Celia Garth: A Novel (21 page)

They saw it, and then they heard it. Even at this distance the crash was so fierce that they ducked backward and put up their arms to shield their eyes. After an instant they looked again. Above the island and the men-of-war were pillars of smoke, sparkling with the exploding shells. At the head of the line the admiral’s flagship roared and flashed as her guns returned the fire. She looked as if she was sending out bolts of lightning.

The flagship passed the island and came on. Celia could not tell whether the ship had been damaged or not.

The guns of the fort roared away as other ships sailed into the smoke. And now Celia could see that one ship was gravely damaged—a mast was broken and dangling down, dragging part of the sails down with it—but the ship struggled crookedly on. Then in the midst of the black clouds she saw another ship catch fire. The fire leaped across the deck, catching the great sails like sheets of paper, and Celia stood with her lips parted, her whole body tingling with triumph, and Marietta cried out.

“Oh I can’t bear it—men on that ship—”

Slowly Celia turned her head. Marietta leaned against the gable, her eyes covered. Celia looked back at the ship. She had forgotten there were men on it. But even so, they were the king’s men, trying to kill her friends. She did not care if they got killed first.

“Miss Celia,” Marietta said brokenly, “I’d like to go in.”

Celia said, “All right,” and Marietta climbed back through the window. Celia stayed where she was, watching and listening, now looking at some detail through the glass, now lowering the glass to get a view of the whole. It all had a dreadful glory: the roars and lightnings, the blazing vessel, the other ships fighting their way through the smoke; on shore the thousands of soldiers in their many-colored uniforms, the people crowding roofs and windows, the other people fleeing by the boats in the river. Celia stood there spellbound.

The ships came in. Not all of them, for besides the one set afire from the fort another ran aground and was burned by her own crew so the Americans could not take her, and the men in the fort did serious damage to several others. Those that passed the fort came as close as they could to Charleston, though this was not very close because of the ships the Americans had sunk across the front of town. But they were near enough for Celia to see them clearly through her glass: the guns on deck pointing toward her, the sailors in wide flapping breeches and tarry pigtails, ready to shoot.

By St. Michael’s clock the time was nearly six. Celia’s legs, her back, her head and neck, were stiff and aching. Her hands were black from the dust of the roof, and there were black streaks on her skirt. She wondered if she was wicked, to have been so exhilarated by a battle. Well, not exactly wicked. But she might as well own up to it—she did not have Marietta’s gentleness, or Jimmy’s. She thought of Luke. He would not have shuddered when that ship caught fire, any more than she had. Luke would have shouted with glee.

What she needed now was to get washed. Climbing back through the attic window she went down to her room. In the mirror she looked even worse than she had thought—her hair was like last year’s bird-nest, her cap was all on one side, there was a black mark down her cheek, and her kerchief looked as if she had used it to dust the furniture. As she unpinned her cap she heard a knock on her door, and Marietta looked in.

“Miss Celia, Mr. Jimmy’s here. He says he can’t stay but a few minutes so please hurry—”

Celia was already hurrying. Jimmy waited at the foot of the staircase, and she almost tumbled into his arms.

He kissed her long and hard. At length he drew back a little and stood looking down at her as if his eyes would eat her up. He seemed not to notice that her hair was tousled and her face dirty; he gazed at her as if he had never seen a woman so beautiful.

“I was afraid you’d get away before I could say good-by,” he said. He spoke softly, almost in a whisper. “Godfrey told me Burton had definitely decided to leave town. Will he take you to Bellwood or to—”

Celia stiffened her courage to answer. “Burton left yesterday.”

She felt Jimmy give a start. He began to reply. She did not listen, but rushed on, explaining why she had stayed behind, why she could
not
go.

“I want us to be together, Jimmy!” she finished. “Whatever happens to you, I want it to happen to me.”

For a moment Jimmy said nothing. His black eyes were intense in his gaunt face. She felt his arms tighten around her. He kissed her again, this time less with passion than with a deep understanding. His lips against hers, he said, “I did think you ought to go. I still think you should have gone. But now that you’ve made a fool of yourself, I’m glad of it.”

Celia felt a thrill of joy. She did not care what might happen. This was worth it.

But Jimmy stepped abruptly back from her. He held her hands, but now he spoke not like a lover but like a soldier giving commands. “Take every pitcher and bucket in the house,” he ordered, “and fill them, some with water and some with sand. Put them all over the house—close to the walls so you can get at them but won’t stumble over them in the dark.”

Celia remembered the burning ship. “You mean we may have fires in town?”

Jimmy had no time to answer questions. He went on with his orders. “Take some blankets and drinking-water down to the cellar. When the firing starts, you and Marietta stay there. Start filling those buckets now, before dark—keep one by you tonight when you go to bed.” He demanded, almost roughly, “You’ll do this?”

Celia’s throat felt thick, but she managed to say, “Yes, Jimmy.”

“I don’t know when I can see you again. But—” he smiled, and the smile was like a sudden light on his face—“I’ll get word to Mr. Moreau that we’re to be married as planned. Next week. I’ve been counting. The thirteenth of April is Thursday.”

As if I hadn’t been counting too, thought Celia. Aloud she said, “And we won’t have to live at your house with Miles and those strange officers. I can stay right here, and when you get leave we can be alone together, with Marietta and Amos to take care of us.”

“And I love you,” Jimmy said softly, “more than—”

There was a pounding at the front door and a man shouted Jimmy’s name.

“Time’s up,” said Jimmy. He kissed her again quickly, and opened the door. Before she could say good-by he had whisked down the steps and away.

Celia called Marietta. They went out to the back yard, and using garden-spades they filled four buckets with loose earth. Each of them took a bucket to her room and they put the others on the staircase landings. Celia was not at all sure this was necessary. Not only was this house built of brick with a slate roof, but so were the houses on both sides and most of the others near by. In its early days Charleston had had several disastrous fires, so now most people built with brick, using as little wood as possible. But she wanted to do everything Jimmy had ordered. If he had scolded her for staying in town she would have been hurt and defiant, but after what he had said she was glowing with happiness. Now she knew she was necessary to him. Nobody had ever really needed her before.

That night the town was as quiet as if the British were back on the other side of the ocean where they belonged. The next day was Sunday, but Celia did not try to go to church. About mid-morning she heard the guns, but the firing was off-and-on and when she looked from the roof she saw that only a few shells were coming over the earthworks into town. Most of them were just burying themselves in the earthworks, sending up great explosions of dirt. But now she saw that not all the British missiles were exploding shells. Some of them were real balls of fire. She could see them blazing their way through the air. So this was what Jimmy had foreseen. Brick walls or not, if those things hit wooden posts and shutters they could make plenty of trouble. Celia went in and began to look for more buckets.

Again that night the guns were fairly quiet, but at dawn Monday they started again. All morning they boomed. The air was sultry, and acrid with smoke. Celia and Marietta carried blankets down to the cellar. Built with heavy brick walls and iron air-gratings at sidewalk level, the cellar was dim and dismal. It was not dirty, for Vivian kept house the way she did everything else, by demanding perfection of other people; but it was not inviting. Celia and Marietta agreed that they would not spend any time here unless things got really dangerous. When they had also brought down two chairs, and a covered jar of water and two cups, they went up to get their dinner.

While Marietta put on the rice to cook Celia went out to the garden to cut mustard greens. To her surprise, the guns had fallen silent. The smell of smoke had nearly all blown away, and she could hear birds twittering. From over the wall where Godfrey’s Bernard’s back yard touched this one, she heard him call to her, and she went to the gate.

Godfrey, who was out most of the time directing the storage of food supplies for the garrison, had been surprised to see that she had not left town with Burton. He made no protest, however; Celia got the impression that he had too much on his mind to care what anybody did. She asked him why the guns had stopped. He told her Sir Henry Clinton had sent a formal demand for surrender, and the guns would stay quiet until an answer was received.

“Surrender!” Celia exclaimed. “We’re not going to surrender, are we?”

“Of course not,” said Godfrey. “It’s just a formality.” He smiled a little, but it was a wry smile, almost mocking. Godfrey’s face was lined with fatigue. He pushed his handkerchief across his forehead. “This crazy weather!” he burst out. “We haven’t had an April heat-wave like this in twenty years.”

As he walked off Celia looked after him with a frown. Usually so jaunty, today Godfrey was troubled. His comment on the weather had been spoken with a fury hardly justified by a few days of merely uncomfortable heat. There was such a lot she did not understand.

Monday night was silent, hot, and sticky. When she came down Tuesday morning Celia told Marietta they could do very well with a cold dinner. Just cornbread and cheese, and a salad. After breakfast she went out to gather salad greens.

The lettuces grew in neat crisp rows. Celia stooped to pull up one of the heads. As her hand touched it she heard a long screaming whistle in the air. An object flashed by her and struck the ground between her and the stable, with such force that it shook the ground in ripples like those made by a stone thrown into water.

It had happened so suddenly that Celia had hardly moved. Now she heard the air full of screaming whistles, and thuds of things falling, and cries of panic. There was a tremendous noise as the thing in the garden exploded. The earth around it rose up like water from a fountain; the earth under Celia’s feet seemed to rise and strike her, and her face went down into the lettuce bed.

Her fall was so violent that the breath was knocked clean out of her chest. Struggling for air, she breathed in nothing much but grains of dirt. Choking and coughing, she managed to push herself up with her hands. For a moment the stable and trees and garden walls swung around her. Gradually as her head cleared she wiped her eyes on her sleeve and spit out the dirt in her mouth. She heard more whistling noises, and more sounds of people screaming and running in the street, and she saw more things flying in the air above her. She heard guns roaring from every direction, and now she knew what had happened. The rebels had refused to surrender and the attack had really begun.

The shell had made a hole five or six feet across, but falling in the grassy space between garden and stable it had done no harm. The near edge of the hole was about twenty feet ahead of her. Celia felt herself tremble as she thought, “If I had been standing there instead of here, I would be dead now.”

But she was not dead. Again, as on the night of that other bombardment, she had a sense of triumph. She rubbed her arm, grimy with garden soil, and the feel of her fingers on her healthy skin gave her a delicious pleasure. The guns were yelling and smashing as if they would split her ears. And she had thought the other attack was noisy! It seemed to her that until this minute she had never heard a real noise in her life.

But she was not as panicky as she had been that night. Jimmy had told her to take refuge in the cellar. As she turned toward the house she saw Marietta, just getting her own wits in order, running toward the back steps. Celia went to join her and they fled together down the cellar stairs.

Here in the musty dark they could hear the guns crashing, and through the street-gratings they could see running feet and hear screams—whether of pain or fright they could not tell. Before long Celia felt that her nerves were being torn to strings. For all she knew, half the town might be blown to pieces by now. Staying in the cellar was like being buried alive.

“Marietta!” she said sharply.

Marietta stood peering out of a sidewalk grating. She wheeled around. “Yes ma’am?”

“Let’s go up in the house,” said Celia. “I’m sick of this.”

“You and me both, Miss Celia!” Marietta exclaimed, and they ran up the cellar steps. After all, Celia was thinking, that shell this morning had landed in this yard by pure chance. The British might fire a thousand more before another one came close.

Up in the light again she found that her idea was reasonable. The bombardment was as fierce as ever, but no more shells had fallen on this lot. With Marietta she went up to the attic. From here they could see that a brick sidewalk not far away had been torn up, and over near the harbor-front threads of smoke showed them that some buildings were on fire. Marietta shivered, and wondered if many people had been hurt. Celia hoped not. But again she found that there was a dark fascination about it all.

The guns fired all that day and all that night. At dark Celia and Marietta dragged the mattresses off their beds and carried them down to the cellar, but they could not sleep. It all seemed more frightening at night. The explosions were so hideously brilliant; the fireballs, which were merely pink glimmers in the daylight, now in the dark looked like imps flying across the sky. When they had stayed in the cellar till they could bear it no longer Celia and Marietta went upstairs and looked out of the windows till they could bear that no longer, and they fled to the cellar again.