Private Life (13 page)

Lavinia pressed her, he actually said nothing that was, as Lavinia put it, "to the point."

Lavinia made her disappointment clear, but then she said, "Since there's always

something to be made the best of, we will make the best of it."

In October, he returned again, but he did not make a proposal. As it turned out, he

was finished in Washington, D.C. Lavinia said, impatiently, "If a woman's task is not to

be patient, then I cannot for the life of me understand what her task is!" Margaret was

patient. Mrs. Early stayed away. Christmas passed. Captain Early was understood to be in

Flagstaff. Then he was understood to have gone to California. Spring came. Elizabeth had

another baby, another girl. Captain Early returned from California. Shortly after he

returned, he found her picking strawberries in Beatrice's strawberry patch, and got her to

stand up, there in the morning sunshine, and, holding both of her hands, he asked her to

marry him. She was twenty-seven. He was thirty-eight. The seriousness of his face as he

asked her made her terribly nervous, but she made up her mind that this nervousness was

love, a form of electricity.

Now Lavinia herself became very patient. There was a lot to do in the month

before the wedding, especially since Margaret's linen chest was nothing like what

Beatrice's had been, or Elizabeth's. What was there in it--three tablecloths, a dozen

napkins, some unhemmed sheets and pillowcases, a quilt, neatly made, but old now, ten

years old or older? And what dress did she have to be married in? Lavinia had overlooked

that, and Margaret had overlooked it, too. Mrs. Bell had nothing suitable--Margaret was

much too tall. It was Mrs. Early who took Margaret on the train to St. Louis, to Stix, Baer

& Fuller and bought her a practical outfit, a blue shirtwaist with lovely lace over the

shoulders and a flattering, bias-cut skirt, in a crisp wool, light but warm, and a coat to go

with it, darker blue. They had tea at a French tearoom, and Mrs. Bell joined them. She

had a hatbox with her, and she gave it to Margaret, and congratulated her, and gripped

her shoulders and kissed her on both cheeks in that St. Louis way, but all of her

conversation was about Lucy May and Eloise (named after Mrs. Bell), who was already

smiling at two months old. After that outing, it was but two weeks until the wedding.

Andrew came over every afternoon. They were having a heat spell, so he would

seat himself in the rocker on the porch. Margaret meant to sit and chat with him, but there

were other things to be done--Lavinia would have her shelling peas for supper, or

hemming, or even pruning the rosebushes in the bed by the steps. Andrew spoke in a

pleasant way about what he had read in the papers that day, or what he had seen walking

along the river, or the habits of bees versus the habits of wasps, or changing climate

patterns in Equatorial Africa. He had a sonorous voice and a formal delivery. Lavinia

never left them alone for very long, but Andrew didn't seem to mind. Every day, upon

leaving, he stood beside her for a second and took her hand in both of his.

The wedding was quickly accomplished, in the parlor at the farm. Beatrice jiggled

the baby, who was fussy with colic, and as Mr. Pine, the minister, asked Andrew if he

took this woman, she passed her to Lavinia. The boys could hardly stay still--Robert had

to grip them each by one shoulder and force them to stand. Only little Lucy May, now

two, was smiling and excited in her smocked dress. She stood quietly holding Elizabeth's

hand until Elizabeth whispered to her, and she walked solemnly over to Margaret and

handed her the bouquet of lilacs. Mrs. Hitchens and Mrs. Early kept smiling through it

all, and then, afterward, Mrs. Early said, "Active boys become adventurous young men,

don't they, Andrew?" For breakfast, Alice served flapjacks, bacon, and her own

blackberry-jam cake, frosted with seven-minute frosting. Margaret and Andrew caught

the
Katy
, which was to connect to the
Missouri Pacific
at Jefferson City that very

evening.

1905

1905

LAVINIA TOLD M ARGARET when she left Missouri, "You've always been a

good girl, and now you've had a piece of luck, marrying at twenty-seven, but a wife only

has to do as she's told for the first year." Since one of the things she was told to do was to

have marital relations, when she and Andrew embarked upon the sleeper that carried

them across the sere and enormous Western lands to California, she expected, as Beatrice

had warned her, that marital relations would commence at once, but they did not-Andrew was too tall for the sleeper and too modest. He felt they should have separate

berths. However, he gave her a chaste kiss every morning upon rising and every evening

just before he retired.

Their progress from Missouri was, at first, a lesson in the effects of decreasing

rainfall--the green fields paled from moist, rippling shoots of wheat, to grass, to straw, to

brown earth, then abruptly thrust up in cliffs of granite against a hard blue sky like none

she had ever seen before. What rain there was Andrew pointed out to her--a vaporous

curtain in the deep distance that often didn't reach all the way from the cloud to the earth.

The endless deserts of Nevada were succeeded by their opposite, the pine-clad Sierras by

way of the Donner Pass, which were just as daunting. Andrew, in his sonorous way, spent

the journey detailing the geology of every region, and then the various stages by which

the Donner Party came to grief and later was rescued. Margaret had never heard of the

Donner Party, but by the time they got to Sacramento, she knew more about them

("Almost all of the women survived. What do you make of that, my dear?") than she

cared to. From Sacramento to Fairfield, while they sat in the dining car and shared a plate

of chicken and potatoes, she thought unwillingly of the Donner Party and stared out at the

darkness. California seemed forbidding and self-contained, just as Mr. Dana had

described it. At Vallejo, it took them almost two hours to sort their baggage and then

make their way, by wagon, from the station through the town and down to the bay, then

by ferry across to the island. In the fog, she saw only dim shapes and sudden lights

reflected back to her. When they got to their little house, brought in their baggage, and sat

down for a rest, it turned out that Andrew had not yet purchased a bed large enough for

both of them--it was as if, until he saw both of them in the room, the need for such a bed

had not occurred to him. Thinking of Beatrice's warnings and advice, Margaret was

relieved; thinking of Elizabeth's more reticent but entirely positive reports, she was

disappointed.

It was only gradually that she came to realize that she was truly in California.

First, there were the facts--Mare Island was the naval shipyard for the West Coast, an

island and an entire world, self-contained and busy and dedicated to everything naval.

Andrew was in charge of the small observatory on the base, where he maintained the

chronometer. Every day, just before noon, a couple of sailors raised the time ball to the

top of the mast on building 51, which was visible from all around the harbor. At precisely

noon, upon orders from Andrew, the time ball was dropped, and officers in ships all

around the harbor adjusted their clocks, which they called "chronometers." The

shipbuilding factories ran in a long noisy row south along the harbor to the drydocks,

where the parts of the ships built in the factories were, by means of huge cranes, joined

together (or, in the case of decommissioned or salvaged ships, taken apart) and,

eventually, floated (or not). Day and night, men were busy in these factories, which were

breathlessly, ear-shatteringly noisy, but all around the noise, people bustled back and

forth, laughing and giving orders and chatting about this and that.

West of the factories, their street of houses looked rather like any other street of

houses, and their little house, Quarters P, was pleasant. She had seen similar houses back

in Missouri, a single story with a front parlor and a bay window, a dining room, back

kitchen, and two bedrooms. The house to their north was yet smaller, but the house to

their south (across a little side street) was the first in a row of houses that were as grand

as any she had ever seen in St. Louis. There were four of them, and then another, even

grander one, with fat columns and a deep awning, where the Commandant of the Base

lived; after that, five more of the first type. Past those, at the end of the street, was a small

brick chapel, nondenominational. West of this row of houses, but out of sight, were the

barracks for the seamen. Not far away, there was a powder magazine. Margaret had never

imagined such a busy place, so simultaneously insulated and cosmopolitan, where

everyone spoke of "Tangiers" and "Buenos Aires" and "Lisbon" with less selfconsciousness than people in Missouri spoke of St. Louis and Chicago.

Andrew's observatory, on Dublin Hill, had a five-inch telescope and a retractable

roof. He took her there on their second night, once they had recovered from their train

journey. It was a small brick building, chilly and crowded with books and papers, but the

instruments he used to make his measurements (which he later explained to her, but not

that night) were set out neatly. She didn't touch them, though she looked through the

telescope and saw a few things she had never seen before--Mars, the craters of the moon,

the rings of Saturn (which, he said, had been at their optimum visibility in 1901, and

would be again in 1927), and Neptune, which, Andrew pointed out, was blue. He said,

"My view is that Le Verrier discovered it, but Adams gets joint credit." He put his arm

around her shoulders and spoke triumphantly: "They knew it was there! They expected to

find it and they did! Bouvard and Adams did the calculations that showed it was there

because it deformed the orbit of Uranus. That, to my mind, was the beginning of the

modern world. Isn't it amusing? Six years after the Battle of Waterloo, and already they

had begun." Then he kissed her on the cheek. Very late, they walked back to their house.

Margaret was as impressed by the fragrance in the moist air--Andrew said it was from the

alyssum--as she was by the solar system.

Since the only book she had read about California was Mr. Dana's, she had

imagined it as a forbidding place--hard to get to by land or sea, protected by mountains,

deserts, offshore winds, and an impenetrable coastline, but this California, the California

pierced and conquered by the Southern Pacific Railroad, seemed to embrace her. The

grass around her little house was green, and there were roses on the bushes. The breeze

off the bay was sometimes damp and foggy and sometimes warm, but it was always

redolent of the sea grasses that grew on the western side of the island. The sun shone, and

as a result of this sunshine, of the observatory, of the factories, of the flowers, of the

unending activity of all kinds--as a result of the constant, pressing presence of Andrew in

their small house--she did not feel herself to be the same person that she had always been.

One of the first things that happened after she arrived was that the back of the

powder magazine blew out in an explosion. They heard it, and saw the fire. By the time