Читать книгу Plum Creek Bride - Lynna Banning, Lynna Banning - Страница 12

Erika watched the doctor tramp onto the back porch and stalk through the kitchen door. The screened panel swung shut behind him with a resounding thwap.

She knew she had overstepped. She had “taken too much upon herself,” Mrs. Benbow had warned when Erika appeared with the goat. Worse than disturbing the housekeeper, she had angered Dr. Callender, made him so furious his eyes burned like smoldering coals when he spoke to her.

Surely he knew she meant no harm to him, or to his flowers? His wife’s flowers, she amended. Why could he not see that zinnias were not as important as milk for his child?

Unless. Erika paused at the top porch step. Unless the child did not matter to him. Thoughtful, she moved into the kitchen and approached the ramrodstraight figure of Adeline Benbow, swishing an oversize iron spoon back and forth in the stockpot.

“Excuse, please, Mrs. Benbow.”

“Overstepped, ye did, traipsing out to bargain on your own,” the housekeeper snapped. “Told you so this morning. Got no more sense than a butterfly.” She banged the spoon against the side of the pot for emphasis.

“Ja,” Erika said in a low voice.

“Use English, girl! You will never learn, otherwise.”

“Yes,” Erika repeated. “You are correct.”

“And just who’s going to milk that animal, I ask you?” the housekeeper demanded.

“I will. And feed it, too. Papa had a goat back in old country.”

“Hmmph. It’s just too much for the doctor after all that’s happened,” the housekeeper huffed. “Losing Miss Tess when they’d just begun their life together. well, it knocked him plumb sideways. Days he’d spend just staring at the bed where she had lain during her torment. Nights, too, staring and staring and seeing nothing. I’m surprised he drove the buggy to town today. Hasn’t set foot outside these walls since the funeral three weeks ago.”

“Maybe he visit the grave?” Erika ventured.

Mrs. Benbow shot her an odd look. “Maybe.” The corners of her thin mouth turned down, and her stirring arm slowed to a stop. An unfocused look came into her eyes.

Erika seized her chance. “What was lady like?”

“Miss Tess?” The stirring resumed, rhythmic figure eights accompanying her words. “Miss Tess was. Her people were from Savannah. Well-to-do they were, before the war. Miss Tess, she had most everything she ever wanted, and that included the doctor. One day he came to call on her father, Colonel Rowell, and the next day he and Miss Tess were engaged.”

“Why did doctor go to that place, Savannah?”

“Colonel Rowell was a surgeon during the war. He found a new way to set broken bones, and—”

“And doctor want to learn?” Erika finished for her.

“Saints, no! Doctor knows all about such things from his training in Scotland, you see. He went to Savannah to thank Colonel Rowell for saving his own father’s life after the battle of Shiloh.”

“And he meet Miss Tess and marry her? She was very beautiful?”

“Oh my, yes,” the housekeeper murmured. “Hair like black silk, she had. And eyes so green they looked like emeralds.”

“And?” Erika prompted. An insatiable curiosity about the woman who had been mistress of this fine house, and the doctor’s affection for her, gnawed at her insides. She wanted to know all about the woman Dr. Callender had loved so much his child—even his own life—seemed unimportant now that she was gone.

“Well,” the housekeeper continued, “Miss Tess was cultured in the Southern way. She had a lovely voice, and she accompanied herself on the harp. She had fine taste in gowns, too—always wore the latest styles from Paris.”

Erika glanced down at her plain blue denim work skirt and the toes of her sensible shoes peeking from beneath the hem. She could never be a lady because her feet were too big and her tastes too simple. She was a working girl through and through, a poor shoemaker’s daughter with rough English speech and untutored manners. Such things could be learned, she supposed. But even if one had a quick mind, it required generations of breeding and practice in manners to make a real lady.

The housekeeper sighed and slid the lid onto the simmering soup kettle. “But for all that, Miss Tess didn’t—” She broke off and turned toward the sink.

Erika pricked up her ears. But? Miss Tess didn’t what? “Yes?” she invited.

She wanted to know about Mrs. Callender as a person. What kind of woman planted brilliant scarlet flowers in a thin, straight line like carefully spaced soldiers marching toward the front steps? Had Mrs. Callender been a kind woman? Did she like to laugh? Was she warm and caring as well as beautiful?

“Miss Tess never cared much for. Ah, well, never you mind. The bairn’s beginnin’ to wail, do ye hear? You’d best warm that milk you set such store by. I put your bucket in the pantry cooler. After that, you can help me with the ironing. I got too much starch in the doctor’s shirts again, and they scorch easy.”

Tess never cared for what? Erika wanted to shout, but Mrs. Benbow dismissed her with a wave. She pondered the unanswered question all the way up the stairs to the nursery. Perhaps later. She would spend all afternoon in the sweltering kitchen, helping the housekeeper with the ironing. Maybe then the old woman would finish that intriguing sentence.

But she did not Erika labored for hours over the starched white shirts as the baby slept in the nursery upstairs. By late afternoon her hands ached from lifting the heavy, nickel-plated sadiron and guiding it over the pleated shirtfronts. The six-mile walk out to Cyrus Peck’s farm and back early this morning hadn’t bothered Erika’s strong legs a bit, but pushing the heavy iron back and forth over acres of white linen made her shoulders ache.

The housekeeper smoothed sheets and pillowcases with a second iron until she plopped exhausted into the single chair next to the stove. “Teatime,” she announced in her raspy voice.

The thought of drinking a cup of scalding tea made Erika groan out loud. The kitchen was stifling, the air hot and heavy with moisture, the smell of scorch and tomato puree suffocating. She longed for a cool drink of spring water.

“You have a complaint, missy?” Mrs. Benbow queried, an unpleasant edge to her voice.

“Nein. No. Is very hot. I warm easy.”

The housekeeper sniffed. “A hothouse girl. But you work hard, I’ll say that for ye.”

“Papa used to say I do everything ‘hard.’ I do not like halfway things.”

Mrs. Benbow glanced up. “Your father is dead?”

Erika nodded. “Mama, too. Of fever, last year. We do not have doctor in my village.”

A curious look crossed the housekeeper’s face. “You mean you came to America alone? All by yourself?”

“Ja. No other way. No one in village want to leave, even though things there very bad. So I come alone.”

“Were…weren’t you frightened?”

“Oh, yes. I come anyway. Nobody see how I shake on inside.”

The housekeeper rose and set the teakettle on the stove. “I came with my Donald. I didna want to leave my home, but Donald wanted to build ships in America. Men are like that. They want to do things.”

“I also want,” Erika replied. “I want to speak good American, and be able to write, so I can become citizen. Maybe someday vote.”

“Vote! My stars, girl, are ye daft?”

Erika fished in her apron pocket for her notebook. “How spell ‘daft,’ please?”

“Never you mind. All a woman ought to want is a husband and babes of her own. All I wanted was my Donald, but he up and died in Philadelphia three years after we were married. I have been with the Callender family ever since.”

The kettle began to sing. Erika lifted it off the hot stove and poured the steaming water into a flowered china teapot. “I am sad you lose husband,” she said in a soft voice. “But glad you are here in Plum Creek.”

Mrs. Benbow jerked upright. “Are you, now? Then it’s daft you are for sure! I haven’t been—” She broke off. “Why in the world are ye glad?”

Erika handed the older woman a mug of tea. “Because,” she said slowly, “you learn—I mean, teach me things.”

“I do? You’ve been here just three days, missy! Just what is it I’ve taught you?”

Erika cradled the warm mug of tea in her hands. “You do not like me, but you care for doctor. I learn is possible to ‘get along.’ And I watch at dinner. You show me what spoon to eat soup with, which glass for water.”

She purposely avoided mentioning how she learned the difference between the blue flowered vegetable dish and the ceramic washbowl she now used for bathing the baby.

Mrs. Benbow gaped at her, her snapping black eyes widening as she peered over the rim of her mug.

“And I learn also about doctor’s wife,” Erika continued.

“Miss Tess? Now, why on earth.” The older woman’s voice trailed away.

“Tomorrow I replace flowers. Want to do what is proper, like real lady would.”

The housekeeper’s thin gray eyebrows went straight up. “If you don’t mind some advice, child, I’d leave well enough alone about those flowers. You’ve done enough for one week.”

She plunked her mug down on the table and rose. “Now, let’s just finish up these few pieces of linen before I have to start supper.”

A fluttery Tithonia Brumbaugh swept open the front door of the mayor’s two-story house on Chestnut Street. “Why, good afternoon, Dr. Callender,” she warbled. “I didn’t expect a call so soon after—”

Jonathan cut the plump woman off with a curt nod. The mayor’s wife had an unerring knack for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. “Is the mayor in?” he inquired, his tone brusque.

“Why, no. Plotinus is over at the bank, where he spends most Tuesdays. Won’t you come in?” She peered at his face. “Forgive me, Jonathan, but you look dreadful. Is anything wrong?”

Jonathan ground his teeth. Everything was wrong.

“Thank you, no. I’ll drop in at the bank.” He tipped his hat and retreated to the buggy. Daisy jerked forward before the whip snapped over her head.

So he looked “dreadful,” did he? And he’d forgotten again what day of the week it was. At this rate, he would never regain his equilibrium.

Damn Tess, anyway. It had been an uphill struggle ever since the day he laid eyes on her, all ruffles and furbelows, in Colonel Rowell’s Savannah drawing room. She’d torn up his heart and tossed it away as casually as she poured tea and ordered the servants about.

When he reached Main Street, he slowed the mare to a walk. By the time he stopped the buggy in front of the bank, Jonathan had calmed himself and tried to forgive Tess for the hundredth time for setting her cap for him and then dying.

“Summon Mr. Brumbaugh,” he ordered the young man behind the wire cage. “Tell him it’s urgent.”

“Yessir, Dr. Callender, right away. Say, Ma’s sure been feelin’ better since you gave her those pills last month. What’s in ‘em, anyway?”

“Carbohydroxygenate,” Jonathan said shortly. They were plain sugar pills, but he didn’t think it any of the boy’s business. What Mrs. Ellis needed was attention, not medication.

“Mr. Brumbaugh?” he reminded.

The youth ducked his head and disappeared through an inner doorway. In a moment he was back, gesturing Jonathan forward through the swinging wrought-iron gate.

“Go right on in, Doc. The mayor’s been expecting you.”

“I’ll just bet he has,” Jonathan muttered under his breath. Four long strides and he entered the bank president’s inner sanctum.

The round, florid-faced man rose from behind the spotless desk. “Jonathan, good to see you.” He extended a beefy, freckled hand.

“Plotinus, let’s not play games. You know you dislike the sight of me. You’ll like it even less when you know what I came to say.”

“Now look, Jon, can’t we agree to—”

“We cannot,” Jonathan snapped. “Or rather, I cannot,” he said, softening his tone. “Dammit, man, you’ve got to swing the vote on a new water system. I’ve walked every mile of Plum Creek these past few weeks. We’ve got privy and barnyard waste seeping into the water along a ten-mile stretch north of town. Drinking water pumped from that creek is contaminated.”

“Yes, yes. You’ve said it all before, Jon. We’re getting tired of hearing—”

“It’s dangerous, ‘Tinus. Polluted water brings disease.”

“Aw, come on now, Jon. You’re expectin’ a disaster like you read about in those back East newspapers you’re always quotin’. But hell, my house and your house get their water from wells, so we have nothing to worry about.”

Jonathan grabbed the mayor’s shirtfront and pulled him up nose-to-nose. “Plotinus, you simpleminded ass, don’t you realize that, wells or no wells, if we have cholera here, the whole town will suffer? You, me, everybody?”

Sweat stood out on the mayor’s mottled face. “Just how come you’re so sure?”

“Because I’m a physician,” Jonathan snapped. “Because I’ve seen the bacterium under a microscope!”

“Dr. Chilcoate says—”

“Good God, man, Chilcoate’s not a qualified doctor! He’s a medicine hawker, not a physician. Come on, ‘Tinus, I need a vote.” He released the perspiring man, steadied him with one hand while the shorter man regained his balance.

“We need the water system,” he continued in a milder tone. “You know we do.”

“Mebbe. But there’s no more I can do, I’m afraid. Council already decided the matter. Nothing more can be accomplished, this year at any rate.” The mayor straightened his shirt collar with shaking hands. “You oughtta go away for a rest, Jon. Been strung up kinda tight since—”

“You know, and I know,” Jonathan said between gritted teeth, “that this has nothing to do with Tess’s.” He couldn’t say the word.

“Sure, Jon, I know. You’re just doin’ your job.” He reached up, clapped a thick hand on Jonathan’s shoulder. “Now get out of my office and let me do mine.”

“You’re a damn fool, ‘Tinus,” Jonathan snapped.

“I know. Always have been, I guess. Leastways I’ve got no power over the council members to force another vote.”

Jonathan clamped his jaw shut in frustration. He couldn’t just give up. He didn’t know what else to do, but he had to think of something. The health of an entire town was at stake.

“I want you to try, anyway. Call another meeting.”

The mayor worked his lower lip. “I’ll try. But don’t hold your breath. And stay away this time. You’re gettin’ folks riled up with all your talk about horse dung and bugs.”

Numb with disbelief, Jonathan drove back to Maple Street and the house he had shared with Tess. Somehow, now that his wife was gone, his whole life shattered, it was important—desperately important—that he try to save Plum Creek.

A sickening feeling of failure rose inside him. Now that the baby was ensconced upstairs, out of his study, he could once again pore over his medical journals from the East and abroad. Much good it did him.

With foreboding, he noted that the leaves of trees that had been frothy with blossoms in May were even now brown and sere around the edges. Midday temperatures had hovered around the hundred-degree mark for over a month, and the thick pall of road dust swirling about Daisy’s feet smelled dry and smoky. The worst heat of this long summer was still ahead.

But there might still be time to find a suitable building—a barn, a warehouse, even a church cellar—to scrub down for use as a temporary hospital if the need arose. He thought of Tess, and the familiar knot of anger tightened around him like a hangman’s noose. She didn’t die on purpose, he reminded himself. But he still felt abandoned. It felt like pure, unadulterated hell.

He stopped the buggy, laid the reins on the bench and climbed out. “The irony, old girl,” he said to the mare as he unhitched her and led her toward the barn, “is that I finally have all the time I need for my medical practice. But now there’s no joy in it.”

It was all wrong. Tess had always wanted more of him than he could give. She’d resented his commitment to medicine, the long days spent seeing patients, the emergencies that called him out in the dead of night. To be honest, he had chafed under her misguided nagging.

He had fallen in love with her that day in Savannah, deeply in love. But in the short time they’d had together, they couldn’t seem to balance passion and resentment. He regretted that he hadn’t been able to manage things differently—make Tess happy as his wife.

And now it was over. His time with her was past.

Is life always like that? he wondered. Always learning too late what went wrong?