A Sound Among the Trees (37 page)

He told me I will be warm and safe with his parents in Richmond while he is away, but Eleanor, I cannot live here while he is gone. Nathaniel’s physical presence, his daily care for me, his intense admiration and loyalty and devotion, and yes, even his nearness in my bed—these are what sustain me in this new life I have chosen. When he leaves, I will have nothing
.

I begged him to let me return to Fredericksburg to care for my grieving mother and grandmother. With Eliza gone, they have no one. It would be unkind and unchristian for me to ignore them when his absence would allow me to care for them in their grief. And he, of course, implored me to send for them, to have them come to Richmond. And again I reminded him that Holly Oak is their home and that my grandmother, especially now that she is in mourning, would never leave it. Then I told him that I couldn’t bear to be there in Richmond without him, which indeed is quite true
.

My pleading won him over, Eleanor. He is that disposed to grant me my every desire
.

I leave tomorrow on the first morning train north. His parents do not seem overly sad that I am leaving
.

Susannah Towsley Page

1 February 1863
Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

I am home, Eleanor. Tessie, round with the growing bulge of her unborn child, met me at the station. I had forgotten how much Fredericksburg had suffered at the close of the year. The ruins of houses and buildings still line the streets. Fences are gone; trees are gone—fuel for Yankee fires. People are gone too, having fled before the battle and now having heard there is little reason to return
.

Princess Anne Street is still littered with remnants of war and cruel revelry, and it saddened me only a little that I am only visiting this place. When the war is over, I will never call Fredericksburg home again. My home will be in Richmond with Nathaniel. It is a strangely acceptable notion
.

On my arrival, Holly Oak looked plain and gray and lonely. I stepped inside and immediately noticed its sparseness. Tessie had cleaned away every hint of death and injury, but in its place was a melancholy emptiness. It was like the house was in a state of quiet bewilderment. My grandmother was waiting for me in the parlor, looking both forlorn and elegant in black taffeta
.

“You didn’t have to come,” she said as she kissed me hello
.

“I wanted to. Nathaniel will be gone for perhaps many months. I did not wish to be alone there in Richmond,” I said
.

And she said, “But you would not have been alone.”

I told her Nathaniel’s parents are very nice but I barely know them. I would’ve felt alone. For a second she said nothing, and then she asked Tessie if she might bring us some tea. Grandmother asked me to sit with her. When I had taken a chair, she asked me why I left for Richmond in such haste without saying good-bye, why I could not have told her I was taking the train to Richmond to marry Lt. Page
.

I reminded her that in my letter I had said the horrors of the battle and what had happened inside our house had taken their toll on me. I had to escape
.

“I know that is what you wrote, but that is not why you left. You left the same day Eliza was arrested. Did your leaving have something to do with that?” she said
.

I don’t know if it was this new knowledge that I belong to someone else or that I was only visiting Holly Oak now, but I suddenly had no great desire to keep up the pretense. “What does it really matter now, Grandmother?” I said. “You wished me to marry Lt. Page. I married him.”

Tessie came in with the tea tray, but I stood. “I’d like to say hello to my mother before we have tea,” I said
.

And I left the parlor and climbed the stairs to my mother’s
room. I found her seated at her writing table with a book open to the middle. As I approached her, she slowly raised her head. She looked afraid
.

“Hello, Mama,” I said gently
.

“Susannah.” She spoke my name not in greeting but more as if to remind herself that that name meant something to her. I kissed the top of her head and squeezed her shoulders. She stared at me
.

“I am married now, Mama.” I showed her my ring, and she stared at that
.

“Remember Lt. Page, who first brought us the uniforms to sew?” I continued. “Remember he asked me to marry him?”

She nodded slowly
.

“He’s away at the war right now,” I said. “So I’ve come to stay with you and grandmother for a while. I’ve missed you.”

She looked back to her book, unable I suppose, to deal with having been missed. I looked at her book too and saw that the pages were upside down
.

If I were going to send you this letter, Eleanor, I would tell you not to tell Grandmother Towsley or Aunt how poorly my mother is faring. She has all but disappeared. She has found a way to manage her losses—my father, her home, her father, her sense of peace and safety, the virtues of compassion and decency—missing now these many months. She has withdrawn from reality. I don’t know exactly where she spends her days mentally. Her nights I would guess she spends dreaming of my papa and our house in Washington and maybe of me as a little girl who hasn’t dashed off to be married
.

I kissed her head again and told her I would bring up some tea. We drank it in silence
.

I am suddenly very tired, Eleanor. I cannot hold the pen to write anymore
.

Susannah Towsley Page

12 February 1863
Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

I have been sick the last few days, Eleanor. Too ill to eat and lacking energy to write a word to you. Tessie came upstairs this morning with a warm drink to settle my stomach, and I told her I hoped I would be better soon so that she wouldn’t have to run the house all by herself in her condition
.

She smiled at me. Then she said, “You surely will get better, Miss Susannah. I’d say long about September.”

It took me a full minute to realize what she was saying. She asked me when was the last time I had my monthly bleeding
.

Eleanor, I am with child
.

Susannah

15 March 1863
Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

Dearest Eleanor
,

I am finally feeling well enough to rise from my bed and not spend the morning retching into a basin. I asked Tessie if this is how her pregnancy began, and she said all pregnancies begin with the woman’s body struggling to leave off meddling with the little one growing inside. But she wasn’t nearly so sick as I
.

And then I asked her what I have wondered since she returned to us in November. I asked her if the father of her baby will come to Holly Oak looking for her. She answered that the child she carries
has no father. A heartless man did what he did, not a father. So, no, there would be no father coming to Holly Oak to look for her. Then she offered to take a few of my dresses down to the parlor to begin letting out the seams
.

Grandmother seems pleased that I am to have a child but worried that we will not be able to properly outfit a nursery. Mama touched my stomach when I told her, a quiet recognition that she understood my words, but then she withdrew her hand and her mental presence and spent the rest of the day looking out her window
.

A man from the quartermaster’s office came a few days ago and asked us to again sew uniforms. He was short and portly and balding—nothing like Nathaniel at all. The cut pieces were delivered this afternoon. Tessie just stared at those sections of gray cloth, and I told her she didn’t have to sew anything for the Confederate Army if she didn’t want to, but she told me she will take my mother’s place at the sewing table. Mama will perhaps be aware enough to sew on buttons, but I doubt she will have the understanding to do anything else
.

Tessie knows President Lincoln says she’s free. But Holly Oak is the only home she has right now, and every baby needs a home
.

10 April 1863
Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

My dear Eleanor
,

A birthday parcel arrived from you today! Somehow it made it across the trenches of battle and found its way to me. Your note was so lovely, short as it was. I know you would have said more if we were not at war. I shall send you a note thanking you. It will not be
this note. This I will add to the hatbox where I have stashed all the others since I learned what Eliza had been doing with them
.

Thank you, dearest, for the lovely chemise. After the baby is born, I am sure it will fit me
.

I am nineteen. More than three years have passed since my papa was taken from my mother and me, since I have seen you and Aunt and Uncle and Grandmother Towsley. My life is not what I had imagined it would be
.

I wonder if you have heard from Will and John? Are they well? Are they safe? I wish you could have said more in your letter. You wrote that all is well. I am trusting you included Will and John in that declaration. Surely you did
.

Nathaniel writes that he will be traveling near Fredericksburg in late April to supply the troops near Chancellorsville and will ask for three days’ leave to come see me. He says he dreams of me every night. I have not written to him that we are to have a child. It seems something that should be told to someone face to face, not in a letter. He wrote that his father is sensing pressure to join the Cause and seek his commission. He will surely receive one. Alexander Page is a successful banker and respected in Richmond. No doubt he would be made an officer straightaway. He wrote that his mother will relocate to her parents’ home in Savannah if his father is to be sent afield. Perhaps it was providential that I had been called away to Fredericksburg, he said
.