Miss Fuller by April Bernard Read Free Book Online

She then measured and noted, to a millimetre’s precision, the length of each caterpillar. A cloth tailor’s tape with millimetre markings went around the thickest place on each one — for a “waist” measurement, circumference. She wrote it all down and dated it. Then she made several preliminary sketches. Henry was in correspondence with a Dr. Jaeger, who was compiling an encyclopedia ofinsects; their data would be mailed to him. Possibly Anne’s drawings would be included in the encyclopedia. She was exact in detail, but her perspective and shading were inexpert and Henry argued with her about her choice of colors. She hoped he would remember to buy her some new water-color paints in New York.
    It was necessary to push the cat off the table again. She tidied the note-books, then replaced the lid, anchored it with stones, and shooed the cat ahead of her. She looked idly at the piles of Henry’s books and noticed, suddenly, a thin green-bound volume with gilt lettering: Woman in the Nineteenth Century by Margaret Fuller. She had never read it. Well. She would read it now. Was it a coincidence that she had found it, or was it that her eyes were newly alert to the author’s name? She tucked it into the front pocket of her smock and closed the shed door.
    A surprise: Miss Fuller’s brother Arthur had stopped in, and he would stay for a cup of tea. Father sat stiffly by the stove, his face drawn, but fortunately Mother was occupied with the visitor and had let up her scolding. Arthur Fuller looked wild, his big hands clumsy, his pale eyes flat and full of the ocean at which he had been staring. His sister’s body was not recovered — nor was her husband’s, nor the book — just some scraps of clothing. He nearly broke into tears many times. He told them about the one recovered body — that of his nephew, little Angelo Ossoli, not yet two years old, for whom a grave in the upper dunes had beenquickly dug the day after the wreck. “I never saw his face in life,” said Arthur. “I never met my nephew. There was a wooden cross — we dug it all up and brought him back in a crate.”
    The funeral for his nephew would be held the next day in Boston; Arthur was to visit with Mr. Emerson briefly before heading back to be with his own family. He gave Anne a note from her brother.
Dear Annie,
There are difficulties and we will probably not succeed in finding what we came for. I am staying for a week or so more to walk and hunt for specimens. Tell Mother. I have notes on birds and other beach life and will bring you shells and a skate’s egg-sac called a devil’s purse. It is empty, but do not let that give you false comfort. The devil grows richer every day.
    H.

    Henry hired the oysterman to take him to Mattituck, on the North Fork of Long Island. He spent several days there, boarding with a farmer, and continued his walks and his notes. On his last day, he returned to Fire Island and watched the dogged, nearly finished haulage of the marble.Most of the stone was in rough slabs, but there were also two out-sized marble statues, a man standing and a man on a horse, lying, bizarrely, on the sand. By looking more closely, he realized that the block faces had been left unsculpted — evidently these stone figures were basic models of the heroic, meant to be adapted locally once they had reached their destinations, some county seat court-house, some new library or athenaeum in Ohio or Maryland. They shared the feature of having the right arm raised. The solitary man pointed to an indefinite future — for the moment, as he reclined on the wet sand, to the clouds above the beach. The figure on horseback had suffered more from the wreck: The horse’s neck and head were gone and the man’s extended arm was broken off at the elbow, making his intended gesture less clear.
    The police-man had vanished, and so had the pickers. But the sailor Bolton dropped his work and came over to tell Henry that one of the locals had been