“I have been thinking,” said Lavinia. “It would be best if we added a wing onto the house. The current arrangement of space is not suitable for a married couple. Goosey can have my old room. But I shall miss the cupola, where I often watched the ships.”
“Let us have a cupola on the new wing — my dear girl must have her view of Lake Michigan shipping vessels.”
“And you shall place your greenhouse wherever you wish. While you are gone to New England the time will pass quickly enough. I can oversee construction of the new wing with our new living quarters. Will we go abroad for a honeymoon? There is such a great deal to do.”
He smiled. “A honeymoon! We shall go wherever you like. I leave it to you. I leave all such decisions to you. But consider if you would not like to see the results of untrammeled forest removal in the lands around the Mediterranean? It is what urged other countries to become mindful of forest care and management.” He picked up her hand and suddenly licked her palm.
“Dieter!” She was startled, pretended offense and pulled her hand away although his hot mouth had given her a strange sensation. But a honeymoon looking at desolate lands was not tempting.
“Lavinia, I shall do my best to make you happy. I see nothing but joy in our future. I will get this visit to New England out of the way quickly. There are train connections much of the way to Albany, the rest by hired coach and whatever local railways exist. Vermont is still very rural. And I will write to you. I will write a long letter on the train, another when I arrive, still another when I go to bed and another when—”
“I think you have a grand sense of silliness.”
• • •
She was in the old cupola looking out at the passing ships when she heard the crunch of wheels on gravel and looking down at the drive saw a carriage draw up at the front of the house. Mr. Pye and a tall thin man unknown to her got out. She heard the door knocker, heard Libby’s voice, yet felt no presentiment until she reached the bottom of the stairs and looked at the unknown man who had taken off his hat, disclosing a dark shaven head, a cannonball skull looking like it had just emerged from the birth canal, the face long and narrow down to the point of jaw. Mr. Pye said, “Lavinia, you must sit down. This is Mr. Averso from the rail office. Lavinia, there has been an accident—” She heard without understanding, heard heard heard. This had happened with James. It could not happen again. She looked at Mr. Averso, that face, that head was imprinted on her memory for the rest of her life. Her heart froze and Averso’s slowly opening mouth was the last thing she saw as she sank to the floor.
“Lavinia, we do not yet know!” shouted Mr. Pye. “Libby, fetch water!” He dashed the water into Lavinia’s face, shook her, slapped her cheek. “We do not know! He was on the train, but we do not know if he was in the car that — the car that fell.” What she did know was that Dieter had reserved a seat on an Albany-bound train. She heard Mr. Averso say that east of Cleveland the locomotive had steamed onto a high trestle bridge, the last car had somehow derailed, uncoupled, crashed into the chasm below.
“Lavinia!” shouted Mr. Pye. “Mr. Averso is telling us most of the people in the other cars survived, though some were injured. We must wait for news, Lavinia, we must wait! Hope is not lost. It is not sure who — who died or lived.”
She stared at him. Stared at Averso. “It is not sure?” she asked.
“It is not sure,” said Mr. Averso. “I have come to offer you transport to the scene so we may determine if Mr. Breitsprecher was among the — the saved.”
“It is not sure! I will come with you. I must know. Libby, Libby, my shawl. I am going to Dieter!”
So Lavinia learned that love came with a very high price and she sat clenched and bent in the seat as the special train rushed toward the accident. It was the familiar journey with Cyrus to find James frozen among the stumps. Once again she was rushing toward proof of the perils of modern life. Fate could not be so singularly cruel as to take Dieter from her.
Before dawn the next morning they reached a scene of horror lit by flickering bonfires and dim lanterns, the fallen car still smoldering in the rocks below the trestle. Blackened bodies lay in the stream below, the injured along the tracks moaning and calling. Where was help? All was the feeble chaos of the inept. Lavinia, Mr. Pye and Averso walked among the survivors looking for Dieter. She thought a huddled form had the wide shoulders of Dieter but the man turned his raw and bleeding face away. She could see one ear was torn so that it hung down below his jaw. His nose was a pulp and the swollen blackened features resembled a boiled hog face. She stumbled to the next one.
“Lavinia!” came a choking hoarse roar behind her. She turned. The hog-faced man, mouth agape, dribbling bloody froth croaked again, very low: “… viniaaaaa.” She stared, trembling. Mr. Pye ran up, looked in the creature’s face. “It’s Dieter! Lavinia, it is Dieter Breitsprecher.”
• • •
Goosey Breeley came into her element. She took on Dieter Breitsprecher’s injuries as a mission. The guest suite in Lavinia’s house became his recovery room and Goosey his private Clara Barton. She was indefatigable, dressing his wounds, changing bandages, airing the room, reading to the patient for hours, concocting tasty dishes famed as recuperative: oat porridge, beef broth, shredded chicken breast, poached eggs and the like. “Sleep,” she would say, “I am keeping watch, so sleep,” and he slept.
He asked her one day if she would go to the little forest park and bring him a sprig of pine; he thought the scent would refresh him.
Goosey asked Lavinia’s permission first, for there was an unspoken sense that the park was only for the use of Lavinia, Mr. Jinks and Mr. Cowes.
“Of course, Goosey, you are quite free to ramble in those woods all you like. Do bring him an armful of pine boughs.”
Goosey was gone for more than an hour, but she went back every day, occasionally bringing a fresh branch to the sickroom.
• • •
For Lavinia something important had changed. The foaming cataract of love that had coursed through her seemed to have shifted into a subterranean channel. Dieter stitched and bandaged and lying on pillows was not the Dieter against whose shirtfront she had wept. This vulnerable man could not protect her. Their positions had been reversed. Her desire for money and success swelled back into the space vacated by Dieter — that at least was permanent.
The doctors said Dieter Breitsprecher would likely make a complete recovery but when she entered the sickroom and looked at the swollen discolored face she could not quite believe it. When she sat at his bedside she turned slightly away and spoke to the wall or window. She could not quell the atavistic feelings of being alone and surrounded by wolves that had plagued her since James’s frozen death.
She plunged into work, leaving Dieter’s care to Goosey except for the hour in the evening when she came and sat beside him and, looking at the wall, held his hand and told him sketchily of the day’s business — too much detail might tire him. Although her feelings had changed she intended to go through with the marriage as soon as he was well. She liked him very much, she wanted a husband. But never had business been more absorbing: for the first time Duke was opening foreign markets.
59. lime leaf
If Lavinia cared less for Dieter Breitsprecher after his accident, he fell into a gyre of dangerous love. He could not escape. He sensed it would be a mistake if they married, but he was caught in the immediacy of the whirlpool and did not have the strength to stroke away. Some unsuspected need for Lavinia racked him. He knew it was irrational, knew her direction in life was injurious to his own beliefs. She would crush him. The unswallowable truth was that he wanted to be crushed. Although he would never say it to her, Lavinia returned him to his grandmother, that ruler-straight woman with the unlined face and black parted hair who knew the answers to everything and who ran a household that shone golden as the ormolu clock on the mantel. Her stringent rules, her commands and painful punishments, and the never-forgotten rare words of praise had arranged his emotions for Lavinia. So he lay abed, waiting for the scant hour when she came to his bedside and sat with face averted, talking of the day’s business and weather signs.