by Sarah Price
“Do not suffer on my account, Mary Ann,” Eleanor pressed her. “I wish Edwin nothing but the greatest of happiness. More importantly I recognize that his conduct was flawless. Despite my own imagined hopes, I provoked my own disappointment through my presumptions of more than just friendship between us. And I take comfort that I did not cause others to suffer when I learned the truth. Why should others be afflicted from the pain of my misunderstanding?”
“But I shall suffer, Eleanor! Why, I begin to understand now, at least more so than I did before,” Mary Ann exclaimed. “During all this time, you knew and remained silent. You bore the pain of heartbreak as no other! With composure and discretion. And during my time of need, you supported me. I shall hate myself forever for not having been there for you. For not having seen beyond my own problems and worries to recognize yours!”
She leaped to her feet and wrapped her arms around Eleanor, holding her as tight as she could. “Oh, schwester,” Mary Ann cried. “Forgive me my impertinence and selfishness. I shall never complain again about John Willis! You have acted in a way that no one can find fault with, even if Edwin has!”
Eleanor extracted herself from her sister’s embrace. “You need to understand something,” she said in a tone that hinted at reproach. “Edwin is doing the right thing, Mary Ann. If he had backed away from his promise to Lydia, regardless of how long ago and under what circumstances he made it, I would think all the worse of him! A man without principle is no man at all.”
Mary Ann sighed. “Oh, Eleanor, don’t we know that to be true?”
Eleanor turned once more to the window, staring aimlessly out of the glass panes while Mary Ann put her arm around her older sister’s shoulders. For a long while they stood like that, the two sisters looking at nothing. Then Eleanor shut her eyes and rested her head against Mary Ann’s. Despite her facade of cheer and strength it would take her a long time to overcome the disappointment of Edwin’s marriage to Lydia. For unlike Mary Ann, Eleanor had no Christian Bechtler to comfort her or show her the compassion of a man of true principle.
Still, in true form, Eleanor felt only happiness for her sister. If one thing came from the realization that there had been no sense and even less sensibility to their initial selection of men, at least Mary Ann had found a stalwart supporter in Christian Bechtler. Their unlikely pairing may not have occurred if Mary Ann’s heart had not been broken, her eyes opened, and her character matured.
God’s plan, Eleanor thought as she felt Mary Ann’s arm tighten around her shoulder. God’s plan, indeed.
Chapter Twenty-Five
CHRISTIAN SAT ON the edge of the chair, his knee almost touching Mary Ann’s as she rocked back and forth in the rocking chair. With a blanket tucked under her chin, a flush of red covered her cheeks, and she reached up to push down the cover, never once removing her eyes from attentively staring into his face.
Eleanor kneaded some dough, her hands covered with flour as she listened to Christian’s solid voice as he read out loud from Mary Ann’s Bible:
“How fair you are, my love!
How very fair!
Your eyes are doves behind your veil.
Your hair is like a flock of goats, streaming down the hills of Gilead.
Your teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes that have come up from the washing,
all of which bear twins, and not one among them has lost its young.
Your lips are like a scarlet thread, and your mouth is lovely.
Your cheeks are halves of a pomegranate behind your veil.
Your neck is like the tower of David, built in rows of stone;
on it hang a thousand shields, all of them shields of mighty men.
Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle, that feed among the lilies.
Until the day breathes and the shadows flee,
I will go away to the mountain of myrrh and the hill of frankincense.”
He continued reading, his voice low and soft but with an inflection that maintained Mary Ann’s attention. She seemed to linger on the edge of her chair, waiting breathlessly for him to continue reading. And when he did, she seemed to relax, listening to each and every word he spoke, a soft smile on her lips.
Her deliberate concentration on both the Scripture being read as well as the man reading it was not lost on Eleanor. Working at the counter, her body positioned so that she could watch Mary Ann’s reaction as well as hear Christian’s reading, Eleanor smiled, pleased with how rapidly her sister seemed to be recovering. Five days had passed since Jacob’s visit to the house with his announcement that had stunned the rest of the family. Having been unwillingly prepared for it in advance, thanks to Lydia sharing her secret, Eleanor had been able to maintain her composure even as the fateful Thursday approached.
By now Edwin would be in the throes of preparing for his wedding, and Eleanor did her best not to think of him. She knew there was no sense in pondering the what-ifs and what-could-have-beens. Edwin Fisher was, after all, off-limits to her now, for soon he would be someone else’s husband. To wallow in self-pity would do no one any good, neither Eleanor nor anyone else in her family. So she pushed him out of her mind and focused on other things, such as the transformation in her sister.
To bide her time and force her heart to recover, Eleanor found that watching the budding relationship between Christian and Mary Ann filled her with a healing happiness that felt as if it spread throughout her entire body. While the feisty and opinionated Mary Ann of the past seemed to have disappeared, a new Mary Ann emerged from the ashes, one who showed compassion and reverence for the man she credited with saving her both physically and emotionally. Eleanor often wondered if she might add spiritually to that list as well.
Despite Mary Ann’s steady improvement Christian continued his daily visits. The only change was that, rather than stay all day by her bedside, praying over her and waiting for her to respond, he curtailed his visits so that he stopped by only during the late afternoon. With her health slowly being restored and no need to worry that she might take a turn for the worse, Christian knew it would not be proper to visit with her in a bedroom. By the afternoon Mary Ann would be sitting in the kitchen area among the other family members, thus enabling his visit to adhere to the strictest of propriety and at no time compromise her reputation.
His thoughtfulness did not go unnoticed by Eleanor, although she spoke of it to no one. Instead, she continued to observe Christian and Mary Ann with great optimism, which only grew when Eleanor noticed the change in the timing of his daily visits clearly worked in Christian’s favor. As she grew stronger and more alert, her depression slowly lifting along with her spirits, Mary Ann began to miss his presence and looked forward to the steadfast manner of his company. She seemed to wake in the morning with only one thing on her mind: Christian’s visit. By the time she dressed and sat in the rocking chair, her eyes would alternate from watching the clock to staring out the open door. Her impatience for his arrival would be matched only by her lengthy sighs and frequent tapping of her fingers against the arms of the chair.
Today, however, she made her frustration known to him. When he shut the Bible, Mary Ann reached out her hand and pleaded with him, “Please keep reading, Christian. I so enjoy listening to your soothing voice”
He glanced down when she placed her hand on his arm. For a moment he seemed to contemplate her touch, and while he did so, she made no attempt to remove it. When he finally raised his eyes to look at her, the glow on his face said more than words could. Eleanor saw something in addition to love in his expression; she saw hope.
“Ah,” he said slowly as he placed the Bible on his lap and reached out to gently cover her hand with his own, “but that is the beauty of tomorrow, Mary Ann. The anticipation of what is yet to come!”
She thought for a moment and then searched his face, that pleading tone still in her voice when she asked, “You will come tomorrow, won’t you, Christian?”
“Tomorrow is Sunday, my dear Mar
y Ann.”
“But we don’t have worship tomorrow.”
He gave her a soft smile. “You are correct. It is our off-Sunday.”
“Then you will still come?”
He tilted his head slightly and watched her, his adoration and devotion to her more than apparent in his expression. Slowly, he nodded his head. “We have much more to read in the Song of Solomon, do we not?” He held the Bible for a moment, his hands wrapped around it as if holding a cherished gift. Eleanor suspected he was holding it like that not just because it was the Bible but because it was Mary Ann’s Bible. Reluctantly he held it out for her to take from him. When Mary Ann took it, her fingers brushed against his.
Eleanor looked away, wishing the room was larger so that they could have some privacy. She remembered how Mary Ann used to complain about Christian’s long-winded, monotonous sermons. She knew her sister would most likely never complain again. Her image of him had changed, and she had seen through the exterior of an older, single man who remained calm in the worst of situations and displayed little emotion. She had found the inner man, one who remained devoted to those he cared about, dealing with the most unlikely of adversaries and situations while he waited patiently for the tide to shift in his favor.
“Until tomorrow then, Mary Ann,” he said as he stood.
She smiled at him, her eyes taking him in before she looked down at the Bible in her hands.
Christian started to walk out of the room, heading toward the front door. He hesitated, however, before he opened it. He looked over his shoulder at Mary Ann, who sat with the Bible on her lap, her fingers tracing the very place he had just touched. Satisfied that she was fine, he cleared his throat and met Eleanor’s gaze. “If I may, Eleanor, I’d like to have a word with you. There is something I need to discuss.”
Surprised, Eleanor nodded and gave the dough one more good knead and then placed it in a wooden bowl to rise. She covered it with a kitchen towel before quickly washing her hands under the faucet. Pieces of dough fell from her fingers, the water washing away the dry feeling of flour that clung to the sides of her fingernails.
As she followed him outside, she dried her hands on her black apron, wondering at the formality of Christian’s request to speak to her. She didn’t doubt for a moment that the discussion was not about something but, rather, someone, and she braced herself for what she suspected he wanted to talk about with her. Certainly his request to marry Mary Ann would not come as a surprise to any of the women in the Detweiler family. It did, however, seem surprising that he would request an audience with her and not Maem.
After being in the house all morning, Eleanor felt refreshed by the cool autumn air. The bright yellow and red leaves had fallen a week ago, and now only the brown oak leaves remained, along with the pale green of the silver maples. When the breeze blew, the drying leaves rattled and some of them broke free from the tree branches and floated through the air.
Eleanor stood before Christian and waited for him to speak. She thought of how Christian and Mary Ann started their relationship, Christian comparing her to a love long lost and Mary Ann not even thinking of him at all. The bittersweetness of the moment caught Eleanor off guard as she realized that, despite all of the pain Mary Ann had felt over the past few weeks, God had provided her with a man who far exceeded John Willis in every way possible.
“I must ask something of you,” Christian started, enunciating each word slowly and deliberately. He seemed nervous, shuffling his feet and clutching his hands behind his back. “It is quite important, and I can only ask this of you. No one else.”
Eleanor tried to hide her amusement at this anxious side of the usually confident and calm Christian Bechtler. “What is it, Preacher?”
“I have heard about the plight of your friend, Edwin Fisher,” he said.
Immediately the smile disappeared from her face. She had expected a discussion about him and Mary Ann, not a mention of the one person she truly hoped to forget. “Edwin Fisher?”
If he was aware of the pain that Eleanor felt at the mention of Edwin’s name, he did not show it. Instead, Christian merely nodded his head. “The one and the same, ja.”
“What . . . why is his story of importance to either one of us?” she managed to ask, despite being flustered. She could not imagine any circumstance in which Edwin Fisher would be of concern to Christian Bechtler and even less to her!
“Ah.” Christian held up a finger as if to make a point. “A man who stands by his principle, regardless of his true affections, is a righteous man, indeed.”
She blushed, remembering the sacrifice Christian had made so many years ago. Although in a different situation, Christian had demonstrated the same characteristics and been rewarded with doing so when he was nominated to be one of the preachers for their church district. At the same time, she remembered the plight of his niece, the very woman who now had a child both fathered and denied by John Willis.
“I understand Edwin Fisher has been removed from the family farm and has no means of supporting himself in the way he had intended,” Christian said. “I find that most troublesome, Eleanor, for a man who stood by a promise made so long ago. The respect I have for his commitment is quite great. There should be more men like him in the world, wouldn’t you agree?”
She forced herself to nod once in recognition of Christian’s questions, but she could not speak. How could she argue with Christian’s perspective while denying her own angst at Edwin’s upcoming nuptials? In her mind she recalled Lydia on the very first day she brought Eleanor into her confidence. Surely Lydia must have had an ulterior motive for doing so, especially since they had only just met. Yet now that Lydia was marrying Edwin, Eleanor could only wonder why Lydia felt threatened at all. She made up her mind that Lydia was just a silly woman with confidence issues. Clearly Lydia had nothing to be concerned about for Edwin stood by her, even in the face of losing his parents’ farm.
“I’ve thought about this man since I heard of his disinheritance. It has kept me awake at night, and only recently was I able to come up with an idea.”
“An idea?” she echoed incredulously.
“Ja, a proposition for this young man.”
She could hardly imagine what Christian had in mind.
“It turns out that my own tenants at the farmhouse are moving west to join with that Colorado Amish community.”
“Colorado? You mean the settlement headed by Ephraim Troyer?”
He nodded his head solemnly. Many people were moving west, joining smaller communities of Amish with greater access to land. Colorado was one of the latest places that seemed to attract aspiring farmers from Pennsylvania. “I’ve corresponded with Troyer over the years since he moved there. It’s a gut place with a lot of inexpensive land out there. With what my tenants have saved, they intend to buy a 120-acre plot to farm. A wunderbarr opportunity for them to create something to pass along to their children and grandchildren.”
“Of course,” she said. “But what does Edwin Fisher have to do with that? Or me either, for that matter?”
“I should like you to write him a letter, extending my personal invitation for him to move to my farmhouse and take over the farm.”
Eleanor could hardly believe what she was hearing. The generosity Christian was bestowing on Edwin—and Lydia too, for that matter—conflicted with Eleanor’s realization that she would have to live in the same community as Edwin and his new bride. To see them at worship service every two weeks? To watch them as their family grew? Surely that was more than she could bear.
“Why me, Preacher?”
“I seem to recall that you were quite friendly with him.” There was no malice or suspicion in his words. With his rapid departure from Quarryville and his concern over helping his niece, Eleanor doubted that Christian knew anything from the lips of Widow Jennings or Jacob Miller about her association with Edwin Fisher. And if he did, he was gentleman enough to keep it discreet.
“His sister married my half b
ruder,” she said at last, feeling it was the safest comment to make, admitting the reason for being friendly with him without admitting the extent of that friendliness. “I know he is a good worker, for he helped at my daed’s farm when John took it over from us.”
“So I suspected. Of course, if you feel good about Edwin, then I take that as the highest of recommendations. And since I am not very familiar with Edwin Fisher, he is more apt to accept the offer if it comes from a friend.” He leveled his gaze at her. “That is why I’d like you to pen the letter. The grossdaadihaus is certainly large enough to accommodate a young family for several years. I’m sure Edwin and his fraa would be quite content there.”
How could she possibly say no? After everything Christian had done for the family, especially for Mary Ann, Eleanor knew she had only one choice, and that was to say yes. However, reaching out to Edwin to invite him to bring Lydia to Quarryville would be one of the hardest things she had ever done. To put pen to paper and draft a letter that remained friendly yet distant, personal yet professional, interested yet aloof? What Christian asked of her was more than she thought she could do, but she knew she could not deny him.
“Of course, Christian,” she said, hoping her voice held no emotion to give away how much she dreaded this favor he asked. “I’d be happy to write this letter for you.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
October 26
Dear Edwin,
I trust that all is well with the upcoming wedding. Maem and I will be sorry to not be able to attend. Unfortunately, as Fanny and John may have relayed to you, Mary Ann has been ill, and we feel it best not to leave her unattended. Please know that we send our best wishes.
I am writing to you at the request of Christian Bechtler, one of our preachers and also the owner of a harness-making shop in Quarryville. While personally unknown to you, Christian Bechtler is the finest of men with a sincere offer to you that you might take over the management of his farm.