by Jane Peart
Major Devlin frowned, shook his head slightly, "An inexcusable episode. Totally without cause." He paused, then said, "Strange, but we had entirely opposite counter-intelligence that this place was a station on the Underground Railroad, assisting blacks to freedom in the North."
Bewildered by his statement, Garnet did not reply.
"This pony was brought in along with other horses conscripted for army use, but I had not had an opportunity to inspect them until this morning. When I saw h i m . . . I knew there was no need for him and no use to us in his acquisition. I understand he belongs to this boy."
Garnet nodded. "Thank you for returning him," she said stiffly. She felt an urge to burst out with all the other things conscripted by his men, but thought better of it. The less said to the enemy, the better.
It was he who seemed to linger, openly enjoying the reunion of boy and pony. His eyes resting on the two seemed to soften, "My sister has a boy about your boy's age," he remarked thoughtfully.
Garnet drew herself up in her old defiant stance and lifted her chin proudly. 'I hope he and his family have not been subjected to suffering such as we have known." Then she shrugged and added, "But then you are the victors and we the vanquished, and the fortunes of war are always weighed in the balance of the invader," she said coldly.
Major Devlin glanced away from Jonathan and regarded Garnet with a steady, direct gaze. She was taken aback by the expression of genuine regret, almost sadness, in his clear, gray eyes.
When he spoke his voice was edged with melancholy, "This war will leave no man the victor. It is a cruel travesty on the dreams our mutual forefathers envisioned for this nation. American against American, state against state, brother against brother. The wounds, both North and South, have been deep and will not soon nor easily be healed. I pray to God that this child and all the children of this land will eventually build something stronger and better over the scar."
Major Devlin bowed slightly from the waist, gave Garnet a salute at the brim of his hat, then turned his horse and cantered back down the driveway.
Garnet stood watching him until he was out of sight.
Afterward Garnet kept thinking about what Major Devlin had said. She had not known much more than rumors about the so-called Underground Railroad. Before the War she had been too self-centered to think of anything else. Now she wondered. Could Rose have been in any way involved? One by one, random thoughts began to fall into place, forming a tapestry of understanding. Rose's sympathy with the slaves: She had been secretly teaching her own servants to read and write. That had come out when the three, Tilda, Carrie and Linny, had confessed why they were all in Rose's bedroom the night of the fatal fire.
Then, how did Rose alone know about the hidden room in Jonathan's nursery? Had she held black people there and somehow sneaked them out to freedom?
Lizzie! Garnet gasped. Had Rose even helped Lizzie escape?
Slowly the probable truth gripped Garnet, followed by a kind of awed admiration. How daring of her! How brave to have risked so much for her convictions that slavery was wrong!
Garnet thought of those heavily underlined passages in Rose's Bible: "I can do all things through Christ which strengthened! me." How much fragile, gentle Rose must have relied on the Word of God to give her the courage to carry out such dangerous tasks.
Regretfully, Garnet wished she had known Rose better, allowed herself to love her sooner.
chapter
33
THE FIRST WEEK of April the weather was beautiful. The trees wore pale green halos as the delicate first foliage began to appear. The orchards blossomed into canopies of pink and white fairy lace. Walking through the sweet-scented paths, Garnet breathed in the perfumed air, relishing the beauty as if for the first time, realizing she had often taken happiness for granted in the past, never knowing each day should be treasured.
That spring, bad news followed bad news. The crumbling of the Confederacy came as hammer blows of heartbreak as one after the other of the strongholds fell before the sheer numbers of the enemy that now seemed invincible. Vicksburg, then Atlanta, taken over by the Federal forces. At Montclair, infrequent letters from friends and relatives related the dire disasters that had befallen those in the path of Sherman's ruthless drive to the sea.
Although all seemed entirely lost, Cousin Nell's notes relayed that Richmond was still putting up a gallant front. President Davis was maintaining morale in spite of the tragedy of the death of his small son "little Joe" in an accident.
Then like the proverbial last straw—when the word came that Charleston had surrendered, the soul of the Confederacy was broken. Where it all began, it ended.
Within days the pretense that the remnants of the Confederate army would fight on was discarded. Lee surrendered his weary, hungry troops to Grant and the hopes of the South were finally shattered. President Davis and his cabinet evacuated Richmond, and within forty-eight hours Richmond was occupied by federal troops. The war was over after four endless years. On top of the dreadful defeat they suffered, the South was stunned by the shocking tidings of Lincoln's assassination. Now they girded themselves for a personal apocalypse believing the vengeance of the North would be terrible.
Finally word reached Montclair that Leighton had died of wounds and illness in a Yankee prison hospital. Dove's brave resignation was an inspiration even as they mourned him with her.
As summer approached, Garnet worried not only about Bryce but about what they would do about the acres of unplowed, unplanted fields. The fieldhands who had come back after being recruited by the Army showed no inclination to work, and Garnet hoped desperately Mr. Montrose would soon come home and take over some of these responsibilities. The last letter they had from him was posted in Georgia, where he had gone to oversee some of the fortification building. They knew that no one who had been connected with the Confederate government, as he had been, would now be allowed to travel through "occupied territory" without taking an oath of allegiance to the United States. Garnet was not sure the proud, stubborn Clay Montrose would ever bow to that demand.
For those at Montclair the day to day effort for survival seemed overshadowed by the new fears that sharpened their ordinary daily life. The Negroes, informed of their freedom, began to slip away, leaving work undone, fields unplowed, wandering the countryside in search of their liberators and the new life promised them. The Yankee raid that had depleted their stores had not been replenished, and the gardens were still unplanted.
Men began to straggle home. Harmony got word her husband was coming and they all went to the Mayfield depot to meet him. The scene this time was a far cry from the days when they had seen their eager, youthful soldiers off to battle. Then the air had been filled with gaiety and gallant promise.
When Clint Chance stepped off the train, Garnet hardly recognized him as the strong, young man she had known. Harmony burst into tears at the sight of his worn, hollowed face, his shoulders sagging under the once-trim gray uniform, now torn and stained. He gathered his wife into his arms silently. As his eyes met Garnet's over her head, only she saw the utter weariness and defeat in them.
Clint and his little family left soon to go to his parents' plantation outside of Winchester, though they were uncertain as to how it had survived its Yankee occupation. Guiltily, Garnet felt no real regret at seeing them go. It meant fewer mouths to feed, and besides, Harmony had never been any great help.
One morning soon after, they came down for breakfast and found Bessie had departed. Tilda informed them that she had packed all her things the day before and left at dawn. It was only one more incident in all the other changes of the post-war South. The same thing was happening in the households of most of the people they knew. A whole new order was being established, and no one knew exactly how it would evolve.
Then one night toward the end of April, Garnet went to bed after a particularly wearying day. It had started raining early in the evening and it rained all night. The wind rose and the rain and win
d beat upon windows, sending the boughs of the trees scraping against the house. Garnet had fallen asleep to the sound and did not know why she awakened.
Wide awake she sat up in bed listening—for what she did not know. It was then she heard hoofbeats on the crushed shell drive below. Her heart thumped in alarm. There had been bands of renegades, stragglers, deserters from both armies seen in the vicinity over the weeks since the surrender, and she was frightened.
She got out of bed, moved cautiously over to the window and, concealing herself behind the curtain, peered out into the misty night. She saw a single horseman corning slowly up the drive. She went out into the hallway, then padded barefoot down the stairway across the lower hall and to the front door. She looked out one of the glass panels, holding her breath.
As the figure on horseback came nearer, Garnet stiffened. As she watched, she saw the shadow of Josh, the faithful groom who had taken to sleeping on the veranda at night to protect the household. Instantly he was on his feet, rushing down the steps toward the stranger. Garnet stood frozen as Josh took hold of the horse's bridle with one hand, then used the other to support the rider's body that was slumping forward.
In the same instant she realized who it was and flung open the door, she heard Josh nearly sobbing, "Lawdy, lawdy, Miz Garnet! It's Marse Bryce!" He was staggering under the burden of the taller, heavier man. Garnet rushed to help, hardly aware of the gravel cutting into the soles of her bare feet.
Bryce gave a groan as they half-carried, half-dragged him down from the horse. Garnet saw that one arm hung useless, and his torn uniform was stiff with blood.
"Go get somebody to help!" Garnet ordered Josh. "Quick!"
The rain was soaking her, her unbound hair streamed into her face, her nightgown was clinging to her. She knelt beside Bryce, knowing they must get him into the house, tend to his wound.
Josh was back with one of the younger men, and together they picked Bryce up and carried him into the house. By this time Dove had awakened and was standing at the top of the stairs.
"It's Bryce!" Garnet told her hoarsely. "He's been hurt."
Dove ran down the steps. She took in Garnet's condition and said, "You're wet through, Garnet. Go get changed. I'll help Bryce."
Her teeth chattering from the chill, Garnet threw on her clothes and was back downstairs in a flash. The men had laid Bryce on a sofa in the parlor, and Dove had cut away the sleeve of his coat, revealing a bullet wound in his upper arm that had splintered the bone. It had been primitively treated, for it was festering.
Dove's and Garnet's eyes met in alarm.
"We'll have to go for the doctor in Mayfield tomorrow," Garnet said through stiff lips. Blood poisoning could have already started, she realized. "We'll clean it as best we can tonight and . . . pray!"
Bryce was out of his head with fever. Garnet wasn't sure whether he knew he had somehow made it home. She leaned over him to hear what he was mumbling, then straightened and nodded to Josh.
"It's his horse he's worried about. Take him out to the barn, Josh. Rub him down, see he gets some oats."
Together Garnet and Dove cleansed and wrapped Bryce's arm, made him as comfortable as they could. They were afraid to move him until the doctor had seen the arm, afraid they might start the bleeding again, that a piece of shattered bone might pierce an artery.
Tilda, aroused by the stir, had come out from the room near the kitchen where she slept, and helped the other two women. When Dove went back to bed, Tilda remained beside Garnet in her vigil.
Josh left early the next morning and brought back a young doctor recently paroled, who had served as an Army surgeon in Richmond. He examined Bryce immediately.
Garnet took one look at Dr. Myles's face and a cold certainty wrenched her heart. He had dressed Bryce's wound, left powders for the fever, but there was something in his eyes that betrayed the professional cheerfulness of his voice.
When he said gravely, "It's a matter of time," she was not exactly sure whether he meant "until he's well" or "until he dies."
"I've seen many men in worse condition recover, Mrs. Montrose," he told her. "Your husband has suffered from exposure and the wound has gone untended who knows how long . . . but with good care—"
Dr. Myles repacked his bag with a sigh. Something in his voice chilled Garnet's heart, something in his eyes betrayed a cold certainty when he added, "Only time will tell—"
She thrust back the fear that rushed up inside her. In its place came a fierce determination. She would not let Bryce die. He couldn't die! Not before she had a chance to show him how much she had changed, how much she regretted her selfishness. Please God, not before she had a chance to make up to him for all that she had not done that might have made him happier.
Garnet knew it was wrong to bargain with God, but in spite of that, her prayers took on a desperate quality as she vowed to do everything in her power to nurse Bryce back to health.
There was something redemptive in each task Garnet set herself to, as if in a way she was doing penance for all the wrongs she had done Bryce. The first and worst was marrying him when she had not really loved him, depriving him of a wife who would have loved him more completely. She hoped somehow she would be forgiven for that sin even though she found it hard to forgive it in herself.
She found a kind of exaltation in the very menial nature of all she did, serving him in the necessities without which he would not have been comfortable, nor be healed and eventually recover—as if in doing these things, she was compensating for all the times she had not treated him with kindness or consideration.
"Thank God, he did not die!" she whispered to herself as she hovered over his bed, washing his wasted frame, turning the hot fever-warmed pillow, gently combing his thick, wavy hair.
Whenever he opened his eyes, hazy and drugged with fever, he seemed surprised to see her. He murmured something unintelligible and weakly held her hand. She had to bend low to hear the words of gratitude he whispered.
She felt ashamed. She deserved no gratitude. She only wanted him to live. But as the days passed and there was no improvement, Garnet grew frantic.
Word had gone out to the quarters, and the few remaining Negroes gathered in little clusters under the bedroom window each morning to see if Marse Bryce had lived through the night. Garnet would go to the window and raise her hand and nod, and they would move away slowly, murmuring among themselves, shaking their heads. Bryce was well-loved among the Montrose people. She had never heard him say an unkind word to any of them.
Mom Becca, Bryce's old nurse, long crippled with arthritis, had not worked for years. She spent her days sitting either by the fire in her little cabin or in the sun in front of it. Now she daily shuffled laboriously up the stairway of the big house and took a place outside the bedroom door, where "ma baby" lay nearly unconscious most of the time.
One day late in the afternoon, Garnet was sitting alone beside the bed and Bryce opened his eyes, for once seeming clear and lucid. He moistened his cracked lips, raised one hand weakly and motioned her closer. She leaned down to hear what he wanted to say.
"We're two of a kind, darlin'." His fingers curled around her hand. "We thought our world was the only one." He shook his head, his sad gaze upon her. "It isn't, you know. You're finding that out, too, my poor little Garnet." His eyes widened, grew bright with tears.
"People like us are a dying breed. Nobody out in the real world gives a tinker's dam about us. They call us the idle rich. Only a handful of us are left even in the South. We lived in a dream. Even thought war was some kind of glorious game. But it wasn't." His eyes grew wild, his grasp on her hand tightened painfully. "It was hell!"
"I saw it . . . it was hell! I believe in hell, Garnet. I didn't always before, but now I know what it must be like—"
"Please, Bryce, save your strength, honey," she pleaded.
"I just want to know it was worth it," he groaned.
"Yes, it was worth it." she said, frightened that she might not be
able to control him. "Lie back now, honey." She smoothed the sheet soothingly.
"Life is precious, Garnet. I've seen so much wasted."
Garnet began to stroke his hand. She wished Tilda would come in so they could give him one of those powders the doctor had left.
His head moved restlessly on the pillow, then his eyes closed wearily. "You don't understand . . . but how could you?"
"Please, Bryce, don't get so excited, honey, it's bad for you."
Bryce struck the mattress weakly with a clenched fist. Two tears rolled down from under his closed eyelids over the hollowed cheeks.
He seemed to fall into an agitated slumber after a while and Garnet, looking down at him, tried to recall the dashing young officer in his slouch hat, his fresh uniform and shiny boots who had ridden away through the gates of Montclair four years ago accompanied by his black body servant and two fine horses. The picture faded as she tried to bring it back, much as if it had never been.
She couldn't think about the past. She must think of the future. That's the only way I can keep from falling apart. Garnet told herself, willing the weak, grieving part of herself into iron.
The only way I can stand what's happened is to believe that things better. I will be better, too. I'm better than I used to be. She looked the gray, thin face on the pillow. When Bryce was well, he would see how she had changed.
Not that she didn't still have a temper or get easily annoyed by stupidity or slowness. But that was mostly because she had discovered she had a brain and could often see better ways to get things done. She'd had to change these last years. But she wanted Bryce to benefit from those changes. More than anything else, she wanted the chance to be a better wife to him, better than the old Garnet would have even chosen to be.
But soon Garnet realized she would never have that chance. The doctor's next visit confirmed her worst fears. "No need for me to come any more unless there is some crisis." By that she knew he was telling her there was no hope.