Harriet and Isabella by Patricia O'Brien

Author:Patricia O'Brien
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2008-01-08T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

Winter 1874

THE CLOCK IN THE PARLOR seems to be ticking louder than usual. Isabella decides it must need oiling. She will call the clockmaker and have it checked out; it is, after all, very old. Clocks need tending, just like people.

John smiles when she informs him. “This couldn’t have anything to do with your sealing yourself off here from the clamor of your family?” he asks.

Isabella puts down the knitting in her hands. Since Henry’s exoneration, the angry letters from her brothers and sisters are piling up on the library table. She no longer sees any reason to read them. The message is always the same: break all ties with “Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony and all that set,” as Mary put it, or none of them will speak to her again. Henry is now officially proved innocent. She must join them in denying his guilt. This, they inform her, is her last chance for redemption.

“It doesn’t seem to be enough that I’ve promised I’ll say nothing about the matter for the rest of my life,” she tells her husband.

“And that you’ve made a monastic vow to stay entombed here for the same amount of time?”

“I doubt if any of them care.”

“I don’t want my Bella turning bitter,” John says gently.

Unthinking, Isabella raises the half-knit sweater to her eyes and wipes the tears. “What I wish for now is an end to this constant barrage of scolding letters.”

“Ah, the plague of being from a literary family.”

She tries to smile. She is thinking of the “last chance” her family is offering her: redemption for a lie that proves her loyalty. How can that be a moral choice? She gropes for a way to break the impasse. All families find themselves thrown from time to time into different warring camps, but sheer survival of loving bonds depends on learning when to hold one’s tongue, when to back away. Certain topics surely are avoided at every dinner table, with words parsed carefully to keep the peace. She knows this as a sister, as a wife, and definitely as a mother. She’s managed the careful balance, perhaps less deftly than Hattie, but certainly with less clumsiness than Catharine.

This is different. Do her brothers and sisters know what they are asking? How can they expect her to tell a blatant lie that no one will believe at this point anyway? They are telling her that loyalty is more important than truth. She feels pressure building in her head. If she accepts that Beecher mandate, she is denying the core of what her family is supposed to be all about. Truth is supposed to win out over all. Do Hattie and the rest of them not see the contradiction here? She covers her face with her hands, her head throbbing now. She is caught. Decency requires the truth, and love requires a lie. She cannot settle for ambiguity; surely God frowns on moral ambiguity. But He gives no guidelines.

John walks over to the table and picks one letter off the top of the pile.

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