by Lynn Austin
“He’s hateful toward everyone, including me. He’s barely civil to his own mother.” She lifted the shattered mirror from her lap, gazing at her multiple reflections. Mr. Chandler gently took it away from her and set it on the step.
“I would hate for you to cut yourself,” he said.
“That mirror was a present from my father . . . and now it’s broken.” She was afraid she might cry. After everything else she had endured, was she going to cry now, over a silly mirror?
“I’m so sorry,” Mr. Chandler said.
“Why? It wasn’t your fault.”
She heard him take a deep breath and slowly let it out. “What is your relationship to Mr. Blake? . . . If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Our families have known each other for ages. Harrison was my brother’s best friend. They were together when Harrison was wounded and Samuel was killed. Mrs. Blake was here all alone with him, so I agreed to stay and keep her company—well, it was my mother’s idea really. Heaven knows Harrison isn’t good company for anyone.”
“I thought maybe you were his fiancée.”
“Never! Why would you think that?”
“You seem to care about him. You knew him well enough to figure out what he was about to do, and you cared enough to stop him.”
“I couldn’t stand by and let him die. His mother would never get over it. She’s nearly lost all hope as it is. She’s starting to revive now that she has servants again and me for company, but his suicide would kill her.”
“How about your own family? Are they doing all right? Your mother never came to my office for help. I was certain she would after advising Mrs. Blake to work with me.”
“My brother Daniel is home now. He’s the one who’s running the plantation. He may have survived the war, but he hasn’t recovered from it any more than Harrison has, if you know what I mean.”
“I’m not sure any of us will ever recover.”
“My family is slightly better off than the Blakes, because two of our servants agreed to stay with us. And my mother is a very strong woman. She’s determined to have her life back the same as it used to be—except for my father and brother, of course. I haven’t been able to convince her that our lives can’t possibly be the same. We’ll never get back what we lost.” Josephine halted, embarrassed to be baring her soul to this stranger—and a Yankee at that. What had gotten into her? “I’m sorry. I’m keeping you from your work.” She started to lift his jacket from around her shoulders, but he stopped her.
“Please, keep it for a while longer. And I’m not in a hurry to start working. I want to make sure you’re all right first.” She wasn’t. She was trembling all over, and she wondered if she would ever stop.
“There was so much blood!” she said with a shiver. “I can’t imagine being desperate enough to do that. I’ll never forget the look on Harrison’s face when he was lifting the razor—” To her horror, Josephine started to cry. Mr. Chandler slid closer to her and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. His embrace was so comforting that Josephine forgot who he was for a moment and leaned against him, grateful for someone to hold on to, someone who would listen to her and care about her.
“After everything that Harrison has been through,” she wept, “all the bloodshed he’s seen, you would think life would be precious to him. That he’d consider himself fortunate to be alive at all. Instead, he wants to die.”
“Unless you’ve been to war, Miss Weatherly, you can’t understand what men like Harrison and your brother have really been through and how it changed them.” He spoke quietly, gently, and she felt the strength in his arm as if he were holding her together. “After a while you see so much death that you become numb to it. You start to realize how close we are to dying every single moment of the day. We’re just a heartbeat or a bullet away from it. In war you face death day after day, watching your friends die, facing it yourself, and you stop fearing it. It seems inevitable. You become a walking dead man.”
“Harrison watched my brother die. Samuel was his best friend.”
“We all watched our friends die. In one battle right here in Virginia, they ordered us to attack an enemy entrenchment at the top of a hill. One squadron after another had to run straight into enemy fire, and they got mowed down like hay. Men I had marched with and lived with and laughed with lay on that hill, dead, dying, screaming in agony. But as fast as they fell, the commander simply ordered the next squad to charge up the hill right on top of them. I watched five thousand men fall in twenty minutes. I was lined up with my squad, waiting for my turn, waiting for them to order me to die next, and it seemed so inevitable that I simply didn’t care.”
He paused, and when he didn’t continue right away, Josephine looked up at him. Tears shone in his eyes.
“Someone finally saw the stupidity of it and called a halt to the slaughter. But I can understand why your friend would stop caring whether he lived or died. Death is nothing. It’s an ordinary, daily occurrence during wartime. A razor across your wrist is nothing after what he faced.”
“I don’t know how to help him. How do I get him to move forward?”
“He never will as long as he remains bitter. Bitterness is one of the deadliest emotions we ever feel. You can’t look forward when you’re bitter, only backward—thinking about what you’ve lost, stuck in the past, despairing because it’s gone. In the end, it devours all hope.”
He was describing how Josephine felt about her unanswered prayers: bitter. And she suddenly remembered that she was talking to her enemy. She shouldn’t be sitting here alone with him. It wasn’t proper. Josephine sat up straight and slid out of his embrace, shrugging off his jacket. “What are you even doing here in Virginia, Mr. Chandler? Don’t you have a home and a family up north somewhere?”
“When I first returned home from the war, I felt the same bitterness that Mr. Blake does and—”
“I doubt that very much! You were on the winning side.”
“Nobody wins a war, Miss Weatherly. We all lose in one way or another. I lost my family, the girl I hoped to marry, my self-respect . . . but I don’t want to bore you with my story.”
“No, please. I would like to hear how much you think you lost.”
“Well,” he said with a sigh, “my family belongs to the Society of Friends—we’re Quakers. I was raised in that faith and became deeply involved in the abolition movement. I couldn’t understand how people could own someone, like a possession. I had read Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and we all heard the terrible stories about slavery in the South. My faith teaches that it’s wrong and inconsistent with Christianity to live a life of wealth and ease while making others suffer and toil. We also believe that God is greatly displeased by slavery.”
“My father was always kind and fair to our slaves. He never whipped or mistreated anyone.” She pulled his handkerchief off her finger and handed it back to him.
“But he owned people, Miss Weatherly. Human beings. I just didn’t understand that, and I hated Southerners for it.”
“Did you even know any of us?”
“No, of course not. Did you know any Yankees when you started hating us?”
“We had good reason to hate you. Your army invaded our sovereign nation and destroyed our land.”
He held up his hands for peace, briefly waving his handkerchief as if in surrender. “I understand. I’m sorry.” He paused for a moment. “Quakers teach nonviolence. We’re pacifists—or at least we’re supposed to be. But I wanted to fight. Other men my age were putting on uniforms and learning how to fire weapons and marching off to war, and they made it seem so manly and courageous. I could have claimed conscientious objector status and become a noncombatant when I was drafted, but I didn’t want to. I told my father my motive was to help set the slaves free. He said I was fooling myself, and I was. In truth, I was twenty years old and I wanted to travel and fight like everyone else my age and earn glory. As you can imagine, my family was horrified. The woman I hoped to marry wanted nothing m
ore to do with me.”
“Was it worth it? Was killing us everything you hoped it would be?”
“It was hell,” he said, shaking his head. “Or the next closest thing to it. The first time I went into battle and had to aim my rifle at another man and pull the trigger, I couldn’t do it. I knew I had made a huge mistake. But I had to shoot. I had to kill or be killed. If I didn’t participate but I somehow managed to live, I’d be branded a coward. If I walked away, I’d be shot as a deserter. If I didn’t kill my attackers, I would likely be killed by them—and I didn’t want to die. I had created an impossible mess for myself, and there was nothing I could do but follow orders and shoot.”
“And when the war ended?”
“My home may not have been invaded like yours has been, but I had nothing to return home to. I understand how you and Mr. Blake and your families feel. I may have won the war, but I lost everything that was important to me. My old way of life was gone forever, everything I took for granted. Worse, I’d made a shipwreck of my Christian faith. And so I wallowed in bitterness, thinking about what I’d lost and despairing because it was gone.”
He paused for a moment, twisting his handkerchief. “It’s hard enough to come home when you’re on the winning side. I can only imagine the bitterness and shame of defeat for the Confederates. The South fought hard and well, and that’s the truth. Men like your brother and Mr. Blake lost this war through no fault of their own. The Union simply had more weapons and men than they did. And you’re being made to suffer for their defeat.”
“So why are you here, Mr. Chandler?”
“The Bible says we’re supposed to love our enemies, so that’s what I came down here to do.”
“How very righteous of you.” Josephine heard the scorn in her voice.
“I’m sorry if it sounds that way, but it’s true. Everywhere I went, the Lord kept speaking the same words to me: ‘Love your enemies, love your enemies.’ I didn’t know what it meant at first. I knew love couldn’t be a feeling in this case; it had to be an action. I had seen all the destruction down here. I had taken part in it. I had seen how the Negroes had been set free with no place to go and no way to support their families, so I decided the best way to love my enemies was to come back here and help. Believe me, I didn’t want to, but I was compelled to. So, here I am.”
“I suppose you know there are a good many other Yankees down here who are just trying to steal what they can from us, even though most of us have nothing left.”
“You may believe whatever you’d like about my motives, Miss Weatherly, but I don’t want anything from you or your family or even Harrison Blake—except forgiveness.”
“Forgiveness for what?”
“For being part of the army that killed your fathers and brothers and husbands. Forgiveness for ruining your land and causing you sorrow and hardship. Forgive me for picking up a gun and going to war against you. And forgive me for living when so many others died.”
Josephine couldn’t reply. He was asking the impossible. Neither she nor anyone else in her family could ever forgive him. Could this be why her brother refused to talk to Mr. Chandler? And why Harrison would rather die than accept his help?
“The only way our anger and bitterness are ever going to fade is if we forgive each other,” he said, as if reading her thoughts.
“I’m not only angry with you and other Yankees like you—I’m also angry at my father and my brothers for getting us involved in this stupid war in the first place. What was it all for? If I forgave you, I’d have to forgive them, too. And I’m not ready to do that.”
She was surprised by her own confession. She had never allowed herself to think such thoughts before. She was about to take back her words, saying she had spoken in error, when he asked, “What do you want, Miss Weatherly, for your life, for your future?”
Before she could respond, she heard Dr. Hunter’s voice behind her. “Miss Weatherly?”
She stood, bending to pick up Mr. Chandler’s jacket from the step and handing it to him. “Thank you for your help. Excuse me, please, Mr. Chandler.”
“Wait. Before you go . . . won’t you please agree to call me by my given name, Alexander? And may I call you . . . ?”
“Josephine.”
“Yes. Thank you, Josephine.”
She followed the doctor inside and into Harrison’s room. He was no longer tethered to the bedposts but lay with his eyes closed, looking more dead than alive. “I was able to stitch up his wound,” Dr. Hunter said. “Let’s hope it heals properly. But the bigger issue, I think, is that his spirit needs to heal.”
Josephine’s stomach turned when she looked at Harrison’s wrist. The wound was raw and purple, with black stitches like spider legs holding the two edges of skin together. Harrison’s mother would faint from horror when she saw him—not to mention all the blood. The bed sheets were a mess, the blood drying stiff and brown.
“Harrison and I talked,” the doctor continued. “I don’t believe he’ll try something like this again, but you never know.” Josephine could only stare at Harrison and at the mess, feeling dizzy again. The doctor rested his hand on her shoulder, bringing her back. “If you’ll fetch some soap and water, Miss Weatherly, I’ll help you clean up.”
“Yes . . . thank you . . . I don’t want Mrs. Blake to find out.”
“This is none of your business,” Harrison mumbled.
“Well, I care about her, even if you don’t,” Josephine said. “If she finds out, it will be as if you slapped her in the face and told her you hated her. I won’t let you hurt her that way, I won’t!” She felt the doctor’s hand on her shoulder again.
“She’s right, Harrison. I’m going to move you over to that chair for a few minutes so we can clean up your bed.” The doctor was not a large man and a head shorter than Harrison was, but he lifted him effortlessly and set him on the chair where Mrs. Blake usually sat. Harrison seemed too weak to resist.
Jo quickly stripped the sheets off the bed and crumpled them in a ball. The servants would have to boil them in lye soap, and even then the stains may never come out. She found clean sheets in the linen press and quickly remade the bed, knowing the doctor would have to leave soon.
“I’m going to bring you a wheelchair,” she heard him telling Harrison. “Otherwise you’re going to get bedsores, lying here all day. I’ve already written to a friend at Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond, asking to borrow one. But there’s no reason at all why you can’t walk with crutches someday.”
“You expect me to limp around here like a miserable cripple?”
“You can learn to walk again, Harrison. Why not let the limp remind you of the courage you and the others displayed against enormous odds?”
Josephine offered to leave the room while the doctor helped Harrison change into a clean nightshirt. “Put a long-sleeved one on him,” she said, “so his mother won’t see the stitches.” She carried the ball of soiled sheets downstairs to the servants and returned with a basin of warm water, then helped Dr. Hunter wash Harrison’s face and arms. He didn’t resist. But she didn’t want to scrub too hard, and the black, caked blood around his fingernails wouldn’t come out.
“He’ll be very weak for a few days after losing so much blood, so he shouldn’t give you too much trouble.” The doctor washed his own hands and then rolled down his sleeves. “You have blood on your face, Josephine. Would you like me to stay with him a little longer so you can wash and change your clothes?”
“Yes. Thank you.” She hurried from the room to ask the servants for more warm water as Dr. Hunter sat down in the chair to wait.
She would have to change into her Sunday dress. And she would have to think of a way to explain to Mrs. Blake why she was wearing it. Tomorrow she would go home and find something else to wear. This dress and her mirror would have to be thrown into the garbage.
The servant knocked on her bedroom door before coming inside to fill her washbasin and pitcher. “Everything all right, Missy Josephine?�
�� Jo saw concern in Beulah’s eyes.
“I’m fine. Mr. Blake . . . had an accident. All this blood is his. But please don’t say anything about this to Mrs. Blake when she comes home. We tried to clean it all up so she wouldn’t see. I don’t want to upset her.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The water felt warm and soothing as Josephine splashed it on her face and neck and arms. She scrubbed her fingernails until they felt raw in order to get out all the dried blood. She felt so alone, weighed down beneath the weight of Harrison’s terrible secret. It would do no good to pray. God wasn’t going to help her. She would have to find another source of strength to keep moving forward. She should be used to this lonely feeling by now.
“It’s very kind of you to help the Blakes this way,” the doctor said after Josephine returned to the downstairs bedroom. Harrison was in his bed again, lying very still with his eyes closed. “Listen, Josephine. I can see that today’s ordeal has taken a toll. You look shaken. I hope you’ll try to get some rest this afternoon.”
“Yes . . . thank you. I will rest. Mrs. Blake has servants to do the cooking and cleaning now. The agent with the Freedmen’s Bureau made all the arrangements.”
“It’s good work that Mr. Chandler is doing. He’s a good man.”
“I wish my brother Daniel would listen to him. We could use more help at White Oak, too.”
“Who’s working your plantation?”
“No one, really. We only have one house servant and one field hand left, and he can’t possibly do all the planting. Daniel won’t ask for help, and so Mother is still carrying everything on her shoulders. She was here when Mr. Chandler explained about sharecropping, and she agreed it was a good idea, but Daniel won’t listen to her.”
“Would you like me to talk to him? I could stop by White Oak before I head back to the village, if you think he and your mother would be home.”