Louisa and the Country Bachelor : A Louisa May Alcott Mystery (9781101547564) (22 page)

Llew cleared his throat and gave me a glance. Mrs. Tupper was, for a change, speechless. Clarence Hampton made a point of appearing unmoved by such sentiment, but his eyes had reddened, and I wondered if his conscience smarted.

Dear Fanny rose to her feet and applauded. “Mrs. Alcott, I've not heard a finer voice in this country or Europe!”

“Perhaps you would honor us with a declamation,” Mother suggested.

“Well,” said Fanny. “I think I could get through a speech or two without much trouble. How about Gertrude from
Hamlet
?” (Reader: I had asked in advance for this particular section. The play's the thing wherein to catch the conscience.)

“Excellent,” I said. “Mr. Hampton, you can read from Hamlet's role to complete the scene.” I gave Fanny the book carried in my pocket.

“Charming,” said the actress when she and Clarence stood face-to-face. “I see from where Louisa has opened the book that we are to begin in the scene after Hamlet has murdered Polonius.” She paused, and I saw all her concentration move inward, searching, and then as her energy moved out again it was as if she were a different person, a woman who had seen much of life and understood none of it.

“ ‘O Hamlet! Speak no more. Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul; And there I see such black and grained spots as will not leave their tinct.' ”

Fanny's voice was always thrilling, deep and lovely and rich, but for Queen Gertrude she made it higher-pitched, the voice of a woman who denies her own maturity until too late. I could not help but look in Ida Tupper's direction. Confusion showed on her face, and I suspected she was unfamiliar with any Shakespeare except
King Lear
.

Clarence cleared his throat. His face turned sullen and angry, as I imagined Hamlet's would have looked. “ ‘Nay, but to live in the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love over the nasty sty—' ”

“ ‘O! Speak to me no more—' ” began Fanny.

“No more indeed,” said Abba, rising hastily.

“What is an enseamed bed stew'd in corruption?” asked May.

“None of your concern. Louy, I do not like this choice of yours,” Abba chastened.

“Perhaps it is inappropriate,” agreed Fanny. “Though I must say, Mr. Hampton, even your abbreviated reading surprised me with its authenticity. You might have a future as a tragedian.”

Clarence Hampton returned the volume to me. “Is there a future for villains? Ask Miss Louisa what she thinks.”

Fanny stared at him, then at me, and I could not tell what she was thinking. “Well, since I have warmed my throat, I will do a little speech for you. Lady Macbeth,” she announced.

“The spot speech!” cried Lizzie with delight, pulling her ottoman closer to the hearth, where Fanny stood.

Fanny drooped her head, as people do when much aggrieved in their minds, indeed just as Clarence often stood. She pulled loose one of her prettily dressed side curls and loosened the lace jabot of her dress; she pulled up her sleeves to reveal her arms all the way to the elbows. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, which she held for a very long time. When she opened her eyes again she was Lady Macbeth, sleepwalking, much disturbed in mind over the blood she had caused to be shed.

“ ‘Out, damned spot! I say! One; two: why, then, 'tis time to do't. Hell is murky!' ” Her voice began as a quiet growl; it rose to a shriek with the word
hell
. Fanny—rather, Lady Macbeth—turned and faced Clarence Hampton and cast her gloomy gaze upon him. “ ‘Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?' ”

Clarence blanched.

“ ‘Do you mark that?'” I said, for I knew this scene and could cue the lines for Fanny.

“ ‘The Thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now? What! Will these hands ne'er be clean? . . . Here's the smell of the blood still; all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh! Oh! Oh!' ” And with the final
oh
Fanny collapsed onto the carpet, sobbing.

“Oh, don't cry so,” said Lizzie, her own eyes brimming. “Fanny, here, let me help you up.”

When Fanny raised her face, we saw that she was laughing and quite gay!

“Tears and laughter are so close they can substitute one for another onstage,” she said. I would remember that.

Supper began with steamed clams, progressed to oyster chowder, and moved on to a baked halibut. We wondered if Abba weren't perhaps feeling a little unsound. She hummed as she passed around the plates and hugged Father, who seemed somewhat stupefied by so much company and so much food. His blessing before dinner had been unusually brief:

“Bless the roof that protects the family beneath it.”

“Hear, hear,” answered Uncle Benjamin, raising his wineglass. “Though in a heavy storm the roof leaks somewhat in the southeast corner.”

“That is to remind us that life is never certain,” said Father solemnly.

“Nor always dry,” said Lizzie, who shared a bedroom with May in that corner of the house.

After dinner, Fanny required “the young people” to entertain her, since she had entertained us. Anna, Sylvia, and I agreed to play a brief scene between Mrs. Malaprop, Lydia Languish, and the maid, Lucy. Clarence Hampton, with a great lack of enthusiasm, agreed to be, for the evening, Lydia's suitor, Captain Absolute, disguised, as he is for much of the play, as impoverished Ensign Beverly.

“Then we will disguise you,” said Anna with great determination. “Uncle, may I?” And she fetched from the hall coatrack his Turkish hat and cape.

“Here, here,” said Uncle with consternation. “See it comes to no harm.”

“What harm can come to it?” replied Anna cheerily, placing the cap on Mr. Hampton's head and the cape about his shoulders. He cast angry looks about the room.

“Ready?” asked Sylvia, who donned one of Abba's aprons to signify her role as a maid. She carried a tray with a tea set on it. Abba's face was solemn with worry for the china, but she said not a word.

“Places,” I instructed. “The parlor door will now be the entrance to Miss Lydia Languish's sitting room, where she awaits a secret visit from her lover, Ensign Beverly, to be announced by her maid, Lucy, while her guardian, Mrs. Malaprop, lectures her on the duties of youth.”

I had tied a pillow round my waist and covered it with a coat to simulate the bulk my slender figure lacked; I stooped to hide my height and walked crablike, jutting my chin unpleasantly, encouraging laughter, and the scene went better than I had originally feared; we earned our applause and bows despite Clarence, who muttered his lines with obvious distaste.

“Bravo!” cried Fanny, when we finished. “Anna, I have never seen a more enchanting ingenue give a lover more difficulty! And Louy, if your Walpole audience doesn't hurt from laughing at your portrayal of Mrs. Malaprop, well, then we will have a measure of their lack of humor, for you are humorous in the extreme.”

“Port all around!” cried Uncle Benjamin, for he had laughed loudest of all.

“Not all around,” protested Abba, looking at May and Lizzie.

“A sip won't hurt them,” insisted Uncle.

“Indeed it won't, Abba,” said May hopefully.

“No,” said that wise mother. “Not even a sip until you are twenty-one.”

“But I have no port!” protested Father.

“Clarence, there is a bottle stored in the potato cellar. Would you fetch it?” Uncle Benjamin said. “And while you are there, bring up a basket of potatoes for Mrs. Fisher's Sunday roast. Make sure they haven't sprouted, mind you.”

“Yes, sir,” said Clarence, so eager to be away from the group that he neglected to remove Uncle's hat and cape.

The potato cellar was the traditional kind based on colonial housekeeping, just large enough to store a few baskets and barrels and dug outside the house, so we heard the kitchen door slam behind Clarence as he went out.

“I must powder my nose,” said Ida Tupper, heading for the same door to the outdoor conveniences. Father snorted with displeasure. He did not like to hear of women powdering their faces.

As we waited, we discussed the performance of that evening, and the performance to come, when we would appear before the good people of Walpole. Fanny looked at my script and suggested a few changes in lines and exits, and Lizzie and May began to yawn. Mrs. Tupper returned. We waited fifteen minutes for the sound of the back door to open once again, for Clarence's step in the hall. It did not come.

“Perhaps I should go see,” said Uncle Benjamin. “That last step is tricky.”

“Perhaps he had a call of nature,” said his mother. “Give him time.”

We waited another fifteen minutes.

“Something is wrong,” said Abba, rising from her chair by the hearth.

“I am sure he has taken offense and returned home,” said his mother. “He is thin-skinned, and the girls had fun at his expense tonight. He often behaves in this manner, coming and going with no regard for others.”

“I will check the cellar, to be certain,” said Llew. He was unenthused about his chore, for we all knew his antipathy to Clarence, yet he disliked seeing Abba distressed. Llew returned four minutes later. “The cellar is empty,” he announced.

“Why didn't you bring back the port and potatoes?” grumbled Uncle Benjamin.

“Forgot them,” said Llew, grinning sheepishly.

It was growing late, and Cousin Eliza, too, began to yawn. We all made little stretching movements of fatigue. Anna and Abba went to the kitchen to begin the washing-up. Lizzie and May went upstairs to their beds.

Mrs. Tupper rose. “I'll be off. So charming to have met you, Mrs. Kemble. Perhaps sometime when I am down to Boston we might have tea together.”

“Perhaps,” said Fanny noncommittally. “I, too, will be off. Louy, will you ask my servant to meet me at the front door with a lantern?”

I went to the little pantry off the kitchen where the man was having a pint of lager and making conversation with Fanny's maid.

Uncle rose to go, and scratched his head with great distress.

“The young scamp has gone off with my hat and cape,” he complained.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE NEXT MORNING, though I was fatigued, I rose at dawn as usual and dressed for my run in the ravine. When I returned, I spent several hours in my writing shed, working with only a modicum of success, for I admit my thoughts were elsewhere than with the words marching uneventfully across my pages of foolscap. The morning had menace in it, somehow.

At midmorning, when I returned to the kitchen for a cup of tea, Ida Tupper knocked at our cottage door. Her hair was undressed and looked skimpy and dull; she had not rouged her cheeks and lips. In fact, she was still in her nightdress, with a thin coat thrown over it.

“He did not come home last night,” she said. “Clarence did not come home. I woke up and went to his room and he was not there. Oh, I just know something is wrong!” She gave a little shriek and would have fallen to the floor in her faint, had Abba not caught her by the waist.

We lifted Ida by her ankles and arms and carried her to the parlor. She was small, and the task was not difficult. We put a compress on her forehead and passed smelling salts under her nose several times, bringing her to.

“It is my fault, my fault,” that strange mother sobbed. “I should have been ever so much better. My poor boy!”

“Now, now,” crooned Abba. “Mothers always take the blame for their children. Even so, we have no reason to believe he has come to harm. Why think so? Young men sometimes find places to rest other than their own beds.”

Sylvia came in then, carrying her book of Confucius and looking dreamy-eyed, which meant she had again been attempting meditation.

“Clarence Hampton has disappeared,” I told her.

“Ah. Fled,” she said knowingly.

“Fled?” Ida Tupper began to wail.

“Louy, make us a pot of chamomile tea,” said Abba. “We must wait this out.”

Llew heard the commotion and came in from Father's study, where he had been at his work of classifying rock specimens gathered from the ravine.

He looked at Ida Tupper, swooning on the settee, and then at me.

“What has Mr. Hampton got up to now?” he asked.

“He did not come home last night,” I said.

Llew paused and considered. He stroked his chin, the way Father did when deep in contemplation. “Perhaps I should give the cellar a better search,” he said.

“You searched last night.” I chafed Mrs. Tupper's wrists.

“Well, I peered in through the door,” he admitted. “I was certain he had gone on home, so I didn't actually go past the doorway.”

“Oh, Llew,” I said.

“Should I fetch the sheriff?” he asked.

“Check the cellar first,” said Abba. “Take a lamp so you can see all the corners. Maybe he fell on the bad step and hit his head.”

Llew returned minutes later, bloodied on his hands, his feet, his knees, his face. I couldn't help but think of Lady Macbeth: “Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?” Llew seemed all in blood, and what we could see of his face beneath that blood was bone white and dazed.

“Mr. Hampton is found,” said Llew in a strange voice.

Some presentiment of doom brought Father out of his study. He lowered his reading glasses halfway down his nose, and eyed us with great misgiving. He flinched slightly when his gaze landed on Llew.