Sat, May 19 2012
As Fogg was considering if he had attended the community gathering long enough to make his departure, he caught the sight of a young girl accepting an Easter egg from a young boy of about fourteen. They were at the oak tree to the south of the church, a traditional meeting place for sweethearts for several hundred years. It was an innocent tradition that had been done on Easter mornings for who knew how long. The sight of the two reminded him of a younger Phileas Fogg doing the same thing.
In a smallish isolated village such as Shillingworth, pairing had always been done fairly early. The pairs might be reshuffled a bit between twelve and eighteen, but by the time the girls had been ready to be presented, the front-runners for their hearts had been a known quantity. None of the ardent suitors ever had any idea that the girls they had been dreaming on would more likely go to older more established men one day. Phileas had been innocent of that fact when he had given Elizabeth an egg when they had been fourteen.
She had still worn ribbons and lace and glossy brown curls at fourteen, but Bessy had been on the verge of becoming a young lady by then. And she didn’t go by Bessy anymore, but Elizabeth. Phileas had also grown up over the last nine years since he had first set eyes on her. He had become a tall rail thin young gentleman who had gone on to his studies at Eton.
For several months he and his friends had talked of whom they were going to give an egg to on Easter when they went home for the weekend. Phileas had pretended disinterest in the notion; but inside, he had been excitedly looking forward to seeing Elizabeth again.
The moment finally came. Phileas had asked Elizabeth to meet him by the old oak after services. When she came, he had told her to close her eyes and hold out her hands. In them he had laid the choice one, the best most prettily decorated egg he had found in the hunt that morning. His mother, Phileas knew, always hid eggs around his and Erasmus’ rooms to find on Easter morning. Even though one might think a boy his age too old for such things, Phileas had found six eggs around his room in shoes, under the bed skirt and sitting in corners.
Elizabeth had opened her eyes and looked down at her egg in excitement. Then she had smiled up at him bright as the Easter rising sun. Phileas had looked around to make sure no one had been watching, and then had landed a fast kiss on her cheek.
Elizabeth had lost her smile for a moment looking too surprised by his bold ways to speak. Then she too had looked around blushing to see if anyone had seen before pulling herself up on her tiptoes to hurriedly kiss him back. Elizabeth had run off the second she had been done, but she had done it. She had kissed him back. Phileas had spent the rest of the day walking in the clouds.
‘Lord, was I ever really that innocent?’ Phileas thought as the memory receded. So many years had come and gone since then.
In the years that had followed that memorable event, there had been tears and changes for both young people. Elizabeth had lost her mother to a fever and Phileas had lost his to childbirth. Phileas had later gained a little cousin for a sister and Elizabeth had been sent away to a finishing school near London. The two had exchanged letters though Elizabeth’s brother during Phileas’ first year at university, but their secret correspondence hadn’t lasted long. Elizabeth wrote him before the Easter he turned nineteen with the news that her father had chosen a husband for her.
Young Phileas had been devastated, but there had been nothing he could have done about it. He had learned enough about the ways of the world by then to know he had been in no position yet to ask for her hand. What really hurt had been the fact that he had lost her to a stranger. Some doctor’s son, so she wrote, who was presently studying medicine in Scotland. She would be moving away and he would never see her again.
With no other recourse, Phileas had kept his silence. When his father had received an invitation for the family to attend the wedding, Phileas had been made to go. He danced with the radiant bride once. There had been what ifs in both their hearts during that dance, but they had voiced nothing. At the end, Phileas had led Elizabeth back to her husband and had stayed away from her for the rest of the reception.
‘So ended my first love,’ Phileas thought, wondering why he had turned so melancholy this morning. Phileas had not thought of Elizabeth in years. Why now?
These bittersweet recollections were beginning to make Phileas uncomfortable. Any more of it and he would not be fit company for anyone. Fogg decided to head home while he could still make a pleasant good-bye. After final words offered to Bodkins and a few of the elders, Fogg began his stroll back to the house. But before he could leave the churchyard, Fogg caught a bit of conversation among several women that caused him to hesitate.
“She looks well,” a woman to his right said. “And her sons are such handsome lads. I would have never recognized her, but her eldest son looks so much like Tom, its truly uncanny.”
“True, she does look quite different,” another woman agreed. “All that travel and living in such primitive places... It must have been a very hard life.”
“It was just a scandal the way Tom decided to become a missionary instead of taking on his father’s practice the way he should have,” the first woman added. “Dear Elizabeth should have lived a gentle life in a nice home in Sheffield. But no…”
“Now Doris,” a third woman admonished, “I admit it had been a surprise, but really, Tom had always been an adventurous young man. Becoming a missionary doctor had been as true to form for him as becoming a sedate city doctor would not have been. Tom would have never done well at that and Elizabeth knew it. That’s why she supported him.”
The three gossips had at that point been separated by their respective husband’s leaving Phileas to wonder who they had been talking about. He didn’t recall any Toms from the valley becoming a doctor. And Elizabeth was as common a name as Mary.
He set himself to leave again only to have the little brown-haired girl appear running around a corner with an egg basket in her hand. She bounded through a crowd of adults coming straight for him.
“Mr. Fogg, Mr. Fogg!” she cried out to him. “Are you going home now?”
Phileas looked down at the child thinking that she looked like sunshine incarnate in a pale yellow dress with baby blue ribbon trimming. She looked to be no older than six or seven. Her curly pigtails dressed in matching blue bows bobbed up and down as she came skipping to a halt in front of him.
“I ‘was’ heading home,” he admitted. “Did someone send you to find me?”
“No sir,” the child said. “I am on my way home too. I was told to give this to you before you left.” The child then took an egg out of her basket and handed it too him. “Happy Easter sir!”
The little girl then ran down the drive to a waiting open carriage. She was scooped up into the arms of a young man, who was perhaps nineteen years old, and deposited beside a woman Phileas assumed to be her and the young man’s mother. A second boy, about sixteen years old, climbed up and took the reins at the drivers seat. Then the older boy climbed up beside him and the family drove away.
Phileas tipped his hat to the lady in the open carriage. She nodded her head smiling to him in response. She had silver hair and large stunningly brilliant blue eyes. She was perhaps Phileas’ age or older. ‘A fine looking family,’ he thought as they passed by him. ‘But no husband in attendance… A widow perhaps?’ Fogg speculated.
Then the little girl turned in the carriage and waved to him. Over thirty years disappeared as Phileas was tossed back in time to the memory of another little girl waving good-bye to him.
And then it hit him. That had been Elizabeth… the same Elizabeth that he had innocently loved so many years ago. And the little girl had been her daughter. Phileas looked down at the brightly colored egg in his hand as surprise and bittersweet joy washed over him. On it had been penned:
To Phileas Happy Easter
Rebecca walked up to him a moment later.
“Were you waiting for me?” Rebecca asked. “You’ve been standing here for some time. I just made my good-byes to Bodkins. It was a wonderful morning, don’t you agree?”
Phileas pulled himself back together and managed to make a clear reply. “Yes, everything went very well.”
“I see you were given an egg,” Rebecca observed smiling down at his hand clutched around his prettily colored present. “That came from Mrs. Smythe’s daughter. I saw her hand it to you just before her family left. Mrs. Brinkley told me that she has been visiting her brother. Her husband is a missionary doctor. Mr. Smythe is in London at present making arrangements for his next missionary trip to India. They have been settling their sons into boarding schools under her brother’s guardianship before leaving.”
Rebecca stopped her chatting, taking note of Phileas’ odd expression. Only someone close to him would have noticed it. “Did you know Mrs. Smythe?” Rebecca asked. “I understand she grew up here, but I don’t remember ever meeting her. Granted, she is several years older than me. She may have married and moved away before I might have noticed her.”
“Yes, you ‘were’ still in pigtails when she married,” Phileas confirmed. “It was a long time ago,” Phileas admitted thinking back.
By the lines on Elizabeth’s face and the silver of her hair, one could see that life had been difficult as a missionary’s wife. But Elizabeth had been smiling in the carriage as she had rode away with her two sons and daughter. She was happy and had gained a handsome family to show for those years.
Fogg then looked to Rebecca, the only close family he had left. Life had been hard on him too. Phileas had much to mourn over and regret, but he also supposed that he had things to be thankful for too.
No, he didn't suppose, Phileas knew. Phileas looked around the churchyard then with a new attitude, and everywhere, he made eye contact with someone who smiled and gave him greeting. These people knew him by name and considered him one of their own. He was part of a greater family than the Foggs. Even now, when he visited here so rarely, he could still find a friendly homecoming. Had half a dozen people not visited him just in the two days since his arrival? Fogg knew he was not so exalted that they did so out of duty. They came because they genuinely wanted to and cared about him.
As Phileas stood by Rebecca considering the blessings he had thus far overlooked, Jules joined them on the lawn of the churchyard followed by Passepartout. “We saw you two standing here,” Jules commented as they reached the cousins. “Are you heading home now?”
“Yes,” Phileas said smiling. “Let’s go home.”
Fogg then took Rebecca’s arm and headed back to Shillingworth Magna with a lighter spirit than the one he had left it with. As they walked, the sun streamed down on them through fluffy cotton clouds, promising a beautiful warm day.
End of Chapter Three
Chapter 2 | Chapter 3