Beauty From Ashes (34 page)

the bed as she used to tell me she reached, 451 trying to find Mausa John in the dark? This has to be almost the hardest time of all for her, because it’s been too long for other people to sit still and listen to her telling about pain like that. It’s no less pain, though. Nobody has to tell me that. I know Miss Anne too well. I’d give almost anything in this world not to be sure she will need me to say exactly the right things to her when she has to turn around and walk away from his grave today! I don’t want to know how much she will need me this time, because even though I almost always know, this time nobody but Miss Anne can tell how much she will need me!

All the way out Couper Road to where it forked into Frederica Road as Big Boy turned the team north toward the churchyard, Eve kept her thoughts to herself. The nearly five-mile trip from the Wyllys’ had never seemed so long; Big Boy had never driven so carefully, but his occasional smile back at them and the reassuring wave of his huge hand must have comforted Miss Anne some. It comforted Eve too.

Lord, Eve thought, it just came to me that she will be hurt to say good-bye to Father Fraser too. How

Miss Anne loved that old man! She loved the little white church, too, so she will need strength to walk away along that old path when it comes time for us to leave. Pulling up roots, Sweet Jesus, as Miss Anne has to pull them up today, will hurt her far more than pulling a tooth!

In sight of the chapel now, Eve struggled to figure out something of what Miss Anne might be thinking. Close as she felt to her mistress, who had in their childhood been her playmate and was now—both women in their fifties—her friend, Eve felt more than helpless because it wasn’t possible that even she could tell for certain just how Miss Anne was making it so far.

And then, if the winter sun hadn’t already been out, it would have come out, because Miss Anne turned and gave Eve a smile that would have brought it out!

“I’m—all right, Eve,” she said. “So far, I’m all right. I wouldn’t be were I in this carriage with anyone else but you and Big Boy, but you’re both here and—I’m all right.”

With the firm, sure support of Big Boy’s giant, brown hand, they stepped down from the carriage, and for only a moment Eve wondered whether she should walk up the path a little behind Miss

Anne or right alongside her. 453

“I’d like it if you took my arm, Eve. We don’t need to talk. I don’t think there are any words anyway—for either of us. Just be with me, please?”

When a wren called from behind the church—beyond the two rows of graves they’d be visiting—Eve knew God was with them. In early winter most birds scarcely chirped. Wrens were faithful, though. God guided wrens, too.

“Thank you for praying,” Miss Anne said as they walked past the north side of the church toward the Couper and Fraser graves.

“How you know I’m prayin’, Miss Anne?”

In response, Anne lifted her chin and did her best to smile.

Eve turned briefly to be sure Big Boy was following them, although some distance away; he was there, keeping Miss Anne in sight every minute. Their visits began with the Couper plot after they’d passed John Wylly’s broken-column tombstone. Slowly, holding her thoughts quietly inside herself, Miss Anne stopped to say good-bye to her parents, Miss Rebecca and Mausa Jock Couper, to her

sister, Isabella, to Father Fraser and Dr. William Fraser, Mausa John’s only brother. And then, after she knelt for a long, silent moment near them all, instead of going to her lover’s grave, she turned and walked slowly toward the Demere plot on the other side of the church. Eve followed her.

At Annie’s wide, thick, flat stone, Miss Anne knelt again, her head bowed. Finally, she reached one hand to touch the letters of Annie’s name: Anne R. Demere—the R. for Rebecca. Each letter was touched lovingly, slowly, with a tenderness only a mother could show her firstborn child. As far as Eve could tell, Miss Anne had not sobbed once. When she looked up at Eve, holding out her hand to be helped to her feet, a smile Eve hadn’t seen since Annie died lifted Eve’s heart.

“Now,” Miss Anne whispered, “we’ll go to—John.”

Sweet Jesus, help us, Eve breathed wordlessly. Sweet Jesus, we’re both in need of help.

Together they walked back around the tiny white church. Eve held on to Miss Anne’s arm for

dear life. When they reached the granite 455 slab that lay on the sandy ground, keeping Miss Anne’s eyes from ever looking at him again on this earth, they stopped. Miss Anne gently removed Eve’s hand from her arm. This time, she did not kneel at once. Instead, she just stood there, swaying a little—all by herself—her eyes fixed on the inscription:

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF

JOHN FRASER

OF THE ROYAL BRITISH

MARINE ARTILLERY

And then, as with Annie, her finger traced each letter of his name—over and over and over.

Finally, eyes still dry, she looked up at Eve with a surprised smile on her face. Miss Anne looked almost young again—young, the way she and Eve used to be.

“Eve! Eve, did you hear—what John just said?”

Not wanting to say the wrong thing, Eve simply shook her head no, to show she hadn’t heard. Then she gave a big smile, too, to make sure

her mistress knew Eve believed that Miss Anne had heard his voice.

“Oh, I was so sure you’d heard it too!”

Eve hesitated only an instant, then asked, “What he say, Miss Anne? What Mausa John say to you?”

“I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you exactly what I heard him say. He said, `Oh, Anne, you’re going to love the white-light house!`”

“He say that?”

“I suppose you’re thinking I sound like Heriot Wylly.”

“I’m only thinkin’ how proud I am of you!”

“Proud? But do you believe I heard John say that?”

“I believes it an’ I’m proud, too, cause you ain’t cried one drop!”

Miss Anne’s shoulders slumped a little, but there was only certainty on her face when she said, “I don’t have any more tears. I cried all my tears out in the woods at Lawrence yesterday. I want so much for John to go to Marietta with me, but I’m at peace, Eve. I now know he’s alive—somewhere. And that he knows what’s

happening to all of us. Otherwise, how 457 would he have known I call it the white-light house?”

A week before Christmas Day, 1851, Louisa Fletcher caught her oldest daughter, Georgia, thirteen, trying to slip past her mother at work behind the counter in the lobby at the Howard House in Marietta.

“Georgia, dear, I know you’re not deaf, so will you kindly slow down for just one minute, please? I need you to run an errand.”

“But Mama, it’s time for me to practice my music lesson!”

“I’m well aware of that, but all I want you to do is bring our personal mail to me from our rooms upstairs. It should be on the dressing table in my bedroom. Your absentminded father forgot I have to serve my time behind this hotel counter this morning, and I know there’s a letter for me from my new friend Mrs. Anne Fraser, down on the coast.”

“Oh, Mama, are you sure? I should have begun practicing fifteen minutes ago.”

“I’m sure because your father said it was there. I’ve waited and waited to hear from her, so do as I say, Georgia.”

“She’s the pretty lady with the red-haired daughter named Pete, isn’t she?”

“Exactly,” Louisa answered.

“The lady who’s going to move up here soon and live in the Bostwick house. I liked her,” Georgia said. “I liked her daughter Pete, too.”

“Then I’d be ever so grateful if you could see your way clear to grant me a few moments of your time,” Louisa Fletcher said with a smile. “I’m fond of them both, too, and I’ve been on needles and pins waiting for word. I want so much for Anne Fraser to live here.”

“Oh, so do I, Mama. She also has another daughter named Fanny and a younger one nearer my age named Selina. Mrs. Fraser told me all three of her girls will be coming to live here with her.”

“That’s right and I’m still waiting to read her letter. If you aren’t in too much of a hurry to practice your music lesson, I’d be ever so happy to share the letter with you, but you will have to get it for me. You

know I’m chained to this counter.” 459

Georgia left in a hurry, calling back, “I’m going, I’m going.”

Within minutes, Georgia was flying back down the hotel stair, waving her mother’s letter. “Here it is, Mama. Papa’s right, it’s from Mrs. Fraser!”

After a cordial though somewhat hurried good-bye to some departing hotel guests, during which she made full use of her cultivated Massachusetts speech, Louisa turned to her daughter and the letter. “You may go to your practicing, Georgia,” she said, lapsing at once into her most affectionate parental tones. “Far be it from me to keep you from your piano. Music is still my life, too, despite the harried hours spent trying to help your poor father run this establishment.”

“But I thought you said you’d share Mrs. Fraser’s letter with me! And why do you sometimes call Papa by the name poor father?”

“Because the good man strikes me that way at times when all of this hotel management gets to be too much for him without me.”

“Papa says you’re a very good wife.”

“That’s exactly what I’ve always striven to be, Georgia. Your father’s a good father and a well-meaning, morally upright husband, who also tries very hard.” After glancing around the lobby of the hotel, Louisa broke the seal on Anne Fraser’s letter, reminding her daughter as she did so that she’d read aloud unless or until guests entered the lobby, in which case she’d stop at once and expect Georgia to run straight to her piano practice upstairs.

“We’re all alone now,” Georgia said impatiently. “Read, Mama, read.”

Louisa gave her daughter a teasing smile. “And here I thought you were in such a hurry to get to Mozart.”

Smiling, too, Georgia said, “That’s mean.”

“Not mean, child. Your mother’s approaching forty-four. She’s just getting old and peculiar.”

“Please read! All we know is that Mrs. Fraser is going to be able to move into the Bostwick house sometime, but not when. I want to know when!”

Since Georgia was behind the high counter with her

now, Louisa hugged her. “I am being 461 mean. A mean old sinner and that’s because there isn’t a Protestant church in all of Marietta where your heathen, Unitarian mother is welcome to take Communion. So, don’t blame me.”

“I like it when you tease, Mama, but I’d much rather hear Mrs. Fraser’s letter.”

“And hear it you shall. Right this minute.” After scanning the first page of Anne’s neat, spidery script, Louisa began to read.

“Hopeton Plantation Near Brunswick, Georgia In care of James Hamilton Couper, Esq. 10 December 1851

My dear Louisa,

This letter has been a long time in the writing, but I received definite word from Mr. Fred Bentley only a few days ago, and many plans needed to be discussed here before I could place a possible date for our arrival in Marietta. Lawyer Bentley’s letters are as charming and gallant as his conversation, and now I know that, allowing a week or ten days for my new home to be cleaned and

readied, including some small repairs, we may be able to move at least some of our belongings and ourselves into it around the end of March 1852, or at least by the first week or so in April. My daughters and I leave the coast about a week after New Year’s on the steamer Welaka for Savannah, where John Couper holds a responsible position with your husband’s young friends and former business acquaintances, McCleskey and Norton, and where my girls and I are always welcome for an indefinite stay in the comfortable home of Mrs. Robert Mackay on East Broughton Street. I am sure we will be with her and her two daughters for a month or so, but that will depend on when my son can leave his work to make the long-awaited train journey to Marietta with us.

I feel I know you well enough, Louisa, to say honestly that without my son, I could not possibly be buying this house. I will be dependent on his late father’s pension from the British government and on monthly help from John Couper for our livelihood. There was only time before my beloved husband went away for me to have given him one son, but as Tennyson wrote of Sir

Galahad, his `strength is as the strength 463 of ten.` Pete, Fanny, and Selina are the companions of my heart, but John Couper is my rock as I so often say. Even though only Pete and I have seen Marietta and the house, Fanny and Selina share our excitement and are looking forward to the move. As you know, John Couper and Pete have been the steady forces behind my decision to uproot myself and stake what future happiness I may find on being up there near you. Not only have I begun to pray for you daily, dear Louisa, but I think of you often no matter where I am or what I am doing. I will do my best to be more definite in my next letter, but right now, it looks very much as though Marietta’s population will, come April, increase by four females. John Couper will, of course, visit us as often as his Savannah work allows. I have told Selina about your charming and talented Georgia, only two years or so younger, and Selina is eager to meet her. My middle girl, Fanny, will fit in with all of you, since a kind, agreeable nature is her greatest charm. And, Louisa, I am counting on you more than you realize. You may, I promise you, count on me in any way in which you

find need of me in your busy life. May you, Mr. Fletcher, Georgia, your middle daughter, Eliza, and little Louise experience all the beauty and holiness of the coming holidays. I can only pray that you are looking forward to our coming half as much as I am. When I know definitely, I will write again, since we will hope to stop with you once more at the Howard House until the great day when we can at last move into our white-light house.

Your friend,

Anne Couper Fraser”

“Oh, Mama, they’re coming!”

“Georgia,” Louisa said, studying her attractive daughter’s serious face, “I’ve never known you to be so pleased about anyone else’s moving to Marietta. Certainly not about the comings and goings of our hotel guests. What is it about Mrs. Fraser that you like so? Or is it anticipation of meeting her youngest daughter, Selina?”

“I think Selina and I will be good friends. Oh, yes! But I just liked Mrs. Fraser. There’s something about her that makes me think of her often