The Witch of Blackbird Pond - Elizabeth George Speare [79]
Mercy would look across at Kit's wistful face, and smile in understanding. She knows, Kit thought. When I tell them that my mind is made up, she will not try to keep me. She will be sorry, I think, but truly, won't they, all of them, be a little relieved?
In all honesty, she often argued, wouldn't she help the family most by leaving? Did the help she managed to give her aunt and uncle ever begin to make up for their trouble, and for the inescapable fact that she was another person to feed and clothe? Though no one ever so much as hinted at it, the grim truth was that where a short time ago two girls had been well provided for, there was now every likelihood of three spinsters in the Wood household.
No, she amended, Judith would never be a spinster. Kit had watched William's face in Meeting, and she knew that he was only biding his time. And Judith, in spite of her downcast eyes, was well aware of this. By every right of beauty and accomplishment, Judith belonged in the new house on Broad Street. In their secret hearts all three of them, she and William and Judith, had really known that all along. It needed only time now to bring about the match which Kit and John Holbrook had interrupted.
In March a fresh blizzard buried the town in drifts. The long days wore on, one as like another as the endless threads of the loom. Though the bitter cold did not abate, the daylight hours grew perceptibly longer. They lighted the candles a bit later every afternoon.
Judith had just set the brass candlestick on the table one late afternoon, and the girls were moving the table nearer to the hearth in preparation for supper, when a knock sounded at the door.
"See who it is, Kit," said Rachel absently. "I don't want to take my hands out of this flour."
Kit went into the hallway, leaving the kitchen door open behind her, drew back the bolt, and opened the door. A gaunt, ragged figure stood on the step, and as she shrank back a man pushed his way through the door and halted on the kitchen threshold. Judith suddenly let fall a wooden bowl with a clatter.
Rachel, wiping her hands on her apron, came forward, peering in the dim light. "Can it be—John?" she breathed tremulously.
The man did not even hear her. His eyes had gone straight to Mercy where she sat by the hearth, and her own eyes stared back, enormous in her white face. Then with a hoarse, wordless sigh, John Holbrook stumbled across the room, and went down on his knees with his head in Mercy's lap.
CHAPTER 21
ON A LECTURE DAY in April two marriage intentions were announced together in the Meeting House. John Holbrook and Mercy Wood. William Ashby and Judith Wood.
The Wood household was busy from dawn till close to midnight. There was so much to do if all were to be ready for the double wedding that was set for early May. There was the vital matter of two dowries. Judith had been carefully hoarding a small store of linens since childhood, adding one cherished bit from time to time, and her loom and needle had worked busily. But Mercy had never given a thought to a dowry. She had not a single pillowcase or linen napkin that she could call her own. Now, though Rachel fussed and stitched, Mercy still regarded the whole problem with indifference. Why did she need a dowry, she argued practically, when she was really not leaving home at all? She and John had already decided that for the first year at least they had best share the Woods' ample house. The company room was being readied with fresh whitewash and new linen curtains.
John had resumed his studies with Dr. Bulkeley. All his uncertainty had disappeared, and his steady eye and voice plainly revealed the core of strength that Kit had always sensed beneath his gentleness. In the days of his captivity, of which he never spoke, in the waiting for a chance to escape, and in the weary hunted trail down the Connecticut River, John had found his answers.
"Dr. Bulkeley