The Unitarians preached a divinely inspired religion proved by the miracles of Christ. Mortals had the right to spiritual experiences of their own, inspired by the love of God rather than terrified by the Calvinistic emphasis on the sinfulness of their human natures. The gentleness of the doctrine, the hope and dignity embodied in it, had appealed to Verity’s father, she knew. How much beyond that doctrine did Mormonism go?
Her skin grew hot and she bit her lip, glancing involuntarily at the backs and profiles of her neighbors. She almost feared they somehow had power to discover her thoughts. Blasphemy to entertain thoughts of such heresy in this hallowed place. Hallowed by my father, more than any other, she thought. There had been times since his death that she had fancied she saw him standing behind the pulpit, as warm with life as he had ever been. She had felt she could reach out and touch him. At other times it was more a sensing of his spirit that overtook her, an inner awareness of his reality, of some influence of his being that lingered near her.
She shook her head visibly to dislodge all thoughts, then tried to pay heed to the sermon. The Reverend John Seabury was a dull speaker compared with her father. He was a dull speaker compared with the bearded Mormon who had preached in her father’s parlor. Verity put her hand to her mouth. Heaven help her! She closed her eyes and prayed fervently for forgiveness. When she opened them again she saw that her mother was looking at her. Her face bore a curious expression that Verity could not read. She would have given anything to know what her mother was thinking. She had a vague fear that what existed in her mother’s overly active mind would have an effect on them all, and she cringed at her helplessness in the face of that fear.
As the day wore on the ache in Verity’s head grew no better. Millie brewed a tisane of lemon balm and made her rest after drinking it, which helped a little. But the dull ache was still there, and with it, a growing sense of restlessness. In the late afternoon she told Millie, “I’m going out for a walk, alone. Please don’t let anyone follow me. I must think; I must sort things out in my head.” She grabbed her shawl and slipped through the side door unseen.
Twilight had not yet begun to gather. A warm golden haze seemed suspended in the very air she breathed. The houses and trees stood in stark relief against the unnatural light that seemed to rob them of dimension and make them appear to be floating—lovely painted apparitions against a backdrop of smoldering sky. Verity drew the beauty into her like a tonic. Hadn’t her father’s death been enough? Why must her mother contrive to spoil what was left?
She walked the few remaining yards of Walnut Street to where it ran into Beacon, then veered off to her left to find the place where the Long Path headed from Joy Street all the way through Boston Common to meet with Boylston Street on the other end. How quiet the Common appeared this afternoon. Very few people were out. In the early days it had been forbidden to ride or walk in the Common on the Sabbath. Verity could not imagine such restrictions. Whatever would her mother have done if she had lived in that time? Most likely been burned as a witch or sorceress.
Verity took long strides, drawing the cool air into her lungs as she walked, and reached Quincy Lake, or what the children called the “frog pond,” before she expected. The bench beneath the tall elms looked inviting. She sat down, drawn by the antics of two gray squirrels chasing one another through the lacework of branches above her head. She did not know how long she sat watching them before she felt a hand on her arm and heard a man’s tentative voice ask, “Miss Thatcher, may I sit here beside you?”
At first Verity failed to recognize the big, quiet man who stood anxiously watching her. She hadn’t seen much of him before, really. His older, bearded companion had done most of the talking when they had been at her house. She nodded slightly; curtly, she hoped. She could feel her cheeks growing hot. Why hadn’t she the courage to send him away with a stinging retort? She tapped her foot on the pavement unconsciously, out of patience with herself.
“I have forgotten your name,” she said as the large gentleman settled himself beside her, unaware of her agitation.
“Edgar Gray at your service, miss.” With the large, capable fingers of a working man he touched the edge of his hat. “Isn’t that the famous Old Elm?” he asked, inclining his head slightly.
“Yes, it’s nigh two hundred years old, they figure. Isn’t it beautiful in this soft evening light?”
“It truly is. This whole place is a wonder.” Edgar Gray’s gently modulated voice did not match his large frame and rather imposing appearance, but it served to temper the rough edges that life and experience had not smoothed yet. “Wasn’t there once a gallows near here?”
Verity nodded. “Over a hundred people were hanged right there. Isn’t it horrid to think of? And not only murderers and pirates, I fear.”
“Those were hard times.” Edgar Gray’s eyes were thoughtful. “A man could be hanged for stealing bread to feed his hungry family. Doesn’t even seem to make sense.”
“Rachel Wall was hanged for stealing a bonnet that was worth seventy-five cents.” Verity’s words brought a reluctant smile to the face of her listener. “But then there was Margaret Jones, one of our very earliest women doctors. She was hanged, too.” Her companion was listening intently now. “She created an amazing potion of anise seed and various liquors that produced such wonderful results in her patients that the magistrates suspected her of possessing imps. How else could she have done what she did? They wished to seek no other explanation.”
“And so she was hanged?”
“Sentenced as a witch, found guilty, and hanged from one of the limbs of that elm.” Verity shivered involuntarily. “Those were preposterous times.”
Edgar Gray’s face held an expression of mingled disgust and horror. Verity nearly wished she had not told him the awful story. Perhaps he was merely a man after all. Surely he seemed to feel things as only the most sensitive of men do. But then he spoke, and she found herself wishing vehemently that she had not been so foolish as to speak to the young man at all.
“Men were also hanged for religious prejudices back in those preposterous times, weren’t they?”
The sudden question startled Verity. “Yes, I suppose they were. Yes, men—and women, as well.”
“It isn’t so unimaginable as we might think it,” he continued. “I’ve seen things myself—in the name of religious persecution—that would turn your stomach, miss.”
Verity fixed her wide, angry gaze on him. Why was he speaking this way?
“ ’Tis only a thin veneer at best, what we call civilization or refinement,” he continued. “It doesn’t take much to turn man against neighbor, brother against brother.” Verity sensed a shudder travel along his big frame. “We aren’t so much different from them as we think.”
Verity smoothed her skirts, then stood with as much determination as she could muster. “I must be getting on home now. I don’t wish Mother to worry.”
Edgar Gray was on his feet before the words were out of her mouth. “May I accompany you home, then? See you safely there?”
She tried to laugh lightly, but it didn’t come out right. “Heavens, no! I’m perfectly safe in the Common, and home is only a little way from here. You go about your business . . .” She paused, feeling the color rise in her cheeks. A faint smile lifted the corners of the young man’s straight, serious mouth.
“My business is saving souls, Miss Thatcher. My business is teaching truth to our Heavenly Father’s children.”
Verity sniffed slightly and began to turn away from him. She was trembling inside.
“You may find me odious, distasteful to your customs and traditions. You may be unwilling to listen, but that doesn’t make the message I bring you any less true.”
“If you are a gentleman, you will leave me at once, sir. I wish to hear no more of your words. I hope I never see you again—you, or any of your kind!”
She was trembl
ing visibly now. Edgar Gray had the effrontery to place his hand on her shoulder. “Fear does strange things to people, Miss Thatcher. I know that, and I’m sorry. My best to you and your family.”
He turned and walked away from her, through the darkening avenue of elms and across the long green of the Common. “How dare he!” Verity muttered. She stumbled back along the path. The golden light had turned gray. The sky was torn into long crimson tatters and faint pink banners, and all was lovely and still. But Verity felt only the cold and saw only the gathering shadows as she scurried back to the house. When she shut the big front door, safely closing the night behind her, she was breathing heavily.
“Verity, where have you been?”
It was her mother, coming down the stairs, looking at her a little too closely.
“I’ve been for a walk on the Common.”
“And was it pleasant, my dear? You look a bit disturbed. Did anything untoward happen?”
“No, Mother. I’m fine. I believe the fresh air was good for me.” She would not tell her what had happened and who she had met there. If heaven was kind they would never see those horrid Mormons, would never be disturbed by their ravings again. Oh, why was change the only aspect of life of which one could be sure?
“Well, come along. Nancy has tea ready, with fresh, warm cakes. And Millie has agreed to read to us.”
Verity went gladly, anxious only to forget all that had happened that day. She willed the return of simple happiness and security, just as a child, eyes closed tight, wills the terrors of night’s darkness to vanish. Could it be so? Verity hoped with all a child’s credulity. And when she prayed that night she prayed with the same selfish simplicity, forgetting entirely the things her father had taught: that one should seek the purpose of God in one’s life, and strive to love and serve others. Only then would the spirit be illuminated and the path become clear. The path of life. Verity shrank from placing her foot there. Resting here in the warm sun of her girlhood was pleasant and safe. She wished to stay here, heedless of challenge and danger, for as long as she could.
Chapter Three
For the following three weeks the Mormons came every Thursday night to the home of the minister’s widow and held their proselyting meetings there. Meanwhile, March gave way to April. With a light hand spring touched the air, leaving the mark of her passage on tree and roadside, meadow and pond. Green was a smell in the nostrils as well as a color on grass and new leaves. The grime and soot of the city’s roadways was washed away by a soft, cleansing rain. Something deep and dormant was awakened in Nature, and in the men and women who, dulled by city life, could yet respond to the pure bliss of living, of drawing life in through the senses and finding it good.
For years afterward Verity would say that it was spring alone which made bearable the ordeal they were called to pass through: the loss, the change, the terrible giving up and letting go.
After the third meeting took place, the Reverend Seabury paid Judith a visit. He was excruciatingly polite, but stern, so stern that the very air around him seemed to shrink. Judith received him in the selfsame room where the Mormons had been praying and exhorting. With a pained air of horrified disdain he glanced round him, as though all he cast his eyes on was in some way diseased and unclean.
“Pray, take a seat, Mr. Seabury.”
“No thank you, Madam. I prefer to stand here.”
Judith acquiesced, knowing her ground, at least, and the direction in which things promised to go. In her characteristic manner she did not wait for him to attack and herself to be forced to defend.
“Yes, this is a lovely room. And both you and I have spent many pleasant and meaningful hours here in company with my husband. But you may be sure that what has occurred during the Mormon meetings has not in any way dishonored my husband’s life or his memory. I give you my word on that.”
“Judith, please!” The Reverend Seabury forgot himself and called the lady by her first name. Judith kindly ignored his consternation and continued.
“We believe in honestly seeking after truth. At least, we pay lip service to that concept, don’t we?” Judith’s voice was silky and gently persuasive. Nothing abrasive or argumentative at which the minister could lash out. “Anthony encouraged an honest seeking, as you well know, John”—guardedly she used the familiar form of his name, taking her lead from him—“and that is what I have been doing these past weeks; no more, no less.”
Mr. Seabury drew himself up a bit stiffly, and the tight air tingled. “And just what, Mrs. Thatcher, do you think you have learned?”
Judith relaxed a little. The Reverend Seabury could not fail to notice the warmth in her eyes and the softness about her mouth. “I have learned for myself that Mormonism contains God’s truth, as revealed in these last days to a living prophet.”
Mr. Seabury could not have replied if he had wanted to. His complexion went pale, and he put a hand up to his mouth to stifle a dry cough that was irritating his throat.
Judith took a step forward and placed her hand, just the slender tips of her fingers, on the sleeve of his coat. “In many ways it grieves me to come to such a decision. By doing so I lose my place in a congregation of neighbors and friends who are dear to me. In some cases—knowing human nature as you and I do”—Judith increased almost imperceptibly the pressure of her fingers—“I fear I shall lose the respect and even the affection of some of those friends.”
Mr. Seabury frowned. He recognized the trap she had crafted for him. But how in the world had she managed it so quickly and so smoothly? He coughed several times into his hand.
“It will grieve me to lose your friendship and association.” She stressed the word your ever so slightly. “You have been a great comforter and counselor to me since Anthony’s death. I shall never forget your kind services.” Judith meant what she said; there was nothing of the hypocrite or the dissembler about her. But the bold truth is sometimes harder for the mind to digest than mere lies, or a comfortable mixture of candor and sophistry.
“It grieves me to leave my friends, the city I love, this house, which has been home to me for more than twenty dear, happy years.” Saying the words out loud had an effect upon Judith. Her voice trembled. She withdrew her light touch on the minister’s arm and clasped both hands tightly in front of her. She was not one to show emotion lightly, to let others see into the heart of her. John Seabury knew that. The slight, disquieting awe he had always felt for her rose up like a tenderness in him.
“In fact, John, I have always known how fond you are of this house. So I shall give you the first opportunity to purchase it, before making public its availability.” He drew his breath in sharply; Judith did not fail to note it.
“Judith, my dear—”
“Yes, I know. ’Tis an unhappy affair, and I am sorry it had to happen at all.”
“Are you quite resolved?” The question was asked gently, but when Judith paused he persisted. “There is always time! If you were to see too late the error of your decision”—his voice was beginning to rise, to take on the timbre, natural to it, of a lawgiver, a master, a revelator—“the horrible tragedy, Judith, the shame, the—”
“Hush, John, please.” Judith again placed her hand on his arm. “I know full well the weight of the decision I am making. I have spent many long, sleepless hours alone on my knees.”
“Alone, my dear?”
Judith smiled indulgently at his quick, yet pompous, response.
“Yes, much of it alone with my own soul, struggling to find out the will of heaven. Such may be easy for you, but it has not been easy for me.”
The reverend softened at her supposed deference to him and patted the hand on her arm. She had always been such a confoundedly handsome woman.
“I shall depend upon you, John, to defend me, to support me when all else fails me.” The weakness in Judith’s voice was real; there was a vulnerable note that was ra
rely revealed there.
“Yes, of course. Yes, my dear.”
With an effort Judith collected herself. “You will discuss your interest in the house with Janet, then, I assume, and let me know of your decision? As soon as possible?”
“Yes, yes, you will hear from me shortly.”
“Good.” Judith began walking very slowly toward the door. “Thank you for your time, John, and for your concern. You have always been very good to me.”
What could he say to this woman? In the end, standing awkwardly in the entrance of the home he could not help already envisioning as his, he merely gave the hand she extended a kindly squeeze. What to do, what to do? He walked back to his office wrapped in a vague feeling of fatherly piousness, a feeling that suited him and did much to dispel the terrible awkwardness of the situation. He still had his parishioners to answer to. But was not mercy and forbearance always the better way? Was it not the way that Christ taught? For the sake of the Reverend Thatcher, who had been loved by his congregation, might they not condone mercy for his widow and his fatherless children? The Reverend Seabury fervently hoped so. He hoped nearly as fervently that the hours before dinner would pass quickly so that he might return, without unseemly haste, to his own house and report to his wife the fortunate chance that had come their way.
Judith, left on the porch step looking after him, stood there a very long time. She knew that John Seabury had always coveted the house she lived in, and she knew that his wife, Janet Peabody, had money of her own that would assure their ability to purchase it from her. She meant to set the price high and keep it there. Heaven knew she would have need enough of funds in the days ahead. Sometimes the decision she had made frightened and nearly overwhelmed her. But she refused to look back. She didn’t believe in that. She had set her course, and she would hold to it now. So she had always done, and look how far it had gotten her, how much of the richness of life she had purchased with what others called brashness but which she knew for certain to be courage and faith—a strange mingling of dependence upon her own inner resources and, when she felt her own powers slacken, upon the powers of heaven. It was the way she did things; it was the only way she knew. She lacked the refinement, even the discernment, of her husband, but that could not be helped. She must go forward in the best way she knew, and trust to heaven for the rest.
The Heart that Truly Loves Page 2