“Didn’t you know Captain Early was educated in Germany?”
“Whatever for, my dear?”
“For astronomy and physics. At the University of Berlin. I mean, after the University of Missouri.”
“But why didn’t he go to an American university, like Harvard?”
“I don’t know.” In fact, though he was always informative, Andrew hardly ever said a word about his past, or his feelings. It was as if his feelings were entirely accounted for by what there was to know. Nor did he delve into her feelings, seeming to think that, whatever they were, they were her business.
Another time, Mrs. Lear said to her, “Captain Early has very big feet, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“He’s a tall man.”
“Goodness me, well over six feet—not made for a sailor, my dear, not at all. But do tell me, does he have his boots specially made?”
“I believe so.”
“But where?”
That evening, when Andrew came in, she took a good look at his boots, which were a rich deep brown, and not really like any boots she’d seen in Missouri. She couldn’t believe she had lived with these boots now for two months without noticing them. She asked him. He said, “German Street.”
The next day, when she reported this to Mrs. Lear, the lady’s eyebrows lifted.
“My dear, I’m sure he means Jermyn Street, with a ‘J.’ It’s in London.”
Margaret said, “I should ask him.”
“You could,” said Mrs. Lear, “but I find keeping a sharp eye out is more instructive. Captain Lear hates to be asked questions. My father was just the same way.”
This conversation led her, the next afternoon, into his wardrobe, where she looked at his clothing for some minutes. He had five pairs of boots, four uniforms (he wore a uniform every day to the observatory), a stack of shirts and other linen, five hats in various styles, three summer suits, and three winter suits. He had two dressing gowns, of silk, which he wore about the house in the evening. She didn’t know what was more surprising to her—that she had gone so long without investigating Andrew’s wardrobe, or that its contents were so much finer than the contents of her own.
Spurred by this investigation into Andrew’s wardrobe, she tried another—she looked at all the books in his library, which was a small room at the back of their house, to which the door was always closed. The shelves in their parlor were well stocked with Dickens and Verne and Conan Doyle and Rhoda Broughton. In his office the books were in German, French, English, Dutch, and what looked like Norwegian. She could not make out what any of them were about, even the English ones.
She ate with him, walked with him (it wasn’t just birds he liked, but plants and snakes and rabbits), listened to him sing (he had a pleasant baritone, and sang lively songs in German), and watched him read (which he did, quite often, at meals, apologizing to her for not being able to break a lifelong habit). She cooked for him. He liked bacon fried in a skillet, then pushed to one side so that two eggs could be fried, sunny-side up, in the bacon grease until their edges were crispy and brown but their centers were still warm and a bit runny. At midday, he liked a steak, and in the evening, he liked a soup, especially a pea or bean soup cooked with a ham hock. He liked her to boil up the greens he brought home from walks—telling her they were nutritious and good for the digestion.
But there was nothing he loved more than new information. Their little house was a riot of books and papers. The first ferry of the morning (which arrived before 6 a.m.) brought all the current editions of the San Francisco Call, the Chronicle, and the Examiner. Of course there was the Vallejo paper also, and if you scoured Vallejo, you could get the Sacramento Bee. Dozens of copies of Scientific American sat by the kitchen door, where Andrew left them to go out to the rubbish or not, depending on whether he was offended by articles being run. The copies of Nature, another science journal, more respectable in Andrew’s estimation, sat on a table in the front room for a long time, the stack growing taller and taller, but eventually that stack, too, wound up beside a door, its fate always in the balance, because it, too, ran articles that Andrew disagreed with. In addition, he had many correspondents,