Celia Garth: A Novel

by Gwen Bristow

  Elise, cross with disappointment, was wailing, “We can’t see from here!”

  Celia wet her lips. She spoke with determined steadiness. “What—regiment—has gone up to—meet the British?”

  Elise turned around. She smiled comfortingly. Silly Elise might be, but she had a kind heart. Also she had some respect for Celia, because Celia did not talk much and was calm in her manner and competent with her hands, and most of all because Celia was engaged to Jimmy and he was such a good catch. “Continental troops,” said Elise. “Not the militia—not Jimmy.”

  Celia felt a marvelous lightness. Until she felt it, she had not known how frightened she had been. But now she had as much curiosity as they had. “Maybe I can see the battle,” she offered eagerly. “Could I try?”

  “But if I can’t see,” said Elise, loath to give up the spyglass, “you can’t either.”

  “I can climb out on the roof.”

  “You’ll get hurt!” they cried.

  “Oh no I won’t. I’ll be careful.”

  They moved aside and Celia scrambled out, with no worse result than blackening her dress. The slope of the roof here was gentle, and Celia supported herself against the gable that held the attic window. Elise handed her the glass.

  “What do you see?” they begged as she put it to her eye.

  “Smoke,” said Celia. “Big thick puffs of smoke. It’s a long way off, above town.”

  Now that she was out here, with a view in all directions, she turned her head to see what else the glass would show her. On the Ashley River the cannon were not firing. With no smoke there to hide her view she had a good clear look at the redcoats, and she could see men among them who were not redcoats.

  These men’s coats were blue with red facings, and they wore helmets of fantastic height. The helmeted men appeared to be officers, directing their troops. For a moment Celia was puzzled, then she realized who they were. Hessians. The German soldiers hired by King George to kill his subjects in America. As she looked at them a shiver started at the back of her neck and went right down to the bottom of her spine.

  A little farther up, working on the gun emplacements, were more men who were not redcoats, and neither were they Hessians. Many of these wore no coats, but the men directing them were in uniform, and as she looked Celia had glimpses of green. Americans. Tories.

  She had a sick feeling all over. Jimmy had told her, with his characteristic fairness, that some Tories honestly believed in the side of the king. But Celia knew, and Jimmy knew, and so did everybody else, that many men had joined the Tory regiments because there they got regular pay in hard British coin, while the patriots were paid in paper that bought less every week. Celia looked at the Tories across the river and felt her lips curl with anger.

  In the window, Elise and Mrs. Baxter wanted to know what she was seeing. “Troops everywhere,” said Celia. “And that battle up yonder. Here, take the glass, I’ll come in.”

  She climbed back through the window, and leaving the spyglass with Elise she went to a trunk by the wall and sat down. All those men, she thought, all those ships, closing in like a drawstring. Again she had that feeling of being squeezed.

  Tessie had burst into sobs of fright. Elise said, “Oh, do hush, they’re nowhere near us,” but as she drew back from the window she said to Mrs. Baxter, “You know, Patsy, maybe we shouldn’t stay in Charleston. Maybe we ought to leave.”

  Mrs. Baxter nodded. “I’ve been thinking so too. Have you heard there’s smallpox in town?”

  “Oh good heavens!” said Elise.

  “We can leave by the Cooper River,” said Mrs. Baxter.

  “Burton and I could go to our country place at Gaylawn,” said Elise, “or to my brother’s plantation on the Santee. That’s where our sons are, you know—we should have gone with them, our place is really with our children, don’t you think so? And Burton isn’t as young as he was, he’s a good deal older than I am, you know, I was nothing but a child when I married, all this work is hard on him.”

  Celia was sitting up stiffly on the trunk. They had said so firmly that they were going to stay in town! If they left, would they make her go with them?

  Marietta, who had been soothing Tessie’s fears, came over to the trunk. With an understanding smile she said, “Miss Celia, don’t you think it would be nice if you and I went down and made some coffee?”

  Celia sprang to her feet. “Wonderful. You go on to the kitchen. I’m black from being on the roof, but I’ll wash and change my dress and I’ll be there in a minute.”

  They were pouring the coffee when another maid came to say that Captain Rand had dropped in. Celia ran indoors. Jimmy was in the parlor, dustier, leaner, tireder than ever. He gripped her till it hurt. Hot coffee? he repeated when she asked him. Yes, yes, heaven must have inspired her to make it now. Celia went out to the kitchen to tell Marietta to bring him a cup, then went upstairs to get the cravat.

  When she came down Jimmy sat by the dining room table, sipping coffee and sighing with pleasure. As she unfolded the towel, she heard him gasp.

  “Celia! Why that—that’s a work of art!”

  She smiled joyfully. “Then you do like it?”

  “Like it? I never had such a cravat in my life.” He reached toward it, but drew back. “I don’t dare touch it.”

  “Why not?”

  Jimmy held out his hands. Celia had been so glad to see him that she had not noticed how grimy they were. He looked again at the beautiful cravat. He looked at it for a long time. When he spoke to her again his voice was almost reverent. “Celia, I can’t tell you how I feel about this. I’m so tired, I’ve got so much on my mind—I never was any good at words and now I seem to be worse than ever. But you’ll never know how beautiful this looks to me. And you’ll never know how much I love you.” He took her soft clean hands in his hard dirty ones and kissed them.

  She said softly, “You don’t like this war, do you, Jimmy?”

  “No,” he answered. He looked at her straight and spoke without hesitation. “I don’t think I’m a coward, Celia. But I wasn’t meant for killing. I’ll do whatever I have to do, and do it the best I can, but I can’t make myself want to do it. I can’t hate the British, I can’t hate Hessians, I can’t even hate Tories.”

  “I can,” said Celia. “I do.”

  Jimmy shrugged a lean shoulder. “Well, it won’t last forever. And in the meantime—Celia, I’m so glad you’re here. Just seeing you at odd times like this, it means such a lot.” He looked at the cravat again, a smile lighting his tired face. “Put that away till I can wear it.”

  She nodded, and waited while he finished his coffee. Then he had to leave. As she closed the front door after him she knew that no matter what Elise and Burton might do, nobody was going to get her away from Charleston.

  CHAPTER 12

  ABOUT SUNSET THE FIRING died down. But in the morning the cannon on the Ashley River started again.

  Now Elise was really frightened. The king’s men across the river were cannonading, the king’s men above Charleston were digging a trench across the neck of the peninsula, the king’s ships were in sight and might get in any day. She clung to Burton and told him they had to leave town.

  He put her off, saying he could not go today. They had a boat and could leave any time, but first he had work to do. He had moved much valuable property, including all the furnishings of their suburban home, into a city warehouse. This warehouse was a stout brick building, but it had to be barred and sandbagged, to make it safe from thieves in town as well as guns outside. When he had done this, said Burton, he would talk about leaving. Only he still did not think there was any reason for it, he added as he went out after breakfast.

  During the morning Mrs. Baxter came in. She said she and Mr. Baxter had decided to go up the Cooper River to her father’s plantation. It wasn’t right to keep poor little George here where he might get hurt.

  “Don’t you think we should leave too?” Elise demanded of Celia.


  Celia shook her head.

  “But my dear,” cried Mrs. Baxter, “haven’t you heard what those British under General Prevost did last year along the Edisto River? They raided people’s homes—”

  “They stole everything,” said Elise. “They even ripped up the mattresses with bayonets to see if people had hidden money inside—”

  “They shot the cows and chickens,” said Mrs. Baxter, “and left them to rot on the ground.”

  “They rounded up all the Negroes,” said Elise, “and shipped them to the British West Indies to be sold in the canefields—”

  “And what they did to women—” began Mrs. Baxter, but Elise cut in shrilly,

  “Oh Patsy! Not before a young girl—that’s not nice!”

  At last Mrs. Baxter went home to pack. Dinner was a sketchy meal, for Elise had scared the wits out of the maids. However, when Burton came in he managed to restore some order by assuring them that though they could hear the guns, no shells were coming into town. Also he brought some encouraging news. For two years now, the king of France had been sending men and ships to aid the Americans, and several months ago the Marquis de Lafayette had gone back to France to urge that he send still more. Now the word was that King Louis had agreed, and a French fleet was on the way to Charleston.

  Elise spent most of the next day in the attic with the spyglass, looking for the French ships. But they did not arrive, and when they still had not arrived by the following morning she was in despair again. This was Sunday, but Elise said she simply did not feel strong enough to go to church.

  Leaving Tessie to pat Elise’s head with rosewater, Burton and Celia and Marietta walked to St. Michael’s. Above the faroff rumble of guns, Celia listened as the banns were read. “… James de Courcey Rand, bachelor, of the parish of St. Philip, and Celia Garth, spinster of this parish.” She counted happily. Today was the second of April. Her birthday was eleven days ahead. After that, she and Jimmy could be married.

  Two days later Elise said the Baxters had left town. And so, according to Elise, had practically everybody else, though Celia could still see plenty of people in the streets. But it was certainly true that whenever she turned the spyglass eastward she saw boats hurrying off by way of the Cooper River. That river was safe, guarded by Luke and the rest of Colonel Washington’s cavalry.

  The military men were glad to have these people go. Civilians got in the way. There had even been talk of ordering all non-combatants out of town. But the fact was that many people had nowhere to go. Leaving town was simple enough for those who had country homes, or whose out-of-town friends could give them accommodation. But ordinary folk—clerks and tailors and women who taught school—they had no country homes. Few of them even had boats, and the army had no boats to spare. So they stayed.

  There were also a good many men like Burton, who wanted to stand by their property. But much as Burton wanted to stay, he was fond of Elise, and her terrors were wearing him down.

  That night, not long after they had gone to bed, they were wakened by loud gunfire from the neck of the Charleston peninsula. Everybody jumped out of bed. While the kitchen servants huddled around the cook-fire to pray and sing hymns, Elise wandered through the house in a white robe that floated around her and made her look like a chubby ghost. After her came Tessie and the housemaids and their children, in various states of wailing fright. They roamed up to the attic, where if you looked toward the Neck you could see the shells flaring and bursting in a mighty display. When Elise had borne as much of this as she could, she and her train rambled down to the cellar, and here among the bins and storage kegs they crouched and covered their heads. After a while, tired of not seeing what was going on, Elise would lead them up to the attic again.

  Hurrying into his clothes, Burton went out to make inquiries. He came in and told Elise that she had nothing to fear. All this gunfire was coming from American guns. The British, busy digging their trench from river to river across the Neck, were not shooting back. If she would go to the attic again, and look, she would see that the shells were all going outward toward the British lines.

  Elise merely shook her head and trembled. “But I want to be with my children, Burton! My precious boys, why did I send them away and not go with them? What do you suppose is happening to them now?”

  Burton told her the boys were undoubtedly in bed asleep. There were no British north of the Santee River.

  “How do you know where the British are? That dreadful man Tarleton is all over the country, raiding and looting and killing people—oh, nobody knows what’s going to happen!”

  Burton sighed helplessly.

  Burton had never had many decisions to make. He had been born into a good family, he had been to the right school and lived in the right neighborhood and had always tried to do the right thing. But until now, he had always known what the right thing was. Now he really did not know. Burton was confused. He had learned the rules so carefully, and now they were of no use to him. He felt that somehow, somebody had not played fair.

  At last Elise climbed back to the attic. She sat on a trunk. The cannon rumbled. Elise turned to Celia, who stood at a window watching the faroff exploding shells.

  “Have you heard what the officers have decided to do?” moaned Elise. “They’re going to take the army out of town and let the redcoats march in without a fight. They’re going to leave us to be murdered and have our houses burned over our heads.”

  Celia did not answer. It would not have mattered if she had, for Elise was starting down to the cellar again.

  Celia and Marietta stayed in the attic, watching the shells. Celia thought if Elise had not been here this would have been an exciting adventure. But as the hours passed she found that a battle, especially a battle in which you are not yourself being shot at, gets monotonous. It was like an endless display of fireworks.

  She and Marietta wore cloaks over their nightgowns, but as the pre-dawn mist crept in they began to shiver. Marietta smothered a yawn.

  “Let’s go back to bed,” Celia said to her.

  Marietta agreed gladly and they went down the staircase. In the second-floor hall they met Elise, taking whiffs of her smelling-salts.

  “I’ve sent Tessie out to make coffee,” said Elise. “Where are you going?”

  “To bed,” said Celia.

  “What! You can’t sleep now! They’re still firing! Nobody knows what’s going to—”

  “I can’t stay awake till the end of the war!” Celia retorted, and before Elise could answer she went into her own room and shut the door. When she had pulled the curtains together to keep out the daylight she got into bed, and she knew no more till she woke up at noon.

  The cannonade was still going on. By this time the British were returning the rebel fire, and a few shells had even reached the earthworks in front of the city. But the firing was slow, with long spaces between shots. Late that afternoon the maids managed a pick-up supper, after which Burton and Elise went to their room. They both looked worn out, and Celia hoped that now they would get some rest.

  After her long sleep this morning she felt wide awake. She went into the library and stood by a side window looking over the garden. How peaceful it seemed in the evening glow—the sweet yellow jessamine, the roses scrambling over the walls, the magnolia tree full of buds. Under the roar of the guns she could hear the silver sound of crickets. She wished she could know what was really going on. She had no idea what Jimmy was doing, or Darren, or Miles. She wondered if it was true that Tarleton’s Legion was galloping about the country, and what part of the country they were in. She wondered how Luke was, and Vivian and Herbert, and Beatrice and Audrey and the baby. She wondered if Francis Marion had reached his plantation safely, and if his ankle still hurt him very much. How long since he fell? About a month—it seemed like a hundred years.

  Now I’m getting mopey, she thought. I’d better do something.

  She glanced toward the bookcases. There was plenty to read, for Herbert had taken only t
he valuable books to Sea Garden. Celia brought a candle, and chose Robinson Crusoe, which she had heard about all her life but had never read. Going to a big cushioned chair by the window, she curled up comfortably and opened the book.

  After a few pages she was absorbed. The guns made an undertone like distant thunder. The evening grew dark, the candle burned steadily, the damp fragrances of the garden came in by the window. Celia read on and on. And then all of a sudden she heard a noise as if the world had exploded.

  She sprang up. The book fell sprawling at her feet. The noise went on like the roar of a thousand volcanoes; the windowpanes shook, the poker fell clattering on the hearth; at her side the candlestick quivered on the table, and she snatched it up and set it on the hearth close to the grate so if the candle fell it would not set anything on fire. She heard screams of fright as Elise and the maids woke up, and more screams from the street. Flashes of light were splitting the dark over the garden.

  Grabbing the candle seemed to have used up her own power of movement. Her hands clasped in front of her, she stood still, listening.

  At first the noise had seemed to be everywhere, on all sides of her and in the sky and under the earth. But now she could tell that the roars were coming, not from the lines across the Neck, but from the southwest, somewhere close to the spot where she had seen the first redcoats across the Ashley River. She had never heard so much noise in her life. Slowly, she raised one hand and stroked her ear. It seemed strange that she could also hear the little brushing sound of her fingertips.

  Now that she had moved she kept on moving, doing things with little jerky motions like a doll. She bent and picked up her book, smoothed a crumpled page, and placed the book on the table. She saw that the glass holder on the mantelpiece, which contained the rolled paper lamplighters, was trembling under the force of the guns; she took it carefully and set it on the floor so it would not fall and break. Kneeling by the hearth she took the tongs and fire-shovel and laid them beside the poker so they would not fall either. Still kneeling there, she burst into tears and began to sob with fright.