Comfort was asleep in her cradle. For once Honor wished her daughter were awake so that she could hold her. Instead she sat down on one of the straight chairs in the middle of the quiet kitchen and closed her eyes. Since staying with Belle she had not often had the opportunity to sit in silence. It was always harder to do so without the strength and focus of a community. Collective silence contained a purposeful anticipation. Now, alone, her silence felt empty, as if she were not searching hard enough or in the right place.
She sat for a long time, taken out of the sinking feeling she sought by the interruption of sounds she would not normally notice: the crumbling of embers in the stove; the tapping of wood drying somewhere in the house; the clopping of a horse and turning of wagon wheels in the street in front of the shop. Honor found herself thinking about the cot quilt she was going to start and whether the rosettes she had made all summer would really suit Comfort. They seemed very English, and Comfort was not.
Then she heard scratching at the back door and opened her eyes. Through the small window in the upper half of the door she could see the crown of a brown felt hat trimmed with red and orange maple leaves.
Honor hurried to open the door. “Quick, now, let me in,” Mrs. Reed said. “Don’t want people to see.” She stepped past Honor into the kitchen. “Shut the door,” she instructed, for Honor was so surprised she was standing still with her hand on the latch.
Mrs. Reed was wearing a man’s coat with a brown shawl over it. Her mouth was set in its habitual downturn, her lower lip protruding. She wiped her glasses with the end of her shawl, then looked around the kitchen. Spotting the cradle, she brightened, as she had with her own granddaughter when Honor had visited her. This was a woman who liked babies. She might be grim and suspicious with others, but babies got her unconditional smile. She leaned over and put her face right in Comfort’s. “Hello, baby girl, sleepin’ like a li’l angel. Bet you don’t always. I done heard ’bout you. Expect I’ll hear those lungs soon. Comfort to your mama, that’s what you are.”
“Will thee sit?” Honor offered the rocking chair, hoping Mrs. Reed would not wake her daughter. It was always harder to talk when Comfort was awake.
Mrs. Reed sat in one of the straight-backed chairs rather than the rocker. Clearly she was here on business instead of a leisurely visit; a rocking chair would muddle the two. However, she did accept a cup of coffee, sweetened with brown sugar.
“What in the name of our good Lord are you doin’ here, Honor Bright?” Mrs. Reed demanded after she’d tasted the coffee, grimaced, and reached for more sugar. “Apart from burning the coffee, that is. I didn’t even know you was here till Virginie told me. I asked Adam Cox ’bout the baby and he told me you’d had it, but didn’t say nothin’ ’bout you bein’ in Wellington.”
“How is Virginie’s little girl?” Honor deflected the subject from herself.
“The one who was ill? She fine now. A little chili pepper chased away that cold. They stayed with me a few days, then was off to Sandusky. Should be there by now, waitin’ for a boat, with any luck. But don’t change the subject. This visit ain’t about them, it about you. Why are you here and not with your husband?” Mrs. Reed watched Honor steadily, her eyes now clear through the glasses. It was a straight look: not angry, or sad, or frustrated, or any of the other things Honor had seen in others’ eyes while she had been at Belle’s. That straightforwardness made her feel she too should be direct.
“I don’t agree with the Haymakers about not helping runaways,” she said. “That makes me feel I am not a part of the family and never will be.”
Mrs. Reed nodded. “Virginie done told me that part. That the only reason? ’Cause if it is, it ain’t enough.”
Honor stared at her visitor.
“Honor, you think you singlehandedly savin’ all the runaways? You think that one meal you give ’em or the sleep they get in your barn is goin’ to make all the difference? They already come hundreds o’ miles by the time they get to you. They been through some terrible times. You jes’ one small link in a big chain. Sure, we grateful for what you done, but we managed before you come along last year, and we’ll manage without you. Someone will step into the gap, or the Railroad will shift, is all. We been doin’ this a long time, and will be a long time more. You know how many slaves there are in the South?”
Honor shook her head, lowering her eyes to her hands in her lap so that Mrs. Reed would not see the tears welling.
“Millions! Millions. And how many you helped in the last year-maybe twenty? We got us a long way to go. It surely ain’t somethin’ you need to break your marriage over. That’s jes’ foolishness. Any runaway would tell you that. All they want is the freedom to make the kind of life you got. You go and throw that away for their sake, you jes’ mockin’ they own dreams.”
Honor gave up trying to hide her tears and let them roll freely down her face.
“I don’t know what Belle here been sayin’ to you, but someone got to say somethin’, ’cause you ain’t thinkin’ straight.”
“It ain’t so easy sayin’ those things to ’em when they’re livin’ with you, ’cause you got to go on livin’ with ’em.” Belle was leaning in the doorway, startling the women. Now that she was up, her face had regained some of its color, though the gray had not entirely disappeared. “Glad to hear you talkin’ some sense to her.” She gazed at Mrs. Reed, who stared back. The women nodded simultaneously. Their interest in each other gave Honor the chance to wipe her eyes and take a shaky breath.
“Good to meet you at last, Belle,” Mrs. Reed said.
“And you, Elsie.”
“You have never met?” Honor was astonished.
“Better not to-don’t want to draw attention,” Belle replied. “But we know ’bout each other.” She turned back to Mrs. Reed. “Anybody see you come in?”
“Not that I saw. I got a man waitin’ with a horse in the woods out o’ town, took me that far. Then I walked in. Really I shouldn’t be down here-ain’t safe for me these days. I’ve stayed closer to home ever since the new law come in last year. But I made an exception for this one.” Mrs. Reed nodded at Honor. “Ask myself why, though.”
Belle chuckled. “She sure has that effect on people, don’t she?”
Honor looked from one woman to the other, her eyes wide.
“Guess I got to help a runaway when I see one, whatever they color. It’s in my nature.” Mrs. Reed shifted her gaze onto Honor. “Now, I don’t want you usin’ the runaways as the excuse for you to run away. You got a problem with your husband’s family, you stay and sort it out. Or do you have a problem with him?”
Honor considered the question.
Belle joined in. “Does he provide for you? Does he hit you? Is he gentle in bed?”
Honor nodded or shook her head with answers the women already knew.
“Course he’s a Quaker, so he don’t smoke or drink or spit,” Belle continued. “That’s something. What in hell’s name is the matter with him, then? Apart from his mother.” She and Mrs. Reed waited for an answer.
For once Honor wished Comfort would wake to distract them. “There is nothing wrong with Jack,” she said at last. “It is with me. I don’t belong in this country.”
As Belle and Mrs. Reed smiled the same skeptical smile, Honor knew she sounded ridiculous to a woman facing death and a woman whose freedom was precarious. “I am of course grateful to have been taken in by the Haymakers,” she continued, “but I do not feel settled. It is as if-as if I am floating just above the ground, with my feet not touching. Back in England I knew where I was, and felt tied to my place.”