"I'm beginning to think I may need a book of advice on this," Charlie said. They were still laughing from before, and laughed again at this.
"I don't know of one," Sally said.
"Perhaps something translated from the Arabic," Harriette suggested. And this time when they broke up laughing, Charlie could not help but join them. They laughed and laughed together until the tears streamed down their cheeks. Then Charlie went and found Heber Kimball, who came to Charlie's house at four o'clock in the afternoon and performed the marriage in the bedroom, so that no chance visitor would catch them in the ceremony.
Before administering the oaths, Heber made a little speech. "This is a hell of a place for a wedding," he said. "Last time you got married, Charlie, the whole city came, I hear. But let me tell you -- all the guests, all the drinking and dancing and singing, all the friends congratulating you -- that's what the world does to make up for the fact that those public weddings are till death do them part. It's a marriage as the world knows how, and no better. When I seal you together, Charlie and Harriette, it's not a marriage that ends with death. Do you hear me? Celestial marriage is just that -- for this life and the next life. When you take these oaths, you're sealing yourselves up for eternity." Then he had them hold hands, and he said the oaths, and each of them said yes at the right time, and it was done.
But it was not over. Sally caught Heber by the arm the moment he let go of Harriette. "Why should they be married for eternity, when Charlie and I are only married till death!"
Heber was flustered. "Joseph isn't sealing first wives yet -- he wants us to wait until the Temple's built."
"That'll be years," Sally said. "Why should I wait? What if I die in childbirth before the Temple's finished?"
"Well, I'm sealed to Vilate, aren't I? And the Prophet did it himself, so it must be all right. I suppose you want me to do it now?"
"Yes," Sally said.
"Women are like that, Charlie. You haven't been at this marrying business as long as I have, but they keep on telling you what to do as if they thought they had a right to an opinion. Get what they want, too, mostly."
So Charlie took wedding vows for the third time in his life. He wondered fleetingly how many more times he'd take such vows before he was through. I wonder how I'm going to live through the next few years. Truth is, I only have to worry about a few months -- by then if I'm not dead I'll probably be used to it.
There was no lingering after the wedding. Charlie was still keeping the Word of Wisdom, so there were no toasts. Heber just made small talk with them for a few minutes, then took Harriette by the arm. "I hope you'll allow me to take you to your new house in my carriage," he said. "Actually, it isn't my carriage. But then, it isn't your house."
Harriette smiled at him. To Charlie's surprise, her smile was merry, her eyes full of mirth. Here Charlie was feeling nervous as a goose on Christmas Eve, and Harriette was having the time of her life. It didn't seem fair, somehow. Why should she be so glad to marry a man who isn't glad to marry her? Heber reached back and closed the door behind them, and in a few moments the carriage drove off.
"Well," Sally said at last.
"Yes," Charlie answered.
"You didn't even kiss her, Charlie," Sally said.
Charlie wasn't sure if she was reproaching him or being grateful. Didn't matter. Sally would be spending tonight alone, and so he took her in his arms and held her a long, long time, until she stopped crying. Then she made Charlie offer a prayer for the three of them. He didn't know what to say. "This wasn't our idea, Father, it was yours," he said. "We aren't asking you to make it pleasant. We're just asking you to give us the strength to bear the burden. And if you can find a way to make us happy, too, we wouldn't mind." Then he felt inspired to give Sally a blessing, putting his hands on her head and saying some unplanned words that surely came from the Spirit. It wasn't prophecy or a miracle or anything like that, but it was a sign that the Lord approved of what they were doing. Charlie was in sore need of such a sign, and took it gratefully. Then he, too, left the house, to begin a roundabout journey that would get him to Harriette after dark.
"Be careful, Charlie," Sally told him at the door. "You might lose your way in the dark."
"No chance of that," Charlie said. "My luck's been running the other way lately." He kissed her again and left.
It was night, and he stood at the door of Dinah's house. Brother Joseph has stood here before, he realized as he studied the grain of the wood on the door in the moonlight, the Prophet has been here before me, and on the same errand. The difference is that God has spoken to the Prophet face to face, and I got this commandment second hand. He did not let himself think of the fact that Brother Joseph also had Dinah waiting on the other side of the door. She was Charlie's sister, but that didn't keep him from knowing she was one of the most beautiful women in Nauvoo. Not even his utmost charity could convince him that Harriette was in that group.
He knocked, and almost at once heard the scuff of slippers on the rag rug floor. The scuffing stopped near the door, but the latch did not rise. In the pause he remembered his own timidity on that night with Sally, when he had been so frightened he could hardly unbutton his waistcoat. And remembering that night, he also remembered the Bible that had been there on the bed, and the passage that the ribbon had marked. The Song of Solomon; Harriette's favorite passage in all of scripture; surely it was for tonight that Harriette had marked the book, though she could not have known that this night would ever come. She had marked the verses, and Charlie knew what would most gladden her to hear.
"Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled," he said through the door. "For my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night."
The latch rose, and the door opened, and Charlie came in to her. He learned that the severe dresses had concealed a supple, vulnerable body, that the sternness had been a mask for a yielding heart. In the darkness Charlie was enlightened, for he had not imagined that two women could love so differently; in Harriette's arms he was not the man that Sally had so often held. He knew within five minutes that he had never understood Harriette at all before, that she was not at all what she had always seemed; and within an hour he began to wonder if he had really known himself. For here he lay with the warmth of a woman's skin at his cheek, tired and tingling with new-finished love, and as he had in his most romantic dreams imagined, he whispered to her,
Sabrina fair, Listen where thou art sitting Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave. In twisted braids of lilies knitting The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair: Listen for dear honour's sake, Goddess of the silver lake, Listen and save.
And then, her voice not a whisper but a tone so soft that he felt it more than heard it, felt it at the thousand separate points where her body touched him,
Thus I set my printless feet O'er the cowslip's velvet head, That bends not as I tread. Gentle swain, at thy request I am here!
Then she laughed silently. He felt the movement, and asked why. "What would Milton say, that old Puritan," she answered, "if he could see the use we put his verses to!"
Charlie laughed, too, and was far happier all that night than he would ever have dared to think possible.
The addition to the house was framed and roofed, brooding over the old house, almost enclosing it.
"Looks like that big new house just had herself a little old baby," Caleb the carpenter said to Sally.
"I just wonder if anyone will be able to tell the old house is still there, once the walls are done." She had been watching him splitting clapboards, and now he stood with the heavy froe in his hands, dripping sweat like a rainstorm, panting a little. The finished clapboards had grown from a mere sheaf into a haystack in one afternoon.
"Oh, there's a lot of the old house sticking out the back, Sister Kirkham."
Sally laughed a little. "It looks silly. Like a wart."
"I heard your husband mention he planned to face the old house in new clapboard, once the a
ddition's done."
"Yes," Sally said. "You'll be working for us here for a while yet, won't you?"
"Not me," Caleb said. "I'll be dead."
"What!"
"I figure my life will probably end around six-thirty this very day. I've sweated more water this afternoon than I've drunk in my whole life. I've done more clapboards today than all the carpenters in Chicago do in a week."
"Then take a rest, Brother Caleb!"
In answer he set the froe against the end of a board and began pounding with the mallet, pushing and twisting on the handle, so that the wood shrieked and slowly, delicately split at exactly clapboard thickness. "There's sort of a law among house-builders, Sister Kirkham. Never rest while the owner's watching."
"Have I been watching long?"
"Only all day, Sister Kirkham. If you hadn't gone inside for a few minutes half an hour ago, my bladder would've bust. Begging your pardon."
"But I understand that resting is part of the job. You can rest when I'm here."
"I've been doing this for thirty years, Sister Kirkham. It'd drive me crazy to set down with the owner watching. I just can't do it."
Sally smiled and patted his sopping wet shoulder. "I'll stay away. Except for now and then."
"Oh, we don't mind you looking on now and then. After all, you can't help but be interested in how it's getting along -- "
"I'm eager, Brother Caleb. I want this house finished tomorrow."
"Well, in that case you want Brother Joseph, he's the one who does the miracles here."
Sally meant to leave immediately, as soon as Caleb finished this board. But with a cracking sound the wood took a sudden eccentric split, ruining the last two feet. Caleb started to say something, then caught himself. "Dammit, Sister Kirkham, I can't even cuss proper with you looking on!"
She went inside quickly then, closed the door behind her, and sat and looked at the table. Must get dinner ready right away. Must do a washing. We're nearly out of butter and I haven't gone to Sister Calliver's to pick up our eggs. Sally knew all the work she hadn't done, and yet all she could think of was the addition to the house. All she wanted was for it to be finished, so that Charlie would no longer have to take unnecessary selling trips just to be able to spend a night at the little cabin on Temple Hill on the way out and on the way back. So that Charlie's life would not take place where she could not be a part of it. So that she could have her sister back again. Sally sat on the chair and let herself imagine the way it would be -- Harriette there all day while Charlie worked, so that it could be the way it was before that Day, the two sisters talking always, doing everything together, having no secrets from each other.
There was a knock at the door. Sally looked at the mantle clock. She had been sitting there for half an hour. Doing nothing. What am I becoming? she asked herself as she went to the door. What kind of wife spends a whole day in which she does no work at all?
It was Harriette at the door. 'The house is so beautiful already," Harriette said. "I was at Sister Calliver's, and she said you hadn't been by yet for the eggs. Where should I put them?"
Sally blushed. "I was going to get them."
"Here?" Harriette was setting the basket on the table in the kitchen. Sally followed her in.
"Yes, of course.
"I thought you wouldn't mind if I got them for you. The building must be disrupting everything. Well, if you're fine, I'll just go see Dinah. She wanted me to come by this afternoon to talk about a -- "
"Go ahead and go, you don't have to tell me your errand, I don't care." The words surprised Sally even as she said them. But she couldn't think of anything to say in apology.
It was as if Harriette had just been waiting for Sally to say some such thing, for almost without a pause her tone changed completely. She didn't even bother to finish her sentence. "So you don't care? Well, I care. I used to think my sister and I were better friends than any other women I knew, but I was wrong, and it may not bother you, but it bothers me."
"Don't talk as if it were my fault. You're always in and out of here in such a hurry you haven't said ten words to me in a row since -- "
"Since! Yes, since ! Why do you feel like you need to punish me -- "
"Punish you ! I've been walking around like a dead woman, no one to talk to for three weeks, the poor workmen actually had to yell at me to get me inside this house, and you have an errand, you have to visit Dinah, you never even sit down here and talk to me!"
Harriette walked to a chair, sat down hard, and said, "Here I am."
"Not like that!"
Harriette turned sideways in the chair. "Now?"
And in spite of herself Sally had to laugh. "I think we're fighting."
"It makes me feel like a little girl again," said Harriette. "It's been years."
"Why don't you talk to me anymore?"
"Why haven't you even invited me to dinner?"
"You know you're always welcome."
"And how would I know that?"
"Because I'm telling you, now. Oh, Harriette, I've missed you."
Harriette seemed surprised. "Have you?"
"That's the worst thing. Dinah told me wives were supposed to become sisters -- but we've become strangers, Harriette. I was afraid of losing my husband. I never thought I'd lose you."
Harriette looked off toward the corner of the room.
"Harriette, aren't you listening to me?"
Harriette nodded. "Oh, yes. I've thought the same things myself. But I also thought -- maybe it would be better that way. Not to talk at all. Not to see each other."
"Why! It's been so lonely these last weeks!"
"When we used to talk, Sally, you spoke freely about Charlie. Can you speak as freely about your quarrels or your hopes or even your love for him when you're telling it to his wife?"
"I don't know."
"Almost everyone who's living the Principle is keeping separate houses for the wives, Sally. I'm so afraid our plan is a mistake."
"I don't know if we can talk about everything, Harriette, but surely we can talk about some things."
"I'm not talking about talking." Harriette lifted her chin in the proud way she did whenever she was feeling frightened. Almost no one but Sally knew that it was a sign of fear. "I'm talking about living here together. Taking our meals together. I don't know if I can live in the same house with you."
"Do you think I'll be so terrible?"
"You'll be an angel, that's not what worries me.
"I'm not even as jealous as I thought I'd be, Harriette. I lie awake sometimes, but not because the two of you -- just because I need him in the house with me. If I knew he was in the house, even if he were with you -- "
"Sally, I remember when we were very small. You were three and I was six. We were in the street -- Mother was taking us to market with her -- and three other women stopped and looked at you, and chucked you under the chin and all the other things that ladies do to babies -- "
"I used to hate it -- "
"And they said, 'Oh, she's so beautiful.' And you said, 'Yes, I'm the most beautifullest girl in the world.'"
"Did I really say that?"
"You were only three. That's what Mother said, 'She's only three, and she hears that all the time.' Only I stood there, I remember standing there and thinking -- I've never heard that in all my life. No one has ever said, Oh, Harriette, you're so beautiful."
Sally was perplexed. All these years, and Harriette had never shown the slightest sign of jealousy. The difference in their looks had never been a barrier between them. "Why should that hurt you now, Harriette?"
"Oh no, you misunderstand me. I've never hated you for that, I've always been glad for you. No one's taken more pleasure from your beauty than I have, Sally. I don't even envy you now, because I think that Charlie loves me anyway. I really think he does."
"He won't stop loving you if you live here with us, Harriette. If he were going to compare us, he already would."
"What do I care if he c
ompares. Don't you see, Sally? There is my little cabin, in Dinah's little cabin, there in the light of the fire, when we talk about the most difficult doctrines and say poetry to each other and -- love each other, Sally -- I can pretend, just for a few hours, that I am the most beautifullest girl in the whole world. I have to laugh at myself even talking about it. But I can tell you anything, can't I, and you never think I'm a fool for it, do you? When I live with you, Sally, and have that silly little dream broken every day, I won't be miserable, I won't suffer, I won't mope around the house and grieve. I know it's foolish even now. I just don't want to lose it, that's all. I have to move in with you soon enough. I just want to keep my foolishness a little longer. Those old women just annoyed you with their cooing and petting. You don't know how precious a thing it is."