Too Soon for Flowers (5 page)

Tuesday

T
HERE WAS SOMETHING
glorious, the Reverend Christian Rowe decided as he stood at the edge of the placid millpond, in the dawn breaking on the dark trees above him, over the straight saplings as on the mossy limbs of their elders, twisted with age. For all were gilded, as they were touched by the virgin day. It reminded him, somehow, of the biblical patriarchs. King Solomon, sick with longing, had sung of young love in the morning.

“Until the day break …”

A passionate man, certainly. His father, King David, had also satisfied a remarkable lust, taking the woman Bathsheba after glimpsing her washing, then seeing to it that her husband was slain. As the father, so grows the son. His own father, thought the preacher, had found ways to satisfy himself with forbidden fruit, although possessed of a meek and submissive wife.

Reverend Rowe took a deep breath of moist, fragrant
air. Then he clasped his hands tightly together behind his dark coat as he scanned the pond’s rim. What else did the Song say?
“Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?”
Whoever
she
was, she was only one of many, for in Solomon’s house it was also said, “
there are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and virgins without number”
It must have been a most lively establishment, Rowe thought with rising emotion.

The trouble with women was, they all had a terrible facility for falling into sin. You could not entirely blame them, of course. It was a natural condition, put into them by the Lord, well explained in His Scripture. It was up to Man to transport them through life, and for most men, one woman was enough of a burden to carry. But … might it not also be God’s wish that
leaders
of men, ones with marked strength of will, should take more than one woman, as had the patriarchs? The Lord only knew what might happen if all of one’s flock were to try the same thing—but a leader and a scholar might do well to emulate the wise men of old, by allowing himself an occasional, rejuvenating foray.

The reverend looked down, observing the sun’s blinding light on the surface of the still, dark pond. Once again, he wondered at his turn of mind this morning; again, he attributed it to a single cause. Phoebe Morris—a fragrant, pristine lily—was to be contaminated this very day.

Last week he had spoken at some length to Phoebe, and to her young man, William Sloan. He had counseled them not only as a pre-nuptial service to the boy’s family, but as a testing of the girl, for she might one day apply for membership in his church. The minister knew little of this child of Concord, but he intended to find out a great deal more. He suspected she had certain tendencies. She surely held power over men, whether she knew it or not. And that was not good.

The reverend had explained to the two young people that they would soon be joined in spirit and in body, in an honorable estate. And they would multiply. Taking the boy aside, he had asked if Will knew of the need for a man to satisfy a woman, to ensure that conception would take place. Then, seeing the boy seemed to grasp this duty, the reverend had also warned him….

The mill’s wooden wheel rolled softly above the gently flowing water, ready to turn the stone within whenever the miller should desire to engage it. Another bit of verse, this time from Isaiah, crept into Christian Rowe’s mind to further confound him.

Rowe shivered, and quickly blamed the damp air. Had not Phoebe Morris passed over the Musketaquid, a bit of which eddied quietly here before him, on her way from Concord? Yet why had she come? Will Sloan was more mule than boy. But at least he had a temper, which he would need for keeping this young wife to himself, once she truly discovered her passion. Phoebe, like others nearby, was too alluring for her own safety. Rather like Mrs. Willett, up the hill. Was this one stubborn as well? Or would she listen to reason … to talk of duty … to cajoling? He would see.

But today, Miss Morris would submit to a thing shockingly like a pagan ceremony—along with the far less tractable Miss Longfellow. Despite his curiosity, Reverend Rowe vowed again to keep away, for he knew the thing to be wrong. He did envy the misguided physician from Boston, though. Such interesting feelings it must give one
to lay the pustulant thread, after cutting into a slender arm. Occasionally, it might be advisable, after all, for youth to engage in something unclean, if they could then be saved from greater peril. But it could hardly be so with the smallpox! No, interfering directly with the Lord’s will was deadly folly.

The sun was swiftly becoming hotter, and Reverend Rowe wished to remove his coat to cool himself. But first he intended to make his way back to his stone parsonage where he would find other duties to think about, thus allowing his over-exercised passions to sink back into the cooler depths of Reason. At least, that was his hope, as he walked quickly from the ever brightening pond.

“
I DO HOPE
a simple bed is good enough for Miss Longfellow.” Hannah Sloan held on to the small of her back, digging in with fingers that were rough and red from lye soap and hard scrubbing.

Charlotte had helped the older woman lift a new summer mattress of sweet straw onto the slats of a bed frame, in one of Mrs. Willett’s two upstairs chambers. After they added the coverings, she moved toward the window and stood in the late morning sun, where she thought through the arrangements still to be made before the trials of Lem, Phoebe, and Diana began.

“Lem and Will brought Mr. Longfellow’s small bed over for Phoebe earlier,” continued Hannah. “It’s down in your study. That should save me trips up and down those stairs, for which I’m thankful, and I’m as happy to sleep up here as in the kitchen. But I can’t see why Will has to see her every single day, as if he’s under some kind of a spell! I know the doctor says he may, if he stays a proper distance, but can’t they keep to themselves for a few weeks? I’ll be away from my own home until it’s over, though they say a body who’s had it won’t carry it—not that I believe everything
that’s told to me by physicians—yet Mr. Sloan is not complaining about
my
absence. Will is such a stubborn boy,” she charged, not for the first time. “Always wanting his own way.”

“True,” said Charlotte. “But, Hannah, who does not? Though I wonder … were you and Mr. Sloan never eager to be close?” Considering the seven children the couple had produced, Mrs. Willett supposed she knew the answer.

“Fffffttt,” was all that Hannah replied. Yet judging by the look on her round face, the question had raised a memory.

“It won’t be easy, only to talk across the windowsill,” Charlotte concluded, trying not to smile. “But I suppose they will survive.”

“You might pray that I’m as fortunate, for it tires me just to think of the fetching and hauling I’ll have to do, to look after those three in their beds. It’s a good thing I’ve brought my chest of simples for my own aches and pains, which I’m sure I’ll soon have more of! You won’t find me relying on this clever Dr. Tucker.” Hannah tossed this over her shoulder as she shuffled down the narrow hall and into the stairway. “Still, I’m being paid well enough for my trouble, thanks to Mr. Longfellow’s goodness, though others call it something else again. You know, quite a few claim this inoculation’s a terrible danger to themselves. Some even say it goes against God’s laws.”

“So I hear,” Mrs. Willett answered mildly, wondering for a moment whether the many interpreters of God’s laws, or the legions who argued the colony’s, posed the greater threat to health and happiness in New England.

In the kitchen they found Phoebe just returned. After removing her outdoor bonnet, the girl tied a smaller cap over a pile of hair as soft and tawny as doeskin.

“Did the meeting go well?” asked Charlotte. She hung the kettle, then tossed a stick of pine into the fire. She and
Hannah both knew that Phoebe had come from a visit to the Longfellow house down the hill. Now, her lithe and supple figure gave a happy twirl, suggesting a seed of milkweed revolving on the wind. She truly was lovely.

“Miss Longfellow
was
very kind, as you said! And I think—I hope—she will approve of me as a companion, “came the pleased reply. This morning Phoebe’s face was rouged by activity, while an expression of real joy played about her features. What a relief, thought Charlotte, to see her so happy. When an unknown Miss Morris first visited the village at the end of winter, she had frequently seemed pensive, even to the point of distraction. Some had supposed this more than a little odd in a child who had every reason to look toward marriage with hope and pleasure. But Phoebe was not a child; in fact, she was very nearly Diana Longfellow’s age. And many, even among the young, were hurt by life, which was not always what one wished. There was nothing terribly surprising in their occasional melancholy. But somehow, Will Sloan had made Phoebe increasingly comfortable as she looked forward to their life together. And if she did suffer from something in her past, she no longer showed it.

“It is such a beautiful house,” the girl went on, sitting down lightly on the arm of a settle. “I should love to sketch the rooms I saw, and send the drawings back to Concord, so that my sister Betsy could admire them, too!”

“Now that you’ve met the fine lady,” said Hannah, “see that you don’t get on her cross side. Boston folk can be peculiar.”

At this, Phoebe suddenly lost her animation, as well as her confidence.

“But I know she’ll be happy to have you make a likeness or two,” Charlotte quickly interposed, bringing curiosity, at least, back to the girl’s face. “Diana often speaks of her fondness for the arts.” It would have been
closer to the truth to say that Diana was fond of artists, but Charlotte decided to let Phoebe make that discovery for herself.

“Then I’m glad I’ve brought all of my sketchbooks with me, so that she can see them. Miss Longfellow told me she plans to go to New York soon, and will visit the theaters! Oh, how I should love to see a play! Though I have read them, of course, sometimes even aloud with others, to once see Shakespeare played upon a
real stage
would be so like a beautiful dream—”

“Fine nonsense, and a sure road to the Devil,” Hannah snorted. “It’s a good thing they won’t allow such goings-on in Boston’s public places. Now, help me wash these pots. Then you can go and say good-bye to Will. The doctor and Miss Longfellow are to be here at noon.”

Phoebe rose dutifully to do as she was told. She picked up a dishcloth, while Hannah poured hot water from the hearth kettle into a large basin.

After a moment’s thought, Charlotte hurried upstairs to pack a bag to carry across to Longfellow’s house—for it was there she would take her meals, and sleep, until the quarantine was pronounced over.

IN MRS. WILLETT’S
dairy, behind the northeast corner of the house, Lem Wainwright and Will Sloan rinsed out the last of the milk buckets and set them out to dry in the sun.

“Make sure you give them the same amount through the length of the trough, or there’ll be trouble,” Lem insisted as he walked back inside.

“Do you suppose I haven’t seen a cow before?” Will asked crossly. “Though I suppose I may not know them as well as
you
, since you once spent your nights with these fine ladies, until Mrs. Willett hauled you into the house.”

“I’ve slept with worse,” Lem replied, remembering his four brothers still at home, kicking in a crowded bed. “But
you’ll see each animal’s different, Will. Delilah over there—”

Will Sloan was not listening. “Before long, I expect to sleep with far better,” he muttered, nudging red hair from his freckled face.

At a loss for a reply, Lem shook his head. Will might be a year older, he thought, but he would doubtless never grow much wiser.

Although Lem, too, came from a succession of poor farmers, he planned to go to Harvard College. It wasn’t something he’d thought of himself; he’d been encouraged by Richard Longfellow, who’d promised to be his sponsor. But now, it seemed to most in the village that Lem’s expectations had risen so high there was doubt he was still one of their own. It was a dilemma—one of many on the way to becoming a man.

“Just try to keep them all happy,” he urged, his thoughts returning to the welfare of the cows. “And I wouldn’t let Phoebe know you’re talking about her that way, unless you want to get your ears clouted.”

Will laughed out loud at the thought, but made no other comment.

“While we’re talking about nocturnal arrangements—”

“In plain English, please, Mister Wainwright.”

“Are you really planning to sleep out in the garden until they let us out?”

“I’m setting up a lean-to tonight,” Will answered. “It’s not so cold, and I’ll be able to hear if Phoebe should call. Or scream,” he added ominously.