Sailing Home by j. r. Barnes

Author:j. r. Barnes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sailing Ships, War of 1812, Political Intrigue
Publisher: j. r. barnes
Published: 2022-06-17T00:00:00+00:00

After Doctor Myers had gone, Marin, Phillipe and Jude stood in silence facing the closed bedroom door. All three had heard the verbal scuffle between Doctor Myers and Opaline, but Opaline’s final utterance, after the doctor had departed, had not reached their ears.

Marin was thinking about Opaline’s passionate defense of her profession, and he realized that his comprehension of her raison d’être was as distant to his grasp as his call of the sea was to hers.

Phillipe’s thoughts were occupied with Genesis 3:16. He could recite the passage verbatim: ‘I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor, you will give birth to children.’ He had thought he understood the Lord’s pronouncement to Eve. But now, he had come face to face with the shadow of its reach and the full measure if its consequence.

Jude had but one voice running through his head, that of the doctor, saying, ‘If that child dies let that death be on your head, dear lady.’ Jude crouched down against the wall, hung his head to his knees, and it wasn’t long before the whiskey in his veins rendered him null and void. With each heavy breath, he sank deeper into his own absence.

“Why would God do that?” Phillipe wondered aloud.

Marin assumed he was talking to himself, and ignored the comment. “Maybe ...it was to help the mother bond with the child,” Phillipe concluded, his voice swelling with inspiration and his body becoming erect, “... just as pain and suffering bring us closer to the Lord as He is waiting there to comfort us. Pain is a gift that brings us—”

“What the blazes are you going on about?” Marin remarked.

“Pain,” Phillipe said. “Pain and comfort. We must know pain if we are to understand God’s comfort. Without pain, there can be no comfort.”

“Not now, Phillipe,” Marin sighed, placing the heel of his palms into the sockets of his eyes.

“Don’t you see, Marin? Everything meaningful comes to us through struggle. Nothing of value—”

“Struggle, yes,” Marin cut him off, “but pain ... excruciating physical pain? That is something quite different, Phillipe. Every woman who has ever bore a child knows of the struggle that comes with nine months of pregnancy: the swelling of the belly and legs, the nausea and vomiting, the mood swings, the backaches and the loss of equilibrium. The constant fear that something may go terribly wrong at any given moment ...isn’t that struggle enough? Does your God have to top it off with wrenching pain?”

An agonizing moan from the other room brought Phillipe and Marin’s philosophical debate to an immediate halt, and woke Jude up from his drunken stupor. The three adjourned to the kitchen, and Phillipe immediately buried his head back into his Good Book. Marin fixed himself another pot of tea, and Jude lit his pipe and began pacing in a staggering fashion, back and forth between the kitchen and the bedroom door...and so it was they waited...

Aunt Belle eventually came out of the bedroom and had no

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