Catherine’s homecoming, I learned later, was less shocking than she anticipated. Her parents were surprised she hadn’t alerted them by messenger or letter that she was coming. They were shocked that she made the journey without a companion or a plan. They were offended that the Thebleys let her go so abruptly.
But the family is not one for histrionics. Catherine’s mother, Judith, listened to her daughter’s woos, including her emphatic statement that it was Rex, not Henry or Antione who sent her away. Henry and Antione were excused entirely from any kind of complicity. Catherine refrained, impressively enough, from the most Gothic of her imaginings.
Even shorn of drama, the Morland parents concluded that Rex Thebley was an eccentric man of strange habits and strange, uncivil manners. Judith Morland listened, empathized, and then instructed her daughter, “You had quite the adventurous summer! Well, well, time to move on.”
Fall was nearing. Catherine attended school as a teacher’s aide. Olympus applauds education though anything past high school takes place under Athena and Apollo’s guidance or in the other world. Catherine would likely continue to teach the equivalent of third graders up to and after her marriage. She would bring goods and skills to a marriage.She went to work without complaint. Her heartbreak didn’t take the form of shrieks at the universe or sorrowful collapses onto conveniently placed fainting couches. She didn’t sequester herself in her bedroom or take to writing (bad) poetry. She went to school and helped eight-year-olds figure out division. She painted wooden toys carved by her father. She sewed more hand puppets.
She did wallow in lots of walks on the nearby, rocky beaches. And she did spend a great many afternoons gazing out the front window of the house's parlor. He mother worried that Catherine’s few weeks of “high living” had created unrealistic expectations about day-to-day life. Judith is a busy woman—always a dozen projects going in various venues—but she broken away from childcare and breadmaking and community theater to search out an article about mindfulness or something self-improvement-oriented for Catherine’s perusal.
And then Henry arrived.
Catherine had been to see the Allens. They knew the story of Catherine’s sudden departure from The Keep, and Mrs. Allen meandered on about how pleasant the Thebley children were but, well, that father! Handsome, of course. And well-to-do. But such strange manners!
Catherine didn’t find Mrs. Allen’s vague expostulations all that comforting and moped her way home (Oreithyia and Boreas supplied the report of Catherine’s return home and subsequent encounters; the weather gods were prepping for the winter months).
Catherine came into the house, ready to slog through several chores. And there was Henry, looking as bashful as a young man face-to-face with potential in-laws can look.
“I was concerned about you,” he said, dividing his attention between Catherine and her mother, who looked surprised but not displeased at the appearance of this polite young man. “I wanted to make sure Catherine reached home safely.”
No one mentioned that a messenger, such as Hermes, or a letter, through Hermes’s people, would have accomplished the same end. Judith was too curious, and Catherine was too pleased.“Would you care for something to eat?” Judith asked. “I can fetch my husband, and we can eat a late lunch together. Or perhaps—”
“I should pay my respects to the Allens,” Henry said.
It is doubtful that Henry remembered anything more about the Allens than Mrs. Allen’s name. But it was a decent enough excuse, especially when he asked Catherine to show him the way. One of her younger sisters offered to join them while Judith pondered if perhaps they should visit the beach or the schoolhouse as well. Henry and Catherine managed to escape without the accompaniment of family onlookers.
Away from the house, Catherine and Henry temporarily put off the Allens and instead meandered to one of my shrines. In that area of Olympus, the shrine is a small, pillared structure that graces the flat stretch near Kettle Cove. Like in the other Cape Elizabeth, the area is spotted with picnic tables. Henry and Catherine strolled between them. At the water’s edge, they bent to collect rocks to skip.
Henry apologized. He explained his father’s assumptions about Catherine’s supposed wealth. Catherine may be innocent. She had no trouble connecting the source of many of her troubles to John Thorpe. She sighed, but with Henry's reappearance, John Thorpe ceased to be a bane of existence and became a mere irritant.
Henry then professed his feelings of attachment.
“I like you, Catherine. Do you like me? I sound like a kid in school. Check Box 1 or 2. So which would you check?”
Cleverness and bashfulness combined—not an unattractive combination, and Catherine responded with enough pleased enthusiasm to overcome Henry’s self-consciousness. She checked the “yes” box! Henry was relieved. They visited the Allens, partly to fulfill a social obligation but mostly, I guessed, to go somewhere, be somewhere, as a “couple.”
The next step was to request my endorsement, and Henry and Catherine did leave donations at the shrine. Henry had optimistically come prepared with quartz crystals. Catherine left ribbons from her hair. And of course, they both visited my temple on the peninsula much later.
The reality is, most people go to their family and friends first when a meeting-of-the-minds ensues. Catherine and Henry announced their new status at the Morland family dinner that night.
“I would like to court your daughter,” Henry said.
“Henry and I got to know each other this summer,” Catherine said.
“How nice,” Judith said dampeningly. “Catherine’s father and I believe in long engagements.” Richard Morland nodded. He and his wife were rarely on opposing sides when it came to their children’s futures.Richard Morland said, “How about your father, Henry?”
“He’ll come around,” Henry said stoutly.
The Morland parents nodded. As Richard pointed out later to Judith in one of Hermes’s shrines, “That young man carries out most of his family’s business. Negotiations and what-not. I’m sure the father will follow his son’s lead.”
Hermes laughed when he told me about the conversation, and I could guess why. The Morland parents arrived on Olympus full of Greek stories and abstracted desires and philosophical applause for nature and so on and so forth. Nine years living on a farm burnt away the impracticalities, left behind warm and usable embers.
Marriage to the son of a well-established family, so long as the father didn’t put up obstacles or noisy protests, was a decent enough reason to flame the embers. Such was the Morland parents’ position. Henry and Catherine would make a similarly proper Olympian couple.Not that I ignored the melodramatic sparks—but of course, I had more of the story, more even than Catherine and Henry individually. If John Thorpe hadn’t lied and exaggerated, Rex Thebley never would have invited Catherine to stay. Her relationship with Henry wouldn’t have expanded and stabilized. For that matter, Rex Thebley would never have learned the “truth” and thrown Catherine out of the house. If not for Rex Thebley’s bad behavior, his laid-back son might never have declared himself.
The moral seems to be, Even John Thorpes have their uses.
Too cynical. Perhaps the moral is, True love gets the embers burning.
For the embers were there. Neither Henry nor Catherine was thinking wedding-marriage-homelife-children-burial plots. Not in that moment and place: at the end of summer in a town in Olympus. Henry and Catherine were simply, delightfully thrilled to declare mutual desire for each other’s company.
They were, as the other world would say, Dating.
Below: good scene but not accurate!