Belle Cora: A Novel Read online

  Our correspondence had continued from there. Now I wrote as follows:

  Dear Aunt Agatha and Uncle Elihu,

  As I lift my pen to write to you in this season of snow, when hoar lies on the roofs of the horse cars, my thoughts fly to my dear aunt and uncle and to all the other folks in Livy still living the honest farm life and walking the paths of righteousness for the Lord’s sake. I am so happy that thanks to the success of my dress-making shop I have been able to help you out again, thereby repaying your generosity to me in my childhood.

  I am writing a little earlier than usual, while enclosing the draft redeemable at the bank in Patavium, for a special reason: I am coming to see you in person, and not alone: I am bringing a surprise with me, as explained in the other letter I am enclosing, which I ask you pass on to Anne and Melanchthon. They will explain it to you.

  I continue well. God has blessed my efforts here in the city, and I hope the same is true of you. How often in the noisome streets does my memory harken back to Livy and the old farm!

  Yours truly,

  Arabella

  Here is the letter I asked them to pass on:

  Dear Anne and Melanchthon,

  As my aunt will probably have told you, I am coming to Livy soon. I will be bringing a child with me, and if you agree I will be leaving without him, though the two of us have become rather attached.

  Let me explain first, however. As I mentioned in earlier letters to Agatha and Elihu, I am a member of the New York Female Reform Society, which does good works among the deserving poor in the most wretched wards of the city. One sad case, watched by us for almost two years now, was that of Margaret Wright, a woman not out of her twenties, a Protestant and a native of good Yankee stock, employed in a hat-making factory, whose husband, also a native, had passed away of consumption, along with her two children. She had consumption herself and was carrying her husband’s posthumous child; she had little doubt that she herself would go to glory soon after she brought it into the world: and so it came to pass. I was with her when she was taken from us. With her dying breath, in a voice so frail we all had to move within inches of her lips to hear, she asked us to take pity on her poor baby, her little son Frank, and to find a good home for him with a Christian family far from the poisonous fumes and filth of the city. After much praying on the subject, I have come to a conclusion which you may by now have guessed—that I will ask you if you might be willing to raise the child so that, if Providence wills it, he may grow up strong and healthy in upstate New York.

  If you can find a place in your home for a sweet motherless little stranger, the Female Reform Society, assisted by an anonymous donor, has set aside moneys enough to guarantee a $120-a-year stipend, which should more than cover any additional expenses that will be incurred as a result of the child’s keeping until he is of age to take care of himself. The donor has said that he may take a future interest in the orphan, eventually providing assistance in his education, should he prove of quick mind, and should he live long enough for it to be an advantage to him.

  Little Frank has been examined by physicians who say he is at present free from disease, but, in view of his heredity, will benefit from a rural setting and, when he is old enough, by agricultural labor. He has just now become fully weaned, is a little over a year old, and can toddle halfway across a room before falling—with a startled look upon his face but no tears, for he is a brave little boy—and likes milk sops and crackers broken into egg yolk but does not like vegetables very much, I am afraid!

  With fondest regards,

  Arabella

  Judge me, reader, if it gives you satisfaction. I was not without feelings for little Frank. When I was asked how I could do such a thing—I was asked this question by his nurse, by Monique, and even by a couple of gentlemen who knew I was disposing of Frank without knowing where—I told them that it was because I was growing more attached to him every day, and I feared that if I did not do it now it would be impossible.

  Let us think about this, shall we? Think seriously. Even though growing up in a fancy parlor house, where your mother is the madam and can see to it that you are treated well, need not be unremittingly sordid, it doesn’t compare very favorably with growing up on a prosperous farm. If I had hated Livy, that was only because of Agnes and Agatha, and because I had missed the city. Frank would not remember it, and so he would not miss it. One day he would enter a world where reputation matters; he wouldn’t thank me for letting him start life in the character of a prostitute’s bastard. Anne, who had had four miscarriages after Susannah, would be happy to have him. She was the best of mothers. I had often wished I had been raised by her. Melanchthon was a good father, and he would be pleased, both with the child and the $120, which he would use to buy livestock or make other improvements. It was also consoling to realize that my aunt, who would have loved to dandle a baby again, would be rebuked by my conspicuous choice of Anne and Melanchthon.

  Finally, like many other women who abandon their children, I told myself that it was temporary. Who knew but that perhaps, in two or four or five years, when I had enough money to feel really safe from the threat of poverty, I would dissolve the parlor house, open a grocery, or a laundry, or even a dress shop, and return for him.

  MY AUNT HAD TOLD ME BY LETTER that Jeptha’s family had moved to Ohio years earlier. I need not fear meeting them. Still, I could not help wondering, wondering and dreading, what it would do to me to be so near the fields and forests where once we had walked. To make life endurable, I had put the part of me that loved Jeptha to sleep, but I had never been able to bring myself to kill it.

  I returned to upstate New York at the beginning of April 1849, in the company of Jocelyn and Monique, and Frank. We took a steamboat up the Hudson, the New York Central Railroad, and a stagecoach. We went in comfort, stopping like tourists to view famous falls and locks. We dressed simply and used plain names. I was Arabella, Monique was Sarah, and Jocelyn was Martha.

  It was eleven and a half years since my grandfather’s clerk Horace had brought Lewis and me to our uncle’s farm, two children who had just lost both their parents. I mentioned this to my companions, and Monique, seizing greedily on the opportunity, began to cry, which helped me to keep my own eyes dry. “There, there, Monique,” I said. “It didn’t happen to you; surely that’s a comfort.” But as we went south from Rochester, and the roads became ruder, and I noticed that a certain stream was just the same but the bridge over it was different, and signs announced the approach of Patavium—I had decided to stay there, where there was less chance that I would be recognized, rather than in Livy—I felt a steady loss of strength. “What’s wrong?” Jocelyn asked. “You look pale.”

  “I’m dyspeptic,” I said. “That breakfast. This coach. This road.”

  I closed my eyes and slept, and they woke me when we were in town.

  We all wrote our false names in the hotel register. Since there would be talk anyway, when a child appeared in Anne’s family and she told the far-fetched story I had given her, it might have been better to have acted less furtively. But I didn’t have the courage, not here.

  I sent Jocelyn and Monique out to see the town. They were to tell people that they were members of the New York Female Reform Society, charged with the blessed work of bringing orphans of Anglo-Saxon heritage to be raised with good Christian farm families. Yes, the Christianity of people hereabouts was famous. In wicked New York City, everyone talked about it with awe.

  I dreamed that I was with Jeptha on my uncle’s farm. He took my hand and pulled me into the corn. Willingly I surrendered my precious virtue, and before the end of the dream we had a child and named him Charley. When I woke up, Frank was crying; I lifted him from his trundle bed. He snuggled into me, saying his terrible word: “Mama.”

  “No, you don’t,” I told him.

  In the morning, I had the egg with crackers sent up to us. “Eggy!” I said, and he grinned pinkly with a little glint of white suddenly showing through the
gum on top: a new weapon in his arsenal. I broke the crackers finely into the yolk until they had softened enough for him, and I spooned them into his mouth—“eggy, yum yum, eggy”—feeding him, as I thought, for the last time. I felt sorry for him, to lose his mother so young, and I felt sorry for myself, too. I foresaw a very bad time coming in the moment of going back without him. I foresaw many nights of regret. But it was the right thing to do. And he would not be so far away. I could visit him. Next year or the year after, I could change my mind, tell Anne that he was mine, and take him home with me.

  When it was time to take him to Melanchthon’s farm, I told the other women: “You take him. Say I had business back in New York City, I couldn’t come in person.”

  “Are you sick?” asked Jocelyn.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Should we ask about a doctor?”

  “No, just take him.”

  He was asleep with his thumb in his mouth when they picked him up to take him to the carriage downstairs, but I made the mistake of holding him one last time, and he woke; and then, when they took him away, he cried until he turned red, as if he knew he might never see me again; it was a bad few minutes for both of us. “Hush,” I begged him, “hush,” and to Jocelyn and Monique I said, “Stop looking at me that way.”

  When they were gone, I wept a little; after a while, I composed myself. Between parting with Frank and being in Livy again, it would have been more than I could bear. Everyone would have read it on my face; they’d know I was his mother.

  I read fifty pages of a novel by Eugène Sue, and then they were back, and Frank was with them, sleeping again.

  “What’s this?”

  “Your aunt Agatha was there,” said Monique. “Anne says she won’t take the baby unless you come.”

  “But I’m not here, remember? You were supposed to tell her that I wasn’t here!”

  “They didn’t believe us,” said Jocelyn.

  “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” I said, shutting my eyes, and I didn’t know whom I meant. “Now I’m going to have to part with him all over again.”

  Monique, happy to tell me something good, said “Oh—I just remembered—he has a tooth!”

  “Dear Lord,” I said, putting my palm to my brow. “Precious Lord.”

  “Don’t you want to see it?”

  “I’ve seen the tooth! Do you think I’m made of stone? Help me. Don’t make it harder. I won’t have him raised in a brothel. I won’t have him meet life as a whore’s bastard. It’s all been decided. I’m doing this. You are supposed to help me.”

  They apologized and embraced me and cooed, saying that they could tell, from the way I was acting, that I had maternal feelings after all. While I dressed, I had Jocelyn and Monique prepare me for the meeting ahead. What had been said about me and asked about me? Had anyone mentioned Lewis? No. What about Matthew? Was he walking? Short distances, with two canes, same as in Agatha’s letters. Matthew greatly reformed, religious now. Fine, I thought: so long as he couldn’t walk without canes.

  The carriage was driven by Toby, the ten-year-old son of the hostler whose establishment adjoined the hotel. It was a lulling journey. The boy’s back swung from side to side like an inverted pendulum, obsidian flies glistened on the velvet rumps of the horses, and twisting gray fences, deeply etched with the lengthwise grain of the wood, seemed to wriggle and leap as we rode by. I held Frank, cushioning the knocks for him.

  MELANCHTHON HAD BEEN FETCHED from the fields in expectation of meeting us. His hair was grayer. Anne had become a little plump; so had Susannah. My aunt looked more intensely herself: haggard, desperate, driven.

  Frank kicked to be let down, and I put him on the grass. He walked several stiff steps and fell over on his face in the weeds. He rolled over and sat up. He sat for a while, as if deciding what to do next, and whether it would be a good idea for him to cry. He reached his arms out to me. I picked him up.

  “Poor motherless creature,” I said. “He’s become attached to me, I fear.”

  I introduced Monique and Jocelyn to Susannah and Melanchthon, who had not met them. I introduced them as “Sarah” and “Martha,” respectively. Melanchthon told Toby where he could refresh the horse, and to come and join us when he was done.

  Anne asked to hold Frank. When I gave him to her, he began to cry, pushing her away, reaching for me. “Mama! Mama!” I took him back. With the baby between us, we could not embrace, but she pressed her cheek on mine, and I was moved. She had always been kind to me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “As I said, he’s been mostly in my care until now.”

  “Never mind,” said my aunt. “I suppose he’ll get attached to Anne soon enough when he finds he has no other choice.” When Anne and I had given each other that half-hug, Agatha had worn an affronted look. It was not that she longed for my embrace, but she felt, probably, that the embrace was hers by right, that a better girl would have done her that homage in return for caring so wonderfully for her when she was a helpless orphan.

  Two tables were put together to make one long enough, and chairs were brought in from other rooms, and we all ate together, including the hostler’s son. I asked about William Jefferds. Anne told me that he had died in his sleep while living on the Weemses’ farm. At the time, he was no longer our family’s pastor—my aunt and some other members of the congregation having quarreled with him over Adventism—but of course it was sad; certainly he had been a good man. I asked about Agnes. Had she and George Sackett planned a date for their wedding?

  “Not yet, no,” said Agatha vaguely.

  My aunt had never been any good at keeping secret the existence of a secret. I knew she was hiding something. I looked at Anne and decided that she was in on it.

  “Where exactly are they living now? Maybe I’ll go see them after this,” I said, hoping that the threat of a visit, where I might find out the truth, whatever it was, would force my aunt to tell it to me now.

  Indeed, she looked alarmed and reminded me that Agnes and I had never gotten along very well. I replied that that was all water over the dam, and she said, “Well, I would give you her address, only I don’t know it. It keeps changing. You see, she and George are going to California as missionaries, and they, they”—I watched her trying to improvise; she was as incompetent as a child—“the first, the Boston mission society that was going to send them couldn’t quite come up with all the money they needed, so they’re looking for another, and traveling, seeing people to raise the rest of the money.”

  This was plausible. Among the newspaper articles we were all devouring about California in those days were some inspired by the mission societies, talking of how wicked it was bound to be with all those unruly men and hardly any good women, and efforts were being made to send ministers. Men in my house joked about it. I had heard, from Lewis, that my grandfather was involved in these efforts. So that much was true; whether it had anything to do with George and Agnes, I didn’t know.

  “Oh, I see.” I sat watching them awhile, thinking about all this. I looked at Jocelyn and Monique, and I looked back to Anne and Agatha.

  What secret could be so fraught that both Agatha, who despised me, and Anne, who loved me, would want to keep it from me? I meant to know before I left, but I did not press them right away. I asked about Evangeline and Elihu and Mrs. Harding and other old Livy residents, and at last, careful to keep all emotion out of my voice, I asked if they had had any news of Jeptha. At this, they all—Anne, Agatha, Melanchthon, and Susannah—all stared resolutely at their plates.

  I waited a bit and then said, “You’re hiding something from me.”

  “Belle, don’t,” said Anne.

  “What’s the point? I’m sure to find out. I’ll ask around here. I’ll ask in Livy. I’ll ask in Patavium. I’ll go to Boston and ask there if I think it’s important to me.”

  Leaving them to think about it, I fed Frank boiled milk with soft bread and a little molasses at the table; Anne and my aunt both watched with a yearnin
g that was almost lust. I asked Anne if she would like to take over the chore, and she did; and her handsome face lit up with pleasure when Frank accepted the food from her; he smiled and gurgled and flirted with her, after the manner of babies, and my aunt looked on with a starved expression. When he had gone to sleep, I brought his trunk in and showed everyone his baby clothes and his toys, and I said that I thought it would be best if I left while he was sleeping, to avoid creating a fuss.

  My aunt said, “There’ll be a fuss. You just won’t be here for it.”

  Anne said, “Belle, before you go, could you tell me what you think about a dress I’m making? Just you and me.” I was supposed to be a dressmaker, remember. I went up with Anne to her sewing room, and she pulled out a drawer full of material and then she closed it, abandoning the pretense upon which she had gotten me alone. She turned. She surveyed me from head to toe. “You’ve become so beautiful, Belle. Those girls you are with, they’re very pretty, too. I think the three of you are about the prettiest girls I’ve ever seen in one place. Do they work for you at the dress shop?”

  “Yes. They—they work for me.”

  “But they don’t make dresses, do they?”

  I didn’t answer for a while, and then I said, “No.”

  “Oh—oh my,” she said, and she gave a sigh with a sob in it, and we held each other. “Is he yours, honey? You can tell me. I won’t tell anyone else, not even Melanchthon, and I’ll love him just the same either way. But I should know.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, yes. Be good to him. And please don’t tell anyone, for his sake.”

  “I’ll be good to him. I’m glad you brought him to me and not to her.” She let me go and looked at me. “You’re so young still. Just twenty-one.”

  “Yes.”

  “You can start over. Why shouldn’t you?”

  “I know.”

  “Don’t wait too long.”

  “I won’t. I won’t. Don’t worry about me.”

  There was a little hesitation then, and she said, “Well, I guess you’d better get going.”