In January Almira destroyed another letter from Millie’s Mormon upstart. In March Luther came home, and Almira was glad of it. Now this nonsense would stop. He would marry Millie, and the stranger could write every week then for what good it would do him. His intermittent letters were an irritant that only her son’s marriage would be able to allay.
Luther came back looking hardened and older from his year spent at sea. The humble, almost imploring demeanor he had assumed with Millie was gone. His eyes, like glittering bits of black coal, bit through her reserve and would not allow her to feign ignorance, conceal her own feelings, or delay his intentions.
Millie looked at the whole thing a bit coldly. She was not in love with Luther, but she did hold him in high regard. He would be a responsible husband and a good provider. She enjoyed the physical touch of him. And he truly loved her; she had no doubt of that. Those were the positive considerations. The negative she ignored. What good would it do her to face them openly when, from this day on, her best defense would lie in concealing them carefully with what layers of pleasure, companionship, and confidence she could weave from this union? It would not do to be too vulnerable right now.
The only reprieve she could gain was to set the wedding for spring, the middle of May, when her garden would be in bloom and the martins and sparrows in voice. When she would have had time to grow accustomed to the idea. When it would be seventeen months since she had heard word from Nicholas Todd.
In a sort of daze she made the preparations, feeling oddly distant from all that was happening. From time to time she wondered what it would have been like if Verity were there, if she had someone to share things with, someone she cared for. If her mother were still alive, would she have any advice to give her daughter? Surely she had known all the secrets and sorrows of being a seaman’s wife. And that was obviously the path fate had marked out for Millie. Verity had gone on without her, and all other doors had been closed to her. This was all that Life planned to offer her; perhaps Life knew best in the long run. She would try to accept it and do her best.
Three weeks before the wedding, on a mad whim, Millie left her cottage and walked in the direction of the old Copley estate. The few times she had gone by there in the past she had found no one at home and, indeed, little sign of activity about the place. If Jonathan Hammond was there, why, she would invite him to the wedding. What could be more natural than that? She would not admit to herself the childish hopes she was cherishing.
But it was of little matter. Her hopes were dealt a swift, indifferent death when she saw from a distance that the windows were boarded over and there was absolutely no sign of life. A sad derelict of a house, given up and deserted. She stood staring at it, a terrible burning behind the lids of her eyes.
“No one lives there any longer, miss.” A fisherman docking his boat in the shallow cove close by had noticed her. He called out to her in a loud voice, but thankfully he was not near enough to see the tears in her eyes.
“Fellow who bought it went back to Boston. Didn’t have the money he thought he had to fix up the old place.”
Millie nodded her understanding and turned back toward home. That is that, she told herself for the second time. What is the matter with you? It is over. Can’t you forget and bury it?
But for a day or two she was restless and walked the shoreline at night, alone with the stars that sat low in the spring sky and the sloshing sounds of the tide. It was here that old Daniel found her. At first he said nothing at all, merely matching his stiff gait to her girlish stride for as long as he could. Then he reached out for her arm.
“What is it, Daniel?” she asked him, not wanting to hear what he had to say.
“I hear you’ve set the date for the wedding,” he wheezed. “You’re to marry Luther Fenn.”
“That I am.”
“What of this other fellow, the one I left in Liverpool?”
“He may still be there, for all I know.”
Millie could feel Daniel’s consternation and sense the cogs of his mind slowly turning. “You’ve lost touch with him, Millie?”
“I have.” She did not trust herself to speak much. Something within her had begun to stir and tremble.
Daniel shook his head slowly. “Then something’s not right. He cared deeply for you.”
“You don’t know that!”
“I know it as well as I know I’m a man.”
“Well, he doesn’t care anymore. Either he is lying dead in Liverpool or he has come to his senses and realizes that what he needs is a good Mormon wife, not a hotheaded fisherman’s daughter.”
Daniel chuckled under his breath. “You speak truly there,” he said, and his voice held the saucy grin that she could not see. “You’re too much woman for Luther, Millie.”
“I know that.”
“Do you love him?”
“In some ways I do.”
“Enough to make a life of it?” Daniel regarded her quizzically.
“I hope so. I truly hope so.” Her voice was nearly swallowed by the sounds of the sea.
Daniel slid his hand down her arm and clasped her cold fingers in a grip that was amazingly firm, though Millie could feel how frail was the life that pulsed through his depleted flesh.
“Some of us must wrest what we want from Life; she will not give it up to us easily. You can do it, Millie, if you’ve a mind to. Don’t flinch, and don’t lose faith in yourself.”
“I won’t, I promise,” Millie said, knowing this was the closest she would come to loving counsel as she embarked on this most solemn step of her life.
The planting was done. Seeds of hope and faith were sown into the rich black Illinois soil along with the wheat and corn. Nicholas had added another room to his mother’s cabin. Converts were arriving by the hundreds, and some of the more primitive structures in the town were already being replaced by substantial brick ones. Everybody in the city seemed to need shoes or good strong boots to wear plowing. There was work in plenty to keep the Rich family shoemakers busy, and Nicholas was becoming adept at the cutting and stitching, the stretching and molding.
It was May, nearly five months since he had sent off his letter to Gloucester. He had heard naught in return. The silence seemed to shout at him and the void to swallow him up; he knew not where to turn. He prayed earnestly for Millicent morning and night. Was he a fool to keep trying when there was nothing to warrant it? Why couldn’t he simply let go?
The spring weather, a tonic to so many, had not renewed his mother’s energies. Instead, she seemed to be wasting away before his eyes. Jane Miller, one girl of several who seemed bent on attracting Nicholas’s attentions, was in contrivance with his mother; he knew it. Through someone’s good offices they were always thrown together, sometimes even found alone in one another’s company. Jane was too forward for Nicholas—friendly and good-hearted, but she wasn’t what he wanted. When he forgot himself and said as much to his mother once, she fairly bristled.
“I thought you liked a girl to have spirit,” she said defensively.
“Spirit and aggressiveness aren’t the same thing,” he tried to explain, his unsettled thoughts with Millicent Cooper, who was far from forward yet had to be the most spirited girl he had known. He would write once more when he could grab a minute. It couldn’t hurt.
The daylight hours were long now and he worked through them and past them, until at day’s end he was so weary he could scarcely hold up his head. But a letter, a short letter—he could somehow manage that. Thinking of Jane Miller’s smirking smile and pale blue eyes, he knew that he must.
In the end, the occasion was saved by the schoolchildren. Millie, a solemn and pale-faced bride, walked out of the church on Luther’s arm to greet a flush of young faces, scrubbed and smiling, and calling her name. Singing songs of love and promise that Mr. Erwin had taught them, they led the couple along the sea path, scattering flowers before their feet. They were so lovely that Millie could feel salty tears begin to sting in her eyes. Here was something of love and joy for her to hold onto!
At Stage Fort Park a long feast table had been set. Later there would be bonfires and dancing, toasts to the new couple, and merrymaking of all kinds. But Millie would remember best the faces and voices of the children as they skipped beside the sea, fresh as young colts, with the unborn dreams of tomorrow bright in their eyes and the sea wind lifting the locks of their silken hair.
The day following her son’s wedding Almira Fenn fished a letter written by Nicholas Todd out from her stack of incoming mail. The accursed thing! She took its appearance as a bad omen and nearly laid the whole matter out before Luther, but in the end her cooler judgment prevailed. The deed was done; the knot was tied. In time the letters would stop coming, and Luther would never know all she had done for him, that he might possess his desire. But then, had it not been thus between mothers and sons since time began?
From the very beginning it seemed awkward, almost unnatural, for Millie to share her parents’ bed with a husband. Luther knew no such qualms, but he was tender with her, and patient in his own way. The married state pleased him well. A softness crept into his speech and showed itself in half a dozen little ways. Millie wondered if it would last beyond the first blush of sexual passion and domestic pleasures. She kept a tight, shipshape house. She was a good cook. She provided bright conversation to enhance Luther’s hours at home, which some seamen complained of as being dull. There was nothing dull about Millie. After long years at sea, Luther reveled in his bliss. Millie responded; it was impossible not to. At times she even believed that what she was feeling was happiness; it must be. The power to please another is a rare and valuable gift and increases one’s self-worth and well-being. Millie glowed under the effects of it.
Luther stayed close to home that summer, fishing for cod and mackerel along the Georges Bank, which was only a hundred miles east of Cape Cod.
“The mackerel are much more elusive and hard to catch,” Luther explained to Millie after an especially good haul, as she helped him remove his high yellow churn boots and his wet calfskin trousers. “But they bring in over ten dollars a barrel, where they were stuck at five only ten years ago.” He glowed with the success he and Pinky and Andrew had experienced in their little Chebacco. “Cod has risen, too,” he continued, “but not nearly so much.”
Millie was glad. Success at fishing meant peace in the household and a chance to plan for the future.
The sweet days of summer came and went with a gentle sameness that was soothing. Millie gardened and baked and visited more with her neighbors, now that she had become a respectable married woman.
One night, as she and Luther were getting ready for bed, he pulled her toward him and blurted out a bit awkwardly, “How do you feel about children, Millie? I should like to have me a son.”
Of course you would! she said to herself. She should not be surprised. Seaman lived on through their sons—their fine skills, their ancient knowledge, their legends and dreams. Without sons it would all dim and then vanish.
“Not quite yet,” she hedged. “I’m not quite ready.”
“Course you are,” he said, drawing her yet closer. “A child would keep you company while I’m off on the long stints.”
She did not like how he told her what she was thinking, ignoring anything she said that he did not want to hear. “What if we had a daughter?”
“A little girl who had sunlight in her hair, who looked like you? I wouldn’t mind that. Then next time a son.”
He was not teasing her; he was in dead earnest. If only it were as simple as that.
But he had put the thought in her mind, and, surprisingly, she felt herself drawn to it. It wasn’t a matter of judgment, it was a matter of some deep, primal response that his words had called forth from her and that, as the days passed, would give her no peace.
Bless Verity! Millie had at last given in and written to tell her and the others about the wedding, but she had never expected a reply this soon. It was a slender envelope, but any word from her friend was welcome.
Dearest, dearest Millie,
I cannot describe to you the joy your letter has brought us. When I told Mother of your marriage tears actually came to her eyes. She was more attached to you than any of us realized. I believe she admired your sprightly ways, while I admired mostly your gentle spirit (as well as your thick golden hair). Anyway, all happiness to you, my dear heart. I hope Luther is worthy of you, and I wish I were there to lecture him every now and again just to keep him on his toes. Mother says husbands require a great deal of management and a woman who is not willing to work at molding and training her husband should not expect to complain. So like her, isn’t it? I do not understand her ways. Thank heaven Giles takes very little management, or I do not know what I should do.
Illinois has the blackest, richest soil I have ever seen, and we look forward to a rich harvest to reward all our exhausting labor. Perhaps this year it seems more difficult to me because, you see, I am expecting a child. It will be born in October—thank heaven not in the heat of this terrible summer. I have been ill and weak, more ill than I remember Leah being. But then, one notices differently when something involves one’s own self.
I must here add that poor Leah has suffered two miscarriages, which must be very hard on her. She shows little of her feelings. And yet, Millie, I strongly suspect that she does not wish to have another child. I think she is afraid and yet will let none of us help her, just living in her own quiet shell. Edgar frets about her like an old fishwife, but to no avail. Now that I have a husband of my own I can see how dangerous her behavior might become. But she has locked all of us out, even Edgar to too large a degree. He has work to keep him busy, at least.
This city is bursting at its poor, half-sewn seams. People pour in every day on the steamboats—interesting assortments, mainly from the isles of Britain. Mother sniffs out the Irish and makes a big to-do about them. Oh, Millicent, would you believe, Mother has wormed her way into Giles’s business, advising him on which styles of bonnets to order, how many bolts of fabric of one kind or another. She has rearranged his whole store and claims sales have risen because of the enticing new ways she has contrived to display things. Giles believes she is right and indulges her frightfully. But alas, if any item sits too long on the shelf and fails to show signs of selling, Mother whisks it away and finds some poor needy soul to bestow it upon. Leah says she behaves like a minister back home would and fancies herself the same. There is some truth in that observation. Anyway, Father would be proud of her, I am sure. Perhaps her behavior stems in part from the poverty of her own childhood in Ireland. She must feel something for the suffering of these people that you or I could not feel.
The spirit of Joseph lights this city, and we have peace here. Everyone works so very hard. I try to do my part, but I love it when Giles pampers me, as he often does after a difficult day or when I have been particularly ill. Not for three months but for nearly five my stomach refused to hold anything. I was weak and dizzy and sick several times a day. Now that has passed, but the heat makes my feet swell, I am beginning to feel big and cumbersome, and it hurts every time I bend down. See what is in store for you, Millie? I wish you were with me. Leah is no comfort at all. I avoid all mention of my state and its hopeful conclusion: a live, well baby. Will that prove too painful for her? I tremble to think of it.
The days pass quickly and the work never ends, so I must close this letter and attend to the tasks that await me. But remember, dear heart, that I am with you in thought. I can easily picture you in your cottage by the ocean, and sometimes, in truth, I desire escape from the hustle and bustle that is ever present around me and long for the peace you must know. Beautiful Millie, be happy, and think of me as I think of you, with fond memories and devotion that time cannot dim.
Your Verity
Autumn seemed to sneak in overnight and snatch summer away from them unawares. Millie missed its going, though autumn meant she could help out at the school again and brought a lightening of the grueling labor of the planting and harvesting months. Luther tried to talk her into going to Beverly with him, but she would not consider it.
“I can make more money there,” he argued.
“Not much more,” she reminded him. “And this school is important to me. You’ve never understood that. From the beginning you’ve made light of it.”
“What you need is a child of your own.”
Millie concealed the sting she felt at his words. They had been married over four months, and there was no sign of a child yet. “It’s the children, yes, but it’s more than that,” she tried to explain. “It’s the books and the learning within myself. I like how that feels. I find so many different ways to give, Luther, and there is so much to discover.” She watched him as she spoke, but there was no comprehension behind the stare of his gaze.
“Work on the winter sea is harsh, Millie.” He would not relent.
“But the harvest is good on the Georges in winter, and you have a boat and trusted companions.” She argued too well; his irritation was mounting. “I’m not going. Go yourself, if you’d like.”
“There’s too much about being with you that I’d miss, love.”
Millie knew what he referred to first and foremost, but she let it pass. Her mind and spirit were of little consequence to him, though he meant well enough in his own way.
Religion does not separate us, she realized with alarming clarity, but lack of shared sympathies does. Yet she must not think of such things, not ever. It would do her no good. She must find ways to compensate—she must have a child. Though she knew instinctively that a baby would not prove a cure-all, she felt very honestly that it might be her salvation, and Luther’s as well.
October is called the yellow month from the fading of the leaf; all things old and dying wither and fade in October. That was how Daniel Hawkins died. He grew brittle and weightless as the leaves that layered the woods where Millie walked to pick late blackberries and gather sprigs of hawthorn and dogwood to display in a jar on her kitchen shelf.
Amos Fenn ran to tell her; she met him walking down the long slope, her arms sagging with the weight of the tangled, woody branches. She thanked him, fed him a large piece of apple pie in a bowl of rich cream, and hurried him back to his mother. Amos was a good sort of boy, and would be better if he could be got away from Almira’s influence. She taught a stinginess and self-interest through her example that belied any words she might speak. Luther had fared all the better because he left home when only a youngster and took to the sea.
It was indeed difficult to hold onto the boys in a town like Gloucester. As soon as fishermen’s sons could walk they swarmed over every banker boat or Chebacco that came into port. They became expert at hand-lining for cunners, the small fishes that swam in close to shore. They were always seen hanging about, begging the older boys to teach them to row. By the age of six they were able to aid in curing the catch, and a fishing village was one of the few places in the world, Millie supposed, where a boy eagerly helped his mother with the kitchen work in order to qualify as a sea cook. Boys as young as nine did the cooking on Marblehead and Gloucester fishing boats. The next step was to become an apprentice and learn at last the secrets of luring codfish to hook and the art of heading, splitting, and salting with quick precision.
Millie admired Thomas Erwin more than she could say. In his determination to educate these boys who had only the sea in their eyes and in their heads, he employed every resource he could muster. If Millie had sons they would know history and poetry and literature, and not only that of the sea. She would open their eyes to other possibilities that the wide world held.
She sighed. So Daniel was gone, dying an easy, natural death, the way all things in nature die—an unnatural death for the likes of a seaman. Except for the sense of her own loss, she could not really feel sad. All his comrades had long since gone the way he was going, so the best of company awaited him. And after all the hard, lonely years he was going to her, the girl who, in memory, dreams, and perhaps even spirit, had been with him all his life. I don’t even know her name, Millie thought with a sharp little ache. What was it Daniel had said? She could not remember, but she had written it in her journal. For some reason she felt she must know, and she dug through the pages until she found the entry: “But now that I had tasted that rare mystery of love between a woman and a man, all else left me feeling unsatisfied and unfulfilled. . . .” “All else” in the mouth of a man like Daniel included the sea, and if he had truly felt that way about this woman—Lucinda—he had been a rare man. But perhaps day-to-day living would have drained out the magic, even from a love such as his. Verity seemed to think she could hold onto the glory she felt with Giles. Was it possible? Millie herself had no answer, not being one of the few who had known the rare mystery of perfect love between husband and wife.
Be that as it may, she had a good life, a good marriage by any standard except the ideal. A grateful heart, she had always been taught, is not only a blessing but a duty. She would try to be grateful. With the passing of Daniel she had lost her last tie with Nicholas. If she still saw his face in the sea spray down by the rocks, if she still heard his voice in the echo of the surf, then that, too, she must wrench from her heart. Death was a letting go—with Daniel’s death she must let go, too. She must. Or this love would become a poison within her heart.