Swan's Way

by Weyrich, Becky Lee

  Nearly a month had passed since the Swans’ return from New York. The days were rushing by, now. As Virginia and Agnes and their mothers prepared trousseaus and made wedding plans, each day seemed more exciting than the one before. To both girls, this time seemed the happiest of their lives, spinning away in a whirl of springtime parties and sunny, dream-filled days. The two young women ignored the men of the family, as they gathered in plantation libraries or in the meeting house in Winchester to talk heatedly of secession, or when they rode off to the fairgrounds to drill their companies, preparing them for war. War talk and wedding preparations didn’t mix. Besides, who would want to spoil such a lovely spring with thoughts of the coming conflict?

  “What do you hear from Channing?’ Agnes asked, as she snipped a particularly beautiful blood-red rose.

  “I received a letter only yesterday. Mr. Tiffany has sent my ring to Channing. He says it’s quite lovely, and he can hardly wait to see it on my finger.”

  “Only quite lovely?” Agnes slipped off her gardening glove and held up her own engagement ring to catch the light The diamond flashed a rainbow of brilliance. Rodney had given it to her on Christmas Day.

  “Channing wanted me to have a diamond, like yours. He was not entirely pleased that I chose an opal instead. For him to say it is ‘quite lovely’ must mean that it is indeed magnificent.”

  “When will he be sending it to you?”

  Virginia smiled. Agnes was at her most competitive this morning. She knew the answer to that question well enough, but Virginia replied just the same. “He won’t be sending it. He plans to give it to me when we go up to West Point for the commencement ceremonies next month.”

  “La, dear, how can you abide the wait?”

  “The wait will make the moment all the sweeter when it comes.”

  “You mean if it comes.”

  Virginia whipped around to stare at Agnes. “Whatever do you mean?”

  A small smile of triumph curved Agnes’s thin lips. She always took pride in her ability to ruffle Virginia’s feathers. “My daddy says we’ll be at war before my Rodney and your Channing finish at the Academy. He says word could come any day—any minute—that the first shots have been fired. He is certain that’s all Governor Letcher is waiting for, before he insists that Virginia secede from the Union. When that happens, our men will ride home to marry us quickly, before they go into battle. Rodney said as much in the letter I received from him this very morning.”

  Virginia kept cutting roses, her lips pursed tightly in annoyed silence. She refused to respond to Agnes’s needling. And she refused to allow herself to think about war. Surely the cooler heads in Washington would prevail and figure out a way to bring the states back together peacefully. Thinking of the alternative turned her heart to ice. She knew all too well Channing’s feelings on the subject and where his loyalties lay.

  Both women were distracted from their roses and their thoughts, when a rider came charging up the lane past the swan pond at such a furious pace that the old cob and his mate flapped their wings in distress. The man was a total stranger-dirty, disheveled, and wild-eyed. His horse was lathered and muddy, stumbling with exhaustion.

  “Who on earth could that be?” Agnes wondered, aloud.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Just look at the beggar, Virginia. Why, he’s riding right up to the front veranda! I’m surprised your mother would allow his sort at the company entrance. Surely, Miz Melora will have one of the servants tell him to go around to the back door.”

  However, as the two young women watched, Colonel Swan himself burst out of the front door to greet the man, then ushered his filthy visitor right into the house.

  “Well, my stars!” Agnes exclaimed. “Will you look at that?”

  A dark cloud drifted over the bright sun just then, draining the riot of color from the rose garden and threatening a violent springtime storm.

  “We had better go in, now,” Virginia said. The calm quiet of her voice betrayed none of the cold fear raging through her. Fear for the man she loved was uppermost in her mind. Agnes’s statement earlier about Governor John Letcher and his determination to join the Confederacy focused her thoughts on facts she had been trying desperately to ignore. She had an awful feeling that her whole world was about to come crashing down around her.

  By the time Virginia and Agnes entered the front hallway, Jedediah Swan and his mysterious visitor were closeted together in the library, but the sounds of their excited voices boomed through the door.

  “The Palmetto troops have fired on Fort Sumter, sir. A thirty-three hour seige. Three thousand shells fired from thirty guns and eighteen mortars. The officer in charge of the fort, Major Anderson, surrendered at two-thirty last Saturday afternoon. This is the start of it, sir. Governor Letcher is calling an emergency meeting in Richmond.”

  “God’s teeth and eyeballs, I knew it would come!” the girls heard Colonel Swan shout, his voice quaking with excitement. “Our state won’t be long in joining the fray. I’ll leave for Richmond this minute. And, if I know my son Rodney, he’ll be on his way home from West Point, the minute he hears the news. My cavalry will be ready to ride when the first call comes.”

  Virginia felt tears sting her eyes. The worst had come to pass. Now what? Would Channing come home with Rodney to join her father’s cavalry unit? Or was this the end—the end of everything?

  Neal panicked.

  He had been holding Ginna’s hand when the flash filled the greenhouse. He had expected to be with her when the light faded. But once the dust settled, he found himself all alone. For a few confused moments, he thought he was still at Swan’s Quarter, still in the twentieth century. A quick check of himself, however, told him he was once more Channing McNeal, dressed in his trim cadet uniform, alone in his spartan room in the barracks at West Point. He was writing a letter to Virginia Swan.

  For a time he sat very still, trying to get his bearings, trying to think where Ginna might be. He glanced down at the unfinished letter on his desk, at the pressed forsythia blossoms Channing had meant to send to his love.

  20 April 1861

  My dearest Virginia,

  By the time you receive this, I am sure you will be aware of the dire news from South Carolina. My Southern classmates here are saying this is the beginning. I fear, instead, that it is the end, at least of the life that we have known in our beloved home state. But, believe me, my darling, nothing can possibly put an end to the depth of my love for you. Be assured, my dearest, that no cannon shot—not even one heard round the world—can alter my feelings for you, or my determination to make you my wife and spend the rest of my life with you. Without you, Virginia, 1 am no longer of this place and time. I have no place in this world without you. I would be only a gray, formless spirit, drifting alone and aimlessly in the fourth dimension, that realm of lost souls and half-lives. Be assured, my love, that this war, should it come, will never touch our affection for each other. No matter what the future days and months might bring, I will be at Swan’s Quarter on our appointed date to see you descend the grand staircase on your father’s arm. I will make you my wife, my mate for life, in the swans’ way—ever faithful, ever caring, ever yours.

  Neal took up Channing’s pen to finish his letter to Virginia, but there was so much shouting and cheering from the quadrangle that he couldn’t hear himself think. Before he could dip the nib into the inkwell, Rodney Swan burst into the room, without so much as a knock.

  “Channing, old man, how goes it?” The big, blond, burly Virginian was bursting with excitement, bristling with a hawklike verve.

  “It goes less than well,” Channing answered, grimly.

  “Haven’t you heard? The Virginia legislature has finally recognized the Confederacy. They’re sitting in Richmond right now, drawing up a proclamation of secession. Since the surrender of Fort Sumter, all hell’s broken loose. Superintendent Bowman has announced that any cadet who wants
to can leave immediately for home. That’s us, old buddy!”

  “You mean classes have been suspended?” Channing was not pleased with Rodney’s news. He had worked too long and hard for his degree and his commission in the United States Army to have it all snatched away at the eleventh hour by the rash act of a group of militiamen nearly a thousand miles to the south.

  “There’ll still be classes, commencement, too, if there’s anyone left here to graduate. But, hell, who can study at a time like this? As for our commissions, the rank we get will be determined by the Confederacy now, not the U.S. Army. Rumor has it that officers are resigning right and left to answer the call of the South. Even Lieutenant Colonel Lee.”

  “Robert E. Lee?” Channing was sure Rodney must be making this up. Everyone knew President Lincoln had offered Lee command of the Federal forces.

  “That’s right. He turned old Lincoln down flat and resigned from the Army. There’s a copy of the letter Lee wrote to Winfield Scott posted in the chapel. I don’t remember all of it, but one line made his intentions quite clear.” Rodney paused, frowning, trying to recall Lee’s exact words. “He wrote, ‘Save in defense of my native state, I never desire again to draw my sword.’ So, he’s with us, for sure.”

  “Colonel Lee?” Channing muttered, shaking his head, still trying to grasp this disturbing reality. He couldn’t believe it. The man was his idol, a former superintendent of the Military Academy, a hero of the Mexican War.

  “And Lee’s not the only one joining up to fight for our Cause. Jubal Early, John Bell Hood, Joseph Wheeler, Benjamin Helm, Theophilus Holmes, John Magruder, Joseph E. Johnston—the list goes on and on. Even Samuel Jones, one of the instructors right here at the Point—but he’s a loyal Virginian from Powhatan County, so that’s no surprise. Of course, the West Pointers will get the choicest commands in the Confederate Army. Why, I’ll bet Pa will jump us both to majors right at the get-go, since we’re riding with him. Come on, McNeal! Quit mooning over that letter. You’ll be bedding Virginia before the mail can reach her. I’m packing now and heading home on the first stage out of here. Get your gear together. We’re going to war!”

  Channing’s heart went cold and colder, as his listened to his boyhood friend talk excitedly of the coming conflict. The moment of decision had arrived, the moment he had dreaded for months. Virginia! Both the woman and the state were uppermost in his mind and his heart. He loved them both, which made this all the harder.

  “Come on, man!” Rodney boomed. “What are you waiting for? If we don’t move fast, we’ll miss our ride.”

  “I’m not going,” Channing said quietly, his composure painfully enforced.

  “What the hell are you talking about? Of course you are! What’s gotten into you, Chan? This is what we’ve all been waiting for, training for, praying for.”

  Channing stood and stared at his friend, with dark, pleading eyes. “We’ve come too far, Rodney. Stay. Finish classes. There’ll be plenty of time. There’ll be plenty of war to go around.”

  “You damn idiot!” Rodney’s face bloomed bright red, a mixture of excitement and frustration. “We’ll whip the Yankees in a month. You think I’m going to sit up here studying the war tactics of Napoleon and Caesar, when I could be out there using them against the Yankees? Pa would skin me alive if I stayed. Besides, I don’t want to miss a lick. I can’t wait to shoot my first blue-belly!”

  A grim scene formed in Channing’s mind—through a screen of smoke and fire and chaos, he saw a face clenched in a grimace of hate, a face above a gun, a gun pointed at his own heart. He knew that face well. It was the face of his friend, his classmate, his brother. It was Rodney Swan’s face.

  Channing stared down at his unfinished letter to Virginia and shook his head slowly. “I can’t leave now, Rodney. I just can’t.”

  “Well, by damn, sit here, then! Let the world and the glory pass you by. Not me! I’m going home. I’m going to marry Agnes and leave her carrying my son, and then I’m going to mount one of Pa’s blooded horses and ride off singing ‘Dixie’ and waving the Stars and Bars.” He gripped an imaginary flagstaff and made great sweeping motions with his invisible banner. “Hail to Virginia!” he cried. “Hail to the South! Hail to our Cause!”

  Channing knew there was no way he could dissuade Rodney from his plan to leave West Point. He rose, clasped the other man’s hand in solemn farewell, and said in a grim tone, “Take care, my friend. When you get home, tell your sister that I will be there soon to make her my wife. Tell her I love her, won’t you?”

  The two men parted without Channing’s having confided in his friend that he remained loyal to the Union. He couldn’t yet bring himself to confess aloud what he had known all along in his heart of hearts—that as much as he loved his home state, he loved the Union more. He would wait until after graduation. He would tell Virginia first and then confess his plans to all the others. Maybe Rodney’s leaving was premature. Maybe there would be no war after all.

  “And maybe hell will freeze over!” he said, in grim response to his own hopeless thoughts.

  Channing went back to his letter, but the words wouldn’t come. How would he tell Virginia? And what would his decision do to their lives?

  Commencement ceremonies were held on a Monday, the sixth of May. Although Second Lieutenant Channing Russell McNeal had attained his goal at long last, the day was not what he had hoped for. Two hundred seventy-eight cadets had been at the Academy the previous November, eighty-six of them from the South. Sixty-five of his Southern brothers—many, like Rodney, who would have graduated with the Class of ’61—had left West Point to fight for the Confederacy. Channing missed his comrades.

  Since the current in the States was highly uncertain, neither the Swans nor the McNeals traveled North to witness and help celebrate the occasion. Channing missed not having his family with him. Most of all, he missed Virginia. He carried her ring with him everywhere. He had so hoped to be able to slip it on her finger on this glorious day in May. Now he would have to wait until right before their wedding, but that was less than a month away. He had waited this long; he could wait a little longer. All he thought about now was getting back home to her. He concentrated on his love and pushed all the troubling thoughts from his mind.

  Channing received a congratulatory letter from his father, urging him to hurry home as soon as possible, after the ceremonies. Mr. McNeal said that Colonel Swan was waiting for Channing’s return, so that his cavalry unit could be on its way. They hoped to see their first battle before the month was out. Channing’s father also expressed his pride in his son’s accomplishment in graduating from West Point, near the top of his class, and his eagerness for Channing to return South to distinguish himself on the field of battle against the Northern invaders.

  In spite of his eagerness to see Virginia again, his father’s final statement was uppermost in Channing’s mind, as he rode under the arched entrance to Swan’s Quarter. The moment he had most looked forward to and most dreaded had come.

  Virginia got up and stretched. She had put in a long morning, working on her quilt cover. Now that it was finished, she felt only disappointment, not the sense of accomplishment that she had hoped for.

  “It’s not the quilt’s fault,” she sighed. “It’s lovely.” She fingered her handiwork, but her thoughts were all of Channing. Where could he be? Why hadn’t she heard from him since that last letter over a week ago—the one with the pressed forsythia enclosed? She fingered the silver locket at her throat and smiled. One of the golden-yellow flowers was now tucked inside, opposite the miniature of Channing.

  Suddenly, she heard a stir of excitement outside—dogs barking, geese honking, and the raucous chatter of slave children on the front lawn. Before she could reach her window to look out, she heard someone calling her name.

  “Miss Virginia! Miss Virginia!” It was old Polly, the cook. “He done come home. You best get on down here!”

  A quick glance from her window t
old Virginia who had come. “Channing!” she cried. “It’s Channing! I can’t believe it!”

  She tore out of her room and down the stairs. The front door banged behind her so hard that it nearly came off its hinges. She flew into his arms, sobbing his name.

  He was dusty and sweaty, after his long ride from Washington, but Virginia didn’t care. He was home! They were together again! At last!

  “Virginia, my darlin’,” he whispered against her fragrant hair. “It’s been so long.”

  “Oh, Channing, I thought you’d never come! I’ve spent practically the whole last week on this veranda watching for you. I wanted to see you the minute you turned into the lane. I had it all planned. I was going to meet you by the swan pond. Then you go and sneak up on me, surprise me on the one day I decide to stay in and work on my quilt.”

  He laughed and hugged her tighter. “I’ll ride back to Washington and give you another chance, if you want me to.”

  She leaned back in his arms and gave him a stern look. “Oh, no, you won’t! I’m not letting you out of my sight until we’re married.”

  “I think you’ll have to talk to our mothers about that, darlin’. I’m pretty sure they’ll want me cleaned up and shining for our wedding, and I don’t think they’ll approve of you sitting in on my bath.”

  She turned to cover her blush and tugged his hand. “Come inside. We have the house all to ourselves. Father and the boys are out drilling, and Mother is napping. I want to hear everything.”