And that she thought was exactly the right way for it to have happened. The thing she did not anticipate, the thing that no one anticipated, including Charles Harrington, who had by this point abandoned the pretense of indifference toward Eleanor's operation, and had begun stopping by with the regularity of a man who has recognized a reliable source of good sense, was what Robert Ames did next. He waited until December until the engagement was publicly known and settled. And then he sent a letter to Thomas Whitmore. Eleanor found out because Thomas, to his credit, brought her the letter himself.
He came out to the farm on a Thursday before Christmas and he stood in her kitchen and he put the letter on the table and he said, "I thought you should know." She read it. Ames had written to Thomas suggesting and the word suggesting was doing considerable work in the letter carrying the full weight of implication without the legal burden of statement that there might be question about whether Eleanor's farm operation had been conducted with complete propriety given the frequency of her contact with Benjamin Carter prior to their engagement and the unsupervised nature of the arrangement. He suggested that a man of Thomas's standing might want to look into the matter before the family's reputation was further. The word he used was complicated. Eleanor set the letter down on her kitchen table.
She looked at it for a long moment. Then she looked at Thomas. He was watching her with the expression of a man who has brought something unpleasant because it is right to bring it and wishes it did not exist. I want you to pressure me, she said. Or Benjamin.
Yes, Thomas said. Or at minimum create enough doubt about my character that the engagement falls apart on its own. That's what the letter implies, Thomas said. Why? Eleanor said.
What possible? She stopped. She thought about it. Robert Ames, who had called her a heer at the hardware store, who had been willing to overlook her condition for sufficient dowy, who had been turned down by a note, and who had watched from a distance for 16 months as the woman he had dismissed built something remarkable and was now going to marry one of the most respected men in the county. Pride, she said.
It's only pride. Yes, Thomas said he can't stand it, she said. It was not a question. No, Thomas said he cannot. Eleanor looked at the letter.
What are you going to do? She asked. Thomas straightened his coat in the way he did when he had made a decision he was committed to. I wrote back last night, he said. I told him that my sister is the most competent person on 60 acres in this county, that her conduct has been above reproach by every account I have received, and that if he sends any correspondence of this nature again, I will make his letter public and let the county decide what it thinks of a man who attacks a woman's reputation because she didn't want to marry him.
Eleanor stared at him. It was the longest, most direct sentence she had ever heard Thomas Whitmore deliver. Thomas, she said, I also told him, Thomas continued, with the heir of a man who has gotten started and is going to finish. That what he called her condition has produced the finest homestead operation in the territory and the admiration of a Chicago businessman whose family has connections in Washington, and that a man of his apparent business ambitions might want to think carefully about which side of that story he wants to be on. Silence.
You threatened him with Gerald Marsh," Elellanar said. "I reminded him of a relevant context," Thomas said primly. Elellanar felt something rise in her chest. Not the complicated, layered emotion of their previous encounters, but something simpler, warmer. "Thank you," she said.