The Widow's War

In later years when Carrie thinks back to the weeks when Deacon courted her, what she remembers most is how considerate he was. The day after he proposes marriage for the first time, he returns to her house and asks to see her. Instead of telling the maid to send him away, she admits him to her parlor to thank him for sending her the flowers.

That at least is the ostensible reason. The truth is, she’s lonely. Deacon Presgrove is the only person in Rio she can talk to about William and the only person who knows she’s carrying William’s child. She decides in advance that if he renews his proposal, she will ask him to leave at once, but he never mentions the subject. Instead he is sympathetic and considerate, and they have a long conversation that leaves Carrie feeling as if she has found a friend.

Three days later, he comes back again, and again the day after that. Gradually she begins to expect him to call in the late afternoon and to look forward to his presence in her parlor. Deacon is charming, amusing, friendly; he distracts her from her grief, encourages her to imagine how much better her life will be once she leaves Brazil, and reassures her that she will not be lonely in the States.

Sometimes they talk about her baby: whether it will be a boy or a girl, whether or not it will look more like her or more like William, what name she should give it.

On other occasions, they discuss less personal things. Deacon is well-educated, well-read, and intelligent. He can talk about art, literature, and politics without being pompous or boring, and although he knows almost nothing about botany or even, to Carrie’s surprise, how sugar is grown, he knows an amazing amount about the theater. His stories of the plays he has seen in Washington and New York help her remember there is another world beyond Brazil. Sometimes he acts out the best bits for her, calling up the lines from his apparently inexhaustible memory.

He is always most eloquent when he speaks against slavery. His commitment to the abolishment of the trade is not only absolute, it is passionate. Once, while speaking of the horrors of the slave ships that ply the Middle Passage, he breaks into tears, and Carrie finds herself comforting him.

The most amazing thing she discovers about Deacon is that she can say anything to him. One afternoon she confesses that she thinks he looks like William. Yes, he says, he and William also noticed the resemblance. In Salvador they were taken for brothers, which, Deacon says, flattered him, since he knew he was not nearly as handsome as William.

Carrie agrees and tells him so, and he laughs. “You’re an honest woman,” he said. “I like that, Carrie.” By now, they are calling each other by their first names, which seems reasonable since Deacon is, after all, a relative of sorts. And if he ever feels jealous when Carrie talks about William, he never shows it.

Carrie is never sure exactly how it happens, but gradually she comes to believe marrying him might not be a bad idea. Sometimes after he leaves, she feels agitated and filled with desire. Deacon may not be as good-looking as William, but he is a handsome man with a way of sitting and talking and moving that reminds her of a caged tiger. There is a passion in him that is hard for him to conceal and hard for her to overlook, and often when they are talking about ordinary things, she senses it and responds. Sometimes she even feels as if he has reached out and stroked her when all he has really done is pass her a plate of tea cakes or made a remark about the weather.

She finds this confusing and does not know what, if anything, she should do about it. Is she responding to Deacon because he looks like William or is she attracted to him in his own right? Should she tell him or does he already know? Is she feeling lust, loneliness, or something more real? In the end, she gives up trying to decide. Her emotions are so tangled during this period, she cannot sort out one kind of longing from another.

She may not be sure how she feels about Deacon, but she has no doubt how he feels toward her. Those green eyes of his stare at her in a way that is hard to ignore, and although he is polite, discreet, and gentlemanly almost to a fault, she would have to be blind not to see how much he desires her. As the days pass, this becomes increasingly important since she knows she could never consider marrying a man who was only interested in talking to her, and by now she is beginning to seriously consider his proposal. Then, too, she is flattered. How could she not be? When a man sits in your parlor speaking to you with the utmost respect and looking at you as if you are the most desirable woman he has ever met, you are not likely to feel he is making a mistake.

In December, he proposes again, and again she refuses him. She is only twenty-three and not inclined to spend the rest of her life as a nun, but even though he has become a good friend, she does not love him.

That night after he leaves, she goes upstairs and looks in the mirror and sees the lines grief is putting on her face. She still loves William, only William, but at that moment she knows that if she keeps on loving him and refuses all offers of marriage, she will end up a bitter, unhappy old woman. She will have the child, of course, but the child will grow up as all children do and leave her, and then what will she do with her life? Devote herself to good works? Take in stray cats? Become a pillar of the church? Bake cookies for the neighbors’ children?

She thinks of all the years that lay ahead of her, all the hours she will spend sleeping alone, all the nights she will wake up longing for an embrace; the solitary meals she will eat; the poverty of a life lived in the past instead of the present. Staring at her own reflection, she realizes she is on the verge of turning her love for William into a religion. No matter how much I love him, she thinks, I can’t go on worshipping his memory. William was a man of flesh and blood, not an idol, and he would not have wanted me to stop living just because he did.

As if he senses she is thinking of accepting his proposal, Deacon becomes more intimate. He does not try to kiss her, but the look of desire in his eyes becomes more intense, and gradually he begins to confide in her. One afternoon when she is talking about how hard it has been to lose both William and her father in such a brief space of time, she notices he is not responding as usual. Instead he sits silently, looking at her with intense sadness.

She stops talking and lets the silence gather. At last, he sighs and says: “I also lost two people I loved within a few weeks of each other: my mother and a young lady I was very fond of. My mother had shown me nothing but kindness, and I loved her dearly.”

“A friend of my sister’s. I loved her and thought to marry her someday, but it was not to be.” He gives Carrie a sad smile. “She looked nothing like you, but she was pretty in her own way: small and full-figured with dark hair and a little mole right there.” He reaches out as if to touch Carrie’s upper lip, coming so close that she can feel the heat of his finger, then draws back and lets his hand fall into his lap.

Later Carrie plays back this conversation and sees what she should have seen at the time: how unlikely it was that a young woman dying of consumption would be “full-figured.” But on that Saturday afternoon, all she feels is sympathy for Deacon and a sense of comradeship in loss.

Two days after he tells her about his late fiancée, Deacon proposes again, and again she refuses him. This time, she does not go upstairs afterwards and look in the mirror because she knows what she will see. Instead, she goes to her writing desk, takes out the piece of paper that contains William’s hair, drops it into a saucer, strikes a match, and sets it on fire. As the paper burns, she says a final good-bye to him.

“Dearest William,” she whispers, “I will never stop loving you, but somehow I must find the strength to go on without you. If you can hear me, my love, give me that strength.”

As the paper turns to ashes and the flames die down, she feels a sense of release. She won’t forget William, but she vows that from this moment on she will never again allow herself to be frozen in the past.

The next day she begins to check Deacon’s references. Everyone speaks well of him: his banker, his business associates, even Mrs. Wiggins, the wife of the military attaché to the American Diplomatic Mission, who knew Deacon in Washington.

“A wonderful man,” Mrs. Wiggins says. “I’d trust him with my life, Miss Vinton.” Her eyes wander to Carrie’s midsection, which is hidden under layers of petticoats. “Such a warm day,” she observes with a bright smile, “and yet you dress so stylishly.”

Five days later, Deacon makes a fourth proposal of marriage. This time Carrie tells him the truth: That she esteems him, feels friendly affection for him, and finds him attractive, but does not love him and is not sure she ever will. If he’s content with this, she’s willing to become his wife; if not they should stop seeing one another.

Deacon does not hesitate. Seizing her hands, he covers them with kisses. “Carrie, dearest Carrie,” he says, “I can imagine no happiness greater than becoming your husband. I love you more than words can express, beyond everything I value, beyond all riches, beyond life and health and beauty and honor itself, so much so that I can hardly breathe or speak.”

Carrie is touched by his words. When he leans forward to kiss her, she is even moved to tears. For a few seconds she feels the warm pressure of his lips on hers, then she feels dampness on his cheek and realizes he is crying, too. It’s a touching scene, one she remembers for the rest of her life, but there is more to it than she suspects.

Months later, she discovers Deacon cobbled together a few of Goneril’s lines from King Lear, twisted them to serve his purpose, and presented them to her that afternoon as if they were sweets on a tray, and she wonders how long he spent selecting them, and if he ever saw the irony of using the speech of a liar as he reeled her in ever so sweetly inch by inch.

Safado! she writes in her journal on the day she understands what a fool she’s been. It is a fine Portuguese word for which there is no English equivalent. Con man, Don Juan, liar, libertine, gigolo, philanderer, womanizer, rake, cad: all fall short.