Too Soon for Flowers (8 page)

While the singer shuffled and repeated Gay’s lines, as Handel’s somewhat newer tune required, Charlotte smiled toward Dr. Tucker, noticing as she did so that he seemed to take the song seriously.

To sadder notes, Richard Longfellow went on with nicely calculated pathos.

The physician’s face showed something like pain of its own, which was hardly merited by the performance, thought Charlotte. Longfellow, too, examined the physician with curiosity, once he had finished.

“I see love disagrees with you tonight, Tucker!” his host declared. “Perhaps later, we might have a try at Bach. There is a great deal of mathematical interest in Bach, but very little passion.”

Nodding, the physician reached for his glass once more.

“I only thought,” Longfellow continued, “that you might enjoy the reference to blood-letting, as I believe you often work in that area—”

In the middle of a sip, the doctor inhaled when he should have swallowed. Longfellow and Mrs. Willett watched him pitch forward convulsively, thrusting a handkerchief against his face as he suffered a fit of coughing.

Longfellow hurried to his guest, and pounded him on the back until the other weakly raised a hand for his host to cease his ministrations.

“It’s all right,” came his muffled cry through the linen. “I think it will be best if I walk it away! I’ll return in a while.”

Charlotte and Longfellow settled back as they listened to Benjamin Tucker’s footsteps cross the hall and ascend the stairs.

“It’s not often one has the pleasure of expecting to see his physician expire,” Longfellow commented. But Charlotte only stared at the brightly colored molding along the high ceiling.

In a moment, Tabby wandered back to investigate the cause of the physician’s hasty retreat. The cat’s trainer immediately produced the piece of string, and bent forward as Mrs. Willett asked, “How did you come to choose Dr. Tucker, Richard?”

“Tucker? He recently inoculated the boys attached to a bookshop on King Street. He spends a great deal of time there, as I do when I’m in town. Tucker, too, has a particular interest in scientific theory, and he seemed an honorable Virginia gentleman, if a little down-at-heels. He told me he’d welcome a rest, and gladly quit his rooms in Boston, for a generous fee.”

“I see,” answered Charlotte, wondering all the more.

AT THE END
of the day’s final milking, Mrs. Willett left an unusually quiet Will Sloan to finish cleaning up on his own, as she walked from the dairy to the sun-touched side of the farmhouse. Phoebe was away from the closed study window, but Charlotte spoke briefly to Diana, who leaned out of her own room above. Before long, Mrs. Willett turned to walk through the pasture toward the Musketaquid’s marshes, with Orpheus loping happily by her side.

The pink air of the evening was cool; but with a countrywoman’s intuition she knew that when the sun was reborn it would produce an even warmer day, with a southerly wind to force the last reluctant buds. Already, she noticed, the meadow grew thick around frost-thrown stones, which made walking somewhat perilous.

She had to be careful, but Orpheus took no such trouble. Under Charlotte’s admiring eye, the dog bounded from boulder to bog, sniffing and prodding his territory like a proud and wary farmer. It pleased them both to know the long winter was finally over, and summer about to begin. To Charlotte, this meant freedom to walk farther into the countryside, to observe new life, and to cultivate and
harvest from her gardens, orchard, and hay fields. To Orpheus, apparently, the season meant frogs, new nests in hedgerows, and suspicious holes in rock walls. Each soul, Charlotte thought again, had its own pursuits, its own happiness, its own way of defining home.

That idea turned her thoughts again to Benjamin Tucker. No one had ever gotten around to asking, at dinner, about Tucker’s family. But perhaps he, too, had suffered sad losses; maybe that was what had driven him to resettle in an unfamiliar place. By his speech and manner, she suspected he’d been brought up in proper, even prosperous, circumstances. Yet his lace cuffs were poorly mended, the ribbons on the garters at his knees did not quite match, and one of his stockings had begun to unravel at the back of his calf. These things could indicate a careless character—or they could as easily show only a need for a good wife … or at least an efficient housekeeper. Or, she thought, one could suppose Dr. Tucker suffered from financial difficulties. Whatever the cause of his untidiness, she was not about to embarrass him by asking, and knew of no one else who might be able to satisfy her curiosity. So she decided she would have to accept the physician for what he was in Bracebridge, no matter what he was, or had been, elsewhere.

Even so, he was a curious soul! For instance, why had he shown such an aversion to Richard’s song? Had love once been a thorn in Dr. Tucker’s side? Was it still? And could that explain his displacement from Williamsburg? There was also his interest in Phoebe Morris, whom he’d treated before. A curious coincidence, surely, to meet her again after three years, here in Bracebridge! Yet he had said little about it—in fact, he’d seemed reassured when she herself admitted none of them knew the girl well. But again, whatever was between the two had apparently taken place some time ago. While Phoebe had seemed less than
pleased to see the doctor, she
had
placed herself in his care. Really, thought Mrs. Willett reasonably, though it tweaked her imagination, it was none of her business, after all.

She turned at the crest of a hummock and looked back to see her house reddened by the setting sun. There in the garden, opposite what was now Phoebe’s bedchamber, stood something new—a contrivance made of poles and canvas: Will Sloan’s new shelter. Charlotte recalled her own early attempts at setting up just such a temporary camp on nearly the same spot, when she and her brother Jeremy were small. Turning away, she continued toward the river, seeing Jem’s face with her mind’s eye.

By his own reports, her brother was learning more of the physical sciences in Edinburgh, while she took care of the farm that had been left to him. Charlotte had received a letter only the week before, but that would mean the news was now at least six weeks old. From time to time, she wished she had wings, so that she might know what Jem did the very day she thought of him, across the great green pond (as their father had called the broad Adantic). This evening, however, she was content to remain where she was. Recently, she’d seen the teeming coffee houses and taverns, the rich shops and stores of Boston. She had also seen people sorely affected by the spectre of smallpox, and by the lack of employment after the departure of military business, now that the Great War was over. She had returned home to a familiar place where one might always profit from daily chores, and where simple pleasures were the only ones expected, as the seasons changed.

Charlotte suddenly felt in need of a strong cup of tea. Starting back toward Longfellow’s house, she watched a loose window wink at the last of the setting sun. Frogs began a chorus in answer to the rising wind, hidden beneath wild flag scattered around the meadow grass like fallen stars. The flowers reminded her of something else. Earlier,
she had seen long, greenish fingers—pointing omens from the earth—rising along the southern dairy wall. Tomorrow, before they became too tough, she would snap some off and make an asparagus pie. The thought helped to keep her feet firmly on the ground as she made her way across a darkening field, toward the beckoning house, and bed.

IN HER BORROWED
chamber just up the hill, Diana Longfellow continued to read on top of her quilt until the light had fallen off to nearly nothing, and the candle she had brought up from below had need of trimming. This accomplished, she rose to light a second. The moon, past full, would not be up for a good while, and the night would become far darker before it got any brighter.

This conclusion was a reflection not only of Diana’s celestial knowledge (which would have surprised more than a few of her acquaintances) but also of her gloomy mood. Tossing down a collection of Shakespeare’s tragedies, she then decided to pace the room for a while. That felt better, especially as a shift of soft Indian cotton played against her legs to soothe her. When she finally tired of that, she sat in her chair.

Struck by a new idea, Diana took paper, ink, and pen from her traveling bureau, and began a letter to Miss Lucinda Devens of Boston.

After she lowered the window, Diana folded and sealed the page, and added an address to the outside. Then she resumed her place in bed, this time between soft sheets. While enjoying the clean scent of lavender, she picked up her book, considered her own life for another moment, and finally abandoned herself to the Bard’s immortal words.

Some in Bracebridge that night went to bed to sleep, praying they would not dream. But Diana longed for dreams to come, dreams of someone she knew not. Anything, as Miss Longfellow so often sighed, for variety.