All That Makes Life Bright Read online

  A knock at the door spared her a more critical assessment of her looks, and Hattie turned away from the mirror as her brother, Henry, peeked in. His best gray suit brought out the blue in his eyes, the same shade as Hattie’s, and she thought him very handsome today. He looked around the room as though he did not see her, then startled when his eyes landed upon her. He put a hand to his chest with exaggerated drama.

  “I’m very sorry, madam, I’m looking for my sister—Harriet Beecher? She’s small—only about this big.” He put his hand at the level of his chin as he stepped into the room. “And easy to overlook until she opens her mouth. A rather large man with thinning hair waits to marry her in the parlor. Have you seen her, by chance?”

  Hattie rolled her eyes but could not hide her smile. She crossed to the dresser and picked up her orange blossom bouquet. Thank heavens for Henry and his easy nature. “Am I to be escorted to my destiny by an idiot? Such an auspicious beginning.”

  Henry laughed and put out his arm with formal exactness while clicking his heels together like a soldier. “Ah, it is you. My mistake.” He grinned, then leaned in and kissed her on the forehead. As he withdrew he whispered, “Calvin Stowe is the luckiest of men, Hattie. You make a beautiful bride.”

  Hattie could not speak around the instant lump in her throat. She squeezed his arm. He could not know how his compliment helped to heal the wound Catharine had left behind.

  “Thank you, Henry.” As they left her bedroom, Hattie realized that from this day forward she would be forever known as Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe. She took a fortifying breath and lifted her chin. She would meet her future with confidence.

  A new life.

  A new future.

  Calvin and I will flourish together, she thought as she and Henry reached the stairs that would take her to her destiny. They descended in silence and stopped in the doorway of the parlor. Hattie looked up to meet Calvin’s eyes. He was dressed in a sharp black suit, waiting at the front of the room. He smiled at her, and the last of her anxiety softened into calm anticipation of this adventure they were about to embark upon. Together.

  Chapter Two

  February 16, 1836

  Calvin Stowe jotted down his final notes for tomorrow’s lecture and placed the pages in their reserved space on the corner of his desk. He returned the pencil to the drawer, replaced the pen in the stock, and double-checked to see that the lid to the inkwell was good and tight. He stood to return Tholuck’s Commentary to the expanse of shelving that filled one full wall of his office at Lane Seminary. Oh, how he loved German thought on religion.

  As Calvin removed his coat and hat from the stand by the door, he made a final inspection of the office, verifying it was as tidy as it had been when he’d entered. The few papers in the bin would start tomorrow’s fire in the stove. Assured all was in order, Calvin allowed his mind to move from his responsibilities as biblical professor to the evening ahead. Hattie would be waiting for him, and he was eager to see his new bride after such a long day. He was also famished, having only had tea and bread for lunch due to an afternoon class and faculty meeting. Hattie’s father, Lyman Beecher, was not only the president of Lane Seminary but a minister besides, which made faculty meetings a combination of instruction, report, and pounding sermons.

  He wondered how long he would stay at the Seminary.

  The board and the trustees continued to argue over the results of the rebellions of former years, and the lingering difficulties were wearing on him. Lane Seminary had fulfilled very few of the promises they’d made when they’d recruited him from Dartmouth, and yet his roots were deeper than ever. The Beecher family was set upon the business of converting the West to evangelical Presbyterianism, and Hattie had no expectation of leaving the frontier. He would be well to do as Hattie often reminded him: “Count your blessings instead of your miseries.”

  Calvin buttoned his wool coat up to his chin and wrapped his favorite scarf—knitted for him by his mother years earlier—around his neck three times. He pulled his beaver hat low on his head to better protect his ears from the February cold. The streetlights cast a heavy orange glow over the campus, and the metallic winter air smelled of wood smoke mingled with the aroma from various dinners cooking within the two dozen or so cottages that framed the campus. His mouth watered at the remembered promise of roast chicken for dinner. He and Hattie usually had remnants from her father’s table or milk and bread for supper, so he was prepared to be effusive and gracious in order to encourage future dinners like this one. He craved normal routines and simplicity and hoped that Hattie—so carefree and flighty—was coming about to his way of thinking.

  It was not a long walk across campus to Kemper Street, but even so Calvin’s toes had begun to tingle with cold by the time he arrived at the door of the humble cottage. One of the promises Lane had yet to fulfill was for a larger house befitting his position. He stomped his feet on the doorstep to knock off as much of the mud-churned slush as possible, wiped his feet vigorously on the mat, then turned the knob and stepped inside. He stopped in the doorway as his breath caught.

  The small parlor was usually furnished with a settee, a small table, and an upholstered chair near the fire—perfect for reading after dinner. However, the regular furnishings had been pushed aside to accommodate an easel, a folding table covered in paints, and a wooden chair from the bedroom. Sitting in that chair was his wife of six weeks, dressed in nothing but her shift—amply smeared with paint—and her head wrapped in a brown scarf. She held a paintbrush in one hand but paused to look at him, the brush a few inches away from the thick paper clamped to the easel.

  He did not smell roasted chicken.

  “Calvin, dear,” she said, her face breaking into a smile. “Don’t tell me the day has flown already.”

  Calvin stepped inside and closed the door before facing his wife. Thank goodness no one was on the street to see what he’d come home to. “Good grief, Hattie, what are you doing?”

  She smiled indulgently and waved her brush toward the easel. “Painting, of course.”

  Hattie painted?

  She returned to the unfinished painting before her, a summer landscape full of bright greens and yellows and reds that irritated Calvin. They were stuck in the churning gray of winter in Cincinnati, and no one had any business pretending otherwise! Fatigue and hunger and disappointment at not coming home to a hot meal knotted in his chest.

  Hattie kept her eyes on her work while she spoke. “I awoke this morning fairly clutched by the needs of creation that had nothing to do with a pen. I went to Father’s house and resurrected my mother’s easel, which I have not touched since coming to Ohio, I’m horrified to admit.”

  Painting?

  “The house is wrecked, Hattie,” Calvin said, his irritation sharpening in his chest. The coal bin had been placed upon his chair, which currently sat in the corner like a scolded child.

  “It is not wrecked.” Hattie dabbed her brush upon the paper, widening the yellow patch already dashed upon the page and not looking up. “And I shall have it restored in a day or two, once this fit of artistry has passed me. It always passes, you know, but when it comes upon me, I’ve no choice but to surrender—like a story or an essay. You understand.”

  “A day or two!” Calvin exclaimed with more intensity than he meant to. Once it was out, however, he couldn’t stop. “And where am I to sit until then? Where am I to read and recover from the trials of a long day?” His head began to throb.

  Hattie finally seemed to realize his displeasure and looked at him first with surprise, then her eyes narrowed and her chin came up in defiance. “You may sit wherever you like. Simply move what might be in your way and recover. Really, Calvin. You are a grown man.”

  He took a breath that did little to invite calm. “A grown man who has spent the day by the sweat of his brow only to come home to this . . . chaos.” He waved his hand around the room. “My wife sits in her underclothes, and . . . and . . . I do not smell any dinner.” He had not come home to a home-cooked dinner in all the six weeks of marriage, in fact. Tonight was supposed to be a new beginning. He’d looked forward to it all day.

  “I did not make dinner,” Hattie said, sitting up straight and watching him with a challenge in her eyes. “I was not hungry, and I wanted to paint.”

  “Well, I am hungry! You said you would have dinner when I returned. You promised you would have it ready.”

  She shrugged and said coolly, “I changed my mind.”

  They stared at one another, Calvin’s fists clenched at his sides.

  “And,” Hattie continued, “if you want dinner on a schedule then perhaps we need to hire that help I have asked for a hundred times.”

  Calvin unwound his scarf, refusing an argument about hiring help—Hattie knew they couldn’t afford it—when he realized how warm the room was. His eyes went to the coal bin on the chair and then to the merry fire in the stove. He paused. “How much coal have you used today?”

  “Enough to keep myself from catching my death, thank you very much.” She put down her paintbrush and stood with her hands on her hips. There was a smudge of green paint on one side of her thin linen shift and a spattering of orange across her stomach that matched the swipe of color upon her cheek.

  Calvin was acutely aware of the state of her undress, though it might have been more distracting had he not been so upset.

  “And the paper and paints? Am I to believe you had them on hand for such an occasion as this?” The chance that such useful things would have survived at President Beecher’s house was beyond consideration. The Beechers, for all their fervor and merit, were not as industrious or thrifty as Calvin h
ad been raised to be, something he had not fully realized until after he and Hattie had set up a home together.

  She lifted her chin in challenge. “I used my own income, Mr. Stowe. I’ve still some left of my final draw from the Institute.”

  That she would spend the last of her money on something as frivolous as paint was beyond Calvin’s understanding. “And shall my own income pay for twice the day’s usual ration of coal, then? And a new shift, household incidentals, and the like? Am I to have no say in what is considered necessary versus mere flippancy in my own home? And then I am to come home to no dinner despite your having promised me? How do you expect a man to conscience such things, Hattie?”

  Her eyes flashed, more gray than blue. “I expect a man to abide a change of expectation from time to time.”

  “From time to time, not every night!”

  She clenched her jaw. “You are capable of making use of the bread and jam in the cupboard. There are several jars of applesauce as well. Or heat the stove and make yourself some eggs.” She sat before her easel again, dismissing him.

  Calvin clenched his teeth and wound his scarf back around his neck as he glared at his wife, who looked as ridiculous as she sounded. He let himself out of the house, slamming the door as his way of getting the last word.

  Hunching into his collar, he started across Kemper Street toward the college cafeteria meant for boarding students. If he was lucky, the doors would still be open and he could have himself a plate. If he was unlucky, Gilly’s Pub served ham and potatoes most nights, but paying for it would further infuriate him. Calvin had become familiar with the meal options of Walnut Hills after the death of his first wife, Eliza. How he’d missed her; how he missed her still.

  A wave of guilt attended the thought. He should not miss Eliza, not with Hattie sharing his name and his house and his bed. He loved Harriet. Of course he did. But some aspects of Hattie’s character caused Calvin to remember Eliza’s qualities from time to time. Eliza had been a fine cook, for one thing, and kept an efficient house. Duty came before frivolity for Eliza, whereas the opposite was true for Hattie far too often. Calvin shook his head to jar the thoughts out of his mind. He could not travel down the road of comparison. It was poison.

  Calvin turned a corner and shuffled up the steps to the dining hall. The doors were still unlocked, and a smattering of students sat around the tables. He was embarrassed to be there. He was a married man, but instead of eating in his own home, he took a seat at an empty table on the far side of the room. Within minutes he had a plate of roast beef, squash, carrots, and a hearty slice of brown bread placed before him. His mouth watered as he unfolded the napkin and placed it perfectly square in his lap. With his fork in one hand and his knife in the other, he cut the meat into uniformly sized pieces and raised the first bite to his mouth. He would be better able to speak evenly with Hattie when his hunger pangs had abated.

  Speak evenly, he repeated and felt the irony of those words.

  When he and Hattie were aligned on a topic, there was no end to their invigorating discussions. The working of her mind was astounding, and, coupled with her wit, she was unparalleled in intellectual conversation. However, in a disagreement, she was a formidable opponent. A contentious household was nothing short of purgatory in his mind. The exact opposite of order and ease he thrived on. Hattie had to know he’d be vexed when he returned to the house after a long day and found no promised food upon his table. Or did she? Had she been so taken up with painting that she’d thought nothing of him? If that were the case, then the situation was more dire than he’d considered. If his comfort was of no consideration, what was he to do?

  What if he had made a mistake in marrying Hattie? What if his loneliness after Eliza’s death had pushed him to a hasty decision? And yet just considering not being Hattie’s husband brought the sting of emotion to his throat. He loved Hattie. Even after only a month and a half of marriage he could not imagine life without her. She enlivened his mind and his senses; she brought color and laughter into his life. He longed for her company and opinions. But sometimes . . .

  He turned his attention back to his plate and tried to push away the tense thoughts regarding his marriage.

  After lingering as long as manners permitted, Calvin returned to his office at Lane. He needed to center himself in an environment of order rather than risk further agitation from the disarray of his home. To prove a point, he did not add more coal to the stove in the corner but instead kept his coat on. He pulled out an anthology of contemporary Christian thought and read about marriage, but he put it away when it placed too much attention on women remaining silent and subservient to their husbands. He and Hattie had agreed that they wanted a companionate marriage. Such a liberal ideal did not lend itself to submission on Hattie’s part or dominance on his, but surely his expectation that she would fulfill the promise of dinner at the end of the day was within the realm of reason. He remembered something from a current periodical he’d kept for a future lecture and pulled it from his files.

  “The companionate ideal, in short, raises the emotional stakes in marriage. The rewards can be great, but the potential for disappointment has never been greater.”

  Calvin groaned and threw the periodical on the desk, paused, and then picked it up and returned it to the file. Every marriage has difficulties, he told himself, and yet his marriage to Eliza had not. Their temperaments had been perfectly aligned, and, though he may have been overbearing at times and tended to “cultivate indigo,” as Hattie had named his brooding moods, Eliza had been patient and accommodating, allowing him to feel all that he felt as deeply as he wanted to while still putting her effort toward his comfort.

  He groaned again and pushed aside comparisons for the second time that evening. He attempted to distract himself with his notes for tomorrow’s lecture and then, when he had run out of things to do, he bundled up and headed for home.

  He wondered if Hattie’s father might have some advice for him. Both of Lyman Beecher’s late wives had cared for his children, managed boarders, and run household schools. Perhaps Lyman could help Calvin better understand how to inspire Hattie’s compliance.

  Braced as he was to face the madness, Calvin stopped just inside the front door and let his eyes travel slowly around the room, which had been somewhat restored to its usual condition. The settee was still against the wall and the easel was where it had been before, but both the fireplace chair and end table were in their usual places and the coal bin was beside the hearth. Light streamed from the kitchen, set to the left of the common room, and he smelled cooked butter in the air. Calvin warily removed his outer clothes before exploring further.

  The kitchen was empty, but the lamp burning on the table illuminated a single plate filled with scrambled eggs and a slice of bread. A crock of butter sat beside a glass of water, and a jar of applesauce stood ready to be opened and poured into an empty bowl. The rest of the kitchen was a disaster, but she’d chosen him—chosen them—over her painting, and he could not ignore that olive branch.

  With a softening heart, Calvin crossed to the bedroom and opened the door. The light from the kitchen illuminated a triangular portion of the bed enough for him to see Hattie’s small form beneath the quilt. He entered the room and knelt beside the bed, reaching to brush a lock of her hair from her forehead.

  Hattie blinked her eyes open, then smiled and reached a hand from beneath the quilt to lay against his cheek. Her touch felt like a kiss and made his skin tingle.

  “I don’t like it when we quarrel,” she said in a voice husky with sleep.

  “Neither do I.” Calvin leaned in to kiss her full lips as the night’s argument slipped away. When he lifted his head, Hattie put her hand behind his neck and pulled him back for an answering kiss of her own. Calvin was reminded from head to toe the ways in which he found marriage to Hattie extremely pleasing; her passions were not limited to creative pursuit, and in matters of intimacy they were perfectly matched. Surely he ought to factor that compatibility higher than he had so far tonight. After some time, she put her hand against his shoulder and pushed him away.