by Sarah Price
“She’ll be fine,” Eleanor reassured him.
He nodded and stepped out of the room, concern still etched on his face.
They moved quickly, undressing Mary Ann and covering her with blankets. Maem rubbed at her arms while Eleanor took a towel to Mary Ann’s head, trying to dry her long hair so that her head did not stay chilled.
Christian must have been working on starting the fire in the main room, for the smell of raw smoke began to infiltrate the bedroom. Maggie lingered by the door, her eyes wide and frightened. Eleanor heard her ask, “Was she hit by lightning?”
“Nee, Maggie,” Christian responded. “I found her lying down near the woods in the back fields. She was fine but drenched.”
Eleanor caught her breath at his words. Of course, she thought. The back fields were where she had met John Willis. She should have known that was where her sister would go. But to be lying down during a rainstorm? The chill in the air coupled with the rain would surely make her sick, especially since she had lost so much weight recently and wasn’t eating properly.
“Oh, Mary Ann,” she sighed to her sister, uncertain whether she could actually hear her. “What have you done now?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
FOR THE NEXT week Mary Ann remained in bed. Maem gave up her first-floor bedroom so Mary Ann could remain near the main room, making it easier for the rest of the family to tend to her needs.
The family maintained a vigil over Mary Ann. Someone sat with her around the clock, dabbing at her feverish forehead and forcing her to accept some broth. The bishop visited along with other members of the g’may, and Eleanor had no doubt that the news of Mary Ann’s illness had spread far and wide.
Through their visitors other news quickly began to infiltrate their house. Widow Jennings was only too eager to whisper of Willis having married that woman just the Tuesday after the fund-raiser. It had been a quiet affair, which had struck Widow Jennings as odd. Amish weddings usually were all-day events, with hundreds of people visiting to celebrate.
“And when his aendi heard the news,” Widow Jennings had said in a raspy but quiet voice as she leaned forward so that Maggie could not hear, “she was rather put out! Apparently she went to the bishop with some news that”—she glanced over her shoulder at Maggie—“is unfit for young ears to hear. But I’ve heard tell that John Willis has been shunned!”
“Shunned?” Maem gasped and put her hand to her chest. “Surely that can’t be so?”
But there was no time for further explanation. A man’s footsteps on the stairs interrupted their conversation. Christian had arrived and, with his usual somber expression, his concerned eyes drifted down the hallway toward the room he knew Mary Ann occupied. “How is she today, then?”
Eleanor was thankful for his appearance. The last thing she wanted was her mother to learn about Willis and his out-of-wedlock baby. It was news that would eventually be whispered in the shadows of every Amish home, not just in their g’may but also in surrounding ones too. But Eleanor just didn’t want to deal with her mother’s reaction and risk her sister overhearing.
“She’s doing the same, I fear.”
Eleanor stood up from where she had sat, and to her relief Widow Jennings made a quick apology that she needed to return to her own house and could stay no longer.
As expected, Christian sat by Mary Ann’s bedside, the door open for propriety’s sake, and read to her from the Bible. He spent over an hour at her side, his deep voice just a mere murmur as he read to her, occasionally pausing to wipe her brow with a cool cloth. But as the sun began to shift in the sky, he knew he couldn’t stay longer. With great reluctance he vacated his place by her side.
“Eleanor,” he said when he came back into the kitchen. “She seems to have lost her will.”
Eleanor glanced at her mother, who was busy preparing some soup to take into Mary Ann. “She will find it again, Christian.” Looking back at him, she met his eyes. “She must. I don’t know what I would do without her.”
He hesitated before he added, “Nor I.”
An hour after Christian had left, Eleanor sat in the rocking chair and worked on some sewing. Maem and Maggie had retired to bed for a late afternoon nap, both of them exhausted from staying up with Mary Ann throughout the night.
Eleanor was not expecting anyone to visit. So when she heard the sound of horse hooves pounding on the lane, she set aside her work and hurried to the door. Peering outside, she squinted to try to make out who approached their house. She hoped the sound of the traveler did not disturb her mother from sleep, especially since the rider seemed in a hurry, quite unlike the usual lazy clip-clop of a horse and buggy. The urgency of the rider also gave her a moment’s pause, and she hoped nothing untoward had happened to someone else in the g’may. She had quite enough on her hands with Mary Ann still unwell.
Eleanor grabbed her black woolen shawl and wrapped it around her shoulders before opening the door. The days were much cooler now that autumn was well under way. A gust of wind pushed the door out of her hand and almost slammed it against the wall, but she caught it with her foot.
Just as she stepped onto the front porch, she saw a chestnut horse round the bend, the rider, a man, bent over and heading directly for their house. Now Eleanor worried that something was indeed wrong. Perhaps a messenger had come to fetch them or to tell them bad news. Her mind began to sort through the different situations that might warrant such a hurried approach to their house.
Quickly she shut the door behind herself and walked down the steps to the grass in front of the house. She started walking toward the moving figure of the horse and man until she was a good distance from the house. And that’s when she recognized the man atop the horse, a man she thought she would never see again and, in many ways, had hoped for the same.
“Good day, Eleanor,” Willis said as he stopped his horse. Still holding the reins in his right hand, he jumped down to stand before her.
Eleanor stood there, unable to speak as she stared at the sight of the shunned man.
“I . . . I trust that you are well?” he asked in a voice humbler and far more timid than the Willis she knew from the past.
Eleanor crossed her arms over her chest and glanced in the direction from whence he had just arrived. Perhaps Willis had come to visit Jacob and missed the turn. Surely he had not come to visit any of them! “I have no time to spare with the likes of you,” she said in a firm voice. She turned to leave, but he called out her name.
“Please Eleanor, I beg of you!”
She stopped walking and turned back, her arms still hugging her chest as if to still the rapid beating of her heart.
“I must have a moment of your time,” Willis said as he took a step toward her, the horse following behind him.
“A moment?” With great apprehension she considered his request. Besides the fact that she had yet to consider forgiving Willis, her biggest fear was Mary Ann’s reaction should she happen on Willis standing outside their cottage. However, Mary Ann still slept and was unlikely to awake anytime soon. And Eleanor could not deny that she had some degree of curiosity as to why, exactly, John Willis would have shown up on their doorstep. Even more important was Ephesians 4:31–32: “Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, outbursts, and blasphemies, with all malice, be taken away from you. And be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ also forgave you.” With a sigh she leveled her eyes at Willis and said, “Fine, Willis. But please be quick about it.”
A look of relief washed over his pale face. It struck Eleanor that the handsome young man who had so fervently courted her sister had disappeared, leaving behind a shell of a man whose hair needed a good trimming and whose eyes were shadowed by dark circles that had previously not been there.
“I’ve come to inquire about Mary Ann,” he gushed as he took another step toward Eleanor, almost as if he were trying to inch his way closer to the cottage. Recognizing this, Eleanor stood her ground and did not move.
“I . . . I heard at our g’may’s worship service this morning that she has been ill this past week. Is this true?”
What right, Eleanor wanted to say, do you have to inquire about the well-being of my schwester? Her refusal to respond only caused Willis to continue his inquiry.
“Eleanor, my very soul is tortured at the thought that she is in grave danger,” he pleaded. “I must know the truth. I pray morning, noon, and night for her recovery. Take me out of my misery and update me on how her health stands.”
Reluctantly Eleanor conceded. “She is sleeping comfortably right now, and despite having a fever, we have every reason to believe she will make a full recovery.”
He sank to his knees, the reins of the horse now looped around his right arm. “Praise God,” he murmured. “An answer to my prayers.”
Disgusted with his display of emotion, especially in light of the impact his roguish behavior had on the very situation that he inquired about, Eleanor frowned. “If that is all you have come to inquire about, I will be thanking you to leave now, Willis. I fear the friendship and camaraderie that was once felt between us exist no longer.”
“But wait! Please! I . . . I have to unburden myself of the weight on my shoulders,” Willis cried out, dropping the horse’s reins and stepping forward to take Eleanor’s arm in his hand.
“For your benefit or hers?” Eleanor asked, pulling her arm free from his grasp.
“Hers.” He paused. “Mine. Oh, I just don’t know, Eleanor. I just want to explain what happened, to beg of some mercy from your family. If you could only understand what, exactly, happened, mayhaps you would not hold such a grudge against this poor man. Mayhaps you would even find some compassion for me.”
Compassion! she thought. Most unlikely, indeed.
When he realized that she was standing there, waiting for him to proceed with his explanation, he suddenly became flustered as if he hadn’t actually expected to convince Eleanor to listen to him. Now that he had her attention, he tugged at his collar and began to pace just a little, the constant motion helping to ease his mind as he began to share his story with Eleanor.
“When I first met her, the day she was kicked by the horse,” he started, “I had no further intention than to be friendly and welcoming to the family. I knew that I would, one day, inherit my aendi’s farm and, as such, we would be neighbors of sorts. I had no desire to take the friendship further with your schwester. She was, at the time, an object of intellectual amusement and nothing more. Besides, I knew that I would need to marry a woman with some sort of family backing to even begin to properly manage my aendi’s farm.”
Eleanor gasped. Not only had Willis just admitted to having no intention of courting Mary Ann, but he also admitted that he sought a woman of means! “This is outrageous! I fail to see how this will lead me to find any sort of compassion!” she said reproachfully.
Stunned by her words, Willis looked up, red-faced, and held his hand in the air. “Nee, Eleanor, the truth is that, despite my intentions, I cannot deny that my feelings for Mary Ann quickly grew, like the mustard seed in the ground. It grew fast and spread wide until Mary Ann was all that I could think about.” He removed his straw hat and ran his fingers through his hair before he turned away from Eleanor. “You have no idea the torturous nights, the agonizing conversations I had with myself—discussing and debating the emotional tug at my heart that contrasted so sharply with my logical needs for a future.”
Eleanor stared at him, unblinking and mouth open at his confession.
“And, after I could not take it anymore, after I lost debate after debate, I knew I had only one choice, and that was to marry her.” He turned around and stared at her. “I had every intention of proposing, Eleanor, that very day that I went away. But, you see, my aendi learned about a most unfortunate”—he paused and lowered his eyes—“situation, one that I dare say you must have learned about from the ever-growing Amish grapevine.”
“I dare say that it is beyond unfortunate,” Eleanor said, emphasizing the word unfortunate.
Willis raised his eyebrows. “Ach, ja, I see.” He shook his head as if dismissing something troublesome. “You have learned of the situation then?”
Eleanor lifted her head and said nothing.
“I beg of you to consider the source who, I am certain, presented it as though I am the scoundrel and she the victim. There is little to no consideration for the role played by the young woman in question. Was it a lack of understanding or a lack of concern for her own well-being that she finds herself in such a condition?”
Eleanor could barely look at him. Listening to his self-serving account of the facts made her feel physically ill. A grown man defending his own actions against a young woman who was not even yet in her rumschpringe? “A condition? Her life is ruined, Willis!”
“As is mine!” he snapped back. Then he took a deep breath and looked up toward the sky, frustration etched into his face. “Do you not understand? I could not marry the girl—she is not Amish. I would have been shunned! And, once my aendi disinherited me, I could not marry Mary Ann! So now I find myself in the worst of all situations! I am left in a loveless marriage, shunned by my community, and living miles away from the very woman I wish, oh so fervently, that I could wake up beside every day. Not a second passes that I do not long for Mary Ann—”
Abruptly, Eleanor held up her hand to stop him from continuing. “Nee, Willis. Say no more on this subject, or else you will have more sins to confess to the bishop. Shunned or not, miserable or not, you are, after all, a married man now.” She quoted, “But I say to you that whoever looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.”
“Married?” he scoffed. “In name only.”
“That is not my concern,” she said.
“Eleanor, I beg of you! Have compassion! I have been shunned. I cannot sleep in the same room with her, eat at the same table, or even ride in a buggy with her. It is like two strangers living under the same roof.”
While, admittedly, Eleanor felt moved to feel some level of pity for Willis, she also knew that a man so emotionally distraught could easily overlook his own contributions to the events leading up to his current circumstances. And pushing aside her empathy, she knew Willis was one of those men. Still, she was not cruel of heart and could not continue to point out his flaws. Clearly he was feeling the pain of shame for his actions.
“What would you have me do, Willis?” Eleanor finally said, hoping to bring closure to this unexpected meeting. With each passing second she feared Mary Ann would awake and see Willis standing in their front yard. And if Maggie spotted him, that too would present an awkward situation that Eleanor would prefer avoiding.
“I am a man with a ruined reputation, Eleanor. There is little I can do to change that,” he said in a forlorn voice. “But if you should have mercy on me to let Mary Ann know the truth, what my intentions truly were, perhaps then I could at least rest in the future, knowing that the hatred she must feel for me is decreased, no matter how slightly.”
Eleanor glanced over her shoulder toward the house. There was no sign of movement or activity, but she was starting to become anxious for Willis to depart the property. If Christian unexpectedly returned round the bend and saw her speaking to the very person who had defiled his niece and destroyed his friend, there was no telling what the ramifications might be.
“Willis,” Eleanor said, “I will share this information with Mary Ann when and if the time is right. Knowing my schwester, she has already forgiven you. Her heart has always been large and filled with compassion. Perhaps knowing that will help you rest easier.”
Willis stood there, his hat clutched in his hands. He fiddled with it as he reflected on what Eleanor had just said. Finally he tilted his head and stared at her. “But you will tell her? You must promise me.”
With a firm shake of her head, Eleanor responded, “Nee, Willis. I will do nothing of the sort. I would no sooner make a promise that I am not ce
rtain I can keep than I would tell a lie.”
Any indication of hope on his face seemed to evaporate as she spoke. “I . . . I see,” he said, but she could tell from the tone of his voice that her response had not been what he anticipated. She could not fathom what he had actually expected when he took it upon himself to visit. As a married man his communication with any single woman, especially Mary Ann, was inappropriate. As a shunned man he shouldn’t be communicating with anyone in the community at all.
“If there is nothing further to discuss, Willis—and I cannot imagine there is—I will bid you good-bye,” she said, thankful that the conversation was over at last.
He hesitated before turning back to his horse and retrieving the reins. He cast one last look over his shoulder, first at Eleanor and then at the house, before he mounted the horse and reluctantly rode away.
Eleanor watched as his horse carried him back down the lane from which he had arrived just minutes earlier. Unmoved by the visible slump in his shoulders, she remained staunch in her resolve to stay true to her word. She knew only too well the strength of first love. With Mary Ann’s precarious emotional and physical condition being so precarious, Eleanor did not want to present her sister with any reason to feel sympathy or connection to Willis. Despite her current troubles Mary Ann had a promising future, unblemished by any permanent stain, especially now that the truth was known about Willis, even if only by a few people. Eleanor had no intention of relaying any information to her sister unless it was to Mary Ann’s benefit, not Willis’s.
Chapter Twenty-Three
OVER THE NEXT few days Christian remained increasingly vigilant, a constant presence at Mary Ann’s side. Eleanor suspected he had learned of Willis’s unexpected visit to the area—perhaps someone had seen Willis riding to or from the Detweilers’ home. Regardless, Christian was not taking any chances and he stayed at Mary Ann’s bedside, sitting on a ladder-back chair and reading to her from the book of Psalms and the Song of Solomon. His voice carried throughout the house while Maem made batch after batch of chicken soup, which Eleanor repeatedly tried to force Mary Ann to accept.