Interlude

1864
Massachusetts

Nathaniel is asleep on my shoulder, dreaming fitfully, while I shift in my seat, wondering whether he can sense my pounding heart, my memories of passion so filling this space that I could suffocate. I press my handkerchief to my cheeks and blot the perspiration on my brow.

How different is this carriage ride from the one after our wedding. How many miles have we traveled together? Have our years of bliss outnumbered our times of pain?

Even in our Eden days, the stain of death spilled like crimson ink over the clean, white pages of our lives. Reflecting back, I am in awe of the great and terrible rivers that delivered the deaths of kin and stranger to us. Water is the source of life, the holy baptism, but can also be the end of it, the drowning. The placid surface of the Concord River that drifted behind the Old Manse—the river that Nathaniel hated, which I talked him into appreciating just before it stole from us—masked its depths. I could not fathom the turbulence that existed below us on our lazy canoe rides or our winter ice-skating. Had I heeded Nathaniel’s good sense, perhaps I could have changed the course of our lives at that time.

My ailing husband sighs and cries out from the pain in his stomach, and I pat his hand to try to soothe him, but he is awake and agitated.

“Are we there?” he asks.

“Not yet, my love.”

He takes his hands from mine and reaches up to touch the lump in his jacket as if to reassure himself the thing he needed is still there. Then he wraps his arms around his waist and pulls away from my shoulder to lean on the side of the carriage. I am cold where his body no longer meets mine. It is as if a cloud bank passed over, blotting out the sun’s warmth.

“Do you remember our wedding day?” I ask, desperate to reconnect with Nathaniel before we are separated.

He grunts and screws up his face, flinching from pain. I use my handkerchief to dry his sweaty forehead.

“Do you wish me to stay quiet or talk, my love?” I say. “Which will bring you comfort?”

He looks at me, his eyes the only clear and unaltered part of him, though time has taught me of the turbulent depths they conceal.

“Speak if it will bring you comfort,” he says. “Though I fear I am beyond it.”

“I will paint for you,” I say. “I will paint with words something you can hang under the veil inside your soul.”

A smile plays at his dry lips. When I mention the veil, I know he is reminded of how he used to hide my paintings.

“I was a dramatic youth, was I not?” he says.

“Perfectly so.”

“Where did we hang the engagement paintings at the manse?”

“In your study, remember? Where you could observe them in private.”

“No, that is where we hung your Endymion.”

“I did not make the Endymion until I was round with Una.”

“Ah, yes. The years blur from this vantage.”

“Like the mist on the river in the mornings,” I say.

We are quiet for a moment. I drink of our little conversation as if from the wellspring of life. The older I become, the more importance I assign to even the smallest interaction. Fickle, changeable life has taught me to savor any sweetness, no matter how insignificant it might seem.

“I am glad to have this time alone with you in a carriage,” I say. “We are fortunate to have each other. When I think of Robert Browning and poor Longfellow—widowers alone in the world—I do not comprehend how they endure it.”

“I would not last a day without my dove.”

Our friends Elizabeth Browning and Fanny Longfellow both died in ’sixty-one—Elizabeth from her chronic lung illness, and Fanny of a dreadful accident when she dropped a lit match on her dress and caught fire. Henry Longfellow had attempted to save her by wrapping her in a carpet, but the burns were too severe. I shudder at the thought.

“When I recall the Concord River,” I say, “I think of how I saw it through the words we etched on the window. ‘Man’s accidents . . .’”

“‘Are God’s purposes.’”