Carrie Brown - The Stargazer's Sister

After a few minutes, however, he sets down his spoon.

“Listen,” he says. He reads aloud:

Star after star from Heaven’s high arch shall rush,

Suns sink on suns, and systems systems crush,

Headlong, extinct, to one dark center fall,

And Death and Night and Chaos mingle all!

— Till o’er the wreck, emerging from the storm,

Immortal Nature lifts her changeful form,

Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame,

And soars and shines, another and the same.

He puts down the book.

“He predicts…catastrophe?” Lina says.

She looks at the fire. How exactly is one to understand Immortal Nature and her wings of flame? As a force unleashed by God?

William stands up and takes an apple from a basket on the table, polishing it on his shirt. He goes to the window, looking out at the darkness and the rain.

“Yes, catastrophe,” he says, “but then a new universe to follow, a new beginning. Worlds without end.”

Lina turns to look at him, his back to her as he stands at the window. She can see his reflection in the glass.

“Do we face catastrophe?” she asks. He has not exactly suggested this before.

“One day, perhaps,” William says. He takes a bite of apple and then turns to smile at her. “Some think our magnificent sun has sufficient energy to last…only for ten million years. But there can be now no question of instability in the heavens,” he goes on. “These explosions, if you will — these systems crushing systems —are perhaps the source of all the stars and nebulae that surround us, including our own planets and Sun. It is as Darwin says. He knows what I have seen, what others have seen.”

Lina remembers the earthquake from her childhood, her worry that the moon had fallen from the sky.

William returns to the table and picks up the book again.

“He is a brilliant thinker, Darwin,” William says. “I believe there is no one quite like him, really. But he has made some enemies, and he will make some more.”

He lifts the book. “Even with this,” William says. “A volume of poetry.”

He takes another bite of the apple.

“They say I am a lunatic,” William says, “but do you know that Darwin has made an organ able to recite the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments?”

Lina laughs.

“It’s true,” William says. “He is not much for Christianity. This organ of his is a bit of a joke, but some have taken it badly. He believes the world has evolved purely according to physical properties inherent in the universe, not by the hand of God. He says man’s terror of hell is a disease of the mind.”

William takes another bite of apple. “He is not afraid of much, Mr. Darwin,” he says.

Lina stands and picks up their soup bowls. She knows, of course, that some people object to what her brother and other astronomers attempt. They perceive these efforts to understand the universe to be contrary to the quest for God, even an assault upon God’s throne.

“These physical properties,” she says. “This would be Darwin’s Immortal Nature?”

William has opened the book again. “I suppose so,” he says. “Yes.”

“But you believe in God, William?” she says. It has not occurred to her to question this before — his faith as a younger man had been so secure — yet now the thought of God, somehow waiting just beyond the reach of her brother’s telescope, gives her an uncomfortable feeling.

William closes the book, finger between the pages to mark his place, and looks over at her.

“How could anyone look through a telescope,” he says, “and not believe in God?”

—

LATER THAT NIGHT when the rain stops, Lina steps outside. The sky is still overcast, the moon invisible. She takes a lantern with her into the darkness and walks along the garden beds where she and Stanley have been working during the day. The garden is temperate, thanks to the protection of the brick walls and the lingering heat of the furnaces in the new workshop. She has been able to start spinach and lettuces much earlier than usual, protecting them under a carpet of leaves. She moves the leaves aside with her foot. Her light catches the glint of tiny new green shoots. She holds it higher and passes it over the row of winter cabbages, their ornate pink and white and green furled heads beaded with drops of rain that shine in the lantern light. She lowers her lantern over the cabbages, bends down to inspect the bejeweled leaves glistening in the darkness.

She stands upright again. The streets around her are silent. She remembers the “dark center” in Darwin’s poem. She is aware of the night’s cool air on her face, the scents of wet earth and woodsmoke. She touches her fingertips to the soft skin of her neck, finds the pulse there. The manifest miracle of the world, its astonishing structures — cabbage or man or star cluster — has been William’s inspiration from the beginning, she thinks. Of course his interest was eventually attracted by the deepest mystery, the vast unknown, the tantalizing beauty of the heavens.

It must be some smallness in her that sometimes she finds it crushing — she realizes she has Darwin’s words in her head — to contemplate the numberless stars, the innumerable systems that surround them. Under her fingertip, she feels the quiet beating of her blood. She tries to concentrate only on the sensation of occupying her own body, but she cannot sustain it. The universe is all around her, and it, too, seems to pulse with a hidden force, commanding her attention.

—

THROUGHOUT THE REMAINING cold weeks of the spring the Avon has a border of ice on both banks, a thin stream of black water moving in its center. The rear garden wall now has been fully demolished to allow access into the meadow that borders the river with its commanding view of the sky, and the low-roofed workshop is nearly finished, built of heavy timbers and with a stone floor to withstand the heat of the furnaces. William has begun firing the furnaces and testing small mirrors made of various compounds of metal, and though the days have been bitterly cold, the heat of the furnaces when lit and the high brick walls to the east and west protect the garden.

One day in April, Lina goes outside with a basket of wash to hang to dry in the afternoon sun. The air in the garden is warm, the men working in shirtsleeves. She decides to bring tea to the table outside, and the men take their cups there, blowing on them and munching on bread and cheese she provides, as well as lady apples from the baskets stored in the cellar.

She is used to the men’s company by now, more confident around them. They are polite fellows, grateful for the soup she ladles up at dinner, the breads and puddings she bakes. She stands with them for tea, her face turned toward the sun.

Later that afternoon, she rehearses with William in the music room, “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming.” It is a favorite of his, the melody sad and sweet.

“And in German now,” William says.

Es ist ein Ros entsprungen.

She stops when she notices him look up from the harpsichord. She turns around.

Thomas, one of the bricklayers, stands in the door.

William smiles. “She has a lovely voice, Thomas, does she not?”

“Yes, sir. Very lovely, sir,” Thomas says, and he blushes. “Excuse me.” He bows and turns from the door.

William looks at Lina.

“ You are ready,” he says, pointing at her.

“Nearly,” she says. She does not meet his eyes. “Perhaps.”

After William leaves the room, she stands by the harpsichord, depresses a key. The note lingers in the quiet room. She touches her fingertips to her face, the pitted surface of her skin.