The Midwife's Revolt (16 page)

Toward the end of that first week in Cambridge, another messenger arrived. It was a local boy bringing news that quite shocked me: the Boylstons, Mr., Mrs., and Miss Eliza, had returned from exile in New Hampshire and wished a visit from me as soon as was convenient. He stood there patiently and awaited my reply.

How had they known I was in Cambridge? They must have inquired first of Martha.

“If they wish to see me, why do they not visit
me
?” I fumed to Bessie.

“Perh’ps one of them’s ill,” she proffered.

“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that.” I placed a hand on Bessie’s shoulder. While unschooled and in some ways blunt to the point of coarseness, Bessie had a sharp mind.

I did not tell Bessie that after Jeb died, I had lived in mortal terror of the Boylstons’ kidnapping me and removing me from my rightful home. Then there had been the threat of their kidnapping Star. All that was long past now, however, and I chose the more generous path.

“You are quite right, Bessie,” I said. Then, turning to the boy, I said, “Please let the Boylstons know that I shall visit them this afternoon, if that is convenient.”

It was a pleasant, fair day. I easily strolled the half mile up Brattle Street, looking quite the Tory lady in my pale-green silk gown. Apparently the various armies that had passed through my house had seen fit to leave me my old garments. While they were several seasons out of date and somewhat loose (I had grown strong and lean in the intervening years), few ladies these days could afford to wear silk at any price, and thus I cut a handsome, if outmoded, figure. Upon gazing in a looking glass before departing, I was happy to note that my tan had faded somewhat as well.

At the Boylston home, a Negro servant greeted me. This, I believe, was Cassie, the family’s cook. She bade me wait and scurried off.

While I waited, I looked around me. The home had suffered since I was last there. Some of the large pieces of furniture were missing, along with the gilt mirrors and several Turkey carpets. The parlor floor was bare, though clean. I saw no servants save Cassie. Signs of distress were everywhere, and I nearly forgave the Boylstons then for trying to steal Star from me.

The biggest change, though, was in the noise—or lack thereof. Though there were just me, Bessie, and Giles in my home, with little material wealth besides, at least our moving about made a happy clamor. Here, I heard nothing at all, not even the bustle of family.

In a few minutes Mrs. Boylston appeared. The woman had lost a great deal of flesh, and her hair had turned entirely white since I had seen her last. Though not yet fifty years of age, her posture was that of a much older woman.

Most surprising of all, however, was that she seemed genuinely glad to see me.

“Oh, Lizzie, it’s good to lay eyes on a friend, for we have gone without society these three years together.”

I might have quibbled over the importance of going “without society” at such a time as ours, but I had not the heart for unkindness, even for one who had been so unkind to me.

Madam Boylston asked Cassie to bring us “some refreshment.” I gathered by the euphemism that it would not be real tea and sighed. If one could not get a good dish of tea at the Boylstons’, one could not get it anywhere. At my own house, we had long since run out.

“You look well, Lizzie,” she said as we waited together for our tea.

“And you,” I replied with the required lie.

“Oh, no. I fear our troubles have aged all of us greatly. And Mr. Boylston is not at all well.”

“Not well?” I repeated, for though I was no great admirer of Mr. Boylston, he was the father of my beloved Jeb, and in a time requiring less sacrifice, he might have been a good enough man. I certainly wished him no ill, though he had caused me much pain. “What ails him?” I asked. “Has he had a doctor?”

Cassie arrived with our “refreshment” of hyssop tea and some very nice cakes. I ate one greedily. One can only imagine how rare food was if I can recall the passage of time by my repasts!

“Certainly. It is the consumption undoubtedly.”

“Oh. I’m truly sorry.”

“Dr. Bullfinch has bled him almost daily and applied leeches. All to no avail.”

I hid an involuntary grimace. I believed these treatments to be of little use and some genuine harm. “Does he wish to see me?” I asked. I had medicines that might ease his chest greatly, though I knew of no cure on earth. With such a disease, only our Maker can enact a miracle.

“Indeed he does. That is why”—she paused, sensing her own indelicacy in phrasing it so—“that is
one
reason we called upon you.”

“I shall see him now, if that’s agreeable to him. And how fares Eliza?” I asked, for not a word had been mentioned of their daughter.

At the mention of Eliza, Mrs. Boylston’s face grew pinched. A cloud literally seemed to pass over her, though the rest of the room was still quite bright with late-afternoon light. “She is well enough, I suppose,” she said tersely. “My husband shall discuss her presently. I will inquire as to his current state.”

And with that she left the room, leaving me alone for several minutes. As I walked about, I noticed a collection of miniature portraits above a mahogany chest of drawers. Among them, quite shockingly, was a portrait of Jeb. I reached out—hesitated—then, as a hard lump of indignation filled me, I snatched it from the wall. At its back, I found a braided lock of his hair beneath a small convex glass. Oh, my sweet boy’s hair! And to think I’d found that prancing Mr. Cleverly attractive!

I felt fresh rage at this family, rage at the fact that they had had such a portrait and never offered it to me. It would have been such a comfort to me in my cold nights on the farm. But these people were of such a bent as to hoard memory itself.

Mrs. Boylston reentered the room to find me holding the portrait. I said nothing but cast her a hard glance.

“It is a good likeness, is it not?”

“Very good,” I said. “When was it made? It seems drawn from life.”

“I should have shown it to you sooner. We added the
. . .
the lock after his funeral. But as we were obliged to leave in great haste and have just this weekend returned, there was little opportunity. You understand.”

“I understand perfectly.” I turned my back on her to gaze once more at the portrait.

Mrs. Boylston could not have guessed my thoughts then, that God had seen fit to place two kinds of people on this earth: those who, though they had nothing, would give you half of that nothing; and those who would give nothing, though they had all the riches in the world. And while it is blasphemy to say, I believe that no amount of piety or churchgoing changed one kind of human being into the other.

“He will see you,” she said, leaving aside the topic of the portrait as I set it back on its nail.

“Very well.”

I thought it odd indeed that Eliza had still not presented herself. For while there was no love between us, common civility would require that she greet her dead brother’s wife. Now, however, I took this behavior not so much as a rejection of myself but as proof of their pitiable isolation from humankind.

I found Mr. Boylston ill indeed. He was sitting up in bed in a quilted bed jacket and cap, his face quite drawn. He had greatly changed in the three years since I had last seen him, so much so that I should hardly have recognized him. His eyes were unnaturally bright, and his face, which bore a pale-ochre hue, was flushed with fever.

“Lizzie!” He smiled, genuinely overjoyed to see me. “Come here, child.” Mr. Boylston motioned me to his bed, whereupon he gave me a hearty embrace. I actually thought I saw tears in his eyes when I finally pulled away. I sat by the bed and held his hand.

“Mrs. Boylston tells me you are not so well as one could wish.”

“ ‘Not so well as one could wish.’ Ha! She has always been a liar. All smiles and lies. Lizzie, I’m one foot in the grave, and I know it. I have little time to suffer fools. And the truth is, the fresh sight of you gladdens my heart.”

“Then I’m glad, too,” I said, squeezing his hand. “What does Dr. Bullfinch say?”

“Oh, never mind what the doctor says.” He waved the question away as if it were of no importance. “Doctors speak all kinds of nonsense.”

“I have some very fine plaisters and teas that will ease your chest a great deal, if you will let me help.”

He tried to laugh, but it came out as a terrible, hollow-sounding
cough. “Oh, poke and plaister me as you like. I am indifferent.”

I stared at my ailing father-in-law with new respect; not everyone faced death with such equanimity. He seemed nearly disdainful of it, like a greedy creditor.

“Then I shall poke and plaister you, as you say, by and by.”

I would have to send for my things, which I had left in Braintree. Were I to send a note that afternoon, I could have my medical sack by the morrow. “I’ll come tomorrow and shall turn you into a fine pincushion, if that is agreeable.”

“It is,” he said. “But listen”—he grabbed my arm with such force as I had not thought possible in a man as weak as he—“I have matters to discuss with you, and you must help me. In a moment I shall be too tired to speak.”

“I shall listen, then,” I replied.

“We have done you an ill turn, Lizzie,” he began. “Very ill. I see it now as I had not seen it before. I cannot sleep for thinking how we treated you, and my lapse in judgment regarding
. . .
er
. . .
the gift we, at one point, had wished to retrieve.”

By this, I knew he meant my most beloved Star. “You must have felt in desperate straits to ask for such a thing,” I said.

“Exactly, Lizzie. Desperate straits such as I have never in my life known, nor has my wife. As for Eliza
. . .
well, her entire world came to an end when we fled Cambridge.”

Her world
, I thought mordantly. As if her world should by rights continue when all fell in flames about her!

“In any case, I have a little set by, and I mean to leave you something when I die. To provide for you as I should have done from the beginning.”

“It’s not necessary,” I began. “My farm in Braintree is doing well.” That was not entirely true. I had but two pounds in all the world.

“It is my wish!” he said. “But now, I must ask you to help me.”

“How can I aid you, sir?” And so at last he came to the point of my visit.

“It is Eliza,” he said. His breath was failing him. He paused, and the feeling grew upon me that the mystery of her absence was about to be revealed. “Eliza is with child.”

“With child!” I could not believe it. “Whom has she married?”

“No one. That is the point. She is unmarried still and refuses to tell us who the father is.”

Eliza, with child? I could not imagine her smiling at a man, embracing a man, much less
. . .
But it would not bear thinking about.

“How far along is she?”

“I know not. It is not the province of a father, you understand. I bid you find it out and
. . .
take care of her.”

Now at last the reason for my being summoned became clear to me.

I smiled. Mr. Boylston’s low estimation of the human race—the notion that barter was required for all exchanges—was more in keeping with my understanding of him, and thus in a way more comforting, than the heavenly largess of his initial greeting.

“I will help Eliza,” I replied, “but not because of any promise from you of a legacy. I will help her, if she will have it—and I’m not sure she will, mind you—because it is in my power to do so and because it is the Christian thing to do.”

“Suit yourself,” Mr. Boylston said, now clearly exhausted. “I care little for your motivations, so long as the thing is done.”

“Fair enough.” I kissed him on his temple, smoothed his sweaty, thinning hair, and departed his chamber.

Mrs. Boylston awaited me in the hallway, and I was ushered into Eliza’s chamber. I found her standing by a window, in silhouette, great with child. When Eliza heard me, she turned, her pale eyes lighting upon me.

“You have grown tan, Lizzie,” she said without approaching to embrace me.

I could have said, “And you have grown fat,” but I did not. I smiled. “Oh, I was far worse a few weeks ago. In summer, one might well mistake me for a mulatto, I am so many hours at my work in the garden. Or upon Star,” I could not help but add.

At my joke, Eliza turned cold. “Mama insisted that I see you, though I can’t see what for. I am quite well.”

“Indeed, you look well. You are with child.”

“How astute.” Her eyes stayed on me resolutely and did not gaze down at her own roundness.

“Shall we sit?” I asked, trying to maintain my composure. What did I care of Eliza or her problems? She could not harm me, and it is more honorable to be kind even if one is not repaid with kindness. She grudgingly sat across from me on her bed.

Someone knocked—the girl again. The poor thing: she worked hard, endeavoring to be everywhere at once. My guess was that only two or three servants remained from a former dozen. Now Cassie set down the dishes of tea and cakes for us.

Eliza massaged her back with one hand. “I have not been as unwell as some I’ve heard tell of, but my back aches terribly,” she could not help but remark.