When that doesn’t happen, when the heavy door opens and admits the man and he doesn’t come running out two minutes later, Cornelius close behind, yelling at him to peddle his wares elsewhere — well, there’s a fair amount of head-scratching. Then someone snaps his or her fingers and says, “Beatrice,” which is immediately picked up by everyone else. You can practically hear the fingers snapping in succession like a row of dominoes falling, the mouths saying the name, “Beatrice,” as if, “Of course.” Beatrice is Cornelius’s young wife, a pretty girl a good twenty years his junior who accepted his proposal, popular legend has it, to forestall him taking her father’s hotel over in Woodstock. It’s a cliché to say she’s the apple of everyone’s eye, but there you have it. Spring past, she was pregnant with the couple’s first child, an event that seemed to sand the ragged edges off Cornelius just the slightest. You saw her all over the place, a tall girl with pale, milky skin and black hair. She liked to ride. Story goes, that was how she first caught Cornelius’s eye, riding up the road to his front door to plead her father’s case. When she fell pregnant, she didn’t stop riding, despite her doctor’s warning to the contrary, and that was how disaster struck. While she was on her way to visit her sister in Hurley, her horse, which she’d raised from a foal, spooked and threw her into a tree. She lost the baby, and fell into a lingering sickness she’s been unable to pull herself out of. After first hacking Bea’s horse to death with one of the axes for the woodpile — his face calm, the stablehand said, icily calm — Cornelius went through every doctor in the area — not a few of whom have felt the toe of his boot — before bringing in the specialists from Albany. When they proved unable to help, he brought in men from New York, Boston, Philadelphia. A steady stream of doctors young and old has tramped up the path to Cornelius’s front door and tramped back down it. No one has had anything to offer. Whatever is wrong with little Bea, as folks call her, it’s beyond the scope of the medicine of the day. Beatrice has grown worse, and Cornelius has grown more desperate.
The newcomer moves in with the Dorts the same day he arrives. Theirs is a large house, and Cornelius pretty much gives the second storey of it to the man, so the maid says. What the stranger promises Cornelius in return, that maid can’t say, since the door to the library, where they spoke, was very deliberately shut, but most assume it’s little Bea’s recovery.
That assumption is wrong. Two days after the stranger’s arrival, Beatrice’s struggle comes to an end. She’s buried in the cemetery of the Dutch Reformed Church down in West Hurley; though it takes her two full weeks to get there. That’s a long time, in the first half of the nineteenth century. I guess it still is, but there’s no embalming like we have, you know? Especially in the hot summer — and this summer’s a scorcher — you don’t want to leave the dead out of the ground too long. After Bea’s been gone about a week and no word yet of a funeral, folks start talking, amongst themselves, of course, since, even in his grief, Cornelius continues to inspire respect and fear. There’s word that Beatrice’s father plans to talk to Cornelius, demand he release his daughter back to him for burial with her family, but after a day that proves to be only rumor. In the afterlife, it seems, as in this life, little Bea’s family have abandoned her to Cornelius. Finally, when the second week draws to a close, the minister at the West Hurley Reformed Church — Reverend Pied is the fellow’s name — screws up his courage and rides to the Station to tell Cornelius what’s what. No one’s known Cornelius to offend against a man of the cloth, but that’s what everyone who sees the minister, a tall fellow come all the way from Amsterdam, riding to the Dort house expects. To everyone’s surprise, Cornelius agrees with the minister’s request straight away, says that Bea can be buried tomorrow if Reverend Pied thinks he can be ready. The minister figures he’d best take advantage of his good fortune, so says yes, without a doubt, and that’s the matter settled. The stranger is nowhere to be seen.
Those who attend little Bea’s funeral, a surprising number, given the suddenness of it, report that Cornelius appears bored with the whole thing. He’s never struck anyone as the most devout of men, unless money is the god in question, but he’s always known the value of keeping up appearances. You may kick folks up and down your front walk; you may maneuver them out of their businesses, land, and homes; but if you show up in church and contribute generously to the collection plate, it helps to mollify public opinion some. Even today, if you search out that same church, which was moved lock, stock, and barrel during the construction of the Reservoir, you’ll find a host of little brass plates on things ranging from pews to the lectern with the words “Gift of Cornelius Dort” on them.
The morning of his wife’s funeral, though, Cornelius sits in the front pew with his arms and legs crossed, bobbing one foot up and down like a boy who’s impatient for home. During the minister’s sermon, he makes a sound that some take for a sob, others a laugh. When the service is finished, Cornelius strides out of the church ahead of everyone, mounts his horse, and rides for home. It’s the last time he’ll see the inside of a church. He doesn’t wait to accompany Beatrice to her resting place in the Dort family plot. Some, watching him gallop away, contend that Cornelius is fixing to take his revenge on the stranger for not having saved his wife. Others disagree. If he hasn’t by now, they say, he won’t.
That second group is right. Cornelius’s guest, as the man comes to be called — eventually the Guest for short — remains in place, Cornelius not showing the slightest inclination to dislodge the man from the second floor of his house. No one sees much of the stranger, just glimpses here and there. The Dort estate borders that spring I mentioned, the one the Station was built around, and once in a while you’ll see the Guest walking by it, a length of string looped from one hand. Folks like to joke he’s fishing, earning his keep. Occasionally you’ll see him walking with Cornelius, strolling through one of the Dort apple orchards. The Guest appears to be talking, gesturing with his hands every now and again, making big, sweeping gestures as if he’s conducting a symphony. Cornelius walks with his hands clasped behind his back, his head bowed, brow furrowed, obviously hanging on the Guest’s every word. That the man has made an impression on Cornelius, no one will deny. What they discuss, no one can guess.
Which is not to say that folks don’t try. Some adventurous child overheard the Guest mention the Leviathan during one of his and Cornelius’s orchard walks, and that, combined with the fact that the man continues to dress all in black, gives folks the idea that the man’s a preacher. What denomination claims him remains a mystery, but it makes a certain sense to think that Bea’s death has driven Cornelius to God. That is, if you don’t remember Cornelius’s performance at her funeral. Then news comes from one of the tanneries about some hides Cornelius sent up to have tanned. Did I mention that used to be a big business in these parts, hemlock tanneries? Well, apparently the hides Cornelius wants treated are like nothing the fellows at this particular tannery have encountered. I’m not sure what made them so strange, but the tanners state flat out that they’re more like the skins of devils from hell than any beast they’ve ever seen. Along with these hides, Cornelius sends very specific instructions for how they’re to be handled, and pays three times the going rate to insure his instructions are followed to the letter. At first, no one can understand how Cornelius could have come by such hides, not to mention how he’s become so expert in tanning. It doesn’t take long, however, for suspicion to light on the Guest, with that cart full of boxes and bags.