Ahab's Wife, or the Star-Gazer

  “Not with us anymore.”

  “You don’t mean she’s died.”

  “In a manner of speaking, Miss Sheffield don’t exist.”

  “Mrs. Macy, what do you mean?”

  “I’m not Mrs. Macy.” She beamed.

  “Why of course you are,” I said, beginning to feel anxious. She and her sister did resemble each other—both covered with freckles—but this was the laundress.

  “You can’t expect us at home to sit still just because you go traipsing all over the country,” she said tartly.

  “But who are you except Mrs. Macy herself?”

  “The upshot of it is, Miss Sheffield is now Mrs. Hussey of the Try Pots, and I am now Mrs. Mustachioed Captain. Just like you!” She laughed and drew the shape of imagined mustaches under her nose.

  “Ahab is not mustachioed! But you’ve married the master of the Camel!” We both laughed, and I proceeded to hug her well. Even with my arms about her good neck, I grew sober and drew back. “But what has happened to my friend Charlotte of the Try Pots? to Mrs. Hussey?”

  “There’s a new Mrs. Hussey, and she was the old Miss Sheffield.”

  “What has happened to my Charlotte?”

  “Well, that is a story you need to sit down for. I hope it won’t be upsetting to you. It wouldn’t upset me. No, not with a captain for a husband, which is what I have. And what you have. Don’t be forgetting that. But come sit in the parlor before the fire, and I’ll bring you some China tea.”

  I sat down on my silk-upholstered parlor chair as though I were sitting on a basket of eggs. Did all these fine things belong to me? Perhaps they belonged to Mrs. Macy now. She seemed to be in charge. And I was filled with apprehension.

  When Mrs. Macy reappeared carrying the tea tray, I asked her forth rightly: “Charlotte has not died?”

  “That I can’t tell.”

  “Mrs. Macy—”

  “No longer Mrs. Macy—”

  “My dear friend, certainly you can tell if a person is dead or alive?”

  “It’s usually easy enough, yes, if you’re looking at the person. But even there a mistake can be made. We made it—you remember—after the fire, and we thought Isaac the gaoler to be dead, but in fact, he got up and is the father of a fine, golden-haired boy—Oh, Lord,” she said, “where is your baby?”

  Here I bit my lip, and tears of both grief and frustration swam to my eyes. “My baby died.”

  She grabbed her apron to her eyes and instantly had a cry. I sat waiting, as though, again, I were stunned by my own news. Finally, she peeped over the top of her apron—I had never seen it so wrinkled—and said how sorry she was. She soon followed up her heartfelt condolences with hope: “You shall have another sweet babe. Make no mistake about it. When Captain Ahab comes home, we’ll keep him here till the deed is done, even if I have to swim underwater and bore holes in the Pequod.”

  I sat quietly. She sniffled a few times, drank some tea, and then continued, in quite a different tone.

  “About Charlotte Hussey. She told me once that she had loved Kit Sparrow, what was your former husband, from the first moment she saw him, though they were both but children. Then when the news came back the Sussex had been stove by a whale and all hands lost, she married Mr. Hussey, the first Mrs. Hussey having died of natural causes, and I was as glad as any to see Charlotte pickup her life and go on. Then you and Kit came back, married. You know how that was.”

  I nodded, remembering the first time I had seen Charlotte’s merry face materialize from the steam of the chowder pot, and her amazement at seeing not a ghost, but a living Kit.

  “I really don’t know how that was for Charlotte,” Mrs. Macy went on. “I expect no one knows, unless maybe she told you, seeing as how you were friends. She was a dear girl, and she never placed blame where it was unwarranted.”

  “Was?”

  “I only mean during the time I knew her. She’s gone now.”

  “But, please. What do you mean by gone?”

  “Well, Mr. Mustachioed Captain of the Camel—I should call him Robert Maynard now, and I am Mrs. Maynard, if ever you should wonder what to call me—he arrives at Straight Wharf with a letter addressed to Charlotte Hussey, and clear as can be the return name on the envelope of Kit Sparrow. Not usually running out to Nantucket, and being all unfamiliar with the populace here, he—Captain Maynard—asks where to find Charlotte, and whoever that was he asked sees the return and says that Kit Sparrow is dead. So they take the letter to the judge.

  “Now I can’t say under what law he acted, but Judge Across-the-Street he takes it upon himself to open the letter and read it. Then Judge says not a word to anybody, but he sends for Charlotte Hussey. What was in that letter exactly, I do not know. None of us knows. Except the man over there across the street, and his lips are sealed.”

  A slight smile crept to my mouth. I could have bet Mrs. Macy—Mrs. Maynard—that before sundown I would know.

  “Go on,” I urged.

  “Well, that night, slick as a greased pig, Charlotte Hussey disappears. My captain claimed that somebody came down and put her on a little sloop. He thought it might be the judge, but the judge is the Judge Lord, not to be questioned, and you’re the only person I’ve even told what Captain Maynard told me. This is an island, Una, and the talk can twist round and round till there’s a whirlpool in the washtub. That’s not good for Nantucket, and I tell Captain Maynard that this is my home, though he may come and go as his work takes him, but I won’t have my home all stirred up over something he might have seen.”

  “Where did Charlotte go?”

  “Well, nobody knows. At least nobody tells. A couple of months pass. Poor Mr. Hussey is crying into the chowder so bad no salt is needed. And he’s run off his legs, for the new inn is three times as busy as the old place out Madaket Road could have ever been. About this time, another letter comes, shipped from Boston, but no return address on the outer envelope. It’s addressed to the judge.

  “He opens it and calls a group into his parlor to hear what it says. It’s from Charlotte—”

  “She’s alive!”

  “Well, at least at that time. I’ve not seen her since. She may be dead now, and that’s why I can’t say straight up if she’s alive or dead, murdered by Indians. But the letter, like I said, is from Charlotte, and the judge reads aloud that Charlotte says she is gone forever, and that the judge is to grant Mr. Hussey a divorce for desertion! If that don’t beat all.” She finished her tea.

  “I wonder what the letter from Kit said.”

  “I wouldn’t hurt you for the world. You were as sweet and faithful to him as a woman could be. But you see, they had all that growing up together. Well, nobody knows, except the judge, but some speculate that Kit asked Charlotte to come to him someplace out beyond the Great Lakes, and she’s done her best to find him.”

  “It seems possible,” I said, shaken. “Mrs. Macy—Mrs. Maynard—forgive me, but I need to rest.”

  “Well, there’s just a bit more.” She stood up. “I introduced Mr. Hussey to my sister, your housekeeper, and he married her. They say her chowder tops even Charlotte’s, and hers topped the Mistress Hussey’s before her. Not trusting your silver and fine china to just anyone, I moved in myself to keep house.”

  As quickly as I could, after expressions of appreciation, my brain dizzy with Mrs. Maynard’s recital of how names and identities had shifted, I retreated to my room, which was sparkling white and cozy as it had been on my stormy wedding night. My own room! I did get it back, despite Rebekkah Swain’s pronouncements.

  As I lay on the bed, I thought he had wanted her instead of me. A bitter tear squeezed from each eye. Kit could have sent for me. But I was married now, and I would not have wanted to leave Ahab or my home to live with Kit among the Indians. But Charlotte chose it. I was sure she had. Then let her choose it, and let him choose her!

  I would miss my friend, though. Had she guessed that I knew all along that Kit was not dead? Probably not.
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  Did the judge guess that I had misrepresented the facts? I heard Mrs. Maynard slip out the front door, and, rather faintly, I heard the brass clap from across the street of the judge’s pineapple knocker. After perhaps ten minutes, scarcely time at all either to rest or collect my thoughts, my own pineapple clanged away, and I wearily sat up, put on my shoes, straightened my hair, and went to greet the judge.

  He was all smiles and happiness to see me, but he immediately exclaimed, “How tired you look!” and asked if he should return later. “I’ve brought you a basket of jams,” he quickly added.

  How elegant he looked! Like a younger Benjamin Franklin, I noted again, bald dome but his straight side hair fell only to his jaw and not his shoulders. Austin Lord wore gray trousers and coat, cut from cloth of such tight and expensive weave that the color had no power to proclaim its drabness. And he wore a quilted vest of sky-blue silk, crossed in front by a silver watch chain. He was slimmer.

  I escorted him to the dining room and put down place mats and dishes for us. How unfamiliar these dishes were. Haviland china be decked with flowers and ribbons. I felt almost afraid of them.

  “I saw some Irish porcelain-paste dishes when I was in Boston,” he said. “They are so thin they make this look like frontier crockery.”

  “These are dainty enough,” I said shortly.

  “Mr. Hussey has twice brought me money—your return on the Try Pots. He prospers, Una. And you with him. But the business would have gone to rack and ruin if he hadn’t remarried.”

  “My dear friend,” I said, and I actually reached my hand out to him. “Don’t fiddle-diddle with me. Mrs. Macy—the new Mrs. Maynard—has half diddled me to death with her equivocations and misunderstandings. In heaven’s name, what has happened?”

  “Kit wrote to Charlotte. He didn’t ask her to come, but she determined to travel west. There was no stopping her. Finally, I gave her some money—some of mine and some of yours, since you have prospered so handsomely—to help her travel—and I wanted a financial collaborator in speeding them west. Who better than you?”

  It pleased me that the judge used his position so freely, in behalf of friendship.

  “Kit’s letter was mostly a sweet reminiscence of their childhood together,” he went on. “Charlotte took the letter with her.”

  “And she herself has written back. Has she found him?”

  “Well, not exactly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She didn’t write back.”

  “Mrs. Macy—Maynard—said there was a letter to you, from Charlotte.”

  “Try this guava jam, Una.” He put a smear of the ruby stuff, quite seedy-looking, on a biscuit and waited for me to try it.

  I did. “Delicious. But do we have something less fancy—domestic strawberry?”

  “The best. Made from the plainest Quaker strawberries.”

  “I discern that you are rather proud of yourself. And not over jam exotica. What news was in the letter Mrs. Maynard said you received from Charlotte?”

  His face turned red. “My dear, no one reads me as you do. I am delighted that my dear young neighbor has come home. Also, Una, I’m very sorry about the baby.”

  “My mother died, too,” I said petulantly. I felt like a child who was not getting her way fast enough.

  “Oh,” he gasped, and then stammered, “So sorry…” He waited a moment, then went on, “Well, the letter. I wrote it myself, to myself.”

  “You did what?” I could only stare; he blushed all over his bald head. “Suppose she returns, no Kit at all, and her husband has gone and married the third Mrs. Hussey?”

  “Well, Charlotte did leave Mr. Hussey. She should have sent such a letter. She should have legally released him. He was crying so hard—”

  “I know, that the chowder needed no salt. Mrs. Maynard told me.”

  “Una.” He was suddenly serious. “If you could have seen Charlotte that night. She was a woman on fire. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that she will look forever for Kit. Never again will she believe that he is dead. She would have to see his body herself.”

  My head whirled. “She might not be able to tell, even then. You can’t always, you know.” I remembered Isaac Starbuck, apparently lifeless, lying on the ground before the burning house.

  The judge regarded me anxiously. “She said that you had a husband, that you were going to have a baby. She said that you would not begrudge her Kit.” There he stopped, for he was truly curious about my reaction.

  “She’s right.” I looked at my judge and smiled.

  Austin Lord was my friend; he respected my judgment in spending my money and in deciding to travel as I wished; but he was the judge in Nantucket and not just “my” judge, as I liked affectionately to think of him. As we allowed a pause in our conversation, I contemplated him. His wealth and power were like polish on his being. He glowed with it. When I first came to him, I had been poor and my husband had been an outlaw and insane.

  “So what are you thinking now?” he asked me as he sipped his tea.

  “How is it,” I asked, “that we have become friends? My station was abject. I came to you with a plea. I suppose had Ahab not, by chance, bought the house across from yours, we would not have become friends.”

  “That was my good luck. I am grateful for it.”

  “And so am I.”

  There was comfort in his largess. He was a kind of protector.

  “It is partly luck,” he went on, “that we have become friends. But that first time you sat in my parlor with the gaoler, there was nothing abject about you. You had your purpose, your wish. That alone saves any human from abjectness. You wanted me to let Kit go. Did you get your wish? Yes. In the old fairy tales, it is the strength of the wish that transforms life. The wish is itself the magic wand.

  “And you already had a suitor, Una. You were blind to this, but half the unmarried young ladies in Nantucket—at least the ones whose families were not wealthy—were spellbound by the gaoler’s kindly nature, his easy strength, and his golden hair.”

  “Knowing that Kit is yet alive, will the town count any children I and Ahab might have to be legitimate?”

  “Only one person has asked me this. Can you guess who it was?”

  “The Unitarian minister?”

  The judge laughed. “No, Una. He is probably the most liberal and humane person in Nantucket. After, perhaps, William Mitchell.”

  “Mitchell?”

  “The scientist? The astronomer who sets the chronometers? No.”

  “Who, then, asked you?”

  “Think a moment. There is a clue in our most recent discourse.”

  “The gaoler.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Mrs. Macy—Maynard—has just told me he is married and has a golden child.”

  “When he asked me, I told Mr. Starbuck I had pronounced Kit legally dead, and your marriage to Ahab was as legal as any marriage, and your children as legitimate. I told him I was the absolute civil authority in the matter.”

  “Are you?”

  He did not deign to answer. As I looked at him, he seemed to grow larger. I put my hand on my forehead.

  “Una, I think you should go back to bed. But you have found home essentially intact. There is nothing here that has the power to stop your world from spinning at the same rate that you left it. You have jumped off and back on the turning top. The power of the law has kept it so, like magnetism or gravity.”

  “Ahab divorced me from Kit.” I gasped, for I had not meant to tell him. “And then married me to himself.”

  “Ahab did not think kit dead?”

  “No.”

  “Then he is as powerful as the law.”

  “He took me aboard the Pequod, and there on the spot where he had married Kit and me, when we were all far out at sea, he divorced us. And took me as his wife.”

  “You have left one outlaw for another.”

  “Ahab loves me in a way Kit was incapable of. And I him. Kit
’s vision was double, always ambivalent and double. Ahab’s vision has a piercing singleness to it. I am his single choice.”

  “This divorce by captain’s decree, and the marriage, then—they were what you wished?”

  “Yes, I wished it.”

  “And you thought you had no power!”

  “I feel weak enough right now.” Indeed, the room seemed almost in motion. The painted waves on the walls—while I focused on the clean-shaven, polished skin of my bald judge—seemed in my peripheral vision to sway.

  “I meant to make your homecoming light, with crumpets and sweetness.”

  I reached my hand across the table to him. It was a broad, shining mahogany board, and only our fingertips could touch. “No,” I said. “The conditions of home needed to be clear to me.”

  “Well, they are also much clearer to me.”

  “I’ve troubled your conscience?”

  “No. But you have astounded me. You and Ahab.” He fidgeted in his chair. “I had not reckoned his power, in his own lawless way, to be as great as mine. It’s a little unsettling.”

  I tightened my grip on his fingertips. “I do respect the law,” I said. (Why, having just put my own history into an honest light with him, did my lips so soon bubble out a partial truth?) “You have been a wonderful friend to me,” I added, with all my heart.

  He returned the squeeze. “Then very soon we shall settle again into our cozy, neighborly way. I shall introduce you to the Mitchells—a family you will enjoy.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Good. Now you should rest.” He released my fingers and pushed back his chair from the dining table. The painted ship over near the corner seemed to move. It was coming closer to home. The judge spoke yet again: “Let me leave you with an abstract question.”

  “Yes?”

  “You say that Ahab married and divorced you—”

  “Divorced and married—”

  “Quite right. Married, divorced, married. That he divorced and married you on the same spot on the deck of the Pequod where he had earlier married Kit and you.”

  “Yes. As nearly as could be told.”

  “And that makes a kind of rightness and order of things, doesn’t it?”