Ahab's Wife, or the Star-Gazer

  WHILE THE FURNITURE was being moved into my house (the door constantly opening to fan the flames of the four small fires I had lit in the fireplaces), while I was in the midst of directing the movers, who should walk in next—not my china cabinet—but Charlotte. She carried a small bundle of my things. I threw my arms around her. I asked the men to bring us two chairs and a small table, and we camped before the marble hearth of the parlor.

  As soon as we were settled, I realized that Charlotte, in the five or so weeks since I’d seen her, had been ravaged by grief and was even now in a most unsettled state of mind.

  “I received the letter from the judge,” she began, “so I’m not at all surprised, and I am happy for your good fortune—”

  “Captain Ahab,” I interrupted, “like your dear Mr. Hussey, is quite a bit older—”

  “But Kit—” And here she burst into tears. She hunched her shoulders and hung down her head and sobbed. The name of the flower “Bleeding Heart” came to mind, and I reached out with both hands to soothe her trembling shoulders. Behind her chair, the movers carried rolled rugs and boxes of china, never glancing at us.

  Yes, Kit. Was I so unmoved by his situation? Then I remembered: I knew him to be alive; Charlotte thought him dead because the judge would have written her so. Indeed, I had hoped that he would pass on to her his own mistaken notion that Kit was dead, so that Charlotte would forgive my marrying Ahab. But her inconsolable pain! She was the image of my own grief at Giles’s death. I scooted my chair closer and leaned my bosom into hers. I found her hand in her lap and squeezed it hard.

  “Have you no grief for Kit?” she finally burst out. “I am devastated,” she wailed.

  I resolved to tell her that Kit was not dead, but I did not want to shock her sensibility, so I started obliquely. I began quietly, “I have news to tell you. May I?” She grew more calm and nodded assent. “Ahab and I had but the one night, Charlotte. But, Charlotte, I find that I am with child.”

  At this she entirely stopped weeping. “So you are to have a child!” And then she burst out crying again in a strange mixture of joy and continuing sorrow. She added, “I think I shall never have a child, for it has been months with Mr. Hussey and me.”

  Then I felt very bad for her.

  “But I don’t want to have a child,” she blurted out. I saw one of the movers swing his head in our direction. “I want Kit.”

  “Charlotte, Charlotte,” I cooed. “You must stay with me for a while. I will cheer you up. You must help me get my kitchen in order, and I will make you a dress. I’m going to make one for Mrs. Macy. Such measuring and snipping and sewing we’ll have! And I’m to have a housekeeper, so we’ll do no work at all but what we choose. You’ll go with me to lectures, and we will have an endless gam.”

  “What will Mr. Hussey do without me?” She sniffled, but her crying was over. “Una, could we place a plaque to Kit in my church?”

  “We can buy anything we please. Captain Ahab is very rich. Oh, Charlotte, why don’t you and Mr. Hussey move the Try Pots into town? You’d have much more business if the sailors didn’t have to walk down the Madaket Road. Let’s do. Oh, please, let’s do it. I will help you. I’m to do just as I please with the money.”

  At this, she jumped from her seat, threw her arms around me, and sobbed anew. I began to feel aquiver myself in sympathetic vibration with her overwrought state. Consciously, I tried to calm myself. For the baby’s sake, I hoped that having her in the house would not disturb my equilibrium. I condemned the selfishness of such thinking, for this was Charlotte, who had taken Kit and me into her home when a lesser soul would have protected the peace of her own household. Though I duly prevailed upon her to spend the night, to sleep in my own bed with me, she eagerly prepared to leave, saying she would return to the Try Pots to discuss its relocation with Mr. Hussey.

  I had not amended her knowledge of Kit’s situation.

  Might not Charlotte proceed on a more even keel if she grieved for Kit as dead and gave up the idea of him? The joy of all the society of town might make up for the loss of one Kit Sparrow, who was, at best, half a figure created by her fantasy. All the time I directed the movers and unpacked my bright silver, I mused over this question and another: What about my reputation with myself for truthfulness? Perhaps it was only self-serving not to tell her the truth about Kit.

  I looked up to see Judge Lord, along with a freckled woman. She was Mrs. Macy’s sister Lenora Sheffield, and the judge proposed I hire her as my housekeeper. I was glad to do so, Mrs. Macy herself having declined. Straight off, leaving Lenora in charge, the judge carried me away from the bustling to his house to take tea. Here civilization was already in place.

  “And how will you arrange the books of your library, Mrs. Captain?”

  “Why, alphabetically, by the author’s last name,” I replied.

  He opined that the books should be put in coarse categories, such as literature, history, science, and art, and within the sections be arranged by date of publication. “In each discipline, knowledge evolves,” he said, “and this way you will have a picture of the development of ideas. Alphabetizing is arbitrary.”

  I could not but agree his plan was a more rational one, though mine might be more convenient in some ways. Nonetheless, I acquiesced to his system. While we talked and ate—he had noted my fondness for exotic jams and had stocked up on them (secretly) in Boston—a part of my mind began again to contemplate the truthfulness issue.

  I had not corrected his erroneous assumption about Kit’s fate; nor did I have any impulse to do so. Of course, it was not an important issue to him, though it was to Charlotte. Neither had forced me to fabricate details of Kit’s supposed death. And my allegiance to Charlotte, my integrity as Charlotte’s friend, was for me a spiritual issue, not merely a moral one. Still, I was troubled and pondered many times if I was being honest with myself in considering the reasons for silence. I was glad their assumption of Kit’s death arose from their own simple misunderstanding, and I had not compounded it with details. Perhaps Charlotte thought I was not possessed of much information.

  Wondering what Margaret Fuller would say to such a distinction between spiritual and moral matters, I asked the judge if he thought there was a difference. He liked the question.

  “Many churchmen would say, Una, that the spiritual is the foundation of the moral. Belief in a just God causes us to be good.”

  “Yet there are moral folk who are not religious.”

  “Do you truly think so?”

  “I myself am one.”

  “You have an interest in the Unitarians.”

  “Because it is a church that grants me freedom of thought. It does not dictate my actions.”

  “You probably have the potential for highly immoral acts, if none of God’s commandments bind you. But I believe that God’s laws are the foundation for the laws of a just society.”

  “Do you find Moses’ commandments a complete guide for behavior?”

  “Of course not: Jesus added the laws of love.”

  I remembered that he was an enthusiastic Methodist. “Do you think that love can be governed by law? I think love is a disobedient emotion.”

  “ ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’ The law is in place to meet that unruliness.”

  “ ‘Thou shalt not eat thy neighbor.’ There is no such law.” What a boldness had come upon me! “Yet all civilized folk abhor the practice. It is an absolute tabu.”

  “Well, I rather think ‘Thou shalt not kill’ takes care of the matter.” He stirred his tea triumphantly.

  “But suppose someone else has done the killing?”

  “I think that loving your neighbor as yourself covers the case. How would you like to be eaten?” The judge looked mischievous.

  “I think I should not mind it,” I said soberly. “If I were dead.”

  “I certainly could not bring myself to eat another human being.”

  There was something in his smugness, his erect posture on the ne
edlepoint seat of his chair, the unswaying stability of the room, that made me burst out at him: “Suppose you were starving. Starving unto death. And those about you whom you loved, on the very verge of death. And one of the company dies. Would you not urge your companions to take and eat? I would! I know I would! And were I the dead person, it would have been my last wish that I be consumed so that others might live.” And with this declamation, I crumpled into crying.

  “My dearest Una, let us change the topic. Such extremity need not be imagined. You are not in a wilderness. There is no starvation here. These issues are gruesome and hypothetical. They are morbid and Germanic. Are you quite well? Exhausted by the travel and the excitement, I think?”

  I thought to tell him I was pregnant, but I was shy of such a disclosure. “Germanic?” I thought of Margaret Fuller’s great interest in the Germans’ thought.

  “Oh, Goethe,” he said. “The Sorrows of Young Werther. It swept Europe in morbidity. People fancied themselves too sensitive to live, if they could not have the object of their love. Werther committed suicide because his beloved Charlotte was married to another. Young people throughout Europe followed suit.”

  “Did we buy this book?”

  “Not I.”

  I instantly resolved that I would write to Margaret, who, after all, was an expert on Goethe, and ask her to send the text and to comment on the inclination to morbidity as engendered by that writer. Perhaps there was in Margaret, in her essential sadness, a certain love of sorrow?

  “Why do you shake your head?”

  “Did I? It was at my own line of thinking. For myself…” I spoke slowly, for with the judge, as with Margaret, and with Ahab—though how different each was!—I could discover my thought in his presence. “For myself, I reject sorrow as essential to my being. I would pursue joy.”

  “It is part of your essential health.” My friend smiled at me, though there was still a trace of concern about his eyes.

  We changed our tea topic to the Try Pots, and I divulged my plan. In response, the judge stayed carefully neutral. Not even the lifting of his black eyebrow betrayed whether he thought my plan foolish or wise. I rather admired this careful neutrality. And he was helpful, making various suggestions about vacant lots and their availability for building. Suddenly he said, “It would be nice for you to have your close friend at hand, wouldn’t it? With your permission, I will make further inquiries.”

  Soon our discourse was broken off by a knock from the foreman of the movers, saying all was complete, and they were leaving.

  “Would you like me to accompany your inspection?” the judge asked.

  “Thank you, but…but I think I should like to amble my house by myself.”

  AS I WALKED through my home, furnished with the beautiful objects that I had bought, occasionally adjusting a chair, lifting a curtain, or tugging out a wrinkle in a rug, I felt myself blessed beyond any deserving.

  And I thought that I would not tell Charlotte that Kit was yet alive. Though it left me a liar, it left me having placed a higher value on Charlotte’s happiness than on my own clean conscience. But was it not arrogance in me that made me think I knew best in the matter, that my hand at the stopcock had the wisdom to regulate the flow of truth?

  The image oddly caused me to see myself as a male wizard in the midst of experimentation. And oddly that image gave way to one of Ahab, his hand on the tiller of the Pequod. The ship parted the waves at his will. I missed my husband.

  Everything being in order, the house being left with Mrs. Macy’s sister as guardian housekeeper, not to mention Judge Lord across the street and Mr. and Mrs. Hussey in residence while they directed the construction of their new inn, it was time to commence my journey to the silent Lighthouse and thence on to Kentucky.

  CHAPTER 87: Childhood as an Island

  SENTIMENTALLY, I wished I could hire the Camel to take me back to the Island, as it had taken me away. But Captain Mustachio was away. I hired a sloop to take me directly from Nantucket to the Lighthouse.

  As I sailed away from Nantucket, I felt the final loosening of the bonds that marriage to Kit had imposed upon my spirit. Now I was married, but because my husband was independent, so was I. Yet I missed Ahab, and a lump rose in my throat whenever I thought of him. I thought of John Donne’s poem “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” in which one is to imagine a compass describing a circle. The woman is the fixed point of that inverted V formed by the stance of the two-legged compass upon the paper. While the circle is drawn, the woman who is at its center merely turns in place. The man makes his circular voyage. Donne says that if the circle of the man’s voyage widens to a larger radius, then the fixed foot “leans, and hearkens after it,” which is true: as the circle becomes larger the compass stretches ever flatter to the page. So I felt myself to ever be harkening and leaning after Ahab as he sailed farther and farther away, even though in my case I had my own little journeys to make. In spirit, I was fixed in place, yearning, if not mourning, for my husband.

  And when the voyager comes home—to complete the compass figure—the twin arms embrace; he stands perpendicular to the page, erect, his wife beside him.

  During the last three weeks in Nantucket, waiting for spring as a safe time for my own travel, my longing for Ahab, my strong desire that he should see his hearth and home so beautifully and completely furnished, that he should take happy pride in my pregnancy, that he should share again with me that bed where our heads had made but one dent—all such desires had grown every day. My waist was thickening ever so slightly; in my breasts a special tenderness rapidly developed. I needed much sleep, and my appetite, particularly for the judge’s jams and jellies, increased geometrically. (The judge had found an importer of the wares of missionaries’ wives; hence, my jellies might be based on mangos from India, kiwi, coconut, pomegranate from the Holy Land. From the California territory came an avocado paste that I adored on salty crackers.)

  When two more weeks had passed and there was no possibility of error, I told the judge that Ahab and I were to have a child; then the judge branched into other fine foods for me—caviar from Russia, French pâtés, double Gloucester cheeses, heart of palm, water chestnuts from China. I saw him every day and ate with him perhaps as frequently as every other day.

  As I sailed the open water toward the Lighthouse, it pleased my grateful heart no end that Charlotte and Mr. Hussey had decided to move to town and that I had been able to offer them hospitality at Heather’s Moor. Their new tavern would be more extensive than the old one, though many of the old fixtures, including the wonderful seasoned chowder pots, were to be moved. Mr. Hussey insisted that I be given a silent partnership in the new Try Pots Tavern, which he swore would eventually bring me in a nice income. The judge himself considered the money I provided to be a wise financial investment, though I would have been happy to throw it down a rat hole for their sake.

  Charlotte invested the relocation of home and livelihood with her usual radiant cheer. She seemed truly happy, and I was glad I had chosen to let stand the judge’s erroneous conclusion that Kit was dead. I tried my best to examine motives advantageous to myself in the idea that I had become a widow before becoming a wife for the second time, but I convinced myself that Charlotte’s welfare accounted for my choice primarily. I was not entirely pure, and to this day I feel some guilt and discomfort over the issue. But human beings are morally complex, women as well as men, and I must live with that.

  During these weeks, as the spring came on, I had run up two beautiful dresses for my dear Nantucket friends Charlotte and Mrs. Macy, and I wrote twice to Margaret Fuller, who duly sent me the works of Goethe, but alas they were in German, which she bade me learn. By another route, I acquired English translations. I preferred the story The Apprenticeship of Wilhelm Meister to that of Werther; while Werther disintegrated, Wilhelm learned from the wonder of life, and grew.

  My sea journey took but a day and a night and half of the next day. We were a little out of our way, for
my boat commander perceived squalls developing on the horizon ahead, and he wisely chose to navigate around. In truth, I did not like the idea of a rough sea. While I had had no experience at all of nausea with my pregnancy, I did not want to test my immunity.

  The Lighthouse appeared as vague as a stroke of charcoal, on its headland, in the misty distance, much as it had when I was twelve years old and approaching it for the first time. It seemed to me a totem of family love, insular, safe, and complete. My excitement was an evanescence all through my body. I hoped my babe, no larger than a small fish, swam in those bubbles and participated in their joy. What wonderful people they were—Uncle, Aunt, and Frannie. I adored and treasured each of them. And their new child, too.

  Now I could see that the column was made of stones, and I could discern the open balcony that encircled the tower just below the lantern room. As they had approached in the Petrel, Kit and Giles had seen me up there, fighting an eagle. The roof of the cottage became visible when the Cricket hove around the headland and approached the small wharf on the low side of the Island. Goats! They still had the goats.

  A wind was coming up steadily, and it must have been fierce enough on the Island to keep the family inside. Smoke came from the chimney, puffing away quickly in the wind. I wanted them to notice our arrival and come out. I wanted to see Frannie jumping with delight.

  As we approached the dock, a child in brown trousers ran from the door. Not Frannie, and far too old to be the new baby, if he was a boy. Perhaps they had taken in another cousin. I felt a small stab of jealousy. I wanted nothing to have changed; I wanted no replacement by some distant kin. I felt confused by this child, who exhibited no particular excitement in us.

  I stepped onto the dock, while the boy called over his shoulder, “Ma! Pa!” His adults came out—not Aunt and Uncle. My head spun with the confusion and disappointment of it. I nearly fainted and went down on one knee. Quickly the woman ran to help me up. I peered into her face, which acted as my mirror, as though I had lost my mind. Here was a pale, middle-aged woman, with smooth brown hair and brown eyes. An ordinary woman. Nothing of Aunt’s fierce spirit about her. She was speaking, but I could not answer her. The captain of my sloop came forward, explaining for me, and they helped me into the house.