The Spirit Room (16 page)

“
Would you like to visit Silver Thread Falls? It’s several hours to get there. It’s on the east side of the lake.” His low voice carried over the din of the horse hooves clomping in the mud, the harness jangling and the rumbling of the wheels. “I’d like to take you there. We have enough daylight to get there and back.”

“
Yes, lovely.”

They rode without speaking for some time, down along the Geneva waterfront, by shops, hotels, foundries, Long Pier with two steamboats in dock, the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad Station, a coal yard, lumber yard, and then over the canal bridge. The rented dapple was dutiful, slowing when Mac pulled the reins and speeding when he slapped her back. They passed single horseback riders and other open carriages coming from the opposite direction with men, women, children in twos, threes, fours, dressed in their Sunday clothes, fancy bonnets, capes, stovepipe hats. Izzie hoped she wouldn’t see anyone she knew and, when they turned south toward Lodi, she was relieved that there weren’t as many travelers.

She especially didn’t want Papa to hear about her excursion. She wanted to see Mac at least a few times to find out if she was truly interested in him as a husband before they spoke to Papa about an engagement. She didn’t want to fight Papa every inch of the way when, in the end, she might decide not to marry Mac.

“
Are you an admirer of Elizabeth Cady Stanton? She lives just east of here, in Seneca Falls, you know.”

“
I have seen her name mentioned in the newspaper. My landlady, Mrs. Purcell, speaks of her once in a while, but I don’t know much about her.”

He looked over at her, surprised.

“
You’re a young woman with an intellect, an appetite for books, and you haven’t come across her writings, her ideas?”

Cringing, Izzie shook her head. Now he would realize that her self-education, as he called it, was greatly lacking.

He laughed. “Well, that may be just as well for me. Mrs. Stanton and her allies are determined to get married women the rights to their own wages and every woman the right to vote. I haven’t decided yet whether that’s going to be a good thing for society or whether it will put us in a big fat pickle. What do you think?” He gave the horse a flick of the reins.

She buried her hands under her shawl, chilled by the breeze of the speeding carriage.

“
Well, I don’t see how women having more authority over their own lives in a democratic society could turn the world into a pickle. What if we could vote? What if we could attend college? How would this harm society?”

“
Then you are in sympathy with Stanton. But you haven’t read her addresses?”

“
No, no. You are the first person who has asked me what I know and don’t know, what I think about things.”

“
I doubt I’ll be the last. You’re the first young woman I’ve met who has educated herself as broadly as you have.”

That didn’t seem possible, she thought. Surely there were many others like her and surely he would have met them.

<><><>

THEY DROVE SOUTH FOR SEVERAL HOURS. Mac talked a lot about his dream of building his own water-cure institution, but also asked Izzie more about her thoughts on freeing slaves and women voting like men. He told her what he’d heard about Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to graduate from medical school, and right in Geneva at the Geneva Medical College. Blackwell had started something called the New York Infirmary for Women and Children in New York City and he said he hoped to meet her one day. Maybe they both would.

After a long while, Mac turned the cabriolet along Mill Creek. The sound of rushing water came from ahead as he stopped the carriage. She started to climb down.

“
Wait.” Mac darted around the back of the carriage and escorted her out of the gig.

She’d seen men doing this her whole life, but it was the first time she’d been offered a hand down like that. In the bright sunlight, as she lowered herself, she noticed his face, the fine lines around his eyes, and his skin, a bit rough. Clara was right. He was old, but not as old as Clara claimed. He wasn’t as old as Papa. A boy, even a young man, wouldn’t admire her the way he did and no young man she knew—the baker’s son, the neighbor boys up on Williams Street, the older boys Billy brought home from Maxwell’s Nursery—none of them thought about talking to her about abolition or Mrs. Stanton’s ideas about women’s rights or immortality. But Mac did. He was asking her so many things.

“
Let’s take the path around and down to the pool at the bottom of the waterfall,” Mac said.

He tossed his stovepipe hat under the seat of the cabriolet and retrieved a blanket and basket. Izzie followed him down a steep, wooded path. When they arrived at the bottom of the falls, they stood together and watched it in silence for a few moments. The silver thread of water looked like thousands of tiny glass beads cascading downward. Spray rose into a mist over the pool. The splash of it was thrilling.

Mac smiled at her. In the daylight his hair was one kind of brown, a rich color like chocolate, his mustache somewhat lighter, and his curly eyebrows darkest of all.

They stayed there a long while not speaking, only listening to the crashing water. Eventually Mac left her side and spread the picnic blanket some distance away in a clearing under a pair of oak trees.

What joy to be away from the Spirit Room, the Blue Room, Papa, the children. It was her own private holiday. She wanted to stay here forever in the sweet sunshine with the new green oak leaves above and the waterfall flooding down, and this kind man. This kind man.

She would marry him. Why not? As long as she could understand why he hadn’t married sooner. That was her one question. But if he had a reasonable answer, she’d marry him and go to Rochester and start her life, her own new life. She would be free of Papa and all the hoax medium nonsense.

“
Are you warm enough?” Mac put the wicker basket on the corner of the gray blanket.

“
Yes. Don’t you know how these dresses and petticoats pile up like quilts?” She patted her layer-covered legs, tucked under her to one side.

Laughing, he knelt down. “I can’t say that I have thought about it. Are you hungry?”

She nodded and he proceeded to set a picnic out with white ceramic plates, sturdy glasses, linen napkins, then two cheeses, a loaf of bread, and a bottle of red wine.

Izzie had tasted wine once, and Papa’s whiskeys a few times when he was out and she and the children were being mischievous, but she had never consumed a full glass of wine. Mac poured, then held his glass up to toast. Mimicking him, she raised hers.

“
To a spring day of great beauty spent together and…” He glanced up toward the waterfall, then back at her, “…to many more moments and days and years as delightful as this one.”

Then they clinked glasses and she took a small sip. She tasted the sweet grapes and, as the wine slid over her tongue and into her throat, it left a tiny soft flame, not a burning fire like whiskey.

Mac didn’t need to know it was her first real glass of wine. He didn’t need to know it was her first picnic with a man. He was years and years ahead of her with picnics and women and waterfalls.

“
Now, are you going to tell me about immortality? I’ve kept your family secret about the séances. You can tell me what you really believe.”

She wasn’t sure she should entirely trust him yet. What if he did say something to someone in town? What if the engagement didn’t work out and the gossip he generated ruined the reputation of the Benton Sisters? Papa would be unbearable.

“
Seal up your lips and give no words but mum,” she said. “Shakespeare.”

“
I should have known you could quote Shakespeare.” Rolling his eyes up, Mac set his glass down on the blanket. “All right, I promise to be mum for the sake of the Benton Sisters.”

“
Well, I do believe that people’s spirits go on after death and have enough form to speak to some of us.”

“
To you?”

“
No. But I believe some people do have the gift. The girl, Anna, who gave my sister and me lessons. Maybe my mother. I’ll never truly know about her.” She took a linen napkin from him. “Do you think the Benton Sisters are awful? Humbugs for money?”

“
Awful is too much. I’m not a believer in this Spiritualism trend, tables tilting, tapping, rapping. I’m not convinced about the girl or your mother either.” He took a knife from the basket and cut several slices of pale, hard cheese. “I must tell you now so that there will be no misunderstanding later.” He held her eyes. “If you become my wife, a Rochester physician’s wife, I cannot allow you to continue as a humbug medium. My Water-Cure Institute will require respectability. There can’t be any spirit rousing associated with me or my office.”

He couldn’t have said anything more perfect. By mandate, she would be free of the hoax once and for all. He placed some cheese and a piece of bread on a plate and offered it to her.

“
I am relieved. I don’t want to continue. I have fought my father since the beginning, but we rely on the income now.”

“
What about your father’s income?”

“
He hasn’t had any since we arrived in Geneva, at least that we know of.”

Looking pensive, Mac ate a sliver of cheese and was quiet a moment.

“
I won’t have much at first. I have to invest in the facility and staff, but perhaps I could send a small compensation to your father for a short period to make up for your absence. After all, if I would be whisking you away on short notice and you are indeed critical to the family wages, it only seems fair.”

This was incredibly generous. “You mean like a dowry in reverse?”

“
Something like that. When shall I ask him for your hand?”

“
I did want to make my decision first.”

He smiled. “Of course.” He untied his blue silk bow-tie and took it off, then unbuttoned his collar and removed it, baring his neck. Stretching out on his side, he leaned on his elbow near her. He was so tall, his legs so long, that his boots rested on the ground beyond the blanket. His wavy hair smelled of pomade, vanilla and lemon.

She took a drink, then held the glass tightly in both hands. “Now I must ask you something, Mac.”

“
Anything.”

“
Why haven’t you married before?”

Squinting, he looked toward the swirling creek. “I haven’t been settled in myself. I didn’t think I could be a decent husband until now.” He gazed into her eyes with an intense stare. “And there’s something else.”

There was something then. Izzie broke from his gaze and put the glass down, preparing herself for disappointment.

“
I am a horrible romantic and I have been waiting to meet the woman that would fill me with an ultimate passion, a complete devouring passion. I haven’t met her until now.”

Izzie’s heart stopped, then raced. She was to be his ultimate passion? But that couldn’t be his reason for not marrying, being an unfulfilled romantic. It couldn’t be.

“
Haven’t you met a thousand women? I can’t possibly be this one woman you have been waiting your life for.”

“
I have met a thousand women and more. None of them, not one, made me feel what you did when you came in from the pouring rain into that bookshop. By the time you had spoken three sentences, I knew I wanted you to be my wife.”

She wanted to believe him. She sipped the wine. Perhaps it would still her trembling. But he had to have the wrong impression of her. She wasn’t someone who would stand out above and beyond a thousand other women.

“
I think you believe I am someone I am not.”

“
I am the one here who is older and wiser. You can’t see what I see. I know who you are and you are beautiful and intelligent and unique.”

Well, he should be wiser than she was, but even so, something was blinding him. What if they married, and the fog he was in cleared? He’d be miserable. For a moment Mac looked into her eyes without speaking. She waited, thinking he was going to ask her something, even kiss her, but he didn’t.

Suddenly, the chatter of voices interrupted them. She had been holding her breath so long during their gaze that her lungs began to ache. At last she exhaled.

“
Well, there goes our privacy, I’m afraid,” Mac said as he sat up.

Two young couples emerged from the path. They were speaking in merry tones as they arrived in the clearing.
Rubbish and rot
. These cheerful people had stolen away her brief moment with Mac. In another minute she would have told him that she would marry him. But then, the diversion was probably for the best.

Mac kneeled, brushed breadcrumbs from his sleeves and started to pack up their picnic, folding a towel around the bread, paper around the cheese, and replacing the cork in the wine bottle.