High Hearts (32 page)

Stuart laughed. He admired Mars ever since they were at West Point together. Mars was in the graduating class when Stuart was a plebe. Mars’s good looks, horsemanship, and open manner made him the idol of everyone. It was difficult for Stuart, an ambitious man, to understand that Mars’s ambitions rested elsewhere. Perhaps if Mars were a Presbyterian instead of an Episcopalian, he’d snap into shape.

Mars was relieved that Stuart hadn’t found out about the sacks of stolen grain. He was also delighted that Stuart granted him three days’ leave in Richmond.

The earth shifting on her axis, away from summer’s warmth, seemed to Nash a symbol. By degrees he was moving away from the simple love offered by Geneva. If she had not enlisted, he wondered if he would have been able to pick up the marriage where he had left it.

He listened to other men, lonesome for their wives, imagining the day when the war would be over. They assumed they’d stride through the front door to be greeted by wives and children. But this war was changing everybody. Perhaps the human race backs into the future, unable to see anything save its own past. He knew he was changing. He didn’t know how much of it was due to the war and how much of it was due to getting to know his wife. True, he was learning about Geneva in extraordinary circumstances, but he suspected he would have discovered her true personality anyway. At Chatfield it just would have taken longer. She wasn’t the wife of his dreams. He knew she was a good person, but she irritated him by her ignorance. She cared nothing for the things he loved—books, good conversation, intellectual respect; and he cared nothing for the things she loved—horses, adventure, and war.

Nash turned the page of
Tristram Shandy
. The oil lamp sputtered. Geneva, unusually quiet for her, was writing a letter. He observed her profile. Knowing that his feelings about her were changing frightened him, and yet he felt a deep affection for her. Over and over he reminded himself she was risking her life to be with him. The least he could do was to be kind to her.

She looked over at him. “Good book?”

“Yes. Who is the lucky recipient of your letter?”

Smiling, she said, “It’s hard for me to sit still. That’s what I hate about writing. I’m writing Daddy.”

“Pretending to be in England?” He kept the book open, a signal he would return to it.

“No, I’m telling him the truth.” Nash’s eyes widened and she continued. “I can’t stand the thought that I’m lying to him.”

“Once he gets over the shock, I’m sure he’ll be pleased that you did tell him. No one likes being lied to, even when it’s for their own good.”

She carefully put down her pen and capped the inkwell. “Are you mad at me?”

He closed his book. “Of course not.”

“You never want to make love anymore.”

Embarrassed, Nash said, “How can we? These are difficult circumstances, and we can’t ride off like we used to. Vickers tightened discipline like a noose after Manassas.”

She sighed, “I know.” She paused. “You still love me, don’t you?”

“Yes. I love you.” Nash smiled and then opened his book. Liar, he thought, what a liar I am. I love her more like a brother than a wife.

Indian summer bathed Richmond in a deep orange glow. In the overcrowded city, people complained of bad lodgings and obscene food prices. Coffee was up to four dollars a pound. Supplies dwindled daily, thanks to the Yankee blockade. However, even the most pigheaded resident thought himself lucky when passing Belle Isle. Sitting in the middle of the James River, Belle Isle was a camp for prisoners of war. Since the Confederacy was having trouble feeding Richmond’s own
sons and daughters, certainly food was not squandered on enemy prisoners.

Mars noticed the camp as he rode along the Kanawha Canal at sunset. He turned his horse toward the city and was quickly home.

Considering the shortages, Kate managed to put together a fine dinner for him. The table was already set when he walked into the house.

“Hungry?” She appeared in the front hall as he unbuckled his sword.

“Yes. I rode past Belle Island. That place makes me doubly hungry, I guess.” The last slanting rays of the sun illuminated her golden hair. He could not help admiring how beautiful she was.

“It’s just the two of us for dinner tonight, as you requested.”

Shorn of her brilliant companions and a salon full of glittering braid and jewels, Kate ate quietly with her husband, trying to conceal the fact that she was bored. “Judah P. Benjamin, an engine of ambition, loathes Alexander Stephens.”

Mars broke a flaky biscuit. “I thought Benjamin and the Vice-President were on good terms.”

“Alliances are like mayflies in this town.”

Clearing his throat, Mars said, “Speaking of alliances, have you given further thought to our having children?”

Kate fixed him with a cobalt stare. “No, I haven’t thought about it. There’s a war on. It could get much worse. This is no time to have a child.”

“What if I don’t come back?”

“You?” She laughed. “You’re indestructible.”

“I appreciate the compliment but—”

“I’m not even thirty.” She threw down her napkin. She loathed this subject.

“You’re getting damn close.” His eyes narrowed.

“Let me have my youth, Mars Vickers. You had yours.”

“It’s not the same for a woman.” His face reddened.

“Precisely. Once I have children, I’ll be freighted down for twenty years.”

“Why is it such a burden? We have help.”

“You don’t understand anything!” she said, raising her voice.

“I understand plenty. The thought of bearing my children, of bearing any children, displeases you.”

“I am not yet ready to ruin my figure, just so you can have some hostages to the future.”

“Hostages? Is that how you think of children? My God, woman, I want to love somebody. I want somebody to love me. I’ll never get it from you. At least my children might love me.”

“If they’re like you, they’ll prove incapable of that much lauded emotion.” Kate icily got up and left her husband to finish his meal. She hoped he’d choke on it.

Early the next morning, Mars left his house. Kate bade him good-bye and kissed him like a poisoned chalice.

A few blocks away from the Vickerses’ house, Henley Chatfield prepared for another day’s work in the miserably entangled Commissary Department. A letter was delivered to him, and he absentmindedly placed it inside his tunic. Then he walked out into the bracing air.

It wasn’t until later that evening, after he retired for the night and took off his tunic, that he saw the letter. Wearily he propped himself on the bed and opened it.

Henley reread the letter two times to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating. Then he helped himself to a liberal shot of whiskey.

With the curtains drawn back, the smokey lamplight gave the night a hazy look. The clatter of hooves and carriage wheels filtered through the window. How long he sat there he didn’t know, but he finally got up and sat down at his secretary. He pulled out a page of his white stationery and began.

Henley folded the letter and sealed it. To his astonishment, tears rolled down his cheeks. He was torn apart by the fear that his daughter could be killed, and yet at the same time, he was terribly proud of her. Wiping his eyes, he knew that she probably didn’t believe she could die. She was young and believed all her oysters would bear pearls.

“I doan hear you talkin’ to Emil no more.” Sin-Sin stirred the fire into action.

“I think he was insulted.” Lutie sat next to the fire and opened the Bible. Today’s lesson in the Old Testament was Proverbs, chapter 11, and in the New Testament, it was John, chapter 11.

“You did the right thing,” Sin-Sin pulled her heavy shawl around her shoulders, “settin’ Jennifer Fitzgerald’s mind to rest.”

“She seems to have improved.” Lutie commented on Jennifer’s lifted spirits.

“Even give up bein’ a cottonmouth.”

“If she’s going to bite, she’s taking her time about it. Maybe she has changed. People do.”

“I overslept.” Di-Peachy quietly came in.

“It’s hard to get out of bed before the sun comes up.” Lutie thumbed through the thin, crisp pages. The
Episcopal Church Almanac
rested on her left knee while the Bible was on her right.

A loud noise downstairs temporarily halted the morning’s devotion. Ernie June screeched, “You better has nine lives, you varmit!”

Four little feet could be heard padding on the smooth floorboards. The cat, a small plucked hen in its mouth, streaked through the room with Ernie, broom in hand, following close behind. “I’s sorry, but, Miz Lutie, that cat be the devil hisself.”

“It’s too late now, Ernie June. You’ll have to kill another chicken.” Lutie mollified her. Wasting food did not please her, but seeing Cazzie get the better of Ernie June was amusing. “Why don’t you sit down and join us?”

Lutie read from Proverbs. “ ‘As a jewel of gold in a swine’s snout, so is a fair woman which is without discretion.’ ”

“Amen,” Ernie June added. “Tincia be alive today iffin’ she exercised discretion.”

Sin-Sin glared at this religious outburst. Ernie lapsed into silence.

Lutie then read about Lazarus of Bethany, dead in the tomb for four days. “ ‘I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.’ ” Lutie smiled. “That’s one of my favorite passages.”

“How could Lazarus walk out iffin’ he had a napkin over his face and his hands and feet was bound up?” Ernie, of literal mind, was fascinated.

“Hobbled out, I ’spect.” Sin-Sin was content with the story as it was.

“How you know he doan stink? Says he was resurrected; doan say he repaired.” Ernie, not contentious, was truly curious.

“Jesus restored him to health,” Di-Peachy answered. “It wouldn’t make sense to bring him back otherwise, would it?”

“But it doan say so.” Ernie was stubborn.

Lutie interceded. “You’re supposed to take it on faith, Ernie June.”

“Thass hard, Miz Lutie.” Ernie was forthright.

“Yes, I’m inclined to agree. It’s very hard.”

Sin-Sin warmed up for her rapture. Lutie, Di-Peachy, and Ernie June got to listen to this tale once a year, sometimes twice. It was Sin-Sin’s revelation. “Faith. Yes. Faith kin move mountains but we blind most times. We thinkin’ only of usselves. I had me a mean streak in my youth.”

Ernie thought, What do you mean, in your youth, you old bat? Prudently, she held her tongue.

Sin-Sin’s melodic voice rolled like the tide. “My selfishness was big as a waddymellon. I growed with self-regard. I had no peace in my head. I wisht to be exalted before my kind. I wisht I could fly. I thinks only of myself. This conceit was an injury to me. I see it now. On the outside I say Christian things, but on the inside I say nothin’.”

Lutie observed Sin-Sin’s dear, familiar face with contentment. Her oft-repeated tale provided reassurance, a sense of closeness.

“My soul swam away from me like a gracey fish. Then a little white man come to me. He say, ‘Follow me.’ I walked a path no wider than a spider web. Down I scurry on my main lines of sorrow ’til I come to the center. A light blind me. I fall on my knees. Then a voice come to me outta the light, and it say, ‘You find God in people’s heart.’ ” Finishing her story, she put her hand on the Bible. “Thass the truth.”

Ernie ran her apron between her thumb and forefinger. “Why it be a little white man?” What she wanted to say was, Why not a black man? Why was everything good supposed to be white?

“I doan know.” Sin-Sin loathed Ernie anew.

Ernie, irritated, looked at Di-Peachy. Mercer’s letters were under Di-Peachy’s dress next to her heart. As there was now quite a packet, her left breast looked both huge and square. “You gotta growth, girl?” Ernie asked with annoyance.