The Gifted (22 page)

Harmony Hill Village

Entered on this 18th day of June in the year 1849

by Sister Sophrena Prescott

Monday. I have ever loved Mondays. A day to step into service with renewed vigor while Sunday’s meeting echoes in one’s spirit. Even before I came to Harmony Hill, I welcomed Mondays, although Sunday then did not echo so beautifully within my soul. While each Sabbath should have been a time for rejoicing, instead the days more often were spent by those around me dwelling on unmet expectations and even recriminations. I never seemed able to please anyone. Certainly not the man with whom I entered into the sinful state of matrimony and perhaps not even my Lord with my halfhearted worship. I sang but never with joy. I bowed my head but more in fear than devotion.

But the Lord had mercy on me and nudged my former husband, Brother Jerome, toward the Believer’s path. I would have never come on my own. The idea of the shaking and dancing worship seemed too odd to me then with my spirit trapped and frozen within me. Oh, but the joy of loosing those restraints. Of accepting the love Mother Ann throws down to us with such wondrous abandon. Of understanding one’s place at last. Accepting that place. Rejoicing in that place. Hands to work. Hearts to God. Both bring me such joy now when before there was no joy, only tiresome duty.

Duty here among my brethren and sisters is not burdensome. Many hands make the work easy. Our good mother told us to work as if we had a thousand years to accomplish our tasks or as if we had knowledge of our death on the morrow. Here at Harmony Hill the labor of our hands is surely as much an act of worship as any song we might go forth to exercise.

That, at least, is a truth Sister Jessamine has embraced. She has ever been willing to work faithfully and obediently at whatever duties assigned to her. She loves her sisters and brothers. I have no doubt of that. But. Oh, why is there always that word when I think of dear Sister Jessamine? I have no such thoughts when I consider Sister Annie or Sister Wileena or even Sister Abigail. That sister will not long be with us unless she has a change of heart.

But our Sister Jessamine has a pure heart. I see it in her eyes. She is eager to do her duty. And yet she often stumbles along the pathway of proper behavior. I fear her stumbles may increase with Sister Edna her constant companion.

I should cross out those last words. The Ministry knows best. Perhaps Sister Edna’s stern guidance will be exactly what Sister Jessamine needs to bring peace back to her spirit, but I worry that will not prove true. I saw the look in Sister Jessamine’s eyes as she followed Sister Edna out to their duty of planting late beans this day. It was a look I had not seen there before. A weary look. A sad look.

A look that may have more to do with the incident following our meeting yesterday than with her duty in the gardens. The man from the world was proven to be deceiving us and has left. Good riddance, I say! I noted him watching Sister Jessamine in the meeting. It was not the look of one considering the Believer’s path. Nor was her look back at him one that should be exchanged between a brother and a sister. It is a good thing—a providential gift—that he is gone from us with his lies and temptations. Without the upheaval of his presence, Sister Jessamine will have the opportunity to settle back into the way of a proper Believer.

There is still the letter. Eldress Frieda has not shared with me the decision of the Ministry in that regard. That is not my concern. Nor my duty. I am to weave bonnets this week. A good duty to begin on a Monday. Making something useful with my hands. But I could be just as content pulling weeds from the spice gardens.

Or there is always the laundry. A good and fitting duty for a Monday. There is something satisfying about scrubbing clothes. Even in my worldly life, I took to Mondays because it was washday. Then I had to make many trips to the spring for water that had to be heated in iron kettles, but I never minded the chore. I counted it a blessing to be outside with the sky for a ceiling and the trees for companions.

Laundry here in our village is not a bit burdensome with many sisters taking their turns in the washhouse. We have no need to make tiring treks to the springs, for pipes bring the water to the washhouse. And scrubbing time is much shortened by the machines one of the Believers in the north invented. That is the way with our Society. We continually search for a better way and share that way with all. The work of our hands is a gift and Mondays a time to treasure as we begin a new week of honoring God with our labor.

I have been blessed with many Mondays here at Harmony Hill in the fourteen years since I came to join with them. I had just turned twenty-three when we came on a Monday. Is it any wonder I have such affectionate feelings toward Mondays?

14

Tristan pretended not to notice when Laura’s cheek muscles tightened as she suppressed a yawn. Tristan bit the inside of his lip in an effort to hide his own yawn. His apology was boring the both of them. But they kept walking together, kept doing their best to keep up the smiling pretense of courtship.

She had not seemed at all surprised to see him back at White Oak Springs or particularly pleased. He’d heard absence made the heart fonder, but a week apart had done little to warm either of their hearts if their walk around the lake was any indication. Two acquaintances thrown together with little to say to one another of any import.

She paused in their walk to look out at the ducks on the lake. A gaggle of the fowls began racing across the water toward them in hopes of bread crumbs. The owner of White Oak, Jefferson Hargrove, liked to goad the ladies who took such pleasure in feeding the birds by claiming how good the fattened ducks would taste at the end of the season. He could say anything to the ladies with that indulgent laugh of his and they would flutter their fans and think he was merely teasing them. But Tristan had no doubt roast duck would be on the man’s table before the snow started flying here in winter.

Hargrove was a wiry bundle of energy and charm who had trained as a doctor and served as a soldier in every war in the current century. He was reputed to be able to outshoot any man in the country and enjoyed proving his abilities at his resort’s shooting club. Even as Tristan and Laura stood by the lake and looked out over the water sparkling in the sun, they could hear the booms of other men target practicing not so far away. He looked down at his arm still in the sling Sister Lettie had fashioned for him and wondered if he could shoot with any kind of accuracy with his left hand.

It was strange, but he had found everything more difficult to do when he got back to White Oak Springs. While at the Shaker village he hardly noticed the inconvenience of his injured arm. Perhaps because there no one expected anything of him. He could lie in the bed or walk about the doctor’s gardens. He could step into the shadows with the beautiful sister where he’d had not the least problem caressing her cheek with his left hand.

“Oh, I do wish we had some bread for them,” Laura was saying. The ducks were right at their feet, making guttural sounds of demand.

“I could go to the kitchen and fetch some,” Tristan offered. Anything to please. Anything to make the afternoon pass.

“Would you? Oh, that would be lovely.” Laura turned the full shine of her smile on him.

Her light brown hair was caught up in an elaborate twist on the back of her head with a few curling tendrils carefully pulled loose to frame her face. Tristan had no doubt her maid had spent much of the morning combing and pinning the curls and helping Laura into her corsets and frothy white dress. She carried a matching white parasol unfurled over her shoulder to protect her pale skin from the sun. Her hand on the parasol handle was very white and slim and soft. He doubted she’d ever done so much as pick up her own handkerchief.

He remembered the beautiful sister’s hands with the briar scratches from her day spent harvesting rose petals. Her cap had hidden all but a few blonde wisps of hair that held out the promise of spun gold. Her dress had been of a simple, almost coarse material and covered with that bulky collar and an apron, but her feminine shape had not been completely hidden. Vaguely he could remember clinging to that shape as he rode to the village with her. That was a memory he wished he could bring into clearer focus.

“Whatever are you thinking about, Tristan?” Laura waved a lacy hankie in front of his face. “You seem a hundred miles away.”

“Forgive me, Laura. I fear the knock to my head has dulled my thinking.” He forced a smile as he regretfully let his memory of the beautiful Jessamine slide back into the shadows of his mind.

“That will improve, won’t it?” The hint of blue in her gray eyes faded as alarm flooded her face.

“The doctor at the Shaker village seemed to think it was but a temporary problem.”

“Yes, but are you sure you shouldn’t seek out other treatment? Do you truly think anyone there in that village would know about medical issues? Being sequestered the way they are.”

“They seemed very knowledgeable about many things.” When he saw her look of doubt, he continued. “The Shaker doctor had practiced as a physician before he became one of them.”

“If that’s true, why ever would he join with those people?”

“I suppose he believes in their way.”

“You mean shaking and dancing and claiming such behavior is worship?” Her smile returned as she twirled her parasol. “Last summer while I was here at White Oak, they took an excursion to the village as an amusement. I was a bit under the weather that day so was unable to go.” Laura touched her forehead lightly as if remembering the distress of her illness even now. “But my friends regaled me with many stories upon their return. I found some of them hard to believe. Julia Byrd claimed one of the men fell rigid right at her feet. Stiff as a board with his eyes wide and staring. She was quite sure he was dead and said it was enough to make her swoon. That she might have done just that, except she worried they might drag her away and do their best to turn her into one of those plain women.”

When Laura laughed, Tristan politely smiled along with her, but she must have sensed his lack of enthusiasm. “Oh well, when Julia tells it, it is quite amusing.” With a small sigh, she turned back to stare at the ducks now losing hope of bread crumbs and drifting back out to the center of the lake.

It was a beautiful lake. A beautiful place. It was rumored Dr. Hargrove had invested a veritable fortune in the four-story brick hotel that was the center point of the resort. Between June and September the Springs was a swirl of balls and other social entertainments. Courtships abounded. Of course many did actually come for the medicinal properties of the mineral spring waters reputed to cure everything from ague to rheumatism to dropsy.

The doctor also touted the benefits of fresh air and healthy food. Tristan wondered if the man had once been a Shaker. His ideas sounded very like something Sister Lettie would advance. The thought of Jefferson Hargrove a Shaker made Tristan smile with genuine amusement. Too bad his smile came too late to impress Laura with his enjoyment of her story.

But the man he’d met the week before when Tristan and his mother had arrived at the Springs was unlikely to exclude himself from the company of women no matter what stress they might engender. It was rumored Dr. Hargrove was on the hunt for a new wife and had his eyes on a lady less than half his age. He’d been heard to claim that then they might be equally vigorous. Now in his sixties, the man boasted he had already outlasted two wives. Nothing Shaker-like about any of that.

When another small sigh escaped Laura, Tristan remembered his promise of bread crumbs. “Do you want to wait here while I get bread for the ducks or perhaps you’d be more comfortable on one of the benches?” Tristan pointed toward a well-shaded group of benches between the lake and the hotel.

“Never mind, Tristan. The ducks appear to have lost interest.” She turned without actually looking at him to begin walking along the lakeside path again. It was obvious it wasn’t only the ducks that had lost interest.

They strolled along in silence. At least they seemed to be able to match their strides. Perhaps with time they might be able to match a few thoughts and feelings as well. They’d only met a couple of weeks ago. A plant didn’t germinate and bear fruit overnight. Love could take awhile to flower.

But what of attraction—the seed of love? The sight of a beautiful girl could plant that seed in an instant. He knew it was possible because it had happened in an instant for him with the beautiful Jessamine.

He clamped down on the thought. He couldn’t allow himself to dwell on memories of Jessamine. In all likelihood, he would never see her again. She would become a devout Shaker sister. He would become a devout husband and father.