“Are you not going to ask me how I enjoyed our sleigh ride?”
Austin said nothing.
“I take it you found a way to pass the time.”
Still he said nothing.
“Why won’t you talk to me, Austin? Have I done anything to displease you? If so, please tell me.”
Still Austin said nothing. So Sue took a step nearer the abyss.
“Have you seen Mrs. Todd recently?”
“You know I have,” said Austin.
“Will you be seeing her again?”
“Of course. Why should I not?”
“I never said you should not.”
A silence. Austin had expected an accusation, and in its absence he was unsure how to proceed. He had his defensive indignation ready, like a pile of dried tinder, but it needed a match.
“You are free to walk with your friends whenever you choose,” said Sue.
“I should hope so.”
“Of course, if you show too marked a preference, you must expect to give rise to rumors.”
“I can’t be responsible for the fancies of idle minds.”
“But you would not wish me to be insulted.”
“How have you been insulted by any word or action of mine?”
His cold gravity was designed to force his wife into either acquiescence or an open breach. But Sue knew that in one respect at least her position was unassailable.
“You’ve never meant to insult me, Austin,” she said, “and I know you never will, because I am your wife. An insult to me is an insult to you.”
“Just so,” said Austin.
“I know you value your position in society. I know you’re a man of principle and a man of faith. I know that you never would or could betray your marriage vows. That must be my consolation. You are my husband, till death do us part.”
To this Austin gave no answer at all.
• • •
That September Mabel Todd’s story, “Footprints,” was published in the New York Independent, to general acclaim. The Amherst Record reprinted it. David Todd ordered a private printing, and gave out copies as gifts to friends and colleagues.
“I don’t expect you to have read it, my dear,” said Mrs. Jameson to Sue Dickinson. “It’s not your kind of thing at all. The writing is surprisingly sentimental for one who sets up to be sophisticated. But the great wonder is how the husband can bear to have it read by all the world!”
“Only a little wonder, I think,” said Sue drily. “And not quite all the world, surely? They say the Atlantic Monthly turned it down.”
Alone with Austin, she broke her vow of silence on the subject of Mrs. Todd enough to say, “I hear you’ve become the hero of a work of romantic fiction.”
“Mrs. Todd has published a beautiful story,” said Austin. “Have you read it?”
“Do you advise me to?”
“My advice has very little success with you.”
“You are my husband. I respect your opinions.”
“Except in the matter of wallpaper.”
“I may go my own way when it comes to the decoration of the home in which I live and over which I preside,” said Sue angrily. “But I hope I know how to behave when it comes to matters of law and decency.”
“I know of no law against the writing of stories. Yes, I advise you to read it. Her hero is a man who has lived too long with loneliness. Mrs. Todd imagines his feelings with great delicacy.”
“Does this lonely hero have a wife?”
“He is unmarried.”
“Then Mrs. Todd can get him married, and he’ll not be lonely anymore. Does she marry him off by the end of the story?”
“A marriage is in prospect.”
“A happy ending! Marriage is always the happy ending, isn’t it? How could it be otherwise?”
Her voice trembled a little as she spoke. Austin caught a sudden glimpse, through the cracks in the armor of her bitterness, of the wounded creature within. But he had gone too far, and the gulf between them was too great. He gave no answer.
“I have work to do.”
He retreated to his study.
He had gone too far, and yet not far enough. He found himself locked in daily struggle with a terrible temptation. His love for Mabel was a love of the spirit; it was the joyous discovery of a sympathetic companion on life’s bitter journey. The ecstatic release he felt in her company was pure, and holy, and surely a gift from God. His marriage was not negated, it was complemented. However, when he took Mabel in his arms and kissed her, when he felt the soft yielding pressure of her body against his, he knew that there lay waiting a deeper love, and one that he craved more with every day that passed.
He had never spoken aloud of such hopes to Mabel, but his instincts told him he was not wrong to hope. He sensed in her every touch the invitation to further touch. Still he hesitated. If he were to ask, and she were to grant, what then? He felt himself to be standing on the edge of a cliff. So small a step, so great a fall.
It was impossible. It would be a crime, and it would be a sin. It would shatter the whole edifice on which he had constructed his life. His love for Mabel must remain forever unconsummated.
“I believe our love comes from God,” Mabel said to him, understanding every turn of his thoughts. “If God has brought us together, God will find a way to join us in sacred union.”
They both found it comforting and exciting to co-opt religious terms in this way. Mabel wrote to Austin:
I trust you as I trust God. The way in which you love me is a consecration—it is the holy of holies, and a thought, even commonplace, would desecrate it. I approach it even in my mind as a shrine, where the purest and noblest there is in me worships.
Secretly—this she dared not say openly even to Austin—Mabel hoped that Sue would die. Austin, released from his marriage vows by death, would then be free to marry her. Quite what would happen to David she did not consider.
• • •
In the end it was a death that brought about the sacred union, but not Sue’s death. Little eight-year-old Gilbert, known as Gib, the sweet-tempered joy of his father’s heart, contracted typhoid fever. Austin abandoned all his legal and college affairs to sit by the boy’s bedside. He hardly saw Mabel at all. Sue, in terror for her youngest child, nevertheless felt that the illness had restored her husband to sanity. Wracked with suffering for his boy, he had become the father of the family again.
Doctors were sent for, and all was done for the child that could be done. Day followed day, and the fever did not abate. The doctors looked ever more solemn. Sue prayed by the bedside, and Austin prayed with her, his doubts overwhelmed by his need.
“Let him live, Lord,” he prayed. “He’s without sin. Let others pay for their transgressions. Let my little one live.”
Gib himself bore his illness with such exemplary sweetness that his father was harrowed.
“He never complains,” he said to Sue.
“Why should he complain?” said Sue. “If he leaves us, it’ll be to run straight into the arms of God.”
Sue was magnificent: the strong center of the household as they waited night after night for the denouement. She managed Gib’s medicines, fed him such food as he could eat, washed him. She never seemed to need sleep herself, and she never seemed downcast. She went about her duties with a shining face, her head held high.
She only spoke of Mabel once, and indirectly.
“I hear the theatricals are going ahead,” she said to Austin.
The village was to have an amateur production of Mrs. Burnett’s A Fair Barbarian. Mabel Todd had agreed to play the leading part.
“I care nothing for that,” said Austin.
This was sweet for Sue to hear. While she nursed their sick child, Mabel was making a spectacle of herself on a public stage. This would not be lost on Austin.
Then after six weeks, uncomplaining to the end, little Gib died.
Austin was devastated. His grief was compounded by guilt. Was th
is God’s punishment for his illicit love? He withdrew from all society, including Mabel’s, and for a while lost himself in solitude and silence.
The Evergreens entered deep mourning. Sue dressed in black like a widow, and seemed to age beyond her years. Death possessed the house and the family, and it seemed as if they welcomed it.
Emily sent a letter of condolence, one of her strange unfinished notes:
His life was full of Boon, I see him in the Star, and meet his sweet velocity in everything that flies—His life was like the Bugle, which winds itself away, his Elegy an Echo—his Requiem ecstasy—
When Austin emerged at last from the paralysis of grief, Sue was waiting. She expected her husband to be a chastened man, ready to join her in the shared solemnity of mourning.
“Dear Austin,” she said to him, “our boy is gone forever. But he has left us the great gift of his sweet love. We have Ned, we have Mattie. We have each other.”
Austin stared at her uncomprehendingly.
“Austin?”
She took a step towards him, reaching out her hands. To her horror he let out a cry and drew back.
“What is it, Austin? I’m your wife.”
“Leave me alone!”
“Husband! We must stand by each other!”
“He’s dead,” said Austin. “Let the dead bury their dead. I want to live!”
With these terrible words, he left the house that had now become for him a tomb, and ran through the trees to the Homestead. There he begged Vinnie to send for Mabel. Mabel came, and took him in her arms, and there he found the life he craved.
“I live for you now,” he told her again and again. “Only you. I have only you. You are life to me, my darling. Only our love is real now.”
It was as if he had abandoned all his former constraints, and was born again. He no longer cared for his reputation, or for his wife’s feelings. He was possessed by a single overwhelming conviction: death is near, now is the time to love.
“I have no more doubts,” he told Mabel. “Why should there be any barriers between us? Why should we not come as close to each other in body as we are in soul? Is this not what we were made for?”
His love for Mabel was more intense than it had ever been. He had overcome his scruples. He stood within reach of the joy he had been denied for so long. He trembled with longing, and found in his own ecstatic surrender the sure evidence that this was the true path, that this was life, and everywhere else there was death.
Mabel understood and rejoiced. She wanted to bind Austin to her for all time, and she knew that the closest bond was not a wedding ring. She had it in her power to make him the gift of her body. Once given, there was no way back. They would be lovers. They would be one.
But first, following the dictates of her own private morality, she sought David’s permission.
“My dearest,” she said to him, “you know how Mr. Dickinson has been broken by his boy’s death. The dear man nearly died himself. But now he wants to live. He wants to find comfort in the world. I know I can give him that comfort.”
“Of course you can,” said David. “Who would not be comforted by my sweet darling?”
“You’re my own husband, and you know I love you, and I always will. But you know how close I’ve grown to Mr. Dickinson. You know there’s so much love in me that I can love him too.”
“I’m proud to call Mr. Dickinson a friend. Your love for him does you honor. He’s a remarkable man.”
“My best husband in the world! How many husbands would understand as you do?”
“My sweet,” he said, “you and I have always been open with each other. Before we were married I made you a confession. A lesser woman might have broken the engagement for that alone. But you chose to understand my nature, and to love me as I am. I have loved others. I have never denied it. Why should you not do the same?”
Mabel kissed him and was almost reassured. But she wanted to be quite clear that he understood and approved her intentions.
“Before this latest blow,” she said, “Mr. Dickinson held back from the final proof of his love for me. His noble nature caused him to feel that the obligations he had undertaken forbade taking that step. Now, his spirit half crushed by grief, he turns from death to life, and finds it in me. In my arms. In my love. In my fullest love. In all that lies in my power to give. How can I deny him what he asks?”
“You cannot, and you should not,” said David. “Love him as you love me.”
“Darling! Darling!” She covered him with kisses. “What have I done to deserve so perfect a husband? How can I repay you?”
“Keep no secrets from me, my sweet. There need be no false shame between us. Let’s all three give love and receive love, as nature has made us, openly and joyfully. Love him for me too.”
• • •
Secure in David’s approval, Mabel and Austin prepared themselves for the final consummation of their love. Three days after the conversation with David, on the evening of December 13, 1883, the lovers met in the dining room at the Homestead. Vinnie and Emily were accustomed by now to their trysts and made sure to allow them the privacy they needed. The spinster sisters had no way of knowing, now or later, exactly what transpired behind that closed door.
The iron stove burned bravely, warming the dining room. An oil lamp on the table sent out its soft, flattering glow. They drew the sofa close to the heat, and sat there, side by side. Slowly, with trembling fingers, Austin unbuttoned Mabel’s dress, and unlaced her undergarments. When she was partially unclothed, he came to a stop, overwhelmed by wonder. He gazed at her body in the lamplight, unable to believe that such joy was permitted him. Gently she took his hands and pressed them to her breasts, saying without words, See, my body is yours. I give it to you.
He slipped down onto his knees before her. For both of them it was an act of worship.
It had been a long, slow courtship. From the evening of “going by the gate” to the night of the consummation of their love, fourteen months had passed; four hundred and twenty-eight days of ever-intensifying passion. From now on, Mabel regarded her relationship with Austin as a second marriage.
• • •
On December 20 the Todds left Amherst for a long stay in Washington. From her parents’ house, Mabel wrote Austin a poem of her own devising. She added it to the end of a letter, and she called it “P. S. First”:
You are all that I have to live for—
All that I want to love,
All that the world holds for me
Of faith in a world above.
You came—and it seemed too mighty
For my human heart to hold;
It seemed, in its sacred glory,
Like a glimpse through the gates of gold.
Like life in the perennial Eden,
Created, formed anew,
This dream of a perfect manhood
That I realize in you.
12
Stand at the top of the stairs. Look down into the dark hallway below. She’s there with him, the one he loves, the one I need. A door opens. The rustle of a dress as a half-glimpsed woman passes quickly down the passage, and out of the back door. Don’t move yet. Wait.
He comes out more slowly, as if deep in thought. Halfway across the hallway he stops. He knows he’s watched. He looks up, and there’s wonder on his face.
Come down the stairs now, holding tight to the banister, taking each step carefully.
“Why, Em, you’re not well!”
This is true, but it’s of no account. Reach out to him, press one hand to his arm.
“Are you happy, brother?”
He says, “I have no words.”
“But you’re happy?”
“I never knew such happiness was possible.”
This is good. This is as it should be.
I say, “Make me feel it.”
“What can I say?” But the glow of his face speaks for him. “An explosion—of joy . . .”
An explosion.
Like the firing of guns. His arm trembles beneath my hand.
“She loves you too, Em. She feels so close to you.”
I say, “She must come closer.”
He thinks I mean something else.
“Will you see her? She wants so much to meet you.”
“There will come a time,” I say.
He goes on his way, to make his shout in the noisy world. I climb back up my mountain to my lookout. Every day the path a little steeper, until the day I take wing and fly.
Just my little toot of vainglory. There’ll be no playground in the sky when the time comes. Down I shall sink, and the darkness will close over me.
But I do not mean to be silent.
13
Chez Albert on North Pleasant Street is a small, homely restaurant that makes an attempt to re-create the atmosphere of a Parisian bistro. Amber wood floors, candles glowing on copper-topped tables. The front-of-house manager greets Nick as an old friend.
“How is it, Nick? Good to see you again. I heard you were leaving us.”
“You’ll have to put up with me a little longer, Emmanuel. Seat us somewhere where we can hear ourselves talk.”
Emmanuel leads them to a booth at the back. Alice, following, wonders how many young women have come this way in the past. She registers Emmanuel’s brief appraising glance, and feels herself bristling at being presumed to be the next in a long line of dates. For a moment she regrets agreeing to come. Then she looks at the menu and changes her mind. At least she’ll eat a good dinner.
“Paul got anything special on today?” Nick asks.
“The oysters are fresh in. And we have veal sweetbreads with plum marmalade.”
He leaves them to make their choices.
“Emmanuel comes from the Loire valley,” says Nick. “His second name is Proust. How can you not like a restaurant run by a man called Proust?”
“You come here a lot?”
She’s looking at the menu. The dishes are pricey for Amherst, beyond the reach of students.