Chapter Seven #2
“Very much, I gather.” Winifred Newbold was very little at the time, and Brook Farm was indeed idyllic for children.
However, Julia knew she emerged from it with no illusions about the practicability of such ventures.
But if Pelham Stewart, on the eve of departing for the front lines, wished to believe Brook Farm might have had a chance, Julia was not about to disabuse him of that notion.
“They were among the first to recognize the importance of beauty and simple living,” he said. “Now that you mention it, I caught a whiff of that as I walked through the house earlier.”
“Yes. I love the Seabornes’ house. Margaret is an artist, in fact.”
“Is your home in Boston similar?”
Julia could not hold back a laugh, thinking of her comparatively lavish home in Back Bay. “Let’s just say my paternal grandmother had more influence there.”
Pelham looked at her closely, as if intrigued by the window she had opened. Julia, however, mentally slammed it shut.
Three years ago, when Julia announced that she had accepted a teaching job in Washington, Mother had taken it with equanimity. Father, however, still firmly believed that Boston was the hub of the universe, despite it not having been so for decades.
“Why go there instead of coming home?” he asked.
“Jerome, dear, she does have something like a home in Washington. The Seabornes are there.”
The comment had stabbed at Julia’s heart. Little did Mother know, Julia often felt more at home with the Seabornes than she did with her own family in Back Bay.
Father remained mystified by the decision, although it helped when Louisa took a job with the Department of Labor. (Her parents pretended to believe that Julia was looking after Louisa, though Julia knew that any comfort came from the reverse.)
Julia shifted to more comfortable conversational ground. “Mrs. Seaborne is actually named for a famous figure of Concord, Margaret Fuller.”
“Ah, I know that name,” Mr. Stuart said. “Fuller was an early advocate for women’s education and rights, was she not?”
“Yes. Far ahead of her time.”
Among Mina’s friends, Julia was always the asker of questions. She never knew more than anyone about anything. It was refreshing to be able to tell Pelham Stewart a bit about this idol of her family.
“Did she live at Brook Farm?” Pelham asked.
“No, she was not a resident,” Julia replied. When Pelham’s brows went together, Julia detected a hint of disappointment and added, “She was a frequent visitor, though. In fact, they had a building there called Fuller Cottage.”
This seemed to satisfy him, and they moved on to talk about matters of more contemporary interest. Pelham explained that The Current could not afford to send him to France, but The New Republic needed another war reporter, so he was going under their auspices.
Pelham asked what brought Julia to Washington. She explained that she had many friends there—the Seabornes, but also her best friend, Louisa, among others—and that she had been attracted to the opportunity to remain active in the suffrage movement.
She worried that her job at a public school a few blocks from the Seabornes might make her sound unambitious.
Julia enjoyed teaching third grade, and she was happy at the Morgan School, but many Barnard alumnae had more interesting occupations, and those who became teachers generally aspired to jobs at better schools, teaching older students.
As it turned out, though, Pelham was interested in elementary education. “I think it’s wonderful you’re working with younger children. They’re still moldable, so you have a chance to make a difference, help them become good thinkers.”
Julia appreciated that her students were still at a socially uncomplicated age, even as they were beginning to leave their egocentricity behind and develop the ability to understand other people’s perspectives.
She did not wish to disappoint Pelham, however, by telling him that with nearly forty children in the classroom, her “molding” opportunities were limited.
The crowd had begun to thin out, so Julia and Pelham headed across the lawn toward the house. Halfway there, Pelham stopped abruptly and turned to look down at her.
“I am again being terribly forward, Julia, but I do not wish to say goodbye quite yet. I have time tomorrow afternoon. Can I see you?”
“I would like that,” she said, and suggested a ride in Rock Creek Park. Julia kept no horses in Washington, but several friends who had gone overseas as nurses or ambulance drivers had given her permission to exercise their mounts in their absence.
They made their plans, and Pelham squeezed her hand and left.
After Julia helped Margaret clean up, she looked around for Michael, hoping to say goodbye, but she could not find him anywhere.
She gave up and got her cloak, but when she opened the door to leave, she found him sitting on the porch stairs, looking uncharacteristically somber. Julia sat down beside him.
“Are you all right, Michael?”
“I suppose,” he replied, with a little shrug.
“Nervous?”
“No, it’s not that.” He took a deep breath, and then turned to look at her, a sad smile on his face. “I just fear I might have delivered you into the hands of a competitor this evening.”
“Oh, Michael…” Julia said, her heart sinking.
“Don’t worry, Julia. I have always adored you, and I suppose I always will.
But I have also always been your friend, and I will always be that, too.
” He smiled again, reassuringly. “I am glad you know now. I’d hate it if I never told you and didn’t make it back.
But please, you are not to feel uncomfortable. ”
As if to underscore his point, he offered to walk her home, and as they made their way toward Connecticut Avenue, he kept up a steady flow of innocuous conversation. When they reached her row house on Mintwood Place, he turned to her and took her hands in his.
“I will miss you, my friend,” he said, smiling down at her.
“I’ll miss you, too, Michael,” she said.
She said goodbye with a firm hug and her best wishes, but as she walked upstairs to her apartment, she felt terribly dismayed.
Michael had always been warm and supportive, but she’d had no idea that he felt anything beyond brotherly affection for her.
He had squired her about Washington, just as he did during their two overlapping years in Morningside Heights.
He took her to Monday evening dances at his country club, showed her all the best spots for good, long tramps through the woods, and made her his partner for all the Washington Canoe Club’s mixed paddling contests.
Several of Michael’s friends had taken Julia out, and she wondered why that never seemed to bother him.
Thinking it over, though, it occurred to her that in those cases, he might not have felt he was “delivering her into the hands of a competitor.” He would have been right, too.
However eligible, none of Michael’s friends had captured her heart.
Julia’s row house, in the aptly named Pretty Prospect neighborhood, was narrow, but it was at the end of the block, and as she had the third floor to herself, she had windows on three sides.
She went out to the sleeping porch at the back, lowered herself onto the cushion-covered daybed, and watched the sun set between the two large elms in the backyard.
In thinking about Michael’s declaration, she began to wonder if it might have been the product of circumstances. Going off to war, even as a correspondent, surely made one sentimental. And on the eve of his departure, Julia was right there, as she always had been.
Conscious though she was of the contradiction, Julia elected not to apply similar skepticism to Pelham Stewart’s interest. She had waited years to meet this man.
Finally she had, and he seemed taken with her—the real her, too, not the intellectual imitation she’d tried on during her Barnard years.
Their connection seemed meant to be, and she refused to believe it was mere eve-of-war sentiment.
Julia put on a navy worsted jacket over a white silk shirt and breeches, tan gloves and boots, and a simple straw sailor hat. She felt she looked effortlessly smart, despite the not inconsiderable effort that she put into selecting the outfit.
She arrived at the stable to find Pelham leaning against a fence, waiting for her. He approached and looked at her searchingly.
“So you weren’t a dream.”
“Flesh and blood.” Julia smiled, and her heart quivered.
She got the horses, and they mounted and ambled down the bridle path that ran alongside Rock Creek.
The woods were alive with the scent of spring, new leaf and flower.
When they reached the old mill that now operated as a teahouse, they tied up the horses, ordered tea and biscuits, and sat beside the waterfall that ran from the mill dam.
Everything else, the war and worry, might have been a million miles away.
Julia quickly gathered that Pelham Stewart was a man of many intellectual enthusiasms. Like all reporters, he was frustrated with limitations that had been placed on the war correspondents, and worried they would be used as tools for the military.
He confessed that he would rather be going to Russia, as he had taken an eager interest in events there in the wake of the revolution in February.
He had also taken an interest in Sigmund Freud, the Austrian doctor, and even undergone psychoanalysis.
“Freud exposed the constraints of bourgeois morality, the limitations that society puts on us. He helped me see how harmful my parents were to my development. My mother is obsessed with society’s opinion, and my father has a very narrow view of what constitutes an appropriate occupation for his son. They’re both very repressed.”
Julia did not know many people who spoke candidly about their families.
Mina was an open book, often talking about her awful mother, and she never hesitated to ask people probing questions about their own families.
But while she practically rubbed her hands with glee at any interesting revelations—Oh, now this is getting really good!
—Pelham’s curiosity seemed more genuine.
“I just want to know what sort of soil produced such a perfect specimen,” he said.
Thus encouraged, Julia abandoned the reticence she had felt the previous evening.
“My father and brother subscribe to all the old notions about a woman’s place, and have little patience for modern feminine rebellions, as they call them,” Julia said.
“I cannot say that I see the same sort of social ambition in my mother that you see in yours, though. I suppose if she had it, it was satisfied by her marriage. She is very contained, though. And so different from my aunt…”
Julia told him about Anna, the adventures she orchestrated for Julia, and the Liberty Island books that they inspired.
“It sounds like you found many ways to escape the harmful influence of Boston puritans,” he said, laughter in his eyes.
“Oh, yes,” she replied, cheerfully. “Though I cannot say I was harmed.”
Pelham smiled gently. “Even if not harshly conveyed, expectations can still cause harm.”
Julia felt uncomfortable, as if she were speaking out of turn. “I suppose I do not like to think of my family, particularly my mother, in this way.”
“I understand. Perhaps I seem terribly disloyal in comparison.”
“No, no. I did not mean that.”
“Try not to feel guilty. Even if not intended in this way, guilt and family loyalty are tools that prop up archaic social constraints.”
There was nothing of the condescending teacher about Pelham. He did not talk down to Julia, or seem like he was showing off what he knew. He was both passionate and compassionate, eager to share his interests.
Julia felt as if she had taken an intoxicant of some kind. Not for a moment did she feel she must pretend to know more than she did, or to be anything other than who she was. He seemed enchanted, delighted by her curiosity.
She was a bit flummoxed by one comment he made.
His parents, he said, “perfectly illustrated why marriage is an outdated institution.” She wondered if he opposed marriage entirely, or merely thought it was in need of reform.
The latter would align him with Louisa, who objected to marriage laws that harmed poor working women.
But afraid he would mistake her curiosity for personal interest, Julia did not probe further.
They reluctantly rode back to the stable, and after they dismounted and handed off the horses to the stableman, she walked with him toward the parking lot, where he had a borrowed car. He had offered to drive her home, but as she lived just a few blocks away, she declined.
He stopped in the shelter of some trees, looked around, and, seeing no one about, took a step closer to her.
“May I take one more liberty?” His expression was sweetly pleading. She nodded, and he pulled her toward him, put a hand behind her neck, then bent and kissed her.
Julia had been kissed before, though her career had not started auspiciously. (When she was fourteen, and Llewelyn Montgomery kissed her behind one of the great elms near the Frog Pond at the Boston Common, Julia had pushed him into a snowbank.)
She’d had better experiences since, however. Charlie Singer, for example, a friend of Michael’s who took Julia out several times before she decided he was not quite for her, had kissed her quite nicely. He had nothing on Pelham Stewart, though. Julia felt this kiss like fire.
He pulled back, took her hands in his, and shook his head.
“I cannot believe I have only now met you,” he said. “I am telling myself it bodes well. I have a reason to come home again.”
“I’d like very much for you to do so,” she replied. “So be careful?”
“I will write,” he said, and they parted.