The Goodrich girl tried to smile. “Interesting,” she said weakly.
“Life always saves room for an appreciation of the ‘just pretty,’” Mr. Long said quietly. “I wouldn’t take to whittling otherwise. And the Goodrich family wouldn’t appreciate parlor music. Not everything need be purpose-riddled. Beauty and art justify themselves through the pleasure they provide.”
Mama was slowly shaking her head at me, grave disappointment in her face.
I dropped my gaze and studied my hands.
Heat stormed my already (I was sure) pink face when she said in a mortifyingly scolding tone, “Yes, beauty and art and good manners: all worth admiring, all worth cultivating, my dear. I believe I hear your father at the door. Propitious timing. Thank you, Mrs. Goodrich, for so kindly entertaining us. We must take our leave.”
*
Head bowed, I slunk out of the Goodrich house. Mama’s expression fueled my shame all the way home. And as the week passed, whenever I recollected my rudeness and how readily Mr. Long and my mother had corrected it, the shame flared.
It was sufficiently excruciating to compel me to avoid everyone. I skulked outside as often as possible. The banking-up season had begun, and the minute I realized Papa was shouldering the sides of the house with proper insulation, I seized the opportunity to help, wrangled armfuls of cornstalks across the yard, and arranged them around the house’s foundation, mounding the cover particularly high on the north side to keep out the worst of the wind and cold. And since the steady sting of shame quickened my labor, I finished in no time and offered to insulate the barn as well.
Shoveling cow dung along its sides was probably a fitting punishment for someone like me. Of course, what I really needed to do was apologize, particularly to my mother. That I also owed Mrs. Goodrich and her eldest daughter apologies was too painful and impossible to consider.
That week, remorse stuck in my throat and stayed there, every time Mama and I found ourselves alone. It also stopped up my windpipe and choked me when Mr. Long visited the farm and when I saw him at meeting.
Gone was the banter. Extinguished were the titillating glances and laden remarks. He didn’t look judgmental—just uncomfortable.
As for me, I still smarted. Even after I recovered from my mortification, I persisted in feeling teased. Exactly what (and whom) did Mr. Long desire? It infuriated me that I was in this loathsome position of wait-and-see. How lucky to be the man—to dictate action, to shape the future. If I’d held the power, I would have frankly confronted Mr. Long: Do you love me, Daniel? Yes or no?
CHAPTER TEN
Christmas passed, but my heavy thoughts prevented me from joining in on the holiday cheer. Where did I stand with Daniel? With Gid and his pioneer plans? I didn’t know. Nothing was clear.
As I nursed my woes, problems developed elsewhere, ones I had noticed but failed to address. Then, one winter afternoon, the troubles burst like horrid blisters. It was the first Tuesday in January. Rachel and I hogged the house with our spinning. Papa had bought Mama a superior wool wheel for Christmas, and my friend and I were making use of the new wheel and the old one, side by side. We matched our spinning, moving in unison back and forth by the machines, manipulating the thread in rhythm with the turning, singing at the pace of our measured footwork, while the great wheels hummed, fast and low.
Grace, her nose red with another cold and her small frame hidden under a mountain of blankets, sat in Mama’s rocker by the fire and watched our performance with pleasure. Whenever Rachel and I finished a ballad, she clapped, sniffled into her handkerchief, and ordered, “Encore!”
The day marked my happiest in a long time, though it wasn’t without poignancy. Rachel and her two cousins were leaving in less than a week to embark on their frontier journey. I’d miss her. Our singing didn’t just help me forget the catastrophe at the Goodrich house, now more than a month past; as always, it made labor—even the most tedious chore—fun. I was very conscious of the gracefulness of our joint spinning, how our gliding steps, advancing and retreating, might have been the orchestrations of an ancient dance. We partnered our instruments with an ease born of practice, our left hands controlling the yarn while our right hands mastered the wheels.
At the end of a sorrowful duet mourning the death of Sweetie Abigail, Grace sneezed and said hoarsely, “Do ‘American Taxation’ next.”
I looped the yarn and eyed her skeptically. With the wheel’s soft wail, spinning lent itself to more plaintive songs. “Are you sure? It’s not a very touching tune.”
She blew her nose. “I like it.”
Rachel laughed and started: “‘While I rehearse my story, Americans give ear; of Britain’s fading glory, you presently shall hear. I’ll give a true relation—attend to what I say—concerning the taxation of North America. Oh—’”
I was just joining in on the chorus when the door opened and cut short our music.
In a wind-whipped cloud of snow and with the thuds of stomping boots, Mama, the Welds brothers, Matthew, Papa, and Gideon entered the house. Despite the flurry of their entrance, none of them spoke. My mother, red-eyed and drawn, greeted Rachel, Grace, and me with a nod instead of her habitual smile. Her mouth made a thin line across her face.
The door closed. A few seconds later it opened again, and Betsy sidled in, her eyes wide, her mouth puckered in round amazement, the very picture of intrigue.
A sullen din followed: quiet exchanges, the whisper of coats shed and then hung, the clank of the teakettle, the scraping of chairs across the floor. Only the Welds brothers failed to contribute to the activity. They stood silently by the entrance, their expressions decidedly uncomfortable. Robert ran a hand under the scarf at his neck and asked gruffly, “Ready, Rachel?”
“Just about.”
While she and I slid the wheels against the wall and safeguarded the yarn in the wool basket on the shelf, Mama urged Grace out of the rocker and nudged her in the direction of the loft. My little sister’s blankets trailed behind her like a princess’s train. She sniffled and coughed her way up the ladder.
Betsy collected the damp boots and mittens by the door. Under the guise of arranging them on the hearth to dry by the fire, she shot me an urgent look and whispered, “Matthew’s in hot water. The Welds boys know a bit about it. They wandered into the barn when Papa was dealing Matt an awful scold, then—”
“Betsy.”
She bit her lip at the sound of Papa’s voice.
He eyed her in exasperation. “I need you to go to the toolshed and look for the snowshoes I left there. Not the ash plank ones but the hickory splint pair I made last year.”
“Now?”
“Immediately.”
She struggled to keep the scowl off her face, trudged to the door, shrugged on her coat, and cast a final glance of hungry curiosity over the stiff inhabitants, her eyes lingering on Matthew. She huffed on her way out of the house.
Papa shut the door tightly behind her but picked up where she’d left off in gazing at Matthew, who sat slumped at the table, his head in his hands. It was a hard stare with enough disgust in it to startle me. A mild-mannered person by nature, my father had never, at least to my knowledge, looked so fiercely ill-tempered.
While Rachel laced her boots, Mama pasted a polite smile on her face and walked toward the Welds brothers. “Are you sure you won’t take some tea with us?”
“No, no. Thank you. We ought to get back before it gets too late.” Robert glanced at the window, still vibrant with afternoon light. Probably realizing the inanity of this excuse, he blushed and dropped his gaze to the floor.