Carrie Brown - The Stargazer's Sister

Stanley had ridden directly into Upton with a wagon to retrieve Lina’s belongings, and then he had returned to take her to see the cottage the next morning. That night she had slept in the boys’ bedroom under the thatch — she could not go back to Observatory House — listening to the voices of Stanley and Sarah in the room beside hers, the boys downstairs before the fire. She knew they felt sorry for her, appalled at her treatment by William and Mary. How wonderful it must have been for Stanley and Sarah’s boys to grow up knowing, as they did, how much they were loved, she had thought.

—

YET SITTING IN THE WAGON the next day beside Stanley, when they came upon the cottage in its clearing, neglected leaves piled up against the doorway in a heap, Lina had known that she could be happy there.

Within a week, Lina had set up house for herself. She did not go to see William, even when she knew he and Mary had returned from their honeymoon. And when William rode over one afternoon a few days after his return, obviously puzzled about her failure to appear, she had heard the sound of a horse coming while she worked in the garden, and she had hidden in the woods. When she had seen William appear, she had felt a painful pressure in her chest, equal parts grief and anger and longing.

From behind a tree, she had watched William knock at the cottage door. When she failed to answer, he had gone to cup his hands around the glass of a window to peer inside. Finally he had turned around, hands on his hips. He had called her name, but she had retreated, her back pressed against the tree, and she had not answered him. She had thought of the night Henry had left them, when she had not replied to William’s knock on her door, their separate grief. What could they have done for one another that night?

William had waited for over two hours that afternoon — a sacrifice for him, she had known, given how little he liked to be idle — walking around the garden and picking bits of leaves and bringing them to his nose. As Sarah had said, the garden had been lovely and had needed only weeding and pruning to restore it. Lina had wondered if William would let himself inside the house, but though he had knocked again and appeared to consider turning the handle, he had not done so, and she thought then that he had felt at that moment her parting from him, her barred door, where before he had experienced their separation only in terms of his happiness with Mary.

Finally, he had taken paper and ink from his saddlebag and written something on a piece of paper he had left at the door, weighted by a stone.

Come tonight, dear sister, he had written.

Then he had added : Conditions are most excellent.

When he had ridden away at last, she had returned to the cottage. She’d felt no victory at having denied William her presence, only an embarrassed foolishness. And sadness.

At some point over the years, Mary had been forgiven.

About William, it has not been so easy.

But she is not proud of that.

—

SARAH MEETS MARY at the cottage the morning after Lina’s fall in the snow to drape the windows in black cloth to shut out the daylight. Only the thin lines of brightness around the edges of the material tell Lina that it is day…those quivering lines and the birdsong.

“Are you frightened, Lina?” Mary asks, gathering up her cloak to depart. “I will stay with you, if you are at all uncomfortable.”

“It is a fool’s idea,” Lina says. “One cannot practice becoming a blind woman.”

Mary leans down and kisses her cheek. “Please do as Dr. Onslow says. There can be no harm in it, at least.”

A servant from Observatory House, supervised by Mary, brings Lina her meals. Mary visits in the afternoons and reads to her. Stanley comes every day, once in the morning and again at night. His farm nearby is thriving, but on horseback he can be with her in less than half an hour, and he sits with her in the darkness at breakfast and dinner while she feels over the dishes on her tray, their heat or coolness.

When she spills a bowl of soup one afternoon, she erupts.

“This is ridiculous,” she says. “I feel a fool. Take down those cloths, so I can see what I’m doing.”

“Be patient,” Stanley tells her. “Be patient.”

She discovers after a week in the dark that her sense of smell has sharpened: onion soup, tea made with mint leaves, the approach of snow or rain. And every person has an individual smell, she realizes.

She sleeps a great deal over these days. Her dreams are populated by creatures — foxes and stoats — that hurry through the night over the white surface of the frozen field surrounding the forty-foot telescope and its scaffolding. In her dreams, when she holds aloft a lantern, the animals turn to her for a moment, their eyes flashing in the dark.

Though she behaves as if she thinks Dr. Onslow’s warning is absurd, the thought of going blind frightens her so much that in fact she scarcely opens her eyes at all, much less to practice trying to feel her way around her bedroom, hobbling on her sore ankle. She lies in bed, her ankle bound tightly. She hopes that tears, when she cannot prevent them, do her eyes no harm.

She awakes one night during this confinement to the sound of her bedroom door opening. A candle flickers in the hall; she shrinks from its light.

A man’s shape appears: William. He is carrying something large. He enters the room. She smells snow.

She struggles to sit up in bed.

“William?” she says. “What time is it?”

William is in his seventies now. For some months Lina has written all his letters for him, passing them to him for his shaky signature, for he can no longer control a steady trembling in his hands.

Yours most constantly, he appends, the words falling down the paper. Yours most faithfully.

Adieu.

It seems impossible that he should be with her now on this night, that he should have walked from Observatory House to her cottage in the snow…and carrying a cello.

He takes a seat on the small chair by her bedside, the cello balanced between his knees. He bends his head, lowers his familiar profile, lifts the bow. She smells the rosin used to make the bow’s action smoother. She sees bright epaulets of snow on William’s shoulders.

“Do you remember this, Lina?” he says.

He plays “Suppose We Sing a Catch,” one of his own compositions. He plays parts of a sonata for violin, cello, and harpsichord. He plays some capriccios, part of a concerto for oboe, violin, and viola. It is as if he cannot remember all of any of the pieces he has written, and he plays back and forth between them, losing the melody and then picking up a different one. It is a concert most disjointed and strange, William’s head hanging lower and lower as the night goes on, as if the notes he wants are in the floorboards at his feet and he must coax them up from the ground. She knows he has not played much of late, but the music, the bow drawing out the note, is both sweet and sad, holds in it every season and the singing of the stars. She remembers what it was like, all those years when they were alone together, how happy she had been. She gazes at him from her pillow, making no effort to rest her eyes now. She wants nothing more than to hold this picture of him beside her.

They are alone together again, just the two of them. Even late at night at the telescope over these last few years, Lina has been aware of Mary asleep in her and William’s marital bed at Observatory House, aware that William would join Mary there before the sun rose. She hated herself for her lingering anger at him. It was only reasonable that William should want a wife. And Mary is a good woman, thoughtful, eager to please.