The Whale by Mark Beauregard Read Free Book Online Page B

But I overheard your talk of fevers on our hike up the mountain, and how your father and brother both died of fevers, which put menaturally in mind of mine own father’s death, and I thought this detail about him must interest you. I wonder how many of our authors these days have had fathers who died of fevers? It does not seem the most direct path to literary success, but who can decode the secret designs of providence?
    My son Julian has just advised me that the elm leaves outside will not turn golden without our supervision, so I must attend to Mother Nature and bid you farewell until your visit to Lenox.
    Nath. Hawthorne
    P.S. Duyckinck has said that he would be sending the books right away, and the sooner I have them in my hands, the better. You have my thanks in advance.
    Herman walked back to the window with the letter and tried to comprehend its meanings, so rich did it seem with intimations of fate and noble contemplations and intimacy, and even its simplest thoughts seemed knotty with charming complications. His palms sweated with delight. He reread it several times while Lizzie groaned and turned in bed, twisting the covers and pillow around her to form a cave of darkness against the morning. Should I hide it? he thought. Was anything here suggestive or secret? Was the intimacy all in his mind? Hawthorne’s father had died of a fever. Well, what of it? Hawthorne had confirmed what Duyckinck had said, that he had asked Duyckinck to send some books by Melville. What of that? Was it so unusual? No, on the surface nothing here suggested untoward intimacy, and yet Herman hid the letter between the pages of his copy of
Mosses from an Old Manse
and set it on the dresser behind a clock.
    He recited the contents of the letter over in his head, having already memorized not only the words but also the texture of thepaper and the elegant curves of the lines across the page, the heavy blots in the middle of f’s and the tails of g’s. Why had Hawthorne begun the letter with talk of laurels and crowns and magic? Was it a covert token of the gallantry he felt toward Herman, as Herman felt toward him? What medicine awaited Hawthorne at the apothecary’s? Was Hawthorne ill? Did he have some chronic condition, and was this his way of confiding it to Herman? But the fever, the fever! Yes, Hawthorne knew what it meant to lose a father to fever, and perhaps even to madness. Why had he fixed his attention on this talk of fathers, fever or no? Did Hawthorne himself suffer some malady that made him fear for his sanity, and did he foresee a death in fever and madness? Was the blackness Herman had perceived in
Mosses from an Old Manse
a result of some secret that Hawthorne was now trying to confess in this letter? But no, it was all too much!
    Herman removed the letter from between the pages of Hawthorne’s book and read it again. He knew that he was becoming carried away, interpreting secret messages where nothing but commonplace statements existed. The fevers were simply biographical coincidences, and Hawthorne was thinking less of mad fathers and more of the fact that both Herman and Hawthorne’s own father had been mariners—the letter, in fact, said nothing deeper than that, and perhaps the apothecary was holding foot powder. No, there was nothing cryptic here or even interesting, Herman thought. And to close the letter, Hawthorne must have mentioned Julian because it was simply true that Julian had interrupted him at just that moment with a childish remark about the trees. Nothing could have been more banal. Yet Hawthorne had revealed that he had been eavesdropping on Herman’s conversation during that hike up the mountain!
    Was it all a code? Oh, what did it all mean? He turned the letter over and wished more writing would appear on the opposite side, but the statement was complete as he had read it. He returned it toits sacred envelope, replaced it between the pages of Hawthorne’s book, and