Rosalie sees that June is hoping to astonish Father with his success, and she sees that he won’t. He speaks too quickly and his voice scales up when he wants to show a great emotion. This saddens her, but June will be all right.
He’s too steady to belong in this family anyway. She thinks that she will miss him dreadfully when he goes. Not that he was ever much company to her, but at least he was there.
* * *
—
Father, Mother, and little Edwin come home. They arrive late at night when no one is expecting them. Rosalie wakes to the keening of the dogs. She wraps her shawl over her nightdress and goes barefoot downstairs to fix them something to eat. Edwin is sleeping, draped over Father’s shoulder like a sack. She approaches Father, intending to kiss him, but he fends her off by handing her Edwin instead. She sees why. Her father’s face is a ruin.
What happened is something like this: Her father climbed through the window of Thomas Flynn’s room at the Planter’s Hotel in the dead of night and attacked him with a fire poker as he slept. It seems he meant to kill him. Mr. Flynn fought back. He picked up a pewter pot from a nearby table and smashed it into Father’s face, breaking his nose.
Everyone deeply regrets it all; the friendship is unaffected. Mr. Flynn is much more upset than Father. He’ll never be able to speak of it without tears. He blames himself for the blighting of Father’s career, though no one else appears to notice it’s blighted. The bookings, the big audiences, the rapturous reviews continue.
Rosalie’s father will never be handsome again, but no one minds that. What matters is his voice, which has always been the better part of his genius—melodious, capable of such shadings and subtleties. Without his voice, Father’s acting is more craft and less genius.
He recovers quickly. Only a few days later, he is out and about, The Baltimore Sun reporting that “the mad tragedian has arrived in our city.”
And in another paper: “Is this man a maniac?”
No one is able to explain to Rosalie what the fight was about. It seems none of them know. Her father says that he gave Iago’s speech as he bludgeoned Mr. Flynn.
And nothing can or shall content my soul
Till I am evened with him, wife for wife,
Or, failing so, yet that I put the Moor
At least into a jealousy so strong
That judgment cannot cure!
Until suddenly the story changes and now he thought he was Othello, and what he shouted was,
Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore!
Mr. Flynn’s version, confided to Mother, confided to Rosalie, is considerably less Shakespearean. Mr. Flynn said Father was angry because Mr. Flynn was preventing Father from having a fair shake at Mother. Rosalie doesn’t know what a fair shake is and she knows better than to ask. Mother didn’t see the fight herself, but she thinks that poor little Edwin may have seen something. “He had the biggest, saddest eyes after,” she tells Rosalie. Edwin always has the biggest, saddest eyes. “Like saucers. When I picked him up, he buried his head under my arm as if hoping no one would find him there.”
Rosalie knows that her father, who is so tender that he weeps over dead birds and won’t kill even the poisonous snakes, a man who can’t pick a flower because to do so means the end of that fragrant blameless life—that this same father can be cruel when opposed. When opposed and drunk, he’s dangerous. She knows that her mother, who treats him with extraordinary reverence, is also deeply afraid of him. Rosalie loves him very much and is deeply afraid of him, too.
These are things the other children do not know and do not feel, and Rosalie is very sorry to think that Edwin may be learning them at such a sweet age.
She asks Edwin about his trip to Charleston. “Such a big trip for such a big boy,” she tells him. Fortunately, the only thing Edwin seems to remember is being put to bed among the costumes in Father’s trunk.
vii
Broken face and all, Father is off on tour again before three weeks have passed. One night, something, a premonition or an unexpected noise—Rosalie doesn’t know what—wakes her. She makes her silent way to the stairs and down. In the dark, she skirts the chairs and tables by finding the edge of the Turkish rug and sticking to it until she’s at the front door, which she opens. She might be dreaming. The moon is high and shiny as a dime above the trees. Masses of stars have been carelessly tossed about it. The nearby owl calls. A raven launches into the air and Rosalie can hear the whomp whomp whomp of its wings. The world is black and silver. She can smell that rain is coming.
The dogs are lying at the front of the cabin. They rise suddenly, their hair stiffening. They bark and continue barking. Rosalie feels a panic in her chest. She goes upstairs for June, shakes him up, fetches Father’s unloaded rifle for him. They stand together on the doorstep in their nightclothes, listening to the dogs.
Mother joins them in the doorway, Grandfather a moment later. Suddenly Rosalie sees how frail Grandfather has become. If they’re about to be killed, he won’t be the man to stop it.
Figures appear, emerging from the darkness and the trees. They clarify into a man, a woman, and an enormous number of children. The woman seems misshapen until she comes close enough that they see she’s carrying a baby in her arms. Closer, and they see that all are dressed in the most outlandish fashion—theater costumes from completely different plays, dramas and comedies and Greek tableaus. One boy is wearing women’s pantaloons, far too big. He holds them up with his hand as he walks. He’s barefoot. The man is dressed in a long-tailed green velvet coat. The woman wears a toga with a shawl around her shoulders—half goddess and half Irish washerwoman. The dogs growl and snap, but the people come ahead regardless.
Rosalie has never seen these people before; neither has June, nor Mother. The man speaks first to June and his rifle. “You’d be young Junius,” he says. “I’m your uncle Mitchell.”
The woman looks past Rosalie’s head to where Grandfather stands. “Hello, Father,” she says. “Here we are. All the way from England, through such trials as you can scarcely imagine.”
“I’ve no welcome for you,” Grandfather tells her. “Keep walking.” He steps back inside and closes the door. June and Rosalie have been left on the wrong side of it just as the rain arrives.
* * *
—
James Mitchell is a man of no accomplishments and no employment. Long ago he was a bootblack who persuaded Father’s sister to marry him. It’s one thing for Grandfather to admire the democratic spirit of the American revolutionaries. It’s quite another to see his daughter elope against his explicit command, and marry so far beneath her. Grandfather immediately disinherited her and, until this night, he hasn’t spoken a word to her. Nor will he again.
They will soon learn that, sometime during that terrible visit to England, before Henry had fallen ill, Father had gone secretly to see his sister. Distressed by her circumstances, the extreme poverty and the abusive, drunken husband, he’d given her enough money to bring herself and her children to Maryland. This money came with the specific proviso that her husband not be one of the party. This money was meant for Jane Mitchell’s escape.
Obviously, Aunt Mitchell has ignored these instructions. They made it to New York on Father’s money, but arrived as paupers, with no luggage and no provision. On they came, sometimes on foot and sometimes on charity in a passing coach or wagon, to Baltimore. There, their only clothing in rags, they’d applied to the local theater company and, on the strength of Father’s name, got the bits of costumes they are wearing plus directions to the farm.