Beauty From Ashes (48 page)

Louisa stared at her. “And you believe she still feels so strongly about a little boy? I take it he died that day.”

“Yes. Well, the next day, as I remember. It broke his mother’s heart for certain, but also Pete’s little heart. And it seems not

to matter at all that she’s nearly thirty-four now. She shuts me up every time I mention anyone’s courting her by reminding me that her one real love is still that little fellow. About the only added explanation I ever get from her is when she grins that tomboyish grin and reminds me that no one ever climbed a tree as William did!”

“To this day?”

“To this day. It seems they signed some kind of lifetime pact.”

“Anne, Anne, you have lived through more than your share of losses by death, haven’t you?”

“I just don’t know. I’ve heard of people who have had more losses than I. Perhaps none that left deeper scars. I only know that I pray daily it has come to an end now that we’re up here. Then I see my blessed sister-in-law’s stricken face—Frances Anne’s face now that her son Menzies, on whom she depended as I depend on John Couper, is gone too.”

“And, in the same year, her firstborn. Was it James?”

“Yes, named for my Scottish father-in-law, James Fraser. I believe Frances Anne when she writes that she can’t find room to grieve

for James. Menzies filled her 647 life. James was not what anyone would call a—good boy.”

“Do we love one child above another, Anne?”

“I’ve never thought so. But perhaps all mothers fight admitting it, even if it’s true.”

“Similar, I guess, to my own conflicts when I try to differentiate in any way among my own feelings about my three living girls and the three small daughters who died while Dix and I still lived in Massachusetts.”

Louisa reached to touch Anne’s hand. “At any rate, I want you to know that from today on I’ll be joining you in your daily prayer that news of even one more death doesn’t reach you up here. Believe me, Anne, I truly care and so does our loving Lord. When sorrows pile up, the human tendency of us all is to—wonder. Even to doubt that He cares. But He does. Oh, my friend, He cares. The sparrows that fall to the ground do not have a corner on our Father’s love and notice and caring.”

The very next day, Friday, January 28, Pete brought Anne’s mail from the newly

rebuilt post office. On top of the small stack of letters was one in a handwriting so uneven and broken, it was barely recognizable as Anna Matilda’s. Anne remembered what Louisa had said about our inevitable times of doubt that God truly loves as He claims. And then she began to read.

Anne, oh Anne,

How can I write this? My beautiful son, Thomas Butler King, Jr., is gone from me. … The doctor says an aneurysm took him. I’m so confused, I can’t imagine how—or why. My friend, I had to let you know first because this can be the death of me. My handsome Butler … Butler, named for his father, the one man I’ve ever loved. Anne … Anne, what will I do now? Nothing fills the void. Butler, my splendid Butler, is gone. As we laid his dear body in Christ Churchyard, I thought—and I still think— this can be the death of me, too. He was the jewel of my life. I long to follow him.

But I am your friend,

Anna Matilda King

Her mind, body, and heart feeling 649 wooden, Anne still insisted on the girls’ attending the long-anticipated winter ball to be held at the Georgia Military Institute in February, and she wouldn’t hear of their canceling a dinner dance planned at their own Marietta home in March. She even helped them dress for the ball and took part as hostess when their young guests arrived for the dinner party. Anne canceled plans to attend a community picnic in the park at the center of the Square and could tell Louisa honestly that she had done well to keep walking around. Every painful pang of homesickness and longing for St. Simons, which had tormented her through the final months in London with John before they returned to the Island to live, had come rushing back. Had not a letter from Anna Matilda’s husband stopped her, she would have made the trip to St. Simons to be with her longtime friend in this new, terrifying grief.

“Our son, not quite thirty, seems to have taken the life of his mother with him when he went,” Thomas Butler King, Sr., wrote Anne in the letter whose plain intent was to beg her not to come. “In her condition, I doubt that she could converse even with you,

her closest friend.”

When her own John Couper wrote, pleading that she not try to make the journey, urging—almost ordering—her in his gentle way to stay in her white-light house for all their sakes, she agreed.

Then, in the same mail with John Couper’s letter from Savannah, Miss Eliza Mackay added another heavy burden to Anne’s heart. Anne knew, as did everyone who read the short but neatly written script, that Miss Eliza had told her sad news as lightly and gently as a brokenhearted mother knew how. Over and over Anne wondered how, in the name of heaven, she would endure this, too, so long and so deeply had she herself leaned on Miss Eliza Mackay, who wrote:

My dearest Anne,

It is with the heaviest heart that I write these lines to you, even as I apologize for their brevity. As I sit here—I believe it is August 7—five long days since we buried our beloved William, my long-suffering son, my solid comfort and solace through even the

tragedies of his own sorrow-filled 651 life. The only comfort, except the Presence of God now, is the sure knowledge that William is, at long last, back with his sweet wife and children, who went down when the steamship Pulaski took so many lives long ago. Mark Browning and his dear wife, Caroline, are, of course, my stays now, as are both William’s sisters, but my peace comes from the certainty that William is united with his own three loved ones. William fell down our steep stairs from a heart attack on the morning of August 1. My blessed Mark Browning was with me.

Your friend always,

Eliza McQueen Mackay

At the end of some days lately, Anne had found solace in the very act of going each night to her own spacious bedroom on the second floor of her beloved house; had felt deep in her bones that maybe, just maybe, enough time had passed now so that she would learn how to snuggle down between clean sheets in Eve’s carefully made bed and truly rest—even without John’s strong body beside her. After all, he had been gone twenty

years last month. It was now August 1859, but most Marietta nights cooled off so that sound sleep was usually possible. It had come to be all right, with little or no adjustment required on the mornings when Eve was a bit late getting there to open her draperies. After all, June had reached such an advanced age, he often slept until long after daylight.

Eve.

I had better be getting myself in hand, Anne thought on the morning of August 31, when her little filigreed bedside clock told her it was not only past daylight but nearly nine. One day Eve would arrive needing Anne as Anne had always needed her. June would be gone, and with all her being, Anne longed to be adequate to Eve’s grief. Eve had loved June even longer than Anne had loved John. There was no comfort in the long-delayed realization that colored folk suffered the same pain, felt the same joy and sorrow experienced by whites. Anne had known this for a long time, and the very knowing had made her friendship with Eve deeper but also somehow harder, because it required more of Anne. Will I really be able to help Eve when she needs me most?

“Like right this minute?” she asked aloud 653 in the empty room. “What’s stopping me from getting up and drawing those draperies myself?”

Just when the blessed white light flooded the handsome room, she heard Eve’s footsteps in the hall outside. Within seconds after the slender, still-beautiful mulatto woman entered the room, Anne knew something dreadful had happened. For a strange instant—a mere flash of time—Anne was back in the dream she must have been having on waking earlier. She not only could feel the hot, semitropical sun on her face, see the waving shadows cast by banners of Spanish moss hanging from giant St. Simons live oaks, but could actually smell the pungent, familiar, sharp odor of marsh mud and felt safely at home. Then her thoughts veered to her childhood friend Anna Matilda, in her own fresh grief over the death of her fine son, Thomas Butler King, Jr.

Trembling, Anne whispered, “Good morning, Eve. Is—June ill today?”

And when Eve’s calm voice and almost normal manner told Anne that June had not been the reason Eve was so late arriving, she grabbed Eve’s arm. “Then what is it? I’m not cross

because you’re late. After all these years I know there’s a good reason, but something’s wrong, Eve. I can tell by your face, the way you’re working at keeping your voice calm. You—you have a knowing about something. What? What?”

“I be later than ever in my life, Miss Anne, ‘cause of Pete. She must have had a knowin’, too, ‘cause she went so early to the post office for your mail.” And then Eve handed her a single letter from St. Simons Island.

Anne grabbed the letter. “Since when did Pete start to have knowings?”

“She always had the gif’.was

“I suppose your grandmother Sofy told you that.”

“Yes’m. I sorry jus’ to say `yes’m,` Miss Anne, but I be here right with you for whatever wrote down in that letter.”

“Not wrote,” Anne corrected. “Written.”

“Never mind,” Eve scolded. “You better read it.”

“I had such vivid dreams about St. Simons last night.” Anne’s voice was flat, toneless. “I must not allow myself to be homesick for that Island, Eve!”

“That’s right. But read, Miss 655 Anne. Eve right here.”

Anne flared. “How can you possibly know I’ll need you just because of this letter? I don’t hear from her often, but I’m almost sure that’s Hannah King Couper’s writing. Anna Matilda’s daughter Hannah is married to my brother William Audley, you know.”

“Yes’m. How I not know dat?”

Anne’s hand shook as she broke the seal, and part of the letter was torn. “Now, look what you made me do!”

“I gonna let dat go,” Eve said. “Read, Miss Anne. Read.”

The letter from Hannah was short—only one page —but one line blazed in Anne’s eyes: “Mama died from a broken heart. Papa knows that. I know it. Everyone knows she lost whatever spark that was keeping her alive when we lost my brother Butler. People do die of grief. Mama died of grief, and this short note is asking nothing of you but your prayers for all of us who loved her so much. No one’s life will ever be the same here again now that Mama, too, is lying in Christ Churchyard. She died August 22.

We buried her the next day.”

If Anne had been able to reach St. Simons in time for the funeral service and burial of Anna Matilda King, Pete knew her mother might not have found the habit of looking for a letter from Anna Matilda so hard to overcome. But despite the improved train service between Savannah and Marietta, they hadn’t even known her friend was gone until well after the funeral on August 23, 1859. And so, although Mama knew there would never again be a letter from Anna Matilda, Pete was aware that her heart ached painfully at mail time.

“I wish I could do something to help,” Pete would say almost every day in September when she came home from the post office—and felt foolish saying it. “God just has to send something to cheer you—to help you through this bad time. Does it help at all that John Couper is now the paymaster for the officers of his Independent Volunteer Regiment of Savannah? Think how proud Papa would be!”

“I know, Pete. But I don’t feel the same about anything military as your father did. If I could even imagine that killing could accomplish anything, I might feel otherwise. I don’t. War leaves nothing but scars on both sides.” Glancing up from her parlor chair at John’s portrait on the wall of the bright, elegant room, her mother added, “Your tender father really only thought he loved the soldier’s life. It was its color and excitement and pageantry he cared about. The parades and snapping flags. There was nothing in his whole nature to lead me to believe that he didn’t hate the killing as much as I hate it. Now, Pete, don’t argue with me.”

“I’m not arguing! I agree with you all the way. But there is something about men that I don’t think most women understand. We don’t understand it because we don’t have it in our nature.” Pete tried a slight grin. “I seldom think I’d like to conquer anything or anybody. Do you doubt that?”

“Well, no. At least most of the time I don’t.” Pete could feel her mother studying her. “Pete, are you driving at something? Are you trying to find a way to tell me something in particular?”

“I guess I am.”

“Then tell me. You’re the only 659 daughter I have with whom I can speak freely without being interrupted by word of a new style in ladies’ capes or off-the-shoulder dance gowns. Your sisters are thinking of nothing but young men and dances these days.”

Pete thought a moment, then blurted: “Did John Couper ever tell you he could be a secesher?”

“What a ghastly way to phrase a question!”

“Well, you know he’s not only a member but the paymaster for the officers of the Independent Volunteer Regiment in Savannah, and you certainly know what the word volunteer means.”

“It means that as with every other young man moving toward success in the old city, he joined a regiment when he went there. Miss Eliza told me all about how her husband sponsored the young Mark Browning when he first came from the North.”

“Mama, John Couper’s in a volunteer regiment! He’s in it because he’s—was

“If you use that word again, I’ll—I’ll—was

“You’ll what? I was afraid he didn’t tell you when he was here last. When he brought my much-beloved nephew, Fraser Demere, he

told me himself not only that he joined of his own free will, but that should anything as insane as secession happen in Georgia, he would fight willingly for the South’s Cause!” Pete hurried on. “I begged him to tell you himself. He said he would if he had a chance. I guess he thought he didn’t. Or he saw so plainly how you’d take it, he didn’t dare.”

Pete’s mother jumped to her feet and went to stand at a front window. Hurrying to her, Pete saw that she was crying almost uncontrollably. “Oh, Pete, Pete,” she gasped. “Hold me! Please hold me. I’ve been so afraid that was true. I’m not stupid, you know. You and Eve just sometimes act as though I am.”