Beloved (32 page)

He paused and scanned the horizon, then pointed out a newly built and rather pompous house nearby.
"
So. It
'
s
finished,
"
he said with obvious distaste.
"
What a piece of
...
"

They walked on, and Mac got around, finally, to the Legend of the Cursed Rose.
"
All the versions you heard the night of Phillip
'
s dinner party were malarkey. Do you know anything at all about Quaker history?
"
he asked, throwing her one of his you
'
ve-been-to-college looks.

She shrugged.
"
I know the usual amount: that the Friends were nonviolent, had no formal creed, heeded an ‘inner light,
'
and were all for equal rights. Oh, and they spoke in
thees
and
thous.
"
She added,
"
I do know that the Quakers were a major force on
Nantucket
.
"

"
You can see why. They put a premium on hard work, simple living, education, and equality. How could
Nantucket
go wrong with a value system like that? During the Revolution half the islanders were Quakers
—
that
'
s why
Nantucket
stayed neutral in the war
—
and their influence on island life was profound. After that their popularity continued, but by then things were going very wrong
—
am I boring you?
"
he asked self-consciously.

"
No! No, please continue,
"
she said, intrigued as much by his enthusiasm for the subject as by the history itself. He was speaking in whole paragraphs; it was a breakthrough of sorts.
"
I want to know.
"

"
Good. The point is, disownment
—
ejection from the Society of Friends
—
was the only penalty these people had for an offense, no matter how big or how small. Of course, anyone would agree that disownment was justifiable for the serious violations. For example, forty-seven Nantucket Quakers fought in the Revolution; under their strict code of nonviolence, all forty-seven were disowned. Or say someone married outside the Society, which happened. You could argue that that was a serious breach as well, and worthy of disownment.

"
But somewhere along the line, the Elders got caught up in going after the trivial stuff, all in the name of simple living. If you wore a fancy little buckle, for instance
—
disowned. If you went dancing, disowned. Furniture too fancy? Disowned. Drunk? Disowned.

"
It got to the point that for every one new member born into the Society, five were disowned. It doesn
'
t take a genius to figure out that those numbers can
'
t work for long. The Society kept on petering out, and by the middle of the nineteenth century there were only about three hundred practicing Quakers on
Nantucket
.
"

They paused to read a headstone:
EMILY W. HUSSEY, WIDOW OF JOSEPH W.
HUSSEY,
DIED
SEPTEMBER 1859,
AGED 63
YEARS, 9 MONTHS.

"
She would
'
ve been one of them,
"
he commented.
"
The last formal Meeting of the Friends on the island wasn
'
t long after that,
"
he said.
"
By 1900, when the island
'
s population had dropped from ten thousand to three thousand, there were no Quakers left at all. An enlightened and wildly successful movement
—
finished. And why? Because they lost their way. The quest for simplicity became a corruption of power.
"

"
Is that why there are no headstones?
"
Jane ventured.
"
Because they were considered a vanity?
"

He shot an appreciative glance at her.
"
Exactly. The few headstones you see were from the reform movements that came too late for
Nantucket
. There were the Hicksites, and later the Gurnyites. It was the Gurnyites who began using headstones, around 1837. You
'
ll find no stone here that predates that time.
"

"
But where does the Cursed Rose fit in?
"
Jane asked, although even as she said it, she thought she knew. It
'
s as if the answer
were
stored in some locked box in her mind, and all she needed was the key. Mac had the key.

"
Ah, that Cursed Rose.
"
He smiled to himself and pressed an upturned clod of earth back into the ground with his heel.
"
That part
'
s a little tricky. Sometime around 1830, a man was buried here. His widow, distraught by the notion that there would be no marker on his grave, dared to plant a rose on it.
"

His voice became low and thoughtful, as if he were reaching back to the moment a century and a half earlier.
"
You have to understand that while the Friends permitted the planting of herbs and vegetables in their kitchen gardens, they disapproved of flowers. Like music and art and literature, flowers were frivolous. So the widow
'
s deed was doubly offensive: she committed an act of defiance with a thing of beauty.
"

An act of defiance with a thing of beauty. It simply amazed Jane that Mac McKenzie was capable of such eloquence and sympathy. She did not know the man at all.
"
What happened to her?
"
Jane asked, although of course she knew.

"
Disowned. She
'
s no
t
buried here, you can count on that. But the question you should be asking is, what happened to the rose? I have no answer to that. What I
'
ve told you so far is fairly common knowledge to anyone who bothers picking up a history of
Nantucket
.

"
But there
'
s also a story, less well known, that an outraged Elder personally yanked out the rose, and that he died immediately afterward. That, I assume, is where the Legend of the Cursed Rose began. You can safely forget the brain fever, forget the gangrene.
"
Mac let out a soft, rueful laugh.
"
What he probably died of was hypertension.
"

Jane plunged her hands deep in her pockets as they continued their stroll among the headstones. The wind whipped her auburn hair in long, snaking tendrils around her face. She wished she
'
d worn a sweater under her light jacket; it was a gray, penetrating day, and she felt it keenly on the hill.
"
I don
'
t suppose it was a rugosa rose,
"
she said without much hope.

"
Don
'
t know that either; but I
'
d guess not. The Quakers would have found the
Rosa
rugosa
too useful to be so of
fended by it: it had medicinal value, after all. I suspect the so-called Cursed Rose was pleasing to the senses, and that was all.
"

Jane sighed deeply.
"
So this is it; a dead end.
"

"
As far as I know.
"

He seemed to share her sadness; she couldn
'
t imagine why. Or maybe it was the sweet and simple melancholy of the place affecting them both. They walked among the few dozen gravestones, a roll call of names familiar to the island and around the world: Chase and Hussey and Coffin and Mitchell and Folger.

After they looked at them all, they began heading back to the truck. Mac said,
"
I suppose when you consider the fortune in shipping the Quakers made
—
in coffee and dry goods and whale oil
—
it
'
s not hard to see why the Society of Friends died out on
Nantucket
. These were wealthy men; they wanted their mansions. And yet they couldn
'
t put a second story on their lean-to houses without being disowned by the Overseers for extravagance.
"

And they couldn
'
t mark the graves of the ones they loved.
"
How is it you know so much of
Nantucket
'
s history?
"
she asked.

"
I do know how to read,
"
he said with his usual irony. But he seemed not to want to break the mood of friendliness between them, because he added with a smile,
"
The winters are quiet here, and I don
'
t have cable.
"

T
he first phone call Jane received on her newly installed phone was from her father.

"
Dad! Hi! Gee! How did you know I had a phone?
"

"
Not from you, Robinson Crusoe. I have a meeting in five minutes, so I
'
ll make this quick. There
'
s an associate of mine whose company is looking to open a branch in
Connecticut
. He needs a place to stay for six weeks, and I thought of your condo. It
'
ll pay your mortgage for a couple of months. Interested?
"

"
You bet! I can
'
t possibly finish Lilac Cottage in less than a month, and probably more. The timing couldn
'
t be better. Will the guy need a car?
"
she added, fired with enthusiasm.
"
I
'
ll be taking the Volvo back to
Connecticut
to be sold.
"

"
What
'
s wrong with the Volvo?
"

"
Nothing, Dad; it
'
s just more car than I need.
"

"
It
'
s a good, safe car.
"

"
Never mind; I shouldn
'
t have brought it up.
"

"
That
'
s a top-rated car, dammit. Sell it now and you
'
ll take the whole hit on depreciation. What
'
s wrong with the Volvo?
"

"
Dad, I
told
you
—
"

"
I don
'
t want you selling that car. I
'
ve got to run. Your mother will call you. Kiss.
"