Nevertheless, She Persisted

by Mindy Klasky

  Jane suddenly noticed the tall young man standing behind her. His eyes crinkled nicely at the corners as he smiled at her. “No wonder Edmund kicked his chair; I’ve never seen someone take him down so thoroughly. You have my unalloyed admiration, ma’am. I believe you play as well as your brother—and I’ve had my hat handed to me by him on more than one occasion at Hatton’s.”

  Jane groped for something—anything to say. Lady Alleyn—and her brother—weren’t here to berate her, but to congratulate her. Beyond that, however, something else had caught her attention. “You play the Game?”

  “Oh, yes—my brother taught me years ago—my non-horrid one, that is.” She glanced behind her roguishly. “Have you met, by the way? No, probably not; Tom’s been visiting our uncle in Paris this spring. Miss Wetherby, my brother, Thomas, Lord Paice.”

  Aunt Aspasia took over the juggling of introductions among them, bless her; Jane was still recovering from the shock of meeting another female Game player. To make matters worse, within less than a moment of that, their carriage arrived.

  Lady Alleyn looked as frustrated as Jane felt. “Oh, dear. Tom, we must abduct Jane tomorrow for a nice long ride so she can tell us all about her Game-playing. Do say you’ll let us!” she said to Jane.

  Let them? Jane laughed. “No abduction required—I’ll come gladly!”

  Lord Paice handed them into Papa’s barouche. “Till tomorrow, Miss Wetherby,” he said to her. Yes, she definitely approved of his smile.

  “Remind me again—what did I say about the winnowing out of acquaintances who don’t appreciate you?” Aunt Aspasia asked when the carriage door was shut and they were trotting smartly toward home.

  Jane wrinkled her nose at her, then laughed and took her hand. “I wonder if there are other females like Lady Alleyn who play the Game?”

  “If anyone would know, I expect she would. You must ask her tomorrow.” A small smile hovered about her lips. “It was curious, though…”

  “What was, Aunt?”

  “Well, I could have sworn I saw a slip of paper tucked into Lord Paice’s glove just now.”

  “I didn’t notice it.”

  “Didn’t you? It was quite noticeable against the tan leather, being that distinctive shade of blue…” She let her voice trail into silence.

  “No, I—oh!” Jane felt her cheeks grow warm—but not unpleasantly so.

  Tomorrow was going to be a very interesting day indeed.

  How Best to Serve

  P.G. Nagle

  Author’s Note: This story is an excerpt from A Call to Arms, a novel about the true adventures of Sarah Emma Edmonds, who lived in Flint, Michigan, when the American Civil War began.

  “Mr. Thompson, you arrange your entertainments most delightfully,” said the elder Miss Little over a dessert of apple crumble. “I have never enjoyed a concert more!”

  Emma bowed in her seat. “Thank you, Miss Little. I endeavor to please. Did you like the Mozart concerto best, or the Beethoven?”

  “The Beethoven was a little ambitious for the abilities of the orchestra,” Mrs. Little remarked, raising her glass to sip at her Madeira.

  The dining room at the Casino Hotel, the best establishment in Flint, was filled with warmth and the quiet murmur of contented patrons. Dark wood paneling and rich velvet hangings gave the room a cozy feeling, and lamplight glinting on the several crystal goblets and wine glasses at each place attested to the lavishness of the fare. Emma had brought her guests there for supper after the concert, and was pleased to have won their approval.

  “I liked the patriotic songs best,” said Miss Little, her dark eyes glittering with enthusiasm. “You will think my tastes too simple, but I found them thrilling.”

  Emma smiled politely. Patriotic fever was high, just now, with the uncertainty caused by the recent secession of several Southern states. Miss Little’s preference did not surprise her.

  “The supper was also quite elegant, and tastefully chosen,” said Mrs. Little, whose frail, blonde looks she had passed to her younger daughter, but not to the elder. “You must prosper well in your business, Mr. Thompson.”

  Emma fixed her with an interested gaze. Mrs. Little, if she guessed aright, was looking to settle one of her daughters.

  “I am happy to say that I do, ma’am,” said Emma, smiling with private amusement. “There is a great appetite for books in this part of the country. I have sold more in the last year than I did in the previous, when I was first the top salesman for my employer.”

  The ladies made polite noises appreciative of this accomplishment. Emma turned her attention to the youngest, who was but fifteen and prettily shy.

  Miss Daphne Little had spent much of the evening in a state of tongue-tied awe. Emma had included her in the invitation out of kindness, thinking she was just of an age to wish to take part in adult entertainments, without knowing quite what she should do in such a situation. Her presence also made the invitation to her elder sister seem less particular.

  “Do you like to read, Miss Daphne?”

  Miss Daphne cringed a little at being addressed directly, then nodded. “Mother lets me look at her magazines.”

  A rustle of taffeta from her mother’s direction made Miss Daphne give a start and glance up. Her eyes widened with alarm as she looked back at Emma.

  “And I read in the beautiful Bible you brought for us,” she made haste to add. “I read in it every day!”

  Emma smiled to reassure her. “I’m glad you enjoy it, Miss Daphne.”

  “The Bible is indeed wonderful,” Miss Little the elder put in, “and I am also enjoying Jane Eyre.” Her voice held a hint of smug satisfaction, that her parents trusted her to read the novel without fear of its turning her head.

  Emma observed her, a vivacious girl of seventeen, fairly bursting out of her skin at the prospect of claiming her place in adult society. Eager to marry without understanding the toll it would quickly exact from her.

  Emma thought of her own sisters, who were older than she and had wed while she was still young, younger than Miss Daphne. How quickly they had faded, become weary and despairing like their mother, under the burdens of matrimony.

  A sudden anger at Mrs. Little filled Emma’s breast. She hid it by toying with her coffee cup, stirring her coffee and sipping it. It had gone cold, and tasted slightly bitter.

  Miss Little continued talking of Jane Eyre, freely expressing her opinions of the characters and the writing. Emma listened with half an ear, her annoyance fading to sadness as she realized Miss Little was beyond rescue. She would wed, as she was so eager to do, and from then on live in her husband’s shadow.

  Miss Daphne was not yet ensorceled by the attractions of men, though there was a spark of unformed curiosity in her. Emma watched her covertly as she scraped a last bit of dessert from her dish. Miss Daphne had the appetites of a healthy young girl.

  “I encourage you to read as much as you are able,” Emma said when Miss Little paused. She addressed the remark to Miss Daphne, who looked back at her with guileless interest. “It was a book that inspired me to make my way in the world.”

  “What book?”

  Emma smiled. “Perhaps I will bring it to you one day.”

  Miss Daphne’s eyes lit with excitement. Emma glanced at her mother and saw suspicion, though Mrs. Little was quick to hide it with a smile. The mother would willingly give up her younger daughter to the charming Bible salesman, Emma thought, though the girl was but fifteen. Emma had to hide another flash of anger at the thought.

  “What do you think of the situation at Fort Sumter, Mr. Thompson?” Mrs. Little asked.

  Emma looked at her, mildly surprised that she would bring up the subject in her daughters’ company. Fort Sumter was on everyone’s mind, though, even hundreds of miles away here in Flint.

  All the rhetoric of secession and disunion had come to balance on the knife’s-edge of Sumter. Lincoln had refused to hand over the fort to the fledgling Confederacy. The poor garrison there had been
without supply for weeks, blockaded by the Confederates, and was surely near to starving.

  “I think it must be very dire,” Emma replied. “I hope the relief convoy is allowed through.”

  “And if they are not?” Miss Little asked, eyes wide. “Will it be war?”

  Emma regarded her, suspecting her breathless excitement to be fanned by a romantic view of warfare. “I very much fear that it will.”

  “What will you do in that case, Mr. Thompson?” asked Mrs. Little. “Will you return to Canada?”

  “I have not decided, ma’am.”

  The question troubled her. She had gone over it in her mind many times. If war broke out, as a young man in good health and wishing to do right, Frank Thompson might well be expected to enlist. She doubted she would retreat to Canada; she cared too much about this fine country, which had been the source of her independence, to turn her back when it was threatened with dissolution.

  But could she bear arms against her fellow man? She knew how to handle a rifle—growing up on a farm had taught her that, along with other skills that were convenient to her disguise—but she had never contemplated aiming a firearm at another human being.

  “One thing is certain,” Emma said with more lightness than she felt, “you will hear a great deal more patriotic music if there is to be war, Miss Little.”

  Having thus turned the subject, Emma whiled away the remainder of the supper with innocuous conversation, assisted by the willing Mrs. Little. When they rose from the table Emma escorted the ladies home in her carriage, accepted an invitation to visit on the following Saturday despite Miss Little’s threatening to play the piano for her, and bade them all a cheerful good evening.

  Mr. Little, who had no taste for concerts, welcomed his family home again at the door, favoring Emma with cursory thanks and a mistrustful glance. Emma shook his hand firmly, smiled, and went her ways.

  She drove home, bestowed her carriage and saw to the horses, then sought the room she rented from the Reverend Mr. Joslin and his wife. The Joslins had already retired for the evening and the house was quiet, dark save for the lamp left burning low beside the stairs. Emma carried it up to her room.

  Shutting the door, she let out a small sigh. Home at last, sheltered from suspicious glances. Her room was a refuge, small as it was and filled with stacks of books and order forms. She was safe here.

  She took off her good suit and untied her neckcloth, thinking over the evening as she prepared to retire. The Littles were pleasant enough, though she found she did not really enjoy the elder Miss Little’s company. It was important, however, to appear to show some interest in young ladies. To avoid them might occasion remark, and she was careful never to attract that sort of attention.

  Two years, it had been, since that first terrifying day when she had cut her hair off short, dressed in men’s clothing, and stepped out into the streets of Moncton with her brand new case of sample books. She had been so apprehensive of discovery that she had hurried away from the city and waited in the woods for concealing dusk before she dared to approach a farmhouse. Fearful of denouncement and arrest, she had instead received a courteous welcome, and had sold her first Bible to those trusting folk.

  She had never looked back.

  Once, she had paid a visit to her family. She was careful to arrive during the day when her father was sure to be away from the farmhouse. She went in her man’s attire, and had been sitting with her mother, her sister Frances, and her poor sickly brother Thomas, for half an hour before her mother recognized her.

  She doubted she would ever wear skirts again. She had cast them off, and no longer owned anything that might be considered a lady’s property.

  She had kept only one possession from her early life: the book that she had mentioned to Miss Daphne. Smiling, she opened her trunk and sought for it beneath the clothing, drawing out the small volume and holding it carefully in both hands.

  The binding was cracked and beginning to come apart. A faint, musty smell of deteriorating paper arose from the pages. The book was cheaply made, nowhere near the quality of the elegant volumes upon which she made her living. But it was the most important book she had ever possessed, saving only the Bible.

  The title was fading from the worn cover. She opened the book to its title page, admiring the picture of a woman in trousers holding a Jolly Roger. Fanny Campbell, the Female Pirate Captain.

  How well she remembered the day she had received it, a gift from a peddler who had sheltered overnight from a frightful storm in the Edmonsons’ home. He had given it to Emma, the youngest child, before going on his way. She had never seen a novel before. If her father had known of it he would surely have taken it away from her, but she hid it in the pocket of her skirt and went out to work in the fields with her sisters.

  Opening that book had opened Emma’s eyes to a new awareness of possibilities she had never considered. She and her sisters had taken turns reading, then become so engrossed in the story that few potatoes were planted that day.

  When Emma read of Fanny Campbell’s decision to cut off her curling locks and dress as a man, she felt as if an angel had touched her with a live coal from off the altar. The problem of her life was solved.

  It was not until some years later, when her father demanded that she marry a neighbor—a widower much older than herself—that she had actually escaped the farm, and not even then had she donned men’s attire. She had first gone to Salisbury and worked in a milliner’s shop, then moved to Moncton and opened her own hat shop with a friend. It was the constant fear that her father would find her and drag her back to marry his horrid old neighbor that had led her finally to take the step she had so often dreamed of.

  And to discover the freedom a young man enjoyed.

  She could dine when and where she pleased, go wherever she wished without escort, and answer to no one but herself. With the sample books she had requested from W. S. Williams & Company in Hartford, Connecticut, she traveled all about New Brunswick, meeting folk of all kinds and taking their orders for Bibles, illustrated histories, and other books.

  She earned more money than a poor farm girl could ever have dreamed of. Each success increased her confidence, so that now, two years later, she was perfectly at home in the role of Franklin Thompson.

  She turned the yellowing leaves of the novel in her hands, remembering the fire it had lit in her heart. An early passage caught her eye: “Fanny Campbell was a noble looking girl. She was none of your modern belles, delicate and ready to faint at the first sight of a reptile; no, Fanny could row a boat, shoot a panther, ride the wildest horse in the province, or do almost any brave and useful act.”

  How those words had thrilled her, confirming that there was worth in a girl who was able to do such things. She herself could handle a rifle or an axe with equal skill, and rode as well as her father. Fanny Campbell had convinced her that she could base a life upon those abilities—a life that was bound to be full of interest and adventure—rather than resign herself to being a wife and mother. Could this book inspire Miss Daphne Little to a similar conviction?

  Perhaps, but she dared not give it to the girl. Even if Miss Daphne kept the book a secret, it might cause her to suspect Frank Thompson, and that Emma could not risk. She was taking some risk even keeping the book, but she had not so far been able to let it go.

  There was one other way she might rescue Miss Daphne: marry her and take her away from Flint, thereafter to set her free upon the world, perhaps even become her mentor and guide. While the thought of carrying off a marriage amused Emma, she knew she could no more do that than give Daphne the book.

  Suppose Miss Daphne felt cheated upon learning her husband was not a man? The girl might actually wish for children, as her sister so plainly did. Might wish for the drudgery of motherhood and all its attendant woes. Frank Thompson would be a kinder husband than Isaac Edmonson had been, but could never sire children.

  No, Frank Thompson could not marry. Not only would it be dangero
us and uncertain, and perhaps unfair to the young lady, it would make a mockery of a Christian sacrament, and that Emma would not do. The other fire that burned in her, now that her freedom was assured, was the fire of Christ’s teachings.

  She longed to devote herself someday to missionary work. Frank Thompson would do well, she thought, bringing the teachings of Christ to those living in the darkness of ignorance. She was putting some of her earnings by against just such a venture, though for now she was content in Mr. Joslin’s congregation. They were something like a family to her, a great comfort after her self-imposed isolation.

  She closed Fanny Campbell and carefully hid it again in the bottom of her trunk before saying her prayers. She included all the Littles in her requests for God’s guidance and protection, her concern especially for the two Misses Little.

  Miss Daphne would have to find her own inspiration, but at least Emma had been able to encourage her to read. She was curious enough, Emma thought, to seek out works beyond what her mother might consider strictly appropriate. Smiling on the thought, Emma climbed into bed and drifted to sleep.

  The next morning she was walking to the telegraph office to place her book orders when she heard the news of Fort Sumter’s fall. A boy in the street was hawking newspapers, shouting hoarsely that Lincoln had called for 75,000 volunteers.

  With a sinking heart, Emma hastened to purchase a paper from him. Others crowded around the boy, buying papers as fast as he could sell them, blocking traffic in the street. Emma walked away slowly, eyes fixed on the description of the shelling and surrender of the fort.

  It was war, then. Miss Little’s romantic hopes were fulfilled, and Emma’s quandary descended upon her with full force.

  She knew she would not leave America. There must be a role for her, a part she could play in the coming calamity, a means by which she could serve her beloved adopted country. What it would be, she was uncertain.