Twain's End (8 page)

November 1902

Riverdale-on-Hudson, New York

I
T WAS A VENERABLE
old gentleman of a house, bearded with ivy, wrapped with a porch, and capped with a slate mansard roof. Commanding a view of the Hudson River at its most impressive, and situated just a few miles outside of New York City near the quiet rail-stop of Riverdale, the fieldstone mansion looked as if it could have been the cradle of a great man, and it was. The sitting president, Theodore Roosevelt, had spent two years of his boyhood here.

Now Isabel stood on the same broad boards of the porch on which Teddy, in short pants, would have once thrown marbles. She peered again at the letter of instructions from Mrs. Olivia Clemens that she held in her black-gloved hand, as if a study of the hurried handwriting might explain how she'd come to be there. Her—the underpaid and overeducated companion to Philadelphia socialite Millicent Dana—a private secretary! She had no idea what a private secretary did. Heaven forbid that she should be asked to operate a typewriter. She knew no more of stenography than did a chimpanzee. But when the position with Mrs. Clemens was mentioned by Mrs. Whitmore (who had remained friendly with Isabel over the past thirteen years, once she had isolated Isabel from her husband), Isabel jumped. She needed the extra fifteen dollars a month that
Mrs. Clemens promised; she had her mother to support. And although life with Millicent had offered voyages to Europe, trips to New York, and photography lessons and other excursions into the art world of Philadelphia in which Mr. Dana was a distinguished player, she'd grown tired of shirking the embraces of married gentlemen or bachelors before they were wedded to fortunes. Without an inheritance, she would never be considered as a potential partner for the men in the circles in which she ran. She liked this new idea of being a secretary for Mrs. Clemens, of doing a man's work for a woman. In two weeks, Isabel would be thirty-nine—not too late for a fresh start.

The door swung open, exposing Isabel to a face she had not seen in over a dozen years. “Hello, Katy.”

The maid, with her high cheekbones and ruddy coarse skin, was still roughly handsome in her fierce Irish way, although time had thickened her body within its starched and ruffled pinafore and had spun gray wires into her black pouf. By the tough set of her mouth, it did not appear to have sweetened her much.

“Do you remember me?”

“The little governess.” There was a mocking edge to her voice. “To the rear. And be quiet. Mrs. Clemens needs her rest.”

The floorboards creaked as Isabel took a step backward. “Should I come another time?” With a sinking heart, she pictured the train ride back into the city and to the boardinghouse that smelled of canned peas.

“I said to the rear.” The door thudded shut.

Isabel would not be dispirited. She needed this job. Holding her hat against the wind and her letter crushed against her chest, she navigated the side lawn.

Uncut withered grass, rippling sideways, released its herbal scent as it crunched beneath her boots. Brown leaves tumbled before her. In the near distance, across a sloping expanse that could be traversed quickly with a pony cart, stood a step-down shelf of bare trees lit oddly from below, as if they stood on the edge of the world. Beyond
them, in a rocky canyon over a mile wide, the Hudson River, its deep blue skin scaled with whitecaps, lumbered toward the sea with saurian unconcern.

Isabel stopped to look out over it, the wind banging her skirt against her boots. She'd grown up with a similar grand view. In her mind, she saw herself as a four-year-old. Her mother was lounging on a rug with her toddling sister on the lime-green lawn of Spring Side; her baby brother slept in a pram. Her father made her sit next to her mother, and then he put the infant, heavy as a small sack of sand, into her arms. When Baby Charlie had scowled up at Isabel with his double chin and furrowed brow, a petulant worm being pulled into the light, love had surged through her bony chest. Gritting her teeth against the overwhelming pain of it, she squeezed his arm. He cried out.

“Charles!” her mother exclaimed. “Take him away from her.”

Isabel's heart had broken as her brother had been wrenched from her. Even now, as she looked out over the majestic river, she could taste the bitterness of being misunderstood.

The sound of a woman singing penetrated her thoughts. Isabel listened: it was Schubert's “Ave Maria,” sung with more volume than control. The warbling came from a massive chestnut tree located a whack of a croquet ball across the lawn. Stairs led up the side of a tree to a wooden shelter tucked among the spreading boughs.

A gravelly drawl punctured the singing: “Could you at least wait until I get down?”

Isabel felt a jolt. She hadn't expected to be affected by him after all this time. It had been at least a dozen years. She reined herself in. He was an old man in his sixties now. He wouldn't remember her. His wife had been the one to hire her.

Boots with soles much scarred by match strikes appeared on the board steps descending from the treehouse, followed by gray trouser legs riffling in the wind, a flapping coat, and a mane of silvered hair. Their owner saw Isabel as soon as he hit the ground. He stopped. The trauma that she'd heard had befallen him in the intervening years—losing his daughter Susy to meningitis, suffering from bankruptcy,
embarking on a worldwide speaking tour to pay off the debts on the Hartford house, in which he could no longer afford to live—seemed not to have defeated him. He stared at her from beneath those frightening eyebrows, as bold as ever.

The singing ceased. Velvet pumps, slim ankles in black hosiery, and then a fluttering lavender skirt hem piped in black came down the steps. “I'm getting very good, Papa. Everyone says so. Would it grieve you so much to compliment me every once in a while?”

He wouldn't stop staring.

“I won't let you discourage me, Papa.” The singer hopped the last step to the ground. With a bushy mass of auburn hair that resisted the restraints of a pompadour and the endearingly stooped figure of a shy child, the young woman, of perhaps thirty years in age, instantly charmed. Her features were rounded and girlish yet accurate copies of her father's—she was what he would have looked like as a pretty girl. Although her black straw boater was pinned to her pouf in a jaunty tilt, she ducked her head further when she stood next to him, her submissive air contradicting her hat.

“Clara.” Mr. Clemens kept his gaze on Isabel. “I believe your mother's new secretary is here. This is Miss Lyon.”

The long ribbons of her hat jerking in the wind, Clara briskly crossed the lawn, hand extended, to Isabel. “Welcome to our home. If you ever call me Miss Twain, you will be instantly dismissed.”

Isabel laughed until she saw that Miss Clemens was serious.

Mr. Clemens ambled his way over. “So you're a secretary these days. Well, if you are as good at secretarying as you are at sharping cards, my wife is in good hands.”

Clara looked between them.

“We met at your father's Friday-night card game when I was working for the Whitmore family,” Isabel explained. “I didn't think you'd remember,” she said to Mr. Clemens.

“It's funny what Papa remembers,” Clara said, “and what he doesn't.”

Her father tipped back his head to inspect Isabel at his leisure.
“I must be time-traveling,” he announced when he was done. “You look exactly the same. Clara, did you thunk me on the head with a crowbar?”

“He's talking about the main character in the
Connecticut Yankee,
” Clara said impatiently. “He got hit in the head and went back in time. Not everyone has read your books, Papa.”

“You mean Hank Morgan?” said Isabel.

Mr. Clemens performed his old trick of smiling with his eyes. “I think you are going to work out just fine.”

“She has yet to talk with Mamma.”

He patted his breast pocket for a cigar, ignoring his daughter. “You must be a whiz at shorthand.”

“I'm afraid I'm not,” said Isabel.

“Then,” said Mr. Clemens, drawing out a cigar, “you must know your way around a typewriting machine.”

Panic electrified the skin of her forearms. “I'm sorry. I should have been clearer with Mrs. Clemens as to my experience, but Mrs. Whitmore did urge me to apply. Perhaps I'm not right for the situation.”

Mr. Clemens clenched an unlit cigar in his teeth and held out his hand for the letter that Isabel had been clutching. She gave it up.

He looked it over. “So my wife doesn't want you staying with us.”

“You don't have to be rude, Papa. Please excuse him, Miss—”

“Lyon,” said Isabel.

“—Miss Lyon. My father thinks Mark Twain is above the rules of civility. Perhaps you've already noticed that.”

Her father ignored her. “You ought to stay with us. This old pile is a regular rabbit's warren of rooms. I'm sure we could scare one up for you. Don't let the fact that Teddy Roosevelt once lived here spoil it for you. I try not to.”

Mrs. Clemens had been clear in her letter that Isabel was not to stay with them. Had there been an incident with a previous live-in servant?

She took back the paper. “I've made inquiries. I know of a comfortable
room nearby if Mrs. Clemens finds me right for the position.”

“If you insist,” said Mr. Clemens. “But I'm throwing you out if you insist on banging away on one of those goddamn typewriters. I won't have one in the house.”

Did this mean that she had the job?

“What are you talking about, Papa?” Clara cried. “You do have one in the house. He wrote
A Connecticut Yankee
on it. He was the first author ever to have used the machine for a book.”

“I didn't want to show off.”

“Liar. You always want to show off.” Clara seized Isabel's arm, then lowered her head in challenge. “Miss Lyon is Mamma's, so don't try to claim her.”

Isabel let Clara lead her to the house. When she turned around, Mr. Clemens was lighting his cigar. He glanced up, and then grinned at her with his eyes.

March 1903

Riverdale-on-Hudson, New York

I
SABEL WAS DRAFTING A
check when Clara came to the office door of the Riverdale estate, a dress draped over each arm. She held them up with a swish. “Help me decide.”

Isabel put down her pen, glad for company. Five months on the job, and she still had not met Mrs. Clemens. Oh, she had heard the chiming of Mrs. Clemens's music box wafting through the silent halls, had heard the quiet click of Mrs. Clemens's bedroom door being closed by the doctor after his frequent visits, had felt Mrs. Clemens's spirit penetrating the house, or at least she thought she did—she suspected that was what gave the place such a lonely, desperate atmosphere, in spite of Mr. Clemens's playfulness when he entertained reporters or his few friends. Perhaps what Isabel felt was their loss of Susy. Even eight years after the death of the eldest Clemens girl, no one would speak her name. Grief seemed to permeate the air. Clara, Jean, and their father drifted around in the gloom like fish in an aquarium, rarely making contact with each other or Isabel, who was mostly left alone save for when Clara dropped bills on the office desk, a practice she'd unceremoniously begun two weeks after Isabel's arrival. No one seemed to be in charge of the day-to-day affairs of the estate, not even Mr. Clemens, who was locked up in his billiards
room—writing, he said, although the constant muffled syncopated click of the balls said otherwise.

“Of course.”

“I can't ask Katy,” said Clara. “Her taste is hopelessly garish. She used to dress up when she first started working for us—if a gown wasn't low-cut and scarlet, she wouldn't have it. Papa refused to let her go out in them.”

Mr. Clemens bothered himself with his employees' attire when off duty? But Isabel held her tongue, not wanting to alienate her rare visitor.

Clara raised the garments. “Which should I wear to the party tomorrow night?” To Isabel's look of surprise, she added, “Mother is feeling better. Dr. Quintard said it would be safe for me to take the evening off.”

In the five months that Isabel had worked for Mrs. Clemens, the doctor had ordered her employer to keep to her bed, no visitors allowed. Mr. Clemens himself was only granted one two-to-five-minute visit a day—if Mrs. Clemens were up to it, which was not often. Weeks went by without his seeing her. Clara, on the other hand, disappeared into her mother's room for the greater part of each day. Jean, if she decided to come in from the stable or the woods, was usually allowed in, too. For everyone else Mrs. Clemens remained out of sight, as strangely elusive as Mr. Rochester's first wife in
Jane Eyre.

It seemed odd that Mr. Clemens should be so restricted when their daughters weren't, and that Clara should be required to spend all of her time in the sickroom though a very capable professional nurse was in residence. Isabel's own mother would have been frantic for her to be out in the social swirl, meeting marriage prospects, instead of wasting her prime marketability years at bedside. If nothing else, surely Mrs. Clemens would have liked for her daughter to get some fresh air.