Beauty From Ashes (29 page)

When at last she started to tell Anna Matilda about the all-important long walk with John Couper during his surprise visit from his work in Savannah to Hopeton at Christmas 1849, she could feel the last cords of indecision begin to loosen. Not that she didn’t mean to pull up her remaining roots still deep in the sandy soil of the Georgia coast, but even the dread of the day, the hour, the moment when she would have to do it seemed to be slipping away. At fifty-four, she was not foolish enough even to think that

leaving could be easy, but as the minutes passed, as her words poured out, she began to feel that it just might not be quite as painful as she’d feared.

“You were so kind to send your carriage to bring Pete and me and our luggage from Frederica, where the Welaka captain was good enough to let us off the little Florida-bound steamer. I knew even before we took the train in Marietta that I could not go first to my brother’s house at Hopeton, that I had to come here to you for courage to face James Hamilton with my now irrevocable decision to move to Marietta to live.”

“I don’t think he’ll like it one bit,” Anne Matilda said.

“You’re undoubtedly right, but James’s concern for the children and for me is genuine. He and I are as different as night and day, but you’ve been such a good listener, I’m sure I’ve been able to convince you of how drawn I am to that one house in Marietta. So, I’m far less nervous about telling him than I was when I told Miss Eliza MacKay much the same things I’ve told you.”

Anne Matilda frowned. “And why do you think that’s true? I’ve always thought Miss Eliza

knew exactly how to advise everyone 383 about everything.”

“That’s the answer, I think. Poor lady.”

“Sweet, strong, wise Miss Eliza—a poor lady?”

“I’d never given it a thought before, but yes. I actually felt sorry for her when she and I talked at her house before we boarded the boat in Savannah. Now I know why I did. She’s given such wonderful counsel all her life, she must believe by now that everyone is just sitting there expecting her to pour out golden words of wisdom and gospel truth, and that makes me sorry for her! I will admit that she didn’t actually say much to me at the end of my story. Oh, she let me know how happy she is that I have what she called the courage to make such a big, adventurous move at my time of life, but now that I think back, I guess she decided that this time she’d deprive me of the crutch she’s always handed me when I confided in her, begged her help.” Smiling a little now, Anne went on. “I’m right about her, I know. The dear lady said very little beyond sharing her delight in my description of the Marietta house —the white-light house. That’s what I call

it. Miss Eliza seemed to like the idea that even though it’s a different light up there, I knew I belonged in the house because it’s so full of light. I’d told her often of how I used to depend on sunrises at Lawrence after John went away.” Her smile faded. “Anna Matilda, be thankful that at least you know Thomas will be coming home again someday.”

“I am thankful, Anne, even during those sleepless nights when I’m almost in tears with worry because so many miles separate us. But enough of me. I’m thankful, as thankful as I know how to be anyway, and right now what matters is that you’ve found a house that will soon be your very own.” Reaching for Anne’s hand, she added, “I—I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to say good-bye to you once it really soaks in that you’ll be leaving St. Simons Island forever, but I am so, so happy and—was

“My dear friend,” Anne exclaimed, “I can’t leave for months yet! And anyway, we’ll write often and the trains do make travel so easy now. I’ll visit you. You must promise to come to Marietta. We won’t be saying good-bye forever.”

Trying her best to smile, Anna 385 Matilda said, “I know, I know, but even when you’ve been at Hopeton or someone else’s house in recent years, I’ve always known you were still nearby. That a horseback ride or a reasonable boat trip over to the mainland would bring us face-to-face. You know how silly I can be, Anne. No one needs to tell you that after all this time.”

“And no one needs to tell me that there was never a truer, better friend anywhere,” Anne said. “Sometimes I think nothing in life is permanent but change, though. One day soon I will be leaving the coast. Heaven only knows what life holds up ahead for us both, but you do think I’m doing the right thing, don’t you?”

Anna Matilda squeezed Anne’s hand again. “Oh, yes! Yes, I do. And there will be other changes—for us both. What matters, I guess, is that we know, you and I, that whatever comes, we’ll go on being friends. And Anne, speaking of friends, does Eve know you’re back here now?”

“No. Even James Hamilton doesn’t know unless my son wrote to him from Savannah.

Pete sent word to John Couper the minute I made up my mind about the white-light house. He begins his new position two months earlier than he expected.”

“How proud you must be of that boy!”

Anne gave her a long look. “John Couper’s my rock,” she said. “I’d be afraid of—everything if I didn’t have him.”

Knowing that any day now, James Hamilton would surely learn of their return to the coast, Anne and Pete stayed only a week with Anna Matilda and toward the end of April returned to Hopeton, where Selina and Fanny, back from Savannah, welcomed them with such joy Anne felt a little guilty at having left them for so long. Her guilt included Eve, too, especially since the first night she and Pete shared their old room at Hopeton, Anne had gone to sleep trying to remember how long it had been since she’d seen tears in Eve’s large, liquid brown eyes.

“They be tears of happiness, Miss Anne,”

the devoted servant told her as she 387 served Anne’s breakfast in bed the next morning. “You neber desert me for such a long time befo’.was

“But I wrote you a letter from Mrs. Mackay’s house in January before I took the train to Marietta. Didn’t you get it?”

“Co’se I done got it. What you think? Eve be half dead wif worry wifout dat letter! I ‘bout done wore it out.”

“You’ve certainly slipped back into your old way of talking while I was away,” Anne scolded, buttering a hot muffin from the breakfast tray across her knees. “Where’s Pete? I didn’t even hear her leave. And you’ll spoil me rotten if you bring breakfast upstairs to me even one more day!”

“I aims to spoil you so’s you won’ run off an’ leabe me no more. Pete, she out takin’ a walk wif Miss Caroline. De las’ I seen ‘em, dey was laughin’ an’ huggin’ one another headed down ‘long de riber.”

“You know perfectly well there’s no b in river. Where were they heading?”

Eve’s big smile broke the tension in the

room. “They headed down toward the river, Miss Anne. Now, you satisfied?”

“Yes, because you and I are about to begin a whole new way of life in a house that will be my very own, and you and June will have the best cabin on the entire nine acres.”

“Just nine acres? That be no bigger than yo’ hand! How you gonna raise crops on any little ole patch of land no bigger’n nine acres?”

“We’re not going to raise any crops to sell. The girls can plant a garden—a good big one—the girls and Big Boy, but most of what we’ll be planting will be fancy shrubs and trees and flowers. I’ve found a truly beautiful place that cries out for a luscious garden. The kind June knows so well how to plant and tend.”

“June be busy an’ happy lately right here at Hopeton, ever since Mausa James Hamilton turn over all his specimen plants an’ trees to his care.”

“Oh, you’ve learned a new word—specimen! Good for you. But when did my brother turn over such particular work to June? Is old Jeff too crippled with rheumatism to handle his

imported plants these days?” 389

“You been gone a long time, Miss Anne. Ole Jeff be dead.”

“Dead? No one let me know.”

“Mausa James ain’t likely to be writin’ to you, busy as he is, when you don’ write none to him, now is he? What you do wif yourself up there in Mar’etta all this time?”

“I was hunting a place for us to live and anyway, I wasn’t up there very long. It does take time to travel back and forth, you know, even on our trains. You’ll find out when the time comes for us to make the trip. I had to spend time in Savannah with Miss Eliza, too, before I could board the steamboat for St. Simons.”

“Why you not come straight here? Why you stop on Sn Simons to see Miss Anna Matilda King before you come here to see us?”

“Because I wanted to. You brought too much food up here. Will you please take the tray now?”

“You don’ like Eve’s cookin’?”

“I like it fine. You simply brought too much. Don’t just stand there holding that tray. Put it down and pull up that little straight chair here by the

bed.”

“You want me to sit down to talk to you?”

“You did that before I left, don’t you remember?”

“Co’se I remember,” Eve said, pulling up the chair.

“Don’t you like it much better when you’re sitting with me instead of having one of our long conversations while you just stand there?”

“Oh, Miss Anne,” Eve said, the unfamiliar tears once more in her eyes. “Miss Anne, you know Eve feel like Eve again now you home.”

“You and I are going to be really home again one of these days! Home just the way we used to be at Lawrence when everything was under our control.”

Eve’s eyes still glistened with tears, but the flashing smile was back now. “Most everything. I don’t ‘member we always had the chur’n under our control.”

“Eve, we don’t have much more time to talk now, but you must not move up to Marietta mispronouncing the word children. You’re still saying the word chur’n, which sounds as though you’re talking about a churn for making butter, and children and churn aren’t at all alike.

I’m so proud of you, but I want you 391 to promise me you’ll start now being very careful about the way you speak.”

A sly grin on her face, Eve jumped to her feet. “Yes’m. But right now, you best jump outa dat bed so’s we kin git you bathed an’ dressed for yo’ talk with Mausa James Hamilton. That man, he don’ like to be kept waitin’!”

“I know. And we’re both still living here at Hopeton because of the charity of my illustrious brother. James Hamilton has managed to find exactly thirty-five minutes in which to allow me to explain my future plans to him this morning. I need to present myself in his plantation office downstairs promptly at nine-fifteen. But I want to imprint on your good brain, Eve, that Marietta, Georgia, is a highly cultivated place. It’s only a village at the moment, but next year, 1852, it will be incorporated into a real city. The people who live there, most of them, are educated and have splendid taste. Just wait till you see the house we’re going to live in up there! It isn’t fancy, but it’s a big house—eight rooms and a kitchen—and

it’s a beautiful, simply designed place with big, round, white columns in front.” She laughed. “I think even my fussy brother James would approve the clean, good lines of its architecture. But he’s not going to like it one bit that I went to Marietta without consulting him first. More than that, he’ll be sure his sister has taken leave of her senses for committing herself to buy such a fine house, with everyone’s funds so low these days. He’ll worry that I’m planning to make my monthly payments with only my husband’s small pension from the British government and the help of one son not yet nineteen. Eve, will you pray for me while I’m keeping my appointment with my brother?”

“Pray for you?”

“I’ll need your prayers. Master Couper is a truly kind, generous man, but in all my years of life as his sister, I’ve never, despite how much I admire him and his brilliant mind, been able to understand what really goes on inside the man. I didn’t know when he was a little boy. I still don’t. He doesn’t know me, either. We’re born of the same parents, but no two people ever differed more from each other than

James Hamilton and I do. Papa 393 knew that. I doubt that he understood how James’s mind worked either, but he did know we were nothing alike. Dear Papa and I called him the Old Gentleman, you know, through all my childhood. I love my brother. I want him at least not to worry about me. Even if he thinks I’m crazy, I want him to know how grateful I am that he took us all in as he did when we had to leave Lawrence, but that I have realized at last I can’t go on living on his charity or anyone else’s.”

“I pray for you. In my heart I’ve already started, Miss Anne. An’ Eve, she do understand you. Eve understand you zactly the way you are!”

At the allotted time, Anne knocked on the tall, closed door of her brother’s private office at the rear of the spacious downstairs entrance hall.

“Enter, please,” he called in a voice he might well have used were he expecting a business acquaintance.

Anne made sure she was smiling when she

opened the heavy, dark door and went toward him with her hand out. “I hope I’m right on time, James,” she said, embracing him on impulse instead of shaking his hand as he plainly intended.

“You are indeed, Sister,” the tall, handsome man said, checking his gold pocket watch. “I like that.”

“Oh, James, I know you do.” She found smiling rather easy. Eve must be praying. Not that she didn’t dread this interview in one way, but her own mind was at ease. That she was doing the right thing, at this moment at least, she had no doubts whatever.

“I think you’ll find that armchair comfortable, Anne,” he said, leading her to it, then seating her in his gallant way. After he took his own chair behind the heavy desk, he gave her what, for James, was a cordial smile. “Now then, you’ve been keeping secrets from your family for quite some time. Are you ready to share them?” James lifted one slender hand. “First, I do want you to know I have no intention of demanding that you explain why it is you failed to keep in touch with me after you left here to visit Frances Anne at the Wylly home on St. Simons well before

Christmas of last year. And it’s now 395 April. But obviously you had a reason, so we don’t need to use up our time on that. I find I would be interested to know why you didn’t inform me from Marietta that you were returning to the coast at this time. Your son, John Couper, of course, has told me rather a lot of what you’ve been up to lately.”