Gift from the Sea (4 page)

Jeanne Witherspoon Groton-Hames was a dear friend of the family and, from the time Maggie had been a toddler, she had insisted Maggie refer to her as “Auntie” even though there was no blood connection at all. Jeanne was the daughter of Gabe’s former business partner. She was a gifted artist, a delightfully flirtatious woman and the widow of a British duke, eighteen years her senior, who had left her with a sizable fortune. Maggie adored her.

As a child she had been delighted to learn that at one time Jeanne and Maggie’s father—who liked to refer to her as “Duchess”—had considered a union, which everyone agreed would have been one of convenience rather than love. In fact, Maggie’s parents and Mrs. Groton-Hames
often laughed about those early days. These days Lucie and Jeanne were the best of friends, much to Maggie’s father’s consternation. He had only limited patience with Jeanne’s chatter and spontaneity, which seemed always to assume that others would simply be delighted to follow her lead.

“But surely Auntie Jeanne can be trusted—” Maggie began.

“Your father is concerned.” Lucie handed Maggie each item of clothing in order to speed her along with her actions. “She was deeply devoted to the duke and well, his family has ties to the Austrian royal family and—”

“Austria is on the same side as Germany,” Maggie said, finishing the thought. “But still the duke was assassinated in Austria when he tried to stop the war.”

“Even so, Jeanne’s penchant for speaking whatever is on her mind at any given moment could spell disaster,” Lucie reminded her.

Maggie couldn’t argue with that. More than once Jeanne had blurted out some private detail of the days when she and “darling Gabe” had been courting, much to Mama’s amusement and Papa’s mortification.

“Besides,” Maggie’s mother continued, “she’s bringing others with her—her maidservant and her traveling companion, Sir Frederick Groton, a nephew of the duke. Plus, I suspect that at least a portion of her motive in coming is to lighten the burden of your grief over Michael. She’s fond of you.”

Maggie certainly appreciated that it was far too risky to involve any more people in this matter until they could be certain what Stefan Witte’s purpose truly was. Of course, there was a solution for that but she knew better than to suggest how simple it would be to load the German up and
deposit him on the steamer that brought mail and passengers and supplies between New Bedford and Nantucket twice daily weather permitting.

In spite of occasional bursts of sympathy for a patient in pain, she continued to argue that turning the German over to the authorities and letting them sort it all out made a great deal more sense than keeping him at the inn. But all her protests had fallen on deaf ears—in fact, with each day the seaman was under their roof, everyone else in the household became more attached. The world had indeed gone mad.

“Just let me get dressed,” she said with a long-suffering sigh.

Lucie nodded and turned to leave. “And bring your coat and scarf and mittens. There’s a strong north wind and it’s very damp and raw out.”

Maggie did as she was told. Wrapping her wool scarf twice around her neck, she took the back stairs to the second floor and hurried down the hall to room three. Overnight, the German had taken an unexpected turn for the worse. And now he was lying flat in the bed, his eyes closed, his face as pale as the sheets. Every few minutes his entire body was racked with coughing and Sarah ran to attend him.

“Ah, Maggie,” her father said. His voice was reassuring but his expression showed clearly the worry and concern he had for this new development. He was wearing his winter coat and gloves and scarf. He took Maggie’s hands in his and drew her to one side of the room while Sarah wrapped Stefan in layers of blankets. “Here is the plan. We are moving Stefan to the cottage for the time being. Given his state of health, Tom thinks it best that you stay with him.”

“I have my work at the hospital,” Maggie protested.

“That’s all arranged. Doc has told the staff that he plans to move all of his surgical patients out of the hospital to private homes and cottages to be cared for until the threat of influenza has passed. Everyone will simply assume we are caring for such a patient and Doc is making his usual rounds in the community instead of the hospital.”

“But you can’t possibly expect me to stay alone with him. Once he’s stronger, Papa—”

“Sean will be just outside the back door in his workshop, repairing his nets. He and Sarah will take the nights. We’re installing locks on the door, and we’ve nailed shut the window of the downstairs bedroom. You will be perfectly safe. The man is weak as a kitten—”

“But Auntie Jeanne will wonder why I’m not here,” Maggie protested, searching for any possible way she might avoid the assignment her father was giving her. She felt almost desperate to avoid such close contact with Stefan Witte. Something happened to her sense of propriety whenever she was near him, and the only sensible way to fight that was to maintain her distance.

Over the German’s coughing, Maggie continued to protest, “I’m to be his nurse and warden?”

“We will all help you, Maggie,” her mother assured her, coming to stand with Papa—a united front. “Besides, it’s only until Auntie Jeanne and her party leave. How long can that be?”

Well, let me think now—two summers ago when she “visited” she stayed for three months. What if she decides she likes it here so much that she decides to stay permanently?

Maggie felt outnumbered, not to mention confused. What was it about this man that had her parents inventing whole strategies to keep him with them? Maggie glanced toward
the bed and then back to the eager faces of her parents. “That man is not a son of Nantucket,” she whispered.

“No,” her father replied. “But what if he has been sent to us by God?”

“For what purpose?” Maggie asked.

“To give us the opportunity to save another mother’s son—to give us the challenge of forgiving our enemies,” her mother said gently, her eyes brimming with tears but her expression filled with hope. “Do this for your father and me, Maggie. Do it for Sarah and Sean. Do it for the memory of Michael and George.”

She understood that they had discussed it already, and in the face of her parents’ steadfast faith, Maggie could not refuse. “Very well,” she said.

Moments later Sean pulled a wagon mounted on runners up to the back entrance of the inn. Upstairs Sarah opened a folding cot and placed it next to the bed. Using the skills she’d developed in training, Maggie orchestrated the transfer of the German from the bed to the cot. Immediately, Maggie’s mother and Sarah began adjusting and adding covers until the man looked like some kind of mummy, his face barely visible. Through it all he floated in and out of consciousness.

“Ready?” Gabe said as he positioned himself at the front end of the cot while Sean took the back. Together the two men maneuvered their heavy burden down the back stairs. Once there, they loaded the cot onto the back of the wagon and slowly made the short journey over the frozen and snow-covered yard down the slight hill to the smaller cottage.

“You should go,” Maggie’s mother said when Maggie hesitated in the kitchen. “Jeanne will be here soon and everything needs to be in place.”

“What if Auntie Jeanne insists on coming to the cottage?”

Lucie laughed. “She would never traverse the yard in this weather,” she predicted. “She’d ruin her expensive shoes. No, she’ll be disappointed to find you away but will wait to see you this evening. Now, go. I need to prepare her room.”

Room three, Maggie thought as she wrapped her scarf once more around her face and started across the yard to where the others had disappeared into her grandparents’ former home. It was the house where her father had grown up and the place he had run away from when he was a few years younger than her own nineteen years. Her heart lightened. Perhaps the German would escape—run away. But she immediately felt contrite at the trouble such a thing could bring for the doctor, the Chadwicks and her parents. Before Michael died, she would have uttered a short prayer begging forgiveness for even thinking such a thing. But in this new world where the insanity of war ruled everything, Maggie had difficulty rationalizing a benevolent God.

By the time she reached the cottage and removed her coat, scarf and mittens, the German was settled in the first-floor bedroom her grandparents had used. It had also been the room Sarah and Sean had shared before George’s death until Sarah had insisted they move down to the inn. When Maggie reached the room, Sarah was offering a groggy but conscious Stefan Witte a verbal tour. Maggie saw the effort for what it was. Sarah had come to see in Stefan the ghost of her son, George.

“We can leave the curtains open or closed as you prefer, and here I’ve put your sister’s photograph in this frame so it will sit here where you can see it.” She placed the frame on the bedside table and turned it so that Stefan only had
to turn his head to see it. “Shall I get you something to eat? Or water. A pitcher of water.” She started for the door.

“Sarah?” Gabe’s voice was always gentle and quiet, especially when he spoke to Sarah. “Let Maggie take care of that. You’ll be needed back at the inn.”

Sarah glanced at Maggie. “Get those blankets off him,” she instructed as Maggie walked with her and Sean back to the front foyer. “I’ve brought a kettle of soup. It’s on the stove. Sean can light it. And upstairs—” She faltered as she looked up to the closed door at the top of the stairs and Sean put his arm around her shoulder as he added, “In George’s room, there are books and a chess set for when he’s feeling better.”

“I’ll be all right, Sarah,” Maggie said gently. “Everything we need is here.”

Sarah kissed Maggie’s cheek. “Darling girl,” she murmured. “Take those dustcovers away in the parlor and dining room so you can be comfortable. I’ll keep a plate warm for your supper.”

Maggie’s father kissed her cheek and handed her a large cowbell. “If you need anything ring this loud and long. Sean will be just outside that door.”

Maggie wondered what sorts of emergencies her father had imagined as he searched for something she could use to sound an alarm. She took the bell and tried it. Satisfied that she had everything she needed, everyone left—Sarah to help Lucie ready the inn, Gabe to meet Jeanne at the wharf and Sean to get back to work.

Maggie placed the cowbell on the bedside table and looked down at Stefan Witte. “Don’t get any ideas,” she muttered, but the man was quite unconscious.

Maggie had decided to think of him as simply “the German,” for that impersonal tag would surely stem the
tide of her curiosity about his past. He slept most of the morning. Maggie looked in on him several times as she uncovered the furniture, stirred the fire in the parlor, set the soup on simmer, then stood at the dining room window across the hall from the bedroom. There seemed little point in literally watching him sleep, and Sarah had already changed the man’s bandages for the day.

Just before noon she saw Jeanne and her entourage arrive. The sounds of Mama’s enthusiastic welcome and Jeanne’s bell-like laughter carried across the yard on the cold air. Maggie saw a small older woman—obviously Jeanne’s maid—scurry into the inn carrying the smaller two pieces of Jeanne’s luggage. Behind her was a man about Jeanne’s age who helped Gabe unload the rest of the luggage. She envied her mother and Sarah the opportunity to hear Jeanne’s chatter about things in Europe and in New York, where she had been living ever since the duke’s death.

Turning from the window, she prepared herself a bowl of soup and a plate with cheese and two thick slices of the bread that Sarah made each morning. She settled in on the cushions that lined the window seat of the dining room’s large window, where she would have a good view of any further activity at the inn as she ate. But aside from a lamp in room number three, obviously lit to offset the gray gloom of the day, there was little for her to see.

A crash from the bedroom startled Maggie, and she dropped her bowl of soup onto her grandmother’s frayed Oriental rug. The silence that followed had her imagining everything from the German now waiting for her, armed with one of Sean’s hunting rifles that he’d managed to slip from the locked case in the front hall, to the possibility that he had made good on an escape through the window. She
crept across the hall and pushed the half-closed door open with a force that made it bang against the wall. The German had obviously tried to get up and in so doing had knocked over the bedside table. As soon as he saw her, he fell back onto the bed, which brought on a howl of pain followed by a bout of coughing that led to choking. With each cough he jangled the cowbell Maggie had inadvertently left on the bedside table—the cowbell he now held in one hand—with the table and its other contents strewn across the floor.

“Give me that,” Maggie snapped as Sean came at a run and stopped just inside the doorway. Maggie pushed the German forward and pounded his back with the flat of her hand. “Breathe,” she ordered, trying to temper her own irritation with a little of the gentleness her mother would use under similar circumstances.

Maggie signaled to Sean that everything was under control, and after he retreated, she turned her attention back to her patient. “Slowly. Deeply.” She forced herself to modify her tone and draw out the words as she allowed him to relax his weight against her. In spite of the hollow sounds of his breathing, she could not help noticing that he was muscular and rock solid for all his frail health.

“Now out,” she coached. “That’s it. Again.”