Beauty From Ashes (22 page)

Her face radiant, she whispered, “John Couper, John Couper, you’d really do that for us, wouldn’t you? Don’t forget, though, your old mother has a little income. There’s Papa’s small widow’s pension. Fanny could do some fancy sewing. Pete’s a fine teacher.” She laughed softly at herself as she wiped away tears shed unashamedly in public. “But then, you always said you and I would work it out together didn’t you?”

“Together,” he said. “And it’s easy travel by railroad from right here in Savannah. Why not

take Fanny, board the Central of Georgia after a good visit with Miss Eliza, and I’ll come up as soon as possible and bring Selina with me. What do you think?”

“Don’t push, Son. Please don’t push. I could have brought Selina when I made my first escape to the Wyllys’ before Christmas, but she begged to stay at Hopeton, where there are children more her age. I don’t like being away from her for such a long time.”

“But Mama, you could tell a lot about Marietta from just a short visit. You can take the Central of Georgia from here. Pete will still be up there to help you inspect the place. It’s just a day on the train, with changes at Macon and Atlanta.” He grinned. “Around ten dollars for a first-class ticket. I can afford that right now!”

After a long look, she said, “You’re very like your father, who always wanted decisions made yesterday. But Son, your mother has done what she thought she had to do for so long—packed and unpacked, cleared out for visits, returned again—she can’t make up her mind that fast. I’ll also need to talk it over at length with Miss Eliza.

If ever anyone needed her wisdom, I 287 need it now. Thank you, though, for hatching these frightening, exciting plans! You realize, I do need a few days to try to think clearly about so many things.”

“Take all the time you need, milady.” He got to his feet. “And if you’re quite finished with breakfast, I’ll walk you back to East Broughton Street if the wind isn’t too chilly. Shall I hire a carriage? It is January out there.”

“The walk will do me good. Clear my head,” she said, smiling up at him as he moved her chair. “Anyway, just because you’ll be rich in the fall doesn’t mean we have money to hire anything extra right now, Mr. John Couper Fraser.”

“Your fire feels good,” Anne said as she and Eliza Mackay took chairs before blazing live oak logs in the Mackay parlor. “John Couper offered to rent a carriage, but I needed the walk after the enormous breakfast he ordered. I do hope your Hannah wasn’t too

upset that the boy had his heart set on eating out this morning.”

“For a few minutes only,” Eliza Mackay laughed. “We’ve all been so eager for you and Fanny to get here. Fanny plainly enjoyed her breakfast, but I think Hannah was disappointed not to cook for you and John Couper— especially John Couper. She knows how he loves her corn cakes and apple butter. You know the woman has always been partial to him.”

With a smile, Anne said, “Shall I make a confession? So is John Couper’s mother. Miss Eliza, wait till you hear what that boy has in mind for his mother and sisters!”

“From the look on your face, it must be something wonderful.”

“I vow I’m so dumbfounded by it that I probably won’t be able to tell you all he told me at breakfast in its proper sequence, but be patient with me. I do need your advice. You’ve lived through so many joys and heartaches. This could involve—both.” She bit her lip a moment. “I know I could so easily sound like just another whining widow, when the truth is that James Hamilton and his entire family, the friends and

other relatives we’ve visited, have 289 all been so kind to my girls and me. But, somehow it feels all right to tell you that I’m completely worn out with having no home—no place to go when I’m tired and needing to be private. It’s been such a long, long time since our little family has been able to sit down together at a table that’s really just ours. My good china, even my everyday dishes, have all been packed since the day we had to leave Lawrence. I’ve almost forgotten their patterns.”

“You really loved that tabby cottage at Lawrence, didn’t you?”

“More than any other place I’ve ever lived, because it was the only home that belonged just to John and me.”

“So, in a real sense, you belonged to the cottage, too.”

“Yes. Oh, yes! I couldn’t bring myself even to visit it when I was right at the Wyllys’. Miss Eliza, you are so wise. I also know you’ll be straightforward with me. I not only know this from my parents’ long friendship with you, but my husband told me how his friend Mark Browning depends on you. Your own daughters have also made it clear that even when they don’t agree with everything you say,

they know eventually they’ll find out you were right.”

Miss Eliza’s laugh was infectious, far younger than her seventy-three years. “My daughters actually said that?” She raised her hand. “Never mind what they said. I want to know what your son told you this morning at breakfast that has you so excited.”

“Have I said I’m excited?”

“It shows. Anyone could see.”

“Maybe the most important part to me as his mother is that John Couper has known so clearly how painful it is for me not to have a home of my own. And now he’s found out for certain that Mr. McCleskey means to give him a fine promotion this fall, so there will then be funds to rent or even buy a house for me somewhere—one that is mine, a real home again where I can invite guests and plan our meals and sleep at night in my own bed.”

“Anne, Anne, what a heartbreaking twelve years these have been since John left you! All those deaths in your immediate family, all that grief on top of grief. Any woman would have a reason to whine, as you said. But don’t say it again! You mustn’t even imply that you’re not one of the

strongest, bravest women on earth.” 291

Anne frowned. “Don’t just pay me compliments, please. Somehow I have found a way to keep on walking around through all of it, but right now I need guidance, real guidance. John Couper’s way ahead of me. I think I told you when I wrote, asking if we could spend some time with you here in Savannah, that Pete was in Liberty County trying to find a house that we can afford. Well, she’s no longer in Liberty County. She’s in Marietta, Georgia, at John Couper’s urging, and, Miss Eliza, this is what has me so excited but also frightened. With his new position paying him almost double his present salary by fall, the dear boy wants to find a place for his sisters and me in Marietta because his Savannah friends, the John Wilders, have convinced him that Marietta, Georgia, is exactly what the people there claim it is—`The Little Gem City of Georgia.`”

“And my dear, the Wilders know! They’ve been spending time up there and know firsthand that the climate is nearly perfect. So healthy, I’m sure even your frail little Fanny would almost never catch a cold or a sore throat again. You should be so

proud of John Couper. Most boys his age would not be forming close friendships with caliber folk like the John Wilders. They must know such a move for you and your family would be beneficial, or they’d never lead John Couper to think of such a thing. The Dix Fletchers have moved to Marietta, too. When his lumber and cabinetmaking business burned out here on Factor’s Walk, they were headed for St. Louis to live—until they spent a night or two en route in Marietta. Louisa Fletcher, especially, is not easy to please. She’s a woman of genuine good taste and opinion. She and Mr. Fletcher have been living in Marietta now for something like two years.”

“Miss Eliza, you’re frowning suddenly. Is something wrong?”

“Only that I’m wondering how you really feel at the thought of such a big change. Weren’t you dreadfully homesick for St. Simons the whole time you and your husband lived in England?”

Anne tried to give her a noncommittal look but knew she had failed. “The truth is, I’m still homesick for my St. Simons Island. Even when I’m there visiting Anna Matilda or my brother William

Audley’s family at Hamilton 293 or Frances Anne Wylly Fraser, I’m not at home anymore. I’m eating someone else’s food, sleeping in someone else’s bed, taking walks on someone else’s property.” Her voice broke. “Miss Eliza, I so need a place to call—home. …”

“Tell me, Anne, do you have any response down inside yourself to what your fine son is proposing? Does the idea of beginning life all over again in a new area appeal to you? Or does it frighten or sicken you?”

For perhaps a full minute, Anne sat staring into the fire. “I have to ask you a question before I know how to answer yours. It’s personal. May I?”

“Please, yes!”

“Did whole years pass after your Robert died before you felt in your heart that you—knew yourself anymore? Before you could decide what you truly wanted to do next? Can you decide even now? John’s been gone almost twelve years. I still feel most of the time that I don’t recognize myself at all. Is that the way it’s always going to be?”

“It will be thirty-five years in October that

my Robert left me. There are still some days when I feel it was only yesterday. I’m not sure I know the answer to your question about how long it takes to learn to decide what the real you wants or needs—because it took me years to reach the place where I didn’t cry out, in my heart at least, that all I really needed was to have Robert with me again. Acceptance enters the picture about then, I think. There’s a world of difference between mere submission and true acceptance. I only submitted to my loneliness and tears for a long, long time. Then, one day I began to realize that I had finally stopped rebelling, because I knew he would never come home again. I wish I could tell you exactly how long that took. I can’t. I can only promise you that once you’re able to stop fighting John’s absence and take a firm hold on the fact that someday you’ll be together again, acceptance comes. Too slowly, but it comes. And with it an unexplainable peace. And—hope.”

“Hope?”

“Yes. We’re never whole persons without hope. You have John Couper. You have Fanny. You have Selina. You have Pete. You can begin, perhaps, by placing your hope in them. But first and

foremost, it must be firmly in the fact that 295 God loves you through everything.”

“Sometimes I don’t feel at all close to God. I don’t know why I’m telling you, but sometimes I don’t think I even—like Him very much. That’s sinful of me, I know.”

“It is not! It’s merely human. And if you don’t think God knows that, then remind yourself that it was God who thought you up in the first place.”

Anne said nothing for a time. Then, “What I most need to know is, will it ever seem like home in Marietta, do you think?”

“No one on earth should dare try to tell you that. Do you remember your first feeling when your son told you of his plan this morning?”

“Yes,” Anne answered with no hesitation. “Yes, I remember. I was rather excited. Almost the way I used to feel when John and I were setting out on a lark of some kind. Is that terribly immature of me?”

“No. But it well could be a clue. My dear, no one knows better than I that you’ve been pushing yourself through most of your days. We all need a little excitement. We all need things to look forward to. To give us—hope. Even with hope in

God and your children, you still need hope for Anne Couper Fraser. You did say John Couper is suggesting that you go on a trial basis, didn’t you? You’re not committing yourself to living your life in Marietta. My daughter Eliza Anne Stiles loves it up there. So does Mark Browning’s daughter, Natalie. I’m told the climate is exhilarating and it’s scenic, especially in Marietta. But unless something is stirring inside you, I beg you not to let me influence you. I mustn’t influence you one way or another, Anne, because only you can possibly know if the gamble is worth it.”

“I guess it is a gamble.” She paused. “Miss Eliza, how long did it take you not to be afraid of going places you’d never been with Mr. Mackay? John knew and loved St. Simons in his way. We’d been together here in Savannah. He knew Darien. He even knew Hopeton. Will it be too awful for me to go to live in a place John never even saw? You see, I keep clinging to the need to get back into the Lawrence house because it was ours. I keep believing that if only I could live there again, it would give me back a little bit of John. That’s

silly, isn’t it?” 297

“I don’t think it’s silly at all, and you’ve hit right on an area where people differ so much. Some people do far better in the old, familiar surroundings where memories and images abound. Others fare better starting over where there aren’t so many painful reminders, where they aren’t clinging to what is no longer. No one traveled more expertly or extensively, from what I understand, than your John. Mark Browning told me once that the man could feel right at home almost anywhere on earth within five minutes!”

Anne knew her face brightened, because she felt the brightness inside. “I just thought of something. For all I know, John might absolutely revel in everything about Marietta!”

On a short laugh, Miss Eliza said, “You know, he just might do exactly that.”

Because of time lost from work during their leisurely breakfast yesterday at the Exchange Coffee House, Anne was not surprised that it was nearly sundown the next day before John Couper knocked

again at the Mackay door. One look at the boy and she knew something troubling had happened.

“It comes as no surprise to anyone,” he said as he hung his top hat and warm cape on the hall tree in the entrance hall, “but I knew I wouldn’t sleep well tonight if I didn’t know for sure that you ladies had seen the Savannah paper today. Grandpapa’s best friend, Mr. Thomas Spalding, is dead. He did what he believed was right at the Milledgeville convention. Pushed through Georgia’s vote on the slave state Compromise and started for home. The old gentleman got as far as his big house in Darien—was

“Ashantilly,” Miss Eliza said.

“Yes. Now his son’s home since Mrs. Spalding’s death. The old gentleman died at Ashantilly.”

“You and Fanny and I must go to his funeral,” Anne said. “He’s always been such a part of my childhood on St. Simons. I don’t remember a time when our family wasn’t making the trip up to Mr. Spalding’s Sapelo Island place. Or when his oarsmen weren’t bringing him to Cannon’s Point. I have to represent the