Nicholas did not attend general conference meetings to socialize, as some did. He loved the concentration of power he perceived there as the Saints united in purpose and faith. Sidney Rigdon was an impressive orator, but Nicholas would far rather listen to Joseph Smith speak. No one could make the gospel seem as rich and alive as the Prophet could; no one else emanated such tender, unqualified love as one could feel in the Prophet’s gaze when he looked over his people.
At first Nicholas did not even notice the commotion beside him as he concentrated on the words of the speaker. Then, as the sounds began to pierce his consciousness, he heard a voice call out, “Catch her! She’s fainting!”
He turned just in time to open his arms and cradle the young woman’s body as she fell. He lifted her effortlessly—she weighed no more than a child—and carried her to where his wagon rested in a small stand of trees. There was shade here, and quiet. He doused a cloth in water from the nearby river and bathed her forehead and pale, slender arms until he saw her begin to revive. Her eyes, when she opened them, were the softest brown he had ever seen.
“Where am I?” she murmured. There was such a mingling of fear and confusion in the brown eyes that Nicholas placed his hand over hers, which felt soft and smooth as a little white lily.
“You fainted in the press of people,” he told her. “I brought you here.” Then, as the confusion remained in her gaze, he added belatedly, “I am Brother Nicholas Todd. What is your name? Where are your people?”
“I have no people,” she replied, her voice barely more than a whisper. “I am here all alone.”
“But you must live somewhere, with someone . . .”
She sighed and struggled to raise herself. Her thick hair, which hung in soft curls to her shoulders, was the same warm shade of brown as her eyes. “My name is Helena Miller. I came over from England three months ago. My father had been a tin miner in Cornwall, but he died when I was a child, and my mother took sick our first day on the riverboat out of New Orleans.” Her eyes seemed to grow larger as she spoke, and to take on a distant, almost haunted expression. “She lived long enough to see Zion with her own eyes, but died two days after we arrived.”
“Have you no other relatives? No brothers and sisters?”
“No, there is no one. No one at all.”
Overwhelmed with pity for her, Nicholas gazed into her eyes and was surprised to see in their rich depths a quiet confidence—a faith, really—that reached out and spoke to his own.
“What have you been doing to take care of yourself? Where have you been living?”
“That was three weeks ago. One of the sisters on the ship has a family of nine children. I live with her and help with the care of them.”
“In a two-roomed cabin?”
“One room, actually.” Her small mouth tightened resolutely; it was a lovely mouth, gentle and kind. “We get by.”
“That is hard to believe!” Nicholas was becoming worked up and struggled hard to control himself. He demanded with sudden insight, “Have you enough to eat?”
“Not always.”
“That’s why you fainted, isn’t it?” He grabbed hold of her hand. “This must be ended. You’re too frail for such treatment. I’m taking you home with me.”
It was a resolve of the moment, but as soon as he had made it Nicholas felt the rightness of it flow through him. He drew a deep breath to calm himself. “My mother is ailing and could use help about the house, since my sister is largely occupied with her work as a seamstress.” He paused. She was watching him, silent and wide-eyed. “They will welcome you, I assure you.” He smiled and gently smoothed the hand he held. “There, that’s settled and done.”
For the first time he could ever remember Nicholas left meeting early. He drove the young girl to the new house he had built for his mother. He fixed her something to eat, then insisted she lie down to rest in his own room while he went back for his mother and sister.
When he explained what he had done his mother made no objection. In fact, her eyes took on that pleased, almost glazed look with which he had become so familiar. Prospects for Nicholas again! He could hear her mind churning out the thought. But, for the first time, it did not offend him. For the first time he had thoughts of his own that coincided with hers.
From the beginning Ellen Todd liked the slim, quiet English convert; in fact, she was wont to say that the first time she set eyes on Helena, walking a bit bleary-eyed and unsteadily into her kitchen, she knew this was the girl Nicholas would choose for his wife. Nicholas did not begrudge her the obvious triumph she felt, because he knew it was laced through with joy. She was not well, and the relief she felt at his marriage was understandable—in fact, it pleased him to be able to make her happy at last.
Five weeks after Helena’s arrival in their household, where she fit in so beautifully and harmoniously, the two were married by Apostle Heber Kimball. Helena wore a truly elegant dress fashioned by her young sister-in-law, Lizbeth, and everyone who saw her agreed they had never set eyes upon a lovelier bride. A party was hosted in the bowery following the ceremony. The warm Indian summer weather held. Mellow and fragrant, the evening spun itself out until the tired couple sneaked away to the small cabin Nicholas had fixed up as their home.
Watching Helena move about in the cozy, lace-curtained room, Nicholas felt a warm confidence regarding his choice, the same confidence he had felt from the very beginning. Growing to know her better had not dispelled any of the aura of gentleness and kindness that clung to her. She had no great faults, no obvious weaknesses, nothing he had discovered to mar the beauty of her spirit. He felt himself a fortunate man. And he loved her tenderly, though he felt his affection did not match her own. Time would amend that, and would complete his healing. It had to; heaven would be merciful to him and grant it so.
Several days following their wedding, sometime past the middle of November, Nicholas was out walking alone by the river, a habit he still enjoyed whatever the temperament of the weather. His mind was empty of all thought or reflection as he enjoyed the beauties around him. Suddenly, a picture of Millicent Cooper came into his mind, a picture so vivid that it startled him. With it came an impression that she was in need of assistance of some kind, an impression urgent enough that he found himself searching for a secluded, overgrown place where he might lean against a tree, close his eyes, and offer a prayer for her.
He prayed a long time, but when he opened his eyes again a sense of peace flowed through him. He shook his head in wonderment at what he had just experienced, and picked his way back to the main path. However, he did not think it strange that a prompting should be given him concerning the girl in Gloucester. It seemed a natural order. For who else was aware of her and concerned for her welfare? Surely this meant that his prayers for her through the years were acceptable in the sight of heaven.
He went on his way thoughtfully, no longer aware of the landscape through which he walked as he contemplated life’s entanglements and purposes which seemed so strange and wonderful, so above his own ways.
Millie heard the wind, like the keening of dying spirits, shiver around the sides of the schoolhouse. Shivering herself, she urged Thomas Erwin to dismiss school early and send the children home. A New England northeaster was blowing up, and this late in November it promised to be wicked indeed. Millie herself wasted no time in hastening home and battening down the hatches, protecting what she could from the gale force of the wind that was building, building, gathering strength as it churned the sand into spiraled eddies that whined with voices of their own.
All day the wind built and the sky became a deep, green-tinged black, with eerie lights playing through it. No living thing should be out in such weather, yet Millie knew there were ships out in the Georges or fishing off Sable Island that would be limping through the slashing seas toward a safe port. Her skin went cold at the thought of them, and she uttered a little wordless prayer in the ba
ck of her mind.
The sun did not go down; it had been blotted out long before nightfall. The storm possessed the sky and in its fierceness drove all the elements before its cold breath—a breath that had the smell of death in it. Millie, sitting alone with a book and a cup of hot tea, felt the house rock to the rhythm of the blast. She looked up from her book, straining to hear the sounds that the storm made, a dread sensation creeping over her that she was not alone.
“What is it?” she said aloud, and was flooded by a memory of the autumn morning beside the sea. Was it the spirits of the dead calling from their watery graves to her? Here in this house she had never felt a sense of the other world so strongly.
Something as powerful as an audible voice spoke the words, “Norman’s Woe.” Without hesitation Millie bundled up tightly, took her father’s lantern, and walked into the black night and the storm.
She fought her way up Hesperus Road to the feet of the rocky promontory where lay the reef of Norman’s Woe. Long before she drew near she could make out the swinging lights of many lanterns and hear the muffled warning of the fog bells sounding over the rock-bound coast. Scrambling on her hands and knees she slid and stumbled down the rough slope until she reached the broad shore, where the white water, whipped by the wind into boiling towers, rose before her like a living barrier. She felt herself shrink inwardly but forced her feet to move forward.
The sand and the shallow pools by the rocks were littered with debris from the wreck of a ship whose slanted, sinking hulk Millie glimpsed once imperfectly, then again as lightning parted the sky and the green lights glowed. Dozens of dark, silent shapes moved over the beach, bending and swooping like awkward gray birds as they scooped up the spoils. Millie called out, but she could not hear her own voice, and she knew no one else could. The wreckage of the dying ship would be picked as clean by these cold shapes around her as the bones of the dead are by black-plumed birds of prey. Millie turned. There was no reason for her to be here. She tightened her hand on the dancing, wavering light she carried and headed toward the slope. But a sudden sound made her freeze and then turn slowly around again.
In a shallow pool not three yards from her feet a large wooden chest was lodged between two rocks. The sound was coming from there. Millie moved closer, her eyes wide and cautious in the weird light, her heart beating with fear. The sound came again, and she knew with certainty this time that it was the distressed cry of a child.
Using a length of wood as a lever, she pried the battered lid open and, lifting her lantern above her, peered inside. Two big eyes stared back at her, dark and frightened, framed by hair as wet and stringy as seaweed.
Millie reached out slowly. “I won’t hurt you,” she said. The child could not hear her voice, but she saw her lips move and felt Millie’s compassion reach out to her. She raised thin, shivering arms, and Millie secured the lantern, then lifted her out of the coffin and wrapped her long cape around the slight, trembling form. She could not have said how she managed to drag herself up the incline, balancing the swinging light and the weight of the child in her arms. By the time she reached her own cottage her whole body felt numb with the cold and the strain.
Once inside, she collapsed on the floor, and the child huddled near her, both drawing deep, ragged breaths but speaking no word. When her strength returned Millie carefully removed the child’s sodden clothing, rubbed her down with a clean towel, and dressed her in a soft muslin frock that she dug out of the big chest where her mother had long ago stored her own outgrown clothes. She spoke as she worked, explaining what she was doing, humming under her breath as a way of soothing the child.
The large eyes moved about, watching Millie, and at length the terror in their gaze subsided. Millie warmed broth and coaxed her to eat a few bites. Seeing the girl’s weariness, she lifted her and tucked her into the bed under the eaves where Millie had spent her own childhood.
The blue eyes fluttered and closed, protected by thin, blue-veined lids. The white face was almost translucent in the yellow glow of the candle. A fairy child, Millie thought, given up by the sea.
Studying the sleeping girl, Millie judged her to be three, perhaps four years old, no more. She was sent to me, she realized, a great shudder running through her. Some power called me out into the storm. The words “Norman’s Woe” had come distinctly into her mind. But why her?
The wind continued to rage through the dark night, and a deluge of icy rain soaked the land and slashed the bucking seas in long silver streaks. In a stranger’s bed the lost child slept the sleep of exhaustion, but Millie kept watch, cooing and crooning to her through the lonely gray hours before daylight.
The next morning the torn and battered land shivered beneath the cold sun. Bleary-eyed, the people of Gloucester turned out to view the wreckage and assess what damage the great storm had done.
Millie woke late, her muscles cramped from sitting for hours in the rocker. She felt drugged and light-headed. The child still slept, so thin and motionless that Millie’s breath caught in her throat and she feared the little one might have died in her sleep. But reassured by the gentle rising of her chest, Millie washed and dressed and did half her morning chores before she heard the child wake and stir.
Millie was amazed anew at the deep blue of the girl’s round eyes set in her pinched, white face. She spoke to the child, who made no attempt to respond. Gently and unhurriedly Millie dressed and fed her, explaining all the while that they two must walk into town and see what they could discover concerning her family and the ship that had carried her here. The docile child, her eyes nearly free of the alarm that had clouded them the night before, did all Millie asked.
Millie went straight to the wharfmaster, who knew of the drowned ship, but they had not recovered a ship’s log or even a list of her passengers, route, or destination. He was not even sure of her name.
“We think she was the Lady Elizabeth out of New York heading for Portsmouth, but we can’t be sure. There were no survivors as far as anyone knows.” He peered down at the child.
Millie explained, and he shook his head back and forth as he listened. “I’ll send out a bulletin right away,” he assured her, “and we’ll see what we come up with.” He rubbed his chin. “May not be much. Can you keep her till then?”
Millie nodded.
“What’s her name? Has she told you?”
“I can’t get her to speak.”
He slowly shook his head again. “Shock, I suppose. ’Tis a pity, and a great wonder that you discovered her, Millie. Well, leastways she’s well off with you. I’ll keep in touch.” He touched the brim of his hat with thick, tobacco-stained fingers.
“Should we put an advertisement in the New York newspapers?”
“You might do that. Cost a pretty penny, and what can you tell of her, save a description? But you might do that if you’d like.”
“Do you think the trunk might still be there on the beach? I’d like to look through it again. I don’t remember seeing anything last night, but—”
“Nothing’s left on the beach, lass. It’s been picked clean as a bone. Take the child with you, and don’t go expectin’ no miracles.”
Millie smiled up at him, a hard lump in her throat. She was hoping for a miracle, though not the one he spoke of. She was hoping against all hope that if the child’s parents had perished in the wreck of the ship, no one would come forward to claim her. She was hoping that the storm gods had indeed sent her as a gift—a precious, unsought gift from the sea.
Days passed, then a week, then two weeks. Millie had paid for carefully written, meticulously thorough advertisements in both Boston and New York papers, but she heard no word at all. She began to let hope flutter within her like a fledgling bird. But she was also dismayed. Not once since the night of the child’s arrival had she spoken a word. Millie knew trauma could do strange things to the mind, and she tried not to worry. Surely in time something wou
ld surface in the girl’s thoughts, some inner resource rise to aid her. But meanwhile, her silence merely increased the mystery that clung to her. “Child of the sea,” Millie whispered often, at times almost believing that she was some sort of a changeling, different from Millie and the children she taught at the school. Her eyes were as wide and blue and fathomless as the sea, and her hair was fair, almost white, like new sunlight on the first days of spring. She looked as if she could be Millie’s own child, and that haunted Millie, too. She began calling her Adria, which means “woman from the sea.”
When a letter from Verity arrived a week before Christmas telling of the birth of her second daughter, Millie didn’t mind. For the first time she had something warm and tangible to wrap her own heart around, and talk of daughters did not fill her with pain.
We have named this one Emmeline, and she is as different from Katy as she can be. Where Katherine is precocious, constantly teasing or begging, Emmeline seems quiet and docile and content to look on. Of course, I know it is far too early to tell, but one senses these things. Already there are signs that Leah’s Joshua will give Katherine a run for her money once he figures out how to walk on his stout little legs. I predict he will be as big and burly as his blacksmith father, and I hope half as gentle and kind.
Are you well, Millie! I hope you will be blessed during this season when we celebrate the brightest, best gift ever sent to this earth. I pray that God, who cares for all his children, will bless you with love.
She meant with a child, of course, though she was fearful of stating the words directly. Millie looked over to where Adria sat, playing with a rosy-faced doll Millie had made for her. “Your prayers have been answered, dear friend,” she whispered. The air around them was sweet and melodious as the sea when the colors of sunset brush its surface with gentle shades of vermillion, burnished gold, and orchid as pale as the blush on a fairy’s wing; when the evening birds raise their hushed lullaby to the sky, and the tide, with the same hushed murmur, caresses the shore; when one can almost hear the rhythmic breathing of nature in that great, glowing space.
The Heart that Truly Loves Page 19