Eternal Deception Read online

  He thundered like a pulpit preacher in full flow, pointing an accusing finger at Professor Wale, who clapped his hand to his forehead, still coughing.

  “God save us from the irrational and emotional argument,” he wailed. “The moment I begin discussing the How, you accuse me of disputing the Who—“ His voice rose to a hoarse squeak, and he stopped to draw breath.

  “I accuse you,” said Mr. Poulton in a tone of righteous wrath, “of attempting to put ideas into the minds of innocent boys—boys with the noble aim of spreading God’s kingdom in this whiskey-sodden, heathen-ridden country—that will cause them to doubt everything they’re taught.”

  Professor Wale took a deep breath and spoke more calmly yet failed to keep an edge of sarcastic humor out of his voice. “If they doubt so easily, you can hardly claim to have taught them well. My own faith rests on more solid ground—on the very rock of Christ Himself. These boys,” he gestured upward to the classrooms above, “will be tested soon enough, when they’re out in the world. It’s imperative to teach them to use their God-given intelligence to think—to think, Poulton—and by thinking, to affirm their faith so that it’s unshakeable. Because they will meet challenges, small and large. We’re called to form men, not mere mouthers of platitudes.”

  Mr. Poulton opened his mouth to reply, but I got there first.

  “What on earth are the two of you arguing about?” I realized Tess had come to hover near my elbow and passed Sarah to her. “Dat,” said my daughter, pointing at the two men.

  “Yes, they’re being naughty.” I straightened my shoulders.

  “Naughty,” echoed behind me as I swept between the Professor and Mr. Poulton, indicating with a jerk of the head that they should step out into the corridor.

  “Supposing the students saw this?” I fixed both of them with what I hoped was a gimlet stare. “Do the two of you have so much leisure on a weekday that you can roam the seminary fighting like a couple of schoolboys? Because I, for one, have work to do, and you have interrupted it. And, incidentally, upset my daughter.”

  “I have no classes at the moment,” Professor Wale retorted.

  Mr. Poulton, however, turned to me with a contrite expression on his face, mingled with a warmth that sent a strange stabbing sensation into my limbs.

  “I really am sorry,” he said. “I was trying to defend this school’s mission and forgot myself. We were discussing Professor Wale’s eternal insistence that he be allowed to introduce the pernicious teachings of Darwin—and others of his atheist ilk—into our seminary. I can’t agree with his position, and Dr. Calderwood is of the same mind.”

  “And yet Dr. Adema, God rest his soul, was of my mind, and you know it well.” Professor Wale turned to me. “And I apologize also for my ungentlemanly behavior, Mrs. Lillington. But you must have heard Hendrik Adema say it: ‘The bold and fervent defense of orthodoxy through the enlightened pursuit of knowledge.’” He laid heavy emphasis on these last words, stabbing the finger of one hand into the palm of the other as if to underscore them. “But he has most conveniently gone to his well-deserved rest, leaving his seminary in the hands of those determined to pursue the most narrow definition of Christianity that is possible.”

  Mr. Poulton went chalk white, his high cheekbones standing out under eyes that were narrow slits. “Your dirty insinuations hold no water here,” he hissed. “Get thee behind me, Satan.”

  While talking, we’d been moving toward the large double doors of the chapel, and Mr. Poulton was close enough to reach them in four long strides and wrench them open. He stalked inside, and as the doors slowly closed, I could see him proceeding in the direction of the door that led to the president’s office, which was part of a suite of rooms tucked between the chapel and the front of the building.

  The doors settled back into their position, and all the air seemed to go out of Professor Wale in one long exhalation. He leaned against the wall and pinched the bridge of his nose, looking suddenly old and tired.

  “What did you mean by that?” I asked. “That Dr. Adema’s death was convenient? You can’t possibly—“

  “Oh, I have no proof. And I shouldn’t have said that in front of you, although you don’t seem the sort to gossip. It—well, call it an intuition, if you like. I refuse to believe Hendrik Adema simply slipped and fell. I’d like to believe it, for the sake of my peace of mind, but something inside me won’t let go of a certain suspicion.”

  The hallway was silent except for the faint wail of the ever-present wind as it struck the corner of the building. I shivered despite the day’s warmth as I watched Professor Wale cross the black-and-white marble tiles to the bottom of the ornately carved staircase and look up, his face lit blue and gold by the stained glass above him.

  “He was a good man.” He stared up at the figures in the glass. “He truly believed that faith could move mountains. He began planning this school when the frontier was still Indian Territory and we were fighting over whether Kansas would be a slave state or free. He wished to offer education to those who could not pay for it—the poor sons of the plains, be they white or colored, even Indians if they showed true evidence of faith.”

  He ran his hands over the riot of carving on the stairpost’s finial. “But he made the mistake of throwing in his lot with the Calderwoods. Her money built the school, but it also gave her the power to insist on a majority of fee-paying students—to support the others, was the story. And they’ve thought up ways to bar all races but the white.” He shrugged. “I sometimes wonder if we fought the war for nothing at all, Mrs. Lillington.”

  “Why do you stay here?” I asked, curious.

  “Loyalty. Or it was loyalty, when Dr. Adema was alive. Now—how can I leave his work to those who would destroy it from within? I feel I must stay and fight, for his sake.”

  “With Darwin?”

  The professor snorted. “You know, I don’t really think Mr. Darwin has proved anything. I daresay that twenty years hence science will have forgotten all his theories. But I’ll go to my death defending his right to postulate any idea he wishes. It is the right of all men to stare unafraid at any theory or piece of evidence that the years will throw in their path. The age of scientific inquiry is upon us, and if faith is to remain, it must grapple with these new ideas, not pretend they don’t exist.”

  He glanced back at the closed chapel doors, and one corner of his mouth twitched.

  “Beware that man Poulton,” he said softly. “He is ambitious.”

  He turned his back on me and climbed the wide, polished treads of the staircase, his progress lit by the many-hued beams of light.

  I turned to go back to the workroom, but the soft chunk of the chapel door opening arrested my steps. Mr. Poulton and Dr. Calderwood emerged, all smiles.

  “Mrs. Lillington,” Mr. Poulton called to me. “I must apologize again for inadvertently causing you to witness such an unseemly argument. I allowed myself to become heated in my efforts to make Professor Wale see sense.”

  Dr. Calderwood bowed, his huge white teeth bared in the uncertain grin I had so often seen during chapel services. Since Dr. Adema’s death, of course, he presided over those services. His sermons were of the saccharine variety, full of little moral tales designed to make the hearer feel emotion, and I found them tiresome.

  “We must sometimes endure a little unpleasantness in a community such as ours, must we not?” Dr. Calderwood bounced on the balls of his feet and rubbed his hands together. “But there are generally ways to reconcile our small differences to the satisfaction of all parties. For example, I have been telling my dear wife about the delightful letter I received from your friend Mr. Rutherford, who seems to be a most respectable merchant. He made a generous donation and put us quite right about the propriety of your correspondence. You may regard our little misunderstanding as entirely cleared up.”

  I stared at him, not knowing what to say. So Martin had bought off the Calderwoods? So much for my vaunted independence. Well, I supposed I woul
d, as Martin had said, just have to accept the gifts he sent me—including my respectability. I rather wished Martin were close at hand so I could kick him.

  “I must return to work,” was all I came up with.

  “My dear young lady, of course,” intoned Dr. Calderwood, turning in the direction of my workroom and offering a massive arm to me. “Allow us to walk you to your door.”

  Mr. Poulton fell into step beside me, and I proceeded back to work in fine style. On the way there, we encountered Mr. Lehmann, who saluted us all cheerfully while standing aside to let us pass. A sardonic smile lit his face.

  When we reached my door, Mr. Poulton took my hand and bowed over it, for all the world as if he were about to kiss my fingertips. An odd feeling ran through my entire body, something between excitement and danger—but the sensation was gone in a second and I was aware only of Dr. Calderwood’s indulgent smile.

  “We’re most fortunate to have you in our establishment,” said Dr. Calderwood unctuously. “Please do call on me—or Mr. Poulton, of course—if there is anything we can do to improve your comfort.”

  He held the door open, and I re-entered the monotony of my daily work bathed in the smiles of both gentlemen.

  “Did they stop arguing?” asked Tess once the door closed behind me.

  I nodded in the affirmative as I took Sarah into my arms, but my thoughts strayed far outside the room, chasing the slippery currents of all I’d just seen and heard. I had felt threads of meaning and purpose in the air all around me, drifts of deduction and intention that floated just out of my grasp. What was it about this place that felt so insubstantial and yet so charged with meaning? And were my problems with Mrs. Calderwood really over?

  7

  Virtue

  “That’s a pretty display.” Reiner Lehmann surveyed the yards of fabric spread across every available table. The summer vacation was upon us, and most of the students were gone, so Reiner, working on a translation for Dr. Calderwood and not returning home for the summer, had taken to haunting my workroom.

  “What d’you call that?” He extended a hand toward the pool of shimmering pale green on the nearest table and then jerked it back in time to miss the swipe I made at him.

  “Don’t touch it. I don’t mind if you take a closer look at the cottons, but not this silk. I barely dare approach it myself in case I get a drop of perspiration on it.”

  “Women. What are you going to do with it?”

  “I’ve been trying to decide that for over a month.” I grinned as I handed him the sketch I’d made. We had fallen into an easy, undemanding friendship that didn’t seem to require much more than the occasional half hour together when his studies and my work permitted. Being so close in age, it didn’t seem shocking that we’d progressed to calling each other by our Christian names when nobody else was near.

  To be sure, Mrs. Drummond and Mrs. Calderwood kept a wary eye on us, but Reiner was a favorite with the Calderwoods. And I—well, I seemed to have overcome the bad impression I had made at first. I had achieved this change, I supposed, by diligent hard work and a great effort to remain demure and dignified when in the presence of any person in pantaloons. That, and whatever Martin had done to secure me in the Calderwoods’ good graces.

  Reiner studied the drawing, mopping his brow as I rolled up the silk. I worked with care, mindful of the hot breeze that wafted through the room from the open windows, bringing the sweet, honeyed smell of the prairie with it. I hadn’t been able to resist unrolling my precious cloth and taking yet another peek before I began work on our everyday summer dresses. It was the palest green, shot through with a faint yet rich purple that only revealed itself when the light struck it exactly right. In the light of my night-time lamps, it was precisely the color of Sarah’s eyes, the rich watered green of clear jade.

  When Martin said he was sending us a parcel, I had never imagined his idea of a celebratory gift would be half a cartload of bolts and packages. As well as the green silk and practical gingham for summer dresses, he had sent yards of gauzy ivory silk for undergarments and ivory lace that made me gasp in astonishment at its fineness.

  “To remind you that you will not be a seamstress in a seminary forever,” the accompanying note read in Martin’s neat, slanting script. And to emphasize the point, he had enclosed an accounting of my capital, which he had already increased by more than I could earn in six months at the seminary. The knowledge of that small increase in wealth rested inside me like a tiny, warm sun.

  “I don’t know when I’ll have the occasion to wear it though,” I said as I returned from putting the bolt of silk, wrapped in cotton, into my cupboard. “But I simply can’t turn this wonderful fabric into anything other than an evening dress. Anything less grand would be a crime. Now all I need are some friends to invite me to dinner.”

  “So who are your friends?”

  I rolled my eyes, smoothing out a length of pink cotton that had become a little creased. “Tess. And you, I suppose. Professor Wale, perhaps. And that’s the sum total of my acquaintance in this part of the country—the Lombardis are too far away to count. If you’re going to give a dinner, let me know.”

  Reiner snorted with laughter. “We’ll have to work on that.”

  “I’d be obliged. But not for a few weeks. I’m minding the Lombardi girls while Mr. and Mrs. Lombardi—and young Teddy—attend a missionary meeting in Wichita. So I’ll also be making both girls pretty dresses since I have enough to go round.”

  “What a ministering angel you are.”

  “Not in the least. I’m a dressmaker with a surfeit of gingham and some work to do that isn’t, for once, sewing clothes for young men who grow too fast. Now make yourself useful and pass me that bundle of paper—carefully, don’t crumple it!—so I can get on with Tess’s dress. She’s going to love this color.”

  “I mean, to take charge of two little girls. What are you going to do with them all day?”

  “I’ll find something.” I picked up my box of pins. “I’m sure they’ll be no trouble at all.”

  “Mrs. Lillington?”

  I removed the last pin from between my lips and stabbed it into the layers of cotton. Thea was making painstaking basting stitches in the gingham dress that would be Lucy’s. I was pinning up hers, which was a longer and most decidedly more grown-up version. It would have an overskirt swept to the back and sewn to fall into a pouf of fabric in imitation of a bustle, in place of Lucy’s more childish bow. After all, Thea was nearly ten, and her skirts could now fall well below the knee.

  “Yes, Thea?” Outside, I could hear Tess, Sarah, and Lucy, who were playing on a blanket in the shade cast by the building. The young trees on the seminary grounds rustled in the prairie’s hot breath, which brought us the sweet smell of yellowing grasses and sunflowers.

  “Why doesn’t Sarah have a father?”

  I looked at the child and encountered a candid gaze from splendid hazel eyes that were just like her mother’s—but not nearly so benign. Thea was as prickly as Grandmama’s favorite cactus and every bit as stubborn as I’d been at her age. Yet she was a hard worker and naturally attached herself to the busiest person in her vicinity—me, barring the servants—when she wasn’t bossing the other children around.

  I decided an indirect lie was the best response. “I am a widow, Thea.”

  “What was your husband’s name? How did he die?” Thea’s eyes were bright with interest and something else I wasn’t quite sure about.

  I racked my brains to see whether I’d ever given a cause for my imaginary husband’s death. “He died of a fever.” That was common enough and should cover all contingencies.

  “And what was his name?”

  “Jerome Govender.” The name came too easily to my lips after the months of practice I’d had in Victory, and I cursed inwardly. Thea would not miss the point—

  She didn’t. “But your name isn’t Govender, it’s Lillington.” She looked at me from under her lashes.

  “I resum
ed my maiden name after I became a widow.”

  “Why? Didn’t you like your husband?”

  I stopped pinning. “I just liked my maiden name better.”

  “Then why aren’t you Miss Lillington?”

  “People wouldn't want to call me ‘Miss,’ Thea. I have a child; I’m clearly not a maiden.” Too late, I sensed the abyss opening up under me.

  “What’s a maiden, Mrs. Lillington?” Thea’s pretty mouth was sweetly curved, the picture of childish innocence.

  “A woman who has not—who is not—“

  I was going to have to resort to every adult’s defense against juvenile curiosity.

  “These are not matters a little girl should be asking about. Or at the least, you must wait to ask your mother.”

  “Oh, I did. Mamma says a maiden is a virtuous woman.” Thea pronounced Mamma with a lilt, in the Italian fashion. “She says a married woman is no longer a maiden but is still virtuous because marriage is God’s way of allowing a woman to remain virtuous while still enjoying the fruits of the flesh. But then she wouldn’t tell me what the fruits of the flesh are. Do you know?”

  “If your mother won’t tell you, I certainly won’t. Such things are a mother’s province.”

  What on earth was Catherine Lombardi doing even mentioning the fruits of the flesh to this miniature inquisitor? Although I suspected Thea had simply worn her mother down to the point where she’d said more than she meant to.

  “I asked Prudence, and she said the fruits of the flesh are fornication,” Thea continued in a mild tone. “What’s fornication?”

  “Who’s Prudence?” I asked sharply. The fine hairs on my forearms were standing straight up despite the heat of the day.

  “She’s a farmer’s wife who helps out in the mission, to make the money go furrader.” Thea said the last word with a strong Scots accent, in derisive imitation. “I heard her say to Marta once—she’s Swedish; she cooks pies for us—that Mamma knows plenty about fornication because she consorts with wicked women who should be stoned for their sins.”