American Dreams Trilogy

by Michael Phillips

  They went out to the porch and sat down. Seth listened with interest as Thomas told his story, recognizing many of the same questions and issues he had struggled with in arriving at his own decision regarding possible enlistment when the war had broken out.

  By the time the evening had grown cold and forced them back inside, the two brothers had shared more deeply and personally on issues that touched them both than ever before. In one evening they had taken giant strides toward becoming what it is hoped all brothers become when they grow into manhood—lifelong friends of the heart.

  The next morning Seth was up early, walking outside around the familiar grounds, passing back and forth several times beneath Cherity’s window in hopes that, seeing him, she would come out to join him.

  But he saw no sign of movement inside, and eventually came in, by now thoroughly depressed, to join his family at the breakfast table. Though being together again with his family was cause for thanksgiving and they all made a pretense of happy conversation, by now the others sensed from Seth’s mood and Cherity’s absence that something unpleasant had taken place between them. Seth did not quite fill in all the gaps in his recent itinerary—making no mention of his involvement with Veronica and her problems, which rendered whatever was going on with Cherity, to all but him, utterly mystifying.

  “Do you really have to go on today’s train?” said Carolyn at length. “Why couldn’t you just stay a few days more?”

  “I’ve been away far too long already,” replied Seth. “I’m behind schedule already. McClarin gave me just two days extra and then said I had to get back.”

  “Why have you been away so long?” asked Richmond.

  “I was working on a special assignment for the paper.”

  “What about?” asked Thomas.

  “Something that came up that took me away from my unit for a while. It involved the war effort, but… well, it is still I suppose what you would call confidential. I can’t talk about it yet, until the story breaks. Not that any of you would say anything,” he added. “That’s not what I mean. But I gave my word and I have to honor that. Sometimes journalists have to keep what they are working on to themselves—even just lowly photographers.”

  “Now you’ve got us curious, Seth!” laughed Richmond. “When will this mysterious story break, as you say?”

  “I don’t know… probably in another week, maybe two.”

  “Can you give us a hint what it is about?” pleaded Carolyn.

  “Sorry, Mom.”

  “And from here you’re going to…?” said Richmond.

  “Sorry, Dad,” replied Seth, “I’m not supposed to say. I know you wouldn’t tell anyone, but I promised. All I can say is that from here I’ll take the train to Petersburg, then catch the southbound to Columbia and then west. Beyond that… all I can do is let you know when I’ve arrived and am safe.”

  “Isn’t it dangerous traveling on a train with so much fighting everywhere?” asked Cynthia.

  “There are always a few soldiers,” replied Seth, “sometimes wounded men going home or others on their way back to their units. But there aren’t enough on board that either side would try to capture a train. So, no… it’s fine. But on the battlefield,” he added, shaking his head with a sigh, “that’s a different story. It’s awful. I hope and pray I never have to live through anything like it again.”

  “I can’t help it, Seth,” said Carolyn. “I hope you don’t think me too motherly, but I worry about you constantly. I worried about you both,” she added, glancing toward Thomas, “until you came home, Thomas.”

  “We don’t mind, Mom—do we, Seth?” said Thomas, smiling warmly at Carolyn, then glancing toward his brother.

  “Of course not. That’s what mothers are for.”

  “I am glad to hear that,” smiled Carolyn, though it was a smile tinged with sadness. “Because I will probably cry when you leave again, and will cry many times when I think of you, and will probably keep crying until this war is over and you are back safe and sound for good.”

  Mention of the end of the war and Seth’s eventual return to Greenwood, subconsciously turned Carolyn’s thoughts toward the one who was missing. Involuntarily she glanced about. “I can’t imagine why Cherity isn’t down yet,” she said.

  “Maybe I ought to go up and talk to her,” suggested Cynthia, rising from the table.

  Changing the subject quickly, Seth turned to Richmond. “Dad, could I talk to you?” he asked.

  “Yes, of course,” replied Richmond, rising from the table.

  Richmond and Seth left the house together. As soon as they were alone, Seth grew quiet. Richmond suspected that it had to do with Cherity. He waited patiently.

  They walked away from the house toward the pasture where half a dozen horses were grazing.

  “Dad,” said Seth at length, “has Cherity been to Boston recently?”

  “Yes, a little over a month ago. She had some business concerning her father’s estate. She went north to sell her father’s house.”

  “Sell the house… why?”

  “It’s a long story, Seth, my boy. Actually, we have been having some difficult financial troubles here at home.”

  “Dad, why didn’t you tell me? Maybe I could have helped. I make a good wage from the paper.”

  “I doubt that would have been enough to help with the thousands we needed. It wasn’t something I wanted to burden you about. Now that he is back, Thomas knew, of course. The fact is, we came very close to losing Greenwood altogether. Cherity found out about it and sold her Boston house without our knowing anything about it, then gave us the money she received from it.”

  “Wow!”

  “It was pretty astonishing,” nodded Richmond, “—and humbling. God has his way of making provision, sometimes unexpected. Anyway, to answer your question in a roundabout way… yes, Cherity made a trip up to Boston. Why do you ask?”

  Seth let out a long sigh.

  “Remember that mess I got myself into with Veronica, Dad?” he said at length.

  “How could I forget!”

  “Well… as hard as it is to believe—I thought I was through with these kinds of things!—it looks like I’m in over my head again, this time with both Veronica and Cherity.”

  “What do they have to do with each other?”

  “Cherity thinks I’m still in love with Veronica.”

  “Surely she can’t think such a thing,” said Richmond. “She’s never even mentioned Veronica.”

  “Believe me, Dad, she really thinks so. That’s why she didn’t come downstairs and won’t see me. Dad, she is furious with me. She thinks I’ve been lying to her this whole time.”

  “How could she possibly think so?”

  “It’s a little complicated, Dad.”

  Seth paused and sighed again. “The fact is… she saw me in Boston… with Veronica.”

  Richmond’s eyes clouded slightly, but he waited patiently.

  “That’s not all,” Seth went on, shaking his head as if trying to forget a bad dream. “She saw us together again… yesterday, over at Oakbriar. That’s what I’m doing here, Dad—I brought Veronica home from Washington. We didn’t think it was safe for her to travel alone. She’s going to be staying with her mother for a while.”

  If Richmond was experiencing sudden doubts about his son’s moral character, he kept them to himself for the present. His own difficult and ambiguous past had made him more than commonly tolerant of the failings of others. He was reluctant to rush to judgment until he knew the whole of any story.

  “Is there… trouble in Veronica’s marriage?” he asked, fearing, yet not for a moment entertaining the thought, that Seth himself might be the cause of it.

  “No, it’s nothing like that, Dad. Richard’s a good man. Veronica knows how lucky she is. Honestly,” he added with a light laugh, “the way Veronica used to be, I don’t know how she found a man of his caliber! She was… well, she was something! Richard is the one who asked me to bring Veronica
home.”

  “Are you saying she has changed?” asked Richmond, breathing an inward sigh of relief at what he had just heard.

  “She’s changed a lot, Dad. You would hardly know her. What she’s been through has humbled her, if you can believe it. It’s remarkable to say it, but I almost… I think I like her now.”

  “You still haven’t told me what happened.”

  “Veronica got herself into trouble,” said Seth. “She came to me for help.”

  “What kind of trouble?” asked his father. “Not… marital?”

  “No, nothing like that. She got involved with a man who was using her. He drew her into some questionable things—more than just questionable, dangerous and even illegal things. He lured her with money and excitement. Veronica was alone and bored, Richard was away, and… she got swept in over her head.”

  “Were you able to help?”

  “I think so… I hope so. Anyway, she came to me and I didn’t feel I could turn her away. So I tried to help and that’s what we were doing in Boston. The paper got involved and McClarin wanted to meet her, and I guess that’s when Cherity saw us.”

  “So you didn’t see Cherity?”

  “No… I had no idea, until last night when she hit the roof.”

  It was silent a few minutes. Both father and son were thinking.

  “Did you tell Cherity all this?” asked Richmond at length. “I’m sure she would understand.”

  “I didn’t have the chance. She wouldn’t listen. And… it’s complicated, like I said. I made a promise to Veronica that I wouldn’t divulge her trouble. So I can’t tell Cherity everything. Veronica still may be in danger too. That’s why she’s here, not exactly in hiding, but out of the way until it all blows over.”

  “It sounds mysterious.”

  “It is, I suppose. Even if I was able to tell Cherity, the way she’s feeling about me right now, she would probably just laugh it off.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “But it sounds more than a little implausible, you have to admit.”

  “Maybe. But she will come to her senses. Women always do eventually. She will realize that you are telling the truth.”

  “If I had the time. But I don’t. I have to leave today, Dad. I’m not going to force her to listen to me. That’s just not something I can do. What would I do—yell at her through the locked door?”

  “Do you want me to talk to her?”

  “Thanks, Dad,” replied Seth. “But not yet. I guess I want her to trust me… trust me enough to know that I would never lie to her, and to know that Veronica means nothing to me in the same way that Cherity means everything to me. Veronica is a friend, like a sister. But I love Cherity. There’s all the difference in the world.”

  “I still don’t understand why it is so secretive. What does your paper have to do with it?”

  Seth thought a minute before answering.

  “That’s the reason I’ve been vague, Dad, and why I still can’t tell everything until the story comes out,” he said at length. “But I will tell you what I feel I can without breaking confidence. Then you can handle it as you think best… with Cherity and everyone else. There’s no reason even for Mom to know, unless you think she should.”

  “I have to admit,” said Richmond, “you are making this sound more and more mysterious all the time.”

  “Dad… it’s about spying,” said Seth.

  Richmond’s face went instantly serious. “Spying?” he said, almost as if he had mistaken what he thought he had heard.

  Seth nodded. “Veronica got herself mixed up in a spy ring with connections on both sides,” he said. “They were people who had the power to change the course of the war. They are very powerful. When I say that she is in danger, I mean her life is truly in danger, as mine might be as well for all I know. The stakes are high, Dad. That’s all I can say.”

  Richmond exhaled a low whistle and nodded intently.

  “I see,” he said. “At last I begin to understand your concern.”

  “That’s what the story is about. But until it appears in print and the people involved are either arrested or put out of business, we have to be very careful.”

  “Right… it is indeed complicated as you say.”

  “I wish I could tell Cherity everything. Right now I just don’t feel I can.”

  “When is the article scheduled to appear?” asked Richmond.

  “Literally any day. It may already have run in the Herald. If so, it will make it into the Southern papers any moment. Then the people involved will be out of business and you can tell Cherity what I’ve told you. I’ll write when I’m back with my unit and I’ll explain the whole thing in detail.”

  Seth and his father returned to the house an hour later, having spoken of many things. Still no one had seen Cherity.

  For the remainder of the morning, Richmond, Seth, Thomas, and Sydney worked together, laughing and talking as if Seth’s presence were nothing out of the ordinary. Yet each of the other three were aware of Seth’s frequent glances toward the house, and knew that he was hoping for a glimpse of Cherity coming toward them. But steadily the hour of Seth’s afternoon departure approached, and still there was no sign of her.

  At last the time came. Seth cleaned up from the work, then said his last good-byes to home, friends, and family.

  Carolyn had not the slightest idea what was going on between Seth and Cherity, but ached for them. All her mother’s instincts told her to go upstairs, pull Cherity out of her room and take her to Seth, and tell them to talk it out.

  But she had seen the looks and expressions on her son’s and husband’s faces after their talk that morning. She knew both well enough to recognize that whatever was going on, they had discussed it. It was therefore not her place to speak up. She would not interfere in the holy order of things with her own womanly two cents’ worth.

  As she had predicted, Carolyn cried when Seth embraced her.

  “You be sure to write us,” she said, smiling through her tears.

  “I will telegraph the moment I am back with my unit to let you know I arrived safely, and follow that with a letter.”

  Seth and Richmond shook hands and gazed into one another’s eyes.

  “Handle it as you think best, Dad,” said Seth, forcing a smile.

  “And you be careful until this is all over,” said Richmond.

  Thinking it a curious exchange, but assuming Richmond to be referring to the war, Carolyn said nothing further.

  Seth got into the buggy and, in one of the loneliest rides he had ever taken in his life, returned to Dove’s Landing and the train.

  PART FIVE

  MISSING

  October, 1864 - April 1865

  Fifty-Five

  From her window, Cherity saw the buggy bearing Seth away from Greenwood. She cried two or three more times, unable to distinguish the remnants of her anger from her grief.

  Once he was gone, she did her best to put on a presentable face, then crept downstairs. She heard Cynthia and Maribel in the parlor but was able to get to the kitchen unseen. She found something to eat and drink, for she was famished and thirsty, and snuck outside by the back door. By the time Seth stood on the platform waiting for the train, she was again galloping up the hill away from Greenwood on Cadence’s back. She again remained away until nearly dusk, having by then all but resolved to leave Greenwood at the earliest convenient opportunity.

  Far to the north in Boston, meanwhile, Adrian McClarin of the Herald had put everything connected with the spy story on a rush timetable, such that, as Seth had anticipated, the article was on the presses even before he reached home.

  After his departure, Seth spent the night in Richmond before catching the next morning’s train to Columbia. Picking up a copy of the Richmond Gazette, it was while seated on the train that he saw a reprint of the article that had appeared the day before in the Herald.

  The same paper found its way to the breakfast table at Greenwood a few days later.r />
  “Did you hear that Veronica is back home for a while,” Carolyn was saying. “I heard several women talking about her when I was at Baker’s in town.”

  “What is she doing here?” asked Cynthia.

  “I don’t know,” answered her mother. “The old gossips were talking about marital troubles and other things I won’t mention. But knowing who it was, I doubt any of it is true.”

  Richmond, who had been silent till now, engrossed in the newspaper, set it down long enough to put the rumor to rest.

  “I can tell you on good authority,” he said, “that Veronica’s marriage is absolutely sound. She is at home for other reasons altogether.”

  Carolyn looked at her husband with surprise. Expecting him to go on, she waited. Gradually it became obvious he intended to say no more.

  “You knew Veronica was home?” she said.

  “I did,” he answered.

  “How?”

  “I have my sources.”

  “Do you also know why she is here?”

  “I do.”

  “Are you going to tell us?”

  “Soon,” said Richmond, then returned to the paper to finish the article.

  Carolyn continued to eye him, then finally let sound a good-natured humph. She turned back toward Cynthia.

  “I really ought to go pay a visit to Lady Daphne,” she said. “Even if I weren’t curious about Veronica. Would you ladies like to join me?” she added, glancing also in Cherity’s direction.

  “I would, Mother,” replied Cynthia. “I haven’t seen Veronica since we were both married.”

  Cherity kept her head down and said nothing. Veronica was the last person she wanted to see.

  “I wonder what Veronica is doing at home,” said Cynthia.

  “I think I might at last be able to answer that,” said Richmond, setting down the paper he had been reading. “In fact… I have just been reading about her.”

  “Reading about whom?”

  “Veronica.”

  “In the newspaper!” exclaimed Cynthia.

  Richmond nodded. “Seth is here too, though his role remains mostly invisible.”