The Night Angel (26 page)

“We were honored with your presence. Let me walk you to the door.”

“Good night, Miss Goody,” he said as he passed.

“I like your tales and the look of you, John Falconer.” She busied herself rolling up her work. “I look forward to the next time we meet.”

At the front door, Ada Hart leaned against the doorjamb. “I stand ready to help you, John Falconer.”

He saw the warmth of a good and open heart in her expression. “Mrs. Hart, your words are a blessing.”

She dropped her gaze and said, “I hope you will find your way back here to our table before too long.”

Nathan had returned to work, and Serafina and Eleanor Baring were alone. The atmosphere between them had become very comfortable. Serafina was pleased with how the portrait was developing. The woman’s formality called out for a more definite and meticulous likeness than she had employed with her parents’ portrait. Serafina remained indifferent toward attempting the classical structure required by oils, full of details and dress and background. Instead she kept the surroundings vague, sharpening into focus only about the face, as she had done previously.

The two women halted for tea at midafternoon. The sole housekeeper was away, so Serafina prepared the tray while the kettle boiled. She sat in the chair formerly occupied by Nathan Baring. A clock ticked comfortably on the mantel. A horse clopped by outside, the footfalls almost in time to the clock. Otherwise the house was silent. Serafina drank her tea and worked through in her mind the next mixing of colors that would be required. She would be able to complete the canvas today, she was sure. She found herself already missing the times here, although Eleanor Baring had scarcely spoken to her at all that day.

Abruptly the older woman said, “May I ask if God has ever spoken directly to you, young lady?”

Serafina set her cup down in its saucer, not sure why the words, uttered as they were by a relative stranger, did not disturb her. Instead, they seemed in harmony with the room’s atmosphere. “A friend asked me the very same thing recently, ma’am.”

“And how did you answer?”

“I told him that to my knowledge, God had never spoken with me in words. In many other ways, however, I have felt Him close enough to trust that my sentiments were indeed based upon communion with my Lord.”

“You are indeed wise beyond your years,” Eleanor Baring murmured. “My husband felt God spoke to him about the profession my sons should choose. I have long wondered if it was truly God or simply my husband’s desire to command the directions his sons would take, invoking an authority they would not question.”

“Perhaps . . .”

“Yes? Do go on, Miss Gavi.”

“Perhaps it was indeed your husband’s desire, but granted God’s blessing.”

The older woman inspected her carefully. “How remarkable.”

“I have often felt that the difficulty with me is not that God is silent. Rather it’s that I am not able to hear Him. He speaks, but my ears and my mind and my heart are too clouded by my own ideas, even waywardness.”

“That I very much doubt.” The woman did not give Serafina an opportunity to disagree. She turned her face to the front window and said, “The hours in your company have been most reflective. Nathan is taking my approaching home-going very hard. Along with that, he feels his life is wasted. He wanted to be a minister, and my husband objected. Nathan has spent years waiting for fulfillment in a vocation that does not rest easy.”

“Your son is a good man, Mrs. Baring.”

“Yes. Yes, he is.” She pointed at the easel. “May I see the work?”

Serafina usually was reluctant to reveal an unfinished painting, yet there was a sense of harmony with her subject strong enough to overcome her objections. She rose and turned the easel around. Then she moved her seat in order to view it along with the woman. Sharing this moment granted her a distance from the work that was more than mere space away from the easel. She immediately could see that the emotion she had intended was truly captured, the mystery revealed.

She heard the older woman swallow. Then, “You are not painting . . . This is not the Eleanor Baring I see in the mirror.”

“Yes, madam. I must differ. It is.”

“Nathan will be very pleased.” Her sigh was unsteady. “Young lady, I have two requests to make of you.”

“Of course, ma’am.”

“My housekeeper’s name is Sally Long. She has been with us for almost twelve years. More than just a friend, she was my strength during the days following my husband’s illness.” Eleanor Baring spoke to the canvas upon the easel. “This week her youngest child died of the croup.”

“I’m very sorry to hear it, ma’am.”

“Sally is taking it very hard. The bairn was her favorite. A little angel. Called Sally as well. She was just eleven months.” She set her tea down. “The funeral is in two hours. Please, if you would, accompany my son to the service.”

“Of course, madam.”

“Take your drawing pad. If you find yourself inspired, perhaps . . .” She shook her head. “No, it is asking too much. You never even knew the child.”

“I will see what I can do, madam. You said there were two matters?”

She studied Serafina a long moment. “My end is near. No, please spare us both the unnecessary words. We both know it is so. I lie here watching you work, and I have felt God’s hand upon the moment.”

“As have I, madam.”

“Have you indeed? That makes what I am about to say much easier. Young lady, I sense a deep sadness about you. My son carries a similar sorrow, but he has borne it for so long he manages to hide it better. Yet it is there, and in our time together, I have found myself sensing that perhaps you would be able—”

“Oh, no, Mrs. Baring. Please. I must ask—”

“Ask what, that I not speak words I feel God has set upon my heart?”

Serafina wished to protest, but her power of speech seemed stolen away. It was all she could do to shake her head, just a tiny fraction of movement.

“Perhaps, just perhaps, the Lord has spoken of a time beyond us all,” Mrs. Baring said comfortably. “Beyond you, because you see only your wound. Beyond Nathan, because he sees only what the immediate future will bring. Beyond me . . .” She smiled, and in so doing she showed to Serafina the same affection and openness that she granted her son. “Here, then, is my request. If sometime you and my son find yourselves drawing together, I ask that you tell him I give you both my blessing.”

The funeral was a most tragic event. The Long family was there in great numbers. Aunts and uncles and Sally Long’s own parents. Six other children, all clustered in various stages of distress about a distraught father. The mother was scarcely there at all, which only caused her other children additional anguish.

The coffin stood at the center of the church’s front aisle, a tiny thing the size of a narrow wooden crib. Serafina set her sketchpad in the cloakroom and took a firm hold of Nathan Baring’s arm. The closer they drew to the front of the church, the tighter her grip became.

Sally Long was seated at the end of the first pew. People stopped to embrace her and spoke words she did not hear. Her only response was to reposition her head so nothing came between her and her child’s tiny face resting against a lace pillow. Serafina gripped Nathan’s arm with both hands as she leaned forward and peered inside the coffin. The figure of the baby embodied all the sorrow an earthly existence could hold.

She stopped, halting the procession behind her. She forced herself to look long and hard, imprinting the features on her mind and heart. She was sure there was no way her canvas and paints would be able to give life back to this baby. It was impossible. The emotions and the loss and the absence of life were simply too strong.

She allowed Nathan to draw her away. She was led to a pew. She seated herself, shut her eyes, and prayed. She begged God for some way to overcome the impossibility. But before her closed eyes she saw only the infant’s features, lifeless and waxlike.

She opened her eyes. And there before her was the answer.

A child of perhaps three years sat in her father’s lap, unquestionably the baby’s older sister. Her face held an almost identical oval structure as the infant and the mother. The child whimpered softly and pulled on her father’s sleeve. She was frightened and unsettled by all that was happening that she could not understand.

Serafina released Nathan and stepped forward. She leaned down to whisper to the father that she was a friend of Mrs. Baring and she would be happy to care for the little one during the service. When he did not object, she held out her arms and whispered, “Would you like to come outside with me, little one?”

The father looked uncomprehendingly at Serafina. The child must have sensed something warm and inviting, for she responded by reaching up toward Serafina.

The father stirred himself and lifted his daughter into Serafina’s arms. She whispered her intentions to Nathan and carried her charge over to the side aisle and out to the back of the sanctuary. The child was dressed in softest wool and smelled of soap and warm baby scents. The child wrapped her arms tightly around Serafina’s neck.

In the rear foyer Serafina moved into the cloakroom to collect her sketchpad and charcoals.

She put the child down, and they walked hand-in-hand back into the sunlight. The day was warm, a rare gift in a rain-swept season. Serafina walked slowly, sketchpad and charcoals at her side, gently talking to the child. She learned that the little girl’s name was Ella. She let the child direct them until they came to the carriage decked out in black. Ella did not understand the significance of the dark feathers perched upon the horse’s head. Nor the black crepe wrapped about the reins, nor the black cloth that cradled the rear portion of the open carriage. Instead, she peered up at the horse, then began talking to it, the animal bobbing its head in response.

Serafina looked a question to the carriage driver, who nodded. She moved closer to the horse, who sniffed the child’s hand, then snorted softly. Ella laughed delightedly.

The driver spoke, “Here, little one. Offer him this sugar and you’ll make a friend for life.”

“Hold out your hand,” Serafina told Ella, “flat like this.” She demonstrated and then placed the sugar cube on the tiny palm.

“Now hold it up to the horse like this,” and Serafina lifted the little hand to the horse’s mouth.

The child squealed with delight as the horse delicately ate from her fingers. Serafina took three steps back, leaning in close to the driver’s station so she could see the happy little face clearly. She sketched as fast as she possibly could, drawing the face she had seen inside the coffin, but making the eyes those of the laughing child before her. She incorporated the life, the sunlight, and the joy. She struggled hard to keep her vision clear, wiping impatiently at the sudden tears. Serafina drew and shaded and darkened, promising herself she would have a good cry when she had completed the task.

Chapter 22

The three riders covered the distance to Charlotte in two very hard days. Up with the sun, into the saddle, riding until the road was all they could taste and smell. Two brief halts to blow the horses. Cold coffee and apples and good Salem soda bread for breakfast. Apples and cheese and well water for lunch, while the horses munched two handfuls of grain from their nose bags. The day’s only hot meal was at sunset—beans and smoked beef and more soda bread. Ada Hart had packed what she referred to as her road bags, and Falconer was certain he could catch a hint of her fragrance whenever he opened the satchels. The last task before they unfurled their bedrolls was to set a pot of coffee by the banked coals to brew all night long. They did not take time for a fire at dawn.

The weather was neither for nor against them. The sky remained mostly sullen and the road muddy. Springtime seemed lost, a word for some other world. But no more rain fell. Twice they passed wagons mired to their wheel rims in boggy pits, lowing cattle straining against the mud. Like other travelers on horseback, Falconer held to narrow tracks that paralleled the main road, such as it was. The North-South Turnpike was somewhere off to the east, running from Richmond to Raleigh to Atlanta. The Salem-Charlotte road was adequate in some spots but mostly rough. The people who traveled it were cautious and well armed.

The wind blew a damp warning of further storms to come. The men cut wide circles through the surrounding forests as they approached the two main towns along the road, Salisbury and Davidson. They spoke to no one the entire journey.

Theo Henning gave no sign he thought anything untoward about their pace or their solitary ways. Nor did he give any notice to how Joseph stayed to one side, both on the road and off.

Their most difficult challenge was lighting a fire for their evening meal. All three men scavenged for dry wood and a place to refill their canteens whenever they stopped. By nightfall they had enough moss and branches lashed to their saddles to cook, but the last glowing embers soon faded, and by morning their muscles were tight with cold and damp.

So it was that three road-weary men entered Charlotte late in the afternoon of the second day.