Under the Wide and Starry Sky

CHAPTER 57

Louis waited. He imagined the ten-day voyage of his letters on a steamship. The fastest he would hear from Henley or Katharine would be twenty-some days. Since Henley’s cruel letter arrived, his work had been at a standstill. Louis mostly stayed inside his bedroom, buried  under  the  heavy  bedcovers,  unsure  he  could  conceal  his  turmoil  in  front  of  his mother and Lloyd. His stomach roiling, his gloved ?ngers quivering with fury, he wrote one letter after another to Baxter, his only con?dant about the matter. How I wish I had died at Hyères, while all was well with me.

When  a  letter  came,  it  was  from  Katharine  and  proved  to  be  a  masterpiece  of equivocation. Henley’s letter had been written without her consent, she claimed, though he had a perfect right to be astonished. If Fanny believed she had a right to the story idea, well, far be it from Katharine to disagree. As for her own feelings, she wouldn’t discuss the matter a syllable further. At the end of the note, she wrote, It is of course very unfortunate that my story was written ?rst and read by people and if they express their astonishment it is a natural consequence and no fault of mine … I trust this matter is not making you feel as ill as all of us. Yours affectionately, Katharine de Mattos.

It was the last words of the last sentence that stayed with Louis. All of us. That  meant  Katharine,  and Henley,  and Bob.  Louis could imagine  the  three  of  them
sitting  together,  the  two  men  assisting  Katharine  in  choosing  just  the  right  words  to appease Louis without giving an inch.

He  found  himself  wondering  if  he  had  misunderstood  something,  if  he  had  made  a mistake  in  remembering  the  conversation  about “The  Nixie.”  He  wondered  if  Fanny deserved the blame Henley was hurling against her. Even if it were true that Fanny had made an error of judgment on that stupid little story, was it right that Henley attack her with such impunity? Were Louis’s loyalty and kindness nothing to him?
Again  and again  he thought, What good is a man if he  will not defend the  honor of the woman he loves?

And what did it matter, even if Fanny had overstepped propriety? They all knew Fanny well enough to know she sometimes steamed ahead and thought about a thing later. Surely they knew it wasn’t her intent to plagiarize the story.

They were her friends, supposedly. Fanny had cared for Bob when he was depressed and

broken. She had helped Katharine with her pitiful stories in the past, had put up  with Henley’s remarks because he was Louis’s good friend. Wouldn’t a true friend let the matter pass? If Henley’s wife, Anna, had been accused of such a thing, even if she had been guilty of it, Louis would not have spoken of it to her husband. In fact, he would have tried to keep the information from Henley.

Sick. Sick. Sick. Sick with regret that he had not spoken in Fanny’s defense against Henley’s rudeness to her before now. Sick that he hadn’t insisted she give up the idea of redoing Katharine’s idea. For nights on end he could not sleep, until he resorted to codeia. When he rose from bed, he was rested but tearful. For days he ached with regret, and then he was angry. He tromped through the woods for hours at a time, shouting the truth to her in his mind.

You  love  an  adversary,  don’t  you,  Fanny?  How  powerful  you  must  feel  in  your  holy indignation! You enter the fray cocksure and ?sts ?ying. Who’d guess that a woman with your backbone would crack so easily for a few crumbs of praise?

He was angry at himself that he had not told her frankly what he knew. You are trying to find recognition in the wrong place. Give it up!

He stopped and watched his breath send clouds out in front of him. How galling it was to think of Fanny in California, apparently not su?ering the way he was, if her letters were any indication. She had been having a wonderful time visiting with her sister Nellie and her  old  friends. I shall write  an apology or something, she had said almost lightheartedly, among many tidbits of news about dining with Rearden and Dora and looking about to procure a schooner for a Paci?c cruise. Was she covering her real pain? Was she wounded to the quick to have her moral character questioned? He didn’t know.
That  was  the  thing  about  Fanny.  Her  temper  would  ?ash  like  quicksilver  and  then disappear. Meanwhile, here he sat stewing, regretting that he had indulged her need by sending her story to his editor at Scribner’s.

Ambition.  That  was  at  the  root  of  Fanny’s  foolishness.  He  had  seen  ambition  often enough in a man who took leave of his moral compass in a ?t of mad enthusiasm. He’d seen  such  ambition  in  women,  though  rarely  so  naked,  which  made  it  all  the  more unseemly.

In  late  April,  when  Henley’s  response  arrived  in  Saranac,  it  trumped  Katharine’s  for insincerity.  His original letter was not meant as an  a?ront,  he wrote,  but merely  as a “reminder.” He did not respond to Louis’s request for a retraction but o?ered instead a tepid apology, if he had offended their old “kinship.”

Louis held the letter in his hands while new tears spilled from his eyes. How very rarely a man is called upon to give up his dearest friends for the sake of his wife’s honor. And yet that was what he understood must happen. “I’m ?nished with you,” Louis said to the letter. “I’m finished with Katharine. I hope to God I am not finished with Bob.”

Outside the bedroom where he was holed up, he saw a crocus shooting through the snow. He thought of his mother and Lloyd sitting by the ?re, imagining their improbable cruise, unaware of his true misery. They believed he was in here writing. During the agony of the past month, he had hardly paid attention to his real kinships.

“What do you say we go down to New York for a while?” he asked them that evening over dinner. “I can call on my editor at Scribner’s. And McClure will be back from England with stories, I hope. And then on to see Will Low, perhaps?”

New York City, they did visit Will Low in New Jersey. It was May. They stayed at a hotel in Manasquan and amused themselves by sailing around in catboats. It was there that McClure, freshly returned from Europe, tracked him down. He and Louis talked for hours on the porch about the differences between the state of publishing in England and in America.
At one point during their discussion, Louis left brie?y. As he approached the porch again, he overheard McClure speaking quietly:  “Do you know these people, this Henley and his literary circle?” he asked Low. Out of sight, Louis stood perfectly still, riveted. “Stevenson sent me to these people. I can hardly believe they are his friends. They diminish him so! They all say how dear a friend he is to each of them, and then they say, ‘Oh, but Bob is the real genius of the family.’ Or  ‘Louis’s talent is overrated.’ Or  ‘He’s wasting his gifts.’ On what, I’m not sure. An American audience? On his choice of subject matter?
“And  I  get  the  distinct  impression  that  they  can’t  bear  his  wife.  Henley  said  she was … what was the word? Primitive. Said the woman was primitive! Now, tell me, who needs enemies with friends like that?”

Standing in the shadows just beyond the door, Louis trembled. Who else besides Henley did McClure mean by “his literary circle”? Gosse? Surely not Colvin. This bloody nightmare

will not cease.

One afternoon, while he was dining outside with Will Low and the Fairchilds, a telegram arrived for Louis. He saw it was from Fanny and opened it, a little afraid something had gone wrong. She’d had to go into the hospital to have a lump removed from her throat, but the growth had turned out to be benign. Or had it? He glanced quickly at the message and then, laughing, handed it to Lloyd to read out loud.

Can  secure  splendid  seagoing  schooner  yacht Casco  for  seven  hundred  and  ?fty  a  month  with  most  comfortable accommodation for six aft and six forward. Can be ready for sea in ten days. Reply immediately. Fanny

Louis took out his notepad and scribbled a sentence for the messenger to return.

Blessed girl, take the yacht and expect us in ten days.