Too Soon for Flowers (10 page)

“Mr. Pelham has asked to be allowed to visit you, for
what he suggests might be cheerful conversation,” Mrs. Willett returned with a smile.

“He hasn’t!” Diana cried, looking down at her house costume.

“I’m afraid I gave my approval,” said her physician, as he took her wrist to feel her pulse. “Was that unwise?”

“Well … I do have some idea Mr. Pelham will forgive something less than elegance in dress—after all, he
was
married. The tattle, Charlotte, is that when he was quite poor—though his family was once quite proud—he took a rich wife for her fortune and little else, apparently. I always found Alicia Farnsworth to be a dry, retiring sort of person. And sickly, of course. But he may have loved her for some reason, if that matters. Unfortunately, she soon died. It’s the opinion of several ladies I know that Mr. Pelham was sure she would—but they also say that he should not hesitate to wed again—if only he asked them!”

“There are,” said Charlotte, “many reasons for marriage. Was Miss Farnsworth interested in learning? Sometimes, when one lacks health—”

“I’m afraid I can’t say, Charlotte. Though when I think of it, I have noticed Mr. Pelham actually listening at the town’s evening lectures, so perhaps he is able to talk of something besides one’s appearance, or the state of the weather—unlike many others. In fact, he
must
be a man of many experiences, having traveled, and been married … so I suppose a visit is perfectly fine, Dr. Tucker.”

“I can assure you, Miss Longfellow, that Mr. Pelham admires you greatly—something he has made very plain to me,” her physician replied with a crack in his voice.

“Really? In that case, let me do something about my hair. He can’t expect too much, under the circumstances. If only Patty were here! Charlotte, where is my mirror?”

Soon after the mirror had been located, and when Diana
had found a comb, a choice of caps, and a handful of ribbons, her visitors left the wonderfully revived young woman to her task.

ONCE HE AND
Mrs. Willett had gone down the stairs and across the kitchen, Dr. Tucker knocked on the door to the small side room. The shelved chamber had once held stores, and sometimes sheltered itinerant craftsmen who showed up to mend shoes, repair clocks, or add heads to their ready-made portraits. More recently, the room had become Lem’s sleeping chamber, although in winter he had to share it with bushels of potatoes and apples.

Fully dressed and lying atop a striped blanket, the boy turned from his book with an inquiring look.

“Don’t get up,” said Dr. Tucker. “For once, you’re allowed to stay there all day, if you like.” Tucker brushed the hair from the boy’s forehead, and found only smooth skin. “No aches, no pains at all? No weariness?”

“A small headache. It’s not bad.”

“The countryside breeds superior young men,” Dr. Tucker noted to Charlotte, who nodded her assent and wondered if Lem might be hungry, as usual. Before she could ask, the doctor uncoiled the bandage on the boy’s arm, looked at the suppurating wound closely, wrinkled his nose, and covered the area back up again. He signaled that he’d concluded his examination.

“We’ll leave you to your studies,” said Dr. Tucker in parting. “By the way, what do you conclude, on reading the great Caesar’s adventures?”

“That they are the reason my head aches.”

“An interesting theory,” the physician said with a dry chuckle. “I seem to recall observing the same phenomenon, a very long time ago.”

Leaving his second patient to fend with history on his
own, Dr. Tucker led Mrs. Willett through a kitchen portal and into the main room of the house. Eventually, they passed through the open door of her study.

Phoebe was the only one of the inoculated who seemed feverish. At least, her face was more flushed than usual, Charlotte noted when they entered the room.

“Do you feel ill, Miss Morris?” the physician asked at once.

“No.” Phoebe’s reply came in a low voice. Her eyes moved from Dr. Tucker to Mrs. Willett.

“Then, do you wish you were home?” Charlotte guessed, worrying that the girl should have been sent back to Concord after all.

“I once looked forward to seeing more of the world,” Phoebe replied vaguely. She lay back as Dr. Tucker reached for one of her hands.

“Your new life here will be exciting,” Charlotte assured her. “But you might find time to travel, too, in the next twenty or thirty years.”

“Have you seen Will this morning?” Phoebe asked her suddenly.

“He’s well, but a little pensive.”

“That is unlike Will, isn’t it?” Finally a smile skipped across her face. But it swiftly faded. “Have … have you seen him as well, Doctor?”

“No, indeed. You have a good pulse,” he told the girl. “However, I advise you to stay in bed. Eat lightly, sip small beer or cider when you can. That should calm you. It occurs to me, Miss Morris, that we’ve not spoken of your medical history.”

“No,” Phoebe answered, “but perhaps—could we talk of it now?” This time, her own hand reached out for the doctor’s, while her steadfast eyes attempted a message her lips seemed unwilling to convey.

Charlotte had supposed another woman in the room would make Phoebe feel easier. Now, she saw that Miss
Morris wished to speak to the physician without her. She watched as Tucker covered Phoebe’s fingers gently, while to his face came a look that seemed to combine sharp sensations of pleasure and pain.

She rose to leave, then waited a moment longer; still, she heard no objection. Then she went out of the room somewhat uneasily, leaving Phoebe and Dr. Tucker alone.

MUCH LATER IN
the day, Mrs. Willett sat on a milking stool, while nearby, Will Sloan pulled with slow regularity at a soft bag. In the dairy’s doorway, mosquitoes, an occasional long-tailed mayfly, and swarms of gilded gnats gave movement and sound to the evening air. Charlotte wore a thin veil to keep the worst at a distance. Encountering Will’s weathered neck and face, the biters found they had even less chance of success.

“You’ll see Phoebe again tonight, won’t you?” she asked over a cow’s twitching back.

“I expect so,” Will called dreamily from another flank.

“Would you give her a message?”

“If you want.”

“I have forgotten to tell her I brought back a length of fabric, as she requested, from Boston. It’s for a skirt to wear at the wedding, with the short jacket she’s already made.”

“Do you expect me to gossip like a girl, about
clothes?”
Will demanded, suddenly suspicious.

“A married man should know about them. How else can he keep an eye on what his wife needs—and explain to her how well she looks?”

“I won’t need to look at what she has on to tell her that!”

“But like it or not, she’ll expect it. So—the cloth is white linen, with a pattern of light green sprigs. And it has tiny apple-red knots. I think she’ll be pleased.”

“More than I’ll be to tell her,” Will muttered.

“How long have you known the soon-to-be Mrs. Sloan?” Charlotte soon went on, to pass the time. “Almost a year.”

“Has she told you much about what her life has been like in Concord?”

“Didn’t need to. I’ve been there a dozen times, so I saw for myself.”

“Do you like it there?”

“It’s all right. When we stay the night, her family gives my brother and me a room that looks out over the river. If I’d only had a fowler last time, I could have shot ducks for dinner, without even getting out of bed.”

“Has Phoebe ever spoken of visiting Boston, Will?”

“No. But her younger sister Betsy said she was there once, and ate lobsters. And I think it was with Phoebe, so Phoebe must have gone there, I suppose.”

Not for the first time, Charlotte marveled at the workings of love—for what other reason could these two have to marry? They seemed an unlikely match, and probably knew very little of each other. Surely, Phoebe had a keen curiosity in things Will had little use for. Perhaps a trip together would open his eyes, the way a month’s visit had spread the world before a grateful Mrs. Willett, who had traveled with her new husband to Philadelphia for the month of their honeymoon.

“She might enjoy spending a week or two in Boston, if you’d take her there,” Charlotte suggested. “For your wedding trip. It would be a good chance to get to know one another, without brothers and sisters there to tease you. And you could eat all the lobster and oysters and fresh scrod you’d ever want. I think Phoebe would like to go. Especially to be sharing something new with you.”

“I
know
she would,” Will began. But he never finished, for soon he’d drifted off into a trance again.

Charlotte smiled and let him go.

•   •   •

AN HOUR AND
a half later, Will Sloan stood whistling softly outside the west window of Phoebe’s new bedchamber. The sun had already gone down, ending the long day, and a freshening breeze made the boy glad he’d put on a second shirt over the first. In another moment he saw his fiancée appear, carrying a candle. Setting the light down on the sill, Phoebe raised the lower sash as far as she could.

“Throw on a shawl—it’s cold out here,” Will told her, unsure if he had given advice or an order. Whichever it was, he was pleased to see the girl draw a wrap from a chair and adjust it over her shoulders before she leaned out.

“Will—I’ve waited so long!”

“My mother sent me off earlier. You do look beautiful tonight … sweetheart.” At this moment, in the twilight, with her hair loose and long, she reminded him of a princess in disguise, waiting to be discovered by a wandering shepherd—or, as it happened, by an errand boy and milker of cows. Once again, Will Sloan told himself he was a very fortunate young man.

“And I think … I’m sure that gown’s becoming. Especially with those little pieces you put in, shining back at the candle.”

Phoebe looked down to her green shift, whose cambric sleeves she’d worked into a pattern of vines with silver thread. As she gazed back up, tears brimmed in her eyes. This soon had the effect of dissolving Will’s gallantry into a fount of passion—though a small part of his mind was able to note that Mrs. Willett had given him sound advice.

Abandoning all thought, Will moved forward impulsively. But his betrothed swiftly backed away from the sill.

“Stay there! Will, you promised!”

“I only promised not to come inside—if you would sleep down here where I could see you. But I wish you would come and sleep with me tonight, Phoebe.” He whispered now, so that no one else would hear. “You could, if you wanted to! Nobody would know, if you slipped out, later …”

“Will, you promised you’d do as I say.”

Will Sloan thought of another evening a few weeks before, when he’d had his own way. “But Phoebe, you know I need you!”

“I know, Will,” she answered softly.

“Are you sure you miss me, too? As much, I mean? Do you miss … ?”

“Yes,” she said simply.

“I don’t know why you had to do this, Phoebe.” The boy was unable to keep his frustration from his rising voice. “You didn’t have to go in there! If you’d only
told
your father—”

“You know I had to do what he thinks best.”

“But after we marry, I’ll take his place in that!”

Phoebe smiled briefly, then seemed again about to break into tears.

“Phoebe, what is it?” Will asked tenderly.

“I was only thinking …”

“What?”

“Of Boston.”

“Boston!” Will shook his brick-red hair in amazement. “Sometimes I think Mrs. Willett just might be a witch, like some around here say …”

“What?” asked Phoebe, startled out of her own thoughts.

“She just told me to ask you about Boston! Do you think we should go there, Phoebe, for a marriage trip? I have family we could stay with. You’d probably like to visit yours again, too. Did you enjoy it when you went before? Oh, and about your skirt, for the wedding—”

“Will—I won’t marry you! Not now, not ever!”

“What do you mean, saying something terrible like that!”

Her eyes sought the heavens, where the stars flickered back. “Listen, Will,” Phoebe began again, her voice trembling, “my father sent me to Boston three years ago, to stay with my Aunt Mary. He told me I would see drawings and paintings—he said I might paint portraits, too, of people in Concord. And he hoped I might meet others who were interested in such things. Perhaps even suitors …”

Will frowned, reconsidering his previous regard for Phoebe’s father.

“But when I got to Boston, it didn’t happen the way … the way I’d imagined. Then I was ill, and a physician came. For a rash …”

“I’ve had plenty of those myself, but it was usually just nettles,” Will interrupted.

“But something else happened, too, Will. And then, today—oh! I hoped you’d never suspect, since you never saw, when we … that I—I was not …”

“What do you mean?” demanded her young lover.

“Oh, Will! I’m afraid!”

“Afraid! Of what? You’ve no reason—”

“I
can’t
marry you, Will,” she answered fiercely. “Nor anyone else!”

Will Sloan thought it over, and then he felt his pulse begin to pound like thunder. In another moment, the ground under his feet seemed to rise and fall as he suspected swells might, beneath a dory on a great sea.

“Why?” he whispered hoarsely.

“Please, Will, please!”

“Why
, Phoebe—?”

“I don’t mean to hurt you—but there’s nothing else I can do!” the unfortunate girl hurried on. “More, I won’t tell you. I
can’t
, Will!”

“Oh, no?” he growled, moving closer to the window.

•   •   •

THE EARTH CONTINUED
to turn, as the faint stars grew brighter. The moon appeared in the east, its pocked face rising to reign until the break of day. That night, the cold brilliance of the Huntress was slightly diminished; still, she soon lit up the sleeping countryside with a pearly sheen, like that which is often seen through tears.

Into that pale light, a dark figure tumbled awkwardly out of the window of Charlotte Willett’s study. After it had gone away, all was again quiet … except for occasional sobs, or so they seemed, somewhere in the night.