High Hearts (47 page)

The lesson was a hopeful one. Chapter 4 of the second book of Kings tells how Elisha laid himself on the body of a dead boy and breathed into his mouth. The boy came back to life. The New Testament, Acts 20, said that St. Paul revived a youth, Eutychus, who tactlessly died during one of his long sermons.

After the brief service, Mars invited Mercer into his office and asked him how serious he was about Di-Peachy.

“I intend to marry her. I’d marry her now, but she says we must wait until the war is over,” Mercer said.

“I see.” Mars watched a jade-green hummingbird hover near the window, then dart away.

“Big Muler was crazy.”

“I don’t doubt that.” Mars flicked ashes into the huge crystal ashtray. “Corporal, what if our legislature repeals manumission when the war is over and makes it retroactive?”

“That’s not going to happen.” Mercer was puzzled. “Once the war is over, we’ll phase out slavery.”

“Virginia, perhaps. Maybe a few other states but not the
coastal states or the Delta.” Mars shook his head. “Some men are already talking about reopening the slave trade.”

“Never!” Mercer exploded.

“I agree wholeheartedly but consider this, Corporal. Suppose six or seven years from now these men strike a bargain for Virginia’s votes. Naturally there would have to be something vital to our interests involved, but it is possible.” Mars wanly smiled at him. “I only wish for you to be aware of the insecurity into which you might be placing yourself.”

“You sound very formal, Colonel.” Mercer was testy.

“I suppose I do. I am not your commanding officer, and perhaps I have no right to speak to you this way. But I have come to know the Chatfield family, and I thought perhaps I could help.”

“Are the Chatfields against this marriage?” Mercer took a deep breath.

“Mrs. Chatfield feared you would fool with the girl and abandon her. Apparently Di-Peachy has told her very little.”

“Well?”

Mars cleared his throat. “Mrs. Chatfield seems to be grateful that your intentions are honorable, even if they do present a thorny situation.”

Mercer exhaled. “Thank God.” He stubbed out his cigar. “Does it matter so very much that she is black and I am white?”

“I’d be a liar if I said it didn’t.” Mars looked him square in the eye.

“I love her, Colonel! If we have to flee to the North once this war is over, I’ll do it. If that’s no good, then we’ll go to Brazil or Peru. I don’t care where we go as long as we are together!” His eyes flashed and his cheeks burned.

Mars said nothing for a few moments, then he, too, stubbed out his cigar. “I envy you, despite what lies ahead. If she loves you as you love her, good luck to you. Come now, let’s join the others. Tomorrow morning we report back to duty, so let’s enjoy the day.”

A smoky haze, golden peach, enshrouded Richmond at sunrise. It remained in the sky at matins when Lutie, Kate, and the other Charlottesville matrons attended early services at St. Paul’s. The war provoked an upsurge in church attendance, not that St. Paul’s, being the most fashionable church in the city, needed new parishioners. But St. Paul’s popularity was hotly contested by St. James Episcopal Church. When the war started, the first funerals were elegantly orchestrated by each congregation for its fallen officers. By now, death among the high born was so commonplace that neither church could spend much time on a man’s last social engagement.

No one said anything on this First Sunday after Trinity, but sharp concern rippled through the people. The Old Testament lesson was Genesis, chapter 3. In normal times Father John might have woven a delicate but dogmatic theme from the pulpit on the subject of Adam and Eve and the serpent. Instead, the sumptuously robed priest talked about the flaming sword and the cherubims who guarded the east of the Garden of Eden. As Lutie listened, she mused on the situation in which she, and everyone around her, found themselves.

MeClellan received seacoast siege guns at White House Landing, his headquarters on the York River Railway not far from Tunstall Station. He also received reinforcements, rumored to be another ten thousand men. Richmond needed not only a cherubim at the east, she also desperately needed one at the west. General Stuart’s dashing exploit had proven what everyone felt passionately: that any Southerner could outride and outfight any Yankee. But the South needed more than superb cavalry to win this war. The statistics slowly gathering in Richmond like marbles rolling into the ring were
sobering. The North had superior artillery and more men. The South had no chance to catch up. The entire white population of the eleven Confederate States was five million. The equivalent population of the North was twenty million.

Lutie prayed less for cherubims and more for a great leader. As yet, no one man had emerged to save the infant nation. She hoped it would be Robert E. Lee who now found himself commander of the entire Confederate army. But how rarely in history does the right man find himself in the right place? Was that race of giants, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Mason, the last of a breed? Patrick Henry, too, who walked the streets of Richmond, arguing as he went, was he the last? Was Virginia so impoverished intellectually and morally that she bore no more great men or women? Lutie nursed an abiding affection for Dolley Madison, her childhood heroine. Thomas Jackson showed himself a master in his fighting in the Shenandoah Valley. Was he the one? She fidgeted in her seat. Whoever he was, he’d better show himself fast because the wolf was dozing at the door, and sooner or later that wolf had to wake up.

“May the Lord bless thee and keep thee. May the Lord lift up His countenance upon thee and make His face shine upon thee and give thee peace. Amen.”

“Amen,” Lutie and the congregation answered in unison.

The organ rumbled its throaty pipes. The rustle of skirts and the shuffle of boots filled Lutie with a strange premonition. The men walked down the aisle, ladies on their arm, to the rear of the lovely church. There they shook the hand of Father John and immediately outside, in the small vestibule, they retrieved their swords.

Lutie thought, Christ is an hour and a half a week plus a few prayers in the morning or the evening. We go through the motions and conveniently forget Him the rest of the time. Small wonder we fall into such evil. One hundred years from now every person in church today will be dead. Will anyone remember us? Even my own blood kin? Will my great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren know who I was or care what I did? Will anyone remember Sumner? He left no children. We’ll be shadows, shadows dispensed with their sunlight, their problems, their triumphs. They won’t believe that we loved, fought, sung, cried, and died nor will they care. Maybe we’re already shadows and we don’t know it. What if
my soul should awaken one hundred years from now? I fear my sorrows would awaken with it, but then so would my joys. Yes, I’d like to come back. I’d like to see these new people. Dear Jesus, why did you give me but one life to live?

Hazel Whitmore, walking next to Lutie as they paraded past the Catholic church on the corner murmured, “You’re unusually pensive.”

“I was wondering, what would it be like to come back here to this very spot one hundred years from now?”

“That would depend upon whether we won the war or not, wouldn’t it?”

“If they win, I don’t think they will do as Rome did to Carthage. They won’t sow the land with salt,” said Lutie.

“What are you two talking about?” Kate skipped a little faster to catch up to them, dragging the other ladies along.

“Whoever wins, I’d like to see better streetlamps and less traffic,” Jennifer said. “But we’ll win, of course.”

“If the North wins, it means we’ll all end up so relentlessly commercial.” Rise Rives turned up her nose.

“It is vulgar. I think anyone who discusses money publicly should be locked up for one month’s time.” Miranda was adamant. “A nation of shopkeepers. I can see it now.”

“Who knows what kind of hideous machines they’ll foist upon us? They are machine mad, and if you want my opinion, the downfall of the human race started with the spinning jenny!” Jennifer was on a roll.

“I thought this mess started with Adam and Eve,” Kate drolly commented.

“Oh, that.” Jennifer’s hand fluttered.

“It is a disturbing story.” Hazel waved to parishioners leaving other churches. The neighborhood, filled with churches, gave every Sunday a festive air because after service, people strolled up and down Grace and Franklin streets and often onto the capitol grounds.

“As a child I had a mammy,” Kate interjected, “Mammy George. Her real name was Georgianna, but we called her Mammy George. Her story of creation was that when God made man, the earth cried. Taking a handful of clay hurt her. So God said, ‘I will repay you.’ When we die, we must go back to Mother Earth lest our Father be a liar. The spirits of those who accept Jesus fly up to heaven. Those that don’t get mixed up with old tree roots. I can tell you that as a little girl
I’d go to bed at night and pray to Jesus, ‘Dear Jesus, I accept you. Please don’t let me be mixed up with tree roots.’ ”

Lutie laughed. “That’s a charming story. I do so love to hear their stories.”

“I get more stories than work out of mine,” Rise ruefully noted.

“A Negro is a Negro and nothing more.” Jennifer said this without rancor. “They have to be told the same thing every day and watched to see if they do it then.”

“I never have to watch Sin-Sin,” Lutie said.

“She’s the exception that proves the rule,” Rise said.

“Yes,” Jennifer piped up. “Certain Negroes are exceptional, but I think that goes back to whatever tribes their African ancestors were from. Obviously, some tribes were far more intelligent than others.”

“Like the European tribes?” A light smile played over Hazel’s lips.

“Just what do you mean by that?” Jennifer demanded.

“Anglos, Saxons, Jutes, Welsh, Irish, Gauls, Romans, Etruscans, Austrians, Prussians, Russians, Montenegrins, Czechs, Rumanians, Norwegians”—she breathed in—“the list could go on.”

“It’s not the same,” Jennifer said.

“Why not?”

“Because those are Caucasian peoples.”

“Oh, I forgot.” Hazel, of course, had forgotten no such thing.

“There does seem to be differences in intelligence among the Caucasians,” Kate remarked.

“I know what you’re driving at.” Jennifer spoke clearly. “But it won’t wash, ladies, it won’t wash. I have spent a lifetime with servants, as has each of you, and my entire experience has taught me that you can’t let those people out in the world. Why, they’re babes in the woods!”

“That’s what men say about women.” Lutie swung her purse, the velocity of that object being the only clue as to her inner feelings. Perhaps Henley was right about freeing Chatfield’s slaves.

“Have you turned into an abolitionist?” Jennifer surveyed her with horror.

“No! I don’t believe the Negro can go into the world as it now stands.” She paused for dramatic effect. “But I think
with planning, schooling, moderation, they could be gradually taught the responsibilities that go with freedom.”

“Piffle.” Jennifer dismissed this. By this time the women had reached Kate Vickers’s house. A smug lieutenant stood there.

“Good morning, ladies.” He bowed. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Lieutenant Barbizon Hun. I understand you have a wounded Yankee here.”

“Yes, we do.” Kate extended her hand to him.

“Is he well enough to be taken to Belle Island?”

“Certainly not!” Lutie rushed forward. The purse was really swinging now. “He suffers terribly, especially at night when his fever shoots up alarmingly.”

“Might I see him?” Lieutenant Hun asked.

“Of course, if you would be good enough to give us one moment to change his bandages,” replied Lutie.

“I would like you to see him in the best possible circumstances.” Kate’s voice wavered with insecurity.

“Mrs. Vickers, you have one of the best home hospitals in the city,” he said. “I do understand your desire to have things perfect.”

Hazel and Rise chatted with the lieutenant while Kate and Lutie hurried inside. Miranda casually walked Jennifer around to the back porch. Jennifer wanted to know what the fuss was about.

“He’ll die over there in his condition. He needs good food and attention.”

“We aren’t starving them.” Jennifer’s patriotism burst forth.

“How do you know? Have you forgotten last February and March?” Miranda’s voice fell low. “Even we couldn’t get enough to eat. Why would we feed prisoners before we feed ourselves?”

“But he is the enemy!” Jennifer could be stubborn.

“He’s a sick young man deluded by the thought that he is preserving the Union.”

Sin-Sin silently slipped into the sick room and wrapped Gunther Krutzer with boiling towels. As soon as he looked feverish she whisked them away. Lutie prepared him.

“Here he is, Lieutenant.” Kate stood close to Barbizon Hun’s side.

The lieutenant, not fond of any sick man much less a sick Yankee, said, “He does look feverish.”

“It comes and goes.” Lutie mournfully glanced at him while seated next to the suffering fellow.

The other wounded men viewed this ruse with some amusement. As enlisted men, they had no special love for officers; so it was fun to see this pompous banty rooster bested.

“What was your unit, soldier?”

“The One Hundred Third Pennsylvania, sir,” Gunther answered through parched lips.

“Do you know you are a prisoner of war?”

“Yes, sir. When do you think I can be exchanged?”

“Your President Lincoln, in his vast wisdom, is now refusing to exchange prisoners. Be glad you are in Richmond and not in one of your own prisons, such as Elmira.” The lieutenant glowered at the red and sweating man.

“I am glad, sir. These women have been angels of mercy.” Krutzer was sincere.

Kate steered the lieutenant to the front door chattering about how difficult his duties must be and how she and the other women were forever indebted to men such as himself, the only bulwark between themselves and the bayonets of the enemy. He left in a cloud of compliment.