Sense and Sensibility

by Sarah Price

  Should this be something of interest, I have included a slip of paper with his information so that you might contact him directly.

  Again, best wishes from all of us.

  Prayers and blessings,

  Eleanor Detweiler

  She stared at her handwriting on the plain sheet of white paper. The blue cursive words seemed forced and unfeeling. It was her tenth try at penning the letter. Nine other pieces of paper were scattered in crumpled wads near the garbage basket. No amount of writing those words made anything seem sensible. How could she possibly write to Edwin to alert him of this offer when the last thing she ever wanted was to speak to or hear from him again? Each drafting of the letter made her fight the emotions that welled up in her throat and threatened to engulf her. The only concession she could make to her own feelings was to avoid any direct mention of Lydia in the letter.

  Two days had passed since Christian asked her to write the letter to Edwin. Two long days of Eleanor trying to draft the letter in her head. Each time that she thought she had formed the correct words to use, she began to write them down on paper only to realize that she didn’t like them after all. Now Eleanor feared that more days would pass before she actually drafted something even remotely acceptable by her standards, much less have the emotional strength to mail it.

  The previous day when he visited, Christian had not asked whether the letter was finished, for which Eleanor was thankful. She would have been embarrassed to admit that she struggled to find ways to put the offer into words. Each time she tried, she merely saw Edwin’s face and heard Lydia’s laugh, neither of which brought her any closer to writing the letter. Now she figured she was on borrowed time, and she knew she had to tackle this letter without further delay.

  Just a short time ago, at exactly two thirty, Christian had arrived at the cottage with his buggy. He seemed to be a creature of habit, arriving at the same time every day. His consistency was admirable and apparently appreciated by Mary Ann, who began to preen a bit each afternoon at two o’clock in preparation for his arrival.

  Today, after spending fifteen minutes inside the house visiting with Mary Ann, Maem, and Eleanor, Christian had suggested that Mary Ann take in the fresh air. With glowing eyes she had started to get up from her chair when Maem began fretting out loud.

  “Oh, it’s so chilly today. There’s a bitterness in the air,” she said. “I’d hate to see her catch cold so soon after recovering.”

  “The change of scenery will benefit her more than the cold will harm her,” Christian countered politely. “Besides, I made certain to bring along a quilt in case the air is too cold for her.”

  Reluctantly Maem had agreed and Eleanor had stood at the window, her arms wrapped around her waist as she watched Christian hold Mary Ann’s elbow, gently guiding her to the buggy. The compassion he continued to show to her sister made Eleanor feel confident that an announcement of their upcoming wedding would be shared with the family soon.

  Mary Ann could hardly keep her eyes off him when he was there, his attention devoted to ensuring her comfort. Yet Eleanor noticed that other than Mary Ann’s unfettered awareness of Christian’s presence, she displayed none of the girlish infatuation she had exhibited with Willis. In fact, just the night before, Mary Ann sat in bed, her pillow propped against her back as she read through the very verses Christian had read earlier that day. When Eleanor made a comment about how well Christian read Scripture, Mary Ann merely smiled but said nothing. What a difference, Eleanor had thought. Gone was the love-filled boasting and starry-eyed daydreaming, replaced with a sensible young woman with a private demeanor. She reminded Eleanor more and more of herself each day.

  Now, in the quiet of the kitchen, Eleanor sat at the table with her head bent over the paper as she reread it one last time.

  “What are you writing, Eleanor?” Maem asked as she entered the kitchen carrying a basket of folded laundry. She set the basket on the table and began folding the items she had just pulled from the wash line. “You’ve been at it for two days now.”

  Eleanor sighed and slid the letter into an envelope. “Nothing of much importance. Just a letter to an old friend,” she said.

  What did it matter, she wondered, how the letter was worded? Her words would not change the situation. After all, Edwin would soon have a wife, and Eleanor knew that moving on was her only option. If a word was out of place or a statement just a little unclear, it was not such a big deal anymore. She didn’t need to care what he thought of her penmanship or wording. All that mattered was that she fulfill her promise to Christian Bechtler.

  “I suspect your sister will have an announcement for us,” Maem said, as if reading Eleanor’s mind. She plucked the small pile of freshly washed and folded kitchen towels from the table and carried them over to the cabinet drawer where she stored them. After she shut the drawer, she stood there staring at the wall for a long, thoughtful moment. “And I’m happy for Mary Ann. Christian has proven himself to be rather devoted to her care, don’t you think?”

  Eleanor nodded as she opened her address book and looked through it for the Fisher family’s address in Narvon, which she quickly wrote on the envelope. While she wasn’t certain he was living there, she suspected that someone would get the letter to him. “How fortunate that Mary Ann finally understood how strong Christian’s admiration is for her.”

  “Admiration?” Maem laughed, shutting the drawer with a quick shove of her hip. “Oh, Eleanor, sometimes you are too practical for your own good. That man is besotted with her! If he wasn’t so mature and godly, he’d be a ferhoodled young man, for sure and certain!”

  “Who’s ferhoodled?” Maggie pranced through the front door, shedding her sweater and dropping her lunch bag onto the floor. She ran over to the counter and started to reach for an apple from the fruit bowl. Maem, however, reached out and grabbed her hand.

  “Please pick up those things you dropped on the floor, Maggie,” she said, pointing to the sweater and lunch bag. “That’s not where they belong now, is it?”

  “No, Maem.”

  Eleanor stood up, and with the envelope in hand, she hurried to the door. The postal truck came by the mailbox just a little after Maggie’s return from school. She wanted to be certain to mail the letter today so that she didn’t have to struggle with rewriting it for an eleventh or twelfth time that evening. Just knowing that the letter was out of her hands would make her feel less apprehensive about having written it at all.

  Eleanor discovered that the mailbox was already filled with several letters from the past few days. Unless they were expecting letters, they usually walked out to fetch the mail just once or twice a week. To her surprise, there was a letter in the mailbox addressed to Maem from Widow Jennings, who remained with her daughter Charlotte in Honey Brook. Placing her own letter in the now empty box, Eleanor raised the red flag before hurrying back to the house, suspecting she knew what Widow Jennings had to say that could not (or, rather, would not) have been shared through Jacob.

  Bracing herself, Eleanor handed the letter to Maem. “Vell now,” Maem said as she set the empty laundry basket in the hallway. “I’ll be curious to see what she has to say then.” She sat at the table and slipped her finger along the flap. The letter fell onto the table, and Eleanor could see that it was just two sheets of paper.

  Maem picked them up, and after retrieving her reading glasses from her apron pocket, she began to read the letter to herself. Her lips moved as her eyes traveled along the small, cursive handwriting. Just a few lines into the letter, she gasped and covered her mouth with her hands. “Oh my!”

  “What is it, Maem?”

  “I . . . I can hardly say.”

  Maggie ran over, clamoring to try to see the letter. She stood on her toes, peering over Maem’s shoulder. When Maem tried to shoo her away, Maggie peeked over her other shoulder.

  “Go on outside with such energy,” Eleanor scolded her.

  “Ja, out you go! Go run to Jacob’s for some fresh milk.
We’re almost out.” Maem seemed just as eager to have Maggie leave the room as Eleanor, the former unaware of the news the letter would bring and the latter far too aware that it was nothing a young girl should hear.

  “Aw, why? I want to hear too!”

  Maem lowered the letter and leveled her stare at Maggie. “And that’s exactly why you are being sent to Jacob’s! It’s not for your ears.”

  Kicking at the floor, Maggie turned around, grumbling about how she never got to hear any of the good gossip as she sulked out the door.

  “That child!” Maem said disapprovingly, clicking her tongue and shaking her head.

  “What’s the news, Maem?”

  Raising the letter again so that she could read it, Maem began to summarize what was written. “I don’t want to give credence to what Widow Jennings was saying about John Willis, but it seems it is true. John Willis has been shunned.”

  “Really?” Now it was Eleanor’s turn to hurry to the table. She leaned over her mother’s shoulder and began to read the letter for herself.

  “Ja, that’s what she says.” She pointed to a section of the letter. She handed the letter to Eleanor and sank down into one of the kitchen chairs. “Finish reading it, Eleanor. I don’t think I dare do it myself!”

  It had taken well over a week, but John Willis’s shunning was public knowledge at last. Only now the details of his behavior were being whispered about among households throughout the country, for sure and certain.

  “Apparently he has been more worldly than is permitted for a man who has taken the kneeling vow,” Eleanor said, trying to disguise her previous knowledge of this news.

  Maem’s mouth opened, and she reached out to retrieve the letter from Eleanor. Her eyes quickly read the rest of the letter. “Oh my! A young Englische girl? A boppli? Why, she’s not more than a child herself!”

  She set down the letter and stared at Eleanor. “The girl’s uncle and Willis’s aendi contacted the bishop?”

  While Maem tried to grasp that information, Eleanor struggled with the only piece of news she had not previously known: Christian had gone to Willis’s bishop. Eleanor caught her breath, and like her mother, she covered her mouth with her hand. Standing up, she tried to make sense of what she had just learned. If Christian had not informed the church of Willis’s behavior as soon as he learned of it, why would he have told on him now? There was only one answer for that: Mary Ann. Certainly seeing Mary Ann heartsick and broken had upset him so much that he finally decided the suffering of two young women warranted more than divine interference; it also called for community intervention.

  “And Willis denied it at first until confronted by the uncle and the girl.” Maem set down the letter and looked up at Eleanor. “Have you ever . . . ?”

  “Nee,” Eleanor replied. She had never known anyone who was shunned by the church. Yet it was always an unspoken possibility that hung over the heads of every member. As a child, she had always worried that someone she knew would be shunned. When she had taken her kneeling vow, she learned about the strict discipline of the church for members who strayed from living plain. Venturing into the worldly ways of the Englische held consequences. Shunning was the most extreme sanction for materialistic behavior that did not conform with the Amish lifestyle.

  “His poor fraa!” Maem lamented. “Such an unsuspecting lamb to be taken in by such a wolf in sheep’s clothing!”

  Eleanor wanted to respond that clearly Willis’s wife was not the first young woman to be taken in by Willis’s smooth words and handsome looks. In fact they had their own poor unsuspecting lamb who had fallen prey to his charms. Remaining silent, however, seemed the best option.

  “In all my years, I’ve never heard such a story. And to think that Mary Ann was intent on marrying him! Oh, help!” Maem folded the letter and shoved it back into the envelope as if the mere touch of her fingers to the paper burned her skin. She slipped it into her apron pocket as she looked up at Eleanor. “Best not let Mary Ann see this. No sense in even bringing up his name, never mind spreading the gossip about him.”

  Silently Eleanor agreed.

  She couldn’t imagine how Willis would manage to live with his new wife and her family. They could not eat at the same table or even share the marital bed. The scandal of Willis’s promiscuity—and with a young girl at that!—most certainly would sour his relations with his new family. And Eleanor could hardly imagine what the young wife must feel about discovering her husband was a philanderer who refused to accept responsibility for a baby he had fathered. Even if Willis confessed his sins to the congregation and the ban was lifted, it could take years, if not a lifetime, for his relationships with family and friends to return to some degree of normal.

  Perhaps this was one of the reasons God had intervened and saved Mary Ann from such a tainted relationship. The thought struck Eleanor, and immediately she wondered if that had not been part of God’s plan. Yes, Mary Ann had felt terrible emotional pain over humiliating abandonment by a man she thought loved her and would marry her. Yet certainly it was better for her to have loved a man that rejected her for another woman than to have married him only to learn that he was guilty of so many grievous sins. The shame of the former was nothing compared to the dishonor and pain associated with the latter.

  And indeed, Eleanor further realized, God had used the pain to teach her schwester a valuable lesson: life is best lived with a strong dose of humility and an even stronger amount of maturity. Only by feeling the pain of such heartbreak was Mary Ann able to recognize—and value—the godly character and steadfast love of Christian, a man she had heretofore overlooked. Indeed, the ways of God were often mysterious, but in this case, at least, Eleanor caught some glimpse of His plan and could only bow her head in humble gratitude at His work in her schwester’s life.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  ELEANOR AND MAEM knelt by the kitchen chair while Mary Ann stood on it, her arms outstretched to the sides as they pinned the hem of her new light blue dress. Maem held six straight pins between her lips while Eleanor measured to ensure that the hem remained straight. With a small fire in the fireplace, the kitchen smelling of burnt wood and freshly baked bread, the room felt warm and cozy on this cold November day, as much like home as their former residence at the Manheim farm.

  “My arms are getting tired,” Mary Ann complained.

  “Oh, hush now,” Eleanor retorted. “You only get married once, Mary Ann, and you must have the perfect dress!” She took a pin from her mother and gently slid it through the fabric. “And this color of blue is perfect, indeed. Now turn around, schwester, so I can see the other side.”

  As expected, Christian had proposed to Mary Ann on their buggy ride over a week ago, and the wedding was scheduled to take place on Tuesday. With only slightly more than two weeks between Christian asking Mary Ann and the actual wedding, everything had been a flurry of activity since then. Fortunately Jacob insisted that the wedding be held at his farm, since the cottage would not accommodate the three to four hundred guests that would, undoubtedly, stop by for the day-long activities. His ever-quiet wife volunteered to help organize the food preparation, which left Maem and Eleanor the task of making her wedding dress.

  “Christian has been even more attentive since you agreed to marry him,” Maem said happily through her pressed-together lips. “I wouldn’t have thought that to be humanly possible.” She pinched a section of the hem together, assessing how even it was when compared to the rest. Satisfied, she removed a pin from her mouth and stuck it through the fabric. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a groom who took such satisfaction from pleasing his intended. Oh, Mary Ann! Such a wunderbarr gut marriage you will have.”

  Mary Ann blushed and merely said, “He is the best of men.”

  Eleanor sat back on her heels and looked up. “I do believe the hem is finished. Lower your arms. Let’s see how it sits now.”

  Once her arms were lowered, Eleanor assessed the hem with a critical eye. “Hmm, I think we
may have gotten it on the first try.”

  “Thank the good Lord!”

  Maem and Eleanor laughed at Mary Ann’s exasperation, reveling in the return of the spirited Mary Ann they had always known. Then they stood up and reached out their hands to help her get down from the chair.

  The sound of a horse and buggy approaching the cottage startled the three of them. Almost simultaneously they turned their heads to look at the clock. One fifteen.

  Mary Ann frowned and hurried over to the window. “Whatever could have happened that Christian would come visiting so early? I hope nothing is wrong.” She stood on her tippy toes and craned her neck to see the back of the buggy. “Oh. That’s not Christian’s buggy.”

  At this announcement, Eleanor and Maem joined her at the window.

  “He is a creature of habit,” Eleanor said. “It’s far too early, so I can’t imagine it would be him anyway.”

  “Why, I don’t recognize that buggy at all,” Maem said as she pointed to the orange reflectors on the back of the buggy. Most Amish men created their own patterns with the reflectors, just one way of identifying their buggy when it was parked among so many others that were identical in their external appearance. “I can’t say I’ve seen that one before.”

  “Mayhaps a new client?” Mary Ann suggested.

  Regardless of who it was, Eleanor began to bustle about the kitchen, picking up their sewing items and putting them back into the basket they used for storage. She swept up the scraps of fabric from the table and laid them on top of the basket. “Best tidy up, Maem,” she said over her shoulder. “And Mary Ann, be careful taking off the dress so that you don’t get stuck by the pins, ja?”

  As Mary Ann hurried to the bedroom to slip off the dress, Eleanor picked up the last few items that remained on the counter. A quick glance of the room gave her satisfaction. Whoever had just arrived would not find their small cottage in disarray.