The Stargazer's Sister (21 page)

She stands upright again. The streets around her are silent. She remembers the “dark center” in Darwin’s poem. She is aware of the night’s cool air on her face, the scents of wet earth and woodsmoke. She touches her fingertips to the soft skin of her neck, finds the pulse there. The manifest miracle of the world, its astonishing structures—cabbage or man or star cluster—has been William’s inspiration from the beginning, she thinks. Of course his interest was eventually attracted by the deepest mystery, the vast unknown, the tantalizing beauty of the heavens.

It must be some smallness in her that sometimes she finds it crushing—she realizes she has Darwin’s words in her head—to contemplate the numberless stars, the innumerable systems that surround them. Under her fingertip, she feels the quiet beating of her blood. She tries to concentrate only on the sensation of occupying her own body, but she cannot sustain it. The universe is all around her, and it, too, seems to pulse with a hidden force, commanding her attention.

—

THROUGHOUT THE REMAINING
cold weeks of the spring the Avon has a border of ice on both banks, a thin stream of black water moving in its center. The rear garden wall now has been fully demolished to allow access into the meadow that borders the river with its commanding view of the sky, and the low-roofed workshop is nearly finished, built of heavy timbers and with a stone floor to withstand the heat of the furnaces. William has begun firing the furnaces and testing small mirrors made of various compounds of metal, and though the days have been bitterly cold, the heat of the furnaces when lit and the high brick walls to the east and west protect the garden.

One day in April, Lina goes outside with a basket of wash to hang to dry in the afternoon sun. The air in the garden is warm, the men working in shirtsleeves. She decides to bring tea to the table outside, and the men take their cups there, blowing on them and munching on bread and cheese she provides, as well as lady apples from the baskets stored in the cellar.

She is used to the men’s company by now, more confident around them. They are polite fellows, grateful for the soup she ladles up at dinner, the breads and puddings she bakes. She stands with them for tea, her face turned toward the sun.

Later that afternoon, she rehearses with William in the music room, “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming.” It is a favorite of his, the melody sad and sweet.

“And in German now,” William says.

Es ist ein Ros entsprungen.

She stops when she notices him look up from the harpsichord. She turns around.

Thomas, one of the bricklayers, stands in the door.

William smiles. “She has a lovely voice, Thomas, does she not?”

“Yes, sir. Very lovely, sir,” Thomas says, and he blushes. “Excuse me.” He bows and turns from the door.

William looks at Lina.

“
You
are ready,” he says, pointing at her.

“Nearly,” she says. She does not meet his eyes. “Perhaps.”

After William leaves the room, she stands by the harpsichord, depresses a key. The note lingers in the quiet room. She touches her fingertips to her face, the pitted surface of her skin.

—

A FEW DAYS LATER,
William tells her that Henry Spencer will be in Bath for the weekend, and that he has invited him to dine. Lina has taken out the mare often that winter. Each time she has sent Henry a letter of thanks, telling him of her ride and some news of William or the household. He rarely writes a reply, but on several occasions she has opened the door to a servant delivering gifts from the Spencer estate: small and exquisitely wrought landscape paintings—she learns from William that Henry is an amateur painter as well as an astronomer and, like William, a musician. Once he sends them a pair of silver candlesticks, then a finely woven shawl for her, bottles of wine and claret.

William appears unimpressed by these gifts.

“Yes, of course. It is very kind of him,” he agrees, examining one of Henry’s paintings when it arrives one day, holding it up to the light of the window.

Then he looks at his sister. “I hope, Lina,” he says, “that you do not imagine that he
admires
you.”

She has been sitting at her writing table, but she stands up quickly.

“Of course not,” she says, though she can feel her face coloring. “It is
you
he admires.”

She realizes as she speaks that she has wondered this, if perhaps Henry is in some way in love with William himself.

“I have offended you,” William says, though he does not sound contrite. “Do not misunderstand me, Lina. It is only as I told you. Henry is…”

“It is men,” she says boldly. “He prefers…men.”

William looks surprised.

“You go about so little in the world, one might think you know nothing of it,” he says. “You surprise me. But I think it is not that, though of course I cannot be certain. I think…”

She has been touched by the extravagance of Henry’s gifts. She feels—she wants to feel—that they are, whatever William says and though she has no evidence of it, tokens of Henry’s esteem…for
her.

William holds the painting against the wall as if to test how it will look there. It depicts the curved shoreline of a seaside bay, darkened winter fields, a sky of beautifully painted clouds.

“I don’t know. It is as I have said,” William says. “Henry wants for
no
companion.”

He touches his temple. “He is not a man of the body. Only of the mind.”

Lina looks down at the papers on the table.

“You have…spoken about this?” she asks him.

“Can you imagine such a conversation with Henry?” William says. “Of course not. And it is not that he has no feeling for a friend; you see that. But he has no interest in—intimacy, I think. I don’t know how else to say it.”

Lina straightens some of the papers on the table. Her feelings about Henry, rather than becoming less complicated, have only become more so as the months have gone by. She feels grateful to him for the gift of the mare. His attentions to their household and to William’s career have been steady and kind. All around her are his gifts: a pretty Chinese bowl. One day a full silver tea service arrived, packed neatly in a hamper. A pair of soft kid gloves, cloud white, clearly intended for her.

She has never asked William about women, about whether he imagines a wife for himself. It would have seemed…an intrusion. They do not speak of such things. But she has wanted to, she knows.

“
You
have no companion,” she says now.

She looks up and watches him examine Henry’s painting; she wants to see his response.

But William only laughs. “How can you think so? I am
surrounded
by companions,” he says. “And I have you.”

“But…you have no
wife,
” she says.

“Too busy,” he says. “And no money. A wife is expensive.”

She sits back down at her writing table, takes up her quill.

She is glad. She knows she is.

May they be poor forever, she thinks, if this is poverty’s happiness.

—

THE NEXT EVENING,
Henry and William sit at the gateleg table in the kitchen while she prepares supper. She has been anxious about the meal—they eat simply, and she imagines Henry will have expectations about the food—but William has told her not to worry. Henry is no more interested in food than he is in love, he says. They will eat in the kitchen, where they may all be comfortable. They have a ham, and Lina has made onions in cream and roasted turnips. Later, they will take out the fourteen-foot telescope. William is eager to show Henry his recent observations about the moon.

When they are finished with the meal, William pours more wine for them. He has been writing about the Lunarians, he tells Henry; he would be glad now of his friend’s thoughts.

Lina and William have been looking at the circular shapes—the circuses, William calls them—on the moon’s surface.

“You will indulge me?” William unfolds papers from his pocket.

Lina glances at Henry; she knows that some do not countenance her brother’s theories about life on the moon.

But Henry sits forward with apparent interest.

She notices with sympathy his red-rimmed eyes, the strange way in which he holds his hands gripped together in his lap, as if it is necessary to contain them somehow. There is an unhappy pressure in her chest. Truly he is the most awkward man she has ever known. She has to look away from him.

William reads aloud:

As upon the earth several alterations have been and are daily made of a size sufficient to be seen by the inhabitants of the moon, such as building towns, cutting canals for navigation, making turnpike roads, etc., may we not expect something of a similar nature on the moon? There is a reason to be assigned for circular-buildings on the moon: as the atmosphere there is much rarer than ours and of consequence not so capable of refracting and reflecting the light of the sun, it is natural to suppose that a circus will remedy this deficiency. In that particular shape of building, one half will have the directed light and the other half the reflected light of the sun.

Lina looks over at Henry, but he gives no sign of surprise.

William continues.

Perhaps, then, on the moon every town is one very large circus. Should this be true, ought we not to watch the erection of any new small circus, as the Lunarians may watch the building of a new town on the earth? By reflecting a little on the subject, I am almost convinced that those numberless small circuses we see on the moon are the works of the Lunarians and may be called their towns….Now, if we could discover any new erection, it is evident an exact list of those towns that are already built will be necessary. But this is no easy undertaking and will require the observation of many a careful astronomer and the most capital instruments that can be had.

When he finishes, he looks up at them. He puts his papers on the table.

Lina looks over his shoulder at the drawing he has made, something that looks like an inky copse of trees.

Henry, too, leans across the table. William turns the paper so Henry can see it better.

“What is the illustration?” Lina asks.

“A lunar forest,” William says. He bends over it with his quill and makes a few further scratch marks. “And I believe I have detected
growth,
” he adds.

Something about this drawing of his, the little hash marks to suggest trees, and how close he bends to the page, makes her feel protective of William. It is not that she doesn’t believe his theories; she has spent enough time at the telescope now to be able to see at least some of what William sees, though she knows her eye is not as acute or her mind as informed as his. She never knew William as a young child, of course, for too many years separated them, but she has an apprehension of him at this moment as childlike, the little boy gazing up at the moon. She remembers her own fanciful notions about the creatures that might—or might not—inhabit the other worlds around them. She lets her hand fall to William’s shoulder for a moment, resting her fingers lightly there.

He continues to draw, but he reaches out to her with his other hand, palm up, surprising her.

After a moment, she puts her hand there, and he closes his fingers around hers.

“How much better,” William says, “now that you are here, Caroline.”

—

WHEN WILLIAM AND HENRY
prepare to go out that night to the street, Lina says she will remain inside, that she has tasks to complete. Henry can assist William in her place.

“Another time, I hope,” Henry says, bowing, as she prepares to go upstairs.

It is only a formality, him speaking this way, she thinks. It is just what people say. She knows that he will be happier if he can be alone with William.

It only occurs to her later, when she looks out the window of the music room at William and Henry in the street with the telescope, that perhaps William was laying claim to her in some way with that gesture, that hand opening and expecting hers to rest in it. He was telling Henry that Lina is not free to leave him and love another. That indeed she would not choose to do so.

After a moment, before one of them can sense her there, looking out at them, she turns away from the window.

—

THE NEXT WEEK BRINGS
another book loaned to William from a fellow astronomer. It is part of her regular duties to copy such books, even this one in Latin, which she cannot read, and today the task gives her one of the headaches from which she sometimes suffers, the flashes of light and queer blank spots in her vision. William frequently prepares papers on his investigations. These, too, she copies, but she has fallen behind, and many pages await her. She sits by the window in the parlor reserved for music lessons, where the light is good, but when William leaves the house for an errand, she puts her head down on her folded arms, willing the pain to pass.

She is woken sometime later by Stanley, by his hand jostling her shoulder.

“He’s back,” Stanley says, quietly.

Lina sits up, blinking. At least the headache is gone. Usually there is no remedy for them except sleep.

“Thank you,” she says. She touches her hair.

Stanley moves away, but he lingers in the door, a worried expression on his face.

“It’s all right, Stanley,” she says to him. She smiles to make him feel free to go.

She looks down at the papers before her. There are so many of them, an infinity of papers.

—

THAT WEEK,
William begins holding rehearsals at the house with the performers he has engaged for the spring concert series. He composes chants and anthems and psalm tunes for the choir, the morning and evening services set in two different keys. The speed with which he transposes music astonishes her.

Yet every penny goes toward the household’s needs and his pursuits in astronomy. He wants no horses, no comforts, no fine furnishings or clothes. Painful moments between Lina and William occur when there are not sufficient funds to pay their creditors, and Lina must present to William the difference between what they owe and their income.