Twain's End (25 page)

Even one of their guests this afternoon, the author Thomas Wentworth Higginson, presently indoors admiring Helen Keller's book with Mr. Clemens, had captured Isabel's hand earlier that day and clung to it, saying he wanted to hold the hand that guided Mark Twain. Once she got over the shock of it, such behavior only brought out Isabel's protectiveness toward Mr. Clemens. How like a hunted animal he must feel, with everyone wanting a piece of his hide.

“Have you ever thought of writing an article on Mark Twain?” asked Miss Bright.

“Mr. Clemens, you mean.”

“No, I mean Mark Twain.” Miss Bright lowered her voice. “No one cares about Samuel Clemens, do they? He's just a salty old man from Missouri. But Mark Twain—”

“Excuse me?”

Miss Bright put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, dear. That must have sounded terribly harsh. I'm sorry, it's just that, well, that's all he would be if he hadn't created his Mark Twain character, do you see what I mean? But of course, he did create Mark Twain, and he is a
genius! Mr. Clemens made himself into a character that the whole world loves. Bravo!”

Colonel Higginson lumbered outside, the floorboards groaning under his feet. His thick skin, crosshatched with weathering, as well as his drooping eye bags, jowls, and mustache, lent him the air of a tired walrus, although there was a spark in his saddlebagged eyes, as if a nimble boy were encased within his heavy carapace of flesh. “What are we applauding out here?”

“Mark Twain,” said Miss Bright. “Colonel Higginson, please help me convince Miss Lyon that she should write an article about Mark Twain. Wouldn't it be the candy to hear from Mark Twain's secretary's point of view?”

He rotated his bulk toward Isabel. “Why, that's an excellent idea. Miss Lyon, would you consider it? I think my friends at
The Atlantic Monthly
would snap it right up.”

“I really couldn't.”

“Why ever not? I am warming to this idea. Who knows Mark Twain better than his secretary?”

“Unless it was his daughters,” said Miss Bright.

Isabel drew in a breath. Currently, Clara and Jean were in their beds, Clara still in the sanitarium in New York, and Jean upstairs recovering from another epileptic episode, neither available to rhapsodize about their father. Even before her self-imposed confinement, Clara had nothing to do with her father after her mother died. And Mr. Clemens would have little to do with poor Jean, especially now that her seizures were coming more often than ever. He could not bear to see Jean in her agonies. At the moment Isabel was trying to figure out how to tell him about Katy's report from this morning—that, while in her fit, Jean had attacked Katy with the intention to kill. Isabel didn't know how Mr. Clemens would react if he thought Jean might be dangerous to others. Already she was such a danger to herself.

“Mr. Clemens is a very private man. I don't think—”

“Mark?” The colonel laughed. “I have never met such a glutton
for the spotlight. Bet he'd be the first to admit it if you asked him. That's what we all love about him—he's so honest about himself, flaws and all.”

Isabel agreed, hoping the subject was dropped.

“I do confess,” said the colonel, “that I am completely intrigued by the secretary angle.”

She suppressed a sigh. “Well, thank you, but it wouldn't be right. It would be a betrayal.”

“It would only be a betrayal if you said something scandalous about him.” Miss Bright lit up. “
Is
there something scandalous?”

“No!” Isabel tried to laugh.

The colonial looked down upon her with shrewd amusement. “Do you realize how important you are, the influence that you have over him? This brings to mind a story I once read, about a mighty king whose life was governed by the words of his valet, no one suspecting it, least of all the king. The king thought he was ruling, yet by a single word, the servant could turn the better judgment of his master.”

Katy came out with a tray of lemonade, offering it to everyone but Isabel. The colonel took a glass before continuing. “In this case, the valet used his power to cause the king to condemn as worthless, as utterly self-seeking, the service and homage of the real one who gladly gave himself to the king. The king cast out the loyal servant, never seeing that it was only jealousy in the other.”

“Sounds like
King Lear,
only with servants instead of daughters,” said Miss Bright.

“I don't have that kind of influence over Mr. Clemens, I assure you.” Isabel lifted a glass from the tray as Katy passed.

Mr. Clemens swaggered onto the porch, escorting the colonel's grown daughter Margaret, who was pink-cheeked with excitement. Isabel was struck, as always, at how his face was as ruggedly handsome as that of a forty-year-old, his figure as hard and upright, as if he were too fierce to age.

“Just the person we were talking about,” said the colonel. “Mark,
what do you think of Miss Lyon here writing an article about you for
The Atlantic
?”

Mr. Clemens stopped across from Isabel and cast his coolly aggressive gaze upon her. “Whatever the secretary wants, she gets.”

“Oh-ho!” the colonel cried.

Isabel was too drawn in by Mr. Clemens to care about their meddling guests. She could feel his spirit bridging the space between them, filling her with its warmth. Happiness burned down her throat like whiskey.

“Oh, do tell us his secrets,” said Miss Bright.

“Yes, Miss Lyon,” said Mr. Clemens. “Do tell them some of my secrets.” He shook his head at Katy, who was offering him a drink.

The wind picked up, tugging at the ladies' skirts. It hissed through the ranks of fir trees that marched into the distant mountains as, in her mind's eye, Isabel saw him reading “Eve's Diary” to her last month. She had listened, his customary after-dinner plate of radishes sitting untouched on the table set up on this very porch while the daylight reddened and then drained into a smoky gray. She'd lit a lamp, then sat back in its throbbing glow as fireflies rose into the treetops.

A lump had scalded her throat when he'd finished and taken off his reading glasses. “Well, what do think?” he asked.

“Eve tells all the reasons why she could love Adam, but those aren't really why.” Fireflies signaled as she'd swallowed her tears. “She loves him because he's hers.”

Just then a rocket, a leftover from Independence Day, had soared over Mount Monadnock. It struggled toward a heaven it couldn't reach and then, in a piteous burst, fell to earth in despair. They had looked at each other with shining eyes. The very world seemed to have been created just for them.

Now she told Miss Bright, “He eats radishes every day.”

“Radishes!” Miss Bright exclaimed.

Mr. Clemens glanced away in amusement.

“They're good for the digestion. Some nights they're all he will eat.” Isabel would never give him away.

The wind sent a sheet of newspaper tumbling across the lawn. Katy appeared inside at a porch window and, watching Mr. Clemens, closed it with a bang. He flinched unconsciously at the noise.

“Should we go in?” Isabel asked the group.

Mr. Clemens turned his gaze toward the mountain. “Not yet. I like it out here.”

“Then tell us something else,” the colonel said to Isabel, “about the great and powerful Twain.”

Down the way, Katy banged another window shut.

Another memory poured before Isabel's eyes. She saw herself writing in her daily reminder at her desk just last week, during an afternoon rainstorm. In the midst of an entry, as lightning lit the room, she heard a rapping on her ceiling:
tap-tap-tap-TAP.
She had paused but, hearing nothing further, resumed writing in her journal.

Tap-tap-tap-TAP.

She put down her pen and went up to Mr. Clemens's room. He was at his window, in his dressing gown, clasping his hands behind him, one turned out in that dear way of his. A scratchy symphony was playing on his phonograph. On his bed, a cat was giving itself a bath, the sound of its licking audible over the music.

“Did you want something?” she asked. Thunder boomed, closer now, sending vibrations through the floor.

“Hmm?”

“You knocked.”

Just then, the phonograph crackled with the familiar strain of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. He tapped his foot along with it.
Tap-tap-tap-TAP.

“Oh.”

He quirked his mustache. “If I had known that's all it took to get you up here, I would have done it a long time ago.”

“If you don't need me, then—”

A flash of lighting illuminated his shock of hair. “Come over here. I want you to see this.”

At the window, he had slid his arms around her from behind. Conscious
that they were in his bedroom, that his forearms were crossed over her ribs, that his sensitive hands with their tapered fingers, an ink-stained callus on the side of his index finger, were near her breasts, she lifted her gaze to the storm sweeping toward the mountains. White fissures sliced the curtains of rain slanting from the black heavens. Thunder jarred the house. At the edge of the lawn, the fir trees reached up as for mercy, their supplications lit up by the relentless lightning.

Mr. Clemens tightened his hold until she could feel his every contour pressing into her back. She dared not move.

By and by, the terrible ecstasy beyond their window died away, until the only sounds were the hissing of the phonograph needle at the end of the cylinder, their breathing, and the purr of the now sleeping cat.

Mr. Clemens's mustache had brushed against her cheek when he spoke. “Is that you, Lioness, or the cat?”

“Me,” she had said.

Now Isabel told Miss Bright, “He loves cats.”

Miss Bright shook her head. “Give us something juicy!”

“I'm afraid that's as juicy as it gets. Let's leave the writing to Mr. Clemens, shall we?”

Farther down the porch, another window was slammed shut.

Miss Bright put her hands on her hips. “Well, if you won't write the article, then we will just have to get the maid.”

“Ha!” said Colonel Higginson. “Perhaps
she'll
air Mark Twain's laundry.” He smiled at Mr. Clemens.

Thunder rumbled in the distance. Mr. Clemens stared off toward the mountains, past the fir trees standing guard.

“Maybe we should go inside,” Isabel said, just as the first fat drops began to fall.

• • •

Later, after the visitors left, Mr. Clemens picked at his dinner, a fricasseed meat so delicious that Isabel sent Katy to the kitchen to fetch the cook, Marjorie.

A slight girl with the flinty face so common in the region, Marjorie came in wiping her hands on her gravy-stained apron as Katy stood behind her, her brow thick with disapproval.

Isabel lowered her fork. “This meat is divine, Marjorie. What is it?”

The girl fought back a delighted smile. “Frizzled beef, ma'am.”

“Frizzled?”

“You frizzle shaved smoked beef in butter until it curls, then cook it with hot cream and a beaten egg.”

“Well, it's delicious.”

Rubbing the callus on his index finger, Mr. Clemens glanced up absentmindedly. Perhaps mistaking his remoteness for displeasure, Marjorie bobbed in a curtsy. “Thank you, ma'am.” She fled the dining room, brushing past Katy.

Katy remained at the dining room door, watching. Isabel would not let her presence bother her. “Jean seems to be feeling better tonight,” she told Mr. Clemens.

He grunted.

“She was up and around when I took some dinner to her room, thank goodness.” Isabel took a small bite. “I do fear that she's getting worn out.”

He stared blankly.

“I'm placing a call to Dr. Peterson in the morning.” She stabbed another bit of meat. “I wonder if we should increase Jean's medicine. Her attacks seem to be on the increase—it makes me very uneasy. She had three on Monday and then one today.” She took a breath. “There's something I should tell you about.”

Mr. Clemens snorted. “Colonel Higginson thinks
The Atlantic
won't publish ‘What Is Man.' ”

Isabel put down her fork. “About Jean.”

“
The Atlantic
is too cowardly to publish anything with an original idea.”

Isabel knew the article well and thought it brilliant, although she did not agree with it. She could see why a mainstream publication
like
The Atlantic
might shy away from a story that concluded Man was no better than a machine when it came to making moral choices. According to the tale, Man would always do what he was premade to do; he was no more in control over himself than a hammer. Man would do whatever benefited himself, first and foremost. There was no real thinking about it, no such thing as free will.

“Maybe a more forward-thinking magazine would be a better fit. As for Jean—”

“That's how it has been my whole life: whenever I'm not playing around and delivering a straightforward truth, the target hasn't the strength of mind to receive it.”

Isabel glanced over her shoulder. Katy was still there.

“Higginson told me about an Englishwoman.” Mr. Clemens wiped his mouth with his napkin. “A Miss Allonby, who wrote a book she ambitiously called
The Fulfillment.
He said she couldn't publish it while she was alive because people couldn't stand the bare-bones Truth of it. So the poor dear recently committed suicide, in order that her book and all its Truth might be given to the world.” He threw down his napkin and got up from the table. “She thought that only from the grave could one have freedom of speech, but poor deluded woman, she won't even have it there. Miss Allonby's relatives edited everything out of the book.”

“That's terrible.”

“That's why I want you to be the editor of my letters.”