Lilac Spring

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by Ruth Axtell Morren


  “Hello, Warren.” Cherish greeted him at the front door the day after the Fourth.

  He apologized for not being able to come out the day before, but she put him at ease. After the initial pleasantries, he asked if he could see her father. He seemed quite serious, and she wondered what it was about.

  “Certainly. I believe he’s in the parlor.” When she had taken him to her father, she left the two men.

  By the time she came back to them a quarter of an hour later, her father’s face was wreathed in smiles.

  “Cherish, I have some wonderful news.”

  She looked from one man to the other. Warren no longer seemed embarrassed or serious. He was smiling, as well. “What is it?”

  “Warren, our good friend, and I hope soon to be something more,” he added with an eager look in her direction, “has been so generous as to offer me five hundred dollars to help us out at the shipyard until I can get fully back on my feet.”

  She looked at Warren in stupefaction. “How did you know? Did you tell him?” She could scarcely believe her father would request money from a man who was no relation to them.

  “Of course not! Warren knew from his father, who is on the bank board. He was aware of our temporary difficulties.” His attention turned back to Warren. “You don’t know how grateful we are for your friendship.” The two men shook hands warmly.

  Later her father excused himself and left her to visit with Warren. She didn’t know what to say. She felt overwhelmed by the gift.

  “Oh, Warren, you can’t imagine how much we needed this. We will repay you some day, I promise,” she added fervently.

  “You don’t have to repay me, you know,” he said quietly. “I wanted to help you out.” He grinned. “I didn’t really have much money stored away. I had to scrape it together.”

  She felt doubly under obligation. “You didn’t have to give us this money.”

  “Yes, I did,” he answered grimly. “I didn’t tell your father—I didn’t want to upset or worry him—but my father has been waiting for an opportunity like this. He’s looking to take over a shipyard, and this was ideal.”

  She listened in shock as he told her his father’s role at the bank.

  Warren got up to pace the room. “So you see, I had to come up with the cash somehow. I don’t have much of my own. But I didn’t want you to be under any pressure to accept my proposal. If you decide to marry me, I want you to do it because you want to, not to save your father.”

  She could feel her face heat up, seeing that he had guessed her turmoil. Tears welled in her eyes as she realized what a true friend he was. “Oh, Warren, how can we ever thank you?” She rose then and embraced him. He held her, though he didn’t use the moment to his own advantage.

  She eased out of the embrace and sought her handkerchief from her pocket. “I’ll—I’ll give you my answer soon, I promise,” she told him fervently, wiping her eyes, and not meeting his gaze.

  Later that afternoon, when Cherish was in the boat shop office, the door opened. She looked up in surprise to see Captain Phelps entering.

  “Good afternoon,” he said with a smile that crinkled the corners of his deep blue eyes. She was struck by what a handsome man he was, and she thought again of what a striking couple he and his wife made.

  “Good afternoon, Captain Phelps,” she said, returning his smile. “How may I help you?”

  “Are you Tom Winslow’s daughter?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

  “Yes.”

  “My, but you’re a young lady now. I remember you as a little thing peeking out at me from around a boat frame.”

  She laughed. “Yes, that sounds like me.”

  “Is your father around?”

  She sobered. “No, my father has suffered some ill health this summer. The doctor still hasn’t given him permission to return to the shipyard.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. How is he now?”

  “He’s better. It was his heart.”

  Captain Phelps shook his head. “What a shame. So, you are here covering for your father?” he asked with a smile.

  “I’m trying my best. It’s not easy to fill his shoes.”

  “No, it never is,” he replied with understanding, and she remembered that he, too, worked for his father’s company.

  “I’d like to congratulate you on your win yesterday. It was a wonderful race.”

  “Thank you. You know the boat was built at this shipyard?”

  She smiled. “Yes, I know. Even though I’ve been away, I have kept up-to-date with the goings-on here. That’s why I can congratulate you sincerely—I know the win is just as much a triumph for us!”

  “Indeed it is. That’s one of the reasons I stopped by today. I wanted to talk to the young man who built it for me. Could you tell me if Silas van der Zee is around?”

  Her face grew serious. What would she tell him? “He’s not around right now,” she began. “You can find him after four down at the parsonage,” she suggested with sudden inspiration, glad she didn’t have to mention the cannery. She wondered what Captain Phelps wanted to talk to Silas about. Commissioning a new boat perhaps? That seemed unlikely, seeing as he had just had one built. Still, one could only hope.

  “Oh.” The captain seemed disappointed. “He’s a fine builder.”

  “Yes, he is,” Cherish answered immediately. “The best.”

  He smiled at her as if amused by her enthusiasm.

  He placed his hat back on his head. “Well, you can tell him I stopped by if you see him. Otherwise, I shall make my way to Pastor McDuffie’s this afternoon.”

  “Captain Phelps?”

  “Yes?” He turned back to her.

  “I wanted to congratulate you also on your marriage.”

  He smiled again. “Thank you. I am a very blessed man.”

  She nodded, wondering again at the transformation in the woman who used to be known in Haven’s End as “Salt Fish Ginny.”

  “We’ll stop by and call on your father this week.”

  “He would enjoy that,” she told him.

  Silas had scarcely had time to wash and change into clean clothes when he was visited by Captain Phelps.

  He and Mrs. McDuffie exchanged greetings before she left the two of them on the porch to talk. Silas was surprised that the captain had come to see him, but the reason for his visit surprised him even more.

  “I have a friend in Boston who would like to commission you to build him a yacht. A racing yacht.”

  Silas stared at him, hardly believing what he was hearing.

  “I don’t know if you saw the race yesterday.”

  “No, I missed it.”

  “That’s a shame. The boat you built me won hands down. But that’s not all. I raced her down in Boston before coming up here, and she won.” He grinned at him. “My friend was impressed enough to want one himself.”

  Silas blew out a breath. “I don’t know. I—I’m not working at the shipyard, for one thing.”

  Captain Phelps pierced him with those sharp blue eyes. “You’re not? Why not?”

  Silas looked away. “I…it’s a long story,” he answered finally. “Let’s just say Mr. Winslow and I had a disagreement. So I have no workshop, nor any tools to work with.”

  Captain Phelps considered a moment. “You could work in my barn. We could convert it into a workshop.”

  Silas felt himself floundering. He stared past Captain Phelps to the inky-blue sea beyond. What would You have me do, Lord? Is this of You?

  It was a dream come true, and yet, Silas realized, for the first time in his life he knew there was something more important than mere boatbuilding.

  “Can I give you my answer tomorrow?”

  “Of course. You think about it.”

  “I’ve committed myself to helping out at Winslow’s Shipyard just until the schooner they’re building is launched. But that’s only in the evenings that I put in a few hours.”

  “This shouldn’t interfere with that
.”

  Silas cleared his throat. “I’m spending my days at the cannery in town.”

  Captain Phelps merely nodded at the information. “That wouldn’t leave you enough time for this project. Would you consider quitting that job to take on this short-term one?” He paused. “If this boat is as fast as the one you built for me, your reputation would spread. I’d make sure of it.”

  Before Silas could absorb this, the captain continued, his enthusiasm growing. “Did you hear about the race that was just held in England? A yacht named Jullanar won. They say it had some interesting innovations—the builder cut away all the deadwood in both stem and stern and rigged it as a yawl instead of a schooner. I’m awaiting the particulars. But the interesting thing is these innovations were designed by someone who was unknown—he wasn’t even a shipwright.”

  Silas could feel his excitement growing as Caleb talked to him about yachts and yacht racing, a heretofore unknown aspect of sailing to Silas.

  “The yachts introduced in the fifties have a raking sternpost and sharp lines like a clipper. The canvas is set flatter. In the sixties, designers began combining an iron framework with the wooden skin. Now you begin to see a clipperlike bow.

  “I think if we put our heads together and study the design of Jullanar, we could come up with some innovations of our own,” the captain told him as he shook his hand in farewell.

  Silas stood watching the captain’s buggy as it left the lane. His mind was so full of possibilities, he could hardly form a coherent thought. All he knew was he needed to find a quiet place to commune with God.

  The moment Cherish had been dreading arrived. Warren Townsend visited her again, and she knew she must give him an answer.

  They sat across from each other in the boat-shop office.

  “Have you had a chance to think about my proposal?” Warren asked after they’d chatted a while.

  “Yes.” She looked down at the letter opener on her desk. “Warren, I care about you deeply, and I can never tell you how much your help has meant to me. It has come at a very timely moment. I promise you, my father and I will repay you.”

  “Forget about the money. I told you that wasn’t the reason I gave it to you.”

  “You’re very kind. I wish—” She bit her lip, wondering even now if she had the courage to face her future in Haven’s End without the security Warren Townsend offered.

  “I know you don’t love me,” he surprised her by saying, “but we get along well.”

  “Well, you don’t love me either!” she found herself blurting back to him.

  He didn’t seem fazed by her remark. Instead he seemed relieved. “But I think an awful lot of you. You’re the nicest, prettiest girl I know. I’d do anything to help you out.”

  She took his hand across the desk. “Oh, Warren, you’re too good. You’ll never know how you’ve touched me.”

  He squeezed her hand. “You still don’t have to give me an answer right now. I’m in no hurry—to my parents’ exasperation.”

  She looked at him in sympathy and patted his hand. “Thank you, but I won’t string you along.” She looked down at their joined hands. “The answer must be no.” In her heart she knew she had made the right choice, though she didn’t yet know how she was going to tell her father. “I wish sometimes that we were in love. It would make things easier, don’t you think?”

  “It sure would,” he said with a laugh. Then his eyes grew somber. “Sometimes I feel as if we’re born with this loose noose around our necks and as we grow older, it slowly tightens and there’s less and less slack in which to wiggle.”

  “Oh, Warren, no! Is it so bad…being the son of Warren Townsend the Second?”

  He ran a finger inside his stiff collar as if illustrating the point. “I feel right now that between taking over more and more of the business for Father and getting married to ‘the right young lady,’ my life is being stifled to the point that I have no breathing room left. I mean that as no offense to you.”

  She laughed. “No offense taken. Poor Warren.” She reached across both hands this time and clasped his. “I feel I, too, shall greatly disappoint my father by refusing your proposal.”

  They sat smiling sadly at one another.

  Silas had prayed through the night after telling the McDuffies briefly about Captain Phelps’s offer.

  Now he wanted to tell the only person who would truly understand. He left the cannery on his lunch break, knowing he had very little time. He walked up the road toward the boat shop and made his way toward the office, figuring she would be there if she hadn’t yet left for her dinner. Peering in the window, he stopped short when he saw Townsend and Cherish, eyeing each other warmly and clasping each other by the hands.

  All the pleasure and anticipation died within him in those seconds he stood watching them. He thought back to the time Cherish had told him she behaved with that informality only with him, Silas. His mouth pressed into a grim line as he watched Cherish smile at Warren. Then he turned and left the area, trying to smother the bitterness that threatened to quench the excitement he had felt since Captain Phelps had visited him.

  The day had been hot and steamy. At seven in the evening the tide was out, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, the sun was still high on the horizon and the mudflats seemed to radiate the heat of the afternoon sun. Cherish made her way up the ramp to the deserted schooner.

  It was nearly completed, lacking only masts, which would be stepped later, after the ship was launched. She hiked up her skirts and climbed onto the deck. It smelled of turpentine.

  Silas stood with his back to her, a bucket in one hand and a brush in the other. She remained where she was, watching him. She hadn’t seen him in days. He could almost have gone off to live in another town for all she saw of him now.

  “Hello, Silas,” she said finally.

  He jumped around at the sound of her voice, the bucket sloshing its contents. He held his brush as if fending her off.

  “Hello, Cherish.” His tone was serious, the look in his eyes wary.

  His shirt hung open. He brought a hand up to his chest to clutch the two edges of it together.

  “What smells so bad up here?” she asked.

  He indicated the linseed oil and kerosene mixture used to prevent dry rot on the exposed wooden surfaces. He set down the bucket and brush and turned his back on her as he began buttoning up his shirt. When he faced her again, working on the last button, he seemed more composed.

  Ignoring her further, he took up the brush again, dipped it into the bucket and began brushing the floor planks. Since he didn’t seem inclined to talk with her, she found a perch upon the gunwale and watched quietly.

  He dipped the brush into the bucket again and brushed it over the planks. He shoved away a lock of hair that kept falling over his forehead as he knelt on the wood and continued to paint the boards. After a while he took up a stained rag. With it he began rubbing the area soaked in the linseed oil.

  She could see the back of his shirt sticking to him with perspiration. “Silas, why don’t you ever come up to the house anymore? Papa’s not angry with you. He’s grateful for all you’ve done for him down on the yard while he’s been laid up.”

  He didn’t answer, and Cherish tried to stifle the annoyance that rose in her. Why didn’t he talk to her?

  “Silas?”

  He finally looked at her from his kneeling position on the floorboards, his arm resting against his knee, the rag suspended in his hand.

  She longed to go over to him and push away that lock of hair that had fallen across his forehead again.

  “Do you think it’s a good idea to be here with me so late in the day?”

  She stared at him. “What do you mean?”

  He turned the rag over in his hand. “Is it something your friend Mr. Townsend would approve of?”

  “Warren? What does he have to do with my talking with you?”

  His gray eyes scanned her. “Is it customary for the young ladies of Bost
on or the Continent to speak privately with other men when their suitors are not around?”

  Was he…perhaps…a little jealous? “Do you think Warren is my suitor?”

  “Isn’t he?” His eyes held hers captive.

  She didn’t look away. “He could have been.”

  He glanced back down. “What do you mean?”

  “He asked me to marry him.”

  “Isn’t that what you and your father wanted?”

  “It’s what Papa wanted, yes.” Glad and relieved that she would finally have the opportunity to talk with him about it, she explained, “It would have made Papa happy. It would have solved a lot of problems.” She met his eyes, which didn’t waver from their steady perusal of her face. “Warren has been very good to us. I don’t know if you realize this, but…well, Papa has had some financial troubles. With his heart illness, everything just seemed to come to a head.” She sighed. “But thanks to God’s grace, Papa received the help he needed. Warren Townsend is one of those who stepped in just when we needed it most. He just did it as a friend.”

  “Or because he loves you.”

  She could feel herself coloring.

  “He said he didn’t want me to feel…under any obligation of that sort.”

  Silas began rubbing the woodwork with the rag again. “What did you tell him?” he asked her, his attention back on the deck boards. Cherish swallowed her disappointment.

  “I told him I was deeply honored that he would consider me for his wife, but that I couldn’t marry him.”

  He stopped his rubbing. “Why not?”

  What could she say? For a moment she wanted to toy with him, because he acted so cool and aloof. But just as quickly the impulse died. What she felt for Silas was too important for coy games. “Because I’m in love with somebody else.”

  His eyelids shuttered over his eyes, so she had no idea how the information affected him. “You’d be better off with him.”

  “How could I be if I’m not in love with him?”

  “Aren’t you?” His hand began to move the rag back and forth again vigorously.

  “How can I love him when I love you?”

  He stopped the motion and they looked long moments into each other’s eyes. Her heart thudded at her boldness, but she refused to back down. She didn’t understand the barrier between them and wanted to get to the bottom of it.

 

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