“But the cook’s boy can do that, and the housekeeper can make the bed,” said spoiled Lavinia.
“Yes, but I want you to do it. If you know from experience what others must do to earn a living you will be a better person with deeper knowledge of others. I have no use for the weak and helpless woman. You may need independence in your life, for women are too often taken advantage of — no one knows this better than I.” But when Lavinia pressed her for those details she said, “Never mind, you need not know. It is only that I do not want you to be helpless if your expectations are dashed. You will thank me someday.”
• • •
One August morning that summer young Lavinia had come to the breakfast table with a bulging red purse. She opened it and poured out twenty-seven dollars in coins. “I have saved this money from Mama’s weekly gifts and my birthday gift. I wish to buy a horse.”
James’s eyes had flooded with tears of pride. He had looked at Posey and shaken his head in wonderment. “Dear child, I will take you to the horse fair this coming Friday that you may see what manner of horse goes for twenty-seven dollars.”
• • •
The Friday horse fair was not crowded at the early hour James and Lavinia arrived. They walked around, examining horses, James naming good features and warning Lavinia not to choose solely by the color of the coat or a bright eye.
“We look for a strong short back, a nice muscled croup, straight legs, oh, a hundred little things. And the teeth. It takes some years to know a good horse — it’s like learning the ropes on a ship. And I warn you now that for your twenty-seven dollars you will not be able to afford a Thoroughbred.”
James suggested two animals, a gray Tennessee Walker with white on its face and a handsome black three-year-old Morgan mare. Lavinia loved both of them and could not decide. The owner of the Walker wanted fifty dollars firm; the owner of the Morgan, Mr. Robinson, an elderly farmer with silvery whiskers and red-apple cheeks, asked thirty-five, but he winked at Lavinia and they went over to the fence together to bargain, for James was determined not to step in.
Lavinia rushed back, seized his hand. “Papa, she was born in Vermont. They call her Blackie, but I will call her Black Robin. We have an agreement — if we can go straight back home now and get Greengage, my parakeet, and his cage and dishes, Mr. Robinson will take him in addition to the twenty-seven dollars.” James could tell she put a high value on the man’s name — the son of a robin could only be a good man, and, allied to birds by his name he would be kind to Greengage, the most valuable parakeet in New England. Silently he thanked Posey for Lavinia’s character. And now that Posey was dead and all her faults forgotten he thanked the lucky day he fell into Boston harbor. But all he said as Lavinia mounted her new mare was “I doubt Greengage will enjoy the Vermont winters.”
“Mr. Robinson said he will live in the kitchen near the stove and Mrs. Robinson will knit him a wool vest and leggins if it’s a terrible cold winter.”
• • •
Several weeks after the mass funeral a letter of condolence reached them in Boston from Armenius Breitsprecher with the postscript that if James and Cyrus needed aid he and Dieter would be pleased to help in any way. Lavinia was inclined to think it presumptuous, but James took it in good heart and said Duke & Sons were in no position to offend other timber companies. “We cannot tell what the future will bring. In fact, other timbermen are beginning to buy parcels of Michigan pinelands. Many of them are from Maine. Now, Lavinia, I think it is finally time to shift all our operations west,” he said, dipping a crust in his cocoa.
“Is there any decent society in Detroit? Or is it still a captive of the wilderness?”
“Oh, Detroit is very well, it is not Boston but it has a growing population and is convenient for our current business. We have a good solid establishment there and the lakes provide transport, though they are difficult and dangerous waters, quite as perilous as the oceans, yet not saline — one drowns more quickly they say. But as for society — there is not much of that. It is, as you say, yet a captive of the wilderness.”
“Papa, have we a great deal of money?”
“The truth is that indeed we do have a great deal of money despite the timberland purchases of recent years. Why do you ask? Is there some great expense you contemplate?”
“Yes. I would wish for this house”—she waved her arm over her head in a compassing sweep—“to be replicated in Detroit to the last roof slate. Perhaps it would be the first mansion in Detroit. Would it not be soothingly familiar if we had our old rooms? I can make lists of the linens and Mrs. Trame may enumerate the kitchen goods, the plates and silver. We can order those.”
James felt a frisson of fear — it would take many thousands to replicate Sedley’s Boston house. But he could afford the expense, and what better way to use the money now coming in from the Michigan pines? And there were the legacies from Edward and Freegrace, even from Lennart. He did not hesitate. “Yes. We can do this. I will contact an architect. We might even have a few embellishments added, as bathing tubs. Bigger stables and new equipages. A chapel dedicated to your mother. But I put my foot down on one thing — that monstrous mahogany hall stand will not come to Detroit.”
“We must have something where people can hang their hats and put their umbrellas.”
“We will get another, something elegant and simple rather than carved elks and hunting horns.” For a week they talked of this new house. Mrs. Trame entered the sport with an eager list of improvements — a bigger pantry, a butler’s room for cleaning silver, a larger staff that included two housemaids, a wine decanting room with a private staircase to the cellar, piped-in water instead of a kitchen cistern.
But old Will Thing would have none of it. “No Detroit for me. I was born in Boston, I will stay in Boston. I worked all my life for your father and you right in this stable and here I will stay.”
“But as soon as may be we intend to sell it all,” said James. “You would have a new family in residence. Suppose you do not like them?”
“It is not my place to like or dislike, I shall get along,” said the old fellow and there the conversation ended. James was disappointed and still hoped to prevail. Perhaps Will did not realize the horses were going to Detroit.
Planning the new house became a postprandial exercise for Lavinia. After dinner a stack of paper, sharp pencils and samples of wallpaper littered the mahogany. James had years before chosen a hilltop site in Detroit with a sweeping view south to Lake Saint Clair, that extra lake too small to be Great. He made a sketch for his daughter, outlining the back and sides of the lot as an encircling arm of forest opened to frame the bluest lake and distant smudgy Ontario.
“This house will eclipse Black Swan,” said Lavinia.
“Oh, we will have no black swans,” said James. “In any case let us leave the water feature to the landscape designer, whom we must still discover. We might send to England, where these fellows abound. This country is too young to have acquired such glossy professions. It will take several years to construct this house as we wish, so we must put up with something simpler now. The company houses I had built two years past will do.” He felt his headache creeping in, a tiny pain in his neck that would, he knew, grow into a throbbing agony. He resolved to find another doctor who might help him.
• • •
But if this was the amusement of evenings, for Lavinia the daytimes were packed with study and reading of newspapers and government bulletins that came in the mail coach, writing letters and quizzing visitors for news of new inventions and technical advances. Most of the news concerned the exploratory claims of various would-be railroad promoters; short local lines were springing up all over the eastern cities like weeds after rain and there was no doubt that a transcontinental railroad would be built sooner or later but the fights over the central-northern route or the southern route were ferocious. Both James and Lavinia were in favor of a northern route. “It will be another twenty years before they lay the first rail,” said James. His thoughts were on another invention. “Have you read anything of the telegraph experiments? No? They say the electric telegraph will allow people to send messages over great distances as long as there is a copper wire to carry the impulses. Imagine. If the process comes to pass and if the wire comes to Detroit I can send an immediate message to someone in Boston, a message that can be read within minutes. But so far it is only on trial in England.”