Wedded to War (43 page)

Charlotte clutched Aiden to her as she struggled to breathe. It was Marty, the girl who had asked her for help. Now she was dead and it was Charlotte’s fault.

Back and forth Charlotte rocked Aiden. She squeezed her eyes shut, but hot, stinging tears escaped anyway, spilling down her cheeks and landing on the baby.
What have I done? What have I done?
But the answer was right there on paper. She had killed a woman. No, she had not shot her in the thigh with a minié ball, but she had the means to save her
life, and instead of doing that, she followed her heart and made a mistake that had cost a life.
If only I had followed Dr. Ware’s advice! “Deny your heart.” I didn’t realize following my heart would hurt other people, too.
Charlotte watched her teardrops darken Aiden’s cotton blanket in a random pattern of small polka dots.

Lord,
her heart cried out in desperation.
Forgive me! If my own selfish ambitions have been my driving force, humble me and help me submit to whatever it is You want me to do, even if it takes me away from nursing. Have I pushed my plan when it wasn’t Yours? I don’t trust myself. Please God, show me the way!

Charlotte lifted the letter again and wiped the blur of tears from her eyes.

Alice touched Charlotte gently on the shoulder then.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

Charlotte nodded, waving the letter. “Phineas has written again, pleading with me that I come home.”

Alice was quiet for a moment before asking, “Will you? Have you given enough of yourself here yet?”

Charlotte grazed a palm over Aiden’s fuzzy hair. “If you had asked me that last week, I would have said no. But now …” A lump lodged in her throat. She could
not
believe she was considering anything but staying here, where she was needed.

“Sister, you have such a good heart. Impetuous, but good.” Alice
chuckled. “You want to be where you are most needed, don’t you?”

“More than anything.”

“Well …” Alice took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “It just might be that, after more than a year away from home, the people who need you most are your family. And Phineas.”

Charlotte stared at her younger sister. “Do you really believe that?”

“With all my heart. I am here, not out of my great love for my country—although rest assured, I am as patriotic as anyone. But my main purpose in leaving my home in Fishkill was to be as near as possible to my husband. I am happy to serve patients while I’m here, but if Jacob weren’t here, I would be wherever he is. After serving God, my top priority is serving my husband.”

Charlotte sighed, but this was not a surprise to her. Only Charlotte was here to prove that women could be useful outside the home. Alice was here, ironically, only to be a good wife.

“You know, Charlotte,” Alice continued, “I want to give you the benefit of the doubt because we’ve all been under such tremendous strain. But I might do you more harm than good if I don’t say what’s been on my mind lately.”

Charlotte eyed her warily, and hugged Aiden to herself. “Go on,” she said. She had just asked God to humble her.
Here it comes!

“You seem to be developing a strong disrespect for the male race.”

“Well Alice, you have to admit, most of the men we’ve had contact with are wholly disrespectable! They are idiots!”

“There—you see? What about Jacob, Mr. Olmsted, Mr. Knapp, Dr. Ware? What about the soldiers? You care for them with the most tenderness and efficiency. Surely you don’t think they are idiots, too, fighting for their country.”

“Of course not, don’t be ridiculous.”

“So is it only men in authority over you that you chafe against? This doesn’t bode well for you, Charlotte. A woman is under the leadership of her husband. Everyone has to obey authority, even women who never marry, even men themselves. It’s called order.”

“No, it’s called being ordered around,” Charlotte shot back. “You’re quite good at it, aren’t you?”

Alice’s eyes narrowed into ice-blue slits as she studied her sister’s face. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Charlotte briskly swatted mosquitoes away from Aiden’s soft head. “You do what you’re told, like a good, culturally acceptable woman should.”

“You make it sound like an insult.”

“If the shoe fits!”

Alice’s eyes blazed with light. “What on earth is this all about?”

Charlotte looked down at Aiden now, amazed and thankful he was still asleep despite the arguing going on just over his tiny head.

“I’m just saying,” said Charlotte, “sometimes those above you are not well-intentioned. And sometimes you just need to make choices on your own.” She paused. “If I had obeyed Mother like you did when Father was sick, he would have died alone.”

Charlotte sighed, deflated from the unfairness of her own statement. Alice had only been fourteen years old at the time. She was right to go with Mother.

“You were right to stay with Father,” said Alice quietly. “And you would be right to go back home now, too. Don’t you see? Your presence was irreplaceable to Father. No other nurse could have brought him the comfort you did. And your presence is irreplaceable to Mother and Phineas, too. Sometimes the people who most need our help are the ones God has already placed in our lives. If you go back to New York, no one here will fault you. Many soldiers volunteered only for three months. You have served four times that length.”

“But you will not be coming home.”

“I am home when I am near my husband. You are home when you’re with family.”

Charlotte leaned her head back against the rocking chair and sighed in resignation.

“Read this.” She held out Phineas’s letter.

After a few moments, Alice looked up at her sister again, a soft smile on her face. “It appears, dear sister, that Mr. Hastings and I are on the same page on this matter. But the question remains—where are you?”

“Mrs. Carlisle.” It was Dr. Ware.

“Good morning, Dr.—” Alice stopped, and Charlotte watched her fair skin lose all its color. “Not Jacob,” she said.

The doctor looked down. “I’m afraid so.”

Alice and Charlotte were on their feet in an instant, their eyes immediately drawn to the gleaming white rows of tents next to the railroad tracks.

“Wounded?” Fear tinged Alice’s voice.

“Chickahominy fever. Typhoid-malaria. Utterly broken down with it, I’m afraid.”

“Did he just arrive?” Charlotte looked around. “I didn’t hear any train.”

“No, no. He’s been here since yesterday but only now is conscious enough to tell me his name. I’m sorry.”

Charlotte’s heart caught in her throat. She reached out to lay a hand on her sister’s arm, but Alice was already slipping away toward her husband. She could not imagine what her sister was going through right now—or what she had endured up until this moment.
How selfish I’ve been!
With every patient, Alice must have imagined that it could be her own Jacob, but for the grace of God.
Grueling!
And now the moment had finally come. It was Jacob’s turn, at last.

“Dr. Ware!” Charlotte called after the doctor’s retreating back.

He turned and looked at her. How old he had grown in a few short weeks, how tired and careworn!

“Is it really so very serious?” she asked.

“
The Daniel Webster
sets sail for New York tonight,” he said. “The Carlisles must be on it. Will you be joining them?”

Aiden awoke with a start and began crying in Charlotte’s arms, clamoring for his mother’s milk.

The gentle rocking of the Pamunkey River beneath the
Wilson Small
failed to put Charlotte to sleep. Somewhere out on the Atlantic Ocean, Alice was no doubt still awake on the
Daniel Webster
, as well.

They had not parted on the best of terms.

“Mother will never forgive me if we come home without you,” Alice had said.

“Just a little longer,” Charlotte had countered. “Ruby needs to rest a little more before making the journey. Besides, the Commission can’t lose its two best nurses at once.”

But Alice had just shaken her head and said, “I have enough to deal with as it is. I am not my sister’s keeper.” She boarded the ship, as they had done together hundreds of times, and set sail for home without Charlotte.

Now in the stillness of the night, Phineas’s letter came back to haunt her, and her mind landed on Marty’s death once again. The weight of her guilt was crushing. Maybe she should have left on the
Daniel Webster
tonight after all, and sailed away from any possibility of doing more harm.

In the yellow glow of the lantern light, Charlotte pulled out the small Bible that had once belonged to her father and held it to her chest, wishing she could somehow hear what he would say to her now if he were still alive.

Hear what your heavenly Father has to say to you
, her heart told her.
He is still alive.

She turned to the psalms first, finding comfort in King David’s expressions of anguish followed by words of praise. Hadn’t he sinned greatly by deliberately taking another man’s wife and then having her husband killed? And yet he had been restored to God, and had been called a man after God’s own heart.

She flipped to the Gospels, where her father’s hand had underlined so many of the words of Christ. When she came to Luke 6, she stopped,
and her vision clouded with tears once again.
Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.
The verse that inspired her to have mercy on the sick and wounded Union soldiers in the same way her father had had mercy on the cholera patients in Five Points. Five Points … Ruby and Aiden. She had promised Ruby she would take care of her. Could she really do that best by keeping her amid the sick and wounded? What if either one of them caught the fever? Maybe showing mercy now meant leaving this place and returning to New York.

But there were so many here who needed her help, and so few to give it.

She was more confused than she had ever been.

Scrounging up a pencil and using the top of the sugar box for paper, Charlotte knelt on the deck and poured out her heart to Caleb as she wrote her letter on top of a cask of water. She held nothing back, using her letter as if it were a personal journal entry. She told him about Dr. Ware’s advice to deny her heart and she confessed her fatal mistake with Marty. She told him about Ruby and Aiden, the letter from Phineas, and Alice’s similar advice.
What do I do?
she asked him, as if she were sixteen again, and he was the only one who could see clearly the path ahead.

Her letter finished, she crept back to her cabin and slept only fitfully as the tug
Wilson Small
bobbed in the water, up and down, back and forth, as if the boat itself could not decide which direction to go.

P
hineas Hastings felt as if he had been kicked in the stomach. The shock, the pain, the disorientation. The anger.

Alice and Jacob had returned home, and Charlotte had stayed behind. What was the girl thinking? How long would this nonsense continue? After all the money he had poured into the Sanitary Commission since October, as if he had money to burn. He was running out, truth be told. He had considered the donations a worthwhile investment if the return on it would mean Charlotte’s hand securely in his, and her wealth securely his, too.

He had never dreamed her ambition would drag out for so long.
Who could have imagined such a thing?

Phineas reached into his pocket and clamped down on his gold pocket watch until it became slick with his sweat.

He was done waiting for her to come home. If she refused to come
of her own accord, it was time to act like a man and make her obey. His father may not have been able to force his own wife into submission, but Phineas certainly would.