Love's Pursuit (2 page)

2

I RESOLVED NOT TO give Mary’s flirtations another thought and turned my meditation instead to my task. How perfect God’s plan that the blueberry should ripen in June. That the picking of them could be done absent the sting of black flies and that it could be accomplished before the planting of cabbages and the mowing of hay. That there should be one summer’s day absent the pulling of weeds or the making of biscuits . . . was that not God’s just and perfect rest from labor?

I heard myself sigh.

It was not helping. True, virtuous, and praise-worthy thoughts did not work when they were not what one was truly thinking.

A cough alerted me to another’s presence.

I looked up and, recognizing John Prescotte, scrambled to my feet.

He reached out a hand in aid.

“Thank you, John.”

“Susannah.” He dropped my hand and came to stand beside me. Shifting his feet, he crossed his arms, shot a glance toward his shoes.

I smiled at him.

He began to smile at me, then tugged the corners of his lips back into place. Squinting, he surveyed the barren around us. “Looks to be the start of a fair summer.”

“Aye.”

“If the wheat crop does well . . . if God allows it . . . I am of a mind to start building a house of my own. My father’s health improves daily. And he has deeded me a portion of his land.”

My heart thrilled with the news. If he meant to build a house, then he also meant to fill it with a family. “And why should you not?”

He did smile then. And his eyes twinkled as well. “Why indeed.” As he looked at me, I felt my face color. Perhaps I had spoken out of turn. Perhaps I had been too eager. But it was time. It was time for him to build and time for us to wed. And why should there be any shame in that?

“I was thinking of building on the end of Father’s land. That is . . . my land. He should be well enough this fall that I could start to work my land instead of his. I was thinking . . . near that stand of trees . . .”

“By the brook?”

He nodded.

“ ’Tis a lovely spot.” And it would be just far enough away from his parents’ that I would feel as if the house were my own. But close enough to my own mother’s that I would not feel too far gone. It was perfect.

“ ’Twas my thought as well.” His eyes held mine a moment longer before he drew in a deep breath and inclined his head toward where his mother and his sisters worked at picking. “I should return to the picking.”

“Your father does better?”

“He gains strength. And more of it every day.”

“ ’Tis good news.”

“Aye. The very best. Good day, Susannah Phillips.”

As John walked away, my father came to stand beside me.

“Good man, that John.” My father said the words as if he had spent some time thinking about them.

“Aye.”

“And Simeon Wright as well.” He left the words for me in parting.

Simeon Wright? What did Simeon Wright have to do with aught? Besides the fact that it was him upon which my father depended to practice his trade.

I returned to my berries, unsettled in my thoughts. The expectation of happiness that John had brought with him had somehow been pushed aside. My hands worked of their own volition. My thoughts refused to be gathered.

Simeon Wright.

He could have no interest in me. No more than in the other girls in town. Why should he? And, furthermore, he was not one of us. He had not been part of our congregation in Boston, though he had been welcomed quickly enough once he made it known he intended to build a sawmill. And, further, once the move had been made and the town lots established, he had volunteered that his house be the garrison to which half the town would retreat in the event savages attacked. He had even brought brick from Boston for the building of it. Simeon Wright was a town selectman, indeed the town’s premier citizen. But unlike most of the other girls my age, I had never given one thought to marrying him.

I had John.

Of course, marriage to one like Simeon Wright might be advantageous, and unions were arranged for lesser reasons, but I did not know the man. It was said he had two and thirty years. And he was handsome. He stood shoulders above the rest of the men in town and his fair hair seemed to shoot sparks at the sun. Though I had noticed, more than once, that his ready smile and his eyes seemed at odds.

But there was no reason for me to think of him. And even less reason for worry.

I had John.

I am my name. I have small hopes. But the largest of my small wishes is that I be overlooked. In my experience, the less one is noticed, the less trouble one encounters. There are those by whom I have no wish to be seen. Simeon Wright is one of them. I have no wish for trouble from that man. Nor from any like him.

I have had trouble enough already.

I recognize Simeon Wright for what he is. I doubt the Phillips sisters do; I doubt they can. The younger chases after him, yapping like a puppy at his heels. The elder is puzzled by his glance. She does well to question. He is a riddle. Will she solve him in time?

How can she? She possesses no clues. I know the answer, but then I have seen such riddles before.

They cannot read the signs, those sisters. They have been petted and worshiped and adored. They have been raised by a father who loves them and provides for them. Why should they have knowledge of any other kind of man? Of any other kind of life?

They do not know what it is like to wish you had never been born.

Yea, better is he . . . which hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun.

Mary returned from Simeon Wright and soon picked her way out into the barren in front of me. Nathaniel picked toward me to close the gap she had created.

“Susannah, I have been thinking . . .”

I dipped my head to hide my smile. Nathaniel was always thinking. “Of what were you thinking?”

“These blueberry canes grow along the ground.”

“They do.”

“They grow in the dirt, and at times they plunge their heads back beneath the soil, but always they resurface.”

“Aye.”

“And though it might seem like a new plant, every time it raises its head again, you have only to pull at it to bring to light the whole. ’Tis all one cane.”

“It is.”

“Is that not an example of grace?”

“How so?”

“The canes are like people. We all live in a state of sin. And sometimes we plunge ourselves into it and hide from the love of God. But if we do, have we not only to raise our heads once more toward heaven to be rescued from our filth?”

“ ’Tis one way of looking at things.”

“We try so hard to bury our sin. But if we look back on what we have done, we realize that God can create something from the whole of us. And that we cannot hide ourselves from Him.”

“Aye. ’Tis true.”

“Can this not be my conversion experience?”

I sighed. I had conversations like this with Nathaniel by the dozens. “ ’Tis not internal, your example, Nathaniel. ’Tis external and wrought from your own knowledge. ’Tis God that must do His work in your heart to convince you of His love. What is wanted is an experience of the inward work of grace. There must be some sign, some change. Otherwise any who wanted could call themselves Christian, and who could doubt them? If we are truly part of the elect, then God will show us.”

“But I want to be a member of the church. I want to have an experience so I can tell everyone about it. I want so much to be saved. Why does God not want me? Why can He not speak to my heart? Why can I not know?”

“It is not given to us to know God’s mind.”

“But how then shall I be saved? How then shall I know? Does God not want me?”

Did God not want him? Who could say? How could any of us know what God wanted? How could any of us know who God intended to save? The best we could hope for was a sign. An experience. A sort of indication from God that might signal that He had indeed chosen us. And then one could be permitted to join the church and receive communion. But, even still, one could not know for certain. The only hope was to keep working, keep hoping, keep praying. Keep proving oneself worthy of God’s grace. “I do not know who God wants, Nathaniel. How can any of us know? We can only do. And hope.”

“But—”

“Keep hoping.” I only told him what I was telling myself. I had not had a conversion experience either. Though I heard the Holy Scriptures read each night, though I had attended meeting on the Sabbath since I had been born, though I had knowledge aplenty, and though it had always been my hope that I might become a member of the church before my marriage, I had no conversion experience to declare. No inward change that would signal any faith. Keep hoping: It was all that I could do. That . . . and discover how to become the good person that everyone thought me to be.

A babe’s cry sliced through the drowsiness of the afternoon. It was ours. I looked round for Mother.

She saw me and inclined her head toward the tree where the town’s infants had been drowsing in the heat.

I pushed my bucket toward Nathaniel and then went to see to the child.

This one always woke angry and just now he was sitting, legs splayed in the dirt, rocking back and forth, face red as a beet. I picked up his cap from the ground and set it back on his head, tying off the strings beneath his chin. Then I bounced him to my hip.

Little legs circled my waist and tiny hands clasped the collar of my shift.

“Hush-a, hush-a.” I kissed his tear-streaked cheek. “Nightingales sing in time of spring! Time cuts down all both great and small! An eagle’s flight is out of sight! A dog will bite a thief at night!” As I jostled it, the babe shushed and finally smiled. I took it as a sign to disengage its fingers from my collar.

When little heels began to kick at my hip, I set him down on the ground and took up the leading strings that trailed from his dress so that he would not fall as he toddled.

How many times had I done this? Looked after a babe of our mother’s? My earliest memories included the cries of a babe. There was always one to be had, to be held. And this one . . . this one looked to be healthy. And strong. He might yet live to the age of seven, when he would be breeched and take his place among the boys of the village. He might yet live to pass down my father’s name to his own children.

There had been another John Phillips, named after my father. A boy older than I. The firstborn. And he had lived until just after Nathaniel’s birth, when he had died of a lung sickness. After that, after Nathaniel, there had been two others with that name, but they had died in quick succession. I stooped and embraced the mite. There was joy to be had in a babe, and until Mother birthed another, Babe is who this boy would be.

I chased him round the tree first this way and then that, enjoying the cool of the shade. But the berries waited and soon I gathered the child into my arms to take him back with me to the barren.

But as I did, I noted a crackling in the wood behind us. And then something snapped.

A savage? Were they upon us already, just as Simeon Wright had warned?

Nay. A savage could go like a spirit through the woods, leaving no sounds to mark his presence. Least that is what the men said. This thing then could be no savage. It must be a bear. One which would not be pleased to have its access to berries denied.

I moved to warn the guard, but he had already come to the alert.

He put fingers to his lips and whistled.

Behind us, the work ceased of a sudden in the barren. And then the field exploded with movement. Mothers leapt through the canes to gather up their children. Men came at a run with their muskets. Quickly, shoulder to shoulder, they walled off the women and children from the danger. And even as the men moved into position and the women and children shrunk back from them, Simeon Wright was barking orders.

The noisome rustling grew louder and closer and then, finally, it broke out of the wood into our clearing.

In the time it took Simeon to tell the men to stand down, a sigh of relief rippled through the women and laughter broke out among the boys.