Twain's End (7 page)

“Of course you have. She's quite the outspoken girl, in a very outspoken family.”

“—but I've only caught a glimpse of Mrs. Clemens while passing her room on the way to the card game. At least I believe it was her. She stepped out of sight before I could see.”

The tinkling sound of a music box wafted into Isabel's memory.
She felt once more the sadness radiating from that room, as if a creature were struggling to be freed with the silent anguish of a butterfly beating within an overturned glass. She shook off the disturbing feeling.

“She must be interesting. It must be amusing to be married to Mr. Clemens.”

“You think so?” Mrs. Whitmore's gaze went to Isabel's hair. Isabel had taken extra pains to brush and re-pin it into a twist and, in a burst of energy, had crowned it with her garnet and pearl comb, a relic from her past.

Mrs. Whitmore kept her gaze on Isabel's comb. “I know that Livy was supposed to have fallen down skating when she was sixteen and that walking has been difficult for her since then, but she spends so much time in her room—more than you'd think a fall twenty years ago would warrant.”

Isabel plunked on her hat, covering her hair none too soon. “I didn't know of her injury. I'm sorry.”

“Sometimes I think her old skating wound is the least of it.” Mrs. Whitmore brought her gaze down to Isabel's eyes. “I suspect that Mr. Clemens—”

“Mr. Clemens what?” Mr. Whitmore came down the stairs.

Mrs. Whitmore raised the pitch of her voice. “Mr. Clemens curses entirely too much.”

Mr. Whitmore nodded coolly at Isabel before smiling at his wife. “That he does. I don't think Livy will ever take the country boy completely out of him. He's as rough as a cob, in spite of that hulk of a house.”

Mrs. Whitmore shook her head. “That house! What a spectacle! That is what comes of having more money than sense. I don't care that it's bigger than ours—poor Livy!”

“Poor neighbors,” said Mr. Whitmore, buttoning his coat.

“Poor neighbors?” said Mrs. Whitmore. “The rest of them are every bit as colorful over there in Nook Farm as he is, what with Harriet Beecher Stowe wandering like a ghost in house slippers in and
out of everyone's house, now that she's lost her mind, and her sister Isabella Hooker harboring all those suffragettes who keep landing themselves in jail. I shouldn't be surprised if Mr. Clemens finds himself in jail someday, wild as he is.” She handed her husband his hat from the rack. “It wouldn't be the first time, from what I understand. Livy said that when he was wooing her, her father tried to turn him away after details of his unruly past came to light, but Mr. Clemens just had to have her and she just had to have him. I wonder if she's so glad now.”

“Of course she is.” Mr. Whitmore clapped on his hat. “They are happily married.”

Seventeen-year-old Frederick trampled down the stairs, his dark hair flapping into his eyes. His cheeks, already pink with youth, reddened when he saw Isabel.

“Where are you going in such a hurry?” asked his mother.

“To a play with some fellows.” He grinned at Isabel. “Miss Lyon, they asked if you could go.”

Mr. Whitmore touched Isabel's back. “She may certainly not.” Mrs. Whitmore's gaze went to her husband's hand. Isabel moved within her own skin, willing his touch away. Mr. Whitmore unknowingly dropped his hand. “Which fellows are you going with?”

“Russell and Theodore. They would really like Miss Lyon to go.” Frederick threw his striped scarf over his shoulder. “You ought to, Miss Lyon. We'd be more fun than Father's crowd.”

“Watch it,” said Mr. Whitmore.

“We aren't a bunch of old men who come home smelling like they've been rolled in ashes.”

“Off with you!” said his mother, whisking him out the door. She turned to her husband when Frederick had gone, tucking her arms under her bosom. “Shouldn't you and Isabel be going, too?”

Mr. Whitmore pecked her on the cheek. “We'll be back.” He opened the door for Isabel. His carriage was waiting for them under the porte cochere. “We can't walk tonight,” he said when she paused. “Too wet.”

She got into the carriage. He sat heavily next to her. The vehicle shuddered forward with a clatter of hooves on wet paving blocks. Over the stony smell of the rain, she inhaled the spicy scent of his flesh doused with shaving lotion.

Silence mushroomed between them as they rocked within the musty leather walls of the carriage, the rain drumming on the roof. She ached to adjust the space between them. The heat of his leg next to hers made her want to squirm.

She kept her voice light. “I wonder what ridiculous story Mr. Clemens will tell us tonight.”

Mr. Whitmore cleared his throat, then inched his leg closer. After a moment he said, “I'm worried about Mark. You know that I handle some of his business . . . ?” There was more than a hint of pride in his tone.

“Yes. I'm sure he must be grateful.”

“Mark pays three thousand dollars a month to Mr. Paige for development of that infernal typesetter he so loves, resulting in an investment that is nearing three hundred thousand. Not even Mark Twain can afford to throw that kind of money down a pit. I'm afraid that he's going to lose everything.”

“Surely he knows what he's doing.”

“Just because a man is intelligent doesn't mean that he has sense.”

Just then the carriage jerked to a stop, throwing them forward. Mr. Whitmore flung out his arm to catch her, brushing her breast. He snatched away his arm as if singeing it on an iron.

“Jimmy!” he bellowed out the window. “What in God's name are you doing?”

The driver shouted back. “A dog, sir! It ran out.”

Mr. Whitmore blew out his breath and threw himself back, rubbing his offending arm. He edged away, to Isabel's relief.

“I'm just saying that Mark isn't the hero that you think he is,” he said testily. “He has absolutely no mind for business, although why anyone would expect that from a humorist, I wouldn't know.”

“Does anyone expect that from him?”

“I should think that his wife might find that to be an admirable quality.”

They spoke no more until they reached the Clemens house shortly thereafter.

• • •

Mr. Clemens threw down his jack of spades in disgust. “Even Christ couldn't take tricks with these cards.”

Isabel coolly put her ace on it, then scooped up the deal.

Mr. Clemens sat back and smoked his cigar. “Your girl is ruthless, Whitmore,” he drawled. “Do you really trust her with your children?”

“Do you expect her to let you win,” Mr. Whitmore said almost peevishly, “like one does with a little child?”

“It wouldn't go unappreciated. But she won't. She's as cold as a San Francisco summer.” Mr. Clemens caught Isabel's gaze. He let his sights travel to her garnet and pearl comb before languidly picking up his drink.

Aware of his admiration, she posed for him as she sorted through her cards. “Better to be cold than unlucky.”

“Better to be unlucky than dead.” Mr. Clemens took a gulp of whiskey. “Wait a minute—I'm not so sure of that.”

They exchanged a smile that was limited to the eyes, the art of which Isabel had not fully valued before making Mr. Clemens's acquaintance. Who knew that forcing a grin away from your mouth drove it directly into your heart? She craved the game within the game that they had invented over the weeks, in which he protested her cruelty and she rewarded him with mock aloofness. No boys she had met when she was marriageable had been half as much fun. Suddenly, she was very glad she had worn the garnet and pearl comb.

“When does your next book come out, Mark?” Reverend Joe played his card. “What's the name of it again?”

“
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
Comes out next month by subscription.”

The men held up their glasses. “Congratulations.”

Mr. Clemens raised his cup, then tipped his chair back on two legs. “Thanks, but this is my literary swan song, boys. I am done with this unsatisfactory business.”

“Unsatisfactory?” said Reverend Joe. “You're the most widely read author in America.”

“And the most uncomfortable. Even with Howell editing instead of Livy—that goddamn eye infection has been plaguing her all year—I had to take out the most important bits. Now these truths burn in me, and they can't ever be said. Do you know what a damned prickly feeling that is?”

When he saw his friends' discomfort, he rocked forward. “Gentlemen, I got a telephone call today—Paige expects to start production Monday. Say hello to the new Prince of Printing.”

They clinked glasses, Mr. Whitmore rather reluctantly.

Isabel sipped her water. “What truths, Mr. Clemens?”

Mr. Clemens put down his drink. For once he looked at her neither fiercely nor flippantly but with a growing seriousness. A knock came on the billiards room door.

“Who is it?” Mr. Clemens shouted.

The haughty Irish maid opened the door.

“Yes, Katy?”

She blinked as if taken aback by her employer's unmasked expression. They looked at each other longer than a servant and master should.

“Mrs. Clemens is asking for you.”

He rose without questioning her.

When he returned to the room perhaps a quarter of an hour later, he was his old self again, making salty remarks and dry observations. The party broke up before midnight, with the gentlemen half tipsy and Isabel steeped in smoke. As she was spiraling down the flamboyant staircase with Mr. Whitmore, she thought she heard a woman crying. Gripping the newel post on the second-floor landing, she paused to listen.

“Wouldn't you say that was right, Miss Lyon?” Mr. Whitmore said, continuing his conversation. He saw that she was listening to something elsewhere. “What is it?”

The crying stopped. The very air seemed to be holding its breath.

Uneasy, Isabel started forward again. “Nothing.”

• • •

Months passed. The card games were suspended due to one or another of the gentlemen being called out of town, and then the summer season intervened and everyone escaped to the countryside. To Isabel's disappointment, the Friday-night games did not reconvene in the fall. Mr. Whitmore claimed that as busy as he was at work, he wanted to spend his evenings at home, and encouraged her to join the family circle.

One November afternoon, the weather outside as dreary as her life, she was giving the younger Whitmores a history lesson when Frederick, now eighteen and only a visitor to the nursery, spoke up. “I like this place, Pompeii.” He swung the leg he had hooked over the arm of the leather chair. “It's gruesome.”

The youngest boy, thirteen-year-old Harold, gaped up from the rug before the fireplace. “Miss Lyon, were the people really caught in the act of whatever they were doing?”

“Well,” said Isabel, “yes. The volcanic ash rained down on them and covered them completely, then hardened, forming perfect casts. They were caught bent over tables, sitting against walls, crawling, even—”

“In bed?” Frederick thumped his leg against the chair.

Eleven-year-old Ruth jumped up when her mother entered the room. “Mamma! Miss Lyon is telling us about the most terrible place.”

“Pompeii,” Isabel informed her employer. “We are studying the Roman empire.”

Mrs. Whitmore nodded distractedly. “Isabel, may I speak to you a moment, please?” Once she had drawn Isabel into the hall, she said,
“I'm asking a favor of you. I have a dear friend in Philadelphia who is in great need. Emilie Dana has just returned from abroad, where she lost her seven-year-old son to meningitis.”

“I'm so sorry,” Isabel murmured.

“It is a sad story. To lose one's child! There is nothing worse.” She sighed deeply, the corners of her mouth furrowing. “Well, now there's the daughter to care for, ten-year-old Millicent, and I fear Mrs. Dana is not up to mothering her. She asked if I knew of a governess—and well, they need you more than I do now. It would be just until they get settled in.”

Isabel let what her employer was asking sink in. “You want me to go to Philadelphia?”

“Yes. Just for a while.”

“But your children—”

“Oh, they'll survive. This is only temporary. You'll like the Danas. Mr. Dana is a gentleman professor, like your father—he teaches art. He's not a boring old banker like Mr. Whitmore.” She smiled pointedly.

Isabel blinked at her. Was she being let go?

“I told Emilie that you would be there tomorrow. You don't mind, do you?”

Isabel thought of her mother, now living with her sister in Farmington, only an eight-mile ride away. Philadelphia was hundreds of miles beyond that—there would be no more Sunday visits. She thought of the Whitmore children in her charge. They would grow up without her. After a little while, they would not even notice she was gone, or when they did think of her, they would experience only a twinge of melancholy, like one did when remembering a favored childhood dog. This was not her home. They were not her family. She was only perched here, allowed to stay on as long as it suited them. Even if she'd done nothing to encourage Mr. Whitmore's advances, even though she kept him at arm's length, there was nothing to keep her here should Mrs. Whitmore grow too uncomfortable.
Isabel's own good behavior couldn't save her. Her mistake had been in not understanding that.

“When do I go?”

“There's a train at eleven-twenty-three in the morning.”

Isabel thought briefly:
No more card games with Mr. Clemens.
And then put such dreams out of her mind.

“All right.” She kept her sigh to herself, for pride's sake. Pride was all she really had.