Afternoons with Emily (66 page)

“As I suppose it is,” I agreed.

“And perhaps it has nothing to do with the school at all. It could be that Roger has an enemy who felt that his involvement
with the school was his most vulnerable point.”

“Perhaps
I
have made an enemy,” I said.

Alan shook his head. “I hardly think so. You are too young to have made an enemy of this caliber, Miranda.”

“Do you think I should come to New York to meet with the board?” I asked after a few minutes.

“Not now. I would suggest that you write a letter in which you repudiate the charges, then continue as you have done. Your
own good work will remind them of why they backed the school in the first place. And with Roger across the Atlantic . . .”

Alan stayed the night and returned to New York on the morning’s train. That night I wrote my letters to the board, finding
a way to deny Roger’s and my involvement without telling a direct lie. We were fortunate, Alan reminded me, that none of the
backers had given a copy of the letter to anyone in the press — and that the writer had not thought to do so. As Aunt Helen
had told me, once a rumor of this sort became public, it never entirely died.

Roger’s letter to me arrived on the first of May, just a few days after Alan’s departure.

We shall weather this. But to do so, for the good of the foundation and the schools, and to save you and all the good people
who are involved in them from embarrassment, I must go away.

Fortunately, I had just been contacted by Mr. John Parker, a friend of my father’s and the president of the Great Western
Insurance Company. Great Western has been involved in the settlement of the Alabama claims. I do not know if you remember,
but the CSS
Alabama
was a cruiser built in an English shipyard, which sank fifty-eight Union ships before she herself was sunk by the Union in
1864. It is the United States’ position that England violated the International Statutes of Neutrality by looking the other
way when the
Alabama
sailed out of the Mersey Estuary to spend months waging war. England refuses to pay the claims of America’s private insurers
— including Great Western Insurance — and our government has become involved. My father — and, through him, Mr. Parker — has
asked me to go to England to represent Great Western in the case.

I had intended to refuse, but it appears that for many reasons — not least the scurrilous accusations in the letters Alan
and the board members have received — it is providential. I have left my wife well cared for, although I know, with great
sadness, that my presence makes no difference to Cecilia in her unhappy state. A junior partner at my firm, Will Martindale,
will take over foundation business. He is a good man and knows how close to my heart the foundation is. He will do his best
for you and can always reach me for advice.

I shall miss our correspondence, which has meant a great deal to me. Perhaps someday we shall meet again. Until that time,
I wish you, and the foundation, all good things.

The letter was cordial and distant, as if he feared someone else might read it. And perhaps, I thought, he did fear that.
But folded inside the letter was a smaller slip of paper, with a few words.

I have you always in my heart.

R

Those few words undid me. Once again my longing for Roger, which I had thought was well controlled, welled up. I wanted, now
especially, to feel his arms around me, to be safe and protected. And loved! The yearning for him was so powerful I felt it
like heat on my skin. I stared at his handwriting and realized those few sweet words might be my last from him. I might never
see Roger again. I might never hear another word from him. I closed the door to my room and sat there for a long time, too
sad even to cry, running my fingers across the surface of that note as if it had been Roger’s skin.

Through the days and nights that followed, I carried this private sorrow, unable to confide to anyone but Miss Adelaide. And
yet I could not bring myself to write to her too candidly about what had happened, for fear that my letter might go astray.
I felt sometimes as though I were being watched, my actions and words judged. Someone had known, or guessed, or suspected,
that Roger and I were more than colleagues.

I threw myself into work, and work, as it always had done, soothed my hurts and distracted me from the great emptiness where
Roger had been in my life. And life insisted upon continuing. Trees leafed and blossomed, and each morning the summer sunshine
attempted to burn away my sadness. Alan wrote to me of the end of the first year’s classes at the New York school, hoping
I would visit before the summer break to see the bounty our work had reaped: “Two dozen bright, happy children, busily learning
everything and anything we can teach them!”

One morning’s post brought a message from Emily. She had written to me several times since our gardening day, just before
the turmoil at the foundation, but I had been too distracted to make time for her. Perhaps the tone of those notes — cloying,
worrying that she had offended me in some way — had made me want to avoid her. Still, this was not a note but a poem:

We learn in the Retreating

How vast an one

Was recently among us —

A Perished Sun

Endear in the departure

How doubly more

Than all the Golden presence

It was — before —

I imagined Emily was acknowledging that we had not seen each other recently. But I did not care for the exalted position she
placed me in, in her private galaxy. I sent her a note thanking her for the poem, relieved at least to see that she was writing
again.

Over the next weeks more poems arrived, and I grew uneasy. There was something insistent about the steady stream of verse,
and I was unable to understand what Emily’s meaning was in sending them.

’Twas awkward, but it fitted me —

An Ancient fashioned Heart —

Its only lore — its Steadfastness —

In Change — unerudite —

And another several days later:

I showed her Heights she never saw —

“Would’st Climb,” I said?

She said — “Not so” —

“With
me
—” I said — With
me?

I showed her Secrets — Morning’s Nest —

The Rope the Nights were put across —

And
now
— “Would’st have me for a Guest?”

She could not find her Yes —

And then, I brake my life — And Lo,

A Light, for her, did solemn glow,

The larger, as her face withdrew —

And
could
she, further, “No”?

I could not imagine her purpose in sending me these. They seemed very much to be messages intended for me, but I could not
— or perhaps would not — discern their meaning.

I had, after all, a good deal else to think about. There were the curricula for both the New York and Amherst schools to be
planned. More trained teachers would be needed soon, and Alan was looking for candidates in New York. Late in June he sent
me a list of several candidates, with his detailed notes on each. Almost as an afterthought he enclosed the letter he had
received from the anonymous “Friend of Education,” with his apologies for having forgotten to send it on before now.

I unfolded it and then could not read it. Not at once, when the shock of its authorship was with me. It was written in imitation
of pompous business letters by someone to whom the style did not come naturally, but the style did not disguise it. I knew
that hand, the delicate, slantwise arches.

Dear Mr. Harnett,

I have learned of the success of the Frazer Stearns School with great pleasure, for it is on the education of children that
America’s future rests. Because this sacred mission is of such importance, I feel I must warn you of an
unwholesome
relationship between two central figures in the school. Mr. Roger Daniels, the administrator of your foundation’s trust,
has what can justly be described as an
unconventional
influence upon Miss Miranda Chase. I believe Miss Chase is too
young
and
inexperienced
to understand the consequences of this association. This regrettable influence can only serve, in the end, to cloud the mission
of the school and its generous backers. Even the appearance of
unhealthy
interest might jeopardize a school whose work, I think, is of the greatest importance.

A Friend of Education

The handwriting was Emily Dickinson’s.

I felt dizzy and, for a moment, unaware of my surroundings. Then, as the shock wore away, I was left with cold outrage. I
folded the letter, took up my hat, and left the house for The Homestead.

Lavinia met me at the door.

“Miranda! Emily had not told me she was expecting you!”

“She isn’t, Lavinia. I need only a moment of her time.” It was hard not to let my anger spill over to poor Vinnie. “May I
go up?”

She stood aside to let me pass, but her face was avid with curiosity. I thanked her and went up the stairs to knock at Emily’s
door.

“Emily, it is Miranda Chase.”

Her flutelike voice bid me enter. “So formal today! So you finally DEIGN to visit? I see that the claims of old friends are
less than —”

I extended the letter to her. She squinted slightly, as if the sunlight on the page made it difficult to recognize. “Oh. Yes,
that would bring you here if NOTHING else did,” she said.

“Why, Emily?”

She tilted her head as if hearing another voice than mine speaking to her.

“I did it for you and for the school. You’re very young, Miranda. Little more than a child! You have no conception of how
dangerous your LIAISON with that man was to you — how likely it was to separate you from everything important in your life.”

“Likely! Emily, your letter was more destructive to the schools and the foundation than anything Roger and I did! What were
you thinking? What could you hope to accomplish by —”

“I told the TRUTH.” Emily turned back to her desk.

“You told the truth
slant,
Emily. You told enough of it to suit your own purposes and might have destroyed the schools, and me, and a very good man.”

“You do not need HIM,” Emily said crisply. “Women like ourselves must do without men — to WORK we cannot afford distractions.
Women like ourselves —” She appeared to have lost her train of thought. “Do you think I could BEAR to see you dwindle into
a SATELLITE of this man? That I could stand that PAIN? I acted to save you, Miranda.”

“You acted to save yourself,” I said furiously. “You acted to keep me as your pet. It was all very well when I was
your
satellite! But you could not bear that there was another person in my life who was as important as you. More important! You
could not bear that there was some experience in my life that you could not share!”

“What of what I have SHARED with you? You forget that there are very few people I admit to my circle. Perhaps there are others
who would better appreciate that HONOR.”

“An honor is not a friendship! And what you have done is not honorable! It is selfish and cruel. It is all posturing and false
drama, without an iota of real feeling.”

For a moment this accusation seemed to affect Emily. “I was trying to SAVE our friendship. And I was afraid for YOU. Miranda,
that is hardly —”

I could not listen to any more. “What you did was not the act of a friend, Emily. It was the coldest, most calculating self-service.”
I folded the letter and put it in my pocket. “Do not ever attempt to hurt me or the foundation again.”

“Miranda, do not LEAVE this way!” Emily’s burnt sienna eyes were cold, but her anger felt like playacting.

“Good-bye, Emily.” I was as cold as she.

“You will not be able to REPAIR this,” she warned. Then abruptly her anger was gone, and she reached out her hand to me. “Miranda,
please! Miranda, this is CRUEL!”

I said nothing more, just turned and left the room.

As I went down the stairs, I heard Emily call my name again, but I did not stop. As I turned toward the back door, Lavinia
Dickinson appeared at the kitchen door and watched without comment as I left the house.

I walked unseeing through the town. Confronting Emily had not made me less angry, only deeply tired. When I reached home I
wrote to Alan, telling him that I had discovered who the mysterious author of the letter was and assuring him that there would
be no further problem.

Then I slept. When I awoke, I felt sad but oddly free. I even felt some pity for Emily, so alone in that great house, keeping
half the world at arm’s length and driving the rest away. But sadness did not excuse what she had done. I would not see her
again.

Mercifully, that summer, with Emily gone and Roger lost to me, I was busier than I had ever been. I taught, I wrote, I traveled
to New York to meet with Alan, to help select new teachers. I was invited to lecture on early childhood education and to write
essays for newspapers. There was Elena to watch over and nurture, and Lolly to visit in Boston. When I thought of Roger, it
was with longing but not despair; my life was now becoming meaningful and full again. And so, summer rolled into autumn.

From time to time as the months passed, I received notes or poems from Emily. None of them referred to our last meeting, and
all of them were disturbing. I was still angry with her, and each time I saw that familiar hand on an envelope, I felt a shudder
of exasperation, but I was curious despite my anger, and sometimes I did read them. The poems, in particular, suggested a
depth of feeling I could not believe — more of Emily’s melodrama. One poem I recognized from the time years ago when we had
collected her poems into fascicles: Emily was sending earlier work.

Come slowly — Eden!