Remembrance

by Spaeth, Janet

  Hyacinth came out of Mary’s room after visiting with her, and Eliza stopped the machine to talk to her. Hyacinth smiled widely. “I think Mary’s going to come to the wedding! She said she wants to but she doesn’t have anything to wear. Eliza, do you think you could—”

  Silas’s nail-pounding stopped, and he laid the hammer on the table with a bit more emphasis than necessary.

  “Eliza, I’m going to talk to Edward. I’ll see you back at Birdbath House,” Hyacinth said in a low voice, her eyes guardedly watching Silas.

  Eliza nodded.

  A pin that had been stuck into the fabric imperfectly worked its way loose and jabbed her finger. A bright spot of blood appeared, and she wiped it away before it could spot the fabric.

  She needed to pay closer attention. That was simply a pin, but if she were careless around the machine, she could do much worse damage to her hands. She hadn’t had it happen, but she’d seen it often enough with the other seamstresses, their hands riddled with scars from just such accidents.

  It was a good thing this was Saturday. Tomorrow she’d be able to sit in church, soaking up the Word, and generally getting good with the Lord again. Sundays were her day of rejuvenation, and she certainly needed it.

  Silas had stopped hammering and was now measuring the hinge placement. He measured, marked, remeasured, remarked, over and over until at last he gave up with a sigh.

  “How close are you to being done?” he asked.

  “I can finish these shirts at home. There’s just a bit left on each. Want to help me take the machine to the wagon?”

  He strode over and began to insert the machine into its wooden table case with quick short movements. She clamped her lips together and folded the remaining items to take with her, and stopped into Mary’s room to retrieve the cat.

  The woman was sitting up in bed, looking better than she had all winter. Her hair was washed and braided, the work of Hyacinth who made sure that Mary looked as good—or better—than she felt.

  “I hear you would like a new dress,” Eliza said as she unhooked Tiger’s claws from the blanket. “Any particular color or style?”

  “You’ve already done too much,” Mary protested, but Eliza waved her objection away.

  “Making a dress is very easy for me. It won’t take long at all. Just tell me what color you’d like. You can’t have yellow since Hyacinth will be wearing a stunning yellow wedding dress. Red might be a bit too vivid, and black’s harsh. How about a sky blue or a summer green or even a lilac or lavender?”

  “Oh, I do like lavender. Let me get Jack in here to pay you—”

  “No, no payment. I brought back my sewing machine and trunk that I left in St. Paul, and there’s a nice length of fabric that I think will be perfect on you. The background is lavender, and there are tiny sprigs of flowers in creamy ivory. So, the next question is the style. What would you like?”

  “Can you select something for me? You have so much more experience than I have.”

  “It would be an honor.”

  Eliza carried the cat to the wagon, and when they got in, Silas burst out with, “I’m sorry. I just can’t deal with them getting married. I think it’s wrong.”

  She faced him square on. “Get over it. They’re in love. What’s wrong with that?”

  “We’ve already gone over this. They met through letters. She came out here without having ever even seen him. Don’t you think that’s odd?” He frowned.

  “It’s not the way I would do it, but on the other hand, I’m not Hyacinth. I’m not an older widow whose options for finding love again are limited.”

  “But to do it that way?”

  “What do you care how they met? It’s working out. Take a look at them, Silas. Pudding Plum is madly in love with his morning flower. Sappy, I agree, but look at how contented they are. Who cares how they got there? Why are you so upset?”

  “I’m afraid,” he said at last, “that I’m to blame for this. If Uncle Edward hadn’t taken me in when I was a young man, he would have had time to meet someone else, and he’d have gotten married and—”

  “He might have met someone. He might have gotten married.” She shook her head. “Besides, everything is turning out just fine. He’s retiring—and getting off ladders—and he’s passing the carpentry business on to you. He’s in love. What’s wrong with that? It sounds good to me.”

  His lips tightened again into that expression that she’d seen way too much of, and she knew what it meant. He had an opinion, and he was going to hold onto it until it was forced out of his grasp.

  “It’s not the way we do things here,” he said.

  “It’s not the way anybody does things—except for these two. Just be glad for them. They found each other, and I can’t imagine two people who seem to be better suited for each other than them.”

  It was true. They were completely and totally ideal as a couple.

  “I don’t want him to be hurt,” he said after a long silence.

  “I don’t think he will be,” she replied honestly. “I suspect that your treatment of the woman he loves hurts him more than anything right now.”

  He stared straight ahead, his jaw clenched.

  “Just take me home, Silas,” she finished gently. “Help me unload the sewing machine and get it set up in Birdbath House, and you can go think about this. It’s really vital for you to work this out inside your soul.” She took a deep breath. “Until you do, I don’t think you and I can go further. It’s too big and too important for you to walk around with this weight in your heart.”

  He said no more than the necessary words as he set up her machine in the house for her and left again. She stood at the window and watched him go. He’d never looked so lonely.

  And she’d never felt so lonely.

  ❧

  He’d gotten far behind with his readings from Professor Barkley’s Patented Five Year Plan for Success, and he took the book out to catch up. Perhaps the professor had some advice for him.

  But the daily lessons were more of the same. Be careful what you say. He tried to be cautious with his speech. If he felt he was losing control, he simply opted for silence. Be kind to those less fortunate. Look at how much time he spent at the Robbins house. Pray for peace. Well, that was a given.

  Could it be that Professor Barkley was getting—more predictable?

  Maybe it was time for another list. He did enjoy lists. He glanced at his Bible, where his list of questions for Eliza was safely tucked away. Maybe his lists weren’t always as helpful as he hoped, but they helped him organize his thoughts.

  He made two columns on a piece of paper. One column he titled, Yeas. The other, Nays.

  He worked on his columns until he could come up with nothing else, and he leaned back and studied the results.

  Under the Yeas were two entries: They seem to love each other, and They seem to make each other happy.

  Under the Nays were also two entries: They don’t really know each other, and They act crazy.

  So it hadn’t been a particularly fruitful exercise. He expected more from it. His head wasn’t any clearer than before. He wadded up the list and threw it toward the wastebasket, missing it entirely—something, he noted wryly, he had done a lot of lately.

  He lowered his head and stared at the wall. Since when did someone have to like everybody? Well, there was of course the biblical injunction that Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, but did that really apply here? He searched for the phrase in his Bible, and soon sat back, shaking his head.

  It was from Matthew 22, the same chapter that Reverend Tupper had used as his text in church a while back. The verse about loving his neighbor came after the wedding feast story, and according to Jesus, it was a foundational premise. He read it again: Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

  That last line laid a heavy responsibility on him. Clearly the charge to love others wasn’t minor at all. Jesus compared it to loving God Himself.

  His head started to hurt. Being a Christian was getting increasingly complicated. If Hyacinth and Eliza hadn’t shown up in Remembrance, he might have been able to sail on through the rest of his life without these challenges. But now, having heard the Word on the subject, he had no choice but adapt his life.

  That meant loving Hyacinth. Was it possible? If God insisted, could he?

  He got up from the table and laid his weary body on his bed. Why did life have to be so complicated? His head pounded even harder. His eyes closed against the pain, and at last he slipped into a restless sleep.

  His fitful dreams were interrupted by his uncle hollering up the stairs at him. “Are you going to church or have you turned into a heathen?”Silas’s eyes flew open to glaring daylight and he groaned. If his uncle was already up and anxious about church, he must have overslept. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up, automatically checking the weather outside his window as he did so.

  It was a beautiful Sunday morning, and he winced at the sun’s beams. The way he felt, at the very least the weather could have cooperated and produced some thundering clouds to gray up the sky.

  But Sunday was Sunday, and he didn’t miss church. He cleaned himself quickly and pulled on good clothes and headed downstairs. His uncle was already at the stove, and he handed Silas a plate of ham and eggs.

  “Wolf this down and let’s get going. I don’t want to be late.”

  Silas ate as quickly as he could, and soon the two men were headed into the church.

  Edward of course greeted Hyacinth enthusiastically. Today, she was his Sparkling Sunday Sunbeam. Silas tried very hard not to react. He was going to make every attempt to be kind to her.

  Eliza was polite but guarded as he slid into the pew next to her. “Let’s talk after church,” he whispered to her as they stood for the first hymn, and she nodded. He had no idea what he was going to say to her. Perhaps something would come to him during church.

  He sat back in the pew, mulling over the upcoming discussion with Eliza, when the sermon began. Reverend Tupper was in fine form, delivering a rousing sermon based upon Proverbs 22:24. Silas found himself listening intently, and he hung on every word.

  “Make no friendship with an angry man.” As the minister proceeded to explain the wisdom of the proverb, why one should choose one’s companions carefully, Silas considered another angle of it.

  What if he was the angry man?

  Certainly he’d been polite enough—outwardly—with his uncle’s romance, but lately he’d become aware that it had blown into something more virulent. He’d become angry about it.

  Was Eliza thinking the same thing? Was she concerned about the man next to her, the man she’d professed to love? He was the angry man—and the Bible warned others about him.

  He felt as if he’d been brought up sharp in front of God and had been found wanting.

  But what was he to do? He had to make some change, somehow. He needed to let the anger go. The fact was, though, that it was one thing to be aware of it, but something else entirely to be able to do it.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and prayed, asking God to take away his anger, to clean his heart of these negative emotions. If he was going to be able to love, he had to have an anger-free heart.

  He prayed longer. More intently. He didn’t want to carry this burden of hate any longer. He wanted it gone.

  The fact was, he realized as he continued to petition God, he nurtured his dislike of Hyacinth. He looked for fault at every turn. His scorn became his pet, his companion, and he elevated it into a consuming passion that froze his heart to her. In other words, it had nothing to do with Hyacinth, and everything to do with him. His heart was in desperate need of a good housecleaning. He opened the darkness of his soul to the light of God’s goodness and aired out every corner.

  Bit by bit, he felt the ice leave the haven he’d given it in his heart, and his soul was filled again with joy.

  After church, he and Eliza walked the short distance to Birdbath House. The snow was almost gone, and they had to pick their way through the rutted mud.

  “I was the angry man,” he said, “but I’ve made a commitment not to be. You were right. I needed to let go of my dislike of Hyacinth. For one thing, I was so concerned about my own future here in Remembrance that I let my worries overtake my senses. Plus I was being too protective of my uncle, and he is, after all, quite the grown man and able to make his own decisions. I still think it’s a crazy way to find someone to love, but if it worked, then praise God.”

  “I’m glad,” she said, taking his arm as they reached a particularly muddy area. “I do think you’ll find Hyacinth to be quite a wonderful woman, very worthy of your uncle’s love.”

  “You mean Pudding Plum and—what did he call her this morning?—Sparkling Sunday Sunbeam are meant for each other?”

  “I do.”

  “Are we?” He held his breath, waiting for her answer.

  She stopped and put her hands on each side of his face. “We are.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed him. “And I promise I’ll never call you names like that. Not Honey Bee. Not Darling Dumpling. And never,” she finished, grinning impishly, “Lovey Lamb.”

  Twelve

  “I told her about it,” Uncle Edward confessed when Silas asked him how she knew about “Lovey Lamb” from the earlier conversation the men had. “I thought she might find a time to use it,” he added, grinning, “and I gather she did.”

  Silas laughed. “She did. But she did promise never to call me Lovey Lamb, so in the long run it was worth it.”

  His uncle shook his head. “Never underestimate the power of a bit of silly affection.”

  “Why, Uncle, you sound like quite the romantic expert,” Silas quipped, raising his eyebrows in mock surprise. “For someone who avoided marriage for your entire life thus far, you sure do seem to know the secrets of a happy relationship. Is there something you haven’t told me?”

  Uncle Edward chuckled. “Probably. Oh, speaking of things I haven’t told you, Hyacinth and I’ve decided not to move to Duluth, but to stay here.”

  “I’m delighted, of course, to hear that you’ll stay here, but I thought your dream was to move to Duluth,” Silas said. He marveled at his calm. Whatever the change in plans boded for his life, God was in charge.

  His uncle shrugged. “Remembrance is home. Besides, moving is work for people my age, and I don’t think I’m up for it. Plus I can do my work here as well as I could in Duluth.”

  “I thought you were retiring.” Silas frowned. His uncle’s hands weren’t as steady as they used to be, and in woodworking, steady hands were all-important. It simply wasn’t safe for Uncle Edward to continue to work with the sharp tools, and making his products to his demanding standards would be difficult.

  “Oh, I’m giving the carpentry business over to you, no doubt about that. I mean my writing. I can do that anywhere.”

  “Writing?” Silas gaped at his uncle. “You want to be a writer? I had no idea!”

  “Oh, I already am. About ten years ago I wrote some silly thing called Professor Barkley’s Patented Five Year Plan for Success.” Uncle Edward frowned a bit. “This is one of those things I didn’t tell you, apparently. Well, it wasn’t some grand production. I put all the sensible advice I could come up with into a book, and it sold, oh, maybe fifteen or twenty copies.” He grinned. “I think I might rewrite it, update it for the new era, you know.”

  “You wrote it? You’re Professor Barkley?”

  His uncle laughed. “You can’t tell me you’ve heard of it.”

  “Heard of it? I’ve been reading it every night for the past nine months. I found a copy
in my room when I moved the nightstand—it was under the drawer in it, wedged in there pretty soundly.”

  “Oh, that’s where I put the book. I looked all over the place for it. I think it’s time for a revision, don’t you?”

  Silas laughed. “You might consider taking out all the warnings about romantic entanglements.”

  “You’re right. I need to encourage love. After all, doesn’t the Good Book say in the Song of Solomon, ‘This is my beloved, and this is my friend’? How can anyone have a plan for success without including love?”

  How, indeed? How, indeed!

  ❧

  Snowflakes sparkled in the moonlight as Eliza and Silas lingered outside Birdbath House. Hyacinth and Edward were inside, cleaning up after the dinner the four of them had shared.

  “What do you think Mrs. Adams would say about that?” he asked, indicating the silhouettes of the older couple in the window as they shared a quick kiss over a pan of dishes.

  “I think she’d say they should get married, and quickly.”

  Eliza felt as full as a cat. If she were able, she would have purred. The dinner of roast chicken and biscuits had been delicious, and sleep threatened to overtake her. She fought back a yawn. Had she ever been this happy?

  “That’s a splendid idea.” He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. “Eliza, shall we make it a double wedding?”

  Her sleepiness vanished. “A double—do you mean—are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

  “I should do this properly.” He dropped to one knee and took her gloved hand in his. “We haven’t known each other long, but the heart has its own schedule. I’ve loved you from the first time I saw you. You were scented with blueberries and soap, and you literally fell into my arms. I want you by my side—and in my arms—for the rest of my life.”

  She couldn’t answer. Her heart caromed in her chest, coming to land squarely in her throat.

  “I thought that Professor Barkley’s Patented Five Year Plan for Success was going to revolutionize my life, but it didn’t take into account one thing—and that was love.”