Beauty From Ashes (65 page)

world. I can still give you a child. I truly want to do that.”

“Have you told anyone else about—what you’ve just told me?”

“No.”

“Why haven’t you?”

“I don’t confide easily.”

“Not even to your mother?”

“Sometimes especially not to Mama. Her heart’s broken over Fraser, too. Why should I add to all the sorrow upon sorrow the tender, gentle woman has already endured? Besides, I know my own heart and my heart is yours. Not Mama’s. Yours. Proper suitors go down on bended knee to propose marriage. Do I have to do that with you, Sam?”

Despite the tension in the room, he laughed a little, and as always, his laugh shattered any tension between them. “Pete, dearest, if you want to take a chance on this old tippler, he must be some special specimen. I need you, too. I need your strength. I need you to help me see myself as—as I’ve always wanted to be. Pete, more than anything, I want to be upright and trustworthy and—sober. For you.”

“For yourself, too?” 883

“Yes, for myself, too.”

Once her mind was made up, Pete had no trouble setting the date for her wedding—June 9, 1863, with a prenuptial dinner party at the white-light house on the afternoon of June 8. Again, as with Selina’s marriage to George Stubinger, there would be no fuss and no expense for an elegant wedding gown.

George Stubinger would do his best to stand as Sam’s groomsman, Selina would be Pete’s maid of honor, and, of course, the Reverend Benedict would perform the ceremony at St. James Church. And if their house normally seemed full of light, it fairly shone during the happy days leading up to June 9. Mina was crushed that there was to be no meat course for what they were gaily calling a dinner party, and it took her a few days to regain her usual cheerful manner. But she was unable to grump around for long because she was so happy for Miss Pete. Even Big Boy felt downcast for a time because he tried and failed

to shoot a wild turkey or any other manner of game in the woods outside the city, but he soon regained his good spirits.

Pete’s usual firmness and charm took over, and in no time they were all laughing and enjoying Pete’s makeshift, wartime menu: canned sardines, crackers, pickles, wine, and cake. That Miss Anne agreed to take a chance on finding more sugar at one of the few grocery stores still open in the Square soothed Mina’s ruffled feelings, even though she would be permitted to bake only plain sponge cakes with no fancy icings. It helped Anne’s spirits when Louisa Fletcher seemed absolutely enchanted with the menu and thought it could become the most talked-about dinner party in town.

About midafn on June 8, guests began to arrive as carriage followed buggy and phaeton up the driveway to the white-columned entrance of the Fraser home on Decatur Street. Among them were the Denmeads, the Robert McAlpin Goodmans, Henry Greene Cole with his wife, Georgia, and Louisa Fletcher, whose husband, Dix, was unable to leave the crew of painters working on his new farmhouse at

Woodlawn. Mrs. Slaughter, the 885 widow of Dr. Slaughter, came; Beaulah Matthews was invited, too, because even Pete thought she might cause more trouble by being excluded than by being there in all her Rebel glory. Of course, the guests included the Reverend and Mrs. Benedict and a dozen or so other prominent Mariettans. Group after group of guests reached the festively decorated white house on its nine acres of well-tended land. As always, most of the conversation centered on politics and the progress of the war moving ever closer to the small, prosperous city of which they were all so proud.

Eve was helping Mina and Flonnie with the flower-decked table where their sardine entrée would be served, but she also made a point of watching Pete’s every move—and Miss Anne’s. Pete, the bride-to-be, had been standing alone with her mother, greeting her wedding party guests for over an hour. A full half hour had passed since everyone was supposed to have been served.

Dr. Sam Smith was nowhere in sight!

Eve was proud of her flower baskets, which adorned Miss Anne’s lovely table, but again and again she rearranged first one bouquet, then

another, all the time wondering exactly what Miss Anne was thinking as she stood loyally beside Pete, making the kind of small talk Eve knew she disliked, desperately trying to help fill the time. And, of course, awkward silences gave Beaulah Matthews the kind of talking chance she reveled in.

“I keep telling my son, Corporal Buster, that I’m glad and relieved that he chose not to be a doctor. Buster’s away fighting for his beloved country, you know. But one simply can never count on doctors to be on time for a mere social event!” Her laugh was not merry at all. It was mean, Eve thought, just plain mean.

“I well remember,” Dr. Slaughter’s wife said so sincerely Eve gave her an involuntary smile, “that my dear late husband was two hours tardy for the christening of the baby of one of his best patients! I forget the nature of the emergency call he had, but what could the poor man do about any of it?”

Miss Anne looked relieved at the possible reason Sam was so late, and, of course, that relieved Eve some. I can do most everything she needs done, Eve thought, but I can’t

help her at all at a time like this. 887

“Oh, Mrs. Slaughter, I’m sure you’re right that Dr. Sam’s been called to attend a medical emergency,” Miss Anne said firmly but not sounding a bit believable. Even her laugh sounded hollow when she turned to Pete. “You’ll just have to get used to things like this, my dear. I’m sure this is only the first of your future husband’s late arrivals.”

The look on Pete’s flushed face almost scared Eve. Pete had never been a beauty, but her well-bred, patrician face looked like a storm cloud, and Eve honestly couldn’t tell whether she meant to run out of the room or let fly one of her spiels in the sharp-edged voice Miss Anne always declared too loud.

Pete neither ran nor spieled. She just went on standing straight as a pine, glaring at the closed front door of their house. A flurry of forced conversation kept everyone but Eve and Pete from hearing the rattle of a buggy outside, and evidently no one heard Sam’s carelessly loud, plainly thick voice when he yelled for Big Boy to take his horse. “Over here, Big Boy,” Eve heard him call out. “My

charger is thirsty as a noble charger can be! Why, he’s almost as thirsty as I am! Big Boy! Where are you?”

For a reason Eve could not have explained had she tried, she looked at Pete, who was for the first time looking back at her. Until this anxious minute, Pete had seemed to look at no one. She was peering, Eve thought, deep inside herself and doing her level best to tear out whatever she was finding there.

“Sweet Jesus, help her,” Eve breathed. “Ain’t nobody kin help her now but You, Sweet Jesus!”

When the front door burst open and Sam barged into the spacious entrance hall, he was awkwardly swiping at his thick brown hair standing on end as though he’d ridden through a high wind—and he was laughing like a fool.

“Dat ain’t no happy laugh,” Eve muttered. “Miss Pete’s man be so drunk he kin hardly stand on his two feet!”

A silence as thick as heavy cream filled the whole first floor. No one spoke. Beaulah Matthews coughed. Then Sam began to sing a snatch of the one song still forbidden in the Fraser

home: “Drink to me only with thine 889 eyes—and I will pledge with mine.”

Didn’t Dr. Sam know that had been the one song that would always bring back the cruel truth that Mausa John was dead? Eve longed to run to Miss Anne, to hold her close, to remind her that the doctor didn’t know what he was doing. When a man gets himself that drunk, he drops the reins of everything and lets fly! What Dr. Sam let fly in that song was worse than any arrow right through Miss Anne’s poor heart.

The uneven murmur of voices stilled, and in the dead silence, with Sam weaving back and forth on his shaky legs, only humming the forbidden song now, Pete stepped toward him.

“Sam,” she said, her voice too loud because she meant to be heard by everyone present, “did you have an emergency call to make? Is that why you’re so late to our wedding dinner?”

“Late? Oh, Rebecca, my love—am I late?” He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket for his watch, dropped it, began laughing again, picked it up, blew on the watch dial, and polished it elaborately on his sleeve. “Why, yes, Rebecca, my love. I had a dreadful

‘mergency! One you’ll never believe!”

“You’re right, I won’t,” Pete said. “And you won’t have even one more chance to try an out-and-out lie on me, Sam Smith!” She turned to take in the gathering of guests. “I’ve never believed in beating around the bush about anything, as some of you may know. So this announcement, painful as it is—painful, I suppose, to everyone except Dr. Sam Smith, who feels no pain at all right now—is final and this will be the end of it. Reverend Benedict, friends, there will be no wedding at St. James tomorrow or ever.” Looking straight at her mother, Pete added, “Mama, I’m truly sorry. I know how you’ve looked forward to my finding the right husband. I thought I had. I now know I had not. I knew you drank too much at times, Sam. I didn’t know you lied, too. And lies I cannot, will not, tolerate.”

Word of the canceled wedding spread across Marietta as rapidly as had the terrifying news that the Yanks were coming. That news had so far been proved false. This was not. Within days, Sam closed his medical office, sold his cottage, and was on a train headed north to his native New York.

Despite repeated entreaties, 891 Pete refused to talk to him before he left.

“What am I supposed to say to people?” Anne kept asking her mostly silent oldest daughter. “We do live in a talkative society, Pete. People make up what they don’t know. Can’t you tell me something you’d like me to say to them?”

“You’re not being fair to Mama,” Selina scolded Pete.

“I know I’m not. But I don’t care what anyone tells anyone. For the first time I let my heart rule my otherwise good head, so I’ll just have to go on paying for it. And I will.” Pete’s normally strong voice broke. “I’m—too heartbroken to think of anything for you to tell them, Mama. I just know I did the wise thing, but even when a woman is wise, she doesn’t necessarily erect a protective fence around her heart. I’ll come out of this. But in the meantime, will you both pray and ask Eve to pray that somehow I’ll find out before I die that—Sam’s getting along all right?”

“But, Pete, darling,” Anne said, “what about you? Are you going to clam up and suffer your own

broken heart in silence?”

Pete waited a long time to answer. Finally, she said in a surprisingly soft voice, “Yes, Mama. I expect I will.”

On the morning of June 19, Pete found her favorite bench, directly across from what used to be the entrance to Sam’s medical offices in the Square. As usual, she had been to the post office, and because she seemed to be finding some solace in solitude these days, she sat down on the bench and for only an instant allowed her imagination to deceive her into believing that any minute now Sam would hurry down the narrow stair and run to where she sat, still holding the latest letter from her brother, John Couper.

Imagination, she thought, is dangerous and tricky. Most of the time since Sam left town, she had found a way to blame her imagination for the whole fiasco. No matter how hard she tried, there was no other way to explain how she had ever permitted herself to think for one minute that she could do what no other woman had ever done—reform a

man’s drinking habit. Her shame at 893 her own behavior weighed almost as heavily on her heart as did the loneliness without him.

How like John Couper, she thought as she broke the seal on his fairly thick letter, to write so soon after he’d received the news of her messed-up marriage plans. Her fingers trembled unfolding the pages, and because there had been so much talk of the Rebel troops moving north, she breathed a prayer of gratitude that her brother was evidently still in Virginia at a camp near Culpeper Courthouse.

My dear Pete,

Your latest letter, which came yesterday, both concerned and relieved me. I have tried not to interfere, but what I had heard from other sources causes me to believe that you did the right thing in stopping what could have meant terrible heartache. I am praying for your recovery inside your good self. I know it is hard. I was, as always, glad and relieved to learn that otherwise you are all well and reasonably comfortable there. Just knowing that my loved ones are well lightens my load here. For days we have had only torrential cold

rain, but I seem to take it in stride if I know all of you are all right. We are on the move, but of course I cannot tell you our destination.

It is gratifying to me in the extreme to have such good news of the well-being of our beloved mother. God grant her life and health for many years to come. If Selina’s husband, after being turned down by the Confederate Army because of his wounds, does join John Hunt Morgan’s Raiders, she may wait long periods to hear from him, but even if he’s taken prisoner, it is likely his life will be spared. Notwithstanding our foul weather, we are a very healthy company and glad not to have to march today in the rain.

It pleases me enormously that you are all proud of my promotion to captain. It simply makes my life better, and the extra money per month will help us all in these difficult times. All I ask is some good, heavy fighting for my battery, and if I escape death, the higher I will go in rank. You see, I have a pretty good opinion of my fighting qualities. This is because of my experience, as I am as much at home and as unconcerned on the field as I usually am in a

lady’s parlor. Many people talk of 895 peace. Believe nothing of it! War must continue for at least two more years and maybe longer if we are to prevail. These are my predictions from the signs all around me. Remember them, and I think you will find I am right. The greatest folly the South can be guilty of is looking forward to peace, thereby losing its vigor and watchfulness. I do not believe, nor does General Robert E. Lee, that the Yankees will give up until we have invaded them and their states and made them feel what war is actually like. What do the people of New York City know of war? Most Northerners are as comfortable as ever, and until the wealthy of Yankeedom feel war as has the South, the fighting will go on.