by Kay Moser
“Silence!” Victoria commanded. “You must not—you will not—talk this way in front of the girls. I am sorry for you. I am sorry your life is unhappy, and I have offered to help you, but until you choose to stop—” Victoria looked over her shoulder at the cowering girls. She forced herself to calm her voice. “When you are ready to accept help with your problems, Edith, I will help you. Now, however, you need to go home and sleep this off.” She took Mrs. Bellows’ arm and turned her toward the door. “Frances, Mrs. Bellows is leaving. Show her to the front door.”
“Well really!” Mrs. Bellows jerked her arm away and swayed a bit as she attempted to stand with dignity. “When I need your help, I’ll ask for it.” She pointed to the girls. “Come, girls. I refuse to leave you in this den of iniquity.”
Victoria stood taller and crossed her arms across her chest. “Edith, the girls are not going with you, and if you ever stop the girls from reaching this house again, I shall personally thrash you.”
“Well really.”
“Yes, really. Now, turn around, go home, and drink a pot of coffee. You need it.”
“So that’s how all your bohemian, European experiences have taught you to speak to a lady.”
“No. That’s how Texas taught me to speak to someone whose behavior is out of bounds. Go, sober up! Leave the girls alone. End of discussion.”
“Well really!”
Victoria tapped her foot. “You are repeating yourself, Edith.”
“I’ll never darken the door of this house again.” Edith jerked her straining bodice down, staggered a bit as she turned, threw her skirt behind her, and stormed out.
“We can only hope,” Victoria muttered before turning her attention back to the girls. “Now, does your mother know where you are?”
Both girls studied their feet.
“I see,” Victoria concluded. “We better send a message to her. Then we’ll have a tea party and create a strategy to help her.”
Juli cocked her head “What’s a ‘strategy?’”
“A plan of action. It’s always better to act rather than worry. Right?”
The girls looked at each other, then chimed in unison. “Yes, ma’am!”
After supper that evening, Victoria walked down to the Boyd house and found Christine resting on the bay window seat of the darkening music room. Across the expanse of polished oak floor, the girls were asleep on the carved rosewood love seat.
“Don’t get up,” Victoria urged her friend as she slipped through the sliding doors, but Christine rose anyway.
“I’m so glad you came. I need—” Christine’s voice broke, and she buried her face in a lace-edged handkerchief.
Victoria enclosed her in a hug. “The first thing you need is to cry.”
“I should have better control.” Christine forced the words out between quiet sobs. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
Victoria held her friend, gently rubbed her back, and shed her own tears. “I know what’s wrong with you. You’ve lost your soul mate and your art all at the same time. On top of that, people won’t give you any space.”
“They mean well,” Christine murmured.
Victoria sighed. “So they unthinkingly follow the social conventions.” She pulled Christine back to the window seat. “But despite your outward show of conventionality, you are an artist. Social calls—no matter how well meant—won’t heal you. Nothing can truly fill the void Richard’s death has left, but your music can lead you to the next stage of your life.”
“And the girls, of course. I hear they came to see you.”
“Ah ... Mrs. Bellows, no doubt, made a beeline straight to you. I should have locked her in the closet.”
A small smile drifted across Christine’s face. “You would.”
“With pleasure.” Victoria took Christine’s hand in hers. “Let’s not speak of her. I should learn more patience. No ... I should step in and help her.”
“And you will—we both will—when she’s ready.”
“I’m more concerned about you, Christine. Are you ready to be helped?”
Christine wearily shook her head. “Is there any help for me?”
“Yes. There are proprieties that must be observed; I acknowledge that. You must wear black and restrict your social engagements, but to fast from your music—I truly believe that will kill you.” She watched as her friend turned toward the window and stared at the distant, dying light.
“Part of me is already dead.”
Victoria’s memory sent her mind hurtling back to the years after the War when she had grieved the loss of her beloved James. “I know what you’re feeling, Christine. Death brings more than loneliness; it also brings a dulling of the artistic urge. It’s as if death wants to pull you into the grave too, but you must not surrender the fight. Don’t give up your music, Christine. Please …”
They sat in silence, gazing out the window as the room darkened.
Soon Victoria became aware of a stirring in the shadows, and a ghostly melody rose from the piano. Startled, she peered across the dusky room, her eyes struggling for definition. She saw a child clad in her dainty nightgown, her blonde hair tumbling and hiding her face, her thin arms extended, her tiny fingers pressing ivory keys. “Clair de Lune” floated on the air.
“What is this?” Awe saturated Victoria’s voice as her heart soared. She turned to Christine and found joy on her friend’s face for the first time in weeks.
“She played for me for the first time on the night of Richard’s burial. I did not know she could. Oh, Victoria, am I imagining this?”
“No!”
“Am I exaggerating her talent?”
“Clearly that would be impossible. How could we deny what we see, what we hear? That tiny child has tamed that massive piano; she is making it sing.”
“I should have known she possessed such a magnificent gift.”
“Even a child’s mother cannot see into her soul. That knowledge is God’s alone.”
They listened as the final notes ascended from Ceci’s delicate fingers.
When the child finished, she scooted off the stool, ran to Christine, and clutched her mother’s knees. “Don’t die, Mommy! I will make music for you until you can play it again.”
Victoria gasped. “Oh, Christine! This is the future—yours, hers. How can you even think of postponing it to satisfy rigid tradition, useless proprieties?”
Christine drew Ceci onto her lap and met the child’s earnest eyes with her own. “My darling girl, stop your worrying. I am not going to die. We shall both make music—on the piano and in our lives.”
“Play, Mommy. Play music now.”
“Yes. Now,” Victoria urged. “Now is when we live, now is life.”
Christine nodded, slipped Ceci onto the window seat, and moved to the piano.
Victoria watched her friend’s face begin to glow with joy as exalting sound rose from the instrument. Ceci snuggled down next to Victoria, a smile on her lips as she slipped into sleep.
CHAPTER 14
The next evening, Christine slipped into the drawing room and kissed her father on the cheek. “The girls are tucked in bed and fast asleep. I am sorry to abandon you, Father, but I need some time alone.”
“Of course you do, my dear. You have been receiving non-stop condolence calls for days now. I had hoped that people would give you time to rest, but my hope proved futile indeed.”
“Yes, Richard was loved by everyone.”
“It is you they all love, my dear. Richard, they admired and respected. You, they love.”
“You are most kind as always, Father,” Christine murmured as she wearily turned toward the door.
“Good night, my dear. You have extended yourself quite far enough for the day. I worry—” The sound of the doorbell interrupted his comment.
“Oh dear.” Christine’s hand flew to her forehead. “Another visitor. I don’t know if I can—”
“You can’t.” General Gibbes rose, took her arm, an
d walked her out into the entry hall. “Go upstairs, and I shall make your excuses.”
“I don’t want to offend anyone—”
“They will surely understand.”
Christine nodded and hurried toward the staircase as General Gibbes turned toward the front door.
When she entered her room, Christine found Josie placing a vase of flowers next to her bed.
“Oh, Miz Christine, I’s glad you’s up here good and early. You needs to rest. You want me to help you undress?”
Christine sank onto the slipper chair. “No, Josie, but I do have an errand for you. Run out to the stables and tell Davy to hitch up the small buggy.”
“Why you need a buggy, Miz Christine? You ain’t fit to go nowhere.”
“Just do as I ask, please, Josie.”
Josie hurried across the room to Christine’s side. “But you can’t be thinkin’ of goin’ nowhere, ma’am.”
Christine rose and smiled sadly at her. “I know you are young, Josie, and it’s hard for you to understand, but I need you to help me. So many loving people have visited these last few days, but I need to be alone with my husband. I need to go visit his grave.”
“But, Miz Christine, you needs rest more than anything. Besides, it’s gonna be dark soon, and you can’t be in no graveyard after dark.”
Christine sighed. “I’m not afraid of graveyards, Josie, and I can’t rest until I have some time alone with Mr. Boyd. Will you help me?”
Josie peered into the grieving face of her beautiful mistress.
“Please, Josie. I must go to his grave.”
“General Gibbes gonna shoot me for sure.”
“He’s busy receiving guests. Please, Josie, I need to do this, and it will be light for another hour.”
Josie’s shoulders rose and sank as she sighed loudly. “Well, I guess this be as good a reason to die as any other. I get the buggy ready for us, Miz Christine.”
“You don’t need to go with me.”
“But it ain’t fittin’ for a lady like you to go out there alone. I’s goin’ with you.”
“That really won’t be necessary. In fact, I prefer—”
“I’s goin’ with you,” Josie called back over her shoulder as she hurried to the door. “I may as well get killed by a ghost ’cause I’s gonna get killed by General Gibbes anyway.”
***
Christine picked up a standing gold cross she kept on her bedside table. Richard had given it to her on their first Christmas together. All day long, as she had greeted visitors, she had pictured the bouquets of flowers which friends had placed on Richard’s grave. Christine was a realist, a fact that would have startled her neighbors, and so she’d pictured the flowers as wilted, as indeed they would have been in the Texas heat. Dead flowers were not a fitting tribute to the man who had rescued her and her beloved parents from the torments of the Reconstruction era in South Carolina. His tribute must be strong, indestructible, and symbolic of undying love. Only the cross would do, and she was determined to scour his grave of dead flowers and mark it with an appropriate monument. There would, of course, be a granite monument in time, but for now she would leave the gold cross.
Numbed by her sadness but determined to fulfill her plan, Christine took the reins away from Josie as they left the stables. The suffocating dusk of late June was fast descending. Moist humidity lay heavily on her face, and the air seemed too thick to breathe as the dying sun refused to relinquish its control of the earth. Its last rays still seared the landscape and forced mists to rise from the red clay.
The rhythmic clatter of the buggy wheels on the brick-paved street filled Christine’s ears, and she gave her mind over to the sound, willing herself not to think, simply to listen and to feel the tug of the leather reins. Her reprieve was short. As night approached, the cicadas doubled their volume, and their screeching invaded her ears, demanding her awareness. She tightened her control of her nerves as well as her grip on the reins. I shall do this!
She felt the wheels of the buggy leave the paved street and grind into the rutted gravel of the cemetery road. Her spirits sank. It was all real. He was truly dead. She could no longer float on the lofty decorum of receiving visitors into her home. She would not have come out into the night to the cemetery if she could unite herself with her beloved husband any other place. He was there, and he would not, could not, leave.
Just as total despair began to blanket her, the night birds in the nearby trees released their grating calls into the fast-darkening skies. To Christine’s heightened perception, the sounds were nightmarish screeches. Dear God, please help me! She handed the reins over to Josie and covered her ears with her hands.
“I’s gonna take you home,” Josie announced.
“No, keep going. We are almost there.” Christine clutched the cross in her lap.
“I don’t like it here. They be spooks here for sure.”
“God is with us, Josie, no matter where we are.”
“I’s scared, Miz Christine.”
“Say the Lord’s Prayer, Josie. Say it over and over, if need be.”
Josie began to whisper, her tone desperate, the words tumbling over each other. Christine felt the girl shiver as she stopped the buggy close to the Boyd plot.
“Stay here,” Christine ordered as she slipped down. “I won’t be long.”
Exhausted by the ordeal of the week, she held on to the buggy for a minute as she stared at the mound of raw, red clay that covered her husband’s casket. “Richard,” she whispered. “Oh, Richard! How can this scar upon the land be your new home?” She hurried toward the mound, but as she approached, she stumbled and fell, face forward, into the clay.
“Miz Christine!”
Josie’s voice seemed miles away as Christine pulled herself up, staggered the remaining feet, and sank to her knees by the grave.
“I will not have this,” she cried as she brushed away a mound of dead flowers. “No, my beloved, no dead flowers. Not for you.” She scrambled around on her knees until she found the perfect spot at the head of the mound and plunged the cross into the clay. “Only the everlasting … for you, only the eternal … only—”
The shrill, nerve-grating call of the cicadas rose to a deafening volume; the night birds screeched; the ground fog rose from the clay. All the world seemed to protest her presence, but she refused to leave her husband. Instead, she embraced the mound as sobs bounded from her lips, and she surrendered to the tide of grief she had suppressed for days.
“Miz Christine!” Josie’s voice was receding now.
“Miz Christine!” Josie’s voice sounded miles away, and Christine refused to come back to it.
***
As Christine’s mind drifted upward into consciousness, it first recognized the touch of fingers stroking her cheeks. She fluttered her eyelids, attempting to clear her vision, but she could not keep her eyes open long enough to focus. Her mind floated away again, aware only of the repeated caressing of her cheeks.
A voice—no, two voices—murmured close to her face. She could almost make out the words. Another being, a warm body, snuggled beneath her chin, and the neediness in a familiar voice dragged her up, up, up into the world above her primary senses.
“Mommy … Mommy. Wake up, Mommy!”
The body next to hers shook as sobs flew from it. “She’s dead like Daddy!”
The closeness of the small head tucked beneath her chin, the warmth of skin to skin, the feel of a tiny hand grasping her shoulder, the cherished scent of someone she was inextricably, eternally linked to—all these sensations fired a strength in her that fought with the weight of her unconsciousness.
“Mommy! Mommy, don’t leave us!”
Christine’s primal connection to the voice commanded her to fight harder.
“She’s gone to visit Jesus, just like Daddy did. They’ll put her in the ground!”
Christine heard a high-pitched wail. “No-o-o! No, Mommy. Don’t go!”
The monsoon of sadness drench
ed Christine again, and for a moment she felt sure she would drown in its muddy grayness. Richard … Gone!
Horrifying images flooded her mind. His suddenly stilled body, his dulled eyes, his fingers that lost their strength and released her hand. His lifeless body reclining on tufted satin, cold and distant in its wooden casket. The lid slowly closing. The black veil descending across her face, down her neck, over her shoulders. The slow, difficult journey as she followed Richard’s casket on its procession through town, the arrival at its devastating destination, a gaping hole in the red clay. The quiet sobs of the mourners around her as she heard the familiar Scriptures. The heat, the mugginess of the air suffocating her, the insects whirring around her face, their sounds growing more grating as her veil frustrated their attempts to reach her skin.
How she had suffered! How strong her desire to abandon her own body, to join him in the hereafter! But the beings who cried, who pulled at her hands and buried their faces in her heavy skirts, tethered her to this world.
My girls. My daughters. How had she lost sight of them? They had been there after the funeral, wandering on the periphery of the crowd of condolence callers. She had seen their sad faces, their attempts at bravery. At every opportunity, she had held them close to her, but then this great darkness came upon her.
Oh, where have I been? She had lost time; worse, she had lost vital connection to her little girls.
Horrified by the thought, she forced her eyes open.
“She’s awake!”
“Mommy! Mommy!”
“I’m here,” she mumbled.
***
When Christine gained complete consciousness, she lay in her own bed. Nancy was applying cold compresses to her forehead, and the doctor was leaning over her. Slowly she understood that she had fainted, that Josie had gone for help and found Hayden Hodges, who had lifted her into his buggy and brought her home.
She looked around the bed. Her faithful father, General Gibbes, stood at the end of her bed, his face engraved with concern.