The following night, Jesse laid out the envelopes on the small table that served as a desk in his bedroom. By overlapping the edges, he could create a grid four by six with two left over. Twenty-six responses! Hadn’t he bemoaned the lack of a response a week or so ago? Now this. Moreover, none other than Louise had delivered them—along with his cleaned and pressed handkerchief. It was more than a man could take in.
The names on the envelopes betrayed heritages ranging from English to Irish to Italian to German. There was even a Polish or Russian-looking name in the lot. He’d never imagined so many women would be interested in an assistant lighthouse keeper bound for life at a remote post.
Where should he begin?
Opening the envelopes, he supposed. The stack had intimidated him yesterday, and he took advantage of the opportunity to hear Mr. and Mrs. Evans give a concert at the hotel rather than deal with them.
Tonight he must figure out what to do with them. He took out his penknife and slit open the first. The scent of lavender erupted from the envelope and made him sneeze. He set it down. The next wasn’t perfumed, but the lady’s script was so flowery that he couldn’t make out many of the words. At this rate he would eliminate a good many of the applicants.
The third letter in the top row, second from the right, was more promising. The penmanship was legible and the grammar acceptable, even if Miss Barnes displayed a rather limited vocabulary. Nothing like Louise with her grandiose words.
He chuckled at the memory of her last one—presumptuous—and then cringed. He had been just that, telling her he planned to have ten children. A person didn’t dictate how many children he would have. God made that decision. Illness, injury and death all played a role. But the number wasn’t the problem. The motive behind that declaration was. He’d exaggerated in order to dissuade her from caring for him. It was cowardly, but there was no taking it back.
So he reached for the next letter, the last one on the top row. It was written by a woman of Italian heritage, a Miss Marinaro. The paper was unscented, and the letter short and to the point. She was twenty-five, could cook, and was willing to work hard. Promising, yet he felt no delight.
Before coming to Singapore, Louise had responded to just such an advertisement. What had she written? Had she touted her intelligence and curiosity? Would she have mentioned her quiet beauty? He doubted she’d said any of that. Louise was one to quietly downplay her virtues. She would have mentioned she was widowed and educated, but he doubted she would have expounded on either of those.
Louise Smythe carried herself with godly virtue, something that Jesse found incredibly appealing.
Unfortunately age and stature worked against her, at least in his case. An older gentleman might make the perfect match. He would pray she found that match.
Pausing for a moment in his survey of responses, he said a silent prayer for Louise, that she would receive everything she desired.
That didn’t make him feel much better, but he told himself this was the only way. As much as he wished she could be his wife, she had too many strikes against her.
He resumed the survey.
By the time he’d finished the second row of letters, the responses muddled together in his mind. He would have to make notes, or he’d never keep them straight. Perhaps he could read each one and put them in a different sort of grid, one based on the positives and negatives each letter generated.
Yes, that was it.
He would establish four criteria: apparent physical hardiness, age, homemaking capabilities, and education. Each letter could then be judged against those criteria. The responses matching none would be discarded. Those matching one, two, three or four criteria would be separated into different piles. Naturally the ones that met all four would be his target. He would write them back asking for more information. Their responses would further differentiate them. If none of the letters met all four, he would then start with those that met the greatest number of criteria.
It was orderly. It was efficient. It made sense.
A rap on the door was followed by Jane Blackthorn calling out his name. “I saw your light so I figured you were awake. Samuel’s asking you to join him up in the tower.”
At this hour? Jesse was supposed to be napping before the midnight watch, but he couldn’t sleep with all those letters sitting around. If Blackthorn had called for him, he must need help hauling up more oil, or the equipment had failed and repair required an extra set of hands.
He pushed the letters into a pile. “Tell him I’ll be there shortly.”
“Good.”
Another thought popped into Jesse’s head, one having to do with Louise. He pushed his door open just before Jane Blackthorn disappeared downstairs.
“Ma’am?”
She stopped and turned back to him.
“I was wondering,” he said. “Were you here when Mrs. Smythe dropped off the mail?”
“Yes, indeed. Quite a lot of letters you got.”
“Responses to my advertisement.”
“That’s what I told Louise.” Jane Blackthorn stepped closer. “If you don’t mind my saying so, she seemed a bit unnerved by them. I thought it only kind to tell her why so many young women would be writing you. I hope you don’t mind.”
It was as he’d suspected. “Thank you, that was fine.”
Yet he could not account for the sinking feeling in his stomach.
* * *
Louise set down her pen and rubbed her forehead. She ought not work on Sunday night, but Jesse’s refusal to do any more lectures left her scrambling for lessons. She could fill tomorrow’s spot with another foray into the field, this time to examine the rosa blanca, or meadow roses, near the river mouth. There the dunes harbored a little pocket of vegetation protected from the harsh winds. A single willow tree, untouched by the saw, offered shade.
Before her evening prayers, she could jot down a few ideas. Completing that much would relax her enough so she could sleep. Otherwise, she was liable to toss and turn while fretting about the matter. After making a few notes, she could turn it over to the Lord and rest easy.
She hoped. Thoughts of Jesse kept creeping in. Why had he advertised for a wife before attempting to see if they were suitable? Didn’t he feel the same attraction she felt? At the very least, he should acknowledge their growing friendship, which was often a prelude to marriage. Instead, he’d advertised for a wife.
A peculiar sound from the direction of the window drew her from her thoughts. What was that? It sounded as if something had hit the pane.
She rose to check. Children often threw acorns and other small objects to attract the attention of a friend stuck indoors. Even though she worked in the classroom, that was not the case this evening. No one would attempt to lure one of the girls outdoors. Or would they? Both Linore and Dinah had found beaus amongst the lumbermen in the past.
It was dark outside, and she couldn’t see what might have made the noise. Maybe it was rain. Rain! It had been so long since the last rain that she’d forgotten to take that into consideration when making her plans for tomorrow’s class. The girls had complained bitterly about going outdoors on a warm and sunny day. She wouldn’t convince a one of them to leave the school on a rainy day.
That meant coming up with a classroom lesson for tomorrow.
She headed back for her desk when another sound drew her attention back to the window.
What on earth? If there had been someone outdoors, he or she would have seen her in the lit window. That should have stopped all further attempts. Unless that person wanted to alert her. But who would do that? Only one person came to mind. Jesse.
Surely he wouldn’t toss objects at a window like a lovelorn youth. Still, the idea made her pulse race and her heart flutter. Had Jesse realized his mistake and come for her?
She returned to the window and lifted the sash, ushering in a stiff breeze. No rain, though. That meant the objects had been thrown.
She stuck her head out the window. “Hello?”
No answer.
No sound except the rush of the wind. This was no breeze. She could hear the roar of the waves and their crashing on the shore. It was a full gale.
A gale. That was it! She would teach the girls about the wind. They had seemed interested when Jesse mentioned it.
She began to close the window, and a bit of dried-up plant struck her on the wrist. The brown object fell to the floor. She picked it up. A withered, curled leaf. That must have been what was hitting the window. The wind was strong enough to lift light debris and fling it against the side of the building.
No one had thrown it. No one sought her. No love waited for her in the dark.
She paused, tears gathering in the corner of her eyes. Just once. One time in her life she would like to know what love felt like. Not the heady rush of capturing the attention of a man that the other girls coveted, which was what she’d felt when Warren directed his attention to her. That was infatuation, not true love. What did the latter feel like, to know a man thought of her, longed to be with her, and was willing to sacrifice for her sake? And in her turn to give all she had to a man worthy of receiving it.
Slowly she closed the window. Such men dwelt on the pages of novels, but there was no Mr. Darcy in Singapore. None at all.
Only then did she realize that the wind had carried in something else—smoke.
She lifted the sash and sniffed. Yes, that was definitely the smell of smoke, but she couldn’t see any sign of fire. Last November the fire could easily be seen from town. Her mind flashed to Jesse and his fear of fire. What if he was right? On a night such as this, a spark could carry far. But there was no telltale glow in the darkness. No one appeared alarmed. She closed the window again. The smoke must have been driven her way from the kitchen chimney. The hotel did use wood in its cookstove.
Yes, that must be it. She settled back at her desk and began jotting notes for a lecture on wind.
* * *
The moment Jesse stepped into the base of the tower, he smelled the smoke. Maybe the wind had pushed the stove’s smoke back down the chimney. Then again, if that was the case, he should have smelled it in the house, not the tower.
Blackthorn wasn’t there. He must be in the lantern.
Jesse lit a lamp and began the climb, taking two steps at a time. Something had happened, and he had a feeling it wasn’t a mechanical breakdown. Round and around he went until reaching the short landing. From there, he crawled up the ladder and popped through the open hatch into the lantern.
“There you are,” Blackthorn said as Jesse pulled himself onto the lantern floor.
In the light of the lamp, Blackthorn looked worried.
Jesse got to his feet. “What is it?”
“Look there, to the north, when the beam faces opposite.” Blackthorn pointed up the coast.
Jesse waited, but even before the beam focused away, he saw the glow in the sky. “What is it?”
“Not only there. Look across the lake and south.”
Jesse only had to wait a second, and then his mouth went dry. “The sky. It’s...orange.”
“Just like Holland way. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Blackthorn shook his head. “Sometimes I can pick out the glow of a city, but it’s pretty faint. This? I don’t know what to make of it.”
Jesse did. He’d seen that glow before, though much closer. He squeezed his eyes shut and told himself to take a breath. Then another and another. It couldn’t be. There must be another explanation.
“Street lamps?” It was a feeble explanation.
“That’d take a whole lot of lamps from this distance. Must be sixty, seventy miles away at least. Even Chicago couldn’t put out that much light.”
Jesse’s heart sank as the truth settled in. It was the Sultana again, only worse. The steamship had taken 1700 lives and lit the night sky. Folks nearby saw it from their homes. But they weren’t sixty miles away. For him to see an orange glow from this distance, the conflagration must be enormous. Moreover, it was burning to the north as well, much closer and thus much more deadly to those living in Singapore.
Louise!
His heart stopped. She slept in a wooden building. So did the students. So did families and workers and children. Everyone. The nightmare he’d feared had begun.
“Fire,” he croaked.
Wind rattled the panes of glass encasing the lantern. On such a night, the keeper had to stay ready to relight the lamps, for the gusts could blow them out.
“We have to warn everyone.” Yet Jesse’s feet stayed rooted to the spot. Just like in Vicksburg. Just like on the Sultana. If the blast hadn’t propelled him through the air and into the water, he would have perished with the rest. In a crisis, he froze.
Lord, help us. Help me.
Blackthorn grabbed his arm with a viselike grip. “You’re faster than me. Go. We might have just enough time.”
God answered Jesse’s prayer. His limbs moved. Without any thought but saving Louise, he raced to the ladder and headed down it.
“Take the lamp.” Blackthorn handed it to him.
Jesse could have made it down without a light. He thought only of one thing. He had to get Louise out of the school before the fires reached Singapore.