Emily & Herman Read online

And thinking of time and of wounds, I wonder whether this is the beginning of a long and felicitous correspondence or an attempt to hold on to something precious and lost for as long as we can. I try to live my domestic life as best I can, giving all their proper due and working diligently to finish The Whale. But what I live for, are these letters. And, of course, I think—it is only normal that someday your affections toward me will alter, undergo a transformation, and affix themselves more properly to someone else—someone freer and with no need to be hidden from view, someone who can be at your side. The mere thought of such a normal and inevitable occurrence fills me with dread. Dearest, dearest Second Mate—my queen and princess, my inspiration, my north star, my morning tide…

  H.

  Amherst

  Mon Cher Armand,

  Less than one month ago, my life was calm, predictable, tedious at times, but virtuous. Since you dismounted in front of our house, filling up our salon with your singular concoction of city sophistication, maritime exoticism and wilderness wisdom, standing beside your august, more familiar and less dangerous friend—I find myself enmeshed in scandal. Some of it my own making (!) I implore you thus to not condemn me further by implicating me as a “spot” from where, had you known, you would have spun your web four years ago—when I was only sixteen!

  I have conveyed your most suspiciously knowledgeable opinions concerning Fiona to Austin as if they had been my own and it did seem to placate his anxious state considerably. I thank you for that and only hope I can someday repay you.

  Now—not only are you a man, with all such a condition implies, but you are an especially vigorous, outgoing, and impetuous example of the species—armed, thank goodness, with a pen or, once upon a time, with a harpoon aimed at sea monsters rather than with a spear or club—and thus you are susceptible to fits of jealousy, suspicion, and despair. The force of your spirit frightens me and incites me at the same time. Thus it was from the first moments when I met you until we bade each other farewell.

  Do you truly fear my feelings for you are capable of so rapid a cooling? Do you think someone like me meets and then relinquishes her heart to someone like you very often? Do you have any real idea who I am or of how I am or from where I am? (I write these lines with a smile, not a scowl.) First of all, the odds that any swain my parents would approve of, not to mention myself, for I am far more particular still, will approach our door at any time in the future are small indeed. I would like to think of myself as so much a prize to be fought over but I am not that woman. And even if such a gent were to materialize and win my hand and inspire trust enough for me to marry—I know how this gent would be—and he would not be anything like my Master Commandant. This position in my heart that you have invaded and possess is not subject to further pillage and is not subject to the wear and tear of time, dear man. You have done me in and all that is left for others to claim, were that ever to happen, is a shell, one that will wrinkle and darken over the years while my blood now incensed forever with my master’s fire, will course on like one of your raging ocean storms.

  E.

  Arrowhead

  Dearest Emily,

  Do you really exist? Have I not conjured you into my brain for solace in this universe ruled by despots and krakens? Are you not some figment of my far too romantic imagination brought forth like Venus from her shell to sweeten a life surrounded by meals and visitors, a peevish wife, an intrusive mother, and a bevy of unmarried sisters? I take my little Malcolm and my massive hound on long walks during the afternoons and I take you with us. The summer clings to the land with a sad desperation closing its eyes and ears when the night breeze arrives bearing a telltale chill that rattles the leaves with a sound all too characteristic of another season. Each day the water of the lake is colder and more invigorating. You will be pleased to know I have taught you to swim and you dart about around my son and I like a shameless Merrow.

  I have news. On this final day of August, spurred on by the added disruption my father-in-law’s impending visit to nearby Lenox to preside over trials, an annual peregrination requiring my household’s utmost attention and condition of vassal-dom, and amplified this year with the feature of his daughter’s pregnancy fast approaching its conclusion—after cloistering myself away in the barn this entire past week—I have finished this morning The Whale.

  I penned in the final period, thought of you, gave it to Augusta to copy out, and went out for a very long walk, alone, physically alone but otherwise accompanied by your spirit. The sensation of peace and contentment that invaded my heart was only tempered by the regret I feel at not being able to dedicate The Whale to you. When a copy finally has the good fortune to drop into your hands, you will find it dedicated to NH (I plan to surprise him with it). But know, dear girl, that it is really meant for you.

  H.

  Amherst

  Master,

  I am so touched, so transformed, so proud of my Captain. Swell the wave, ripple the tide, vast and deep the undertow.

  E.

  Amherst

  Armando,

  Contemplating your dedication and remembering one of the first conversations that took place between the four of us here, in this salon, where I sit this morning blissfully alone—I thought something like this might be appropriate for you: In token of my admiration for his genius, this book is inscribed to Nathaniel Hawthorne.

  E.

  Arrowhead

  Dear Emily,

  The words you suggest for me are more than perfect and thus shall it read, and the fact that they have come from you means the utmost to me. The final proofs went off today to Mr. Craighead in New York, the only change being the title—for I have decided to name the book more specifically after its main protagonist.

  Fetching today’s post my disappointment at not finding anything from you—you must forgive my greed—was somewhat relieved by an agreeable surprise in the form of a letter from none other than our William Johnson. As I opened it I feared it might contain trouble of some sort, but then I was quickly set right reading the man’s inimitable god-fearing prose.

  Quite aside from the joy I felt in perusing its contents was the far greater joy, one not unmixed with melancholy, I experienced as remembrances of the time we spent together flooded through me. It all came back in a great rush of images and sensations that I confess brought me to tears.

  I cannot write more today, but I shall here conclude by faithfully transcribing a passage from William you will, I am sure, appreciate:

  In this distinguished home in where I work, a teacher comes every morning after chores to give me and the cook lessons in all manner of erudition. We all are treated well under this roof. I was just going to write “under this master’s roof”! But Mr. Wheeler, a merchant who buys and sells grains and lumber and slabs of granite, makes a point of telling all of those in his employ that we is equal and the same as he under the grace of God Almighty. I know that last part may not mean much to you, sir, but perhaps you might pass this along to Miss Emily, who I know shall understand. The Lord works in mysterious ways, sir—that’s all I know—I lay down before him and accept what travails and joys he see fit to send my way. I am certain, sir, that over time, Miss Emily will show you the way—that her good nature will find and take hold of yours and bring it unto the light whose brightness and sweet warmth shall clean your doubts and resistances away. I received a letter from Mr. Whitman—a proper one asking me proper questions as to my progress here—but as an exercise of faith and holy resolution, I shall not reply and I do hope he will understand. Perhaps, sir, you could tell him for me and say that I ask for him to strive as well to find and stay upon the Lord’s righteous and narrow path.

  Amherst

  Dear Mr. Melville,

  What great relief and satisfaction it gave me to read William’s words. I thank you for passing them along. It does sound like he is doing well, an outcome that was never guaranteed, and so I am thankful for that as well. And yes, I can hear him as I read him, and
I am tempted to write to him and say that if he ever tires of his current duties he should consider coming to take over the church here in Amherst. The sermons given by our local pastor, regardless of their proper grammar and judicious choice of scripture, are painfully dull. When I read William and remember his very particular cadences of speech, I am drawn to return to the fold with the same eager spirit and depth of faith and conviction I had years back, before I was exposed to and corrupted by your satanic excesses.

  Father and mother are off to Boston next Tuesday for a few days. Austin improves and spends most of his free time with his betrothed, Miss Susan Gilbert, with whom I am getting along very well. The two of them parade about like a couple already long married. So it will just be Lavinia and I here to keep the household running—a turn of events that I hope will also give me more time with which to write to you.

  When do you think a copy of your Moby-Dick might be available for a provincial soul like mine to read?

  E.

  Arrowhead

  Dear Emily,

  I beg of you—do not respond to this letter with an answer, but rather with your appearance. I will be there regardless, next Wednesday, by eleven in the morning, and shall wait for you until sundown if need be. I would prefer to wait in vain all day than to receive a negative response from you earlier by post. If you are unwilling or unable—so be it. But if you could find a way …

  Where—you ask?

  Upon reading of the trip your parents are making to Boston, I have contacted a friend who keeps a hunting cabin well hidden along Lake Warner, near Stockbridge and Hadley. We could spend the day there alone together. So, I propose we meet at the cemetery in North Hadley.

  H.

  14

  Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

  mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,

  ché la diritta via era smarrita.

  — DURANTE DEGLI ALIGHIERI

  IN NEW ENGLAND, THERE COMES A DAY EACH SEPTEMBER, usually toward the end of the month, when autumn first asserts itself. Regardless of how much sun is shining or how green one’s land and trees remain, a breeze arrives announcing the banquet’s end. Though resistant to precise description, one nevertheless knows the minute it appears, unlocking sentiments at once familiar and melancholy. For one’s heart takes note—one’s heart senses the kingdom of finitude exerting its forceful dominion—instilling in one regret for all the bounty taken for granted and that is slipping through one’s fingers, regret at time’s inexorable vector, regret at youth’s heedless penchant for merry squander.

  The breeze arrived at Amherst and Pittsfield, Massachusetts, early on the morning of the twenty-second, as Emily dressed for breakfast and as Melville saddled his horse. Both were too distracted to give the announcement its full due, even as its effects took hold of their spirits.

  As Melville rode to Hinsdale and then on to Worthington and Chesterfield, and from there to Haydenville and Hatfield, the breeze and its effects dissipated as the sun rose spreading heat through clear air. At Hatfield, he took a second breakfast and then rode north to catch a small rope ferry across the Connecticut River when clouds began to drift in from the East. By the time he reached the cemetery at North Hadley the sky was shrouded in gray and the morning’s breeze was back threatening to cast a pall upon the day.

  Melville tied the reins that fell from his bridle about a birch tree, one of many that ran along a perimeter of the churchyard, leaving his weary horse to graze. He walked slowly between verdant rows of gravesites, resigned to spend the entire day there if necessary. The older tombstones went back as far as 1790. Each one stood above a plot of earth where a coffin had been lowered and covered over and in each coffin the remains of a dead human being. He saw families buried together. He saw the headstones of children and of women who had died giving birth to children. Some of the oldest graves held the bones and uniforms of veterans who, like both of his grandfathers, had fought in the War for Independence. For a moment the thought crossed his mind of Elizabeth and the difficulties she was having with this second child now so close to entering the world. If something were to happen to her his way to Emily would suddenly be clear. Such was the degree of shame that filled him for ceding to this macabre fantasy that he almost returned home.

  But it was just then he saw the horse and carriage. It had come to a halt not far from his horse. Emily, dressed in white, held the reins and was seated next to another young woman he presumed to be her sister. For a brief second he was nervous, almost to the point of losing heart about the whole assignation, wishing he had never put it into motion, almost preferring the epistolary realm their relationship had evolved into—to this sudden return to flesh and sinew. As he drew nearer to them and observed her more clearly, the shy warm smile upon her face and the anxious smile upon her sister’s younger and wider visage, his hesitations and second thoughts fell away from him.

  “Good morning,” he said to the both of them.

  “Good morning” Emily said with a brave and somewhat forced cheerfulness. “Mr. Melville, I present you my sister, Lavinia.”

  He offered the young girl a curt bow. “How do you do?”

  “Very well, thank you, sir.”

  “How was your journey?” Emily asked him.

  “Long. I had to leave before dawn. But very beautiful too.”

  He went up to his horse and untied the reins. “Do you think you might follow me for a bit? Just a few minutes, down to where the canoe is kept.”

  “Surely,” said Emily. “Lead the way.”

  The small caravan made its way onto a grassy road that went gently downhill passing through a narrow stretch of forest before bisecting a pasture so bright with sunlight—due to a sudden parting of the clouds—all three of them had to shade their eyes.

  “So,” Emily said to Lavinia, “how do you find him?”

  Lavinia looked down at their feet trying to repress a grin. “Old. I find him scandalously old.”

  “Old? He is only thirty-two, and just.”

  “He is handsome.”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “And very married, Emily.”

  “We have been through this.”

  “I know. I just cannot get over the shock of it. And now, seeing him, I feel like an accomplice to a dangerous crime.”

  “I will not go over all of this again.”

  Melville could not hear them and only looked back a few times with an encouraging smile as they neared the lake. What most occupied his mind were the palpable facts of his current reality. That Emily was there with him, there riding just behind him and only a few minutes away from the beginning of a day they would spend together without any intrusion. Though tempted by nature and character to look ahead toward the day’s end and to go on and consider the odds of their being one day found out, he threw up a wall against it. The lake at that spot was largely obscured by another growth of trees. The water, normally crystalline, was at that moment muted and somber from additional low-laying clouds moving in above them. The trail narrowed where the stand of trees began, but the wagon made it through and, coming out behind Melville into another smaller clearing, the lake was suddenly there, calm and majestic and pristine. At the end of a small wooden dock built out from the shore, was an overturned Indian canoe.

  Melville dismounted and gave his horse some oats from a feedbag tied to his saddle and then tied the reins over a branch of a sturdy pine making sure the horse would have shade in case the weather cleared. Then he unfastened the saddlebag and draped it over his shoulder and made his way over to Emily’s side of the wagon.

  “There now.” He raised a hand to Emily. “Let me help you down.”

  Such was the sensation that seized them when their fingers touched as she alighted from the wagon, they barely heard Lavinia’s meekly intoned question. “At what time should I return?”

  “Shall we say around six p.m.?” he replied. “I do hope this is not a great inconvenience for you, Lavinia.”

  She looked dow
n.

  “Not at all,” Emily said, answering for her sister. “Vinnie has a good friend in Hadley she has arranged to spend the day with, and we are all sworn to secrecy upon the threat of a long and cruel death.”

  “There will be no need for that I’m sure,” Melville said, looking directly at Lavinia with genuine sympathy.

  “Six o’clock it is then,” The younger girl said, still not looking at him.

  “I am very grateful,” Melville said.

  And then she did look at him, briefly, without saying anything, but offering a quick little smile. He thought of commending her to have a good day, to be careful, of announcing he would take good care of her sister, but none of it seemed appropriate and all of it felt awkward and it was with relief that he watched the girl turn the wagon round with an expert’s pair of hands, saying nothing further, either to him or to her sister. Together, side by side, they watched the wagon go back through the trees until it broke out onto the pasture again and began to make its way up the incline at a brisk pace owing to Lavinia’s use of a whip.

  He reached for her hand.

  “Emily. I do not quite believe it.”

  “Nor I.”

  “How have you managed it?”

  “I told everyone the truth—that I was to pass the day with a friend.”

  “Surely they asked for more details that that—Elizabeth and my mother certainly did.”

  “Yes. It’s true.”

  He turned to face her and took her in his arms. She pushed into him and closed her eyes and took in the smell and the feel of him, surrendering, shame and gratitude mixing. “Where is it you are taking me, Captain Bluebeard?”

  “Bluebeard was a murderer. I am only a poor kidnapper, and a short-term one at that.”

  “Then lead me to your pirate’s cove before we are discovered.”

  “Right this way.”

  They walked to the end of the dock and he squatted down by the canoe, turning it over. The paddle was there. He put it aside and then carefully put the canoe into the water.