The Endless Forest
Page 75

She remembers too the first day she met Alfred, and how his dark hair and the color of his eyes reminded her of Gabriel Oak.
Much later when they are alone again, Curiosity looks up from the loom when Maddie comes in and she says, “You never mentioned to me that you don’t like to be called Caroline.”
She looks up in surprise. “I don’t dislike it,” she tells Curiosity. “It is my name, after all. Maddie was my girlhood name. I suppose I think of it that way.”
She doesn’t say how much she liked being called Maddie again.
“But you like it,” Curiosity said. “And it suit you better than Caroline. I’ma call you Maddie from now on.”
Maddie says, “Certainly, if thou feels called upon to do so.”
For a long minute Curiosity says nothing, but then the questions Maddie had hoped to avoid begin.
“Tell me about him, about your friend Gabriel. Is he disowned too?”
“Oh, yes,” Maddie tells her. “I was there when the elders read their statement at quarterly meeting.”
She was not there for her own disownment, but she has a copy of the declaration; she keeps it with her wedding lines.
“Because he wanted to draw?” Curiosity can’t quite understand. Maddie doubts that anyone but another Friend could.
“He could not live his life according to the principles,” she says. “And so he left.”
“And his family won’t own him.”
“No!” Maddie’s tone is too sharp, and so she takes a deep breath and attempts to explain.
“A Quaker who cannot or will not live by the principles is warned and prayed over and given every chance, and when it is clear that he has no intention of changing his ways, he is disowned by the meeting. It only means that the meeting no longer owns him. He might still attend if he likes. He is welcome everywhere in the hope that he will find the light again and return to the Quaker way of life.”
“But his family put him out,” Curiosity says. “Because he has a gift for drawing.”
“Not exactly,” Maddie says. “People are sometimes disowned by the meeting but rarely by their families. In his case, his father would not allow him back into the house unless he gave up his worldly ways.”
“Like your mama did to you,” Curiosity says. Her tone is not unkind; she is a sensible person and not given to displays of emotion.
“Yes,” Maddie says. “That is true. Though thou has seen, my father still is concerned with my well-being. He sent ye to us here, and I am thankful for thy help and company every day.”
“He don’t want you to be lonely,” Curiosity says.
To that Maddie has nothing to say; she is overwhelmed, as she often is these days, by the depths of her loss. How much she gave up, for something that never existed.
He comes again when she is working in the garden, and his hair is damp and she thinks he must have gone swimming in the lake. He has an exuberance of hair, thick and healthy and anything but plain. Her own curly mass she keeps tightly braided and hidden away under a white linen cap. She is no longer a Friend, but some habits she cannot leave behind.
“Let me help thee,” he says and without waiting for her answer he takes up the spade and starts turning the earth with sure, quick movements.
For a long while they work in silence. Without asking he takes the bushel of seed potatoes and begins to plant them, his fingers moving in the earth. Maddie realizes that she is staring and she goes back to her carrot bed. She has many questions, none of which she can think of a way to ask.
He says, “Tell me about thy husband. How ye met, and why ye married.”
From anyone else this question would be too rude to answer, but he is a Friend, someone from home. He is asking for her testimony, in this oddest of ways and settings. Maddie finds, to her own surprise, that she doesn’t mind. In fact, she feels some relief that he has asked so directly.
“Alfred came to see my father on business,” she tells Gabriel. “And my mother invited him to table. He told us stories of his travels. He is English, you understand. He came to the colonies when he was just five-and-twenty and decided to stay.”
He works on as if he doesn’t hear her, but she knows that he does.
“It was very exciting,” Maddie says. Her trowel makes sharp punching sounds as she digs. “Such tales as he told. He spoke of the Russian winter, and the villages ruled by robber barons. He told of Paris and Barcelona and the African coast. He spoke of Sweden and the Lowlands. He traveled through the mountains in Switzerland and Austria on his way to Italy. Oh, how he talked about Rome and Florence. He is a good storyteller, and he made it so real, I could smell the very air. And he had plans to travel farther. He wanted to go to China, and start a business importing silk.”
What she doesn’t say, not yet, not now, is simpler: Most of what Alfred told was no more than fantasy. He is a story teller first and foremost; he does not credit any difference between truth and imagination. Something she realized far too late, after she had married him and left her family for this wilderness.
The simple truth is, he has no more been to Russia than she has. All his plans and grand schemes will never be more than that, ideas that never come to life. If not for Galileo and Dan’l Bonner, who bring meat and fish for the table, they might well have starved in the past winter. She and Curiosity spend every spare minute spinning and weaving to trade cloth for things they cannot afford to buy and Galileo can’t make.