Amherst (7 page)

Austin arrived promptly at the Amherst House to escort Mabel the short distance down Main Street to the Homestead. Miss Vinnie opened the door herself, a small fluttery woman with sharp, noticing eyes.

“Oh, Mrs. Todd, you’re too good to us. We’ve heard so much about you. All the town seems to be in love with you at once. Come in, come in. Though to be loved by the residents of Amherst is no great compliment, I’m afraid. Did you ever see so many sour faces in all your life?”

Mabel entered the dark hall and followed Vinnie into the almost equally dark parlor, where there stood a low box piano. Austin followed.

“I don’t know that our instrument will be up to your usual
standard, Mrs. Todd. I’m no musician myself. Our father bought it for us when we were girls, but I’m afraid we neglect it sadly. And Austin of course has not a single musical note in his body.”

“That’s enough now, Vinnie,” said Austin. “I’m sure you have a cup of tea and a slice of cake for Mrs. Todd.”

Mabel set herself down at the piano and unfolded the music she had brought with her. Vinnie fussed about her, offering compliments and disparagement in equal measure, and throwing quick glances of fascination at Mabel’s hair and dress and hands.

“You really are quite a wonder to us poor rustics, Mrs. Todd,” she said. “So much style almost dazzles us. Austin is half blinded. But then he never did see very well in the first place. As for Sue, all I ever hear is Mrs. Todd this, Mrs. Todd that. I fancy you are the perfect woman.”

“Oh, very perfect,” said Mabel. “So please not to come too near me, or you’ll discover I’m mortal.”

Mabel looked about her as she prepared her music, and found the home of the Myth just as it should be. The furniture old-fashioned, the lamplight feeble, the shadows deep. In such a lair, untouched by the busy world, a magician would be free to cast her spells. No husband to serve, no society to please, and a dragon at the gates to repel intruders.

But the castle gates had opened. She had entered. And when she sang, Emily would be listening at the door.

Tea was brought in by the servant.

“Thank you, Maggie,” said Vinnie. “I’ll pour.”

And so the time came for the performance.

“Your sister won’t be joining us?” said Mabel, pretending not to know how matters stood.

“No,” said Vinnie, “Emily doesn’t go into company.”

But as she spoke, she threw a meaningful glance at the closed door to the hall. Mabel felt a shiver of excitement. Was the Myth there now, hearing all they said?

“I understand she writes poems,” said Mabel. “I’d love to read some of them.”

“One or two have appeared in the
Springfield Republican
,” said Vinnie. “But other than that, Emily’s poems are for herself alone.”

“I find that hard to believe,” said Mabel, hoping Emily was listening. “Those who write do so to be read, and to be understood.”

Vinnie went a little pink at this, and glanced again towards the door.

“My sister’s poems are unlike other poems,” said Austin. “They’re more in the nature of thoughts spoken aloud, thoughts without pattern or coherence, as thoughts can be.”

“Austin is a fool, as you can tell,” said Vinnie. “He knows nothing at all about Emily’s poems.”

“I grant you there are flashes of great beauty,” said Austin.

“Flashes of great beauty!” said Vinnie with scorn. “What do you know about great beauty? Come, Mrs. Todd, sing to us if you will. Austin, if you have nothing sensible to say, pray be silent.”

“I have no intention of speaking while Mrs. Todd sings.”

Mabel opened the lid of the little keyboard and stretched out her elegant fingers. She arranged the sheet music on the stand before her, where it caught the light from the oil lamp. She looked round and saw Austin’s eyes fixed upon her. She turned back to the piano, touched the keys, and sent her music out across the long room to the closed door.

She sang “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes” and then “The
Last Rose of Summer.” As she came to the end of the last line she found Austin’s gaze still on her. He seemed not to have moved a muscle.

She sang:

“Oh, who would inhabit this bleak world alone,

This bleak world alone?”

She played out the last few notes and then closed the lid. Vinnie and Austin clapped softly. From beyond the door Mabel thought she caught the sound of scuffling feet.

Vinnie came to her with her hands reaching out, her face shining. Mabel offered her hands to be clasped.

“What an angel you are,” said Vinnie.

The servant entered, carrying a little silver tray.

“From Miss Emily,” she said, presenting the tray to Mabel.

On the tray was a glass of sherry and a small sheet of paper. Mabel took the paper and held it to the light. It was a poem.

“For me?” she said.

“You are honored,” said Vinnie.

Mabel read the poem in silence.

Elysium is as far as to

The very nearest Room

If in that Room a Friend await

Felicity or Doom—

What fortitude the Soul contains,

That it can so endure

The accent of a coming Foot—

The opening of a Door—

“Do you think she wrote it just now?” said Mabel, convinced that it must be so.

“It’s possible,” said Vinnie.

Austin took the paper and read for himself.

“The usual profligacy with capitals,” he said.

“Oh, Mr. Dickinson,” said Mabel reproachfully.

“No, no,” he said, “I think it has some fine lines—‘
If in that room a friend await
,’—that is very well done—but why will she never end a verse? See the way she leaves off in mid-effusion?”

“It’s my poem,” said Mabel. “I consider it perfect.”

Better than perfect: the poem had at once struck Mabel as true. She wasn’t yet sure what this meant, she needed time to reflect, but here, she knew, was one who felt the vibrations of unspoken feelings between people even more acutely than she did herself.

“I would so like to read more of her poems,” she said.

“She keeps them tucked away,” said Vinnie.

“Please tell her I admire this beyond anything.”

As Austin escorted Mabel back across town, he complimented her on her singing, and she thanked him for his kind words, exactly as if they were in a public drawing room where everything they said was heard by others.

Then Austin said, “That line in the song you sang, the last line. It haunts me. ‘
Oh, who would inhabit this bleak world alone?
’ ”

“And yet,” said Mabel, “you remained unmoved by my poem.”

Already it was hers, written for her.

“I didn’t say that. But there’s something willful in my sister’s way of writing, as if she wants to obscure her meaning, which grates on me.”

“Why would she want to obscure her meaning?”

“To appear grander and deeper than she is.”

“Mr. Dickinson!”

“I’m sorry if I shock you,” said Austin, “but she is my sister, and I know her too well, perhaps. Emily has a tendency to pose.”

“I won’t listen to you,” said Mabel. “I’ll have no more of your brute masculine intellect.”

They walked a few steps in silence. Then Austin sighed.

“Don’t abandon me, Mrs. Todd,” he said. “My intellect is no friend to me. Truly I am one who inhabits this bleak world alone.”

“That is your choice, Mr. Dickinson,” Mabel replied.

At the door of her boardinghouse, taking his leave, Austin reminded her that she was expected the following evening at his daughter Mattie’s whist party.

“May I fetch you at seven o’clock?”

“You may.”

He watched until she was safely in the house, then turned to retrace his steps.

Mabel showed David her poem. David was very struck by it.

“It’s certainly odd enough, but it’s got something. I’m damned if I know what it is.”

“Truth,” said Mabel. “We live our lives among lies, so the truth seems odd to us.”

“But you and I, puss. We don’t lie to each other.”

“No, David. We don’t.”

As they were preparing to go to bed, he saw that she was in an unusually thoughtful mood.

“So is my puss going to tell me what’s on her mind?”

“Oh, so many things,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about my father. He’s such a wonderful man, David. I wish you knew him better. There was a time when he was a friend of Thoreau, and Emerson. He’s a truly wise man. I wish he was here now.”

“What would you ask him, if he was?”

“I’d ask him to tell me about love. I remember him telling me once how God has created us with the power to love, and how it’s the best of us, and we must never be ashamed of it.”

“A wise man indeed.”

“But our religion tells us we must only love one person.”

David said nothing. Mabel, half undressed, turned to look at him. He beckoned her to come to him.

“My darling puss,” he said. “I’ve already made my confession to you. I know that I, as a man, am capable of loving more than one woman. Why should not you, as a woman, be capable of loving more than one man?”

She let him caress her, gazing into his eyes.

“Do you know what you’re saying?” she whispered.

“I think so.”

She kissed him.

“You’re a darling,” she said, “and I adore you.”

•  •  •

The next day it rained without ceasing. Austin Dickinson presented himself at the door of the Amherst House armed with a large umbrella. Beneath its shelter, necessarily close, they walked down the street towards his house, the Evergreens.

“Our last evening,” he said.

Mabel and David were due to leave for Washington the next day.

“Must you go?”

“David says we must,” said Mabel. “They are to decide who is to lead the expedition to photograph the transit of  Venus. He says he must be there to have a chance. You know this is his big opportunity.”

“The transit of Venus, yes.”

“He hopes to be sent to the Lick Observatory in California.”

“Will you go to California with him?”

“That is not yet decided.”

They walked on through the rain.

“I will miss you,” said Austin. “I’m not sure you appreciate quite how much. Your company has meant a great deal to me over these past few months.”

“And to me,” said Mabel.

“But you’re young, and admired wherever you go. Your life lies fair before you. For me the prospect is very different.”

“And yet here we are,” said Mabel, “on the same street, walking towards the same house, under the same umbrella.”

“What do you mean to say?” His voice shaking.

“We have the same prospect before us, if we so wish.”

They were on the high path now, with the picket fence and hickory hedge of the Dickinson properties on their left.

“Mrs. Todd,” he said, speaking very low, “I have never met anyone in all my life who I feel understands me as I believe you do. Perhaps I delude myself. I speak as I feel. You have become the one person in whose company I feel the possibility of happiness.”

They had now reached the gate into the Evergreens. At this point, where they should stop and turn into the path to the front door, Mabel did not stop. She continued walking, and Austin walked on by her side. In that moment, by that action, Mabel knew she had given him the answer he longed for, and had made her own irrevocable commitment.

“Tell me if I’m wrong to believe what I believe,” he said.

“You’re not wrong.”

“You believe it too?”

“I do.”

“My dear Mrs. Todd,” he said, “you may not realize it, but I am a drowning man, and you have just saved my life.”

“I’ve done nothing,” she said. “There’s a power here that is stronger than both of us.”

“There is,” he assented fervently.

“I don’t know what name to give it,” said Mabel. “It may be God’s will, it may be nature taking its course. All I know is we have been prepared for this moment, you and I, and this is what was meant to be.”

“Amen,” said Austin.

“But at the same time I’m frightened.”

“Of course. We’ve crossed the Rubicon. There’s no turning back now.”

He sounded like a different man, younger, filled with a joyous energy. As he spoke the words “there’s no turning back,” they both turned back, towards the gate. For a brief moment, beneath the umbrella, he took her hand, and their eyes met.

“Am I not too old?” he said.

She shook her head, struck by the blaze of his happiness.

“Let’s be the same age,” she said. “Both born today.”

7

The West Cemetery, where Emily Dickinson is buried, is up at the farther end of  Triangle Street, beside Jones Realtors and facing Triangle Family Dental. Iron railings bound the grassy gravestone-studded hill. Emily lies within an inner iron-railed compound, one of a line of four family headstones, between her sister and her father. The other stones give the date of death beneath the one word
DIED
. Emily’s date of death, May 15, 1886, is headed
CALLED BACK
.

The day that Alice visits the grave is chilly, damp, grey. There’s no one else in the little cemetery. She takes some photographs. Earlier pilgrims have tied a red ribbon to the railings by Emily’s headstone, and on the stone itself have placed a half-burned candle and a small glass vase holding a white flower. The grass within the railings is weed-filled.

She tries to imagine the day of Emily’s burial. Austin was there, of course, leading the mourners, with Vinnie. The accounts of the time make no mention of Sue. But Mabel was present, discreetly at the back.

Emily was familiar with graveyards. In their former house on Pleasant Street, before the family moved back to the Homestead, her bedroom had overlooked what was then the main entrance to this same cemetery. In so many of her poems she imagined her own burial.

Ample make this Bed—