by Fortune Kent
“I do believe you,” Beth said.
After eating three lamb chops, potatoes, corn and peas, pudding and apple pie, Beth felt better. She lay back and closed her eyes. Although her face was damp and her palms felt clammy, she knew she was getting well, the fever and the chills gone.
I’ll sleep for a week, she promised herself.
She was up and about in three days. Later, when she thought back to those days, they were mostly dream-like, a babble of words, a succession of faces merging one into another. Charles Fremont, Father Moran, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis, Alice coming and going, Mr. Bemis, men and women from the parish, and even Jonas Weeks, the estate agent. Yet a few visitors stood out with vivid clarity.
Mrs. Worthington, for one.
“We found this in the pocket of your dress,” she told Beth. The old woman extended her hand, and Beth saw the brooch, cleaned and shining, cupped in the small wrinkled palm.
“The gift you had made in England especially for me,” Beth said, taking and turning the pin so it glistened in the light. “I found it in the tunnel.”
“Lost there when you were a child, most likely,” her grandmother said. Together they looked at the likeness of the long-dead English king.
“Do you remember the secret of the brooch?” Mrs. Worthington asked.
Beth went to the sewing table and found a pair of scissors in a drawer. She placed the pin on the table and inserted the point of the scissors under the portrait and pried, and the cameo swung upward to reveal a second portrait underneath.
“You can still make out the likeness,” Beth said, showing her grandmother. George Washington’s stern face stared up at them.
The old woman placed her hand on Beth’s cheek. “I’m so glad you’re my granddaughter,” she said.
They exchanged memories, an unfair exchange, Beth thought, for her grandmother had so many more to share. They spoke of Beth’s father and mother, and for the first time her parents were real to Beth. Her throat was tight as she remembered being held close and warm in her mother’s arms, saw herself walking while holding her father’s hand and looking up at him.
And for a time grandmother and granddaughter sat quietly staring through the barren trees to the river in the distance. They were at ease, one with the other, discovering a warmth and tenderness Beth had thought could come only after years of love.
Later, Margaret Jamison hobbled to Beth’s bedside and eased herself into the chair. “Your doctor did a better job than I gave him credit for,” she told Beth. “He says I should be walking without this,” she indicated the cane in her hand, “in a week or two.”
“I’m so glad,” Beth said.
“I suppose you’ll go to the Worthingtons’ church now you know you were born a Presbyterian.”
“No, I won’t,” Beth said. “My religion is what I believe, not what I was born.”
Mrs. Jamison shook her head and changed the subject. “Thank you, Beth,” she said, “for giving me the gatehouse to live in. I know I’m going to be happy there.” Her eyes told of the anticipated pleasures of small teas at which she would gossip and serve scones. “I always believed in you, Beth,” she said, “right from the beginning.”
Beth, startled, looked into the older woman’s eyes. “Yes,” Beth said, crossing her fingers under the covers, “you did, you always did. Nothing that’s happened would have been possible without you.”
And she was glad she had told the white lie. A gift, she thought, for Mrs. Jamison to enjoy in front of her fire during all the long winter afternoons.
She remembered Jeffrey visiting on the first day of her convalescence. She had never thought she would see an abject Jeffrey.
“I didn’t know what John was like,” he said. “He fooled us all.” Jeffrey stood, head down, at the foot of the bed fingering his gold watch chain.
“You found no trace of him?”
“No, none. We went over to the island this morning. The water is halfway up the stairway inside the vault, the tunnel is flooded, and debris is floating on top of the water. We couldn’t get in. Perhaps in the spring…”
“John’s boat was still tied at the jetty?”
Jeffrey nodded. He ran his hand through his curly black hair. Beth felt strange. Nothing she could define; she couldn’t locate the source of her disquietude, yet the feeling was palpable between them. I can’t accept the fact he’s my brother, she decided. There’s the rub, the strangeness.
She sighed, ashamed of her weeks of romantic imaginings. She should be laughing at herself, she thought, yet all she felt was a sense of loss.
“You were lucky,” Jeffrey told her.
“Lucky?”
“Yes, to escape the collapse of the old tunnel. You’re probably the most fortunate young lady in the entire Hudson Valley.”
“Yes,” she said, fighting to hold back the tears. “I suppose I am.”
Matthew came the next day. “We don’t need this anymore,” he said as he put his bag on the stand beside the door.
He sat at her bedside, hesitant, almost sheepish. He’s thinking about asking me, Beth thought. Sometime soon he’s going to propose marriage.
She felt an excitement, a thrill tingling through her body, and also a wariness. What shall my answer be? she wondered. What shall I tell him? She admired the doctor and liked being with him and, yes, had a genuine affection for him. Was affection enough? She didn’t feel the desire she had known for Francis or the unthinking attraction she had believed, for a time, she felt for Jeffrey.
I don’t love him, she told herself.
I’ve known him but a few weeks, she answered. Love can come later. I know many a good marriage that was without love at the beginning.
But must mine be without love? she asked herself.
“…day after tomorrow,” Matthew was saying.
“You’re going where?”
“To Catskill on the Alexander Hamilton. They need another physician, and I’m planning to visit for a few days to make inquiries. I’ve decided to leave Canterbury. I have too many memories here.”
“And are the tenants dissatisfied in Catskill?”
Matthew smiled. “Most of the farms there are in the old van Rensselaer patronship. One of the most oppressive in the state.”
“May I go—” Beth began, and when she saw Matthew’s glance added hastily, “to the ship to see you off? I’m feeling fine. The excursion to Newburgh and back will be good for me.”
“Yes, fine,” Matthew said “We’ll have dinner on the way.”
Two days later Beth came down the curving staircase wearing the long velvet dress she had worn when she came to the estate. The gnarled old man who welcomed her then smiled a warm greeting now, and she smiled back.
“Thank you,” she said as he helped her into the maroon redingote. She wrapped a shawl over her shoulders, tied a bonnet beneath her chin, and put her hands in her white muff. On the porch, she stopped in surprise. Mrs. Worthington, bundled in a winter coat and several scarves, waited with Mrs. Jamison, Alice, and Mrs. Bemis. The boy Andrew held the reins of Matthew’s gig in the driveway.
“I’m only going to Newburgh,” Beth said. By some feminine intuition, she knew, they too thought Matthew meant to propose.
“Yes,” Mrs. Worthington said. “Only to Newburgh.” She looked toward Matthew sitting in the gig swinging his arms to keep warm. “But one never knows.”
Beth blushed. “Be sure Andrew meets me after the ship sails,” she said in a firm voice. Her grandmother nodded, a conspiratorial smile on her face.
It had rained while she was ill, and Beth saw ice in the wheel ruts in the driveway.
“Looks like snow,” Andrew said hopefully as he handed her into the seat. Beth looked to the gray sky and felt the tingle of expectation she had known as a child when she waited for the first snowfall of the season.
“Let’s hope,” she told the boy.
Matthew tucked a robe over her legs and flipped the reins. The horse trotted along the drive, Be
th waving to the women on the porch. She looked for Jeffrey in vain.
Matthew drove along the river road, through the covered bridge over Moodna Creek, and on to Plum Point. He pulled up on the point, and they looked down at the island. There was no mist today, and now that the leaves had at last fallen, the ruins rose white and lonely above the dark rocks and vines. The river flowed restlessly by, whitecaps spotting its surface.
“Look,” Beth said.
“What? I see nothing.”
“I thought I saw a bird, a seagull, on the island,” she said. “I couldn’t be sure.”
They drove on, past St. Andrew’s Church and Calvary Cemetery, into Newburgh, across Broadway to the Palatine House, a two-story inn on the crest of a hill. A swinging sign promised “Entertainment,” and over the doorway Beth saw the carved date 1765.
They were early and sat by the window. While Matthew wiped the steam from his glasses, Beth gazed over the roofs of the shops to the wharves and the river and Mount Beacon beyond.
During dinner Matthew talked of the tenants and the settlement with Jeffrey and the Worthingtons.
“The farmers are satisfied,” he said as he finished his roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. “Under new agreements they’ll at last be able to own the land.” He wet his fingers in the finger bowl, dried them, and laid the napkin on the table. “Thanks to you,” he added.
Beth flushed and was about to protest when a waiter entered the room and pulled a cord on a mounted ship’s bell near the entrance. At the ding, ding, ding, the diners began to call for their bills.
Beth raised her eyes in inquiry.
“They have a boy on the roof who keeps watch,” Matthew explained, “and when the ship comes through the highlands past Butternut Hill, they ring the bell. Don’t worry, you have time to finish your coffee.”
After leaving the inn Matthew stopped at a livery stable where a young man about Beth’s age took the reins. He glanced at the weathervane on the roof pointing to the west. “Looks like snow,” he remarked matter-of-factly as he led the horse away.
They walked down Colden Street to Water and along Front, her hand light on his arm. The street was crowded with carriages and wagons going to the dock, and men and women hurried past, some carrying luggage and others pulling their bags on small carts. Only a dray horse hauling a wagon heavy with barrels plodded by going the other way.
A tin horn sounded, sharp and insistent, and for a moment Beth imagined herself back on the mountain watching the bonfire spurting fames into the night. She tightened her grip on Matthew’s arm, and he put his hand over hers.
“Just a boy hawking tickets for the steamship line,” he said. The boy rounded the corner in front of them, looked hopefully at Matthew who shook his head, then ran past. “Fifty cents, fifty cents,” his cry came back to them. “No cheaper fare to Albany.”
The ship had docked and the debarking passengers trooped from the gangplank shouting and calling to friends. Matthew led her away from the crowd along a pathway beside the river. He looked at her hair, her muff, off over the river, at the darkening sky, never meeting her eyes.
“Damn, it’s cold,” he said. “I think this young fellow was right,” he added, shaking his head resignedly. “Looks like we’ll have snow.”
The Newburgh passengers were off the ship, and a ticket agent blew his whistle and swung the gate open for the upriver travelers. Matthew removed her hand from the muff and held it in both of his.
“Beth,” he said, “back on the mountain at the meeting the words came easy. I can say those kinds of words, like tyranny and oppression and slavery. It’s the soft words like love and caring I have trouble with.” He looked into her eyes. “Beth,” he said, “will you come with me? Come tonight, now. We can be married in Catskill when we arrive. I need you, Beth.”
What shall I tell him? she wondered. The truth, she decided. He deserved the truth.
“You honor me,” she said. “But I can’t. I don’t love you. I respect you, I like you very much, but I don’t love you.”
“Is there someone else?” he asked. She shook her head.
He nodded. “I’m patient,” he said and led her to the gangplank. Most of the embarking passengers were aboard. Beth looked down the river, shrouded in the twilight, put both of her hands over his. “You need someone whose love is like this river,” she said, “deep and constant and forever. Sometimes I think I’m like one of the western rivers I read about. Quick and rushing and always changing course.”
The boatman waved to them. Matthew started to answer her, did not, instead leaned to her and kissed her on the lips. She kissed him in return. He held her to him before he pulled away and strode up the gangplank.
Beth watched him climb the outside stair to the second deck where he leaned over the rail. She took a handkerchief from her reticule, and the white cloth fluttered in the wind. He raised his hand head high and waved back.
The ship drifted clear before the paddle wheels began plunging into the waters of the river. Once they began turning, the ship churned away from the dock, and Beth peered through the dusk across the widening gap between ship and shore and saw the soft reflection of the ship’s lights in the water. Matthew waved, and for a time she could see him clearly. Then the ship was far up the river, and he was lost in the glory of the early winter evening.
Shall I always be left waving good-bye? she wondered. My life seems a succession of good-byes, of losing those I care for. Tears were in her eyes and her throat was tight. For a moment she held the handkerchief to her eyes.
She shook her head and walked slowly to the waiting room. A tall man stepped from the shadows, his long brown coat buttoned against the wind, black beaver hat cocked a bit to one side, a gloved hand holding a walking stick under his arm. He bowed.
“Jeffrey!”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“I thought you might go with him,” Jeffrey said.
Beth looked back at the ship which was now only a blur of lights in the distance. “I think I almost did,” she said.
“What stopped you?”
She shook her head and turned away, holding the handkerchief to her face.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I intrude where I’m not welcome and don’t belong.”
She walked ahead of him along the shore, the path lighted from the lamps of the nearby street, walked beyond the pilings of the dock until the path ended on a small promontory.
A light snow began to fall, a first-of-the-winter snow with large wet flakes drifting down to melt as soon as they landed. Jeffrey took off his hat and raised his head so a flake melted and glistened on his forehead, another on his chin. He opened his mouth and caught a snowflake and then danced about chasing one after another.
He stopped when he saw Beth staring at him in amazement. “For a minute I felt like a boy again,” he said. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “Sometimes I’m afraid I play the fool.”
“The combination of first a critic and then a fool surprised me,” she said.
“Even though many men have made a reputation merely by combining the two?”
She smiled.
“Good,” he said. “You look much prettier wearing a smile. Come along, I have a gift for you.” He led the way to the waiting room.
Damn you, Jeffrey, she thought, stop making me tag after you as though I were a child.
The snowfall was heavier now and while the dirt at their feet remained wet and dark, the grass beside the path was white. Jeffrey opened the door and they went inside brushing the snow from their coats. Two men stood before the ticket window, but the rows of benches were empty.
“Brrrr, it’s cold in here,” Jeffrey said and stopped in front of the iron stove in the center of the room. “I see the trouble,” he said. “Two troubles, in fact.”
He removed his gloves and took an iron rod from beside the coal box and shook the grate. “Stand back,” he warned as ash dust billowed from the bottom of the stove. For a moment she was back in the v
ault on the island with the stove glowing and John Price standing over her. She shivered.
“We should be warmer soon,” he said, shaking the grate again. He led her to a bench where they sat side by side.
“What was the second trouble?” she asked.
“Oh,” he said. “I thought you’d noticed. Look at the stove.”
She looked and shook her head.
“It’s an imposter,” he said. “The stove isn’t a Worthington.”
Beth laughed. She laid her muff on the bench and undid and took off her bonnet. “Ummmm,” she said, holding her hands to the fire. She looked straight ahead at the backs of her hands and the stove. “Sometimes supposed imposters turn out to be genuine.”
“Yes,” he admitted, “and vice versa. There are all sorts of possibilities.” He reached inside his coat and brought forth an envelope. “Here,” he said, “my present for you. You’ve been looking expectant since we came inside.” She blushed. “All the others seemed to be giving you gifts the last few days,” he went on, “if only gifts of flattery. So as not to be left out I’ve brought you this.”
He laid the envelope on the bench between them. “Open it,” he told her.
Beth turned up the unsealed flap and withdrew a creased sheet of paper. The scroll-like writing was faint and difficult to read.
“‘William Gundry was born on December 27, 1815’,” she said. She looked at him quizzically. “A strange present. What does this mean to me?”
“I’m William Gundry,” he said.
“You…” She tried to understand what he was telling her. “I don’t believe you,” she said at last.
“Why should I lie?” he asked. “Let me tell you what happened. Perhaps you’ll believe me then.”
Beth stared at him, nodded.
“Charles Fremont began it all,” he said. “After the shipwreck he was despondent, the entire family lost, all the plans for the future in ruins. Then someone from the wreck was found alive. Who, I don’t know, but someone. And Charles began to search through the towns on the southern shore of Lake Erie. He didn’t find Jeffrey, who must have drowned. Instead he found me in an orphanage.”