Gladden the Heart

by Olivia Newport

  “In the mercantile in Lewistown. I happened to overhear him.”

  “So you intruded on a private conversation?”

  “I assure you, the gentleman considered it no intrusion.”

  “You cannot force Gottes wille,” Susanna said, stirring more vigorously.

  “Susanna, you fret too much.”

  And you are too nosy, she wanted to say.

  “I told him he was welcome to come by at his earliest convenience,” Timothy said. “Even today, if he can spare the time.”

  “Today?” Susanna’s paddle stilled. “You had better tell Daed then. And Mamm.”

  “She will go into a frenzy,” Timothy said.

  No doubt. Timothy should have thought of that before inviting a stranger to their land this very day.

  “Go,” Susanna said, stirring again. She could not undo his invitation to a stranger, but it was in everyone’s interest that their mother be prepared.

  Timothy cantered his horse toward the house. Susanna stirred and judged saturation and considered which of the Amish women she knew might find this violet-blue cloth appealing without considering it vain. She had just finished hanging the cloth on the line when she again heard the clip-clop of a horse.

  An English man sat astride.

  Although the Hooleys sometimes saw English when they were off the farm, other than Patsy and her mother, no English had been on their land in years. Surely this was not the man to whom Timothy had spoken. An Amish family would appreciate the cleared and cultivated acreage. It was not unheard of for a family from a nearby church district to seek a farm in the valley. If her father did want to sell, surely it was not necessary to sell to an English.

  “You must be the industrious Susanna,” the man said.

  She blanched and shielded her eyes from the waning afternoon glare. What had Timothy told this man?

  “Your brother’s instructions to find the farm were pleasingly exact. I had no trouble finding my way around its dimensions. I have only yet to see the buildings, for which of course I would want your father’s permission.”

  Susanna stared up at him.

  “I’m sorry. I have forgotten my manners.”

  He slid off the horse, and Susanna could better judge his age, probably not yet thirty. If this were to be his first farm, he must already be a prosperous man.

  “I promise a fair offer,” he said. “Perhaps you would do me the kindness of taking me up to the house and helping to locate your father.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Sitting in church alone was something Adam was not sure he would ever adjust to. Of course he was not alone. On one side of him was Seth and on the other LeRoy, but neither of them was his cousin Jonas, who had sat with him during every worship service for the last two years except one time when Jonas was too ill to attend. Side by side, they both listened to Jonas’s father pray or preach and could readily glance across the aisle to see Deborah watching her husband with an expression bordering on pride. But today Jonas was not here, and neither was Deborah. Both had opted to worship at home privately with Niklaus, as they all did on Sundays that were not church Sundays. Surely this was not a permanent break. Both had been to church without Niklaus two weeks ago, and in a few weeks Jonas would marry Anke, who was sitting beside her own mother across the aisle. No one could hold Jonas accountable for his father’s decisions. Jonas would do more to please his bride-to-be than any other young man Adam knew. He would not imperil his betrothal by a break from the church.

  Would he?

  Yohan Maist gave the short sermon. Shem Hertzberger led prayers longer than Yohan’s sermon. Virtually any hymn in the Ausbund would take longer to sing than Yohan’s typical sermons. But the service would be no shorter than usual because Shem, as always, was more than eager to use the extra time. A child squalled in the back and was quickly quieted. A hymnal dropped, banging against a bench on its way to the bare wood floor of the host’s home. The breeze that blew through the open windows an hour ago when Shem began had dissipated, leaving grit in the weave of Adam’s new blue Sunday shirt.

  “Some would have us believe,” Shem said, shaking an index finger, “that salvation comes through words that we speak in a moment of emotional frenzy. Some would have us believe that weeping and clapping are signs of the regenerate heart. Some would have us believe that lofty rhetoric is what leads us to God and assures us we are saved. Some would have us believe that if we learn to describe God in certain ways, this is how the world will know our faith.”

  Shem paused to shake his head and move his glance back and forth among the eyes of his flock before settling on Adam as if daring him to look away.

  “My children,” Shem said, “I do not want you to be led astray. Young men and old men, stand firm in the truth. Our regeneration comes through our obedience, and our obedience from a heart of submission. The great apostle Paul wrote to the young Titus that we are heirs of the hope of salvation, not the certain knowledge of salvation. To claim such assurance is to manifestly declare to the world the pride of your heart. And when one is prideful, the entire congregation suffers.

  “‘Are you saved?’ some will ask you. I exhort you that your answer should be, ‘Ask my family’ or ‘Ask my neighbor.’ Let your deeds speak for the condition of your heart. For how can true salvation come from the words or prayer of a moment if they be not manifest in the actions of a lifetime? Only at the end of our lives, when the time of the Great Judgment comes, can we hope to hear, ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant.’”

  Susanna could think of little but Noah during Shem’s sermon, and even Adam’s patient attempts to calm her after the church meal were futile. He took her home directly after she helped clean up, lest her mother have some other reason to doubt her piety. Susanna had clamped her mouth though. She would give neither her mother nor the bishop reason to gloat that they had been proven right about the dark condition of her heart, and she would not squeeze Adam into the middle of anyone’s accusations if her tongue got the best of her. Neither did she tell Adam of the English visitor to whom her father had been more encouragingly cordial than Susanna expected. Timothy had followed the men around as her daed led the tour of the house, barn, stable, equipment shed, chicken coop, and odds and ends of outbuildings.

  And Patsy. If she heard any word of Shem’s sermon and the pointed way he had looked at both Susanna and Adam and others who had been to hear Noah preach, she would gallop Galahad directly to the Hertzberger farm and loose her tongue.

  Susanna wore her oldest dress on Monday for a long morning of mashing ingredients into batches of dye. Some of it she would barter with women who preferred to dye their own cloth, and some of it she eventually would use to color the newly woven cloth customers brought to her. Someday she would devote time to her weaving skills. If she could create cloth worthy to sell as well as color it, she would have a useful skill whether she married or not and whether she moved to Indiana or not.

  Indiana. She could not move to Indiana.

  She sealed a wide-necked jar that would provide a household with enough black dye for a family of garments—trousers, dresses, aprons, hats, bonnets—and plunged her hands into a pail of water to wash up with lye soap and a brush. Despite the income and bartered goods her skills brought to the family, her mother did not tolerate lines of color beneath Susanna’s fingernails at the midday dinner.

  “Susanna.”

  She looked up. “Phoebe! Is Noah all right?”

  “For the moment,” Phoebe said. “But he was up and down all night complaining that his head hurt. I did not dare leave him on his own. But this morning he has no recollection of any of it.”

  “Did he fall under?”

  Phoebe shook her head. “He insists he is fine.”

  “But you do not believe him.”

  “And my sister was so unwell the last time I saw her,” Phoebe said. “I never know when I might get word that I must go to her. I thought if I came to ask before you arrived this afternoon,
you might come prepared to spend the night and I could go today if need be and stay as late as needed.”

  Susanna gulped. “My mamm.”

  “We will tell her, of course,” Phoebe said. “I do not mean to cause her alarm. But I need help.”

  Susanna blew out slow breath. “Then I will talk to her.”

  “We will go together,” Phoebe said. “I have my wagon.”

  “Yes.” Susanna quickly agreed with the strategy. Her mother’s face might announce disapproval, but her tongue would not directly deny Noah or Phoebe the comfort of Susanna’s presence, and if Susanna took neither the mare nor the cart, her mother could make no claim their absence was an inconvenience. Susanna would need her father’s blessing, but he was sure to give it. It was just for a night—two at most.

  Patsy galloped toward the Hooley farm. At the speed with which Galahad moved, the time spent riding in the wrong direction would soon be recovered. Susanna was so pent-up lately. She needed a strong, swift ride on the back of Patsy’s horse, and Patsy would be glad for the excuse to gallop the animal twice in one day in order to have Susanna home in time for supper. Undeterred by the orchard that lay between the main road and Susanna’s shed, Patsy wove between the trees and emerged in the clearing. The shed’s door was propped open by an arrangement of small crates.

  “Susanna?” Patsy called, reining in Galahad.

  Veronica’s head poked out of the shed.

  “Hello,” Patsy said, sliding off her mount. The coals beneath the empty kettle were cold. Susanna had not been dyeing today. “Is Susanna in there?”

  “You have missed her.” Veronica dropped a tin into a crate. “She has gone early today.”

  Veronica disappeared into the shed. Patsy could have called out her thanks and hoisted herself back onto Galahad, but intuition tugged her into the shed. Susanna rarely walked the miles to the Kauffmans’ anymore. It was too risky when no one could be sure when Noah would stop preaching and Susanna had promised her mother she would always be home for supper. Susanna didn’t ride, but even the old mare Susanna used to pull the cart was faster than walking. But the cart was there beside the shed. If Susanna had left already for the Kauffmans’, what mode of transportation had she used?

  Patsy was wasting time speculating. Susanna always said that her mother rarely stepped inside the ramshackle structure. This niggled at Patsy as she followed Veronica. Inside, Veronica clearly had two categories on the workbench, those items she was taking care to arrange and those she piled as if they held no value.

  But it all held value to Susanna. Every small bit of crushed bark or reduced berry juice bore the potential to add nuance to a hue, to reveal a shade of nature that ninety-nine people out of a hundred would never notice but that Susanna’s eye would memorize.

  Veronica’s haphazard pile was many times larger than her careful pile.

  Patsy’s gaze went to the crates propping open the door. Empty tins separated from their lids. Jars with no stoppers. Flat—emptied—muslin bags.

  “What have you done?” Patsy marched to the crates and picked up the top one. She had sat for hours with Susanna stitching these tiny muslin bags, and some of the tins had come from her own mother’s kitchen.

  “’Tis not practical to take everything,” Veronica said. “I have asked Susanna half a dozen times to sort through her things.”

  “Take them where?”

  “Indiana, of course. I am hopeful we will have a good faith offer on the farm any day now.”

  Patsy’s hands went to her face but only for three seconds. Then she gripped the crate in one hand, stepped into the shed, and began sweeping Susanna’s belongings into it.

  “Miss Baxton,” Veronica said. “Need I remind you this is none of your affair?”

  “It is my affair until I hear with my own ears Susanna say she is moving to Indiana and does not intend to take these things.” Patsy picked up another crate, set it on the workbench, and grabbed fistfuls of jars and bags. Whatever sorting system Susanna had used clearly was compromised. Veronica had already seen to that. The important thing now was to prevent destruction of anything Susanna could reassemble. At least Veronica hadn’t started burning anything.

  “Is this how your mother raised you?” Veronica said. “To barge into other people’s homes and wreak havoc?”

  “To be a loyal friend!” Patsy started in on a third crate. “And I will thank you to leave my mother out of this.”

  Until recently, Patsy would not have imagined Veronica capable of what she had begun doing. She wanted to live apart in the Amish manner. All the Baxtons respected the boundaries Veronica guarded around their interactions. But this? Was she so frightened of her cousin’s gift?

  Crate after crate, flour sack after flour sack, Patsy loaded the remains of her friend’s curated collection wherever the items would fit in the cart. She didn’t often hitch Galahad to anything, but she would manage. She’d seen Susanna fasten the bridle and shafts to the mare enough times to know how to do it, and Galahad was loyal enough to cooperate. Several times Veronica protested and attempted to thwart Patsy’s movements, but youth—and anger—gave Patsy the advantage. She didn’t get everything, but she got as much as she could swiftly manage and left Veronica, without remorse, red-faced and indignant at the shed.

  CHAPTER 27

  Susanna knew the creak and rattle of her own wagon, and she knew the thundering gallop. Never before had the two been in combination. She and Phoebe had come at a more reasonable pace in the Kauffman wagon and had barely arrived. Phoebe had just let her horse into the pasture, and Susanna was waiting to see whether Phoebe wanted her help in the house or she might keep Noah company in the barn. Both of the Kauffmans now appeared in the yard, drifting toward Susanna as the horse and cart rolled down the lane.

  Galahad!

  “What in the world?” Susanna ran toward the rig, which came to a rough halt.

  Patsy jumped down from the cart. “I’ve brought your things.”

  Susanna narrowed puzzled eyes. The small bag she’d filled with everything she would need to spend a night at the Kauffmans’ sat on the stoop. When she came alongside the cart she gasped.

  “What have you done with my dyes?”

  “I saved them, that’s what.” Patsy unhitched the cart. “Your mother decided to sort through them. Some ridiculous thing about an offer on the farm and Indiana.”

  “Susanna?”

  Noah’s voice was distant, as if he were half a mile away rather than standing right next to her. Susanna picked up a small jar that had lost its cork. What had become of the powder she had ground just after breakfast?

  “Susanna,” Noah said again, his voice breaking in more firmly now. “You must tell us what is going on.”

  Susanna fumbled for a starting point and arranged events as coherently as she could manage amid the shock of seeing the contents of her shed scattered in the cart.

  Her mother’s growing anxiousness over Susanna’s daily visits to the Kauffmans’.

  Veronica’s correspondence with an old friend who had moved to Indiana and sent glowing accounts of God’s blessing and the wonderful faithfulness of the believers there.

  The conversation with other families who feared the church was becoming too progressive.

  Elias’s permission for Susanna’s choices but not his agreement with the events.

  The English man Timothy had turned up who looked eager to buy a farm in Kish Valley.

  “You must stay with us indefinitely.” Noah lifted Susanna’s kettle out of the cart. “You can use the back corner of the barn for your things, and I will prepare a place just outside for your fires.”

  “One night,” Susanna said. “That is all I asked my daed for.”

  “I doubt he knows what your mamm has done.” Now Noah lifted out a crate of jumbled jars and tins. “It will not take much to persuade him this is the best place for you right now.”

  Susanna looked from Noah to Phoebe. “For how long?”

&nbs
p; “As long as it takes,” Phoebe said.

  “It is too risky for me to go now, but I will speak to your parents first thing tomorrow morning,” Noah said. “I will appeal to Veronica as her cousin, and Elias will not deny me. He is a good man.”

  Susanna looked down at her garments. She and Phoebe had left swiftly. Susanna had not even changed out of her old work dress or put on a suitable apron.

  “Have no worry,” Phoebe said. “I have dresses. If I have to, I will make you a new dress from your own cloth. Come. We will settle you in the small bedroom.

  Voices woke Patsy the next morning. Her parents’ murmurings spiraled up the back stairs, indistinct yet comforting. The sound was not unfamiliar, but it was rare. Her father’s habit of slipping into the house in predawn hours to surprise his wife and daughter with his presence made Patsy smile every time. She threw off the light quilt she used during the warm months, sat on the side of the bed, and let her toes fish for her slippers.

  “Papa, you were a rascal once again,” Patsy said when she reached the bottom of the stairs in her nightdress and a cotton robe.

  “I stand guilty.” Charles pecked Patsy’s cheek. “A man can only bear to be away from his family for so long before the Spirit moves him to go home.”

  “Eggs?” Mercy stood at the stove dropping butter into an iron skillet.

  “Shall I make them?” Patsy said.

  “Sit. It will only take a moment.”

  Bread and jam were already on the table. Patsy reached into a cupboard and took down three plates.

  “Tell us the news, Papa,” Patsy said as soon as Charles had blessed the food.

  Most of the people her father named, Patsy had never met and likely never would. Yet they were her father’s scattered congregation, so she wanted to hear whose illness had improved, whose baby had come safely through a dangerous delivery, whose prodigal son might have sent his parents a letter, who had at last surrendered to God in a blissful conversion. Patsy bit into jam-laden bread and swallowed her mother’s fluffy eggs while her father chattered about events on the circuit.