Honor

by Lyn Cote

  This arranged marriage. Samuel’s deafness. The care of his three-year-old nephew. A suffocating weight settled over her, followed by something like escalating panic.

  SEPTEMBER 14, 1819

  Two days later, the sun had finally lowered into twilight, golden rays gleaming through the parlor windows. It was his wedding day. Uncomfortable and hot, Samuel stood in his First Day suit, which Royale had brushed and pressed. Now Royale stood near the door, holding Eli in her arms. Samuel’s mother reclined on her chaise, ready to act as witness. White-haired Jemima Wool had come to be the other witness.

  Samuel felt trapped, yet something—some hope—stirred within him. Today he was getting a wife, something he had thought impossible. His bride, Honor, stood beside him, dressed in all he’d ever seen her wear—deep black—and her face was as fixed as if she were sitting for a portrait. He feared she would falter now.

  Standing with them in front of the cold fireplace, a local Congregational minister who’d known Samuel’s father had come to officiate. This minister would have to do, though neither bride nor groom shared his denomination.

  The fact that Honor was still in deep mourning had saved him from the spectacle of a Quaker wedding and had persuaded the minister to come to his home to perform this private ceremony. But when it came to it, would Honor actually go through with the marriage?

  The minister bowed his head in prayer. Samuel mirrored him but was unable to pray. God’s latest treachery roiled inside him—he couldn’t set aside his anger over his mother’s illness. And his stiff bride looked as if she were facing the scaffold.

  Honor’s fingers shook as they signed, “Amen.”

  Now the minister looked to him. Samuel tried to read the man’s lips and caught fragments of his speech. Honor touched his arm, and Samuel, glancing sideways, watched her laboriously sign the vows he was to agree to today. Quakers didn’t take vows; they made promises or affirmations. He felt oddly guilty.

  Again she nudged him, and he began to repeat the vows in sign to her.

  Then she signed hers to him. “I, Honor, take thee, Samuel, to be my lawful wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward: for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer …”

  He watched as her whole body shuddered, her hand trembling. She would surely flee from him now.

  Instead she paused and mastered herself. She went on, steady and determined. “… in sickness and in health; to love, cherish, and to obey till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I give thee my troth.”

  When the vows had been spoken, the two stared at each other. Dread gnawed at him. She could still back out.

  Then Honor translated the minister’s next words: “Where is the ring?”

  Samuel lifted his grandmother’s wedding ring, a cool, thick gold band, from his pocket. He repeated in sign the final lines of the vows: “With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

  In that moment his gaze and Honor’s met, and the connection sucked all the air from his lungs. Even strained, even in Quaker mourning, his Honor was beautiful and possessed a fierce dignity that emanated from her core. Samuel had somehow gained not only a bride, but one of whom he knew he was unworthy. He expected her to shrink away.

  But she didn’t, and he placed the ring on her finger. Then she signed, “I have given thee my promises. I will honor them.”

  So the vow-taking had upset her too. Still buffeted within, Samuel replied, “I will also.”

  The pastor finished, “I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride.”

  Samuel bent his head but could not make himself go the last few inches to touch Honor’s mouth.

  Honor rose up on tiptoe and pressed her cool, dry lips to his, then stepped back.

  The touch sent shock waves through him. He held all reaction in, unnerved but unwilling to let it show.

  He led Honor to the kitchen table, where he, Honor, and the pastor signed the marriage certificate, as did his mother and Jemima as witnesses. Jemima had baked a light French-style cake with creamy white frosting. They all gathered around the table to eat it. The sweetness nearly gagged Samuel as much as did everyone’s attempts to appear cheerful.

  He watched the faces around the table. No one looked truly happy, least of all his bride, who had withdrawn further from him—from everyone, really. And he didn’t blame her. The wedding night loomed over both of them. He couldn’t imagine that she would welcome him. I can’t believe this is happening to me.

  As Royale cleared the table and began to wash the few dishes, Honor tried to keep a faint smile on her lips, show a serene countenance to all. Be the happy bride. However, her thoughts still floated through her head in a kind of daze. She had no idea whether her husband even liked her. And thinking of the wedding night scattered her thoughts further.

  First the minister rose to take his leave. He paused to speak to Miriam. Then he bowed over Honor’s hand, clapped Samuel on the back, and was gone. Jemima rose also, accepted their thanks, and left. The four remaining adults sat around the table. Eli was slumped on Royale’s lap, nearly asleep.

  Honor mentally drew herself together. “Miriam,” she said and signed, “thee needs to go to bed. Samuel, please help thy mother.”

  Royale stood. “I’ll get Eli into bed too.” The overtired child whimpered as she carried him up the stairs, humming an old song.

  By the day’s last light, Honor followed Samuel as he carried Miriam to her first-floor bedroom. He set her down gently and left the room. Honor helped Miriam out of her dress and into her nightgown.

  “Honor, I am so happy. I know this marriage is not what thee came to Pittsburgh to find. Yet even as I prayed for a wife for Samuel, I also prayed for that woman herself. God will bless thee. And my Samuel is an honest man with a kind, true heart.”

  Honor’s strength was draining from her and evaporating, but she rallied. “I would not have married him if I didn’t believe that.” And he will always need me, so he’ll never betray me. A bitter thought.

  Honor helped Miriam lift her legs into bed and covered her with a soft, worn sheet. She set the handbell next to Miriam, who had flattened somehow, now appearing like a sketch of herself on paper. “Call me if thee needs me.”

  “I’ll try not to.”

  Honor’s body clenched. Yes, this would be her wedding night. How would she face it?

  Honor climbed the steps, feeling as if she were girding herself for battle. What did she know about husbands and wives and consummation? Royale had already moved her few things into the bedroom that Eli and Samuel had once shared. Now Royale would sleep with the child. And Samuel with Honor, his wife.

  At the head of the stairs, Honor approached the room where her husband waited for her. The door stood open and her husband sat on the bed, his head bent and his hands hanging in front of him, folded. The very picture of dejection. She wondered if she looked as gloomy. This is my husband. Her heart went out to him. His mother was dying, and now he had been forced to marry a stranger.

  Inhaling deeply, she entered the shadowy room, and he must have felt her step because he rose politely but wouldn’t meet her eyes. As he seated himself again, she considered what to say. She nearly moved to the chair but changed her mind and sat next to him, drawing near. The bed ropes creaked; the bed dipped, sliding her closer to him. This is my husband.

  Facing forward, she signed, “This is very awkward. We barely know each other.”

  He hazarded a glance toward her and nodded.

  She kept her gaze directed at the open door but found his hand and took it in her left so she could still sign. Her heart beat like a man running on an uneven road. “Will thee give me some time alone?”

  He nodded, rose in one quick surge, and was out the door.

  Across the hall, Royale peered from her own door. “You need me to help you undress?”


  The thought of asking Samuel to help with her many buttons and laces sent heat through Honor. “Please.”

  Royale proceeded to go through the nightly routine of assisting Honor and putting away her clothing neatly. As Honor sat and Royale unpinned her hair, she was tempted to ask Royale what she knew of the marriage bed but decided not to embarrass them both. “Oh, we will begin paying thee, Royale. I’m sorry I didn’t start that earlier—”

  “It be all right. I know you makin’ sure I safe and got a place.”

  “It’s different now. Samuel said we could afford to pay thee, and he appreciates how good thee is with Eli.”

  “I happy to hear that.” When Royale finished, she squeezed both of Honor’s shoulders. “You be fine.” And she slipped from the room, closing the door behind her.

  Honor did not know if she believed Royale.

  Samuel opened the door and stepped inside. The last of the sunset glowed at the window.

  Shaking, Honor stood from her seat and, not looking at him, went to the far side of the bed and slipped under the covers. Her heart beat so fast, she felt she could faint.

  He sat down and the bed shifted.

  This is my husband.

  Then Miriam’s bell rang, and another presentiment bathed Honor with sharp, cold dread.

  SEPTEMBER 16, 1819

  Honor’s wedding night had been Miriam’s last evening in this vale of tears. So in her best mourning dress and stiff with grief, Honor stood at Miriam’s graveside beside Samuel, who held a bewildered Eli in his arms. Royale stood a step behind Honor, weeping. Tall trees shaded them in the solemn place. Modest limestone markers dotted the green grass.

  Honor realized now that Samuel’s mother must have been just holding herself together till Samuel had someone to speak for him, to go with him. Now she was being buried beside her husband in the Society of Friends cemetery. Honor gripped her frayed composure, stilling a deep trembling.

  In the oppressive heat, one of the older Quakers stood at the head of the grave and read William Penn’s soothing words in a deep, gravelly voice:

  “‘And this is the Comfort of the Good, that the Grave cannot hold them, and that they live as soon as they die. For Death is no more than a Turning of us over from Time to Eternity… . Death then, being the Way and Condition of Life, we cannot love to live, if we cannot bear to die.’”

  Honor craved the solace of these familiar words. She signed them to Samuel but couldn’t tell if he was paying any attention to her or not. She had known Miriam so briefly; still the loss stung like an open cut.

  Dressed all in black, Jemima Wool and other older members from the local meeting had come along to the interment. Now Jemima stepped forward to speak. “From girlhood on, Miriam was a blessing to everyone. A strong woman of faith, a good wife and mother. She will be missed.”

  The rest nodded and murmured their agreement.

  As the men lowered the simple pine coffin into the earth, Honor bent her head and instinctively claimed Samuel’s free hand, rough and dry even through her thin summer glove. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” she whispered, remembering her grandfather’s funeral. She swallowed a gasp at a stitch of intense pain in her side.

  Just as Honor, Royale, and their new family were about to get into a hack for the ride home, the land agent, a member of the local Quaker meeting, approached them. He handed Samuel a note with a solemn nod, then turned to her. “I hear that thee and Samuel were married?”

  “Yes.” Two days ago.

  “May God bless thy union. I will come tomorrow with the papers to transfer the deed.”

  So the house had been sold. Honor felt as if someone had slammed a door against her. She let Samuel help her into the hack. Even in her extremity, she noted that he performed the same courtesy for Royale. She clung to that. Miriam had said her son was good and kind. Honor could only hope that would continue now that Miriam was with the Lord.

  Later that day, through the narrow, airless, grimy streets, Honor reluctantly accompanied Samuel to the manufactory where he worked so he could get his tools and quit. Why did they have to go there today, the day of Miriam’s funeral? But, of course, the land agent was coming to complete the sale of the house tomorrow, and they must prepare to leave for faraway Ohio and the land Samuel had already bought.

  Honor struggled to keep her mind focused on the present, not what might be coming toward her. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof”—the Gospel of Matthew stated it well.

  At the factory’s wide double doors, the heat of the place hit her, wrapping itself around her face and smothering her. She stood gasping, watching men puffing into long-stemmed blowpipes, shaping terrifying molten glass into molds. And others fearlessly thrust tubes with the molten glass back inside small furnaces with open doors, alive with orange-and-blue flames. Honor had never seen anything like it. She fought the urge to flee from the hellish scene.

  Samuel glanced into her face and tugged on her arm, prompting her to come with him. Still she held back. Then a few men did start looking her way, and this moved her forward. She didn’t want to make a spectacle of herself here.

  The unfamiliar, harsh odors of molten glass and coal-burning furnaces filled her nostrils and raised her gorge. She clung to Samuel’s arm as he drew her toward what must be his place.

  Samuel’s area sat empty. No one had turned toward him. The other glassblowers always ignored him. Yet even while intent on their dangerous work, they began to acknowledge his bride’s presence, not his. He loved working with glass. But he hated this factory, though it was the place where the father who’d loved him in spite of his deafness had taught him his trade. His memory brought up an image of his father working here. Today he could leave it once and for all—a break he desired yet dreaded, too.

  Feeling as if he were standing on the edge of a cliff, he led Honor along the side of the large, dim room to the manager’s small office. Usually they communicated with brief notes, but now, with Honor translating, he introduced her as his wife. The man’s expression at the announcement irked Samuel, but he supposed he might as well get used to it, if he ever could. Samuel explained to the manager that he was leaving the manufactory. The manager had risen for Honor and stood behind his desk in rolled-up shirtsleeves, now staring at Samuel. Then he addressed Honor.

  “He says he’ll give thee a raise if thee stays,” she signed.

  “Tell him we’re going to Ohio, where I’ll set up my own glass shop,” Samuel signed.

  The manager looked surprised, but then he startled Samuel by offering his hand.

  Samuel accepted it. They shook, and after receiving the pay he was owed, Samuel and Honor left the office. They walked together to Samuel’s station, where he methodically packed his long wooden toolbox with paddles, tongs, shears, hooks, metal blowpipes, and bellows.

  The other men evidently started to notice he was packing up. One began talking to Honor and the manager, who’d apparently followed Samuel from the office. When Samuel finished and looked up, all work had stopped. The other glassblowers had turned, regarding him.

  Samuel stood, frozen. Why were they acknowledging him now?

  Honor signed, “I told them your news—about your mother and about Ohio.”

  One glassblower and then another raised his hand to Samuel as if in salute. Samuel stared at them. Most of these men had never even waved hello or good-bye to him. Today, for the first time, he felt a part of them, part of this band of men who worked in a hot, dangerous, yet useful and often-beautiful craft.

  Then he, too, raised his hand to them. His throat thickened, clogged with his reaction to this tribute.

  Honor and the manager accompanied him to the wide-open doors, and the manager shook hands with him again, thanking him for his work for the company. As Samuel turned his back, cold uncertainty flashed through him. He felt himself stepping into the dark unknown. Could he actually leave Pittsburgh, go somewhere he’d never seen, and set up a shop of his own?

  The con
flict between the known and the unknown sliced into Samuel like a knife. Sweat that had nothing to do with the heat of the forges or the summer day beaded on his forehead.

  Honor walked beside him under a parasol, not looking toward him, appearing drained by the heat and by the events of the day.

  He led her toward home, the heavy toolbox slung over his back, the weight of his isolation over his heart, bitter over his inability to connect with the other glassblowers. They might have been friends.

  Honor stumbled over the uneven cobblestones, and he offered her his free arm. When she took it, he slowed to her pace. Sometimes when he looked at her, he couldn’t breathe. But he had to hide his desire for her. So far their acquaintance had been one crisis after another, no time to get to know each other.

  But did his wife want to get to know him? Would there always be this separation? He didn’t know how to make friends, especially with a woman, a wife.

  SEPTEMBER 20, 1819

  A few days later, Honor sat at Miriam’s secretary desk in the parlor. She’d hunted through the pigeonholes and located a quill, ink, paper, sealing wax, and a seal. She had carefully laid out all of these on the fold-down desk. But she could not make herself lift the pen to dip it.

  Never before had Honor resented the Inner Light. Never before had she felt a stronger prompting to do something. And of course, it would be something she did not want to do.

  Father, I do not want to write a letter to Darah.

  The prompting did not relent.

  Already the day’s heat was beginning to suffocate her. She closed her eyes and bent her head into both hands. “Father,” she whispered, “my life in Maryland is over. I don’t want to keep in touch with my cousin. She doesn’t need me. She will probably read my missive with scorn or, worse, laughter.”

  Darah isn’t laughing now.

  Honor’s eyes flew open. The words had come without a voice—just the words, just the feeling. She tried to discount what she’d thought. Tears flashed into her eyes at the memory of Darah standing with Alec Martin at their grandfather’s graveside.