The Courtship of the Vicar's Daughter (5 page)

Don’t think about that
, she told herself. It became quite easy to keep her mind occupied some minutes later when her brothers bustled into the house for their lunch. Dale and Harold were the oldest, at twenty-six and twenty-nine years of age. Oram and Fernie, fourteen and fifteen, were next in ages, then Jack and Edgar. Except for Mercy and Edgar, who had inherited their mother’s hazel eyes, the Sanders siblings were all cast from the same mold as their father, with green eyes, ruddy complexions, and strapping physiques.

“After we eat, I want you to scrub the water trough,” her father was saying to Jack from the head of the table between bites of roast beef, boiled potatoes, and cabbage. Clicks of pewter cutlery against crockery plates provided background noises against the usual mixture of banter and complaint, sprinkled with occasional profanity.

“Aw, Papa—” the ten-year-old started but then clamped his mouth shut after receiving a look of warning. While Willet Sanders had taught his sons by example that authority in general was to be scorned, his own rule was supreme—and correction came swiftly in the form of a blow with the back of a hand or a strapping.

“I seen those school men out front,” Oram said while managing to chew at the same time. “You ran ’em off, didn’t you, Papa?”

Busy with the meal in front of him, Mercy’s father grunted something in the affirmative.

“You should ha’ called me,” Fernie said. With one deft movement he transferred cabbage juice from his chin to his sleeve. “I would’ve took the shotgun after ’em.”

“Tried to.” He flung Mercy a wounded glance. “Now they’ll only be comin’ back to pester us.”

“They were just trying to help Jack and Edgar,” Mercy argued, grimacing inwardly as Dale plunged a food-grimed fork into the butter crock. Long ago she’d given up trying to get her family to use a butter knife. And about the same time she’d stopped putting butter on her own bread.

“They don’t care nothin’ about Jack and Edgar,” Harold, the oldest, declared. “They just want that spinnin’ jenny for the school yard.”

“It’s a merry-go-round, not a spinning jenny,” Mercy corrected. “And they do care about Jack and Edgar. Why would they risk coming out here for the sake of something they’re too old to enjoy?”

“Well, what’s the difference anyhow?”

After the meaning of his question became clear to her, Mercy replied, “A spinning jenny is for weaving, a merry-go-round is for playing. It twirls around in a circle as children ride upon it.” At least that was what she had read in a book.

“It does?” asked Edgar, perking up considerably. “Can it go fast?”

“Now, don’t you go getting ideas.” His father waved a fork at him. “You’ve enough to do here without takin’ fancy notions about school.”

“Mebbe they should put a spinnin’ jenny in the school yard instead,” Harold snickered. “Give ’em somethin’ useful to do instead of recitin’ poems.” This caused several more snickers, for Harold was considered the family wit.

“Give ’em something useful to do,” Jack echoed.

“Shut up and eat,” their father ordered.

Until she began attending the Wesleyan Chapel two years ago, Mercy had not known that there were families who actually prayed before meals and carried on pleasant conversation as they ate. Did those families know how blessed they were?

She cleaned up the kitchen, put a pot of soup on the stove for supper, then went upstairs into her room. At the mirror over her chest of drawers, she stood untying the blue ribbon so she could comb her hair. She knew she was too old, at twenty-three, to tie her light brown hair at the nape of her neck, but it was so thick and curly that it tended to shed pins all day when she attempted a chignon.
Nobody cares how I look anyway
, she thought. Mother had been the only person to tell her she was pretty, but then, Mercy supposed all mothers told their daughters that. At least she hoped they did, for it had been nice to hear.

After retying the ribbon, she stared at the mirror in a rare moment of self-scrutiny. The heavy-lidded eyes of her father and brothers had somehow bypassed her. While her own hazel eyes were not disproportionately small, they were fringed with short, wispy brown lashes that certainly did nothing to call attention to them. Two straight, fawn-colored slashes formed her eyebrows, and her nose turned slightly upward at the tip. Underneath curved a nondescript mouth with lips neither too heavy nor too thin. At least her complexion and teeth were good, for she was meticulous in her grooming, if only to prove to herself that being a Sanders did not mean a total lack of pride in one’s appearance.

She went downstairs to the pantry next, where dozens of quart jars stood in neat rows on the shelves. Most were filled with the bounty of her well-tended vegetable garden, along with jams of sloeberry and crab apple, preserved pears and apples, and honey from the beehives behind the barn. Taking a basket from the bottom shelf, she set a jar of pickled beets at one end, some crab apple jam at the other, and wedged a loaf of raisin bread between them to keep the jars from knocking against each other.

“Where you goin’, Mercy?” Edgar asked, coming into the kitchen for a dipper of water just as she turned the corner from the pantry.

Mercy smiled. She loved her brothers, all of them, but felt particularly responsible for Jack and Edgar. If only she had come to know the Lord when they were much younger and still very pliable! For now, try as she might, she could not persuade them to accompany her to chapel. A contempt for religion was another legacy passed on to them by their father. Any conversations she attempted with them about her newfound faith were met with blank stares and much fidgeting. Their need for spiritual training was another reason Mercy
had
to persuade her father to allow the two youngest to go to school. At least there, they would have no choice but to sit through Vicar Phelps’s chapel services every Monday.

“I’m going to Mrs. Brent’s,” she replied. “Would you ask Papa to let you come inside and stir the soup every now and then?”

“All right,” he shrugged. “Why do you spend so much time with that old woman?”

“Because she’s my friend.”

But her friend was dying. Mrs. Brent, who lived at the end of Nettle Lane, was instrumental in getting Mercy to attend the Wesleyan Chapel. Every Sunday for years the elderly woman had passed by in a wagon pulled by two black dray horses driven by her caretaker, Elliott. If Mercy or one of her family happened to be outside, Mrs. Brent would have Elliott stop. “We’ve lots of room back here,” she would call, her wrinkled face bearing a sunny smile. Even Mercy’s father couldn’t bring himself to be rude, though he never accepted the invitation. But one day over two years ago, Mercy found herself sitting between the white-haired woman and her housemaid, Janet, in the bed of the wagon.

Mercy’s friendship with Mrs. Brent opened up a whole new world to her. Besides introducing her to the Gospel, the former schoolmistress taught Mercy to speak correctly, to read and cipher numbers, to use proper table manners, to embroider, and other little niceties that her mother had never had the opportunity to learn.

Mercy’s flock of a dozen guineas accompanied her across the yard, clucking their usual
pot-rack!
sounds. The size of small chickens, they were a dark gray color with light gray speckles. “Go back!” She shooed them away from the gate lest they follow her.

Alternating the heavy basket from the crook of one arm to the other, she walked the half mile. Mrs. Brent’s stone cottage was in a sad state of disrepair, with weeds choking the garden, a shutter hanging askew beside an upstairs window, and broken shingles on the roof. Mercy hated to think that Elliott was as lazy as her brothers, but she didn’t recall his allowing things to go to pieces when Mrs. Brent was up and about. If she could spend more time here, she would be willing to attempt some of the repairs. But her father already complained enough about her leaving her chores to make the daily visit down the lane.

Janet, who seemed to be more conscientious than her husband, answered the door. “You’re so dear to visit her, Miss Sanders,” she said, greeting Mercy with a smile. She was a softly rounded young woman with soot-colored hair and a jutting chin.

Mercy glanced at the staircase and lowered her voice. “How is she today?”

“The same—perhaps a little worse,” Janet whispered. “Would you like to go on up?”

“Yes,” she replied and scooped the jar of pickled beets from the basket before handing it to Janet. The first bedroom from the upstairs landing was Mrs. Brent’s. A rock the size of a teapot kept the door propped open so that Janet could listen for her call.

“I
thought
I heard your voice, Mercy,” Mrs. Brent said. She lay propped on pillows against an iron bedstead, so frail that it appeared a mild wind could sweep her away like a fallen leaf. Palsy, Doctor Rhodes had diagnosed, had robbed her of the ability to walk and now was moving its way up through her arms.

“I brought you some beets,” Mercy said, leaning forward to kiss the wrinkled forehead.

“You did?”

She held the jar up so that the sunlight slanting through the window would touch the glass.

“Look how they sparkle like rubies,” Mrs. Brent breathed, lifting a trembling hand to touch the jar.

“There, there—don’t tire yourself.” Mercy eased the hand back to her friend’s chest and took a seat in the bedside chair. “I just hope your digestion can still bear them.”

“Oh, I can bear them all right. Do you think there will be pickled beets in heaven, Mercy?”

“Mrs. Brent … don’t talk that way.”

“Oh, forgive me,” the gentle soul replied. “I don’t want to cause you sadness. But you must understand that I’m looking forward to that place, dear child. Remember, we weren’t created for this world.”

A lump came to Mercy’s throat. “It’s just that I’m going to miss you so much.”

“But only for a little while.” Mrs. Brent’s faded blue eyes were shining now. “But here … hold my hand. We’ve plans to make.”

Memories of sitting at her dying mother’s bedside assailed Mercy as she wrapped her fingers carefully around the fragile hand. Yes, she knew that a better place awaited her friend, but such talk was so hard to hear. And deep inside she believed, though without rationale, that if plans were not made for the afterlife, then the death could not occur. If she did not love Mrs. Brent so much, she would have made some excuse and left the room.

“First, my little herd,” the woman said, seeming not to notice her discomfort. “There are six now, counting the two calves born this spring. I want you to have them when I’m gone.”

Mercy had to shake her head. Mrs. Brent’s cattle, named after flowers, were like the children she never had. “Mrs. Brent …”

“They’ll not be allowed to accompany me to heaven, Mercy,” she said in a thin but firm voice. “And I know you’ll take good care of them.”

“But Elliott and Janet …”

“I’m leaving them the horses and wagon and whatever money is left. But they’re planning to live with Elliott’s family and hire on at the cheese factory, so there will be no place for my herd.” Beseechingly the old woman looked at Mercy. “I’m too weak to argue over this, dear. Please say you’ll take them.”

Mercy gave her a careful squeeze of the hand. “If it will make you happy.”

“Yes.” Letting out a sigh, Mrs. Brent lay back on her pillows to collect her breath for a moment. “The land and house go back to the squire,” she said presently. “Janet will be taking my clothes for her mother-in-law—except the nightgown I’ll be buried in, of course. Please remind her it’s the blue one.”

“Yes, the blue one.”

“As for the rest of my belongings—they’ve been in this house for so long that I feel as if I should leave them for whoever settles here. But I want you to take my Bible. And if there is anything else you would like to have—”

“Mrs. Brent, I can’t talk about this anymore.” Mercy blinked the sting from her eyes.

“Have I made you sad? I’ll stop then.” She looked up at Mercy with the most tender of expressions. “Sing to me, child?”

“Yes, of course. What would you like to hear?”

“Oh, you choose this time. Something about heaven?”

“Very well.” Mercy thought for a minute, and managing to stay on key in spite of a lump in her throat, she sang one of the hymns she’d learned at chapel:

There is a land of pure delight, where saints immortal reign,
Infinite day excludes the night, and pleasures banish pain.
Could we but climb where Moses stood, and view the land-
    scape o’er,
Not Jordan’s stream, nor death’s cold flood, should fright us
    from the shore.

Mrs. Brent’s eyes were closed as she lay back on the pillow, but her creased lips moved along with the words. Mercy completed two more verses, and then sang “Jesus, Still Lead On,” one of her friend’s particular favorites. After she was finished, she thought Mrs. Brent was asleep and wondered if she should leave, but then the faded eyes opened.

“You’ve such a pure voice,” the woman said with a little smile. “Your babies will be so sweet tempered from listening to your lullabies.”

Mercy felt a dull sadness at the futility of those words, but it wasn’t the appropriate time to contradict her just now. She returned the smile. “Thank you, Mrs. Brent. Now why don’t you try to sleep?”