The House of Hawthorne (5 page)

As I retrieve a fresh page, the sight of my name scribbled on the letter she is writing to Mother draws my attention. It is difficult to control my rising anger as I take in the words:
“A quivering tinderbox . . . one who cannot control her raptures . . . bears all she sees miraculously well . . . Continue to allow Elizabeth to share Sophia’s Cuba letters with the public . . . will see to it that she marries no local planter.”

How dare she! A tinderbox! Marry a planter? And encouraging my mother to allow the public reading of my letters, which I did not know about when I poured out my effusive descriptions of Fernando and flowers and all manner of achingly lovely sights and sounds!

I do not care that Mary will know I read her letter, and scribble in my own handwriting that I do
not
appreciate the sharing of my private thoughts for every gossip to ponder; I am
no tinderbox; I keep my sufferings to myself instead of plaguing my company with them; and I will
not
marry a Spaniard—though my hand trembles in rebellion of the very words I write. I circle my addition to Mary’s libelous scrap and sign it prominently so my mother will not miss my frustration, and Mary will see that I have read it.

Once I am back in my room, I summon Josepha to help me with my toilet and do my best to ignore the lingering ache that extends around my ears. I must appear tonight to ensure that Mary is not spreading her venom in this household where I am rehabilitating, learning about the world, and finding a key to a thing that has been locked inside me for so long it is almost frenzied to emerge. I begin to realize it is those around me who wish to suppress it, because they fear what will happen if I allow my full power to be realized. They have wanted my sterility to keep my passions at bay, and have even encouraged me in my infirmities because they wish to contain me. No more!

I take extra care with my preparations, and for that I am late to the table. When I enter, the men rise and the women bow their heads to me, though Mary will not meet my eyes. Josepha pushes my chair in behind me, and the family resumes dinner, though in a heavy silence. I wait for their inquiries after my health, but find the adult conversation—in French, for it is dinnertime—formal, distracted, and well outside of me.

The children are excited because on a previous night neighbors brought a lovely set of turtledoves, and Tomás fashioned a
large cage for them out of rattans and cornstalks on the piazza. The female laid an egg, and the children are betting when it will hatch and whether they will be awake to see it. They imitate the lovely cooing sounds, which upon recollection I realize brought me some comfort during my infirmity. I mention this, but no one seems to care except Eduardo, who tells me how glad he is to have me at the table. The children beg to be dismissed early, and Madame Morrell surprises me by agreeing. Before Mary rises to join them, I place my napkin on the table.

“Mary, allow yourself some rest,” I say. “I will mind the children, and you may return to your letters.”

Her face becomes pale, and as I stand to walk to the piazza, I give her my iciest stare.

Outside, the Morrell children crowd with a group of slave children around a dove they have let out of the cage. They take turns passing her from one small hand to the next, with Josepha cautioning them from nearby. The dove’s gentle nature and softness bring smiles to each face when she allows them to pet her.

I kneel next to Josepha’s son, a tiny one of not four years old, who flits about with the eagerness of a hummingbird. He places his little brown hand on my arm and speaks rapid Spanish I cannot understand in words, but feel in my spirit. When the dove comes to him, Josepha crouches at his other side and places her hand on his back. He quiets while he holds the dove, and I think that I will write to Mother about the doves and the children, and how even the wiggliest of them understands when nature requires stillness. I will try not to mention Fernando, so I do not stoke the fires Mary has started.

I kiss little heads and stand to venture into the garden at night while Madame Morrell is not watching. Her cautions about the night fragrances harming one’s elements are exhausting, especially when I feel as if I need the sweet aroma of the flowers to balance the poison from Mary’s sphere. I am about to step off the piazza when I spot a feral cat watching the scene from the railing. As I shoo him off into the shadows, I cannot help but shiver at the thought that just inches away from such innocent pleasure lurks something dark, waiting to destroy it.

S
ilence has taught me something of its power.

Mary comes to me to ask my forgiveness, and while I had intended to make her suffer a bit longer, the combination of her repentance and the golden beams of sunset turning the very air of my room into a jeweled paradise dispel every ounce of ill will I held toward her.

Fernando and his brother, Manuel, have come, further lifting my mood. Fernando is delighted to see me in bloom, and presents me with a bellflower that I know I will paint. Then he sits at the piano and, after experimenting with various chords, begins to play a melody as pure and sweet as a dove’s song, bringing as much pleasure to us in the room as the bird did to the children. We gather around him, and I think that music must be a way to enter holy conversation with one another and with God. When the piece ends, various groups of Morrells and neighbors draw together in quiet conversation, and Fernando approaches me at the piazza doors. I know I make a pretty scene for him, with the gentle night breeze stirring my lilac satin gown. It is the first of the dresses promised to me from Madame Morrell, and I have
never worn so becoming a frock. I hold the bellflower and inhale its fragrance.

“¿Te gusta la noche?”
Fernando says, while pointing out at the night.

“Sí,”
I say.

“¿Cabalgas conmigo?”
He makes a riding motion with his hands.

“Tonight?” I have never ridden in the night, and I think there has never been such a magical suggestion. I scan the room for Eduardo, and motion for him to join us.

“May we ride, Eduardo? Under the moon and the stars?”

He hurries to ask his father, who agrees with a nod of the head. Madame Morrell looks as if she would rather we did not, but Manuel and Louisa have heard, and will join us. It will be a night-riding party! I encourage Mary to come, and to my surprise she agrees. Within a half hour, we are galloping down the avenue toward the mountains. The ladies here do not wear bonnets, and my ringlets have fallen by the time we reach the border of La Recompensa, but I pay no heed. I feel as if I have no cares. Oh, to ride in the night; I am restored! I lean in to embrace the neck of Rosillo, and squeeze my eyes shut, inhaling the scent of his exertion mingled with the garden’s intoxicating fragrance.

“Miss Sophia, look!” calls Eduardo, pointing up to the sky
that seems to pass us as if the world were turning at double speed. “Beautiful!” he says, pronouncing each syllable, and making us all laugh. Fernando and Manuel echo him, to our delight, and we begin calling out the English names for the celestial bodies while they imitate us. Mary smiles as never before. She is so much more at ease when her native tongue is being spoken.

We continue on, following our eager guide, Eduardo, and end up at the base of a cataract, gleaming in the night. By day the spray of this waterfall sparkles with the brilliance of jewels, but in the darkness the drops are not discernible; the water is one fluid, silvery being, pouring forth in a deluge. I drink in great gulps of air, inhaling its freshness, and entering communion with divinity itself.

There is heat at my side in the cool of the night, and it is Fernando. He allows his leg to rest against mine and leans in to me.

“You draw me again,” he says.

“I draw you.
Mañana
.”

“Sí,”
he whispers, so close to my ear that if I tilted toward him, his lips would be on it. I am about to do just such a thing when he withdraws from me into the shadows. I breathe in to quiet my throbbing heart, and spot a night-blooming cereus opening in the moon’s light. Once she is in full splendor, I detach her from her vine with apologies to the stalk, and press her in the bosom of my bodice. As we ride back to La Recompensa, I feel her petals on my skin.

I am no woman of letters, but I did once write a poem. It is called “To the Unknown Yet Known,” and addresses the lover I imagine waiting for me. Every once in a while, I am stirred by the
shadowy form of a man who I feel was made for me, and I for him. It would terrify Mother to hear such a thing—for she more than any other perpetuates the idea that as a holy artist I must remain alone—but the vision is so strong and seems to come from outside my mind, rather than from within, that I feel I am being told some sacred truth. The lines I penned were born in this vision, and give ode to the artist who awaits me, and whose sweet music will accompany my painting in an artists’ marriage of the highest order. It concludes with my heart’s knowledge that all good I do is for him, and his for me, though we may never meet on this earth.

As the night ride concludes, I allow myself to ask my soul whether Don Fernando is the man I prophesied. I face this question that I have been suppressing because of outward circumstances, but I receive no answer or certainty. It is true I imagined a writer or fellow painter with whom I could live in blissful cocreation, but is not Fernando an artist with music? Does he not make melodies as striking as any collection of words on a page, and naturally, because he was not formally trained?

This thought troubles me, because I could never assimilate myself to plantation life. On the other hand, I cannot deny my love and my destiny. Doing so would deny the very will of God. Perhaps I am here with Mary to change these planters. Fernando is a willing man. He does not suppress his own hatred of the slave system, though he is chained to it by family connection. Perhaps I can help him break away from his own form of enslavement.

As we dismount our horses, I see Dr. and Madame Morrell
framed in the light from the salon where they sit on the piazza. She leans her head on his shoulder, and his cheek rests against her hair. Their arms are interwoven, and I see her laugh at something he has whispered to her. While I watch them, I feel a hollow longing, and wonder whether I will ever rest my head on the shoulder of a holy, earthly companion. For the first time perhaps ever, I begin to covet such a union more than I do my artistic solitude.

I
do not know where the days go. I teach art to the Morrell and slave children, who make wonderful progress. We spend most nights dining with neighbors at La Recompensa or at other plantations, and almost always with the Layas brothers. My Spanish and Fernando’s English improve, and we now converse without needing a translator. I painted the night flower, which left me with a three-day headache, and I still cannot finish Fernando’s simple portrait. Almost as soon as I start, I am so weary that I begin to wonder whether it is immoral to draw him.

Mary has experienced a depression of spirits. She delights when Mr. Mann corresponds with her, but her light dims as she reads each line. I can only imagine that he continues to withhold his deepest self from her. If I ever have a lover, I will insist that he pen the most adoring letters.

Mary also spends far more time than is healthy with the slaves. During a tour we were given of a nearby sugar plantation, we both became horrified by the treatment of those poor wretches, and were assured of the higher quality of slave life on coffee plantations. I can now see why Madame Morrell takes
pride in their own slave society, having seen the miserable humanity present at the sugar mills. I have never witnessed such a terrible sight as those walking ghosts who populate the cane fields and tend to the hot cauldrons. How they do not take their own lives is beyond my comprehension, and must speak to the superiority of their tortured souls. After the tour, Mary went to the slave village at La Recompensa, and has wearied herself ever since assisting in planting their personal gardens, ministering in the hospital, and caring for the children. I do what I can, but I see that Mary’s involvement with the slaves displeases Madame Morrell, and I wish to remain in her good graces.

How I do tire of Mother’s continual reprimands regarding my interactions with men, when Elizabeth forms the most intimate acquaintances with every male within a twenty-mile radius of Boston. I expressed my outrage that Mother continued to allow Elizabeth to distribute my writings so widely and have them read at her salons. Mother should worry less about my violation by the men with whom I keep company, and more the continual exposure of my deepest thoughts and longings. When I speak my frustrations aloud, they are met with Mary’s chastisement.

“Sophia, if you truly minded the public reading of the letters that you know Mother has allowed all these months we have
been in Cuba, you would stop pouring your deepest thoughts and feelings so abundantly onto the pages.”

“How ridiculous of you to say such a thing,” I reply. “One would think that my frequent requests to Mother to keep the letters from Elizabeth would be respected and heeded.”

“You only put such requests in writing to be able to say you asked, in case you are met with criticism.”

“When you say such things, I am burdened to my soul to see how little you understand me.”

Mary looks up at me over her letter and smiles, which I find infuriating. Josepha’s interruption, however, saves Mary from the tongue-lashing I am about to give her.

“Don Fernando,” says Josepha, with a gleam in her eye.

I follow her into my room, closing the door between my and Mary’s chambers with some force to convey my feelings.

My cavalier is early, and I am still in dishabille. How it thrills me to know that he is just outside the door while I have not finished dressing, and my hair lies over my shoulders without any confinement.

When Josepha steps out, I am sure to stand just in the doorway where Fernando may catch a glimpse of a woman at rest, something he surely does not see very often. At the opening and closing of the door, I meet his eyes across the walkway, and see his pleasure when he takes note of my state. I will have to make him wait a little longer than usual for our ride, because seeing his face arranged in such a way has struck my artistic sensibilities, and I will be able to finally complete my sketch of him.

Upon my completion of the portrait, the vitality in my blood courses so that after dinner with the Layas brothers, when Louisa organizes the dancing, I join them! Mother will die when she finds out that I waltzed, and find out she will. I do not want to torment her, of course, but to illustrate how well I am. I wonder whether she or the parlors full of women whom she and Elizabeth entertain will believe that little sickly Sophichen engaged in such activity.

In my whole maiden life I have not been able to participate in such a whirlwind of sound and motion, since it usually bruises me to the core. But tonight, after completing a work of art and devouring a chicken dinner from Tomás, and drinking just a smidgen of the wine Madame Morrell so much enjoys, I find myself spinning in three-four time in the arms of Fernando. He leads me through moonbeams with such rolling sweetness I am borne back to the lift and fall of the ocean beneath my feet on the brig. The night breathes in through the doors, insulating me from too much heat and allowing me to drift along with the elegant music.

My head does not hurt a bit after the waltz, though Fernando seems much affected by having me in his arms. I have declined all of his previous offers to dance, so tonight marks something new for us. This shift emboldens me to fetch my completed portrait of him, and when I present it to everyone in the room, I am met with applause and appreciation. Old Tekla surprises me by throwing her broom, leaping into the air, and rushing to embrace me. I laugh with delight as she says, “Ave Maria
santísima
,” first squeezing my cheeks and then Fernando’s, whom she adores. He
embraces the effusive slave with warmth, and I think the ancient woman may have just experienced her life’s greatest joy.

I know she wants me to marry him—she has alluded to as much in her incessant ramblings, though I pretend not to understand her. I often dismiss her, but I cannot help but wonder whether Fernando and I are being drawn together for some higher good. When we nestle together watching the pair of turtledoves, just the way Madame Morrell and the doctor do, I find an ease and comfort such as I have never before known. Mary thinks it is her vocation to write about the slaves so the world knows their ills, but perhaps mine is to somehow transform the system through my marriage.

I look to Josepha, who melts into the shadows in the corner of the room, and see a smile on her lips, though her eyes remain dark. She nods at me in appreciation of the drawing and, even amid such joy and celebration, I find a lump in my throat that I do not understand.