Patience & Sarah (Little Sister's Classics) (16 page)

I should be trying to guess what’s gone wrong, but I shall wait and let you tell me Sabbath afternoon.

And now you too understand about staying out of bed when there’s something that needs to be discussed. I think I could not get you to bed today, by any ordinary means, until we talk.

You are full of your topic and not shy. Your anger makes you handsome in a way I haven’t seen before.

“What made you come to my place?” you ask.

“I have to see you every day,” I say.
Demurely
, I think, is how.

“Do you call that seeing?”

“I take what I can get.”

You say, “I won’t have it. I won’t be made to do what I judge is foolish.”

“No, Sarah. I have made only my own choice. Your choice is still your own. I’m not making you do anything.”

“You’re making me come every day.”

“And you consider it foolish?”

“Some days it’s foolish. In an ice storm, it’s foolish.”

“All right, I’ll be the foolish one in nasty weather.”

“You know I can’t have that either.”

“It’s not for you to say. It’s my choice. You could choose to hide away and not see me. I couldn’t help that. But you can’t choose whether or not I’ll come. In any weather you find troublesome, look for me.”

“You want me out in storms, to see you when we can’t kiss or talk or anything. It’s not worth it.”

“To me, it is worth it. I value many things about you besides your kiss. So I’ll be out in storms.”

“You won’t. You know I’d break my back to spare you that. Oh, I thought love would be so sweet! I thought things would go
easier
! You’re running me. You’re playing me. Stop playing me.”

(I do have my hook in your mouth, darling, but I’m not playing you; I’m landing you. I’d better, don’t you think, before we’re both too old for the walk in any weather? It does no harm that you are not deceived. One should not be able to deceive a woman.)

I say, “There’s another way. We can go to Genesee.”

“We can’t.”

“Or you could live here. There’s room.”

I block your “no” with a kiss. “Don’t say no until you think about it,” I say, and then because it’s been so long since we had a proper chance, I kiss you again and again, and as always when this begins we talk no more.

You come to me through the dark, when you need rest, when the snow is deep and blowing, when no sister is gracious about accompanying you, when your mother protests and your father threatens, you come to me. And now you know as well as I, that you cannot resist me. We both need the proof.

You are so much finer than I, noble, generous, devoted to freedom, unwilling to bully. But it is I, and the traits in which I differ from you, who will save us.

I love to alarm you by making my lips into a kiss when our chaperone is intent on her book. She could look up at any time, of course, and it makes the fun, watching you try to shake your head without shaking it, try to indicate her without moving. I stay reckless and imperious, not pitying your blush and your puffed-up throat, leaving it up to you whether to get us caught by leaving me there unanswered. You can always be made to answer, and then I bow my head and smile.

We even make some progress in reading. Your sisters, too, learn easily. I am fond of them, but I begin to be sorry that they are so fond of me. Now they will be as sorry to part from me as from you.

Sometimes I wonder how much of your love for me is gratitude for the ways I have made their lives more interesting. I have made them small gifts, such as cards and jackstraws, and of course the reading, if they are able to go on with it, can give them the world. You dream, I think, of the number of times your mother may be moved to smile. I suspect you of wanting to spend not only your own life but mine in adding to their pleasures. If I would let you, you would be happy to consider our love the weekly refreshment we need for going on with this main task.

As a teacher I groan for your wasted family, but as a woman I must choose only one of you to be devoted to.

Perhaps you are too young. At twenty-two, would I have left everything for love, as I ask you to? Even last year, at twenty-seven (to remember what I would rather forget), I couldn’t go with you. But you are better than I. Everything depends on your being better than I. You have nothing to learn. You need only to be guided to recover what you always knew.

We are lying together on my winter bed in the kitchen, in a sweet afterwards.

“Stay by me. Live here,” I say.

“You said to think on it, so I did. I think you don’t need me here and my folks do.”

“Not need you! I need your warm body in bed and your – I
need
you.”

“Not my work. You don’t need that. And the folks do. Here I’d just be your pet, and get in your brother’s hair.”

I say, “Do you want another winter like this one?”

“Yes!”

“Exactly like this one?”

You bite your lip and pretend to think. “I’d settle,” you say.

“Do you want ten more exactly like this one?”

“I’d settle.”

“How about twenty-five? Fifty? We can live to be eighty. Who’s to say we won’t? Old maids often do.”

“I hope we do.”

“You hope to be tottering across the ice on your rickety brittle old bones every night of your seventy-fourth winter? Which will be my eightieth winter?”

You eyes are so bright, laughing and unimpressed. You get up and creak around the room, to show me age seventy-four as it is usually experienced, and then leap to show the form it will take in you. I am rebuked that I believe in death. It is our whole difference, I see now. Believing in death has made me brave. It could do the same for you, but maybe there’s no hurry. You charm me so, just as you are. Leap, leap you go, holding your skirt up to show me your legs. In lax and heathen York Sate, surely we can dance? You land so lightly in your soft blue stockings, washed and darned a thousand times. I love you.

In an old cracked voice you say, “Patience? Pate? Patty?” and peer for me everywhere and see me and become young and bound towards me. I curl up laughing, for I suspect that you intend to tickle me. You pry my body straight and lie on it and kiss me. “
Just
like this, I’ll settle,” you say.

It may take years. It may take age twenty-eight, to believe in death. I decide to enjoy the six years. I reach up and hold your face, luring you into a kiss. You are in no hurry. You like it up there, looking at me, making me wait. Before it can go to your head I pull you down and we join our mouths together in a seal I am willing to make permanent and then some one says, “
What
are you doing?” not gentle or in sympathy or in any way that belongs in the same room with love, and I consider who might be capable of such an offense.

Who but Martha?

You pull up from me and stand, oh greatly agitated. I almost think you may run out without your shoes or wraps. I sit up and take your hand. “Settle down, darling,” I say.

You look at me wildly. I smile. “It’s nothing,” I say. And then you’re not afraid either. You are not a coward. You are only afraid that I am. I am so relieved that I am not, just as I hoped not to be.

Martha stares a while. I don’t suppose she wants an answer. I don’t suppose there can be any need to ask of two people with disarrayed hair and opened bodices who are lying in bed and kissing so deeply they can’t hear someone come in, what are you doing? I stand beside you, holding your hand, and wait for her to go away. She does, and then I neaten your clothes and hair, and mine, and neaten the bed, and tug the rope that lifts it back to the ceiling. Edward will be along.

He pounds the door vigorously and waits until I call, “Come in.” His wife should take up the custom. Perhaps she will in the future. He never has before. It is not the country way. My poor brother. He would like very much to see our embrace, and so he concludes he mustn’t.

But I don’t despise his decency and honor. I rely on them.

You are on the bench, looking into the fire. I am at the wheel. He goes to the window and looks at it. It is too frosty to look through. We say nothing. I will not be forward and unwomanly and set him against us. I meekly wait. He clears his throat, and then clears it again.

“I hoped all this was done with,” he says.

I say nothing, and of course you don’t.

He says, “Have you prayed to be freed of it?”

I say, “I meant to. Last summer I got as far as my knees.” (You turn and stare at me. Well, darling, of course there are some things about me you don’t know.)

“But didn’t pray?” he asks.

“I found I didn’t wish to be freed of it.”

Gravely he says, “The Devil wouldn’t let you pray.”

“I prayed. But not for that. I prayed to be fulfilled in it.”

He thinks it over. It is impressive that God didn’t strike me with lightning for such a prayer. There is a chance that God is not offended.

I must leave everything for Edward to think of. I wait.

“Martha’s upset,” he says.

I say, “I’m sorry.”

“She says she hoo-hooed pretty loud and you didn’t hear.”

I bow my head.

“She says it could’ve been anybody. One of the children. A neighbor. It’s God’s blessing she was the one.”

“Yes.”

“She feels you must be made to stop. Can you tell me you will try?”

I am silent.

He says, “She wasn’t told about the other time.”

“Thank you.”

“So she thinks it’s still a bud that can be nipped.”

Now there is a long silence.

He says, “I won’t be rushed. I need time to think this through. Martha can’t make up my mind for me. I have to meditate and pray.”

“I’ll do the same,” I say.

“Good day, Miss Dowling,” he says, looking at you for the first time. He is taking your measure. Your worth is clear to see. I trust he sees it. In any case, he likes you.

“Mr. White,” you say shyly, and nod.

He goes. I sit beside you on the bench. You put your arm around me. I lean against your side.

“What do you think he’ll do?” you ask.

“I think he’ll ask me to leave. I needn’t though. I am protected by my father’s will. We needn’t go until you want to.”