The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [27]
But now I’d seen those rifles, rifles I had heard of, that were made in New England and coveted by everyone for their pinhole accuracy. It’s a fact that no bride knows what layers are in her groom, that every wedding is a lottery, too. All weddings are alike in that. But it was also true that with my money from the sale of my father’s house in my pocket, I’d seen what I wanted to see in Mr. Thomas Newton. Those rifles that I didn’t like to think of were part of my bridal portion, and I dared not speak about it, even to Thomas.
Thomas, himself, continued agreeable and affectionate. We shared a tiny stateroom off the ladies’cabin, and each evening he came to me about ten o’clock. We also made it a point to take our meals together, but the customs of travel made it difficult for us to begin experiencing any prolonged marital intimacy. I did see that apart from me, Thomas seemed not to be establishing much acquaintance on the boat. When I asked him about it, he smiled and said that at one end of the men’s saloon, the gamblers were fleecing the emigrants, and at the other end, there was much praying going on, and it was interesting to observe, he said, which of the prospective settlers regularly made their way between the two enterprises. But apart from these observations, he had some books to read, and spending his daylight hours sitting beside the aft rail of the hurricane deck improving his time in this quiet fashion would prepare him best for the weeks and months of hard work to come.
There were a dozen or so ladies taking passage in the ladies’ cabin, and many more taking deck passage below. We were a widely assorted bunch, and there were a few I might have spoken to more readily if I hadn’t been so mindful of those rifles. Four of the women were going to Kansas, and two of these had small children. Each of the four was from a different place: One woman and her husband and two sons were coming from Pennsylvania; another was traveling from Louisville, Kentucky. A very small young woman, whose baby looked sickly, had come all the way from Nova Scotia, in Canada, to meet her husband, who was an American and waiting for her in Leavenworth. A girl of about my age had lived four years in Saint Louis with cousins but had come originally from Bavaria. She had more cousins in Kansas, including one young man whom it was expected that she would marry. She tatted without ceasing, the lace rolling out from between her fingers as if from a machine. She smiled all the time, too, the way foreigners do, but when she spoke, it was almost without accent. Under different circumstances, I thought, I could have made a friend of her.
It was readily apparent to me that I wasn’t the same person on the steamboat that I had been in Quincy. Certain fixed elements of my character that my sisters and I had always taken for granted seemed to have disappeared. For example, I’d always gone my own way, without making close friends of any girls my age, even my schoolmates, when I’d had them. Those girls seemed foolish to me, too interested in dress patterns and bonnets and pretty things, and I drew back from them. But really, they were smaller and daintier than I was, and pretty things looked flattering on them. I looked best in plain. And of course, there was the problem of my father and sisters. The fathers of my acquaintances were young, healthy, and mostly prosperous. My father’s friends, what few he had, had all died years before, and anyway, he had been a man who made deals, not strong ties or even alliances. He was interested only in men who had something to buy or sell, and each one of them was his potential antagonist. His dearest relationship had been to his horse, or possibly to his house. My sisters, too, had few friends, because always, and over everything else, they had each other, and none of them was really interested in anyone outside the family.