleeve

of his jacket, and to pat it from time to time. But, as she told Lavinia that evening when