The Loves of Leopold Singer

by L. K. Rigel

“The Adams place?” Eleanor had said. “Then Sara’s parents will not be returning.”

  “I don’t know,” Harry said. “It’s all too mysterious. An advertisement came in to let the house. The managing editor showed it to me as a matter of curiosity before having the type set.”

  “So you grabbed it peremptorily.” Jonnie laughed.

  “Of course.” Harry looked at Marta. “I plan to be even more involved with the paper than Father was, and I’d be no use on The Farm. It makes sense to keep a house in town.”

  “Of course, Harry.” She didn’t care what anyone did now.

  Samuel said, “With such a fine house, it won’t be long before some young lady decides she must keep it for you.”

  “I'm ready to meet such a one,” Harry said. “But I won’t be without a housekeeper. Josef and his bride will stay with me until their house is built. The place is large enough to shelter all of us and more.”

  “Poor Sara,” Eleanor said. “Now she won’t have a home to come to—if she does come back.”

  “That’s the mystery,” Harry said. “The place doesn’t belong to Franklin Adams after all. The advertisement was posted from Kingston, Jamaica. The property belongs to a Mr. J. C. Beaumonde.”

  “Must be a relative who put up the money to build,” said Samuel.

  “Or someone who owed Aristaeus Sande a very large favor,” said Harry.

  “Lucky Mr. Beaumonde was smart enough to keep it out of Franklin Adams’s name.”

  “That’s unseemly talk from a minister,” Jonnie said.

  “A man can work for heaven and think of earth too,” Samuel laughed. “Speaking of which: Jonnie, I’ll be at Harvard at least another year. And really, I have as much talent for farming as my brother.”

  “Yes,” said Harry. “So we, Samuel and I, were hoping that you and Eleanor would live here and run The Farm. Surely Father wished that, Jonnie. He was grooming you for it.”

  “No pun intended,” Samuel slipped in.

  Jonnie and Eleanor grinned, and Jonnie said, “We hoped others would see this solution.”

  Marta alone had not laughed, but neither did she frown. So Jonnie officially assumed the responsibilities he had already taken on in actuality, and Eleanor could expect to permanently relieve Marta of her housekeeping obligations. In her early grief, Marta had been grateful. Now she just felt useless, aimless, and lonely.

  Then last night she heard sounds in Eleanor’s childhood bedroom. When she went to investigate, her daughter was putting a quilt over a compromised Miss Sara Adams. “Mother!” Eleanor had hissed, waving her from the room.

  Sara Adams’ unexpected appearance only made Marta feel worse. It seemed the order she had worked so long and hard to maintain was coming undone all around her. Coming out of her room this morning, she had met Eleanor coming up the stairs. “Is there no husband?”

  “No.”

  The curt response had sent her to the kitchen to find something to chop or pound. Cook set her to the bread dough, and soon the imperative of muscle memory took hold.

  Leopold’s will was clear. The Farm belonged to Samuel and Harry. They had every right to move Jonnie in and make Eleanor the mistress of the house. She would accept her new role as dowager. So was she old now. She remembered the wet pressure of Leopold’s kiss behind her ear. How she ached to feel his touch, if only once more.

  She had to get out of the house. Out to the grass between the headstones, in the presence of those who knew all.

  She always felt better in the little graveyard. Across from Leopold and Obadiah, the Zehetners had added to their numbers in the world of shades. Gisela was there, and beside her an empty space waited for Jonathan. Willie was to his mother’s left, then George who died from an infected cut, and Thomas, taken by scarlet fever. Old Carl’s marker, at his request, had his wife’s name carved upon it. One day they would all be here, secure from the world.

  “I miss your voice, Leopold,” she said. “Do the angels sit at your feet, just to hear the sound of it? Someday I’ll be here with you forever. And will it be so wrong that Obadiah lies between us? For he always did. There was always that one secret I kept from you. You must be his friend there in heaven. He would have no other.”

  She thought of the letter Eleanor had received from Sara Adams just last week, posted months before that, with the news of Sir Carey’s murder. She had asked Eleanor to repeat the name of the deceased person after hearing Sara’s description of a kind and well-loved man.

  “Sara writes:

  Sir Carey died a devout Christian, beloved by all. Hundreds attended his funeral, and there was a great wailing from all the common folk of the Peak.”

  Marta had snorted at that. No, she would not believe eternal heaven was any portion of that man’s reward. George Grim’s horse plodded up the long driveway, and she snorted again. “I swear, Leopold, sometimes I find myself in sympathy with Jonathan and Willie. If God loves the likes of Sir Carey and George Grim, then I cannot love God.”

  Though the graveyard was behind the house, she could hear the preacher’s groans as he strained up the stairs to the front door. She sighed.

  “Dear, what do you think? So many times I pushed you to church. Now one thing or another keeps me home Sundays. It is my good luck, Jonnie is as much a heathen as his father. He tells Eleanor to let me grieve in my own way. I heard him say to her that religion is just superstition. I like to think our son-in-law makes good sense.”

  But she had a new secret. She had begun to pray to the Virgin, like a Catholic. She fancied her old brooch as something of a rosary, fingering the snake’s fine scales in the place of beads. These days she remembered the bronze pieta with fond nostalgia. “God’s grace, I am giving myself a pity party today!”

  Inside The Farm, Grim drank coffee and waited. He was as patriotic as the next man, but to his last day he would prefer tea. At least in this house, the coffee was laid on with cream and cane sugar and interesting spices. Josef Zehetner kept both families stocked with precious things.

  Since the horror of the storm, he visited Mrs. Singer every Tuesday. He doubted he brought her much comfort. The day of the storm constantly replayed in his mind. Why had he been led out on that limb only to fail? Why had the river taken Leopold Singer?

  His study of scripture now focused on the Lord’s mysterious ways. His sermons had changed. No longer did he lay down God’s gauntlet before an intimidated flock. Over the last year, he had explored the nature of the Lord’s never-ending love. It had been so long since he mentioned Christ’s chariot, the young people no longer joked about it. Mrs. Singer continued with Lightfeather and the Unitarians, but that did not deter him. He would not abandon her.

  He shifted the bundle in his lap to the table so he could rest his coffee on his knee. He had brought the brass teakettle he’d made for Hattie years ago. That morning he’d found it set aside, dull and uncared for, in a corner. The latest Mrs. Grim never used that kettle. She seemed even to resent it.

  I and the kettle are the same, he’d thought, unloved, dishonored, losing our luster. He polished it to its original brilliance, thought to give it to Mrs. Singer, and felt a little less sad. When the time came, she could pass it on to her fine daughter. Lyman had no taste for artful things, and Martin was lost to him.

  He heard her then, heavy on the staircase treads. But it wasn’t Mrs. Singer. “Good Lord!” He flew across the room.

  -oOo-

  Only one, Sara thought. Only one misstep, and either she or it—or the both of them—would be gone. In any case, she would be free. Halfway down the stairs, the solution had come to her. So simple, really. She lifted her skirt a little, stuck her foot out just a bit too far, and began to fall. Easy. Until something large and determined blocked the way.

  -oOo-

  Reverend Grim caught the girl in the midst of her fall and alarmed the household. He sat with her through the afternoon into the night, held her hand and wiped her forehead, paced outside her door, and offered quiet
prayers to the Almighty. He left his vigil once, very late, when night had gone but morning had not quite arrived.

  Marta sat in an overstuffed chair by the fire. She was beautiful as ever, the firelight dancing in her emerald eyes. Her daughter Eleanor slept on a sofa some distance away.

  “Mrs. Singer, for a long while now, I have wanted to give you this.” He set the bundled teakettle in Marta’s lap. The cloth it was wrapped in fell away, and it gleamed in the firelight.

  “How lovely.” Marta’s expression was enough. He was satisfied. “But I cannot accept this, Reverend Grim.”

  “It’s merely a gift!” He stood apart from her, hands dangling, powerless. “Only a gift.” He fell to his knees and clutched at her skirt. “My name is George.” The kettle clattered to the floor. “Could you not say it once? Just once.”

  Marta pushed him away. “Reverend Grim, remember yourself.”

  Sara’s wail invaded and added to George’s pain, and Marta turned away to look at the fire. George rose silently and returned to the stairs. The sofa was empty. Hadn’t Eleanor Singer been sleeping there?

  In the room she shared with Jonnie, Eleanor stifled her sobs. She hadn’t been asleep. The sight of the teakettle glittering in the firelight, so lovely, had evoked a searing pain in her heart. She’d slipped away and gone upstairs.

  She opened her wardrobe, searching. She had seen what she wanted quite recently, but now she couldn’t remember where. She wasn’t afraid of waking Jonnie. He was always exhausted at the end of the day. He’d slept through Sara’s loud labor so far. That was it. They were lying on the trunk below the window in her old room.

  She crept in unseen behind Grim’s back. It was extremely odd that Sara refused all help but Grim’s in her distress. She wouldn’t even let them call a midwife.

  “Stretch forth thy hand, dear girl.” Grim’s voice was tender and sweet. “That’s all God wants, one small act of faith, like reaching for a piece of bread, and He will give you such nourishment, you will never again hunger.”

  Sara saw her. “Get out!” she screamed, her eyes wild. “Get out, get out!”

  Eleanor snatched up her old boots and ran. She found privacy downstairs on the side porch in a wicker sofa. She rocked back and forth, cradling the treasures, her cheek against the leather. “Papa, I miss you so much.”

  Hours later the sun was well up, the babe delivered, and the new mother out of danger. Reverend Grim was declared a hero, but he seemed distracted and sad and unwilling to hear any praise. “I must go now,” he barely whispered and staggered out to his wagon.

  Marta and Eleanor stood in the doorway and watched him urge his horse down the drive where Leopold’s daffodils danced in the morning sun. Midway between the house and the main road, the wagon stopped. There was a noise like a pop, and Grim slumped over.

  -oOo-

  The large attendance at his funeral would have stupefied George Grim. Bleak though his vision often was, it was no bleaker than that of the majority of his contemporaries. He had been a teacher, a healer, community leader, and a sincere and powerful preacher, in the end one who explored God’s mysteries more than the Lord’s mandates.

  The few who knew the true circumstances of his death told the same story: They supposed some wild creature, likely a snake, had frightened his horse so that he had fallen from his cart. It was a bizarre freak that his pistol accidentally discharged to such tragic effect.

  More than one eulogy was given, and all mentioned his heroism during the time of the near flood. Lyman displayed saintly bereavement, and Martin was truly distraught. Grim III made an outstanding widow. As she packed to leave the parsonage, she fleetingly wondered what had become of Harriet’s teakettle—not that she wanted the horrid thing near her.

  -oOo-

  Sara rocked a stinky sweet bundle in her arms. Her daughter was a wee old and still unnamed. “I think ‘Jane’ for her Christian name,” she said. “It’s plain and strong and easy to wear.”

  “May I hold her?” Marta said. She sat down with the sweet darling. “Jane sounds very nice. Gabrielle was almost Eleanor’s name.”

  Eleanor and Sara exchanged a look of mock horror.

  “After my sister in law.”

  “This is beautiful.” Sara turned Reverend Grim’s teakettle in her hands and fingered the bright-cut morning glories. “Really quite lovely.”

  “I think she needs to be changed,” Marta said. “I'll do it.”

  She didn’t want to talk about the kettle. Every woman in Shermer Landing had heard the story of its making from Harriet Grim’s own mouth. When Grim had offered it to her, she misunderstood, thinking he was making another overture. After what he’d done to himself, she felt as if she had committed a sin in refusing. “I’ll see if one of Eleanor’s old gowns fits her.”

  “Mrs. Singer, you are too kind.”

  “Nonsense,” Marta said. Then she softened, “I’m glad a little girl is in the house again.”

  After twenty minutes when Mrs. Singer and the baby didn’t return, Sara found them upstairs, Jane on Mrs. Singer’s bed kicking her feet and making her mewling gurgle. Mrs. Singer stood nearby, dazed. She pointed to the baby’s birthmark, a strawberry-red, heart-shaped blotch just above the infant’s right nipple.

  “Mrs. Singer, are you ill?” Sara guided her to a chair.

  For so long, Marta had worked to atone for that night in the garden, to keep a harmonious home, to create a haven of civility, comfort, and constancy. To what end? Leopold was dead, her boys were gone away, and Eleanor was married and living her own life. And now Sara Adams was here, unmarried, and the child had this birthmark.

  All the pain flooded back. The torture of carrying the wrong man’s child. The time lost to dull depression. Her resentment and anxiety over Sara’s situation fell away, replaced by a rush of sympathy. But something made no sense. How could Sara have written in so sanguine a manner about Sir Carey, yet bear a child with that birthmark?

  “Sara,” she said, “you are going to tell me everything, and I am going to tell you what to do.”

  “Mrs. Singer!”

  “Young people think the older generation has never lived and has nothing useful to say on any subject. But you’re in no position to argue.”

  Sara wanted to hold onto her secret. As long as she could do that, the truth didn’t seem quite real. But Mrs. Singer had a fierce strength about her, and Sara was truly overwhelmed. In the past, she had felt safe in the sphere of Mrs. Singer’s serenity, and it would be a relief to have someone in the world who knew. “Will you swear never to tell another soul? Not even Eleanor?”

  “I swear it.”

  So Sara told Marta everything.

  “Does Mr. Geordie Carleson still want you?”

  “I think so.”

  “Don’t be a fool. Does he?”

  “He does.”

  “Then return to England. Marry this young man and forget your violation. Forget this child was born to you.”

  Sara gasped.

  “Jane should never have been born, but she was. Eleanor will raise her. Like her mother, she has found it difficult to get with child.” Marta softened. “This isn’t the worst that could happen. I lost my first child to death. This way, you can know her as the daughter of your best friend.”

  “I don’t know.” It felt wrong, yet what other choice was there? It would be better for Jane than—than what? The truth was, an unmarried mother had no rights. If Wills ever found out, he might take Jane away. This was indeed the only option.

  “You will have other children with your husband,” Marta said. “For his own good and yours, he must never know and you must never remember.”

  Geordie’s Heart

  Before going to the parlor, Geordie washed his face and hands. He worked in the fields with the men because he loved it, but he was careful to act as a gentleman in other matters. He put on a clean shirt and changed his boots, and when he saw who was waiting with his mother, he thanked the guardian angel who’d
told him to clean up.

  “Geordie, look who has come back to us,” said Lady Asher.

  Sara Adams rose with his mother. Geordie bowed, wondering if everyone heard his pounding heart. “Sara—Miss Adams. How wonderful.”

  Lady Asher poured out a cup of tea and handed it to him. Luckily, he didn’t shake too much as he set in on the table beside his chair. She caught his eye and raised an eyebrow. “If you will excuse me.” She left them alone, removing all doubt. If Sara was Geordie’s choice, she would accept it.

  “Wonderful,” Geordie said again. His feet were rooted to the ground through the planks in the floor. He was aware his grin was too silly. The depth of feeling surprised him. He’d believed he’d learned to no longer care for her. She looked tired, but lovely. “How did you find America?”

  “Big. And new. Spread too far apart. And I had forgotten how loud it is.”

  He chuckled at her cleverness. She was as delightful as ever. “And your journey,” he continued. “It was not too tiring?”

  “It was tiring. I don’t like the sea at all. I'm at Aunt Philly’s, of course.”

  “Of course.” They were awkward in the way of two mountain goats separated by a wide stream, sure they want the ground on the other side and unsure exactly how to get to it. But he wasn’t a complex man. He knew what he wanted.

  “Sara, Miss Adams—Sara.”

  “Yes, Mr. Carleson?”

  “I find, upon seeing you again, my feelings are not diminished.” She didn’t appear unwilling to hear him. He took her hand, and his heart leapt. She wore the serpent ring still. “I renew my request. Would you do me the great honor of becoming my wife?”

  All she had to do was say yes, and everything would be set right. Say yes, Sara. It sounded like a prayer in his mind.

  Her mouth formed the word, but she stopped and pulled her hand away.

  “Oh, Mr. Carleson—Squire Carleson, I mean.”

  “I hope you will call me ‘Geordie,’ darling Sara.” His heart sank, but he wasn’t going to give up that easy.