The Indentured Heart

by Gilbert, Morris

  She sat there and tears welled up in her eyes. She was a girl of deep feelings, although she seldom let them show. She was so bright and full of fun that things came easily to her, and now these two strong men who wanted her had offered themselves honestly. “I know I’ve been frivolous, Adam, with you and Timothy. I love you both, of course. But Timothy said the same thing—the time’s past for this.”

  “He’s a fine man, Mary—none finer!” Adam stood up suddenly, saying, “I love you, Mary, but you’ll have to choose.”

  She stood up, and there was no foolishness in her as she looked at him. Reaching up to place her hands on his broad shoulders, she whispered, “I—I know I don’t deserve to have two men love me, not men like you and Timothy.” Her eyes filled with tears, a rare thing for this girl!—and she said, “There’ll be one happy person come out of this thing, Adam.”

  “Just one?”

  “Yes, because no matter which one of you I marry, I’ll grieve for the other!”

  * * *

  Timothy and Adam proposed in early June, but as July and August went by, Mary said nothing definite. Both Timothy and Adam shrugged and stayed away from her to a great extent, knowing that sooner or later she would make a choice. Both of them yearned for it, yet dreaded it.

  Molly and Robert went on much as before, though at times he grew impatient with her. She refused to name a date, and once when he pressed her, she looked at him and said calmly, “Would you rather we called it off, Robert?” Her readiness frightened him, so he fought down his impatience and said no more about it.

  A letter from Saul came in September, so confusing that Adam could not make head nor tail of it. It was an involved matter of business that required Adam’s signature, and since Rachel had agreed to the deal, he signed it and mailed it back.

  Scarcely a week later, Molly came to the forge to get him. “Charles is here.”

  “Charles?” Adam stared at her, and saw something in her face. “What’s wrong, Molly?”

  She hesitated, then tears filled her eyes. “It’s—Rachel.”

  He put down the hammer he was holding on the anvil, then looked at her. “Is she dead?”

  “Yes!” Then her face broke and tears flowed down her cheeks. She turned from him, bringing out a handkerchief and trying to stem the flow.

  He stood there, tense, feeling as if life had been drained from him. A great emptiness filled his heart. Unable to believe what he was hearing, he finally murmered, “She was very good to me. Never gave me anything but love.” He pulled off his apron and stated calmly, “We’ll have to go right away for the funeral.”

  “She’s—already buried, Adam.”

  He stared at her, then said, “I’ll talk to Charles.”

  He found his brother in the parlor, and went straight up to him with a blunt question, “Why didn’t you come and get me for the funeral?”

  Charles looked startled. He was weary, and it was the first time Adam had ever spoken to him with such obvious displeasure. He licked his lips, then said in a conciliatory voice, “Adam, there wasn’t time!”

  “It’s not that far to Boston!”

  “No, but she died of some sort of plague,” Charles said quickly. “Nobody knows exactly what it is, but it’s all over the city. There’s a new law—bodies have to be buried within twenty-four hours.”

  Adam relaxed, and he shook his head. “Sorry to be so sharp, Charles—but she meant a lot to me.”

  “Yes, I know. I wanted to come, but there was just no way.”

  “Did she suffer much?”

  “No, thank God! She was taken on Monday and the terrible thing works so fast that by Wednesday it was over.” He put his hand on Adam’s shoulder. “Her last words—she spoke of you.”

  “Of me?”

  “I was with her. She’d been unconscious, but before that she’d said goodbye to everyone—Saul, and Esther and me. Then she woke up and she said, ‘Tell Adam that Miles was right!’ ”

  You’re the best of the Winslows. That was what she was saying, and she’d managed to pass it along without offending her family.

  Adam blinked, then said, “I’ll miss her, Charles.”

  “Yes. You were always her favorite.”

  They stood there in the grip of that paralyzing helplessness that comes with death—struggling to say that which can never be said, to express that which can never be framed in words. Charles sensed that Adam did not want to talk about Rachel, so he excused himself as soon as he could.

  All afternoon Adam walked through the woods, seeing little, but going over and over old memories. He startled a mule deer and watched as it went sailing smoothly over logs in a motion that was as much like flight as any animal ever achieves, but this time the movement did not provoke the admiration it usually did. He could almost hear Rachel’s voice telling the tales of Matthew Winslow, of his fight to the death with an Indian to save her life. She had not been a dramatic woman in her Christian life, but as he looked back, he realized that her iron-ribbed convictions to her God were part of what he had loved. She had never wavered, and now he thought of all the times she’d spoken so confidently of this very time—for her belief that she would see Gilbert and Lydia and Matthew again was unshakable.

  It made his own intellectual acceptance of faith look scanty and foolish, and he wondered how she and others had come to such belief. Finally, he looked up, overtaken by dark, and made his way back to the house.

  Molly met him at the door, and he tried to eat, but could only nibble at his food. Charles sat there, watching him furtively, but said little. Finally they went to bed, but Adam lay there most of the night thinking of his aunt.

  The next morning Charles said, “I have to talk to you, Adam.” He hesitated, and there was a lack of assurance in him that puzzled Adam. “I know it’s a bad time . . .”

  “It’s all right.” Adam got up and led the way to the parlor. He stood beside the window, but Charles paced back and forth, his face strained and his voice higher than usual.

  “Adam, it’s an awful time to come to you with this, but there’s no way it can be put off!”

  “What’s the matter, Charles? Bad news?”

  “No!” Charles paused abruptly, and said the word so quickly that Adam at once knew he was not honest. “Well, Adam, to tell the truth, you may think so, but somehow I’ve got to show you it isn’t.”

  Adam stared at him curiously. “Why don’t you just tell me what it is and let me decide if it’s bad or not.”

  Charles paused, bit his lip, then shrugged and said uneasily, “I wish Saul were here, Adam! This thing is so complicated that I’m not sure I understand it myself. And I wish that we’d got it all settled before Rachel died! You’d have believed her!”

  “And I’m not going to believe you?”

  “I’m hoping you will, Adam! I really am!” The tall man began pacing again, and said, “I wish we’d been closer, you and I. Oh, it’s my fault, I suppose—or maybe it was inevitable, with Mother feeling like she does.” He halted abruptly and rushed on hurriedly, “I—I didn’t mean that like it sounded, Adam!”

  “I’ve never been Martha’s favorite, Charles,” Adam said. “That’s no secret. Look, what’s the matter? Something gone wrong with the business? Come on, let’s have it!”

  “All right, here it is . . .” Charles stated, a bead of perspiration rising on his upper lip. Then he said in a rush: “Adam, the whole picture has changed—everything! The fur trade has picked up so much in the last year that Saul and I had to increase that side of the business. And that meant that we had to have money, so we shifted as many of the assets as we could to get the cash.”

  Adam said doubtfully, “But that’s pretty risky, isn’t it? I mean, what if the French invade the Ohio Valley? Where does that leave us?”

  “England will never let that happen, Adam. Look at the map, and what do you see? We’re pinned in here along the coast right up against the Appalachian Mountains. The whole continent lies over those moun
tains, and if you think King George is going to let the French have it, you’re just not thinking!”

  “Well, we haven’t done much so far,” Adam argued. “We’ve had two wars over that territory, and there’s another around the corner.”

  “And we’ll win this time!” Charles’ face gleamed with excitement. “France may keep Canada, but never in a million years will the Crown let this New World go! Not if she has to fight a full-scale war for it! And if that comes, whoever owns that land in the Ohio Valley will control the country!”

  “I don’t know politics, Charles,” Adam shrugged.

  “You’ve got to see it, Adam! A whole new world over those mountains, and it’s ours for the taking!”

  Adam grinned at him and remarked, “You’re trying hard to sell me, Charles. You must want something from me pretty bad. Well, you’re going to have to tell me sooner or later what it is.”

  “Adam,” Charles stated quietly, “it took all of it. That’s what it cost to get in on this thing.”

  Adam looked at him, doubt in his eyes. “All of what?”

  Charles took a deep breath, then answered quietly, “I mean we had to liquidate everything; Adam—we had to sell this place, too.”

  “This place?” Adam stared at him. “You can’t sell this place, Charles. It’s part of the general estate. We’d all have to agree and sign.”

  “You did sign, Adam.”

  Then it finally dawned on Adam, and he said slowly, but with a growing rage beginning to swell up in his chest, “Those papers you brought last time you were here, and that letter from Saul? That was what I signed?”

  Charles saw for the first time the dangerous light in his brother’s dark eyes, and said hastily, “It—it all happened so fast, Adam! Why, we had no idea at the time that we’d ever sell this place—or anything else—but when the thing came up, we had no choice!”

  “Rachel knew about this?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “You’re a liar, Charles,” Adam stated with a deceptive calm. “You lied to her, too, didn’t you? You and Saul arranged this, and you knew we wouldn’t be in favor of it. So you lied and got our names by fraud.”

  “I tell you, Adam, there wasn’t time—!”

  “How long does it take to get here from Boston, two days? And was Aunt Rachel all that far away? You’re lying again, Charles!”

  The easy assurance of Charles Winslow had fled, and he wished with all his heart that Saul had come, or that they’d put the thing in a letter as he’d suggested. But Saul had said, “You’ll have to face him sooner or later, Charles. Might as well meet him head-on with it.”

  Now staring at Adam’s face, Charles tried vainly to make the thing look better, but the more he talked the worse it sounded even to him.

  Finally Adam said, “I want an answer from you right now—and don’t beat around the bush. Father left his property equally divided between the two of us. What do I have and what do you have?”

  “Why, it’s not that simple, Adam!”

  “Nothing is ever simple to a crook, Charles! You sold this place that I’ve poured my life into—what do I have to show for it?”

  “Don’t worry, Adam,” Charles said swiftly. “We got a good price, and you’ve got one of the finest tracts of land in Virginia.”

  Adam stared at him. “A plantation?”

  “N-no, not exactly!”

  “It’s just a patch of wilderness land, isn’t it? That’s what you’ve sold this place for?”

  Charles said, “Well, it’s wild land, but—!”

  Then with a cat-like spring, Adam was on him! He caught his brother by the throat, and though Charles was much taller and a strong man, the iron hands of Adam Winslow held him as though he were a child.

  “You’re a thief!” Adam roared, his dark face contorted with rage. He ignored the gurgling sounds that emerged from Charles’s throat, and his voice rose as he shouted, “Liar! I trusted you! And you stole this place . . .!”

  Charles’s tongue was protruding, his face a dark crimson. His hand beat ineffectually at his brother, but the room was exploding into flakes of light.

  Adam was cursing him, blinded by rage, and then he heard a voice scream, “Adam! Let him go!” He felt small hands beating on his back and pulling at his hands, and he suddenly saw Molly standing there crying.

  He loosed his grip, and Charles slumped to the floor, his oxygen-starved lungs gulping in air in great swallows.

  “What is it, Adam?” Molly asked. When he didn’t answer, she took his arm and moved in front of him so she could see his face. “What’s he done?”

  Adam took a deep breath and forced himself to relax. He looked down at his brother, who was slowly pulling himself up. Reaching down, he plucked him off the floor, stood him up, and said quietly, “He’s robbed me of my inheritance, Molly.” Then his lips twisted in a parody of a smile and he added, “Brotherly love, he’d call it.”

  “No!” Charles gasped. He put out a hand to touch Adam, and he tried to explain. “It’s still yours, Adam! More than ever!”

  Adam stared at him, and Charles saw a door close inside his brother. “I’ll never believe you again,” he said quietly, then he turned and walked from the room.

  “Molly! You’ve got to talk to him!” Charles groaned. “He’s gone crazy!”

  “Did you take this place from him?” she asked abruptly, and he found it as difficult to face her as it had been to look at his brother.

  “Molly—Molly, it was a matter of business! We did it for his good as much as ours. Adam needed us! He hasn’t got the head for this sort of thing!”

  Molly stared at him, contempt in her eyes. “No, he’s not as smart as you are, Charles. He’s so simple-minded he believed in you, trusted you. I heard you tell him once, ‘You’ve got to learn to look out for yourself, Adam!’ Well, he didn’t listen to you, did he, Charles? He didn’t look out for himself—so his own family destroys him!”

  “It’s not like that!” he tried to reason. Taking his handkerchief out of his pocket, he wiped his face using the time to regain his composure. Finally he calmed down. “Molly, this place is gone, but nobody has stolen it from Adam! I—I see now that we should have come to him, but there’s nothing to be done about that now. But he can have ten places like this in Virginia!”

  She looked up at him and studied his face. Finally she said, “Are you telling me the truth, Charles? With you I can’t tell.”

  “I know I’m no good,” he said quietly, then smiled at the look on her face. “You think I don’t know that, Molly? Adam, he’s the one who’s like Gilbert and Edward and Father!” A look of pain touched his light blue eyes, and he whispered softly, “I’ve wished a thousand times that I didn’t just look like a Winslow—but that I acted like one!”

  Molly felt a sudden touch of pity for this tall, strong man, for she had not seen this side of him. “I—I believe you, Charles—and maybe you’re not as bad as you think.”

  He straightened his shoulders, smiled wryly, then said, “Let us pray that I am not—but in any case, as much as Adam hates us—and as much wrong as we’ve done him—he’s got a great opportunity. He was made for Virginia, Molly! And you’ve got to see he doesn’t let his hatred for Saul and me let him miss out on it!”

  Molly looked away from him, thinking of Adam; then she sighed and replied, “I’ll not be a help, Charles. He’s going to marry Mary Edwards.”

  The thin veneer of sophistication that covered the cynicism in Charles suddenly slipped, and he stated with a grin, “Not likely she’ll marry a man who has no big farm here. She’ll go for that other fellow!”

  Molly thought about Mary, and Adam’s pursuit. “No,” she returned, shaking her head, “I don’t think so—but I’ll certainly pray in that direction!”

  “Well, I trust your prayers work. But just in case they don’t, here’s what we’ve planned.”

  For the next hour Molly listened as Charles explained to her how it was going to be.

&nbs
p; CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “AND THE WALLS CAME TUMBLING DOWN!”

  The mood of New Englanders is delicately hinged to the weather; nowhere else is winter so trying, the mud season so endless, spring so giddy, summer so brief, fall so glorious. Tuned to the caprices of weather, New Englanders’ moods swing as the climate does. Perhaps that was why Jonathan Edwards was hounded by the Northampton church in 1750.

  The whole year had been one of spooky extremes. The winter was unusually severe. Mill River had frozen over by early October. The town was smothered by six feet of snow that lingered monotonously for months. The gray weeks dragged out, chill rains slanted over stubble fields, maples gauntly swayed in the harsh winds.

  To make matters worse, Edwards grated on his people in a campaign against taverns—an old struggle that he fanned into new fury. He intimidated people, quite unintentionally, with his intelligence. He tried to be less awesome, but it was difficult.

  The antagonism against him increased, and finally two hundred parish members signed a petition for his dismissal. The council was dominated by a man named Joseph Hawley, who read a diatribe against the pastor, and the council voted 8 to 7 to dismiss Jonathan Edwards.

  Adam Winslow had scoffed all along at the idea that his friend would be voted out, and when he got the bad news it was coupled with a second blow.

  He heard of it early in the morning, and late that afternoon he rode over to the Edwards’ and went directly to the pastor.

  Edwards was calm, his face was pale, but it was obvious to Adam that the man was deeply hurt. He listened quietly as Adam raged against those who had raised their hands against him; then when the storm ceased, Edwards said mildly, “It’s not the end of the world, Adam.”

  “But—what will you do?”

  A smile broke across Edwards’ face, and he said with a look of wonder on his face, “Judge Dwight has offered to share half his income with me—if I will start a new work with those who did not agree with the decision to release me.”