The Cautious Maiden

by Dawn Crandall

  I knew it wasn’t exactly proper to walk out into the woods on my own, even if there was purpose to it. It was something I’d been used to doing while growing up in Westward before the lumber camps had come to the area, before my parents had passed, before Ezra had taken over and my life had become so dramatically altered.

  I’d missed those walks dreadfully. When I’d had the good fortune of meeting Dexter Blakeley and was offered the job at the front desk of Everston, I couldn’t help myself from exploring the grounds and falling completely in love with Leightner Hollow.

  The walk wasn’t long, and the beautiful hills were covered with dense pines and birch trees that reminded me of home. When I finally came to the barren clearing under the giant bonnet-shaped stone formation, my feet were cold and my boots and the hem of my skirt mud-soaked. But despite the chill in the air, I was warm from the exertion of the walk.

  I hadn’t bothered making my hair presentable that morning, opting only to tuck as much as I could up into my bonnet, keeping it on during church. The night before, I had tried to sleep with it all pinned up in order to keep it for the next day, but decided after a few hours of discomfort that starting over would be worth pulling every well-placed pin out and getting some real sleep.

  But I’d been wrong. I should have kept them in and dealt with the lack of sleep. When I awoke, my shortened locks were twisted and flattened and sticking straight up in all directions. No matter how I tried, I could not get the strands into any sort of semblance of order. And I couldn’t ask for anyone’s help. Francie, who also worked at Everston, would have surely helped me, but I hadn’t gained the courage to tell her about it yet.

  Once I’d returned to the Everston employee dormitory after church, I’d traded my bonnet for a warm white woolen hat my mother had made me for Christmas once. It covered most of my hair and wasn’t at all stylish, but it was warm and that’s all that mattered.

  I never saw anyone at the hollow, anyway. I knew if I had a room at Everston instead of my stark little room in the dormitory, I would probably have stayed there, sitting by the fire to write, but that wasn’t an option. Nor would I ever have such opportunities. No, I had either my frigid room or the blustery beloved hollow.

  When I neared the stone platform at the deepest part of the shelter, I stopped in my muddy tracks, startled at the sound of a masculine voice reading quietly, almost to a tune. I stopped swinging my reticule carelessly beside me and stood still, sure that it was Dexter. I hadn’t seen any tracks in the snow—whoever it was must have come from the direction of the north end of Half Moon Lake where Blakeley House used to stand.

  Not really wanting to find out who it was, I turned around and walked back in the direction I’d come, trying my best to not shuffle through the leaves and melting snow quite as loudly as when I’d sauntered into the makeshift chapel.

  “Is that you, Violet?” It was Vance Everstone’s voice.

  I kept walking, now not caring whether I made much noise as I left.

  “Violet, where are you going?” Vance asked when I didn’t answer.

  I stopped, begrudgingly, and turned around. Vance had stood so his torso was now visible from across the top of the tall stone platform. I watched as he leaned over and set something down, looking at me shyly, as if he were hiding something. I took a step back, in the direction of Everston.

  “I’m going back. We shouldn’t be out here together. Alone.”

  “But we already are. And there’s no harm in just talking.”

  “We shouldn’t—”

  “I’m not going to eat you, Violet.” The most amazing smirk crossed his lips as he uttered those words.

  I took another step backwards. “Of course not, but—”

  “And I’m not going to hurt you, either.”

  Oh, but he could. Even without actually doing a blessed thing.

  “What are you doing here anyway?” I asked. “You weren’t at church; I thought maybe you went back to Bangor.”

  “I wanted some privacy.” He’d ceased to come any closer, likely because of how many times I’d already stepped away from him. He wasn’t exactly close—probably twenty feet away from me, standing near the far corner of the stone platform. “I’m about finished with my business in Bangor. What are you doing out here?”

  “Nothing.” I swung my reticule behind me, happy my small notebook was hidden inside. “I come out here to get away from work and the employee dormitory.”

  “Ah, I see. I’m sorry I took your sanctuary without asking. I will leave you.” Vance turned around, back toward whatever he’d hidden, and came back around the platform carrying a large, thick book and a small, blue, hardcover pocket-sized one. It looked to be a Bible. He walked up to me, and I thought he was about to go right past without another word, but then he stopped as he came up beside me. “But I find that I can’t. And I won’t.”

  “Why not?” I asked, breathlessly. Really, he needed to leave. Being alone with him for as little time as had passed was already causing me to have second hopes that he would stay; that he’d been there hoping to see me; and that he’d, indeed, been there at the hollow reading the Bible, waiting for me to show up.

  “I cannot, in good conscience, leave you out here alone after what happened to you yesterday.” His dark eyes burrowed into me, and I immediately felt ashamed for being completely incognizant of that danger as I’d walked away from the protection of Everston. Not that I feared Ezra, but his friend didn’t seem the kind of man who would want to stay away from such an easy target. And that’s what I was now. I’d proven it yesterday with my inefficiency at fending them off.

  “If you want to head back, I’ll follow you at a safe distance.”

  “But I haven’t had a chance to—” I stopped, immediately regretting almost getting into why exactly I’d come.

  “To what?” Vance prodded.

  “Oh, nothing.”

  “You really ought not to put yourself in such dangerous situations. What if it had been someone else here, someone else who would want to hurt you?”

  Although Vance had already urged me to start on my way back to Everston, and I knew it was the best thing to do in our given situation, I couldn’t make my feet move. Instead, I asked, “What’s that you have there?”

  He shifted the books farther to his right side, as if I hadn’t already seen them. “Oh, nothing.” He smiled, purposefully matching my own vague answer to his previous question.

  “Were you reading?”

  “I was just looking through some books.”

  I’d never seen Vance Everstone look embarrassed before, but the blush that crept up his neck after he’d admitted so little, was quite a sight to behold. I forced my gaze from his neck to the books again. Boldly, I reached over and took them from his loose grip.

  The small one was a Bible, and the larger one, one of the hymnals from Everston that Dexter would bring out for the services during the warmer months.

  “I was looking for a certain hymn I’d heard months ago, but it’s like searching for a needle in a haystack. I don’t remember the title, only a few lines.”

  “What are the lines you remember?” I turned to the glossary at the back, ready for the challenge, hoping the words would trigger my memory, and I’d be able to find the hymn.

  He seemed even more ill at ease than he’d been before divulging the fact that he’d been searching for a hymn.

  I smiled. “You don’t need to sing the words to me; you can just tell me what they are.”

  “I couldn’t sing them if I tried. I don’t remember the notes,” he admitted. “That’s part of the reason I’m searching for the hymn. I wanted to learn to sing it, for the words I recall are often on my mind.” He took the Bible back, slipped a scrap of paper from between its pages and handed it to me. “I wrote them down.”

  In penciled, block letters I read, “Thy power, and Thine alone, can change the leopard’s spots and melt the heart of stone.”

  I held the paper and clos
ed my eyes, hoping for inspiration. As the words repeated in my mind, I let them sift through my memories. But all the while I couldn’t help but wonder why Vance would have had those specific words saved and written, treasured and hidden in his little blue Bible.

  That he had a Bible still surprised me. Had his heart of stone been melted? His spots changed? Why else would he—?

  Vance took hold of my hand, and my eyes flew open as he pried my gloved fingers from his paper and let go of me. “Never mind.” The open manner he’d been discussing the matter with me before was gone, replaced by a wall of stone. “Like you said, we shouldn’t be out here alone.”

  “I’ll remember, just give me a minute.” I flipped through the back pages of the hymnal.

  “You don’t need to help me. I need to help you. By following you at a safe distance through the woods back to Everston. Now.”

  As Vance walked passed me, I stood my ground, still silently repeating the words he’d written down. I knew the hymn. I’d sung it before, probably multiple times; I just needed to remember.

  As I scanned the titles, the notes were just barely coming to me. To get them just right, I decided to sing the words to myself, “Thy power and Thine alone, can change the leopard’s spots.” I stopped mid-sentence and said, “Actually, I don’t think it’s leopard’s spots you mean, but rather, leper’s spots,” and then I started over, each note coming back to me stronger than the last, until I got to the final line which I had to repeat, “And melt the heart of stone…and melt the heart of stone…and melt the heart of stone.”

  I spun around as I recalled the next words—the title of the hymn—and found Vance clutching his Bible in his fist, staring at me, looking as if he were vexed, instead of thankful.

  “Jesus Paid it All.” I said the words now, instead of singing them.

  “Thanks.” He shook his head slightly, which completely transformed the vexed look into something ultimately blander, which I didn’t at all care for. Then he stepped back toward me, reached for the hymnal and gently tried to pull it from my grasp.

  But I kept ahold of it, and we ended up holding it between us.

  “You have an amazing voice.” His words were surprising, especially after the array of opposing expressions he had displayed before saying as much.

  “Thank you.” I opened the book, found the title in the back and turned to the page the hymn was on. Then I handed him the book. “There it is. You said you had trouble recalling the notes.”

  “I’m not likely to forget them now, not after hearing you sing them.”

  Now it was my turn to blush, and I truly hated that I’d let him get to me with such an easy compliment. He was a flirt, wasn’t he? A flirt with a heart of stone—but maybe not anymore? What all did that mean?

  “You really have changed your spots, haven’t you?” I said, hoping to draw him out.

  “You could say that, but it actually hasn’t been me doing the changing at all—only receiving the blessings of the change Christ has been doing in me.”

  I felt something strange melt in my own heart at such unexpected words. Was this really the disreputable Vance Everstone saying such things?

  “So, you’re implying you’re not really as bad as your reputation might suggest?”

  “My reputation…you can probably believe all of what you’ve heard. And you might as well.”

  “How can you be two such different men? The one I’ve heard all about, and the one standing before me?”

  “There’s a verse regarding that, isn’t there? I can’t remember the reference off the top of my head, but I remember reading, or at least hearing, something about becoming a new creation.”

  “So, you’ve only just become a Christian and turned from—”

  “The absolute deplorable way I’d been living my life? Yes.”

  “How did it happen? What made you—?”

  “It’s actually a long and complicated story, and one your innocent ears are much too sweet to be tainted by hearing.” Vance turned, almost as if he now couldn’t face me.

  “But your heart—?”

  “We need to get you back to Everston. You head up the hill, and I’ll follow.”

  I swallowed nervously, a little relieved he’d decided me too naive to hear what he could have said. I spun around without another word and started off in the direction I’d come not twenty minutes before. I had heard rumors enough about how he’d ruined a number of young women over the years and refused to marry them; how he’d been in Europe evading responsibilities at home with his family. Was that when he’d met his wife?

  It sounded as if it was a relatively recent change he’d made, and although he seemed entirely repentant of his previous ways, he seemed to struggle with the fact that his past was as awful as it was. Something must have hit him hard to have embraced Jesus as fully as he’d described. And if I were to guess what it was, I would wager it was the death of his wife that had made a difference.

  How he must have loved her.

  I’d walked a good thirty feet before I heard Vance advance through the leaves. I really hadn’t thought it likely that Ezra—or his friend—would come back any time soon after what they’d done the day before, but as I walked back to Everston under Vance’s guided supervision, I couldn’t help but feel the difference his presence made.

  I suddenly wondered if Vance would in fact be going with Dexter and Estella to Boston to see their brother, his wife and their new baby.

  By the time I’d made it to the front lawn of Everston, I wasn’t looking forward to the coming weeks or months. I hated that all of my new friends would be leaving so soon. Not that I minded working the front desk of Everston, but it was the company of the other employees that I didn’t quite fit into very well. I’d been raised to be a lady. Even if we hadn’t had as much money as the kind of people who stayed at Everston, I’d had a comfortable life before my parents both died within a week of each other, and Ezra took over The Hawthorne Inn.

  How things could change in such a short time! And now…now what did I have to look forward to? I apparently didn’t have any pull on keeping Ben in Laurelton, or he would have said something to me, wouldn’t he?

  I stopped at the steps to the veranda; the same place Vance had found me the evening before. It would have seemed rude to just go on my way after arriving, after all he’d shared with me at the hollow. Vance finally caught up with me in front of the steps, and again, no one else was around. Everston was actually proving to be quite boring during the off season, even in the middle of the afternoon.

  It had started to snow on the walk back and I dusted the snowflakes off the front of my long coat as Vance walked up to me. I didn’t know why he made me feel so self-conscious.

  “I tried to catch up to you once we neared Everston, but you just kept blazing ahead.”

  “Sorry. I guess I was cold.” Which wasn’t the truth at all. For some reason I had such an urge to both run away from Vance Everstone and his intense black eyes, as well as run to him for protection.

  As if he would want to protect me. Which wasn’t really the case, I was sure. He was such a quandary. And every time he opened his mouth, he made me want to know more and more about him.

  Vance came closer, putting a hand on the railing beside me. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you, or rather, ask you since I found you here yesterday.”

  When he didn’t go on, a million thoughts raced through my mind. What could he possibly mean?

  “Yes?” I asked, for he still didn’t seem too eager to say whatever it was.

  “About Ezra. Do you…do you happen to know how he keeps The Hawthorne Inn going?”

  “You mean besides the obvious?” For the first time, I briefly wondered whether Vance had ever frequented the brothel—my degraded home. I shook the thought away; I didn’t want to think on those things. It was no good. “Why? What does he do?”

  “I’m sure he does any number of rotten things besides the fact, but he gamble
s quite a lot. And wins.”

  “Do you think his gambling problem has something to do with what he did to my hair?” I reached up into the wool hat and grasped the strands of my short blonde hair behind my ear.

  “I think so. He’d talk about you often when he was drunk—and he was almost always drunk when he was playing poker.”

  “So, you were there too?” I couldn’t shake the thought away this time. “Gambling? Playing poker with Ezra?”

  “A few times, but I had my reasons beyond the thrill of the win. I…there was something he’d bet and lost, and I’d been trying to win it back. Without much luck.”

  “That’s very noble of you, Vance,” I used his first name as he’d asked me to, although I’d gone back to formalities the night before when he’d been so moody. “But what does that have to do with yesterday?”

  “Just forget I brought it up.” At his sudden abruptness, I recalled why I’d gone back to calling him Mr. Everstone instead of Vance. As much as I wanted to find out more about him and to keep asking him questions, his brick wall would go up without a warning in the middle of our exchanges, and it frustrated me to no end.

  And since that wall usually signaled the end of our conversations, I decided to bid him good day and be on my way back to the dormitory. Which he allowed, of course. It wasn’t as if he had anything more to say to me.

  4

  Mrs. Ava Cagney

  “It is very hard to say the exact truth,

  even about your own immediate feelings.”

  —George Eliot, Adam Bede

  Thursday, March 31st, 1892

  I spent much of my free time during the following week alone, working at finding ways to make my hair presentable. I had become quite good at fixing it so that its odd length wasn’t something anyone would particularly notice.