Lilac Spring (16 page)

“You’ve always gotten your way with your father, between smiles and tears. Neither will move him this time—even if you were allowed to use them. But as Doc Turner said, he mustn’t be upset about anything.”

Her aunt rose from the bed and smoothed the counterpane. “Now, I suggest you wash your face and comb your hair and begin acting like the sensible young lady you were brought up to be. I know you have it in you somewhere. If you want to do something useful, come to the kitchen and help me with supper.

“I have to go into Hatsfield tomorrow. My cousin Miriam isn’t doing at all well since Patrick passed away. And with Celia’s husband sick, I’ll need you to see to dinner tomorrow morning. Do you think you’ve learned enough to manage that?”

Her aunt’s words acted like a splash of cold water on her flushed face. She rose and walked over to the dresser. “Yes, Aunt Phoebe. I’ll manage perfectly,” she said through gritted teeth. If she’d wanted sympathy, she should have known better than to talk to her aunt.

After Aunt Phoebe left her room, however, Cherish followed her advice. With her face washed and hair brushed, she felt somewhat better. Perhaps the crying had done her good. As she gave her face a final inspection in the mirror, she suddenly squared her shoulders and lifted her chin.

She would do as Aunt Phoebe asked and prepare the finest Sunday dinner Haven’s End had ever seen. She’d make her aunt proud.

And some day, no matter how long it took, she’d make Silas proud.

T
hat evening, after leaving the sardine factory, Silas felt too tired to wash or eat, discouragement bowing him down more strongly than the heaviest ship’s timber. He sat for a long time in the grassy meadow behind Tobias’s shack.

God, what do You want of me?
he asked. The words of Pastor McDuffie’s sermon came back to him.
Present your bodies a living sacrifice.

In the days following the sermon, the verse had stayed in his thoughts.
Present your bodies a living sacrifice, present your bodies a living sacrifice
had beaten a refrain, which matched the rhythm of his knife against the slippery, scaly sides of the fish.

After the first days of clumsily trying to grasp the tiny fish and getting frequently nicked by his knife, Silas had caught on. Though not as fast as some of the veteran workers, nor even some of the boys, at least he put in a good quota by day’s end.

He couldn’t escape the annoying repetition of the Bible verse. It slithered into his thoughts like the tide filling every nook and cranny of rock and mud and marsh grass.

God, what do You want of me?
he asked again.
I’m no missionary, no eloquent speaker. I have no gifts…except to take wood and
shape it and mold it. It’s all I know how to do. It’s all I’m good for.
He looked down at his hands.
What good is that gift now?

That evening as he turned from emptying his dirty bathwater, his body feeling exhausted, the thought of preparing himself a meal too much to cope with, he saw Pastor McDuffie coming through the long uncut grass of the yard. He groaned inwardly. He felt too weary to fight on both the physical and spiritual fronts together.

He set the washtub back on its hook and stood, waiting.

“Good evening, young man.”

“Evening, Pastor.”

McDuffie came up and shook his hand firmly, his baby-blue eyes peering at him all the while. “I’ve missed you in church.”

Silas looked away. “There’ve been a few changes in my life.”

He nodded. “So I see. You know, usually when one’s life takes a turn, either for better or worse, that’s when we most need to stay close to the Lord. Many times our inclination is to do the opposite.”

Silas shrugged, having no answer.

“May I come in and visit for a while?”

“I don’t know if I’d recommend coming inside.”

McDuffie smiled. “Where is old Tobias anyway?”

“Sleeping.”

He nodded. “I haven’t been by to see him in a while. The last time he shooed me off with his shotgun. The time before that he wasn’t quite coherent.”

“He’s all right.” Silas would always feel grateful to the old man, who’d offered him everything he had.

“He is.” McDuffie turned away from the shack. “It’s a fine evening. Why don’t we just visit out here?”

“Sure.” Silas looked around and finally settled on a couple of old crates. “Come on, if we set these by the water, the black-flies won’t be so bad, with the breeze coming in.”

Pastor McDuffie swatted at one of the tiny black gnatlike bugs with a chuckle. “Excellent suggestion.” He took one of the crates.

“Watch your step. These floorboards aren’t all intact.”

“Thanks for the warning.” McDuffie stepped over a caved-in board on the porch as he followed Silas to the meadow overlooking the cove.

“Lovely time of day, isn’t it?” he asked as the two set down their crates by the cliff. With a satisfied sigh he sat down on the dirty crate as if it were a damask-silk armchair.

“I suppose so,” Silas answered, observing the milky-blue sky, which melded with the silvery gray of the sea, almost obliterating the line of the horizon.

“So, young man, you want to marry Cherish Winslow?”

Silas’s jaw dropped as he turned to find Pastor McDuffie’s twinkling blue gaze on him.

Suddenly Silas found he couldn’t answer. He turned his gaze back toward the sea. What
did
he want?

“How can I want anything? I’ve lost my job—my profession. Winslow forbids me to cross his path, let alone his daughter’s.” How could he tell McDuffie that what he wanted, more than life itself, was his own shipyard? It was a modest dream; he didn’t want a large one, just a small boatbuilding yard was enough. But now that dream seemed further away than ever.

McDuffie only chuckled, which made Silas all the angrier. “It’s fine to laugh. You aren’t living in a stinking hovel, working in a stinking factory, getting covered with fish guts every day.” He jabbed his hand through his hair. “I come home with scales everywhere, even in my hair, under my fingernails! I wash, thinking I’ve gotten rid of every last one of them, and I find some more.”

“Why don’t you come and stay with us for a while?” McDuffie’s eyes had lost their twinkle, and he looked in deadly earnest.

“What?”

“Come and live with Sister McDuffie and myself until you decide what course to take.”

“I—I couldn’t do that.”

“Why not?”

Silas was stumped. “Well, because…you’ve got your own family…you’ve got your own obligations…I’m nothing to you….” He struggled to find more reasons. The pastor sat placidly watching him. “Besides, how do you know you could trust me?” he ended bitterly.

McDuffie said simply, “You’re my brother in Christ. There’s no closer relation than that.”

“I don’t feel like your brother in Christ.” Silas answered him honestly. “In fact, at the moment I don’t even feel like a very good Christian.”

McDuffie only chuckled. “I’m curious. What is a ‘good’ Christian in your book?”

Again Silas found himself at a loss for words. “I don’t know,” he began impatiently, rubbing his palms along his trouser legs. “Someone who does good to others, keeps the Ten Commandments, goes to church every Sunday.”

McDuffie laughed out loud. Silas looked at him irritably, wondering what the big joke was about.

“How about, a good Christian is one who has accepted the atoning work of his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ on his behalf?”

The words sounded too complicated for Silas. “Look, Pastor, I don’t mean any offense, but I’ve had a long day, and my mind doesn’t seem able to think beyond fish scales and what I’m going to prepare myself for supper.”

The pastor, rather than take offense, seemed in complete harmony. He reached over and patted Silas on the shoulder. “Let me ask you one thing before I leave.”

Silas looked at him in suspicion. “What’s that?”

“Have you ever made Jesus the Lord and Savior of your life?”

“Well, I know He’s our Savior. I’ve gone to Sunday school all my life. I’ve read the Bible. I understand He was sent by God to die on the cross for the sins of mankind.”

“Yes, that’s true. Do you know Him as
your
Savior, Silas? Have you received Him and accepted that He’s paid the price for
your
sins? Have you made Him the Lord of your life? Is
He sovereign over every decision you make? Do you commit your day to Him when you leave here in the morning and head for the factory? Do you submit to Him when you’d like to give up?”

Not giving Silas a chance to reply, the pastor rose from his crate and took it up again in his hand. “I’ll leave you to your supper now. Think about what I said. The invitation to stay at the parsonage is open. Come any time of the day or night.” He held out his hand, and the two men shook hands.

Silas walked back with him silently to the shack, where they set down the crates along the side of the rickety porch amidst all the variety of rusty and dilapidated objects sitting there.

“See you at church tomorrow” were the pastor’s last words as he gave a final wave and turned down the grassy path.

Silas remained standing until the pastor was out of sight.

Lord of his life?
The phrase had too uncomfortably close a ring to offering up his body as a living sacrifice.

It sounded too ominously like something that, once accepted, gave a person no maneuvering room. Silas wasn’t sure it was something he wanted to think about.

Cherish blew the wisps of hair away from her face. She felt hot and sticky and dangerously close to crying again.

She bent over the chicken carcass she was filling with a cracker stuffing. Her hands were greasy from the salt pork and raw egg mixed through it. She glanced once again at the scrap of paper in her aunt’s handwriting. All it said was “Stuff the chicken and put it in the oven to bake.”

She drew her forearm impatiently across her forehead, driven mad by the hair that threatened to fall across it again. Wiping her hands against the apron that had started out brilliantly white that morning, she tried to think back to all the chickens she had seen Aunt Phoebe prepare for roasting. Why hadn’t she paid more attention?

Oh, yes! String, that was it. She had to tie up the carcass before putting it into the oven. She rummaged in a drawer for string and a pair of scissors, then went back to work on the
chicken. The kitchen clock ticked on, reminding her she hadn’t much more time to tidy up before church.

“There, you’ll have to do,” she said to the lumpy-looking, trussed-up bird. She set it in the roasting pan and took it over to the oven.

Now for the potatoes. She’d leave them boiled and mash them when she came home from church, she decided. Then for some biscuit batter. That she felt confident of, having assisted Aunt Phoebe several times with them now.

She had peeled the potatoes and set them on the stove to boil, along with some of last winter’s carrots, and was cutting butter into the flour when a knock sounded on the kitchen door.

Who on earth could be coming by so early on a Sunday morning? Jacob wouldn’t knock. She glanced down at her soiled apron and flour-covered hands before calling out, “Come in!”

Silas had woken up once again with a dream about Cherish. The last image he had of her was the expression he had seen on her face when she’d stood on the wharf. A little lost but trying to be brave. What had she been trying to tell him?

He’d felt uneasy as he dressed and fixed Tobias and himself some breakfast. He regretted his harsh attitude yesterday, but the last thing he’d wanted was for her to see him there. What must the villagers, among whom he’d built a sort of reputation as a gifted shipwright, be thinking at seeing him reduced to taking work at the factory?

But the thought of Cherish wouldn’t leave him, and after he’d eaten and cleaned up—as much as he could amidst the clutter—he’d set out early, intending to stop quickly at Cherish’s.

He’d pay a call on her father—if Winslow would see him. He would do nothing underhanded with his daughter. He wouldn’t get between Winslow and his daughter, but in passing, he could at least apologize to her.

His heart pounded through his clean, though unpressed, shirt and jacket as he entered the door into the long shed that led to the kitchen door. He knocked loudly to drown it out.

Expecting to hear Celia or Mrs. Sullivan’s voice, he started when he heard Cherish call out, and he turned the knob.

The sight that greeted him took him aback. Instead of the usually tidy kitchen, it seemed as if a legion of cooks had been through it. All the countertops were filled with pots, crocks, canisters and bowls. Cherish turned startled eyes on him from the worktable in the middle of the kitchen. She looked the antithesis of her usual fashionable Sunday-morning-attired self. Her hair, in a disheveled braid down her back, had traces of flour in it. Her face looked shiny with perspiration. Her sleeves were rolled up past her elbows, and her hands were covered in white.

“Silas, what are you doing here?”

He stood in the doorway, fighting with himself. Why
had
he come?

“I—I came to see your father…to see how he’s doing.”

“Oh.” Did she sound disappointed? She rubbed the back of her hand against her forehead and turned her attention back to the bowl before her. “He is doing better. It was nice of you to come see him,” she said stiffly.

Seeing he was going to get no invitation to come in, he hesitated before stepping into the hot kitchen. He fiddled with the hat in his hand, wondering what to do next. Was she angry at him? She certainly had a right to be.

“Can I help you with anything?” he asked finally.

She looked up again, with that same startled expression. “No. I’m fine. Why don’t you go up and see Papa? He’s awake.”

“Where’s your aunt?”

“She had to see a cousin in Hatsfield whose son just passed away.”

“And Celia?” he asked, glancing around the disorderly kitchen.

“Her husband is ailing.”

He nodded. Just then a hissing came from the woodstove. Both turned to the noise as a pot lid began clacking against the pot and foaming water started to spill over the edge.

They sprang toward the stove. Silas reached it before Cherish, and he grabbed the pot by its handle. He let it go a second later. “Ouch!”

Cherish clutched it with a pot holder and took it off the heat. She removed the lid and replaced the pot onto the iron stove top.

“Did you burn yourself?” she asked solicitously, looking at his reddened palm.

“No, it’s okay.” He felt embarrassed at his stupidity. He sensed her eyes on him and finally met her gaze. He could see the amusement begin in those smoky-blue irises before the smile reached her lips. The humor touched him and he could feel the tug on his lips. Suddenly both of them were laughing.

When their laughter subsided, she wiped the edge of her eyes with the hem of her apron.

“Careful, you’ll get flour in your eyes.”

She realized how dusty her apron was and burst into fresh peals of laughter. He joined her as he handed her a clean handkerchief. “Tha-thank you,” she gasped, this time managing to wipe her eyes dry.

“Do I have any flour on my face?” she asked when she could speak.

Before he could stop himself, he took her chin in his fingertips and examined her face closely. It was flushed, her eyes sparkling, her lips like a succulent fruit. He remembered his boyhood name for her. “Cherry.” He spoke aloud without thinking.

He saw the smile die on her lips. She moved her face away and he let his hand drop. “No, you’re all clean.”