“N-no. I just . . .”
“Wish that I had never come into your life.”
“Yes.”
He sighed heavily. “The bitter pill. I'm not sorry. I’m not sorry about anything. Well then, good-bye.”
He offered his hand but she did not take it. “Goodbye, Mr. Fowler.” Amélie turned and walked up the street, conscious of his eyes upon her back.
Fearing that her guilt might somehow be apparent in her face or that her hastily donned gown would betray a telltale sign, Amélie planned to slip into the house and up the stairs without attracting notice. She needn’t have worried, however. When she opened the door she was greeted by the sounds of Ella, John, and Willie quarreling in the parlor.
“You will marry her over my dead body!” Ella shouted. “I don’t care what she—or her father—says.” Apparently Willie, in Amélie’s absence, had already talked to Garvin, then broken the news to his mother.
“Now, my dear,” John cajoled, “please calm yourself. Do you want everyone to hear?”
“I don’t care! He’s my son, not yours. Mine. And to marry that—that”—there was a pause as if she were struggling for the right epithet—“flirt when he can have anyone he chooses is madness.”
Amélie, listening on the stairs, heard Willie demand loudly, “Who? Who’s anyone?”
“The Pritchard girl. Good family, impeccable manners, a gentlewoman. Why her needlework—”
“Mama, have you ever looked, I mean really looked, at Louise Pritchard? They’ve been trying to fob her off for years. She’s an old maid. And I don’t give a damn about her needlework.”
“Willie!” a shocked Ella exclaimed. “See, see John, that hussy’s influence? He’s swearing at me, his own mother.” She burst into sobs.
Gathering her skirts together, Amélie ran up the stairs on light feet. Babette was waiting for her, sitting on the big four-poster bed, tapping her toe, her cheeks high with color. “Are the fireworks over?” she asked.
“I think so.” A silence had suddenly fallen on the house, the hushed quiet after a storm.
“Do you know if Willie—”
Babette was interrupted by a tap on the door and the whispered, “Babs?”
“Oh, Willie!” She was across the room, pulling him in. “Willie!” Flinging her arms about him she kissed him on the mouth.
He saw Amélie and unhooked Babette’s arms. “Now, Babs—”
“It’s all right. Amélie won't mind if you kiss me. After all we’re engaged. We are engaged?” she asked, looking intently into his face.
“Yes. I finally convinced Mother.”
“Well, then.” She threw her arms about him again, claiming his mouth. Again he freed himself. “Babs—we're engaged, but Mother made me promise we wouldn't be married right away.”
“What does she mean ‘right away’? How long must we wait?”
“At least until Christmas?”
“Christmas!” she wailed. “I can’t! I won't!”
“Now, Babs . . .”
“Why didn’t you stand up to her? Why didn’t you insist? You’re going off to war. Why you might not—”
“Babs!” Amélie exclaimed, shocked. “Christmas is not that far away,” she went on. “The men are sure to have furloughs. And think of the grand wedding you can have.”
“I don't want a grand wedding,” Babette said sullenly. “I want to be Mrs. Harper now.”
But there was no swaying Ella and though Willie, to his credit, tried in a gingerly fashion to do so, Babette was forced to accept the delay.
Chapter
❖ 6 ❖
The Townsends returned to Arbormalle, Garvin happy to reach the safety of his home, Babette disgruntled and complaining, and Amélie sure now that she was carrying Thaddeus’s child.
It was May. In the gardens the roses were blooming, lush, sweet mock orange perfumed the air, and blue salvia and white phlox blazed in neat borders. Along the creek partridge berry flowered in pale pink and under the trees mayapple vied with bellworts.
All this beauty, however, had been lost on Therese Townsend. A woman not usually given to excessive emotion, she had been demonstratively relieved to see her husband again. She had been uneasy, she said, during their absence. A few days after they had left she received an anonymous note threatening to burn the house if her husband continued to support the Southern cause. The Warners had been sent a similar warning but Mary Warner had dismissed it as the work of a crank. Therese did not feel that way. Ten of the slaves had run off. She was sure they had been urged to do so by the same person who had written the note. She suspected Thomas Winslow, whose sympathies for the Union were well known.
“No,” said Garvin. “I don’t think it would be Thomas. He would challenge me to pistols before he would sneak around with a lighted brand. It might very well be someone he knows, though, an acquaintance, a fellow sympathizer he’s entertained at home. I’ll call on him tomorrow and see what he has to say.”
The next afternoon Garvin came home from his talk with Thomas Winslow white-faced and aggrieved.
“That friendship has gone by the boards,” he said, sinking down heavily on his favorite chair, a whisky and water in his hand. “He literally threw me out, said it was an insult to think he would entertain arsonists or rowdies at his table. As for the Negroes, he wanted to know why I didn’t let them all go. Gave me a long lecture on the immorality of one man owning another.” Garvin shook his head. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
The women looked at him in consternation. It seemed to Amélie that her father had been more shaken by the anonymous threat and his quarrel with Thomas Winslow than the bullet that had creased his skull.
“Don’t take on so, Papa,” she said. “Mary Warner’s probably right about the note being sent by a crank.”
“Perhaps she is,” he said.
Nevertheless after sunset each evening Garvin released his fiercest hunting dogs to roam the grounds. He slept with a derringer under his pillow and kept a loaded hunting rifle behind the dining room door. Although he made a valiant effort to keep his nervousness from showing, adhering to his customary daily routine, taking his breakfast at nine, riding his fields until noon, tending his accounts after supper, he developed a tic under his right eye and would turn white at the sound of a stranger’s voice at the door. They all felt the change in Garvin. A man who had once been self-assured, rather pompous at times, now seemed worried and uncertain.
Meanwhile, Amélie’s condition had created a happy stir. Both sets of parents were delighted at the prospect of a grandchild. Therese set down a strict regimen for her daughter to follow, including daily naps, no lifting, no riding, no red meat, and a jigger of cowslip wine at bedtime. But somehow the glowing health that her mother promised did not materialize. Instead Amélie developed a morning sickness that seemed to last most of the day. The smell of fried bacon or the sight of congealed eggs on her plate would send her running upstairs to the slop jar. She lost weight and turned pale.
Her parents, alarmed, sent for Dr. Colter. A man of wide girth with thick black side-whiskers, he pronounced Amélie fit as a fiddle. “You’ll get over this,” he ascertained. “You need a good purgative.”
The vile tasting medicine was dutifully taken twice a day but did little to help Amélie’s condition. When her mother wasn’t looking she quietly poured it into the handiest potted plant.
In the meanwhile unsettling letters reached them from Baltimore. John Harper wrote that since the Yankees had occupied the state capital at Annapolis, the General Assembly (Maryland’s governing body) was now meeting at Frederick. There they had protested the war as unconstitutional and unjust. Members of the Assembly had exhorted the citizens of Maryland to work for peace between North and South, asserting the state would have no part in the war. They also felt a call to secede was imprudent. On the other hand the Assembly wanted Washington to recognize the Confederate states as a separate nation.
“A mixed bag of compr
omise,” said Garvin, who, safe at a distance, could bristle at the shilly shallerers. “Maryland’s pussyfooting around. Wants it both ways.”
“She’s trying to act as peacemaker,” August observed. On May 13 General Butler took possession of Federal Hill in Baltimore and established a liaison with the garrison at Fort McHenry. The next day he published a proclamation to the people of Baltimore. It stated that his troops would enforce the laws of the United States government and that all munitions earmarked for the Confederacy would be confiscated. Meetings of armed men as well as the display of flags and banners representing the Confederate states were banned. To Garvin the final blow was the arrest of Ross Winans, an outspoken secessionist member of the Assembly, for high treason.
“We’ve lost Maryland to the North,” Garvin said dejectedly.
“Officially, yes,” Amélie pointed out. “But in the southern counties and on the eastern shore the people are for the Confederacy. Just because a few mealy-mouthed politicians have toadied to Washington doesn’t mean we’re finished.”
“I hope you’re right,” he said gloomily.
It disturbed Amélie how her father had lost his perky sense of humor, his optimism. Perhaps his injury had damaged him, made him fearful and depressed. She didn’t want to contemplate the notion that her father might be a coward. Deep down she felt that when push came to shove he would once again assert his defiance. But she did wish he would make some positive move now, take the risk of open and loud opposition and prove he was still a man of courage.
Toward the end of the month Amélie received a long letter from Thaddeus from a camp in South Carolina. It was a cheerful missive, given to descriptions of his fellow officers, the servants they had brought with them, and the captain they had elected, a blue-blooded Virginian named Hawkes. The only disturbing note was a reference to an epidemic of measles and pneumonia, which had carried off a dozen men. Thaddeus wrote: “What an ignominious way to die! Of a childhood disease rather than on the battlefield.”
He was ecstatic about the baby and hoped it would be a boy. “When this war is over,” he wrote, “we’ll make up for everything. We’ll get on with building our house and raising a family.” He loved her; he missed her.
Amélie carried his folded letter in her bodice, rereading it so often it soon became tattered and illegible.
She did not think of Damon Fowler, at least not consciously, though she did have troublesome dreams in which he appeared. And as time went on the episode at the Barnum took on the quality of just such a disturbing dream. She could almost make herself believe it never really happened.
June came with a spell of heat. The morning mist that burned off by eight gave way to a broiling sun and a steaming, suffocating humidity. Every movement was an effort, a gathering of strength against a heavy, perspiring lethargy. Amélie’s bouts of nausea had become less frequent, though she continued to have occasional spells. She slept poorly. Her bedroom, still hot hours after sunset, was like an oven. Sometimes with her nightgown open at the collar she would stand at the window, hoping to catch an errant breeze. Hours might pass as she gazed over the dark landscape thinking of nothing in particular, counting sheep or stars until heavy eyelids sent her to bed.
It was on one of those nights that she noticed a mysterious light through the trees in the vicinity of the barn. She mused on it, deciding that it was probably their overseer, Chris Bishop, tending a sick horse or cow. Chris, a resolute Southerner, a dependable and trustworthy worker, had been at Arbormalle for twenty-five years. Garvin considered him more of a friend than an employee, “his mainstay,” as he put it.
Amélie shifted her position, resting her elbows on the sill. The light seemed to have become brighter. She thought she smelled smoke. Leaning out the window she sniffed suspiciously. Yes! Smoke! She rose on tiptoe. Suddenly beyond the stables a thin ragged edge of orange appeared. God in heaven! Fire! The tobacco fields were on fire! Now she could see two gesticulating figures silhouetted against the growing blaze, their cries coming to her faintly across the lawns. Wheeling from the window, she searched blindly for her wrapper and slippers, and unable to find them ran barefooted out of the room across the hall.
“Papa!” she cried, knocking on the door. “Papa!”
He flung open the door, the derringer in his right hand, his face a ghastly white even in the darkness. “What is it?”
“Fire! The fields are on fire!”
Amélie didn’t wait to get his reaction but ran back to her room. Pawing frantically through her wardrobe she found her riding skirt. It took her another few minutes to get into it and to stuff her still bare feet into her riding boots. She was halfway down the stairs, following her father’s fleeing figure, when her mother called, “Amélie, where are you going?”
“To help, Mama!”
“Are you mad? Don’t you realize you are carrying a child?”
“I know. I—I’ll be careful. There must be something I can do,” she pleaded desperately. “We can’t let it get to the house, Mama!”
Babette’s tousled head appeared over the banister. “What’s happening? What’s all the fuss?”
“Fire,” Amélie said and hurried down the stairs and out of the house as her mother cried, “Amélie! Amélie, I forbid you!”
She ran past the kitchen, her hastily buttoned boots slipping rawly against her heels. Past the smokehouse and the old well she went, pausing at the potting shed to snatch up a long-handled spade. Then cutting through the leafy orchard she came out on a slight rise where she could look down on the burning fields. The fire had spread to within a few yards of the overseer’s house, the flames leaping skyward under a pall of thick smoke. Embers sparked and popped, falling on a dead white oak that stood at the back of the house. A minute later little shoots of fire began to climb up and through the hollow trunk and blossom out on the naked forked branches.
A shout went up from the men below as the tree became engulfed in flames. A group of slaves with damp sacks were beating at the fire in the tall grass. Others formed a relay line from the well to Garvin and Mr. Bishop who were tossing bucket after bucket of water, trying to make a damp perimeter around the house.
Amélie descended the incline with quick running steps.
“Papa!”
“Amélie! Get back!”
A bush caught fire and lifting her spade Amélie thrashed at it until the flames went out. When she turned back to her father she saw Babette with a bucket in her hand. Babette had not bothered to dress but was still in her nightgown, the lurid glow of the fire lighting up her face.
“Will it catch. Papa?” she cried, not with fear, but with an almost joyous voice.
To Babette the whole scene—the flames licking into the black night, the crackling tongues of fire leaping and dancing, the acrid smoke, the sense of urgency and danger—was like an intoxicant. She gave no thought to the destructive force of the fire, to the consequences. Only the exciting moment stirred her, bringing a gleam to her eyes, a quickening of her pulse. This was living on the razor’s edge. So much better, so different from the boring routine of Arbormalle where nothing ever happened.
Suddenly a cry went up. “The roof!”
Chris Bishop put a ladder against the wall and clambered up to the roof. “Buckets!” he exhorted. “I need buckets!”
The servants quickly changed the angle of their relay. Babette tried to go up the ladder, too, but her father pulled her away. Instead he sent two of the men to join Chris Bishop. The sloshing water buckets went from hand to hand. Amélie, streaks of sweat from the blasting heat running down her begrimed face, wielded her spade, hurrying from one red-embered clump of vegetation to the next. There was little wind but a stand of trees some one hundred yards from the house had caught, sending flames vaulting higher and higher into the night sky. A pall of bronze smoke turned the air acrid.
Again a hoarse cry as a finger of orange crooked around a corner eave of the house.
Garvin, his face haggard, one sleeve
of his coat singed, shouted, “Amélie! Babette! Get back!”
Amélie snatched a reluctant Babette’s hand and pulled her across the yard and up the rise.
“Let me go, Amélie!”
“No, I shan’t. We’re only getting in the way, and it’s spreading. I wish Papa would leave, too.”
From their position they watched Chris on the roof as he ran from one little spurt of fire to another, beating at it with his coat. Beyond the house, to the edge of the horizon, fire was eating away the rows of tobacco plants.
Suddenly with a whoosh and a fiery waterfall of sparks the roof of Chris’s house sprang into rocketing flame. The servants on the ground fled. The two on the roof jumped to the ground, rolling over and over, then were pulled to safety by a big black who rushed forward to haul them out of the burning grass.
“Chris!” Garvin yelled. “Chris, jump!”
But it was too late. Chris was on fire, a frantic, arm-waving figure, jumping and screaming with pain. The next instant the roof collapsed and he disappeared amid the roar and crackle of the inferno.
“Oh, God, no!” Amélie, shuddering, covered her face with her hands. To watch a man die so gruesomely, and to feel so helpless. Good, faithful Chris. It was just horrible, horrible!
August Warner rode up. “Can I be of any help, Garvin? I came as soon as Mary woke me and said she thought your place was on fire. God, I’m sorry ...” He looked over at the overseer’s house, now a leaping, writhing pyre.
“Chris,” Garvin began, a sob catching in his throat, “Chris is gone. The roof caved in and he went with it.”
“How awful!”
“There was nothing we could do. Nothing.”
They stood bleakly looking on as the fire continued to rage. Fortunately the humidity, lack of wind, and a fallow strip to the west contained the burning fields and the main house was never in danger. But it was hours before the last shoot of flame shrunk, shriveled, and winked to smoking ash.
Honor's Fury Page 7