The Deserter (19 page)

“But where?” cried Ida. “Where did he go?”

“Dear me, I don't know. It's just for a few days.”

“A few days!”

“His battle wound,” babbled Lily. “It was bothering him.”

“Oh,” cried Ida, “he was wounded? Seth was wounded?”

“On his neck,” decided Lily quickly, rejecting leg, arm, shoulder, chest and back. “It's flared up again.”

“Oh, but he needs me,” burst out Ida. Then in her distress, she said, “Please forgive me, Lily,” because in this new shape of things, it might be discourteous to make any wifely claim. Perhaps it was Lily, only Lily, whom Seth needed in his time of suffering.

But Lily was still scurrying around the room, plucking up pieces of clothing. A corset with crisscrossed lacing sailed into the air. She threw open her trunk, tumbling the contents, holding things up for inspection, dropping them and then tugging at something else. Finally she pulled out a gossamer scarf and ran across the room to drape it over Ida's shoulders.

“Oh, how perfect,” she said, clapping her hands. “And, my dear, it hides your—come see how sweet you look.”

She swept Ida across the room to the looking glass and they stood side by side in front of it, Ida's drawn face pale in the mirror beside the rosiness of Lily.

“We'll go shopping tomorrow,” said Lily firmly. “There's crinolines on Broad Street. Just wait till you see.”

“But I don't wear crinolines,” said Ida. She was desperately confused. “Hardly anybody in Concord wears crinolines.”

Lily laughed. “Oh, praise be to Concord, the Paris of the North.”

A LETTER FROM
EUDOCIA

My dear Ida
,

Eben has set off & should arrive in city of Bait, by the time you read this. I have told him to ask for you at hotel so please look out for him. He has strict instructions to bring you home. Now Ida I know that at 19 you are a grown woman but I request nay order you to come home at once. Mother Morgan although somewhat enfeebled as you know joins me in this entreaty. Think of the child's welfare if not of self
.

I send photograph of Alice taken in Watertown. Eben's is from a gallery in Brighton while selling Mr. Hosmer's horse
.

Yr devoted mother,
Eudocia Flint

Alice has made you a penwiper
.

BABIES THAT
GET STUCK

T
he uncertainty was hard to bear. Ida waited day after day for the arrival of her brother Eben and for news of Seth's return from the fresh air of the country.

At night she slept on a settee in Lily's hotel room. By day she walked out on the streets of Baltimore looking for Seth, studying the faces of the companies of soldiers as their regiments marched to the depot and searching among the crowds gathered around the food tables of the Christian Commission. On the back streets of the city the colored people of Baltimore looked at her and smiled and called out, “Bless you, missus. When's that chile acomin'?”

But Lily LeBeau kept saying she had heard nothing from Seth. Sick at heart, Ida pleaded, “Lily, he may be very ill. Doesn't anyone know where he is?”

“No, dear, I'm afraid not.” Lily was weary of Ida's questions, weary of repeating the same old fable. Impulsively one day she changed her story. She sat down beside Ida and looked at her gravely. “Now dear, I have something hurtful to tell you. The fact is, your husband skedaddled.”

Ida looked blank.

“You know, dear, from the battle. He skedaddled from the battle.”

Hastily Ida said, “Oh, yes, I know, but I don't care about that.”

“Good gracious, child, surely you can understand that your dear boy don't dare take a chance. They'll shoot him if they find him. That's what they tell me.”

“But Lily—”

Whenever Lily's logic failed her, she had ways of skipping aside. The first way was a change of subject.

Boldly she patted Ida's bulging skirt and told her she really must go home. Didn't she know the truth about babies? Hadn't she been told there was often trouble with the first? Lily had heard such terrible things about babies that came out in pieces and mothers who died shrieking with pain. “I told you about my off cousin, how her baby got stuck.”

When Ida merely set her jaw and said nothing, Lily tried another fib. “The hotel, Ida dear. Mr. Kenney knows you're here but his wife don't, and it's against the rules. If she finds out there's two of us, she'll throw the both of us out.”

Quickly Ida said, “I'll pay you more, Lily.” She patted the place where her money was tightly pinned under her dress.

Lily softened. “No, no, my honey, never mind. I'll talk to Jesse. He's sweet on me.”

Her other resource was vivacious action. Failing in argument, Lily jumped up in a swirl of ruffles and feathers and bounced across the room to attack her trunk. Flouncing back with a sash, a fichu, a mantilla and a bonnet, she thrust them at Ida. “Now dear, just help me dress.”

In a miserable state of agitation, Ida tied the sash around Lily's corseted waist, hooked the fichu, adjusted the mantilla and straightened the bonnet.

“Your turn now,” said Lily. Once again she plunged her arms into the tumbled clothing in her trunk. “Because this evening you're coming with me. I won't take no for an answer. Remember, dear? It's the last performance.
There ain't gonna be no more, no more
.”

She hauled out an enormous shawl and draped it around Ida. Then, standing back, she laughed at Ida's hugeness and sashayed around her, swishing her skirts from side to side. A curl came loose and fluffy bits of swansdown escaped from her bonnet and drifted to the ceiling, buoyed by a warm breeze from the blowing curtain.

Gloomily Ida stood stock-still, admitting to herself that Lily was bewitching. Her arms and bosom were plump with girlish chub, and most of her fair hair was real. Her eyes were blue and sparkling and her manner adorably coquettish, even with clumsy Ida, even with Mr. Kenney at the desk, even with the colored man who swept the stairs and the pretty dark-skinned chambermaid, even with the half-starved cat in the alley. Ruefully Ida told herself that Seth could not be blamed for being swept off his feet.

Obediently she accompanied Lily to the Holliday Street Theatre to witness her performance in
The Marble Heart
. Of course Ida already knew the tragic story of Phidias, the noble sculptor, and the three beautiful statues that came alive. Although Lily seemed to think of Ida's hometown as a far Northern outpost of civilization, the people of Concord were not completely out of touch with the dramatic arts. Ida herself had taken part in swashbuckling homespun performances in the Alcotts' dining room. Some of the productions of Seth's Pudding Club had been burlesques of famous dramas like
The Lady of Lyons
and Shakespeare's
Othello
. No one in the family had heard Jenny Lind or seen Edwin Forrest, but the newspapers carried daily intelligence of the theaters and music halls of Boston.

This evening the living statues in
The Marble Heart
were astonishing. It was wonderful how still they stood on their pedestals and how thrillingly they melted at last and spoke. But how strange! The play was not tragic at all, not here in Baltimore, it was hilarious.

Ida was in no mood to laugh. She applauded when Lily sang her slave girl's song, but she was grateful when the curtain came down for the last time. Wearily she moved up the aisle in a crush of other people, the women in their ballooning skirts, the men adjusting their silk hats. In the lobby of the theater she waited, but it was a full half hour before Lily appeared, flushed and glowing, to walk back with Ida to the hotel.

The letter about Eben had been a milestone. Ida read it over and over, homesick for the first time. Oh, yes, it would be a relief to go back with Eben as her mother had requested—
nay, ordered
—her to do.

But she couldn't. She could not possibly go back with him now, not with Seth somewhere nearby, perhaps sick unto death.

AROUND THE PIANO

M
other Morgan sat in the corner, her head down.

Ida's mother sat at the piano, with Alice in her lap. Sally and Josh leaned on either side.

Eudocia flipped a page, poised her fingers over the keys, and said, “Ready?”

They were a singing family, and they launched into it with gusto. Even Alice pretended to sing.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword;

His truth is marching on
.

I have seen Him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps;

They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;

I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps;

His day is marching on
.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;

He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgement seat;

O be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet
!

Our God is marching on
.

Glory ,glory, hallelujah
!

Glory ,glory, hallelujah
!

Glory ,glory, hallelujah
!

His truth is marching on
.

They were starting the fourth verse when Sally nudged her mother. Still singing, Eudocia swiveled around on the stool to look at Mother Morgan, who was weeping.

“Stupid,” sobbed Mother Morgan. “Stupid, stupid.”

“There now, Augusta,” said Eudocia, springing up. “It's just a song. Here, why don't you put in the new pictures?” She opened the album to an empty page and showed Augusta how to tuck in the cards.

Augusta glowered at the young faces of Alice and Eben and muttered, “Stupid,” again, but she bent to the task while they sang the last verse.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,

With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me;

As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free!

While God is marching on.

Later on, with Mother Morgan napping in her room, Eudocia talked about the song in the kitchen. Standing at the stove with a long fork, extracting peaches from a boiling kettle, she said it was all very well for Julia Ward Howe to say they should all die, but was Mrs. Howe about to die in the war? She was not. Did she have a son in the army? She did not. So she had no right to talk about dying. Eudocia pierced a floating peach. “Well, never mind. It's a good song anyway.”

Heaps of overripe and bruised fruit lay on the table. Sally and Josh peeled and sliced and said nothing. Alice ate the juicy skins.

Jam was in the making, but it came to a halt when a wasp crawled out of a peach and stung Sally, who screamed, causing Josh to cut his thumb.

Eudocia dabbed baking soda on Sally and bandaged Josh and complained to nobody in particular, “When in the name of heaven is Eben going to write? When, oh when, is that sister of yours coming home?”

But a letter from Eben came next day.

Dear Mother
,

I can't find Ida anyplace. I went to a lot of hotels and rooming houses but there are so many. The one where you said she was, the lady didn't have her name in the book. I went to a hospital the way you said and asked for somebody having a baby but they just laughed. They pointed to the beds and there must have been a hundred lined up in one big ward with wounded men and they said none of them was a maternity case. So then I looked for a lying-in hospital like you said but it was full of men too except for two babies crying and they weren't Ida's
.

Now Mother don't worry but I have joined up. The recruiting office hardly asked me anything they were so glad to get me. I told you before how I wanted to go only you said I was too young but they said sixteen was all right. Now Mother don't worry about me, I'll write as soon as I know where we're off to. It's 2d Maryland. Tomorrow I get a blue coat with brass buttons—you know what they look like—and an Enfield rifle with a cartridge box and knapsack and all the fixings, just like you say at Thanksgiving
.

Your loving son,
Eben

A GIGANTIC FIREARM

S
eth did not return from the country, and Eben did not come. Afraid of missing her brother, Ida took to spending hours at the B&O depot, unaware that it was not a point of arrival for trains from the North. Every day she patiently waited on the platform, watching the passengers come and go. Sometimes entire regiments jumped down from the cars and with shouted orders were gathered into companies and marched away. Some of the trains carried wounded men, but Ida could see that these hospital cars were better equipped than the one in which the men had lain upon straw. One hospital train carried wounded colored soldiers shipped north from Battery Wagner. Others brought sick men, feverish with disease, from anywhere and everywhere.