The Endless Forest
Page 76

It has been three months since she had a sheet of paper, anything at all that she might write on. Her father will wonder, and worry. That is the hardest thing, not having her father’s ear, even in this disjointed fashion.
She doesn’t say any of these things, but it seems that he may be reading them from her face. It would be a gift to have another Friend—a former Friend—to talk to about these things, but maybe it would not be wise.
“It is a quiet life here,” she says finally. “And a good one.”
“So I see.” And then: “But not the life thee expected.”
“I am young,” Maddie tells him. Too young, her mother had said, but that thought she puts aside. If she thinks of her mother she will weep.
“I am young,” she says again. “There are many years to travel.”
To that he says nothing at all, and she knows now that he is wise where she cannot be.
It is the next day or the day after when he asks her. He says, “What wilt thou do if he doesn’t return?”
That question that beats like a drum in her head. Alfred has been gone almost three months, the longest time he has been away without any word at all. He may be dead, or he may sit in a gaol somewhere, or maybe he has just lost track of time, wandering as he loves to do. As Maddie had once thought she would do with him.
“Go home,” she says. “I will go home to my family.”
“Thou might do that anyway, if this life does not suit.”
“I was married before God,” she said. “I made a promise.”
“And so did he, but is he here to keep it?”
There is something still in his expression, something watchful. As if this is an assignment he sets her, this question.
“I thank thee for thy concern,” she says. “But I will wait for my husband a while longer.”
“Then may God send thee children to brighten thy days,” says Gabriel Oak, and when she looks up in surprise she sees that he knows more than she could ever say.
“Ma,” said Lily. “This is not talk for Birdie to hear.”
Her mother’s gaze was distant. She came back to this room, this day, with reluctance, blinking like a child roused from a nap.
“Ma,” said Lily.
Birdie scowled at her sister. “Curiosity wanted me here and Ma wanted me here and you can’t send me away. Can she, Ma?”
“No,” Elizabeth said. “We won’t send you away. I think Curiosity is almost done with her story. Is that not so?”
“Almost,” Curiosity agreed.
“I want to hear the rest of it,” said Birdie, still glaring at her sister.
“So do we all,” said Curiosity.
—
It is clear that Galileo and Curiosity are concerned. Curiosity says, “You watch yourself, Maddie. You watch out for yourself.”
Another time Maddie hears them talking in the garden.
“First time I seen her smile like she mean it,” Galileo was saying.
“Headed for heartbreak,” answers his wife.
When Sixth month passes into Seventh and the visitors have not yet moved on, Martha Todd and Mary Witherspoon come to pay a call. Mrs. Todd’s firstborn, a sturdy little boy with hair the color of ripe corn, runs ahead of her and jumps into Maddie’s lap where she sits in the shade of a birch tree, mending a shirt.
Mrs. Todd is heavy with child, her belly so extended that it almost comes to a point, like the prow of a great ship. Her face is red with the sun and perspiration runs off her brow like rain.
Maddie offers them water, and they accept with thanks. When Mrs. Todd puts the jug down her gaze fixes on Maddie, and her mouth presses itself into a line.
“Mrs. Middleton. Caroline. We are here,” she says in her clipped Boston way, “to tell you that your immortal soul is in danger. Send the man away.”
She has been expecting this for some time, and she is ready. “Friend Gabriel comes and goes as he pleases,” she says. “He is not mine to command.”
Mrs. Witherspoon’s thin mouth curves downward, but she leaves the talking to her friend.
“Is he not?” Mrs. Todd’s tone is flat. “Well then, suit yourself. What will you tell your husband when he comes home?”
“I am sure you will tell him whatever needs to be told,” Maddie says. “Which is nothing at all.”
When they are at the door Mrs. Witherspoon speaks for the first time.
“Whose shirt is that you’re mending, Mrs. Middleton?”
When Maddie doesn’t look up and keeps her silence, her neighbors go out into the heat of summer.
Gabriel says, “Come away with me.”
Maddie thinks of the cabin, of the garden and the ripening corn, of Curiosity and Galileo. She thinks of Cora, who has been so kind, and the other friends she has here. Anneliese Metzler, who is often ill and needs help. Axel, who makes her smile with his tall tales.
“We’ll go to Russia,” he says, laughing down at her. This is a joke now, one they tell each other quite often.
“Russia in the winter?”
He is so close, the smell of him rubbed into her skin so that she is loath to bathe.
“And in the spring. And summer. And fall. Maddie, come away with me.”
High summer, in the cool of the woods.
“Wilt thou think about it?”
She says, “I do little else.”
“Tomorrow,” she tells him on a day when rain has driven them indoors. “Tomorrow is the anniversary of my marriage.”