The town idlers put it with awed simplicity: “She took his manhood away.”
There was no suppressing the affair. Eugene had been dispatched by train to the Savannah hospital, accompanied by Dr. Platt, who stepped out of near retirement to make the journey, and, to the general surprise, by Priscilla Davis. Priscilla and her mother felt that Eugene should be accompanied by “someone close,” and since no family member volunteered, Priscilla did so. As Ann Oglethorpe explained, “In the circumstances, we consider no chaperon necessary.”
Before leaving, Eugene and Dr. Platt signed an order committing Frankie to the state asylum for the insane, and there was no voice to oppose them. Most of the townspeople had considered her mentally disordered for years, and if the violent act was not final proof, Frankie furnished it by vociferously accusing her husband of having murdered both his first wife and that wife’s mother. A few might have wondered about Bessie’s death, but Bessie herself had sworn that old Mrs. Marsh died by an accident she was witness to. Only those at Beulah Land believed Frankie, and they understood there was nothing to be gained by doing so openly. Frankie must be put away, for if she were not, she would stand trial for attempted murder.
Sarah, however, would not have her go to the state asylum. With Benjamin she approached Annabel. “You must postpone this present project of yours and help us find a place for Frankie, a private one suitable for ladies.”
Annabel retorted, “I shall do no such thing.”
“You must,” Sarah said.
“Please, Aunt Annabel,” Benjamin begged her.
“Why should I?”
“You ask such a thing when she was first your daughter and later your sister? You are doubly responsible. Furthermore, Eugene has let it be known that he won’t pay to have her privately kept. We can’t afford it, so you must pay for her.”
Benjamin said, “Think how the town will praise you, Aunt Annabel.”
Sarah rephrased it. “Think how the town will condemn you if you refuse. You boast constantly of doing your duty. Now do it.”
After long hesitation, Annabel muttered a grudging “Very well,” but she looked at Benjamin as she said it. “Perhaps I’ll think about it.”
“Blair Three should come home and see to his mother,” Sarah said.
“I won’t allow that.” And on this point Annabel did not give way. “He mustn’t be associated with her again in the public mind; it would shadow his future.”
Within a week Annabel found the right place less than twenty miles from Highboro. It was near the town of Sandersville and called itself “a private home for difficult cases.” It was in effect an asylum for gentlewomen. Its governess had to be persuaded that Frankie was no longer violent, but Annabel was a practiced persuader and Frankie was docile. Since the night of the attack she had been given morphine, and it was no wonder the governess found her “tractable and genteel.”
“Thank goodness,” Annabel said, “that is arranged. So much has depended upon me. However, ‘rank imposes obligation,’ as I am the first to admit. Now I can return to my important project.”
Later, Benjamin asked Sarah what that was.
“Surely you’ve heard. A skeleton was found over in—I think it was Emanuel County. In the woods in a shallow grave, hardly a grave at all. Nobody knows who it is. There are no identifying marks and no clothes. It might be the Missing Link for all anyone could prove, but Annabel has got it into her head that it was one of our soldiers who fell before Sherman’s advance and was buried hurriedly by retreating comrades.”
“Where was he found?” Benjamin asked quietly.
Sarah wasn’t certain. He went to Annabel, and what she told him sent Benjamin and Daniel away on a day’s journey of investigation. When they returned, Benjamin asked his grandmother, “Just what does Aunt Annabel propose doing?”
“Why, adding it to the Confederate Memorial. A sort of urn at the foot of the statue she had us erect, with the skeleton in the urn and a nice inscription along the lines of ‘unnamed but not unremembered’—something like that.”
“She mustn’t do it.”
“Oh, it’s harmless enough, and it keeps her busy.”
“Grandma, I know whose skeleton it is.”
She stared at him. “You amaze me.”
“Sergeant Smede.” She continued to stare at him. “Yes, ma’am. Dan and I went to the place they found him, and we remember it well. We buried him there after we followed and killed him.”
Sarah said slowly, “The man who killed your grandfather and Annabel’s father. Who raped Nancy and Lotus, killed dear Lovey, and dug up Uncle Ezra’s grave looking for silver. The man who looted Oaks and Beulah Land.”
Benjamin nodded. “That’s whose bones Aunt Annabel proposes to honor.”
“Well.” Sarah sat thinking until she came to a decision. “We must let her do it. What does it matter? May God forgive him, for I never shall. May God forgive us all.”
“You don’t mean it, Grandma. You can’t.”
“Yes. We’ll have it to hold over Annabel as long as she lives, for if she ever gets out of line, she’s done for. If there’s one thing Annabel fears more than eternal damnation, it is ridicule. Were the truth known, she’d be the laughingstock of the county.”
“You’re a wicked old woman,” he said, and kissed her cheek.
“Have you heard what your wife is doing?” Benjamin shook his head. “They say she’s all but moved into Eugene Betchley’s house and taken over. Molly insisted on going with Frankie to Sandersville, so Priscilla has brought in her own cook to take care of Eugene and Theodore, thereby assuring the same low standards prevailing at her mother’s house. To call it Spartan would slander the Greeks.”
Fanny and Edna May were staying with Annabel, who disliked girls and complained of the arrangement. One evening at Beulah Land after a long-whispered conference with Bruce and Luck and Nancy, Fanny took Leon aside.
“I will no longer be an old maid dependent on relations. I must have my own place. You are to marry me now, Leon Davis, or never.”
Nonplussed, Leon talked to Sarah and Benjamin. Sarah said, “If you let that girl go, I shall disown you. I want her for Beulah Land. I can’t live forever, although I think I can.”
“Let’s call it settled,” Benjamin said.
Annabel was vastly relieved when Benjamin told her that both Fanny and Edna May were to move to Beulah Land after the Christmas wedding. “So good of you, Ben, to think of keeping sisters together.” He blushed, and Annabel thought it from modesty.
At long, long last Benjamin Davis was to have all his children under his own roof.
20
Leon and Fanny were married at the church in Highboro two days before Christmas, and of those who loved them only Luck was not there, having the night before given birth to a son, whom she and Abraham named Roscoe.
“A Roscoe Kendrick!” Sarah said to Roman. “Think of it, after everything that’s happened between the different Roscoes and Kendricks! You see, my dear? All things are reconciled in the end.”
After the wedding Sarah took an armful of holly that had decorated the church into the graveyard, where she and Jane put a sprig on each family grave. “The first warm day in January we’ll come and work,” Sarah said. “Much wants doing.”
Fanny and Leon would take no wedding trip, although Benjamin offered them one. Instead, Leon drove his own buggy from the church back to Beulah Land. As they turned from the main road into the private one that would carry them through the orchard and along the avenue of oak and cedar to the main house, Leon stopped the horse. “The first thing I remember,” he said, “is stopping here one morning. Mama and I were taking our wagon to town to sell eggs and chickens. It was cold, and she pointed through the trees and said, ‘That’s where you belong.’ Welcome to Beulah Land, my love.” He lifted her hand and kissed the ring Sarah had worn when she married Leon Kendrick.
Sarah and Beulah Land were to thrive together for many years to come, her reign ov
er it exceeding that of Victoria’s over England, as Annabel Saxon once pointed out dyspeptically. But one day Fanny took Sarah’s place, and by that time, she was ready. It had come about so gradually no one felt any change. Benjamin stayed more and more in his house in the Glade, where he and Nancy were husband and wife in all but name.
Frankie never recovered the mind she had lost, although she was said to be not unhappy in the home that cared for afflicted ladies of means. Of the family, only Fanny and Leon went to see her, for she wanted no one else and became agitated in the presence of any others from the past. She learned to play the piano, and they allowed her to care for a patch of garden and call it hers. When Fanny told her that they’d taken her portrait to Beulah Land, where it was hung in the entrance hall for everyone to admire, Frankie smiled as if she understood. Yet when Fanny was ready to leave, Frankie clutched her hand and asked anxiously, “Where will you go?”
“Why, back to Beulah Land, Mama.”
Frankie smiled again but a little vaguely, as if she could not recollect the name, she for whom it once had been the sum of all she coveted of consequence in the world. “Beulah Land. It sounds like heaven. Is it far?”
Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzi-bah, and thy land Beulah: for the Lord delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married.
Isaiah 62:4
Copyright
Copyright © 1980 Lonnie Coleman
Copyright © 2019 Classica Libris
All rights reserved.
Books by Lonnie Coleman published by Classica Libris (digital editions)
Beulah Land (Beulah Land #1)
Look Away Beulah Land (Beulah Land #2)
The Legacy of Beulah Land (Beulah Land #3)
Ship’s Company
Mark
King
The Legacy of Beulah Land Page 46