Jo & Laurie

by Margaret Stohl

  It was on one of these rambles to the post-office that she ran into Mr. Brooke, who was still working for the elder Mr. Laurence.

  She came inside to check the mail, as she had for the past three days, and at first didn’t notice the man with his back to her.

  As Meg walked in, she took off her plaid wrap, for it was a well-known fact that the inside of the post-office in Concord was close and stifling even in the howling winds of winter. She clutched the shawl in her hand and waited for her turn at the counter, distracted by thoughts of Amy, and of John Brooke, and of Jo and what an impossible, obstinate mule she had become—and so didn’t hear the first part of the conversation between the post-master and the man in front of her. Only . . .

  “So you’ll be off, then?” asked the post-master.

  “Yes. Tomorrow.”

  The man heaved a great sigh, and the post-master said, “When you return, be sure to come by, and we will toast your good health.”

  The man stood a little taller. “If I do come back, I will gladly take up that offer. Thank you, Mr. Taylor.”

  “Good luck to you, Mr. Brooke.”

  The mention of Brooke’s name finally broke Meg out of her torpor. She looked up just in time to see John Brooke nearly bump into her, so distracted was he as well. “Oh!” she said, and he took her by the shoulder to keep from knocking her down.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. “Are you all right, Miss March?”

  Meg felt her face flame. “I—I’m all right. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Brooke. I didn’t see you there.”

  “Nor I you.”

  They fell into an awkward silence. Neither mentioned why they hadn’t seen each other much in the past few days, but it was there, between them: his request, her refusal. Like the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads.

  Finally Meg said, “I thought you had already left for Boston.”

  “Not quite yet. But soon.”

  “Will you not come back to Concord?”

  “Alas, no. Young Laurie has little need of a tutor now that he is in university,” he explained. “And Mr. Laurence will soon be off to London.”

  She looked at his new coat—plain brown wool, with a coin pinned on his breast. He mustn’t ever know the anguish she felt at seeing him like this. She would be cheerful, and wish him well, so that he would leave with her kind wishes, nothing more. She pasted a smile on her face and said merrily, “You will be sorely missed, Mr. Brooke.”

  “Will I?” He looked grim.

  She startled. She’d meant the words as nothing more than a cheerful good-bye, but she realized he must have taken them otherwise. That she was making a jibe about his proposal once more. That she was laughing at him on the eve of his leaving.

  “You will. You have been a kind friend to my family, and we will all miss you.”

  “All? Even you, Miss March?” His earnest brown eyes were full of pooling sadness.

  Meg looked down at her hands. “Of course. Even though you would scorn my friendship.”

  “I didn’t scorn it. I said your refusal would make it difficult for us to maintain our friendship. And so I was right, wasn’t I? Because you can hardly bear to look at me.”

  It occurred to Meg that the post-master was still standing behind his counter, listening to every word. “I—I can look at you very easily, Mr. Brooke.” And she raised her eyes to meet his, quickly, and then looked away once more.

  “Very easily, yes.”

  Meg remained stoic. He mustn’t see. He mustn’t know she loved him, because that would be a disaster. She’d refused him once, for both their sakes. To save them both.

  And ever since, Jo’s words had haunted her: I’ve never met such a martyr in all my life!

  Was she? A martyr?

  Had she denied Brooke just to prove she could? She’d always thought she and Jo were so different—that she, Meg, had a much more dispassionate temperament, calm and thoughtful. She would never throw away a perfectly good marriage proposal on such quixotic principles as Jo’s about maintaining her career, remaining free.

  But she had refused John Brooke, just as Jo had refused Theodore Laurence.

  And why?

  What is wrong with this family? Perhaps Amy was right.

  Meg had asked herself many times over the past week why she had refused Mr. Brooke, why she had insisted on throwing him at Lady Hat, to use Jo’s words. Partly it was for the reasons she had told Brooke herself: She had no dowry. They would have no money.

  Two wrongs don’t make a right.

  That’s what she’d told him before sending him away.

  But she’d had another reason, too, one that had slowly been making itself understood in her thoughts, when she was alone at night in her cramped room at the Kings’, when she ate her solitary breakfast and directed her small charges in their lessons: She’d wanted to punish him.

  Punish John Brooke.

  And what was his crime? Not immediately snatching his arm away when Lady Harriet laid claim to it? Having the audacity to allow himself to be so petted and fondled by her that he made a fool of himself?

  If he liked Harriet’s attentions, let him have them for life, her soul had cried to itself, insensate. For Meg knew she was being ridiculous, but had been powerless to stop herself.

  She was no better than Jo, who had denied herself everything in life on principle. Worse, even, because she’d done so out of jealousy.

  And for all I know, I’ve ruined both our lives along the way.

  Meg looked more closely at the coin pinned to his jacket and realized who had given it to him. Lady Hat, clearly. The coin was a love-token, engraved with her initials, HCC, and his, JAB. John Anthony Brooke.

  Pinned over his heart.

  Meg had thrown the two of them together, and they had stuck. Just as she had wanted, just as she thought was best for him.

  Punishment, indeed!

  She felt her lip tremble and looked away, quickly, toward the window, where some of Amy’s school friends were on their way home for the day. Dear Amy, whose cough wracked her body. She would not be meeting her chums this afternoon, or anytime soon, and possibly never.

  Just like poor Beth.

  Where there had once been four March sisters, now there were three, and soon perhaps there would be only two.

  It was all too terrible.

  “Are you all right, Miss March?”

  She was weeping. She’d tried so hard, but the tears started anyway. “Just thinking of my sister. How sorry I am not to be home with her now. How frightening it all is.”

  “Yes,” said Brooke. “I was very sorry to hear of her illness. Mr. Laurence has sent for his physician to see if he can help.”

  Meg looked up, her eyes shining with gratitude. “Oh! That is very generous of him. Please tell him how much we appreciate it.”

  “I will. And Lady Harriet sent over some very good whisky to mix into a tea that she thought might help.”

  “That is . . . most kind of her. Please thank her as well when you see her next.” Meg looked at the love-token. How gaudy it looked, engraved in gold. How much it must have cost. But then again, Lady Hat could afford to lavish him with gifts. “She is still in town?”

  “Yes, for a few more days.”

  “And then back to New York?”

  “I believe so. I don’t really know where she’s headed next.”

  “No?” Meg asked. “She wouldn’t tell you where to send a letter?”

  “No, I doubt she will want to hear from me anytime soon.”

  “What?” Meg asked. The politeness was all gone from her voice. She was in shock, plain and simple.

  “I believe her last words were to tell me to go to the devil.”

  “How is that? Then you and she aren’t—?”

  “As I told you last week, Miss March
, my heart is already accounted for. I have little notion of turning away from the object of my affection, even if she doesn’t return it. Lady Harriet has been told so, quite clearly. In almost those exact words, in fact, earlier today.”

  “What about this love-token she’s pinned to you?” Meg indicated the engraved coin. “I would have thought one would give such a gift only to a husband or, at the very least, a betrothed.”

  “Ah, I think her affections were leaning in that direction. I think she thought this token would be the first of many. Those were her words. But when I told her I couldn’t marry her, she told me to keep it. To buy my passage across the Styx, I think she said.”

  Meg’s face burned furiously. They were not engaged! She could hardly believe it. “But you kept it.”

  “Honestly, until you mentioned it, I’d forgotten it was there.” He smiled at her, and her heart eased. “Is that why you were crying just now, Miss March?”

  Meg turned positively crimson; she could feel the spots burn on both cheeks. “Perhaps,” she said.

  “But I am still a poor man,” said Brooke. “Poorer than ever, since I am no longer in Mr. Laurence’s employ. I have nothing but the clothes on my back, in fact.”

  Meg touched the fabric on his arm. “But they are good clothes,” she said in a small voice. “As is the man who wears them.”

  “Does that mean you have reconsidered?” Brooke asked, and this time it was he who could not meet her eyes.

  Meg’s heart leapt. “I suppose it does.” She reached for his hands and held them. “If you’ll have me . . . my John.”

  24

  BEACON HILL

  An evening out was still an evening, and not to be turned down.

  Grandfather had arrived in Cambridge. And, as it turned out, the Perkins family knew Laurie’s grandfather as well and offered an invitation to the party that could not be refused.

  So it happened on that autumn night that Fred and Laurie were fetched to the Perkinses’ house in his grandfather’s carriage.

  It was a cool evening, foggy and raining, and the cobblestones of Beacon Hill were damp and slippery. The horses had trouble pulling the carriage, giving Grandfather ample time to question his grandson on his studies, for one thing, and how Laurie and Fred had been spending their too-abundant free time for another.

  “I just hope you are not wasting these golden years of your youth,” Grandfather lectured. “And your studies.” Truthfully, he did seem to know a suspicious amount about Laurie’s performance so far in his courses. Laurie was growing a bit wary; Grandfather mentioned both the Virgil assignment and the Reformation essay by name.

  “I suggest you turn them in first thing Monday,” the elder Laurence said. “And to make sure you do a good job of it, you will spend all day tomorrow with me.”

  Laurie groaned inwardly but said nothing. The visit was a warning: Remember why you’re here, the old man was saying. While I live, I have a say in how you live.

  As if Laurie could forget.

  Beside him, he could feel Fred stiffen with repressed laughter. Fred’s family didn’t care if he received “gentleman’s Cs,” but apparently Laurie’s grandfather did. It wasn’t enough that his grandfather required him to go to Harvard, Laurie must actually learn something as well.

  Despite himself, he remembered the look on Jo’s face when she said she would cut off her hair and dress as a boy if it meant she could go to university. It shamed him to think of it—lively, curious, intellectual Jo would have loved the opportunity. And only because she was a girl, she was denied the chance.

  In the next moment, though, he was angry with her all over again. She knew how much he despised going, and yet she couldn’t give him the one thing that would have made his banishment to Cambridge more tolerable: her promise to marry him when he returned in four years, older and (he hoped) wiser.

  If Jo wouldn’t marry herself to him in fiction or in life, then he wouldn’t bother to waste time on pitying her. She’d made her own bed and could lie in it, for all he cared.

  He sighed.

  Now they were pulling up to the Perkinses’ house on Beacon Hill, the horses straining to keep their feet on the wet cobblestones. Grandfather and Fred managed to get down to the pavement in one piece, but Laurie was just halfway out when one of the horses slipped, jerking the carriage to the side, depositing Laurie in a puddle up to his knees and dirtying his good evening suit.

  Fred hurried to help his friend up, but the damage was done: There was mud from his cuffs to his knees. “Look at you!” Fred declared. “You look as though you’ve just come in from a rugby match.”

  Laurie considered the mess his trousers had become and thought he spied a way to retreat without angering Grandfather. “I have to go home and change,” he said. “This won’t do at all.”

  “Nonsense,” said Grandfather, as if he knew exactly what Laurie was up to. “Everyone’s wet tonight. The Perkinses will have a fire going. A quick towel-off and you’ll be good as new.”

  Still Laurie objected. “I can’t go to dinner with mud on my trousers!” he said. “Grandfather, be reasonable! Let me go home and change into dry clothes.”

  But Grandfather was not having it; he sent the carriage away to wait for them. So Laurie stood on the sidewalk dripping, watching the guests go through the front door, all while deciding what to do. It was possible running away was his only answer.

  But where?

  More carriages were arriving, with more guests. Laurie watched them go inside in twos and threes: society matrons, young women in hoop skirts, gentlemen in top hats with long, wet mustaches. A couple of servants at the top of the stairs held out umbrellas to keep the guests dry at the threshold, and Laurie thought again how much he did not want to be here.

  He should be at home in Concord with the Marches—with Amy, who was ill.

  Of course, Jo had not written him to tell him so; he had to hear from Brooke, of all people. Still, his place was there in Concord, not in Beacon Hill, where he would be expected to play suitor to a girl whose company he could barely tolerate.

  He should go and do as he pleased. If his grandfather cut him off because of it, then at least he would be free—free to pursue his music. Free to make a life wherever and however he wanted.

  Like Jo.

  No, he realized now, he could not go back to Concord, not until Jo apologized.

  Until she begged his forgiveness. Until she took everything she said back.

  Laurie would travel the world instead; he would show her! He would have his adventures without her, since that was what she wanted. He would go to Italy, to France. Anywhere unexpected; anywhere he could start anew, as he wanted. He could be poor and penniless and free—the way his parents had been.

  He had just turned on his heel to leave when he bumped into a set of powdered bosoms beneath a wide black umbrella. A particularly jolly, familiar set, as it were.

  “Laurie!” declared Lady Hat. “Is that you?”

  “Hullo, old Hat,” he said, his attitude brightening almost immediately. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

  “Neither did I,” said Harriet, “but your grandfather insisted we join him here. He thought you might need cheering up.”

  Laurie raised an eyebrow, as everything fell into place.

  He suddenly understood.

  If possible, Grandfather had been even more despondent than Laurie upon hearing the news of Jo’s refusal. “There are more fish in the sea,” the old man had said, in an effort to console—though it wasn’t entirely clear which one of them he was consoling.

  Other fish?

  And so—if Laurie’s suspicions were correct—this, it turned out, would be the fish Grandfather hoped Laurie would hook.

  After all, like the Marches, the Lord and Lady Carmichael-Carlthorpe were the Laurences’ old friends. And it would be just like the
old man to bring Harriet to Boston as a surprise for Laurie, and then make sure she appeared at the Perkinses’.

  “Where are you staying?” Laurie asked.

  “Kate and I have gone to the Parker House. Mummy insisted. You know how it is.”

  “I do,” said Laurie, sadly.

  “It’s comfortable there. Between you and me, we’re all a bit tired from our Concord adventures.”

  “Oh? Did you see Brooke there?”

  “Indeed. And those March girls,” she said, sharply.

  “Ah, yes,” said Laurie.

  “Well, I for one wish them all the happiness in the world,” said Harriet with a toss of her head.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You haven’t heard? About Brooke and Cousin Meg?”

  “What about Brooke and Cousin Meg?”

  “They are engaged to be married.”

  “Blazes!” said Laurie. “Old Brooke finally spoke his piece!”

  “Rumor has it she refused him the first time. But apparently the man was not to be daunted.”

  Good for him, thought Laurie. “And she has accepted him?”

  “She has,” sighed Harriet.

  He crossed his arms. “And you are all right?”

  She shrugged. “As well as I can be.”

  His suspicions in New York had been correct, then: Harriet had set her sights on Brooke, just as she had the musician in London. The thrill of illicit romance, daring her mother’s disapproval—Harriet thrived on all of it.

  Now here she was, disappointed in love another time. The dowager had probably insisted on the rooms to keep an eye on her willful daughter, who gave her affections so recklessly to undeserving men.

  “Honestly, I don’t know how you stand living in the country,” she was saying now. “So provincial. Small towns are so stifling, aren’t they?”

  Oh, Hat.

  Laurie wasn’t the least bit fooled by her dismissals: He knew heartbreak when he heard it, having so recently suffered it himself. “I suppose so, in some ways,” he said. “Socially speaking.”