Lilac Spring (23 page)

“Yes, I imagine he had.”

Silas said nothing about Annalise. Even the thought of her made him feel disloyal toward Cherish.

“Do you have any idea when you might be leaving Haven’s End?”

Cherish’s question caught him by surprise. Was he already relegated to her past? A brief flirtation like the ones she’d described by her friends, but now it was time to settle down to a serious prospect like Warren Townsend?

“No, I haven’t thought about it yet.”

“There’s nothing keeping you here.”

Was she telling him not to think about her anymore?

“No, I suppose there isn’t. I was waiting for the schooner to be launched.”

The two fell silent. The only sound breaking the stillness was the lapping of the high tide in the inlet across the street. The sound of the fireworks was dying down as the last rocket was shot off.

Finally Silas rose, feeling old in every limb. “I’d better get to the McDuffies. They’re probably in bed by now.”

“Captain Phelps won the race.”

He turned toward her, joy mingled with regret. “Did he? In the sandbagger?”

“Yes. Isn’t that the one you worked on?”

“Yes, the one I wrote you about.”

“It’s a beautiful boat. You should have seen her skim the water.”

“Maybe I’ll still be able to. He’s up for the summer?”

“Yes, with Geneva.”

Cherish didn’t move from her seat. Silas hesitated, but finally turned away from her. “Good night, Cherish.”

“Good night,” her voice called softly after him.

As she heard his soft footfalls die away on the gravel, Cherish sighed, feeling as if with them went the vital part of her.

Silas hadn’t told her where he’d been all day. What had been so important to make him miss the boat race?

It could only be about seeking work at another shipyard. She could think of nothing else that would be more important to Silas.

Did it mean he had received an offer somewhere?

He seemed so distant lately. She thought sadly of her great expectations on returning to Haven’s End. All her hopes and dreams of a lifetime so quickly brought to nothing. Had Silas adjusted to life without her in the two years she had been absent from home? It certainly appeared so. And what of their kiss? Had he kissed her only to demonstrate his warnings to her about the nature of a man toward a flirtatious woman? She touched her lips. Had there been no love for her in that kiss, merely masculine desire?

Dear Lord, show me what is the right way. Would You have me marry Warren? It seems right. It would make Papa so happy. It would solve our financial problems. It would ensure Papa’s peace of mind. If I didn’t marry him, where would we be? Would I be precipitating Papa’s ill health if I turn Warren down?

Silas doesn’t seem to care for me at all. Perhaps as a sister, but nothing more.
She attempted to suppress the wave of despair that swept over her.
Oh, Lord, I gave my love for him over to You. I know I have no rights to him. What is best for him? Should he go away from Haven’s End? Is his future somewhere else? Grant me grace to accept Your will for Silas.

Silas arrived at the parsonage expecting to find all dark and quiet. As he walked up to the house, he heard the pastor’s and Mrs. McDuffie’s voices coming to him over the yard. They were seated on a bench overlooking the harbor.

“Good evening, Silas. You saw the fireworks from the other side? Weren’t they grand?” McDuffie asked.

“Uh—yes. I didn’t see too much of them. I was just getting back from Hatsfield.”

“Oh, they were beautiful,” Mrs. McDuffie told him. “We had a perfect night for them. No fog.”

“A minor miracle, I would call that, for July,” McDuffie added with a chuckle. “We’ve just been sitting here, not wanting the evening to end.”

“Don’t let me disturb you,” Silas said quickly. “I’m going to turn in.”

Mrs. McDuffie rose from the bench. “Just my thoughts exactly. Why don’t you stay out and keep my husband company a little while?”

“Yes, come have a seat, Silas.” Pastor McDuffie patted the bench beside him. “I’m reluctant to get up and call it a night.”

“All right.” Suddenly Silas desired the company. He didn’t want to face his own thoughts. Most likely they would only point to what a stupid fool he had been to throw away every chance that had come his way. First his hard-earned savings and now the offer of his own shipyard.

After Mrs. McDuffie wished them both good-night, the pastor and Silas sat quietly for a few minutes, listening to the rippling sound of the waves upon the pebbles of the beach.

Slowly Silas began to tell McDuffie of his day.

“What do you think?” he asked as he finished. “I turned down the offer to court a decent young lady whose father would open every door for me. Opportunity’s only supposed to knock once.” He contemplated the black expanse of sky and water in front of them, their presence evident only by the sound of the waves and twinkle of the stars. “I missed the boat race today. You know how much I wanted to race my own boat? I’ve raced boats I’ve built for Winslow for the last several years and won the last five. This time I wanted the chance to sail my own boat.”

As he sat silent, he realized how good it felt to unburden himself and how much he desired to hear this man’s opinion.

“Well, you’ve had yourself quite a day…quite a day, I would say.”

“I feel like…like…” Silas groped for words. “Like God’s taken it all—my sense of worth, my dreams, plans, even any…any hopes I had about Cherish—and now I’m just adrift. I’m surrounded by sea with no thought which is north, south,
east or west. What should I do now? I keep asking myself, but I get no sense of direction.”

“Have you never heard of ‘waiting on the Lord’?”

Silas rubbed the back of his neck. “I suppose so. It just never struck a chord with me. I always had a goal, a purpose to my life. It’s what kept me going through the bad times.”

“The Lord tells us to seek His kingdom and righteousness and all the rest will be added to us. You need to take Him at His Word.”

“But what does that mean, ‘seek His kingdom’? They sound like words that have very little meaning for a boatbuilder.”

“What about starting with getting to know your Savior? Have you been reading the Bible?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“Well, I’ve enjoyed it.”

“But?”

“I don’t know. I guess I still haven’t gotten to the point where I see the connection with my own life, here and now. How can I serve the Lord? What can I do?”

“Well, as I see it, the Lord has already given you a perfect opportunity.”

Silas glanced at him in surprise. “Yeah? How so?”

“Well, old Tobias, for one. You can minister to him.”

Silas let out a breath. The thought hadn’t even occurred to him. “You mean, tell him about Jesus?”

“Do as you’ve been doing. Be his friend. Share the light of Jesus through that friendship. The Word says not to despise small beginnings. I would say this qualifies.” Silas could hear the humor in McDuffie’s voice.

“You know, Silas, if you learn the secret to obedience, God will take you places you never dreamed. You say you want to build boats. God will open doors you never imagined possible, that His name might be glorified through you—that name that is above every name.” McDuffie’s voice rose in the sheer excitement of it. Then his voice sank. “But you’ve got to be a
willing vessel. There’s only one way to be a vessel. Empty yourself out on the altar, that He may fill you.

“Become the clay in the potter’s hands, and you’ll see, Silas, what the Lord will do.”

Well, from high-flown dreams of designing fast ships to visiting the village drunk was quite a shift in purpose. Silas rose and stretched.

He had nothing else to offer. All that was left was to be obedient.

“H
ello, Warren.” Cherish greeted him at the front door the day after the Fourth.

He apologized for not being able to come out the day before, but she put him at ease. After the initial pleasantries, he asked if he could see her father. He seemed quite serious, and she wondered what it was about.

“Certainly. I believe he’s in the parlor.” When she had taken him to her father, she left the two men.

By the time she came back to them a quarter of an hour later, her father’s face was wreathed in smiles.

“Cherish, I have some wonderful news.”

She looked from one man to the other. Warren no longer seemed embarrassed or serious. He was smiling, as well. “What is it?”

“Warren, our good friend, and I hope soon to be something more,” he added with an eager look in her direction, “has been so generous as to offer me five hundred dollars to help us out at the shipyard until I can get fully back on my feet.”

She looked at Warren in stupefaction. “How did you know? Did you tell him?” She could scarcely believe her father would request money from a man who was no relation to them.

“Of course not! Warren knew from his father, who is on the bank board. He was aware of our temporary difficulties.” His attention turned back to Warren. “You don’t know how grateful we are for your friendship.” The two men shook hands warmly.

Later her father excused himself and left her to visit with Warren. She didn’t know what to say. She felt overwhelmed by the gift.

“Oh, Warren, you can’t imagine how much we needed this. We will repay you some day, I promise,” she added fervently.

“You don’t have to repay me, you know,” he said quietly. “I wanted to help you out.” He grinned. “I didn’t really have much money stored away. I had to scrape it together.”

She felt doubly under obligation. “You didn’t have to give us this money.”

“Yes, I did,” he answered grimly. “I didn’t tell your father—I didn’t want to upset or worry him—but my father has been waiting for an opportunity like this. He’s looking to take over a shipyard, and this was ideal.”

She listened in shock as he told her his father’s role at the bank.

Warren got up to pace the room. “So you see, I had to come up with the cash somehow. I don’t have much of my own. But I didn’t want you to be under any pressure to accept my proposal. If you decide to marry me, I want you to do it because you want to, not to save your father.”

She could feel her face heat up, seeing that he had guessed her turmoil. Tears welled in her eyes as she realized what a true friend he was. “Oh, Warren, how can we ever thank you?” She rose then and embraced him. He held her, though he didn’t use the moment to his own advantage.

She eased out of the embrace and sought her handkerchief from her pocket. “I’ll—I’ll give you my answer soon, I promise,” she told him fervently, wiping her eyes, and not meeting his gaze.

Later that afternoon, when Cherish was in the boat shop office, the door opened. She looked up in surprise to see Captain Phelps entering.

“Good afternoon,” he said with a smile that crinkled the corners of his deep blue eyes. She was struck by what a handsome man he was, and she thought again of what a striking couple he and his wife made.

“Good afternoon, Captain Phelps,” she said, returning his smile. “How may I help you?”

“Are you Tom Winslow’s daughter?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

“Yes.”

“My, but you’re a young lady now. I remember you as a little thing peeking out at me from around a boat frame.”

She laughed. “Yes, that sounds like me.”

“Is your father around?”

She sobered. “No, my father has suffered some ill health this summer. The doctor still hasn’t given him permission to return to the shipyard.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. How is he now?”

“He’s better. It was his heart.”

Captain Phelps shook his head. “What a shame. So, you are here covering for your father?” he asked with a smile.

“I’m trying my best. It’s not easy to fill his shoes.”

“No, it never is,” he replied with understanding, and she remembered that he, too, worked for his father’s company.

“I’d like to congratulate you on your win yesterday. It was a wonderful race.”

“Thank you. You know the boat was built at this shipyard?”

She smiled. “Yes, I know. Even though I’ve been away, I have kept up-to-date with the goings-on here. That’s why I can congratulate you sincerely—I know the win is just as much a triumph for us!”

“Indeed it is. That’s one of the reasons I stopped by today. I wanted to talk to the young man who built it for me. Could you tell me if Silas van der Zee is around?”

Her face grew serious. What would she tell him? “He’s not around right now,” she began. “You can find him after four down at the parsonage,” she suggested with sudden inspiration, glad she didn’t have to mention the cannery. She won
dered what Captain Phelps wanted to talk to Silas about. Commissioning a new boat perhaps? That seemed unlikely, seeing as he had just had one built. Still, one could only hope.

“Oh.” The captain seemed disappointed. “He’s a fine builder.”

“Yes, he is,” Cherish answered immediately. “The best.”

He smiled at her as if amused by her enthusiasm.

He placed his hat back on his head. “Well, you can tell him I stopped by if you see him. Otherwise, I shall make my way to Pastor McDuffie’s this afternoon.”

“Captain Phelps?”

“Yes?” He turned back to her.

“I wanted to congratulate you also on your marriage.”

He smiled again. “Thank you. I am a very blessed man.”

She nodded, wondering again at the transformation in the woman who used to be known in Haven’s End as “Salt Fish Ginny.”

“We’ll stop by and call on your father this week.”

“He would enjoy that,” she told him.

Silas had scarcely had time to wash and change into clean clothes when he was visited by Captain Phelps.

He and Mrs. McDuffie exchanged greetings before she left the two of them on the porch to talk. Silas was surprised that the captain had come to see him, but the reason for his visit surprised him even more.

“I have a friend in Boston who would like to commission you to build him a yacht. A racing yacht.”

Silas stared at him, hardly believing what he was hearing.

“I don’t know if you saw the race yesterday.”

“No, I missed it.”

“That’s a shame. The boat you built me won hands down. But that’s not all. I raced her down in Boston before coming up here, and she won.” He grinned at him. “My friend was impressed enough to want one himself.”

Silas blew out a breath. “I don’t know. I—I’m not working at the shipyard, for one thing.”

Captain Phelps pierced him with those sharp blue eyes. “You’re not? Why not?”

Silas looked away. “I…it’s a long story,” he answered finally. “Let’s just say Mr. Winslow and I had a disagreement. So I have no workshop, nor any tools to work with.”

Captain Phelps considered a moment. “You could work in my barn. We could convert it into a workshop.”

Silas felt himself floundering. He stared past Captain Phelps to the inky-blue sea beyond.
What would You have me do, Lord? Is this of You?

It was a dream come true, and yet, Silas realized, for the first time in his life he knew there was something more important than mere boatbuilding.

“Can I give you my answer tomorrow?”

“Of course. You think about it.”

“I’ve committed myself to helping out at Winslow’s Shipyard just until the schooner they’re building is launched. But that’s only in the evenings that I put in a few hours.”

“This shouldn’t interfere with that.”

Silas cleared his throat. “I’m spending my days at the cannery in town.”

Captain Phelps merely nodded at the information. “That wouldn’t leave you enough time for this project. Would you consider quitting that job to take on this short-term one?” He paused. “If this boat is as fast as the one you built for me, your reputation would spread. I’d make sure of it.”

Before Silas could absorb this, the captain continued, his enthusiasm growing. “Did you hear about the race that was just held in England? A yacht named
Jullanar
won. They say it had some interesting innovations—the builder cut away all the deadwood in both stem and stern and rigged it as a yawl instead of a schooner. I’m awaiting the particulars. But the interesting thing is these innovations were designed by someone who was unknown—he wasn’t even a shipwright.”

Silas could feel his excitement growing as Caleb talked to him about yachts and yacht racing, a heretofore unknown aspect of sailing to Silas.

“The yachts introduced in the fifties have a raking sternpost and sharp lines like a clipper. The canvas is set flatter. In the sixties, designers began combining an iron framework with the wooden skin. Now you begin to see a clipperlike bow.

“I think if we put our heads together and study the design of
Jullanar,
we could come up with some innovations of our own,” the captain told him as he shook his hand in farewell.

Silas stood watching the captain’s buggy as it left the lane. His mind was so full of possibilities, he could hardly form a coherent thought. All he knew was he needed to find a quiet place to commune with God.

The moment Cherish had been dreading arrived. Warren Townsend visited her again, and she knew she must give him an answer.

They sat across from each other in the boat-shop office.

“Have you had a chance to think about my proposal?” Warren asked after they’d chatted a while.

“Yes.” She looked down at the letter opener on her desk. “Warren, I care about you deeply, and I can never tell you how much your help has meant to me. It has come at a very timely moment. I promise you, my father and I will repay you.”

“Forget about the money. I told you that wasn’t the reason I gave it to you.”

“You’re very kind. I wish—” She bit her lip, wondering even now if she had the courage to face her future in Haven’s End without the security Warren Townsend offered.

“I know you don’t love me,” he surprised her by saying, “but we get along well.”

“Well, you don’t love me either!” she found herself blurting back to him.

He didn’t seem fazed by her remark. Instead he seemed relieved. “But I think an awful lot of you. You’re the nicest, prettiest girl I know. I’d do anything to help you out.”

She took his hand across the desk. “Oh, Warren, you’re too good. You’ll never know how you’ve touched me.”

He squeezed her hand. “You still don’t have to give me an answer right now. I’m in no hurry—to my parents’ exasperation.”

She looked at him in sympathy and patted his hand. “Thank you, but I won’t string you along.” She looked down at their joined hands. “The answer must be no.” In her heart she knew she had made the right choice, though she didn’t yet know how she was going to tell her father. “I wish sometimes that we were in love. It would make things easier, don’t you think?”

“It sure would,” he said with a laugh. Then his eyes grew somber. “Sometimes I feel as if we’re born with this loose noose around our necks and as we grow older, it slowly tightens and there’s less and less slack in which to wiggle.”

“Oh, Warren, no! Is it so bad…being the son of Warren Townsend the Second?”

He ran a finger inside his stiff collar as if illustrating the point. “I feel right now that between taking over more and more of the business for Father and getting married to ‘the right young lady,’ my life is being stifled to the point that I have no breathing room left. I mean that as no offense to you.”

She laughed. “No offense taken. Poor Warren.” She reached across both hands this time and clasped his. “I feel I, too, shall greatly disappoint my father by refusing your proposal.”

They sat smiling sadly at one another.

Silas had prayed through the night after telling the McDuffies briefly about Captain Phelps’s offer.

Now he wanted to tell the only person who would truly understand. He left the cannery on his lunch break, knowing he had very little time. He walked up the road toward the boat shop and made his way toward the office, figuring she would be there if she hadn’t yet left for her dinner. Peering in the window, he stopped short when he saw Townsend and Cherish, eyeing each other warmly and clasping each other by the hands.

All the pleasure and anticipation died within him in those seconds he stood watching them. He thought back to the time Cherish had told him she behaved with that informality only
with him, Silas. His mouth pressed into a grim line as he watched Cherish smile at Warren. Then he turned and left the area, trying to smother the bitterness that threatened to quench the excitement he had felt since Captain Phelps had visited him.

The day had been hot and steamy. At seven in the evening the tide was out, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, the sun was still high on the horizon and the mudflats seemed to radiate the heat of the afternoon sun. Cherish made her way up the ramp to the deserted schooner.

It was nearly completed, lacking only masts, which would be stepped later, after the ship was launched. She hiked up her skirts and climbed onto the deck. It smelled of turpentine.

Silas stood with his back to her, a bucket in one hand and a brush in the other. She remained where she was, watching him. She hadn’t seen him in days. He could almost have gone off to live in another town for all she saw of him now.

“Hello, Silas,” she said finally.

He jumped around at the sound of her voice, the bucket sloshing its contents. He held his brush as if fending her off.

“Hello, Cherish.” His tone was serious, the look in his eyes wary.

His shirt hung open. He brought a hand up to his chest to clutch the two edges of it together.

“What smells so bad up here?” she asked.

He indicated the linseed oil and kerosene mixture used to prevent dry rot on the exposed wooden surfaces. He set down the bucket and brush and turned his back on her as he began buttoning up his shirt. When he faced her again, working on the last button, he seemed more composed.