Here Comes a Candle

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  “She’s not had the measles,” said Jonathan flatly, and rose to see the doctor out.

  Returning, he found Kate settled once more in her chair by the bed. The laudanum drops were already taking effect, and Sarah was lying more quietly, her hot face pressed into the pillow. “Well?” she looked up at him, he thought challengingly, but kept her voice low, not to disturb the child.

  He seemed to have had time for a thousand years of shame since that disastrous encounter in the dark. “Kate—Mrs. Croston—I don’t know what to say.”

  “Then say nothing. After all, what’s the use?” She too had had time—too much time—to think. “You’ve been talking, of course, to Charles Manningham. No—I don’t want to discuss it.” It was as final as it was quiet. “For the moment, there’s nothing we can do, either of us. Sarah must come first. You know as well as I do that I am the only person who can see her through this. My fitness, or otherwise, has nothing to do with the case. Time enough for you to think about dismissing me when Sarah is better.”

  She was admitting it. He felt as if the life had been knocked out of him. “Shameless!” But he, too, kept it low, remembering Sarah.

  A quick, angry breath and then, still quietly: “I said we’d not discuss it. Good night, Mr. Penrose.”

  She would not even think about it. And, indeed, she had little enough time to do so while Sarah was ill. Inevitably, Jonathan had to share the burden of the nursing with her, since he and Mrs. Peters were the only other people who could keep Sarah at all quiet in her bed. Even they were not able to do so for long at a time, and Kate was literally too busy and too tired for thought.

  She slept and ate in Sarah’s room, relieved that by doing so she could avoid meeting Jonathan except when he came to take over so that she could get out briefly into the hot June garden. And even there, sitting in the locust grove by the river, she was too tired to think, too tired to plan. The present was enough. The future would have to take care of itself.

  Delirious, Sarah screamed endlessly. This was worse than anything Kate had been through with her. Now, at last, Kate feared for the child’s reason. The doctor had insisted that Sarah be kept well covered in bed: a chill, he said, at this point might prove fatal. Kate obeyed him at first but halfway through the second night, when the child came out of a drugged, restless sleep and began at once senselessly, hysterically to scream again, her every instinct rebelled. “It’s all right, my poppet, I’m here.” She fetched a big knitted shawl from the cupboard, wrapped Sarah up in it, picked her out of bed, and settled on the old sofa, with her in her arms. Now she could rock her, and sing to her, and feel the tension gradually drain out of the small body that weighed so alarmingly little. After that, Sarah would only sleep in her arms.

  The doctor was shocked, but had to admit that this natural sleep did her infinitely more good that that induced by laudanum. “If you can do it, Mrs. Croston.”

  At the end of an exhausting week, he pronounced Sarah over the worst. Kate could have told him that she was. That night she had slept in her bed with Kate merely holding her hand. But her recovery was as slow as her illness had been violent. For another ten days she had to stay in her room with Kate singing to her, feeding her by spoonfuls, like a baby, reading aloud to her endlessly out of her favorite book, The Pilgrim’s Progress.

  All this time, Jonathan had stayed at Penrose, and all this time Kate had managed never to be alone with him except in Sarah’s room. The doctor came every night, so as to see Jonathan, who now went to the factory again in the daytime, as well as Kate. On the last day of June, he let Sarah’s thin wrist gently down on the shawl she now refused to part with and smiled at Kate: “I congratulate you, Mrs. Croston. I didn’t think you’d do it, but you have.”

  “You mean?”

  “It’s over. She’ll do now. I don’t see why she shouldn’t get up tomorrow.”

  “Thank goodness for that.” As the child grew stronger, Kate had found it more and more difficult to keep her contented in bed. “And go out?”

  “In this fine weather? I don’t see why not. Not too much sun at first, but the more fresh air she gets, the better, so long as she doesn’t get tired. She’ll eat better once she’s getting out, I expect.”

  “I hope so,” said Kate. Only she knew what a test of her ingenuity it had been to get any food at all into her recalcitrant patient, the rhymes she had made up, the songs she had sung...

  “Good.” He picked up his hat and coat. “I don’t think I need call again. Send for me if you’re worried, of course, Mrs. Croston, but I’m sure you will manage admirably. I don’t know what we’d have done without you, do you, Jon?”

  “No.” His eyes met Kate’s in a look of perplexity that should have been comic. “No, I don’t.”

  “Mrs. Croston certainly has a wonderful way with her,” went on the doctor, as he followed Jonathan downstairs. “A mother couldn’t have done more for the child. I don’t want to raise your hopes, Jonathan, but just the same—if anyone can bring your Sarah about, that girl will. It was a lucky day for you when you found her up there in Canada.”

  “Yes. You might say so. Yes, thank you. Good-by, Doctor.” He turned abruptly, to stride away across the grass toward the river. The doctor looked after him for a moment, puzzled, then shrugged and mounted his horse. Tired out, poor Jonathan, he thought as he rode away.

  Jonathan was relieved to be summoned urgently into Boston for a Federalist meeting that evening. It gave him the excuse he wanted to postpone the inevitable decision about Kate. Saying good-by to her in Sarah’s room, with Mrs. Peters also present, he castigated himself inwardly for a moral coward. But what could he do, so long as Sarah looked so thin and pitiful and depended so entirely on Kate?

  Just the same, the problem haunted him all the hot way to Boston. Absurdly, pitifully, he realized at last that he was hoping, deep down below thought, that something would happen to change everything, that Arabella, perhaps, would tell him it had all been a mistake, a misunderstanding ... But Kate had admitted it. He always came back to that. “Time enough to think of dismissing me,” she had said, “when Sarah is better.” What could be more conclusive than that?

  Impossible, after such an admission, to contemplate leaving her in charge of the child. And yet—how would Sarah bear to part with her? How would he, for the matter of that? Thoughts like this were madness. To remember the softness of her in his arms, that first moment of yielding, was worse. He kicked his horse into a gallop and took the narrow neck road into Boston at such a pace that his friend Josiah, meeting him on the far side, had to shout to him to stop. “What’s the matter, Jon? Are the redcoats coming at last?”

  “Nothing like that—so far as I know.” He pulled his horse to a walk. “What’s the news in town?” It was a relief to talk about ordinary things.

  “Nothing much. The blockade’s tight as ever. I’ll bet you a hundred dollars we’re out of the Union by Christmas.”

  “Lunacy—worse! Our job is to stay in the Union and make Madison see sense. It’s peace over-all we want, not a private treaty.”

  “That’s all very well, Jon.” They were riding side by side along Orange Street. “But what makes you think we are going to get peace? Now France has fallen, it’s good-by to our hopes of a negotiated settlement.”

  “I hope you’re wrong. Of course we’ve no chance so long as we don’t present a united front. With all this talk of secession it’s no wonder they think they can do what they like with us.”

  Josiah whistled. “You’ve changed your tune, haven’t you? I can remember the time when you called this war a folly and agreed that New England would be better out of it.”

  “Yes.” Abruptly. “I have changed.”

  “Oh well. It’s a free country—I hope. And that reminds me—you remember that prisoner of war you were asking me about—Manningham?”

  “Yes. What of him?”

  Josiah laughed. “He’s had his conge from old man Betterton. You know he was dangling aft
er that plain girl of theirs? I had fifty dollars on it that he’d carry her off, fortune and all, but old Betterton was too many for him—and for me. Shipped the girl off to Ballston Springs overnight, and I near he’s using his influence to get Manningham sent down to Washington to be exchanged on the southern front.”

  “And good riddance, I’d say.”

  “The ladies will miss him.” But Jonathan refused to be drawn, merely saying a curt good-by and turning his horse down Summer Street.

  He was less surprised than displeased to learn that Arabella was out driving. “With Mr. Manningham.” Was there the same sort of gleam of inquisitive sympathy in the servant’s eye that had irritated him in Josiah? Or was he imagining things? Probably. In all the years of their marriage, Arabella’s conduct had been above reproach. Though they had lived so much apart, she had taken good care that no breath of scandal ever touched her. She valued her position in society too highly to risk it, surely, for a mere adventurer?

  But he was late. The Federalist meeting must have begun already. This was no time to be thinking of Arabella. He picked up his hat and hurried along the Crescent to the house where it was being held. Here, too, he rather thought he was greeted with curious glances, but the business of the day was too urgent for him to give them much thought. Josiah had been right. When he arrived, the assembled leaders of the Federalist Party had almost made up their minds to summon the other New England states to a convention to be held, perhaps, at Hartford, with the avowed intention of discussing secession from the Union.

  Arguing with a passion that surprised even himself, he managed to persuade them to suspend decision. And so the hard-fought meetings continued those breathless July days. The Fourth came and went, with gingerbread stalls on the Common, and little boys throwing illegal firecrackers, and a temporary upsurge of patriotic feeling that helped Jonathan to postpone a decision still further. And every day a brief, stilted note from Kate told of Sarah’s continued progress, and Arabella’s absences from the house in the Crescent grew longer and less predictable.

  Manningham was still in town awaiting his transfer to Washington. Manningham, he knew, was seeing a great deal of Arabella. He ought to do something about this. He ought to come to a decision about Kate. How could he, when all his time and energy were needed for these endless meetings? He was making excuses to himself. He knew it, and went on doing it until one sticky day late in July when everyone wanted to get out of town and the Federalists finally decided to postpone action: “At least till fall.” Returning to his own house, exhausted, but with a sense of achievement, Jonathan was surprised to find Arabella waiting for him in the drawing room. “I began to think you were never coming.” She was moving restlessly about the room, stiff satin creaking around her. There was something surely different about her tonight; a sense of violence repressed. Or was it just impatience?

  “I’m sorry,” he said mildly. “I had no idea you were waiting for me.”

  “Waiting—” she moved away, picked up a volume of Mr. Channing’s sermons and put it down again. “Well, of course.” She was at the chimney piece now, running her hand up and down its intricate carving. Then at last she turned, head up, to face him. “Jonathan!”

  “Yes?”

  She was finding it more difficult than she had expected. “Jon—will you let me go?”

  “Let you go? What do you mean?”

  Suddenly, she was the young Arabella he had almost forgotten, diffident, pleading. “Jon; I’m in love. I had no idea it could be like this. Jon—I’ll do anything ... only help me.”

  “What? Bella, are you mad?”

  “No, Jon; just happy for the first time in my life. Oh— I’m sorry. I understand now what I did to you, marrying you as I did; without love. But how could I know? Only that’s why—Jonathan, you must understand; this is too strong for me; it’s my everything, my future...”

  “It’s Charles Manningham?”

  “Yes. He wants to take me back to England. You can get a divorce there—I don’t quite understand it, but through Parliament somehow. And he has—influence. Did you know he is heir to a viscountcy? He says our marriage will be a nine days’ wonder: no more. It’s constantly done in high society, he says; the Duke of Wellington’s, own sister—”

  “Oh, my poor Bella. And you believed him?”

  “Of course I believe him. Why should I not? What has he to gain by lying to me?”

  “That, my dear, is just what I am waiting to find out. What is this help you want from me?”

  “Oh—that.” Here was the center of her uneasiness. Once again she had to take council with the chimney piece. “I’ve done my best to be a good wife to you, haven’t I?”

  “Your best? Yes, Arabella, I think, in your way, you have.”

  “Well then. You’ve always been generous. And—you’re a rich man. Richer than ever, they say, because of this war.” Again she paused, as if hoping he would take it up, but he remained firmly silent. She moved away to the window, so that her back was turned to him, and spoke over her shoulder. “You told me once, about your will: about what you had left me.”

  “Yes?” He was ashamed for her, but it must be got through somehow.

  “Oh, Jon, if you would only let me have it now! It would be nothing to you, with your fortune. Why—Charles says everything you touch turns to gold. And—you must see how it is. He is here, a prisoner of war, almost penniless. It’s not that he wouldn’t give his life for me, but what can he do? How can we manage the journey to England? Jon, if you’d only help!”

  “Oh, my poor Arabella,” he said again. He had not thought he could find himself, in these strange circumstances, so sorry for her. “Don’t you know he tried his best to fix his interest with Sophia Betterton?”

  “No!” She spat it at him. “It’s not true. He told me all about it at the time. It was just for fear that his passion for me would be noticed. If you knew what it cost him to dance attendance on her when I was in the room ... he was fighting against his feeling for me, don’t you understand? He is a man of honor, Jon. He knew I was a married woman with a child. He thought it his duty to conceal what he felt.”

  “He does not seem to have altogether succeeded.”

  “It was too strong for him. Too strong for us both. You must understand. You loved me once. I know it is gone long since, but if you ever did, now is your chance to give me happiness.”

  “Happiness! Poor Bella, if I only could. It’s true, of course; I was quite as much to blame as you for our marriage. You told me—no one could have been more honest—you told me you could not care for me, but, poor fool, I thought my love was enough for both. Well, I was wrong, was I not? Miserably wrong.”

  “Well then,” she came toward him eagerly, hands outstretched. “Let me go, Jon!”

  “No, puss, I’m sorry.” It was years since he had used that pet name for her. “I’ve loved you too well to let you persuade me into bribing an adventurer to ruin you. That’s what it means, face it, Bella; there’s no future in this. Come home to Penrose with me and we’ll try to help you forget him. Sarah is better, by the way: much better, Mrs. Croston writes. I had meant to tell you I thought you could come home any time you wished.” And was this, after all, a solution? Sarah better ... Arabella home where she belonged ... and Kate?

  But Arabella had flown into one of her sudden rages.

  “Sarah! Nothing but Sarah this and Sarah that! What about me, Jonathan! What kind of a life am I expected to drag out while you dote on her? Banished from my own home—publicly neglected by my husband—an object of sympathy to my friends! Yes—sympathy. I! Arabella Penrose! And now, of all things, you tell me that Mrs. Croston gives permission for me to come home. Mrs. Croston! The common drab of her father’s parish. Are you sharing her now with Job and the boy? I suggest you take a hard look at yourself, Jon, before you play the hypocrite with me.” And then, frightened by the anger in his face. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. But, don’t you see, we’re no good
to each other: we’re better parted. Here’s our chance: help me take it, for both our sakes. I beg of you, Jon: think again.”

  “There’s nothing to think about.” He had had time, as she went on talking, to master the extraordinary wave of rage that had swept through him when she spoke of Kate. “Nor anything to say, either. I think I had best leave you before we say anything else we will regret. But believe me, Bella, you’ll be grateful to me one day for saving you from this adventurer.”

  “Grateful!” She spat it out. “I warn you, Jonathan Penrose, you’ll regret this day’s work for the rest of your life.” Idle threats, poor Arabella, he told himself as he rode out of Boston. He knew enough, by now, about Manningham to be comfortably certain that there was no chance of his going through with the elopement once he knew there was no money in it. The kindest thing he could do was to allow Arabella at least the dignity of privacy for her disappointment. By what he had learned today, Manningham would be leaving for Washington at once and, he was sure, alone. And he, for his part, would leave Arabella alone to bear the first shock of it without even the suggestion of an “I told you so.” She would send for him soon enough, when she felt the need of him.

  But these were surface thoughts. All the time, as he turned his horse along the Penrose road, his mind was echoing with what she had said about Kate. “The common drab of her father’s parish.” And something worse, something he would not remember. It was impossible, all of it. And yet—she had admitted it herself. “You’ve been talking, of course, to Charles Manningham.” He could remember every tone of her voice, all its cold finality. This was something she had been expecting. “Time enough to think about dismissing me when Sarah is better.”