Beauty From Ashes (56 page)

Still watching from her bedroom window, Anne couldn’t help thinking that the two women—Louisa, short and somewhat pudgy, and Eve, tall and statuesque—could not have differed more in appearance, but to her they were alike because she would stake her own life on their loyalty to her.

Suddenly, she needed almost desperately to be with these two women who were filling their basket with flowers until it was nearly running over—as both their great hearts ran over with love for Anne and for God. The two were smiling now and looking toward the house, evidently not seeing Anne at the open bedroom window. When she called their names, they appeared for the first time to notice her and motioned for her to come outside.

When Anne joined her friends at the top of the

wooden front-porch steps, she could 757 tell from a close look at Eve’s face that despite their playacting, something was terribly wrong.

“But I don’t understand,” she said, addressing them both. “I’ve been watching you two picking violets for almost a quarter of an hour, talking together, even laughing now and then. If something’s so wrong, and I’m sure it is from the way you both look now, for heaven’s sake, tell me!”

“It done happen, Miss Anne,” Eve said, her voice thick with dread and concern.

“What?” Anne demanded. “What’s happened?”

“You tell her, Miss Louisa,” Eve said. “You know all this war stuff better’n I knows it.”

“Eve’s right,” Louisa said, taking a step toward Anne. “Somehow these violets, pretty as they are, seem a bit silly now. War, Anne. Oh, war hasn’t been declared yet, but it will be. It’s all the South’s doing, of course, but they did it. It’s really war and nothing good can possibly come of it!”

“Stop talking in riddles, Louisa.”

“I don’t have many details, but sometime in the black of night—I think about four-thirty in the morning on April 12—the South fired on Union-held Fort Sumter at Charleston. The bombardment kept up most of the next day until around late afternoon of the thirteenth, when Major Robert Anderson, in command at Sumter, surrendered. It’s begun, Anne. Eve and I foolishly hoped our little offering of violets might help you some. I now see it was just that—a foolish hope.”

Without a word, Anne sank to the top step and buried her face in her hands.

“I go fix the flowers, Miss Louisa,” Eve whispered. “Dat be what Miss Anne she want me to do.”

“Yes, Eve. I’m sure it is, and I’ll stay right here with her for as long as she needs me.”

The last thing Anne vowed to Louisa, right after the well-meant but now pathetic presentation of masses of violets, was that she would not burden her girls with her own load of fear and worry over John Couper. She broke the vow almost at once by refusing to dine with her daughters for the

remainder of the month of April. 759 Reluctantly, Eve brought her meals to her in her room upstairs.

“You know I gonna climb them steps with every meal,” Eve said, “but it be bad for you. You fixin’ to kill yo’se’f from hunger an’ den where we all be wifout you? You ain’t eat enough all this time to keep a bird alive!”

“I’ll eat when I can,” Anne said. “It’s just that I can’t seem to make sense of anything until I’ve heard something from John Couper. He always writes to me every week. This time it’s been a whole month, Eve!”

Standing at the bedroom door with the untouched tray of food, Eve said, “I knows. I knows, Miss Anne. An’ I don’ know nothin’ else to say.”

“Good. Then don’t try.”

A few minutes later Eve stood alone downstairs, just outside the dining-room door, trying to make up her mind what to do. The spacious dining room was oddly silent. Selina, Fanny, and Pete sat at one end of the long table, but no one spoke. How I gonna think this

through with everything so still? Eve wondered as she stood there holding Anne’s untouched dinner tray. Then she knew and, being Eve, set immediately about doing what she’d just decided.

“Gimme dat newspaper outa yo’ pocket, Petey,” she almost ordered as she set down the tray.

“What newspaper, Eve?”

“Dat Mister Goodman paper ‘bout de South declarin’ war on de North over in Montgomery, Alabama.”

“I’ll do no such thing!”

“Then I go get June’s copy.”

“June’s got a copy of that paper? The one telling about President Jefferson Davis giving his approval of that Confederate congressional bill declaring war between the United States and the dumb old Confederacy?”

“Yes’m. His friend Johnson the barber saves the paper for him.”

“What for?”

“I reckon you think June can’t read. Think again, Miss Petey. You be the one dat promise me you won’t do nuffin to add to yo’ mama’s heartache. It ain’t right to keep any

scrap ob news from her, an’ from now 761 on, Eve be the one that decide what Miss Anne know and what she don’t know ‘bout!”

Instead of flaring at her as Eve expected, Pete gave her a genuinely puzzled look. “You—you really think it’s been wrong of us to keep the news story from Mama?”

“It ain’t only wrong, it be mean. Now, you gonna give it to me so’s I kin let her read it herself or is she gonna read June’s paper?”

Looking a little sheepish, Pete reached into her day dress pocket for the crumpled piece of Goodman’s paper. Without a word, she held it out to Eve, but before Eve could take the article, Pete quickly stuffed it back into her pocket.

“Give dat to me,” Eve ordered, “or else take it right upstairs yo’se’f an’ let me stan’ there while you give it to Miss Anne!”

“Well, aren’t you getting uppity, Eve?” Fanny fairly snapped, something she seldom did, even during these days of standing apart from the others in her family as the only Confederate sympathizer.

“No, I’m not just gettin’ uppity, Miss Fanny. I speck I allus been dat way. I just made up my min’ to begin to act like I really be Miss Anne’s friend.”

Anne was up before daylight on the morning of May 23. It was too early for Eve to come. The bedroom was still chilly from the night hours even though no wind blew, and as it had been for two weeks, the air outside her open bedroom windows was mild. Anne’s whole body shivered anyway as she sat alone, one candle burning beside her on the writing desk. She just stared at her diary, still unopened because she knew not one word had been written on its pages since the day she learned the South had declared war against the North. Had she scribbled anything, it would not have been worth reading because she could only have written “still no word from John Couper. Still no word from John Couper in Savannah. God help me. Still no word from my son.”

The soft, rapid knock at the bedroom door was as quiet as a whisper, but, her heart pounding as

though John Couper himself were standing right 763 outside in the upstairs hall, Anne leaped to her feet, threw open the door, and heard herself say, “Oh, it’s you, Pete! I hope I don’t look too disappointed. Come in, dear. I—I somehow imagined it was your brother knocking.”

“In a way it was John Couper, Mama,” Pete said gently. “Look! Here’s the letter you’ve been waiting for. I got home too late to give it to you last night. So here. See what my brother has to say.”

Anne unfolded the page and read aloud.

“Dearest Mama and girls …

“It’s happened at last. I’m sure you know by now that the President of the Confederacy, the Honorable Jefferson Davis, has finally declared war on the United States. Well, he has, and after all these months in a volunteer regiment, I am enlisted now in the great and glorious Cause as a first lieutenant in Captain John P.W. Read’s Light Artillery Battery for the duration. I know this news will make my little sister Fanny happy.

I’m not so sure about the rest of you, but I pray you will go straight to God, Mama, and let Him guide you in your loyalties as well as in your all-important role as our beloved mother. All over Savannah’s military population there is a new sense of purpose and zest for living. It is as though we have all given a potent spring tonic. God’s will is so evident: We can only win our freedom as a separate country, and in His infinite wisdom, I expect Him to honor my mother’s prayers and that her heart and excellent mind will open to the rightness of the Southern Cause. I send my everlasting love to you, dear Mother, and to all three of my sisters. I now fully understand why my father so loved the military life and expect that I will find a lifetime of valued work and satisfaction in the same life he loved so dearly. No more business worries. My silence has been so long because of our extremely full calendar these past weeks. I will write again when I know the date I am to leave for the front lines in Virginia.”

When Anne looked up at Pete, she saw more fear and agony than she ever expected to see in

her strong daughter’s face. 765

Fanny was sorry if she seemed more curt than usual at breakfast the next day, but so much had begun to happen in Marietta in the few days since word reached there about the new Confederacy’s declaration of war with the United States, Fanny simply did the best she could to contain her delight and enthusiasm. Heaven knew it was hard at best to stay civil around her mother and sisters, with all three of them sick at heart and worried about John Couper instead of being proud of his spirited Southern stand. Usually Fanny let Pete and Mama do the writing to her brother, but she had actually written to him herself yesterday, so that he would know firsthand that at least one member of his immediate family was standing by him in his decision to lay down his life if need be for the blessed place of their birth.

She had tried and failed to convince Mama, Pete, and Selina that they should join most of the other women of Marietta in making garments, baking cookies, rolling bandages, and planning social activities for the Confederate soldiers who were rapidly swelling the ranks of General Phillip’s Brigade, an ever-growing

encampment of Confederate soldiers six miles or so from town, out the Atlanta Road.

“Whatever John Couper needs, he’ll feel free to let us know,” Mama had said sternly. “He won’t be depending on the ladies of Marietta for his comforts or necessities, Fanny. You do as you choose. I’ve always wanted all my children to use their own good minds, to follow their own consciences. Go every day, if you can find a means of getting there, to General Phillip’s encampment, watch your splendid Buster march and drill to your heart’s content. But do give us the right to our own opinions in this dreadful war to come.”

“Oh, Mama,” Fanny could still hear the whine in her own voice, “I wish we all agreed on this, don’t you?”

“My dear girl—and you are my dear girl— don’t you dare try that whine of yours in order to sway my thinking. I don’t want us to argue. We’re too well bred for that! But I want a clear understanding. You are entitled to your opinion. Pete, Selina, and I are entitled to ours.”

“I’d do almost anything, Mama, if I knew how to keep your approval the way I once had

it. I don’t. You don’t like Buster. 767 You don’t like his mother. I love him, and most of the time I like Mrs. Matthews just fine. And I’m glad you feel the way you do about everyone’s right to her own opinion. I certainly have mine.” After a deep sigh, Fanny said, “I just wish I could think of some other really important way to help the—Cause. Don’t you ever feel even a little bit of longing in yourself to help John Couper and his fighting friends, Mama?”

“Of course I do, but I also know which side has the good Cause.”

“But the ladies of Marietta are going to cook a festive dinner and give each soldier a New Testament before they go marching off to the train depot next week. Don’t you want to be part of that? Don’t you just long to help the boys who, like my own brother, are willing to die for our country?”

“I’m a believer in the United States of America, Fanny, and that’s all there is to say now. If we’re not together as one country, our entire economy will perish and then where will we all be?” Her voice wavering, Fanny’s mama added, “I’m too torn up to argue anymore at all. And as long as you’re living in my

house, you’ll mind your tongue. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, Mama, I hear you. And I’ll mind my tongue, but I’ll also be searching for a place where I can contribute still more to—to my country’s Cause!”

After the large and festive dinner in honor of the Confederate soldiers in General Phillip’s Brigade, the yelling, confident, laughing boys piled into the waiting train coaches, their New Testaments in their pockets. After fond good-byes to friends, sweethearts, and family members gathered to see them off to battle in Virginia, lustily singing “Dixie,” they took their leave.

Fanny’s Buster Matthews was not due to depart Marietta for two weeks, but she was at the depot hoping at least to see him and to find a chance to tell him something that might cover the humiliation she felt because neither her mother nor her sisters were anywhere to be found in the crowd of high-spirited well-wishers.

“I’m so sorry, and I know Buster will be, too, that he didn’t have an opportunity to speak to you alone, dear girl,” Beaulah Matthews said

in what Pete called her squishy, 769 sweaty-handed way. “The boy will be heartbroken, I’m sure, but at least you and I know he’s on God’s side in this struggle. And God looks after His own. We’ll both have ample chance to be proud of Buster just any day now. Please do tell your mother she missed a spirit-lifting spectacle here at this heartwarming occasion. Her lack of concern over you, with your intended due to leave on a life-and-death mission soon, is more than my mother’s heart can take in! But, sweet Fanny, you do have Buster’s mother, who means to stay very close to you come what may.”

“Thank you, Mother Matthews, but I hope you don’t think my mother is being hard-hearted. I know you and I think she’s on the wrong side, but she cares about the Confederate boys. The minute she heard General Phillip’s Brigade had gotten so large that it needed extra fresh provisions, she sent our June and Big Boy with every chicken and egg and fresh vegetable we could possibly spare. Don’t forget, my only brother—and I guess Mama loves him more than anyone else on earth—is enlisted now in the Confederate Army, and Mama watches every day for a

letter from her grandson, Fraser Demere, telling her he’s enlisted in some Florida regiment. It’s bad enough on you and me, but at least we’re on God’s side with the Confederacy and bound to win in just a matter of weeks, according to Buster. Poor Mama’s just torn in so many directions.”