Here Comes a Candle

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  Firm, friendly hands—not Jonathan’s—helped her into the little boat. At last she had time to look about her. The day was overcast, with even a hint of late snow in the piled-up clouds, but as they pulled away from the ship the sun broke through for a moment to light up the wooded shore they were approaching. Where, before, all had been flat monochrome, she now saw great splashes of color, the brown of last autumn’s oak leaves contrasting with the deep green of pine and fir.

  “I reckon you find that a mighty handsome sight, ma’am,” said the very young man who commanded the boat. “You ain’t got woods like that in the old country, I guess.” He spoke with the same nasal twang as the other sailors, and she found herself surprised, for the first time, at her companion’s lack of accent.

  “It’s beautiful.” She forbore to say that the woods, in fact, looked very much like the ones on the other side of the lake, in Canada. “And it’s spring!”

  “Yes, ma’am. There ain’t much to touch our American spring, I guess. What do you think of it?”

  “It’s beautiful,” she said again, not quite sure to what his question referred, but grateful for his interest. “It’s come on so fast.” While she had been below decks rain and wind had washed away the last patches of snow, and now, as the boat drew nearer to the shore, she could see touches of brilliant green in the clearing where they were to land.

  “Spring comes fast when it comes,” said the young sailor. “But I reckon you’ll have a rough journey of it, Mr. Penrose.”

  “I’m afraid so.” How different his voice was. “This is the worst time of year,” he explained to her. “No snow for sleighing, and the roads still waterlogged. If you can call them roads.”

  “Perfectly good corduroy,” said the sailor.

  “Corduroy?” Kate had never heard the phrase.

  “They’re made of logs.” The sailor was glad to explain it to her. “Laid crossways. Well, stands to reason you won’t get too smooth a ride.”

  “Goodness gracious, I should rather think not.” And then, beginning to be aware of how sensitive these Americans were about any criticism of their country: “But what a miracle to have roads at all over all these miles of wilderness. How far is it to Boston, Mr. Penrose?”

  “Quite a way, I’m afraid. We’ll be lucky if we get there under three weeks, now it’s thawed.”

  “Three weeks!” Her voice went higher than she meant. She brought it down a tone. “I had no idea. Stupid of me. I should have realized...”

  “I suppose I should have warned you.” No need to add that it was too late now.

  “It’s not that. I just hope I won’t be a terrible trouble to you.”

  “Nothing of the kind.” Impossible to tell whether he meant it. “Well, here we are. This is the landing for Fort Niagara,” he explained. “But we’re not going there. It’s out of our way.”

  “Welcome to American soil, Mrs. Croston.” The young American had lost his heart to her on sight and made a point of helping her ashore. He held her hand for a moment. “I reckon you’re pretty average glad to have got safe away from that bloodthirsty Regent of yours.”

  “Oh—thank you.” She had hardly looked on her adventures, or, for the matter of that, on the Prince Regent in this light, but felt a great surge of gratitude for his interest.

  “We go this way.” Jonathan had been watching the exchange with a slightly doubtful amusement. It was no part of his intention to have to set up as chaperon to his young companion, and, indeed, it had been a source of self-congratulation to him that she was such a quiet little thing and unlikely to attract much attention.

  Now, watching the sailor press her hand in farewell and wish her a pleasant journey at rather excessive length, he was not so sure. “Come, Mrs. Croston, we’ve no time to waste.” His tone as he cut short the interview sounded repressive even to him, and he tried to make amends as he took her arm to guide her up the rough track that led away from the lake. “I hope you don’t too much mind our famous American curiosity?”

  “They’re wonderfully kind.” She had expected hostility from the American crew of the Madison, and had met nothing but an oddly frank, friendly curiosity. Now, as they reached the turn of the track, a sailor who had just finished unloading stores from the boat ran to catch them up.

  “Excuse me, ma’am.” He sketched a salute. “But you’re the first English lady I ever set eyes on. Tell me, do they really eat babies there?”

  “Good heavens, no!” Impossible to resent the simple inquiry. But a relief just the same when he smiled broadly, said, “I reckoned it was just a tall story,” and turned away. And yet his going left her feeling alone as never before. Fantastic to be walking along this wild trail with a total stranger.

  “It’s no distance.” Jonathan Penrose might have read her thoughts. “We’re going to the house where I left my wagon. The Masons are old friends of mine.”

  And indeed Hugh Mason and his wife Janet greeted them with warm relief and a volley of friendly questions. “And now, I suppose, you’ll want to be on your way at once,” said Hugh Mason, when the first explanations were over.

  “As soon as we can. Yes, I’m afraid so. It’s taken so long ... Arabella will be wondering—”

  “She’s bound to be.” He had a quick look of curiosity and, she thought, sympathy for Kate. “Well, your wagon’s all ready; your horse has been eating me out of house and home; you should be able to pick up the stage tomorrow, with luck. Lord, it’s good to see you, Jon. Do you know, I was worried about you.”

  Janet Mason whisked Kate off to the surprising comfort of her upstairs bedroom. “Hugh says there is no need to live like savages, just because we have come to the west,” she explained. “Of course, the first years, when we were still in the log cabin, were something else again.” She watched as Kate took off her heavy blanket coat and combed out soft brown curls. “So you’re going to have charge of poor Sarah.” And then, abruptly: “What’s Jonathan told you about Arabella?”

  “Why, hardly anything. Do you know her?”

  “Gimini, yes. Hugh and Jonathan have been friends since Harvard. Jonathan met her then, you know, on a visit to Washington. He adored her for years, quite hopelessly, it seemed. She was a southern beauty, with the world at her feet, and poor Jon was almost penniless.”

  “Was he?”

  “Oh dear, yes. His father and grandfather lost everything between them, taking different sides in the War of Independence. Really, it was the most romantic thing. Jonathan went to sea, and made a fortune in the Western trade. They go around Cape Horn, and buy furs from the Indians way up in the northwest country, and then maybe a cargo of sandalwood from an island miles from anywhere, and so to China, for days of bargaining and a fortune in tea and willow pattern ware at the end of it. You must get Jon to tell you about it some time. Anyway, he was soon captaining his own ship, and then, fantastically rich. He got back from, I don’t remember, maybe his third trip, and went straight to Richmond, to Arabella. And there she was, beautiful as ever, proud as ever, and—single. That was a whirlwind courtship if ever there was one. He worships the ground she treads on. Well, you can see for yourself how impatient he is to get home. And that reminds me, I should be downstairs getting something for you to eat. Only—I thought I should tell you...”

  “Yes?”

  “Well,” she hesitated. And then, in a rush: “Of course, I’ve not seen her for years, but Arabella’s a beauty, the golden kind you have in England. She was the loveliest thing you ever saw when they were married. But— now—well, there it is: she’s not so young as she used to be. She must be all of twenty-eight. And from what I’ve heard she don’t much like competition. Just look at all the trouble they’ve had finding someone to look after that poor child. I’m sure that’s it partly. It’s lucky you’re small and dark.”

  “And plain.” Kate rose from the glass, the flush in her cheeks suddenly making nonsense of her words. “Thank you for telling me, Mrs. Mason.”

  After Jonath
an and Kate had driven off, Hugh Mason and his wife exchanged long, thoughtful glances. “Well,” he said at last, “what do you think, love?”

  “She’s a plain little thing.” She said it almost hopefully.

  “That’s what I thought at first She’ll do, I thought. Nothing there that Arabella could possibly object to. But then she smiled at me ... Did you notice her smile? Something happens in those big brown eyes of hers. I tell you, something almost happened to me. I’d have taken on a dragon for her, if there’d been one handy.”

  “How lucky there wasn’t,” said his wife. “But I know just what you mean, Hugh. I felt the same, and I’m a woman. Oh well, let’s hope Arabella doesn’t notice, or Jonathan either.”

  “Jonathan won’t,” said Hugh cheerfully. “You know how he is about women. But I’m not so sure about Arabella.”

  At first, Kate’s anxious thoughts circled around Arabella as they drove off down the narrow trail into the dark heart of the forest. But she was soon too tired and shaken even for anxiety. No doubt Jonathan Penrose, too, was thinking of his golden wife as he drove the light wagon relentlessly forward so that it bucked and jolted over the log road and Kate thought at every moment that they would overturn. But, “We must get to the Ridge Road before dark,” he explained. “Hugh Mason has friends there, who will put us up tonight, and then, I hope, we’ll pick up the stage in the morning.”

  She nodded speechlessly. They had been driving through deep forest for over two hours. Exhaustion had turned to nausea, and now, biting her lips, she fought down faintness.

  “I’m sorry.” Suddenly aware of her plight he pulled the horses to a standstill. “You’re not well. I should never have brought you.”

  “It’s nothing.” A gallant effort made the lie almost convincing. “I’ll be better in a moment. I’m so sorry.” She bent forward on the hard bench so that her head almost touched her knees, and felt reviving blood pound at her temples.

  “I’m a brute,” he said. “I should have let you rest a day at least. But you said you were better. And I’ve lost so much time already...”

  “I know.” With an effort she pulled herself upright and breathed deep breaths of the cool forest air. “I’m better now, truly I am. I wouldn’t delay you for anything.”

  “The trouble is”—he was looking up, considering the position of the westering sun—“that it would take us almost as long to go back as to go on.”

  “Go back?” She would not think about the Masons’ warm house. “Absurd.”

  “Good for you.” For the first time his blue eyes met hers with a look of approval. “Well, in that case?”

  “What are we waiting for?”

  But she was dizzy with fatigue when they drew up, at last, outside the log cabin where Hugh Mason’s friends lived. They were wonderfully kind. After the inevitable questions, and a quickly cooked meal of the tough fried salt pork she had learned to expect there was, mercifully soon, a hard little bed where she slept the sleep of total exhaustion. Only once, waking to the howl of a wolf in the forest had she a moment to think what a lifetime away she was from anything she had ever known. But that was what she had wanted. She turned, slept again, and dreamed of Arabella Penrose.

  The stage coach from Lewiston to Rochester passed this isolated forest clearing early in the morning. “They can’t do more than four miles an hour on these corduroy roads,” explained Jonathan. “They make a very early start from Lewiston so as to reach the halfway house before dark. Ah, here it comes.” He moved forward into the road as a strange, boat-shaped vehicle lumbered into view from among the trees. “They stop to bait and water the horses here anyway,” he turned back to explain to Kate as the cumbrous-looking carriage lurched to a stop.

  “Rochester?” The driver removed the quid of tobacco from his mouth and spat expertly between Jonathan’s feet. “Wa-al, I don’t just see why not. Not much business along the road today, as you can see. I reckon the rats as are going to run from the border, has run already, and the rest of us calculate to stay put a while, war or not war.” And then, inevitably, “Where are you from, stranger, and what’s the news?” He was busy watering his horses as he spoke and now turned back to address the four men who had spread themselves out comfortably on the three crossways benches of the coach that were intended to take three passengers each. “Move up in there, boys, we’ve got a lady passenger!”

  To Kate’s surprise, no one complained and no one seemed to find it in the least strange that she should be traveling alone with a man. She smiled her thanks and settled herself gratefully on the hard bench that had been vacated for her. Jonathan, she saw, was helping the driver harness up his horses. Hard to imagine an Englishman doing so. Now he climbed in beside her and pulled back the coach’s leather curtains to improve her view. “Not that there’s much to see but trees. There! We’re off!” And once again, as the four heavy horses lurched forward in their collars, Kate was aware of the tension in her companion, of how he longed to be at home. “I suppose you’ve not been able to let Mrs. Penrose know where you are,” she said. “She must be anxious about you.”

  “I hope not.” He turned away from her to lean forward and ask the driver what time he expected to reach the halfway house, and she, in her turn, turned quickly to look out unseeingly at the dark forest and fight back tears. Mr. Penrose did not discuss his wife with his servants. She would not forget her place again.

  And yet it was increasingly difficult to remember it, in the easy camaraderie of the journey. She soon got used to the routine of the road, the huge fried breakfasts eaten at silent speed, the piling into the coach with, always, the best seat saved for her, and the long day’s drive through the forest. Rochester, where they spent the second night, was nothing but a sprinkling of houses and a primitive inn, where the men slept huggermugger in one big dormitory but she, as the only woman, had a tiny room to herself, with a feather bed probably full of bugs. But she was too tired to care, too tired even for the nightmares that had haunted her since her father died.

  They caught the Albany coach next morning. “We’ll be there in ten days, if we’re lucky,” said Jonathan, helping her in. “The country’s clearer from here on, so the roads should have dried out a bit.”

  And so they lumbered on, with a pause every five miles or so, to bait and water the horses, and a longer one, at some appointed way station, for a midday meal, which, like supper, was merely a repetition of the fried-food served up at breakfast. Kate had learned by now, with relief, that these tobacco-chewing, tough-looking Americans were an abstemious race, at least by British standards. If they drank at all, it was in the bar of the little inns where they spent the night, rather than with their meals, and she was yet to see one of them the worse for liquor. It made a change, she thought wryly, from life in the British Army.

  She grew used, too, to the independent, I’m-as-good-as-you-are attitude of landlords and their families, who always sat down at table with their guests, the daughters getting up, reluctantly enough, to change the plates. She was even almost used to the incessant questions. In fact, without her quite realizing it, they were doing her good. Ever since the night her father died—the night she tried not to let herself remember—she had felt an outcast, a pariah, cut off from the fellowship of men. But it was impossible to go on feeling this among these friendly, inquisitive Americans, who wanted to know everything about her, from the price of her dress to what she thought of their country. It was only when the cross-examination turned, as, sooner or later, it was bound to do, to the past, to her background in England, that she would flinch and color, and Jonathan Penrose would intervene to parry question with question and get her tormentors talking, as they were ready enough to do, about their own problems, about ground clearance, or the potash business, or the course of the war. Surprisingly, no one seemed to hold the fact that she was English against her. She remarked on this in one of her rare moments alone with Jonathan on the stoop of the little inn at Schenectady.

  “Why should
they?” He seemed surprised. “You have to understand about this war, Mrs. Croston. Nobody wants it. It’s a folly—a lunacy. It almost died in armistice last fall—it will be over this year, if we New Englanders have any say in the matter. We’ve no quarrel with old England—or none that can’t be solved by friendly discussion.”

  “ ‘Friendly discussion!’ After all that’s happened? Mr. Penrose, you don’t understand. War—just the fact of war—changes things, changes people. I’ve lived with it. I know. Men—kind, ordinary men, with families, children—they turn into beasts, worse than beasts. Well, you were at York, you saw—”

  “Oh, that!” With irritation, he remembered saying something like this himself. “That was barbarous, of course. And out of character. We’re not that kind of people really, neither we nor you. We’re civilized. It won’t happen again. Madison will apologize—you see if he doesn’t. It will all blow over.”

  “I hope you’re right.” She shivered, haunted now by a new set of ghosts, by memory of the sights and sounds of the troop transport, coming over, with Fred Croston already coughing his heart out and hardly able to protect her from the more and more overt advances of his fellow soldiers. By the time they had reached York, even she, determinedly optimistic, had been able to see death in his face, and his closest friends had been drawing lots as to who should have her when he died. Soldiers civilized? “You don’t know what war is,” she said again. “What it does to people.”

  “Maybe not.” He made his voice cheerful. “Albany tomorrow, your first real American town. You’ll be glad of a rest.” When she looked like this, haggard, and gazing back into an unbearable past, he wondered more than ever if he had not been mad to take Dr. Brown’s advice without finding out more about her background. Once or twice, alone with her, he had nerved himself to ask her about the ghosts that haunted her, but he never managed to make himself go through with it. Wincing away from his first questions, she reminded him, somehow, of his own Sarah. He could no more persist in questioning her than he could slap Sarah for her bouts of hysterical screaming. And yet his anxious New England conscience gave him no rest. What right had he to trust his beloved child to this total stranger, who had only Dr. Brown to recommend her?