Sweet Forever (10 page)
“Oh, yes.” Her face flushed a deep pink, and she scooted an amber bottle beneath a green and white gingham cloth. “Just—just an errand.” Her face looked as if it might crack with the force of her smile.
“Are you sure, because if you’re unwell. . .”
“No. I’m quite all right. Quite.” She looked down Mulberry as if eager to be away and transferred the basket to her arm farthest from him.
What was she hiding? He wished he’d gotten a better look at that bottle. He’d thought it looked suspiciously like a whiskey bottle the instant before she’d hidden it. Maynard’s sold spirits as well as medicines. Could it be for Ralston? But then, wouldn’t the man simply get his liquor at the Billiard Saloon?
“I was just on my way to the church but would be glad to carry your basket and accompany you back to the boardinghouse first.” Perhaps God had given him this opportunity to speak with her.
“No, thank you just the same, but I wouldn’t want to detain you from your work on the church.” Her rushed answer tumbled out while her glance darted about as if looking for escape.
“I don’t mind, really. . . ,” Jacob began.
“Reverend Hale. Ma’am.” Constable Rafe Arbuckle’s voice intruded as he stepped toward them dragging his hat off his shock of salt-and-pepper hair. “The sheriff got wind of a bunch of runaway slaves. Just wonderin’ if you’d seen any different faces, you bein’ situated near Georgetown an’ all.”
Jacob stiffened. “No. No, I haven’t.” He knew the sheriff was a hot pro-slavery man. In the two years he’d been in Madison, Jacob would have liked to help the Chapmans and Opal in their work with the Underground Railroad. However, being a minister, he knew he’d be questioned often. He’d learned from Orville that he could best help the organization by being oblivious to its movements.
“I—I need to get back to the boardinghouse and help with the washing,” Rosaleen murmured. Before he could stop her, she hurried down Mulberry Street.
“Don’t mean to be a bother. Just supposed to ask, that’s all,” Rafe said, his voice apologetic as he shifted from foot to foot.
Jacob’s heart sank at his lost opportunity to talk with Rosaleen. He dragged his gaze from her fleeting figure back to Rafe. He couldn’t help feeling sympathy for the constable. Rafe Arbuckle was a good man who’d been sent on a distasteful errand. He gave Arbuckle an understanding smile and clapped his hand on the man’s shoulder. “That’s all right, Rafe. You’re just doing your duty.”
As he walked to the church, Jacob realized that instead of learning any answers to his questions about Rosaleen, he’d been presented with even more questions.
“
Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers.
”
The words from Second Corinthians screamed through his mind. But he
was
yoked. His heart was inextricably bound to hers.
The sight of the new church building no longer brought him the joy it once had. Each soul won to Christ in this building would be precious. Yet if he failed with Rosaleen, he feared he’d be forever haunted by the one soul his heart most longed to claim for Christ.
Oh God, help me to win her for You, or disentangle my heart from hers and emancipate me from this misery.
❧
Rosaleen jerked up from her bedroom floor with a start. She’d slept in her day dress expecting the knock, yet the soft rap set her heart pounding.
“Rosaleen.” Andrew Chapman’s voice slowed her heart to a canter.
Without a word, she unlocked the door and let him in.
“Train’s a’comin’.”
“Already?”
Andrew nodded.
The encounter this afternoon with constable Arbuckle had been unnerving. She remembered how her heart had pounded and her knees had gone weak, fearing she would be directly questioned about the runaway slaves.
She knew the sooner they could move on, the better for all involved. Yet in the last two days, she’d become accustomed to the presence of Sally and the children. The sadness she felt at the thought of parting with them surprised her.
Sniffing back tears, she gently woke Lizzie and Elijah. It tugged at her heart to see the way they accepted the intrusion. She, too, had known what it was to be treated as less than human. Like these slaves, she’d lived with terror, accepting it as a matter of course. The cruelty she’d experienced in her own life caused her heart to bond with these innocent unfortunates who simply longed to breathe free. With tears streaming down her face, Rosaleen hugged the little ones in turn.
“God bless you, Miss Rosaleen.”
Stunned at the first words Sally had uttered to her, Rosaleen hugged the frail woman. She pressed into Sally’s hands the bottle of tonic that had done wonders for Elijah’s cough. “Just stay well. All of you.”
“Need you to come, too.”
Startled, Rosaleen raised her face to Andrew’s. “Why?”
Whispering, he kept his words pared to the essentials.
“ ’Case we’re stopped an’ somebody asks questions. Patsey ain’t been feelin’ none too good. Jis fetchin’ you to see about Patsey, that’s all.”
A still, small voice spoke to Rosaleen’s heart, nudging her to the straw mattress. She’d been reading the words of Jesus. With each new day, the longing in her heart grew stronger to obey His words. This evening she’d been reading from the nineteenth chapter of Matthew. Hungering for Christ’s acceptance, she’d fixed her attention on Jesus’ response to a young man who’d asked how he might attain eternal life. She’d read verse twenty-one over and over until she’d committed it to memory.
“Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.”
Without hesitation or regret, she reached into the mattress
slit and grasped the little calico bag then turned to Andrew. “I
want them to have this. It’s only six dollars, but maybe it will help.”
“Bless you, Miss Rosaleen.” The look of gratitude on Andrew’s face as he tucked the bag inside his shirt was all the reward she needed.
Praying had now become a habit with Rosaleen. Though she remained unsure if Jesus actually heard the prayers, they simply made her feel better. She prayed hard as their little ragamuffin band stole down the stairs and out to Andrew’s waiting wagon.
In the darkness, Rosaleen could just make out the farm wagon piled high with straw. While she wondered if Sally and the children would have to burrow deep inside, she watched Andrew reach beneath the wagon bed and unlatch a little door. To her amazement, the three runaways crawled up into the false wagon bottom, and Andrew fastened the door behind them.
Her heart hammering, Rosaleen bounced on the buckboard seat beside Andrew. They wended their way through the moonless night, northeast out of Madison. Andrew had told her the next station was at a place he’d called Eagle Hollow. He said the distance would be about ten miles, but the crooked, elevated path made it seem twice as long.
At last, they stopped at a little stone house, and Andrew rapped softly at the door.
The door creaked open, revealing no light within the home’s dark interior.
“I have the cargo you ordered.” Andrew’s whispered words carried through the still night air to the wagon.
No one answered, but a moment later he was at the back of the wagon helping the three runaways from their cramped hiding place.
Rosaleen’s eyes strained in the darkness to catch one last glimpse of the three who’d shared her attic room for the past two days and three nights. A prayer rent from her anxious heart.
Jesus, be with them. You healed the sick, raised the dead, and stilled the tempest. Please, please just keep them safe.
“Will they make it?” Rosaleen couldn’t help asking the question as she and Andrew jostled over the rut-pocked road toward Madison.
“Good chance. Conductors from here on are pretty reliable.”
“Is Patsey really sick?” Sudden concern for her friend tightened Rosaleen’s voice. She hated the thought of Patsey sick at home alone without her husband beside her.
“She’ll be all right.” His teeth flashed a smile in the darkness. “Jis took a hankerin’ for some fried mush then couldn’t abide the grease. She be sleepin’ now.” Rosaleen heard love and longing in his soft voice. “I can walk back to the boardinghouse from here,” she said as they neared the Georgetown area of Madison.
Andrew shook his head. “Ain’t fittin’. . .or safe. Like I said, Patsey be sleepin’. ’Nother few minutes won’t make no difference to her.”
Only moments after Andrew dropped Rosaleen off near the boardinghouse and headed back to Georgetown, she understood his concerns about her walking home.
Her heart jumped to her throat when she saw a large shadowy figure looming in the dark street ahead less than a half block from where she stood. As the figure neared, weaving its way toward her from the south, she heaved a sigh of relief. It was only Alistair, making his way back to the boardinghouse from a night of gambling down at the Billiard Saloon on Ohio Street’s riverfront. A good deal worse for the wear, it would seem.
“Rose’leen, m’little Rose’leen,” Alistair slurred as he grasped her around the waist. “Too late, too late,” he lamented, wagging an unsteady finger in her face. “Gamblin’ done, drinkin’ done. Time to go t’bed.”
He stumbled and nearly fell when she pushed away from his whiskey-soaked breath. “I’d say
bed
is exactly where you belong, Alistair.” She turned her face south toward the fresh breezes blowing off the river.
Wrapping her arm as far around him as it would go, Rosaleen prayed she’d be able to maneuver Alistair up to his room on the second floor without waking Jacob or Opal. She cringed at his every hiccup, laugh, and slurred verse of “Old Dan Tucker” until they reached the door of his room.
When she pushed open the door, he stumbled in, carrying her with him. Alistair fell back onto the bed with a crash, and she found herself pulled on top of him, his arms clamped around her. Pushing hard against his chest, she extricated herself from his grasp, but fell backward, landing on the floor with a
boom
. She could hear him snoring, already dead to the world.
Gasping for breath, she struggled to her feet. Her hair pulled loose from its pins and tumbled to her shoulders. It was in this disheveled state that she met Jacob’s shocked gaze as she exited Alistair’s room.
The lit candle in his hand illuminated his stunned features. He stood in his nightshirt, his blond head poking out from his bedroom door. “Everything all right?” he asked in a frosty voice.
“Yes—yes.” Mortified, Rosaleen pushed the straggling hair from her face, realizing how stupid and ineffectual the motion must look. Racing past him, she hurried to the end of the hall and the stairway that lead to her attic room. Behind her, the sound of his door snapping shut felt like a lance through her heart.
Rosaleen fidgeted on her seat beside the piano. For the first time since she’d begun playing for Sunday services, she felt eager for the benediction.
She hadn’t been able to look Jacob in the eye after her humiliating encounter with him outside Alistair’s room. His demeanor toward her had not thawed one degree, and her heart screamed to give him a true accounting of last night’s events. But even if she could tell him about her involvement in helping the runaway slaves, would he believe her if she tried to explain?
This morning, his sermon, taken from the second chapter of Proverbs, dealt with wisdom. She wondered if he’d chosen the theme especially for her benefit, though his gaze seemed to diligently avoid hers.
“ ‘To deliver thee from the strange woman, even from the stranger which flattereth with her words,’ ” Jacob read from verse sixteen.
She remembered the look on Jacob’s face when he’d watched her stumble from Alistair’s room. What emotions had she seen playing across his features in the vacillating light and shadows of the flickering candle? Astonishment? Of course. Anger? Disgust? Had he, like Wilfred Maguire, decided that she was beyond redemption?
The next passage of scripture that boomed from Jacob’s voice seemed directed at her. “ ‘But the wicked shall be cut off from the earth, and the transgressors shall be rooted out of it.’ ”
Wicked.
There it was again—the word Reverend Maguire had consistently attached to her. And now she’d heard it from Jacob’s own mouth. It reverberated through her stricken heart as if the very ax of the Almighty had fallen, severing her from any prospect of salvation. The hope she’d nurtured during hours of searching the Gospels for Christ’s acceptance had all at once been consumed to ashes and blown away. Reverend Maguire had been right. She was wicked—wicked and irredeemable.
Struggling for breath, Rosaleen knew she had to get away. Gathering her skirts in her fists, she leaped from her seat and ran from the room, through the boardinghouse, and out the kitchen door. Her vision obscured by tears, she ran on trembling legs as if to escape the wrath of God. She hadn’t even realized how far she’d gone until several minutes after she sank to the bench beside Jacob’s new church.
Lifting her head, she gazed two blocks south where the sunlight danced over the Ohio River like silver sprites. A strong southwest breeze carried the dank, fishy scent of the river that blended with the fresh smell of new lumber. Cool river breezes dried her tears and brushed the leaves of Orville Whitaker’s willow tree against her shoulder.
