Alex and Eliza: A Love Story(79)
THE DOORKNOB TURNED; the door eased open.
“Eliza, darling? The carriage is waiting downstairs.”
Gone was the woman who had waved a vial of smelling salts in Governor Livingston’s face and called it the great pox. Part of the skill of being a good soldier, she had told Eliza last night, is knowing when a battle is lost. This was not a battle, Eliza had protested. It was the whole war. “Perhaps,” Aunt Gertrude had admitted. “But there would still be other battles, other wars, and you must save your strength for them.”
Aunt Gertrude held out a gloved hand to Eliza. She stood and let herself be led like a little girl into the hall, where the servants stood on either side, smiling at her as best they could. She nodded at them as Aunt Gertrude led her between their ranks and down the stairs, where Peggy and Stephen waited, their smiles even more forced. The door was open, sunlight streamed in like a shower of gold. At the end of the walk a red-trimmed four-wheeled carriage waited just the other side of the gate. Its top was thrown open so that everyone in town could see her as she was carried to her groom.
She let herself be led outside and helped into the carriage by a liveried footman she didn’t recognize. One of the Livingstons’, no doubt. Aunt Gertrude was installed beside her on the leather seat and the driver snapped his whip and the carriage sprang forward with a little skip. The Livingstons’ house, where the ceremony would take place, was behind them, but the carriage set off gaily up Pine Street and then turned onto Dumon, heading toward the Green, where Eliza would be displayed for all the town to see.
“It’s just like a wedding is about to happen,” Eliza said, “when it’s really an incarceration.”
Aunt Gertrude put her hand on Eliza’s knee.
IT SEEMED THAT spring, too, was in on the joke, for the day had dawned as glorious as any in the new season. The air was brisk, to be sure, but the breeze carried a hint of warmth rather than chill, and though the sunlight illuminated more than it heated, it still shone down through a sky dotted with birds: hawks, ducks, pigeons, jays, and finches, all circling or diving or darting through the buoyant air and singing their varied songs. The trees in the town green hung heavy with buds that seemed only seconds away from bursting into full leaf, while the pond at the park’s center was ringed with golden daffodils, whose blossoms shone in the dark water like the reflection of a hundred little suns.
Sheep grazed on the verdant grass and chickens pecked at grain while sows rooted at the boggy end of the pond, their bellies full with litters about to be born. A half-dozen townsfolk were about, maids and grooms on their errands, and as many soldiers, who all stopped what they were doing to smile or wave or salute at the lucky girl who was about to marry into the most powerful family in the state.
“That elm tree there,” Eliza said, pointing over the well-wishers, and past them. “The one with the strong horizontal limb, like a soldier’s rifle held at his shoulder. That is the tree where convicts are hanged, is it not?”
“Eliza, please,” Aunt Gertrude pleaded. “You are only making it worse.”
THE TURN AROUND the green was completed, and the carriage headed back along South Street. The view was of white houses now, dainty and neat, with shutters thrown wide to let in the late-morning sunshine. A great furred calico cat, as big as a raccoon, with an orange patch over one green eye and a black one over the other, sat atop a fencepost and cleaned its paws lazily as she watched Eliza’s carriage float by.
“Oh, I do so love a long-haired cat,” Aunt Gertrude said, staring at the placid beast. “They are as twice as warm as a muff on a winter day. They can be a bit ratty, though, but that fine puss is as well groomed as a princess. Someone loves her!”
“Mama tried for years to keep cats at the Pastures,” Eliza answered. “But the foxes killed them all. I don’t think they were even eating them. I think they just killed them to spite Mama.”
“You cannot blame Mrs. Schuyler for this, Eliza. You know she wants what’s best for you.”
“Does she? She offers me for sale to the highest bidder and then has not even the courtesy of showing up to see the final results of the auction.”
“It is a three-day journey from Albany, under the best of circumstances and, with the wetness this spring, no doubt the route is even slower than ever. And I have heard reports of British raiders, too, making so bold as to attack even guarded mail coaches. Would you really want your mother to risk her life just to see you exchange a few words before a minister?”
“I think she ought to be here to see what she has wrought. Papa, too. It is the least they could do.”
“Hush, now. We’re here.”
The carriage had pulled up before a large white house, which, if truth be told, looked like every other house in Morristown, and every other house in New Jersey, save that it was a little larger than most, with broader windows and a more ornate pediment over the door. Where once Eliza had delighted in the little touches that made each five-bay house a unique expression of its owner’s taste, now she saw them as minute variations on a single repetitive theme, and that theme was, conform or be cast out.
And look at her! After all her talk of being her own woman, forging her own path, she was letting herself be led along like a sheep to be sheared and sheared again and again until, at last, it gives no wool and instead of having its hair cut, its throat is cut instead, and it winds up in a stewpot.