Margaret nodded and carried the tray into the dining room. Amid the clatter of serving, I sat a moment to eat my cracked wheat and cream, staring at the wild daisies that Margaret had put in a vase. Amid its flimsy white petals, each flower had a fiery orange sun at its center.
Clementina has just such a fiery center, I mused.
As do I.
Instantly I grew panicked at my virtual imprisonment in this unhappy house. My heart rose to my throat, beating irregularly and making me breathless. I grabbed my shawl from the kitchen bench and rushed to the back porch, which overlooks the work yard and, beyond that, a stretch of gardens. A fog descended in a wall of soupy mist. Someone clambered onto the porch behind me, and I turned, expecting Margaret. A hot-faced Albert stood there, dressed for the office in a summer suit and bow tie.
He cleared his throat; awkward seconds ensued. Agitation emanated from him, and the strain of standing still in such a state. I felt no differently myself.
“Shall we take a turn about the property?” he asked. “I don’t mind the fog. Do you?”
“Not much,” I said, wondering again why he doesn’t revile me as his wife does. He also seemed immune to the fear that she might grow suspicious if she saw us walking together. I wasn’t immune. Each step on the brick path seemed one step closer to bursting the balloon of her temper and threatening my employment. Yet I wouldn’t let her cage me.
We stepped side by side without speaking as beads of water settled like a chilling blanket on my skin and hair. He made fretting sounds, and I sought solace in the garden and its flowering trees. The dogwoods were impressive specimens, far larger than the one I’d viewed each spring from my bedroom window. When I was a girl, during its annual week of glory, I’d gaze at its spread of white petals veined with pink and the clusters of tiny yellow flowers at their centers. I’d wish to lie upon that flowering dome as one might wish to be held aloft by a cloud. But my older self was not so dreamy. I noted the hard branches beneath the blossoms. I knew a cloud was but a gathering of chilly vapors.
Albert thrust his body forward along the path and mumbled to himself. Finally he burst into speech. “Why is my wife unhappy? She stormed away because I asked her this. I don’t understand. She has two houses, abundant help, a healthy son, and”—he reddened—“a husband who adores her.”
“Perhaps she feels she was meant for a freer life, without a child and a household to run,” I offered.
“I believe you’ve got it.” Albert turned to assess me anew. “Did you know she gave up a career in music? Actually, her parents forbade her to pursue it.”
A career in music! Her parents forbade it! So that was what the doll and musical scores and copybooks indicated. My words came out before I could think: “She’s haunted by that.”
“Yes, she’s haunted.” He spoke slowly, as if first realizing. “If only I’d understood the extent of this before I yoked my life to hers.”
The mist turned cold on my arms and face and at the back of my neck. We turned onto a brick path toward a grape arbor. By Eighth Month, the arbors behind my home would droop with clusters. The scent they wafted was so delectable and elusive that I would breathe and breathe and never breathe enough. My lips tingled, anticipating that scent.
“I met Clementina at a dance,” said Albert. “She holds her own as a partner, I assure you. Maybe I shouldn’t have married such an independent woman.”
“May I speak frankly?” I asked.
“I’ll tolerate nothing less, Miss de Jong.” The set of his mouth was equal parts serious and jesting.
“She wants to escape from others’ control,” I blurted. “To decide for herself. She wants what women rarely can have—the chance to determine her own way.”
“Ah,” he said. “You’ll be needing to take another work from my Pine Street library. J. S. Mill has written a treatise on that subject called The Subjection of Women.”
I wondered if this work might address my troubles with his other treatise.
“Soundly trounced for it, he was,” continued Albert. “And no wonder. A degree of subjection can be awfully convenient.” He chortled.
I had no ready answer.
“Miss de Jong, have you ever fancied yourself a free thinker? A rebel?”
“I’m not versed in those terms,” I said. “But the Society of Friends has valued the spiritual equality of male and female for over two centuries. All flesh is equal in the eyes of the Lord.”
“Interesting.” He pulled a handkerchief from his jacket and wiped the accumulating wetness from his face. “But what of equality in areas besides the spiritual?”
“Ah.” I broke off into quiet to consider this.
“This may well be what Clementina is on about,” he mumbled.
Indeed. And Mill seemed once more to be my dearest ally. Might he have even considered a woman such as me while decrying women’s subjection? I might have dared to ask Albert to bring that screed to Germantown, if he were to stop in at Pine Street, but his brow was creased, and his lips moved with some preoccupation.
In silence we traveled past the flowering honeysuckle, the sage plants that reached already to my waist, the feathery stalks of yarrow bursting upward into lace. We passed the stable, where the coachman in trousers and a livery coat—their summer regular—was harnessing a horse to the carriage. I peered into the dusty space. At back was a closet, and nearby, a staircase, perhaps leading to a second-story room where a coachman or a groomsman might have slept, when the Appletons had one around the clock.
The stocky fellow inclined his head of red curls toward us and nodded. “G’morning, Mr. Burnham.”
“Good morning, Randall. About ready with that carriage?”
“Of course, sir.”
“Thank you, Randall.”
The coachman gave me a suspicious glance with his small brown eyes as we passed.
“How do you like our summer place?” said Albert.
“It’s quite comfortable.” I pulled my shawl over my head, for the mist had cohered into insistent drops. “But…”
“What?” he asked. “Has Henry been difficult to manage?” He leaned to take a sprig of lavender, pinched it, and brought it to his nose as rain dripped down his face. I hadn’t noticed till then that he wore no hat. His nostrils widened as he inhaled, and his lips curved upward. Pleasure drives him, I saw then. We resumed our walking.
“Oh, no,” I answered. “Thy son isn’t difficult. The opposite, really. I—I merely find it odd to be—so close to home.”
“Where is your home?”
“I spent my life in Germantown, until last fall.”
His face lit with surprise. “Why don’t you visit?” A furry form streaked by, nearly tripping him. His attention followed the cat, who was no doubt pursuing a small rodent.
I tried to reply. “I’m—surely thee can imagine—well, I can’t disgrace my family by showing up as a—as someone considered—ungodly.”
“Ah, I’d forgotten your situation,” he said.
Yet I devote my every hour to his. I swallowed that bitter pill.