The Blue Hat and the Red Rose: A Historical Romance
Page 8
He went back to his own little portion of the Senior Officers tent and picked up a sheet of paper from the supply drawer, then sat down on the desk, dipped a quill pen in the inkwell and began to write:
Dear Emily, Thank you so much for your letter. I do want to let you know that I have already recovered from a head wound due to an explosion here at the camp, but I am going to be just fine. Of course, I'm going to have another impressive scar, one easier for you to find than another we both know of.
One result of my injury is I'm going to be going on leave for a while. That means that for some weeks, I'm going to be going back to my farm. I am expecting to leave in a couple of days, so I have put my home mailing address on this envelope so that you will have it. I understand that you are still unsettled about everything.
As I told you near the end of our trip, we will deal with however things turn out. I want you to know that what I want to happen is for us to give ourselves a chance to spend time together and see if the right kind of love blossoms between us. I don't think that there is any question that we love each other in a way that most couples fall in love. But it takes a while for that first stage of love to develop into something so deep and strong that two people are ready to and capable of committing their lives to each other.
At least we made it to that first step, but as long as this war is still going on, there will simply be too much disruption. I can tell you, Emily, with all of my heart, that if the war were to end today, I would do everything within my power for us to find out if such a life together is meant for us.
I have spoken to you on different occasions about the cruelty of war. One of the cruelest elements of war does not involve the actual maiming or death of others. An equally cruel part of war can be that so many possibilities are denied, possibilities of craft, possibilities of pleasant endeavors, and possibilities of meaningful love. Sometimes the stark brutality of war can cause us to grasp onto the allure of momentary pleasure to salve the wounds in our hearts and minds.
We almost did that in the river, and I know that should we ever again be similarly within each other's embrace, it will be an expression of the kind of love that dreams can be built on. I hope that it works out for us to see each other soon and I hope that you will want for me to meet your parents. Most of all, I would like to congratulate your mother and Red Rose on their recent contribution to the orderliness of civilization. Yearning to see you soon. Love, Charles
Before he left Camp Harrison, Charles stood looking over the camp once more before climbing onto his horse. As the war was winding down, there was no shortage of unassigned officers, and another Colonel was brought in to fill in for him. He had a new and unblemished uniform, complete with gleaming insignia of his higher rank. The rank was of little consequence to him as he trotted his horse through the guard post at the entrance to the encampment. Once he was back out on the road, he felt as stiff as if a spring were uncoiling inside, and he felt a sense of serenity he had not known in nearly three years.
The lifelong home that had seemed so distant on the other side of the gate to the camp was now just an hour away. He strained to remember the last time he had been present there with both of his parents alive, and he gulped from the emotion and frustration in that he was unable to do so. He wondered if he were fooling himself in his recollections of what the house looked like on the inside. As his horse trotted along, he wondered if his cousins, who lived just across the road, had rearranged anything inside the house to the point that it would not be consistent with his memories. He just wanted the house to look the same as when he had left for the Army three years before, just after the death of his mother. What he really wanted was for everything to, once again, be as he knew that it never could.
He just hoped that his old featherbed was still as welcoming as he remembered, and that his boyhood souvenirs still rested upon the top of the dresser, the pocket knives, the broken and inoperable flintlock pistol that had belonged to his grandfather and the acorns he had gathered in the woods when he was four years old. He feared that he would decline into madness if any of them were not as he had left them.
As he rode on, he felt as though he were being subjected to some kind of witchcraft, for he suddenly feared the effects of things, objects and memories not being in their assigned places. He came to the last road to turn onto, the rugged dirt road that led to home.
He rode for a few minutes until he could finally look in the distance, and there was the place he had been born and where he hoped to die as an old man worn out by decades of work and the joyous demands of family. Suddenly, he pulled on the reins of the horse and called for a halt, at the same time pulling his rifle from its scabbard, for he saw something move in the shrubbery to his right.
In one swift movement he had dismounted his horse, cocked the lever on the rifle and crouched down to take aim at his adversary. Out of the bush and the brush came a large deer that ran out onto the road, halted to turn and look at Charles, then ambled slowly across the road and into the woods on the other side. He sat down on the edge of the road, his rifle across his knees, and he lowered his head and began to sob.
Visions and memories flooded over him, visions of bodies ripped open and severed in half by artillery fire, and recalling his horror at being painfully struck in the side by the severed foot that had been separated from some unfortunate leg by a charge of Confederate grapeshot. Then the sounds began to overtake him, the phantom sounds of battles past, of cries silenced by the mercy of death, of screams of dying grown men begging for the comfort of their mothers.
He leaned over and began to vomit over and over again until he was able to once again sit upright and try to get his wracking sobs under control. He was afraid to raise his head and look up the road once again.
He was having a moment in which he did not know how to distinguish reality from the nightmares, most of which visited him at night, but on the worst of times, came to him in the middle of the day. Slowly and carefully he brought his head up and waited for his vision to clear. He really was home.
Emily stood in the kitchen of the farmhouse peeling apples for the several pies her mother was planning to bake for an upcoming picnic for her social club. She stopped suddenly, putting down the knife and resting her hands on the edges of the tub of apples in front of her. She gazed out the window that overlooked the front yard of the stately home. She could not keep her eyes off of the lane as she hoped beyond hope that a man and a blue uniform would be seen riding up the lane to come calling.
Her vision blurred as tears filled her eyes. She was finding the quiet of being at home nearly maddening after the chaos, the hardship, the violence and the awakening of her heart during the preceding days. Even as she rambled recklessly away from the pursuing Charles as she approached her home, she knew that it was not really him that she was fleeing from – she was running away from her fear of the pain of saying goodbye to him. The last day of the trip, she had tried to convince herself that Charles was simply at the whim of too many external forces for her to feel secure with him.
He had already been assigned to different posts in a short period of time, and even though he was now nearby at Camp Harrison, that circumstance could be fleeting. It was comforting for her to be with her parents again, in spite of the rather memorable manner in which her first morning back home had begun.
The evening of her arrival had been as welcoming as one would expect, with parents relieved and grateful that their daughter had been returned safely. On the other hand, before Emily retired to her upstairs bedroom for the evening, her mother had walked with her to the stairway with her arm around her shoulder, and admonished her to not get fully dressed upon waking. And Emily knew exactly what that meant.
Shortly after getting out of bed and trying to get her thoughts under control, Emily walked slowly in her nightgown toward her parents' bedroom and knocked gently. She knew that her father would already be out in the fields dealing with weeds among his crops, a duty he usually had as
sumed by sunrise. Emily's mother was also an early riser, and when Emily entered the room, her stern faced mother was standing there in her blue cotton day dress leaning against a dresser, her arms crossed in her involuntary display of displeasure. Emily began to chew on her lower lip and took several steps toward her mother, and saw that the decades-old hairbrush rested on the dresser right at her mother's hip.
With a deep sigh, her mother picked up the hairbrush, sat down on the edge of the bed, and crooked her finger repeatedly as Emily walked slowly toward her and knelt down on the bed next to her. Emily obediently laid down across her mother's knees, and as she felt her nightgown being shoved up onto the middle of her back and her bloomers being lowered to her knees, it made no difference that she was twenty years old and had not felt the searing wrath of the hairbrush with the delicately painted flower for quite some time.
She held her breath and knew that a brief lecture was to precede her tanning. “After all your father and I went through to arrange to have you escorted home by a trustworthy soldier, you decided that it was okay for you to run away and try to come home by yourself.” Emily tried to respond, but first no words would come out of her mouth. “I didn't believe it was really going to be dangerous.”
Her mother pressed the cool surface of the brush against her bare bottom, the sensation startling Emily. “And upon what experience and expertise did you call upon that you knew better than your parents, your aunt and uncle, and a battle hardened Major in the United States Army?”
Emily closed her eyes and shook her head and sighed loudly. “Okay, Mother.” Although she had pledged to Charles that being spanked with his hand was not as painful as when her mother employed the Red Rose hairbrush, she was brought to the realization that the intensity of the experience had been somewhat diluted in her memory by the passage of time.
Each time the brush landed on her bare bottom with a loud WHACK, a hissing squeal would escape through her clenched teeth. And it did not take very many applications of the brush before tears were running down her cheeks.
She had never doubted her mother's love, even when the hairbrush was put to use in such a manner. She always had known her mother's intentions at such moments. But this was a most intense and animated tanning she was receiving, and she was startled when her consciousness inadvertently provided her with a manner in which to cope with the intense and fiery sting of the brush. She realized that she was closing her eyes and pretending that she was once again bent over the back of the wagon, and that it was Charles' large and hardened hand rather than Red Rose painfully whacking her bottom. And visualizing that it was Charles administering the punishment somehow made it feel almost welcome and reassuring to her although she was crying her eyes out.
Her mother continued to paddle her with the hairbrush until her bottom was as red as the rose painted on the oak surface. But Emily, while starkly experiencing the blazing pain, was in another time and place, and when her mother finally ended the discipline, and asked her if she felt that she had been sufficiently punished, the mesmerized young woman whispered while sobbing heavily, “Yes, Sir.” Her mother could not help but laugh, “What did you say?”
Emily quickly reassembled her thoughts. “Uhm… I'm sorry for all that happened, Mother. I really knew better.” That had been two mornings before, and each time she thought about the memorable spanking across her mother's knees, she only felt an increased need to see Charles again. It also opened a floodgate of conversation with her mother for most of the rest of the day, and as she related all that had happened during the memorable journey home, it became overwhelmingly evident to her and her mother, that Emily had been denying the depth of her feelings for Charles, the brevity of the relationship notwithstanding.
She frequently thought back to their time together in the river, the surprising casualness with which she had dealt with their mutual nakedness. And each time the recollection would flood over her, she would close her eyes and hold her breath, for never before in her life had she felt such uninhibited want and need.
Charles encountered his cousins as they were pulling a wagonload of hay into the lane. He could tell at first that they saw him coming, but were unsure as to who was approaching. They slowed the wagon down to stop, and even from a distance he could see their expressions of curiosity break into wide grins. A moment later, they were shaking hands slapping each other on the back in the middle of the road.
They talked furiously for a while, Charles yielding to their promises to sit down with them soon and tell them stories about the war, and all the while he was hoping that he could avoid fulfilling that pledge. When the impromptu celebration was over, they waved goodbye and Charles began to walk his horse slowly down the lane. He was relieved that the outside looked so much the same as the last time he had been there.
He guided his horse into the barn, and put him in the same empty stall where he had kept every horse he had owned in his life. He retrieved the bucket of grain for the horse, patted him on the neck in gratitude for getting him home safely, then walked slowly toward the house and entered through the back door. At first he felt as if he were in some kind of a museum honoring his family, all of them gone but him.
He wandered through the downstairs to see that everything was virtually untouched, then walked to the upstairs where the bedrooms were located. He opened the door to his room and tears of joy began to run down his face as he saw that everything was still in place, just as he had remembered it.
To one side was the room that had been his parents' and to the other side the one where his brother Carlton had slept. He would disturb neither room by opening the doors. At that moment, he missed all of them too much. In the case of Carlton, he also felt a sense of guilt that he knew was illogical. He could not help that he felt it was unfair that such a good and honorable young man such as Carlton had fallen in battle rather than him.
Chapter Six
With each day that went by, Charles regained the sense of peace that he had known when he had ridden his horse through the gates of Camp Harrison. Now his days were filled with leisurely horseback rides through and around the farm inspecting the cattle, and stopping as necessary to fix some fence or repair a gate that had seen better days.
There were even a couple of rainy days when he was able to stay in the barn and build a couple of new gates from the pile of lumber that had been delivered years before in anticipation of Carlton doing the work. Charles managed to avoid thinking much about the telegram that would come someday soon from the General telling him when to report back to Harrison.
He had been home for a relaxing full week, and nothing seemed to bother him except for the ever-present thoughts of the petite and feisty Emily. It was on a Saturday morning that he decided to catch up on the reading of some books that Carlton had placed on the downstairs bookshelves for Charles to read some day. He had not read for pleasure or leisure since he had left for the Army, so he went to the shelf and pulled out a mystery novel about railroad detectives that his brother had raved about.
The morning was already exceptional in that Charles had slept three hours later than normal, so he walked out to the front porch and sat down in the swing, a light mild breeze ensuring his comfort as he looked out across the front of his property on such a bright and sunny day. He had been reading for an hour, engrossed in the plot of the book when he was finally distracted by a movement at the end of the lane.
He leaned forward and thought that he was having some kind of mischievous hallucination. For there was an open carriage coming up the lane sending up just a wisp of a cloud of dust behind it. He did not recognize the two people in the front seat of the obviously elegant carriage, but there was no mistaking the identity of the diminutive woman in a dark green dress standing in front of the second seat and waving frantically.
He ran down the three steps of the porch, and as soon as the carriage came to a halt he took Emily by the waist and hugged her tightly as he placed her on the ground. Then she gestured to her pa
rents, “Charles… Howard McMannus, my father… Rebecca McMannus, my mother.”
Charles had not known that they were coming, but the parents were relatively close to what he had envisioned. They appeared to be in their mid-forties, with the father about his own height and build and brown hair, and the mother a quite beautiful woman who could have passed for Emily's older sister rather than her parent.
There was a frenzy of greetings exchanged amid pleasant comments and Charles invited them to join him on the front porch and relax in the wicker furniture his parents had always liked. Of course, Emily sat down next to him in the swing, and right away her father leaned forward with his hands folded to speak, “Charles, we want to apologize for dropping in on you so unexpected like this. We will be on our way soon and we won't take up much of your time. But we had heard so much about you that we decided on a day outing to enjoy such beautiful weather and that we would take the chance on finding you here. We decided that if you weren't home, we were going to ride into Cincinnati and see some of the sights. We're glad that you are home, because we have really been wanting to meet you.”
Emily turned toward him and gave him a mild elbow in the ribs. “Of course, I've really been wanting to see you. And this is the first time I've seen you in civilian clothing.”
She leaned toward him and brushed her fingertips across a scar on his forehead as she shook her head in disapproval. “You're really okay?”
He nodded and smiled. “I'm just supposed to take it easy for a while. I can do some normal chores, so I'm keeping myself occupied. Most of all, it's just good to be home where it is so quiet and peaceful.”