by Murray Pura
The students all grinned.
“Certainly you may, Miss Ross,” responded Bartholomew, his spectacles perched, she thought, rather precariously on his nose.
“Yes indeed,” replied Theodore, with his trim but still bushy, black-as-tar beard. “And may we have permission to write now and then, Miss Ross?”
Clarissa smiled. “Certainly you may, young sirs. I’ll jot my address down if any of you have a pencil and paper.”
Immediately a scramble began as the four students bent and hastily rummaged through their bags. Clarissa stared at Kyle—she hoped he identified correctly that her demeanor was icy—as he remained immobile. “I suppose letters from a young lady whom you’ve became rather well acquainted with do not interest you in the least, Mr. Forrester?”
He looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”
Now she could not hide her peppery annoyance. “You do not want me to write you while you are away at war, sir. That is plain to me.”
“What need would I have of such letters, Miss Ross?”
“What, indeed, sir, since our friendship of many months duration is apparently inconsequential to you?”
“Inconsequential?”
“That is my word of choice, sir.”
“But I …”
“I have paper and pencil, Miss Ross,” interrupted James eagerly.
“As do I,” added Thomas and Theodore at the same time.
Clarissa turned away from Kyle with a bitter smile on her lips. “One will suffice, young sirs. Thank you, James.” She scribbled quickly on the notepad he handed her. “There. That should do it. You may share my address around the four of you. I do look forward to hearing from you, gentlemen. Do not disappoint me.”
“Oh, we won’t,” replied Thomas. “At least I won’t.”
“Nor will I,” said James.
“Nor I,” echoed Bartholomew.
“None of us will.” Theodore tipped his hat. “Rest assured.”
“Good. Then I may expect letters from Washington informing me of your enlistments?”
They all said yes in unison as if they were a trained chorus.
Clarissa laughed happily. Well, at least I get a dash of enthusiasm and an ounce of satisfaction from some men in my life today.
The whistle on the train blew several times.
White steam billowed over the platform.
The cars were opened, and the men—Clarissa supposed anywhere from twenty-five to thirty of them—began to board, offering their loved ones and friends final handshakes and hugs and kisses on the cheek. She waved her gloved hand to the students as she stood beside Professor Saxon. Kyle did not budge, and she cast a glance at him out of the corner of her eye.
“You will be late, sir,” she finally said, not wanting to but exasperated at his tardiness as the last men climbed aboard the train.
“What, Miss Ross?” he responded.
“Do you intend to attain Washington by foot? They are closing and sealing the cars.”
“So they must.”
She rolled her eyes. “Why aren’t you joining your friends and colleagues?” Then she had a wild and hopeful thought. “Did you wish to say something to me in private, Mr. Forrester? Is that why you are lingering?”
He stared at her. “You are mistaken.”
Immediately her temper flared, like sparks shooting up a chimney. “Indeed, I must be. I must be mistaken about everything when it comes to you. For I thought you were a friend and a gentleman, perhaps even a beau, or almost a beau, when clearly you are none of those things to me, sir. None of them.”
“Clarissa …”
“Do not address me by my Christian name, sir. Don’t you dare.”
“I don’t think you understand …”
“I understand, sir. Oh yes, I understand perfectly. Don’t think I shall lack male companionship while you are gone, sir. I shall be surrounded by well-wishers. Oh, most certainly, and I shall welcome round to my parents’ hearth and home young gentlemen who think it a blessing to be honored with my friendship and my presence. You shall not be missed, Mr. Kyle Forrester. In fact, I doubt I shall even notice you are absent. I will understandably be quite occupied. Now, if you will excuse me.”
“Miss Ross,” Professor Saxon said.
“Good day, Professor.” Clarissa began to step away from the train. “I apologize for my sharpness. I am still very young and not well versed in the ways of women and men and social etiquette. I have, however, learned an invaluable lesson today.”
“Miss Ross. I insist.”
She stopped. “What is it, Professor?”
“There has been a grievous error on your part.”
“Truly? And what is that, sir?”
“It has just become clear to me—forgive me for my slowness here—that you are under some sort of misapprehension concerning young Mr. Forrester’s plans and position.”
“Am I, sir?”
“He is not boarding the train to Washington.”
“Apparently not this one, sir, as it is presently pulling clear of the station. He will have to catch another.”
“He will not catch any other. His work here, under my supervision, is much too important to terminate on a war that may well be over by Christmas. No, he is not enlisting in the army of the United States, Miss Ross. I am grooming him to be a leader in the Lutheran Church in America, both in the Pennsylvania Ministerium and the General Synod. I intend that he one day take my place at the seminary here in Gettysburg. I do not wish that all my plans and pains—and God’s plans too, I trust—should come to naught due to an ill-conceived shot from a Mississippi musket three weeks hence. No, Miss Ross, he has not boarded this train, nor is he boarding any other train, for the purpose of enlistment. He is in the Lord’s army, miss, and there, I pray, he may remain. I trust that now you understand his position and that no insult or slight was intended toward yourself. Indeed, I can personally vouch for how well he speaks of you. Very highly, Miss Ross, very highly.”
“Oh.” Clarissa stood frozen to the platform at Professor Saxon’s words. The four students she had befriended were waving to her from one of the windows of the slowly moving train, and she finally took notice and lifted a slender arm with its long white glove that reached to her elbow. “Oh, I see.”
The train was gone, sliding down the iron tracks, the locomotive expelling large gouts of dark gray smoke.
Clarissa turned to Kyle, her face scarlet. “I owe you an apology, sir. I fear my youth and my temper and my inexperience in the ways of the world and polite society often get the better of me.”
Kyle grinned and inclined his head. “I continue to find your youth and temper and inexperience in polite society infinitely surprising and charming.”
“Do you, sir?”
“It is my confession.”
She was not in the mood to smile, but a small one slipped over her lips just the same. It seemed to her that there were a lot of things she could not control about herself. “In that case, may I ask you to see me to my home? I should like to chat on the way and make what amends to you I can for my unladylike behavior.”
“I’d like that very much. Just as I like your unladylike behavior very much.”
“Do you?” Her smile broadened, a smile liberally sprinkled with summer freckles. “Then, sir, we may have a future in store for us.”
He offered his arm, and she slid her gloved arm through it.
“That’s my hope, Clarissa Avery Ross. That’s truly my hope and my prayer.”
September
Gettysburg
Clarissa finished signing her name to the short note of encouragement she’d penned to Theodore. His two-page letter, smeared with dirt and rain spots, lay open beside her on the writing desk. She folded her note into an envelope and set it aside for the morning’s mail. Then she leaned back and thought about everything that reading his letter had stirred in her. Finally, she got up, left her garret, and went downstairs. She found her father in his den with the
door open and a book in his lap. An open door meant he didn’t mind if she or her mother looked in on him.
“Father?”
“Oliver Twist.” He looked up and smiled. “How are you this evening, my dear girl?”
“I am well. No, no I’m not.”
“I see. Please take a chair and tell me all about what is not well.”
She dropped into a well-worn leather chair she knew had been purchased new just prior to the War of 1812 by Papa Ross, her father’s father. “I received a letter today from one of the seminary students I saw off to Washington in July.”
“Ah. Good. And how was that?”
“It was fine at first. He told me how they were all attached to the same regiment and the same platoon in the Army of the Potomac.”
“Wonderful.”
“Then he confessed he had taken a ball to the leg during some inconsequential skirmish on the Virginia border. He called it inconsequential—I don’t.”
“I’m very sorry to hear it.”
“He made light of it, but at the end of his letter, he confessed gangrene had set in and they had … the surgeons had removed his left leg above the knee.”
“Dear Lord. Poor boy, poor boy.”
“He is laid up in a military hospital in Washington. Of course he is being very brave about it all.”
“I am sure young Theodore will recover handsomely.”
“I am not at all sure that he will, Father. I wish it would be so. Indeed, I pray it would be so. But … I have an unpleasant feeling about all this.”
“Mother and I will pray with you. Our minister will direct the church to pray.”
“There is … there is something else.”
“What is that, my dear?”
“I read about Theodore’s sacrifice, and I cannot help but compare it to Kyle Forrester’s lack of sacrifice.”
“I see.”
“These boys are students like him. Why, they are all the same age—twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three—and they are in danger every day from Confederate pickets. They eat their food out of tin pans, the meat and potatoes indifferently cooked. As autumn and winter come on, they will be chilled to the bone … all in the service of our country … all in the cause of ending slavery in the Republic … and there sits Kyle in his ivory tower on Seminary Ridge, wanting for nothing, feted by the Lutheran notables that come to town, a soft bed every night, three hot meals a day, no skirmish lines to face, no minié balls to dodge, no privations to endure, nothing more taxing to put his hand to than the conjugation of Greek verbs or the writing of doctrinal treatises for Professor Saxon and his cause célèbre of minimizing the importance and infallibility of the original Lutheran Confessions … while Kyle’s peers stare through musket sights at secessionists they are trained to kill and who are trained to kill them …”
“Now, now, my dear girl, slow down …”
“I can’t slow down. I’ve never known how to slow down.”
“You paint your young man in the most dreadful of colors. Your mother and I were under the impression you had feelings for him.”
“I do. Of course I do.”
“He is not so bad a fellow as you make out. Remember, it is Professor Saxon who insists he remain in Gettysburg to assist him at the seminary.”
“I know.”
“And he is helping provide important spiritual leadership and counsel to the other students at the seminary and to the Lutheran community here as a whole, both the English-speaking and the German congregations.”
“I’m aware of that, Father. I admire him very much. God has granted him wonderful gifts and talents. We get along splendidly. But.”
“But. He is not fighting the Confederacy directly and he is not fighting the progenitors of slavery directly, so you find fault with him.”
“I … I suppose I do.”
“You think him weak? Unpatriotic? Lacking in courage?”
“I don’t know—something is not right.”
“If Professor Saxon released young Kyle from his service, and if he enlisted immediately after he obtained this release, would this please you? Would this settle your heart?”
“I expect it would.”
“Even though he would be absent from Gettysburg? And absent from your side?”
“I would be willing to make that sacrifice.”
Her father arched his eyebrows. “Be careful what you wish for.”
Clarissa wound and unwound her hands in her lap. “I can’t help it. I’m being honest about how I feel. Of course I’d rather have him here. But not … but not when all the other men are out there fighting to save the Union and …”
“Fighting to set men free,” her father interjected. “Have you told young Kyle all this personally?”
“No, sir. I suppose it was all bottled up inside. I had no idea my feelings were so strong and so decided. Reading the letter from Theodore stirred them up till they caught fresh fire.”
“Perhaps I might offer a word of advice.”
“Of course, sir. That is why I sought you out this evening.”
“Now that these feelings have come to your attention, and come full-blown, you are thinking of confronting your young Mr. Forrester with them, are you not?”
“Well, sir, I am bound to do so. He must know how I feel. We’ve grown quite close, and it would not be right of me to pretend I did not harbor these misgivings about his present position in life and all the blessings he has at his fingertips while others his age are …”
“Quite right,” her father interjected. “But it would not do to subject him to your cannon fire until you discussed all this with the man who has put young Kyle where he is right now, and who has placed all the blessings you so strenuously object to at his fingertips.”
“You mean …”
He nodded and closed Oliver Twist. “Yes, my dear, I do mean that and I do mean him. I would suggest you make an appointment to meet him at his home, however, for if you sat down with Professor Saxon at the seminary …”
“Kyle would know and Kyle would wonder what it was all about.”
“Exactly.”
“I will try and see him tomorrow. I must.” Clarissa stood up. “Thank you, Father. I think I’d have tossed and turned all night if I hadn’t gotten this off my chest.”
“I’m glad to have been able to help, my girl. And I’m sure a good night’s sleep will put things in their proper perspective. Resting the brain always does.”
“Especially a fevered one like mine, you mean?” She laughed.
“Always a good and appropriate ferment, it seems to me.”
“Sometimes. May I take this spare candle with me?”
“Yes of course, that’s fine. Good night, my girl, and may God bless you.”
“God bless you too, Father.”
But it was not a good night. She thought about Theodore and worried. She thought about Kyle and worried some more. She thought about Liberty—Iain Kilgarlin—and worried until her brain felt like scrambled eggs. Theodore was not a love interest; she was concerned about his amputation and his recovery from his wound. But Kyle and Iain, that was a different matter. Whom did she love? Or did she love either of them? Did she love anybody? She flipped her pillow to one side and then to the other, but it never felt comfortable. Somehow she got up at dawn and made her way downstairs to a ham and cheese omelet, then dashed off a note to Professor Saxon that their hired hand, William—a freedman who also worked with her father at his boot and shoe shop—took up the hill to the seminary on horseback. She received a favorable response, which William handed to her upon his return. She asked him to dress appropriately and fetch the carriage and matched sorrels, wore her six-hoop green dress, a green bonnet, and carried a green parasol when she climbed into it, and was at the professor’s house for ten o’clock coffee and tea.
“I do not have a class again until eleven,” he informed her, pouring Clarissa a cup of Irish breakfast tea. “Pray, tell me what is on your mind, my dear. I’v
e received no notice of a cargo that needs to be brought safely across the border.”
“No, sir, it isn’t that.” She sipped at the tea. Even though the July day was already almost too warm, she was grateful for the tea’s heat both in her throat and on her hands. “It’s about … it’s about …”
“It’s about young Mr. Forrester. Am I correct?”
Her face reddened. “Why is it so obvious to you?”
“My goodness, my dear, I’m well aware of how much time you spend in one another’s company.”
“I don’t wish to dance around the subject. I just didn’t think anyone had noticed our … prolonged involvement with each other.”
“Hmm. Well, Miss Ross, all of Gettysburg has taken note. Many have you married off by Christmas.”
Her face reddened even more. “By Christmas? Oh no, no, no. There are no wedding bells in my immediate future. In point of fact, Professor, I am not entirely sure of my feelings toward him.”
“No?”
“There is another young man who works on the Railroad. Risks his neck on the Railroad more so than many of us, may I say? And that is so because he is a scion of a famous and well-to-do Southern family. They have a plantation on the Mississippi.”
“Indeed.” The professor stopped in the midst of adding sugar to his cup. “Then that makes him a very principled and courageous man.”
“Yes it does.”
“For if Southerners captured him …”
“He is aware of the danger. Yet he will not relent from rescuing men and women from slavery.”
“Bravo.”
“And that, sir, is my dilemma. He is fighting the greatest scourge to America’s honor, literally with his two bare hands, and when I compare Kyle Forrester to him …” She stopped.
The professor waited a moment for her to finish, then nodded and stirred his tea several times so that his spoon chimed against the cup’s bone china sides. “Mr. Forrester pales in comparison. Is that it?”