Heaven and Hell (64 page)

"Virgilia?"

"Yes. I would love that," she said softly. Because of the tumult he couldn't hear the words, but he understood. She took his arm. "I'll fix breakfast for us afterward."

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EMPIRE SIDE-WHEEL LINE.

The fast and favorite steamship

MISSOURI.

w. loveland, Commander

43

Three weeks after the parents' program at Mrs. Allwick's Academy, the term ended. For the last time until fall, the girls trooped noisily out the front door at 4:30 on a sparkling June afternoon. Several beaux waited on the broad, cool porch, including Sara Jane Oberdorf's apprentice undertaker.

Marie-Louise remained unforgiven for the tableau tragedy. Sweeping past, Sara Jane said sweetly, "Still no one waiting? Well, perhaps when you grow up in a few years." She clutched her young man. "Lyle.

How darling of you to be here."

Desolate, Marie-Louise pulled her books against her bosom and walked down the steep wrought-iron steps. Her head was lowered; she saw the shadow fall on her skirt. "Excuse me." She side-stepped, glanced up, and dropped the books.

"Miss Main." Theo German bowed and swept off his straw planter's hat, which had a peacock-feather band. He was again out of uniform.

"Allow me." He knelt to pick up the books.

"I thought--" Get hold of yourself, ninny. "I imagined you'd never speak to me after that dreadful evening. You must have thought I cut you."

"Of course not. I saw it was your father's doing." He straightened and offered his arm. "Do you have time for a stroll on the Battery?"

If I'm late, Mama will quiz me. And what if Papa should find out?

But Cooper's behavior at the program had lighted the fires of revolt in his daughter, and heightened her attraction to the young officer.

"Oh, yes," she said.

Her bosom accidentally touched his coat sleeve. She felt as though a lightning bolt had struck her. Theo smiled, taking note of the sudden pink in her cheeks. There was some in his as well.

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404

r~

The Year of the Locust 405

Bedazzling needles of reflected sunlight bobbed on the surface of the harbor. Gulls followed a fish trawler chugging in from the Atlantic.

Out at Sumter, above the ruins, the Union flag stood straight in the breeze.

"Do you often go about town without your uniform?" Marie-Louise asked, desperately trying to remember Mrs. Allwick's lessons on social conversation. Her mind was a mass of glue.

"I do," he said. "General Canby doesn't object, and it's easier for me to get people to talk. I get helpful insights about local feelings that way. Of course, there are a few people who refuse to say anything at all after they hear me speak."

"Because of your accent."

He laughed. "I don't have an accent. You do. I find it charming, though."

"Oh, Mr. German--Captain German--"

"How about Theo?" he said, warming her with the friendly innocence of his blue eyes. Marie-Louise was suddenly so in love she could have perished of ecstasy and sunk through the ground to China.

"All right, but you must call me Marie-Louise."

"With pleasure."

The gulls squawked and swooped. The young couple strolled under stately old trees near the water. Theo told her that he was twentyfour--she'd known he was a worldly older man the moment she saw

him--and attached to Canby's staff. "That day on the railroad, I was sightseeing. The loveliest sight I saw was in that passenger car."

"Papa was in a perfect fury when you gave the colored woman your seat." She sighed. "He's still fighting the war."

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"Your father and half of Charleston. Still, the other half's enchanting.

I've never encountered Southerners before, except for great lots of prisoners who naturally weren't in a good mood. I find Southerners are warm, charming people. And Carolina has a grand climate except in the summer."

"What did you mean about prisoners?"

He explained that he'd been commissioned in the last year of the War and posted to Camp Douglas, the huge prison compound south of Chicago. "We had thousands of inmates, but I heard shots fired only once, when a half-dozen attempted an escape. Only once did we feel any real danger. There was a Sunday in November of '64 when Chicago was seething with rumors that Confederate secret agents were going to

torch the city and liberate our captives. Nothing came of it. When the Prison was closed a year later, I decided to stay in the Army and see some of the country. I had never been out of Illinois until I came here."

406 HEAVEN AND HELL

He smiled again, lightly touching her mittened hand on his arm. "I was lucky to be posted to South Carolina. I'd like to settle here and escape the snow and cold weather forever."

"Will you always be in the Army?"

"I think not. I was a law apprentice when I joined up. I'd like to finish my studies and practice." Marie-Louise feared she'd topple off the esplanade and drown if he kept turning those blue eyes on her.

Other beaux strolling with their sweethearts drifted in and out of the dappled shade cast by the trees. Along one of the oyster-shell paths came an old black man waving a fly whisk and pushing a creaky two wheeled cart. He advertised his wares with a musical chant. "Buy melon.

Sweet winter melon here."

"Would you like a slice of musk melon?" Theo asked. She was too nervous to do more than laugh and nod, but he didn't seem to mind.

He bought slices from the vendor, bringing them back to the iron bench where he'd laid her books. Marie-Louise grasped the melon by means of a bit of paper wrapped around the rind. Careful as she was, the juicy melon leaked all over her chin. She was mortified.

Theo whipped out a handkerchief. "Allow me." With gentlemanly dabs, he dried her chin. Her body throbbed at every touch.

"I hope you don't think me too forward, Miss Main."

"Oh, no. But you must think me silly, nattering and giggling all
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the time. It's just that--" Did she dare? Yes, better to risk an explanation than lose him. "I'm not experienced with beaux. I've never really had one."

The melon dripped in his fingers. He bent toward her in the cool and breezy shade. "May I say it's my fervent hope that you'll never need another?"

That declaration brought her near the point of collapse. Then, astonishing her again, he leaned forward quickly and brushed his lips across the corner of hers.

A great silence enveloped her. The chant of the melon man was gone, and the gull cries, the whistle of a packet putting out to sea, even the frantic lubbing of her heart. Her nervousness dropped away as she stood near him, gazing at him, irrevocably changed. Girlhood was over.

In their hands, the melon slices dripped, pattering the oyster-shell path. Neither of them noticed.

Gradually she forced herself back to reality. She saw the slant of the light falling on the great gabled houses of South Battery. It was late.

"I must be going back to Tradd Street."

"May I escort you?"

"Certainly." This time there was no fumbling as she slipped her The Year of the Locust 407

arm around his. She felt at ease; womanly. No one paid them any heed as they strolled up Church in the mellow spring light.

"I'd love for you to meet my family," Theo said.

"I'd like that, too."

"I have eleven brothers and sisters."

"Good heavens," she cried.

He grinned. "I love them, but it did make for a crowded household, and skimpy portions at the table. Father's wage wasn't big enough to handle so many mouths. He's" a Lutheran minister."

"Oh, dear. Not an abolitionist, too?"

"Yes, he was."

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"And a Republican?"

"I'm afraid so. I'm the second youngest child, so I always had to sleep on the floor. We didn't have enough beds. It's the reason I joined the Army. To have a bed of my own and regular meals. Soldiers grouse about the poor food and bad mattresses. For me, it's the life of a prince."

Seeing the Tradd Street intersection but one square away, she said,

"Like you, I'm very glad the Army brought you here, Theo." She was shocked by her own boldness.

As they walked on, she told him about the loss of her brother off the North Carolina coast, and the harrowing moments in the sea when

she feared they'd all drown. "Papa was much less severe before Judah died. It did something to him, and he's never recovered."

"That's tragic. It does explain the way he reacted to me. I hope it isn't an impossible obstacle." In the shadow of a high brick wall, he faced her and clasped her hand. "I want to pay court to you in the proper way-- You're frowning."

"Well, it would be much easier if you were--not what you are."

"As in Mr. Shakespeare's play?"

"What?"

"Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? In other words, why arn I Romeo, a Montague?

An enemy? Will it truly make a difference?"

Marie-Louise went swirling down, into the blue whirlpools of his eyes, abandoning herself to emotions so fierce, she wondered if she could endure them. "No," she declared, all at once very certain of what she wanted. "No, it shall not."

"Your father--"

"No," she repeated confidently.

He left her at the gate of the Tradd Street house, promising to call formally the next afternoon. With a parting clasp of her hand, he was 8one, leaving her floating there, several feet above the mundane earth.

408 HEAVEN AND HELL

"No!" Cooper clattered his spoon against the bowl of lamb stew.

"I won't have some Yankee freebooter calling on my daughter."

Marie-Louise started to cry.

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Judith reached out to squeeze her daughter's hand. To her husband she said, "It's a perfectly reasonable request."

"If he were a Southerner. One of us."

"Aunt Brett married a Yankee officer--" Marie-Louise began.

"Without causing the collapse of civilization as we know it," Judith remarked.

The irony was lost. "I refuse to have some yellow dog from Canby's staff sniffing around my family."

"You make it sound so crude and nasty," Marie-Louise cried. "It isn't like that."

"Please reconsider, Cooper," Judith began.

He shot his chair back and rose. "Allow my daughter to be courted by a shoulder-strap whose father is a Bible-thumping Republican? I'd sooner have that fellow LaMotte in my house. The decision is made I am going to the garden to work while the light lasts."

With quick strides that rapped hard on the polished floor, he left the room. Judith braced for a new flood of tears. Instead, she was surprised by what she saw in her daughter's eyes. A silent rage not at all typical of a girl so young.

Marie-Louise wiped her cheeks. She kept staring at the doorway through which her father had disappeared.

Later, when it was dark, Judith went quietly to the piazza overlooking the garden. Insects circled the oil lamp burning on a wicker table. In a chair beside the table, Cooper had fallen asleep, his waistcoat open, his cravat undone.

Stepping over papers covered with columns of figures, she leaned over to wake him by kissing his forehead. Cooper jerked erect, momentarily unsure of his whereabouts.

"It's almost ten o'clock, Cooper. Marie-Louise ran up to her room right after we ate, and I've scarcely heard a sound since. I think you should go make peace, if that's possible."

"I did nothing wrong. Why must I--?" Judith's look silenced him. Rubbing his eyes, he stood. "All right."

She listened to his slow step ascending the stairs. Heard a faint knock. "Marie-Louise?" She was gazing into the dark garden when he
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came bolting down again, shouting. "She's gone."

"What are you saying?"

"She must have used the side stairway. Her room's empty, half her clothes are missing. She's gone!"

V

The Year of the Locust 409

The speck-like insects circled the flickering lamp. Judith allowed herself anger for the first time. "This is your doing. You've driven her out.

"That's impossible. She's a mere girl."

"Of marriageable age, I remind you. Many South Carolina girls are mothers at fourteen. You misjudged her attachment to that young man. Because of him--and you--she's run away."

A muffled pounding broke- through the mists of sleep. Trying to interpret the sound, Madeline slowly raised her head. She heard Prudence Chaffee stirring in the other bedroom.

The pounding grew louder. "Please--someone--"

A woman's voice. Madeline thought she should recognize it, but she didn't. She was still too sleepy. Was it one of the freedmen's wives?

Prudence lighted her lamp and brought it to the door of Madeline's room. Her plain, stout face was alert, her eyes anxious. "Do you think it's trouble with the school?"

"I don't know." Barefoot, Madeline went to the front door. "It's the middle of the night."

It was actually morning, she discovered as soon as she opened the door. Between the great trees she saw jigsaw pieces of orange-tinted sky. The light silhouetted a disheveled figure on the stoop.

"Aunt Madeline -- "

She couldn't have been more stunned if Andrew Johnson had come calling. "Marie-Louise! What are you doing here?"

"Please let me come in, and I'll explain. I walked all night."

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"You walked all the way from Charleston?" Prudence exclaimed.

"Twenty miles, by yourself, on a dark road, and you didn't think twice about it?"

In the space of a heartbeat Madeline knew something dire had happened. A death? Some act of violence? Then she saw the bulging valise. People didn't pack a valise in order to report a tragedy.