The lineage of Newfoundland dogs is ended, but the Halls have a litter of big-footed, liver-spotted puppies and Pink Hall, a tall boy, nearly as black as his father, Joe, and about Asia’s own age, brings them sometimes to Tudor Hall so Asia can watch them play, hold a snoring puppy in her lap. The Halls seem to think she needs cheering up, but really, she doesn’t. Her life is good. She’s as contented as she’s capable of being. The end of harvest means John has time for her again. Joe Hall manages the cider press and the dairy without much help. John and Asia are back at work on Father’s biography.
Although she still prefers her old Baltimore set, she’s made new friends. There are teas, the final picnics of the season, an occasional ball. Asia and John attend these together, all heads turning when they enter a room—this handsome, high-spirited couple. John’s friends fall in love with Asia. Asia’s friends fall in love with John. Bel Air society is not as lively or as elegant as in Baltimore, but Asia makes do.
John tells William O’Laughlen that he has his eye on three girls, and Asia knows who two of these are, but is mystified as to the third. Years later, a fellow actor will say that John Wilkes “cast a spell over most men . . . and I believe over all women, without exception,” but he hasn’t yet come into his full powers and tells William he only hopes he gets enough.
Asia sends a letter of her own to Jean, tucking a second letter inside. The letter enclosed is for a boy named Walter Scott. Jean is to post this letter so that Walter will look at the postmark and think Asia has visited Baltimore without telling him. It’s meant to be a joke. Walter has given her a ring, engraved with a heart and Asia’s name. Asia is smitten.
A few days later, she encounters Walter’s older brother Dan in Bel Air. He’s out riding with his friend Jim Crocker. Asia teases them into racing her home. She can feel Fanny’s pleasure at being the faster horse. Her strides lengthen. The ground streams beneath her.
Asia turns into the farm lane, pulls up at the porch, and drops to the ground. She’s light-footed, lighthearted, giddy, laughing. Fanny is breathing hard, but triumphant, and Asia takes her soft muzzle in two hands, kisses her. Dan comes galloping on his large bay. He is, or so Asia writes Jean, red, white, and blue with anger.
“You were determined to win, weren’t you?” Dan asks her coldly. He thinks considerably less of her for doing so. Later he will ask Rosalie to accompany him into the fields to pick wildflowers. Rosalie can be counted on to know her place.
Asia cares not one whit. “Either that or break my neck trying,” she answers gaily. She hands Fanny’s reins to Pink Hall, and tells Dan and Jim to sit on the porch steps while she fetches a pitcher of cider. Dan is thin and pale with excellent teeth and wild, curly hair, a thoroughly presentable young man. Asia feels her blood quicken delightfully, brushing past him on her way into the house. She thinks that she can find her way back into his good graces anytime she likes.
For a time, her affections waver between the brothers, though neither relationship lasts. She would have retained a friendship with Walter, had he been willing. As to Dan, she pleads with Jean never to pen his name again. “It looks to me now like a coil of snakes,” she says. “A doom upon my happiest dreams,” which is the way Asia’s romances generally seem to end.
* * *
—
John’s friends from St. Timothy’s Hall come to call—Samuel Arnold sometimes, but far more often, Jesse Wharton. Asia is surprised to hear John referred to as Billy. She learns that Billy Bowlegs was John’s nickname at school, chosen because John’s legs curve like his father’s did, and inspired by the Seminole Chief Billy Bolek. It’s quite clear that this nickname is meant more affectionately for John than for Bolek, and that John takes it as intended. But Asia suspects that, since he never spoke of this, John must not have liked it much.
Jesse Wharton is a handsome boy, with a wide smile and an open, readable face. He and John and Asia walk through the woods together, the leaves now more brown than red. But the sun is out and the day mild enough to sit on the steps down to the spring, the place where Asia once made Edwin give her all his pebbles.
The boys smoke their pipes and the smell of tobacco wafts about. Asia fills and empties her cupped hand with cold water, listening to the music of it falling, but also to Jesse. He tells a story she’s never heard before, a story of a wild river and a day in which John, sucked under by a powerful current, nearly drowned, which makes Asia suddenly remember the dream she’d had. She has a brief image of John, floating face down amongst the books and chairs. For just a moment she can’t breathe.
“We thought we’d lost him for sure,” Jesse says. “We thought he’d never open those big eyes for us again.” He throws his arm over John’s shoulders and John lays his cheek briefly on Jesse’s hand. A thin column of smoke rises like a charmed cobra from the bowl of his pipe.
“No, I’m not to drown,” he says. “Nor burn nor hang, though my sister has long believed I’m marching towards a martyr’s death.”
Does Asia believe that? She doesn’t want to.
Years later, she will write that it was a golden afternoon. She will write of her deep contentment. How she watched the two boys, leaning together in the sunshine, so gifted, so beautiful, so brilliant, and wondered about their futures. Surely both would leave a shining mark upon the world.
* * *
—
Eight years later, in April of 1862, Jesse Wharton will be killed in the Capitol Prison in Washington, DC. A captured Confederate, he’ll be shot by the sentry on duty. Maybe he stuck his head out of the window, refused to retreat, and abused the sentry with awful oaths and the taunt that he was too cowardly to shoot. Maybe he was quietly minding his own business, in fact, had just looked up from his mother’s favorite Bible verse, when he was murdered, suddenly and without cause. It all depends on whom you ask.
All this was known to Asia when she wrote about his shining mark. But on that lovely, quiet afternoon, she was unaware and unconcerned. The war was several years and a handful of verses to the beautiful Miss Booth in the future.
* * *
—
Asia is sitting in the parlor, mending a torn hem, when she hears a horse and carriage coming down the lane. No one is expected and she sets down her sewing to go and see who is arriving, but Rosalie gets there first. Suddenly Rosalie is calling for Mother, her voice uncommonly loud and excited.
Asia hurries out to the porch, just in time to see June taking baby Marion from Hattie’s arms and helping her down. He turns to look at the women running towards him, one after another, from the house he’s seeing for the first time.
It’s been years since Asia saw him. In that time, he’s grown to resemble Father so much, her breath stalls in her throat. He looks simultaneously enormously pleased and slightly abashed. “Surprised?” he asks them.
x
The railroad across Panama is nearly complete and that perilous journey now reduced to a comfortable four-hour train ride. June makes it sound as if dropping in unexpectedly from San Francisco will soon be normal, as if they might expect him at any moment. Nancy Hall runs off to find John and bring him back to the house.