Don’t disregard what a man says to you. If it comes out his lips, it was, in some form, in his heart at some point.
~A scientist’s observations on love
“I despise being forced to do anything.” Golda’s voice cut through the peaceful night. “Almost as much as I despise an unknown destination.”
On Saturday evening we rode like two opposing forces of nature trapped in the same carriage—Golda, the storm cloud, and me, the penetrating sunlight attempting to break through. “Give it a chance and perhaps you’ll enjoy yourself.”
I’d finally received a reply to my audacious letter, and it was better than I had dared hope. We were invited to attend the sold-out event and given most enviable seating—included in the response were notes of admittance for Mrs. Gresham, her “clever nurse,” and one relation. Which turned out, thanks to Aunt Maisie’s cupid-like maneuvering, to be Gabe. Mr. Gresham had still not responded to my urging to return to Crestwicke, and Celeste wouldn’t give up her ladies’ meeting.
“If everything in the world was known, what intrigue would be left to us?”
She grimaced and turned away. On the rear-facing seats sat Gabe, and Golda’s lady’s maid, Jenny.
“A clue, then.” I turned toward my patient on the seat. “You’ll need your fan.”
She glared at me. “I seldom have need of my fan. I’m not given to vapors over mere surprises.”
The maid piped up from her seat. “You won’t keep us in suspense all the way to Brighton, will you, Miss Duvall? I can hardly bear it.”
But keep the suspense I did, and soon we were rolling up New Street in Brighton before the expanded Theatre Royal, and the very sight of its lit-up columned entrance against red brick made me gasp. The stately old building had always imposed over Pavilion Gardens with a commanding dignity, but since it had come under the management of imaginative actor Henry John Nye Chart some years ago, the new face of this four-story structure lent it a gleaming magnificence that hinted at the talent displayed inside.
“The theatre?”
I turned to smile at Gabe, but the poor man looked stricken and pale at the notion of entering the social spotlight of Brighton. I’d warned him to dress for the event—what had he expected?
We all climbed from the carriage, and with a gallant bow, Gabe escorted his mother up the torch-lit steps along with the throngs of well-dressed gents with ladies on their arms. Shoes clicked amidst the muffled tones of happy voices and swishing gowns. Soon we were escorted to a box seat near the stage, with red velvet chairs and gold-fringed curtains, the smell of gaslights filling our nostrils. It was a small auditorium compared to the houses in London, seating maybe one hundred fifty in the main level, but it was richly appointed and quite full.
Gabe leaned over to whisper. “You are the oddest nurse I know, with the strangest treatments.”
I gave a prim smile. “Why, thank you.”
The red curtains parted, a weighty hush fell over the crowd, and a man stepped out onto the dim stage. He spoke his welcome and thanked everyone for coming to a most auspicious presentation. Golda gasped as a bearded gent in a brown tweed suit stepped onto the stage next, his weathered face framed by great clouds of white beard that had become his signature. “That’s . . . My heavens, is it . . . ?”
“Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.” I drew out the name with delicious pleasure.
She gasped again, and I leaned close with a raised brow. “Fan?”
Grabbing it with a pointed look, she flipped it open and fanned vigorously.
Longfellow bowed deeply, generating hearty applause, then introduced the first poet of the night in his deep American accent. The tall gent read his verses about leaves and grass, and the way the light struck these ordinary things. I’m certain he was famous and ingenious, but it was my patient who held my attention. Every emotion in the rainbow showed on her face through the night.
Gabe noticed too, I could tell even from the shadows, but he said nothing. With the next artist, her fan paused at the emotional crescendo of each poem, then sped up as applause burst across the auditorium.
Longfellow loped back onto the stage after all six poets had read selected pieces of work. The great man held up thick hands to quell the applause. Then he bowed his head and spoke. “I thank you all from the depths of my humble heart for humoring an old man this night.” His rumbling voice, though more strained than some of the others, rolled up into the rounded ceiling and carried across the theatre.
Gabe leaned over to whisper to Golda, their heads bent together. I kicked his foot, but he ignored it. Of all the times for the man to begin a conversation.
“It has truly been a much-needed inspiration for me, hearing these honored voices here tonight. I have a treat for you now—the first new material I’ve presented in years.”
He fixed wire spectacles on his face, wrapping them behind his ears, and pulled out a familiar red book, flipping to a marked page. I had to clench my hands to keep from grabbing Golda’s arm and forcing her to look at the stage, where her own notebook now lay in the hands of her favorite poet.
That wretched Gabe. Must he speak now? Whatever it was, it could wait.
I gripped the arms of my chair and the poem rolled out in the man’s deep, weighty voice.
Every pair of footsteps, marks left in the sand,
Lovers walking side by side, strolling hand in hand.
There but for a moment when the tide of everyday
washes over everything, fading love away.
Golda’s head lifted, eyes steadily ahead as the man continued. Gabe’s hand immediately covered hers. “What is it, Mother?”
“That’s . . .” Her mouth hung open in a most unladylike fashion. “My song.”
The man carried the verses to their peak and let them fall over his eager audience. For a full three seconds, no one moved or spoke. Then applause erupted.
After a moment, the man on stage raised one gloved hand to dim the flow of praise. His American accent glinted across them. “These new lines, friends, are not from me.” The applause stopped at the sound of his voice. “They were written by a promising new voice in poetry who will share the rest herself. So if you’ll allow, I’d like to ask Mrs. Golda Gresham to the stage, for a reading of her work. Mrs. Gresham, are you present tonight?”
Murmurs lifted into the air as people turned, craning their necks for the first glimpse of the woman who now sat two seats from me. White-knuckling her chair, Golda looked to Gabe, to the red book she’d thrown away, then to me.
I offered a gentle smile amid the whispers. “You said you wanted your verses heard.”
She stared, and I merely shrugged. Golda Gresham rose, for once meek and unbalanced, and applause erupted when they caught sight of her.
As I watched her wobbly smile blossom, this woman once called impossible, victory surged through my chest. She moved past us with Gabe’s assistance. I rose to join her, but she waved me back to my seat. She wanted to go alone. As she moved in her unhurried, queenly way across the stage, I turned to Gabe and burrowed deep into his gaze, looking for a spark of the approval I’d once found there without effort. “I’d call the night a success, wouldn’t you? A triumph to compensate for my previous missteps.”
He stared at me with that frank and open face. “No one’s keeping score.”
Well then, I was no one. If this bold act didn’t convince Gabe I meant well, little else would. “I’ve managed to hold my tongue for days now. Your lecture was not without impact.”
He frowned slightly and lowered his voice when there were dark stares in our direction. “I don’t want you to hold back your opinions, Willa. I’ve never asked you to.”
I puffed out my breath and fell back against the seat. Hadn’t he? “You are exasperating, Gabe Gresham. There, that’s one opinion.”
A sharp shushing sound came from the seats just outside our box, and I clamped my mouth shut.
“Well and good. Especially if it means I can take my exasperating company away early.” He leaned back with a slight grin. Then he looked to his mother highlighted in gaslights on the stage as applause rippled between her poems. “I’ll admit, your odd tonic seems to have worked.”
I narrowed my eyes at him and grinned. “I don’t intend to stop with her.”
He raised dark eyebrows as he joined the applause.
“Oh yes, I have plans for you too, Mr. Gresham.”
He paled. “Not dancing.”
I gave a prim smile, and he stiffened in his seat. “I’m determined to break through that thick shell of yours and draw you out into daylight.”
“I rather like the dark. A cave would suit.”
I eyed him from the side. “What do you have against dancing anyway? Have you a lame leg?”
“No.”
“Then why not join in?”
He shifted in his seat. “I’ve never done it before.”
“Well, if that isn’t the worst reason not to do something. One waltz, at least. I’m not in the habit of leading, but perhaps I can fumble through. I’m certain you’ll survive.”
The gray pallor to his face expressed his doubts on the matter. He let my assertion hang in the air as silence drew our attention to the stage and a poised, glorious Golda Gresham. Her even voice fell upon a hushed audience, melodic and poignant.
“My love has been smoothed to perfection,
A pearl against the sands of adversity;
You take it in hand, merely a bead,
A string about your neck, a tiny seed;
Yet it’s all I have to give, so I implore
When you no longer have need
Of this pearl I’ve given, set it free,
That I may guard it and deliver it again
To one who will be true, always true to me.”
The surprising delightfulness of the lines was fully felt when stripped of the background noise of her singing. I glanced about the audience, glad that they seemed charmed by her.
After her final poem and the hearty applause, Gabe and I rose to help Golda from the stage. I looked up when she was settled into the seat and Gabe was gone. “Where did he go?”
“Gabe?” She gave a vague smile, still floating on a cloud of delight. “I haven’t the slightest idea. You know that boy—likely gone to find us rooms . . . then close himself inside them. See if you can’t fetch him back and we’ll make him be social for once.”
I attempted to check her pulse, but she batted me away. “Miss Duvall, you really needn’t be at my elbow all night.”
“It’s my job.”
Her gaze iced. “Your job is doing what you’re told. Now, go and find my son.”
When Golda’s lady’s maid approached from her waiting spot just outside the auditorium, I slipped away. Past the thickening crowds, I bolted into the empty atrium, nearly colliding with a stout older gentleman. “Oh, I beg your pardon.” I put a hand to my racing heart. “Have you seen a tall man in black come through here?”
“I’ve not seen a soul save the one who nearly toppled me this minute.”
I stepped back with a jolt of horrified recognition. “Oh! Mr. Longfellow.” I bobbed two curtsies. “My deepest apologies, sir.” Another dip. “My name is Willa Duvall, nurse to—”
“Golda Gresham. Ah yes, now I know you, Miss Duvall.” His easy voice had a casual, meandering quality that loosened my tension and put me at ease. “It’s a pleasure running into you, even in this manner.”
I smiled at the light accent to his speech, the plunging “r” sound that marked him as an American. “I’m glad for it too, sir. I’ve wanted to thank you from the deepest parts of my heart for allowing Mrs. Gresham to attend and even be a part of this wonderful night. I cannot begin to tell you what it means . . .”
My voice faded as he continued to stare at me, that timeless face watching me as if he never had anywhere else to be in his life. “Your letter, Miss Duvall. It resurrected my stale old heart for a moment, and I was compelled to act. You’ve quite a convincing way about you. Made me feel I still might do something worthwhile, even in my dried-up state.”
I saw in him, with an ache, the same sense of resigned despair that had settled over Aunt Maisie. It was a sense of life being over before the body had given out, with one constantly left questioning why they were still bound to earth, and little broke my heart more. “You are anything but dried up, sir.”
He turned away with a dismissive nod toward me, the younger woman he felt could not possibly understand. Yet my heart couldn’t bear to let the man leave more broken than when I found him. A future physician, I was compelled to restore what I could. I laid a hand on his arm.
“Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart.
Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.”
He turned back to me, stricken as I paraphrased lines of his own poetry.
“Your words resurrected my heart once too. In the worst year of my life, in fact. You were that ‘humbler poet’ whose songs quieted my heart when nothing else would.”
He studied me, as if trying to determine whether or not he believed it.
“It was the one about the reaper and the flowers, how the Lord had need of such beauty, and they would bloom with him. It made me feel that perhaps my mother . . .” I dropped my gaze, feeling foolish. Exposed. “That perhaps God simply had need of her, and she was blooming up there with him. That it wasn’t my fault.”
When I looked up, the ache in my heart was mirrored in his face, and he shifted, visibly wrestling with what to say. “It’s curious to me how a young woman can find relief in the poems of a man writing in vain to find it himself.”
“Perhaps because in all those moments of regret, of silent chastisement, of torturing myself with the past, I was not alone.”
This simple answer satisfied him, and his beard stretched into a sad smile. “It’s an exquisite sort of pain, isn’t it? Walking through the important parts of life without them, seeing everything they should have seen, every milestone they would have enjoyed . . .”
“The holidays and highpoints, the parts of their story that should have been but never were, all because . . .”
“Because of you.” He frowned and blinked, patting about his pockets, and I immediately produced a clean handkerchief from my reticule. He accepted it and wiped his face, dabbed his forehead, and blew his nose loudly.
“I’m sorry, sir, for your loss too.”
He put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t be terribly hard on yourself over the past, Miss Duvall. As Mr. Dickens wrote, no one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another. You’ve done it for me tonight and, I daresay, for many others. Never tire of being such a person.”
I smiled at him. “Even in conversation your words are beautiful. Please tell me you’ll not abandon your writing. Even with a hurting heart.”
He gave a slight shrug. “If my heart is empty, where will the words even come from? They’d be mere shapes on the page.”
A man hurried over and spoke in low tones to Longfellow. With a grim look, the poet excused himself, and left me in the atrium alone. I watched him go, then I circled the atrium again without finding a trace of Gabe. Perhaps he’d returned to his mother.
I wove through the crowds back to Golda. “Ah, there you are, Miss Duvall. What have you done with my son?” Her smile froze on her powdered face, dangerous lights coming into her eyes. “Have you been with him all this time—alone with him? After I made it quite clear—”
“Perfectly clear. I assure you, I’ve not seen him. I thought perhaps he returned here.”
Her stare relaxed a bit. “Well, then. Why not find him and send him to me? Then you are free to retire for the night.”
“I must insist on remaining with you. You’ve had a great deal of excitement.”
“And I plan to have a great deal more.” She smiled. “Please, Miss Duvall. I’d like to pretend, at least for one lovely evening, that I am as unfettered and free as anyone else. Do remember that until you arrived, I was carrying on quite nicely on my own. I shall allow you to come and fetch me after nine.”
“Very well, my lady.”
I backed up the aisle, watching her poised back, then turned and searched in earnest for Gabe. I finally spotted his loping stride out the window, moving deep into the foggy night with his hands in his pockets.
Where was he going? I paused at the window, simply watching him. He was so very Gabe. His broad back, the aura of solitude, a lone dark figure outside the glittery social scene—it was all so familiar. With another glance toward my patient, who’d once again become absorbed by the admiring crowds, I hurried toward the arched entryway and down the steps into the crisp autumn evening that smelled of pooling water and fresh rain.