by Lynn Austin
“I have never met a more selfless, caring woman,” he told her. “Imagine, traveling all this way to help your brother with his convalescence. What a brave, devoted woman you are.”
“Um . . . but you see, Mr. Garner, the truth is—”
“Say no more. I see that blush of modesty, and I am moved by your humility.”
Indeed, she was a fraud.
It hadn’t been her idea to come to Philadelphia to take care of Franklin. She hadn’t been the least bit brave about it. And now that she was there, she had no idea how to nurture him or anyone else back to good health. The Beatrice that Horatio Garner saw was a creation of his own flowery imagination and her mother’s frugal grooming. She would have told him the truth if he had asked—or if he had let her get a word in edgewise—but Horatio never stopped talking. And, oh, how she loved to hear him talk. His words sounded just like poetry.
Little by little, Bebe’s feelings for Horatio Garner began to grow and bud and blossom until she was certain she resembled one of her father’s apple trees in full, glorious bloom. And little by little, the food she’d brought from home, and the laughter she shared with Horatio and Franklin, coaxed life and health back into her brother. By the end of the second week, Franklin was eating like a farmer again, and the color had returned to his cheeks. Bebe and Horatio managed to convince him to take a few hobbling steps on a pair of crutches. When he could limp as far as the front door, Horatio boosted him into a hired carriage and the three of them toured Philadelphia. The carriage rides soon became daily ventures. Sitting close to Horatio gave Bebe the same dizzy, giddy feeling she’d had when soaring through the air on the swing. She tried to forget that they soon would have to go their separate ways, certain it would feel much like the shock of plunging into the river when she had let go of the rope.
All the while, Bebe’s hostess continued to invite her to attend the anti-slavery meetings. “They have such wonderful speakers— you really should hear them, Beatrice.” Bebe made excuses, but truthfully she didn’t want to give up a single moment of time with her new friend.
It took a month for Franklin to regain his health, but at last he was strong enough to go home. Bebe knew it had very little to do with her influence and everything to do with Horatio Garner’s. The day of Franklin’s discharge was a bittersweet one. Bebe was elated for her brother, who had learned to maneuver quite well on his crutches, but devastated to have to say good-bye to Horatio. He drove them to the train station, making sure Franklin’s bags were loaded on board and that the porters were well compensated. And just before saying farewell, he presented his ebony and silver cane to Franklin, holding it out to him like a medieval king bestowing a great honor on his knight.
“This is for you, my friend. I want you to keep it as a token to remember me by.”
Franklin scowled. “I can’t use that. I need two crutches to get around.”
“Only for now, my good man, only for now. I’ve heard there is a doctor here in Philadelphia who can outfit you with a fine wooden leg when you’re ready. By this time next year you’ll be running relay races.”
Franklin mumbled his thanks and gave the cane to Bebe to carry. Horatio turned to her next. “Before we part, may I ask a very special favor, Beatrice?”
“Of course.”
“On the day you arrived, you graced your brother with a kiss, and it was like watching the sunshine melt the frost. Would you favor me with one farewell kiss before we part? It would mean so much to me . . . I don’t know when I might meet another woman as beautiful and kind as you are.”
“You must have a sweetheart back home. . . .”
“No, I have no one.” He leaned toward her and pointed to his cheek. “Please?”
Bebe had never kissed anyone who wasn’t a family member. Tears filled her eyes as she stood on tiptoes and briefly pressed her lips to Horatio’s cheek. His ruddy beard felt soft, not scratchy as she had supposed. His warm, rich scent smelled like something she would eat for dessert.
“Thank you,” he said softly. He took her hand in both of his and pressed it to his heart, then raised it to his lips. “Before you came to Philadelphia I had forgotten how sweet and good a woman smells, how soft her skin feels. Tenderness . . . gentleness . . . beauty . . . I’ve missed those things these long, dark months when I’ve been surrounded by death. But a woman is made for life. How beautiful that reminder is to me.” He gave her captive hand a gentle squeeze and released it.
“Good-bye,” she murmured. “I’ll never forget you.”
Horatio helped her and Franklin climb aboard, then waved to them from the platform. Bebe waved back, her heart aching. Horatio had filled her life with laughter and delight these past few weeks, and now she would never see him again. Their parting had been inevitable. She wasn’t the vision of loveliness and gentility that he imagined her to be. The rose water that had provided her with the sweet fragrance he’d admired belonged to Bebe’s mother. From now on, Bebe was much more likely to smell like the bacon that she fried for breakfast every morning rather than rose water. She leaned out the window, watching until the train station—and Horatio—disappeared from sight.
“Why are you crying?” Franklin asked when he saw her tears.
She quickly dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief and forced a smile. “I’m so happy that you’re finally coming home, Franklin.” It wasn’t a lie.
Philadelphia had seemed like a strange, foreign place when Bebe had first arrived, but after being away from home for a month, the village of New Canaan now seemed like a foreign place to her, shabby and colorless after the glittery bustle of the city. Each day on the farm moved as sluggishly as mud as she settled back into her daily routine. For Bebe, the river of life had dwindled down to a trickle, and the most she could hope for was to cool her toes in its shallows. She wondered if her brothers felt as restless and bored as she did. After all, she’d spent only a month in Philadelphia and they had marched all over the country for the past few years, seeing new things and meeting new people. She remembered complaining to her mother about not liking change, but now she longed for it.
Then one Sunday morning Mrs. Webster stopped to speak with Bebe and her mother after church. “I have good news, ladies. Our local chapter of the Anti-Slavery Society has decided to hold meetings again. We have a speaker coming from Philadelphia on Wednesday evening, and I just know you’ll be fascinated when you hear what she has to say. You remember one of our society’s most outstanding proponents, Mrs. Lucretia Mott, don’t you? Well, she’s coming to speak to our organization, Hannah. Do you think you and Beatrice might attend?”
“We’ll see,” Hannah replied.
Bebe hated it when her mother said, “We’ll see.” It usually meant “no.” Bebe remembered attending meetings before the war, and although they hadn’t been very exciting, hiding the occasional slave in the attic had been. She couldn’t imagine what work the society would do now that all the slaves were free, but she was curious—and more than a little bored. She decided that she would go, with or without her mother.
“I would like very much to go into town for a meeting on Wednesday evening,” she told her father on the drive home. “May I please borrow the wagon?”
“Is it a prayer meeting?”
“No . . . it’s for the Anti-Slavery Society.”
The horses traveled a full quarter of a mile before Henry said, “Seems to me the abolition people got what they wanted, didn’t they? Didn’t Mr. Lincoln free the slaves?”
“Yes . . .”
“Then why are the abolitionists still meeting?”
“I don’t know, Papa. I guess there must be other things they would like to accomplish. May I please go and find out?”
Her father began shaking his head, his expression already warning her that he was about to say no. Surprisingly, Hannah intervened.
“Let her go, Henry . . . please.”
He drove all the way home in silence. He remained silent on the subject throughout the aft
ernoon and into the evening hours. Bebe didn’t know how her mother could be so patient with such a taciturn man. She thought of Horatio Garner—as she had every day since leaving Philadelphia—and wished he were there to fill the silences in her life with his ever-flowing words.
As Henry rose from his customary chair in the parlor at bedtime, he turned to Bebe and said, “You may go, but you’ll have to take care of the horse and wagon yourself.” She would have hugged him, but her father never had cared much for affectionate displays.
Bebe rushed through her chores on Wednesday evening, then hitched one of the horses to the wagon for the long, dusty drive into town. Only a handful of women had gathered at the church for the meeting, and Bebe was the youngest. Several of them took out their knitting as they sat in a circle, waiting to hear what Mrs. Webster and her guest had to say.
“Like all of you, I thought our work for the society was finished,” Mrs. Webster began. “I’m sure you recall the many meetings we held before the war, and all the prayers we offered up to heaven in order to end slavery here in America. The Scriptures say, ‘The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.’ And I do believe that the same can be said about the fervent prayers of women. We all thank God that He heard our prayers and freed the slaves. But while visiting with my sister in Philadelphia recently, I became aware that there is still more work to be done. Ladies, I would like to introduce our special guest this evening, Mrs. Lucretia Mott, who is going to explain what our next task must be.”
Mrs. Mott looked like a peacock among hens in her fashionable city clothes. She wore her hair coiled in an elaborate knot that Bebe wished she could copy. Her alert, observant expression told Bebe she was very intelligent, yet she seemed to have the same kind, gentle nature that Bebe always admired in her mother, Hannah. Mrs. Mott waved away the spattering of applause and remained seated as she began to speak.
“It’s clear that women like us, united for a heavenly cause, can accomplish great things. Let the men shoot it out on the battlefield or argue politics; women fight best on their knees.
“Our United States Constitution has now been amended to grant Negro slaves their freedom, which is what we’ve been praying for. Soon another amendment will grant civil rights to those former slaves, but only to the men. That means that half of the population of America—its women—are still denied the basic rights of our Constitution. Ladies, this simply isn’t fair. Shouldn’t the women who worked so hard on behalf of the slaves be accorded the same civil rights that they now will enjoy?”
Bebe glanced around at the others as Mrs. Mott paused and noticed that the ladies had stopped knitting. Everyone gazed intently at her, waiting to hear more.
“We were the force who, through our prayers and hard work, won freedom for them. We are all educated, literate women, while the vast majority of Negroes are illiterate. Yet those uneducated men will now be allowed to vote while we will be denied. Is it fair, I ask, that those of us who’ve worked so hard to see the Negroes raised to a position of equality—and Negro men have been so raised—is it fair that the very women who’ve helped raise them are still considered inferior?”
Bebe could barely sit still. She wanted to leap up and shout, “No! It isn’t fair!” Mrs. Mott’s cheeks flushed with passion as she continued.
“If I were to go around this circle and ask each of you to describe the sacrifices you’ve made for the cause of abolition and for the recent war, I believe I would hear tales of great courage and devotion. Many of you risked your own freedom to help slaves escape on the Underground Railroad. Others supported the cause with your time and donations. And you continued your volunteer work during the war, sending packages to our soldiers, and supplying the army hospitals with nurses and food and bandages. You took over your families’ farms and businesses when the men marched off to fight, and sat at the bedsides of wounded loved ones when they needed you. Some of you paid the ultimate price, losing a loved one on the battlefield for the cause of freedom.
“In light of all these sacrifices and accomplishments, don’t we deserve to be counted as full citizens? After everything that we have done during the war, haven’t we proven our equality?”
Once again Bebe longed to shout, “Yes!” She had worked just as hard as her brothers had, so why should she be treated differently? Lucretia Mott’s speech made sense to her, and she wanted to send up a cheer. The other townswomen sat so quietly that it was impossible to tell what they were thinking. Mrs. Webster, the minister’s wife, glanced around at the ladies, and seemed surprised that no one had responded. She turned to Mrs. Harrison, who was seated alongside her.
“Tell me, Grace. Don’t you work just as hard in the store as your husband does? I’ve seen you waiting on customers and making change and ordering goods—then you have to go home and cook dinner and clean house. And all you other women, didn’t you take over a great deal of the work when your sons and husbands were away?”
“I did,” Bebe said—but she didn’t say it nearly as loudly or forcefully as she would have liked to. Mrs. Webster smiled at her.
“Yes, Beatrice. You took over for all four of your brothers and helped raise the food that fed the armies.”
Mrs. Morgan, the doctor’s wife, lifted her hand for a chance to speak. “But if the government does grant us equality with men, might we also be required to take up arms and fight in the event of another war? I, for one, am grateful that I didn’t have to fight in the recent conflict. I wouldn’t care at all for equality if that were to be the case.”
Bebe pictured the rows and rows of wounded men she’d seen in the hospital and had to agree with Mrs. Morgan on this point. She turned back to Mrs. Mott in confusion.
“It’s true that women currently aren’t required to fight,” Mrs. Mott quickly replied. “Thank goodness for that. Our gentler, more tender natures don’t equip us for the rigors of battle. Our soldiers displayed outstanding courage during the recent war—but who was responsible for shaping those young men’s characters so that they developed the necessary courage to fight? Their mothers, of course—women like all of us. Is the task of molding and nurturing the next generation of leaders any lesser of a role, deserving lesser rights? Of course not. If we are the ones who help mold our future leaders, why shouldn’t we be granted the right to help choose those leaders?”
When no one else challenged her, Mrs. Mott continued. “We need a plan, ladies. Winning civil rights for women is the next logical step. In the past, we used prayer, petitions, and pamphlets for the cause of abolition—now we will use those same methods to accomplish this new goal. Those of you who disagree”—she smiled pleasantly at Mrs. Morgan—“are of course free to engage in other work. But if you believe, as I do, that ‘there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female,’ as the Scriptures say, ‘for ye are all one in Christ Jesus,’ then let’s get to work tonight.”
Bebe needed no further convincing. She already had proven her equality with her brothers. She would join the cause. She would give it her all.
CHAPTER
9
As I said before, Grandma Bebe never did tell a story in a straight line like the chapters in a book. Following the thread of her sagas was like chasing a startled rabbit through the woods—you never knew when it was going to turn and head in a new direction. I hated to interrupt her, but we were more than halfway home from the picnic that Decoration Day, and if she veered off the path of Horatio’s story, I was afraid she would never find her way back to it. Grandma had wandered in a new direction with Lucretia Mott, and while I’m sure her story would be very interesting, I was losing patience with this new rabbit trail.
“Um . . . Grandma Bebe?” I said when she paused for a moment. “Could you go back to the story of—?”
I never finished my sentence. We heard a bang! that was as loud and explosive as a gunshot, and it scared the thoughts right out of my head.
Grandma hit the brakes and gripped the steering wheel with both hands
to control the car’s sudden swerving. “Hang on tight, Harriet! We’ve had a blowout!”
I’ve watched my father struggle to wrestle his car into submission after a blown tire, and I was pretty amazed that my tiny grandmother could manage to control her behemoth of a car. I was also glad that I hadn’t been driving at the time. The sound the ruined tire made as it slapped against the roadbed was like a dozen maidservants beating carpets on a clothesline. The car came to a halt at last on the side of the road, enveloped in a great cloud of dust.
“Well!” Grandma said with a sigh. “Don’t you hate when that happens?”
We climbed out of the car and walked around it to look at the rear tire. There must have been a pond nearby, because I could hear frogs thrump-thrumping in the distance. I looked around for a farmhouse, but the only light I saw came from the moon high above us. We seemed to be on a desolate stretch of road, surrounded by forested hills. I hoped there weren’t any hungry bears in those woods.
“Now what?” I asked. “I suppose we’ll have to wait for another car to come by and rescue us?” I shivered and folded my arms tightly against my chest. The air in that mountain hollow felt as damp as the inside of a cave.
“Nonsense!” Grandma replied. “Only women in fairy tales wait to be rescued.” She twisted the handle on the trunk, and it opened with a squeak. She had to raise her voice to be heard above the clamor that she made as she rooted through the shadowy bin. “No, Harriet, I made up my mind when I bought this car that if I was responsible for driving it, then I should be responsible for fixing it when something went wrong. Here, hold these . . .” She handed me a car jack and a tire pump, then disappeared into the trunk again. She emerged a moment later, waving a rubber inner tube in the air like a deflated black snake. “Always carry a spare, dear.”
I watched in awe as Grandma crouched down and wedged the jack under the car frame as expertly as my father did. Her driving gloves were getting greasy and the front of her duster was smudged with dirt, but she didn’t care one whit. I wanted to be just like her.