Celia Garth: A Novel

by Gwen Bristow

  “Oh you silly creatures!” Vivian was calling. “Running off—you’re missing the excitement!”

  “What’s happened?” they demanded, and Miles started to tell them, but Vivian was already telling them.

  “My darlings, we were standing in front of Godfrey’s house, saying good night, when a fellow came running down the street—just a boy and scared out of his wits—he was jabbering and pointing toward a house all lit up for a party, and he said there was a man about to jump out of the window—”

  They listened breathlessly. Vivian chattered on.

  “Well, we’d never seen a man jump out of a window, so we were charmed. We ran as fast as we could, wondering if there really was a man and hoping he wouldn’t jump till we got there—and we came to the house and the boy pointed up to the second story, and my dears, there was a man about to jump out of the window, and just in that instant while we looked up at him—he jumped!”

  “Was he killed?” Celia demanded.

  Vivian shook her head, and now at last Miles got in a few words.

  “Not killed,” said Miles, “but hurt—we heard him groan after he fell.” Miles was more serious than Vivian about the whole matter. “That’s why I came for you,” he said to Jimmy. “We need help to keep the sidewalk clear till we can get a stretcher.”

  Jimmy said he would be glad to help. They all started back toward the corner, and he asked, “Does anybody know why the man jumped?”

  Miles shrugged. “Drunk, I suppose. They were having a bachelor party.”

  “I see,” Jimmy said good-naturedly. “He tippled, and he toppled. Could happen to anybody. Know who he is?”

  Miles said he had not waited to find out. There was a lot of confusion, he said—the injured man’s fellow-tipplers had rushed out, eager to aid him but so hazy-headed that they were merely in the way; and also in the way was a bunch of gawkers, the sort who seemed to spring up from the ground whenever an accident took place.

  “Like you and me,” Vivian whispered to Celia, and they both giggled. They had reached the corner, and a little way along Tradd Street they saw the, crowd. Light streamed out of the open doorway of the house from which the man had fallen, so the people were clearly visible: several of Godfrey’s guests, the gawking strangers Miles had spoken of, and members of the bachelor party. The last-named gentlemen had been having a fine time. Their noses were red and their wigs crooked, and they toddled like children just learning to walk.

  Celia heard Luke’s voice shouting to them to stand back and not try to lift the injured man—let the stretcher-bearers take him up when they get here. Herbert, catching sight of her and Vivian, came to meet them, and Jimmy went with Miles. Vivian asked Herbert, “Is he much hurt?”

  “They say he’s broken his ankle,” Herbert told her. “Luke sent those two mounted patrolmen to bring a surgeon.”

  “Really?” said Vivian. “I didn’t know military patrols could go on errands for ordinary folks.”

  “Ordinary folks?” Herbert repeated. “Didn’t anybody tell you who he was?”

  “Why? Somebody we know?”

  Herbert said, “It’s Colonel Francis Marion.”

  Celia gave a start. No wonder they were all in such a flurry. She looked again toward the group in the shaft of light. Marion lay on the pavement, while Jimmy, Luke, and several other men in uniform had constituted themselves a military guard. Nearer at hand, Burton was exclaiming that this was the worst, the very worst thing that could have happened, and Godfrey was saying, “Marion, of the whole Continental Army! Why couldn’t it have been somebody else?”

  Then, just beside her, Celia heard a funny little sound. Turning, she saw Vivian biting her handkerchief in an effort to keep quiet. Vivian was choking with laughter.

  As her eye caught Celia’s, Vivian beckoned her a step nearer. “Isn’t it wonderful?” she whispered. “That speckless hero!”

  At this, Celia began to laugh too. She laughed and laughed. She thought she knew just how Vivian felt.

  Vivian was exulting. “He’s not perfect. He got a fuzz on. He doesn’t know how happy he’s made me.”

  Two soldiers came up carrying a stretcher, followed by a surgeon with a bagful of instruments. At Luke’s command the group parted to let them through. They picked up Marion and carried him back into the house.

  As they disappeared through the doorway Vivian kissed her hand and waved.

  “Francis Marion,” she murmured, “for that sinful skinful, I almost like you.”

  The next morning the schooner left for Sea Garden. Elise sobbed loudly at parting with her boys; she made considerably more noise about sending them to stay with her brother than either Madge or Vivian made about leaving their sons to face British bullets.

  When Burton had gone out to consult with Godfrey about storing meat for the garrison, and Elise had retired to her room with smelling salts, Celia roamed about the house. The rooms looked cold and empty. The essential furniture was still here, but with the loss of Vivian and Vivian’s pretty trifles the place had lost its charm. Celia had a frightening sense of being alone.

  To keep from brooding she set to work on the cravat she was making for Jimmy. This calmed her nerves and she went down to dinner in a better mood. As only Burton, Elise, and herself were at table, she expected a tiresome meal; but having been out for some hours Burton had plenty to tell them.

  He said everybody was talking about Marion’s accident. The break in his ankle was a bad one and he would be helpless for weeks to come. He was being moved to his own home, a plantation near Eutaw Springs in the parish of St. John’s Berkeley. And, Burton told them solemnly, the tale that Marion had been tipsy last night was nothing but gossip. Wicked, malicious gossip, no doubt started by Tories.

  He said he would give them the facts.

  Certainly there had been a party, and some of the guests had had too much to drink. But not Marion. Marion was a temperate man, a very temperate man. When the party got too gay, Marion decided to leave.

  He slipped away unobserved and went to the front door, but found it locked. The host had locked it to make sure the company continued to drink until they were all under the table—that was some men’s idea of hospitality. So Marion went upstairs and opened a window, intending to climb out and leave the party that way. But he slipped and fell. Simplest thing in the world, said Burton.

  “Why of course,” said Elise. She usually echoed Burton’s opinions, not because she really considered him a fount of wisdom but because it saved her the trouble of doing any thinking of her own.

  Celia said nothing. As she was going to be their guest for the next six weeks she had no wish to start an argument. But she had her own thoughts and they were sassy thoughts. She thought this was the silliest yarn she had ever heard.

  That afternoon Miles dropped in. Last night Miles had taken it for granted that the man on the pavement was there because he had been too merry, but now that he had learned the man’s name he had changed his mind. Tory talk, Miles said indignantly.

  With an effort, Celia kept her mouth shut.

  The next day Elise had guests to dinner. This was not like the dinners Vivian gave, where the people were gay and the talk was light and everything had an air of frivolity. Elise and Burton’s friends were solid folk, serious about life.

  Celia thought the food was good. But Elise apologized for each dish as it was passed, explaining either that this was a substitute for something she would rather have served, or that this was not made as she would have liked because she could not get the proper ingredients. Both Elise and Burton said they did not know how people in town were going to live, with the army taking all the food that came in. The company sighed and said they did not know either. They talked darkly about their future meals; you would have thought they expected to be reduced to such a state that they would be glad to eat the cheese out of a mousetrap.

  Celia watched the waitress pass a dish of chicken stewed with little sausage balls. She did not know what th
ese others might have, but she did know that Vivian had left the storerooms of this household stocked with hams and spiced beef and sides of bacon, grits and cornmeal, syrup and sugar and rice. Also they had vegetables coming up in the garden. She wondered if these people ever laughed at anything.

  The talk turned to Francis Marion, and they certainly did no laughing here. Everybody agreed that Marion had tried to leave the party because he did not care to get drunk. But this was not all. No longer was it enough to say that Marion was a temperate man. Now they were saying he had never had a drink in his life. He had never taken an eggnog on Christmas Day. He would not touch a pudding flavored with brandy. If you doubted this you were a disloyal American, a friend of the king, you might even be a spy who ought to be locked up in the dungeon under the Exchange.

  That evening after the company had left, Jimmy dropped by. He and Celia went into the little reception parlor. It was the first time she had seen Jimmy since the night of Marion’s accident, so she asked him to tell her: was the great man drunk that night or wasn’t he?

  Jimmy groaned. “Oh, my grandpa’s Sunday wig! You too, Celia?”

  “I just thought you might know!” she retorted. “You were there, guarding him.”

  “I didn’t bend over to smell his breath,” said Jimmy. He smiled contritely. “I’m sorry, Celia, but I’m exasperated. This thing has even held up work on the defenses—men throw down their tools to argue about it. But I’m not exasperated with you. Go on with what you started to say.”

  She told him about the talk at dinner. As he listened, Jimmy’s lips had a quiver of mirth. When she paused he said,

  “Now tell me what you think.”

  This was the first time she had been asked for her opinion. It was a pleasure to give it.

  “I never heard such a silly tale,” she said. “The man who gave the party had locked his door, he’d be a fool not to lock it in the middle of the night with the town jammed the way it is. And if Colonel Marion wanted to leave by a window I don’t know why he chose one on the second floor. There were plenty of windows downstairs. I think he was tipsy.”

  Jimmy, laughing, did not answer at once.

  “Wasn’t he?” Celia demanded.

  “Celia darling,” said Jimmy, “I don’t know. I saw Luke this afternoon and he doesn’t know either. Frankly, we both think the same thing you do, but we’re sick of the argument. Losing Colonel Marion right now is a calamity. That’s what matters, not what he drinks for supper.”

  His voice was grave now. But he grinned at her again as he asked,

  “You haven’t spoken your mind about this to anybody else, have you?”

  “Oh no.”

  “Don’t talk about it,” said Jimmy. “Somebody will say you ought to be deported and I can’t do without you.”

  Celia promised. When he left her, she stood a moment on the front steps, looking after him. Jimmy had said “calamity,” and Jimmy was a man who meant what he said.

  She looked toward the dark steeple of St. Michael’s. “Lighten our darkness,” she whispered. “Lighten our darkness.”

  The next morning was cool and diamond-clear. When she was dressed Celia opened her window and rested her elbows on the sill, enjoying the early spring freshness. Her room was on the north side of the house, overlooking the carriage drive and the brick wall dividing this property from that of the people next door. From where she stood she could see over the wall into their garden, gay with hyacinths and daffodils and a peach tree with bursting pink buds. The air was full of birdsongs. Close by her Celia heard a thrasher pouring out such happy melody that she smiled as she listened.

  An upstairs window of the other house opened, and over the sill leaned an elderly man whom she recognized as Mr. Simon Dale, a relative of Burton’s father. At Mr. Dale’s elbow she saw his grandson, a boy about twelve years old, handing him something.

  Mr. Dale held up the object, which she saw now was a long thin spyglass. For an instant Celia thought the old wretch was trying to peek into her bedroom, but at once she knew she was wrong. Mr. Dale was not looking toward this house at all. He had turned his spyglass southwest, toward the point where the Ashley River flowed around the tip of the Charleston peninsula into the sea. He must be looking at a boat. Celia smiled a silent apology to the old gentleman as she turned from her own window and started to go down for breakfast.

  As she opened the door her nose caught a whiff of sausage. At the same time she saw Burton standing at a window here in the upstairs hall, and he too held a spyglass to his eye and was looking toward the Ashley River. Celia wondered what was going on over there. Maybe he would let her see too. She had never looked through a telescope. Eagerly, she went toward the window.

  Intent on what he was looking at, Burton did not hear her footsteps until she had reached his side, then with a start he turned. “Why good morning, Celia,” he said.

  His manner was so abstracted that she was afraid her interruption was not welcome. “Excuse me, sir,” she returned hastily, “I didn’t mean to trouble you.”

  She started to back away, but he held out the spyglass as if glad to share something of interest. “Do you want to take a look?” he asked her.

  “Oh yes!” Celia exclaimed. She touched the thing carefully. It was like a tube in several sections, the smallest section toward the eyepiece and the largest at the other end. “Will you tell me what to do?” she asked.

  “Of course,” said Burton. He shrugged. “You’ll have to see them sooner or later, might as well be now.”

  “But what are you looking at?” she asked.

  Again he was startled, then he smiled as he answered, “I forgot you were just awake. Tom Lacy came by early to ask for some breakfast—he’d been on duty all night—and he told us. The British are there on the west bank.”

  “The British!” she gasped. Forgetting the spyglass she leaned over the sill and looked. Her eyes, younger than his, could see them even without the glass—a number of small boats in the river, and tiny figures moving on the other side.

  But she wanted to see more. Burton showed her how to put the eyepiece to one eye, and turn the lenses to adjust them to her vision. As her view cleared, the trees across the Ashley River seemed to spring closer. She moved the glass to get something more than trees into her range, and at last she saw what she was looking for, men in red coats and tan breeches and high black boots. It was hard to see what they were doing, but they were scrambling about as though very busy, and more of them were wading ashore from rowboats in the river.

  Celia had a queer feeling as if there was a lump of something cold under her ribs. Until this minute, the soldiers of King George had been a vague mass in her thoughts, abstract like the problems in a book of arithmetic. But now that she saw them they became men, men who wanted to destroy the town she lived in and everything she had to live for. The lump under her ribs began to get hot. It was like a burning pain.

  Slowly she lowered the glass. Her thoughts must have shown in her face, for Burton gave her a reassuring smile.

  “They’re not going to get in,” he said. “They’ve tried before—remember?”

  “Why yes!” said Celia. She spoke with a sense of lightness. Of course they had tried before, they had tried twice—at Fort Moultrie, and again just before she came to work at Mrs. Thorley’s, when a British force under General Prevost had marched up from Florida. Prevost’s men had done a lot of looting around Beaufort, but they had not set foot in Charleston. The hot lump under her ribs began to dissolve as Burton said heartily,

  “So don’t you be scared. You keep your pretty face pretty, for Jimmy. Now we’d better get some breakfast. I’ve got to go out soon.”

  As they turned from the window they heard little pattering steps, and Elise came hurrying toward them followed by her maid Tessie.

  “If you’re going down, Burton,” Elise urged him, “let me have the glass—I’ll take it up to the attic, we can see much better from there. Tessie, do bring me some more
coffee. I declare, I’m so excited I can’t eat a thing. I’m going to ask Susan Dale to come over here, and Patsy Baxter, I don’t believe the Baxters can see from their house, I’ll send a note to Patsy—”

  Celia tried to look demure. Mrs. Baxter’s name was not Patsy. It was Charlotte. But the wife of George the Third was also named Charlotte, and when the war began Mrs. Baxter had announced that no good rebel woman should bear the name of the British queen. So she asked her friends to call her Patsy, because somebody had told her that this was George Washington’s pet name for Martha.

  Burton gave Elise the spyglass. “Oh dear, there are more and more of them!” exclaimed Elise, all a-flutter with pleasurable tremors. “Isn’t this amazing? I do think we were wise to stay in town. Everybody is going to be asking us about this for years to come. Tessie, maybe I could eat just a little sausage, and some hominy, be sure it’s hot—Celia come up to the attic after breakfast and get a really good look—”

  Celia said, “Yes ma’am,” and fled downstairs.

  All day long the king’s men were plainly to be seen, but they gave no trouble. Directed by Sir Henry Clinton, they minded their business. This business was the bridging of Wappoo Creek, a stream that flowed into the Ashley River on the side away from town. The high windows were crowded with women and children and old men, watching. Every man strong enough to be useful had work to do on the defenses. Burton, in charge of sandbagging some buildings on King Street, was out all day.

  He was out all day every day, while the redcoats slowly moved their wagons across the bridge they had built. They kept moving up the far bank of the Ashley, and as they went, here and there they built a platform and dragged a cannon to stand on it. On the Charleston side of the river the rebels threw up earthworks and placed cannon of their own. With Elise and Elise’s friends, Celia watched from the attic windows. It was gruesome, it made her flesh creep, and yet it was fascinating and she could not make herself stop watching.

  The redcoats had appeared first on Tuesday, the seventh of March. The following Sunday morning while Celia was dressing for church she heard a boom that shook the air. She had just put on her petticoat and was about to tie the strings at the waistband; at the sound she stopped and stood poker-stiff, listening. After the boom came a rumble, and in the midst of the rumble she heard another boom. The noise was like thunder and yet different. It was not, in fact, like any other noise Celia had ever heard. The boom came a third time, and the rumble behind it, and this time she knew what it must be. They were firing those guns on the river. The battle for Charleston had begun.