The Love Note

by Joanna Davidson Politano

  “Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.” I drew out the name with delicious pleasure.

  She gasped again, and I leaned close with a raised brow. “Fan?”

  Grabbing it with a pointed look, she flipped it open and fanned vigorously.

  Longfellow bowed deeply, generating hearty applause, then introduced the first poet of the night in his deep American accent. The tall gent read his verses about leaves and grass, and the way the light struck these ordinary things. I’m certain he was famous and ingenious, but it was my patient who held my attention. Every emotion in the rainbow showed on her face through the night.

  Gabe noticed too, I could tell even from the shadows, but he said nothing. With the next artist, her fan paused at the emotional crescendo of each poem, then sped up as applause burst across the auditorium.

  Longfellow loped back onto the stage after all six poets had read selected pieces of work. The great man held up thick hands to quell the applause. Then he bowed his head and spoke. “I thank you all from the depths of my humble heart for humoring an old man this night.” His rumbling voice, though more strained than some of the others, rolled up into the rounded ceiling and carried across the theatre.

  Gabe leaned over to whisper to Golda, their heads bent together. I kicked his foot, but he ignored it. Of all the times for the man to begin a conversation.

  “It has truly been a much-needed inspiration for me, hearing these honored voices here tonight. I have a treat for you now—the first new material I’ve presented in years.”

  He fixed wire spectacles on his face, wrapping them behind his ears, and pulled out a familiar red book, flipping to a marked page. I had to clench my hands to keep from grabbing Golda’s arm and forcing her to look at the stage, where her own notebook now lay in the hands of her favorite poet.

  That wretched Gabe. Must he speak now? Whatever it was, it could wait.

  I gripped the arms of my chair and the poem rolled out in the man’s deep, weighty voice.

  Every pair of footsteps, marks left in the sand,

  Lovers walking side by side, strolling hand in hand.

  There but for a moment when the tide of everyday

  washes over everything, fading love away.

  Golda’s head lifted, eyes steadily ahead as the man continued. Gabe’s hand immediately covered hers. “What is it, Mother?”

  “That’s . . .” Her mouth hung open in a most unladylike fashion. “My song.”

  The man carried the verses to their peak and let them fall over his eager audience. For a full three seconds, no one moved or spoke. Then applause erupted.

  After a moment, the man on stage raised one gloved hand to dim the flow of praise. His American accent glinted across them. “These new lines, friends, are not from me.” The applause stopped at the sound of his voice. “They were written by a promising new voice in poetry who will share the rest herself. So if you’ll allow, I’d like to ask Mrs. Golda Gresham to the stage, for a reading of her work. Mrs. Gresham, are you present tonight?”

  Murmurs lifted into the air as people turned, craning their necks for the first glimpse of the woman who now sat two seats from me. White-knuckling her chair, Golda looked to Gabe, to the red book she’d thrown away, then to me.

  I offered a gentle smile amid the whispers. “You said you wanted your verses heard.”

  She stared, and I merely shrugged. Golda Gresham rose, for once meek and unbalanced, and applause erupted when they caught sight of her.

  As I watched her wobbly smile blossom, this woman once called impossible, victory surged through my chest. She moved past us with Gabe’s assistance. I rose to join her, but she waved me back to my seat. She wanted to go alone. As she moved in her unhurried, queenly way across the stage, I turned to Gabe and burrowed deep into his gaze, looking for a spark of the approval I’d once found there without effort. “I’d call the night a success, wouldn’t you? A triumph to compensate for my previous missteps.”

  He stared at me with that frank and open face. “No one’s keeping score.”

  Well then, I was no one. If this bold act didn’t convince Gabe I meant well, little else would. “I’ve managed to hold my tongue for days now. Your lecture was not without impact.”

  He frowned slightly and lowered his voice when there were dark stares in our direction. “I don’t want you to hold back your opinions, Willa. I’ve never asked you to.”

  I puffed out my breath and fell back against the seat. Hadn’t he? “You are exasperating, Gabe Gresham. There, that’s one opinion.”

  A sharp shushing sound came from the seats just outside our box, and I clamped my mouth shut.

  “Well and good. Especially if it means I can take my exasperating company away early.” He leaned back with a slight grin. Then he looked to his mother highlighted in gaslights on the stage as applause rippled between her poems. “I’ll admit, your odd tonic seems to have worked.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him and grinned. “I don’t intend to stop with her.”

  He raised dark eyebrows as he joined the applause.

  “Oh yes, I have plans for you too, Mr. Gresham.”

  He paled. “Not dancing.”

  I gave a prim smile, and he stiffened in his seat. “I’m determined to break through that thick shell of yours and draw you out into daylight.”

  “I rather like the dark. A cave would suit.”

  I eyed him from the side. “What do you have against dancing anyway? Have you a lame leg?”

  “No.”

  “Then why not join in?”

  He shifted in his seat. “I’ve never done it before.”

  “Well, if that isn’t the worst reason not to do something. One waltz, at least. I’m not in the habit of leading, but perhaps I can fumble through. I’m certain you’ll survive.”

  The gray pallor to his face expressed his doubts on the matter. He let my assertion hang in the air as silence drew our attention to the stage and a poised, glorious Golda Gresham. Her even voice fell upon a hushed audience, melodic and poignant.

  “My love has been smoothed to perfection,

  A pearl against the sands of adversity;

  You take it in hand, merely a bead,

  A string about your neck, a tiny seed;

  Yet it’s all I have to give, so I implore

  When you no longer have need

  Of this pearl I’ve given, set it free,

  That I may guard it and deliver it again

  To one who will be true, always true to me.”

  The surprising delightfulness of the lines was fully felt when stripped of the background noise of her singing. I glanced about the audience, glad that they seemed charmed by her.

  After her final poem and the hearty applause, Gabe and I rose to help Golda from the stage. I looked up when she was settled into the seat and Gabe was gone. “Where did he go?”

  “Gabe?” She gave a vague smile, still floating on a cloud of delight. “I haven’t the slightest idea. You know that boy—likely gone to find us rooms . . . then close himself inside them. See if you can’t fetch him back and we’ll make him be social for once.”

  I attempted to check her pulse, but she batted me away. “Miss Duvall, you really needn’t be at my elbow all night.”

  “It’s my job.”

  Her gaze iced. “Your job is doing what you’re told. Now, go and find my son.”

  When Golda’s lady’s maid approached from her waiting spot just outside the auditorium, I slipped away. Past the thickening crowds, I bolted into the empty atrium, nearly colliding with a stout older gentleman. “Oh, I beg your pardon.” I put a hand to my racing heart. “Have you seen a tall man in black come through here?”

  “I’ve not seen a soul save the one who nearly toppled me this minute.”

  I stepped back with a jolt of horrified recognition. “Oh! Mr. Longfellow.” I bobbed two curtsies. “My deepest apologies, sir.” Another dip. “My name is Willa Duvall, nurse to—”

  “Golda Gresham.
Ah yes, now I know you, Miss Duvall.” His easy voice had a casual, meandering quality that loosened my tension and put me at ease. “It’s a pleasure running into you, even in this manner.”

  I smiled at the light accent to his speech, the plunging “r” sound that marked him as an American. “I’m glad for it too, sir. I’ve wanted to thank you from the deepest parts of my heart for allowing Mrs. Gresham to attend and even be a part of this wonderful night. I cannot begin to tell you what it means . . .”

  My voice faded as he continued to stare at me, that timeless face watching me as if he never had anywhere else to be in his life. “Your letter, Miss Duvall. It resurrected my stale old heart for a moment, and I was compelled to act. You’ve quite a convincing way about you. Made me feel I still might do something worthwhile, even in my dried-up state.”

  I saw in him, with an ache, the same sense of resigned despair that had settled over Aunt Maisie. It was a sense of life being over before the body had given out, with one constantly left questioning why they were still bound to earth, and little broke my heart more. “You are anything but dried up, sir.”

  He turned away with a dismissive nod toward me, the younger woman he felt could not possibly understand. Yet my heart couldn’t bear to let the man leave more broken than when I found him. A future physician, I was compelled to restore what I could. I laid a hand on his arm.

  “Read from some humbler poet,

  Whose songs gushed from his heart.

  Such songs have power to quiet

  The restless pulse of care,

  And come like the benediction

  That follows after prayer.”

  He turned back to me, stricken as I paraphrased lines of his own poetry.

  “Your words resurrected my heart once too. In the worst year of my life, in fact. You were that ‘humbler poet’ whose songs quieted my heart when nothing else would.”

  He studied me, as if trying to determine whether or not he believed it.

  “It was the one about the reaper and the flowers, how the Lord had need of such beauty, and they would bloom with him. It made me feel that perhaps my mother . . .” I dropped my gaze, feeling foolish. Exposed. “That perhaps God simply had need of her, and she was blooming up there with him. That it wasn’t my fault.”

  When I looked up, the ache in my heart was mirrored in his face, and he shifted, visibly wrestling with what to say. “It’s curious to me how a young woman can find relief in the poems of a man writing in vain to find it himself.”

  “Perhaps because in all those moments of regret, of silent chastisement, of torturing myself with the past, I was not alone.”

  This simple answer satisfied him, and his beard stretched into a sad smile. “It’s an exquisite sort of pain, isn’t it? Walking through the important parts of life without them, seeing everything they should have seen, every milestone they would have enjoyed . . .”

  “The holidays and highpoints, the parts of their story that should have been but never were, all because . . .”

  “Because of you.” He frowned and blinked, patting about his pockets, and I immediately produced a clean handkerchief from my reticule. He accepted it and wiped his face, dabbed his forehead, and blew his nose loudly.

  “I’m sorry, sir, for your loss too.”

  He put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t be terribly hard on yourself over the past, Miss Duvall. As Mr. Dickens wrote, no one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another. You’ve done it for me tonight and, I daresay, for many others. Never tire of being such a person.”

  I smiled at him. “Even in conversation your words are beautiful. Please tell me you’ll not abandon your writing. Even with a hurting heart.”

  He gave a slight shrug. “If my heart is empty, where will the words even come from? They’d be mere shapes on the page.”

  A man hurried over and spoke in low tones to Longfellow. With a grim look, the poet excused himself, and left me in the atrium alone. I watched him go, then I circled the atrium again without finding a trace of Gabe. Perhaps he’d returned to his mother.

  I wove through the crowds back to Golda. “Ah, there you are, Miss Duvall. What have you done with my son?” Her smile froze on her powdered face, dangerous lights coming into her eyes. “Have you been with him all this time—alone with him? After I made it quite clear—”

  “Perfectly clear. I assure you, I’ve not seen him. I thought perhaps he returned here.”

  Her stare relaxed a bit. “Well, then. Why not find him and send him to me? Then you are free to retire for the night.”

  “I must insist on remaining with you. You’ve had a great deal of excitement.”

  “And I plan to have a great deal more.” She smiled. “Please, Miss Duvall. I’d like to pretend, at least for one lovely evening, that I am as unfettered and free as anyone else. Do remember that until you arrived, I was carrying on quite nicely on my own. I shall allow you to come and fetch me after nine.”

  “Very well, my lady.”

  I backed up the aisle, watching her poised back, then turned and searched in earnest for Gabe. I finally spotted his loping stride out the window, moving deep into the foggy night with his hands in his pockets.

  Where was he going? I paused at the window, simply watching him. He was so very Gabe. His broad back, the aura of solitude, a lone dark figure outside the glittery social scene—it was all so familiar. With another glance toward my patient, who’d once again become absorbed by the admiring crowds, I hurried toward the arched entryway and down the steps into the crisp autumn evening that smelled of pooling water and fresh rain.

  sixteen

  “For of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh,” it says in Scripture. If a woman wishes to change her words toward a man, she must start with restructuring the place from which they spill.

  ~A scientist’s observations on love

  I lifted my skirts and ran to catch him as he headed east toward the Royal Pavilion, disappearing across the foggy street. “Gabe!” The air was wet and chilly, impossibly dense with fog. I called out again but heard no answer. No footfall. I looked up and down New Street, straining to see all the way to the end where something moved, but—

  Oof. I collided with a person. I stepped back, staring into the fog, but two hands grabbed my shoulders to steady me.

  “And you want to teach me to dance?” Gabe’s deep voice rumbled against my hands where they rested on his chest. He stepped forward, his face aglow under the lights. “How is she?”

  I blew out a breath. “Riding on a cloud of praise.”

  He smiled, gratified, and held out his arm to escort me. “This was a good idea, you know. Bringing her here. So why have you left?”

  “She sent me looking for you. Partly to be rid of me.”

  “Hmm.” He looked out at the distant buildings’ outlines rising all around us. “Walk with me first, then. I want to show you something.”

  The click of our shoes echoed together as we made our way along the sidewalk, nodding at the lamplighter, and we paused under the stone arch to the pavilion grounds. Without a word, he hoisted me gently over the closed gate, then planted his hands on the iron bar and launched his tall frame over. With a giggle, I took his arm and we trotted up the promenade that was ours alone. The pavilion looked down upon us with its Taj Mahal air, towers rising to rounded roofs of bud-shaped beauty.

  “It’s spectacular.” I breathed the words.

  “Reminds me of Aunt Maisie’s descriptions of India.”

  I looked up at that palace of a place as we took the path around it. “I used to think she was bold and strong for doing so much without a husband, but do you know, I think she’d rather have had the husband after all.”

  “Hmm.” He pulled me close to pass by thorny shrubs.

  “Do you think she’s ever been in love?”

  “Yes, once. Years ago. I don’t know why they didn’t marry. Perhaps because he couldn’t dance.”

  I gave him a p
layful shove.

  We crossed St. James and found our way into the Old Steine Gardens, staring at the softly illuminated Victoria Fountain. Flowers had been planted in colorful bunches since I’d been here for the unveiling several years ago, with Victoria’s two tiers of cascading water a magnificent, sparkling centerpiece. Pink and blue hues from the setting sun rippled over the water as we walked side by side, our arms nearly touching. “How isolated from the city, yet right in the center of it.”

  “The perfect spot.” He paused beside the fountain and took my hands, turning me to face him as the spray dotted my arms. The earnest lights in his eyes like two soft lanterns melted something within. “Teach me, Willa.” He breathed the words out, as if they’d taken all his courage. “Right now.”

  I blinked. “To dance?”

  He nodded.

  “I thought you didn’t—”

  “Not in front of people.”

  I tipped my head. “What, am I not people, then?”

  That rare smile glinted in the setting sun, teeth white against his sun-darkened face. He shrugged. “You, I trust.”

  With a wry smile, I slid close and fixed his hand on my waist. “Flattery will get you everywhere, Mr. Gresham.”

  He breathed deep and braced himself, staring intensely at my feet.

  “All right, then. Follow along, and count with me.” I moved into a slow waltz with fluid steps, pulling him with me, and he came willingly. “One-two-three, one-two-three. Like this.” He followed, forcing his solid legs into the delicate paces as sparkling water sprayed over its fountain base beside us.

  Every third step he ran into my feet, kicked my toes, or tripped over his own, twisting his face in all manner of bemused expressions that kept me laughing, but I kept my guiding tug through the steps, drawing him along. We fumbled through with much amusement and a little shared laughter.

  Finally he stumbled and pulled back. “Aye, just like the horses—I’ve two left feet.”

  I gave a wry grin. “Chin up. Look at me, not at your feet.”

  “How’ll I know what yours are doing?”