Private Life (10 page)

ever produced, but not beloved. Though I never knew him myself."

"Who did?" said Beatrice. "He's very old."

"He's not more than thirty-five," said Robert. "He was born a couple of years after

the war. He's something like five years older than I am. And his brother John is a

personable fellow."

"John's wife never says 'boo,'" said Beatrice. "I always wonder," she added in a

saucy manner, "if a wife looks and behaves like a rabbit, is the husband behaving like a

wolf?"

Robert

laughed.

Margaret said, "Where's the berry basket?"

"In the summer kitchen."

She went out. Robert left soon after, mounted on one of the pretty Morgans.

At the poker party, in the absence of Mrs. Early, all the ladies talked about the

captain (So tall! So good-looking! No, not good-looking at all, rather glowering! He was

coming inside of a week! No, he was going to New York City!), but none of them really

knew anything. Margaret didn't relate her own experience, since she thought that the most

appealing thing about Captain Early was his mother. The ladies went on. Was Mrs. Early

embarrassed? Of course she was, given the transgression. Certainly she was not, given

her nature. She
should
be embarrassed, though, they agreed on that. All Margaret said

was "I can't imagine Mrs. Early being embarrassed about things."

"Isn't that true!" exclaimed Mrs. Landon, but Margaret had meant her remark as a

compliment, and Mrs. Landon did not.

Four days later, Margaret left on the train for Kirkwood, and didn't hear another

thing about Andrew Early for six months.

All the talk in St. Louis was of the coming fair, Olympic Games, and Louisiana

Purchase Exposition, which was to begin on April 1, 1903, a hundred years to the day

from the Louisiana Purchase (and wasn't it amazing that the city had been required to

raise fifteen million dollars to put on the fair, the exact sum President Jefferson had spent

on the whole of the Louisiana Purchase? If nothing else showed the progress humankind

had made during the nineteenth century, that surely did). Among the Bells, on

Kingshighway, near Forest Park, there was a blaze of chatter and news. There was

absolutely no doubt there that St. Louis, Missouri, was the center of the universe, the

coming city of the twentieth century, and certain to eclipse New York and Chicago, if not

London, Paris, and Rome, as the greatest city the world had ever known. And why not?

All the best Frenchmen, Italians, Englishmen, and Germans had decamped from those

moldy old spots and set out for right where the Mighty Mississippi and the Big Muddy

met and married. The twentieth century in St. Louis, Margaret was given to understand,

was already vastly improved over the nineteenth century. In the nineteenth century, St.

Louis was all cholera and typhoid fever, smallpox, and tornadoes and heat and damp air,

a place where dead dogs and cats lay in the streets for weeks. Now St. Louis was shoes

and shipping and flowers and ladies' dresses and coats and magazines and beer, not to

mention plug tobacco and people from around the world meeting up in Forest Park to

display their wealth. Would the capital of the United States be moved to St. Louis? It

made perfect sense, even if it wasn't likely to happen. At least you could point out what a

good idea it would be, the whole nation gathering right here in the natural middle of the

country. And then, as if to ratify what everyone was saying, the imminent exhibition was

put off for a year--until 1904--because so many nations wanted to come and display

themselves that the facilities could not be built in time.

After Thanksgiving, Elizabeth had a baby--the child was named Lucy May, after

Mercer Hart's mother (whose maiden name was Wilder--"not Jewish at all," said Mrs.

Bell. "Very prominent out West somewhere. Where would that be, Mr. Bell? Where is it

that the Wilders are prominent?"

"Big family," said Mr. Bell, "prominent everywhere," without looking up from his

paper.

"Not here," said Mrs. Bell.)

Elizabeth and Mercer exuded the gravity of genuine parents from the first day of

Lucy May's existence. Margaret got none of the feeling that she got with Robert and

Beatrice, that the youth of the child was a mistake time would eventually correct.

Although Elizabeth had little experience of children or infants, the nanny (actually a

woman from southern Missouri named Agatha) had to show her how to do something just

once for Elizabeth to understand and master it--bathing, dressing, nursing, changing,

rocking, singing, carrying from room to room. Agatha said to Margaret, "Good Lord, I've

seen some babies, you do exactly what is right to do, and it doesn't have any effect at all,

they just go their own way as if you hadn't done a thing! This child is the kindest.

Whatever you do for her makes her happy. Your sister is going to be spoiled, and go on

and have another and then another, and then, one day, she'll get one of those unrewarding

ones, and then she'll know how spoiled she is." She shook her head sadly at this thought.

Margaret found Agatha to be such a sympathetic person that she even told her

about Lawrence and Ben and that hanging she couldn't remember she'd been taken to on

the very day of Elizabeth's birth, so long ago now. Agatha shook her head again. She

said, "Those days are gone, and it's a good thing. Down there, where I come from, near

Sedalia, you were afraid to answer the door in case it might be someone bringing home a

body, either dead or half alive--and which was worse, I want to know. If it wasn't

snakebite, then it was gunshot, and if it wasn't gunshot, then it was a drowning or a tree

falling or a horse that run off with the wagon and it tipped over. My own mother had

herself fourteen babies, and toward the end of her life, she wouldn't answer the door at

all." Agatha was forty-five, not twice as old as Margaret, but she looked seventy. She had

no teeth, and she walked with a limp. Margaret was a little sad when, having taught

Elizabeth everything she knew, the woman left.

Dora was now twenty, though no taller and no prettier. She wore mannish boots

and coats. She never wore gloves or any kind of a hat that other women were wearing.

"The only reason to wear a hat," she told Margaret, "is to keep your hair from falling in

your face." And though her parents were wealthy and prominent, and Dora herself would

have a considerable inheritance, everyone seemed to have given up utterly on the idea of

getting her married. No one spoke to Margaret about her own future as an old maid, but if

Dora didn't perennially hear about hers, it was simply because she was never present

when everyone was talking about it. Mr. Bell's attitude was one of resignation. Mrs.

Bell's attitude was one of grievance against Dora for, in the first place, having no

feminine assets and, in the second place, making nothing of those she had. Elizabeth was

more philosophical--maybe Dora would enjoy her condition, or else convert to

Catholicism and become a nun. St. Louis had any number of convents, including one

"where the nun takes a French name and lives in a tiny cell for her entire life, sometimes

seventy years, and never sees a soul and gets her tray of food once a day through the wall

and prays eternally." You could see this convent from the streetcar, when it went from

Kirkwood north and then east into St. Louis. Dora was writing things, but no one knew

what they were. She was sending them to magazines such as
McClure's
, but nothing, as

far as anyone knew, had seen print yet.

Dora's behavior was attributed, by Mrs. Bell, to how famous St. Louis was. Even

Lincoln Steffens, that terrifying man, was in St. Louis to report on the arrest of Boss

Butler. Lincoln Steffens, said Mr. Bell, was trying to see to it that all the best people

would have their money taken away from them and be sent in rags upon the streets to

beg. That Dora would consort, even in the privacy of her own mind, with such an

unprincipled man indicated to Mrs. Bell that Dora was some kind of changeling. The sum

of all of this was that St. Louis was the world's most exciting and modern city, and such a

thing could be either good or bad, morally, but there was no denying that the city was

better to live in than it had been when Mrs. Bell was growing up as Miss Branscomb

down near Tower Grove Park: you couldn't get really good silk foulard to save your life,

and everyone ate catfish right out of the river. "And it's not so hot as it was, either. Is it,

Mr. Bell?"

"Of course it is" (not looking up from his paper).

"He doesn't remember. Truly, Margaret, the weather has moderated in a very nice

way. There hasn't been a typhoid epidemic in twenty-five years."

"Twenty-four," said Mr. Bell.

Shortly after this, Margaret happened to overhear Mercer and Elizabeth chatting.

Elizabeth said, "It makes no sense. I think she's pretty." (This was where she divined that

she was the subject.) "Prettier than Beatrice. And nice, too. But she's never had even a

beau. She would have told me." Margaret smiled to herself even as she stilled her

movements, instantly curious to hear her brother-in-law's reply. He said, "Pretty enough.

But forbidding. You'll allow that, won't you, Lizzie?"

Elizabeth laughed. "That's silly."

"But she never looks at a fellow, and if she makes a mistake and lets him catch

her eye, she glares like fury. I don't know anyone who can stand up to that sort of thing,

at least at the beginning. I love her now, as your sister, and she's sweet as a peach with

Lucy May. It's like she's a different person when you know her. But the average fellow

doesn't get a chance to know her unless he happens to marry her sister."

"That can't be ..."

"And then you don't know what she means half the time. I ask myself once a day,

is she making a joke? The fellows can't take that. It makes them feel thick."

"She is making a joke," said Elizabeth. "I laugh all the time at what she says."

"But you know her. A fellow doesn't want to feel as though a girl is running rings

around him, at least not till he marries her." Now they fell silent. This was, indeed, the

first Margaret had ever heard about her demeanor. She had thought she was too old to

have her feelings hurt, and now they were.

BY Margaret's January return to the little house, Lavinia, Mrs. Early, and Mrs.

Hitchens had become friends, almost a regular threesome. According to Lavinia, Mrs.

Early had come up to her in Macomb's general store and spoken to her in a very friendly

way about both Beatrice and Margaret, and then Mrs. Early had invited her to tea. The

three of them turned out to have many interests in common, though none of those she

listed was poker. When the two elegant ladies came visiting, they sat in the front room

and knitted or crocheted. Or they trimmed hats. Or they talked about the exposition, and

made plans to go to St. Louis and see everything, "even if it takes three or four trips to do

it." Mrs. Early chatted genially about places she had been--yes, that spa in Germany

(Baden--the word itself meant "baths"), where you could see the excavations of the very

spots where the Romans had taken their hot baths. She had also been to Paris and to

London, of course, and taken hikes in the Lake District ("I love Wordsworth, don't you?")

and the Scottish Highlands ("I grew up reading Scott, didn't everyone? I do believe it

ruined me"), and she had been to Menton in France, and Amalfi and Rome in Italy

(where, in fact, she had met Mrs. Hitchens and invited her to come to Missouri). And

then she had been planning to go to Texas, to visit her son there, but when Captain Early

returned to town, she didn't want to leave while he was here. She sprinkled references to

Captain Early into her conversation--exactly enough so that they would know she had no

worries about him. When Margaret asked about the scandal, Lavinia said, "Scandal?" and

Margaret decided that Robert had not known what he was talking about. Margaret got

used to hearing Mrs. Early talk about her son--he had installed a very nice telescope in

one of the upstairs bedrooms, he was particular about his coffee, Mrs. Early was knitting

him fingerless gloves because he wouldn't have a fire in the upstairs. All of these matters

came up very naturally.

Mrs. Early made a point of conversing with Margaret about books. If she had read

something Margaret liked, she would compliment her taste, and if she hadn't read it, she

would frankly state that she wished she might someday. At last, after telling her for

weeks about her extensive library, Mrs. Early invited her to come and choose a few

things to read.

But by that time it was February, and there was no walking out, because of a

tremendous cold snap. Lavinia kept a big fire in the kitchen stove, and they sat there most

days and tended the fire. The cats sat with them. It was said that it was twenty or thirty or

forty below, but Margaret didn't know. Supposedly, at forty below, if you threw a bucket

of water into the air, the drops would freeze before hitting the ground. Old Paul, the hired

man, shoveled a path between the house and the barn, and she went out, bundled up,