In October, while out in the orchard helping the widow pick apples, Alice felt the first quickening in her womb, and the shock of it dropped her onto her knee. The widow rushed over to her.
“Alice! What’s the matter?”
Alice struggled to right herself and collect the scattered apples, already nesting half-hidden in the grass. She pointed to a vague spot on the ground and said, “Skunk hole”; of all the lies she’d told the widow that seemed the most awful because of how easily it fell off her tongue. She moved away from the widow to the next wind-stunted tree in the row, but she had some trouble settling again to her task. With that first kick of life everything Alice had been attempting to push away to some distant point in her future came plummeting down into the present. The seed Verley had planted in her was no longer mere seed but life, a life that would grow and grow until it got born and ruined her own.
THAT NIGHT THE widow stayed even quieter than usual throughout their supper. After Alice had been in bed some time, sorting through all the old daydreams in search of sleep and not finding it in any of them, she saw the quivering light of a candle working its way up the stairs. The widow rose up out of the dark stairwell, her loose-bound hair a mix of night-gray and candle-gold. She crossed the floor to Alice’s bed and held the candle over her as Verley had done so often; either that or the fear of what the widow had come to say set Alice trembling.
The widow said, “I’ve come to ask you this again, Alice, while Mr. Freeman is absent, in case his presence hindered you from answering as forthrightly as you might have when we last talked of it. Before you answer know this: you needn’t fear telling me the truth. Never the truth. Are you with child, Alice?”
Oh, to tell the truth! To remember how large a heart stood before her, and how it might, oh, surely it might, take pity on her again, as it had done before on the deck of the Betsey. But the voice that spoke to Alice now wasn’t the voice that had spoken to Alice on the Betsey. It had lost some of that heart. Alice understood that she had cut away at that heart herself, that the hollowness she heard now was the offspring of her attack on Freeman and the lies she’d told after it. She understood too that to tell the widow a new truth now was to confirm the old lie; what more certain way to provoke the widow’s rage at her? She didn’t know what else could happen along the road that might save her, but she knew it wasn’t this, now.
“I am not,” she answered.
THROUGHOUT OCTOBER THE days stayed unseasonably warm, but the nights grew chilled; the widow and Alice turned away from flax and went back to wool; as the yards of worsted and broadcloth and shirting reeled off the loom, Alice carted them to the fulling mill and then to Sears’s store. Foreign cloth still appeared on Sears’s shelves, but it seemed to Alice that it sat there longer than it used to do, and so it also seemed that homespun gowns had begun to blossom throughout the village, whether made from the widow’s cloth or no. Once Alice saw Mrs. Cobb stop and speak to a young woman in silk, flapping her own homespun skirt in the air like a flag until the young woman’s face reddened. A week later Alice saw the young woman at the store purchasing the widow’s homespun.
FREEMAN CAME. HE was all bright, crackling cheer, and the widow was in return; Alice couldn’t bear to be near them. After clearing away the supper she went upstairs, not interested in listening from her near-worn-out stair tread, for what could they say that Alice didn’t already know? Even if Alice managed to conceal her condition through winter under layers of thick clothing, by March there would come a thing impossible to conceal, and Alice and her bastard would be sent away together. So why did Alice’s feet drag along the stairs? Why did she sink down and cant her ear to catch each stilted, stumbling phrase from below?
“How do your textiles sell?” Freeman began.
“They sell faster. Alice moves slower.”
“I saw a fair display of homespun as I rode through town. More so here than at Barnstable.”
“You might have noticed both Alice and I have made new gowns, although Alice covers hers with both shawl and apron at all times now.”
“We should send you to Barnstable. How their silk parade must burn Otis’s eyes whenever he comes home!”
“’Tis mild weather yet for a constant shawl.”
“Yes, it has stayed mild.”
“Mr. Freeman, you don’t hear me.”
“I hear you, Widow Berry. I merely struggle to determine if your words are informative or accusatory.”
“Informative or accusatory! Can you not tell a cry for help when you hear it? I’m beside myself, Mr. Freeman, as to what’s to be done with the girl! You saw the truth the minute you walked in, I saw it take you. Have you nothing to offer in this dilemma?”
“What the devil would you have me offer?”
“I don’t know. Indeed I don’t. If she won’t admit to the thing—”
Silence. After a time Freeman said, “I have my own dilemma, not entirely unrelated. Nate has written her a letter. I confess to a struggle as to whether or not to give it to her.”
BUT THE NEXT day Freeman did, indeed, hand her the letter.
Dear Alice,
I took up my pen with the idea of writing to my father and in thinking of the great divide between what I wished to say and what I would be compelled to say I set my pen back; in no long time the idea came to me that the two might better meet if I addressed my letter to you. Perhaps you are now thinking that you have come up a poor second, but as you hold the only letter I shall find time to write this entire week you must conclude that you have triumphed over all.
I see your soft, solemn eyes as you read this, and although I don’t dare imagine any great joy lighting them, I hope I may feel convinced of some curiosity to read on, as I have long detected a share of that commodity in you that equals mine. The question now before me is what shall I tell you that might satisfy it? Perhaps as you have inquired of me about the College from time to time I’d best begin there.
On my arrival here I expected to find myself surrounded by souls most kindred to my own, eager to begin their instruction not only in the way of advancing themselves on a profession, but in the way of educating themselves on the many other subjects that would better qualify them for learned discussion. I have found instead a silly gaggle of boys more determined over a bottle of rum and a game of cards, not at all deterred by the fines for this behavior, which of course are paid by their parents and so don’t disturb their gaming at all. You wouldn’t wish to converse with one of these lads more than two minutes altogether, I assure you.
As to the place itself, it is more farm than town and overrun with livestock most of the time. The marketplace is busy enough, but with few stores. They have given me a room in the new dormitory, Hollis Hall, which should please me well enough if it weren’t for the closeness, the smokiness of the air here. I know how you must feel for me, trapped in such a place while you bathe in the sweet breezes of Satucket!
My main study this term is in English and Greek literature as well as oratory in Greek, Latin, and English; I have a fine tutor in mathematics and natural philosophy, a Professor Winthrop, and get on with him well, but I miss my talks with Mr. Freeman. He has sent me a fine letter, even enclosing a word of advice from Mr. Otis, that “a lawyer ought never to be without a volume of natural or public law, or moral philosophy, on his table, or in his pocket,” which I beg you to tell him I now follow. Please also give Mr. Freeman my warm regards, and my duty to my grandmother. How I miss my happy, happy visits to her home! How much I wish I could feel your hand against my cheek again! I must stop my wishing there or ruin all.
I am,
Yours Most Respectfully,
Nathan Clarke, Jr.
Alice was greatly surprised to get such a letter. She read it and wondered at it, and read it again and wondered again. She didn’t know her eyes to be soft or solemn. She didn’t think herself greatly curious. She didn’t remember inquiring about Harvard College beyond asking when he was to go there. Nor did she feel at ease passing on his regards to Freeman or his duty to the widow; she didn’t feel it her place to be the keeper of his regards, nor did she think Freeman or the widow would feel it her place.
Alice read the letter once more and began to think that she and Nate must have talked a good deal more than she remembered.