One Glorious Ambition Page 13

  One of Dorothea’s physicians joined the meal as well, making points with his fork poked in the air, a smile toward Dorothea when she offered an opinion.

  That evening she wrote to her grandmother that the course of her disease had been part of the debate. “Here I am quite pampered and petted.”

  She basked in these new friendships, seeing great stimulation in conversations with passionate people wanting to serve the “least of these.” Ducks floated on the lake, which she could see better now from her upstairs bedroom. She had insisted the Rathbones retake their boudoir, a sign that her health had truly improved.

  “Perhaps you have imposed too long on the Rathbones,” Madam Dix wrote. “It’s time you returned to Boston. I have need of you. Mehetable tires easily. A young woman should lend us a hand.”

  Dorothea responded, saying she was still not well, which was what her doctors argued over: the cause and the treatments. Perhaps hiring a nurse would help Cookie. Dorothea would send money.

  Madam Dix replied that she had hired a young woman Dorothea’s age, but she had become ill as well. “It’s time for you to come home and help your family.”

  Dorothea sighed and lay the letter down. Her own Latin studies reminded her that the word family came from the Latin famulus meaning servant. She had a servant’s heart, didn’t she? Servants did what was required. Yet the thought of returning … She pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders.

  The people hovering around the central fires at Greenbank were interested in the world around them and active in their pursuit of ministry without being demanding of others. They paced themselves in their work and thus had much to draw on for the care of others. They gave their time, their strengths, as well as their money. God’s love, that’s what should burn the fire in the hearth of a home. As Dorothea accepted the hot tea Elizabeth brought to her room, she told herself, This is what love looks like. This is what a family feels like.

  Spring growth pushed its way through the dried grass on the Greenbank lawns. “My grandmamma’s caretaker has taken ill,” Dorothea told Elizabeth after her latest missive from Madam Dix. She held the knitting skein as the older woman wound the yarn taken from sheep on the estate. “And I sit here not able to tend anyone, a failure of my duty.”

  “Your time is yet to be,” Elizabeth reminded her. “I feel certain of it. You must simply wait upon the Lord. He has a plan for you. Someday you will say as we Quakers are known to, ‘If it is to be, it is up to thee.’ Something will call to you, and through it the Lord will have you toss away your cane and peel away the crust of uncertainty that stifles you. You will go places you have never imagined.”

  “Do you really believe that’s so, for me?”

  “I know it. I pray for it. I trust it will come, and we will all be the better for it.”

  Dorothea found a peace here despite the rule of no paper, no pens for at least an hour a day. “If God is to speak to your heart,” Elizabeth told her, “you must put away distractions so you can hear His voice.”

  This was new to her. At Greenbank, she yielded. Not certain of her direction, she let others move into the stream of life around her, hoping that soon she would follow. It was a route through suffering she had not before allowed. She was grateful.

  Sleep now. And then awake.

  Sixteen

  An Orphan’s Tale

  Dear Auntie. You are now my only real mother. My own dear mummy is at rest. She is past all trouble and pain and in the home of the blessed. Please come to be my mummy.” Marianna Davenport Cutter signed the letter that reached Dorothea in the spring of her second year at Greenbank. Her hands flew in her packing. Elizabeth helped.

  “Are you certain you’re well enough for travel?”

  “I have to go. This is what I’ve wanted my entire life. This child. She’s a cousin, and I wanted to adopt her before her mother passed, but I did not press my case well. I ought to have persisted. But now it has come, this door to a child, my child.” She clasped a dark skirt to her chin. “I have sent a letter, but they take so long. I hope she knows I am coming.”

  Elizabeth handed Dorothea the book of Gray’s poetry to pack. “I wish we had time to visit Thomas Gray’s grave. It’s not far from here.”

  “Next time I come. I’ll bring Marianna with me.” Dorothea embraced her friend. “It is an answer to a prayer. As are you.”

  As she boarded the carriage for the ship leaving Liverpool, she stuffed into her valise a letter that Elizabeth handed her. Postmarked from America. She would read it while she listened to the horses clop down the winding driveway taking her from Greenbank home to Marianna. She waved good-bye, leaned her head back against the leather pad; a smile on her lips.

  Dorothea waited until on board the ship before opening the latest letter, anticipating another note from Marianna. Instead, it was from her grandmother’s solicitor telling her that Madam Dix had died of influenza. The solicitor provided a few details Dorothea read through her shroud of guilt for not returning at her grandmother’s request. Her grandmother had wanted her back not because she missed her but so that Dorothea could do her duty, a duty in which Dorothea had failed. She sighed and continued to read while the steamship swooshed across the Atlantic. Orange Court would be divided between Dorothea, her brothers, and Dorothea’s uncle Thaddeus Harris, husband to Madam Dix’s daughter—the summer aunt and uncle, where she had taken ill instead of finding a proper suitor. The other uncles and aunts were apparently settled, and her grandmother had provided for her two children who had the least resources for caring for their families: Dorothea’s father and the woman married to that poor minister, Thaddeus Harris. But she hadn’t left the estate to her daughter, but to her daughter’s husband, Thaddeus, instead. Dorothea wondered that her grandmother didn’t leave Dorothea out of the will, left the other half to her brothers. She supposed it was because she was single. If she’d married, her husband would have been named in the will. Dorothea would have a home with some surveillance by her uncle, as she was still a single woman, but there would be a place for her and Charles and Joseph and now Marianna as well. God does look after each of us, Dorothea decided.

  She set aside the shards of guilt and thought instead of joining Marianna at last. Anticipation brushed Dorothea’s face like the ocean breezes as she took her daily walks around the ship. She bundled up tightly, already aware of the coming fall and the cold of Boston’s winters. But she would be warmed this winter in her home at Orange Court. She was stronger than she had ever been. She would have a child of her own, one who would never leave her, and she would educate her, prepare her for a life of service and compassion. They would sit by the fire and read together. She would sew dresses for the young lady, brush her hair. They would try new mouth soaps to whiten their teeth, and in the spring they would take picnics. She would bring her to Greenbank! Yes, she would share this healing place.

  Dorothea made lists in her diary of things to do to brighten up the mansion, trying to decide whether to continue it as a boardinghouse or make it a real family home. Surely her aunt and uncle would not want to move into the house, as her uncle had a life and ministry in Worcester. She made lists of shopping she would do with Marianna, though she hoped Marianna wasn’t overly impressed with fashion. She would help her grieve the loss of her mother. She imagined pouring out bushel baskets of love onto the child, all that Dorothea had stored to give away. To continue her good health, the first she had ever really known, Dorothea kept an hour each morning on board ship without pen and paper, where she simply tried to discern God’s intention for the day. Being well was her fervent prayer so that she might be the mother Marianna truly deserved.

  “But—”

  “It has been arranged, Miss Dix.”

  “But she’s asked for me, claims me as her only mother.” Dorothea sat in the paneled room of Grace’s solicitor. Potted ferns drooped near the floor-to-ceiling windows and reflected Dorothea’s emotional state after her long journey. Distant cousins sat across from
her, three of them en mass. Marianna was not present though.

  “She’s not yet betrothed,” the cousin said. His starched collar was too small for his thick neck, and he pulled at it as he spoke. “Marianna had to go somewhere, and we, her cousins, have taken her in. After all, you were in England and not well.”

  “Your grandmother told us you were on death’s door. What were we to do?” the cousin’s wife whined.

  Another cousin, a sister, unmarried as Dorothea was, knotted her handkerchief in her hands. “She’s been with us for more than two months. It would be criminal to move her now.”

  “Yes. Criminal,” her male cousin agreed.

  “Only in that I imagine it would force you to give up that portion of the Cutter estate that came with her,” Dorothea charged. “That would be the crime, I suspect.”

  “Oh, now, now,” her cousin blustered. “You’ve no right to impugn our motives. What of your own?”

  What would move them? The graciousness of the Rathbones? Was there a way for her to influence them? to change their minds?

  She softened her voice. “It was good of you to be there for her. I know Grace would be grateful. I would take her without the estate attached to her.”

  “So would we!” the maiden cousin shouted. Her brother shushed her.

  “You can keep the resources for the care you’ve already provided,” Dorothea said.

  “And as soon as we agreed to that, you’d call the solicitor to demand the money for her dowry.”

  “I wouldn’t. I have no need. It would be my pleasure to provide for Marianna.” Her voice broke. “I have a place for her. I have means. I don’t need the Cutter share. I simply want what’s best for Marianna.”

  The solicitor cleared his throat. “Have you as yet met with Madam Dix’s executor? He is a member of our firm. I know you’re just recently arrived.”

  “No, I haven’t met with him.” The solicitor’s interruption was like a bee buzzing at her ear. She had taken a hotel room to be closer to his office and had not yet gone to Orange Court. “I let your office know immediately that I might tell Marianna I had returned.”

  “There is some news—”

  “I believe this has been decided already,” the male cousin interrupted the solicitor. He stood. “You have other affairs to attend to, dear cousin. A single woman without a father, brother, husband, or son to look after her will have enough to worry over. And your grandmother’s estate to tend to. We will ensure Marianna has sufficient care and a satisfactory dowry when that time comes.”

  “Of course you’ll be welcome to see her and correspond,” the whining wife added. “We would not deprive you of that, though you should give her a little time to grieve. We’ll have her send a note when she feels up to seeing you.”

  “She has already sent me a note. She asked me to come and be her mother.” Couldn’t they see how the girl longed for Dorothea to claim her? Why wasn’t she here?

  “She already calls me Auntie,” the maiden cousin told her. The woman’s pinched eyes shone greedily inside a face with cheeks dotted red.

  Dorothea felt that same slow seethe that had brewed inside her all the years she stitched her father’s tracts. She named it powerlessness. Marianna, too, was a pawn and not allowed to choose her destiny. She was aware that the cousins all stood and were waiting for her to leave as well. She did not stand, however. She was not finished.

  “Why not let Marianna decide?”

  The male cousin stopped at the door, his hand on the gold knob. “She has no say. She is a girl.”

  The solicitor shrugged his shoulders.

  The cousins filed out, and after a few moments of silence, the solicitor asked if Dorothea was all right.

  “I will be.” Her hands shook. She didn’t know if it was a lie.

  She made an appointment to meet with the executor of her grandmother’s estate later in the week. The following day she hired a cab to Orange Court. At least here was something firm. She would have a place to call her own. Property mattered in Boston society. From here she could launch her campaign for Marianna and her own future, whatever it held.

  The estate looked even more forlorn than when she had left. Fall always stripped the mansion bare: the porch held no wicker chairs, leaves already clustered at the roots of bare trees. The Hudson brother must have slowed in his age or perhaps no longer tended the grounds at all. She walked up the stone steps that needed sweeping, opened the mansion door and gasped. Where was all the furniture?

  Dorothea walked through the house, her footsteps echoing on the pine floors, the brush of her crinolines as she turned this way and that exerted small pressure against her stockings. She heard herself gasping, taking in breath. She stopped, gained control. She would not be ill.

  In the parlor her eyes went to the fireplace where a single settee and two chairs sat forlorn. The room had once been filled with chairs and end tables and three divans, ferns on plant stands waving their fronds at passing guests. Gone were the porcelains, the statues, the treasures her grandfather had brought back from Europe. She climbed the stairs to the library. Only a few books lined the shelves. Had they sold the collection book by book? The long table where she had taught school remained, but the ladderback chairs had been replaced with benches. Cobwebs already gathered on the chandeliers.

  She opened a bedroom. A simple bed, a nightstand, and a small armoire. A room bare of all but necessities. There were clothes inside the armoire. People lived here? In what had been her room, a single trunk sat in the center. She lifted the rounded cover and peered inside. She moved aside her camisoles, corset covers, and a pale chemise. Beneath were pens and ink, books, and older diaries that she had stored in her writing desk. And the desk was no longer in the room.

  A porcelain candle stand that had been her father’s lay alongside several beeswax candles. First-edition copies of each of her books made a small stack. She looked around, grateful she had not had her trunk sent to Orange Court when she had arrived. Someone lived here, someone with spare taste.

  She took the path through the pear garden to the cottage. It was locked. She looked through the window to see that nothing remained, no dishes on the shelves, no pictures on the walls. She hoped she would have some personal memento of her grandmother to claim. What had happened to Benji? Without a key, she couldn’t enter.

  As she walked down the hill to locate a cab to take her back to her hotel, Dorothea let the high and low of her day wash over her. She had not coughed. She would find out about the stripped mansion. Greenbank had rescued her, saved her. While she faced a terrible loss on the first day of her arrival—the custody of Marianna—she would continue a relationship with the child, she was committed to that.

  Potted ferns graced the executor’s office, but these were well watered and lifted their fronds to the window heights. Outside, autumn scampered across the street in the form of little children chased by the breeze as they held on to their bonnets and mothers’ hands. A fire burned in the fireplace, the logs crackling perhaps because they were damp from the first light snow, which had fallen overnight.

  “I have a number of things to share with you, Miss Dix,” the executor said. He stood taller than Dorothea, and she noted how pleasant it was to be looking up into the eyes of a man without having to crank her neck. “Would you like tea?”

  Dorothea nodded and they passed the time waiting for it by discussing the weather and her book sales. He had a mole on his high cheekbones.

  “Ah, here we are then.” The executor poured her tea, then returned to his perch behind his desk, where he opened a thick file.

  “Your grandmother left a number of small bequests to different acquaintances throughout New England, and she hoped you would be the one to assist me in locating the recipients.” Dorothea thought that was his job but said nothing. When she did not respond, he continued. “Ah, then.” He rifled through the pages, pulling up one. “She has left you her cane, hand carved and used by her very hand to steady herself.
It’s a fine symbol of her care for you, don’t you think? Her wish to help you be a steady woman.”

  “I’ll appreciate that.”

  “An English tea set she left you, which we have stored here. She said you liked tea and so wanted to be sure you had it. There are small items for your brothers who, as they continue abroad, received this information by post.” He cleared his throat. “Your grandmother’s bequest to you is one-sixth of the estate. Charles and Joseph will receive one-sixth each. Your brother Charles has bequeathed his share to you to manage, and Joseph’s share will be managed by his uncle Thaddeus until Joseph is twenty-five. He intends to live with them at Orange Court.”

  “Oh? It was my understanding that half of Orange Court was to go to me and my brothers.”

  “Ah, and well it does. Your grandmother wanted your minister uncle and his fine wife to have use of the house for free until they died.” He showed her a codicil of the will, dated while she was recovering at Greenbank. “The best way to arrange that was that I simply sold the house to your uncle after Madam Dix died. I thought it best for everyone. You are a single woman, and the upkeep of a mansion would be extraordinary. The income will be yours, of course, along with the profit from the sale of some of the furnishings. Your uncle’s simple tastes meant they had little need for many of the heirlooms.”

  “The mansion … I have no claim on it? No … property?”

  “It was in your best interest. With a small bequest left from your grandfather, the money from the sale, your own earnings, which I imagine provide you a little from your writing and teaching, you ought to have—”

  “But I have no … home.”

  “Perhaps your uncle will welcome you.”

  Dorothea shook her head. Her uncle and aunt had been stuffy and prim when she had stayed with them. Her aunt had complained the entire time she had been with them. “I find no hope in their interest in having me be a part of their household.”