Beauty From Ashes (14 page)

The tall, handsome desk sent from London by John’s father still stood in a corner of the Lawrence cottage hall—out of place, dwarfing the small empty house with its heavy, dark elegance. How Anne longed to have it moved to Hopeton! But she’d kept the longing to herself, knowing how set in his ways her brother was. If

there had been a proper spot for such a 175 cabinet, James Hamilton would have had one of his own.

“Miss Anne?”

Eve, as always, sitting beside her on the wooden boat seat, peered into Anne’s face.

“What is it, Eve?”

“You so still. Your face so sad. Effen Eve could think of somepin to do to help, you know she’d do it, don’t you?”

Anne gave her the merest smile. “Yes, I know you would. But you’re doing all anyone can do—under these ghastly circumstances. You’re here with me.”

“You know Eve always be here—right here.”

“I hope you know I’m going to do all I can to persuade my brother to arrange for you and June to have your own cabin at Hopeton, too. I have absolutely no influence with him, but I’m going to try.”

“June, he hab to come back to Lawrence for another month anyway. He dead set on movin’ dem new lil trees from Lawrence to Cannon’s Point for Mausa Couper. June be hardheaded. He gonna steer us all

to Hopeton an’ help us unload, den head back across the water to our Lawrence cabin all by hisself.”

Anne touched Eve’s forearm. “And you’re willing to be away from him because of me. I’ll find a way to thank you. I will. Your faithfulness is my one bright spot these days. Your faithfulness and the fact that my dear papa is still alive.”

“You an’ me gonna work some at findin’ more bright spots, too,” Eve said with a determined smile. “An’ I jus’ thought of somepin dis minute. The room you an’ Pete gonna sleep in at Hopeton, don’ it face east?”

“Yes, I guess it does. What on earth does that have to do with anything?”

“You don’ think the same sun show when it come up of a mornin’ as we used to watch from your room at Lawrence? De sky’s big, Miss Anne. De sun, he come up at Hopeton too an’ we’s gonna watch for him eber day! Maybe not as clear or as close, but he gonna show his face jus’ the same.”

“Eve, you’re not going to be with me when the sun comes up! For the time being anyway, you’ll have to sleep in Lydia’s cabin. You know that.”

“Dat don’ mean I can’t slip 177 ober to the big house every day before the sun come up. I done dat when Mausa John, he lef’ you all alone in yo’ bed at Lawrence.”

“But Pete will be with me from now on. There’s no space even at my brother’s place for her to have a room of her own. What really worries me is Fanny sleeping in that hot, stuffy attic!”

“But dat where Fanny she want to sleep. She done tol’ me.”

“I know, I know. She volunteered to sleep up there because she’s Fanny. Fanny is always going to do the unselfish thing. You know that.”

“You wouldn’t want young S’lina up there by herself, would you? She be better off in the room with your niece Miss Margaret Couper. They mos’ of an age.”

“Do we have to go on talking about such sad things? It’s all I can do to keep control of myself without your stirring it all up again. Eve, it’s different, but I’m almost as miserable and lost this minute as I was when John and Annie left me!”

September 18, 1849—

March 24, 1850

Throughout the hot summer and well into the damp month of September, Anne, when she wasn’t worrying about frail, reserved Fanny trying to sleep alone in the attic room at Hopeton, lay awake many nights beside Pete in their shared bed and worried about her father. Allowing only enough time to do some sewing with her daughters and keep up her end of courteous conversations with her sister-in-law Caroline Couper, Anne spent most days in her father’s room, doing her level best to stay cheerful and still weather the increasing scoldings from both Pete and Eve for what she was doing with her time.

“I’m perfectly aware that I annoy you by my constant nagging, Mama,” Pete said one sticky September afternoon as the two sat together darning, “but—was

“Yes, Pete, you do annoy me. It seems to me that it’s my business if I choose to spend

all my waking hours with my father, 179 especially at his age. I can see a difference in him every single day. He’s growing weaker and weaker. Do you realize he hasn’t left his room even to dine with us except once in the more than five months we’ve been living at Hopeton?”

“Yes, I do. And I hope you realize how hard I’m trying, especially with John Couper too far away to help make things better for you. The air cools a little around seven in the evening. If you don’t want my company, why don’t you try taking a short walk out by the river with poor Selina? With Fanny? I don’t think Fanny’s a bit well either.”

“Pete, I’m her mother. Is anyone better equipped to know that Fanny has never been really strong? Not since she had measles at seven and certainly not since her bout with fever two years after your father went away.”

Pete’s abrupt laughter at first infuriated Anne. Then, because she and Papa and John had always believed firmly in the healing power of humor, she began to laugh a little too. “Listen to us! Will you just listen to the way we must sound? You’re my mainstay, Pete. Why on earth am

I taking my misery out on you?”

“Are you keeping your diary these days? Have you written in it at all since we moved to Hopeton?”

“No, I am not keeping my diary and I have not written a line because whatever I might set down would make anyone who happened to read it—vomit!”

Smiling her father’s mischievous smile, Pete said quickly, “Then, for heaven’s sake, don’t write a line. There’s something else you could do, though, and I know it would be good for you and maybe for all the rest of us.”

Anne cocked her head in suspicion. “What now?”

“Visit Aunt Frances Anne Fraser in Savannah. You know she wants you, that when she’s up there she rents a place with plenty of room for you.”

“Pete, you’re every bit as distracted as I am! When you dropped off to sleep last night, I was telling you that Frances Anne’s mother isn’t well and that she’s already back on St. Simons at the Village, the Wylly home. I will work out a way to get to the Island soon and visit her,

though. Big Boy can take a boat 181 across to Hamilton with me and ride along up to the Village. Uncle William Audley has my horse, Gentleman. It would be like old times.”

Sighing as she tossed her sewing aside, Pete said, “Well, I hope you go somewhere soon, just to give yourself a little change.”

“But what if something were to happen to Papa while I’m away?”

“He’d be surrounded by family. We’d all do everything we could for him. You know Johnson never leaves him for an hour once it begins to get dark.”

“I know all that. And my dear girl, I appreciate everything you try to do. You are a help. With John Couper away and Papa so weak he tires even with a short conversation, I don’t see how I’d make it without you. I almost don’t make it anyway. I feel as though I’m lost in a big, dark forest. I want so desperately to go home!”

“Does it help at all that so many of our people from Lawrence are here now? Eve’s grandmother and mother, ole Sofy and Fanny, Cuffy, Robert,

Rollie, Tiber, Peter, George, good old Big Boy, and June. And Mama, I know Uncle James Hamilton seems too strict, but I thought he was very sensitive about bringing both June and Eve here. Even he knew you could never make it without Eve.”

Laying aside her own darning, Anne looked straight at her eldest daughter. “And I couldn’t. Only God knows better than I that I can never make it without Eve nearby. Your Grandmother Couper didn’t really approve, but no matter how hard I tried to keep the proper mistress-servant distance between Eve and me just to please Mama, I couldn’t do it. Mainly, I think, because I didn’t want to.”

“You don’t have to now.”

“That’s right. I no longer have to try. Eve and I can even laugh about how hard it was on Mama— how she worried that Eve and I were friends.”

With a surprised look, Pete asked, “You and Eve actually talk—even laugh—about dear old Grandmama’s strict rules on handling servants?”

“We do. Any objections?”

“Me? Not on your life. I like the whole

idea. Why not?” 183

“I don’t know why not. I just know I didn’t question Mama’s word on it for years, but now, especially after listening to your father and, of course, to my friend Fanny Kemble Butler when she visited here all those years ago, I have begun to have questions about the whole subject of our people. Lots of questions, most still unanswered.” Anne got to her feet. “We’ll go on with our little discussion later, Pete. I need to look in on Papa now. You understand, don’t you?”

“Yep. I surely do.”

“I wish you wouldn’t say `yep.`”

“I know you do, but I like to sometimes. Go pay Grandpapa a visit.” While she gathered up her sewing, Pete asked, “Do you want to know something, Mama?”

“Of course. What?”

“Since I’ve grown up, I often think that maybe Grandpapa Couper never really felt comfortable in the role of slave owner. Do you think he did during all those years as the Cannon’s Point master?”

“What a strange thing to say.”

“Strange or not, I’ve thought about it a lot.

Have you ever come right out and asked him?”

“No. No, I haven’t, I guess. For me, his owning people has just always been a part of being his daughter.”

When Anne reached the door to Papa’s bedroom and saw Johnson just outside, an involuntary shudder of alarm went through her. What was Papa’s man, Johnson, doing in her father’s room at this hour of the day?

“Johnson,” she whispered sharply. “What are you doing here? Did Papa send for you? Is he—is he feeling worse than usual?”

The reassuring smile on the old Negro’s face calmed some of her fear. “No’m, Miss Anne, Mausa Couper don’ send for me. I just come on my own. It help me to stay nearby enough to look in on him a tech more often these days.” The reassuring smile widened. “He be glad to see you. It be a mite early for you to visit him, too.”

“Yes, but he has been sleeping most of the mornings. Sometimes until early afternoon lately.” Anne’s nervous laugh sounded silly. “I’m sure none of that explained anything, did it?

I’m—I’m just here, that’s all. Pete 185 and I were darning, talking away downstairs in the parlor, when suddenly I felt I had to see my father. Was he asleep when you were in there just now?”

“No’m. He ain’t sleepin’. He just layin’ there lookin’ up at the ceiling. Seems to be thinkin’ pretty hard ‘bout somepin. Not sayin’ much. I know he be glad you come.”

She nodded gratitude as Johnson held open the door for her and shuffled down the shadowy upstairs hall to retake his usual daytime post in a chair close enough to his master to hear if he jangled the little bell beside his bed.

For several seconds Anne stood just inside the sunlit bedroom and looked at the shriveled, wrinkled face of her once tall, vital father. His graying hair was still definably red, but oh, his thin, shrunken form under the light coverlet tore at her heart. Johnson had shaved his sagging old face, his still-thick hair was brushed, but above the cover she could see that the scrawny, once muscular shoulders were clad only in a nightshirt. He hadn’t felt like dressing today.

“Papa? Good morning! It’s Anne. Do you want to open your eyes and prove me right? Or

are you too sleepy? I didn’t come to tire you with a lot of talk. I just came to look at you. To tell you how much more I love you today than yesterday. …”

The blue eyes opened slowly, and as always when he looked at Anne, his eyes held a smile for her. “Aye,” he said just above a whisper, “‘tis my bonnie Anne. My bonnie, bonnie daughter Anne. And did you gr-rather-eet me with a good morning? Isn’t it a tad early for you to be paying me the honor of a visit?”

“Well, it’s still morning. Almost eleven o’clock. Anyway, don’t I have the right to look in on you every time I get the urge to see my wonderful father?”

“But Pete said the two of you would be darning a gallon of socks this morning.”

Surprised, Anne asked, “Pete’s already been here to visit you? She didn’t say one word about it to me. Papa, I don’t think I’ll ever catch up with her. There is just no way to guess five minutes ahead of time what the girl might do next. Did Pete have a particular reason for coming to your room so early?”

He smiled a little. “And did she need one?

She’s my very own gr-rather-andaughter, now, 187 isn’t she? But no, lass. She had no special reason beyond asking me a rather blunt question —from over there at the doorway just as she was about to take her leave.” He tossed one pale, slender hand toward the closed door to his room. Then, looking straight at Anne, he added, “Pete is a handful all right. Seems to me no one will ever be sure just what the gir-rl might think of next.”

“Do you want to tell me what she asked you?”

“If you like. She gave me almost no time to answer, since she was on her way out, but she asked me straight out if I really—down in my heart—approve of being a slave owner.”

“Papa! Pete—asked you that?”

“Aye.”

“This morning?”

“Aye. And I’m sure you want to know how I responded to the lass.”

Anne nodded yes.

“Not fairly, I’m afraid. I resorted to a trick I’d known Pete to use. I answered by asking her a question. A tricky one, I fear. Two questions, in fact.”

“Well, are you going to tell me what you asked her?”

“These may not be my exact words, but close. I asked, `And what do you think, Pete?` When she said firmly that she had thought for a long time that I did not approve of owning other people, I then asked my trickiest of her: `And Granddaughter, what choice do you think I had even if I disliked the evil system?`”

“Well, did Pete just go on out the door then?”

“She did indeed. Should I have called her back to discuss it with her more fully? Was I wicked?”

Anne leaned over to kiss his forehead. “You’re too sweet and generous and dear to be wicked, ever. Now I’ve worn you out with so much talk. How about a nap? Johnson’s right outside in the hall if you need anything. And I’ll come back soon to visit my most favorite gentleman.”