Free A Different Sun: A Novel of Africa by Elaine Neil Orr Page A

himself for acting on impulse. Well, it was too late now.
    “Good day,” he said, setting his hat on his head and walking out of the room.
    “Well?” Emma said when he met her on the porch.
    “Your father offered land and labor to work it in our absence—to see to your security—but I wouldn’t take it. He had already agreed to the marriage because it was your wish.” Emma’s face seemed to drain of color and he thought,
Well, there she goes, like a little goat; I’ll have to restart this business of courtship
. But she latched on to his lapels.
    “You were right, of course,” she said. “We will wait on the Lord.”
    “The way is open, then,” he said. “As I see it, you choose a date.”
    “I’m happier,” she said, her eyes thoroughly charming.
    “Happier than what?”
    “Than I ever was before.”
    Something in him turned clean over. He loved her. She would be enough to wrestle with and she would keep him alive.

· 5 ·
    A Seal Is Set
    E MMA HELD H ENRY’S gift in her lap.
    “Open it,“ he said. “I made it from a mahogany packing box. It’s larger than most and a little heavy, but you’ll be glad for the accommodation later. Anyway, you’ll have a boy to tote it.”
    The rectangular writing box stretched across her lap and beyond on either side. Eighteen inches wide, she surmised, maybe ten inches front to back, seven inches deep. The wood was dark brown, the shiny lacquer bringing out the natural grain in ribbons of gold, one section of grain rounding like currents in a stream.
    “A man in Richmond gave me the inset handles.”
    The top sat flush to the sides. Emma slid her hands up and down over the perfect handles.
    “The latch came from my host in Petersburg,” Henry said. “This way you don’t have to keep up with a key. Just push the little swing arm to the right to open it.”
    Emma brushed the latch with her thumb and ran her fingers over the brass corners.
    Henry had worked a slender groove half an inch from the lid’s perimeter. Emma sent her index finger along its circuit. “How did you do this?” she said.
    “A V gouge,” Henry said. “A man in Petersburg lent me his tools. I spent more time sharpening than carving. Mahogany is dense.”
    “No. I mean how did you do all of it?”
    “I guess I’ve fiddled with making things most of my life,” Henry said. “I had some time on my hands over Christmas. Open it.”
    The hinges moved like silk and held the lid propped. Etched into the lid’s interior so she might read it upon opening,
In my heart a seal is set.
A verse from Percy Shelley she had written to him in their weeks of correspondence.
    “I saw your journal the first day I called—figured you ought to have a writing box,” he said. “Do you like it?”
    A brush of memory. His hands at her waist. The hand-sewn diary falling to the ground. Then a vision of her bureau drawer lifting of its own accord, lost for a moment in a swirl of winter leaves, settling now in her lap. Henry had seen into her heart.
    “You’ll have a great deal to record in Africa,” he said.
    “It’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me, Mr. Bowman,” Emma said, awed by this mystery.
    “Now look here. I’d like you to call me Henry when it’s just the two of us,” he said, the hint of a smile in his lips.
    Wouldn’t he kiss her?
    “I put steel screws in the interior to strengthen the joints,” Henry said. “Here’s the writing surface covered in baize to be good and sturdy.” He was serious again. “When you unfold it, you have your desk.” She wanted to touch him. But she opened and closed the box. “I’ve already got most of what you need—ink, quills, nibs, paper. I found the diary in Washington at a stationers’ shop,” he said. The book was bound in red leather. The firm cover and thin pages gave her a feeling of great tenderness and security.
    Finally Henry showed her the secret drawer by lifting the pen – and-ink holder and pressing a latch. “For