Lilac Spring

by Ruth Axtell Morren

  The other, as if understanding his turmoil, said, “You’re a good man, Silas, an honorable one. I’ll be sorry if you turn my father down. But if you do, will you do me a personal favor? Will you come by and see Annalise some day? Sort of as a goodbye? She’ll never know I spoke with you,” he added.

  “All right.”

  As he watched Townsend walk down the overgrown path, he reflected on the offer just made to him.

  Why now? Just when he was beginning to question whether he’d put his love of boats and boatbuilding before his love for the Lord. Why, Lord? his heart cried out.

  He heard Townsend’s words again. You’re a good man, Silas. An honorable one.

  Honorable? Good?

  Or was he just a mediocre, quixotic fool?

  Chapter Seventeen

  Cherish looked up when she heard a knock on the boat-shop door. She got up, curious at seeing a man’s silhouette through the glass panes.

  “Good afternoon,” the man said, lifting his hat. “Stanley Morrow from the Hatsfield Bank.”

  “Come in, Mr. Morrow,” she said, opening the door wider. “How can I help you?”

  “I’m here to see Mr. Winslow.”

  “I’m sorry, but Mr. Winslow is bedridden at present.” Briefly she explained what had happened.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that.”

  “He is recuperating nicely. We hope to see him here again soon,” she hastened to add. Something about the man’s frozen smile and formal manner gave her a queer feeling.

  “Whom, may I ask, am I addressing?” he asked her after a pause in the conversation.

  “I am his daughter, Cherish Winslow.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Miss Winslow. Who is—” he cleared his throat softly “—in charge of the shipyard while your father is incapacitated?”

  “My father is not incapacitated. I bring him reports daily.”

  “I see. So he is still in charge of operations here?”

  “He has placed me in charge for the time being,” she answered with more confidence than she felt.

  “Ah.” He drew out a leather portfolio. “The reason I came by from Hatsfield today was to talk about the loan your father took out from us some time past.”

  “A loan?”

  “Yes. He needed some extra cash at that time, and we arranged for it, on the understanding of future profits, at which time he would repay the loan.” As he spoke he removed some papers from the portfolio and spread them out before her. “You’ll see everything here.”

  She looked at the documents closely. The thing that stood out was the sum of two thousand dollars and the date—June 30, 1875.

  “What does this mean?” She looked up at the black-suited man.

  “It means the note is due at the end of this month.”

  “But surely, in light of my father’s illness, you can give him an extension.” All the while she was thinking wildly that there was no such sum of money in her father’s bank account. Already what she’d seen were expenses exceeding income and the difference was being taken out of her father’s savings, which seemed meager now in light of the amount of this loan.

  “A bank is not in the habit of making exceptions because of illness. If we did, we would soon be out of business ourselves.” He ended with another straight-lipped smile.

  “Yes. I understand.”

  Mr. Morrow rose. “I shall leave this with you,” he said, indicating one of the papers and collecting everything else into his portfolio. “You may discuss it with your father and come in at your earliest convenience if you or your father should have any further questions. I wish you good day, Miss Winslow.”

  “Good day, Mr. Morrow.” She spoke distractedly, going to the door and seeing him out. When he had left, she sat at the desk and pondered the paper in front of her.

  What could it mean?

  She had a thought, but dismissed it before it could take root. The date of the loan coincided with her trip to Europe. No, it couldn’t be.

  Finally she bowed her head and began to pray, asking the Lord for wisdom. What was she to do about this information that had come to her?

  The next day she sat with her father a while after his breakfast. They chatted about inconsequential things as she waited to broach the subject uppermost on her mind.

  “Papa?”

  “Yes, dear?” he asked with a smile.

  “Do you owe money to the Hatsfield Bank?”

  He looked away. “Well, every business owes money somewhere.”

  “Yes, but do you have an outstanding loan from the bank?”

  “Those aren’t things for you to worry your head about. I don’t want to have you down at the shipyard if it means you’re going to have to be dealing with numbers and finances.”

  “Papa, I know something about bookkeeping. I can see from the accounts that we’ve been a little short lately. But, well, yesterday I had a visit from a banker. He said you also took out a loan a little more than a year ago.”

  Her father’s fingers began to rove restlessly across the bedspread. “Yes, well, what of it? It isn’t due yet. They shouldn’t have come by and burdened a young lady with such things. What were they thinking? I’ve a good mind to write that bank and ask to have that clerk reprimanded. Did you get his name?”

  “Papa, don’t fret. I wouldn’t have brought it up if I thought I’d upset you. Mr. Morrow said we had until the end of the month to settle this.” She looked down at her hands clasped tightly in her lap. “I just thought I would get a little more information about it from you.”

  “It’s precisely because of things like this that I find myself lying awake here at night. I can’t afford to be abed right now. I need to be out, looking for new contracts. This loan could be paid in a snap, once we get more orders in.”

  “I understand, Papa,” she soothed.

  They fell silent. After a while Cherish gathered her courage once again. “Papa, what did you need that money for?” When he said nothing, she asked, “Did it have to do with my trip to Europe?”

  He looked away from her and still did not answer.

  “I thought Cousin Penelope paid for my trip.”

  He snorted. “Cousin Penelope? Do something for someone else? I had to convince her that you’d be a companion to her, promising you’d see to her comforts, before she even agreed to act as your chaperone.”

  “I see.” She looked back down at her hands. “You didn’t have to go borrowing money to give me a trip abroad. I would have been perfectly happy staying here at home.”

  “Nonsense. It was part of your education, so you could enter society with your head held high.”

  “I would never be ashamed of who I am. I didn’t need any European polish to achieve that.”

  “I wanted you to be able to hold your own among people like the Townsends, the Aarons, the Bradshaws and all the best families of Hatsfield. Why, look at young Warren. He’s had the benefit of a Grand Tour. I want you to be able to move in their society and some day marry into them.” He gave a deep, mournful sigh. “I was so hoping you and Warren would get along well enough to formalize things.”

  “Oh, Papa, I told you I…I like him, but he’s not, I mean, he’s very nice, but…” Her voice trailed off.

  He smiled bitterly. “But you have your heart set on Silas van der Zee at present.”

  “I can’t help whom I love.”

  He turned sad eyes on her. “You’re very young, my dear. Marriage can be very difficult. When there are financial straits, things are made harder. When there are differences in upbringing and education, a person might seem very attractive when one is young, but a few years down the line, things that seemed so attractive will begin to grate. You’re a bright, vivacious young lady. You’ve been given the advantages and privileges few girls around here ever dream of. You are curious about life, you enjoy people.”

  He shrugged helplessly. “Silas is a good man. He’s a hard worker. He’s very dedicated and talented in one area alon
e. And he’s penniless. He has no family, no heritage. He’s single-minded in his boatbuilding to the exclusion of everything else around him. I shudder to think of you shackled to him for life.

  “Oh, Cherish, I’ve withheld nothing from you. Can’t you accept my wisdom on this, this once?”

  Her heart felt stretched in pain. She could understand what her father was saying. She wanted to cry out that it wasn’t so. He didn’t truly know Silas as she did. No better man, no truer man had she ever met. But her love for her father restrained her. There was an irrefutable logic to his words. Her father had always been the man she’d striven to please, the one whose wisdom she’d always looked up to, and now she found herself mute against his arguments.

  He didn’t realize how he was tearing her up inside, asking her to forget Silas and consider someone like Warren Townsend.

  The sum of two thousand dollars rose before her like an insurmountable obstacle between her and happiness.

  Cherish sat in church on Sunday with her aunt and Jacob. She’d looked around for Silas, but he wasn’t there. She’d so hoped to catch a glimpse of him today. She would ask him to Sunday dinner to make up for the previous one. There could be no harm in that. But he was nowhere to be seen. She knew he’d begun coming to the shipyard after hours, but she hadn’t been able to go down then. She had to be home helping her aunt with supper and taking care of her father.

  Swallowing her disappointment that she hadn’t seen Silas since last Sunday, she turned her attention to Pastor McDuffie.

  “My message today addresses the most important fruit of the Holy Spirit,” Pastor McDuffie began. He paused to get everyone’s attention. “It is the fruit that receives the most attention at the hands of poets and artists when addressing its romantic manifestation, but few come to truly know and live God’s definition of it.

  “I am speaking of love. Agape.” Pastor McDuffie’s eyes scanned the congregation and came to rest on Cherish. His gaze lingered on her, a smile on his cherubic face as if he could discern the feelings she’d harbored for Silas over the years and was now going to hold them up for public examination.

  By the time Cherish left the service she felt as if she’d been examined, not by McDuffie or the congregation, but by God Himself. She’d felt His convicting power like a light thrust into her very heart, which forced her to take an unvarnished look at her comportment since she’d returned home.

  She was silent over dinner, only answering questions directed to her and escaping to the kitchen to wash up as soon as it was over. Then she took up a shawl and headed toward the back door. “I’m going for a walk,” she told Aunt Phoebe.

  “It’s not such a nice day. Might be damp with this fog.”

  “That’s all right. I’m not going far. Just up the hill.”

  The hill meant the rise behind the house where the forest began. Cherish crossed the backyard, passing the sheds, barn and sprouting garden beds, and began to climb the narrow rocky pastureland that led to the forest.

  She entered by a fir-needle-laden path, using the jutting rocks as footholds as she climbed upward, her spirit quieted by the scent of balsam and spruce. The path continued climbing. Cherish took a fork that led back to the edge of the trees to her favorite perch. It was a large, moss-covered boulder, with a hollow almost like a seat, which faced the land down below. From its vantage, Cherish could see the house and the road. Beyond lay the harbor surrounded by white houses with steep black roofs. The wharves jutted out into the water, the tall warehouses edging them.

  The still water, what was visible through the mist, was a gray-green, the color of Silas’s eyes. She could hear the foghorn sounding every few minutes.

  She sat atop the granite stone, its roughness softened by the moss, drawing her knees up and pulling the shawl closer. She thought long and hard on the morning’s message. She felt ashamed to call the feelings she harbored for Silas love when compared to that divine love, agape, which was described as “suffering long.” It “was kind, it didn’t envy, it didn’t vaunt itself nor was puffed up.”

  She cringed, remembering her anger toward poor Annalise. It didn’t “behave itself unseemly.” Cherish huddled farther into her shawl, thinking how she had been throwing herself at Silas ever since she’d been home.

  Love sought not her own, was not easily provoked, thought no evil….

  The pastor had gone over each one of these points and drawn it all back to Christ’s love for His church. He’d described the capacity of this love to endure being mocked and scourged, and to be poured out to demonstrate the Father’s love.

  Her own childish feelings paled in comparison and she questioned whether what she felt for Silas was indeed true love. It seemed she’d loved him so long with everything she possessed and had waited patiently for the day she’d be a woman to offer herself to him, and now she wondered whether her feelings were even worthy of being called love. Were they nothing more than a desire to have her own will above all? Had she done nothing since she’d been home but manipulate circumstances to her will? Had it taken her father’s near death to make her see how far she’d grown from allowing the Lord to take charge of her life?

  Her father’s words came back to her. Her own girlish feelings couldn’t withstand their logic and common sense. How could she know what love was? How could she know that her love would pass the test of time? Hadn’t her father sacrificed all these years for love of her? Even this awful debt looming over them had been out of love for her.

  Dear Lord, she prayed, resting her head against her knees, forgive me. I gave myself to You a long time ago, but it seems that in these last few years I’ve lost touch with Your will. I’ve been so intent on achieving my goals—come home, prove to Father that I can form a partnership with him, prove to him that Silas should be his right hand, and show Silas my love. She shook her head against the fabric of her gown. Now I don’t know. It all seems so petty and selfish—all me, me, me, when Your Word tells us to take up our cross and follow You. What would You have me do, Lord?

  She uttered the words with trepidation, not sure she wanted to hear the reply, but then she proceeded, knowing she couldn’t turn back. Show me Your will, Lord. She remained silent a long time, waiting.

  She kept sensing the reply, although she tried to ignore it and tell herself it was her own voice.

  Do You want me to give up Silas? God, I don’t think I can do that. These feelings have been with me far too long. Another verse came back to her. Grace. My grace is sufficient for thee….

  She pictured an altar with Abraham laying Isaac there, and a story that had never made sense to her was suddenly filled with meaning. It didn’t have to do with a sadistic god forcing a person to give to him what he loved. It had to do with trusting a God who was love itself.

  She spoke the words aloud, though they came out muffled against her skirt. “Very well, Lord, I give You Silas. I lay my feelings for him on the altar. Take them, Lord, they’re Yours, in Jesus’ precious name.”

  Tears rolled down her cheeks as she felt a pain more acute than any physical pain she’d ever experienced. But she felt a release in saying the words, as if because they had been spoken aloud, with only the witness of the trees, they could not be taken back.

  Silas climbed the steps to the shack’s porch, feeling bone weary, a bag containing a loaf of bread and a wedge of cheese in his hand. If he hadn’t felt so filthy, he would have had neither the will nor the energy to wash himself. After spending the day at the factory, he’d put in a few hours on the shipyard.

  The men had been happy to see him back. He’d explained how he wasn’t coming back permanently, only until Mr. Winslow was up and about again. He’d told them he was just waiting until then to pull up stakes and head for a bigger shipyard—letting them believe it was his ambition that had led to his rift with Winslow. After all, didn’t Winslow himself believe it now? Maybe it was true. Maybe all along he’d wanted Winslow to give him credit and treat him as an heir apparent.

 
The work on the schooner had soon occupied the men and left little time for personal conversation. Even though Silas had been tired when he’d arrived on the stocks, the work had invigorated him. He’d felt like a human being again, someone worthy of something.

  But now, after half-past eight in the evening, he felt he could fall asleep in his clothes, fish scales, sawdust and all. He didn’t know how long he would be able to keep up this pace. He was eating poorly, and every morning before the rising of the sun he felt as if he could use a few more hours’ sleep.

  “Hey, there, Silas, you back?” came Tobias’s slurred voice from the darkened porch.

  “Yes.”

  “Still working at the shipyard?”

  “Yes, I will be every night this week, as I told you.” Since the weather had been hot and sunny, he’d filled the washtub from the well before he’d left in the morning and left it sitting in the sun. It was still tepid from the day’s heat.

  He began stripping off his clothes in the dusk.

  “Yes, so you did,” Tobias said reflectively, drawing on his cold pipe.

  Silas, used to the old man’s presence by now, turned his back on him and proceeded with his bathing.

  “We used to wash with salt water aboard ship. Yep, and our clothes, too. They never felt clean, just stiff.” He chuckled.

  Silas, having heard the same thing every evening, knew no reply was necessary. After his bath he went inside to fix supper. Tobias shuffled in after a while. Theirs had become a ritual. Tobias would sit at the table, rambling on about various things, mostly events that had taken place in the past, while Silas set about preparing a simple meal. Tobias would accept whatever he served him and usually ate very little. Silas wondered what kept him alive.

  Afterward, the two sat awhile, the kerosene lamp between them, and Silas listened until weariness finally overcame him and he excused himself to lie on the sofa. He drifted off to sleep to the sound of Tobias’s unsteady hand pouring himself another nightcap.

  “I remember sailing on the square-rigger Emerald Seas. She was a beauty, built right down in Belfast…sixteen hundred tons, two hundred and two feet long…Boston to ’Frisco with a cargo worth more than forty thousand dollars. She was lost in a hurricane in ’49.” His lips smacked after taking a sip from his bottle. “Clipper Red Jacket…handsomest vessel I ever laid eyes on…extreme clipper she was…”