The Heart that Truly Loves

by Susan Evans McCloud

  Before October was over Almira Fenn had destroyed two letters. The first one nearly slipped past her. It bore an Illinois postmark, which she associated with Millie’s rich Boston friends who had lost their senses and joined with the Mormons, yet still had to be taken into account. But this letter bore a name that had become familiar to her, though in another setting. She disposed of it with her usual efficiency. Two days later she chuckled a bit to discover a letter from Millie, addressed to Liverpool, in her pile of outgoing mail. Then she knew her efforts were paying off for her and for her foolhardy son who thought he wanted the pretty little snit of a thing for his wife. Well, if he wanted her he should have her, if Almira Fenn had anything to say in the matter. And, of course, she had.

  As the Christmas season approached Millie received a greeting from Verity that contained the most startling news.

  Dear Millie,

  I am to be married. He is the kind of man a girl dreams of, and he loves me as dearly as I love him. He is from New York and is a graduate of Harvard—he knows Boston and loves it, Millie! That is one of the best parts. He understands the very heart of me, something I never thought to find in another person while in this life. More later, my dear heart. A letter will follow after the holidays; I promise. I have so much to tell.

  Millie had to be content with this tantalizing tidbit. But, oh, how cruel the contrast between her state and Verity’s! The night before Christmas, while deep in sleep, she dreamed of Nicholas Todd. He was standing on a rock in the middle of a gray sea, surrounded by mists. A cold spray blew in his face and the mists rolled over him. He called out her name. He groped toward her with wet stiff arms, but a dense curtain of fog hid his face and then concealed him altogether. Millie cried out to him, but his voice did not answer. He was lost to her sight, beyond the sound of her desperate cries.

  She awoke with tears choking her throat and lay awake in the cold darkness for hours, trying to make out the meaning of such a dream. Had the sea claimed this man she was so strangely drawn to? Or had death in some other form snatched him away from her, and her mind had sought the most natural symbolism for her—the sea—to express the dreaded horror? No! That could not be! Nothing so cruel and senseless and wasteful. Yet the thought of the fevered children he had cared for always sat like a cold stone at the back of her mind. Even in the sane, sun-washed air of morning she could read only one general meaning to the dream, whatever the particulars: Nicholas Todd was lost to her. But one thing maddened her senses. Through the caroling, the baking of cakes and cookies, the making of homemade presents, the school nativity scene—all the activities of the season that Mr. Erwin gently but firmly drew her into—her mind was consumed with one question: Was Nicholas Todd seeking her? Was he reaching out for her from some unknown place, as he had in the dream? Was he groping for her, searching for her as she was searching for him?

  That Christmas season was one of great rejoicing for the Saints at Nauvoo. They were out of the way of their enemies. Under the Prophet’s inspired direction they were building new homes and clearing land, creating a city where their children could learn to live the gospel in peace.

  Nicholas was grateful. His house had been completed before cold weather set in, and his mother had made it homey enough with the little furniture that was left her. She and Lizbeth had woven colorful rag rugs for the floor, and Lizbeth sewed curtains for the two windows, though there was no glass yet to go in them. But with the whitewashed walls the big room had a pleasant air.

  Nicholas’s mother and sister had both taken to knitting gloves and mittens, which they sold to neighbors and to Lizbeth’s sewing customers. Nicholas had also found work with young Frederick Rich and his father in their shoemaking shop. Every day things improved and looked brighter. Every day he could feel himself growing stronger, more fit.

  But still he was haunted. At the end of the summer he had written to Millicent Cooper, but she had not replied. Surely his letter had reached her. Memories as clear and real as the things that were happening around him took his thoughts back to Liverpool and Daniel Hawkins’s visit a year ago. What twists and turns his life had taken since that day! But the old seaman had seemed confident of Millicent’s affection for Nicholas, as though he was privy to her feelings in ways Nicholas could not be. And Nicholas believed him. He believed, too, what he had felt with his own heart and seen with his own eyes. Such a sympathy of mind and spirit did not spring forth between a man and woman for no purpose at all. Why was she ignoring him? Had he offended or frightened her? Was she in trouble, or was she ill?

  On a quiet day as the year drew to a close, Nicholas took pen and paper and sat at the back of the shoemaker’s shop, encased in the pungent fragrance of leather, oils, and wood shavings. It was snowing outside, large, wet flakes that built up quickly so that sky and earth blurred into one landscape of white. He dipped his pen into the thick black ink. Was he a fool to be doing this?

  Dear Miss Cooper,

  I send this letter out of deep regard, and concern for your welfare—and in hopes that my attempt to communicate with you will not meet with your disapproval or offend you in some way I do not intend.

  He started out slowly, but before he knew it he was pouring out his heart to her, and the mere doing so had a healing effect upon his own troubled spirit. Surely something would come of this letter, surely things would work out.

  There were already certain young women of his mother’s acquaintance who had expressed an interest in him. His mother was pleased, and anxious for her son to think seriously about marriage. “I want to hold my grandchildren in my arms before I die,” she told him. She was older, since he and his sister were late children, and her privations in Missouri had aged her further. If Nicholas could please her, he would. If Nicholas could marry where his heart was . . .

  He sealed up the letter, tucked it into his overcoat pocket, and walked out into the snow. He drew the cold, clean air into his nostrils. The smog and smoky fumes of Liverpool seemed like a dream. So did the tangy salt smell of the sea breezes drifting over a gray, weathered New England town. Nauvoo was new and just beginning; all things were possible here. This place, this gathering of people, wove so many varied and radiant dreams into a harmonious pattern. Could not one more strand, diverse as it may be, find a congenial place here among the rest?

  A new year, but no change in Millie’s life, no expectations. Luther would not return until spring. In February the promised letter from Verity arrived at her door. She put down the book she had been reading and opened the envelope, a fluttering anticipation, not altogether pleasant, quickening her pulse.

  Nauvoo, January 1840

  Dear Millie,

  Here is my unexpected news in detail, as much as I have time, space, and presence of mind to relate.

  My new husband, Giles Winter, is a new convert, gleaned through the persistence of his older sister and her husband, who sent missionaries back East to assail him, with orders to persist and persist with him, until he gave way. He arrived in Nauvoo during those first terrible months in time to watch his sister and her new infant die of the ague, which has claimed lives here by the hundreds. At first his faith was sorely tried by this loss, and by the terrible injustice of the loss and suffering he saw around him on every side. In characteristic manner he went straight to the head—straight to the Prophet Joseph himself. As Giles relates it, Joseph listened sympathetically, with tears in his eyes. Then they discussed the various precepts of the gospel as Giles had been taught them, and the Prophet opened his understanding on many a point, and offered to give him a blessing right then and there, which he did.

  Giles walked away from there, as he puts it, a changed man. I met him for the first time the following day as I was carrying lunch to Simon and Edgar at the blacksmithing shop. He spoke casually, a hello to a stranger in passing. But he told me later that as soon as I spoke to him, as soon as his eyes met mine, he felt that he had known me before. From that moment on he pursued me, and
the sweet influence of his spirit made itself felt in my life.

  You may well guess, Millie, that it was Giles who converted me to the principles of Mormonism. Ever so gently he led my understanding, first on one point, then on another. It had to be so, for two cannot love and grow in unity when something so essential as religious belief separates them. My proud, determined reading of the Book of Mormon gave me some little foundation upon which he could build. I could open my heart to Mormonism, I suppose, because I was opening my heart to him, and in many ways that process was one and the same. Suffice it to say that I was baptized on the 18th of December, and nearly froze to death in the process, though the weather was thankfully mild enough for that time of year. Giles himself performed the ordinance. It seemed to me that we walked down into the water as separate people and emerged as one. Two days later we were truly united in the holy bonds of marriage. And Millie, dear heart, my life is made new! I am a different self, and the world I inhabit, though outwardly unchanged, has new dimensions because I see all things differently. Are you laughing by now? I would not blame you if you are. I have succumbed to the idealism of love with the guilelessness of a school girl. And yet, the realities of life here are so harsh and demanding that it is not as though I live in a make-believe world of love’s perfection and pampering; it is not like that at all. Here I go, explaining and excusing myself to you! Let me get back to facts.

  Giles is twenty-six years old, while I am nearly twenty-one. He is a shopkeeper, of all things, though he has the soul of a poet and contributes articles to the Nauvoo Expositor, which are published! We live in our own little house, half a block from Mother and Leah. And it is little, Millie. One room for cooking and eating, socializing and sleeping. But I don’t really mind. This is the frontier, and I am kept busy making my own soap and candles, spinning and weaving, sewing and cooking—all the chores which were allocated to the serving girls back home. Giles says I will be surprised at how quickly Nauvoo will prosper. He predicts that within a year he will make a buying trip to New Orleans and we will see the latest fashions sported on Nauvoo’s streets. Perhaps he is right; I cannot even imagine it. But for now I am content.

  There you have it, Millie. Are you happy for me? You would be if you were here. We are so distant, so removed from each other. I grieve over that. I wish I could share with you all I have learned during these months, and I wish I could share with you my joy. I remain one who loves you and ever will.

  Your friend,

  Verity Winters

  She signed her new last name with a flourish and underlined it with a squiggle of ink. Millie had to smile at that. So I was right, she said to herself. Verity became one of them when she first decided she would throw in her lot with her mother and accept Judith’s fate as her own. Her life is settled and decided now; it has turned off from the old life in a direction I can never follow.

  “Two cannot love and grow in unity when something so essential as religious belief separates them,” Verity had written, not knowing how thoroughly Millie would understand what she was saying. That is the only thing that stands between myself and Nicholas Todd. There. She had given place to the thought. Could it ever have been with Nicholas and me, she wondered, as it is with Verity and her Giles?

  “Don’t be a fool!” she said out loud, catching herself angrily. “There is nothing there to dream about, much less build upon. It was merely a relationship of days—a sympathy that both of us wished to extend, but circumstances, whatever they may be, have prevented us. And so, that is that. Let it be. It is over and done with.”

  She wanted to be happy for Verity. And, deep down in her heart, she was, despite the envy and the icy loneliness that singed the edges of her joy.

  Chapter Eighteen

  In January Almira destroyed another letter from Millie’s Mormon upstart. In March Luther came home, and Almira was glad of it. Now this nonsense would stop. He would marry Millie, and the stranger could write every week then for what good it would do him. His intermittent letters were an irritant that only her son’s marriage would be able to allay.

  Luther came back looking hardened and older from his year spent at sea. The humble, almost imploring demeanor he had assumed with Millie was gone. His eyes, like glittering bits of black coal, bit through her reserve and would not allow her to feign ignorance, conceal her own feelings, or delay his intentions.

  Millie looked at the whole thing a bit coldly. She was not in love with Luther, but she did hold him in high regard. He would be a responsible husband and a good provider. She enjoyed the physical touch of him. And he truly loved her; she had no doubt of that. Those were the positive considerations. The negative she ignored. What good would it do her to face them openly when, from this day on, her best defense would lie in concealing them carefully with what layers of pleasure, companionship, and confidence she could weave from this union? It would not do to be too vulnerable right now.

  The only reprieve she could gain was to set the wedding for spring, the middle of May, when her garden would be in bloom and the martins and sparrows in voice. When she would have had time to grow accustomed to the idea. When it would be seventeen months since she had heard word from Nicholas Todd.

  In a sort of daze she made the preparations, feeling oddly distant from all that was happening. From time to time she wondered what it would have been like if Verity were there, if she had someone to share things with, someone she cared for. If her mother were still alive, would she have any advice to give her daughter? Surely she had known all the secrets and sorrows of being a seaman’s wife. And that was obviously the path fate had marked out for Millie. Verity had gone on without her, and all other doors had been closed to her. This was all that Life planned to offer her; perhaps Life knew best in the long run. She would try to accept it and do her best.

  Three weeks before the wedding, on a mad whim, Millie left her cottage and walked in the direction of the old Copley estate. The few times she had gone by there in the past she had found no one at home and, indeed, little sign of activity about the place. If Jonathan Hammond was there, why, she would invite him to the wedding. What could be more natural than that? She would not admit to herself the childish hopes she was cherishing.

  But it was of little matter. Her hopes were dealt a swift, indifferent death when she saw from a distance that the windows were boarded over and there was absolutely no sign of life. A sad derelict of a house, given up and deserted. She stood staring at it, a terrible burning behind the lids of her eyes.

  “No one lives there any longer, miss.” A fisherman docking his boat in the shallow cove close by had noticed her. He called out to her in a loud voice, but thankfully he was not near enough to see the tears in her eyes.

  “Fellow who bought it went back to Boston. Didn’t have the money he thought he had to fix up the old place.”

  Millie nodded her understanding and turned back toward home. That is that, she told herself for the second time. What is the matter with you? It is over. Can’t you forget and bury it?

  But for a day or two she was restless and walked the shoreline at night, alone with the stars that sat low in the spring sky and the sloshing sounds of the tide. It was here that old Daniel found her. At first he said nothing at all, merely matching his stiff gait to her girlish stride for as long as he could. Then he reached out for her arm.

  “What is it, Daniel?” she asked him, not wanting to hear what he had to say.

  “I hear you’ve set the date for the wedding,” he wheezed. “You’re to marry Luther Fenn.”

  “That I am.”

  “What of this other fellow, the one I left in Liverpool?”

  “He may still be there, for all I know.”

  Millie could feel Daniel’s consternation and sense the cogs of his mind slowly turning. “You’ve lost touch with him, Millie?”

  “I have.” She did not trust herself to speak much. Something within her had begun
to stir and tremble.

  Daniel shook his head slowly. “Then something’s not right. He cared deeply for you.”

  “You don’t know that!”

  “I know it as well as I know I’m a man.”

  “Well, he doesn’t care anymore. Either he is lying dead in Liverpool or he has come to his senses and realizes that what he needs is a good Mormon wife, not a hotheaded fisherman’s daughter.”

  Daniel chuckled under his breath. “You speak truly there,” he said, and his voice held the saucy grin that she could not see. “You’re too much woman for Luther, Millie.”

  “I know that.”

  “Do you love him?”

  “In some ways I do.”

  “Enough to make a life of it?” Daniel regarded her quizzically.

  “I hope so. I truly hope so.” Her voice was nearly swallowed by the sounds of the sea.

  Daniel slid his hand down her arm and clasped her cold fingers in a grip that was amazingly firm, though Millie could feel how frail was the life that pulsed through his depleted flesh.

  “Some of us must wrest what we want from Life; she will not give it up to us easily. You can do it, Millie, if you’ve a mind to. Don’t flinch, and don’t lose faith in yourself.”

  “I won’t, I promise,” Millie said, knowing this was the closest she would come to loving counsel as she embarked on this most solemn step of her life.