Isaac Simms was incarcerated in the jail at Belleville, and Lewis visited whenever he could slip away for a time, but he had little success in getting the prisoner to talk to him in any kind of coherent manner. He huddled in the corner of his cell, gibbering to himself and ignoring whatever was said to him. He appeared to have sunk deep into the madness that had taken him, giving himself over to it completely. The guards reported that he did experience short periods of lucidity, when he seemed amazed at his surroundings and the crimes of which he was accused, but that he would soon fall back into his twisted world again, and then nothing he said would make sense. Surprisingly, Spicer had better luck, and spent hours sitting just outside the cell with his books, waiting until Simms the likeable peddler fought his way up through the layers of torment to reality.
They compared notes on whatever they learned, attempting to place all of the puzzling details into a picture of what had occurred. Lewis directed Spicer to the Book of Proverbs, and pointed out the relevant verses to him. Morgan struggled with making sense of the words, but the clear import of the passages eventually formed into meaning for him.
“It’s obvious that Simms was tortured by those verses about strange women,” Spicer said. “What I don’t understand is the part about ‘rejoice with the wife of thy youth.’ He didn’t have a wife. So why would he be troubled by strange women?”
“There’s no doubt in my mind that it has something to do with the sister, Esther,” Lewis said. “But unless Simms comes to his senses and wants to talk about it, we’ll probably never know for sure exactly what went on.”
“I wonder if Sally knows anything about it,” Spicer said. “I’ll ask her.”
Sally was the girl who had pointed them in Simms’s direction, the girl who worked for his family, although she had now been let go. Lewis knew that Spicer had gone back to see her, and that their relationship was now based on something more than an exchange of information. Morgan had sought her out, and had confessed that he wasn’t really a preacher, or at least not yet, and to his surprise she had laughed.
“Oh, I knew that,” she said. “I didn’t know it at the time, but I figured it out pretty fast. It was Mr. Lewis who was the preacher; that was pretty clear. It doesn’t matter though, you’ll be one soon.”
With this cheery faith in his future, the girl had won Morgan’s heart.
It was an ugly story she told him, if it were all true. As Sally had said before, Esther had been courted by any number of young men, but in her mother’s opinion, none of them were quite suitable enough, and the old woman insisted furthermore that the older girls must marry first. In the meantime, Simms was expected to generate enough income to keep the household comfortable in a manner that was far beyond his means, and all the while his mother railed against him for being nothing more than a peddler. Where was the empire her husband had promised her? Where were the wealth and the status that would have come with the establishment of a shipping enterprise, or a forwarding company, or even a store on Belleville’s main street? Her husband had failed her, now her son was doing the same, and it was his fault that his sisters remained in spinsterhood. If he were more successful, if they were richer, then looks wouldn’t matter. Young men would be beating a path to their door. And all the time, Simms saw his profits dwindling, driven away by unrest and rebellion, his hope of realizing his father’s dream fading until it was no longer discernible.
“You wouldn’t believe the waste that went on in that household,” Sally said. “And the money spent on foo-fer-ahs.”
But there was more, and at last Lewis arrived at the root of Simms’s desperation.
Frustrated by her mother’s refusal to let her accept any of the proposals she received, Esther had apparently turned her attentions to her brother. By Sally’s account she “flirted with him something terrible.” And Isaac had responded. The girl had no way of knowing, of course, how far this flirtation had progressed, but Lewis had a suspicion that it had gone far enough to engender a despairing guilt in the man. He had his own frustrations to deal with after all, for how could he ever afford to marry, himself, when his family sucked up every penny he earned?
Now his wanderings became welcome; he could remove himself from the temptation that tortured him, but could still never rid himself of the desire: “Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love.”
But the wife of his youth was his own sister and her love was a sin. Lewis was disgusted and repelled by the story, and yet a part of him felt an overwhelming pity for them all. Snared in the web of pretension and financial folly, the old woman had set in motion a series of events that brought them all to destruction. The two plain older sisters would have no hope of marriage now. Like so many women — like his own daughter-in-law for that matter — they had never been allowed to acquire the talents that might allow them to earn their own ways in the world, and their mother would never countenance a match with any farmer or local tradesman who was looking for a working partner as much as a wife. The younger one, Esther, could marry yet, but all her life she would carry the guilt of what she had done with her brother, and the end it had brought him to.
Most of all, he felt sorry for Isaac. Guilt and failure were his only companions now, and it was he who would pay the ultimate price for them all. A part of Lewis hoped that he would stay in madness until he had paid it.
As far as he knew, only one member of Simms’s family ever came to visit him in jail — and only once.
After a time the guards had come to know Lewis by sight, and usually waved him through to see the prisoner without question. He was surprised when he was stopped one afternoon at the gate.
“His sister is there now, Preacher,” he was told. “This is the first time any of ’em has showed up. We’d best give them a little privacy, don’t you think?”
Lewis agreed and was about to go on his way when the sister emerged. As he expected, it was Esther. She held a fine lace handkerchief over her nose against the jail’s smell of urine and feces and unwashed bodies. He stepped forward and introduced himself.
“I know this is a terrible time for you,” he said. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
She looked at him with open disgust. “So you’re the one! You’re the one who did this to us.” Her face was set in lines of hate, the cruel mouth twisted in an ugly sneer. He wondered how he could ever have thought that she looked like Sarah.
“Whatever is going to become of us now?” she spat at him. “Did you ever ask yourself that question, preacher, before you started to meddle? Get out of my way.”
He was speechless. Five young women deprived of life, and all this girl was concerned with was what would now happen to her. He watched as she left, not bothering to hide her contempt when the guard tipped his hat to her.
He went inside. Simms was again huddled in the corner of his cell, but he looked up and seemed to recognize his visitor. “Did you see her?” he said. “Did you see the whore of Babylon? ‘Her end is as bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.’”
“Esther?”
He shuddered. “‘Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.’”
“Isaac.” He said it quietly, almost in a whisper. “Isaac, listen to me.”
He shuddered again, but Lewis was sure he was listening, that he had heard. “Isaac, I know about Esther. I know about the two of you. I know