Another Bitter Pill

Even worse than the humiliating church service on Sunday was Ingeborg’s conversazione the following Thursday.

Wilhelmina Wilder sent a note by her kitchen maid. “Dearest Ingeborg, I am so sorry, but I am indisposed this afternoon, having taken to my bed.”

A creamy envelope from Eugenia Hunt was delivered by her husband’s hired man. He arrived at the parsonage door just as Abigail Whittey came up the steps of the front porch. Ingeborg took the envelope, Abigail opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again, and Ingeborg’s maid, Millie, scurried past with the cake stand.

“My dear Ingeborg,” said Eugenia’s note, “I am désolée that I cannot attend this afternoon, being afflicted with one of my frightful migraines. I shall spend the afternoon in bed in stygian darkness, having drawn the shades.”

“Well, it’s too bad,” said Ingeborg to Abigail, rallying her forces, “it appears that our circle will be a little diminished this afternoon. Minnie and Eugenia have both been taken ill.”

“Eugenia?” said Abigail in surprise. “But I saw Eugenia’s buggy careering down Quarry Pond Road only a moment ago.” Abigail realized at once that she should not have said this, but she went on bravely to deliver her own regrets. “I’m dreadfully sorry, Ingeborg, but I’ve only stopped by to tell you that a very important engagement has come up, which will prevent my attendance this afternoon.”

Abigail had rehearsed this speech, mumbling it over and over on the way to the parsonage, but it did not have the hoped-for effect. Ingeborg’s company face changed. She glowered at Abigail, who then whipped out something from under her shawl, thrust it at Ingeborg, and fled, explaining as she scuttled out the door, “I just wondered if you’d seen this.”

“Seen what?” Ingeborg stared at the Boston Evening Transcript. But at once, two more of her ladies fluttered in and had to be welcomed. With her heart clenched in foreboding, Ingeborg laid the Transcript on the hall table and led them into the sitting room, where the topic of the afternoon had been changed from the question about depraved humanity—it was depraved; it most certainly was—to a safer subject: “Poetry sublime.”

A circle of three was too small to be called a conversazione, especially since Eugenia and Abigail, the cleverest of Ingeborg’s friends, were missing. Even frivolous young Ella Viles had not come, although she had failed to send an excuse.

“Cynthia,” said Ingeborg, pulling herself together, “I hope you will favor us with your opinion?”

Cynthia Smith jerked upright in her chair and tried to remember the first line of “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” She had committed the entire poem to memory, but now under the gelid eye of Ingeborg Biddle, she could remember only one line. “O Attic shape!” gibbered Cynthia, then faltered to a stop. “I’ll just read it from the book,” she whispered timidly.

Pity Ingeborg Biddle! She was not a stupid woman, and her efforts to raise the intellectual aspirations of the women of Nashoba were surely worthy of praise. Heroically, she explained to silly Cynthia Smith and foolish Dora Mills that the discussion this afternoon was supposed to be concerned with the meaning and value of the poetic instinct, not merely a recitation of favorite verses.

Eugenia and Abigail would have been up to it, but not Cynthia and Dora. They were struck dumb. In desperation, Cynthia reared up from her chair, seized the cake stand, and rushed it across the room to Dora, who stopped up her mouth with macaroons, and then to Ingeborg, who waved it away.

The afternoon was a failure. Not until her guests had made their farewells could Ingeborg plump herself down on the sofa with the newspaper and a piece of cake.

Only then did she understand the pitiful excuses of Minnie, Eugenia, and Abigail. The subject of the afternoon’s discussion had been poetry, and this, too, was a poem, but it was a bitter blow.

On the first page of the Transcript, the lofty view of Nashoba’s burial ground appeared once again, with the white scar of the chestnut stump showing clearly among the tombstones. But this time, there was also a poem by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. It was a parody of Longfellow’s “The Village Blacksmith,” but at the same time it was a villainous attack on a nameless person who could be none other than the Reverend Horatio Biddle.

Under the spreading chestnut tree

A vicious killer stands;

He looks up at the branches free,

A great ax in his hands.

The tree flings wide its glorious crown,

Its leaves the winds caress.

Two hundred years the burial ground

By this tree has been blessed.

But now the madman lifts his ax

To play the devil’s part.

The keen blade strikes and strikes again

To burst that mighty heart.

Great nature weeps, Nashoba’s jewel

Lies shattered on the ground,

Broken, the hearts of young and old

In all the country round.

Let good men curse the vandal vile

Who killed our ancient tree.

May this foul deed afflict his soul

Till he shall cease to be.

Ingeborg couldn’t believe her eyes. Anguished, she read the dreadful poem again. The “vandal vile” had been her own distinguished husband. Everyone in Nashoba knew it, and soon everyone in the great cities of Cambridge and Boston would know it, too. The name of the Reverend Horatio Biddle would be a byword and a hissing throughout the land—or at least throughout the Massachusetts counties of Suffolk and Middlesex, which were all of the land that mattered.

Of course it was the fault of Josiah Gideon. And yet—how strange!—Ingeborg felt a curious hunger rising in her heart. She longed to run down the hill and across the road, knock on the Gideons’ door, and fling herself into the open arms of Mrs. Julia Gideon.

Had Horatio seen today’s Transcript? How wretched it would make him! The poor man was spending most of his time sequestered in his study.

Horatio was there today, hiding away from Ingeborg and her ladies, from the tea party and the high tone of the conversation. Once again, he sat at his desk reading Cicero, his spectacles hooked over his ears. Here he could recover from the perfidy of the outside world and be almost happy. As always, Marcus Tullius Cicero could be depended upon to open wide his marble arms and take Horatio to his breast.