Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule (21 page)

Julia kept up a cheerful façade for Jesse’s sake as the train sped them northward, but behind it all was turmoil and worry. Louisa had mentioned Fred’s illness in previous letters, but even after she and Cousin Henry had taken him out of boarding school so that she could nurse him properly, Julia had not feared for his life. All had changed in a moment, in the reading of a telegram. She prayed for the Lord to shine his healing grace upon her son, but she also willed the train to move faster, faster, so that she might be with him in his final moments if her prayers failed.

They were obliged to switch trains in Louisville, and as Julia took Jesse in hand and followed Major Dunn across the platform, she lost sight of Jule in the press of the crowd. “She hurried off that way,” Major Dunn said, nodding to the baggage car. “I think she went ahead to collect your luggage.”

Julia tightened her grip around Jesse’s hand and followed the major along the platform to the rear. A porter was attending to their bags, but Jule was nowhere to be found.

Julia felt as if a cold fist had seized her, squeezing the breath from her lungs. She looked wildly about—and then, in the midst of the throng, she glimpsed a familiar headscarf and a black shawl that had once been dove gray, but they were immediately swallowed up in the bustle of passengers and porters.

“Jesse, stay with Major Dunn,” she ordered, quickly making her way through the crowd. Inside the station, she glanced this way and that, increasingly frantic—and then she spotted Jule passing through the doors to the street. “Jule,” Julia cried, waving, but Jule neither stopped nor turned. Gathering up her skirts, Julia ran after her, but by the time she reached the sidewalk, Jule was already halfway down the block.

Julia cupped her hands around her mouth. “Jule,” she cried. “Come quickly! We’ll miss the train!”

Jule’s quick strides slowed. After a moment, she turned deliberately around, but the distance between them was too great for Julia to read her expression.

“We aren’t staying over,” Julia called, hurrying after her. “We’re going straight on to St. Louis.”

“You are,” said Jule flatly. Only a few yards separated them, but something in her voice brought Julia to a halt. “I’m going my own way. I won’t go back to Missouri.”

“But, Jule—” Then the full meaning of her words sank in. “You don’t mean you’re running away?”

“I shouldn’t have to.” Jule’s face was stone. “Mr. Lincoln signed that Emancipation Proclamation. I should be free.”

“But Missouri isn’t—”

“Don’t give me more of that ‘exemption’ talk.” Jule shifted her calico bundle to one arm and planted her other fist on her hip. “Don’t talk to me about the law. Talk about what’s right. You say you’re for the Union and Mr. Lincoln—well, prove it. Grant me my freedom. Go on. Do it.”

“You know I can’t.” Julia raised her hands and took a few tentative steps forward, expecting any moment to hear the train whistle shrill its warning. “Papa owns you, for all that we say you’re mine. It would be meaningless for me to declare that you’re free. You know that.”

“I’m not free because you don’t want me free,” Jule countered. “Did you ever ask your papa to free me? Did you and the general ever ask to buy me from him, so you could free me yourself?”

Julia hesitated. “No, but that doesn’t mean—”

“Did you ever pay me wages for my work, like you would’ve if I was a free woman, to show you think I ought to be free?”

“Jule.” Julia felt close to tears, frantic. “I was kind to you, I—”

“You kept me a slave. How is that kind?”

“You had a roof over your head, plenty to eat—” With every word, Jule’s frown became more scornful. Desperate, Julia said, “Jule, please. After all our years together, how could you leave me now, in my hour of greatest need?”

For the barest of moments, uncertainty and defiance warred in Jule’s expression before resolve won out over both. “I pray Fred gets better, but you’ll have to tend him without my help.” She took two steps backward. “I don’t hate you, Miss Julia, but I don’t forgive you either.”

She turned and darted off, her footsteps drowned out by the blast of the train whistle. Julia watched her go, stunned and despairing and angry. She was tempted to shout for a constable, but then she remembered the departing train, and Fred languishing in his sickbed, and she turned and ran back to the station.

Major Dunn was pacing anxiously on the platform, and when he saw her coming, he shouted to the conductor to wait one moment longer. His request was either unheard or ignored, and the train was already moving as Major Dunn seized her arm, heaved her on board, and quickly jumped on after her.

Jesse was fidgeting in his seat, peering anxiously out the window. “Did Jule get lost?” he asked when he saw them coming down the aisle without her.

“Yes,” said Julia shortly, fighting back tears. “Jule is lost.”

J
ANUARY
–F
EBRUARY
1864

I
t was after midnight when Julia, Jesse, and Major Dunn finally arrived at the Boggs residence in St. Louis, half-frozen and exhausted from arduous travel and worry. Louisa met them at the door, red-eyed and fatigued from sitting up with Fred day after worrisome day. Julia quickly shrugged out of her wraps and hastened upstairs to her son, who tossed fitfully in bed, burning with fever and shaken violently by hoarse, hacking coughs.

“He declines by the hour,” Louisa told her softly, putting an arm around Julia’s shoulders as if to bear her up. “But Dr. Pope says we have every reason to believe he will rally.”

All through the night Julia tended her ailing son, and all the next day. On the second morning, Papa brought Buck and Nellie to see her; she embraced them tearfully in the parlor but forbade them to enter the sickroom.

“Is Fred going to be all right?” asked Nellie, ever gentle and tenderhearted.

“Of course he will,” Julia said, forcing confidence into her voice, “but you must pray with all your might. Can you do that?”

Nellie and Buck both nodded vigorously, their little faces drawn and worried. Then Papa placed his hands on their shoulders, told them to kiss their mother good-bye, and took them away again as quickly as they had come.

Dr. Pope attended Fred every day, but his medicines seemed to have little effect. In the last week of January, he somberly told Julia that she must prepare herself for the worst and that Ulys should be summoned at once, to say his good-byes before it was too late.

Later that day, she received Ulys’s terse telegram announcing that he was on his way.

As the hours passed, she tried, as the doctor had urged, to prepare herself for the worst, but she could not do it, she could not—and somehow, knowing that Ulys would soon be there infused her with new hope.

She was sitting in a chair at Fred’s bedside, clasping his hand in one of hers, resting her aching head on her arm on the bed, when she heard a faint whisper. “Mamma?”

She bolted upright. “Yes, Fred, my darling.” Her heart clenched as she brushed his sweaty locks off his forehead. “I’m here.” And then she froze, her hand on his brow, hardly daring to believe it, wondering if it was only the workings of a mother’s anguished imagination or if he truly did feel cooler.

“I’m thirsty.”

She filled a cup from the pitcher and helped him sit up to drink. Then, with a sigh, he settled back against his pillow and drifted off to sleep again, his breaths deep and even. She pressed a hand to her mouth to hold back sobs of joy and disbelief before hurrying off to share the good news with Louisa.

Later that day Ulys arrived. Julia heard his boots pounding as he raced up the stairs two at a time and burst into the sickroom. “Does my boy yet live?”

Julia held out her hand to him, smiling, tears in her eyes. “His fever has broken,” she said quietly, beckoning him to the bed. “He’s going to be fine.”

Heaving a sigh of relief, Ulys took her hand and looked down upon his sleeping son. “Thank God,” he said, his voice trembling. “Thank God.”

Fred stirred at the sound of his father’s voice, blinked sleepily, and smiled in recognition before sinking back into sleep.

Ulys had brought with him an expert telegrapher so that he could retain direct command of all his forces and maintain communications with Washington. As Fred steadily improved, Ulys turned the Boggs’s parlor into his headquarters, reading telegrams, sending off dispatches, and studying maps.

“I never thought the Yankee war would be fought from my own house,” Cousin Henry remarked without rancor.

An entire day passed before Ulys noticed a conspicuous absence from the household. “Where’s Jule?” he asked Julia.

“She abandoned me in Louisville,” said Julia, distressed anew by the memory. “Oh, Ulys, she said such unkind things.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, but I’ll forgive her if she’ll only come back. She couldn’t have gone far. I’m sure she made her way to Cincinnati—she knows the city well and they’re known to be tolerant of runaways.” She rested her hand on his forearm. “Ulys, you know so many people in Ohio. If you send word for the authorities to search for her—”

“Absolutely not,” he interrupted. “I forbid any attempt to bring her back. In fact, I’d be only too glad if we could be rid of your other slaves in the same manner.”

“Ulys,” she protested.

“I only wish I had known she was planning to run. I would have given her a fat purse for the journey.”

Inexplicably, Julia suddenly realized that she wished she had thought of that. What would become of Jule—a colored woman, penniless, alone, and on the run? But even as she wondered and worried, a faint hope stirred that perhaps after a day or two, Jule would decide to return home, chastened and wiser—though Julia did not confess those feelings to Ulys.

•   •   •

When Jule quit Julia outside the train station, she had hastened away as quickly as she dared, balancing speed and discretion. An icy prickling went up her spine as if hundreds of pairs of accusing eyes were upon her, but she dared not turn around. She expected any moment to hear Julia cry out for the constable, to feel strong hands seize her roughly, but nothing followed after her, not even the sound of pursuit.

Blood pounding in her ears, she ducked down a narrow alley and pressed herself so hard against the wall she felt the bricks through her wool dress and shawl. The train whistle had blown, signaling its departure, but was Julia aboard? Had she and Major Dunn remained behind to search for her?

She waited, shivering from cold, thoughts churning. No. Julia would never linger to pursue a runaway slave while her son lay on his deathbed.

Her spirits dipped as she remembered young Fred, but she steeled herself and made her way down to the riverside, her stride purposeful, her gaze lowered deferentially. At the docks, a surreptitious glance told her which steamer was bound for Cincinnati, but to cross the gangplank, she would have to pass between two crew members.

She had no ticket, no papers, no pass, and no other way to board that ship.

As the passengers began to file aboard, she observed a family on the landing, an elderly couple, a young widow swathed in black crepe and heavy veil, and four children who looked to be under eight years of age. The second smallest child dawdled behind the others, a rag doll dangling from her hand. Jule quietly fell into step behind them, and when the little girl approached too closely to the edge of the pier, Jule quickly placed a hand on her shoulder and drew her back. “Careful, Miss Sarah,” she said, mindful of the crewmen’s watchful gaze. “You don’t want to lose your dollbaby in that deep water.”

The little girl gaped up at her, too surprised to wrench herself free or protest that her name was not Sarah. Jule released her and smiled, and as the child scampered ahead to catch up with her family, Jule hurried along behind her, shaking her head and sighing as she had many a time over the antics of the Grant children, for all the world as if she were the four children’s overworked, long-suffering nurse.

The crewmen gave her only the barest of glances as she boarded the steamer. As soon as she was sure they were not watching, she turned and strode briskly away in the opposite direction from the unwitting family.

She had traveled on the river so often with Julia that she knew the best places to avoid other passengers and crew, and when she did cross paths with anyone, she carried herself as if she were on an important errand for her mistress. No one challenged her.

As the hours passed she grew hungry, but although her handkerchief of coins was hidden in a secret pocket in her skirt, she dared not draw attention to herself by purchasing anything to eat. Her stomach was rumbling by the time she disembarked in Cincinnati, so she quickly seized up the flow of passersby and followed other colored folk to a neighborhood northeast of the landing, where she bought a cup of hot cider and a loaf of bread at a market. Cradling the cup in her hands to warm them, she made a quick meal of the bread before asking the vendor to point her in the direction of the Zion Baptist Church.

A prayer service was under way when she arrived, so Jule slipped into the back pew and bowed her head, closing her eyes against tears. The preacher’s voice, while raspier than Gabriel’s, resonated with faith and feeling as his had, flooding her with memories and a renewed sense of loss and absence almost too painful to bear.

Worship ended with a rousing hymn of love and redemption, and Jule opened her eyes to discover that she was the only one not standing, clapping, singing in the spirit. She quickly rose but could not find her voice, and as the service ended and the worshipers fell to embracing one another and laughing and chatting like longtime friends, she felt heat rise in her face, shaken by the sudden fear that she was too conspicuous even here, even among people of her own race.

As the worshipers filed from the church, some gave her kindly, knowing glances, and suddenly she found the minister at her side. He was tall and solidly built, with two straight creases across his brow and a wreath of black-and-silver hair encircling a bald pate. “Are you in need, sister?” he asked in an undertone.

She nodded and gripped her shawl more tightly around her shoulders.

He glanced warily to the tall double doors that flanked the entrance, but then turned his gaze back to her, searching her face, warm and sympathetic. “Come with me,” he said, offering her his arm.

She hesitated only a moment before taking it.

•   •   •

Word that General Grant was in St. Louis spread quickly, and soon the Boggs residence was besieged by callers and invitations. One morning Julia glanced out the sickroom window and saw a woman, her face hidden beneath a black bonnet, draw her cloak close about her and walk dejectedly away from the house. Curious, she descended from the sickroom and came upon Major Dunn in the foyer. “Who was that caller?” she asked.

“She gave her name as Mrs. Mary Simmons,” he replied. “She wants a pass through the lines, but the general can’t meet with her now.”

“Why, she’s an old acquaintance of mine. Did she ask to speak with me?”

“No, Mrs. Grant.”

“If she calls again, I’d like to see her.”

The major bowed assent.

Fred improved dramatically hour by hour, so much so that Ulys arranged for a nurse to sit with him so that he and Julia could take Henry and Louisa out for a night at the theater. They rode the streetcar downtown to see
Richelieu
at the St. Louis Theatre, but although they were escorted to a private box and Ulys seated himself near the back, he was soon recognized. As the curtain came down on the first act, rapturous cries of “Grant! Grant! Speech!” rang out from the audience.

His cheeks flushing, Ulys reluctantly rose, bowed to a crash of applause, and abruptly sat down. As the applause continued, Julia’s gaze traveled from one beautiful young lady to another, their lovely faces turned to Ulys like spring daisies to the sun. Keeping her smile in place, she leaned closer to him and rested her hand upon his arm, reassured when he took her hand and smiled briefly at her, as he had not to the others.

The next day, when Dr. Pope came to the Boggs residence to examine Fred and declare him entirely cured, Julia escorted him to the foyer, where she sent the servant away with a discreet nod. “Doctor,” she said quietly as she helped him into his coat, “I wondered if I might speak to you on a most delicate subject.”

“Certainly,” he said. “Is anything the matter?”

Julia shook her head, then nodded, then took a deep breath and handed him his scarf. “Many years ago, you spoke to me and my parents about a simple operation you could perform upon my eyes to improve their appearance.”

“Yes, I recall.”

“I was too frightened to consent at the time, but now—well, at the risk of seeming terribly vain—” She broke off and glanced quickly over her shoulder before continuing. “I don’t wish to put myself forward in public, but my husband has become so famous that people recognize and watch me too, and I think it behooves me to look as well as possible. So I think I should like to go through with the surgery as soon as it can be arranged, please.”

“My dear Mrs. Grant,” said Dr. Pope. “It grieves me to tell you this, but it’s too late, much too late. The operation I described could have succeeded only if it had been performed when you were still a child, with the marvelous resilience and recuperative powers of youth. There’s nothing to be done for it now.”

“I see.” Bitterly disappointed, Julia nonetheless managed a smile. “Thank you just the same.”

Promising to call on Fred again the next day, Dr. Pope bade her good-bye, and when he left, he took with him Julia’s last wistful, fleeting hope to reclaim some of her faded beauty.

Later that afternoon, she was taking a slow stroll in the Boggs’s winter-bare garden with Fred on her arm, as thin as a rail but in good spirits, when a servant hurried out to inform her that Mrs. Mary Simmons had returned. After seeing her son back upstairs and comfortably settled in bed, she hastened to the sitting room to receive her visitor. “Welcome, Mrs. Simmons,” she said, offering her a seat in the chair adjacent to her own. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“The general alone can grant my petition.” Mrs. Simmons hesitated before plunging ahead. “I lost my husband at Vicksburg.”

“Oh, dear. I’m so sorry.”

A bit of fire appeared in the widow’s clear blue eyes, illuminating the shadows beneath. “He fought for the Confederacy, against your husband. Does that make a difference?”

Julia reached out and clasped her hand. “Your sorrow is no different, and neither is my sympathy.”

“You’re very kind.” Mrs. Simmons bowed her head in a vain attempt to conceal her tears. “I would like to join my late husband’s family in Georgia, but I can’t cross through the lines without a pass.”

“General Grant can’t see you because his every minute is occupied with the war.” Julia rose and gave her an encouraging smile. “He
will
see me.”