The Language of Paradise: A Novel (29 page)

Sophy doubts that the Lord’s mercy would be efficacious in Leander’s case. After observing his way with her family, she has to conclude that the laundress was misled: the man is less a mesmerist than a diviner—though maybe the two are not so different. Mrs. Pitt did get his eyes right: strange and, yes, “greeny,” flecked with yellow and brown and gold. He uses them to look deep into each soul he meets, and tailors his response to what he sees there. She thinks of him doubled up in her little cot, his hands cushioning his head against the backboard and his legs steepled. He says he sleeps, but she sees him with those eyes open, staring at the ceiling and savoring each of them in his thoughts. His shirt is open at the neck. The triangle of flesh—not smooth like Gideon’s, but matted with black hair and tanned even in winter—is as shocking to her mind as his sudden white smile was to her senses. The last thing he said to her was, “You and I will have to try harder, Sophia.”

SHE DIDN’T GO
to church that morning. Someone needed to turn the meat and make sure the potatoes didn’t burn, and Mama deserved to go, having done all the baking and slaved for two days to make the house ready for a guest. Sophy worked alongside her, mocking the effort they were expending on behalf of a rough man like the schoolmaster, but glad to see Mama cheerful and engaged again. The holidays had come and gone like any other day, each of them brooding on those who were absent. Preparing for Mr. Solloway’s visit was a welcome distraction from a fear Sophy had kept to herself since Christmas. Micah had arranged his manger scene on the mantel and added a new donkey to the worshipful beasts, but Sophy couldn’t look at the tiny knob-head Jesus sleeping in its cradle of straw. All these months she had thought of her state as temporary: the marriage still new, the child waiting until they were settled before making an appearance. On Christmas Day, she tried out the name Barren.

The house gleamed. The floors had been scrubbed and all the furniture polished, the table set with good china. Sophy was determined not to exert any undue care on her person, but sheer momentum carried her to the bedroom to change her dress and arrange her hair. Mama had given her a cameo pin for Christmas, a treasure from her own girlhood. Sophy hesitated before stabbing it through the bodice of her dress, her fingers making the decision for her. She stepped back and looked at herself in the glass. The effect of the cameo was not frivolous; it made her look older, official, as if, after months of apprenticeship, she had at last merited the emblem of wife.
Sophia
: classical, composed, carved in shell. A household goddess. If this was the woman Gideon wanted her to be for his new friend, she would act the part. She descended with measured steps to the parlor and sat with hands clasped as she had on the day of her betrothal, waiting.

She heard them before she saw them, Mr. Solloway’s cadences rising above the others’. He attained the peak of the story just as they approached the door. “And then, the fellow GAVE ME HIS HAT! Swept it off his dusty head and gave it to me, as mannerly as any diplomat. By Christ, sir, he says, you need this more’n I do!” This last was delivered in country dialect, followed by the extraordinary sound of Mama’s rich, unfettered laugh.

Sophy went to the hall and stood before the door, arranging her features in an expression of guarded welcome. Her mask of composure was undone when they burst in, red-cheeked from the cold, slapping their garments to shake off the snow. They looked so pleasant that her face softened into a genuine smile. Even James was animated, trading mock blows with Micah, whose Sunday jacket, like his own, bore evidence of a savage snowball fight. Mama spied the cameo pin right away, and sent Sophy one of her fleeting omniscient smirks that said, clearer than words, You’ve come round after all, haven’t you? Gideon bent to touch his cold lips to her cheek—a mere peck, but so rare nowadays for him to display affection in public that she drew back in surprise. Despite his story, Mr. Solloway wore no hat to warm him, only a large shawl, fringed and outlandishly patterned, that all but covered his thin coat, and, in Sophy’s opinion, might better have adorned a piano. He inhaled deeply.

“You say you are no cook, Mrs. Birdsall,” he said, “but I can tell you that savory aromas lured us from a good quarter-mile up the road, diverting our thoughts from a very fine sermon to earthly joys ahead.”

She was about to shrug off the compliment when he dug into his pocket and brought up a paper twist of molasses drops, tied at each end with red ribbon. This he presented to Mama—“I don’t know about you, Mrs. Hedge, but the cold weather sharpens my sweet tooth”—who accepted the candies with a stifled gasp, as if they were winter-blooming roses. He foraged in the other pocket and produced a tin whistle, “in case anyone should feel like a tune after dinner.”

There was something else. He held it out to Sophy, closed in his fist. “If you can tell me what animal I have here, it is yours,” he said. He was contemplating her with the same teasing amusement that had enraged her at church.

“I’ve no idea, Mr. Solloway,” she said, “but whatever the poor creature is, it must be dead by now.”

The schoolmaster stared at her, they all stared, as the bent minute hand scraped a few grudging seconds off the face of the hall clock. Then he threw back his head and laughed. He opened his fingers. A tiny green rabbit crouched on his palm, its long ears carved flat against its back. Micah came close and gazed at it with wonder, stroking it with one finger. “M-m-marble?”

“Jade. From China. I have never been that far east myself, but a friend gave it to me when I first set sail to bring me luck.” He turned to Sophy again. “It was one of the talismans I carried with me during my travels, but now that I’m settled, I have no need for Little Lapin any longer. I would be grateful if you would give him a good home.”

He offered the rabbit again, and, wordless, she took it.

GIDEON SAT IN PAPA
’
S
old place at the head of the table, the first time he had claimed that seat since Papa died. It seemed so natural to see him there that Sophy wondered if she was the only one to note the momentous fact. The sermon must have gone well, she thought. He had told her earlier that he would preach about loose speech—gossip and tale-telling, slander, casual oaths; the havoc that ephemeral words could wreak and the lasting harm they inflicted. Gradually he planned to introduce the idea of a higher language, of words as portals to a better life. Catching her worried look, he’d said, “Don’t fret, my love, I’m well aware of the wolves in our midst. I will be wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove, and give Old Man Mendham his spoonful of Scripture.” He was adjusting his cravat in the mirror, and over his shoulder he added, “I’ve learned so much from watching Leander in the classroom.”

So it’s Leander now, she’d thought.

Dinner passed congenially, festive after the silence that had reigned for months, everyone chattering at once. Sophy was the only one to hold back, quietly observing as she attended to others’ needs; Mama, seated at the other end of the table, gave her a look of gratitude touched with new respect. The guest ate with deliberation, seeming to savor each mouthful, and declared himself fulfilled in all ways. The mesmerism he practiced was of a subtle kind, Sophy saw: He directed the conversation without appearing to take charge. A question here, a comment there: he drew each of them out, inquiring of Mama what methods she used to attain such loft in brown bread and preserve the sweetness of the squash; of James how he’d managed the farm through hard times and what changes he anticipated in the coming year. Rather than ask Micah a question, he took note of the boy’s hands, “a craftsman’s hands,” expounding on the length of the fingers and shape of the thumb, “uniquely suited for fine work as well as gross.” He hadn’t seen the like since he befriended a watchmaker in Heidelberg. Unprompted, Micah spilled out the story of their long communal labor on the family clock, revealing a barbed humor he kept well hidden. He stumbled over difficult words but plunged ahead, caught up in the telling, even confronting “zodiac” head-on—for how could he leave out the tale of Sophy’s thwarted design for the clock face? The incident had long since become a family joke, Mama dredging up her usual remark about having to consult Aries at dinnertime and Capricorn for supper. Leander laughed with the others, but Sophy saw that he had registered the fact that she painted. He would surely try to use it to reach her. She would have to be wise as a serpent to elude him.

Gideon suggested that dessert be served in the sitting room, to be followed by a tune, if Leander was so inclined. Sophy was about to retreat to the sanctuary of the kitchen, but Gideon grabbed her wrist. “Stay, why don’t you? You’ve hardly said a word all evening. Leander must think you’re excessively shy. Your mother can serve the cake.”

She sat beside Gideon on the settee, wishing for the first time in her life that she had a piece of embroidery in her lap, a reason to keep her eyes down and her hands busy.

“What a picture you two make!” their guest exclaimed. “The very model of youthful domesticity.” He had chosen Reuben’s old rocker, and was sitting with his legs stretched before him on a footstool Micah had provided. “Such a perfect pair, a child of earth and a child of air. You balance each other well. It’s clear the cosmos collaborated in your union.”

“And which of us is which, Mr. Solloway?” Sophy asked.

The schoolmaster did not smile, as she expected, but gazed at both of them seriously, as if her question were a deep one, requiring careful thought. After a pause he began to speak, but Mama came in with a tray and cut him off. Sophy had observed before that Mama heard only the part of a conversation that she cared to hear, and tonight she had heard a bachelor extolling domesticity. She swooped over him with a plate. “Now that you’re settled, Leander, perhaps you ought to be thinking of acquiring a wife yourself. You can’t live in that drafty schoolhouse forever. There comes a time in a man’s life when he wants a hot dinner and a bit of comfort at the end of the day. I assure you, it’s not too late. There are several ladies in the parish—worthy women, not in their first bloom, but young enough. You have only to say the word, and I’ll do what I can.”

Leander was momentarily flustered—an effect Mama’s directness often had on folks—but he recovered himself quickly. “My dear Mrs. Hedge, only someone with your kind heart would be so concerned with a stranger’s welfare,” he said. “But the fact is, I can’t marry. My love is too
wide
to spend on a single soul, even were I to meet one as charming and capable as Mrs. Birdsall. Many fortunate men find all they need in the woman they adore, but I call myself a pan-lover—doomed to love the world, whatever form that love might take. Here in Ormsby, I give it to my students—and perhaps a few friends.” He spread his large hands and shrugged. “What can I do? It’s my nature.”

Mama’s face closed. She went on handing out plates, but Sophy could see that she had received a shock and was trying to reconcile her guest’s alarming comments with her recently acquired good opinion of him. A literal soul, she was possibly mulling over the schoolmaster’s baffling affection for a cooking vessel, or weighing the brash paganism of “pan-lover” against the Christian self-giving of his thankless profession. The phrase puzzled Sophy as well. How could a single man love so generally as to encompass the whole world? Was Leander one of the new thinkers that Papa had railed against in the pulpit—Unitarians, rogue Congregationalists, the odd Baptist—and consigned to a common fiery pit labeled Boston Preacher? Or did he mean that he was a disciple of Pan? A picture came to her of the goat-footed god in a forest glade, one furry leg crossed over another, piping away as Leander lay prostrate at his cloven feet.

For a couple of minutes no one spoke, each of them conscientiously attending to the cake. Then, unprompted, as though he had looked into her after all and seen the image inscribed there, Leander took out his tin whistle, blew a few tentative notes, and began to play.

Later, when the others had retired for the evening, Sophy left him talking to Gideon and went to see about the state of the linens on her old bed. As she shook blankets and changed sheets, the crux of her argument drummed in her head, a satisfying staccato: Too short! Anyone can see it is too short! She was tugging at the corners of the coverlet to smooth it when a shadow fell across the surface of the bed. Leander stood in the low doorway, massive, his head poked forward, peering at her with an air of distant benignity like a father admiring the contents of his daughter’s dollhouse. He had untied his cravat and draped it around his open collar. The candle he held gave an antic life to the spurt of dark hair on his chest and the tendons of his neck.

“If you could see where I usually sleep, you would not have gone to all this trouble,” he said.

“We would do the same for any guest.”

“Gideon tells me that you are an accomplished artist. The likeness of Mrs. Hedge in the dining room must be your work—and that fine portrait of the late Reverend in the parlor. It seemed that his eyes were peering into me as I played my little tune, reminding me that life is a serious business. You must have been very close to your father to capture his character so precisely. I regret I never knew him, but people speak of him in such a vivid way that I feel as if I did.”

“The portraits were meant for practice. I don’t like to look at them now; I see all their flaws. Papa and Mama were very kind to hang them at all.” Sophy took a few steps toward the door, but Leander did not move.

“And do you still find time to paint, with all the demands on a minister’s wife?” Leander lounged against the doorframe as though the conversation were only beginning. “It would be a shame if all that practice was for naught. Art ennobles life, whether we make it for our families or a wider audience. I seek out the salons wherever I travel.”

“My husband’s welfare is my first care. A minister’s daughter is well schooled in putting the needs of others before her own.” Sophy was pleased with the crisp correctness she had summoned, but felt her color rising in spite of herself. “As for the painting, it counts little in the grand scheme of things. I have only a very small talent.” She moved more decisively to the door. “And now I must let you rest.” She gave a last sardonic look at her old bed. “I expect you’ll have interesting dreams, Mr. Solloway—if you manage to sleep at all.”