Chapter Five

I stayed in Bethlehem, flourishing in the Moravians' care. Papa knew that his decision to keep me there saddened me. He comforted me--and assuaged his guilt--by writing to me every day, assuring me that the country was ever so much safer and healthier than the city. His words proved his wisdom when more, less severe plagues befell the city during the summers of 1794, 1795 and 1796.

Secretly, I was glad to be in the country. I had no desire to endure another plague without the friendship of Kit and Dona to bolster me. Papa had found Dona a position with another family, and Kit had returned to his studies. In the beginning Dona and I wrote often, but over time, as we pursued new lives, our correspondence dwindled. Kit and I never wrote. We had no reason to communicate, if only by virtue of our stations in life.

The fact that we did not write did not mean that I never thought about him. In quiet moments, or lying awake at night, I would remember how he wrested me from the stream, or covered me with his coat when I fell asleep on the stable floor, rendered senseless by the stultifying prose of the Articles of Religion. I was thankful I wasn't closer to his age. I knew I would have been tempted to seek his affection, the way Dona did. But I also knew that my chances of success were nil. I had neither beauty nor intelligence. I was guaranteed nothing in life save extreme difficulty in, if not the impossibility of, finding a husband.

In the spring of 1797, Papa brought me to Philadelphia for what would be my last time in the house where I had been born and spent the first twelve years of my life. As we sat over dinner in the garden, he revealed that the Church was opening a mission for expatriates in Paris. Because the French government at that time banned religion not recognized by the state, the mission would be discreetly centered at an orphan asylum, which the presiding bishop himself had asked Papa to administer.

For the second time in four years, my father was separating himself from me with a passion that approached willful neglect of his only child. I regarded him as if he had just jumped from a hot-air balloon without a parachute. "Papa! This is your home! This is my home! How can you leave it? How can you leave me?"

Slowly, he cut his meat into minute pieces. "Sweetie, I'd like you to understand that we who have decided upon this mission are neither pious men who wish to put on a show of devotion to God, nor cowards who wish to run from the city. To paraphrase the psalmist, we have seen a thousand fall beside us and ten thousand at our right hands, so to speak, but it did not come nigh us. The Lord saved us and ours. Time has come to repay the debt."

"But France? You've got to do it in France, where they execute clergy?"

"Papist clergy, sweetie--Roman Catholics who plot to overthrow the Revolution. We're not Roman, and we have no intention of doing anything to arouse the government's ire or suspicion. We'll be there for the expatriates."

"Are there so many expatriate orphans that they need an asylum?"

"If there is one orphan or foundling, it would be enough."

All my life, Papa had entreated me to be truthful. Now he was embarking on a career that reeked of deceit. I wanted to admonish him by saying something Kit might have said, something wise or at least reasonable. But as earnestly as I wished to follow Kit's example, I could think of nothing appropriate. I was not Kit. I was Janet. I was still the child that must honor her father and respect his wishes. My silence and lack of enthusiasm must suffice for an answer.

I watched as flies washed themselves in my gravy. "What will become of me? What do you expect me to do?" My tone was bitter.

Papa's was not. "I expect you to join us in Paris once the mission is open."

I made a noise of disbelief.

Papa patted my hand. "Don't worry yourself, Jannie. We'll be safe. We won't flaunt our beliefs. Our neighbors won't even know there's a vicar among us."

As Papa took care of his business affairs, I prepared the house for sale. I remember listing items for auction while sitting at the kitchen table. It was a fresh, bright day; the windows were open wide, letting in the crisp, sweet scent of hyacinths. As I wrote, Evvie, the girl who had replaced our dear Mrs. McHenry, repeatedly slammed a lump of dough on the kitchen table and regaled me with gossip from her friend Gerard, a porter for the Congress. Though she spoke much and had her own way with the language, she had a stone face and rarely emoted during her dissertations. I half-heard her say something about a chaplain berating his wife for having spent money on a new dress at a time when the government was struggling to fund a water system meant to prevent future plagues. It sounded like something Kit's father would do.

Still writing, I absently asked, "And how is Father DeWaere these days?"

Evvie replied, "Which one?"

"Which one of what?"

"Father DeWaere."

I raised my eyes to see if she weren't addled. She continued assaulting the dough, not at all concerned about my interest in her mental state. "There's another Father DeWaere, ma'am. Said his first Mass in Christ Church a couple of months ago. He’s up at Trinity Church in Manhattan, running a school or something near the wharves."

"Poor fellow," I mumbled, setting back to work. "I tell you, Evvie, I've seen Rector DeWaere in his moods, and I dare say he's a man I shouldn't want to be confused with."

Evvie punched the dough, sending up a cloud of flour. "Well, I don't think these'll be confused. The other one's lots younger. He done something heroic-like. Preserved some children from the fever back in '93, I think your father said. Everybody knows about it."

Recognition twisted my heart. Struggling to appear nothing more than superficially curious, I asked, "Have you seen this new Father DeWaere?"

Evvie nodded. "Oh sure, ma'am. You know how the important families invite all the big society people to their sons' first Masses? This Father's family had nothing to do with it. He invited me himself. Was here one evening, visiting your father, and out of nowhere says, 'Evvie, what are you doing this Sunday?' Of course, I'm not going to tell a priest I'm doing anything but going to Mass, and he says he'd be honored if I'd drop in for his first, that Sunday at Christ Church. So I go and find out that just about everybody there's a servant or a plain worker, 'cepting your father, of course, and a pretty thing said to be the new Father's intended."

A pretty thing? I could not help remembering Kit and Dona in the clearing. I coughed to veil the tremor in my speech. "What does he look like, this new Father?"

Evvie made a face. "I don't know how to describe him. He's young, younger than most new priests and certainly the youngest one I've ever seen." She stopped pounding the bread, and for the first time raised her small, closely set eyes to mine. The corners of her mouth tipped upward in a fleeting smile. "A deer, ma'am. That's what he reminds me of. A deer that hasn't yet got its rack."

That, indeed, was Kit DeWaere.

I gathered my papers and went to my room, where I walked in circles, roiling with emotion. I was furious at Papa for not telling me all this. I wanted to race to New York to find Kit and tell him how happy I was that the community lauded what he had done for us even if his father did not.

After an hour of imagining what I would do and say, I had exhausted my mental excursions, and they had exhausted me. I lapsed into the belief that a kind, well-mannered letter must suffice. By the time Papa returned, I had composed something in which I congratulated Kit on his ordination and wished him well. I had no idea where I would address it, but I reasoned that I could always ask someone at Christ Church. I did not dare approach Kit's parents, for I nurtured an acute dislike for Father DeWaere which, I had no doubt, would endure into the life of the world to come. Nor would I ask Papa. He was so embroiled with preparations for his new venture, I believed I would be wrong to accuse him of hiding news from me when he had so many, more important things on his mind. I accepted the fact that he just plain forgot to tell me.

I cast the letter from my mind as soon as I had posted it with help from the Christ Church sexton. I expected no answer. It was enough for me to send Kit my best wishes and to let him know that I would never forget what he had done for me. My contentment allowed me to devote my time in Philadelphia to preparing Papa for his journey and for the sale of the house. I returned to Bethlehem knowing that I had done everything I could for Papa, and that Papa proceeded into his new life with a rare quality of faith that had taken him a lifetime to nurture. He sweetened the sadness of our parting by reminding me that we would meet again as surely as we believed in the Second Coming.

I begged him not to tease me with theology.

"It's not theology, Janet," he tenderly replied. "I'm telling you that I'll come back for you when we're ready for you. You will teach the orphans. It will be the best work you may ever do while on this earth."

I gave him my handkerchief and a lock of my hair to remember me by, and he, in turn, gave me something I never in my life expected from him--his pocket watch. "You're as dear to me as any son, sweetie. Let me honor you like one."

I had promised myself that I would send Papa off bravely, without tears, secure in the knowledge of his happiness. But that gift! It was an insurmountable surprise, and so noble. I shriveled in sobs on Papa's shoulder, devastated by the prospect of perhaps forever losing not simply the only parent I had ever known, but a man whose good heart surpassed all others.

It was a long year. Papa wrote to me every day that we were apart, but it could take two months for the mail to reach me in Bethlehem. Sometimes I received no letter; sometimes, I would be handed a dozen. I tried not to think about Kit DeWaere. He never replied to my letter. I considered that I had made a humiliating mistake: I had had no business writing to a man I had neither seen nor spoken to in years. Doubtless, he thought me a silly little fool and burned my childish letter lest it be seen by his "intended." (It had to be Donatienne!)

I began to think it strange, how anyone dear to me vanished from my life. It was almost as though I was not meant to be happy in this world. During my early days in Bethlehem, when I was unhappy or lonely, I would remember my home, my father, Mrs. McHenry, Kit and Dona. My memories were my refuge. Now I wanted nothing more than to forget the people and places I had once loved. My studies were my refuge. I took heart in the knowledge that, someday, I would have a new life in a faraway place that I had known only through Dona's tales.

My journey to that place began in the spring of 1798. Papa and I could not sail directly to France from Philadelphia. The United States and France were enjoying what the politicians called the Quasi War, a naval conflict, in the Caribbean, that marked the end of friendly relations between America and the nation that had helped her win her freedom from England. American merchant ships were prohibited from French waters. We had to sail to Denmark, a neutral country, and take a Danish packet to Calais, where we availed ourselves of the first of several mail coaches to Paris.

Papa lived in the Marais section of the city, on the Right Bank of the River Seine. More than one hundred years earlier, the Marais had been a fashionable area, home to noblemen who lived in stately mansions called hotels or smaller townhomes called maisons. Since the Revolution, those buildings had been hacked into apartements that became homes for as many as two dozen families, depending on the size of the hotel.

Papa's apartement was a huge ballroom that had been divided into several much smaller rooms. Each room had the same high ceiling, with plaster reliefs of ornate flowers and fanciful designs, and each room had the same high, wide windows and uncarpeted, parquet floor.

The building was noisy with the sounds of life: children, musical instruments, laughter, loud conversation. It reminded me of activity that could be heard throughout my dormitory at the Moravian school, but the familiarity of life could not dispel a feeling of foreboding. Perhaps the journey had unnerved me, or perhaps I was exhausted beyond the ability to think clearly. As I lay in bed that night, listening to the strange language and the new sounds, I had a feeling that this would not be my home for long. I fell asleep fearing what the days would bring.

Following a quick breakfast at a local coffee house, Papa led me through the Marais's maze of badly cobbled paths, barely one carriage wide, between rows of limestone buildings, some as high as seven stories, ground floors included. The way was crammed with people and vehicles.

The orphan asylum was a plain limestone house that sat on the street, facing a cobbler's shop, a bakery, a milliner, and cheap apartement buildings on the other side of the path.

Papa explained that the building was once a convent school, and I could see that the architecture reflected the former usage. The ground floor contained the kitchen and several small visiting parlors. The dining hall and small classrooms were on the first floor, while the dormitories and small bedrooms, formerly used by the nuns, were on the upper floors. The windows on the ground and first floors were tall and narrow. The windows on the upper floors grew progressively smaller, until the window in the attic was little more than a functional square.

As I followed Papa into the cramped foyer, I noticed a silence that had little to do with going indoors, away from the noise of the street. I had expected the orphanage to resound with the tumult associated with children, but the place was quiet. Papa and I were the only ones making noise as we trod the creaky staircase against the wall. "Is everyone in class?" I asked.

My ignorance of the situation was so complete that I suspected nothing even as Papa stopped and turned to me in the midst of our ascent, saying, "Yes, you may say that."

I listened, failing to hear anything other than a woman humming "Adelaide," a song, by the new German composer Beethoven, that was all the rage in those days. "A music lesson, Papa?"

He hesitated. When he spoke, his words were measured. "Mrs. Reynolds likes to sing to them. She, and her husband, believe that the children respond best to soft singing."

I had never heard of that mode of teaching. "Is this a French concept?"

Papa smiled. "It is Candace Reynolds's concept. So far it has not proved unbeneficial. The children really do seem to respond to it."

Intrigued, I reached the top of the steps before Papa and followed the fluty voice to a room where a black woman in a brightly colored shortgown and petticoats was brushing the long, dark blond hair of what I at first perceived was a porcelain doll the size and shape of a real little girl of perhaps five or six years of age. She-It?-wore a light blue dress with a muslin scarf at the bodice. She-It?--sat on the chair with legs sticking straight out, instead of bent at the knee. The arms hung straight down. The only thing that assured me this was a human child and not a porcelain creation was the face. A master dollmaker would have fashioned a spirited expression. This child's face offered no evidence of animation. The eyes were empty. The mouth hung open. Drool streamed down her chin.

"Other institutions shear off their hair and dress them in little more than a chemise," Papa said in my ear. "We prefer to maintain their dignity and keep them as fashionable as possible."

An odd snuffling drew my attention in the direction of the window. There, a similar child was propped in the corner of a wing chair. A smaller specimen lay full length on the faded Persian rug at her feet. Grunts passed between them, as though they were communicating with each other.

I cannot express what I felt as I realized these were not the children I had expected to teach. No teacher on earth could help them. They were incapable of learning. Struck mute by shock and fury, I trod purposefully through the hallway and down the stairs. I had half a mind to storm all the way back to Papa's apartement. Instead, I followed the comforting scent of almond and vanilla that now pervaded the ground floor and found my way to the kitchen. A small-bosomed woman in a modest Directory dress kneaded bread at the table. More bread and cakes were forming within the school's big, brick oven. I fitfully paced around the table, struggling to contain a raging sense of betrayal. The woman continued her work in a state of utter, uncompromised serenity.

"Jannie, you must understand what has happened to this country," Papa begged. "When the government banned the Church, they wiped out the religious orders that took care of people. The asylums closed. Normal foundlings and children were easily placed. But children like these? Nobody wants them. People started bringing them here. We couldn't turn them away."

"You should have told me this before we left America."

"Does it matter, Jannie? They're still children. They still need care. They still need family, just as you needed care and family."

"These are idiots, Papa. They know nothing about family. They know nothing about anything! They're worse off than animals. My guinea pig had more intelligence than these creatures ever will."

Never had I seen Papa look so helpless. His eyes brimmed with tears and acquired the redness often associated with inflammation. He took his handkerchief from his sleeve and wiped his nose. "I'm so sorry, Jannie," he said, sounding as if he had a cold. "I don't want you to be unhappy. Maybe the vicar can find you a position as governess for an expatriate family. Would you like that?"

There are few things so awful to a child as seeing a parent cry. It was my fault. I had acted like a spoiled, petulant ingrate. My throat tightened with my own, unshed tears as I hugged Papa and begged him to forgive me.

"Here, have some chocolate. Everybody likes our chocolate." A young man pressed a heavy, white, breakfast cup into my hands.

Papa said nothing. Indeed, as he patted his eyes and nose, he studied me as if waiting for what I would do next.

I don't deny that the chocolate was a great consolation. As I sipped the steaming, syrupy liquid, I wondered how I could have let myself become so upset. I took my time, not to enjoy the brew's incomparable taste and fragrance, but to compel Papa and the younger man to stew in suspense as they awaited my reaction to accepting a drink from somebody I had not seen for five years, and who, to my knowledge, was still living in New York.

Shaking from the peculiar shock of suddenly seeing somebody whom you believe has stepped forever out of your life, I set down the empty cup and said to Kit, "Forgive me for saying so, but if Dante had seen this place, there'd be a few more circles in Hell. Is this your reward for getting lost in the woods with a wagon-load of children?"