Blessing

by Lyn Cote

  “That’s why he sent me away to school!” Shock quivered through him.

  “Yes. I never asked him to, Gerard. But frankly it was the right decision at the time, and not only for Stoddard’s sake. We almost lost your mother that year—she could hardly rise from her bed. She couldn’t have been a mother to you for several years after that severe bout of her ailment.”

  The thought that his father had not sent him to school out of selfishness or spite—but rather for nobler reasons—astounded Gerard. He still couldn’t move.

  “Let me explain how it was.” His aunt tugged at his arm and they began walking again.

  He obeyed but could barely feel his boots touching the ground.

  “My dear love, Stoddard’s father, had died of cholera, and when I could no longer stand living with my parents, I allowed them to finesse me into marrying a much older and reasonably wealthy man I didn’t love. Eventually, I discovered that my second husband married me only to gain an heir. But I never gave him a child, and in the end, ironically he made a will leaving all his wealth to Stoddard, the stepchild he’d avoided for over a decade.”

  Gerard chewed on this new perspective of the past.

  As they arrived at the grocer’s, Aunt Fran’s confidences ended. She walked to the counter, and presently the basket on Gerard’s arm was filled with staples such as eggs, cornmeal, salt, pepper, sugar, and flour.

  Gerard wanted to ask many questions but couldn’t find his tongue. For the first time he began to view his father as a person like him who’d made choices—some good, some bad—and then lived with them.

  Outside again, Aunt Fran pulled out a slip of paper and read the address. Moments later they were entering the neighborhood of Little Africa.

  “I presume the new widow is a woman of color,” Gerard commented, noticing the aftermath of the riot still plainly visible in the rubble littering the streets and the handful of burned-out dwellings.

  “Yes, though I’m sure if I looked, I could find a needy widow in most any part of this city. Maybe that will be my work.” Aunt Fran glanced around and approached an older man sitting on a bench at the front of his modest home. She inquired about the widow’s address, and he rose, directing them to the right house, a one-room cabin that looked like it had been built by an original Ohio pioneer fifty years ago.

  A young woman opened the door and stared at Gerard and Aunt Fran.

  “Blessing Brightman gave me your name and said you needed help,” Aunt Fran said by way of introduction.

  “Miz Brightman sent you?” the woman replied.

  “Yes. I brought some items that any housewife can use, but what else do you need?”

  Gerard entered the cabin and joined the widow and Aunt Fran, seated on kitchen chairs.

  Just like Scotty at the orphanage, the woman’s children gathered around Gerard’s knees, staring up at him. One of the little girls climbed onto his lap. When her mother protested, Gerard smiled and raised a hand. He began talking to the children about whatever they brought up.

  “What I really need is work,” the widow said finally. “I can sew real good and I bake a good cake.”

  “I will spread the word,” Aunt Fran said.

  “Thank you, ma’am. That’s kind of you.”

  A few more minutes of conversation, and Gerard and Aunt Fran bid her good day.

  When they were a couple of blocks along, Gerard finally found the words he wanted to say. “Why didn’t you tell me all that about your past earlier?”

  She paused and eyed him with a mix of amusement and exasperation. “You don’t know?”

  He shook his head no.

  “My dear nephew, I’m sure that you want to marry Blessing Brightman. And it is by far the most intelligent thought you’ve ever had. Now, my advice: you need to figure out what is stopping you. Is it your past? Is it something else? Whatever it is, fix it.”

  No, he wasn’t the one stopping matters, but he didn’t say that. “Fix it?” Fix Blessing Brightman?

  “Yes, exactly.” She began walking briskly toward home.

  He grumbled silently but hurried to keep up with her, the now-empty oak basket banging against his side. The discomfort mimicked his frustration over Blessing’s refusal to entertain his proposal.

  Then, as he kept pace with his aunt, who appeared to be in a great hurry to get back to her home, he thought about her advice—“Fix it.”

  How was that possible in such a situation? Could he fix all the obstacles between himself and Blessing on his own?

  MAY 16, 1849

  Bouncing the eight-month-old, squirming-to-get-down Daniel Lucas in her arms, Blessing watched as the judge signed the papers making the baby her legal son, her legal heir.

  In the judge’s chamber, Tippy and Stoddard stood to one side of her. Tippy was pale and thin but smiling at this occasion, her first time in public since her convalescence. Ducky Hughes, wearing an obviously new dress, stood on Blessing’s other side.

  And behind her gathered Blessing’s beaming family, who’d all come to celebrate the new member of their family. Rebecca clung to Caleb’s arm; this was her first family gathering away from Sharpesburg. She’d been worried about coming so close to the docks but had decided to be brave. She had a husband with a large family for protection now.

  Yet, for Blessing, a persistent weight overlaid today’s joy. She crafted a smile and brought it to her face. Gerard Ramsay would not be here with her for this happy moment. She disliked this reality but could not deny it.

  The judge finished the paperwork and said, “I hope this child realizes what you’ve done for him today. And never causes you to regret it.”

  The implied judgment that a bastard orphan would probably only cause her grief nettled Blessing like a sharp stone in her shoe. She mentally shook it out. The conflicting emotions of today clogged her throat.

  “He’s one lucky child indeed.” It was Ramsay’s voice, coming from behind.

  Trembling within, she whirled around to see him just inside the room, leaning against the doorjamb nonchalantly as if he’d been invited.

  Tippy leaned close. “I told Gerard about today,” she whispered into Blessing’s ear. “It’s time you faced him. Don’t be foolish. Gerard Ramsay isn’t Richard Brightman.”

  Her friend’s words startled her, made her mute. But fortunately the agenda for the day had already been set. She moved forward with it, ignoring—or trying to ignore—Ramsay’s presence.

  Soon everyone sat around Blessing’s dining room table for a festive meal. Blessing had been annoyed to see that even before they’d arrived, Salina had set a place for Ramsay at the table. Everyone seemed to be one step ahead of her.

  For his part, Gerard let Blessing hide behind her family and the occasion, biding his time. If nothing else, the way she refused to look at him said tomes and revealed her awareness of his presence. Oh, Blessing, you’re acting like a silly schoolgirl. He found it charming.

  The legal document he’d commissioned Alan Lewis to draw up warmed his pocket. He couldn’t wait to witness Blessing’s reaction to it.

  Finally the meal—capped by a sumptuous wild-strawberry cake topped with fresh whipped cream—had been fully appreciated, the well wishes had been spoken, and everyone left, all casting parting glances at Blessing and him.

  While Blessing walked her parents to their wagon, Gerard purposefully moved to the rear parlor, settled in, and waited for Blessing to capitulate and come deal with him. Alone.

  She finally entered the room. “Ramsay,” she reprimanded him politely, “I’m very much fatigued, so I must ask thee—”

  With aplomb, he lifted the prepared document from his inner pocket and handed it to her. “I need you to sign this.” He read the surprise and reluctance to accept it in her expression, so he shook the paper, insisting she take it.

  Blessing finally claimed it as if picking up a snake by the tail. After glaring at him for a moment, she sat in the chair opposite him. She nervously smoothed the documen
t on her lap.

  “You’ll have to read it. It can’t speak aloud,” he teased.

  Frowning, she bent over the legal document.

  Gerard watched intently for her reaction.

  As she read, her lips parted in disbelief. At the end she looked across at him and then down again. “I don’t understand.”

  Her tentative response energized him. “What’s not to understand? I am in love with you, Blessing. I want to marry you.”

  She tried to interrupt.

  He refused to let her. “You said if you married, you would give up your independence, lose all your legal rights—and you were correct. The way the laws now stand, your point is valid. I don’t like it, but we must work with what we have.” He pinned her with his gaze. “So I’ve promised in this agreement that I will never treat you as if you’re of less value than I am merely because you were born female.”

  She began to speak.

  He held up a hand, forestalling her. “I will never expect you to become my shadow, to become powerless. As the document states, I will not claim any right to control or possess the property you bring into the marriage, and I grant you complete partnership in whatever property I have or will gain.”

  Blessing felt her eyebrows rise with each statement he made. Still, she could not miss the fact that his words were confident but his tone revealed not only how important this agreement was, but also how important she was to him. “Ramsay, I—”

  “Your family’s lawyer, Alan Lewis, assures me that this document would stand up in any court. You will lose nothing by marrying me. And I hope you might gain something. I’m not much, but I love you.” He cleared his throat, then waited for her response.

  Pressing her lips shut, Blessing gazed at him. Why had he done this, stripped away her defenses? And then her stomach began to churn. With this unexpected act, he’d taken away one of the main protests she could voice in opposition to marrying him.

  The more private reason she could never trust herself to marry flared within. She felt as if the power of it were dragging her down. Her pulse throbbed in her temples.

  “You look ill, Blessing.”

  She grasped for another objection. “If I marry thee, I will be put out of the meeting again.”

  He stared at her, considering this.

  And Blessing was relieved. Gerard Ramsay would never become a Quaker. She was safe.

  “Blessing, I have always vaguely believed in God but have not often felt close to him. I think that had to do more with my father than the heavenly Father.” He glanced down. “Perhaps the man I’ve become since meeting you would fit better in your meeting than the man I was before. Hearing Frederick Douglass, James Bradley, and especially Sojourner Truth . . .” He shook himself. “I can’t shut away what their words revealed. I can’t forget the look on that young female slave’s face that day at your parents’ home. Or the mocking and cruelty of those slave catchers. I’m not the same man I was when I stepped off the steamboat here last September. I confess now that God is real and demands that we be real too. And you must see I’m finally aware of more than just myself, my petty problems. I will give your meeting a try, Blessing. And not only for your sake . . . for my own.”

  Nonplussed, Blessing stared, cornered. “I’m sorry. I cannot marry again.”

  “Why? What do you have to lose now?” He edged forward on his seat.

  Her mouth stuttered, opening and closing several times. “I-I . . .”

  Ramsay studied her. “Smith knew your husband.”

  The mention of that man jolted her. She gasped.

  “Is that why you won’t wed a second time? Because Brightman ignored your advice and became a puppet of Smith?” He pressed her with his words, but he did it with compassion, in a way she couldn’t rebuff. Tears wet her eyes and her resistance began to melt. Not only had Ramsay changed over the past months; she now knew she had as well. She’d fallen in love against her will. Her resistance collapsed.

  “Ramsay, I married unwisely. I was so young, barely eighteen. I was swayed by the promise of life in the big city, dazzled by Richard’s good looks, charm, and wealth. He pursued me single-mindedly, relentlessly. Richard Brightman opened an entirely new world to me. . . . I only knew him a few months before we married—against my parents’ counsel.”

  “What happened?” he asked, so gently.

  She pressed a handkerchief to her moist eyes and pursed her trembling lips. She did not want to explain, but this was Ramsay.

  He’d helped her rescue Rebecca, who was now a member of her family.

  He’d saved Theodosia and her children in the riots.

  He’d played ball with the orphans.

  He’d liberated the young runaway from the slave catchers.

  He’d comforted Stoddard when they’d nearly lost Tippy.

  And now he’d proposed marriage and offered to protect her rights in writing.

  He deserved the truth.

  She gathered her courage and will. “Richard always meant well, but he could not handle his liquor. And when he drank, he became mean and belligerent, a completely different person from the cheerful, easygoing man I thought I’d married. He became . . . abusive with me . . . physically.”

  Gerard blanched but said nothing, not wanting to stop her flow.

  “He promised each time this happened that it was the last time.” She sighed in little hitches. “But Smith made certain—” her tone hardened—“that various temptations always brought Richard back to the docks.”

  Gerard took her hand for a moment. “Thank you for revealing that to me.” Thank you for fighting Smith on my behalf as I took dangerous chance after dangerous chance in becoming involved with him.

  She nodded and looked down. All the truth must come out now. She needed to give Gerard all the facts before they made an irrevocable decision. “Did thee hear Smith accuse me of killing my husband?”

  “The man was deranged.”

  Blessing drew in a deep breath, preparing to expose what she’d never revealed to anyone else. But after going to such lengths to propose marriage, Ramsay deserved her honesty.

  “The night my husband died, he came home drunk yet again. He’d promised me he would come straight home from the brewery that evening and not go down to the docks. But as I waited, I finally decided I would leave him. I would humble myself and go home to Sharpesburg and live with my parents. It was in the early hours of the morning, and I met him on the second-floor landing.”

  Gerard couldn’t speak for the suffering he read on her face, heard in her voice.

  “I told him I was leaving him, and we fought. He was cursing me and . . . striking me. I had never hit back before, but this time I did. I shouldn’t have. It surprised him and put him off-balance. He staggered and fell down the stairs. He broke his neck at the bottom.” She inhaled a sharp breath. “He died instantly.”

  Gerard put his hands over his eyes as if he could shut out the image she’d portrayed. “Oh, Blessing.”

  “I never meant to hurt him. I just reached the end of my rope and struck back. I know I didn’t intend for him to die. If he’d kept his promise to me and come home early that evening as he should have, he wouldn’t have died. And if he’d come home sober, he wouldn’t have been unsteady on his feet.”

  She wiped away her tears but they continued to fall. “Nor would he have been argumentative. I married a man I shouldn’t have. And then he died while we fought. All these things I know. And most important, I know God has forgiven me. Yet I can’t get over . . . the guilt.” Her voice broke. “What’s left over,” she echoed Rebecca’s words.

  Gerard sat silently, going over her revelation, considering what to say. The sound of Blessing’s subdued weeping twisted his nerves. “I understand your guilt,” he began. “A woman like you with a very tender conscience would of course feel guilt. However, I doubt any honest grand jury would even indict you, when the incident was clearly accidental and the result of defense against bodily harm. But what do
es this matter to me? To us?”

  She lifted a bewildered gaze to him. “What?”

  Certainty surged through him. “I won’t dismiss your feelings. But why should we pay the price for your first husband’s incredible stupidity? He was married to a woman like you and he preferred Smith and his enticements? Please. I was foolish at first but I was able to learn. I want you for my wife, my helpmeet, my joy for life. Are you going to let Smith win this final battle—from his grave?”

  Blessing blinked away the moisture in her eyes.

  “I am committed to the orphanage, as you know,” he continued. “And I’ll work with you for women’s suffrage and abolition. I will not violate your rights and am willing to attend the Quaker meeting with you, to seek Christ and ask God to make himself known to me. I’m offering you my heart and my commitment for life. Will you turn away? Are you going to be as foolish as your husband?” He leaned forward and tapped the paper in her lap. “Sign this agreement and we’ll begin planning our wedding.”

  She clasped her handkerchief like a lifeline.

  A moment passed as he let her digest what he’d just said. Then he continued, “Why should what happened in your past make us miserable?”

  Her expression changed as if a light had been kindled within her, rays of sun bursting through storm clouds. “I hadn’t thought about it that way.” She eased forward. “Smith took his own life and destroyed so many others’, but not ours.”

  Gerard couldn’t hold back his joy. It filled him, warm and buoyant. “Good, because I’m not going to take no for an answer. And people might talk if they see me carrying you kicking and fighting to our wedding.”

  Blessing laughed, and it felt good, a release of tension. Joy lifted her to her feet. The paper fell to the carpet, and she knew she wouldn’t have to sign it. Gerard meant every promise. She opened her arms. “Gerard, kiss me.”

  Gerard sprang to his feet and pulled her close. “I am happy to obey you, ma’am.” He folded her into his arms with all the tenderness he felt for her. He kissed her once lightly and then drew her tighter to him and kissed her again, promising everything with his lips.