Mistress Brandon, turning her attention wholly on him, said, “But what a fortunate outcome! We all dream that a rich relative will shower us with gold and manses, but you are the first one I have ever known who has experienced such a turnover. What will you now do, live happily ever after? Is your wife ecstatic?”
“I will participate in the affairs of the family company, Duke and Sons, in what capacity I am not yet secure. And as to the other, I have no wife. I have ever been single.”
“Indeed!” cried Mistress Brandon. “Did you say Duke and Sons? The great timber company?” Her eyes were forest pools.
“Yes. It is the family business and I am joining it. I have been asked to serve on the Board — as my father did. But the truth is that I am somewhat nervous as I know very little about the timber trade.”
“My dear Mr. Duke! Perhaps I may be of help to you. I am the daughter of Phineas Breeley of the Breeley Lumber Contractors in New Brunswick. He has had many dealings in Maine. As a girl I assisted my father in his paperwork. I know something of the business and all that I know I shall impart to you. And then we must find you a wife.”
• • •
James visited the Brandons again the next week. Mrs. Brandon let him in.
Mr. Brandon was nowhere in sight—“closeted with another fit,” said Mistress Brandon, whose first name, he learned, was Posey. She smiled, she looked at his lips when he spoke, questioned him about his cousins and the Duke business, asked his advice on the choice between a deep blue shawl and one of rose cashmere, and then, from the corner cupboard, she pulled out a sheaf of closely inscribed pages held together by a dressmaker’s pin detailing the structure and proceedings of her father’s timber contracting business — his work as timber looker, the cheapest kinds of lumber camps, where to find the best men (Penobscot men, found in Bangor). He thought he had never met so intelligent and fine a woman and told her so. To himself he thought that not only were her eyes beautiful, but she had the grace of a swan, the voice of a dove. Batting those beautiful eyes and blushing from cleavage to hairline, she begged him to call on her again the next week, when he should have digested all the workings of her timber business scrawls. She would answer his questions and even quiz him if he thought it beneficial. But before then came the dinner at the Trumbulls’—seven the next evening. He would at last meet the Duke cousins.
• • •
It was a bitter cold and blowy evening spitting snow. Would spring never come? He arrived at the Trumbull house one minute before seven, and in the near dark saw the loom of a brick building. A black man in black livery opened the door for him. At the same moment the cousins and their wives arrived in their coach. They exchanged names and greetings in the vestibule while Mr. Trumbull urged them into the parlor, where a snapping fire spread out billows of heat. A bald-domed giant in an exquisite French-embroidered waistcoat stood near the fire holding a glass. This was the law partner, Josiah Tendrill, and he crushed James’s hand saying, in a blast of brandy, “Very like, very like indeed.”
Cousin Freegrace Duke was plump and short, breathing with asthmatic stertor. Freegrace’s brother, Edward, was a large heavy man like his father, George Pickering Duke. Neither resembled the backwoodsmen of James’s imagination. Freegrace’s wife, Lenore, was a pale beauty with smoky eyes and a flaxen chignon, who would attract attention in any gathering. James was astonished. How had such a fat little man got such a beautiful wife? Edward’s wife, Lydia, was of a more common type, brown braids wound around her head, and a habit of clearing her throat before she spoke.
They all kept glancing at James, and Freegrace finally said, “Forgive the scrutiny, but you are uncommon similar in appearance to Sedley. It is as if he went away for six months to the fountain of youth and tonight has rejoined us.”
James did not like the constant references to his father as the shaper of his appearance, however true they might be. A maid brought hot toddies for the gentlemen and glasses of sherry for the ladies. They spoke of the unseasonable weather and the cold.
“Truly unusual the way this winter hangs on,” said Mrs. Trumbull.
“Ah, James,” said Lenore, “you will harden up in Boston. The dulcet climate of England is in your distant past. Here we must wrap in furs to keep alive. Going out in the winter or a spring like this one is always a dangerous adventure.”
Josiah Tendrill told of a great snowstorm that had come in his childhood. “The snow fell for five days and when it ceased the drifts were up to the eaves of three-story houses. It took fifteen men three days to shovel us out.”
The dinner was long, but not a single word was spoken about the business, Duke & Sons.
At last an English pudding streaked with blue brandy fire came in, and when it was reduced to a rubble of crumbs the ladies retired to Mrs. Trumbull’s sitting room and the men to the library for cigars and imported cognac.
“I beg you tell me more of the family,” said James. “I remember a large number of cousins. Are not some of them involved in the family business?”
Edward sighed. “Time has not been kind to the family. We lost almost an entire generation. Your uncle Piet on a visit to Virginia took the cholera in the very warm summer of — what — years ago now, and did not survive the attack. He is buried there. Aunt Patience Deckbolt suffered mental exhaustion and finally passed away in her sleep. Three of her daughters still live in the city with their husbands and families and you shall meet them at a future gathering. None of their husbands — well, I shall forbear to describe the husbands. Patience’s grandson Cyrus is a clever young man and shows some promise for the company. We employed him. In time he will ascend the ladder of success. You will meet him when we have our meeting in June. Your half siblings, Sedley’s second family, have all repaired to Philadelphia. Maury, the eldest, who is Sedley’s only other son, your half brother I suppose we might say, works for a banking firm and I wish he had remained in Boston as he is certainly good timber.”
“And are there no other cousins and relatives I should know?”
“Your great-uncle Old Outger Duquet returned to Amsterdam or Leiden and lived there. He continued to draw his stipend from the business to the end. But now he is gone. His half-breed daughter lived in flagrant concubinage with an Indian in Outger’s house on Penobscot Bay. They produced an army of Indian brats. They are quite unknown to us. I have mentioned Cyrus Hempstead. And we have Lennart Vogel, the only son of your great-aunt Doortje Duquet. So, you see, it comes down to you to help replenish our ideas and fortune.”
• • •
Weeks passed and James often called on Mrs. Brandon. They had become great friends. It was foolish to pretend he was calling on both husband and wife. Mr. Brandon was always in his fits and James had never actually seen him save for the glimpse of wild eyes on his first visit.
He had read attentively through Mrs. Brandon’s notes on her father’s timber business. “There is still much I do not understand,” he said. “For example, I hear everywhere that Maine is the place for the best pine, but I know little or nothing of Maine.”
“What could be easier? Maine is not yet a state, but sure to be very soon. It is a large territory heavy with forests, especially the valuable white pine. Maine is spotted with a thousand lakes and ponds like a slice of yeasty bread is riddled with holes, has great rivers, each with a hundred branches. I can name some of them for you and next time you come I will have a map of sorts showing the best waterways — the Androscoggin, Kennebec, St. George, St. John and the Allagash, and the best, the Penobscot. All the rivers of Maine have countless streams feeding them, but you can only get logs down them with dams in the time of the spring freshets.” He could hardly think when she looked at him so intensely and struggled to find sensible questions.