Carrie Brown - The Stargazer's Sister

Henry continues. “I do not mean that William lacks for intellect or imagination, obviously, or that you have made up for some deficit there. It is extraordinary, what he has accomplished. Truly he has changed our understanding of the universe more than any other human being of our time, and I suspect for some time yet to come. And he has given all the rest of us the tools to continue his work, the knowledge of how to see. That may turn out to be his greatest contribution.”

Henry looks around the room, as if its spare furnishings might somehow suggest proof of William’s abilities. “You live in such a simple way, the two of you,” he says quietly, as if speaking to himself. “I envy it.” He pauses. “But that is not what I mean to say.” He turns back to look at her. “I mean that your hand is in everything, is everywhere, Lina — the workshops, the gardens, the library, in every paper or letter William writes, every list and map and notation in an atlas. I know that you are with him night after night. Few women — few people, man or woman — would be capable of such devotion. But it is not just your loyalty that must be rewarded. Your intelligence is absolutely necessary to these endeavors. I believe you know that. I would think less of you for false modesty.”

He has never made such a long speech to her, she realizes, nor spoken so fervently.

She stands still, holding the plates. It is true, she knows, that she has been more than a kitchen maid or housekeeper to William. Why would she say such a thing to Henry, of all people? She has William to credit for training both her mind and her eye, but it is unbecoming to be self-deprecating, and meanwhile it is insincere, too. She has learned things. She has been of use. It is true.

“I believe I must thank you now,” she says quietly. “I know what I have done for William. I am grateful to you, Henry, for seeing it truthfully, for neither more nor less than it is.”

Henry stands up abruptly. His cheeks are flaming red.

She looks with sympathy at his poor sore, watering eyes, his long nose, which is pinched and blue. She notices, too, that there are ugly lesions, little eruptions, at his high collar, as if it chafed him. It pains her, as it has always pained her, to look at him, to look at the discomfort he seems to be in. What is it that has caused this man to be so deeply uncomfortable in his own skin, meanwhile showing the world — as a painter and gardener and scientist and physician — such generosity, attending devotedly to both its beauty and its pain?

He stands and takes the plates from her and sets them on the table, but his hands are shaking, and the forks clatter. Then he reaches out and takes her hands in his. She can feel in his grasp how he trembles.

“Believe it or not,” he says, “I have never held a woman’s hands like this until this moment.”

He looks down at her hands. “So tiny,” he says. “And yet so extraordinarily capable.”

He is to make a proposal to her. She cannot believe it. She looks quickly across the room, out the window. Through the darkness, as if at a great distance from her, she sees William’s light burning in the old laundry. She has a sudden, almost frantic desire to go to him — she has difficulty not removing her hands from Henry’s — to rest her hand on William’s shoulders as he sits at the table writing, to set a cup of tea at his elbow.

“Do you not feel very small sometimes, Lina, in this vast universe William has illuminated for us?” Henry says.

She looks up at him. He is smiling, but the expression in his eyes is sad.

Once she wished for this, she thinks. What has changed? She cannot leave Observatory House. She cannot leave William. Once she had imagined she would be glad to be relieved of her labors for him; she had not understood at all — even though he had warned her — that he would ask so much of her, that she would work so hard. Yet she has come to love even more fully — though she would not have thought greater love possible — not only her brother but also the work itself. She would not give it up. In a way, William has given her herself. Anything else, any other life, she realizes, would be a small life, a narrow life, compared to the one she has now. There will always be a…lack; she thinks of the empty bed, the desires she feels at night, heat in regions of her body that at times is almost painful. But there is no having both, for she cannot have a husband and her brother and her labors with him.

She never believed she would have a choice, but in fact, she sees now, there is no choice to be made anyway. She would not consider it. And she imagines in any case that Henry acts now only out of his great regard for William, and that he believes it would be a comfort to her, before she is too much older, to be wed. He aims only to provide for her, she suspects.

“Henry. There is no need,” she begins. “You must not feel sorry for me.”

His expression changes to one of dismay. “No. Caroline. You misunderstand. Never would I feel pity for you. I admire you beyond any woman I have ever met.” He stops and looks down.

When he begins again he speaks very quietly, and she can feel in their joined hands their pulse, which seems to have become one.

“It is not easy for me to say this,” he says. “But if there were a woman I was free to marry, I should choose you. I wish now to convey, to convey…my love.”

He drops her hands, reaches for a handkerchief, and presses it to his nose and then his eyes.

Lina is horrified. Pity — and, yes, a kind of love — sweeps her. She twists her hands together. “Henry—” she begins.

“But I am not free,” he goes on. “I am not free in so many ways it is almost—” He laughs, but it is a bitter laugh. “I would say it is ludicrous, but it is too terrible to be funny. I should like nothing better than to give you any comfort in the world, Lina. I know you will not simply take my money, though I intend to give you and William as much of it as I can now, despite that I am constrained in some ways. And I cannot give you my…body, my self in any way other than as a poor, pitiable companion. For the purpose of companionship, you have already an ideal companion in William anyway.”

“Henry.” She does not know what he means, but she fears she does not want to know, either. “What is it?” she asks. “What is the matter?”

“You know that I am a physician, Lina, so you will trust me when I tell you I am absolutely certain. You have heard of the disease,” he says. “Some have called it the great imitator, for it presents in so many different ways.”

Lina thinks of Jacob, of a conversation overheard long ago. Her father had warned Jacob, shouting at him, that his behavior with women — with prostitutes, she knows now — would endanger him.

Syphilis. She knows what it is. She knows how it is contracted.

Henry must see on her face that she understands him, because he continues.

“There is more, I am sorry to say, in some ways the worst yet. For I am in fact to marry, though I will have no contact with the lady at all. It will be a marriage only on paper, in secret, in order that the Spencer estate may be transferred to her father at my death. You see, there has been a debt, a gambling debt from my father’s time, gone unpaid these many years, interest accruing. It must be paid now. They have exercised some kindness in not removing us earlier, wishing to protect my mother. It has been a kindness, in that regard.”

“Henry! Henry, you are not dying !” She stares at him, horrified. She was right; it has been painful for him to live in his body. She lifts her hands to touch him, but he steps away.