Her father yawned. “Yep, well, I was just thinking about having to go home and milk the cow.” He turned to her mother with a chuckle. “What do you think, dear? Think we can trust Mr. Samuels to bring home our daughter?”
Mrs. Devon smiled at Noah. Before she could answer, Noah assured Rianna’s father, “I’ll see she gets home at a decent hour.”
Rianna felt like a girl again, cherished and protected. She hadn’t appreciated it back then, too eager to be off on her own. She helped her father get her mother into the wagon, while Noah gathered their belongings. After her parents had gone, she and Noah sat together around the bonfire with those remaining and continued singing.
During a lull, Noah turned to her. “I’m sorry if I implied anything unkind about your marrying one of your patients.”
Her breath caught, reading the sincere regret in his dark eyes. Then she smiled. “That’s all right. It’s forgotten. Besides, I should be used to it. That’s why I was teasing you a little.” At his surprised look, she explained, “You’d be amazed how suspicious people are—especially family members—when a private nurse comes to a house.”
“How did you get involved in nursing?”
She gazed at him, enjoying the way the firelight turned his skin golden and reflected off his eyes in the deepening twilight. “It’s a long story.”
“During the war, wasn’t it?”
She nodded, resting her cheek on her clasped knees. “But it all started with Ralph and the reasons I married him.” She took a deep breath, seeing into the past as she watched the flames shoot up from the dry wood. Was she ready to tell Noah?
“Reasons you married him?” He sounded puzzled.
She looked over at him. Something about the intense way he had of listening—as if he was not just hearing the words, but understanding their real meaning—made her decide to risk the pain of telling him. “Poor Ralph. I wasn’t exactly honest when I married him. I wasn’t exactly dishonest either. We were both just fun-loving youngsters. Well, you knew that about me back then.”
He nodded.
“I married him to escape the drudgery of factory life.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in trading one type of drudgery for another.”
She smiled. “But you see, Ralph was different. Or at least I thought he was. Neither of us was interested in buckling down and building a home together as married people do. We made grandiose plans—to go abroad in a year, live the life of artists on the continent.” She shook her head in tender reminiscence. “Or as the hangers-on to the real artists. I suppose I saw Ralph as my way to fulfill those childhood dreams I had.” Then she sobered. “But Ralph and I never had the chance. Before we’d even had our first quarrel, the war broke out and Ralph joined the Union troops.”
“He must have been one of the first.”
She nodded against her knees. “He was so full of enthusiasm. Finally, a real cause! To defend the nation. He looked quite handsome in his uniform. I continued working at the factory.”
She paused, the next part the most difficult to speak about. Thankfully, Noah proved patient, giving her time to tell her story in her own time and way.
“The only thing Ralph didn’t know was that I…was—” the words were still hard to say “—expecting at the time.”
She heard Noah’s intake of breath and met his gaze. His two dark eyebrows were drawn together, his gaze penetrating. “You were with child?”
She nodded, unable to speak for a moment.
“You didn’t tell him?”
She looked down at her knuckles. “I didn’t know it then myself.” Taking a deep breath, she braced herself to go on. “I didn’t realize until I started feeling sick. Yet I had to continue working. And then, not three months later, I heard from his commanding officer that Ralph was in a hospital in Washington.”
She was silent, remembering those terrifying days and nights. “Ralph lay there, gravely wounded. Infection had set in. He wasn’t expected to last the week.
“I handed in my resignation, took all our savings—” she made a humorless sound “—savings for Europe—packed a few garments and took the first train south.
“After living in Lowell I’d imagined myself as somewhat a woman of the world.” She shook her head. “I didn’t know what a big city was. A city in wartime, with soldiers everywhere, wounded choking the hospitals, fear of invasion any day, prices beyond reach, scarcity…” She could see it all in the flames. “Well, I finally found the hospital. What a horror.”
Rianna felt Noah’s hand on her shoulder. He was looking at her with understanding in his eyes. “You know,” she whispered, “you saw much worse than I did.” She shuddered. “I don’t know which was worse—the agonizing cries or the stench.”
“They stay with you always.”
She nodded. With a sigh she resumed her narrative. “In time I found a place to board. A kindly nurse let me share her rooms. She soon realized my condition. I…I was just beginning to show. She was truly a godsend, making sure I ate properly and got my rest.
“But there were so many casualties that soon we both hardly had a moment to ourselves. We spent most of our time at the hospital, I at Ralph’s side until he…until he passed away.”
Noah cleared his throat. “How long did your husband last?”
“Not long. Three, four weeks. He regained consciousness after the first week, though he was so awfully weak. Then the fever set in again, and he lost consciousness and never woke up.”
“I’m sorry.” Noah’s words were simple, but she knew they came from the heart.
“He was so happy about the baby coming, and I promised him I would come back home as the time drew near. He worried about what would become of the baby and me, but I assured him that my family would take care of us. I was more concerned with making Ralph comfortable.
“If I hadn’t had those few weeks with Ralph, I never would have truly had a husband, nor been a wife to him.”
“I don’t understand.”
She took a deep breath, suddenly wishing she could whitewash things more. “Because I was selfish when I married him, just thinking of how he could help me achieve my dreams.”
Noah’s expression was unreadable, only the reflection of the fire visible in his eyes. She continued, hoping in some way to redeem herself through her next words.
“But the Lord gave me the chance to get to know Ralph and be his helpmate before he departed this earth.”
She smiled—a genuine smile this time. “We were able to talk about the things that really matter. I was able—I like to believe—to make his last days on this earth a little more bearable than if he’d been alone. Most of all, the dear nurse who befriended me was able to lead Ralph, as she had me, to his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Ralph received the assurance of where he was going after he left us.” She felt that familiar joy rise up in her. “I witnessed the Lord’s grace in those final hours of Ralph’s consciousness, when he truly knew God’s touch and was no longer afraid of what awaited him.”
“What happened to…to your baby?”
The low question forced her back to the pain of the past. She looked away then and again fell silent. Finally, she spoke. “It was after Ralph was gone, perhaps a week, that I got terrible cramps. I stayed in bed that morning and as soon as my friend found me, she called for a midwife. There was little they could do. I don’t know what went wrong. Perhaps the strain of working so hard…” She shook her head. “I don’t know. I only know it wasn’t meant to be.”
She drew aside a strand of her hair and forced herself to continue. “Once I was able to, I went back to working at the hospital and stayed for the remainder of the war.”
They didn’t say anything for a while.
“Did your family know?”
“Yes. They wanted me to come home immediately. I…I couldn’t leave then.”
“Is that why you never came back?”
She started at the question and slowly met his glance. Th
ere was no hiding behind his dark, piercing stare. Hardly aware, she nodded.
Noah pulled on the nets with Joe, bringing up their catch of cod. The slick, shiny fish fell onto the boat’s deck. Now the grueling work of gutting and cleaning them before bringing them back into port began.
As his fingers worked over the fish, Noah’s mind worked just as feverishly. He couldn’t get the evening of the clambake out of his thoughts.
The stark pain in Rianna’s eyes when she’d told about losing her child tore at him. It was as if he’d opened up a mortal wound…he who well knew what old wounds were like. How could he have been so clumsy and unfeeling?
As she’d spoken to him of the past, she’d looked just like the girl he’d fallen in love with so many years ago, her skin luminescent against the flames of the bonfire, her hair a thick coil at her nape, its loosened strands framing her face, a promise of its rich fullness.
But what had drawn him even more than her beauty were the things she had revealed to him about her life since she’d left Wood’s Harbor.
He knew how hard it was to speak of anything pertaining to the war years. No one who hadn’t lived through it could imagine the fear and horror and absolute waste of human lives.
Rianna had seen plenty if she’d nursed the wounded and dying in a D.C. hospital, a city on the front lines, for all intents and purposes. Why had she had to endure even more? The loss of her unborn child. He wouldn’t have known it to hear her joyous laughter earlier among all the children.
What had given her the strength to go on?
Noah swallowed back a yelp as a fishhook pierced his finger through the knitted gloves he wore.
Not stopping his pace, he reached for the next fish.
He couldn’t help going over Rianna’s words about her husband, unsure what to think. It hadn’t sounded as if her Ralph was the great love of her life, the way he’d first thought. He paused in his actions with the knife, struck for a second at the similarities between her marriage to Ralph and his to Charlotte.
He had loved and respected his wife. A worthier woman he couldn’t have found. But he’d met and married her on the rebound, his only thought to find someone the opposite of Rianna. Charlotte had embodied all that was quiet, steady, thoughtful—the kind of person you wouldn’t notice in a room. She’d be sitting in a corner with her stitching, smiling at the others.
He’d come to admire her more the deeper he got to know her, but he’d never felt the flame of passion. The recognition of kindred souls despite their outward differences was something that he’d felt the moment he’d seen Rianna as a young woman—and the moment he’d laid eyes on her again at the old house.
This time it was all the more dangerous. If Rianna fled again, more than Noah stood to be hurt. Melanie had gotten attached, as well. Yet Rianna was no longer a lighthearted girl with a hunger to live life to its fullest. She was a woman who had seen more pain and suffering than most people would see in a lifetime, and who’d shown the compassion and fortitude to help alleviate that pain…and who, through it all, hadn’t lost the essence of who she was, a beautiful, vivacious, joyous person. Had she lost the restlessness that had driven her away all those years before? Would her joy remain if her mother’s health demanded that she stay in Wood’s Harbor?
He frowned, throwing the fish into the crate. The word joy wasn’t one he thought about often. But it was one he’d heard her use more than once.
Did Rianna’s joy have something to do with her newfound religious convictions?
She’d invited him to a camp meeting. He hadn’t been to one since he’d been a kid—taken by his grandparents. He didn’t remember much of it except running around with other boys his age while the grown-ups sat under a tent, listening to all kinds of preaching.
Perhaps he’d go and see what all the commotion was about. See what it was that put that indefinable light in Rianna’s eyes and lilt to her voice when she spoke of her faith.
Chapter Seven
A week later, Rianna looked down at Noah where he sat under the tent on a folding chair in the gathering dusk. He’d shown up at the camp meeting one evening about midweek into it and had sat down beside her during the service. He stood when the others stood, sat when the others sat, looked onto Rianna’s Bible when she turned to a Scripture. But that was all. If he felt anything at all, he kept it greatly hidden. Amid the shouts of “Amen!”, “Hallelujah!”, “Praise the Lord!” he sat unmoved. As soon as the crowds settled down to hear the preaching—good, rousing, don’t-shout-me-down preaching—Noah promptly fell asleep.
That’s how he was now, as everyone else stood for an impromptu hymn. Impulsively she reached over to smooth his hair, a wave of tenderness washing over her. How exhausted he must be after waking before dawn and spending a day at sea. His hair felt as silky smooth as it looked. Noah started forward, and she quickly removed her hand.
He yawned and sat up, then stood as soon as he noticed everyone else standing. “Sorry, I must have nodded off.”
“You must be tired.”
He looked sheepish. “It’s been a long day.”
“You’re off at first light, I imagine.”
“Yes.”
“Why don’t you go on home and get some sleep,” she suggested again, just as she had several times over the past few days.
He shook his head. “It’s all right. I’m fine.”
She turned away to resume singing. He was as stubborn as her worst patients. Why did he come, anyway? Night after night, receiving nothing, sleeping through the most moving songs, the fieriest preaching. Rianna had pleaded and pleaded with the Lord to touch Noah, to let him receive an inkling—just an inkling—of what it was all about.
If only the Lord would reveal to him what the gift of salvation, of eternal life, meant. But her prayers seemed to fall on deaf—or rather, sleeping—ears.
She told herself once again to be patient. The Lord would do His perfect work in His perfect time. He’d promised if she asked anything in His name, He would do it, and she firmly believed this. Hadn’t He restored the joy in her own life after she’d thought she’d lost it forever?
She went back to worshipping the Lord and was soon caught up in the beauty of God’s holiness and sense of His presence. She lifted her hands and sang with all her soul.
He’d seen her pain and loneliness after the loss of her baby, and He’d healed her. He’d given her the strength to go on and help others. He’d give her the courage to face coming back home. And now she believed in His mercy to allow her to befriend young Melanie and not allow regrets to taint her relationship with the girl who so much needed a mother, and with the father whom she’d like to see smile again the way he used to at age nineteen.
Noah shifted on the hard chair, always uncomfortable with unbridled shows of emotion in people he knew as quiet and generally undemonstrative. Suddenly, with a few hymns and a preacher spouting Scripture at them, they were transformed into an exuberant, hollering, weeping mass.
After the first night, he was no longer concerned by Rianna’s tears, knowing nothing was physically hurting her.
Even though he’d been bone tired from a grueling day at sea, he’d come that night for Rianna’s sake. Her joy at seeing him had made it all worthwhile. He was far more moved by her happiness than by any of the singing and sermonizing he’d heard.
People from several neighboring villages sat around him, as preachers from near and far exhorted them. On the preaching circuit, he called it. Despite all their pleas for repentance, their graphic descriptions of hell, their eloquence over heaven, Noah’s heart remained as stone cold as it had been since—
Since the war. Since Charlotte’s death. Since he’d felt as dried up and lifeless as a weathered shingle.
Rianna hadn’t been the only one to leave home. Noah had been away, too, for a few years. But his departure hadn’t been by choice. The last thing he’d planned on was to fight a war that had nothing to do with him or his. Just when he’d had a chance a
t true happiness—a young wife and child, a house of his own to make into a home—he’d been called up to serve his country.
And after the war, what had he come home to?
Widowhood and broken dreams. His grandparents’ dilapidated house said it all. Any dreams he and Charlotte had had of fixing it up for their future family were useless by the time he returned.
Noah looked at the people under the tent around him in the glow of the campfires. He didn’t begrudge these folks their spiritual experiences. Clearly they were feeling something good. Unfortunately, displays of emotion only made Noah feel his isolation all the more. The loneliness he’d grown accustomed to until Rianna’s return now mocked him in its profundity. It didn’t matter how many camp meetings he attended. He’d be no closer to filling the void in his life than when he’d returned from the war to find nothing left of his former life.
Rianna had risen and moved away from him, but just then she turned and looked at him, her face suffused with emotion. She stretched out her arm and drew him forward by the hand. He complied, startled momentarily by the feel of her strong grasp. Her smile was radiant.
“Noah, you need to have your joy restored. Let me pray with you.” And closing her eyes, she began to pray.
Noah just watched her. She prayed in a way new to him, as if she had a personal acquaintance with her Creator and was free to drop in on Him whenever she wanted. She reminded Noah of a little girl whose father was the bank president. Into his office she marched boldly anytime she wanted, unmindful of his other demands, to perch on his knee, knowing he would make time for her amidst his more important affairs. Noah would almost envy Rianna this bold familiarity, if he didn’t find it so strange.
For Noah, God was a distant deity, as far removed from the realities of his life as the constellations he viewed above him in the inky-black sky—there to acknowledge but too far to affect his everyday life in any way.
To Be a Mother Page 17