Her lips formed into a tiny pout. “Oh.” Then immediately she was smiling again. “Did you really have to get something from the office? It’s the Sabbath, you know.”
He had anticipated such a question and had covered himself. He reached inside his coat and withdrew one of the ledger books. He waved it at her as mute evidence. She only smiled the more brightly. “And it couldn’t wait until morning?”
She had him and she knew it. And Will knew it. And then he didn’t care. “Well,” he grinned, “I had to have some reason for walking by at just the right moment.”
Deeply pleased, she nodded. “And how long did you have to wait?”
He laughed. There was no avoiding her inquisitiveness. “Half an hour.”
“Good,” she said, with a matter-of-fact bob of her head. And she held his arm just a shade more tightly.
“Good?” he echoed. “I nearly froze to death. I thought you were never coming out.”
“Yes, good. It shows you care.”
“I do care,” he said, instantly sober. “I care for you a lot, Jenny. You know that, don’t you?”
Her head dropped and the smile faded. “I know.”
And I care for you a lot too, Will. That’s what you say now.
But she didn’t say it, and they walked on in silence for almost a block, his frustration growing with every step. His honesty had abruptly changed her entire mood. Finally she looked up at him. “Is it true that your mother wants to be baptized into the Church?”
He stopped, surprised by that. “Yes,” he finally said.
She pulled him into motion again. “And your father won’t let her?”
He stopped again and pulled away from her so he could face her directly. “My father has said she can be baptized any time she wants.” The words came out more clipped and sharp than he wanted. And he was a little puzzled. In actuality, he took his mother’s side on this issue. Will understood very well his father’s feelings about the Mormons. Very well! But to stop his mother when she felt so strongly about it—he didn’t agree with that at all. But the bluntness of Jenny’s question made him instantly defensive for his father.
She was watching him steadily.
“It’s just that . . .” He wanted her to understand. “Pa means it when he says she can be baptized if she wants, but Mama knows Pa has strong feelings against it, and so she won’t be until those feelings change.”
Jenny nodded, seeming to accept that. Then her next question caught him off guard again. “And what about you, Will? If your mother joined the Church, how would that make you feel?”
“Me?” He shrugged. “I think that’s her decision. I wouldn’t care at all.”
“But you wouldn’t be particularly pleased?”
He gave a little grunt of exasperation. “I think she can do what she wants. It doesn’t matter to me, either way.”
“Oh.” She turned and started again, this time not waiting for him to follow. He fell into step beside her, but she didn’t speak again until they reached the small cabin by the corrals. They stood there for a moment, the silence awkward and heavy. Then she smiled again. “Thank you for being patient, Will. I’m glad you had something you had to get from the freight office.”
But Will was still trying to cope with his frustration. “This is about me not being a Mormon, isn’t it?”
She looked away.
“Do you know how that makes me feel?” he exploded. “I’m the same person whether I’m a Mormon or not. Why should that make a difference whether or not you care for me? I don’t
think—”
“I do care for you, Will,” she said softly.
He stopped in midsentence. “You do?”
She nodded.
“Then why does this thing about religion always end up being such a big thing to you? I don’t care if you’re a Mormon. If that’s what you want, I think it’s wonderful.”
She just looked at him, then shook her head. To his surprise, there was a touch of tears at the corners of her eyes. “What?” he said. “What did I say?”
She shook her head again. “Thank you for walking me home, Will.” She started to turn away.
“Jenny?” It was a pleading call. “Why won’t you answer my question?”
She stopped, without turning. But still she said nothing.
He threw up his hands. “I know,” he said angrily. “You want someone like Peter. Or Matthew. Well, I’m sorry, but Matthew is already taken, or doesn’t that matter?”
She whirled back. “I never said I wanted to marry Matthew, I said I wanted to marry someone like Matthew.”
He knew he was only making it worse, but he couldn’t help himself. “Or Peter? Is it someone
like
Peter, or just Peter?”
There was a quick toss of her head, and he could see he had struck home with that one. “Peter is a wonderful person.”
“And I’m not, right? I’m not a Mormon, so that makes me some kind of outcast.”
“You know that’s not how I feel.”
“Then why? Why is it that you can’t accept me if I don’t join the Church?”
Her head came up slowly, and there was a deep sadness in her eyes. “Because I don’t want what your father and mother have, Will. I’m sorry.” And with that, she turned and ran into the house, leaving him there in the cold to stare at the closed door.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Nathan looked around the main room of the store. “Any more questions before I leave, Jenny?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Good. Carl needs my help on getting another set of drying racks finished, so I’ll be down at the brickyard if you need me.”
“All right.”
He grabbed his coat and started to pull it on. As Jenny watched him, she felt a great wave of gratitude. “Nathan?”
He looked up. “What, Jenny?”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For letting me work in the store.”
Nathan smiled and nodded. Some of the British Saints came to Nauvoo with particular skills in manufacturing or in various crafts such as pottery making, metalworking, tanning, or shoe making. With the burgeoning growth of the Mormon city, these were skills that were greatly valued, and the immigrants who had them were quickly put to work. Many others, however, had been the poorer of the lower classes, and if they had been employed at all, it was in menial work or in manufacturing enterprises which did not exist in Nauvoo. These Saints found making the adjustment to American life much more difficult. Jenny and her mother were part of this latter class. The skills they had learned while working in the textile factories were not of much use to them now. Abigail took in laundry and sewing, but they were barely getting by. So in a family council held the day after their Thanksgiving dinner, it was decided to offer Jenny a job at the store. In exchange, she and her mother could draw goods from the store as needed.
But very quickly Jenny turned the Steeds’ charity into a necessity. The plan for the store at first had been to have the Steed women do most of the clerking while Nathan handled the business end. But babies have a way of altering even the most careful plans. Rebecca had Christopher, who would be two in June. He had more energy than two sets of triplets, and with Derek gone, he required his mother or someone in the family to watch him around the clock. Caroline had given birth to Charles in February. He was crawling now and pulled things off the shelves faster than she could replace them if she tried to keep him at the store. Lydia was just a week or two away from having her baby, and being on her feet for long periods of time was difficult for her. And Jessica’s school was filled to capacity and was taking her time and the time of the McIntire sisters. So more and more, Jenny became the one who filled in.
She went to school for two hours in the morning, then spent the rest of the day in the store. Nathan was amazed at how quickly she mastered the inventory and pricing. She was consistently cheerful and charmed the customers with her ready smile and British accent. And Nathan noted, with some amusement, that in the two weeks since she had started, the number of single young men coming to the Steed store—some from the far side of Nauvoo—had sharply increased.
“We are grateful to you, Jenny,” he said, pulling his stocking cap on. “I don’t know what we’d do right now without you.”
“Well, it’s been a great blessing to me and me mum.”
“Speaking of your mum, did she ask Joseph about your idea for the Christmas celebration?”
“She did. She went right over the next morning.”
“And what did he say?”
She laughed merrily. “He said he thought that such a celebration would not be displeasing to the Lord, but to be absolutely sure, he and Emma would have to come over and witness it firsthand.”
Nathan chuckled. “That’s Joseph.”
“They’ll be bringing their children too. Mum is very excited. Imagine, having the Prophet himself with us.”
“Caroline said she finally convinced your mother to have it at their house.”
She nodded, suddenly glum. “Mum wanted it very much to be at our house. She wanted this to be our way of saying thank you to your family. But there just isn’t room.”
“Well, you and your mother are in charge of seeing that everything gets done right, since none of us know for sure how to do this. So it will still be your gift to us. And a wonderful one at that. Emily talks about it every day.”
“Good.”
He opened the door. “Well, if you need me, I’ll be with Carl.”
“I’ll be fine, but thank you anyway.”
Nathan held the ladder firm as Carl hammered the last nail in place, then eyed the top shelf one last time. “How does it look?” Nathan asked.
“Looks good.” Carl dropped the hammer to Nathan, then came down again. “It looks real good. Thank you, Nathan.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Come on. Melissa will have something on the table about now.”
Nathan didn’t move. “Carl, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“If you’d rather not answer, I’ll understand.”
“All right.”
Nathan looked at him, debating whether this was wise or not, but wanting to know. “Does Joshua say much to you about the Church?”
To Nathan’s surprise, Carl laughed easily. “Yeah.”
“Oh.”
Carl’s laugh deepened. “Go ahead, ask your next question.”
Now Nathan smiled. “I don’t have to. Not if you already know what it is.”
They were in the long shed used in wintertime for drying the brick molds before firing them in the kiln. There was no heat inside it, but it was considerably warmer here than outside. Carl slipped off his gloves and stuffed them in his pocket. “Well, first of all, you have to realize that Joshua and I don’t spend nearly as much time together as we used to. The brickyard is taking about every minute I have, and he’s busy trying to get Wisconsin set up.”
“I know.”
“You going to go into business with him on that?”
Nathan shook his head slowly. “I was thinking about it seriously, but it means being gone for most of the winter every year. And now with the baby almost here, that’s not good. Also, Joseph has just called me to be in the presidency of the elders quorum of the Nauvoo Stake. That will take some time too. Besides, we have the store. That’s plenty for us right now.”
Carl nodded thoughtfully. “When a man has three good reasons for not doing something, he probably ought not to do it. And by the way, I don’t think Will is much excited about the prospects either. Joshua doesn’t like to hear that, but I don’t think Will is very anxious to leave for the winter either.”
“Not as long as Jenny Pottsworth is around.”
Carl nodded. “Anyway, as I was saying, Joshua and I don’t see each other as much as we used to, but yeah, he and I have talked quite a bit about it. And he’s always making some offhand comment about the Mormons or the Church.”
“I think I’ve heard them all,” Nathan put in dryly.
“Mostly he just asks me questions about how I feel. That’s because he knows that Melissa and I have a situation similar to his and Caroline’s.”
“Only in some ways,” Nathan inserted.
“That’s true. I’ve told him that too. I used to get all upset about Melissa being Mormon, largely because Pa hated them so badly, but all it did was cause us problems. And she has a right to her way of thinking, just like I do.”
“Suppose she weren’t a member and wanted to be baptized. Would you let her?”
“Absolutely! I can see where being a Mormon, especially if you practice what the Church teaches, can make you a better person. Why would I want to stop her from doing that?”
Nathan looked at him strangely and that won him a laugh from Carl. “I didn’t say anything about me being baptized, just Melissa.”
“What about the children?”
There was a quick shrug. “When they get old enough to choose for themselves, why not, if that’s what they want?”
“But not you?”
Carl grinned. From the first day Melissa had brought him to meet the family, Nathan had liked Carl Rogers. But since he and Melissa had moved to Nauvoo, the bond between them had deepened into something that Nathan truly treasured. He liked Carl’s quiet ways and unflinching integrity a great deal.
“I’m not trying to push you into a baptismal font, Carl, you know that. I’d just like to know. Once you were more like Joshua. Now you two are so different in how you deal with it. I’m curious as to why.”
Carl leaned back against the shelving, his face thoughtful. “I don’t know if I’d ever join the Church. To be honest with you, I mostly went to our church back home because Pa expected it of us. I never really got any real satisfaction out of it. I think a man can believe in God and live a good life without having to be a member of this congregation or that.”
“You’re proof of that,” Nathan agreed.
“But I know how you feel too. I know that all of you see the Church as offering you so much more than just believing.”
“Yes, and in a way, we believe that the Church is one way God has of asking more of us too.”
“Yeah, and in a way, that makes sense too. But when all is said and done, I think I’m satisfied pretty much with the way things are for me.”
“And you know that I—we, all of us—respect your right to feel that way.”
“I know you do,” he responded right back, “and I appreciate that. Joseph is the same way. I have a lot of respect for him. He’s a good and decent man, and what he is doing here with his people is incredible.”