Jason, Veronica

by Never Call It Love

  As she sat on the women's side of the table, Elizabeth was aware of the roughness of her surroundings. The stone fireplace with its hooks to hold pots suspended over the coals. The built-in double bed on one side of the fireplace, and Mrs. Thompson's homemade loom on the other side. The wooden ladder leading up to the loft's trapdoor.

  Every now and then she looked across at Patrick and Colin, seated on either side of red-haired Duncan MacPherson. Sir Patrick Stanford, fourth baronet. But no one here knew he was that. He and Colin and Elizabeth had agreed that in the raw frontier toward which they were heading, any mention of former tides would handicap them. To the women, he, like Colin, was plain Mr. Stanford. To their middle-aged host, Joe Thompson, he was already Patrick.

  Colin slept that night in the loft. Elizabeth and Patrick occupied the homemade bed in the lean-to. ("It used to be our son's bed," Mrs. Thompson said sadly. "But last summer he married a girl in a settlement twenty miles to the north, and went there to live.") As they lay there in the darkness, Patrick said, "We can't start work on the house tomorrow."

  "I should think not. After that long journey, you and Colin must be very tired indeed."

  "It is not that. Tomorrow is Sunday. Joe Thompson told me that even though there is no church here yet, New Canterbury observes the Sabbath strictly. The men stay home from the fields, and in the evening everyone goes to the Wentworths' for some kind of meeting."

  "They call it a Bible-reading. Sally Jessup mentioned it, I remember now. And, Patrick! No matter how you feel about religion, I think we also had best go to the Wentworths'. Our neighbors are far too few for us to antagonize any of them."

  "Don't you think I realize that? I'll sit there and listen to whatever sort of mumbo-jumbo they fancy. But on Monday," he said, his voice quickening, "we'll start building our house. It will be like this one, only a shelter until our land is cleared and making money. But someday we will have a fine house on our own acres."

  "With twin staircases?"

  Instantly she regretted her words. She did not want to remind him of his lost property in Ireland. She wanted even less to remind him of the cause that had ended in disaster and that, she feared, still often occupied his thoughts.

  But when he spoke, his voice was calm enough. "Why not twin staircases? I hear that many houses in this country are almost as fine as any in Ireland or England. Why shouldn't ours be?"

  CHAPTER 40

  With Patrick and Colin working from dawn to dusk, and the other men helping after they returned from their fields, the Stanford house took shape with what seemed to Elizabeth unbelievable rapidity. Within a week the well had been sunk, the cellar dug, the floor beams laid. Within a month there it stood, a log house almost a duplicate of the others in the clearing, with a lean-to shed housing the well pump, and a lean-to stable for the horses and wagon.

  Colin did not move into the house with them. Instead, he chose to stay with the Thompsons, waiting until the fall to build a small shelter for himself. Often Elizabeth found herself wondering about her brother-in-law. Was he lonely, living as a boarder beneath another man's roof? It was impossible for her to tell. He seemed much the same quiet, hardworking, practical-minded man that he had appeared to be on the island of St.-Denis. But, just as she had on that tropical island, Elizabeth felt that there was an abiding sadness in him that he allowed no one to see.

  With the house completed, Patrick and Colin started clearing their lands, the northern boundary of which lay less than a mile from the settlement. Working twelve and sometimes fourteen hours during the long summer days, they felled pines and oaks and maples and beeches, and used the horses to pull the stumps from the rich dark earth. It was too late in the season now to plant anything except field corn to serve as fodder for the horses. But next year, Patrick said confidently, they would be able to grow enough food for their own needs. And within a few years their land would include many acres of pasturage upon which to graze cattle. Surely the fast-growing settlements between New Canterbury and Philadelphia would provide a ready market for milk cows and beef cattle.

  While Patrick worked on the land, the women of the tiny community taught Elizabeth the skills of a frontier housewife. She learned to weave on the heavy loom that Patrick, aided by Joe Thompson, had built for her. Using molds lent to her by Mrs. MacPherson and Mrs. Wentworth, she learned how to make tallow candles. Gathering with the other women at the Thompsons' house, she helped salt down partridges and wild turkey and venison the men had shot, and trout and bass they had taken from the river. In return for her labor, she received a barrel of salted fish and a haunch of venison to store in her own cellar.

  Late in October, work on Colin's house began. Situated on the opposite side of the clearing near the young Jessups', it was to be a small house, little more than a hut—a house suitable for a man who did not intend to marry. With the deerskin flap unhooked from the window on this mild afternoon, Elizabeth watched Patrick and his brother stake out an area not more than twenty feet square. To her, aware of the new life within her swollen body, it seemed sad that Colin apparently intended to live out his days as a bachelor. True, there were no unmarried young women in this little settlement, but that situation could change as new families arrived. And there were marriageable girls only a few days' journey away, in the second of the settlements where they had stopped on their way to New Canterbury. But in all these weeks, Colin had made no move to return there.

  On a gray afternoon in early December, her daughter was born, after a brief and far from difficult labor. She awoke two hours later to candlelight. Mrs. Thompson sat beside the fireplace, stirring stewed chicken in a pot that hung over the coals. Near the bed, Patrick was looking down into the cradle he himself had built. Elizabeth must have made some sound, because his dark face turned toward her. Then he came and stood beside the bed.

  He said, holding her upstretched hand in both of his, "How are you, Elizabeth?"

  "A little tired." She hesitated. "Are you disappointed?" It was a question she hated to ask, because she knew it would conjure up for him, as it did for her, that bitter day at Stanford Hall when she had lost their son.

  He said frankly, "When I first heard the child was a girl I was not certain as to how I felt." He had spent the hours of waiting at the MacPhersons'. "But now that I have seen her, I wouldn't want her to be anyone else."

  Elizabeth felt relief, and a happiness so deep she could not express it. And so she said, "What hair she has is yellow. But her eyes are a deep brown, like yours. Did you notice?"

  "I did."

  "What shall we name her?"

  "I have been thinking about that. Unless your heart is set upon some other name, I would like her to be called Caroline, after my mother."

  She said the name over to herself. Caroline Stanford. "I like that. She will be Caroline."

  CHAPTER 41

  Winter was mild that year, so mild that the men of the settlement often were able to fish from the riverbank, rather than, as in seasons past, through holes carved in the ice. With no heavy snow to impede them, Patrick and Colin continued to clear land. And like the other men, they took advantage of the mild weather to hunt, so that they could supplement with fresh meat the provisions salted down months earlier.

  Busy with household tasks, and with caring for an infant daughter who seemed to grow rosier and more enchanting almost by the hour, Elizabeth did not mind the short winter days. To conserve firewood, she and Patrick went to bed soon after supper each night. Sometimes, tired out, they fell asleep almost immediately. Other times, while the banked fire still sent a faint glow over the big room, they made love. One night, as she looked up through half-lidded eyes and saw the brooding look that desire always brought to his face, she suddenly remembered words from the marriage service. "With my body I thee worship."

  Was it only with his body, and only at times like this, that he could be said to love her? Right at this moment, were his feelings any different from those he used to experience when he held Moira
Ashley in his arms? Perhaps actually that beautiful and high-spirited Irishwoman had aroused more protectiveness and tenderness in him than she herself did. Elizabeth had a painful memory of a candlelit room in that Dublin inn, and Moira saying, with the complacent laugh of a truly cherished woman, that Patrick would scold her for not following his financial advice....

  Elizabeth felt Patrick's lips warm on her mouth, and his hand cupping her breast, arousing the first tremors of desire deep within her. Soon all thought of Moira Ashley was swept from her mind.

  ***

  An early spring brought a quickened tempo to the whole community. On the first warm day in March, a big iron caldron was set over a fire in the center of the clearing, and Elizabeth and the other women took turns stirring the bubbling mixture of tallow and lye that eventually would solidify into soap. When the ground grew sufficiently soft, Patrick used the hand plow he had brought from Philadelphia to prepare ground behind the house for a kitchen garden. Using seeds they had bought in Philadelphia, as well as ones donated by their neighbors, she planted peas and spinach and green onions. Several times during the late spring and early summer, leaving Caroline with Mrs. Thompson, she took the trail through the woods to where Patrick and Colin planted potatoes, sweet corn, and squash, and, on newly cleared ground beyond, timothy and red clover, which perhaps next year would provide pasturage for cattle.

  No new settlers arrived. But the long summer days did bring visitors, families on their way to take up land farther west, and French trappers, some bound for Philadelphia, others for the rivers and dense forests of Ohio and beyond. The ones traveling toward the Ohio and Mississippi rivers carried money, with which they bought corn-meal and dried meat to sell in the little French settlements along the river route to New Orleans. Late in August, Patrick hauled up from the cellar most of the venison and dried fish stored there and sold it to two black-bearded voyageurs. When Elizabeth protested that they themselves might need that food, he said confidently, "We won't. As soon as the harvest is in, Colin and I will hunt, just as we did last fall and winter. What we do need is money, if we're to start buying cattle next spring."

  By September Caroline was able to stand alone in her crib, gazing with eager brown eyes at the big world beyond its bars, and gurgling comments that, Elizabeth was convinced, would make perfect sense to her and Patrick if they had the wit to understand them. Looking at the brown-eyed little face in its halo of blond curls, Elizabeth found it amazing to recall that before Caroline's birth she had hoped for a son. Oh, she and Patrick would have sons. Any frontier family needed several sons. But she hoped that for a while Caroline would remain their only child. She wanted to give her undivided attention to this enchanting creature, wanted to enjoy to the fullest the sight of one-year-old Caroline taking her first steps, and two-year-old Caroline running about the clearing.

  One afternoon in late September as she knelt in the kitchen garden weeding between the rows of bush beans, she suddenly thought: Why I'm happy! Not just reasonably content. Happy.

  She knew that many would say she had little reason to be. She and Patrick were poor now. He worked as hard as any half-starved peasant in Ireland, or slave on St.-Denis. The harsh lye soap she used for household tasks had reddened her own hands, and the dark blue gown she wore was of homespun, inexpertly woven by herself. What was more, she still did not know whether or not her husband felt anything more for her than a sense of legal responsibility, plus the physical desire he might feel for any attractive woman. And yet she was happy.

  Perhaps the reason was that she felt she had finally escaped the past. She had lost all fear that Moira Ashley might follow them to this wilderness. And although she sometimes woke with vague memories of a dream in which two dark figures struggled on a wharf jutting out into a black tropic sea, she had long since ceased to speculate in waking hours about the mystery of Christopher's death. No, the past was past. For her, America indeed had proved to be a new world. Smiling, she rose, shook the damp earth from her skirts, and went into the house to start supper.

  Because her sense of having escaped into a new life was so strong, she felt doubly shattered when, three weeks later, the past came crashing in upon her.

  On that Sabbath afternoon, a hush lay over the settlement. The children who on weekdays raced noisily from doorstep to doorstep were in their separate houses. But even so, Elizabeth was aware, as she tended a pot of venison stew, that the clearing was not empty. Half an hour ago a cart bearing two westbound trappers had stopped out there, and the men of the community had gathered around it. Soon Patrick would come in to tell her whatever news the Frenchmen had brought—news of progress on the peace treaty that the Americans were still negotiating with the English, or perhaps word of new settlers in the communities to the east.

  She heard the door open. Turning from the fireplace, she saw him standing there, a kind of grim exultation in his face. Even before she knew the cause of that look, she felt a chilly premonition.

  "What is it, Patrick?"

  For answer he reached into the pocket of his buckskin shirt, walked past the crib where Caroline lay sleeping, and held out a folded sheet of paper. Fingers unsteady, she unfolded it.

  It was crudely printed broadside of the sort she had seen handed out on the London streets to advertise some public event, such as a hanging. It read:

  Irish-born Americans! America is free, but the land of your birth still groans under the English yoke.

  Help free Ireland also! Meet with the American Sons of Ireland in Hagerstown, Maryland, October 27.

  Her voice sounded thin. "Where did this...?"

  "Men were handing them out on the streets in Philadelphia. Those trappers agreed to distribute them in the settlements they passed through."

  He moved to the foot of the bed and opened the wooden chest that stood there. In it they kept the clothes they never wore in New Canterbury, his cambric shirts and broadcloth coats and breeches, and the few gowns she had managed to pack before their hasty flight from St.-Denis. It also held a metal box containing money.

  "Patrick! What are you doing?"

  "I'm going to Hagerstown, of course. I'll leave before daybreak tomorrow."

  "Patrick!"

  "I'll go on foot. Colin will need the horses, if he's to go on clearing land. Undoubtedly I will get a ride in a cart or wagon now and then. Anyway, I should be there by the twenty-seventh."

  She cried violently, "But why? You are an American now. Why should you concern yourself..."

  He straightened up and faced her, the metal box in his hands. "Yes, I am an American. And now that I have seen what free men can do, I am more determined than ever that Ireland shall be free." His voice grew harsh. "Did you think that a hundred acres of American soil would make me forget all I planned for, worked for, for a dozen years? Did you think me that shallow?"

  "I hoped you were that sensible," she said bitterly. "What do you plan to do, abandon Caroline and me so that you can go back and fight for your precious cause?"

  "Don't be absurd." He placed the box on the bed. "I will be back in three weeks, a month at most. You will be safe enough. And Colin is a good shot. He will keep you supplied with game in case the food in the cellar runs low."

  "But if you don't plan to go back to Ireland, then why go to this meeting?"

  "Because I can give highly valuable information to those who will be going. Do you remember how back in St.-Denis, Fontaine told us that the English had discovered only a few of those caches of arms? Perhaps at least some of them are still undiscovered. Before we left Ireland, I burned all my papers, but I still carry the list of those locations in my head."

  She cried, out of some black foreknowledge of disaster, "Your duty is here! I forbid you to go!"

  His eyes narrowed. "Forbid? I have told you before, Elizabeth, that you cannot forbid me to do anything. Nor do I need you to tell me where my duty lies."

  She heard a whimper, then a frightened cry. Their raised voices had awakened Caroline. Elizabet
h turned, reached into the crib, and lifted the baby out. With the warm little body against her shoulder, she turned back to Patrick. He sat on the bed, opening the metal box. He took out a leather bag and upended it on the counterpane. Money spilled out, large silver dollars and small five-dollar gold pieces—what money remained to him after the long journey from the West Indies to New Canterbury, plus the sum the French trappers had paid him for supplies to take downriver. Bitter-eyed, she watched him stack the coins into piles.

  "Are you taking that money with you?" Lest she set Caroline to crying again, she tried to keep her voice quiet and matter-of-fact.

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  For the first time since coming into the house, he seemed hesitant. "I may find I can make an advantageous bargain for cattle. Even though I won't be able to take delivery until next spring, I can seal the bargain now if I have money with me."

  Did he believe, at least at the moment, that he might buy cattle? Perhaps. But she was sure that the money would be used either for his passage to Ireland or for that of some other diehard fanatic. One way or another, that money, like her dowry, would be swallowed up by this cause of his, the cause that seemed so much more precious to him than any one human being, even his wife or his child.

  That night in bed he drew her into his arms and tried to arouse her with kisses and caresses. She lay silent and unresponsive. He did not react with the resentment she had expected. Instead he said quietly, "Very well, Elizabeth. Just let me hold you." She wished that she had the moral strength to free herself from his arms and move to the far side of the bed. But beneath her rage, her bitterness, there was an anguished premonition that this might be the last night he would spend with his long, lean body stretched out beside hers. And so she lay with her head on his shoulder, eyes staring blankly into the dark, until long after she knew by the sound of his breathing that he slept