Time After Time (181 page)

“Do you think we won’t be together, Phe?” Rebecca asked gravely.

“If we can whip the Rebs by fall, I’ll be back with Miss Hampton, but you and Matilda won’t be returning on any account. If the fighting continues, my father wants me at home until it’s over. It’s so silly. The war will never reach Middletown.”

Margaret looked out over the gardens beyond the window. She hoped rather than believed the girl was correct. The unspoken wish charged the air between the four of them. Even Phoebe’s tone seemed forced, as if she were trying to make it so through sheer force of humor.

“Since we didn’t hear from you at commencement, will you give us a benediction now?” Matilda asked.

Margaret smiled. “I will tell you what I wish for each of you. For Rebecca, I desire to see you put away the sadness that has entered your heart. I miss the jolly that tempered your seriousness. Set Emery aside once and forever. Be our Rebecca again.” The girl looked at her, eyes gleaming, and nodded.

“For Phoebe, I hope you will learn humility. It’s not that you don’t recognize it, my dear, but that you do not act on it. I wish you would live the virtues you know to be true and right.” Phoebe grimaced, unconvinced and accepting at once. It was not her accustomed expression, but then she grinned playfully and balance was restored.

“For Matilda, I wish rebellion.” All three Girls’ eyes snapped up at that now-charged word. “Playfulness is a better term, maybe,” Margaret offered. Turning back to Matilda, she said, “You’re perfectly biddable, submissive, and reverent. But I would see you know what
you
want and pursue it.” The girl contemplated her fingertips, finally inclining her head slightly to acknowledge the words.

Margaret concluded, “To the class of eighteen sixty-one, and one member of the class of eighteen sixty-two, then, I wish happiness, modesty, self-knowledge, and discovery. May God bless you all the days of your lives.”

They exited the building then, into a world of carriages, bustle, and noise. Rebecca embraced her and whispered in her ear, “Miss Hampton, my wish for you is for greater faith in yourself and a revival of your belief in love.”

Over the next two days, Margaret pondered those words for hours at a time. Was this wisdom or naiveté?

When she could not decide, she contemplated skipping her assignation with Theo. What good could result from it? At best it would be pleasant but painful. At worst … well, Margaret was not sure which outcome was the worst. The rekindling of shallowly buried feelings? Rejection? Heartbreak?

She wanted fervently to believe in what had been written in Theo’s eyes when they had danced. Perhaps he was finally prepared to change. He always seemed to acknowledge that he needed to. He had said to her more than once that his mother held too much sway over his actions and that his comportment and values were not in accord. He could never seem, however, to do anything about it.

On Saturday afternoon, even as she walked along Main Street toward Ferree’s, Margaret wasn’t sure whether she would go in. Perhaps he would be wise for both of them and fail to appear. But when she looked in the large, plate glass window, there he was.

He fidgeted with his waistcoat, his body tense and ill at ease. He finally managed to settle his hands, but then his foot started to tap out a rhythm on the floor. His insecurity and vulnerability sent an aching chill through her body, inculcating hope where there had previously been none. The dull nervousness that had been cocooning her squeezed her shoulders. The stakes were so high. Perhaps she should leave before he noticed her.

At that moment, Theo turned and saw her, his mouth breaking into a wide smile. She entered and decided the best course of action — that which left them open to the least scrutiny — was to feign that she had unexpectedly encountered an old friend. But even as she began the act, Margaret knew this was the worst of all possible outcomes for them both. He was smitten and joyful. She was wary yet hopeful. How would they hurt one another this time?

“Miss Hampton,” he said a bit too loudly. “I say! Would you like to sit and join me for an ice cream?” Margaret stifled a giggle and assented.

After she settled herself he said, “How have you been?” leaning too close and putting too much warmth in his voice.

“Well. And you?”

He paused and smiled at her. “Ah, the first decision of the conversation. Do I answer honestly or congenially?”

“We are long past congeniality, don’t you think?”

“So far past that I thought perhaps we had come to a new frontier of it. Perhaps propriety has been reestablished?”

“Oh, no. Once it has been left behind, one can’t return to it.”

“Where are we then? Intimacy?”

“Surely you won’t press a lady for an answer to so … encumbered a question?”

He shook his head, but his eyes disagreed. “I won’t force you to label it intimacy, but that is what it is. At least here and now, call me Theo.”

Margaret arched a brow at him and asked again, “How have you been, honestly,
Theo
?”

“I’m frustrated,
Margaret
. I feel like my life has been a series of compromises and now, when at last I might be able to achieve something and to act on my principles, I can only do so by hurting someone I love.”

That was provocative. He did see the heart of the problem in his life. But recognizing it and knowing how to change were not the same. Did he know how to rectify the flaw?

She asked, “In what way?”

“If it were up to me, I would’ve enlisted months ago, but Mother … ”

Margaret nodded. She understood entirely too thoroughly what the phrase “but Mother” could communicate. If he were still using it, then he saw less than she hoped he might. Refusing to give up entirely, however, she tilted her head and asked the question that disquieted her sleep, “Will this war achieve something?”

He leaned back and considered. “If it doesn’t, it will be a grievous failure and one we as a nation can ill afford. I believe in this cause as much as I have believed in anything. These United States are knit together by history, brotherhood, and commerce. Our united republic must be protected. Equally strongly do I believe slavery is an evil that must end. It poisons our liberty and threatens our civic virtue.”

His words were, by themselves, harmless enough. Strung together in this way, they might appear in any number of newspapers and magazines littering the end tables of Middletown’s parlors. Yet taken together, out of Theo’s mouth, they sounded disharmonious. How many times had he said this precise thing to her before? And here he was pontificating again and still not acting on his passion.

Margaret felt a scream building in her throat at his continuing inertia, but she swallowed it and said only, “I see.”

Theo canted toward her, his blue eyes lit with the fire burning within him — the fire he seemed only to be able to douse. “Don’t you agree?”

She pursed her lips and spoke precisely, knowing he would not appreciate the specificity of her language. “That slavery is a stain that must be eradicated? Aye, I do. But must it be by war?
That
is a force that cannot be contained or controlled. I know loss, as do you, and that knowledge will proliferate ’ere the guns are stilled. You may be right but, Theo, I fear for us all.”

The words might be of politics and war, but this was a conversation about why things hadn’t changed between them in two years. His core was racked with passion but his actions too restrained. She was all caution and practicality. A fine pair they were.

“There are times when war is necessary,” he was saying, the all-too-familiar fervor still in his voice and face. “Millions are in bondage. ‘The crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.’”

“Don’t quote John Brown to me,” she snapped, no longer able to pretend this was not personal. “I taught Mrs. Stowe before it was fashionable to do so. But don’t act so sanguine about the trail of blood that led from Kansas to Harpers Ferry and which is poised to overwhelm the nation. If we let go of the very things that make us human, there is no telling where this ends — if it ends. War is a hungry beast. Who will feed it?”

Theo nodded, processing her words. He sipped his soda water and turned to stare out on Main Street. Then, with a coolness that dashed all the delicate longings in her stomach, he said, “I detest sitting here uselessly knowing I could be elsewhere doing
something
.”

She sighed, a deep, defeated loosening of breath. With those words — so accurate and so daft — the hope that he might have changed vanished, leaving her empty and peeved. Her jaw set and she swallowed.

With as much patience as she could muster, she said, “Long have I encouraged you to act on your ambitions. But today, I ask what you will do if you enlist but find yourself no more convinced of your usefulness.”

“I feel more certain I will never act at all than that I could act and remain … ”

“In a state of
ennui
?”

“As you say, Margaret.”

He smiled at her with something in his face, the lines around his eyes crinkled with warmth and affection. She felt an overwhelming desire to box his ears, the foolish, adorable man.

Instead, she told him the truth, as directly as she could, knowing it would extinguish the hope she wanted to believe in but couldn’t. “Your mother will agree to your enlistment eventually, I have no doubt. Whether you will remain frozen is, as it ever was, up to you.”

• • •

Theo wasn’t sure what had happened. One minute he was watching Margaret’s lips. He experienced her voice as much as heard it. It was low, musical, husky, and enthralling. Had she always sounded so? The cadence vibrated through his body, awakening every nerve. He hadn’t felt this attentive in years. His life was a pale imitation of itself without Margaret in it.

There was too much space between them, however. A week ago, he’d been able to hold her. This afternoon it was all propriety and distance. For the first time in memory, he wished someone would announce there was to be a dance.

Then he understood what she’d said and everything went silent.

Into the void came his startled voice. “Pardon?”

Margaret sighed as if his request taxed her. “The source of the lethargy is not your mother or Josiah Trinkett. It’s you. If you want your life to change, Theo, change it.”

“Are you saying I’m a coward?”

“No. I’m saying you have become accustomed to stasis, so much so you’ve forgotten you are capable of achievement. If you wish to act, act.”

Theo took another sip of his soda water. He could feel his shoulders harden and his hands close into fists due to her words. The instinctive response made him even angrier. She was, as ever, correct. Hang her.

“Well, if we’ve established that I don’t change, it’s at least a relief to know the same is true of you,” he finally spat out.

“In what way?” she asked.

“You too are dissatisfied with your life, are you not? Yet you don’t alter it. You’re ever ready with advice for others, but you don’t take your recommendations to heart.”

She shook her head. “I’ve not your resources. Your money. Your job. Your sex.”

“Rarely have I met a woman so gifted.” Theo could see the breath catch in her throat. As angry as he was, Margaret equally stirred him. He had difficulty separating out which feelings were the result of her calling him a coward and which were caused by movement in the vicinity of her bosom. It was a stupid emotion to have on any account, but particularly in reference to such a maddening woman.

This conversation was at an end. He rose. “I apologize. I have permitted my frustration to get the better of me. I can tell you are busy. I shan’t keep you.”

Margaret looked surprised and hurt, but Theo was already collecting his hat and backing toward the door.

“Good afternoon!”

Once on the street, Theo began walking briskly toward his office. He had covered his rendezvous with Margaret by telling Mother he needed to retrieve some documents. Now he had to obtain some fool paperwork or else it would raise her suspicions.

He jammed his key into the lock and, after a moment’s struggle, managed to open the door. It clanged in protest, but he stomped over to his desk enjoying the ruckus his feet made. As he shifted things around, attempting to find a prop to convince Mother, emotion overcame him and he sat with a thump.

Margaret was right.

Here he was, looking for some pretense to hide the fact that he wanted to meet a woman. In a few weeks, he would be forty-years-old. What was he doing?

Since he had finished college, he had told himself the time for action would come. He had whiled away years on the promise of later. Later had come and gone a thousand times over. From the first, the only thing in his way had been himself.

He lacked fortitude, certainty, and the capacity to
do
. But he had done, hadn’t he? In countless ways he had erected barriers to change. Out of fear or laziness or complicity, he had been the author of his own misfortune.

He could have insisted that Mother leave Middletown with him. He could have run for public office. He could have written about the causes close to his heart. He could have worked for change in so many unknown ways because he had never thought to
act
. He had dawdled and dithered and debated. Even a quarter of an hour prior, he had rationalized why he couldn’t serve in the war even as he had articulated precisely why service was so vital.

Margaret had seen it from the first, hadn’t she? Oh, Margaret.

He’d given away a lifetime’s happiness because he had thought she would never let him know rest. Without her, he had known nothing but rest. He had been asleep, and her words had awakened him. And how had he repaid her, but with anger and resentment?

Theo stalked across the room and began digging through a bin of old newspapers. Finally, he found the one with a notice about the organization of new companies for the Fifth Regiment in Middletown. He sat at his desk and began preparing a letter. His life was going to change, starting this instant.

• • •