Celia Garth: A Novel (15 page)

“Why yes!” she exclaimed, with surprise and a touch of defiance. “You didn’t bring me out here to tell me you think I ought to go back to Sea Garden!”

“Certainly not,” Luke returned, laughing shortly. “I think Elise will drive you daft, but that’s none of my business. What I did want to say—”

“Yes?” she asked, smiling contritely.

“If things should get tough,” said Luke, “you can always go to Bellwood and wait for Jimmy there. Bellwood is on the Cooper River, and that river is going to stay open.”

“I won’t go to Bellwood,” Celia said firmly.

With a grin and a sigh, Luke reminded her that in wartime it was never wise to be sure. You had better make up your mind to do whatever you had to do.

He went on to explain about the Cooper River. Nearly all the men and supplies from the interior had to come down this river to Charleston. The army had based a strong cavalry guard at Moncks Corner, the town on the river at the head of navigation. This was the most dangerous post in the state. The British would do all they could to capture such a vital waterway, but these men were a picked group. They would be commanded by Colonel William Washington, a young cousin of the general and one of the most brilliant cavalry leaders in the army.

“I just wanted you to know,” said Luke.

Celia thanked him, but she insisted, “I’m not going to leave.”

“As you please,” he said. He held out a lump of sugar to Jerry.

Celia thanked him for his interest, and said she had better get back to work. As she walked toward the house she heard Luke’s voice raised in song.

“Oh I’m not a knight in armor and I’m not a serpent-charmer,

I’m a plain old cotton farmer and I think

When King George’s war is finished then his crown will be diminished,

For his royal head is sure a-gonta shrink.”

With the colored girls, Celia worked until Vivian told them to stop and get ready for dinner. She said they could have the afternoon to themselves.

Vivian’s daughter Madge came to dinner. Madge had the I’ll-be-cheerful-if-it-kills-me look that so many women were acquiring these days. Her husband and her young son Bobby were on the defense lines. Madge, with her younger boy and her little girl, expected to go to Sea Garden with Vivian and Herbert. It was clear that she dreaded the separation and equally clear that she was not going to make a fuss about it. Celia admired her courage.

With grim humor, Madge told them a good deal of news. She said Tory families were scrambling out of town. If you had clothes of any shade of green you had better not wear them, lest somebody throw a brick at you. She told Celia that Mrs. Thorley had sent the sewing-girls to their homes, and her shop was closed.

Godfrey was planning to give a supper-dance one evening soon, and they were all to be invited. “That means you too,” Madge said to Celia, smiling across the table, “and Jimmy, if he can get away.”

She went on to say that everybody was giving parties. The whole town had a frantic gaiety. Vivian told Celia to take out her red velvet dress. “Wear it now,” said Vivian. “You don’t know when you’ll have another chance.”

Herbert said he would bring down the oldest Madeira from the cypress attic. “We might as well drink it now,” he agreed.

Burton assured them again that the British were not going to get in. But all the same Celia felt a shiver. Her hand hidden by the napkin in her lap, she reached into her pocket and rubbed the rabbit’s foot.

After dinner Vivian retired for her afternoon rest. Celia put on her cloak and went out to buy the lawn for Jimmy’s cravat, thinking how fortunate it was that she had Uncle William’s five hundred dollars just now. Nobody would expect her to have much of a trousseau in these times, but when she had finished the cravat she could get material to make a few pretty things for herself.

The best stores were at the east side of town, near where Broad and Tradd Streets met the Cooper River. It was a bright windy February day, and Celia walked briskly. But before she had gone far, she began to feel dismayed. Though she had been away from Charleston only about three months, it seemed to her that everything had changed.

In ordinary times this was a quiet neighborhood where you met nice people, where storekeepers bowed and said, “How do you do, ma’am, may I serve you?” But not today.

Everything was in a noisy jumble. She had never seen these streets so crowded, soldiers and sailors and non-military folk, some of them well dressed and others in clothes that looked—and smelt—as if they had never been washed. The road was jammed with wagons and wheelbarrows and handcarts, each one loaded with all it would hold: military crates as the soldiers moved food and guns, or trunks and piles of furniture as civilians moved their property out of town. On the sidewalk people kept bumping into her, most of them in such a hurry that they did not appear even to notice that they did so.

She had not dreamed it was going to be so hard to buy anything. Half the stores were locked up, with boards nailed across the doors and windows. Those that were open had little to sell, and the prices were outrageous. She saw a pair of cotton stockings, of not very good quality, for fifty dollars, and a pair of men’s shoes for seven hundred. The clerks were nearly all elderly men or cripples leaning on canes. Their manners were surly. When she asked for lawn they said if she didn’t see what she wanted they didn’t have it, and implied that they were doing her a favor to let her buy anything at all with American money.

There was nothing in plenty except rice, and cubes of indigo for home dyeing, and coffee and sugar and molasses, which had been brought so abundantly from the West Indies. How I hate King George, Celia thought as she pushed her way from one store to another. Turnip-head. Giving me all this trouble.

But at last she found some good white lawn. There were three yards and a quarter in the piece and the man refused to cut it. Take it all or none, he said, and he charged her three hundred dollars. When she had paid another ten dollars for sewing-thread, Celia came out into the street again.

She felt tired and windblown and dusty and disagreeable. How much noise there was!—people shouting, wagons rattling, hammers banging as men boarded up the houses they were about to leave. Somewhere toward the hornwork, soldiers were drilling, for she could hear a military march. Toward the west she saw the spire of St. Michael’s black on the red sunset sky.

She had come back into the residential section of Broad Street and was about to pass a white house with iron-railed steps coming down to the sidewalk. As she came close to it, a ball of mud shot past her and struck the house, throwing a splash on her cloak. Stopping in alarm, Celia thrust her package under her cloak just as another mudball went by, and at the same time a piece of brick smashed into the lamp over the doorstep. The lamp shattered. With a gasp, Celia put her free arm over her eyes to shield them from the flying glass.

In the street she heard angry yells. Close beside her a woman screamed and a child began to cry. As Celia cautiously lowered her arm from her eyes, more mud struck the house, along with sticks and handfuls of garbage. She saw now that by the curb in front of the house was a carriage with a skinny little horse—the good horses had been taken by the army—and on the curb were bags and boxes, as though someone was about to leave home. Turning her head again toward the crying child, Celia saw what was happening.

The house-door was open, and on the steps stood a man and a woman, both in long traveling cloaks. He had his arm around her shoulders, and between them they were sheltering a boy three or four years old, while behind them were two terrified colored maids. Apparently they had been about to leave the house when a gang of riffraff, black and white, had caught sight of them and had begun pelting them with trash gathered up in the street. Pressed against the wall, afraid to move, Celia could hear the boys yelling.

“Tories! Bootlickers! King-lovers!
Tories
!” Among these epithets were others that she had never heard before, but by the way the words were snarled out she could tell that they were dirty words.

The man on the doorstep, about thirty years old, looked as if he might be quite a handsome fellow in normal times, though now he was ugly with rage. Saying something to the woman, he bent to take up the little boy in his arms. As he did so the wind blew back the hood of the woman’s cloak. In the late sunshine Celia saw a flash of red hair, and with a start she recognized Mrs. Kirby, the pretty Tory whose little boy was named for the king. The thought skipped through her head, This is the first time I’ve ever seen Mrs. Kirby when she wasn’t talking.

Evidently following a direction her husband had given her, Mrs. Kirby crossed her arms over her face for protection and started toward the carriage. Her husband went beside her carrying little George, and the two colored women followed. A shower of sticks and refuse came at them. The wind blew back Mrs. Kirby’s long cloak, and Celia saw her figure. Mrs. Kirby was going to have another baby. But if her tormentors noticed this it made no difference. They went on hissing their nasty words and throwing dirt on her dress as she scrambled with trembling haste into the carriage. Her husband gave her the little boy, and as Mrs. Kirby took the child in her arms Mr. Kirby threw in the baggage. Banging the carriage door, he leaped into the driver’s seat and shouted to the horse. Under a new shower of mud and garbage the carriage rattled off toward the Cooper River wharfs.

People on the sidewalk stared after it. Some of them looked frightened, some disgusted, and several laughed as though it was a good joke. Nobody had moved to rebuke the mud-slingers or to give the Kirbys any help. Now that they were gone, the onlookers shrugged and started again about their business.

Celia drew her cloak around her and pulled the hood close about her face, fearful lest they start throwing things at her too as she hurried past the Kirbys’ house. But the loafers were scattering in search of fresh amusement. As fast as she could, Celia made her way home. Little as she liked Tories right now, she felt sick.

When she told Jimmy about this episode he felt sick too. He told Celia not to go out alone again.

Herbert and Vivian arranged to leave Charleston in March, the morning after Godfrey’s supper-dance. Besides Madge and her children they would take Burton’s two boys, who would stop a few days at Sea Garden and then go on to stay with Elise’s brother, Gilbert Arvin, at his home across the Santee River.

As she took out her velvet dress for the dance, Celia thought how wise Herbert and Vivian were, and what courage they had. She knew they did not want to leave Charleston any more than she did. Vivian would be leaving her three sons, and Herbert his much-loved grandson Tom, and there was no way to know when letters could be sent to Sea Garden. But they were going so these people they loved would have no reason to worry about them; and they had planned it so they would attend a dance on their last night at home, and say good-by gaily, in party-clothes.

It was about five in the afternoon. Celia laid her dress on the bed, and beside it her emerald necklace and the bracelets of gold roses. Marietta was taking out the hairbrush and comb and the curling-irons. Marietta was in fine spirits. Vivian was going to let her stay here to wait on Celia, an arrangement that suited Marietta exactly since Amos was with Jimmy on the defense lines.

Mr. Hugo was expected about now, to do Vivian’s hair. Once in his hands Vivian would not be able to move until he had finished, so Celia went down to ask if Vivian had any instructions for her.

As she came down the stairs into the hall she heard a whistled tune from outside the front door. A man stamped up the steps and banged the knocker. Since it did not require much imagination to guess who came calling with such impatient fire, Celia opened the door and was not surprised when Luke strode in and whammed it shut behind him. On his arm he carried a basket piled with snowdrops.

“Morning!” Luke greeted her. “Afternoon!—which is it?”

“It’s afternoon,” Celia said in astonishment, “and what’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing’s the matter with me, only I’m so busy with this war that I sleep in snatches and never know what time it is.” He held out the basket of snowdrops. “These are for mother—will you give them to her?”

“Luke!” said Vivian’s voice from the back of the hall. She came toward them, a rose-colored boudoir robe trailing behind her and a rose-colored scarf about her hair. Brushing past Celia she stood in front of Luke and demanded, “What’s this about your volunteering for duty at Moncks Corner?”

Celia caught her breath. She remembered that Luke himself had said this was the most dangerous post in the state.

“Who told you that?” Luke asked Vivian sharply.

“Paul de Courcey. He came by here looking for you, had some orders. Oh Luke, you fool!”

Luke stood just inside the door, holding his hat in both hands. His hands were so big they nearly hid the hat between them. In front of him Vivian looked as delicate as one of the china figurines Celia had been packing. Celia thought how strange it was that Luke had once been curled up inside Vivian’s small slim body. He said, “I’m sorry Paul told you. I thought you wouldn’t have to know.”

“When did you offer to go?” asked Vivian. Her voice was not loud. But it made Celia think of a cry of pain.

“Yesterday,” said Luke. He looked like a small boy caught in a piece of mischief. “It wasn’t until yesterday,” he went on, “that I knew they needed more men for Moncks Corner. But Colonel Marion told me, and he never exaggerates.”

“Oh, Marion!” said Vivian. “Has that man
no
faults?”

Luke smiled a little. “Not many, anyway.”

Vivian waited a moment to calm herself. Watching the two of them so close together, Celia thought again how much they looked alike, and how much alike they really were. In a resolutely quiet voice Vivian asked, “Luke, why are you doing this?”

He shrugged. “Somebody has to do it.”

“But why you?”

“Why not me?” he asked.

Reaching to the basket on Celia’s arm, Vivian took out a spray of snowdrops and held it to her nose. She smiled bitterly at Celia through the flowers. “I have three sons,” she said, “and no matter what happens I know in advance how they’re going to behave. Burton will do what’s socially proper, Godfrey will make money out of it, and Luke will try to break his neck.”