Darwinia

In fact, Guilford suspected Pierce just wanted him out of town for another spell. The successful publisher and his nephew-in-law didn’t always get along, though both cared genuinely for Caroline. Nevertheless, Guilford was grateful for the opportunity to join Finch in the new world. The pay was good, by current standards. The work might make him a modest reputation. And he was fascinated by the continent. He had read not only the reports of the Donnegan expedition (along the skirts of the Pryenees, Bordeaux to Perpigna, 1918) but (secretly) all the Darwinian tales in Argosy and All-Story Weekly, especially the ones by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

What Pierce had not counted on was Caroline’s stubbornness. She would not be left alone with Lily a second time, even for a season, no matter the money involved or the repeated offers to hire a day maid for her. Nor did Guilford especially want to leave her, but this expedition was the hinge point of his career, maybe the difference between poverty and security.

But she would not be lenient. She threatened (though this made no sense) to leave him. Guilford answered all her objections calmly and patiently, and she yielded not an inch.

In the end she agreed to a compromise whereby Pierce would pay her way to London, where she would stay with family while Guilford continued on to the Continent. Her parents had been visiting London at the time of the Miracle and she claimed she wanted to see the place where they had died.

Of course you weren’t supposed to say that people had died in the Miracle: they were “taken” or they “passed over,” as if they’d been translated to glory between one breath and the next. And, Guilford thought, who knows? Maybe it really had happened that way. But, in fact, several million people had simply vanished from the face of the earth, along with their farms and cities and flora and fauna, and Caroline could not be forgiving of the Miracle; her view of it was violent and harsh.

It made him feel peculiar to be the only man aboard Odense with a woman and child in tow, but no one had made a hostile remark, and Lily had won over a few hearts. So he allowed himself to feel lucky.

After dinner the crowd broke up: the ship’s surgeon off to keep company with a flask of Canadian rye, the scientists to play cards over tattered felt tables in the smoking room, Guilford back to his cabin to read Lily a chapter from a good American fairy tale, The Land of Oz. The Oz books were everywhere since Brothers Grimm and Andersen fell out of favor, carrying as they did the taint of Old Europe. Lily, bless her, didn’t know books had politics. She just loved Dorothy. Guilford had grown rather fond of the Kansas girl himself.

At last Lily put her head back and closed her eyes. Watching her sleep, Guilford felt a pang of disorientation. It was odd, how life mixed things up. How had he come to be aboard a steamship bound for Europe? Maybe he hadn’t done the wise thing after all.

But of course there was no going back.

He squared the blanket over Lily’s cot, turned off the light and joined Caroline in bed. Caroline lay asleep with her back to him, a pure arc of human warmth. He curled against her and let the grumbling of the engines lull him to sleep.

He woke shortly after sunrise, restless; dressed and slipped out of the cabin without waking his wife or daughter.

The air on deck was raw, the morning sky blue as porcelain. Only a few high scrawls of cloud marked the eastern horizon. Guilford leaned into the wind, thinking of nothing in particular, until a young officer joined him at the rail. The sailor didn’t offer name or rank, only a smile, the accidental camaraderie of two men awake in the bitter dawn.

They stared into the sky. After a time the sailor turned his head and said, “We’re getting closer. You can smell it on the wind.”

Guilford frowned at the prospect of another tall tale. “Smell what?”

The sailor was an American; his accent was slow Mississippi. “Little like cinnamon. Little like wintergreen. Little like something you never smelled before. Like some dusty old spice from a place no white man’s ever been. You can smell it better if you close your eyes.”

Guilford closed his eyes. He was conscious of the chill of the air as it ran through his nostrils. It would be a small miracle if he could smell anything at all in this wind. And yet…

Cloves, he wondered? Cardamom? Incense?

“What is it?”

“The new world, friend. Every tree, every river, every mountain, every valley. The whole continent, crossing the ocean on a wind. Smell it?”

Guilford believed he did.

Chapter Two