Too Soon for Flowers Read online

  “I DO HOPE a simple bed is good enough for Miss Longfellow.” Hannah Sloan held on to the small of her back, digging in with fingers that were rough and red from lye soap and hard scrubbing.

  Charlotte had helped the older woman lift a new summer mattress of sweet straw onto the slats of a bed frame, in one of Mrs. Willett’s two upstairs chambers. After they added the coverings, she moved toward the window and stood in the late morning sun, where she thought through the arrangements still to be made before the trials of Lem, Phoebe, and Diana began.

  “Lem and Will brought Mr. Longfellow’s small bed over for Phoebe earlier,” continued Hannah. “It’s down in your study. That should save me trips up and down those stairs, for which I’m thankful, and I’m as happy to sleep up here as in the kitchen. But I can’t see why Will has to see her every single day, as if he’s under some kind of a spell! I know the doctor says he may, if he stays a proper distance, but can’t they keep to themselves for a few weeks? I’ll be away from my own home until it’s over, though they say a body who’s had it won’t carry it—not that I believe everything that’s told to me by physicians—yet Mr. Sloan is not complaining about my absence. Will is such a stubborn boy,” she charged, not for the first time. “Always wanting his own way.”

  “True,” said Charlotte. “But, Hannah, who does not? Though I wonder … were you and Mr. Sloan never eager to be close?” Considering the seven children the couple had produced, Mrs. Willett supposed she knew the answer.

  “Fffffttt,” was all that Hannah replied. Yet judging by the look on her round face, the question had raised a memory.

  “It won’t be easy, only to talk across the windowsill,” Charlotte concluded, trying not to smile. “But I suppose they will survive.”

  “You might pray that I’m as fortunate, for it tires me just to think of the fetching and hauling I’ll have to do, to look after those three in their beds. It’s a good thing I’ve brought my chest of simples for my own aches and pains, which I’m sure I’ll soon have more of! You won’t find me relying on this clever Dr. Tucker.” Hannah tossed this over her shoulder as she shuffled down the narrow hall and into the stairway. “Still, I’m being paid well enough for my trouble, thanks to Mr. Longfellow’s goodness, though others call it something else again. You know, quite a few claim this inoculation’s a terrible danger to themselves. Some even say it goes against God’s laws.”

  “So I hear,” Mrs. Willett answered mildly, wondering for a moment whether the many interpreters of God’s laws, or the legions who argued the colony’s, posed the greater threat to health and happiness in New England.

  In the kitchen they found Phoebe just returned. After removing her outdoor bonnet, the girl tied a smaller cap over a pile of hair as soft and tawny as doeskin.

  “Did the meeting go well?” asked Charlotte. She hung the kettle, then tossed a stick of pine into the fire. She and Hannah both knew that Phoebe had come from a visit to the Longfellow house down the hill. Now, her lithe and supple figure gave a happy twirl, suggesting a seed of milkweed revolving on the wind. She truly was lovely.

  “Miss Longfellow was very kind, as you said! And I think—I hope—she will approve of me as a companion, “came the pleased reply. This morning Phoebe’s face was rouged by activity, while an expression of real joy played about her features. What a relief, thought Charlotte, to see her so happy. When an unknown Miss Morris first visited the village at the end of winter, she had frequently seemed pensive, even to the point of distraction. Some had supposed this more than a little odd in a child who had every reason to look toward marriage with hope and pleasure. But Phoebe was not a child; in fact, she was very nearly Diana Longfellow’s age. And many, even among the young, were hurt by life, which was not always what one wished. There was nothing terribly surprising in their occasional melancholy. But somehow, Will Sloan had made Phoebe increasingly comfortable as she looked forward to their life together. And if she did suffer from something in her past, she no longer showed it.

  “It is such a beautiful house,” the girl went on, sitting down lightly on the arm of a settle. “I should love to sketch the rooms I saw, and send the drawings back to Concord, so that my sister Betsy could admire them, too!”

  “Now that you’ve met the fine lady,” said Hannah, “see that you don’t get on her cross side. Boston folk can be peculiar.”

  At this, Phoebe suddenly lost her animation, as well as her confidence.

  “But I know she’ll be happy to have you make a likeness or two,” Charlotte quickly interposed, bringing curiosity, at least, back to the girl’s face. “Diana often speaks of her fondness for the arts.” It would have been closer to the truth to say that Diana was fond of artists, but Charlotte decided to let Phoebe make that discovery for herself.

  “Then I’m glad I’ve brought all of my sketchbooks with me, so that she can see them. Miss Longfellow told me she plans to go to New York soon, and will visit the theaters! Oh, how I should love to see a play! Though I have read them, of course, sometimes even aloud with others, to once see Shakespeare played upon a real stage would be so like a beautiful dream—”

  “Fine nonsense, and a sure road to the Devil,” Hannah snorted. “It’s a good thing they won’t allow such goings-on in Boston’s public places. Now, help me wash these pots. Then you can go and say good-bye to Will. The doctor and Miss Longfellow are to be here at noon.”

  Phoebe rose dutifully to do as she was told. She picked up a dishcloth, while Hannah poured hot water from the hearth kettle into a large basin.

  After a moment’s thought, Charlotte hurried upstairs to pack a bag to carry across to Longfellow’s house—for it was there she would take her meals, and sleep, until the quarantine was pronounced over.

  IN MRS. WILLETT’S dairy, behind the northeast corner of the house, Lem Wainwright and Will Sloan rinsed out the last of the milk buckets and set them out to dry in the sun.

  “Make sure you give them the same amount through the length of the trough, or there’ll be trouble,” Lem insisted as he walked back inside.

  “Do you suppose I haven’t seen a cow before?” Will asked crossly. “Though I suppose I may not know them as well as you, since you once spent your nights with these fine ladies, until Mrs. Willett hauled you into the house.”

  “I’ve slept with worse,” Lem replied, remembering his four brothers still at home, kicking in a crowded bed. “But you’ll see each animal’s different, Will. Delilah over there—”

  Will Sloan was not listening. “Before long, I expect to sleep with far better,” he muttered, nudging red hair from his freckled face.

  At a loss for a reply, Lem shook his head. Will might be a year older, he thought, but he would doubtless never grow much wiser.

  Although Lem, too, came from a succession of poor farmers, he planned to go to Harvard College. It wasn’t something he’d thought of himself; he’d been encouraged by Richard Longfellow, who’d promised to be his sponsor. But now, it seemed to most in the village that Lem’s expectations had risen so high there was doubt he was still one of their own. It was a dilemma—one of many on the way to becoming a man.

  “Just try to keep them all happy,” he urged, his thoughts returning to the welfare of the cows. “And I wouldn’t let Phoebe know you’re talking about her that way, unless you want to get your ears clouted.”

  Will laughed out loud at the thought, but made no other comment.

  “While we’re talking about nocturnal arrangements—”

  “In plain English, please, Mister Wainwright.”

  “Are you really planning to sleep out in the garden until they let us out?”

  “I’m setting up a lean-to tonight,” Will answered. “It’s not so cold, and I’ll be able to hear if Phoebe should call. Or scream,” he added ominously.

  “Or your mother might want you,” Lem countered. He watched Will spit exuberantly into the straw with a look of having tasted milk gone bad. “And how you must be looking forward to talking wi
th your fiancée at arm’s length, through a window.”

  “Unless she’ll let me help her out of it,” Will returned with an unpleasant stare. “Wouldn’t that make my mother stew, if she found out?”

  “If Phoebe would go along with you … which she won’t.”

  “She might, if I asked her to. She’s gone along with me before, on one thing and another….”

  “If my aunt were a goose, she might lay eggs,” Lem threw back. Yet he felt uneasy, seeing a new irritation on his companion’s darkening face.

  “You think she doesn’t want to?” Will Sloan challenged.

  “I don’t think Phoebe will let herself be talked into anything. After all, she’s got far and away more sense than you, Will.”

  “We’ll see about that. But what if I do catch the smallpox? They say she’ll have it mild, and that means so will I. Maybe I’ll walk in and see her tonight!”

  “And when you leave, if you’ve caught it, you just might carry the sickness out of Mrs. Willett’s house and into your own. Have you thought of that? My mother wasn’t pleased when she heard this doctor was coming, since my brothers and sisters haven’t had the smallpox, either—though there’s not much she can say about it to Mr. Longfellow. But what if it does get out? I’d hate to be in your shoes when my mother, or yours, hears you’ve managed to catch the pox on your own!”

  “Then damme if I don’t!” Will shouted back. He barely avoided injury as a bovine leg swept out, nearly clipping his thigh with a sharp reproof. The boy jibbed and swore at the near miss, before adding, “Nothing in life’s for sure, son, except that women will tie you up in knots, and bring you a world of trouble! But sometimes a man’s got to take a chance. You’ll learn that once you get to Harvard, I suppose, when they pass you your first bucket of rum and ale. They tell me some of those fellows get so drunk on flip—Look out, there’s the doctor! I’d better go and find Phoebe, before they lock her away!”

  With that Will rushed off, anxious to throw himself into the arms of his betrothed, leaving his friend to finish with only Mrs. Willett’s herd for company. As he continued to work Lem solemnly considered the risk he was about to take with his own life. But before long, he found himself instead pondering a familiar paradox.

  What on earth could a warm and beautiful woman like Phoebe Morris see in a randy, ill-tempered lout like Will Sloan?

  BEFORE THE EYES of six others around a pine table in Charlotte Willett’s kitchen, Benjamin Tucker raised his scalpel over the golden hairs on Lem Wainwright’s forearm. Then he brought the blade down swiftly, making a shallow wound in soft: skin, along the inside of the surprisingly muscular limb. Quickly, the doctor took tiny split-wood tweezers from a clean cloth spread on the kitchen table, inserted them into a vial, and pulled out a thin, moist thread, which he then laid gently into the inch-long incision. That accomplished, he set down his tools carefully, and moved his spectacles back into position.

  “There,” the doctor breathed. Again he noticed that the lips of one of his patients, reddened from nervous chewing, were quivering, while her face remained deathly pale.

  Across the table, it seemed to Mrs. Willett that Phoebe was hardly more moved by their encounter than was her physician. She looked to Richard Longfellow to see if he, too, had been alerted by the earlier exchange of startled expressions, but her neighbor apparently had more scientific concerns this morning.

  Minutes before, the physician had opened his leather bag to take out a cork-stoppered glass tube wrapped in flannel. Inside was a small square of linen, made damp (he had earlier explained to Longfellow) by pus from under the drying scabs of a lightly affected patient in the city, obtained two days previously. The matter had been kept contained and warm so that, like bread yeast, it would remain potent. Because the initial case had been light, others resulting from inoculation promised to be mercifully uneventful, too. At least, that was the theory, and it often held up in practice—though not always. Some physicians tried to lengthen the odds against serious illness by prescribing rolled pills of powdered metals, plant materials, even sugar, while withholding meat, butter, and bread. Results were mixed. It was uncertain whether diet, beyond the adoption of a plain one naturally favored by those who were ill, made any difference. At Diana’s urging, Dr. Tucker had agreed not to restrict any particular food. He only promised to watch the course of the disease carefully, in case complications were to develop. (Though he had to admit to himself, at least, that however the disease took one, there was not much to do beyond waiting for the illness to end, one way or another.)

  “Well done, my boy,” said Dr. Tucker, laying down a patch of clean linen on Lem’s wound, then applying a gauze wrapping. “We’ll take a look tomorrow, to see what progress you’ve made. Now, Miss Longfellow …”

  With a move she’d practiced before a mirror more than once, Diana held out her arm, pulling a ruffled sleeve away from the skin above her elbow.

  “Miss Longfellow?” the doctor asked with some surprise. “Have you forgotten? Or have you decided against our plan?”

  Diana colored in confusion. In the excitement of the moment, she had, indeed, forgotten she was to be saved from the knife by a more unusual method of inoculation. At her brother’s urging, both she and Phoebe were to inhale a powder through straws, to see if they might avoid even the mild symptoms that Lem, following the usual procedure, had been promised. Exactly what this strange powder was made of, or where it came from, Diana had been careful not to ask.

  Sections of hollow straw were given to each of the young women. The doctor poured the contents from another stoppered vial onto two pieces of writing paper. Diana went first, holding the turban she wore, pretending as she inhaled that it was snuff—though she had already found that practice not to her liking.

  “Try not to sneeze,” Dr. Tucker cautioned.

  Miss Longfellow did as she was told. Her expression brought a sympathetic chortle, disguised as a cough, from Mrs. Willett, who only now realized how tautly her own nerves were stretched.

  It was Phoebe’s turn. As if inhaling a blossom’s scent, Phoebe sniffed twice, until all the powder was gone. Closing her eyes, she set the straw down and folded her hands in the lap of her homespun apron; meanwhile, Diana continued to make minor adjustments to her own voluminous robe of parti-colored satin.

  “And that,” Longfellow said emphatically, “is that.”

  Hannah Sloan let out her breath. “It makes me glad I was taken in the normal way a long while ago,” she grumbled, going back to her pots by the fire. “And I’m not in a hurry to try such a thing on my own children. Going out of your way to court trouble! Paying for the privilege—and then praying for the best!”

  “That is about the sum of it,” said Dr. Tucker modestly, following her to the fire. He threw in the vials and the flannel. The tweezers, straws, and paper soon followed as Hannah stood gaping.

  “Those pots hold my good dinner!” she cried out to him in horror.

  “Nothing to worry about, Mrs. Sloan. Fire destroys the matter and kills the contagion in it. Anything that comes into contact with the patients’ pustules should also be so destroyed, or washed thoroughly. In the case of letters, I’ll leave you sulphur powder for fumigation. Remember, it is most important that the smallpox should not spread! I’ve written out instructions, which I’ll leave for you to consult when I’m gone. They’ll answer most queries about the course of the disease.”

  “But tell us now, Doctor, what we may look forward to,” said Diana Longfellow, who was forced to admire her own calm. She also asked herself if the beads of moisture she felt at the back of her neck could be seen by the others. If this was to be part of the thing, she thought, she would need to consult a mirror frequently, and keep her powder handy.

  “I would be glad to explain, Miss Longfellow,” Dr. Tucker replied. “You will see nothing at all for a few days, or even longer—though not as long as if you had been exposed naturally. Depending on each patient, a mild fever will arise. This will
last for a few days more, possibly with various aches and pains. You might then notice the appearance of small bumps, like grains of rice, under the skin; these eventually become blisters, and are most often found on the face and upper body, as well as on the hands. We sometimes refer to this as the ‘flowering’ of the disease … though unfortunately the pustules are rather less than sweet. That is where much putrid matter resides, and where scarring may occur. But these pustules will soon break, and then crust over. The scabs that form should fall away within a week. After this, all risk of contagion is gone, and you are safe from the disease for the rest of your days.”

  “A fair trade, it seems to me,” Longfellow said to Diana. “And it’s likely you and Phoebe will have few symptoms. In a warm house, with plenty of clean linen and whatever else you require, you might even enjoy the rest. Though when I was inoculated in England, many years ago, I had quite a time. I’ll long remember several friendships swiftly forged—”

  “They all survived?” Diana asked, keeping her voice low so that it might not quiver.

  “The friendships? Hardly. Oh, you mean the patients! Certainly—in fact, we soon began squabbling over the golf sticks brought in by a Stuart. I believe we each had them out on the lawn for a try before a week was out.”

  “I see.” Diana was encouraged, if somewhat skeptical. “Then you may send for a Scotsman to lighten my mood, Richard, but as croquet would be more regal, perhaps you can find instead a member of the French nobility.”

  “It is just possible that Montagu can come up with one. Shall we send him a note?”

  “At the moment, I would rather you went home, so I can look over my new pattern books. Come along with me, Miss Morris. We will be better off alone. Charlotte, I hope to see you every day. You needn’t bring my brother with you.” With that, the newly inoculated young ladies made their way upstairs, one resembling a harem consort on holiday, the other a chastened waif.