CHAPTER 11
Overheard in the Vestry
The Goldpine church
Ruth had come to the church that particular afternoon to review the ministry's quarterly accounts with Josiah, and arrived rather earlier than their scheduled meeting, early enough, as it happened, to overhear, through the half-open study door, a conversation between her brother and Caleb that had evidently begun some minutes before her own arrival.
“I'm not asking you to simply forget her, Caleb,” Josiah was saying, in the patient, measured tone he generally reserved for matters of genuine pastoral weight.
“I'm asking you to consider whether you're using your continued grief as a shield against any possibility of future happiness, rather than genuinely honoring Eleanor's memory through the particular manner of your continued mourning.”
“I don't know how to properly distinguish between the two, Josiah. It feels, some days, as though any consideration of future happiness constitutes a betrayal of what Eleanor and I shared, however irrational I understand that feeling to be when examined objectively.”
“And has anyone asked you to betray her memory? Or are you perhaps conflating genuine remembrance with a kind of self-imposed penance you've decided you owe her death, whatever her own actual wishes for your continued life might have been, had she lived to express them?”
Ruth, standing frozen in the narrow hallway with the quarterly accounts clutched to her chest, found she could not have moved from that spot for any consideration, understanding that she was witnessing a conversation of considerable private significance that she had never been intended to overhear.
“I've noticed,” Josiah continued, when Caleb offered no immediate reply, “that you've grown rather more animated these past months than your letter first suggested you were capable of, particularly in Ruth's company.
I don't say this to embarrass you, only to observe what strikes me as rather evident to anyone watching the two of you work together — that something genuine has begun growing between you, whatever careful reservation you've each maintained against properly acknowledging it.”
“I've certainly grown to value her friendship and her considerable professional assistance, Josiah.
I'll not pretend otherwise. But I don't know that I'm capable of offering anything beyond that friendship, however much I might, in some private corner of my heart I'm reluctant to properly examine, wish otherwise.”
“Why not? What precisely do you believe stands between friendship and something considerably warmer, beyond your own persistent guilt regarding a loss that, by every account including her own father's professional assessment, was never actually your fault to begin with?”
The silence that followed this direct question stretched long enough that Ruth, still frozen in the hallway, began to genuinely worry the sound of her own held breath might give away her unintended eavesdropping.
“I'm frightened,” Caleb admitted finally, his voice carrying a rawness Ruth had not yet heard from him in all their weeks of growing acquaintance.
“Frightened that if I allow myself to properly love again, and something should happen to her too, I'll not survive the loss a second time.
I could not save Eleanor despite every medical resource available to me.
I don't know that I could bear facing that particular helplessness again, watching someone else I love suffer beyond my capacity to properly help them.”
“Nobody can guarantee against future loss, Caleb, whether you risk loving again or not.
That's simply the plain, hard truth of mortal existence, however much we might wish otherwise.
But I'd ask you to consider this: would you rather spend the remainder of your years protected from further loss but also protected from further genuine joy, or would you rather risk the considerable pain loving again might eventually cost you, in exchange for whatever genuine happiness that same love might offer in the meantime, however long or short that meantime ultimately proves?”
Ruth did not wait to hear whether Caleb found words to properly answer this question.
She set the quarterly accounts down quietly on the hallway table and let herself out the side door into the bright afternoon sunshine, her chest tight with an emotion she could not entirely name — hope and fear intermingled in equal, confusing measure, understanding now, with sudden and uncomfortable clarity, exactly how much she herself had come to want this particular guarded man to eventually find his way past his considerable fear toward whatever genuine happiness might yet await them both, should he ever prove willing to properly risk it.
She walked the long way home rather than the direct route, needing the additional time to properly settle her own considerable emotion before facing Josiah's inevitably perceptive questions regarding her evident distraction.
She found herself turning Josiah's careful counsel over in her mind, understanding that her brother had articulated, with a clarity she herself had not yet managed, precisely the choice Caleb faced — protected safety against risked joy — and recognizing, with some discomfort, that she herself had been making rather a similar choice these past nine years, protecting herself from the risk of romantic disappointment by convincing herself that her ministry work constituted sufficient substitute for genuine partnership.
She thought of her eleven successful matches, each one built on exactly the courage Josiah was presently trying to coax from Caleb, each bride and groom having chosen, at some crucial juncture, to risk considerable vulnerability in pursuit of genuine happiness rather than retreating into safer, lonelier certainty.
She had helped each of them find that courage through careful counsel and patient encouragement.
She wondered, walking slowly through the golden autumn afternoon, when precisely she had stopped extending that same encouragement to herself, and whether Caleb's own difficult reckoning might yet prove the catalyst that finally taught her to properly practice what she had so freely preached to others.
She found Josiah later that same evening, having composed herself sufficiently to face his company without betraying the full extent of what she had overheard, and found him uncharacteristically subdued, evidently still working through his own private assessment of the difficult conversation.
“I hope I haven't overstepped, counseling Caleb quite so directly,” he said, unprompted, over their shared supper. “I've perhaps pressed him toward a reckoning he wasn't yet properly prepared to face.”
“I'd not worry overmuch, Josiah. I'd wager a man of Caleb's evident intelligence needed precisely that kind of direct challenge to properly examine his own guardedness. Sometimes gentle patience alone isn't sufficient to produce genuine growth.”
“That's rather generous counsel, sister, particularly given how personally this whole matter evidently concerns you.”
Ruth felt her composure waver slightly at this gentle observation, understanding that her brother had recognized, with his usual perceptiveness, precisely how much personal stake she carried in Caleb's eventual reckoning.
“I'll not deny the personal interest, Josiah, though I'm not yet entirely certain what to properly do with it.”
“Perhaps,” Josiah suggested gently, “you might simply extend yourself the same patient counsel you've offered eleven other hearts these past years, and trust that whatever's meant to develop between you and Caleb will find its own proper course, given sufficient time and honest communication on both your parts.”
“That's rather sound advice, Josiah, though I confess it's considerably easier to extend such patient counsel to others than to properly apply it to my own uncertain heart.”
“I'd wager that's true of most wisdom worth having, sister. It's a good deal easier to counsel patience in others than to practice it ourselves, when our own genuine feelings hang in the considerable balance.”
Ruth considered this observation with a rueful smile, recognizing its evident truth even as she continued turning over her own uncertain path forward.
“I suppose I'll simply have to practice what I've spent four years preaching, then, and trust that whatever's meant to develop between Caleb and myself will find its own proper timing, however impatient my own heart presently feels about the matter.”
“That strikes me as precisely the right approach, Ruthie. And for whatever it's worth, I'd wager that timing arrives rather sooner than your present uncertainty suggests, given how thoroughly I've watched this particular partnership deepen these past weeks.”
Josiah's prediction, though offered with brotherly optimism rather than any genuine foreknowledge, proved rather more prescient than either of them could have properly anticipated that evening, the outbreak that would soon test both Ruth and Caleb's partnership arriving within the very same week to accelerate, through genuine shared crisis, exactly the reckoning their careful individual guardedness might otherwise have continued postponing indefinitely.
Ruth retired that evening with her brother's gentle optimism settling into her considerable uncertainty like a small, steady flame against the darkness, and found herself, drifting toward sleep, allowing herself for the first time to properly imagine what a genuine future alongside Caleb might actually look like, rather than simply cataloguing her present uncertain feelings without permitting them any further, hopeful extension.
She dreamed that night, rather uncharacteristically for a woman not generally given to remembering her own dreams, of a small house not unlike the one Caleb presently occupied, filled with the particular warm chaos of a genuine family life she had not permitted herself to properly imagine in some years.
She woke the following morning with the dream's warm impression still lingering pleasantly, and found herself, going about her ordinary morning duties, humming that same small tune again without quite noticing she had begun it, Josiah catching her at it over breakfast with a knowing smile he wisely chose not to comment upon directly.
She spent that whole day carrying the dream's warm impression with her, attending to her ministry correspondence with a lightness of spirit that made even the most tedious administrative tasks feel considerably more bearable than usual, and found herself, watching the autumn light shift gradually across her writing desk through the course of the afternoon, genuinely grateful for whatever considerable journey had brought her to this particular moment of quiet, hopeful anticipation, however uncertain its eventual outcome still remained.
She saw Caleb briefly that evening, their paths crossing near the mercantile as each attended to separate errands, and found herself, exchanging only a few pleasant words before their respective duties called them onward, carrying the warmth of even that brief encounter with her for the remainder of the evening, understanding that whatever considerable uncertainty still attended their developing relationship, even its smallest moments had begun to feel genuinely precious in a manner she had not properly experienced in longer than she could recall.