Lilac Spring

by Ruth Axtell Morren

  They worked quietly for some time, test fitting temporary planks called battens along the ribbed hull to measure for the permanent planks that would be placed eventually.

  As they clamped on a batten up against the keel of the hull, Silas suddenly said, “Cherish, what I was trying to warn you about yesterday, about how you behave around men…”

  She bristled at the patronizing, older-brother tone. If he thought she went around asking young men to kiss her, he needed to learn a thing or two about Cherish Winslow. Cherish’s own state of mind was not nearly as calm as she pretended as she worked by his side. Frustration and humiliation threatened to get the upper hand, and it was with an effort that she tried to recall the Scriptures she had read that morning. “He that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.”

  Small comfort when Silas’s arm reached past hers or her glance crossed his, and they both quickly looked away.

  She looked at him steadily now until his gaze shifted away from her. “I’ll tell you one thing I don’t need, Silas,” she said sweetly.

  “What’s that?”

  “A lesson on flirting with young gentlemen.”

  They fell silent after that, and Silas addressed her only about the task at hand.

  The time with Annalise Townsend was not nearly as tedious as Cherish had anticipated. She realized much of it had to do with her own attitude. She’d taken Annalise to visit some of her girlhood friends in the village the first day, and this morning they had spent snipping dandelion greens and fiddlehead ferns in the forest.

  That evening, Cherish’s father spoke across the supper table. “Silas, can you drive the girls over to the grange tonight for the dance? I don’t like their going over alone, and I’m feeling a little tired.”

  “Are you all right, Papa? We can stay home.”

  “Oh, I’m fine. Nothing that putting my feet up and reading the newspaper won’t cure.”

  Now as her father awaited Silas’s reply, Cherish intervened. “It’s quite all right. We can go on our own. It’s only a mile down the road to the village. It’s a beautiful evening.”

  “I can drive them, Mr. Townsend. It won’t be any trouble at all.”

  Cherish stared at him. He wasn’t looking at her, but back down at his plate. She glanced over at Annalise, who looked happy enough. In fact, there was a radiant glow to her cheeks.

  She remembered the verse about charity seeking “not her own” and sighed, taking up her fork once again.

  She tried a last tack. “We can walk over to Julie’s and ride over with her family.”

  “No, I can take you,” Silas repeated, still not looking at her.

  She couldn’t understand Silas. Unless… She gazed at the girl beside her. Was it because of Annalise? Cherish speared the last chunk of codfish cake onto her fork and rubbed it around her plate. She would certainly not expect him to dance with her this time. She swallowed the piece of codfish and felt it stick in her throat.

  Lord, help me to put myself out of the way.

  She gulped down the lump of fish, and although her eyes swam with a sudden wash of tears, she felt the comfort of God’s spirit. It brought a sudden spurt of joy in the midst of her heartache.

  When they arrived at the grange building, Cherish was ready to descend the wagon by herself, thinking she’d let Silas assist Annalise, but he stood there in front of her before she could do more than rise from her seat. He placed his hands around her waist and swung her down. She looked at him briefly, but he wasn’t looking at her, his eyes gazing somewhere above her head.

  Her skirts swished out of his way and she began walking toward the grange, not bothering to wait for him and Annalise.

  From the entrance she watched him and Annalise. The two made a nice-looking couple. The admission cut her deeply, and she turned away. She had to control her feelings and not ruin the evening for Annalise. Grant me Your grace, Lord, to do Your will.

  She purposely stayed away from Silas and greeted all her old friends, reintroducing them to Annalise. When they had a circle around them, she looked around to find Silas gone. Searching the dance hall, she spied him across the room, standing chatting with some young men.

  The music started up, and she had no more chance to think about Silas. She grabbed Annalise by the hand and led her to the set forming for square dancing.

  Later in the evening, when the caller had taken a break and the musicians began playing a waltz, Cherish and Annalise suddenly found themselves partnerless. Now she looked around and realized no young man was going to ask either of them. She laughed. Such a situation hadn’t happened to her in years. She’d always had a superfluity of partners, young gentlemen begging to put their names on her dance card.

  There were no dance cards here. Just a bunch of people who had grown up together, whose families knew each other and who had a good time together. She smiled at the dancing couples, as if to say, “Well, it’s good to sit one out. I don’t know about you, but my feet are sore!” She glanced down at the toes of her slippers.

  Then, casually, as if it was the most natural thing in the world for Cherish Winslow to sit out a dance, she observed the dancers, all childhood friends. A curious nostalgia swept over her. All the time she had been away, being educated, seeing so many new sights, time had not stopped for them, either. They, too, had gotten on with the business of living, in a different rhythm from her own.

  There was Julie with Matt, and Rachel with Jed, and Alice with Douglas. They’d known each other their whole lives, and without her noticing, they had begun pairing off. Cherish had no doubts, watching them now, and remembering other signs she’d seen in the few weeks she’d been home, that soon engagements would be announced.

  For the first time, Cherish felt like an outsider in her own hometown. What had happened? Had she grown up too much for them? For her own good?

  Silas stood across the dance floor with his friend Charlie. The two sipped at their cups of cider, eyeing the couples gracefully moving around the scuffed wooden floor.

  “Do me a favor, will you?” he asked his friend.

  Charlie took a sip and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “What’s that?”

  “Ask Miss Townsend to dance.”

  “The one you asked me to dance with at Cherish’s homecoming?”

  “Yes.”

  Charlie gave him a questioning look. “You sure you don’t mind? You don’t want to ask her yourself?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Well, I thought…the other night at Cherish’s party…then you went and spent the weekend at her parents’ house, didn’t you?”

  “I was just being nice to her, as a favor to Cherish,” he said, annoyed at having to explain himself. “They invited me to Hatsfield just to round out the numbers.”

  “Oh, well, if you don’t mind. She’s a pretty girl. She just don’t talk much.”

  “Well, you do the talking,” Silas suggested calmly, hiding the growing impatience he felt. Was the piece going to end before he convinced his friend? “She’ll talk back if you talk to her.”

  “Okay,” his friend replied with a grin. After a few more seconds’ rumination, he added, “You’re not sweet on Cherish, are you?”

  “What makes you think that?” he asked more sharply than he had intended.

  “Oh, I dunno. You two sure are together an awful lot.”

  “Well, we practically grew up together. That doesn’t mean we’re sweet on each other.”

  “No, course not,” Charlie replied with a sly grin. His smile widened. “And ol’ Winslow, if he ever sniffed such a thing, whoo-ee, he wouldn’t let you within ten feet of her. You sure you don’t want to go after Miss Townsend yourself? Old Mr. Townsend makes Winslow look like small fry. You could probably have your own shipyard or two!”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “You play your cards right, Townsend could set you up for life if he takes a fancy to you.”

  Silas smiled slightly at th
e image. “I’m sure,” he repeated.

  “Oh-kay,” Charlie drawled as he set down his cup and sauntered around the dance floor toward Annalise Townsend.

  Silas knew even as he deposited his own cup and began skirting the edge of the dance floor in Charlie’s wake that this was the reason he’d come tonight. Even as he’d agreed with Tom Winslow’s request, even as he’d shaved and dressed and gone to hitch the wagon, this was why he’d come.

  Ever since the last dance at Cherish’s house, when he’d deliberately kept himself away from her, the reason had been there, simmering down deep below his conscious thoughts, waiting to be put into action.

  Charlie sidled up to Annalise before the waltz ended and asked her for the dance as Cherish looked on in amusement. “Go on, Annalise,” she urged. “I’ll be fine. My feet need the rest.”

  She watched the dancers, her toes keeping time to the music. The waltz ended and another started up.

  So she, Cherish Winslow, whom Annalise had said made every social gathering sparkle, was left sitting out not one, but two dances. If it weren’t so bittersweet, it would be amusing. Her lips already felt chapped with the strain of keeping them stretched in a smiling line.

  She refused to look to see where Silas was. She followed Annalise and Charlie’s progress around the floor.

  “Need a partner?”

  Her composure almost broke at the sound of that low, familiar voice above her ear. Then she remembered his censorious attitude, and she was tempted to turn him down. Finally she looked at him, and her breath caught. He looked so handsome, his lean features softened, his gray eyes tender.

  “I don’t need a partner,” she reminded him with quiet dignity. “But if you are proposing yourself, I would graciously accept your offer.”

  He held out his hand, and she placed hers in it.

  Determined to keep her emotions in check, she assumed the most proper stance for a waltz—arm’s length apart, her hand just resting lightly on his coat sleeve, the other lying in his hand. They came together on the dance floor amidst the other couples and began to move in time to the music.

  “I’m still not the best waltzer,” he said above her head.

  She bit back a rejoinder concerning his efforts with Annalise. “You dance fine,” she said instead.

  They moved about the dance floor and Cherish began to lower her guard and enjoy the feel of his arm about her waist, her hand in his. She was afraid to look at him, afraid of what she would find there—that same older-brother superiority, or worse, pity that she had been without a partner, or worst of all, indifference.

  Instead she kept her gaze fixed over his shoulder, watching the other dancers whirling by her. She smiled, catching a glimpse of Charlie talking earnestly with Annalise, and wondered what he was saying to her. She’d tease Annalise about it tonight.

  On an impulse she looked up at Silas to tell him about Charlie, and the words died on her lips.

  Silas was looking at her in a way she had never seen before. It was as if for a split second the shutters had been lifted from his gray eyes and she could peer all the way down to his soul. It made him look vulnerable, needy.

  She smiled tentatively, but the next instant he averted his gaze. She wondered whether she’d imagined that look. Had it been real?

  “What were you going to say?” he asked, looking over her head.

  “Uh—oh, just that it seems Charlie and Annalise are having a good time together.”

  “Yes,” he replied, and she could see his gaze searching them out.

  “You don’t mind?” she ventured.

  He glanced back at her, a slight frown furrowing his brow. “Mind? Why should I mind? I’m the one who told Charlie to ask her for this dance.”

  “You did?” She began to smile. “I thought you liked Annalise.”

  “Why does everyone try to pair me off with Annalise?” The annoyance was clear in his tone this time.

  “Well, you wanted me to befriend her, for one thing.”

  He looked at her in astonishment. “I just wanted you to behave in the kind, decent way you usually do. That’s all. It doesn’t mean I’m sweet on the girl.”

  “Oh.” She stopped talking after that and fixed her gaze on the lapel of Silas’s jacket, her touch tightening imperceptibly on his shoulder.

  A deep joy welled up inside her, threatening to overflow. Well, well, what do you know? He isn’t sweet on Annalise. And he was looking at me as if he cared about me….

  When the dance ended, Cherish looked up at Silas with her sweetest smile and asked him for one more. That one turned into another.

  By the time Silas got his wits back together, he realized he had danced exclusively with Cherish for more than half the dances.

  Chapter Ten

  For the next few days it rained. Cherish’s initial euphoria that she would be able to spend every day with Silas working on the Whitehall diminished as she realized all the men from the shipyard had to spend those days in the boat shop along with the two of them, working on the various small boat hulls.

  “You still interested in boats, Cherish?” Ezra asked. “Thought after becoming such a fine lady, you wouldn’t want to get your hands dirty with this kind of work.”

  She laughed, looking down at her hands. Gone were the long, buffed fingernails. “What, don’t you think I’m still a fine lady, even in my work clothes?” She glanced toward Silas as she asked Ezra the question.

  Silas was studiously bent over the hull, transferring markings with a pencil onto a small scrap of paper, and didn’t seem to notice Cherish’s attention.

  “Oh, you’d be a fine lady even if you were dressed in rags,” the other workman answered with a chuckle.

  Cherish had noticed in the days following the dance that Silas seemed more distant than ever. He treated her with courtesy, but never uttered the least playful or teasing remark. Not by a mere hint in his eyes did he reveal that she was anything more than a fellow employee of her father’s.

  But her heart danced all the same. She kept going over the naked look she’d caught in his eyes and repeated to herself, “He does care!”

  The question was, how much? She tried everything to discover this, without using the blatant tactics of before. Whenever the opportunity arose, which was often, she would ask for his assistance. But never by a glance or gesture could she discover that her proximity affected him at all.

  “Silas, how does this look?” she asked him from the other side of the hull.

  “Hmm?” he asked, his attention still on the numbers he copied down.

  “Do you think I’ve beveled it enough?”

  He came around to her side and crouched beside her. They looked at the plank she’d placed temporarily against the ribbing and observed how flush its surface lay against the vertical ribs. His finger indicated a slight gap. “I think it could use a little more bevel here.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “How’s young Mr. Townsend?”

  Cherish looked up at Ezra’s question. “He’s fine, I suppose.”

  “Now, there’s a fine young gentleman. I bet he appreciates all that education you got overseas,” William put in from across the shop.

  “The Townsends have a pretty operation over there in Hatsfield,” Ezra added. “I hear they’re going to expand their lumber shipments and need some more schooners. I wouldn’t mind hearing we got some orders from them.” He adjusted the pencil in back of his ear.

  “I hear the shipyard up by the brickyard is closing down after this summer.” William shook his head sadly.

  “Yep. Sad to see them go.” Ezra sighed deeply.

  Silas didn’t participate in the conversation. He’d taken his figures over to the long piece of cedar that lay on a worktable. She knew it was critical that the curve of the hull be transferred accurately to the plank of wood.

  Just then her father entered the boat shop. “Gentlemen, if you want to step into the office before you break for dinner, I’ll have your wages f
or you.”

  “We’ll be right there!” came a chorus from the workers. Silas acted as if he hadn’t even heard. He continued working on the plank he was measuring for the hull.

  Cherish removed the frame and took it to the workbench to sand out the curve some more on its inner side. As her hand worked back and forth over the smooth wood, her mind continued pondering the impasse with Silas. He’d been so elusive since the dance, she sometimes wondered if he was avoiding her.

  But then why had he danced exclusively with her?

  After he’d collected his wages, Silas pried up one of the wall-boards in his room. He reached all the way down into the dark space and pulled up a metal box. Using a key on a string around his neck, he unlocked it and lifted the lid. Inside lay tightly bound bundles of greenbacks and other paper currency and stacks of gold and silver coins.

  Carefully he loosened the string around one bundle and added the bills he’d just been paid by Winslow, then retied it and set it back in with the others. He sat looking at his hoard a few minutes longer, thinking of the years of toil it had taken to accumulate what filled the box.

  He had very few expenses. Winslow provided him with room and board, and Mrs. Sullivan kept his shirts and trousers usable until she could literally mend them no more, and only then did he outlay the money to replace them. He didn’t drink, didn’t gamble, as the men in the yard did on a Friday night. He didn’t court, and had put all thoughts of marriage aside until such a time as he had his own shipyard.

  Now, inexplicably, a wave of despair gripped him as he measured his pile of savings against his years of sacrifice. It occurred to him that just one of Cherish’s gowns from Paris cost more than all the money he had in his tin box.

  He rubbed a hand across his forehead, trying to stave off the doubts. What did he have to show for all his years of saving? A pitifully small pile of coins and bills. He remembered the young men and women at the grange dance. Young men and women he’d grown up with, now beginning to court, making plans to marry, start families of their own, setting up in business or working their family farms, building their fishing boats. For the first time in his life he began to envy them.