“And one of Madam Blossom’s ladies went to Vanderbrocken’s house to tell him?”
“Yes. She came with him to fetch me, and waited at the corner outside my house.”
That accounted for the woman Constance had seen, but it raised another question. “You said Andrew Kippering was the go-between. Where was he that night?”
“I have no idea. I do know he enjoys his liquor far more than a Christian man ought to.” Wade took off his hat and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. His dark brown hair was thinning on top and gone to gray at the temples. “Yes,” he said, as if thinking of something he should have reacted to but had let pass at the moment. “I did say to Constance that the problem would be solved, soon enough. And it will be, by the strong hand of God.”
Matthew decided he wasn’t going to let the reverend off so easily, and may the Lord forgive him for his audacity. “Did you think that, all those nights you stood outside Madam Blossom’s house? Knowing that your daughter was on her deathbed in there, and at any time she might pass? I saw you shed more than one tear, Reverend. I know you were trying to gather the courage to go inside. Did you think that one night you might free yourself of the social bridle? Of what the church elders would say, if they knew a father could still love a daughter who was a prostitute?” He paused, to let those wasp-stings settle. “So I believe that even if the strong hand of God does solve this problem-soon enough, as you say-a broken man may be left behind, if you fail to see her.”
“I’ll be broken if I do see her,” came the firm reply. “If I stepped into that house, I would be putting at risk everything I’ve devoted my life to. You don’t know how some of those Golden Hill families would swoop down on me, if they were to find out.”
“You couldn’t do it in secret?”
“I’m already keeping one secret from my flock. You were present at the church, weren’t you, when I had my little moment up there? I couldn’t bear to keep another secret. I’d be no good for anyone or anything.”
Matthew sat down on a boulder near the reverend, but didn’t wish to crowd him too closely. “May I ask how your daughter came into her profession?”
“She was born with a willful spirit.” Wade looked Matthew full in the eyes, his cheeks reddened, and Matthew wondered if this willfulness wasn’t inherited. “Early on she delighted in disobeying, and in running with boys day and night. What more can I say? I don’t-and never did-fully know her heart.” He clasped his hat between his hands and stared downward, a vein ticking at his temple. “Grace was the first child. Eight years older than Constance. We had a boy, in between, who died. Hester-yes, that was my wife’s name-passed a few days after Constance was born. A complication, the doctor said. Something unforeseen. And there I was, with two daughters and my Hester gone. I tried. I did try. My sister helped, as much as she could, but after Hester died…Grace became more and more undisciplined. At ten she was out in the streets, throwing rocks through storefront windows. At twelve, caught with an older boy in a hayloft. And me, trying to advance my career and the word of God. The plans for success that Hester and I had made…they were coming apart, because of Grace. How many times did someone come to my door with a complaint against her, or a demand for money because she’d lifted an item from a shop and taken to running!”
Wade was silent, lost in his memories, and Matthew thought for a moment that the reverend looked eighty years old.
“When she reached the age of fourteen,” Wade said, “I had to do something. I lost a position at a church because Grace attacked another young girl with a knife. In a more primitive time, she might have been considered demonic. She was beyond control, and her spiteful attitude was affecting Constance, too. God protect Constance, she was never fully aware of all the problems. I tried to shield her, as best I could. A six-year-old child should be shielded from wickedness, shouldn’t she?” Wade glanced at Matthew, who remained quiet. “I…arranged for Grace to be sent to a boarding school, a few miles out of Exeter. It was the most I could afford. Barely a year went by before I received a letter from the head-mistress to the effect that Grace had taken her belongings and left in the middle of the night…unfortunately, according to another girl, in the company of a young man of dubious reputation. A few months later, I received a letter from Grace with three words: I am alive. No address, no intent to seek reconciliation or intent to return to either school or my house. Just those words, and then nothing else.”
The reverend had been working the shapeless hat with his hands, and Matthew wondered if it had been a dignified tricorn before being molded just like this, into a fisherman’s topper.
“My star did continue to rise, after I had sent Grace away,” Wade continued. “I was on the verge of realizing the success that Hester and I had imagined. Then came the opportunity to take the pastorship at Trinity Church, with the understanding that I would return to England in four or five years when an opening presented itself, preferably in London. Grace must have been following my progress from afar. She must have read in the Gazette of my assignment here. And so she took a handful of dirty money, boarded a ship, and proceeded to New York. To spend the last days of her life doing what she has done so well for so many of her twenty-five years…dealing out pain to me.”
The reverend aimed a bitter smile at Matthew. “Yes, I did weep. Many times, and many tears. Whatever Grace is, she is still my daughter and I am fully aware, thank you, of my responsibilities. But I have so much to consider now…so much at stake. Hester and I…our dreams of making a shining example of a church and advancing God’s plan…all of it could be destroyed, if I walked into that house. There is Constance to think of. She knows only that her sister fled the boarding school and disappeared. And if John Five knew, what would he say?”
Matthew recalled John Five’s reluctance to bear witness against Eben Ausley, for fear of what Reverend Wade might say. “I think,” Matthew countered, “that John would say he loves Constance, no matter what her sister is, and no matter that her father will struggle with this decision for the rest of his life if he doesn’t do what he knows to be correct.”
“Correct,” Wade repeated, his head lowered. “What is correct in this situation?”
“My opinion?”
“Let’s hear it.”
“Constance has to be told, first thing.” Matthew saw the reverend wince when he said it, but he knew Wade had already figured out it had to be done, since Constance had followed him to the Blossom house. “If she tells John, so be it. How she’ll react to the news, if you’re asking my opinion, will be a mixture of sadness and relief, with relief winning the day. Now to Grace herself: it seems to me she may have journeyed here for no other reason than to say goodbye. Or perhaps she came to test you.”
“Test me? How?”
“To find out if you still had any love for her. Enough to make you-a man of God-walk into a house of prostitution, for the sake of a wayward daughter. I doubt if she planned to die here, but I imagine a sea voyage did not help her condition. For all she may be, she must have tremendous strength of will.”
“Willful, as I said,” the reverend agreed.
“I think,” Matthew said, “as you’ve asked my opinion, that your eldest daughter does not need a minister, a pastor, or a reverend, but a simple and honest father.” Wade gave no response to this. “At least, the attention of a father for…say…ten or fifteen minutes?”
“So you’re suggesting I walk into there and throw my and Hester’s dream away, is that it? To give fifteen minutes to a daughter I haven’t seen for eleven years?”
“I would point out, sir, that your wife has long departed to the gardens of Paradise and I’m sure only wishes the best for her husband and both her daughters who must remain on this less-than-perfect earth. And I am suggesting that you do what you feel to be correct.”
Wade was silent. At last he put his crushed hat back on. “Yes.” His voice was distant. “I thought that might be your suggestion.”
They sat together for a further time but said nothing, for all had been said. Matthew stood up, and Wade retrieved his fishing rod. He reeled the line in and watched the river moving toward the sea. “That carp,” he said. “I’ll get him, someday.”
“Good luck,” Matthew told him, and started across the rocks, back the way he’d come.
“Matthew?” Wade called, and when Matthew turned around the reverend said, “Thank you for your opinion.”
“My pleasure, sir,” Matthew replied. He continued along Wind Mill Lane and then across to the east side to the little dirt-floored dairyhouse he was beginning to think of as home.
A little plume of smoke rose from the kitchen chimney of the Grigsby abode. Matthew went into the dairyhouse, soaped his face, and began to shave by lamplight, as he had neglected to do so in his haste to see John
