Private Life (5 page)

Margaret said, "It's hot."

"His face is very red."

"Look at Mr. Bell. His cheeks are steaming."

Elizabeth murmured, "Proximity to Beatrice has given him a case of humidity,"

then laughed, and Margaret smiled. One of the great loves of her life was Elizabeth's low,

rippling laugh, never girlish or coy, but always gay and sassy. Margaret said, "I think

Papa likes Mr. Bell."

"It's true that he has made no disparaging references to Mr. Bell's nose, his height,

his horse, his waistcoats, or his ancestry."

Margaret and Elizabeth exchanged a glance, and they nodded. They both knew

that the task was to win Mr. Bell, not to approve him.

Lavinia was watching the procession of the German-American Betterment

Society. Their uncle Anton was in the second rank, wearing his hat and his short pants

and carrying his Bavarian walking stick. The entire association was singing a song

Margaret didn't know, in German.

"Oh dear," said Elizabeth, standing up.

John Gentry had fallen off his chair, and the chair had fallen over. Lavinia at once

knelt down beside him, and the man behind her moved the chair. Everyone turned to

look. Mr. Bell bustled over, and Beatrice stood. Mr. Bell sent a young man out, and then

her mother helped her grandfather to sit up. The young man returned with a cup of water;

Lavinia administered a few sips. John Gentry took a deep sigh, put his hat on, removed it

again, put it on again. His face was dreadfully red, Margaret thought. Outside the

window, the Rebel soldiers passed, their rifles on their shoulders and their marching feet

making the only noise. The crowd in the street was quiet--the Rebels' participation in the

parade was more startling than anyone had anticipated. Who had seen those uniforms in

thirty-three years?

Mr. Bell and another man helped John Gentry back into his chair, and he drank

the rest of the water. He shook his head. He shook his head again, then he reached for

Beatrice's hand. Mr. Bell moved Beatrice's chair so that she was sitting a bit closer, and

Elizabeth resumed her seat next to Margaret. With her other hand, Beatrice gently

smoothed her grandfather's hair back from his forehead, a kindly thing to do, and

something Margaret would not have thought of. It was often remarked in her family that

Margaret did not have a fine sensibility, or, even, a female sensibility. When she read

aloud about the death of Little Nell, her voice was steady and her progress unremitting.

When she read aloud Miss Alcott's book, which was sent to Lavinia by her aunt Harriet,

it did not occur to her to weep at the passing of Beth. She thought that, for all of Jo's

boyishness, she was a sentimental thing. Lavinia found her mysterious when Margaret

shed no tears the day their cat Millie was caught in a raccoon trap or when Alice and

Beatrice contracted the cholera and it seemed as though one or the other of them--or

both--were set to pass on. But, apart from the fact that the first thing Margaret felt about

these lamentable events was that they were
interesting
as well as
sad
, there was always

also what she was feeling now, watching John Gentry, Beatrice, and Robert Bell, that a

play had begun suddenly, perhaps when she wasn't looking. Now, Mr. Bell's leaning over

Beatrice with a smile had something to do with Papa's collapse and something to do with

the marching of the Rebels in the parade and something to do with the paper on the table,

and these events were designed to go together. Her task seemed to her at these times to be

not to leap into the action, but to observe it and discern a pattern, though what she would

do once she had discerned it, she could not imagine. In all the times she had entertained

this sensation, she had never in fact discerned a pattern. She didn't know what to make of

herself, truly. She might have said that for ten years (and who could remember before

that?) she had repeatedly pressed on, doing and thinking what she judged to be right and

natural at the time, only to be told afterward that she had done just the wrong thing. It

was as if she were plowing a furrow, intent upon the ground in front of her, only to stop

and look around and discover that she was in the wrong field, and, indeed, the wrong

country entirely. No, it would never have occurred to her to smooth her grandfather's

brow.

When the parade was over, Lavinia and Mr. Bell helped Papa to his feet, and then

out of the newspaper office and around the building, where they got into the wagon, Papa

first, Beatrice and Lavinia after him. Margaret and Elizabeth were assisted into the back,

and then Beatrice drove the pair of mules to the Fete. Mr. Bell followed on his own

mount, a fine bay Missouri Trotter with a white blaze and a white front foot.

At the Fete, events returned to their customary state. The band played, the

comestibles were served (including two of Lavinia's blackberry pies and almost a peck of

John Gentry's cherries) and declared the best ever. The sun went down. No one would

have known when they drove home that night (an hour in the moonlight, with Elizabeth

sleeping against Margaret's shoulder, and Lavinia and John Gentry discussing something

quietly in the front seat of the wagon, while John Gentry drove the team and Beatrice

hummed in the evening air) that anything untoward had happened--Papa seemed hale and

cheerful. Margaret's idle thought, as the moonlit road unwound between the fields, was

that she had forgotten to find a copy of the paper, and so she knew it would be some time

before she learned what it was that Mr. Early had done to modify the nature of creation

itself.

THIS day, like the day her father shot himself, was the beginning of a new age-Mr. Bell became a regular visitor to Gentry Farm. He would appear in the morning, after

breakfast, and drink coffee with them at the table, and then he would follow John Gentry

into the fields, where he would be introduced to the mysteries of hemp, tobacco, corn,

and mules. He even explored the hemp fields, which were down in the bottomlands,

damp and dirty, teeming with snakes, the girls thought. John Gentry had a long, low

building near the hemp fields, where, using a system of pulleys and hooks and mules and

men with the hemp wrapped around their waists, he manufactured and tarred lengths of

rope. But after he had explored the hemp fields, seen the workmen cut the plants off at

the ground and then lay them in shallow clay ponds full of dank water, Mr. Bell

suggested another plan for the hemp business. John Gentry, he said, should plant the seed

differently--not so close together, but more in rows, so that the plants could mature and

flower. The ultimate product of this sort of plantation was not rope but a medicinal

cornucopia effective in the treatment of every ill. Robert Bell's favorite St. Louis

practitioner, Dr. Caswell, made both powders and pills for the whole city. Robert Bell

took the medicine--Madison County Cure-All, Dr. Caswell called it. It was even good for

the cholera. Robert said, "Thank the Lord you stuck with the hemp." And John Gentry

said, "You've got to make a mess of mule and cattle manure, and chicken litter, and till it

in faithfully every fall. That's what you have to do, and if you have some fish meal, well,

then, that's even better." They talked about it over and over, Robert Bell nodding, as if

farming were in his blood.

Robert liked to look at the horses and the mules, and to go out with Beatrice in the

gig. His Missouri Trotter was a sensible mare whom he sometimes rode and sometimes

drove. He told John Gentry that he did not pretend to be a horseman but he knew some

horsemen, and he knew that, among these horsemen, John Gentry had a good reputation

for breeding both mules and horses. The upper part of the farm was rich pasture, and the

hay fields were cultivated like the hemp fields, with plenty of manure tilled in.

Mr. Bell and Beatrice began to take lovely walks toward evening in these sections

of the farm--sometimes Elizabeth and Margaret watched them out the back attic

windows, but they never saw them do anything interesting. Beatrice strode along and Mr.

Bell trotted to keep up with her. The sisters had been weighing the likelihood of a

proposal for several weeks by that time. At night, in whispers, Elizabeth and Margaret

figured the odds. They both agreed that the odds were two to one in favor of a proposal,

so there was not much to discuss. When they brought this up with Beatrice, she resisted

"counting my chickens." Even so, a proposal looked more and more like the favorite. The

odds should realistically have been pegged closer to three to two, or even five to four, in

favor of a proposal, especially since Margaret and Elizabeth knew that Beatrice was

unlikely to do anything unusual that would throw the proposal into doubt. A book

Margaret had read was
Jane Eyre
. In that book, the parents of Bertha--Rochester's wife,

who lives in the attic and burns the house down--had been quite secretive before the

marriage of Mr. Rochester and Bertha. There was none of that in Missouri. If you didn't

divulge the skeletons in your closet to a stranger (should you be lucky enough to make

acquaintance with a stranger), your neighbors and friends would divulge them for you. In

short, what with the medicinal uses of hemp, the herd of equines, the flourishing hay

crop, the tinkling of the piano, Alice's pork etouffe, and John Gentry's questionable state

of health and lack of male heirs, Beatrice and Mr. Bell were betrothed not long after

cessation of hostilities in the Spanish War. He rode out to inform them of that event as

soon as the dispatch came in; because it was late, he stayed overnight at the farm and

proposed to Beatrice the following morning.

In the books that Margaret read, the young lady in receipt of a proposal always

found herself astonished and embarrassed--she blushed with happiness and could barely

speak at the thought of marriage. Margaret would have been surprised if Beatrice had

summoned up such a performance.

THE WEDDING was set for the fifteenth of December. Lavinia and Beatrice

spent the autumn reconsidering every item that Beatrice had stowed away in her chest in

light of her new circumstances. Yes, her new people lived on Kingshighway in St. Louis,

but she and Robert would be living in their town. Yes, he owned and ran the newspaper,

but she was the daughter of Gentry Farm, and everyone knew her perfectly well. They

hemmed the tablecloths and monogrammed the bed linen, crocheted edgings around the

napkins. Margaret helped with the laundering--they bleached and starched and pressed

everything. Where there were pleats, she steamed them out and ironed them in until they

were exactly right. Lavinia considered how the ladies in town would be looking for signs,

signs that Beatrice was thinking too well of herself, or that she did not think well enough

of herself, signs that their father's demise had taken a sharper toll on the family than

Lavinia had let on, signs that their father's demise had taken less of a toll on his daughters

than it should have. Signs that her grandfather was failing, or that her mother was less

fortunate and perspicacious than she appeared. They did not actually talk of these things,

but every time Lavinia shook her head and decided that some napkin or pillow slip or

apron or collar had to be altered, Margaret knew what she was thinking.

Beatrice and Lavinia went to St. Louis on the train with Robert to meet his

parents. They came home five days later with a bicycle of the new style, with two wheels

of equal diameter and a wide seat. It belonged to Robert's only sister, a girl of sixteen

named Dora. Robert had prevailed upon Dora to loan it to Beatrice as a betrothal favor,

while Dora was visiting cousins in Springfield, Illinois. Margaret and Elizabeth were to

have the bicycle until Robert returned it when he went for a last visit before the wedding.

Beatrice did not care about the bicycle, but described in detail the costume Dora had,

solely devoted to bicycle riding, made of blue serge, with gussets behind the shoulders

for leaning forward over the handlebars, and wide, skirtlike pantaloons. The girl also had

special lace-up boots. Margaret and Elizabeth had none of these things, but they could tie

up their skirts well enough to try riding, which they did.

The best place to ride this bicycle was in an area the mules had pounded flat,

around the biggest barn, and between the barn and the tobacco shed. It was grassless and

hard, and the three of them took turns riding a figure-eight circuit one way round the barn

and then the other way round the tobacco shed. It was an unusual sensation, not like

anything Margaret had ever felt before. She took to it. She put on her oldest skirt, without

a petticoat, and then wrapped some strips of flannel around her legs like horse bandages,

leaving room for her knees to bend. Of course the spokes of the wheel could catch her

skirts and either rip them or topple her over, or both, but she got used to taking care, and

once she had figured out what to do, she went faster and faster, even as the weather got

colder and flakes of snow began to swirl in the wind.

To be balanced so precariously, and to feel that balance become steadier, even