Brookland (16 page)

Roxana blinked and sat down.

“He took one look at her and saw what misery she'd suffered. Must have thought me an ogre. He seems kind; perhaps he was a bit of a scoundrel as a lad. I volunteered her to help him set up house, or whatever such a little creature might do, but he declined.”

“Sounds like a decent fellow,” Roxana said. Prue couldn't detect even a ripple of sarcasm in her tone.

“Yes, I think so. I hope you won't mind, but I offered him our assembly room for his church.” He poured himself a second cupful, and before he drank it, handed it to Prue. “Aniseed.”

Prue smelled it and stuck her tongue in. She was beginning not merely to appreciate gin, but to like it. “It's good when it tastes like licorice.”

“Yes.”

“Why'd you do that?” Roxana asked. As her husband did not respond, she added, “I assume he accepted.”

Matty nodded. Prue gave him back his cup.

“Hmm,” Roxana said, and again took her fingers to the back of her neck.

Matty shrugged his broad shoulders. “He's a good man, Roxy, and someone owed him a bit of kindness after what he suffered this morning. Besides, it was the assembly room or Whitcombe's barn; and I can't suppose even you hate the church enough to ask a man to preach among cattle. I certainly don't.”

So, against Roxana's silent disapproval, Mr. Severn preached the Gospel under the roof of a nonbeliever that Sunday, as he would continue to do until the following March, when the church's roof would at last be in place, and the plaster upon the lath. That week it was the scandal of the town that the Winships did not bother to take their daughters to church even when the services were in their own backyard; but Matty told the girls not to listen to gossip. He said, “We don't have to pretend we're aught but what we are, to do a fellow a good turn.” He could not have known how much Prue yearned to sit on those makeshift benches and pray to God and Mr. Severn to forgive her and Pearl for their various sins.

Pearl held her grudge all the next day and refused to look any of her family in the eye. Johanna, idly burning their breakfast, had either been aware of the histrionics the night before or could smell Pearl's sulking; for she commented, “
Och God
, just like her sister, just like Prue,” to all who passed. Prue heard her say it to her mother as Roxana grabbed two of Prue's ugly pot holders and removed the ruined oatmeal to the compost.

Prue watched her from the doorway as she left the pot out by the well to cool and later be scrubbed. “Don't worry,” she said. Her voice carried in the crisp morning air. “She no longer knows what she says.”

But Prue knew what Johanna meant, and still hoped the rest of them would never discover it. Her mother and Johanna were such good friends, she could not imagine Johanna had kept her secret all this time; yet her mother had never mentioned it. Pearl's ears had certainly pricked up just then, but it was clear she was spoiling for a fight. Prue now saw there truly was something odd about Johanna's face—a purplish swelling, as of a large bruise, where her cap was pushed askew near her left temple. On any other morning she would have mentioned it straightaway.

More than her father's uncustomary wrath, what had vexed Prue about the previous evening's incident was to have seen Pearl reduced so swiftly to a near-animal state. When her slate was not at hand, she was, Prue realized, hardly better able to express herself than a dog. And although Prue had never before thought much about the way the right forearm of Pearl's every dress was caked slick with chalk dust, this now saddened her. She went up late that afternoon to Mrs. Tilley to inquire if something might be purchased to aid her sister. Gray-haired Mr. Severn was standing by with a list of provisions in hand and his ragged muffler wrapped tight around his throat. He smiled bashfully at Prue when she entered, and motioned for her to conduct her business first. Prue walked to the counter, and the minister turned back to examining the dry goods. She kept her eye on him. Mrs. Tilley appeared most interested in how the minister discomfited Prue; but on request, she brought down a catalogue of goods that featured a small silver note case on a chain. Pearl could wear this around her neck, with its wooden pencil holding fast the clasp, yet have her hands free like an ordinary person. “What would it cost?” Prue asked.

“Four pounds, and I'm sure worth every shilling.”

Prue whistled through her teeth, and when she saw Mrs. Tilley's expression, recollected this was not acceptable practice outside the Winship home and distillery. “Sakes,” she said, and felt herself blushing. “I'll have to ask my father.” The pencils wouldn't last Pearl long, either; she would have to buy a bushel of them.

“No,” Mr. Severn said. He came closer to her and fumbled in his pocket for his purse. “Please. It would be my pleasure.”

Mrs. Tilley now looked even more annoyed, Prue presumed because she was considering her own daughter's prospects. “Mr. Severn,” she said sternly. “Don't you think our distiller can better afford such an expenditure than you?”

“Without doubt,” he replied. He took out two pounds sterling and laid them with care on the counter. “But my heart goes out to the girl. It is a terrible lot, to be so isolated. This is all I have, for now, but perhaps you'll allow me to place the rest on credit—”

Prue said, “I can't—”

“I owe your father a debt of gratitude, Miss Winship, for giving a home to my church. If he would come, I could repay him in spiritual tender, but I cannot force his conscience.” He tugged the muffler away from his throat; it must have been stifling hot, and looked itchy. “Please, Prudence.”

No one ever called her by her full name, and it buzzed in her ears. She said, “Thank you very much, Mr. Severn.”

When she left, with the receipt for the case in her pocket, he followed her outside and shut the jingling door behind them. “May I have a word?” he asked. He hunched down in his shoulders to make himself more her size.

Prue nodded. Mrs. Tilley was watching with interest through the glass panes in the door.

He said, “Your shopkeeper is a good woman, but one can say nothing in front of her without having it broadcast like grass seed over all the town.” He had coaxed a smile from her, and nodded as if pleased. “When the case arrives, do you tell Pearl it came from me. She seemed in such torment when your father brought her to my house, and if she won't look me in the eye, I see no other way to apologize.”

“I will, sir. But I feel it is unequal payment.”

He drew his chin deeper under the muffler.

“That is, I feel we should do something for you as well.” She looked him over. What could such a person need? He had a home and a hired woman; he would have a wife soon enough, if either Mrs. Tilley or Mrs. Livingston had her way. “I'm not a very good knitter—my father is training me for the distillery, as you may know—”

“Yes, it's quite the topic—”

“But I could offer to make you a new muffler, as your old one—as your old one appears to be much worn.”

He put his hand up to his throat as if to ask if this threadbare thing was that to which she referred. “This? Oh,” he said. “No. I couldn't part with it. My late mother knitted it for me.”

“I'm sorry,” Prue said, both because she was sorry he'd lost his mother and because she was sorry she'd made the gaffe. “I didn't mean to—”

“I understand,” he said.

“Pearl is a very good knitter,” she offered, though she wanted to kick herself for doing so. “And she works wonders with an embroidery needle.”

He nodded. “Well. If ever she forgives me for having been the cause of her dishonor, perhaps she'll tell me about it herself.” He looked back through the door's six small panes to Mrs. Tilley, who was dusting her shelves with unusual vigor. “I should finish my business here,” he said.

Prue said, “Thank you again,” and as she walked back toward the Ferry Road, felt the eyes of the neighborhood upon her.

The note case arrived after the New Year; it was larger and heavier than Prue had imagined, but would still provide Pearl a degree of freedom she had theretofore lacked. Mrs. Tilley looked tart when Prue wrapped it in her handkerchief to bring it home. Pearl's whole face lit up when she opened it; and though Prue saw her parents wonder whence the money for the object had come, they had the decency not to ask until later, in private. Pearl put the case around her throat immediately and was never again, in all her days, seen to go so much as from one room to the next without it.

Prue waited until she had Pearl alone by the back fence to tell her the case's provenance. Pearl drew her lips in to think about it. She was not yet adept with the contraption, and took a moment to free the pencil from
its hasp and turn the book in the correct direction to write.
Becaus he pity'd me?
she wrote.

“I think he rather regretted how Father treated you,” Prue said.

Pearl continued to chew on her lower lip.
Y
^r
th'un should never have spoken
.

Prue could not respond to this. She wished she had not so elicited her father's rage, but knew she'd been correct about the stolen book. “He said if you'd forgive him, he'd like to see some of your needlework.”

Pearl raised her thin eyebrows, in perfect imitation of their mother. She flipped to a clean page.
What' e think I stoal it for?

“What do you mean?”

Patterns
. She glanced back toward the house, then wrote,
You want to go to the church, do'n't you?

Prue was unnerved by the person watching her—a child who looked much younger than her years, yet stood staring at her with steady black eyes. It was no use hiding things from her; her parents would pass on someday, but Pearl was forever. “Very much,” she said. “I have always wanted to. Since before you were born.”

I, too, wish to go
.

“I'll take you, then, this Sunday.”

Tem'll poak fun at me
.

“We shan't tell her.”

Pearl closed her book and patted it where it hung above her belly. She swayed a little as she walked back to the house.

That Sunday, Prue had her father's keys hidden in her pocket when she offered to take Pearl out for a walk. They stood by the back fence and watched as those neighbors of English descent filed down the lane to the mill yard and entered the assembly room. When the door shut, Prue drew Pearl out into Joralemon's Lane, and they hurried down against the stiff wind rising from the river. At the distillery gate, Prue paused and said, “It's too cold to walk up barefoot, but we'll have to be very quiet.”

Pearl turned up her collar and kept walking, casting a disparaging glance over her shoulder at her sister as she went.

As she placed her hand on the plain banister, Prue glanced into the room. The benches were arranged so the parishioners had their backs to the door and the outdoor stairs. Prue recognized Mr. Severn—facing them at the far end of the room—from his gray hair and bashful posture,
but through the ripples of the window glass, and as she was moving, she could not see if he had seen them. She wanted to hide her face, as if this could prevent her from being recognized.

She had never before noticed the sound of the countinghouse lock, but it clicked and shuffled as she turned the key. Pearl was staring at it as if she could will it to be silent. At last the door gave and let them in. Prue wished the parish would strike up a hymn, but all she could hear was Mr. Severn's muffled voice coming up through the floorboards and the occasional creak of someone moving below.

She shut the door behind them and went to take Pearl's coat, but Pearl shook her head no; they could see the plumes of their breath, and there would be no lighting the stove without giving themselves away. Prue did, however, lean down to remove her shoes, and she helped Pearl out of hers while she was there. She placed them on the rough floorboards as gently as she would have laid down a baby.

Mr. Severn was difficult to hear from the far side of the room; so, with infinite care, they crossed the cold floor in their stocking feet, skirting the great desk and the stove with its kettle on top. Prue knew Mr. Severn was standing, with his Bible and some papers on a stool, at the far northern end of the assembly room. The windows above where he stood were behind the paper-strewn desk and looked out on the rectifying room, cashing room, storehouses, and ropewalk. Their father had left two of their mother's coffee cups, filthy with stains and grounds, on the bookshelf beneath the window. The sisters sat down on the floor and turned their backs to the shelf. They were so nearly atop where Mr. Severn stood, Prue could feel the reverberation of his voice before she could make out the text of what he was saying.

She knew nothing of church. She had understood little in her childhood visits to the domine, and since then had been given no Bible, no catechism, no lessons in doctrine. She heard nothing familiar but the quaver in the voice of the shy, good man beneath her. She knew nothing but the way her heart called out to God, unheard by any but Pearl. She saw Pearl had closed her eyes to listen, and she did the same.

Through the baffling of the floorboards, Mr. Severn's voice sounded intimate, as if he were alone and simply musing aloud. “. . . on the subject of our relationships of temper and feeling to our fellow men,” he was saying.

Prue did not follow, but she trusted she would.

“ ‘Ye have heard that it bath been said, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.” ' The Gospel of Matthew says this on the principle, I suppose, that half a loaf is better than no bread.”

To Prue's surprise, the congregation laughed. She and Pearl both opened their eyes. The pews creaked as people must have leaned forward to hear him better.

“People fulfill the last of the maxim without taking much pains about the first,” he went on. His voice had gained a little strength, a little melody. “The art of hatred is quite thoroughly developed among mankind; it is one of those graces that do not need much nourishing. But the art of loving one's neighbor is a different one, inasmuch as most people are not altogether lovely”