Fairer than Morning

by Rosslyn Elliott

  Outside, Ann herded the girls into the back of the wagon and climbed up into the driver’s seat. When she looked back to assure herself that the barrel was secure, something caught her eye.

  The word sugar had been painted out, and instead, an address wobbled in black ink around the knots in the pine: From Saddler Jacob Good of Pittsburgh to Saddler Samuel Miller of Rushville, Ohio.

  She did not know why, but something about that spidery handwriting unsettled her. She gazed at it for a long moment.

  “Why are we waiting?” Susan rubbed her hands together.

  “We’re cold.” Mabel pretended exaggerated shivers where they sat in the back. They both giggled.

  Ann slapped the reins and clucked to the mare. She had to get her sisters home.

  The temperature was dropping, and on the way back to the farm, the girls’ breath floated in misty plumes before their mouths. Susan and Mabel amused themselves by seeing who could make more mouth-steam. The trees stood bare and stark against the gray sky, not a bird or an animal in sight the whole way home.

  The girls’ chatter ran off Ann’s silent thoughts without touching her, like water from a tin roof. She lost herself in memories of Eli, the day he showed her Shakespeare’s sonnet and touched her cheek as she bent over the book, saying, “Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.” His promise that in only another two years he would have saved enough to go on to university, or to train in medicine, if his father’s friend in Cincinnati would take him on as an assistant. The moment he asked her to marry him.

  Ann pulled up the wagon at the door of the empty farmhouse. “Girls, go inside and stoke the fire. Warm up.”

  Mabel and Susan piled off the back of the wagon and hurried through the doorway, closing the dark door behind them quickly as they had been taught.

  Before Ann could go in the house, she had to tend to their mare, Bayberry. She had raised the horse from a foal, and now that Bayberry was full grown at four, Ann took pains to care for her properly. Nothing comforted Ann as much as the touch of the mare’s velvety nostrils against her palm or the look of peace in her dark eyes.

  Ann led the horse into her stall. Her gloves made it harder to unbuckle the harness, but she was determined not to take them off until she was in the house. Her fingers were numb with cold even with the gloves on.

  When she had laid the harness aside, she put her arm around Bayberry’s neck, buried her face in the mare’s black mane, and closed her eyes. The picture of Phoebe and Eli together would not fade; her throat burned. She breathed deeply, grateful for the icy air that brought an ache to her lungs to distract her from the one in her heart. Eli had forgotten her so quickly. Why could he not wait?

  She must think of any blessing she could find in his faithlessness, or she would cry.

  At least she could remain with her sisters here at the farm. She could not let them grow up without a motherly presence. She could not leave them to struggle through the beginnings of young womanhood alone, as she had.

  Over six years ago, in the bedroom, her mother’s life had seeped away while Ann held in her hands a squirming newborn Mabel. Her father had not returned from his ministry for two days. Like an automaton, Ann had scrubbed the blood from the floor as best as she could, burned the bed linens that would never be white again. And she had spent two days in the house with her mother’s cool, rigid body with its awful staring eyes. She had not known to close them immediately; by the time she tried, it was too late.

  Now a shameful fear consumed her every time her father left the farm, a dread that something terrible would happen, just as it had that day when she lost her mother and no one was there to help.

  No one knew what she had seen, not even her father. She buried the awful memories in the darkness beneath Bayberry’s mane, letting the warmth of living flesh against her cheek call her back from what was cold and dead.

  The barrel from Pittsburgh. She had better take it inside the house.

  Latching the stall behind her, she left the barn and went back to the wagon in the yard. She lowered the buckboard and wrestled the barrel out, moving her toes out of the way as it dropped with a thump on the frozen ground. She knew what was inside; it would not suffer from a thumping.

  She dragged the barrel over the threshold. Warmth tingled on her cold nose and ears. Susan was becoming expert at stoking the fire. In a few years she would be even more help around the house.

  The girls rushed over to see what was in the barrel, but the lid was wedged in place and would not budge.

  “Mabel, will you bring me the fire iron? No, don’t skip,” Ann said as Mabel bobbed up and down, her ringlets tumbling over the shoulders of her white pinafore. “It’s not safe to skip with a poker in your hand, and it’s not proper in the house, anyway.”

  Mabel restrained herself to a tiptoe walk, still waving the black hook of the poker wildly so Ann had to grab it to avoid a poke in the gut.

  Ann pried off the lid. A gorgeous red-brown cowhide, tanned and oiled, lay tucked in a spiral inside the barrel. Ann would let her father take it out and examine it in two days, when he came home from his current preaching trip. Her father was a master saddler, and only his experienced eye would determine whether this leather was fine enough. The customer had insisted on sending it all the way from Pittsburgh, to be returned when her father had shaped it into a sidesaddle.

  Her sisters ran off to their bedroom to play hide and seek. They were bored by the sight of yet another piece of leather, to them just like every other tanned hide in the barn. Ann lifted the lid from the floor to set it back on the barrel.

  But something else caught her eye, in the bottom, almost hidden by the coiled hide. Was that just rubbish or scrap paper? Curious, she tilted the barrel over on its side and reached in to her shoulder until she could snatch the crumpled papers and pull them out. She smoothed all six sheets and set them on the floor next to the hearth.

  The light of the fire fell on the pages. She leaned over the nearest and read: My dear Will.

  A letter. It wasn’t right to read someone else’s letters, but how could she return them if she didn’t know whose they were? She would read just enough to figure it out.

  30th July 1817

  My Dear Will,

  I wish I could be with you on this special day, your tenth birthday. I love to remember when God brought you into the world, blessing us with our firstborn. That morning that you opened your eyes and looked at me, what unspeakable joy and love I felt! The years since you and your sisters and brother were born have been the happiest years of my life, especially this past year in my sickness. I only hope that you will know what joy you have brought me, and keep it in your heart always.

  Your father says perhaps we may be able to come home by autumn. We miss you terribly, but we cannot risk passing the consumption to you and Johnny. Be good and trust in the Lord to bring us through this time.

  Your Loving Mother

  The familiar ache of loss sharpened. How she would have treasured a letter like this from her own mother. But she and her mother had never been separated while her mother lived, and so there had been no occasion to write letters.

  Surely this was not the kind of letter someone would throw away. Why had it been tossed in the bottom of a shipping barrel? She must get these letters back to whoever had lost them— probably someone in Pittsburgh. She could discuss it with her father, but he might say it was none of their concern. Or the mention of a sick mother in the letter might trigger one of his dark moods that could last for weeks.

  Troubled, she collected each of the letters and folded them together. She must think on this. She would put the letters in a safe place where no one else would see them, until she could decide what to do.

  Four

  RUSHVILLE

  22nd February 1826

  ANN DIPPED HER QUILL IN THE INK AND SCRATCHED on the page:

  MyDearest Eli,

  Ithasbeen overtwoyears nowsince youasked metobe your wife. Y
ouonce told methat none should barthemarriageoftrue minds, and yetyouyourself have done sowithout abackward glance. Howcould youturn from mewith no further questions, asifchoosing anewhorse atmarket?

  Youkeep company with Phoebe Vanderlick. Doesshe share your loveofletters? Ihave observed nosuch interest in her, forshenever spoke ofourstudies inschool butonly of ribbons, games, and parties.

  Her hand trembled as she wrote the words, and an ugly stain blotted the page of her diary. She strained to read what she had written, but the cold light from her bedroom window failed to reach her desk. If only she could write to Eli of what was really in her heart—her abiding and passionate conviction that God had destined her to be Eli’s wife, that there could be no other spouse for either of them. But she did not know how he would respond, so the words stayed trapped in the pages of her diary.

  “Ann! Where are you?” her father called from the kitchen.

  She snapped the little book shut, heedless of the likely smearing, and knelt down beside her bed to shove it under the loose floorboard. She kept the diary there with the wrinkled letters from the boy Will’s mother, which she had read again and again until they were like letters from her own mother.

  “Are you ready?” her father asked from the hall. He came to the door of her room, the gray in his hair belied by his clean-shaven face and vigorous bearing.

  He closed his mouth in a firm line. “You aren’t dressed.”

  “No, Father. I don’t wish to go to the dance.”

  “You can’t mew yourself up in here like a convent girl. You’re eighteen years old. It’s time for you to get out, meet young men.” He avoided her eyes.

  “I don’t wish to meet any young men.”

  “That’s not what your mother would have wished.” He shook his head. “She would not want you to spend your life with me on our farm. I am to blame; I have not raised you as she would have—” He broke off. Perhaps he was thinking of the forbidden betrothal. His face grew overcast, the brows heavier, forecasting the coming gloom.

  Ann sighed. “Very well, I’ll go.” The dance would be torture, with Eli and Phoebe certain to be in attendance, but it would be worse to see her father enter the shadows of his grief for her mother. When he did, Ann would be forced to put on an air of artificial lightness in the presence of her sisters, to keep the farm from sliding into full-scale mourning. She would rather bear up under two hours of chatter and dance invitations than two weeks of false gaiety.

  “And wear the good dress I brought you from Pittsburgh,” he said. “Your old ones don’t fit as well, now that you’re growing up.” He looked away in embarrassment. “You too seldom make the most of your appearance. If your mother were here, she would urge you to tend to your hair as the other girls do. You’re a very pretty girl, when you make up your mind to groom yourself and dress properly.”

  It doesn’t matter now. “Yes, Father.” She failed to keep the impatience from her voice. He withdrew from the doorway.

  She was sorry when she was abrupt with him in that way. He had done what he thought best about Eli’s proposal, and he was a good-hearted man. Still, his attempt at matchmaking now grated on her like a washboard against raw knuckles. She walked to the wardrobe and jerked open the door with ill will.

  The dark red dress hung in satiny folds, taking up almost half the wardrobe. She snatched it without ceremony and tossed it on her bed. After she had divested herself of her everyday work dress, she laced her stays a little tighter and slipped the new dress over her head. The high neck with its ruffles across the shoulders was becoming and modest enough for an eighteen-year-old. The dress fit close around the middle before sweeping out over her petticoats. As her father had said—so mortifyingly for both of them—she had been growing more womanly. The satin against her skin did make her feel prettier, but she had no one to charm. The dress would only earn her more unwanted dance requests from James Murdoch and David Crawford, who were fine enough boys but not well spoken or interested in much beyond their farms.

  When she had dressed and twisted her chestnut hair into something resembling the fashionable upswept style, she joined her father in the kitchen. He lifted his head from the volume of sermons he had open on the table and regarded her with approval.

  “Beautiful, my girl.” He stood and gave her a clumsy, one-armed embrace around her shoulders. “You’ll have a fine time with the other young folk, you’ll see.”

  Mabel rushed into the kitchen through the screen door, grubby from an adventure in the mud behind the barn. Her lips were blue; the wind bit sharp in late February, even in the absence of snow.

  “You’re a princess!” She clapped her hands and bounced, which brought some color back to her face.

  “Just going to a dance, my sweet,” Ann said. “You need to come in from the cold. Go tell Susan to come in too.” She turned to retrieve her own cape from the stand and wrapped its woolen length around her arms. It was no match for her dress, but practicality trumped fashion. She would never ask her father to waste their money on a fine coat that would be ruined the first time she wore it to clean stalls or feed pigs.

  Mabel twisted one yellow curl around her finger. “I want to go to the dance! May I?”

  “When you’re older you may go,” Ann said. “You wouldn’t like it.”

  “Oh.” Mabel grabbed a tin cup from the shelf on the wall. “I need to finish one thing outside.” She darted out before Ann could say another word.

  Ann’s father walked to the door and held it open for her. She walked out, holding her skirts away from the doorframe.

  Across the yard, the girls were in heated conference as Mabel gestured with cup in hand. Susan, a head taller, gave half-audible instructions to her little sister about the water pump and a dirt pile.

  “Girls! Go in the house this minute,” Ann called. “You aren’t to come back out until we return. There’s sweeping to do, and, Susan, mind the fire, if you please.”

  With slumped shoulders, the girls obeyed. Ann smiled at their crestfallen expressions. She was glad they were still so interested in play. Susan was about the same age as Ann had been when their mother died. Ann had not been so carefree.

  She didn’t usually need help into the wagon, but her father had to boost her by the elbow because of her voluminous skirt. When she was settled, he took the driver’s position and picked up the reins, clucking to Bayberry. The wagon lurched and rolled out of the yard, startling some of the chickens in the coop into squawks and flurries. It was gray and gloomy. The trees of the woods stood like paupers with their bare arms outstretched for alms.

  Her father turned his face toward her. “I will have to go to Pittsburgh again next week.”

  The familiar frisson of dread ran through her. “Why?”

  “Mrs. O’Hara wants me to make a new saddle for her and personally check its fit while I am there.”

  “I can’t imagine the money that family has, to be able to pay you for such journeys.”

  “Well, for the heir to Pittsburgh’s greatest fortune, such things are not as significant.”

  “But I would be alone here! What if something happens to you while you’re gone?”

  He sighed. “We cannot fight this battle again. I must go. The money for the O’Hara saddles runs our farm for a year. We must trust God to protect all of us when we are apart.”

  She did try to trust in Providence, and she did find some solace in the psalms during the nights her father was gone. But God had not protected the life of her mother, and Ann was still afraid.

  With her father, however, she must take a less painful line of reasoning. “Why do the O’Haras choose you? Why can’t they hire the man who does the leather?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps because when I lived in Pittsburgh, he supplied the leather and I did the work.”

  “But why does it matter so much? There must be saddlers in Pittsburgh who could do it.”

  “I don’t know. Sentiment, I suppose. Mrs. O’Hara didn’t commission me when I fi
rst moved out here. Not until after her husband died.”

  “Please,” Ann said. “Let me come with you this time.”

  Her father raised his eyebrows. “And what will we do with the girls?”

  “Bring them along.”

  “That will be arduous,” her father said. “You think we can bring such young girls by stage and by steamboat for days?”

  “I will assume responsibility. I can entertain them.”

  “And who will care for the farm?”

  Ann thought quickly. “James Murdoch. He has enough brothers—his father could spare him. We could pay him from your profit; he would be glad of the money. And really, he would only have to look after the animals. There won’t be much more to do until the thaw.”

  Her father fell silent and stared ahead at Bayberry’s haunches. When he glanced sidelong at Ann, his eyebrows resumed their natural position. “Very well then. Perhaps just this once. On one condition.”

  “What is that?”

  “You must do your best to enjoy yourself and to be sociable to any appropriate young men we meet. I will undertake the expense of this trip in part out of hope that you will be more amenable to the social pursuits of a large city.”

  “I will try.” That was the best she could do. The city would not offer a better man than Eli.

  But then the thought of the journey brought a rush of exhilaration, and she put her hand through the crook of her father’s arm. “Thank you, Father.”

  He smiled.

  She could hardly believe it. Soon she would see the city and its fine buildings, scores of shops, steamboats crowding the rivers—all the things her father had described to her. Her spirits lifted as the wagon jostled along the road. A journey to Pittsburgh was enough to take her mind off lost love.

  Enough, that is, until Eli walked into the Murdochs’ barn, where couples were already whirling and skipping through the steps of a country dance. Ann perched quietly on one of the chairs that circled the edge of the barn, her burgundy skirt pooling in stiff folds where it touched the floor. She had already danced once with James Murdoch to satisfy her father, but then politely declined a second dance. She held a warm glass of cider and watched the others.