Lovesong

by Valerie Sherwood

  “Oh, Virgie, you’ll see Hugh again.” Carolina had tried to console her sister. “It isn’t as if you were off to New York or Boston, you know!”

  “I know, but it isn’t like being just—just across town from him either,” sobbed Virginia, to whom tears came readily these days and whose face would suddenly become still while her gaze sought distant vistas. “Virgie’s in love!” Sally Montrose was fond of whispering to Carolina with a smothered giggle, for Sally had assumed a certain loftiness about other girls’ love affairs ever since returning from that overstrict school, Mistress Chesterton’s, in London.

  Virginia had cornered Carolina just before they left Williamsburg. “Oh, Carol, Hugh is going to come calling at Farview—he promises he will, and so far Mother does not have wind of a thing—I can tell by the serene way she looks at me. And she mustn’t find out!”

  “How will you manage that, when Hugh comes calling?”

  “Oh, she won’t find out—if only you will help me,” Virginia pleaded.

  “I will,” Carolina promised, bewildered. “But what do you want me to do?”

  “Make Mother believe he is your suitor, not mine— then I will be left in peace. Oh, Carol, if you’ll do this, I promise I will never ask another thing of you as long as I live!”

  Carolina thought that last very unlikely for Virginia was always desperately wanting something that was hers—like her new ruffled petticoat which she had won away from Carolina a fortnight ago and worn to enchant Hugh. “Of course I’ll do it,” she said dryly. “But she may forbid him the house!”

  “Oh, no, she won’t,” said Virginia instantly. “Because you’re only fifteen and have never shown much interest in any special boy. She’ll think you’re only flirting—indeed she may encourage it. She’d believe you’re just trying your wings and that it means nothing. But she’s already considering a list of possible suitors for me because I’m the oldest now and of marriageable age. I heard her discussing it with Father the last time they were on speaking terms—luckily they fell out over it before they could decide anything and haven’t spoken since! But they’ll get back to the subject, and if they think Hugh is calling on me, they may get back to it right away and I will find myself betrothed to some upriver planter’s son and spirited away from Hugh entirely—and oh, Carol, I couldn’t bear to lose him!”

  “Was there anyone interesting on the list?” asked Carolina, amused, for a death-defying romance with stolid Hugh had always seemed to her vaguely funny.

  “I think it included every boy who ever danced with me since we came to Williamsburg,” declared Virginia.

  “Which must be all of them,” laughed Carolina. “For you have the lightest feet in town!”

  “Oh, you can laugh,” rejoined her sister with a trace of bitterness, “for you were not always afraid one of them would become so enamored he would rush up to Father and demand your hand in marriage!”

  Carolina went off into gales of heartless laughter. “To tell you the truth, I never thought about it,” she agreed when she could speak again. “Mostly I was trying not to get my ball slippers trodden on!”

  Virginia gave her an impatient look. “But you will do it? Pretend Hugh is your beau?”

  “Oh, yes, I’ll do it.”

  “Doing it” proved to be something of a chore, for Hugh seemed to be endlessly resourceful in finding reasons to cross the bay and call at Farview. And Carolina had to manage each time to get him into the garden, or some other secluded place—anywhere it would not be readily apparent that Virgie had dashed down to change places with her, to stroll and talk and laugh with Hugh, and kiss behind the shrubbery.

  That first week back there was flawless weather all along the Chesapeake. In the garden of Farview Plantation the boxwoods and big magnolias still showed the effect of the violent storm which had battered them earlier in the season, but the broken branches had been hauled away and cut up for firewood and kindling and the remnants of the roses bloomed bravely in the late summer heat. The younger children were ecstatic at being back, for life at Farview was much freer than at staid Aunt Pet’s, but Carolina found she rather missed town and town doings. They had been back six days and she was strolling aimlessly down the drive when she saw a tall blond youth appear on foot and wave to her. Hugh again! He was almost running and Carolina hurried down the drive to meet him. In case her mother should be watching from the window, she greeted him effusively.

  “I did not know you were coming today, Hugh,” she said.

  “I did not know myself, Mistress Carolina,” grinned Hugh. “But when I learnt my father was sending a boat over to bring grain from your neighbors, the Whitleys, I volunteered to come. The boat is being loaded now, but I had a little time so I came to see Virginia.”

  Carolina did not quite know what Virginia saw in this bumbling youth with the overconfident smile, but then love was a funny thing. She had not known what her older sister Penny saw in stodgy Emmett either. They were both so—tame, that was it. For herself, she preferred wilder men. Like Sandy Randolph in his youth, she supposed, when he had reputedly always been dashing off on mysterious ventures and had turned up with sudden unexplained wealth and scars he had passed off with a shrug as “dueling scars.” Yes, men like Sandy, that you felt were inherently dangerous—and fascinating. She was suddenly frozen at the thought, for hadn’t her mother always preferred wilder men, and wasn’t Aunt Pet always saying that every day Carolina’s ways grew more like her mother’s? Aunt Pet doted on Letty so she meant it as a compliment of course, but Carolina considered it a sentence of doom. She thought her mother’s life was terrible!

  “I’ll tell Virgie you’re here,” she told the gangling lad hastily.

  “No need. She’s already seen me from the window— she waved.”

  “Oh, then I'll just stroll to the garden with you and Virgie can slip out and join us beneath the trees and I’ll leave you two alone.”

  Hugh gave her a contented look. “I'm here to ask your sister to marry me,” he confided.

  Carolina was thunderstruck. She didn’t know why she should be—it had been plain all along that Hugh was in love with Virginia. But somehow she had expected them to drift apart after Virginia got home. Other lads would come calling, Virginia would fancy one of them, the miller’s lanky son would be forgotten.

  “You do not think she has changed toward me, do you?” he asked nervously when Carolina did not immediately comment. “You think she will favor my suit?”

  “Oh, I—I think she might.” Carolina felt confused. “But I think you should know that Mother will never countenance it,” she added in a burst of honesty.

  Hugh sighed and looked glum. “Virginia gave me to understand as much,” he said. “I would not like to see her cut off from her family.”

  “Then—?” A pair of questioning silver gray eyes studied him.

  “But what will be will be.” He shrugged off trouble with the lighthearted optimism of youth. “Once your mother understands that Virginia and I love each other—”

  It will make no difference, thought Carolina gloomily, but she forbore to say so. After all, who was she to blight a lovers’ tryst with unwelcome pronouncements?

  Dutifully she led Hugh to the garden, wondering if her mother was watching. They had no more than reached the spreading branches of a big oak when Virginia hurried out a side door and ran down the garden path to join them.

  “Mother wants to see you inside right away, Carolina,” she said breathlessly, and added in a nervous voice, “I think she’s angry.”

  “What about?” Carolina gave her sister an uneasy look.

  Virginia rolled her eyes toward Hugh and Carolina understood. She was to be taken to task for allowing the miller’s fortuneless son to call on her. Carrying her chin high, she marched inside into the cool, high-ceilinged interior.

  “Carolina.” Her mother was standing by the long dining room table. Its polished surface gave no indication that it had been used as a bulwark against f
alling beams in the worst storm of the summer. “This is thrice in one week that the Clemens boy has come here.”

  Carolina gave her mother a deceptively innocent look. Her mother looked very elegant today—and young. As she always did after her cousin Sandy’s visits. And Sandy had been here yesterday and spent a long time with her mother in the cool paneled living room.

  “Yes, Hugh has been here three times,” she agreed.

  “I do not favor him.” Letitia came bluntly to the point.

  Carolina looked at the elegant woman in lavender silk who stood before her, small-waisted as a girl, beautiful, with her crown of thick honey gold hair. And a frowning expression. “Whatever do you mean, Mother?” she said, choosing not to understand.

  “Don’t be dense,” warned her mother impatiently. She frowned into that winsome face. Carolina was growing up—she was almost as tall as Letitia herself. Her figure was rounding out too. She had counted on that coltish quality to hold Carolina back until she could get Virginia safely wed. It was plain that she had not paid enough attention to her third daughter lately; while she was not watching, Carolina was fast becoming a beauty.

  “I am not being dense, Mother,” said Carolina plaintively. She was deliberately baiting Letitia, for it was hard knowing your mother rarely gave you a thought unless you did something to displease her. This time, she thought wickedly, she would have her mother’s full attention!

  “Of course you are!” snapped Letitia. “It is plain the lad is pursuing you. I am always finding him wandering about—indeed I wonder how he can cross the water from the mainland so often! His father must miss him sorely at the mill.”

  “Oh, he is here today on business of his father’s,” supplied Carolina instantly. “The Whitleys are sending a supply of grain to Williamsburg to be milled and Hugh is to transport it.”

  “But he is not with the loading party,” objected her mother in exasperation. “Instead he is here. Again. I saw you meet him on the driveway and disappear with him into the garden!”

  “What harm can there be in hearing the gossip of Williamsburg from Hugh?” wondered Carolina.

  “You are not to encourage him, do you hear? I forbid it.”

  For a moment Carolina’s teeth caught in her lower lip and there was a rebellious glint in her silver eyes. She was growing up and she did not like her mother’s overbearing tone.

  “Oh, so you think to defy me, do you?” Her mother read that rebellious expression correctly. “Well, I can tell you that boy has no prospects, and if you think to end up a pauper as your sister Pennsylvania no doubt will do—if ever we hear from her again!—if you think to run away across the border as she did—!”

  “Into the Marriage Trees? Why not?” interrupted Carolina recklessly. “After all, you did!”

  Her elegant mother paled perceptibly and her lavender silk bodice rose and fell somewhat faster. “If your father heard you speak to me in that tone of voice, Carolina, he would whip you!” she cried. “Indeed, he will do so anyway, when I tell him about it!”

  Carolina’s resentment spilled over at a mother who, she felt, had never loved her, and who had driven Penny and now most probably would drive Virgie into unsuitable marriages with the first lad who appealed to them.

  “But then you aren’t speaking to Father, are you?” she demanded waspishly. “And it’s unlikely he’ll be speaking to you tonight—if he gets home tonight—for I’m not the only one in this house who has callers who aren’t approved of!”

  Two red spots of color appeared in her mother’s pale cheeks. “Go on,” she said ominously. “Let us hear this accusation you are leveling against me!”

  Too late Carolina realized her folly. She had driven her mother too far. She hesitated.

  “Well, speak!” cried Letitia in fury.

  “Father saw Sandy Randolph’s horse hitched outside yesterday and his face changed color and he spurred his horse away as if devils were after him!” Carolina shouted. “You drove him away! You did—for you know how jealous he is of your cousin Sandy!”

  Her mother’s open palm cracked across her cheek and Carolina staggered backward.

  “Go to your room,” ordered Letitia in a voice gone suddenly wooden. So that was why Fielding had not come home last night—he had spied Sandy’s horse hitched to the post in the driveway. Someone might have told her, she thought angrily. She should not have had to learn it in this impudent way from her daughter. She turned and her gaze was narrow as it followed Carolina into the hall.

  Something would have to be done about Carolina. And soon.

  Fielding Lightfoot came home with the evening dusk, when bats were emerging from their dark hiding places to swoop out over the fields looking for the insects that plagued the crops. There was a hum of cicadas on the evening air and the croak of frogs from nearby Old Plantation Creek.

  He dismounted gracefully for all that he was bone tired, tossed the reins to a groom who had run out of the stable on seeing him ride up, and made for the front door. There he was met by Letitia who had forgotten their earlier tiff and was bursting to talk about Carolina and the miller’s son who—though departed some hours ago—was sure to be back and perhaps would carry her all the way to the Marriage Trees as that miserable clerk had done with her sister!

  “It is time you came home,” she greeted him in a scolding tone. “For I have a matter to take up with you.”

  “Indeed?” Sarcasm rang in Fielding’s voice; he was slightly drunk. “But perhaps you have already found others to take it up with earlier?” He brushed past her.

  Letitia gave him a baffled look. Carolina’s “predicament” had washed other things temporarily from her mind. It took her a moment to realize that her husband was speaking of her cousin, Sandy Randolph, and when she did realize it, she turned and pursued him down the hall. “You are imagining things again!” she told his broad back sharply. “There is nothing between Sandy and me.”

  The dark head turned to give her a baleful look. “Then why do we see so much of him?”

  “You know why!” she insisted impatiently. “He comes here to inquire of his cousin to the north of us, for he hears rumors—in spite of her sending him word that all is well between her and her new husband.”

  “Then why does he not head north and see for himself how matters are? Why is it always to us that he comes?”

  Letitia heaved an irritable sigh. Men were so thickheaded sometimes! “Her parents plead with him to ferret out how matters stand because they do not believe her over-cheerful letters. And he stops here because he knows that I would hear things that would not be apparent to him,” she explained as patiently as if she were speaking to a child.

  “And how is that?” he said ironically.

  “You know how that is,” she cried in a voice of despair. She picked up her skirts and followed her husband up the stairs for he was taking them two at a time. “Maybelle Whitley goes right past his cousin’s place twice a week to see her old mother and she tells me how things are with Sandy’s cousin!”

  “Then let him go to Maybelle Whitley!” roared Fielding, disappearing down the hall.

  Halfway up, with her voluminous lavender skirts caught up in one hand, Letitia stopped and shook her head. Would he never understand? No, because he did not choose to do so!

  “Damn you, Field!” she cried violently, and turned and ran back down the half flight she had just climbed. She was still shaking with rage as she burst into the kitchen, to give the startled servants orders about warming up some dinner for her husband—which was already being done for cook had sharp eyes and had seen him ride up.

  Once again the Lightfoots were not speaking. And so Carolina was—for this evening at least—spared the confrontation she had brought on herself by baiting her mother.

  She was young enough and foolish enough to think it had all been forgotten. And she went to bed beneath a slender slice of new moon and dreamed again of a lover who would be all that her father was not.

  Chapte
r 4

  Breakfast next morning was a silent meal punctuated only by brief exchanges such as Letitia’s frosty, “Carolina, please ask your father if he will have more cream,” and Fielding’s moody, “Carolina, please tell your mother that I have had sufficient.” The girls were sensibly silent as they always were when their parents were warring. But they were also painfully aware that their parents might be on speaking terms again had not a messenger arrived just before breakfast with an invitation to the Bramways’ ball the following week.

  Sandy Randolph was sure to be there. He was sure to dance repeatedly with his beautiful cousin. And Letty was equally sure to encourage him, as if to spite her jealous mate.

  Fielding Lightfoot, who had spent the night on the living room sofa, but had come in to breakfast whistling, had heard the message delivered and a deep scowl had covered his features. He had pulled back his chair with such force that he had nearly overturned it. Letitia had tossed her golden head and told the messenger that of course they would all attend the ball—and neither Fielding nor Letitia had spoken directly to each other since.

  “Virginia, tell your mother her cousin might as well have told her of the ball when he was here,” said her father morosely. “I am told he is often at the Bramways’ these days. They could have used him as their messenger as easily as this fellow who called.”

  “Virginia, tell your father that Sandy didn’t know about the ball when he called here!” snapped her mother. “And as for his calling often at the Bramways’, you can tell your father as well that Sandy is not pursuing Amanda Bramway despite what the gossips will say—he told me so himself.”

  Virginia, caught in the middle, looked unhappy. Nobody ate much although the poached sturgeon sprigged with lemon thyme and served with butter sauce was delicious.

  After breakfast Fielding went upstairs, his wife busied herself with household chores, the younger children were packed off to play and gambol about on the front lawn, and Carolina and Virginia wandered into the garden.