Under the Wide and Starry Sky (29 page)

Thomas Stevenson, on first look, appeared to be napping. When Louis found him in his bedroom, he was sitting upright in a chair, wearing his broadcloth suit, and holding a pipe in his hand.

“Father,” Louis said, leaning over so Thomas could see him. He patted the old man's knee, and the pipe, which had been propped loosely in his fist, fell to the floor.

Thomas's glazed eyes blinked toward his son's face, then closed again.

“He doesn't even know who I am.”

Standing behind Louis, Maggie Stevenson quaked with sobs. “Nor does he know me.” She turned to Fanny and drew her into the family circle, placing an arm around her waist. “He would have wanted it this way. He always said that any man who respected himself would not die in bed. He wants to spend his last day fully dressed, having smoked his pipe.”

“But is he comfortable?” Fanny asked.

“No, he can't be,” Maggie said. “But this is what he always said he wanted.”

“Did he actually smoke a pipe today?” Fanny asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, then.” Fanny knelt before her father-in-law. “Master Tommy,” she whispered. “Would you like to lie on the bed for a bit?”

The old man looked blankly at her. He had slid down and to the side of the wing chair, where his fragile body was folded like a rag doll. His eyelids fluttered.

When they managed to get him lying flat, still wearing the suit, Fanny took Louis aside in a corner of the bedroom. “You must tell him it is all right if he leaves us now. Tell him how good a father he has been. Tell him his work is finished and he has done a fine job.”

Left alone in the room with his father, Louis saw Fanny's wisdom. Thomas Stevenson had waited to leave them until his boy got home. Now he needed to be released. Louis knelt beside the bed and put his mouth near his father's ear.

In a few hours, the old man was gone.

Rain fell in slanted sheets on the day of the funeral. Despite having a cold, Louis greeted guests to the house but took his leave after a half hour when he felt too exhausted to continue. Uncle George Balfour followed him upstairs to his bedroom.

“I cannot in good conscience allow you to attend the burial, Lou,” he said. “You are a very sick man. If this cold goes into your lungs, it could kill you. And I don't intend to let that happen on my watch. It's all up to you. You have a fibroidal lung disease that can't be cured. It
can
be managed, and if you take care of yourself properly, you can avoid the hemorrhages.” Louis's uncle produced a respirator mask shaped like a pig's snout from the medical bag he carried with him wherever he went. “Strap this on your mouth and nostrils. There's pinewood oil in there. The vapors will do you good.”

Now Louis stood in his robe at the window of his bedroom. Outside, a sea of black umbrellas and carriages filled Heriot Row. Fanny and his mother filed out in black veils, followed by his cousin Bob, who would stand in for him during the service at the cemetery. Louis watched Bob gently help Maggie into the carriage and then Fanny. How changed Bob looked. He wore his world-weary demeanor not nearly so handsomely as he had when he was twenty-five. He was a professor of fine arts in Liverpool and looked like every middle-aged don Louis had ever known—wise and disappointed. How quickly the wild boy had dissolved.

Alone in the house, Louis cast about, seeking he knew not what. Some sense of sorrow on this funeral day? He didn't feel it. He was glad that his father was no longer suffering, that the old man's spirit was happily released. Thank God he and his father had made their peace or he would be feeling very different.

Louis wandered into his parents' bedroom. It had always served as their sanctuary; he hadn't been in the room much since he was a small boy running in and out. He climbed onto the bed on his father's side and felt the indentation in the mattress where he had lain every night for so many years. Louis examined the white marble fireplace mantel in front of him, where his mother had placed mementos from his childhood: a silver baby rattle and a photograph of Louis when he was three. He was a round-faced child with blond ringlets, attired as boys were at that age, in a white dress with a tartan silk sash around his middle. His father probably had gone to bed and awakened every morning to that picture for the past thirty years. It was how he would have preferred to think of his son, for those earliest years were the most comfortable times for his father as a father. He had read lovingly to Louis when he was small, taken him on outings, showered him with attention. It was when Louis started to form his own opinions that his father had found him impossible to understand. Poor man. What a hopeless cause Thomas Stevenson had faced, trying to shape his odd and puzzling offspring.

Louis took up a pen and paper to write out an obituary. He began listing a few of his father's feats: harbor engineer; legend in the world of lighthouse builders. Perfected the revolving holophotal sea light. Together with his brothers, Alan and David, carried on the tradition of their father, building lighthouses that guided sailors to safety and saved untold lives. A humble man who took no patents on his inventions; regarded his work as a duty to the nation.

How to capture the real man in a newspaper obituary? It couldn't be done. How could he say that his father was a morbid man, preoccupied with sin and death, almost paralyzed when he contemplated the terrors of hell? That he lost too much time to slinking about in childish snits? That he bore a thousand prejudices and yet provided moral guidance to his friends and acquaintances who regarded him as something of a holy man. That, despite being a fierce Christian and Conservative, he insisted any woman who wanted a divorce should be free to have it, and that no man who asked the same should be granted it. That he loved sunflowers and antique furniture the way some people loved the works of Michelangelo, and that he made the drollest remarks at family gatherings. That he kept only a few books near him, mostly Latin texts, and a copy of
The Parent's Assistant,
a book of little moral tales he had read to Louis as a child. That, religious as he was, he had succumbed to the sin of pride when he installed the grandest bathroom on Heriot Row.

Someday I will write a real account of you,
Louis thought,
something beyond these facts of your life embalmed for a half column of newsprint. I will write you a book.

Louis wrote down the phrase
My dear, wild, noble father.

He was struck immediately by the words. A week earlier he had been longing to end his own life in a wild and noble way. Somewhere in the unfolding events of the last two days, a sea change had come over him. He wanted to live. Desperately. Louis strapped on the hated pig snout and breathed deeply.

A few days after the funeral, the reading of the will took place in Thomas's study. The document called for Louis to get three thousand pounds, his minimum entitlement from his mother's marriage settlement. His mother would get 2,000 pounds and then live on the rent from the twenty-six-thousand-pound estate. When she died, Louis would inherit. And in the event of Louis's death, Thomas Stevenson specified that Fanny would inherit it all, then Lloyd.

Louis noticed Fanny nodding solemnly, clearly honored by his father's recognition. How like his father, Louis thought, to protect her.

“One other thing,” the lawyer added, browsing the legal document over his gold-rimmed glasses. “Your father's will asks that you take care of the children of his brother Alan, if they need help.”

It made sense. Uncle Alan had been a key member of the family business before his breakdown and eventual death. A proper, equitable distribution of funds from the three brothers' family business might never materialize, and Louis's understanding of the company's earnings and value were murky.

Bob and Katharine would need help, if not soon then sometime; of that, Louis was fairly certain. Luckily, he was making money from his writing, for his three thousand pounds wouldn't last long. He knew there were people who would think he'd become a rich man on the death of his father. They would be wrong. He would arrange an annual stipend of some sort for Bob and Katharine—not too little, certainly not too much, as he didn't have it.

“Why don't you come back with us to Skerryvore for a while?” Louis said. He was helping his mother respond to a pile of notes. “I don't like leaving you here alone.”

When Margaret Stevenson looked up, her pained eyes softened. “I would like that,” she said. “Very much.”

“I must tell you, we may not be in England all that long. Uncle George says Colorado is not a bad idea for the winter. What would you think of that?”

“Oh.” Maggie Stevenson sighed gratefully. “I think I should enjoy seeing America.” Her cheeks, pink from a blanket of tiny blood vessels spread upon them, flushed red. “I have some money coming out of your father's business. I believe there is enough of it to cover a winter in Colorado for all of us.”

After the funeral, Lloyd returned to Bournemouth for the summer. “I don't want to go back to school in the fall,” he announced to Fanny and Louis, “and not just because you're talking of going to Colorado. I want to be a professional writer.” He shifted from foot to foot, glanced at Louis, then looked down. “Maybe apprentice with you?”

“But you've only finished two years of university,” Fanny said.

Louis looked at Lloyd. He was six feet tall, sober and studious in his thick glasses. In a deep voice accented by his years in English schools, Lloyd put forth his case. “I have been writing since I was eleven, when you gave me the printing press. I've gotten much better, and it is what I want to do more than anything else I can think of. Why should I stay at Edinburgh when I could learn more from you about writing than any old professor can teach me, and we would be traveling, and I could …”

Louis thought he heard real passion. Passion was the easy part; the proof would be on the page. The boy had written some clever little stories over the years. Well, and how could he say no?

Louis elevated his eyebrows in Fanny's direction. She returned a nod. “It will be a peripatetic sort of education, “ he said. “But sometimes those are the best.”

Beaming, Lloyd shook Louis's hand and then shook it again.

In a twinkling, Louis realized afterward, their household circle had expanded by two full-time members and their lives changed dramatically. Fanny found renters willing to take Skerryvore for half a year, booked passage for five, including Valentine, on a steamer to New York, gave away jars of preserves to neighbors, and put Adelaide Boodle in charge of feeding the wild cats in the chine. They departed Skerryvore with sleeves sticking out of trunks and tempers frayed but dressed respectably, at least.

In London, their old friends trooped to Armfield's Hotel to see them, from Henley and Henry James to Katharine and even Cummy. It was a sweet farewell but for Henley, who couldn't resist firing a parting shot. “It's a pity you must go,” he told Louis. “You won't be understood in America.”

A day later, when they arrived at the docks to board the ship, they found Colvin there to see them off, with a bag of books for Louis and a bouquet of pink carnations for Fanny. In their cabin, they found a case of champagne sent by Henry James.

Drink for seasickness and general merriment,
his note read.
Bon voyage, dear ones. I await the stories.

At Le Havre, where the
Ludgate Hill
stopped to pick up more passengers, Fanny managed to go up on deck to enjoy the stillness of the boat in port. It was late afternoon and the light of the day was beginning to fade. Stacks of hogshead barrels on the quay shone golden brown in the sun. Fanny heard a chorus of neighing. She squinted and saw a herd of something coming aboard—horses, it looked like.

“They
are
horses,” she said to her mother-in-law. “A lot of them.”

They watched as masses of animals boarded. “Ninety-one, ninety-two …” Maggie Stevenson counted. “There must be over a hundred,” she gasped.

“Is it a circus?” Fanny asked.

“No, my dear.” Maggie pointed to a herd of cows coming on behind the horses. “We are on a livestock boat. I'm quite sure of it.”

Louis had gone down to have a closer view of “the pageant,” as he called it, and Fanny could see him on the side of the ramp, watching. She spied several cages, obviously for large animals, rolling onto the ship. Through the bars of one of them, a long hairy arm extended out toward Louis, as if in greeting. Fanny saw her husband reach out his own arm, missing by a foot the touch of the ape's fingers.

“No wonder this passage was a bargain,” Fanny muttered when Louis returned to their cabin. “Not a word was mentioned of animals when I bought the tickets.”

“Think of it as an adventure, Fan,” Louis said. “How often does a man get to chat with one of his simian cousins? The baboons are such beauties! I'm told they're headed for zoos in America. The palms of their hands! The eyes! I would swear some of them were saying hello to me.” He pulled her up from her berth. “Come up to the deck. It will help your stomach.”

Louis grabbed two bottles of champagne from their supply. As the ship departed Le Havre, Fanny followed him as he went about dispensing cups of it to the pale, queasy souls lying on steamer chairs, shivering in blankets.

“Will you have some Henry James?” Louis asked a sickly-looking woman. “Champagne, madam,” he explained when she looked confused. She took the cup of wine gratefully and drank it down.

Louis grew stronger with every passing day on board the steamer. The sea breezes nourished him in a way that no city or country air had ever done. Watching him, Fanny thought he was more like the man she'd met in Grez than he had been at any time since. He walked—
sprang
—miles at a time around the deck, talked to everyone he encountered, studied fishing boats that passed by, seagulls, rope knotting. He reveled in standing in the wheelhouse with the captain, bandying about nautical terms. Word spread quickly among the odd assortment of fellow travelers that he was an author of some reputation, and soon enough crew and passengers and animal keepers were his best friends.

“Those stallions are worth twenty thousand pounds,” Louis told Fanny when they were dining in the saloon. “The owner says he paid first-class passage for them.” After dinner, Louis took Fanny's hand and led her to the lower deck to see the caged apes he'd befriended—some thirty of them.

“Pity they are going into zoos, where they will be cooped up for good,” Louis said. “Those are mating pairs. I can attest to that—they don't mind who's watching. But the funny part is how they … court. I'd call it courting. They have lovers' quarrels and little intimacies. These two over here? The keeper had them both in hats the other day, and they were trading. Trying on the other one's cap. “

“You did that when we were at Silverado,” she said.

Louis led her over to another cage. “And this fellow?” He opened the cage door; a middle-sized baboon climbed into his arms as nonchalantly as if it were Louis's own child. “His name is Jacko,” he said.

With no one else around, Fanny allowed herself to simply stare at the long member of the baboon. “I don't think I've ever seen such an overtly … sexual … animal.”

“And the poor fellow's all alone in his cage, I don't know why. It's not easy being a captive ape. Doesn't seem right to deny him his rare pleasures.” Louis stroked the top of the animal's head. “At least you're not a human, Jacko. You'd have ideals and convictions to bother with.” He eased the ape back into his cage.

“You're having the time of your life, aren't you, Mr. Darwin?” She laughed.

“I believe I could be happy simply living at sea,” he said grinningly, and in a blink, his countenance changed. “I was caged in Bournemouth, Fan. It wasn't a life.”

As the voyage progressed, the seas grew wilder. The boat creaked as furious waves pitched it back and forth, up and down, through one whole night. “Terrifying,” Louis admitted when he crawled from his berth after the raging tempest had passed.

Fanny lay in her bed with a bucket at hand. It was no longer news in the family that she had no sea legs, and Louis did. Valentine and Lloyd were mostly of Fanny's constitution, but the real surprise was Louis's mother. Maggie Stevenson showed more pluck than any of them knew she possessed. She strode the pitching deck as if it were a city sidewalk, the white veil of her widow's cap whipping behind her in the wind. She accompanied Louis on his walks with Jacko and ate her supper heartily in the saloon, where horses eyeballed the diners through the portholes.

On the fourth evening out, the high winds turned nightmarish. Cups and saucers began to fly during dinner hour, and people left behind their ox tongue and muttonchops to retreat to their cabins. “The waves are curling right over the decks,” Louis said when he crept back to their stateroom. He and Fanny clung to the sides of their berths and watched as fittings from their cabin shook loose, then slid back and forth across the floor. Outside, bells clanged crazily as the ship pitched and rolled. The turmoil lasted for hours, and once, when the door of the cabin flew open, she heard the screams of the monkeys and the clomping hooves of terrified horses.

“Tea and biscuits?” Louis called out to her in the noise.

“No,” she groaned.

“Henry James?” he asked.

“Yes, yes, right away,” she shouted back, and took the whole bottle to her lips.

By the end, they had been on board nearly two weeks. Fanny and Louis, watching from the deck, were ecstatic when they saw a small boat appear to lead the steamer into New York. A young sailor on the Ludgate Hill stopped his work to watch. “See that pilot boat, Mr. Stevenson? I worked on it for about a month right before I come on this one. The captain's a tough master, he is.” He laughed. “Do you know what we called him? Mr. Hyde.”

Fanny shot a startled glance at Louis, who shrugged. “The book has been selling well over here, they say. Too bad it has mostly been pirated. We might have gotten rich.” He looked down at her. “Are you feeling up to going to the play premiere when we get there?”

“I wouldn't miss it,” she said.

When the Ludgate pulled into New York, it was a few passengers short. A number of the baby monkeys, sickened by the voyage, had died and been tossed overboard. Everyone looked shaken. Everyone but Louis, who appeared to be glowing with youth and vigor. The only evidence of the harrowing passage was the condition of his coat, which had been mauled to pieces by Jacko during the storms.

Fanny blessed the earth when they walked down the ramp and onto terra firma. She had traveled by ship often enough to know that her body would be swaying for a good couple of days. They climbed into a carriage and proceeded to their hotel, talking gaily the whole way of beds and baths and hotel food. From the side of the carriage, she looked at the dresses on the street. Seven years, and how the clothing had changed! The women of New York were wearing bustles again.

In the hotel lobby crowded with men, Will Low stood waiting to see them, looking highly respectable in a suit—not at all the bohemian painter they had known and loved ten years earlier in Grez. “Louis!” he called out when he spotted his old friend, whereupon the entire lobby full of men turned at once.

“Mr. Stevenson! Mr. Stevenson!” they called out as they closed in on Louis. “
New York Herald
here!” someone shouted. Notebooks appeared, arms waved above heads as they hollered questions at Louis, who looked mortified. Amid the shouts, Fanny heard again and again: Jekyll and Hyde.