Desert Hearts (18 page)

Mrs. Gray waved him away and he stood up, letting her take his place. She pulled Elizabeth against her breast and held her like a child. “There, there, dear, let it all out.”

Michael stood there awkwardly and then became conscious of a whining and barking from the back.

“Should I let the dog in, ma’am,” he asked. “He might comfort her a little.”

Mrs. Gray nodded as she went on rocking. Orion almost knocked Michael down in his eagerness to get to his mistress, but once he entered the parlor, he only pressed up against her, crooning low in his throat as he thrust his nose into her hand.

“I’d better go then, Mrs. Gray,” said Michael, feeling terribly awkward. He had no real place here, much as he wanted it.

Mrs. Gray nodded and he bowed and left.

Elizabeth was lost in a pain that was inarticulable. It felt like the only way to release it was through her body: she wanted to beat her head, she wanted to open a vein, she wanted to bite through to her very marrow. Her sobs went so deep that in a few minutes she was retching, though she had eaten nothing since she had heard of Thomas’s death. Losing Thomas meant losing the person who had stood between her and the loss of her family. He had taken their place immediately, before she had had time to grieve for them. Now that he was gone, so were they, all over again. She didn’t think she would live through it.

Mrs. Gray stayed with her, letting her grieve and only holding her back from hurting herself. When at least the worst paroxysms of grief were over, Elizabeth knelt by the sofa, her head against it, her face swollen and her dress soaked with tears. Orion was pressed up against her and for the first time since he had come in she was conscious of his presence and reached out to pull him closer.

“Come, my dear, you are exhausted,” Mrs. Gray said, gently pulling her up. “Let me get you into bed.”

Elizabeth let herself be led into the bedroom. She curled up on the bed and was asleep almost instantly. Mrs. Gray pulled a quilt up over her and, pushing her tangled hair back from her face, murmured, “Poor lamb.”

When she left, she almost tripped over Orion, who had lain down in the bedroom doorway.

“I have some things to do at my own home, Orion. Will you guard your mistress for me?”

Orion gave her a measured look, as though to say, “Don’t worry, she is in good hands with me, ma’am.”

* * * *

Elizabeth slept most of the day away. When she finally awoke, the sun was almost down and the room was in shadows. She lay there for a minute, trying to remember why she felt so exhausted, why she only desired unconsciousness. Then she saw Thomas’s second-best blouse hanging over the chair. His left epaulet had begun to pull off and she had intended to mend that as well as strengthen the buttons. She would never have the chance to do that small wifely duty. She would never be able to do anything for Thomas again.

The tears started again, but this time her grief was easier to handle. This time she cried only for Thomas, not for her family or herself, but for the kind man who had taken a young girl under his protection. Who had never done anything to make her unhappy. “Oh, Thomas,” she whispered brokenly. She was back standing on the porch, watching him turn to give her one last wave. If only she had run after him, if only she had flung herself in his arms and kissed him and said she was sorry for her mood that morning.

She had to use the privy and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She had eaten nothing for twenty-four hours and felt a little dizzy. She almost tripped over Orion.

“I almost stepped on you, you foolish dog,” she said, her voice hoarse from all the crying.

The dog scrambled up and pressed close to her skirt. It almost seemed to her that he was trying to take Thomas’s place as her support. His last puppy mannerisms had dropped away overnight, or so it seemed, and he stood there as calmly and steadily as a grown dog.

When she got back from the privy, Mrs. Gray was just coming in the door, followed by her striker carrying a covered pot.

“I am glad to see you up, my dear.” And looking more yourself, she thought. The blank, trancelike look was gone, thank God.

Elizabeth nodded.

“Private, put the soup in the kitchen and take these rolls and cakes,” said the colonel’s wife, handing him the basket she had been carrying. “Just a little something from the officers’ wives, my dear. Now come, let me help you wash up and we’ll sit down together for a bowl of that soup.”

Elizabeth hadn’t thought she could even look at food, much less taste it, but her appetite surprised her. She finished a bowl of soup, two pieces of corn bread, and felt better.

“Charles and I want you to come and stay with us for a while,” said Mrs. Gray after they had finished.

“Oh, no, I can’t inconvenience you and the colonel like that, Mrs. Gray,” Elizabeth protested. “And I need to get used to being on my own.”

Being on your own is one thing, thought Mrs. Gray. Being homeless is another. Clearly in her grief, Elizabeth had forgotten that army widows gave up their quarters almost immediately. Once a husband died, the wife of any man was out of the army and on her way home as soon as she was able to travel. Except that Elizabeth had no home. A fact Mrs. Gray didn’t want to remind her of.

“Why don’t we talk it over in the morning, then,” was all she said.

Elizabeth agreed.

“You will be all right for tonight, my dear?”

“Yes, Mrs. Gray. You have done so much already. And please thank everyone for the food.”

Elizabeth walked her to the door, her hand resting on Orion’s head. After Mrs. Gray left, she sat down on the sofa. She would often sit here of an evening, doing her mending or knitting while Thomas took the chair opposite and read. She had always felt so comfortable and safe in her marriage. Presumably Thomas had too. She had loved Thomas, of that she had no doubt. She had expressed it in a variety of ways. He must have experienced it, for he had said she had made him happy….

Was that all a good wife did, she wondered. Make a home for her husband. Cook his meals, darn his socks, entertain their friends? Put up with the rigors of army life with grace and humor? She had done all that, so she supposed that made her a good wife.

Shouldn’t there have been something more she was giving him? Surely love shouldn’t have felt so safe, so much a habit? Had she ever risked anything for Thomas? Oh, from a civilian perspective, she supposed it would look as though she risked some danger. But she had relied on him so completely to take care of her that she had hardly been conscious of the dangers.

Had she really made him happy, giving him only a part of herself? The tears started again and the sense of her own shortcomings. If only she could
know
that what she had given had been enough for him. Had he meant what he had said to Michael Burke? She had to talk with him, had to know exactly how Thomas had looked and sounded his last moments on earth.

She should have been with him. He should have died in his own bed, years from now, with her holding his hand. With her…. She got up suddenly and walked over to the small glass-fronted cabinet where they kept their few pieces of good china and two shelves of books and pulled out Thomas’s Bible. Its leather cover was worn and the pages had lost almost all their gilt edging. She turned to the Psalms and as she read, imagined herself next to her husband, offering the comfort of her hand and heart and the well-known words. As she read them aloud, she thought, surely Thomas would somehow hear her. Please, God, she implored, let my love reach him wherever he is. “Lo, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death….” She could see him walking a dark valley, alone, and she pictured herself running after him, grasping his hand. He looked down and smiled at her and pulled her into his arms. And then he left her. Just before he disappeared, he turned back and smiled, just as he had on that last morning.

She huddled sobbing on the sofa until she had no more tears and then stumbled back to bed.

* * * *

The funeral was two days after Thomas Woolcott had been brought in and everyone wondered whether his widow would attend. Word had spread that Mrs. Woolcott had been sick with grief. But early in the morning, Mrs. Gray led Elizabeth out. She was very pale, and her eyes looked bruised from all her crying, but she nodded to all those who approached her with great dignity and whispered her thank-yous as she received the condolences of the officers and their wives.

The service was mercifully short. When the captain read the Twenty-third Psalm, Elizabeth had to dig her fingers into her hands to keep from crying. She would not start. She would not disgrace Thomas by giving in to her grief.

The funeral procession was also brief, for the small cemetery was right inside the stockade. Thomas’s flag-covered coffin was carried on a caisson and the colonel and his wife and Elizabeth followed behind. Thomas’s company brought up the rear and many of the men had tears in their eyes as they saw his coffin lowered.

Michael’s eyes were dry, but his heart was aching for Elizabeth. She looked so small and alone as she stepped forward to toss a handful of red dirt on the coffin. God bless the Grays, he thought as the colonel’s wife put an arm around her waist and led her away.

There was food and drink for the officers and noncommissioned officers back at the colonel’s quarters, and Michael intended to pay his respects quickly and then leave.

Captain Taggert and Lieutenant Cooper came up the stairs behind him and he heard Cooper mutter something about the “damned mick.” His face burned but he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of acknowledging the insult.

“I am glad you came, Sergeant Burke,” said Mrs. Gray, greeting him warmly. “Mrs. Woolcott especially wanted to speak with you.” Mrs. Gray’s voice became chillier and more formal as she turned to greet Captain Taggert and Mr. Cooper. “So good of you to come. Please help yourself to some refreshments.”

‘Twas a strange, cold thing, this reception, thought Michael as he nodded and chatted and filled himself a plate. Elizabeth was surrounded and he stood off to the side, observing the ritual. Back home, before the famine, there would have been some
life
in the room. Someone would have toasted the dead man and someone else told at least one funny story about him. There was nothing in this gathering to bring Thomas back to life in their hearts and no stories to pass down to keep him in their memories.

Cooper was hovering around Elizabeth as though he had some special right to be there. Michael had to admit that the man looked genuinely sympathetic, but he wanted to knock him down anyway. But then the colonel called Cooper over and people drifted away and Elizabeth was left alone for a moment.

I’ll just be goin’ over and offerin’ my sympathy and then I’ll be out of here, thought Michael as he approached her.

“I wanted to tell you how sorry I am, Mrs. Woolcott,” he said formally.

She looked up at him and this time he could tell she saw him, because her face softened and her eyes filled.

She offered her hand and he took it. “I have been wanting to thank you, Sergeant, for all you did for Thomas.”

“ ‘Twas very little, ma’am.”

“I would like to talk with you more about Thomas’s last moments sometime, Sergeant.”

“Are ye sure ye are up to it, ma’am?”

“I promise I will not collapse as I did the other night, Sergeant. I need to hear it again to take it in better than I was able the first time. If you don’t mind?” Elizabeth added hesitantly.

“Not at all, ma’am.”

“Perhaps you could come by to our…my quarters for a cup of tea when you go off duty tomorrow?”

“I would be happy to.”

Mrs. Taggert came up behind him and greeted Elizabeth, and Michael became conscious that he was still holding her hand in his. “Em, well, good day, Mrs. Woolcott,” he stammered and, bowing to both the ladies, left Elizabeth to her duties.

“She is holding up very well, don’t you think, Sergeant Burke. I am very proud of her,” said the colonel’s wife, coming over to stand next to him.

“Em, yes, ma’am.”

They both watched as Lieutenant Cooper brought Elizabeth a glass of punch and a small plate of food.

“Oh dear,” murmured Mrs. Gray.

“I beg your pardon, ma’am?” said Michael, leaning down to catch her words.

“Elizabeth will be moving in with us at the end of the week. I do hope we won’t have the lieutenant hovering around. I’ve always suspected this, but my husband would never believe me. Men!”

“Suspected what, Mrs. Gray?”

“That Mr. Cooper was drawn to Mrs. Woolcott. And now he is hanging around her like a bee over a flower. And when she is at her most vulnerable.”

The idea that Cooper would even think of Elizabeth in that way made Michael furious. And what have you been doin’, boyo? he thought, being honest with himself.

“Surely he isn’t thinking Mrs. Woolcott has anything on her mind but her husband?”

“For today, you are right, Sergeant. But what will she be thinking of tomorrow when it fully sinks in that she must be out of her quarters in a day or so? We are happy to have her with us indefinitely, but living with an old pair like us is no long-term solution for a young and attractive woman, Sergeant.”

“
Día
,” murmured Michael. “I had been forgetting that she would have to leave.”

“The army is a hard place for women, Sergeant Burke, as I well know.” Mrs. Gray patted his arm and said reassuringly, “She will be here for a while, Sergeant, my husband and I will see to that.”

“Yes, ma’am. Well, I’ll takin’ my leave, Mrs. Gray.”

Whatever had the colonel’s lady been meaning, reassuring him as though she thought he were an interested party? Elizabeth Woolcott had just lost her beloved husband. She wouldn’t be interested in anyone, especially not a poor Irish noncom like himself. She would go home and he would never see her again. Go home where? he wondered. Back East? Did she have any family left there? And if she didn’t, how would she survive, with only a small army pension to support her? A woman in her circumstances had few choices. But, Jesus, she wouldn’t consider Cooper one of them, would she?