The Language of Paradise: A Novel (13 page)

“Have you discussed this with James? It could be months,” Sophy says.

Caroline added yet another improvement this afternoon. She must have a piazza. A grand Italian porch to match the Greek columns at the front entrance. None of them has ever heard of such a thing, but she deems it essential, for where else will their future children play?

“Oh, Sophy, he took it very hard. He called me selfish! He said I loved comfort more than I loved him. Can you imagine your brother being so harsh? He drove me to tears, and when I cried, he was shattered and begged me to forgive him.” Caroline’s chin begins to tremble. She sits up straighter and clutches her knees. “
You’re
the one who is being selfish, I said. You’d deny my poor parents a few more months of my company when they’re soon to lose me for good. You’d burden your family with another guest when they’re worn out with caring for Mr. Birdsall. And what if the poor man doesn’t recover, I said. Shall we spend our wedding night in a bed recently occupied by a—well, you know. What kind of omen is that, James Hedge?”

“He will recover,” Sophy says. “He is better every day.”

Was it her face, or the steel in her words, that betrayed more than she intended? Caroline had been galloping along like a Valkyrie, fire in her eye and blood in her cheek, and she has stopped short; Sophy can hear the snorting of the horse, see its hooves pawing the air.

“Did you and James make peace? I hope so,” she says quickly.

“In the most magnificent way. He knelt before me and promised that if I would honor him with my hand, he would work even harder to raise a house fit to receive me. He spoke plainly but from his heart, and it was poetry to my ear. What were a few months, he said, when measured against the years of happiness we would share? I raised him up, Sophy, and we embraced. We are closer than ever!” Caroline sighs, lost in bliss recollected. “And really,” she says in a different voice, “it’s much nicer to be married in the spring. November is such a drab month.”

Caroline reaches for her sewing; she finished her wedding dress long ago, but to fill the time, she is scattering rosebuds across the bodice. Sophy makes a token stitch or two in the pattern of a full-blown rose that Caroline brought her, and wonders whether she will still be required as a confidante, now that her companion is playing Queen of the May. Some of the afternoon might still be salvaged for painting. She takes the pattern out of its ring and puts it in the sewing box.

Caroline raises one eyebrow. “I hope Mr. Birdsall’s illness hasn’t altered his good looks. He’s quite handsome, don’t you think?” She makes a knot at the base of a flower and delicately bites off the thread. “I speak as one with no personal interest. I prefer strength to appearance in a man. It wears better.”

“He is very thin,” Sophy says, “but still handsome.” The wrong word, she thinks. Many are handsome, few are beautiful. “He looks even purer now. Mama says that when the flesh fades, the spirit shines through.”

“Oh, is that what it is? He seemed a cold sort of man to me. Taken with himself—the opposite of my honest James. You don’t find him standoffish?”

“I don’t find him any way at all. I hardly know him.” Sophy speaks sharply to counter the blush that might be rising.

“I saw him looking at you that day at dinner,” Caroline says. “Are you really such a goose that you didn’t notice?”

Goose she might be, but if Mr. Birdsall had looked at her that way, Sophy would have noticed. Once or twice—not counting Mr. Unsworth—young men have paid her some attention. Ezra Keene, the shoemaker’s son, hung about her last summer, cornering her in the churchyard after meeting and seeking her thoughts on universal salvation, but he was so awkward and pimpled and doggedly earnest that she was tart with him, assuring him she had none. Poor Ezra had mistaken her church face for piety. The truth was, her look of rapt attention had nothing to do with the sermon. No sooner did the Reverend clutch the pulpit and cast a glacial eye on his flock than his pagan daughter flew away to tropical climes.

“I’m sure you’re mistaken,” she says. “Mr. Birdsall has his mind on higher things. Philosophy. He is far beyond the likes of me.”

“Sophy dear, you’re an innocent. Men may be philosophical, but they don’t want philosophy in a woman, any more than they want a hump on her back or a wart on her nose. They want to be flattered. Looked after. Nursing Mr. Birdsall has given you a great advantage, you know. He’ll remember how tenderly you cared for him.” A sly smile. “And there is the other thing they want. I suppose Mother Hedge has had a talk with you?”

“She says I have enough ideas in my head. When there’s something to tether them to, we’ll talk.” Mama is frank about animals and female complaints, and will tell Sophy what she needs to know when she needs to know it. Monthly bleeding was briskly dispensed with, but they’ve made scant progress since.

Caroline nods, commiserating. “Mothers are not always the best to ask. I learned much more from my Cousin Isabel, who married last year.” She inches closer, almost to the edge of the bed, and leans toward Sophy. “Izzie told me that the pain is dreadful at first, but we ought not to fear it for it is the
Portal to Bliss
.”

Absorbing the awe that Caroline breathes into the phrase, its fantail of seductive sibilants, Sophy pictures a natural wonder on the order of the falls of Niagara. A door in a mountain, perhaps, opening to a cave of sparkling crystal.

“But it’s no use dwelling on that now,” Caroline says. “If anything is to happen, we have work to do. Stand up, and let’s have a look at you.”

With a grunt, Caroline swings her legs down from the bed. She stands a few feet from Sophy, folding her arms over her voluminous skirts. Her eyes are a guileless blue and round as a child’s, but they penetrate. Sophy is transfixed, rooted to the spot. She has endured plenty of criticism about her character, but no one has ever appraised her outer layer so coolly.

“Your hair is good, nice and thick, but the style is too strict and old-fashioned . . . We must shorten that forehead—such an expanse, it makes you look simple . . . Your eyes are your best feature, though a little far apart . . . I envy you those lashes, we blondes make do with peach fuzz.” Sophy’s nose and mouth and chin and neck are passed over, apparently unworthy of comment. “Your bosom is not much, but that can be remedied, and you’re not straight up and down, I spy a waist!” This last sung out in triumph, with a wag of Caroline’s finger, as if Sophy had been concealing the indentation all along.

Caroline steps back for an overall view. “We can make something of you, Sophy, and we will! When Mr. Birdsall opens his eyes, he’ll look upon a vision and think he’s gone to Heaven after all.”

CHAPTER 10

____

RETURN TO EARTH

G
IDEON WAS BACK IN HIS CHILDHOOD BED. THE COMFORTING
weight of the quilts over him, the

feather pillow under his head. Soon his mother would come in with a tray of something nice to tempt him, melted cheese or a sunburst egg on a slice of toast. She would put her cool hand on his forehead and tell him he must stay home another day.

“Mr. Birdsall, are you awake?”

Sophy sat in a rocking chair near the bed, poking a needle into a piece of embroidery. Sophy, or someone who resembled her—she looked older, but perhaps it was her hair, which had been pulled straight back from her brow and twisted into a topknot. The short strands had been pinched into commas that circled her face, and worst of all, her ears stuck out, a plaited loop of hair draped around each like a garland around a horse’s neck. Where were the wings he loved? He wondered if he had traveled from the past to the future, losing the years between. In some netherworld he had finished his studies, courted Sophy and married her, entered into a settled life.

“Where are we?” He tried to sit up, but his neck and shoulders were painfully stiff; he must have been lying in one position for a long time.

“Sam’s old room. Lately, Mr. Unsworth’s.” Sophy rose, letting her sewing fall to the floor. She ran over to plump his pillow, slipping another behind him to support his head. “You have been here for nearly two weeks. We’ve been terribly worried. Mama believes it’s all Papa’s fault for working you too hard. She made him feel so guilty that he went and fetched Dr. Craddock. She wouldn’t leave you alone with the poor man, though; she watched him like a hawk. In her view physicians are medicine men in frock coats, on no account to be trusted.”

“And what did the shaman conclude?” Gideon was still very weak, though he felt well enough. His head no longer hurt, and he had the odd sensation of resting comfortably in his skin, as if he had been exiled from his body and come home.

“He thought it began as influenza and migrated to the brain. You kept crying out. You were very eloquent, Mr. Birdsall! I’m sure I could never think of such wonderful things, even in the best of health. I wanted to write them down, but Papa said it would be disrespectful—that we should let your soul unburden itself in privacy, for you might be conversing with the Lord.”

“Maybe one day you will tell me what I said.” Gideon’s eyes filled with tears. He knew it was unmanly—what indignities must she have seen while tending to him?—but he couldn’t help himself. It had been so long since he had been cared for. He had forgotten how it felt. “I owe you all so much. How can I ever repay you for your kindness?”

Sophy put her hand over his. “We were glad to do it. Mama and Papa would tell you so, if they were here.” She paused, hesitant. “We would have brought your own parents to comfort you, but you never spoke of them, and the seminary has no record.”

“There was only my mother, and she is dead,” he said.

“We are both orphans then. I felt that it must be so.” She nodded, patting his hand. “It’s a strange thing to belong only to oneself, isn’t it?”

Until this moment, he hadn’t been sure she had been told the circumstances of her birth. “I suppose,” he said. “I’ve never known any other way.”

He had only meant to state a fact, but Sophy was all sympathy. “You are a member of this family now—if you want to be. We’re awfully odd. I think poor Caroline is intimidated by us. It’s too late to break the engagement, and she does love James, so she has decided that her only recourse is to improve us. Improve
me
, that is. Mama and Papa are fixed in their ways, Reuben is too wild, and Micah—well, he is as God made him.”

“I see she has started with your hair,” Gideon said, more drily than he intended.

“It was very generous of her. She spent hours, and used quantities of her own floral pomade.” Sophy touched the topknot gingerly with a forefinger. “It’s quite remarkably stiff. Indifferent to weather. A great storm could blow me from one end of the county to the other, and not one hair would stir. If only it didn’t itch so.”

Her expression was so serious, her tone so full of solemn wonder, that Gideon could not help grinning. Sophy pressed a hand to her mouth, and began to laugh through her fingers. He laughed too, until a fit of coughing overtook him.

When he could speak again, he said, “Let it down.”

“What?”

“Your hair. Free it from its bonds. Liberate it.”

“I would do anything you asked, Mr. Birdsall, but don’t ask me to do that. I’m trying to preserve it until next Sunday, so Caroline won’t think her labor was in vain.” Sophy knelt and scooped her sewing from the floor. “She gave me this rose pattern so I could practice my needlework. Do you see how far I’ve gotten? Two miserable petals! It’s not in my nature to do stitch after stitch—it makes me feel like a chicken pecking for corn. And tell me, please, what is the use of
sewing
a rose? I would much rather plant one, or paint one.” She stopped suddenly, abashed. “You understand why I have to keep the hair. I mustn’t seem ungrateful.”

“I command you.” His voice was firm and even. He had no idea where the sternness was coming from. He wasn’t in the habit of giving orders.

Sophy stepped back from the bed, and reached up with both hands. Gideon could not see what hidden pin or clasp she removed, but its powers of restraint must have been heroic. Her hair sprang out about her head, wavy from long confinement. She ran her fingers through the mass and it fell in a torrent from her shoulders nearly to her waist.

Gideon thought first how lovely it was, and then that there was too much for such a small person. When he called up a mental picture of her, her hair was always swept back in its simple, artless style, inseparable from who she was; even in his dreams, he had not imagined it loose. Certainly he could never have anticipated such a luxuriant crop. There was something feral about the face that peered out at him from the thicket: eyes wide and startled, mouth slightly open. He watched her cheeks fill with color as he stared at her, unable to shift his gaze.

He had done this. He’d
had his way with her
—the leering phrase, wiped clean of smut and swagger and restored to brisk utility. The thrill of the transaction was still with him. And yet, even as Gideon admired what he had wrought, he saw that something had been lost. She was not quite the Sophy he knew, that being who was her own definition. As she relaxed, he could detect signs of the self-delight he had seen in other girls her age, the coquetry that had always provoked scorn in him. It struck him with a pang that even the Unsworths of the world might look upon her now and find her pretty. Her motion of a moment ago came back to him, magnified as if under a glass. The small breasts lifting when she raised her arms, the prim V at her waistline riding up.