Blessing

by Lyn Cote

  Blessing at last gave in to the urge to draw near. She let herself lean against this man who offered her so much more than love. He pledged her respect and equality. Surely that was a true sign of a changed heart—two changed hearts, hers as well as his.

  Later that evening at the desk in his room at Mrs. Mather’s boardinghouse, Gerard penned a letter.

  Dear Father,

  I am writing to tell you that I am going to marry Blessing Brightman. I’m sure you recall her from Stoddard’s wedding. I will be working with her in her many causes and helping manage her considerable business holdings.

  I will invite you to the wedding, to take place in July, but will not be insulted if you don’t come.

  I have some advice for you. I suggest you sell the family business—I’m never going to take it over; I will never return to Boston. Then you should go to Manhattan. Live your life with your other family. I liked Bella and Lucille. Tell them you’ve retired from your enterprise, and spend time with them and enjoy their company. Why waste more time away from them? You might even find them understanding if you confessed the truth. I do not know. That’s up to you.

  I remind you that, when I visited, I told them my name and that I was a distant relative visiting from Cincinnati. That is the truth. We’ve always been distant relatives. I have resented you for most of my life, but I am free of that now. And I want you to be too.

  Confess your sin to God and he will forgive you. Don’t let the past ruin your life. I’m not.

  Yours sincerely,

  Gerard

  He read it over, sanded and sealed it.

  Kennan came to mind. Would he keep the secret? Gerard could only hope. However, it was his father’s worry, his father’s guilty sin. He had done what he could to dissuade Kennan from speaking out.

  Gerard was free. No longer a slave to his hatred of his father or to the past. He imagined his mother, and she was smiling and clapping. Mother, you would have loved Blessing. I do.

  JULY 19, 1849

  Blessing stood before the freestanding full-length mirror in Tippy’s bedroom. Blessing had ordered a new dress for her wedding—she’d chosen a deep royal blue and allowed herself to have it made in the latest style.

  Tippy, who’d insisted on hosting the wedding, came into the room and stood beside her. Tippy also wore a new dress in a shade of lavender lovely with her blonde hair and light complexion. “We’re pretty, aren’t we?”

  Chuckling, Blessing pressed her cheek to Tippy’s. Tippy was still very thin from her ordeal, but her color had come back and she was getting stronger in spite of the heat of July.

  “On this same day last summer in Seneca Falls, we would never have believed this could happen, would we? That you’d be marrying Gerard Ramsay today?”

  That was exactly why Blessing had chosen this day for her wedding. “And who would have thought we would become cousins by marriage?” Blessing slipped her arm around Tippy’s tiny waist. “Our children will play together.”

  A shadow crossed over Tippy’s face.

  “I’m sor—”

  “No,” Tippy cut her off, “I’m fine. Yes, our children will play together. Now let’s not keep the men waiting. The heat of the day is already building.” Tippy led her down the stairs and handed her a bouquet of daisies and pink roses.

  Blessing’s father, in his best summer suit, was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. He offered her his arm and kissed her cheek. “You look beautiful,” he signed.

  She blinked away tears as she signed, “I’m so glad thee, Mother, and the family are here for this wedding.”

  “We are too,” he replied, and escorted her into the parlor. Only Tippy, Stoddard, Aunt Fran, and Blessing’s and Joanna’s families were in attendance at the private ceremony. Gerard had been attending the meeting for the past two months, and he had already begun speaking to the elders about joining. Since Gerard had stated his sincere intention and proven faithful thus far, the elders had agreed that this private ceremony could take place.

  By the cold fireplace, next to the Presbyterian pastor from Tippy’s church, Gerard gazed at her as she took her place before him. She read the love in his eyes and drew in a deep breath so she wouldn’t cry. Her heart rejoiced, and she wished for once that she had a voice to sing.

  Then Aunt Royale broke the solemn silence and, as if reading Blessing’s thoughts, began to sing, “‘In that great gettin’ up mornin’, fare thee well. Fare thee well.’”

  And suddenly everyone was smiling. Blessing knew finally, fully, that she was forgiven and could look forward to a future filled with love and Gerard Ramsay. She sang in her heart, sang away the regret of the past: “‘Fare thee well. Fare thee well.’”

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  AS I RESEARCHED THIS BOOK, I found myself appalled by many nineteenth-century facts of life and events, primarily race riots and lack of women’s rights. First of all, would a mayor really incite a riot?

  Yes. In very real events, after an abolitionist press had been destroyed in downtown Cincinnati, Harriet Beecher Stowe, a resident of the city at the time, wrote, “The mayor was a silent spectator of these proceedings, and was heard to say, ‘Well, lads, you have done well, so far; go home now before you disgrace yourselves’; but the ‘lads’ spent the rest of the night and a greater part of the next day (Sunday) in pulling down the houses of inoffensive and respectable blacks.”

  And in a quote from an 1888 biography of Stowe, she recalls: “During the riots in 1836, when . . . free negroes were hunted like wild beasts through the streets of Cincinnati . . .”

  This was just one riot. Race riots took place in Cincinnati in 1829, 1836, and 1841. As a novelist, it’s my job to dramatically portray events, not merely report them. So I transported what happened in 1836 to the year 1848.

  If the attitude in the city toward black residents had changed in the twelve years between 1836 and 1848, I would not have felt free to move the event. However, the prejudice against free blacks had remained unchanged and, in fact, might be said to have increased. Cincinnati wanted trade with the South. The South resented the city’s being a pipeline in the Underground Railroad, and these kinds of tensions were among the factors that eventually led to the Civil War.

  Also, I again point out (as I did in Honor, the first book in this series) the injustice of widows not automatically inheriting property. Blessing only inherited her husband’s property because he unexpectedly made out a will in her favor.

  Otherwise his wealth would have gone to his nearest male relative, which could be a woman’s eldest son. If the son was still a child, a trustee would have been appointed to oversee the estate until the child came of age. These laws, which now seem medieval, only began to change in the US in the mid-1840s. Michigan and New York State were two of the early adopters, giving widows the right to inherit and control property.

  When I quoted Frederick Douglass saying that a discussion of the rights of animals would be met with more complacence than a discussion of the rights of women, I did not make that up. I know that, as a twenty-first-century woman, this is hard to believe. But sadly it’s true. The words attributed to James Bradley and Sojourner Truth are also historically authentic. You can readily find the full text of their respective speeches by searching for them online.

  Wives in the nineteenth century were legally invisible. A wife could not own property, keep her own wages, or complain if her husband beat her. Seen as less competent than men, women could even get away with certain crimes if their husbands were present—similar to our modern laws about juvenile crime.

  If you’ve never read the articles of the Declaration of Sentiments, which discusses all these inequities and was passed at the Seneca Falls Convention, where the story of Blessing and Gerard begins, you should. Here’s one address where you can find it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Sentiments. It’s also available, I’m sure, at your local library.

  I was especially struck by the sentiment that discusses a double st
andard:

  [Man] has created a false public sentiment by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated, but deemed of little account in man.

  To put it less formally, while a young man was expected to sow his wild oats, any similar indiscretion could banish a young woman for life from respectable society, “ruin” her. This is one of the injustices that Blessing chooses to work against.

  She knows that the majority of women who work in the brothels and walk the streets at the riverfront did not go there from choice but often after being abused or abandoned by men—or because of a lack of opportunity for education or meaningful work that paid enough to live on, another point included in the Declaration of Sentiments.

  And in light of her unhappy marriage, Blessing resents the fact that an abused woman has no legal recourse. At that time, if a woman sued for divorce, she could literally be put out on the street with no way to support herself and could lose all rights to her children. Chilling, isn’t it?

  I’m old enough to remember my own mother telling me that her mother was already a married woman with children when she gained the right to vote. Her point was that I should never miss voting in any election or I would be showing disrespect to those who had spent their lives working to raise the status of women.

  Blessing, as many other women did, decided not to accept the status quo but to work to change the laws that not only bound slaves but also women of any color. I’m sure Christ, who loves us all, approved of work like hers.

  In our modern world, it’s hard at times for me to believe that women on many continents are still abused and live subordinate lives without education or rights. I hope that when you consider organizations to support financially, you will choose some missions that are committed to bettering the status of women. God doesn’t love and respect one skin color over another any more than he loves men more than women.

  To quote Galatians 3:28—“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”

  HIGH OAKS PLANTATION

  TIDEWATER, MARYLAND

  AUGUST 1819

  Each time her grandfather struggled for another breath, Honor Penworthy’s own lungs constricted. She stood beside the second-story window, trying to breathe normally, trying to catch a breeze in the heat. Behind her, the gaunt man lay on his canopied bed, his heart failing him. How long must he suffer before God would let him pass on?

  Outside the window stretched their acres, including the tobacco fields, where dark heads covered with kerchiefs or straw hats bent to harvest the green-speared leaves. High Oaks—to her, the most beautiful plantation in Maryland. She felt a twinge of pain, of impending loss.

  “The edict was impractical. And your . . . father was a dreamer. But at least he had the sense to realize his irrational decision must be kept secret. Doesn’t that tell you not to carry it out?” Each word in this last phrase slapped her, and each cost him.

  Unable to ignore this challenge, she turned. In her grandfather’s youth, the Society of Friends had dictated that all Friends should free their slaves. “My father remained Quaker.” She said the bare words in a neutral voice, trying not to stir the still-smoldering coals.

  “I remained a Christian,” he fired back. “My forebears chose to leave the Anglican church to become Quaker. I chose to change back.”

  He’d made that choice because the Episcopal church didn’t press its members to emancipate their slaves. All of the other Quakers in the county had left except for a few older, infirm widows—women who’d lost control of their land to sons. As a single woman, however, Honor could inherit and dispose of property legally.

  Honor returned to his bedside. At the sight of her grandfather’s ravaged face, pity and love surged through her.

  As she approached, her grandfather’s mouth pulled down and his nose wrinkled as if he were tasting bitter fruit.

  Torn between love for her father and for her grandfather, she didn’t want to fight with him, not now. “My father loved thee,” she said to placate him.

  “That is beside the . . . point. He should never have asked that promise of you. It was cowardly.” He panted from the exertion.

  Honor gazed at him levelly. The memory of her father’s untimely and unnecessary death still had the power to sweep away her calm, but one couldn’t change history. Her grandfather’s comment could lead them into harsh recriminations. And it proved that he knew he’d done wrong and had chosen the wide way, not the narrow gate. She chose her words deftly. “I believe that my father was right.”

  Grandfather’s mouth tightened, twisted, not only because of her recalcitrance but also from a sudden pain. He gasped wildly for breath.

  If only it weren’t so hot. She slipped another white-cased down pillow under his chest and head, trying to ease his breathing. She blinked away tears, a woman’s weapon she disdained.

  “How will you . . . work the land without . . . our people?” he demanded in between gasps.

  “Thee knows I cannot. And that once they are gone, there will be no way I can hold the land.” She said the words calmly, but inside, fear frothed up. Freeing their slaves would irrevocably alter her life.

  He slapped the coverlet with his gnarled fist. “This estate has been Penworthy land for four generations. Will you toss aside the land your great-great-grandfather cleared by hand and fought the Cherokee for?”

  Honor felt the pull of her heritage, a cinching around her heart. “I know. It weighs on me,” she admitted.

  “Then why do it?”

  He forced her to repeat her reasons. “I gave my father my promise, and I agree with him.”

  Her grandfather made a sound of disgust, a grating of rusted hinges. Then he glared at her from under bushy, willful brows. “Things have changed since your father left us. Did you even notice that our bank failed this year?”

  The lump over Honor’s heart increased in weight, making it hard to breathe. “I am neither blind nor deaf. I am aware of the nationwide bank panic.”

  “Are you aware that we’ve lost our cash assets? We only have the land and the people to work the land. And debts.”

  “Debts?” That she hadn’t known.

  “Yes, debt is a part of owning a plantation. And I’m afraid last year’s poor crop put us in a bad situation even before the bank panic.”

  Honor looked into her grandfather’s cloudy, almost-blind eyes. “How bad?”

  “If you free our people and sell the land, you will have nothing worthwhile left.”

  A blow. She bent her head against one post of the canopied bed. The lump in her chest grew heavier still. “I didn’t think emancipation would come without cost.”

  “I don’t believe you have any idea of how much it will cost you.” Disdain vibrated in each word. “Who will you be if you free our people and sell the plantation? If you aren’t the lady of High Oaks?”

  She looked up at the gauzy canopy. “I’ll be Honor Penworthy, child of God.”

  “You will be landless, husbandless, and alone,” he railed. A pause while he gathered strength, wheezing and coughing.

  Honor helped him sip honey water.

  “I don’t want you in that vulnerable position,” he said in a much-gentler tone, his love for her coming through. “I won’t be here to protect you. You think that Martin boy will marry you, but he won’t. Not if you give up High Oaks.”

  Alec Martin had courted her, but no, she no longer thought they would marry. A sliver of a different sort of pain pierced her.

  The floor outside the door creaked, distracting them. Honor turned at the sound of footsteps she recognized. “Darah?” she called.

  “I want to see her,” Grandfather said, looking away.

  Honor moved quickly and opened the door.

  Darah paused at the head of the stairs. She was almost four years younger than Honor’s twenty-f
our, very slight and pretty, with soft-brown eyes and matching brown hair.

  “Cousin, come here. Our grandfather wishes thee.”

  Darah reluctantly glanced into Honor’s eyes—at first like a frightened doe and then with something else Honor had never seen in her cousin before. Defiance?

  Darah slipped past her into the room. “Grandfather?”

  He studied his hands, now clutching the light blanket. “Honor, leave us. I wish to speak to Darah alone.”

  Why? Worry stirred. She ignored it. “And I must see to a few of our people who are ailing.” Honor bowed her head and stepped outside, shutting the door. She went down the stairs to gather her medicine chest, remembering that later she must meet with the overseer. The plantation work could not be put aside because her grandfather’s heart was failing. She tried to take a deep breath, but the weight over her heart would not budge.

  Honor hated to see her grandfather suffer, and she hated to disappoint him. But her course had been set since she was a child. She shuttered her mind against the opposition she knew she would stir up.

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  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  What were Blessing’s reasons for marrying Richard Brightman?

  Do you believe Sojourner Truth had a vision of Christ? Why or why not?

  Why does Gerard think he needs to save Stoddard from Tippy? What does he believe he is saving his cousin from?

  Why do you think only a thin minority of Christians in the mid-nineteenth century championed abolition and women’s rights?

  In this novel, Blessing works to lift abused women up and give them back their self-respect. But children of both sexes were hurt by society’s expectations. Which male character is mistreated by his father? What is the result?