Gardens in the Dunes (12 page)

The rectangle of lawn outlined with lilacs was wasted space she could put to good use. She stood motionless for a good while as she surveyed the area and imagined its transformation. She became so engrossed as she sketched her renovation plans for the arcade, the child under the lilac bushes slipped her mind. She wanted to surprise Edward when he returned from the Bahamas—Key West expedition. She wanted to reassure Edward that she was not at all bothered that the expedition had come so soon after their wedding.

Of course, the expedition had been planned well in advance of their engagement; Edward always kept a busy schedule. Actually, she looked forward to this time by herself to get accustomed to her new home and new life. The day after his departure, she rose at dawn and gathered pink rose petals from the old climbing rosebush that covered the wall of the kitchen garden. While the petals dried she sewed sachets from white satin remnants of her wedding gown; now the musty drawers and closets of the old house were scented with roses. Her mother said no man wanted a professor for a wife, but Edward was no ordinary man; he showed no concern at all over the controversy her thesis topic caused.

The first week Edward was away, she walked from room to room; from the polished oak floors to the oak paneling and high ceilings, she could find nothing out of place. Edward's mother died ten years before they met, but her presence still was there. The rooms had an aura of completion about them that reminded her of her parents' house, with its aura of self-satisfaction rising off its mahogany furniture and emanating from dark oil portraits in gilded frames.

Hattie's mother did not permit the maids to reposition the furniture,
and Hattie did not bother to challenge her mother over the furniture or rugs, because housekeeping chores bored her. Hattie laughed at her mother's prediction that she was destined for spinsterhood—she knew she was too pretty to be an old maid. She had a sizeable dowry too. Actually she hoped her mother was right: if she were a spinster she would never have to run a household or take an interest in the shirt starch the laundress used.

From the time she was able to ride her pony alone, she vowed to herself she would not have a husband to interfere with rides along the beach as her parents had when she was thirteen. She discovered books when she was four years old, and Lucille, the cook, held her on her lap, where Hattie loved to listen to Lucille read from the old Bible she kept in the kitchen. Hattie pointed at words and Lucille pronounced them, and before long, Hattie recognized the words when she saw them again. Her father was delighted when Lucille proudly informed him Hattie could read; he went into the city that afternoon to buy children's books of simple rhymes and the alphabet. Hattie rapidly lost interest in the dolls dressed in elegant gowns and the tiny china teacups and plates she was given on her last birthday. With a book in her lap Hattie became a different person, thousands of miles away, in the middle of the action. Her mother worried that books at such an early age would ruin the girl, but Mr. Abbott didn't agree. He admired the theories of John Stuart Mill on the education of women and he was proud of his precocious child.

As Hattie finished noting the measurements, she glanced down and saw the bread and jam were gone from the tray; the cup was empty on the lawn. At that instant she heard the cook call her. Hattie returned her call, and the big woman came down the steps to the lower garden with a telegram in her hand. As the cook approached, Hattie said, “I've found a little Indian hiding in the lilacs.”

“I'll send word to the school right away, Mrs. Palmer.”

“Oh no—that's not what I meant.” Hattie was surprised at the sudden change in the expression on the cook's pink face. With her lips pressed together in disapproval, the cook bent down and squinted to get a better look under the lilacs. But when Hattie pulled back the branches to show her, the child was gone.

“You have to notify the school. It's the law,” the cook said.

No one was permitted to employ or otherwise “keep” reservation Indians without government authorization. Edward had explained that out west it was necessary for the government to protect the Indians on reservations; otherwise the settlers would have killed them all.

The cook stared at the lilacs as if she expected a tiger to leap out. In that instant Hattie realized the cook disliked her, and she was embarrassed that her feelings were hurt.

“I'm sure the child returned to school herself,” Hattie said stiffly. What did it matter if Edward's cook did not approve of her? The controversy over her thesis topic had shaken her self-confidence; before the thesis committee's decision, she seldom cared what others might think of her, certainly not a servant.

The cook seemed to be waiting for her to open the telegram.

“No need for you to wait,” Hattie said. “I'll come inside if there is a reply to be sent.” She was annoyed at the cook's attitude. Her mother said leave the cooks in the kitchen, otherwise there would be trouble; if a cook left the kitchen, look out; cooks wanted to run the whole house. Her mother said bachelors like Edward, who were never at home, spoiled good servants because he allowed them the run of the place while he was away. Hattie must be firm with the cook from the start.

She waited until the cook was gone before she opened the telegram. The message was odd; it must have been sent by someone else, a colleague, perhaps, who signed the message “Dr. E. G. Palmer,” not “Edward” as he would have. The telegram told her nothing but the arrival time of the train. Had there been an accident? Was Edward ill?

She felt her heart pound as she hurried past the water garden and fountain and up the steps to the house. The expedition was to have lasted three months, time enough, Edward hoped, to allow him to complete the collection of sponges and marine algae of the Caribbean Sea.

She sat down at her writing desk, then realized she might have to break into his desk to locate the name and address of Edward's liaison officer at the Bureau of Plant Industry in Washington. She had not thought to ask for the address, but Edward did not leave instructions for her either. He had been a bachelor too long, her mother said, but he was the only gentleman willing to take a heretic to be his wife.

She paused at the door of Edward's study. They had not discussed what she should do in the event of an emergency. Edward had invited her into his study once, when they first arrived and he showed her their home. The entire third floor of the house was three big rooms, one passing into the other; the walls of every room were lined with oak bookshelves booked solid from floor to ceiling; in the center of the rooms were oak cabinets with dozens of small drawers.

Edward made his study in the first room; the desk in the center, flanked
by two vast library tables covered with papers, books, and bits of dry leaves and plant stalks, was Edward's desk, as massive as a throne. She felt uncomfortable as she looked through the papers and letters on top of the desk. No mention of the expedition underwriters, no names or addresses, only Latin names of plants, diagrams of leaf structures, and queries from other plant collectors concerning plants they wished to sell or to buy.

The drawers of the desk were locked. She sat down in the big oak chair and took a deep breath. Her heart was pounding and she could feel the perspiration cling to her clothes and her body. She took deep breaths, as her doctor had instructed, and calmed herself. Easy does it.

She was not about to break open the locks on his desk drawers lest she appear to be overwrought. Her annoyance surprised her. Edward prepared for weeks and methodically reviewed all that he might need for three months in the Caribbean. The floor of his study had been spread with lanterns, candles, tents, tarps, a folding shovel, a trowel, a clock, bottles of chemicals—formaldehyde and alcohol—and a number of handsome cherry wood boxes that contained magnifying glasses, a microscope, a small telescope; and of course, one cherry wood box contained Edward's camera, another the glass plates and bottles of chemicals. Specimen collection envelopes, botanical field guides, a book of maps, blank notebooks, leather boots, rubber boots, rubber hip waders, a wide-brim straw hat, a pith helmet, mosquito netting, a canteen, and a revolver all were carefully packed into huge black steamer trunks. With so much equipment to organize, no wonder he forgot to leave her a name or address to contact in the event of a mishap for himself. The telegram said nothing about illness or injury. She really had made much over nothing. Her nerves were still fragile, though she was much better since she married Edward.

She got up from Edward's desk because walking calmed her. She wandered up and down the aisles of worktables in the laboratory-study. He collected other curiosities as well as plants. On the floor in one corner, a fossilized clamshell as big as an oven cradled a giant yellow tooth. Odd baskets as tall as chairs were filled with artifacts—bows and spears and arrows bristled out of pottery jars painted with serpents and birds. A strange carved mask with a frightful expression gazed at her from another corner stacked high with colorful handwoven textiles. Mineral specimens filled the shelves—fist-size amethysts, flawless crystals, and rows of eye agates watched over glittering pyrites.

As she turned, her ankle brushed a big dark lustrous rock on the floor. A meteorite. Edward had showed it to her because he was quite proud of it.
Too heavy for the shelf with the other meteorites, it was allowed a place on the floor. He was quite keen on “celestial debris,” as he called it. Meteorite specimens were nearly indestructible—unlike rare orchids.

In the seventh month of their courtship, Edward told Hattie about the disastrous expedition to collect rare orchids on the Pará River in Brazil. He lowered his voice slightly as he recounted the events. His companions on the expedition were unreliable, and Edward was injured, unable to protect the specimens during the ocean storm. Boxes of rare orchid specimens were lost at sea during a storm, and others were ruined later when they were stored in a damp shed in Miami. Dozens of rare orchids, intended to repay the underwriters of the expedition, mildewed and rotted. Later there were allegations certain plant materials were exported without proper government permits. His companions behaved irresponsibly, and the failure of the expedition nearly ruined him.

Hattie had not expected such frankness from Mr. Palmer, though he was much older than the suitors she was accustomed to. Suddenly she felt too warm, on the verge of a queasy stomach. Was this a test, to see if she would confide her difficulties? How much had his sisters told him about her? Should she tell him how the suitors vanished from her doorstep after the decision of the thesis committee became known? Or how the illness that followed was to blame for her withdrawal? What a relief it had been to stay home with her books. Yes, she would confide in Mr. Palmer.

“By now you must have heard—I am the heretic of Oyster Bay,” Hattie said bravely, with a smile. Then Edward Palmer won her heart as he looked at her intently and replied, “Good for you!” He was a man of science himself, he said. He listened quietly to her story of the failed thesis with its scandalous view of early church history. The thesis committee had been unanimous in its determination that her principal reference sources—Dr. Rhinehart's moldy Coptic scrolls—were not authenticated, and in any case the scrolls were unacceptable Gnostic heresy, pure and simple.

“Surely you've heard all about the furor from your sister,” Hattie said, feeling bolder. “My heresy was a lively topic of dinner party conversations on Long Island for months!” Edward's laughter at her wit endeared him to Hattie; all the other gentlemen she told looked a bit shocked.

How good Edward's laughter sounded! To hear her mother talk, Hattie's entire life was ruined by her assertions that Jesus had women disciples and Mary Magdalene wrote a Gospel suppressed by the church.

Her affection for Edward stirred at that instant, and she could only smile at his neglect to leave her a way to reach him. The hundreds of tiny specimen
drawers in the huge oak cabinets stirred her curiosity. She pulled out a drawer: inside was a small manila envelope carefully secured with red string. She unwound the string from the circular clasp and gently squeezed the sides of the envelope to look inside. All she saw was a single shriveled stalk with fragments of dry plant material, remains of leaves, perhaps. She sniffed the envelope but detected only a faint odor. Edward's special interest was in aromatic grasses and plants, which always were highly prized by horticulturists and gardeners. Edward traveled to places so remote and collected plants so rare, so subtle, few white men ever saw them before. He added these rare treasures to his growing collection of roots, stalks, leaves, and, most important, when possible, seeds. His ambition was to discover a new plant species that would bear his name, and he spent twenty years of his life in this pursuit before their marriage.

♦   ♦   ♦

Hattie did not attend any parties or formal gatherings after she left graduate school, though gradually she accepted invitations to family picnics and outings to the beach—always with a group of her younger cousins, who needed a chaperone. The only reason she agreed to attend a formal event like the Masque of the Blue Garden was because their neighbor Mrs. Colin James served with Hattie's mother on the bishop's fund-raising committee, and Hattie was curious to see the garden so well known for its drama and the spectacle of its mistress.

Hattie's mother wanted the party to mark the end of the seclusion Hattie assumed. Eyebrows were raised when she enrolled in graduate studies in early church history; all the other young women her age were engaged or married. After the scandal over her thesis topic, Mrs. Abbott was relieved to let the dust settle awhile, but she still hoped to find Hattie a husband. In a year or two the incident would be forgotten. By chance, Susan James's distinguished brother, Edward Palmer, arrived from an expedition abroad two days before the blue garden event.