by Sarah Price
“Didn’t expect to see you here today,” Emma said softly, her heart pounding as she spoke.
Henry smiled warmly. “You’ll be staying for supper, then?”
“I’m not certain I’ll be staying long,” he replied, an odd tone to his voice, and looked at Henry. “But danke for the invitation.”
Disappointed, Henry shook his head and frowned. “You running off somewhere, then?”
With a sideways glance at Emma, Gideon gave a cryptic response. “That’s yet to be seen.”
He spent a few minutes with Henry, discussing things that they hadn’t been able to talk about after worship. Emma tried to listen but felt distracted. Her mind raced and she continued to repeat the last part of the devotional verse: “May your unfailing love be with us, Lord, even as we put our hope in you.”
It was no more than ten minutes after he arrived when Gideon looked up and stared at her. There was a fearful look in his eyes as he cleared his throat. “Emma,” he said. “Might I have a word with you?” He stood up and gestured toward the door. “Perhaps a short walk?”
If Henry seemed genuinely surprised by Gideon’s question, for he had never made such a bold request before, Emma was not. Quietly she followed him toward the door and down the porch steps. They walked side by side down the driveway, Emma’s heart racing at what she knew was coming. This is it, she thought. Her heart felt heavy. This was the moment she would have to give up on him. The moment her life would change. Certainly Gideon was going to tell her about his desire to wed Hannah. Now that the dust had settled within the community in regard to Francis and Jane, he clearly had wanted to tell her in private to preempt a repeat display of communal surprise at the next worship service.
“I suppose we were all taken aback,” he said solemnly. He sighed and looked at her. “Mayhaps you most of all.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
He glanced at her quickly as if trying to read her reaction. “Why, Francis and Jane’s announcement, of course.”
“I understood that,” Emma said, trying not to show her nerves as she braced herself for becoming his confidante about his desire to wed Hannah. “It was the second part. Why would I be taken aback more so than anyone else?”
That seemed to catch Gideon off guard and he hemmed and hawed for a moment as if searching for the proper response. “It was quite apparent that you were not unaffected by his attention,” he said softly.
At this, Emma stopped walking and looked at Gideon. Was he serious or speaking in jest? When she realized that he was not teasing her, she shook her head. Had he also thought that she was interested in Francis Wagler? The embarrassment of the situation caused the color to rise to her cheeks. “I take exception to that,” she said. “If his attention was ever directed to me, I can assure you that it was not returned.”
Gideon raised an eyebrow.
“Nee, Gideon,” she reaffirmed, her voice unwavering. “While I admit that I may have found him entertaining and refreshing, especially when he first arrived, I never shared any sort of emotional connection toward him beyond strictly that of friend.” She hesitated, forming the words in her mind before she spoke. “I’m quite content, more than you can probably imagine, that Francis and Jane should have a happy marriage and long life together.”
A look of relief crossed Gideon’s face.
She hadn’t expected that reaction from him and she suddenly realized where she had spoken in error. If a happy marriage for two strangers made her content, he was reassured that her happiness in his news that he intended to marry Hannah would most surely be met with even greater joy.
“I envy them,” he said wistfully. “Their secret is no more.”
His words wounded her, and knowing that he was thinking of his own secret about his feelings for Hannah, Emma looked away so that he could not see the pained look on her face. “Envy is a sin,” she snapped, stealing a quick glance at him.
He smiled. “I envy them in a good way, Emma.” The amused look in his eyes upset her even more. She felt that all-too-familiar lump growing in her throat as she braced herself for the inevitable. “Would you like to know why?”
“Nee!” she blurted, feeling the tears too close to the surface. She feared they would fall when he confided in her. Then, realizing how impossible the situation was, she quickly tried to compose herself and repeated the word softly. “Nee, I don’t think I do. . . . Words once said cannot be taken back.”
He looked surprised. There was a lengthy silence between them. He removed his hat and fiddled with it in his hands. “I see,” he finally mumbled. “I . . . I will speak no more on the subject then.” He started to turn around as if to walk back in the direction from which they had come.
Shutting her eyes, Emma quickly prayed for strength. She knew that she had been wrong to cut him off. She also knew that she couldn’t hide from the truth forever. “I’m sorry, Gideon,” she called after him. Then, hurrying to catch up with him, she reached out to grab his arm. “I should never have said that. Please, tell me what you will. As much as I might dread it, I suppose I must hear it eventually.”
When he lifted his hand to his brow, his expression pained, she realized that her words frustrated him. Turning his back to her, he took a few paces down the road before he turned back and dropped his arm. “Oh, Emma! I gather the courage at last and you destroy it with your words!”
She lifted her chin, searching deep within herself for the resolve to hear him through. What did it matter if he told her today or in three days? If she learned about it now or at the next worship service? If Gideon King wanted to marry Hannah Souder, Emma would just have to accept it as God’s will.
“My apologies, Gideon. I don’t mean to be so difficult.”
He laughed, a laugh that spoke of irony, not mirth. “Difficult? Why, difficult is exactly what you are!” He took a few steps back toward her and placed his hands upon her shoulders. The fierce expression on his face startled her. His eyes blazed as he stared at her. “Do I even stand a chance with you?”
She answered his question with silence, for she wasn’t certain in which direction this conversation was going. A chance? A chance for what? And then, for a moment, one brief, dazzling moment, as she caught a change in his expression, she knew. Gone was the intenseness from just a few seconds before. In its place was an unexpected tender look in his eyes. As he searched her face and a hint of a smile played upon his lips, to her surprise, she found herself suddenly not without hope.
“I . . . I reckon I don’t understand,” she finally whispered, not trusting her voice to conceal what she was starting to feel.
He bent his knees, just slightly, so that they were eye to eye. “Have you no idea of the depths of my emotions for you, Emma Weaver?” he said. “Have you no compassion for how formidable you are as an object of my heart? Difficult, you say. Indeed, that is putting it lightly.”
Her eyes widened as she realized what he was saying.
“I’ve been watching you, all this time, fighting my feelings. By what right do I have to even hope that my affections might be returned? Such a lively and vivacious woman, clearly sought after by other, younger men, I thought. First there was Paul, who I suspected was secretly courting you.”
“Paul!”
Gideon nodded his head. “But your insistence on his courting Hannah convinced me otherwise.”
She was speechless.
“And then Francis Wagler arrived home.” He did not wear a compassionate expression on his face upon mentioning the young man’s name. “I thought to give you a chance, and when I saw how attentive he was toward you and how you defended him so, I knew that my chance had never been there at all.” He looked defeated. “And then at the picnic . . . ”
Her eyes searched his face, her mouth opening, just slightly, as if she wanted to say something. She couldn’t. There were no words that were sufficient to express what she was feeling.
“I . . . I saw his influence over you when you spoke to Hetty.” His eyes looked anywhere but at her. “It was only when the banns were read, I thought that, just mayhaps, I was wrong. But from the look upon your face, I see that I was not.”
Emma stammered over her next words. “I . . . I don’t know what to say,” she managed to say. “I can’t say that . . . I certainly had no idea . . . This is not what I expected . . . ”
He shook his head, a look of pain upon his face. “Nor I,” he admitted. “I’m far too old, I reckon, and apparently too proud. I never should have engaged in such self-indulgent emotional ambition.”
Realizing that the moment was slipping away, Emma placed her hand upon his. “Nee, Gideon,” she said softly, her heart skipping a beat. “It is I who has so many flaws. But I have been trying, oh so hard, to improve. And it has only been with your guidance that I have been able to amend my ways, although I am far from achieving a fraction of the humility and godliness that you have.”
“You speak of flaws?” He laughed nervously. “I’ve spoken sharply to you so many times, scolding you as if you were a child, lecturing you as if you were a student! Why, I’ve pointed out every error or mistake that I thought you made!” He smiled, his eyes meeting hers at last. “And you! Why, you have borne it better than anyone!”
She hesitated, her eyes wide and bright as she dared to shift her hand, just slightly, so that it was pressed against his.
He glanced down at her hand, tucked so neatly in his, as if to make certain that he wasn’t imagining this moment. The perplexed look on his face made her smile and take a small step closer to him.
And it dawned on him what that meant.
“I . . . I’m not good at this,” he confessed awkwardly. “I mean, in all my years, which are plentiful for certain,” he said, ignoring the small laugh that escaped her lips at both his words and his nervousness. “Ja vell, not that many, I suppose.”
“Go on,” she urged, her confidence and her happiness increasing by the second.
He took a deep breath and plunged forward. “We’ve been friends for a long time. It’s high time that I marry, Emma Weaver, and there is no other woman that I could ever imagine caring for the rest of my life, no matter how long or short that may be.”
“Long, I hope,” she quipped.
Her comment caught him off guard and he gave a soft laugh. “Me too, I reckon.”
“I should hope so.”
He frowned. “There you go again, Always able to distract me with your words. As impossible as it seems, that is one of the very traits that I so very much love about you!”
And there it was. The one word she had longed to hear from him without really knowing it: love.
“I want to marry you, Emma.” He looked down upon her, his eyes staring into hers. “There is no better matched couple anywhere in Lititz . . . no, Lancaster! . . . than us. Mayhaps we have flaws, grave imperfections, but together we are as perfect as we possibly can be. We complete each other.” He reached out, and with a trembling hand, he touched her cheek, a simple gesture that said as much as his words. “I want you to be Gideon’s Emma from this day forth.”
This time, when the tears threatened to fall, she let them, for they were not tears of sorrow as she had expected, but tears of joy.
“Nothing would give me greater happiness,” she whispered, clutching at his hand. “I will gladly be Gideon’s Emma from this day forth!”
The look of elation that washed over his face made her laugh as the tears fell from her eyes. He pulled her into his arms and held her. With her cheek pressed against his shoulder and his hand warm against her back, he sighed. He kissed the side of her head, his lips brushing against her prayer kapp. “If you only knew how I have suffered these past months . . . mayhaps years!”
“It was unintentional, I promise,” she replied lightly, feeling warm and safe in his arms. However, the word suffer triggered a new thought, one of practicality rather than emotion. “There is, however, one regret that I do have.” She pulled away as she said this, a new look of worry upon her face.
“A regret?” He seemed surprised at the use of that word.
“Ja, a regret.” She bit her lower lip and wondered how to phrase the fear that was on her mind. By agreeing to marry Gideon, the very thing she had not dared to consider a possibility, she had also agreed to move away from home. The news would undoubtedly cause a great shock to her daed. “Oh, help!” she muttered, taking a step away from Gideon as she contemplated the situation. “If we were to marry, my daed will be left to live alone after we wed. He’ll feel abandoned!”
He seemed to ponder this, but only for a short moment, for Emma turned around and faced him.
“I could never do that to him!” She rubbed her forehead, distressed at the realization.
Taking a step toward her, he reached for her hand. “I cannot find comfort and happiness in our future if your daed is unhappy. There is, however, an easy fix to the problem. He will move in with us, then.” The solution seemed amiable enough, a fair and honorable way to continue caring for the elderly while beginning their new lives together. It was not uncommon for parents to live with newlyweds, especially when the bride or groom was the last child to marry.
Emma, however, was not convinced. “Daed is a creature of habit, Gideon. You are well aware of that.” She frowned at the difficulty that was presented by the situation. “He likes his walks at four o’clock, down the same road and by the same farms. He’s familiar with this house for almost thirty years. He does not adapt well to change,” she pointed out. “Remember the fuss he made when Irene married your bruder? To move him, at this stage of his life . . . I fear it would be rather traumatic for him.”
There was validity to her argument, and Gideon knew better than to debate her on the issue. With a heavy sigh he nodded his head. “Then I shall have no choice but to move into your haus.”
His offer surprised her and she brightened at the thought. “You would do that?”
He laughed at her response and gave her another quick hug. “For you, Emma? I would do just about anything!”
“And I you,” she whispered. For a brief moment Emma let him hold her, her cheek pressed against his shoulder. She shut her eyes and said a silent prayer, thanking God for the long, winding journey that led her to this moment. In all of her attempts to match others to their perfect mate, she had never contemplated her own. Clearly the hand of the Lord had guided her to this destination, a destination that she didn’t know existed until the very moment she fell upon
it.
Chapter Nineteen
FOR AS MUCH as Paul’s marriage to Alice had stunned the g’may and Francis’s betrothal to Jane had taken everyone in the community by surprise, when word began to spread around the church district about Gideon King and Emma Weaver, it was met with broad smiles and general happiness. Indeed, the reaction was just the opposite of what occurred with the two previous announcements. Instead of the news being responded to with “Did you even suspect?” or “How long have they known each other?” the community greeted the unofficial announcement about Gideon’s engagement to Emma with “Why, what took them so long?”
Only two people did not respond in such a positive manner: her daed and Hannah.
During the week immediately following his proposal, Gideon had made a point of stopping by the Weavers’ haus every day in the late afternoon. When Henry went for his four o’clock walk, Gideon and Emma spent their time discussing the best way to tell her daed, for she had insisted on delaying telling him the news of their engagement, fearful of his reaction to the consequent changes that would undoubtedly befall all of them.
“He’s going to be devastated,” Emma fretted, pacing the floor with Gideon standing patiently as he tried to comfort her as best as he could.
“Time and repetition of the gut news will ease his worries, Emma. If we present it to him in a positive light, he should have little argument, don’t you agree? He’s stronger than you think.”
So it was decided that the sooner they told him the better.
On Friday when Gideon arrived for his now-daily visit, they finally told Henry the news. Ten minutes had passed since Gideon’s arrival. Henry had asked all of his regular questions and shared his own news, for he had visited with Daniel Zook earlier in the day. He had just excused himself for a moment to go upstairs and retrieve a sweater, realizing it was growing cold in the room.