Lilac Spring Read online

  Her father was seated in his chair in the front parlor. Uncharacteristically he was doing nothing but staring into space. His newspaper lay ignored on the table beside his chair.

  “Papa?” she began softly, entering the room.

  He stared at her unsmilingly. “Close the door, Cherish.”

  She complied and came into the room and stood before him.

  “Sit down.”

  She took the chair beside him and clasped her hands.

  He rubbed his face as if finding it difficult to begin.

  “Papa—” She decided to help him by explaining her feelings for Silas.

  He held up a hand. “Don’t say anything, Cherish.” After a few moments of silence, he began again. “Cherish, you don’t know how disappointed I am in you today.”

  Tears stung her eyes afresh. He sounded so disillusioned.

  Again he rubbed his jaw, and suddenly she saw him as gray and haggard.

  “Are you all right, Papa?”

  He gave her a look. “No, Cherish, I’m not.” He looked away from her as if he couldn’t bear to look at her anymore. “I can’t tell you what seeing you like that has done to me.”

  “But, Papa, Silas—”

  At that her father showed signs of life again. “Don’t even speak that name in this house again!”

  Cherish stood, her own frustration rising. “Papa, how can you say that? Aren’t you going to give me a chance to tell you how much I love him?”

  He stood, too. “Love him? Love him?” he roared. “Are you going to have the effrontery to stand there and tell me some story about your attachment to a good-for-nothing boy who works on my shipyard…”

  Her voice rose to match her father’s. “A good-for-nothing boy! How can you say that about Silas? He’s worked—slaved—for you for years. What has he gotten in return? Has he ever had a good word from you? A promotion? A chance at learning to design ships?”

  He didn’t let her go on. “What has he gotten from me?” He raked a hand through his dark hair and turned away with a bitter laugh. “You dare ask me what he’s had the gall to take from me? I could kill him, I swear I could. If I ever see him skulking around you again—If he so much as dares look at you again—”

  “Papa! I love him. Can’t you see that?”

  “Love!” His voice thundered at her, his brown eyes black in their fury. “Don’t you dare utter that word!

  “After all I did for him,” he muttered. “All I did for you! I’m not going to have you waste all the education, all the manners you’ve been taught—to throw it all away on some barely literate ship’s carpenter.” He turned to her. “You must promise me you’ll have no more to do with Silas.”

  When she said nothing, it seemed to infuriate him anew. “I’ll send you away, Cherish, I swear I will. I’ll send you back to your cousin Penelope. I’ll send you as far as it takes.”

  “Papa. You wouldn’t! You wouldn’t do anything so cruel.”

  “Don’t push me, Cherish. Now, you get your silly notions about Silas out of your head. Do you hear me?”

  The two were shouting at each other by then, though neither noticed how loudly until they heard a banging on the door. Aunt Phoebe poked her head in. “If you don’t want everyone in Haven’s End to know what you’re quarreling about, you’d better keep your voices down.”

  Winslow scowled at his sister and fell silent, but only for a moment.

  Cherish turned to her aunt. “Aunt Phoebe, you must make Papa see reason. He can’t forbid me to see Silas.”

  “I can and I will! I’ve already kicked him out of the shipyard and promised that if he so much as steps inside, he’ll be accused of breaking and entering.”

  “How could you? This is his home. All his belongings are at the boat shop. Where’s he going to go?”

  “He can go to perdition for all I care!” he roared.

  Even Phoebe felt compelled to intervene at that. “Thomas Winslow, you get a hold of yourself. Cherish, you’d better go. I’ll talk to your father.”

  Cherish left the house, running to the boat shop. She had to find Silas. No one was in the workshop. It looked exactly as they’d left it. She went up the steps to Silas’s room.

  She paused on the threshold. She had never been in his room. Nothing looked moved. A narrow cot stood along one wall, neatly made up. A few garments hung on hooks. She stepped in cautiously. On the chest of drawers were a few boat models, a comb and brush. She slowly opened the top drawer. Everything neatly folded. She opened the second one and found the same.

  Her father hadn’t given him a chance to take anything with him! She brought a fist to her mouth. The extent of her father’s prejudice against Silas was becoming clearer to her.

  Still hoping she was wrong, she walked to the only window in the room and scanned the activity down below. The men were working as if nothing had occurred. There was no sign of Silas.

  She searched for his boat, but it wasn’t there.

  Perhaps he’d left it moored in the harbor. She had to know. She’d go down and ask the men below. If they knew nothing, she’d walk to the harbor and look for his boat.

  Feeling better for having made a concrete decision, Cherish headed out the door. She took one last glance around the room, a part of her wishing she could linger, to breathe in the scent of him from his pillow, his clothes, touch the things he’d touched that morning….

  Tom Winslow spent an uneasy night and woke up feeling battered. The vision of that young upstart presuming—daring—to take his daughter in his calloused hands threatened to resurrect the rage all over again, a rage that overwhelmed him and made him feel physically ill.

  After a meager breakfast, his stomach feeling queasy, Winslow stood on his front veranda, staring at the inlet beyond the front yard. Why couldn’t his daughter—his only child, the light of his life since his dear Isabel had passed away—have fallen for someone like that handsome Warren Townsend? Good English stock, well educated, with the kind of wealth to give Cherish the life he had raised her for.

  How he needed his wife, his Isabel, now. She would understand. Why did she have to be taken away from him?

  His thoughts returned to Silas. Who was he? Nothing but the son of immigrants, with not a penny to his name, no formal education, no roots in Haven’s End. Why, his own—and the Townsend—family went back to pre-Revolutionary days. They each had ancestors who had fought on the Margaretta, in the first naval battle of the war against the English.

  Winslow shook his head. He’d never experienced the anger he’d felt yesterday. Not when a competitor outbid him on a contract. Not when he was frustrated with all the setbacks that life had to offer. The bile rose in his throat and he decided to put his ire to constructive use before it flooded him.

  Such rage was having an effect on his body. He must be getting old, he thought. He felt a vague malaise and a pain in his chest, which he attributed to heartburn.

  He turned his attention to the day ahead. He would go into Hatsfield. Yes, he had people to see. If he could do anything in his power to see that Silas found no employment in any shipyard, he could force Silas to leave the area for good.

  He’d thought long and hard all night over what he could tell his competitors about Silas and why he was undesirable. It had to be convincing. They all knew Silas’s work and would hire him in a flash if they knew he was seeking employment.

  A hint, a mere hint was all, something to taint his character…that was all it would take.

  Tom Winslow left the house, a man with a mission.

  Silas’s neck and back groaned in protest when he finally stretched himself out of his cramped sleeping quarters. His jaw hurt and his lips felt tender where they’d connected with Winslow’s fist.

  Although it had stopped raining sometime in the night, the day looked as dismal as the dirty water pooling around him.

  He picked up a can and began bailing it out. He had nothing better to do at the moment. He felt chilled to the bone and his hung
er had turned to a dull gnaw in his stomach.

  Ignoring both, he returned to bailing.

  At least the action served to warm him up. After some moments of steady work he stopped to stretch the kinks out of his back. As soon as he did, he heard a raspy voice behind him.

  “Ahoy there! Some rain we got last night.”

  The man who spoke looked ancient. He was hunched over and wore a captain’s cap atop a scrawny head of gray hair and about three days’ growth of gray beard. He scratched this as he approached Silas’s boat.

  He wore an old seaman’s jersey that was frayed at the edges and had a few holes at the elbows. His dungarees were held up by a rope belt. A pair of mud-encrusted boots crunched across the pebbles as he neared.

  Silas recognized him, though he’d never addressed him personally. No one knew the origins of Tobias Tibbetts, the village drunk. No one remembered just when he’d settled in Haven’s End after a life at sea. They knew only that he was never quite sober and tended to ramble on about his days at sea if spoken to.

  “Good morning,” Silas answered.

  “Fine day it be.”

  Silas didn’t find he could agree, so he remained silent.

  The man contemplated the boat, his hand continuing to scrape at his grizzled jaw. “Fine yawl she looks.”

  “Yes.” There he could agree.

  The man suddenly stared up at him, his bleary blue gaze taking on a sharpness. “You slept in ’er?”

  “Yes,” he answered without thinking.

  The man sniffed. “Want some chow?”

  Before Silas could think how to refuse, the man turned and shuffled up the pebbly cove. “Come along and have yourself a cup o’ coffee. Looks like you can use it.”

  Silas slowly let the can drop. Jumping down from the boat, he followed the man up a path almost hidden by the high grasses covering the steep cliff that led up from the beach.

  Tibbetts led him through the meadow to a little tar-paper shack set in a grove of evergreen trees overlooking the cove.

  When Silas stepped into the one-room shanty, the odor made him stop. He wondered how such a small space set amidst the fresh-scented spruce and sea could smell so fetid.

  The answer came to him as his eyes roamed the cramped quarters. The room looked as if it had never been cleaned or set in order since it had been built. Bundles lay everywhere.

  Odd bits of metal, old, broken furniture, oily rags, dirty dishes, opened cans of food, heaps of clothes—there wasn’t a space not taken up with something old and dirty. To intensify the smell, the room had the hot, overstuffed atmosphere of a woodstove burning in summer. Amidst the disorder Silas spied at least three cats silently prowling through the mess.

  He had to breathe through his mouth for a few moments as he followed the old man into the room. Tobias cleared off some old newspapers from a wooden chair. “Here, have a seat. I’ll get us both some coffee.” Leaving Silas to make himself comfortable, he shuffled over to the iron stove and took off the enamel coffeepot. “Just go fill this up with water,” he muttered as he exited the shack.

  When the water began to boil, Tobias rummaged around the crowded countertop against one wall, shooing off a couple of cats. He examined an iron frying pan, took a dish towel from the counter, wiped the insides of the pan and set it on the stove top. “I’ll fry ya up some bacon. Know it’s here somewheres ’cause I bought a pound yesterday, that and some eggs. Couldn’t have gone far, unless’n those cats got at it. That’s probably why I stashed it somewhere.” As he prepared breakfast, he continued talking.

  “You’re the boatbuilder, ain’t ya? Seen you working down on Winslow’s yard.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You build the yawl?”

  “Yes. Finished her last summer.”

  The bubbling coffee and frying bacon began to overcome the other smells. When the plate was set before Silas along with the cup of steaming coffee, he temporarily forgot his surroundings and dug in hungrily.

  “Here’s some toast. The bread was a mite stale, but I put it on the stove to toast and it ain’t bad this way.”

  Tobias sat across from him, pushing another cat off a chair. The cat, unfazed, climbed back onto his bony legs and curled up after a few attempts to find a comfortable spot.

  They ate in silence. When they’d finished, Tobias sat back and gave a long, satisfied burp. “Nothing like bacon and eggs after—” He didn’t finish his sentence. Instead, he got up and rummaged around in another part of the room. He came back with a bottle in one hand and a plug of tobacco in the other. He offered both to Silas, who shook his head.

  Tobias poured the rum into his half-filled coffee cup. “Top it off. Gets the blood going,” he explained, settling himself back in his chair and taking a satisfied sip.

  Silas got up, the plate held uncertainly in his hand. “Mind if I wash things up?”

  The old man waved a hand. “Not at all. Make yourself at home. You can bunk with me if you need a berth.”

  Silas hesitated. “Thank you. I—I no longer work at the shipyard.”

  “Don’t have to explain nothin’ to me. Many a time I’ve found myself in port, my money stole outta my pocket, waking in a gutter after a night o’ this.” He lifted the bottle and shook his head. “It’s got me, boy. Can’t live without it.” This time he took a swig directly from the bottle.

  Silas wanted to explain he hadn’t been sleeping off a night of drinking and brawling, but he turned away, realizing it didn’t matter what the old man thought. He walked through the clutter on the floor to the counter he took to be the kitchen. The sight that greeted his eyes made him want to stop and give up before starting. Dirty dishes and pans were stacked everywhere. Suddenly the food that had tasted so good moments before threatened to be cast up as he wondered what kind of plate he’d eaten from. He set his plate down gingerly atop some others. Immediately the cat who’d been nosing around came and sniffed it. Judging it appetizing, it lapped up the remaining egg yolk and bacon rind.

  “You hungry?” Silas asked, idly petting the skinny cat. He gave the cat more scraps of bacon and set a plate down on the floor. The cat jumped down agilely and continued eating. It was soon joined by two others. Silas gave them some more food.

  He found a pot large enough to hold a good quantity of water and took it outside to look for the well. Hot water, he decided. He would start with hot water.

  After two days thinking about things as he set about cleaning up the dishes and clearing up a space for himself in the shack, Silas settled on a course of action. He would just have to find work in another shipyard.

  It took him a while to accept that, after having been so many years with Winslow. But no matter how he analyzed the situation, Silas could not see Winslow taking him back. Cherish was just too precious to her father.

  No, he would just have to start over somewhere else. Silas worked this over in his mind as he cleaned out his boat and put it in order. He came to accept the fact that it was time to move on from Haven’s End and Winslow’s Shipyard as he scrubbed pots and pans and scoured plates and cutlery in hot water. He fought down images of Cherish and thoughts of her in his arms as he washed dirty linen and hung smelly blankets up on a line in the whipping breeze.

  Finally he was able to sleep in fresh sheets and at least know his food was served on clean plates. As for the rest of the shack, he shrugged, surveying the room from the sofa he’d made up as his bed. The sofa had a few holes, where no doubt mice had made their nests at one time. He needn’t fear mice now, as Tobias had at least four cats roaming around the place, and as far as Silas could tell, they lived on whatever they could hunt for themselves.

  Tobias’s snores came across the room to Silas. Tobias slept on his back, his nose thrown back as if groping for air. Silas had come to figure out the man’s routine. He rose after a drunken sleep, rummaged around for enough food to sustain him, washed it down with some rum, then after puttering around among his “things” he’d eventually head dow
n to the cove, depending on the time of the tide, and dig some clams, which he’d sell in the village. He’d come back with a fresh bottle of rum and spend the evening nursing it. Silas offered to cook, but Tobias wasn’t too interested in food.

  Silas turned over, away from the snoring figure, and faced the grimy sofa. He wondered where it had come from. Once it had been a fine piece of furniture. Silas ran a finger along the curl of a fleur-de-lis pattern on its brocaded surface. Tobias was a scavenger, rarely coming home without something he had “picked up” somewhere, probably out of someone’s rubbish.

  Once again Silas fought down the memory of his last moment with Cherish. Where was she now? What had she been doing since he’d left? Had she thought of him at all?

  He told himself tomorrow would be different. He’d sail into Hatsfield and begin looking for work. Perhaps some day in the far-off distance, if he managed to earn enough, he could see her again. Better forget that train of thought, he admonished himself. By then she’d be married to Townsend.

  He’d left his life savings in his old room, but he figured they were safe for now. He didn’t think anyone would find them, and perhaps he could ask someone he trusted, maybe Cherish—no, he had to stay away from her—to get them for him some day. Some day. Everything seemed in the far distant future now.

  Fighting despair, he turned his mind to a ship’s design. He knew at length it would bring the oblivion of sleep as he calculated length and breadth and sharpness of a hull.

  “How’d it go?” Tobias asked from his rickety rocking chair on an equally rickety porch. He held a week-old paper in his hands and worked a plug of tobacco placidly between his gums.

  Silas sat on the wooden steps in front of him and faced the cove. “Nothing available.”

  “Aw, that’s a shame.” The paper rustled behind Silas. “Well, you can stay as long as you like, you know. Maybe somethin’ll turn up.”

  There was silence as he went back to his paper. Silas watched the gulls fly overhead, circling the mudflats in search of carrion. Two days searching for work. He couldn’t understand it. He thought he’d acquired some reputation in all his years with Winslow.