Palmyra

by Susan Evans McCloud

  “Let the lad go,” I said, keeping my voice as pleasant as if I were saying, “Excellent sandwiches, aren’t they?” But my eyes met his squarely as he glanced up in amazement. “Peter is as good a boy as they come,” I continued. “Everyone in Palmyra thinks so. And many people of note, sir, whose influence you ought to regard, have observed the harsh treatment he receives at your hands.”

  The man arched a cool eyebrow and began to speak in defense of himself, but I brushed him aside. “No pretense, please. I shall not play games with you; it is a waste of your time. But I give you fair warning to take care in the future, for more eyes are upon you than you should like to know, and an accounting may be required, if you do not mend your ways.”

  I took Peter by the hand and drew him away with me, his eyes round as saucers, his whole body stiff with the shock of what had just happened.

  “I’ve never seen anyone stand up to him like that, Esther!” he hissed.

  “Yes, I was brilliant,” I agreed, trying to make light of it. “But you must give me your word that you will tell no one at all of the scene back there.”

  I turned him to face me. He nodded solemn agreement. “You understand the importance?” He nodded again.

  “And Peter,” I added, before letting him go. “You must let me know if he is particulary cruel to you, or to—” Tillie’s name clogged in my throat.

  “I know. To Tillie particularly. I promise, Esther.” He squeezed my hand and was gone.

  I watched after him, a sinking feeling in my middle. I have made an enemy, I thought to myself, and the thought was grim. I must not let him frighten me, or I shall be lost. I moved to where Phoebe and Georgie were chatting with the minister’s wife, feeling a sudden need for company and the sound of voices. We were already enemies. But now Gerard Whittier knows it, as well as I.

  Georgie’s Nathan approached the little group at the same time as I did. He smiled and made way for me. Here, I felt, was a true gentleman. Even his looks were coming to grow on me. A slow smile spread over his smooth, somewhat largely drawn features.

  “Our turn next, Georgeanna’s and mine.”

  “Are you counting the days, then?” His smile widened. “Once you belong to Georgie, there will be little left of you,” I teased.

  “Suits me fine, Esther.” His manner was frank, but it had a gentleness to it. “That has been my desire and ultimate goal since the first time I saw her.”

  “She is a gem, to be sure.” I returned his warm smile, and we joined the others. Eugene was nowhere about. I could have used the nearness of him at that moment. Is the notion of weddings contagious? I wondered. Something in the air one can catch?

  After a little while I wandered off in search of Eugene, passing a group of ladies among whom my mother sat, contentedly holding Jonathan, his long legs dangling, upon her lap.

  She is a pretty woman, I thought, more than most women her age. But she has cultivated beauty, as I cultivate flowers, as some women cultivate kindness and grace. I moved on, without any of them noticing me. Eugene was ensconced in a half circle of men, heads bent over an advertisement for new John Deere tractors. I waded right in and gently disengaged him, enduring the good-natured teasing in order to have him alone to myself.

  Latisha went off on a grandiose tour of the canal zone, as I call it, her face aglow. The rest of us settled back into the routine of daily life. Routine. That word did not aptly apply to our doings for these many months past!

  It was in the middle of the night that I was awakened to go to Tillie. A cool September evening, with a wet, fragrant wind. I was nervous, but could not quell a sense of excitement. I urged Peter to drive the team faster. “You know the way,” I reminded him.

  “I do not like the darkness,” he said. And it struck me how timid the boy had become since his brush with the life of the canal. Or was it the circumstances of life in these months since he left?

  Doctor Ensworth was with Tillie, and refused to admit me at once. So I paced the floor with Tillie’s mother, our eyes meeting awkwardly every now and again. I have never been entirely comfortable in Cornelia Swift’s company, nor she in mine. I could intone the small pleasantries, but to what purpose? We paced in silence until we heard the thin wail of a newborn. Every muscle in my body tensed, and I lifted my head.

  “All sounds well,” Mrs. Swift said hopefully.

  I smiled a tight smile. All must be well! I thought passionately.

  At length the doctor came out. The look I had seen him wear when he had attended my mother was missing. I felt my muscles relax.

  “A fine healthy son. And Theodora is doing well. Jane is with her. She’ll be able to manage things from this point.”

  Jane Foster, the best midwife in Palmyra. “May I see her, Doctor?”

  The tired eyes softened. “She is asking for you,” he said under his breath. Then he turned to Mrs. Swift, rubbing his big hands together. “I’ll take that cup of coffee you offered me now.”

  She had no choice but to go with him. I slipped into the darkened room. Tillie’s eyes were searching for me. Oh, how sweet with relief and happiness they were! I bent over the bed. She had wanted a daughter; we have an unreasoned preference for girls, we five. But it no longer mattered.

  Jane was still cleaning the baby’s wrinkled red body. “He has fistfuls of hair,” I reported to his mother. “Dark and thick like his father’s. But he has your almond-shaped eyes.”

  I bent over and kissed her wan cheek. “He is quite beautiful, my darling.”

  “I am so blessed.” She sighed in contentment.

  “Yes. And you deserve your happiness,” I replied.

  I stayed the remainder of the day, administering to my friend’s needs, securing her comfort, rejoicing with her. So I was there, in the very room, when Gerard arrived mid-afternoon to inspect his son.

  He did not even acknowledge my presence, nor more than glance toward Tillie. First he took the child up in his arms. “He has the dark hair and eyes, the look of the Whittiers. Good,” he pronounced.

  “But not your beak nose. Look how small and delightfully rounded his is.” I could not resist. I saw Tillie stifle a smile, but her husband ignored me.

  “You look well, Theodora.” He bent and pressed his lips to her cheek, the way I had; a perfunctory kiss.

  “His name shall be Edward.”

  I heard Tillie suck in her breath. “I had thought of Joshua or Samuel.”

  “Edward Lawrence Whittier, after both our fathers.” Ever the politician. Tillie acquiesced.

  “That is a good strong name,” I told her, after the lord and master had departed. “But I, for one, shall call him Laurie. It fits him well.”

  And Laurie he became, to everyone who truly loved him, from that moment on.

  September slipped away with an Indian summer splendor; we could not believe autumn was here. Eugene and I officially announced our engagement and set a date for April, then changed it to May.

  “Above all else I need flowers for my wedding,” I explained to him.

  “I need nothing for my wedding,” he replied, smiling, “but you.”

  Georgie and Nathan pulled it together, though not until after the term started. But before the pumpkins were ripened and the last of the corn harvested, they were wed. She left her parents’ home and he his cramped quarters, and together they secured a charming little house to rent not far from their school. Georgeanna was certainly the one person of my intimate acquaintance I need not worry myself about. She seemed consistently solid and sunshiny, even more after marriage, which seemed to agree with her. But then, Georgie has the gift of seeming to make everything agree with her or be bent to serve her somehow.

  The harvest dance marked the highlight of autumn. Held traditionally the weekend before All Hallows’ Eve, this is arguably the third largest social affair in the city, after the Christmas Festival and the New Year’s Day party. May Day and Fourth of July festivities run closely behind.

  Latisha returned in t
ime to show off her new husband. It amused me to watch her—disregarding, because she was obliviously unaware, all social conventions, all snubbing and attempted ostracism by those of her father’s friends who felt themselves offended. She was happy, and happily blind. Tillie had her baby. He continued to be the handsomest child in the city, as far as I could surmise. I sensed that the child had softened Gerard’s attitude toward his wife, if only a little. After all, look at the heir Theodora produced!

  You are set up fine and saved from your own failings because of Tillie and her family, I fumed to myself. But, of course, he could not admit that fact to anyone; most of all to himself. Ah, this would never do. For in admission comes humility, and perhaps even change, and his proud Whittier nature would never countenance that. You have met your match, I thought on more than one occasion when I saw Gerard and his father-in-law together. The Swift family was admittedly the nobility of the village. But Gerard, despite his fallen state, did not acknowledge that. His name and his family standing went back as far, and was more widely established, and he used that to uphold him, expecting the respect that he felt was his due to be showered upon him, no matter what. How Mr. Swift fumed and burned! But he found himself helpless before a pompous self-possession that withered his.

  So Tillie had our little Laurie to hold on her knee and be admired. Josephine came with a new frock, all warm, earthy shades of autumn, her head held so high that I knew it must ache—perhaps more than her heart did. It grieved me to see the dull sorrow in Alexander Hall’s eyes.

  “I am not interested in that again!” Josephine kept repeating flippantly every time the subject of childbirth came up.

  “You learned your lesson, eh?” Georgie would tease her.

  “Perhaps I have.”

  At the last minute my mother refused to go to the dance with Father. Jonathan had come down with a cold. It was a nasty cold, true, and he was running a fever. But Maggie Wells, who had fed him from her own breast when he was a squalling infant, had agreed to come and sit with him. Her husband was bedridden himself with a nasty cut on the foot that prevented him from walking, much less dancing.

  “I’ve no hankering to kick up my heels,” she had told Mother, “with anyone else but that man.”

  But now Mother was demurring. I tried my best to persuade her. Even an appeal to her vanity—how slim and attractive she would look in her dancing gown—failed to touch her. What I said I said in jest, with no notion whatever—isn’t that how life is!

  “Your husband is a good-looking man, you know. If you leave him so much to himself, Mother, other women will start to take notice.”

  “Just let them try!” she pouted, reminding me awfully of Josephine. “Besides, he knows better than that.”

  In the end he went without her, and she stayed home to brood, which, for some reason, she wanted to do. As the evening wore on I realized that another person I loved was missing: Phoebe was nowhere to be found.

  “I talked with her yesterday,” Tillie said when I questioned her. “Did you know she has taken up even more sewing for several of the dress shops in town? She is using that as an excuse.

  “ ‘I’ve too much work to do,’ she told me, ‘and no reason to be there, Tillie, no reason at all.’

  “I happen to know,” Tillie continued, her voice heavy, “that James Sadler, Josie’s old beau, has tried to call upon her.”

  “Tried?”

  “She will admit no male admirers.”

  “I have always said James will make some girl a good husband,” I fumed.

  Tillie bent her head close, in that endearing way of hers. “She loves Simon, Esther. I am convinced it is yet too painful for her to put those feelings aside.”

  “But she must! Else what will there be in life for her?”

  Both of us sighed. Of their own accord my eyes roved the room until they lit on Simon and Emily dancing. He was holding her close, with an adoring look in his eyes that went to my heart. She was happy. I shall always remember how happy Emily was that night. I cannot begrudge them! I thought in frustration. No matter what.

  I was happy myself, because the hourglass was turned over, the quiet sands running through. And each day brought me closer to a state I now desired more than I feared.

  Much of the time I was enthralled with Eugene. But I remember one moment when the music stopped and we walked off the floor hand in hand—one simple moment when I saw that my father was sitting beside Widow Foster, Jane Foster, the midwife, and offering her a glass of cold cider punch. Nothing more. A friendly gesture, surely. I had danced with him earlier in the evening, and urged Josie and the others to give him a turn, which I was rather certain they did. But, after all, he was alone, and she had been alone for a long time. I tried to remember how old Jane was—thirty-five . . . surely not forty yet—perhaps ten years younger than he.

  Just as I began to wonder, Nathan and Georgie surrounded us with their laughter and goodwill, and we four traipsed off together, and all else was forgotten for the moment, and for a long time afterward.

  Chapter 12

  Palmyra: December 1828

  Who would have imagined mine would be the first name to come to a near-stranger’s mind? It was close upon midnight when I heard a brisk rapping at the kitchen door. Perhaps, I thought, someone is in trouble and has noticed the dull glow of a light within burning still. I regretted then my decision to curl up in the rocker and read until late. But Jonathan was feverish and fussy still; the tasks of the long day, all diverted from Mother to my shoulders, had worn me ragged; and I needed some time to myself. Then, of course, the hours had gotten away from me, and here I sat, the fire settling to embers, when I heard the knocking. I got up from the rocker, and the wooden floorboards were cold to my feet as I pattered across the empty room to take a cautious peek out the window.

  “Miss Parke, it’s me,” a low voice hissed. “Open up.”

  “Who is ‘me’?” I demanded.

  “Jonah Sinclair, ’Tisha’s husband. I am in need of your help.”

  I drew the bolt back, wondering what specter would greet me, not expecting to see the burly man sagging beneath the burden he carried—a limp body with legs dangling, head lolling.

  “It’s young Randolph. He’s been hurt in a waterside brawl and I had to take him somewhere.”

  “Quick,” I said, “bring him inside.”

  He was too long for the settle couch in the corner; he must have grown tall during the past year. But we positioned him there, anyway, and I fetched a basin of water as Mr. Sinclair directed me.

  “Knife wound,” he said. “Gone deep, I fear.”

  “We should fetch Doctor Ensworth.”

  He shook his shaggy head. “The boy don’t want him to know.”

  “I don’t care what the boy wants. I can trust Doctor Ensworth, if he can’t!”

  “I’ve taken care of many such injuries, miss. Have you got any needle and thread?”

  That decided it! “I shall sit with him, sir! You ride to the corner of Fayette and Foster Streets and bring the doctor back here!”

  “Chances are he ain’t even in, miss.”

  “Yes. But we are taking that chance.”

  It was to Jonah Sinclair’s credit that he recognized his defeat and admitted it. In less than a minute I heard the sound of his horse in the lane. How loud night noises are! How loud even the silence when the heart is beating raggedly and fear prickles the skin with cold chills.

  Every few moments I stopped my pacing to stand over Randolph and look into his face. I could see no sign there of the struggle he must have passed through. He lay so still! I began to wonder if he yet breathed! How long the doctor is taking! Perhaps Jonah Sinclair was right.

  Thus I agonized until at last I heard noises and ran to the door in my eagerness to hurry them in. Doctor Ensworth said little but set right to work. After long minutes he spoke without turning.

  “It is good you sent for me, Sinclair. I believe some of the nerves in this arm have been
damaged. I shall have a deuce of a time sewing it up.”

  I must have gasped.

  “He will never have full use of it, Esther. But I’ll do the best that I can.”

  “What does this mean?” I said in a low voice to Jonah. “Surely he cannot continue the strenuous work on the canal.”

  “No,” the doctor answered. “Not for a long while yet.”

  “Season is winding down, anyhow.” Jonah shrugged, but his eyes beneath their bushy covering were dull with worry.

  “What of his father?” I asked. “And who is to take care of him?”

  “These dressings must be changed regularly, so the wound doesn’t fester. And he must be kept quiet so the stitches don’t tear.”

  “I’ll take him to ’Tisha. We two can manage.”

  “Would you like me to keep him here?”

  “You must for a day or two, leastways,” said Doctor Ensworth. “I don’t want him moved.”

  “What was he doing?”

  Jonah shrugged again. “I’m not certain, miss. I was called to break a fight up, that’s all I know.”

  “Into gambling, I suspect.”

  I glanced up sharply, surprised at the doctor’s words. His gray head still bent over his patient.

  “Surely not!” I protested.

  “Could be so. The lot he was with make a business of preying on others and manipulating things to their liking.”

  Randolph moaned, and a shudder passed along his body.

  “He is a good boy! Can you not steer him in some other direction, Jonah, frighten the bullies away from him? Being right there, as you are—having some little authority . . .” I know my voice trembled with the desperation I was feeling.