Short Story: Grace and Courage

Today I’m sharing a short story about the passage of time and the lives that can connect us. I hope you enjoy it! BUT before we get to that, I mentioned a special announcement was coming in my last post. Here it is!

Over the next month, I’ll be officially launching the Creator’s Guild right here on benjaminjlaw.com! I want to open the door for other writers, artists, and visual creatives to have real estate on my site and access to my audience of readers. It will be built into my blog, and everything will be personally reviewed by me to ensure it meets a certain standard of professionalism. To submit work or find out more, shoot an email over to bjlcreatorsguild@gmail.com. Anyone who is interested can submit content now, and the Guild will be officially open and posting in May.

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Now, without further ado, please enjoy

GRACE AND COURAGE

a short story

England, 1850

“He was a sweet man, I’ll give him that,” Maribell whispered. “Nothing much in the face and nothing left for him in the estate.”

“Maribell Jones, you hold your tongue,” her mother snapped at her, deep, unforgiving wrinkles sagging her face.

“Quite right, Mrs. Jones,” said Mrs. Gravy to Maribell’s mother. “Quite right, indeed. Such a tongue would be cut out in years passed. I’m taken aback, I say. I’m utterly unnerved by your tongue, Maribell.”

“And I,” Mrs. Jones agreed. The matrons nodded in disdain together. Maribell rolled her eyes, looking to her friend for support. Alice only giggled and said nothing.

“Honestly, Alice, I wish you’d back me up,” Maribell hissed.

“I shan’t when you insist on insulting a dead man’s appearance and worth whilst his eyes are wide open and gazing upon me for the photographer.” The four women fell quiet, watching the photographer position the dead Mr. George Gibson, one hand on his old violin, which he played wonderfully in life, and one hand placed just so upon his thigh. Mr. Gibson’s skin was as white as snow beneath the pink makeup applied by the photographer to brighten his face, but his eyes were as dull and empty as they always had been. “But, I must say,” Alice said as hushedly as she could manage into Maribell’s ear; “looking at Mr. Gibson now, I do wonder how fares his poor son.”

“Lincoln Gibson, I’m sure, fares just well,” Maribell answered. “He stands upon more prospects than Mr. Gibson ever did. But perhaps he could use some friendly comfort after the passing of his poor old father.” Alice shook her head and did not say more.

“I admit the unorthodoxy of me inviting you here, ladies,” the photographer said shyly, “but it’s my first time applying makeup. Do tell me, is it all right?”

“Just wonderful, sir,” Mrs. Gravy answered. “Just a beautiful image of health and wellness.”

“Lovely,” added Mrs. Jones. “Is it not, girls?”

“Lovely as could be,” said both Maribell and Alice, and the camera snapped its shot.

An hour later…

Alice Kingsford stood, back held as straight as she could manage, as her mother once instructed her to do, near the back of the dining hall, where friends and family of the violinist George Gibson gathered to mourn his passing. Lavish chandeliers hung from the ceiling, and the walls were painted from crown molding to baseboards with images of towering angels that watched over Adam and Eve, clothed only in leaves, as they explored God’s gifts in the Garden of Eden. Tables spotted the large space, each draped in a perfectly white cloth and with a simple sunflower, George Gibson’s favorite flower, standing in a vase at every table’s center. Beside each flower was a candle, lit to a dim blaze. The hall was, as all things were for the Gibsons before George mishandled the estate, extravagant beyond measure, and the people come to mourn, wearing black suits of high cost and dark dresses that nearly ate the chairs they passed, were also of the most extravagant variety.

Alice was surveying the room from the back of the hall in hopes of spotting the young Lincoln Gibson, but was instead reacquainted with her childhood friend Maribell, who beckoned her to a table where there sat another young woman named Martha, a servant at the Gibson Estate, and two gentlemen of reasonable countenance. Maribell did not know, as Alice did, that one of these gentlemen was Mr. Lucas Larson, cousin to Lincoln and a Navy officer, and the other was one Mr. Adam Jenkins, an army man from the Americas who was very close to the dead Mr. Gibson and who was Mr. Larson’s closest friend.

“Alice, it’s been some time, hasn’t it?” Mr. Larson exclaimed upon seeing her approach. He and Mr. Jenkins stood and bowed slightly. “When did we last meet?”

“I was here, I know that,” said Mr. Jenkins. “I find that the women of England have a certain smell about them that’s so much sweeter than the women of New York.”

“Pray tell, sir, what this smell might be?” Maribell hissed, with a smile, as she claimed her seat in between Alice and Martha.

“Now, don’t fret until your glass slipper shatters from your foot, Maribell,” Alice jested, winking at her friend. “Hello again Martha, I trust your father is well?”

“He’s perfectly well, yes,” Martha answered. “And your father?”

Alice smiled, though below such a smile, which was often given forth as a matter of tradition rather than feeling, was such sorrow that it may not be expressed in the company of others and certainly not at a funeral gathering belonging to someone else. “He’s well,” she answered. “But, tell us Martha: what do you think of Mr. Jenkins’ nose? Is it larger than the others hereabout?”

“Pardon?” Mr. Jenkins laughed.

“Alice never says a thing without reason,” said Mr. Larson.

“Indeed not, Lucas! I only wonder, Mr. Jenkins, how you smell such scents that others may only hear you speak of and never smell with our own nostrils? Might it be due to the particular shape and presence of your own nose?” Alice sipped her tea, which Maribell had poured for her as a thank-you for taking Adam Jenkins on in head to head conversation.

“She’s not wrong, Adam,” Mr. Larson added, laughing aloud at Alice’s remarks. “If you’d given him the chance, Mr. George Gibson would have lost all your nose’s money, too!” The table all laughed at this, hold for Martha, who was most uncomfortable.

“I don’t understand the meaning of your statement, Mr. Larson,” Martha said flatly.

“He means to say that Mr. Jenkins’ nose is as big as an estate, Martha dear,” Maribell clarified giddily.

“That’s not what I mean,” Martha said more heatedly, her face turning to the reds of a startled ember. “You insult a man on the day we remember his death, Mr. Larson? You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“Tell me, Miss…?” Mr. Jenkins paused and raised an eyebrow.

“Miss Little, Martha Little,” said Martha. “Of Yorkshire.”

“Right. Okay. Tell me, Ms. Martha Little, did you know the late George Gibson?” Mr. Jenkins asked.

“Not well. I’m only acquainted with his son, Lincoln. But even so, I don’t see how that affects your dishonorable—“

“If you knew anything about the dead Mr. Gibson,” Mr. Jenkins continued, bringing with his words a darker mood around the table, “then you’d know that the living Mr. Gibson has been left with the mess of a lustful, profit-hungry man that lost his dignity and his life to both. And the living Mr. Gibson, that is Lincoln Gibson, will have to step in, using his own affairs, to clean up his father’s house—like a nanny to a child just reformed from tantrum. Tell me, Martha, what of that did you know already?”

“Adam,” Alice murmured, lowering her teacup without having taken her intended drink from it. “Adam Jenkins, the American with a mouth as loose as you wish your taxes were.” Mr. Jenkins smiled then and winked at Alice, but Martha sat aghast, silent and watchful. “Do tell him your feelings Martha,” Alice added. “He can take it.”

“Indeed I can, Miss Little!” Mr. Jenkins said excitedly. “When a man lives to speak of the military, he lives to see differently, drink more, and take more criticism than one might ever imagine.”

“Absolutely not,” Martha said bashfully. “It’s not right.”

“It’s a world on the move, Miss Little. Just look at how Queen Victoria is changing the nation,” Maribell said juvially. “Sooner or later, we’ll need to tell these men what we think of them.” Maribell chuckled and touched Mr. Larson’s shoulder with the gentleness of a butterfly.

“It would be the thing that kills me, I swear it,” Martha said hastily.

“On the move, indeed,” Mr. Larson agreed with Maribell. “Mr. Jenkins, of all men, knows this, given his uncanny skill of riling both man and woman into a complete haze of fury and forcing them to loose their tongue upon him like fire and brimstone.”

“You speak of such otherworldly things, Mr. Larson,” Martha said.

“We speak of the future, Ms. Martha Little,” Mr. Jenkins said wryly. “But I suppose, to your kind, that is otherworldly.”

Martha set her cup down gently, swallowed, and straightened her dress. “I beg your many pardons, Mr. Jenkins,” Martha began, “but you are what my father would refer to as an everyday, obnoxious, unruly, sad little American who deserves death at the hand of Queen and Country!” The words spilled from Martha’s mouth like boiling water from an overturned kettle, and as soon as the words had left her mouth, she slapped her petite hand, gloved in black, against her lips and stood from the table. “You’ll excuse me,” she said shakily. Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Larson stood for her departure, and lowered back to their chairs quickly after, Mr. Jenkins smiling and Mr. Larson subtly shaking his head.

“She speaks of death at a funeral,” Maribell said hushedly. “Wretched bad luck, I dare say.”

“Luck has nothing to do with it, Maribell,” Alice responded in kind. “I suppose we provoked her. And now, I must apologize for my part. You’ll excuse me, as well.” The gentlemen stood for Alice’s departure.

Yorkshire, 1851. April, 2nd.

Martha Little’s death came soon after her father, Mr. James Little, passed away. They were both diagnosed with leukemia, only months apart, and spent the last of their days at home in Yorkshire. Following Martha’s death, her affairs were left to the estate at which she served, the Gibson Estate, and Mr. Lincoln Gibson was put to the task of her funeral. Two days past the service only a few guests remained in Yorkshire, where it had been held. Among these guests were Alice Kingsford, who had grown quite close to Martha over the year that preceded her unfortunate death.
Alice, dressed all in black as she was the day she met Miss Martha Little over a year earlier, was sat on a bench that overlooked the Littles’ meager garden, populated by the most beautiful flowers that the common folk could afford, when she saw Lincoln Gibson for the first time in nearly three years. He walked over the hill on the garden’s far side, blocking the sun with his body, and its rays spilled out around him in a golden shine that beckoned the eyes to look closer at his lean form.

“Well,” Alice called out to him, “if it isn’t Mr. Gibson himself!” Lincoln paused for a moment to see who it was that called to him, and upon seeing Alice sitting alone, he smiled and moved carefully through the garden towards her.

“Miss Kingsford, is that you?” Lincoln asked, his voice sullen yet proud. “It is still Miss Kingsford, yes?”

“Miss Kingsford, yes, until someone decides to make a change to it,” Alice answered. “How do you fare, Mr. Gibson?”

“Oh, I suppose I’m well enough… May I sit?” Lincoln smiled kindly at Alice, momentarily observing her soft, milky skin and chocolate eyes. She nodded, and he sat beside her before continuing on with his thought. “It is a strange feeling, though, to bury someone like Martha Little. I barely knew her in life, despite her years of good and faithful work at the Gibson Estate, and yet when she dies, I mourn as if I’ve lost a dear friend. And in the same year, on the same day that we lay her to rest, I am told by my friend who works in the government that the people of Ireland have lost nearly seven billion people to their famine in the last ten years.”

“Death is, unfortunately, part of life,” Alice observed, now as sullen as her companion. “The thought often makes me yearn for someone to walk through the mess with, to withstand the war between the Earth and the light beyond.”

“There’s a thought,” Lincoln agreed, and for a moment his young face appeared aged beyond his years. His eyes, Alice noted, were deep, beautiful windows into a life weighted with stress. “I’m nigh on thirty, now. My father always did say that I’d grow into a lonely old man if I didn’t find a friend to travel into the future with.”

“Tell me, Lincoln, how have you been since your father’s passing — if you don’t terribly mind my inquiring?”

“It’s not been easy, I’ll say that.” Lincoln leaned back, fully embracing his place beside Alice Kingsford. “I’d never betray my father’s honor. You know that, don’t you, Alice?”

“I suppose I do,” Alice said, a graceful smile on her lips. “However, I never did see you at his funeral last year. If you would have clarified your feelings on the matter to me then, then you missed your chance to do so.”

“Ah, yes,” Lincoln smiled, too. “I chose not to attend the extravagant event. It was very much like my father, but not very much like me, I’m afraid. But, let us make up for lost time: My father was not the most reputable in the Gibson line. I do know that many people hold negative opinions of him, given his lifestyle, and usually ask me in search of words to spread in the classic way of English gossip. We are a society, after all, built on privacy and honor and things left unsaid, but instead of unsaid, things most often go whispered into eager ears. Despite my revealing such things to you, Alice, whom I trust, I sway to the side of weariness when discussing my father, and have therefore not been able to talk much of him at all.”

“Oh, Lincoln,” Alice said, placing her hand on Lincoln’s. “Well, I’m here to listen if ever you need a safe place to speak of Mr. Gibson. My lips are sealed outside our bubble, I swear it.”

“Not even your friend Miss Jones will hear of it?” Lincoln asked, turning his hand over to hold Alice’s properly.

“No, no,” she laughed. “Not at all. Maribell is a friend for parties and events, but Martha was the one with whom I shared everything, if only for the last year or so.”

“It’s settled then, Miss Kingsford. Will you be my confidante unto the farthest horizons?” Lincoln held his hand out exaggeratedly towards the setting sun.

“I’d do nothing less, dear Lincoln. Nothing less!”

New York City, 1854. February, 28th.

Adam Jenkins was thirty-nine years old when Lucas Larson, his dearest friend, found him wearing only a towel, dead on the kitchen floor of his lavish apartment. A bottle of whiskey, dry to the touch, was in Mr. Jenkins’ cold hand. It was Christmas Day. 

Nearly two months later, in February of 1854, Mr. Gibson, cousin to Mr. Larson, and his new wife, Alice Gibson, arrived in New York City in search of Mr. Larson, who had disappeared after Mr. Jenkins’ funeral. In company with the Gibsons was Miss Maribell Jones and Mrs. Gravy, who came at Mrs. Jones’ eager request that her daughter be escorted safely to America and back again. Mrs. Jones had recently fallen ill with the common cold, but the doctor told Maribell, who was waiting to know before she agreed to the America trip, that her mother would recover finely before long.

It was late morning on the 28th of February that Mr. and Mrs. Gibson and Maribell left Mrs. Gravy at a hotel, with room service of course, and they themselves set out into the city in search of Mr. Larson. The sky was dark before they gained any knowledge of Lucas Larson’s whereabouts, and when they did it was from a man at a private gentlemen’s club who informed Lincoln that Mr. Larson had been seen around the area and at a small pub a half block from the club. Near morning, they finally spotted Mr. Larson sitting outside the pub that they were told about. There, stooped on a bench with a small flask in his fist, Lucas Larson wept, letting his tears fall solemnly onto the dirt. The faintly lit gas light above Lucas cast his shadow long across the road outside the pub, so that every person and carriage that passed by had to pass through the dark shape.

“My dear cousin,” Lincoln said gently, quietly, as he knelt down in front of Lucas. Alice stood just behind her husband, clenching a tear back from her eyes, and Maribell just behind her with a face longer and greyer than it had ever been before. “My dear cousin,” Lincoln repeated. Lucas looked up then, his hands shaking and his face red with drunkeness, and he collapsed into Lincoln’s arms and cried out into the night.

“Poor Mr. Larson,” Maribell whispered into Alice’s ear. “He’s a man defeated by loss.”

“He’s man unafraid to feel,” Alice responded, equally as quiet.

“Come, Lucas,” Lincoln said, patting his cousin’s back. “Come back home with us.”

“What’s left for me there?” Lucas murmured.

“So much,” Maribell interjected, kneeling beside Lincoln where Lucas’s head was on his cousin’s shoulder, so that Lucas’ face and Maribell’s face were only inches apart. “There’s still so much for you, Mr. Larson.” Lucas’ face quivered in pain, but he stared into Maribell’s eyes, silently telling her to convince him. Maribell, now choking back her own tears, removed her glove and placed her bare hand on Lucas’ furry face, and forcing a smile onto her red lips, she said, “Mr. Larson, don’t you know that the women of England simply smell sweeter?”

It was at the hand of Maribell Jones that Mr. Lucas Larson rose from the bench that cold winter night and returned with them to the hotel, where Mrs. Gravy gave them a much belated speech on the merits of English life as opposed to American life, and how she simply could never understand the men who spend their days on dirt streets with a cup of coffee instead of in a warm house with a bit a tea. At first, Maribell protested Mrs. Gravy’s impertinence, but Mr. Larson, eyes still red but clear of tears now, only agreed with Mrs. Gravy and said, “We should return across the Atlantic as quickly as possible, I’m afraid. There are whisperings of war here, because as it turns out not all the US states are in support of slavery any longer.”

“They’d go to war for those…those slaves?” Mrs. Gravy scoffed.

“I think you’d find, Mrs. Gravy, that if you were to stay much longer around these human beings put to work as slaves, then you’d too lift up your weapons in their defense,” Lincoln said, his voice as flat as he could manage it.

“And die for a lesser cause than tea tax?” Mrs. Gravy laughed. “I think not, Mr. Gibson. I’d let those people, as you say, die before I’d lie my old self down for them.”

“And in letting them die, you’d make their weakest stronger and their strongest unstoppable, Mrs. Gravy, because with every death, those men, women, and children become less afraid by the injustices leveled against them and more so of what will happen should they remain as captives.” Lincoln continued, “and even on this night, I’ve found that death — death, Mrs. Gravy — brings us together, makes us stronger, and gives us both grace and courage as vast as the Atlantic itself.”

Mrs. Gravy was quiet then, and only turned to see Mr. Larson, who looked out the window at the streets below, and Maribell, who stood beside Mr. Larson, looking out with him. And Mrs. Gravy looked back at Lincoln and Alice Gibson, who sat beside each other on a small sofa, and held one another in a way that on her own shores would almost be scandalous. It was that night, maybe for the first time in her whole life, that Mrs. Gravy remained silent.

Birmingham, 1865. May, 23rd.

Approx. 4:00 AM

“Life finds a way to balance all things, doesn’t it?” Alice asked, her voice weak. A small lantern illuminated just half of her face, and half of Lincoln’s face across from her. The sky was a deep black outside the window of the Kingsford House dining room. “America’s Civil War ends, slaves are freed, and in the very same month we find ourselves here.”

“Life is a balance, indeed, my dear,” Lincoln answered as best he could, but said no more, for he knew not what to say. Instead, he stood and rounded the table, and he took Alice in his arms. She cried then, and leaned into him, and he kissed her forehead with all the gentleness of an angel.

On the floor above the Gibsons, Mr. Kingsford, Alice’s father, lay old and sick in his bed. The doctor was beside him, only watching, because Mr. Kingsford was already halfway into God’s arms — if indeed God was taking him and not the devil below. The candle burning on his nightstand wavered in an unbidden breeze.

Alice looked up at the ceiling, sensing the hopelessness her father felt. “I wish I’d reached out,” she wept. “I wish I’d tried harder.”

“Hush now, Alice. There’s no need for regret: If you wish to say something to him, then go now, my dear. If he does die tonight, let the last words he hears be the words of his own daughter, returning to him after all these years.”

Heeding Lincoln’s words, Alice ascended the stairs she once knew well and ventured down the hall where she played as a child, and then the door to her father’s room was before her. She knocked, and the doctor invited her in. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Gibson,” he said hushedly. “There’s nothing more I can do.”

“I know,” Alice answered. “It’s okay. May I speak to him?”

“Of course,” the doctor agreed, standing and leaving Alice and Mr. Kingsford with some privacy.

Alice sat in the chair where the doctor had been, but her father didn’t move. He didn’t notice her arrival at all. “Father, can you hear me?” Alice asked gently.

“Alice?” Mr. Kingsford said in a voice rough and burdened. “Alice, dear, is that you?”

“It is, Father.”

“I love you, Alice,” Mr. Kingsford said in a hurry, as much of a hurry as he could. “I’m sorry, darling; I’m sorry I didn’t say it earlier, or more, or—”

“Oh, my father, my dear father,” Alice said, lying her head on his chest and wrapping her arms around him.

Mr. Kingsford began to cry, which he hadn’t done since he was a young boy, and his wrinkles grew ever deeper. “When your mother left us, Alice, when the great beyond came for her at last, I didn’t know what to do. My whole world changed; it all fell through my fingers, and you with it my child. I wasn’t strong enough, Alice. I missed you growing, and now you’re a woman, with a husband and a life full of love ahead of you.”

“Father,” Alice breathed, her tears soaking into Mr. Kingsford’s shirt. “I should have reached out, too. But, that doesn’t matter now, Father. It doesn’t. I love you, do you hear me? And I forgive you, but only if you forgive me.”

“There’s nothing for me to forgive, my darling. There’s nothing to forgive,” Mr. Kingsford answered, and the breath that carried his words swept over to the nightstand, turning the candle’s flame to a stream of smoke. In Birmingham, on May 23rd, 1865, Mr. Kingsford died in his daughter’s arms.

1878.

Maribell Jones had become Maribell Larson, taking Lucas Larson as her husband in the summer of 1855. Together they lived as a picture of happiness. It was, as described by Lincoln Gibson’s skilled language, “A marriage worth capturing in a jar, only to be opened when one was in dire need of fresh air.”

Mr. Larson, who was a Navy officer, was recruited after twelve years of near perfect marriage, onto the British Navy ship, the HMS Eurydice. On November 13th, 1877, Mrs. Larson blew him a kiss and waved him off. The voyage was swift, and when the ship was on its return from Bermuda, it met a snowstorm like the ice of a frozen Hell, and on March 24th, 1878, the HMS Eurydice sank, taking Lucas Larson and a host of more than three-hundred Navy men down with it. Lucas Larson’s body was never found.

After that, Maribell Larson was unable to hold onto the Larson Estate, as the couple had not yet conceived a child, as Mr. and Mrs. Gibson would very soon. Mrs. Alice Gibson would, however, under no circumstances allow her lifelong and dearest friend be harmed in anyway. So it was that in April of 1878, Mrs. Larson became a resident of the Gibson Estate, and was there with the Gibsons as the three of them grew old together.

Gibson Estate, 1899. October 17th.

The casket which held Mr. Lincoln Gibson was lowered steadily into the ground, and his wife, Alice, and good friend, Maribell Larson, stood back from the hole in the ground, both of the ladies swathed in heavy coats. And there, under a sky that simultaneously shined sun and rained rain, they cried, for the world had lost a wonderful man. Lincoln Gibson was buried beside his father.

In the very same graveyard, which was maintained by the Gibson Estate, Mrs. Jones, Maribell’s mother, was also buried, having lost her battle to a flu which followed her cold symptoms in 1854. Mrs. Gravy, who was Mrs. Jones dearest confidante, was also buried in the same place, beside Mrs. Jones in the Gibson Estate graveyard. Mr. Kingsford, by his last will and testament, was buried next to Mrs. Kingsford, Alice’s mother, in Birmingham.

“What a sad place this is,” Maribell said weepily, holding a handkerchief against her cheek.

“I don’t know that it’s sad, Maribell…” Alice answered. “Look at us, two old ladies who’ve watched the world turn. We stand on the brink of a new century together, you and I. Who thought that — all these years gone by, all these lives lost — who thought that you and I would still be the closest of friends?”

“I suppose I always knew, Alice.” The two widows leaned on each other, resting their heads together. “Oh, Alice, you should have gotten the pictures taken. I would have if I’d had the chance with Lucas.”

“He didn’t want it done, Maribell. Lincoln was never one for vanity, for image. He cared for words, for things said and unsaid, for the flowers of the field and the sun when it shined just so. He cared about people, Maribell.” Alice breathed deeply, her breath making a cloud in the frigid air.

“Death rips us all apart, eventually,” Maribell murmured, wiping more tears from her face.

“No,” Alice answered contrary to her friend once more. “Death brings us together and gives us both grace and courage enough to manage the storm, enough to stand in wait as the world turns below our feet, as it changes at every moment into something new.”

Together, Alice and Maribell returned to the large house set on the Gibson Estate. Charles Gibson, now sixteen years old, came to his mother upon her return and hugged her tightly. “I wasn’t sure you’d return, Mother,” Charles said. “You’ve been out there for nearly an hour.”

“An hour is only a fragment of time, my child,” Alice said, smiling with tears still in her eyes. “Now, go fetch your violin. You must practice, even today — especially today.”

“But, Mother,” Charles said quietly, hanging his head. “He was only just laid to rest today.”

“And he would have his absence inspire you, now, Charles, instead of inhibit you.”

Charles left to get his violin as his mother had asked, and Alice and Maribell moved into the living room, still in their dark black dresses, and sat on the couch there. Beside the couch was a fireplace, burning low. And upon the mantle above it was the last picture of Mr. Gibson, Lincoln Gibson’s father, that was ever taken, with his cheeks too pink and his hands clenching his violin.

The End

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