Chapter 20 The Beginning of the Rest
The ceremony happened on the twenty-eighth of December.
The road was clear by the twenty-sixth. Hobart came on the twenty-seventh to confirm the arrangements and to meet Mercy, who he had heard about at some length from his wife Margaret, who had met her at the Christmas Eve supper and had formed the opinion that she was exactly right, which was Margaret Hobart's version of approval and was not given lightly.
Hobart met Mercy in the parlor of Mrs. Connelly's, which now doubled as a workroom, with the dress form in the northeast corner and the fabric organized on the shelves and the smell of cloth and good work in the air, and he looked at her with the pastoral attention of a man who had been performing marriage ceremonies for thirty years and had developed the ability to assess quickly whether the two people in question knew what they were doing.
He concluded, quickly, that Mercy Alcott knew exactly what she was doing.
He looked at Nathaniel, who was present in the measured way he was present for things that mattered — fully, without performance.
Hobart had known Nathaniel for eight years and had watched him keep his distance from everything personal with the focused determination of a man who had decided that distance was the appropriate response to what he had survived, and he had waited, with the pastoral patience that was one of his actual qualities, for the decision to change.
It had changed. The evidence was in front of him.
"The ceremony tomorrow," Hobart said. "Here, or at the church?"
"Here," Mercy said. "Mrs. Connelly's parlor. It's where we both are."
"And witnesses?" Hobart said.
"The Caldwells will come," Nathaniel said. "Clem. Mrs. Connelly, obviously."
"And the deputy, Foster," Mercy said. "He's been very kind."
Hobart looked at the two of them with the warmth of someone doing what he most believed in. "Tomorrow then," he said. "Ten o'clock."
* * *
The morning of the twenty-eighth was the kind of morning that Colorado produced specifically for occasions that required it to be doing its best — cold and crystal-clear, the peaks brilliant against the blue, the snow on the valley floor untouched from the previous night and catching the morning light in a way that made everything twice as bright as it had any right to be.
Mercy put on the navy dress she had made for Clara — no.
She put on the dress she had made for herself.
She had been working on it in the evenings for the past week, quietly, without announcing the project, using a length of cloth from her own stock that she had been saving for something right: a deep blue-black wool that was the color of the Colorado sky at the hour before full dark, when the blue was at its most specific.
She had made it quickly and well, as she made everything, and it was exactly what she would have designed for herself on an important day, which was: beautiful without announcement, wearing its quality without display.
She looked at herself in the small mirror and thought: yes. That's right.
She thought about the stage on the first of December.
The wheel that came off. The sheriff on a gray horse.
The log that had been a comfortable place to sit and read while the situation was being resolved.
She thought about the conversation across eleven days of robbery and supper and stars and walking.
She thought about a question about a closed door and a man who had gone to the front pew of the church.
She thought: here I am. This is what running toward looks like when you've arrived.
She picked up her Bible and went downstairs.
* * *
The parlor-workroom had been arranged for the occasion — the dress form pushed to one side, a clear space in the center, Mrs. Connelly's small collection of winter greenery added to the shelves and the window.
Simple, functional, and entirely itself, which was what Mercy had wanted and what the room had provided.
The Caldwells arrived at half past nine.
Nora in her good dress — the one that had the stars along the hem, the angel costume converted — and Clara and Elias with the particular warmth of people who are genuinely glad to be at a thing.
Clem appeared from somewhere, having apparently walked from the Caldwell ranch on the principle that some occasions required his presence regardless of the inconvenience of the distance.
Foster came in his good coat, looking like the earnest young man he was, pleased to be included.
Mrs. Connelly stood at the back of her own parlor with the satisfied expression of a woman whose boarding house had produced an outcome she approved of.
Nathaniel was there before all of them. He had been there, Mercy suspected, since nine o'clock or possibly before.
He was in the dark coat he wore for the things that mattered and he had shaved and he looked like himself — specifically himself, the full version, the version that had been arriving in increments over twenty-seven days and was now, she thought, essentially complete.
He looked at her when she came downstairs.
She looked at him.
Hobart cleared his throat with the gentle authority of a man who had been waiting for the room to be ready.
They came to stand before him.
"We are gathered here," Hobart began, "in the sight of God and these witnesses, to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony.
" He said it with the same warmth he brought to everything, the warmth of genuine belief in the thing he was doing.
"I have known Nathaniel Horne for eight years," he added, departing from the standard form with the creative liberty of a man confident in his delivery, "and I have been waiting for this morning. I am glad it has come."
Nora, from her position beside the Caldwells, gave a small sound of agreement that was diplomatically converted into a cough.
"Nathaniel Horne," Hobart said, "do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, to love and to cherish, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, forsaking all others, until death do you part?"
Nathaniel looked at Mercy. He looked at her with the full-eyes expression that Nora had first described and that Mercy had been watching come fully alive over twenty-seven days.
"I do," he said. "And I have been — I want to say — " He stopped.
He was not a man for whom this kind of speaking came easily and she had not expected it to.
But he tried again, because he had decided to say the true thing and this was it.
"I have been closed off for a long time and I am open now.
I intend to stay open. I want you to know that before you answer. "
Hobart looked delighted. Foster looked moved. Mrs. Connelly looked satisfied. Nora looked like a scientist whose hypothesis has been exactly confirmed.
"Mercy Alcott," Hobart said, when he had recovered himself, "do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband, to love and to cherish, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, forsaking all others, until death do you part?"
Mercy looked at Nathaniel. She looked at him with the complete, undivided, receiving attention that was simply how she looked at everything.
"I do," she said. "I came to Pinecrest for a commission. I found something I didn't know I was looking for. I am glad the stage wheel came off on the first of December and I intend to go on being glad about it."
Nora, at a particularly significant look from Clara, kept her reaction internal.
The ring Nathaniel produced was not his mother's — he had no mother's ring.
It was a simple gold band he had purchased from the jeweler in Longmont on the twenty-sixth, riding out and back in a day in the cold, which was the most deliberately romantic thing he had done in twenty-one years and which she had found out about from Mrs. Connelly, who had found out from the livery boy, which was how things were found out in Pinecrest.
She felt it settle on her finger with the weight of something decided.
"By the authority vested in me by the Territory of Colorado and in the sight of Almighty God," said Reverend Hobart, "I now pronounce you man and wife."
The room was very quiet for a moment.
Then Nora said: "You're supposed to kiss her."
Nathaniel looked at the eight-year-old.
"She's right," Mercy said.
He kissed her. Properly — not the brief Christmas Eve kiss, but the real thing, the thing that said: this is decided and I mean it and I intend to keep meaning it.
The room, in the way of rooms at these moments, erupted into the warmth of people who had been watching something they were glad to see.
Mrs. Connelly produced the bottle she had been keeping for an occasion that warranted it.
Clem shook Nathaniel's hand with the brief, firm warmth of a man who has been waiting a long time for someone to deserve the handshake.
Clara hugged Mercy with the warmth of a woman who had been the first to see what was coming and was glad to see it arrive.
Elias said "congratulations" to both of them, briefly and with complete sincerity, and Nathaniel received this from Elias in the way of two men who understood each other.
Foster said he was very glad and looked like he meant it.
And Nora — Nora came to Mercy and stood in front of her and held out her carved horse. Ruth.
The same gesture she had made to Clara, on the first day, at the fence.
Mercy looked at the horse and then at the child.
"It's all right," Nora said. "You already held it right the first time. At the ranch. When I handed it to you and you held it carefully."
Mercy remembered. The first day at the Caldwell ranch, the carved horse in Nora's hands, the way she had handed it and Mercy had taken it and understood without being told what the taking required.
"I remember," she said.
"I know," Nora said. "That's why."
Mercy took the horse. She held it for a moment — with the same care, the same acknowledgment of what it was and what the giving meant — and then she handed it back.
Nora took it and tucked it under her arm with the ease of someone returning a beloved thing to its right place.
"Welcome," Nora said. "To both of you. To the family."
Nathaniel, standing beside Mercy, looked at Nora with the expression she had never seen before his face started opening — the expression of a man who was not protecting himself from what he was feeling and who was feeling, at that moment, a great deal.
"Thank you, Nora," he said.
"You're welcome," Nora said, with the equanimity of a person who has done the right thing and knows it.