Libbie

by Judy Alter

Of course, I was careful. There was a girl at the school named Fanny Fifeld whose dresses were always too bright, her plaids too loud, her ruffles too much. Even, as I whispered to Nettie Humphrey, still my best friend, the curls on her head were too tight. The result was, as Nettie once suggested, "ostentatious." I was so impressed by Nettie's big word that I looked it up in the dictionary and soon agreed with her—"ostentatious" was the word for Fanny Fifeld. I, on the other hand, avoided ostentation, and yet I was still very proud of my clothes. And now they were about to burn up.

  "We shall lose all the lessons," Mr. Boyd worried aloud behind me, wringing his hands. "How shall we ever make sense out of the school year if everything burns?"

  "The lessons!" scoffed Miss Taylor. "We may lose the whole building!"

  These grim possibilities hadn't occurred to me at all, and I watched with much more interest and some uncertain feeling while the volunteer fire fighters went about their work. I couldn't keep my mind from toying with the thought of a long, enforced vacation.

  In the end the school was saved, though portions of it were badly damaged, notably the kitchen, where the fire had started, and a large portion of the sleeping quarters on the third floor, for the flames had shot right up a stairwell. It wasn't enough to keep us out of school, and Mr. Boyd found a way to make sense of the school year in spite of some scorched and water-damaged books.

  But less than three weeks later Humphrey House burned, nearly to the ground, and Papa lost many of his belongings. Papa and I were not close in the sense of confiding in each other, but I always knew that his affection for me was as strong as his ever-present grief over my mother. He came regularly and dutifully to the seminary to visit me, bringing with him whatever small gift he thought might please me—fresh fruit in season, chocolate candies, a tiny porcelain figure for my dressing table. Papa was always, I later decided, trying to tell me how much he loved me, but he was too reserved to be able to say it. Armstrong taught me a whole new lesson about men who could express their feelings—but, then, those feelings were far different.

  When the fire bell first rang and word went out that the hotel was on fire, I was in terror lest my father should be hurt or worse. Laura Noble and I were studying in the library—that infernal mathematics!—and I said breathlessly, "We must go, right away. I have to see that Papa is all right!"

  Being somewhat of a goody-goody, Laura said, "We can't go, Libbie. Mr. Boyd would never allow that."

  "Bother Mr. Boyd! I've got to see if my father is all right! Come with me if you want!"

  She didn't, though she peered after me as though torn between friendship and fear. I flew out the door—luckily it was spring and I could go without a shawl—and ran the few blocks to downtown Monroe, where the hotel was located.

  This time I was greeted by a much more fearsome sight—flames shooting out of every window, and roof timbers collapsing into the interior of the building. A large crowd had gathered, and I had no way of knowing where Papa was, except to push and struggle my way through the crowd.

  "Excuse me... pardon me, please... have you seen Judge Bacon?... Papa?" People moved this way and that, paying no attention to one frantic young girl, until at last I saw Papa standing on the edge of the crowd, watching gravely as the hotel burned.

  "Papa!" I threw myself into his open arms and hugged him tight. "I was so afraid for you."

  He stroked my hair in a gesture uncharacteristic of him. "Shhh. It's all right, Elizabeth. I wasn't even in the hotel. I was at the courthouse. I'm afraid I've lost all my papers and books, but luckily no one has been hurt so far."

  "Can you make sense of it?" I asked, thinking of Headmaster Boyd and his worry about making sense of the semester.

  "Sense of what?"

  "I don't know. The papers you've lost."

  "Yes, I think I can. Things could be worse. And thank you, Elizabeth. It's good to have you worry over me."

  I felt closer to him than I had since Mother died.

  * * *

  I guess Papa missed having someone worry over him more than I knew, for in my seventeenth year he married a Mrs. Rhoda Pitts, the widow of a minister from a nearby town. It was rather like Mother's funeral—Papa didn't tell me about the marriage until the ceremony had been performed. Then he came solemnly to the seminary, bringing with him my new stepmother.

  She was not as pretty as Mother had been, heavier with a somewhat round face and faded blue eyes that looked at the world through wire-rimmed spectacles. Her hair was a soft color, sort of a light brown trying to turn gray.

  "Child, this is your new mother," Papa said, with an amazing lack of tact.

  Unable to say a word, I stared. She held out her arms and said, "I hope we'll be close." Unwillingly, but not knowing what else to do, I went into her embrace. She smelled of lavender.

  I wanted to scream at Papa, demanding to know how he could let another woman take Mother's place. Instead, I asked, "What shall I call you?"

  " 'Stepmother' doesn't sound very cordial, does it? Would 'Mother' make you uncomfortable? Or 'Mama'?"

  We settled on "Mama," since I had called my own mother by the more formal term, "Mother."

  "We've opened the house," he said. "It will naturally take some work since it's stood closed up so long, but we hope to be in it within a few weeks. It will be good to be in our house again."

  I wanted to scream. It would always have been good to be in our house, and he didn't need a new wife to make that possible. I would have taken care of him, willingly, happily, though I guess I'd never thought to say that to him. Still, he made it sound as though opening the house again was possible only because he'd married. "I'll stay here until the end of the term," I said without emotion.

  * * *

  I moved back to the house on Monroe Street in the summer of my seventeenth year. Between my stepmother and me there was a frosty distance, made cool by my obstinate refusal to accept her. She tried everything, from baking my favorite chocolate cake to surprising me with new gowns, but I remained distant, unwilling to see someone else in my mother's role. I knew I hurt her feelings—sometimes I would catch her staring at me with a sadly pensive look—but I was selfishly uncaring. Neither she nor Papa had any idea how displaced I felt, like an intruder in my own home. When Mother lived, it had been my home, too, and it had been filled with singing. My stepmother never sang except hymns, off-key, in church.

  By then I had begun to notice the young men of Monroe, and they me. There was one young man by the name of Murphy, a southerner visiting relatives in Monroe, whom I thought particularly charming. When the crowd gathered at one house or another to sing and tell stories—Papa would not allow me to go where there was dancing—Lane Murphy was always among them, and he always had a special word for me.

  "Miss Libbie, you're looking charming tonight."

  My first reaction, being a practical midwestern girl, was to say, "Oh, pshaw!" But I learned to say, with great delicacy, "Why, thank you, Lane. It's such a pleasure to have you here."

  "Libbie, I declare, Lane Murphy has a case on you," Nettie said one day as we sat in my bedroom, each of us hard at work fashioning ribbon trims for new dresses. Nettie, whose tallness, large frame, and pale coloring betrayed a Scandinavian ancestor somewhere, had no beaux, and I thought I detected a hint of jealousy in her tone.

  "Nonsense, Nettie. He's just being polite. You know how those southerners are." I laughed.

  "No," she said, "how are they?"

  "Well," I answered, "polite. That's how they are."

  But I toyed with the idea of Lane Murphy having a crush on me, and let my imagination run until I saw myself as mistress of a fine southern plantation, waited upon hand and foot by courteous and charming black slaves who were a vast improvement over Betsy and her sometimes caustic tongue.

  Lane and I never managed a moment alone—Papa would not allow it—so our moments of tenderness were few. But he often greeted me by kissing my hand—a gesture far beyond the Monroe boys—and once he plan
ted a gentle kiss upon my forehead, an act that sent a thrill through me. "You must come south with me," he would murmur, "and see how life is really lived." I was much impressed, until I learned after his departure that he said the same thing to every third female in Monroe.

  There were other young men who intrigued me—Conway Noble, the brother of my friend Laura, for one. Conway was known for his daring—he'd once been in a fistfight in Ann Arbor, over a girl, or so I'd heard, and I thought it a terribly romantic story. And the summer I was eighteen, a new young minister came to the Methodist church, a Mr. Dutton, who paid serious attention to me until Papa forbade him to come to the house again. "He's far too old to be courting a girl your age," Papa said decisively, and though I had no particular interest in Mr. Dutton, I resented Papa making that decision. Besides, I knew that Papa frowned on a Methodist, since we were staunch Presbyterians. It made little difference to me.

  In the spring of 1862 I finished school, at long last, with a great sigh of relief. But there it was. I was out of school, a young lady launched into the world with nary a thing to do with my time, except sew and paint and play the piano and sing in the church choir and, of course, go to parties. At first I reveled in my new life, treating each party as a once-in-a-lifetime chance.

  We were at war by then. At first life seemed to go on as usual. I heard Papa talk about the war, of course, in tones of despair, and I knew that each day he walked to the telegraph office to read the list of wounded and dead. But few from Monroe were affected, and the ranks of young men seemed not diminished at all. But then we began to see soldiers on the streets, men in the proud uniform of the Michigan troops, and the wounded—young men who walked with crutches, or a young man who had lost a leg—I remember him yet. And the son of one of Papa's best colleagues was killed, his body sent home in a box. We all went solemnly to the funeral, and Papa was somber and quiet for days. I began to see that this war was going to reach out its tentacles of misery to all of us.

  And I began also to hear bits of talk about Armstrong Custer. He had, as he promised, come to the seminary twice after my runaway escapade to check on me. But the Boyds frowned on his visits, and there was an awkward stiffness between us in that setting, so I wasn't surprised when I saw no more of him. The last thing he'd said to me was, "Remember about being a general's wife."

  But now he was the talk of Monroe, the town's first officer in the regular army and the first to be under fire. The whole town knew that he had served with McClellan at Antietam and distinguished himself. The stories were probably exaggerated by the time they filtered down to the hometown folks, but it was said that McClellan had praised him for being always in the midst of the heaviest fighting and keeping a clear head. He was, so I'd heard, both reckless and gallant.

  The town also buzzed with talk of his record at West Point—less than distinguished. He'd graduated at the very bottom of his class of thirty-four. I, who was not an outstanding student, could understand poor grades, but to be at the last of the class? It made me shudder. And there were the rumors of brushes with expulsion, especially close to graduation when he was supposed to have encouraged some kind of fight rather than stopped it, which was his duty. What kind of a man was this Custer?

  I'd also heard that he was a ladies' man, most popular with all the girls, from the daughters of bankers and merchants to the farm girls.

  "They say," Nettie told me one day, "that he's as brave as can be, charges right into every fight, almost not mortal."

  "Pshaw!" I said. "Of course he's mortal. I imagine he puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like any other man."

  Nettie was shocked.

  Chapter 2

  "I believe your promotion has been rapid," I said, looking downward.

  "I have been very fortunate," he answered. Then, under his breath, he muttered, "Custer's Luck."

  It was Thanksgiving of 1862, he was home on leave, and we were introduced at a party given by Headmaster Boyd and his wife. Conway Noble had escorted me to the party, but then he'd said something silly that offended me—I think it was about my looking like my stepmother—and I'd walked away in a huff.

  "Mrs. Boyd," I said, "who is that officer standing over there?" I knew perfectly well that it was Custer—he still had those long blond curls—but I doubted that he would know me, and I thought to fool him by being introduced.

  "Libbie, dear, you've heard of our local hero, Captain Custer," she gushed. "Captain, Miss Libbie Bacon."

  The man who stood in front of me looked neither heroic nor diabolic. He was fairly tall, well built, of solid stature, with strong features and deep, deep blue eyes, so intense they almost burned. And there it was, that long golden hair hanging to his shoulders and below in lovely curls. He wore the blue uniform of the Union and wore it proudly, his very presence giving off electricity.

  "A pleasure," he said formally, bowing low over my hand as Mrs. Boyd beamed. But those blue eyes, looking up at me, were laughing, and as soon as the headmaster's wife was out of earshot, he said softly, "I've been watching you. You survived school, didn't you?"

  "Barely," I said lightly, "and now I'm a lady of leisure, trying to decide what to do. I see you're well on your way to becoming a general and a hero."

  He just smiled enigmatically, as though he knew a secret.

  "How nice," I said after an awkward moment, "that you could be home on leave. Will you stay throughout the holidays?"

  "Probably," he said wryly. "They've seen fit to retire McClellan, so I'm waiting new orders. I was his aide."

  "Your family must be grateful to have you home.... I don't believe I know them," I said.

  "You wouldn't," he replied. "My parents have only recently moved to Monroe, to be near my sister and her family. They... well, they don't move in the same circles you do."

  Were his eyes twinkling as he said that? I was sure I heard something veiled in his tone. "And what circles might that be?" I asked archly.

  "Presbyterian," he replied firmly.

  I smiled in spite of myself, but then said quickly, "I must find Conway Noble."

  "Who's that? The fellow you were just talking to? He's over there by the punch bowl, pouting." He nodded his head toward the punch bowl, and his hair fell to one side as he did so. Offering me his arm, he escorted me formally to where Conway stood, then bowing slightly, backed away.

  There was quite a crowd gathered in the reception area of the seminary, a fairly drab room that had been brightened with festooned ribbons to make it look gay enough for a party. Papa was talking seriously with Mayor Crenshaw, and Mama was in the midst of a group of older women. My crowd of friends stood around the punch bowl, which held only cider. Papa would never have allowed me to attend a party where alcohol was served, and the Boyds were too conscious of their image as schoolteachers to liven up their punch.

  "There she is!" A deep voice boomed in my ear, and when I turned, I faced Walter Ashburn, a lawyer and contemporary of my father's. "Prettiest girl in Monroe," he boomed, to my everlasting embarrassment. "Give me a holiday kiss," and with that he put an arm around my shoulders and pulled me toward him. There may not have been alcohol in the punch, but Mr. Ashburn had found some somewhere—or drank it before he came to the party.

  I pulled away, laughing to be polite, but seething inside. "Why, Mr. Ashburn," I protested, "what would your wife say?"

  "She won't know," he said, now dropping his voice to a whisper.

  "My papa is standing across the room, and he'll know," I said. But when I looked, Papa's back was turned.

  Mr. Ashburn pulled me toward him again, and without hesitation I drove the heel of my shoe down hard on the top of his foot. I heard a soft "Aagh!" as I walked deliberately away from him.

  Armstrong stood watching from one side of the room, his arms folded, a grin on his face. "Well done," he said. "I'd have come to your rescue if it had appeared I was needed. But you seem quite capable yourself."

  "Thank you," I said wryly and went in search of Papa to su
ggest that it was time to leave. I had little idea what impact that brief meeting with my childhood savior would have on my life nor the upheaval it would cause in the Bacon household.

  * * *

  The days from Thanksgiving to Christmas were filled with parties in Monroe. Mama hinted that it was time that I thought about marrying, and I wanted to assure her that I thought about it frequently but so far with no results. Papa occasionally frowned at me and said that my generation ought to be more conscious of the national crisis. But we were young and happy and the war was far away, though some of its officers often seemed close at hand.

  Armstrong Custer appeared at almost every party I attended, and often I would find him at my elbow. "May I get you a glass of punch?" or "You're looking particularly lovely tonight, Miss Libbie." But then I'd see him offering Nettie punch or complimenting Laura or smiling down into the eyes of this girl and that.

  The next time he told me how lovely I looked, I said archly, "Save your compliments for the others, Captain. I don't wish to be included in your admiring throngs."

  "Oh, but Miss Libbie, you're the most important," he said, and those blue eyes looking into mine caused my heart to jump. The man was, I decided, devilishly attractive but unreliable.

  * * *

  Every year we looked forward to a party given by a family named Oldman. The Oldmans lived in a large house, much like our own, but farther out on Monroe Street. They were the parents of three unmarried daughters, and we used to joke that they hoped to marry off a daughter a year by giving their annual ball, but so far it had been unsuccessful—the two daughters who were older than I were still single. They were pleasant girls and not ugly, but they had no spark of personality, no liveliness, and I think by then they'd begun to lose confidence.

  The night of the party was cold and snowy, and Papa bundled Mama and me under great thick robes for the short buggy ride from home. I protested that the heavy buffalo robe would crush my new dress of corded ottoman, but Papa responded that a crushed dress was better than pneumonia.