The Sacred Shore (23 page)

“Andrew's brother!” The man flung the broom aside and stepped forward with a broad smile and outstretched hand. “Miracles do indeed fill my life, sir. You are most welcome!”

“Andrew was a good student. Not the best, no. It would not be truthful to suggest he was a particularly gifted man when it came to books and study. But he worked, oh my goodness, how that man worked.”

Reverend Collins puttered around a cluttered chamber, one apparently shared by several members of the seminary's faculty. It was a large room, high ceilinged and flanked by a pair of vast sunlit windows. Four broad tables were spaced about its length, each surrounded by books and tomes and papers. Charles watched as his new acquaintance lifted a whistling kettle from the fire, filled a teapot, and asked, “How do you take your tea, sir?”

“Black is fine, thank you.” Charles accepted his cup. “It's really not necessary that you go to all this trouble, Reverend.”

“Nonsense. It's not every day that I have such joy brought to me through my afternoon chores.” The bearded gentleman chuckled as he eased himself down in a high-backed chair opposite Charles. “Although such miracles do seem to be coming more often these days.”

“I'm not sure I understand, sir.”

The old man had the ability to show enormous good humor with the mere lifting of an eyebrow. He smiled at something only he could see, took a sip from his cup, then turned to stare out the window. Finally he said, “You must forgive me, Charles. It is all right if I call you that, I hope.”

“Most certainly, sir.” Charles had not told the gentleman of his quest, of his wealth, or his earldom. And apparently Andrew had not even mentioned the fact that he had a brother. Charles decided that seemed fitting, to have been dismissed so completely from his brother's life that Andrew did not even speak of his existence to a friend. “I am honored.”

“And I am Samuel. Samuel Collins.” For some reason, this admission caused the vicar to emit another chuckle. He leaned over his ample belly. “How is Andrew?”

“He is fine, sir. Actually, he is better than that.” Charles swallowed another sip of tea, then added, “The villagers of Georgetown seem to feel the man is a saint.”

“Ah, then he has continued to grow in faith. I am glad, sir. So glad. And Catherine?”

“She is a worthy wife for my brother.” Never had his own lacks and losses bit as deeply as then, not even when left standing morose and solitary by his second wife's grave. “A lovely woman in every sense of the word.”

“Yes, Catherine is truly a gift from God.” His gray eyes blinked. “And their young child, Anne is her name, is that not so?”

“The name is correct, sir. But a child no longer. She is eighteen and as beautiful—” Charles was about to say how she resembled her mother. But then there was the question of
which
mother, and this left him thinking that in truth the young lady resembled both. “She is as beautiful as she is poised.”

“I am so glad. So very glad. You add great joy to an old man's day.” Another sip, and the cup was set aside. “So tell me, Charles, what has brought you to our door this fine afternoon?”

Charles found himself retreating behind his cup. He started to tell the man about Nicole, but then there was the issue of who he was. Which could only result in confessing the dismal way he had treated his own brother. No. Yet when Charles pushed all that aside, he found himself confronting a second set of facts. Deeper ones and newer both, truths that were only now taking a coherent form.

Charles lifted his gaze and inspected the man across from him. Pastor Collins seemed more than merely a gentle, likable man. Much more indeed. Those kind gray eyes held a light that resembled the illumination within Andrew's own gaze. The glow signaled an inner contentment that Charles previously had considered more fitting to myths and childhood fables. Yet here it was, the same peace he had found in his brother, and in Henri and Louise Robichaud. A strength and a security that seemed able to withstand life's harshest winds. A light that was in truth not of this world at all.

Samuel Collins seemed most willing to wait him out. No doubt his teacher's patience combined with a pastor's ability to accept whatever moment the visitor chose to shape. Charles took an easy breath, knowing with certainty that here was a man he could trust. “Truth be known, sir, the reason that set me on my voyage is no longer the reason I journey on. At least, no longer the only purpose.”

“Ah.” The vicar laced his fingers across his belly, seemingly content to remain there indefinitely.

Charles took another breath and began with the storm. It was as good a place as any, though images of watery tunnels of lush greenery, and the warm, fragrant closeness of bayou country intruded into the telling from time to time. He could not describe it all, not if he were to sit and speak for days and weeks. For as he continued with his tale, explaining how he found himself confronted not by the tempest so much as with his own inner turmoil, other images continued to crowd up close. As though part of his mind sat and told the story and remembered the ship and the storm, and another part entirely sat and recalled even earlier days. The absence of childhood love. The sterile quality of his wealthy upbringing. The political intrigue in court. Two marriages for yet more property and position, rather than for love. The journey across the Atlantic. Finding Andrew. Facing himself.

Charles realized he had stopped talking. Guiltily he straightened in his chair and said, “Forgive me, sir, my mind must have wandered off, causing me to ramble—”

“Think nothing of it,” the vicar replied. “I was just telling another young seeker the other day how life's greatest problems are often such because they are tied to so much else.”

“So much,” Charles agreed solemnly. “So very much.”

“You were saying how the storm had forced you to confront your own inner state.”

“My own inner emptiness,” Charles confirmed, marveling at the ease he felt in speaking thus to a near stranger. Known only to him by a brother he hardly knew at all. “My own inner void.”

And there he stopped. There was nothing else to say. Whatever experience he chose to speak of, whatever journey he brought to mind, it would all return to this simple confession. Yes, he saw that now. Here was the center of his quest, this one and the one before and the one that had started when he had been born.

The vicar seemed to gather himself, as though poised to launch into reaches Charles felt were lost to him forever.

Then he smiled, the vicar did, and the light in his eyes gathered and strengthened. “In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus speaks of the need for each of us to take control. Not of our lives, no. That is a myth that men of power and wealth pretend to, that they control their lives and their destinies. But in truth, none of us can claim such control. It is a lie, a veil of falsehood those with power pretend to believe, and in doing so, hide themselves from the deeper truths.”

Charles found he could not help but murmur, “The rudest surprise of this long and harrowing season is just how little control I do have.”

“There, you see? Honest perception
requires
us to admit this. But as we accept our lack of control over
life
, we find we do have control over our
choices
.”

Charles leaned forward, drawn by an unfamiliar sensation within the deepest core of his being. It felt like a hunger of his very soul. “I'm not sure I understand.”

“Everything that is here on earth will wear away. What we place so much importance upon—all of this will soon disappear. Yet we cling to it all. We seek to increase our possessions. We hunger for more, always more. And because our desperation is so great, we fail to see that this in itself is a choice. And the result of this choice is a life lived to a tragic litany. Over and over, day after day, year after year, we chant,
Just this one thing more
. First I will have that, then I will be content. Then I will be happy.” Solemnly the vicar shook his head. “But this chant is a lie, my friend. Oh yes. A calamitous and deadly lie.”

Charles found himself not nodding so much as rocking in his seat. A fraction of a movement, back and forth. Rocked upon his very foundation by the truths he now absorbed. “What is one to do?”

“There is only one answer to that, my brother. Just one. If there had been any other way for this lost and forlorn world to gain entry to the eternal, God would
never
have permitted us to nail His Son to a tree.” Samuel Collins closed the distance between them, leaning forward until his brilliant gray eyes and softly powerful voice filled Charles's vision. “The truth is, life is just a preface for what is to come. And there is
one
way to enter the kingdom.
One
way to gain salvation.
One
choice that you and all of us must make.”

The eyes bore into Charles's gaze with a force so powerful that his quiet words rang like a great bell. Though the vicar spoke softly, Charles felt the words sinking deeply into his mind.

“That choice is to serve the one true God. With all that you have. With all that you are.”

Chapter 26

Nicole ever paced the windswept deck, feeling as trapped as she ever had in all her life. Rain fell in cold and misty curtains. The wind was so light the droplets drifted as much up and sideways as down. Like all the family, she wore several layers of clothing and still could never feel warm. She quickly had learned that the worst thing she could do was remain seated, for then the chill seeped into her very bones. No, it was far better to meet the weather and the cold head-on and walk and work and endure.

Here it was the beginning of August, and Nicole was as cold as she could ever remember. No, that was not exactly true. Once before, in the dim recesses of her childhood memories, she had known such cold. It had been the winter of her mother's grave illness, when Nicole had been forced to jump straight from youthful play to looking after a house. She recalled standing in the doorway of their Carolina hovel and watching white flakes falling from the sky, far too gentle for something so piercingly cold. Here upon the gray ocean reaches north of Boston, the cold seemed a wet and endless chill that burrowed deep and remained. Even her dreams had become laced with storms and grayness and cold winds.

Her pacings took her back to where Emilie stood at the opposite rail, cradling and cooing to the fretting baby. “Here, let me take her for a time.”

“Oh, you are an angel.” Emilie's features had started to take on the pinched quality of deep exhaustion. She was not sleeping well. None of them were. “She's started dripping the yellow fluid again from her nose. Look, it's even in her eyes.”

“It's just a fever, nothing more.” Nicole took the child and turned swiftly away so Emilie could not see her own worry and concern. She rocked the child as she crossed to the boat's opposite side, in truth scarcely hearing the whimpering. Her exhausted mind remained trapped by the gray world and the beckoning memories. Oily waves rose and fell and finally melted into the unseen horizon. The wind began to blow more strongly, pressing her ever onward toward a goal she could no longer clearly identify. As though once she arrived at the destination she had set for herself, still the journey would go on, still her search would continue.

Nicole found herself remembering her departure from the seminary and the reverend's final words. He had clasped her hand with both of his with such warmth and fervor that it seemed to Nicole as though he were actually embracing her. “I wish you a good and joyful journey.”

She had tried to laugh, the unease from her earlier confession still surrounding her. “No voyage upon the sea can be called joyful, m'sieur. And all of them are too long. In truth, I feel as though the voyage is already endless.”

“Not endless, and not without purpose,” Pastor Collins had responded in his quiet and gentle manner. “When you find yourself growing impatient, remember that God's timing is not our own. There is a reason for His delay. Find that reason, and your own journey will grow shorter, even if the time remains long.”

“I … I am not sure I understand,” she stammered, once again shaken by the sheer mystery of this man's wisdom, his deep care.

“There is a lesson here for you, my dear. It is not my lesson, so you must discover it for yourself.” The smile broke free then, showing a confidence in her ability to find out what was there before her. “You must seek the answer by seeking God. In that you will find the reason for all life, and all life's journeys.”

Nicole had departed for the ship and the next stage of her journey, reflecting not only upon the man's words. As she mounted the gangplank she had been struck by the fact that these messages had come from an Englishman, one of the race she had spent her entire life loathing. The race to which she now belonged.