All He Ever Wanted(33)

I cannot help but think of newlyweds and of how they would enjoy this self-contained universe.





This is now the second day of my journey south (the better part of a day lost to the aforementioned derailing), and I am feeling dispirited by some of the sights that I have witnessed through the window of my compartment. One has heard, of course, of breadlines and of homeless tramps, but to see for oneself the extent of the degradation and poverty in our nation’s capital is alarming. Men dressed in rags are lined up for blocks, presumably hoping for a bowl of soup; women with small children sit on sidewalks and hold out tin cups; cardboard shanties line the tracks for miles, and vagabonds hover over fires. It is, at times, too much to take in. I should not like to boast about my own New Hampshire, but it can hardly escape notice that breadlines are few and far between in that state of self-reliance and industry. Of course, we do have our share of people fallen on hard times — the smaller enrollment at the college is but one example; the seizure of Gerard Moxon’s property is another; and, now that I think of it, one might have to attribute to the dismal economy the suicides of Arthur Hallock and of Horace Ward Archer — but we in New Hampshire like to think we help our own. I cannot count the number of times that my cook, Mrs. O’Hara, has fed itinerant beggars from the back door of our kitchen; indeed, I think she bakes more than she normally would simply to be able to do this. I cannot mind, since my own living is ample and reasonably comfortable, and there is only myself to feed in that cavernous and drafty house.

But enough of dismal news! I shall turn my eyes away from the window and peer instead at my notebook, for I should not like to taint my tale with bulletins from the future. Indeed, at the time of my story, which was 1900, the mood of the country, perched as it was on the precipice of the twentieth century, was one of unbounded optimism. Never had we as a nation known such prosperity, nor had we experienced such a period of peace. The rupture of the civil conflict was long behind us, and the nearly constant appearance of new conveniences and inventions such as the automobile and the telephone promised a life of greater comfort and interest than any of us had ever known. It was a bright age, with myself positioned squarely in its center (or, rather, in its northeast corner), and it seemed a particularly propitious time to enter into a marriage.

Etna and I were wed on the 28th of May in a small ceremony at Thrupp College Chapel. Etna wore a dress of beige silk and carried a bouquet of lilacs, which had just come into bloom in profusion all over the campus and lent the day, and even the wedding itself, such a lovely scent that even now when I happen upon a lilac bush and am gifted with its perfume, I am transported back to that May morning. There had been a rain shower the night before, and when we woke, the grass and buds and flowers were washed clean, as though they had been laundered for the occasion. New Hampshire produces precious few fine days in the spring (spring being the worst of the seasons in the northern New England states — unusually late to arrive and more sodden than anyone would like), but that day was a rare gift and seemed, I am bound to say, an omen. Or at least I wished it so.

William Bliss, who appeared to be relieved to have the turmoil of the late winter put to rest, brought Etna from a side door of the chapel to the altar. One of the college’s many preachers married us with a minimum of ceremony, and owing to the considerable affection in which the Bliss family was held (and due perhaps to my own small portion of notoriety), we had quite a few guests in the chapel to wish us well and send us on our way. Etna’s mouth trembled at our first kiss as man and wife, a pale fluttering that might have seized the heart of any bridegroom and, indeed, seized my own, as if she had taken it in her fist.

As it happened, I had hardly seen Etna since the day in Exeter when I had made a proposal of marriage to her. While I had returned to Thrupp, she had stayed on with her sister. Though I minded her absence, I was so busy during those weeks that the pain of separation was somewhat mitigated by occupation. Chief among my tasks was the securing of a house in which we might live following the wedding trip. I wanted it to be grand, suitable for my lovely bride, and one that would, of course, eventually contain a brood of children. There were not many estates to be had that spring in the center of Thrupp, and so I was forced to travel to the outskirts of the town more than a few times to view properties. In April, I found a candidate that excited me for its potential, though its owner had mismanaged the place and the house was in a state of some decay. The land was the finest I had encountered, with magnificent sloping lawns that ran down to a good-sized lake and with unparalled views of modest granite mountains in the distance. The house was stately, a Federal structure of warm redbrick with white trim, three stories high, with a shingled barn and a carriage house in the back. The public rooms had high ceilings, which I knew would be difficult to heat, but which lent the house a grandeur absent in so many of the colonials on Wheelock Street (Bliss’s house, for example). There was a formal dining room that ran the length of the house on one side, and I immediately began to imagine that room as the locus of festive suppers or even, upon occasion, gala balls. When I was shown the bedrooms on the second floor, I pictured Etna and myself asleep within the four posts of a massive bed, our five or six children not far from us, tucked beneath their own comforters. That vision alone was enough to seal the bargain.