Gallant Bride

by Jane Peart

  No one took more than a spoonful or two of the delicate caramelized cream dessert, and soon afterwards, Aunt Van excused herself, followed by Mr. Meredith, who advised Malcolm that his physician had ordered him to rest each afternoon.

  Calling the butler over, John instructed him to serve coffee in the library and, rising, he said to Malcolm, “Let’s go where we can talk privately.”

  When the butler had brought in the coffee service on an oval silver tray, poured the rich, fragrant brew into shell-thin Dubarry china cups, then discreetly disappeared, John began, in his well modulated, reasonable tone of voice. “Before you see Jonathan, I thought there were several things we should discuss. Frances and I have brought the boy up with our own two children, Ellen and Norvell, and love him equally. He is enrolled in Milford Academy, a fine preparatory school, and I have already registered him as a potential student at Harvard. Since he is an intelligent child, quick to learn, and good at sports as well, I have no doubt he will be accepted.”

  As John talked, Malcolm was acutely aware of the chasm between them. Despite their aristocratic roots, they now lived in different worlds—worlds that might as well be continents apart. Again, Malcolm felt the bitter gall of defeat—one more in the string of defeats he had experienced over the past ten years.

  “So now that we understand each other,” John was saying, “shall we drive out to the country? Frances has told Jonathan you’re coming.”

  They maintained a stiff silence on the ride through the tranquil, New England countryside, which looked for all the world, Malcolm thought, exactly like one of the popular Currier & Ives prints. John’s handsome landau was a deep maroon with gold trim, drawn by a high-spirited coal black horse. Malcolm knew good horseflesh, and this was one of the finest he had seen. Again, the goad of bitter resentment pricked painfully.

  When they arrived, he saw that John’s home was a “new” Victorian-style, three-story mansion, with veranda encircling the lower floor, and eaves and peaked roofs rising magnificently against the sky. The lawn was elaborately landscaped, with an iron stag in the center of the circular drive and manicured flowerbeds edging the smooth front lawn.

  Frances Meredith met them at the door. She was tall and slim, with thé same aloof, correct manner as Aunt Vanessa. Her fine features were set off by a lovely complexion, and her keen blue eyes were coolly appraising. As he bowed over the hand she extended, Malcolm sensed that she knew all about him and why he had come, and that she did not approve of either.

  “I’ll get Jonathan,” she said after John made the introductions. “He’s in the playroom upstairs with Ellen and Norvie.” She turned and went swiftly up the winding, dark oak staircase, her pleated train swishing on the steps.

  “Come. We’ll wait in the front room.” John led the way into a large, cheerful room, where a bright fire crackled in the wide fireplace.

  Malcolm followed, looking about him with curiosity, noting the distinct difference between this house and the town house. Here, all was spacious and bright, with a plump, inviting sofa and comfortable chairs covered in a colorful fabric. There were pictures on the wall, and a spinet piano in one corner; bookshelves crammed with books, and windows all along one side of the room looking out on a tree-studded expanse of yard. It was a room that promised warm, congenial gatherings—a homey, happy place where children would be as welcome as adults.

  This is where Jonathan was growing up, Malcolm realized, with a kind of painful relinquishment. Before he had even seen his son, Malcolm knew he could not take him away. What would Montclair seem like to someone who had lived here?

  Lost in his own melancholy thoughts, Malcolm was unaware of anything else until he heard John say, “Come in, Jonathan.”

  Malcolm was attacked with a terrible fear, an emotion close to the panic he had once or twice experienced in battle. And then the slim, handsome boy entered, and Malcolm felt himself go weak with tenderness.

  “Jonathan!” Malcolm spoke his name through stiff lips. With something like shock, he saw his own face at ten, looking back at him. But the eyes—oh, those eyes—were his mother’s. Jonathan had Rose’s enormous, dark eyes.

  “Come in, Jonathan, and say ‘hello’to your father,” John coached as the boy looked at him anxiously.

  Malcolm felt the drumbeat in his temple signaling the onset of one of the blinding headaches he had fallen prey to since his prison days. The throb became insistently sharper, bringing the accompanying blurring of vision, the agony of even the slightest turning of his head.

  Somehow, the hour passed in an unreal spinning of time. John had considerately left him alone with Jonathan for a short period of time, but Malcolm had been too overcome to talk naturally or easily to his own son.

  Gripped by the pain in his head and the waves of nausea, he declined Frances’s invitation to stay for supper, but valiantly met the Meredith children—a pretty, shy little girl and a sturdy, tousle-headed boy. Then, refusing John’s offer to drive him back into Milford, they looked up schedules instead, and John took him to the small train station to board an evening train back to Boston.

  Malcolm slumped into the seat in the first compartment he stumbled into, and could scarcely remembered arriving at the huge, hollow Boston terminal, hiring a hack to his hotel, and falling into bed.

  If anticipation of the trip to Massachusetts had been daunting, Malcolm’s trip back to Virginia was worse. Depression replaced dread; remorse, anxiety, for the whole experience had confirmed his worst forebodings.

  Malcolm delayed as long as possible his arrival in Montclair, staying overnight in Richmond, then forcing himself to travel on to Williamsburg for a visit to his Barnwell relatives, whom he had not seen since he had returned from California.

  At the Mayfield train depot, when Malcolm arrived from Williamsburg, he spotted one of the black men, a sharecropper on Montrose land, loading supplies onto his wagon, and he hitched a ride with him out to Montclair.

  As they came up the winding drive to the house, the whole disastrous journey hit in all its humiliating detail.

  Blythe wasn’t there when he walked into the house, a fact for which Malcolm was immensely grateful. He didn’t want to face her right away with the news that he had not brought Jonathan with him. She had seemed so pitifully pleased with the idea. Poor thing. She was hardly more than a child herself, he thought ruefully. No doubt she had looked forward to having someone nearer her own age in the house—this house that was daily becoming more and more a mausoleum!

  It was bad enough to have to tell his mother, who had thought it would be wonderful for Malcolm to have his son with him … and his father, who still lived with the impossible dream that the Montrose family would resume its proper position in the county … as impossible as that the South would rise again, he thought.

  It had struck Malcolm anew as he had traveled through the small Southern towns outside Washington, how far from fulfillment that dream was for anyone who held it. All of these towns had the same downtrodden, battle-scarred look as Mayfield. There were no signs anywhere of pulling out of the war-imposed, impoverished state.

  Malcolm came down the stairway after a long, wearying talk with his parents. Learning of their plans to move to Savannah, he felt bowed and burdened with all that meant—the full responsibility of restoring Montclair, of resurrecting its dying farmland, of life alone with a child bride with whom he had little or nothing in common.

  He thought of Rose, and his inconsolable loneliness surged within, filling him with grief and regret. Rose, with her keen mind, her sparkling wit, her intelligence and beauty.

  He banged his fist on the post of the banister as he reached the last step and walked out onto the porch, longing for some fresh air to clear his mind.

  As he stepped outside, he saw Blythe coming up the drive. In the too-short riding skirt, her long hair swinging in braids, she looked about twelve years of age, and again Malcolm was wrenched with the improbability of his situation, his farcical marriage.

&
nbsp; When she saw him, she broke into a run, calling his name. “Malcolm! Malcolm! Pm so glad you’ve come! Did you bring Jonathan?”

  Later, he knew he had been unnecessarily harsh. He had answered her questions with cold abruptness and was ashamed when her eyes filled with tears.

  But he couldn’t handle her disappointment, her hurt. He had his own to deal with. He walked away from her and went into the library, shutting and locking the door behind him. He leaned against it, every muscle tense, every nerve twitching, biting his lip so as not to let the moan of despair emerge from his bruised and broken heart.

  In the direct line of his vision stood the glass-fronted cabinet, some of its diamond-shaped panes smashed by the rifle butts of the Yankees who had raided Montclair. Its lock hung loose. Here, his father kept a few bottles of rare old brandy that had somehow escaped the horde of foragers who had emptied the wine cellar years before.

  Malcolm stood for a long time staring at the cabinet, feeling the temptation for oblivion rising within him. Malcolm, who had never had more than an occasional glass of wine in a toast or champagne at a wedding, now felt the strong urge to lose himself in the bottle of amber liquid. He had had no taste for the raw whiskey swilled by the miners in the gold towns of the West, nor for the bourbon and branch sipped by his fellow card-players on the ship coming from California. But now the need to blot out the pain and emptiness stirred, becoming ever more demanding. He stood, fists clenched, hoping it would leave.

  Then, impatiently, he walked across the room, yanked open the cabinet doors, reached in, brought out the decanter and removed the stopper.

  chapter

  19

  AUTUMN CAME to Virginia in a blaze of brilliant color, turning the woods around Montclair into a glorious patchwork of russet, crimson and gold against the dark green background of cedars and spruce.

  But in spite of the beautiful Indian summer, a pervasive melancholy persisted at Montclair. Ever since Malcolm had returned from his trip, he had become more reclusive, taking long solitary walks or shutting himself away in the library.

  For Blythe, who loved people and had a natural capacity for gaiety and happiness and a longing to share it, this isolation was hard to bear. Helping Sara get ready for her move to Savannah came as a welcome diversion.

  Mr. and Mrs. Montrose were to leave at the beginning of October while it was still warm so that Sara would not have to travel in inclement weather. Southern trains were still running unpredictably, with long delays at some stations, so every provision for her comfort along the way had to be arranged beforehand.

  Malcolm would accompany his parents as far as Richmond, see them safely on the train, make sure their accommodations were adequate and that they would receive the best service available.

  Blythe’s daily rides with Rod had come to an end at the return of the students to Cameron Hall for the new term. If it had not been for Sara’s constant demands, Blythe would have missed those afternoons even more because they had been the happiest she had known since coming to Virginia.

  Blythe’s days became busy assisting Sara with her preparations. Every item to take or leave was debated endlessly before a decision was made.

  In this, Blythe proved indispensable. She listened with attention to all Sara’s instructions, ran up and down stairs dozens of times every day to carry them out herself or to supervise some task. If Sara wanted something unpacked that had already been packed, Blythe complied without complaint, though she often had to bite her tongue to hold back a comment. Sara’s nervousness was understandable, Blythe felt. After all, Montclair had been her home for thirty-five years.

  Finally the day of their departure came. After Malcolm carried her out to the carriage for the first lap of their journey to Williamsburg, Sara called to Blythe, “Come here for a minute, child!” She beckoned her close.

  Blythe leaned over, catching the scent of lilacs that always surrounded Sara like a delicate whisper. Framed by the shirred pink chiffon lining of her bonnet, Sara’s complexion had taken on a youthful glow, and her eyes seemed again the deep violet-blue of the woman in her portrait.

  “Take care of my darling Malcolm, won’t you?” she asked. “I have lost my two other sons, and somehow I feel I have lost Malcolm, too. But maybe … maybe there is still a chance…. No matter how things look, there is always hope. Dear Rose taught me that. Perhaps I shouldn’t mention that name, but I’ve always felt Rose was sent to give us all something, and I’ve come to believe her death that seemed so senseless had meaning, after all. She left her mark on all of us. So don’t dwell in the past, Blythe, and don’t let Malcolm do so, either.”

  Tears sparkled for a moment in Sara’s eyes, making them glisten like sapphires. “It can’t all have been for nothing, can it? The deaths … all the loss—” She touched Blythe’s cheek briefly with one silk-gloved hand. “Good-bye, my dear, take care of yourself … and try to be happy.”

  Malcolm handed Blythe a ring of keys. “Have Lonnie stay overnight if you don’t wish to be alone,” he suggested. “I should be back within the week. After I see Mama and Father safely aboard the train, I may visit with some friends in Richmond … I can’t be sure—”

  From within the carriage, Sara’s voice called, interrupting whatever else Malcolm was about to say. “Blythe, be sure Suzie and Cora come when they’re supposed to and turn out my rooms. I want everything washed and cleaned thoroughly, then the furniture covered with dust cloths and my linens packed away in lavender so that they’ll be fresh when I come back in the spring.”

  “Of course, I will!” Blythe replied over the lump in her throat.

  For all the cheerful reassurances they had all made about Sara’s return in the spring, Blythe felt sure none of them really believed it. She was so fragile, her health so precarious.

  His mother’s optimistic words seemed to grieve Malcolm. His expression underwent a change, then he spoke to Blythe briskly, “I’m sure you can take care of things, so we’d best be off.” Again he seemed to hesitate as if there were something more he might say.

  Blythe yearned to cling to Malcolm, beg him not to be gone too long. She had assured him that she would not be afraid to remain by herself for the days Malcolm would be away, and they had all taken her at her word. But now that the moment had come, Blythe felt somewhat shaken by the idea.

  Malcolm did not linger but hurried down the veranda steps and into the waiting carriage. Blythe moved to the edge of the porch, waving and watching as the carriage finally disappeared around the bend of the drive.

  At length, she turned and re-entered the house, her footsteps echoing hollowly on the bare floor. She stopped for a minute as the silence of the empty house dropped over her like a heavy cloak.

  She stood quite still. Then, as if drawn by an unseen magnet, she turned and walked slowly down the hall to the downstairs suite known as the Master Wing, traditionally the rooms occupied by the Master of Montclair and his bride.

  She had seen these rooms from outside and knew they were the ones Malcolm and Rose had shared. The windows were boarded up, and the inside doors never opened.

  Her heart hammering, Blythe got out the ring of keys Malcolm had given her and, one by one, tried them in the lock. Finally, one gave a little, and she felt the knob turn under her clammy hand.

  With a little shiver, she pushed the door open, inadvertently looking over her shoulder as if someone might see and try to stop her. The door creaked a little from long disuse as Blythe stepped into the darkened interior. A stale, acrid odor of smoke hung in the air. She moved into the center of the room, looking about her, half in awe, half in horror. It looked as if no one had touched a thing since the night of the disastrous fire that had taken Rose’s life.

  The bed curtains hung in charred strips from the blackened bedposts, the wallpaper’s faded rose pattern was scorched and peeling, and no light at all seeped in through the boarded-up windows.

  A slow sick feeling swept over Blythe, and her knees felt as if they wouldn
’t support her a moment longer. Cold perspiration beaded her forehead; a wave of nausea threatened to overtake her. She wiped her hands on her skirt, momentarily paralyzed, afraid she might faint.

  The room was filled with frightening shadows, and an oppressive stillness shrouded the place. With a half-stifled scream, Blythe turned and stumbled out of the room.

  chapter

  20

  THE NEXT MORNING, Blythe awoke to the sound of the soft voices of the Negro women under her open window as they arrived for work. She remembered with a start that she had asked them to come early to clean and straighten Sara’s suite. As she got up and dressed, she felt stiff and unrested. She had not slept well. The house seemed full of strange noises and every time she drifted off, something would jolt her wide awake.

  After starting the women on their task, Blythe went downstairs to make some coffee. They finished, then left at noon, and Blythe found herself alone again and dreading the oncoming night.

  “How foolish!” she scolded herself and decided to turn her attention to a project she had been planning to undertake for some time, that of repairing some of the chair coverings in the small sitting room.

  The beautiful crewel work was frayed and faded against the beige linen background. She had learned embroidery at the convent in Sacramento. In fact, Sister Helena had commended her needlework highly and had taught her the more intricate stitches. Blythe hoped she could remember enough to repair this lovely stitchery.

  She recognized some of the symbols—pears, for divine love; the lily, for virtue; cherries, sweetness of character; the tulip, for the resurrection; and the carnation, for pure love.

  Concentrating on her needlework, her mind wandered freely. She missed Malcolm’s presence although he took little notice of her. She even missed Sara and the routine of seeing to an invalid’s needs. At least, she had felt needed then. And, most of all, she realized she missed the easy companionship of her rides with Rod Cameron.