The Language of Paradise: A Novel
Page 14
“How was the Lord to deal with a man of the cloth who went his own way, not once, but twice? Who set such a high value on worldly security that he risked his modest income—the sustenance of his family and the future of his sons—for the sole purpose of making more? Who dabbled, Mr. Birdsall! He saw the path I was on, and upset the wagon to divert me from it. You see before you a man crippled in body and in business, all earthly prospects destroyed. Yet, in His mercy, He has given me reason to believe that the bones He has broken will rejoice.”
The parson’s eyes searched Gideon’s with the same restless ardor as on the night of the accident. There was no condemnation in his gaze—yet, Gideon thought, Hedge must surely be aware that the wondrous outpouring of Hebrew was a regurgitation of the passages from Isaiah he’d translated all those months ago. The only miracle—if so it could be called—was how deeply the chapters had engraved themselves in his memory, how fluently they’d poured out at a time of stress. Gideon had known the truth, but he hadn’t confronted it until Hedge recited the verse to him, reduced in English to rhyming doggerel. He felt a familiar pang of loss. Often, after leaving his own work to return to daily tasks, he’d had to shake off this poignant longing, for which he had no name. It was like homesickness, but for something more primal than his past. For mystery itself. The numinous lurking in the mundane world. He lowered his head, surrendering to his disappointment.
“Why won’t you look at me, my boy? Have I overwhelmed you?”
Hedge’s voice was so gentle that Gideon did look up, astonished. Was the Reverend playing the part of the fond paterfamilias, addressing him like one of his sons? If there were lines to be learned, Gideon hadn’t mastered his. He stared back, dumbly, awaiting a cue.
“You are right to be confused,” Hedge went on. “My own pride blinded me to the signs, though I see now that they were posted from our first acquaintance. I don’t apologize for this. A man in his full vigor doesn’t brood about who will carry on his work. He is too busy doing it. When I thought about the matter at all, I followed the prompting of nature and looked to my own offspring. I have four sons, Mr. Birdsall, and not one has gotten the whole of me. I observe them and see Hedge Dismembered: amiability here, native shrewdness there, a staunch heart here, able hands there. Perhaps that is always the way.”
And what of your excellent wife, Gideon thought. Were any of her traits passed down? He felt a twinge of foreboding, but said nothing. His instinct told him to wait for Hedge to reveal himself.
The parson’s good leg jerked. He subdued it with pats and vigorous rubbing, as one might calm an obstreperous dog. “Immobility is a trial for an active man,” he said. “But I must make peace with doing less. I don’t fool myself that I will be what I was. Even with the help of Micah’s splendid sticks”—he nodded at the crutches glowing in oiled perfection against the whitewashed walls—“I’ll never stand before my flock again, dispensing the Word of Truth, or travel to their humble dwellings to minister to them. It is a hard punishment, to renounce a way of life—the more so if that life is one of service. When I fall into self-pity—and I am human, I succumb—I cling to those words you fed me in my hour of deepest need.” Hedge stretched out his hand to Gideon. “Say them with me, dear boy!”
Gideon stumbled over the Hebrew, following the Reverend as best he could. His fluency was gone, but the sluggish pace had one advantage. He could savor the text as he went along: Isaiah 55, his favorite in all the Bible, the reason he had chosen to translate these passages to begin with. He loved the music of it, the way the last verses built to a crescendo of singing hills and applauding trees, myrtles sprouting up in place of briars, the earth transformed. He imagined the prophet on a mountaintop, sending forth King James cadences like clear, bright peals of a trumpet: For my thoughts are not your thoughts . . . For as the heavens are higher than the earth . . . For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven . . .
Hedge stopped abruptly, leaving Gideon to straggle on for a few syllables before realizing that nature would not exult today—at least not in Hebrew. The parson began to recite in English, slow and deliberate, giving each word its full value. He might have been instructing a deaf pupil, or an exceptionally dull one.
“So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.”
He paused, letting the words settle, his eyes fixed on Gideon. “Wonderful, is it not? You may think you are not up to the task, that you’re too young, too raw to undertake an established ministry. But I assure you, it has all been inscribed from the beginning of time. Think of the precedents! Moses and Joshua, Elijah and Elisha . . . will you judge me arrogant if I suggest that we too share this sacred bond, writ infinitely small?”
Gideon’s lips were stiff, his tongue felt as thick as a cow’s. “Are you saying,” he said, enunciating with difficulty, “that I am to be you?”
“Only in a public sense.” Hedge gave a light laugh. “I had forgotten your tendency to interpret literally. Some of the more eccentric locutions in your little translation give me pleasure to this day.”
And what you ask, Gideon thought, is the crudest kind of translation. Substitution. A word for a word. The hallmark of the amateur.
“No,” Hedge went on, “I am not asking you to replace me—as you see, I am still very much present—but to stand in my place, to preach and teach and minister as my emissary. You will not be alone. I will be with you every step of the way. Together we will get the Word out, and I have no doubt that it will prosper.” The parson looked down at his legs with some irony and twitched his toes. “There is blessing even in the Lord’s punishments, my friend. I despaired that I would ever find time for the Lexicon, though it is the true work of my heart. Now I can entrust my pastoral duties to a younger man, and devote myself to a labor that will outlast me.”
Emissary? How had Hedge arrived at that word, Gideon wondered. Wasn’t an emissary a kind of spy? Possibly the Reverend expected him to prowl dark corners of the parish, reporting on subversion in the ranks. The title for a new book came to him: From Amanuensis to Emissary: A Slave’s Progress. It was not the one he intended to write.
“I am sensible of the honor,” he said, keeping his voice tight and formal, “but I’m not prepared to make such a commitment. I need time to decide what I will do next. I am considering several options.”
“Are you indeed, Mr. Birdsall?” Hedge had easily divined that Gideon’s last statement had no substance. “Seems to me that in these hard times, a young man should think twice before refusing a solid offer. There’s many a seminary graduate sweeping out churches who would welcome such an opportunity. Your phraseology interests me. You say you are not ready to make a commitment—yet, I think you’ve recently made one. Perhaps not in so many words. In certain situations, actions speak louder.”
“I don’t know what you refer to,” Gideon said. He was addled by Hedge’s sudden switch from celestial destiny to hard-edged pragmatism. But understanding was already creeping into him via his extremities. His hands were cold.
“Reuben saw you with Sophy on the night of my misfortune. He said you were making advances of the most explicit kind. I’ve observed your fondness for her, but I never expected that you would abuse the trust we placed in you—particularly after I confided the circumstances of her birth. Sophy is not like other girls. She is innocent, but heir to certain . . . influences that run rampant in her blood. My Consort and I have sheltered her from the world, for her own protection.” He pointed his forefinger at Gideon. “The past must not repeat itself. I won’t allow it.”
Reuben. The serpent twisted around Hedge’s family tree. Gideon made an attempt to speak past the bile flooding his throat. “I have only the highest feelings for Sophy. You greatly underestimate her, sir, if you treat her like a weak child, easily swayed to one influence or another. Her character is beautiful and pure—in that sense you are righ
t, she is not like other girls. Be assured, nothing wanton passed between us, that night or any other. If Reuben says otherwise, the fault—the filth—is in him.”
His voice shook. He could not go on.
Hedge put up a placating hand. “Calm yourself, dear boy, I had to test you. How was I to know the depth of your emotions? My son is no moral exemplar, but he is cunning, he sees what he sees and says what he will. This is a small parish, things get about. I thought it best to send Reuben to the city for the time being. He wants direction, and his energies require a larger scope; he will unravel my poor affairs if anyone can.”
The parson looked down at the scattered crumbs in his lap. With an air of serendipity he took a morsel and placed it on his tongue. His expression was bland, his eyes distant and musing, strikingly like Sophy’s.
“I would not have chosen you for a son-in-law,” he said. “I had in mind a simpler, more practical man who would be an anchor for my daughter. An abiding decency that would keep her safe at home, wherever her fancies take her. Sophy is a dreamer, her thoughts range wide just as yours do. In my experience, minds too alike lack the necessary friction. Such marriages exacerbate each partner’s flaws—and rarely do they result in vigorous offspring. But the Lord had larger plans, and who are we to contradict Him? When I see how artfully He has woven the threads of our lives together, I am in awe.”
Hedge gathered the fragments of gingerbread in the napkin, tied the ends to make a bundle, and motioned for Gideon to relieve him of it. He brushed a few stray crumbs from his sumptuous robe and gathered it closer around him. “Tea is such a thin liquid, I find it goes right through me. It’s the idea that warms, not the beverage itself. I wonder if Mrs. Hedge might be persuaded to bring us a wee dram of her medicinal brandy. The occasion warrants something stronger than flavored water, I think. What do you say, Mr. Birdsall? Shall we take a lesson from the Psalmist and turn our mourning into dancing?”
CHAPTER 15
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HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT
MAMA WOULD SAY IT’S NO BETTER THAN WITCHCRAFT. That the only art she’s practicing is a dark one. But now that she’s been sent away, what else can Sophy do?
Life at Sam’s is crowded and dull, and, two weeks in, she has little time to call her own. The children are forever tugging at her skirts, getting into the few things she brought with her. They are always attached. She wishes she liked them more. She has made sketches of the older girls in the rare moments she can persuade them to sit still, thinking to compose them into a group portrait for the grandparents. A bouquet of tousled heads is what she has in mind, but these little ones don’t inspire. They have no faces to speak of—not to paint. It isn’t just that they’re young and soft-featured. Their parents seem to vanish in the same way, rendered invisible by blandness. The best that could be said of Lucy was that she “looked mild enough,” in Mama’s words. Given the suddenness of the betrothal, they all understood “mild” to be a euphemism for “easily persuaded.” At the hastily arranged wedding, the question in their minds was why Sam had taken up with such an insignificant creature to begin with. He had been handsome then, the only Hedge ever to be called dashing. It seems that the lack of character Papa lamented has spread to his exterior, puffing out his cheeks and blurring his features, coating his bones with a layer of extra flesh. Sophy has no idea whether he is happy. She would like to ask him, but feels she can’t. He goes to his father-in-law’s shop each day, uncomplaining, and comes home to Lucy’s indifferent dinner, and eats in silence, still uncomplaining. Not yet thirty, he has settled like a stone at the bottom of a pond. Sophy hesitates to ripple the surface.
When she first arrived, she tried to act in Mama’s stead, attending to the children’s needs, straightening the casual disorder, making herself useful. But the strain of being pulled in so many directions gave her headaches. Her sister-in-law’s placidity runs deep. She seems content to give over the household to Sophy’s keeping, though she never expresses gratitude and has yet to inquire about the rest of the family. After a week of chasing the little ones, and hovering over the baby to make sure it didn’t smother at the breast when Lucy dozed, Sophy began to relax. The children had survived before she got here, and would probably thrive whether she danced attendance on them or not. The junior Hedges would not meet untimely ends if, once in a while, she retreated to the attic to paint.
Once in a while has become every day. If Lucy objects, she has not told her so directly—though, yesterday, descending the stairs, Sophy heard her brother ask why dinner was late. “I don’t know,” Lucy said, genuinely perplexed. “That girl vanishes to the attic whenever it’s time to help with the cooking. Lord knows what she does up there.”
THE ATTIC WOULD BE a fine place to work, if she were doing any. Sophy goes there late in the afternoon; the days are longer now, and light slants pleasantly through the window. The peace she feels when she is finally alone more than compensates for the cold. She wraps her shawl around her shoulders and settles with care on an abandoned chair.
The eyes that look back at Sophy from the easel are her own—the lone part of the self-portrait that feels true. It is the only work-in-progress she brought with her, in sheer defiance of Mama, who insisted that she’d be too busy to fiddle with paints. She had started the portrait at home, on a poplar board Micah prepared for her. To render herself on wood seemed a utility rather than a vanity, and she liked the idea of putting her image on something that had been alive. At first Sophy used a hand mirror she’d been told belonged to her mother, but this method proved awkward. Propping it at the right angle was a problem, and even when she managed, she couldn’t really see herself; her reflection, with its puckered brow and bitten lip, its irritating lack of composure, got in the way. She couldn’t begin to paint until she put the mirror aside and dreamed her face as if it were someone else’s, or no one’s in particular, like the cottages and gardens and sylvan landscapes that pop into her head when she gazes at an empty canvas. Mama cannot grasp that they aren’t real. “Is that Bartletts’ place?” she asks. “You got the color of the roof wrong, and that shade tree was cut down before you were born.”
The Sophy in the picture reminds her of a doll she had when she was little: the same slick cap of painted hair parted in the middle, the same wide eyes over an enameled valentine of a mouth, prim in spite of being puckered for a kiss. She hasn’t touched a brush to it since she arrived at Sam’s. The flatness of the image proves she has no gift for likeness; yet she can’t quite regard the girl as just another exercise. The eyes seem to demand that this thin slice of a self be plumped out, filled fuller with life. Sophy would provide satisfaction, if she were able.
On a rainy Wednesday afternoon, the implacable stare is too much for her. She has had a harried day, having awakened to cramps from her monthly and two of the children sick with colds. Instead of comforting them, she’s behaved like an irritable child herself, speaking sharply and ordering Alice, the eldest, to stand in a corner. The worst of it is that Lucy approved of her excesses. “See how wicked you are?” she chided her snuffling daughters. “No wonder Auntie hides herself away!” Even the hard-won solitude of the attic doesn’t cheer Sophy after such a display. Her facsimile on the easel is no help; she has as little character as the nieces, and like them, she wants, wants, wants. Sophy has been saying no, no, no all day, and she says it now. She turns the board over to its blank side.
The smooth wood is blessedly mute. As she relaxes, the fist in her stomach unclenches and the sluggish blood flows free. Each month, for a day or two, she goes soft like this, liquid inside. Her body weeps with a sweet need, private and cloistered, not to be dissipated in dancing. Most months the longing is general, but lately she’s been dwelling on Gideon. She hasn’t seen him since the first weeks after Papa’s accident. She wonders what he is doing at this moment, separated from her by nothing more substantial than miles. Is he perhaps thinking of her, too? Of the home they made in the study? The kiss he ventured, barely?
Sophy puts a finger to the board and traces Gideon’s head, the curve of his jaw, his neck and shoulders. She has rehearsed his body so often that the line comes easily. Caroline said she should paint him, and—putting aside Caroline’s meaning—she has been working up to it all these months. During their time in the study she’d thought of asking him to pose, but whenever she gathered courage to broach the subject a reserve came over her—a hesitation, as if a cautioning hand had been laid on her shoulder. To replicate Gideon is a liberty she can’t risk. It is one thing to show him her hazy rural views of no place in particular, quite another to subject his features to her lack of skill. He would be kind, and that would be terrible.
But the unmarked surface entices her. She imagines dipping her fingers in paint, feeling the grain of the wood as she works. Why would he ever have to know? She can paint him for herself—or for her other self, that deprived creature who faces the easel like a naughty child. And when she is done for the day, she can turn painted Sophy to the light again, and no one will be the wiser. Gideon—her Gideon—will be hidden in plain sight. The idea pleases her.
She supposes what Mama said is true: that some who have gone over to the dark side make images of the object of their desire, and chant spells that draw the beloved helpless to their arms. Sophy can’t see that it’s all that different from the things respectable girls like Caroline do. Wiles are wiles, and whatever the method, the end is the same: the merging of two into one.