Beauty From Ashes (27 page)

white, with handsome proportions, elegant Doric columns, two complete stories and an attic —and eight rooms plus a detached kitchen. There are three fairly good slave cabins at the far end of the property and two nearly new outbuildings, a stable and a barn, with a nearby chicken coop. Best of all, and I fear most persuasive of all to me, is the clean, shimmering, homelike beauty of the exterior of the house with clear, up-country spring light pouring over it! I have clung to light every minute since John left me, and even more vital than the practicality that the house is less than ten years old, and in excellent condition, is that it lingers this minute in my mind’s eye as the one place I long to be—under that light.

Oh, a part of me wants only to use what money my son can send and we can scrape together, hie me back to Lawrence, and little by little try to make the dear cottage livable again. An equal, other part of me knows that would never work out! Twelve years of losing loved ones have passed; all the grief of those years took place on St. Simons Island, until now my one beloved place. Neither John Couper nor

Pete believes I will ever shed the 355 sorrow that goes on dragging them down with me unless I am far removed from the coast.

Can I ever learn to love that white-light house (that’s the big white house’s name to Pete and me now) as I loved Lawrence? Can I ever learn to feel at home under up-country light as I’ve always been at home in my Island light?

Before this day is ended, I may at least know what my own mind is telling me to do. For the children’s sake, I am trying as hard as I know how to learn to participate in life again. Children can put more pressure on a parent than a weak parent can bear at times. For their sake, I must become strong. I must not stay divided in my heart. I must not allow myself to be afraid. They need their mother and they need her to be a whole person again.

What am I afraid of? Only now, in my midfifties, do I truly see and grasp the fearlessness I showed just by giving myself to their father when I knew so little about what future lay ahead. But now, as then, surely love still covers. I love my children, and if the truth be known, a large part of me also loves the white-light house. I hope I’m not getting too like

Heriot Wylly, but the truth is, maybe I want to be! Heriot wouldn’t dither as I’m dithering. Heriot would know right off!

“I promise you don’t need to worry about me, Anne,” Louisa Fletcher said as she, Anne, and Pete rocked in the Fletcher carriage along Decatur Street about midafn of the same day. “Because I obeyed my practical husband and rose before daylight this morning, all my hotel records are finished and my other duties attended to. The three of us have the remainder of the afternoon for the big occasion. You’re about to have your first look inside your new home.”

“Hurray for you, Mrs. Fletcher!” Pete said, applauding. Her lace mitts kept the sound at least partially ladylike. “I’m on your side when it comes to wanting Mama to be unable to resist the white-light house once she sees the interior.”

“Please don’t be shocked at my daughter, Louisa. Pete has always spoken her mind with no frills.”

“You can’t shock me, Pete.” 357 Louisa said. “You and I are of the same mind. And your sweet mother is going to find her new home irresistible. I promise you that too.” From her handbag she took a large brass key. “This magic key I hold in my hand will open the door to a brand new, happy life for you, Anne. Shall I promise that, too?”

Anne laughed. “No, Louisa. I don’t want you to overpromise on anything.” Her laughter faded. “Could—could I—hold it in my hand, though, just for a minute?”

Louisa pressed the slightly worn key into Anne’s outstretched hand and closed her fingers around it.

“You’re kind to humor me,” Anne said a bit sheepishly. “Could I ask where you came by the key?” she questioned, reluctantly returning it to Louisa.

“Why not? My husband’s friend Mr. Fred Bentley, Sr., one of Marietta’s most prominent and skillful lawyers, has been put in charge of dealing with—what do you call it?—the white-light house. Mr. Bentley will love the name you’ve given it, and he seemed genuinely

sorry that it won’t be available for you to move in right away. I’m sure it will take you a while to get ready to leave the coast anyway.”

“Yes,” Anne said. “But I have good help down there.”

“We’re relieved there are at least a few cabins on this property, Mrs. Fletcher,” Pete put in. “Mama owns several people, and one couple, her personal maid, Eve, and her husband, June, must have a good tight house to live in up here. We’ll need quarters for Mina, our cook, and her daughter, Flonnie, our chambermaid. Also for Rollie and Big Boy, who would just plain cry if we had to hire him out with all the others.”

“There you go blabbing again, Pete,” Anne said, trying to keep her voice light. “It looks as though you could have let me tell Louisa that I’m— I’m a slave owner.” With the words slave owner hanging in the sunlit air, Anne added quickly, “My late husband definitely did not approve of owning people, though. He had to, of course, despite his strong feelings. I’m sure you know how the British feel about the uncomfortable subject.”

“I do indeed,” Louisa said, not 359 unpleasantly, but she was frowning a little. “And how do you feel about owning slaves? Are you comfortable with it, Anne? Or uncomfortable?”

“I think I’m both ways now,” Louisa’s new friend said in a soft voice. “I grew up with the system, you know. Everyone we knew on St. Simons owned people.”

“Mama vows my Grandfather Couper didn’t really approve,” Pete said, “but with all the land he farmed, he had no choice. I guess at one time he owned a hundred or more people. He was awfully good to them. So is my uncle, Mama’s brother James Hamilton Couper. He isn’t as much fun as my grandpapa was, but he’s kind and considerate.”

“`Judge not, that ye be not judged,`” Louisa said almost as to herself. “By the way, we have a much-admired, trusted, scholarly teacher in town who thinks highly of your brother, Anne. In fact, he’s in the final stages of finishing a new book, and one of the distinguished gentlemen to whom it will be dedicated is James Hamilton Couper of Hopeton Plantation.”

“Oh, that must be Menzies’s professor up

here, Mama!” Pete exclaimed. “The Reverend George White. He once headed the Savannah Academy, too. Won’t Uncle James Hamilton be flattered?”

“I expect so,” Anne answered absently, her mind, Louisa could tell, not on kind, gentle George White. “You see, my father gave my late husband and me the plantation adjoining his Cannon’s Point—a dear, picturesque place called Lawrence. Since there were more than three hundred acres at Lawrence, John had no choice but to—own people.”

“Does calling them people instead of slaves make you feel more at ease about it?” Louisa asked gently.

“I—I suppose so,” Anne said. “My parents always taught us to call them that, never slaves.”

“I see,” Louisa said. “And what did your British husband call them?”

“He tried, for my sake, always to call them people,” Anne answered. “I know you’re wondering if the word itself ever caused trouble between John and me. No. Not real trouble because he was too

sensitive to me.” 361

The team was being deftly reined into the narrow lane that led from Decatur Street to the carriage drive, which would take them straight to the white-columned house.

After a fairly lengthy silence during which she sat looking at what might be her home someday, Anne murmured, “The light’s still there, isn’t it?”

“Just for you, Mama,” Pete answered reassuringly, reaching to squeeze her mother’s gloved hand.

“That’s right,” Louisa said. “Even heaven seems determined that you like your new home, Anne. Could you hope for a lovelier spring day?”

In one quick, graceful leap, Pete was on the ground, reaching for her mother’s hand to help her from the carriage, almost before Elmer had fastened the reins at the iron hitching post.

“Welcome to our new home, Mama,” the tall young lady called out, even though Anne was standing rather breathlessly on the driveway right beside her. “I wish John Couper could be here to escort you up those wide, gracious front steps. Without my sweet young brother, Mrs. Fletcher,”

Pete explained, her somewhat sharp, even features glowing with anticipation, “we wouldn’t even be here—any of us. He’s helping us buy it someday, he vows,” Pete boasted. “And he won’t be nineteen till December of this year! My brother isn’t only smart and responsible, he’s probably the handsomest young man you ever looked at. Isn’t he, Mama?”

“I’ll look forward to meeting him,” Louisa laughed, leading the way up the wooden steps, the brass key again in her hand. “What’s more,” she added, “I’ll be sure to tell him that his sister Pete did her best to give him full credit for this happy, expectant moment.” Then Louisa turned to Anne, the key extended. “Wouldn’t you enjoy the honor of unlocking your front door for the first time, Anne?”

“Mama, yes! You do it.”

For an instant, Louisa saw that she and Pete were the only ones smiling. Anne looked almost trapped.

“Mama?” Pete asked again. “Mama, don’t you want to unlock the door yourself?”

The quick smile that came to Anne’s face was all the more poignant because Louisa knew she had

willed it there for Pete’s benefit and 363 hers.

“Of course I want to unlock it,” Anne said, her voice wavering only a little as she took the key, inserted it in the big, square brass lock, then gasped audibly when as smooth as silk, the heavy door opened to a white splash of sunlight even inside the wide hall that plainly ran through the house, past the stair, to the back door. Streaks of light marked the wide floorboards around an oriental carpet in the large parlor to their left. French doors, which now stood open as though to welcome them, led into the parlor, but intuitively, Louisa knew that Anne was not taking in any of the furniture left behind by the former occupants, or even the lay of the rooms themselves. She was just standing there in the hallway, gloved hands clasped—the trapped look gone and in its place, a radiance Louisa had never before seen on Anne’s face.

“I know I’m being rude,” Anne told herself, struggling to believe there could be so much sunlight inside any house anywhere, then slowly realizing that it surrounded her because not only

were the walls, ceiling, mantles, and woodwork all painted white, but the tall, multipaned windows were large enough to give the illusion, even on a cloudy day, that the light was everywhere.

“Oh,” she breathed, then went on marveling in silence as though she were alone in the great room. Of course, there were trees in the yard outside. She’d seen them herself when the carriage stopped in the driveway near the porch. Even the Cannon’s Point parlor was often shadowy, from Papa’s trees throwing shadows. Her small, cozy Lawrence parlor was downright dark. So dark she’d purposely covered her furniture with bright, splashy colors. This room in the white-light house seemed permeated with a shadowless glow new to her. Why? And then it didn’t matter why at all. The white light was there, and to every fiber of her being, it mattered above all else.

“Mama?”

For the first time, in Anne’s recent memory anyway, Pete’s voice sounded small, tentative. Then silence. The child did need a response, Anne reminded herself. But what? How could anyone explain the effect of that light— that white light?

In a less-tentative voice, showing 365 a touch of alarm, Pete repeated, “Mama!”

“Perhaps,” Louisa said just above a whisper, “we should give your mother a little time to think.”

“Maybe,” Pete said, “but there’s nothing wrong, is there, Mama?”

Anne shook her head. “Far from it. I’m just overwhelmed by all the light. It’s almost as though we were standing right out in the sunshine, isn’t it?”

“I suppose it’s at least partly because everything in here is painted white,” Louisa said. “I’ve seen one or two interiors decorated only in white, but not many. Now, across the hall is the dining room with its own charming French doors into the hallway. Along the hall, behind this room, is a bedroom. Then a door at the back of the dining room leads to a splendid butler’s pantry, with the separate kitchen connected to the house by a porch. Four good rooms along with the kitchen on the first floor. And every room and hallway—upstairs and down—has a chair rail.”

“You must have visited often while the Bostwicks were still living here,” Pete said to Louisa.

“Only once to dinner when my husband and I first arrived in town, but Mr. Fred Bentley,

Sr., in charge of the property, gave me a detailed description of the house to pass along to you. He’s a splendid attorney but also has an eye for beauty and seems to have a particular interest in finding the right person for this house. The man is obviously partial to it.” With a smile, she added, “I wish he could see your face this minute, Anne. I don’t think I need to ask if you like what you’ve seen.”

Anne gave her a half smile. “Thanks for not asking—yet, Louisa. I’m literally whirling and don’t want to say something I shouldn’t.”

“Say everything you’re thinking, Mama,” Pete urged. “That’s half the fun. If you don’t, I will.”

“I’m sure you will,” Anne laughed.

“Why not? I love it! Just think of the wonderful parties we can give in these good, big rooms. Plenty of space for dancing and tables full of food and—was

“Pete, no. Not yet. Don’t push. Please don’t push. I’m still staggered by this— marvelous light. Oh, the light, the light …”

“Don’t you want to see the dining room,

Mama?” 367

“Of course I do, dear. And before you have a nervous breakdown, we’ll cross the hall and look.”

The tour of the downstairs rooms ended in the large, dirt-floored separate kitchen, reached off a small back porch beside which stood an enormous pecan tree not far from what appeared to be an old, gnarled but healthy walnut tree. Both graced the rear yard, where the well—the “good, clear well,” Louisa insisted—was located at the end of a picturesque trellis about to burst into bloom with white clematis.

As they climbed the stair to the second floor, Anne was irrelevantly reminded of the afternoon she and John took Willy Maxwell to see Hamilton Plantation on St. Simons, during dear Willy’s one visit to them. Where is Willy now? she wondered, and longed for someone to ask. She should write to her beloved cousin, now an old man of almost seventy-five. He had been long neglected in the chaotic tempo of her own life these days.