The Orchard House

by Heidi Chiavaroli

  I didn’t know what to say to that. She’d asked for my opinion.

  “Yet I agreed to the changes. There really is no excuse.” She exhaled with a huff. “I only wish I had done better justice to my own idea. In the end I heartily believe it, am willing to be blamed for it, and am not sorry I wrote it.”

  “You made me feel, that much is certain. I couldn’t decide which I wanted—Sylvia and Adam to live happily ever after or Sylvia and Geoffrey. Even so, I feel you did give us a happy ever after for Sylvia and Adam in a sense, and that is what upset me.”

  “You didn’t wish for them to be together, even in death?”

  I swallowed.

  “Don’t be bashful now, Johanna. I can only respect you if you come by it through an honest means. Now is a perfect opportunity.”

  “Very well, then.” I smoothed a stray piece of hair behind my ear. “I felt you cheated us—and your characters—by selecting the solution of death to let them be together. It was entirely too Shakespearean for my tastes. You let them all grow in the story into their most noble selves, and yet in some ways, I felt Sylvia and Adam had the simple way out in death.”

  “Death is simple now, is it?”

  I widened my eyes at her. She’d asked! I refused to back down now. “Not simple in reality, but a means of a simple solution for your story. Poor Geoffrey is who I felt sorry for. How much more authentic for Sylvia to persist in honoring her marriage vows despite her tangled feelings for Adam? What if the happy ending was not death, but the finding of a true love within the bonds of marriage?”

  Louisa had grown quiet, and I grew uncomfortable.

  “I have hurt you,” I said.

  She exhaled. “Just my pride, and that has been hurt before.”

  “Forgive me. I should have insisted on staying quiet.”

  “I asked, and I think at the heart, you are right. Entirely too romantic, but right.”

  I smiled. “Is it marriage in general you are against or simply how it can lead to a lifetime of sorrow if too hastily enacted?”

  She straightened. “I am a hearty proponent of a smart marriage that is thought and prayed upon. But I fear ladies as a whole are too insistent upon making a match for superficial reasons or for the simple fact that it is their expected course.”

  “Was Geoffrey not a worthy man for Sylvia to be married to? If one were to follow the fickle heart, would not one be constantly questioning the vows one has made?”

  “So you do not believe in a single, true love for a woman’s heart?”

  I leaned my head back in the chair, looked out the window. I thought of Bryant, who had pursued me throughout school. He helped his parents run their farm, attended church every week, had grown into an upright and godly man. Yet was that enough of a reason to succumb to his advances when my heart was not drawn to him? Was there a man out there intended just for me, and if I didn’t find him, would my one chance at true happiness forever be lost?

  “I suppose I don’t. I suppose I believe in true love, but more so I believe in the perseverance of two hearts to unite as one despite the obstacles that oppose their union.”

  I wondered if Louisa had ever loved a man. I wondered if she believed her chance at love had been taken from her or if she simply wrote to justify her stance as a single woman. Despite the passion I felt from her, I also felt a barricade—a vulnerability and likely a past hurt that she wouldn’t share.

  I decided it best to let the subject lie dead.

  “Are you upset with me, then?” I asked.

  “Quite the contrary, in fact. I appreciate your honesty. Was there anything else? I do welcome it.”

  I shook my head. “No . . . I found the story captivating. I suppose it just didn’t sit well with me for some reason.”

  We continued on with our handwork before she spoke. “Why don’t we turn the tables, Johanna? Tell me of your castles in the air.”

  I grasped my needle tight. “Pardon?”

  “My sisters and I used to dream up what we wanted for our futures. Our castles in the air. Tell me, what is it you dream of?”

  “I . . . I’m not accustomed to voicing such thoughts aloud.”

  “And why not? Why is it that the men should have all the dreams and we should be nothing but their encouragement?”

  “Is it such a terrible thing to support one’s husband?”

  “Of course not. But is it such a terrible thing to have our own ambitions and goals? Come, there must be something that calls your heart.”

  I inhaled a great breath of air, sucked it in all the way to my belly. “I admit I was excited to come to Massachusetts, a place of such high esteem in the literary community, because I’m quite fond of poetry.”

  Her mouth fell open just a bit. “Are you? That is wonderful! I’ve always been a better patriot than poet myself, but when I was at Fruitlands—Papa and Mr. Lane’s Utopian society—and all of us being much tried and stretched, living on unleavened bread, water, apples, and discontent, I would get to sleep saying poetry. I enjoyed Phillis Wheatley a great deal.”

  “Oh yes, I as well. Such an inspiration she is!”

  “Have you tried your hand at some?”

  I nodded. “Please know I don’t expect anything from you, Louisa. I didn’t come here to be taken under your wing or any such thing.”

  “Fiddlesticks! I don’t care if you did. I should be glad to help. And you will help me, won’t you? Iron sharpens iron. And if ever I am tempted to allow a publisher to change my works when they are not within my heart, I expect you to talk me out of it.”

  I expelled a great breath of air. “I—yes . . . of course.”

  She shook out Mr. Alcott’s breeches, which she had been mending. “It’s settled then.”

  Now I grabbed up another handkerchief to hang on the line, thinking that I had just under two weeks until Louisa left for her grand adventure. She’d asked to read my poems, and I told her I would think on it. I had given her criticism, and she had taken it well. I wasn’t certain I could do the same.

  And yet something about our agreement—an odd sort of partnership—made me feel all the more welcome, as if some strange sort of destiny or perhaps the Lord Himself had led me to this place, this time, this family. They were an odd bunch, but miracle of miracles, I felt at home among them, as if I belonged. At the same time I felt the freedom to explore who I could become on my own. It was one of the greatest feelings in the world.

  A gust of wind ripped the handkerchief from my hands and sent it flying across the gardens. “Oh!”

  I picked my way around orchids and chrysanthemums and tomato plants. The handkerchief had settled on a patch of clover, but when I stooped to pick it up, another squall of wind skirted it away.

  “Blast!” I took off running again. This time I spotted a young man walking down the drive on the adjoining property. The handkerchief traversed the wooden gate. The man’s gaze met my own and he held up his hand in greeting or as if to say, “I’ll get it.”

  I smiled in gratitude, watched him jog a couple of easy steps to where the piece of disobedient laundry sat at the bottom of a pine. He scooped it up. I brushed my hair out of my eyes and crossed the remaining distance to him.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  He doffed his hat, revealing a head of blond curls and eyes the color of the bluest lake. “It is my pleasure.” He held the handkerchief out and I took it, even as I tried not to be taken aback by his charming good looks.

  “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure, miss.”

  I dipped my head. “I’ve only just arrived at Orchard House, sir. My name is Johanna Suhre.”

  “Miss Suhre.” He bowed to me and I felt my face color. He straightened. “My name is Nathan. Nathan Bancroft. I live just up the way.” He pointed to a large house set back from the road a bit. “Are you here for a visit?”

  “Long-term, as far as I can tell.” At the words, an ache for home and Mother and George and our nights before the fire started in my ch
est. I was happy to be on my adventure, but no letter from Pennsylvania had reached me yet. For the first time I understood what John felt when waiting for word from home while in the army. “I’m employed at Orchard House while Miss Alcott travels abroad.”

  “That woman doesn’t approve of staying still much, does she?” He winked at me, and I felt my face flush again. A desire to defend Louisa came upon me, though I wondered if there was even cause for it. Certainly Mr. Bancroft only wanted to make conversation.

  “I—I don’t know. I suppose she wants to live life.”

  “And what of you, Miss Suhre? Do I detect a hint of an accent? Are you a wanderer like our Louisa?”

  Our Louisa. He was familiar with Louisa and the Alcotts, then. Quite familiar, it seemed. “I am from Pennsylvania. Louisa met my brother in Washington during the war.”

  He nodded, and though I had decided to put my guard up when it came to Mr. Bancroft, I couldn’t help but study his fine features and gentlemanly dress, so unlike the farming boys I knew back home.

  “It seems you do not approve of standing still much either, then, Miss Suhre. Are you ‘living life,’ as you put it?”

  I lifted my chin. “I suppose I am, the best I know how.”

  His gaze fell to the handkerchief in my hand, and for a reason I couldn’t quite pin down, I felt ashamed.

  “If I can ever be of any assistance in helping you live your life, say in the form of a walk into town or a carriage ride to Walden Pond, please do not hesitate to flag me down with your laundry again.” He tipped his hat and was off.

  I stared after him, holding the handkerchief tight, something in my belly stirring. I wondered about Mr. Bancroft, if the opportunity would indeed come for me to take a walk or a carriage ride with him, if I would enjoy doing so. I wondered what his interests were, if he lived alone in the big house up the drive. He seemed like no other man I’d ever known. I couldn’t help but think of kind, unassuming Bryant. Of his hand in one pocket of his overall, sun shining on his sweaty brow, his question stretching between us, feeling out the possibility of a life together.

  “You think you could ever love me, Johanna Suhre?”

  I hadn’t answered. Instead, I’d sent Louisa a letter agreeing to come to Massachusetts.

  I walked around the gardens and back to the clothesline, where I finished hanging the rest of the laundry. I took the basket into the kitchen. Mrs. Alcott stood over the stove boiling potatoes while Louisa pulled a loaf of bread from the oven.

  I imagined the simple fare we would partake of shortly—potatoes, bread, perhaps some strawberries from the garden. My stomach rumbled. By far, the thing I missed most about home was eating meat—something the Alcotts did not partake in. Though I was only beginning to grasp the edges of Mr. Alcott’s many beliefs, I knew that he was a transcendentalist, that he believed the state of human perfection possible and something to be pursued. The pursuit of this state involved many things, one being the absence of meat at the table. He did not believe animals should be oppressed, and considered killing them violent.

  I could understand this philosophy in my head, and yet when dinnertime came and only an assortment of vegetables and potatoes filled my plate, I found my understanding slipping.

  A knock sounded on the kitchen door and Louisa peered out the top half of the screen. A mother in a threadbare cotton dress with a babe on her hip stood staring in at us. She couldn’t have been much older than I, but something in her eyes told me she had tenfold more life experience, and perhaps even wisdom, about her. I watched Louisa smile and greet her by name before turning to the golden loaf that was to feed five adults and two babes and cutting a generous portion—nearly half—for the woman at the door.

  Not without some shame, my stomach twisted. The same happened every night, and Louisa never ventured to make more bread. I could only surmise that the family, while not in such a needy state as the beggar woman at the door, was not so well-off as I had first assumed. I couldn’t help but wonder if Louisa had used the last of her proceeds from Hospital Sketches to buy my fare here so that her mother would have help whilst she was away.

  Even so, my pay, though meager, came at the end of each week, as regular as the grandfather clock in Mr. Alcott’s study.

  I didn’t realize I was staring at the warm bread Louisa gave the beggar woman until she spoke. “Perhaps you’ll work on these green beans for us, Johanna?”

  I shook my head into straights, admonished myself for begrudging the bread given to a needy, nursing mother. “She’s come every day. Does she not have a husband who will provide for her?”

  “He was wounded in the war. Lost an arm. He hasn’t been able to find suitable work since he came home.”

  Guilt pierced my chest. How could I think only of my own rumbling belly when those so much more needy than I came to the Alcott home for help? As far as I could tell, they had never turned any away. Seemed to follow the late President Lincoln’s encouragement to “bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan.”

  Charity for all.

  In short, love for all.

  I’d never seen it lived out as I did in the Alcott home. And while I knew part of the reasoning was that this was a way to Mr. Alcott’s state of perfection, I saw also how it was more than that—how Louisa and her mother cared for this woman and her family on a more personal level.

  I pondered Mr. Alcott burrowed away in his study at that moment, perusing his many books and coming up with his ideas. He wouldn’t emerge until dinner, and yet I couldn’t help but wonder how the family might be better off had Mr. Alcott pursued regular work instead of whiling away his hours in his study. For the first time, I glimpsed marriage through Louisa’s eyes. I was beginning to see why she might be so set against it—to her, even a marriage of love might very well be a sort of bondage.

  I looked out the window to the large house up the adjoining drive. I snapped a green bean and then another. Did Mr. Bancroft sit in a study most of the day? What business did he attend?

  “I met Mr. Bancroft this afternoon,” I ventured.

  Mrs. Alcott raised her brow from where she stood, poking a knife into a potato boiling on the stove. “Did you now?”

  I nodded.

  “I suppose he tipped his hat to give you a good glimpse of his curls?” Louisa said.

  My mouth fell open.

  “Louy!” her mother implored.

  Louisa shrugged her shoulders. “He possesses a tendency to do that, is all.”

  I turned back to my green beans. I shouldn’t have brought up the neighbor apparently.

  “So he did, didn’t he?” Louisa appeared at my side, stuck her face in view of my green beans, a playful look upon it.

  A smile crept onto my lips, and then a giggle escaped.

  “I knew it!” she said.

  “I’m sure he only meant to be friendly in doffing his hat.” I snapped a green bean and placed the ends on a dish towel. Later, I would dump the refuse into the compost pile in the back of the yard.

  “Oh, I’m certain,” she said in such a sarcastic way that it got me to laughing again.

  “Don’t you like him?”

  “I like him fine enough as a neighbor. As a friend I’ve found him a bit too cocky for my tastes.”

  “Are there any men in existence of which you approve?” I asked, only half-teasingly.

  Louisa sliced the bread on a wooden cutting board. “Of course there are—unfortunately they seem too few and far between. Take your brother. My regard is high when it comes to him, for it was well deserved. He was filled with humility and grace, and though ten times more handsome than Mr. Bancroft, not one smile or dimple was wasted in attempts to charm the nurses.”

  I swallowed. She spoke truth about John. A better man I would probably never know. In some ways, I’d realized he did not belong of the earth to begin with. I oft wondered if that was why the Lord had chosen to call him home so soon. Better to t
hink such things than to think my brother a mere casualty of war.

  “As for others,” Louisa continued, “I think tremendously much of Mr. Emerson, who has always been generous with me and allowed me to borrow from his grand library. I adored Mr. Thoreau also, bless his departed soul. He helped me think in different and new ways about our world—he showed me the depths of true creativity. My dear friend Alf, who used to help us perform our plays but has since moved away, is another. And now that I’ve somewhat forgiven him for stealing our Nan away, John is an absolute love. And Father, of course.”

  I noticed how she hadn’t thought to include her father until the end. While there was no question she loved the man, I had quickly discerned a myriad of feelings she held toward the patriarch of the family—pity and gratitude mixed with a disguised dose of annoyance and frustration.

  “I see,” I said.

  I wanted to ask more about Mr. Bancroft but decided that to express my interest would not be wise. And then Louisa’s sister Anna—or Nan, as they often called her—came bustling in with her two-year-old Frederick and her newborn babe, John, and I was entirely immersed in the serving of dinner, the ensuing conversation on the idea of “recess” for children during a school day, and amusing ourselves with little Freddie’s tiny antics at the table.

  By the time the dishes were cleared, I’d very nearly forgotten about Mr. Bancroft altogether.

  Very nearly.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Saw Nan [Anna] in her nest. . . . Very sweet and pretty, but I’d rather be a free spinster and paddle my own canoe.

  ~ LMA

  Johanna

  “DO HAVE A GRAND TIME, Louisa, and please write often.” I enveloped my friend in a hug and surprised myself by having to sniff back a few tears.