Belle Cora: A Novel Page 48

  He nodded. “Before you said you had given up things to marry me, you were going to say something particular; then you amended it to ‘many things.’ You didn’t mean the chance of marrying wealth. You meant the satisfactions of the life you were living.”

  “I suppose I did.” I touched his face.

  His head was perfectly immobile on his shoulders, while my fingers stroked his face and felt some bristles the razor had missed an hour ago. Remembering his feeling for my hands, I flattened it against his cheek, and I thought: That was smart. Perhaps, after all, everything was a question of technique, and the right combination of deft moves could save the direst situation. Then he said, as if just reaching the conclusion in his own mind, “Do as you like from now on. I’m finished with you.”

  “Oh, Jeptha, please. Show mercy!”

  “I’m not better than other men.”

  I gripped his coat by the lapels. “You are! You are!”

  He pulled my fingers free and writhed out of my grasp, his elbow knocking my jaw so that I bit myself and tasted blood. I clutched him again and collapsed to my knees. “You’re wrong. I’m not better than other men.” His voice did not express his emotions but merely informed me of them. “I’m not different from other men. I don’t want to be married to a whore. I despise you. You don’t have a shred of decency or morality or honesty. You don’t recognize any law beyond your own desires. You don’t set any value on truth. I don’t want to see your face again or hear your name again. I want to forget I ever knew you.”

  I threw my arms around his legs. “Go on and talk that way; hurt me if you want.”

  “Get up.”

  “Hurt me, you have a right to, I’ve hurt you, but you can’t mean all of it. You can’t. I’m carrying your child.”

  He looked down at me. “How do I know you’re carrying a child? Because you’ve told me? That means nothing; your word means nothing. And if it turns out that you are carrying a child, how do I know it’s mine?”

  “You know I am and you know it’s yours!”

  For a second he seemed to be at a loss. Then he yelled, “How do I know it’s mine?” loud enough for everyone aboard the Flavius to hear, as he pulled me to my feet, and across the room, and kicked the door open, and dragged me out onto the deck. “I don’t want you. I don’t want you, and I don’t want your bastard!” he howled, letting go of me. Before I could scurry away, he swooped me up and threw me over his shoulder and walked toward the stern. I remembered him throwing over the books, and I guessed his intention.

  “Stop it, Jeptha!” I cried, struggling. It was noon by now. There were other men on the deck, boarders, miners, some amused—a young woman over her husband’s shoulder is comical to certain minds. “Stop him!” I called out. A few floppy-hatted men approached, but they were unsure whether it was right to interfere, or wise: in the San Francisco of those days, quarrels had a habit of becoming deadly affrays, and when not under the influence of spirits, men were cautious.

  He lifted me over the rail and threw me clear of the ship. The shock of contact with the chill bay water went unfelt, lost in the shock that he had really done it. I went down a few feet, swam up, and treaded water, tasting salt and beginning to feel the cold. Dress and petticoats ballooned around me. I could swim, as Jeptha knew, and shallow water lay nearby; but the situation was not without danger. There were splashes nearby as men dived in to fetch me. Two men pulled me to the ladder. One climbed ahead of me, and the other stayed below to catch me if I fell.

  I stood on the deck in my dripping clothes, shivering, looking around me. “Where is he? Where is he?”

  “Over there. There, that way,” said Mrs. Austin, pointing over the side, and I saw Jeptha on the wharf, getting out of one of the Flavius rowboats.

  “Jeptha!” I screamed. He didn’t turn. I was shivering so violently I could not speak.

  “You’d better get out of those clothes,” said Mrs. Austin.

  It was at this point that I became aware of an urgent cramping in my womb, a sensation until then lost in my emotions and the shock of my immersion into the bay. “Oh no,” I said. “Oh no.”

  Later, after I had lost the baby, Mrs. Austin brought me clean sheets, took away the old ones, and came back with some broth in a cup. Standing over me, she said, “A Baptist minister—if that don’t beat all. Well, he’s baptized you, all right. You know what? I’ll bet, if you had gotten him to some other city, you could have gone on fooling him for a good ten years. But here everything goes fast. Now, you can stay overnight, while you recover, but I want you out by tomorrow afternoon. I draw the line at whores.”

  XLVII

  I SAT IN THE BED WITH MY HANDS FOLDED across my lap, thinking at first mostly of the bloody mess, my child somewhere in it, that I had glimpsed for a moment before Mrs. Austin wrapped up the gory sheet that had received the contents of my womb. I felt as if I had been struck all over, equally. Though my thoughts were disordered, I understood that this was the good part. When rational thought came, it would bring suffering of an as yet incalculable size. After what could have been a minute or an hour, Mrs. Austin re-entered the cabin with a bucket, a scrub brush, and some rags. Without giving me so much as a glance, she got on her knees—that good woman, that good, stupid, honest Christian woman—and, with her fat bottom a little higher than her head most of the time, she scoured a place on the floor where a puddle of my blood had left a residue. When she was done and had left, the spot was noticeably cleaner and lighter than the surrounding wood; and when feeling came back to me, it came back first through that tawny light patch, which delivered a stab of grief whenever I looked at it. Gradually, it became a symbol of everything I wished not to think about: of the unborn child and all it would never be; of its absent father, who had spurned us both; of the future that had been proved a silly daydream, the impossible things I had wished for with my poisoned heart’s last ounce of innocence.

  It was afternoon, probably, not late. The walls of the cabin were thin, and the schooner was small. Often I heard footsteps, clanking, grunts, and muffled conversations; once, I thought I heard the name “Harriet Knowles,” and a burst of laughter. In time, my eyelids became heavy and I thought that I might sleep. If someone had told me I would never wake again, I would have hoped it was true. I wished I were made of sand and a wind could blow me away. I had as lively a distaste for Arabella Godwin as any of my breast-beating Puritan forebears ever cultivated for themselves. Creation groaned with the burden of me; the earth was an unwilling stage for my wickedness. These facts had been established by an expert in morality whom I had long ago denominated the expert on me. I had told myself that if he knew the truth he would love me still; but I had known all along that he would not. Who was I, really? I was a whore. Anyone who knew my history would agree. He had agreed, because it was true. I was a whore, whatever I did. If I should devote the rest of my life to charitable work in a home for crippled orphan children, I would still be a whore: not only was I a whore as a matter of personal history, I was a whore in my character, in my instinct to deceive and manipulate, in my readiness to turn anything to use, to be dishonored in ways good women would die rather than permit. I was also a murderess, but that was of less account to me, as it is to mankind generally. Though the punishment for murder is very severe, the world holds murderers in far less contempt than whores.

  I woke in the middle of the night, and lay burning like a wound for hours. I slept again. When my eyes opened next, there was a crack of daylight through the door, which shook repeatedly, and a sound of loud knocking. I wanted it to be Jeptha. It could all be made right again, we would mourn together and forgive each other. I pulled the sheet up to my shoulders. “Come in.”

  The door swung open, and a sudden brightness hurt my eyes. I could see from her silhouette that it was Mrs. Austin, but I could not make out her expression. She half closed the door, and after a moment she said, “You can stay if you get back to work right away.”

  I blinked. “Why?”<
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  “Do you want to or not?”

  I thought a little longer, and her patience while I did so was instructive. “Have the men been asking for me?” She didn’t answer. I supposed this meant that they had been. “I’m not well,” I told her finally. “I need more time.”

  In an unconvincing tone of authority, she said that I could not take up space here without working. I repeated that I needed time to recover.

  I spent the rest of the day in the cabin, sleeping when I could and mourning when I was awake. A little after nightfall, it occurred to me that I should eat. I went out to the galley to get a piece of corn bread, but when I had it in my hand I wasn’t hungry. I went back to my bed.

  The next day was the same. In the evening, there was a knock, and upon lighting the lamp and opening the door, I saw Jeptha, with Herbert Owen behind him. I guessed from his grim expression that he had just heard of my miscarriage, but all he said was “I came for my trunk.”

  I watched in the quaking lamplight, which shook our tall shadows, while he dragged it from under the bed and to the door. He stood still for a moment. “She told you?” I asked. He nodded. I rose from my bed slowly and stood before him for a second. I tried to slap him across the face. He caught my hand. “I hope you never have another,” I said.

  “Just as well,” he said, and released my hand. Herbert Owen, who looked very sorry for both of us, helped him drag the trunk down the deck and into a rowboat.

  On the following day, I left the cabin. I had thrown on a bedraggled dress, and had not washed or combed my hair, but still the men I passed doffed their hats and bowed. A few were bold enough to say that they had heard I was indisposed and hoped I was feeling better. When I said I had decided to take a walk through town, three men volunteered to row me to shore. I picked a homely-looking young man who was missing so many teeth he must have had to eat only soft food. When we got to the other side, he refused the payment I offered him. I walked to Portsmouth Square and on the streets around it, past lodging houses, cafés, assayers’ tents, and canvas gambling halls. Everywhere, the men showed me elaborate courtesy. When I was about to cross Washington Street, a tall man with a big droopy mustache offered to carry me in his arms. It was a custom that year: women, who were so precious, were carried over the filth of San Francisco’s unpaved streets. Until then I had declined, but this time I accepted. He carried me to the other side, not speaking except to say, in answer to a question, that my weight was not enough for him to notice, and he tipped his hat and did not presume any further upon our acquaintance.

  I went to the steamship office and asked the price of a ticket to Rio de Janeiro and to other destinations, but I did not buy one. A carter with a load of lumber gave me a ride to the top of Telegraph Hill. I stood on a cliff, the wind buffeting my face and making false thunder in my ears. As I had many times in the last few days, I pictured Jeptha being shown my broken body and the note in my coat pocket, which I had written not with a fixed intention of destroying myself, but just to be prepared in case I did. It would blight the rest of his life, I was fairly sure, for I had some little experience in this matter. He would suffer then as I was suffering. It would crush him. I wanted that. The trouble was, I wouldn’t be here to enjoy it.

  I bought a tamale from a Mexican woman down by the wharf. It made my mouth burn, but I had not eaten in three days, so I finished it quickly while walking, and then turned around, deciding to buy another. Now there was a line, but the man at the front insisted that I go ahead of him, and he insisted on paying for the tamale.

  I walked on, and with my emotions dulled by exhaustion, I began to consider my position in practical terms. There were many ways a woman willing to work and, even better, a woman with capital might make money in the boomtown of San Francisco. Women were getting rich just doing laundry that year. They were getting rich running restaurants and boarding houses. I could do that. Or I could invest my money in water lots, which were going cheap just now. Or I could peddle my beauty at the altar to the richest bachelor in the territory. But there was only one way that was, for me, perfectly reliable—one business I knew inside and out, one way I knew in my bones I could rise to a kind of glory, commanding a host of pretty underlings, in a little kingdom I would rule, while humiliating and shaming the man who had been supposed to save me and instead had damned me. I returned to the Flavius and spent another day in bed. In the morning, Mrs. Austin appeared again. “I need you in the galley. Come now, or out on your ass.”

  “I’m not ready.”

  “Then pack.”

  “But I’m busted, Mrs. Austin,” I lied. “How will I live?”

  “I guess you know how you’ll do it,” she said, and shut the door.

  Presently, there came another knock, and there was big-headed, pop-eyed Captain Austin, in a new shirt, with a tie, and fresh from a bath, smelling of rosewater, his hair slick with grease, the hat in his hands.

  “May I sit?” he asked. I nodded. He took a stool. “I heard what happened, and want to say that I think it was raw, it was too rough, I don’t agree with it.”

  “And you know—you know what your wife said to me.”

  “That was raw, too. I don’t hold with that, either. Cast a woman into the street just after she’s been through an ordeal like that, if you ask me, I can’t see the right of it; it’s heartless, and we have no call to act so high and mighty. Well, I guess you know, just from being on the Flavius the time you have, me and Mrs. Austin don’t see eye to eye on much, and I’ve decided …” He looked down at the hat in his right hand and stroked the underside of its brim. “I’ve decided we’re going to divorce.” He looked up, and once again the bulging eyes regarded me. “It’s easy to divorce in California. It’s a territory. The courts here are easygoing. I think it’s safe to say that you and your husband are going to do it. So there you’ll be, without a husband, and me without a wife.”

  “Good God in heaven.”

  Astonishing myself, I began to laugh.

  “Now, hear me out. I’m not offering myself up as a Romeo. I’m rich, and if certain things work out, I’m going to be a whole lot richer. Let’s be hardheaded. Neither of us are fools.”

  “And what would happen to your poor wife after that? Would she be thrown out in the street?”

  “Well, I don’t know. That would be a little hard.”

  “I would insist on it,” I told him.

  “Well, then, we could talk about that. Maybe—well, all right.”

  I nodded. “That’s good. That shows you’re serious. And it would certainly give me a great deal of satisfaction. But I can’t accept your offer.”

  “Don’t answer so quick. Think about it.”

  “No, I know now. I won’t. Do you want to know why?”

  “Why?”

  I gave a shrug. “Because you’re not rich.”

  Now, for the first time, his feelings were hurt. “Of course I’m rich. Do you know what I own?”

  I nodded. “You own a bunch of land with contested deeds. These water lots are already losing value, because no one can say if the courts will uphold them. They could be worth a fortune one day if the gold holds out, but who knows if it will. Meanwhile, you might lose them. You don’t have enough cash to make land, or build a wharf here, or pay a judge to come down on your side. To get it, you went to a bank, Captain Austin, and if that bank would put on a new shirt and some pomade and propose marriage to me, why, I guess I could learn to love it in time.”

  He shot off the stool like a jack-in-the-box, furious now. “She told you all that? Damn her, she did it to poison your mind against me! And I was going to leave her provided for!”

  “What? Behind my back?”

  “You didn’t say don’t provide for her. You just said throw her out.”

  He put his hand on the door; still, he was only a few paces away from any part of the little cabin. “Wait,” I said, because a thought had been germinating quietly in my mind for days—I had glimpsed parts of it in the corner
s of my eyes, between the tears. I had seen fragments that could not survive by themselves. Now they were assembled, terrible and glorious. I touched his arm. He turned his homely face toward mine, and I think it was the first time he really saw me. “Sit down,” I said. “I have a proposition.”

  I would crush him, that pious upright psalm-singer. I would grind his face in the mud. Whore? I would show him a whore.

  I gestured toward the stool. After a moment he sat. “Are you a religious man, Captain Austin?”

  “Well, not so you’d notice. I’ve got nothing against it.”

  “Nor do I. Religion has its place. But I’m glad you’re not too religious, because I don’t want to offend you. You’ve heard of my house on Mercer Street in New York City, and you’re willing to overlook it, which is kind of you, but why overlook it? Why not make the most of it? I know how much the Flavius brings you now. It could make ten times more as a place of entertainment for men who have been lucky in California. I am not talking of some low bawdy house, but a fine house like the one I had in New York. I would do everything, find the girls, manage them, buy the wine, and arrange for some improvements to make the Flavius a place of refinement and luxury for the very best people—including, probably, the judges, merchants, and legislators whose favorable decisions could help your affairs prosper. We’ll need fewer, bigger rooms, with better furnishings. I have capital of my own to help pay for that. We’ll need female help of other kinds, and since you are sentimental about her, we might keep the former Mrs. Austin on as a general maid and housekeeper. She would have to know she was subordinate to me, be respectful, and stay up to the mark, but if she did all of that, she’d be welcome to stay on at a good salary. Oh, and she must bathe twice a week.”