by Maria Hummel
“No?” said Laurence. “Can you imagine what my father will say when he finds out?” he asked in the old conspiratorial tone.
“You might be gone by then.” Bel shrank to a tiny ball beneath the buffalo robe, suddenly cold. “I won’t tell.”
Without answering, Laurence steered them toward Greenwood, letting the sleigh skim across the lost red scarf, snowy and crushed. Bel turned around to watch it after they passed. At first, she thought the sleigh’s blade had severed the wool, because a snowy gap bloomed where they had run over it. Only later did she tell herself that the weight of their passing had merely shoved the scarf’s center deep beneath the snow, that it was still one piece, and its owner would come back for it and take it home.
Chapter Thirty-seven
“My dear, your Miss Bottum just raves about you, your mother thinks you need some experience in the world, and all we have to do now is convince your father,” concluded Aunt Pattie, who had spirited Bel away to the drawing room to talk her niece into accompanying her on the Sanitary Commission’s spring tour of the hospitals in Washington. The idea thrilled Bel, and she was already drafting plans for her boastful call at Mary Ruth Cross’s house when her aunt continued. “I need a quiet, useful girl like you. My own daughters would be far too busy making beaus of the soldiers to do me any good.”
While Bel didn’t appreciate such immediate dismissal of her own beau-making prowess, she nodded obediently and tore out the five or six stitches she had just made in a new white shirt for Louis, who continued to write polite letters to the whole family. Bel’s sketching was far more advanced than her stitching, as Miss Bottum, the drawing tutor, had attested, and Aunt Pattie had convinced herself that the only way she could outdo Mrs. M. J.’s hundred-page report from the year before was to hand in an illustrated version of the medical care the brave boys received.
“Of course,” continued Aunt Pattie, who needed very little reciprocal conversation to keep her going, “it will be a hard thing for a girl like you to see men suffer like this. Mrs. M. J. and her daughter were absolutely scandalized by some of the places.”
“I don’t mind,” Bel said in a small voice. “I could stand it for Laurence’s sake.” Her cousin had left just days after their sleigh ride, their old camaraderie replaced by a stiff formality. After three weeks with no word from the soldier, she blamed herself for the deadness in his eyes as he said good-bye. He was so sensitive, she scolded herself. She could have pretended to love him.
“My dear son, I hope he learns to be among us again once this war is over,” Aunt Pattie was saying. “He was so happy to be here, especially to see you. And he ate well,” she affirmed. “But he wasn’t the same.”
“No,” Bel said, thinking of the upset sleigh and Laurence thrashing in the snow for his lost cap when it was right beside him. “He wasn’t the same.”
“Mrs. Van Sicklin said that someone in Laurence’s regiment was shot for desertion right before they came home on furlough. Laurence never spoke of it, did he?”
Interested as she was in the gossip, Bel resented this prying, for she realized Aunt Pattie had not garnered any real news from her son and was hoping Bel had succeeded where she had failed. Why couldn’t they leave him alone? “No,” she said shortly. “We didn’t talk about the war. You know he didn’t want to talk about it.”
“I see.” Aunt Pattie reared back with a creak of whalebone. “Well, I’m sorry I asked.”
“He was so tired,” Bel added softly. “He wanted home to be home.”
They sat in silence for a moment, watching the fire.
“I hope you can bear seeing what war does to all those brave young men,” Aunt Pattie said.
“I can stand it.” Bel swallowed hard. Hadn’t she stood it already?
“So many of them are suffering from terrible wounds, far worse than what we saw in Brattleboro,” Aunt Pattie cautioned her. “They reach out to any womanly figure they see, you know. I couldn’t let you visit the wards unchaperoned.”
The thought of being paraded about for weeks by her loquacious aunt was singularly unappealing to Bel. Balancing it, however, was the notion of seeing the capital and getting closer to Laurence and Louis. She wanted desperately to escape Greenwood, which had grown stagnant and cold after her cousin’s departure, with Daniel often away on business and Faustina involved in her remote life of books and letter writing. The only excitement was Uncle George and Aunt Pattie’s Wednesday visit. This particular night, George and Faustina had stayed in the parlor, listening to Mary play Irish songs, while Bel and her aunt crept off to talk about Washington. Aunt Pattie had become positively conspiratorial as the plan took shape, and Bel found a new appreciation for her fashionable aunt. She treated Bel more like an adult than her parents did, and seemed eager to show her niece the world beyond Greenwood.
“I declare the war will be quite over by the time you finish that shirt,” said Aunt Pattie, watching Bel restitch the seam.
“I’ve been making two,” Bel confessed. While he was home, Laurence had claimed his old shirt was worn-out and had commissioned a new one.
“Two,” Aunt Pattie repeated in a considering voice. “One for Laurence, and one for…”
“A friend,” Bel said, and blushed. She didn’t want to say the name of her tutor, afraid the news would leak back to her mother.
“Well…” Aunt Pattie released a long, oniony breath. Her blue eyes fluttered over Bel’s face. “Does your friend know you are making this shirt for him?”
“No. It’s a surprise. And I’m going to send it that way, too. So he doesn’t know whom it’s from,” Bel said, the idea suddenly coming to her.
Just then, her mother and uncle entered the drawing room, their faces flushed. “Did you have a good round?” Aunt Pattie asked.
“Their Mary has a lovely voice,” said George to his wife. “There ought to be another beatitude blessing those who can sing, for they truly bring paradise a little closer.”
Aunt Pattie gave a strained smile, as if she thought he had enjoyed the singing a little more than he ought. Her own puritan heaven would have a respectable amount of toil in it.
“Mary doesn’t need a beatitude to bolster her claim on paradise,” retorted Faustina. “With all her righteousness, she’s already staked a large plot up there.”
“And sown it with good Irish crops.” George laughed in his sister-in-law’s direction.
“I was just convincing Bel to leave your nest for a while,” said Aunt Pattie, her expression difficult to read. “Can you bear letting her go under another woman’s wing, Faustina?”
“If you wish it.” Faustina turned to look out the dark window. “I can’t speak for Washington, but I know you’ll be a fine influence on her. You must convince her father first, however.”
Her uncle settled on a chair with a gusty sigh and regarded his niece.
“Papa won’t think it safe,” muttered Bel. Daniel Lindsey was more conservative than his brother and often lectured about “influences” on his young daughter, the word suggesting an evil, amorphous wind that could seep through the cracks of the tightest door. Despite his fear of influences particular to the male variety, he had not guessed Bel’s attraction to her tutor and simply assumed that his daughter’s good sense wouldn’t allow for any such romance. But Washington? How many temptations could trip a young, rich, and compassionate girl into making the wrong decisions? Bel finished the last stitch on the long side seam of the shirt and let it fall to her lap. The motion made the concealed swan necklace slip toward the groove between her breasts. She had kept it hidden for an entire year.
“He should let her go. Shouldn’t he, Faustina?” said George defiantly. Strained by his full stomach, his buttonholes tightened like eyes in the sun.
“It’s not our choice,” Pattie gently reprimanded him. “Besides, our girls have always stayed in Allenton.”
“Can’t you see that Isabel is nothing like them?” George demanded, making Bel duck her head and redden wi
thout knowing why.
“Whatever do you mean?” Aunt Pattie straightened her spine. “She’s slow at stitching, but she can sketch beautifully, and she’s a passable singer—in a group.”
“But she wants more in her life than to decorate drawing rooms, Pattie.” George did not see that his criticism made his wife wither in her chair, or he would have stopped. Instead, he had turned on his niece, the slope of his body like a stone that sits for centuries on the brink of a cliff, poised to fall but not falling. “Her mother fed her ideas and she wants ideas; Laurence fed her faraway places and she wants to travel there. You can’t raise a girl like this and not expect her to want something different, to go somewhere. And you want to go, don’t you, Bel?” His commanding voice filled the room. Bel fiercely tied a thread and did not answer, her cheeks hot. “Don’t you?”
Instead of facing him, she looked up at her mother, at her slightly bent shoulders and graceful waist, at hips so narrow, they should not have been able to have borne a child, but if so, then only one. She saw Faustina’s lips press to a thin line, and the tears in the corners of her eyes yellowed by lamplight. Then, behind her mother, Daniel appeared, striding down the hall, his expression distant, half-shuttered with daydreams of new buildings, fountains, and statues to grace still nonexistent parks. And behind him, the walls of Greenwood, cold and mellow in the winter night, keeping them all from the whine of the wind and the bitter, glittering streets.
“No,” she shouted, lying. “I don’t want to go.” Her father entered the room, winding his pocket watch. “Don’t make me go.”
Her volume made Daniel flinch. He stared at the timepiece as if it and not his daughter had spoken so loudly, and he shook it hard in his good right hand.
Chapter Thirty-eight
It was the second week in March when the letter came. February had departed with a sudden thaw, leaving snow in dirty piles across the garden, the raw yellow-green grass running like scars beneath. Ground not fully unfrozen held the rain above it and leaves drifted in the shallow pools around tree roots. The early warmth, though pleasant, felt strange to Bel as she sloshed into the garden. It was like a joke that goes wrong and leaves the company regretful instead of pleased.
Cold water seeped through her boots, making rude spongy noises when she stepped. The world was open again and she its first trespasser. Wilderness Spring. She had gone out bonnetless just to feel wind that would not cause her scalp to tingle with pain, but after a few minutes, she hurried back inside, hoping her mother would overlook her allowing the sun to touch her face. Entering the dim foyer, Bel saw the errand boy had left the single letter that arrived that day, along with the new Frank Leslie’s Fashion Gazette. She stared at the envelope. “Miss Isabel Lindsey.” It was postmarked Washington, D.C. The serious, economic cursive of her tutor contrasted sharply with Laurence’s looping hand, and Bel knew the former instantly. She pushed the door softly shut behind her before snatching up the letter and scurrying to her hiding place in the bay window.
As she squirmed deep into the window seat, she slowly tore the government-issue envelope. There was a single soft sheet of paper folded inside. Already blushing, Bel pulled up her knees and spread the letter across them. A gray-white air blew through the bare tree branches, making them knock the windows of Greenwood.
Pressing the swan locket to her lips, she forgot the quiet house around her and began to read.
Dear Isabel,
It seems improper for your humble tutor to begin with such familiarity, but I have spent a great deal of time writing letters to you in my mind, and over the course of such missives began to admit the great affection I feel for you. These are not the words of the teacher who left you, however, but those of a soldier on the brink of dying for a cause you were so right to believe was worth dying for.
I fear we head into grave battle, Isabel. I have no misgivings about the cause in which I am engaged, and I am willing to lay down all the joy in my life—even the thought that I may see you again—that all men might be free.
The recollection of those few hours I spent in your company comes back to me daily. How briefly I knew you, and how strong is my will to remember every detail of our conversations of slavery and consequence, the awful verbs of my native tongue, your delicate frown over your stitching, and the way you would not look at me when we danced, shy bird.
I do not know if you want to hear such memories from a workingman like me. But the soldier’s life has made me reckless, and on the chance I will never see you again, I will say to you, Isabel, that if death takes me, I will return to you always in the lifting wind through the maples, in the fathomless deep of the lake, in every season and on every stranger’s face.
Dear Isabel, remember me, and that one man loved the upright soul in you.
Louis Pierre Pacquette
Bel shuddered as she finished the letter. The very earth seemed to have shifted around her, the balance of trees in the yard somehow lifted beyond their roots. She relished imagining the disappointed face of Mary Ruth Cross, the eyebrows slamming down from the blond hairline as Bel whispered to her of the letter—and surely Louis would win his own medals for bravery; surely he would come back from the war so decorated that one day her parents could not refuse him. Mary Ruth’s brother had already ascended from private to sergeant. Surely the worthy Canadian might at least make colonel.
The steps of someone approaching interrupted Bel’s reverie. It was her father going to get his mail. She shoved the paper back in its envelope, stowing it in the folds of her dress. Making herself very small and very quiet, she listened to the gazette rustle as he picked it up and walked back across the room.
His shadow stopped outside the blue curtain.
“Hidden like a fairy queen in her flower. How’s my brave Titania this morning?” he greeted her, peeking through the split in the fabric. In the clean, gauzy light between the curtain and the window, his face looked animal-like and large. Bel shrank back.
“Oh, she doesn’t want to be disturbed, does she?” He laughed, showing his teeth.
“I was just thinking of spring,” Bel said.
“Don’t believe this mad wind.” He looked out the glass. “We’ll be buried under six inches of snow by the end of the week.”
Bel forced herself to smile. “Of course, you’re right, Papa. I was just wondering what spring might be like in Washington. I hear they have marvelous gardens there.”
He let the curtains fall back and spoke to her from beyond the blue waterfall of cloth. “Gardens and Lee’s army on the verge of invading. Not the spring I want my daughter to see,” he concluded, and strode off, slapping the rolled gazette against his hand.
Bel leaned back with a sigh. The quickest way to get rid of her father was to talk of Washington. How she truly wished to go to that city, but she could wait. Louis’s words told her she could wait, and he would not forget her. She hid the letter in her dress, deciding to sneak it to her bedroom, where she could read it again without disruption.
Walking across the sunny drawing room to the oak staircase, Bel was stirred to a grandeur she had never before experienced, a princess on the verge of becoming queen. Her tender ray of affection for her cousin was suddenly eclipsed by a larger light she didn’t dare to say was love. Step by step, up the circling stair, she let her inner eye run over the memorized features of Louis, his proud, intent nose and black hair, his straight shoulders, and those rough hands that touched book pages as if they were the finest silk.
So absorbed was Bel in this pleasant exercise that she didn’t see her mother coming down the flight. A dreamy procession of the letter’s promises ran through her mind, and it was not until she recognized her mother’s slippered feet on the stair in front of her that she looked up.
“Who gave that to you?” Faustina’s voice rang out, harsh and aggrieved. Bel’s hands closed around the hidden letter.
“Gave what?” she asked. Her mother loomed like a storm cloud, her creamy shirtwaist blocking Bel�
�s way up the stair.
“This,” Faustina said, reaching forward to grip the swan locket Bel had forgotten to stow back beneath her dress. Faustina’s face had frozen into a mask, her features perfect but her eyes like a stranger’s behind them.
“I found it,” Bel said, stepping aside as the hands stretched toward her neck.
It was a motion she blamed afterward on the mute disobedience of her body, its unwillingness to be crushed. Later, when Bel replayed the moment, she imagined herself still instead of swaying, the pain of her own skin and bones taking the blows. Yet in that one betraying instant, her mother lost her balance and tumbled forward down the stairs. She fell with the stiffness of a trunk pushed down the rapids of a creek, both ends jarred and broken but the center slow, weighted with its own fixity. Faustina’s hands battered against the banister as Bel ran after her, the bird locket banging against her breastbone, her hair falling across her shoulders, still cool from the garden.
“Mother,” she cried, unbelieving. Faustina’s legs splayed on the floor like the feet of the chickens Grete brought from the butcher. Bel crouched down to rearrange the upthrust knees to a ladylike position, smoothing the gray skirt over them. Her mother groaned.
“I’m sorry.” Bel looked into Faustina’s face. A jagged cut crossed her right cheek, and bruises were swelling along the corner of her mouth. Faustina’s eyes fluttered rapidly and she fainted.
“Mother,” Bel screamed, thinking worse. She heard the quick step of her father on the landing.
“What happened here?”
Bel turned her head with the slowness of years to see Daniel coming down the stairs, his stiff pant legs bent at the knees, polished shoes shining. His voice was heavy with fear and anticipation, as if every time he descended the spiraling heart of Greenwood, he expected such a scene: Bel leaning over her fallen mother, Faustina’s body deflated like a bellows, the clatter of his own arrival, too late to save them. It wasn’t me, she wanted to shout, but nothing emerged from her open mouth. The front door, not fully latched after she came in from the garden, blew open with a bang. A warm, muddy wind entered the house, and she could hear the slushy clop of horses passing on the street outside, a coachman slapping the reins across their broad backs.