Celia Garth: A Novel (17 page)

“I didn’t bend over to smell his breath,” said Jimmy. He smiled contritely. “I’m sorry, Celia, but I’m exasperated. This thing has even held up work on the defenses—men throw down their tools to argue about it. But I’m not exasperated with you. Go on with what you started to say.”

She told him about the talk at dinner. As he listened, Jimmy’s lips had a quiver of mirth. When she paused he said,

“Now tell me what you think.”

This was the first time she had been asked for her opinion. It was a pleasure to give it.

“I never heard such a silly tale,” she said. “The man who gave the party had locked his door, he’d be a fool not to lock it in the middle of the night with the town jammed the way it is. And if Colonel Marion wanted to leave by a window I don’t know why he chose one on the second floor. There were plenty of windows downstairs. I think he was tipsy.”

Jimmy, laughing, did not answer at once.

“Wasn’t he?” Celia demanded.

“Celia darling,” said Jimmy, “I don’t know. I saw Luke this afternoon and he doesn’t know either. Frankly, we both think the same thing you do, but we’re sick of the argument. Losing Colonel Marion right now is a calamity. That’s what matters, not what he drinks for supper.”

His voice was grave now. But he grinned at her again as he asked,

“You haven’t spoken your mind about this to anybody else, have you?”

“Oh no.”

“Don’t talk about it,” said Jimmy. “Somebody will say you ought to be deported and I can’t do without you.”

Celia promised. When he left her, she stood a moment on the front steps, looking after him. Jimmy had said “calamity,” and Jimmy was a man who meant what he said.

She looked toward the dark steeple of St. Michael’s. “Lighten our darkness,” she whispered. “Lighten our darkness.”

The next morning was cool and diamond-clear. When she was dressed Celia opened her window and rested her elbows on the sill, enjoying the early spring freshness. Her room was on the north side of the house, overlooking the carriage drive and the brick wall dividing this property from that of the people next door. From where she stood she could see over the wall into their garden, gay with hyacinths and daffodils and a peach tree with bursting pink buds. The air was full of birdsongs. Close by her Celia heard a thrasher pouring out such happy melody that she smiled as she listened.

An upstairs window of the other house opened, and over the sill leaned an elderly man whom she recognized as Mr. Simon Dale, a relative of Burton’s father. At Mr. Dale’s elbow she saw his grandson, a boy about twelve years old, handing him something.

Mr. Dale held up the object, which she saw now was a long thin spyglass. For an instant Celia thought the old wretch was trying to peek into her bedroom, but at once she knew she was wrong. Mr. Dale was not looking toward this house at all. He had turned his spyglass southwest, toward the point where the Ashley River flowed around the tip of the Charleston peninsula into the sea. He must be looking at a boat. Celia smiled a silent apology to the old gentleman as she turned from her own window and started to go down for breakfast.

As she opened the door her nose caught a whiff of sausage. At the same time she saw Burton standing at a window here in the upstairs hall, and he too held a spyglass to his eye and was looking toward the Ashley River. Celia wondered what was going on over there. Maybe he would let her see too. She had never looked through a telescope. Eagerly, she went toward the window.

Intent on what he was looking at, Burton did not hear her footsteps until she had reached his side, then with a start he turned. “Why good morning, Celia,” he said.

His manner was so abstracted that she was afraid her interruption was not welcome. “Excuse me, sir,” she returned hastily, “I didn’t mean to trouble you.”

She started to back away, but he held out the spyglass as if glad to share something of interest. “Do you want to take a look?” he asked her.

“Oh yes!” Celia exclaimed. She touched the thing carefully. It was like a tube in several sections, the smallest section toward the eyepiece and the largest at the other end. “Will you tell me what to do?” she asked.

“Of course,” said Burton. He shrugged. “You’ll have to see them sooner or later, might as well be now.”

“But what are you looking at?” she asked.

Again he was startled, then he smiled as he answered, “I forgot you were just awake. Tom Lacy came by early to ask for some breakfast—he’d been on duty all night—and he told us. The British are there on the west bank.”

“The British!” she gasped. Forgetting the spyglass she leaned over the sill and looked. Her eyes, younger than his, could see them even without the glass—a number of small boats in the river, and tiny figures moving on the other side.

But she wanted to see more. Burton showed her how to put the eyepiece to one eye, and turn the lenses to adjust them to her vision. As her view cleared, the trees across the Ashley River seemed to spring closer. She moved the glass to get something more than trees into her range, and at last she saw what she was looking for, men in red coats and tan breeches and high black boots. It was hard to see what they were doing, but they were scrambling about as though very busy, and more of them were wading ashore from rowboats in the river.

Celia had a queer feeling as if there was a lump of something cold under her ribs. Until this minute, the soldiers of King George had been a vague mass in her thoughts, abstract like the problems in a book of arithmetic. But now that she saw them they became men, men who wanted to destroy the town she lived in and everything she had to live for. The lump under her ribs began to get hot. It was like a burning pain.

Slowly she lowered the glass. Her thoughts must have shown in her face, for Burton gave her a reassuring smile.

“They’re not going to get in,” he said. “They’ve tried before—remember?”

“Why yes!” said Celia. She spoke with a sense of lightness. Of course they had tried before, they had tried twice—at Fort Moultrie, and again just before she came to work at Mrs. Thorley’s, when a British force under General Prevost had marched up from Florida. Prevost’s men had done a lot of looting around Beaufort, but they had not set foot in Charleston. The hot lump under her ribs began to dissolve as Burton said heartily,

“So don’t you be scared. You keep your pretty face pretty, for Jimmy. Now we’d better get some breakfast. I’ve got to go out soon.”

As they turned from the window they heard little pattering steps, and Elise came hurrying toward them followed by her maid Tessie.

“If you’re going down, Burton,” Elise urged him, “let me have the glass—I’ll take it up to the attic, we can see much better from there. Tessie, do bring me some more coffee. I declare, I’m so excited I can’t eat a thing. I’m going to ask Susan Dale to come over here, and Patsy Baxter, I don’t believe the Baxters can see from their house, I’ll send a note to Patsy—”

Celia tried to look demure. Mrs. Baxter’s name was not Patsy. It was Charlotte. But the wife of George the Third was also named Charlotte, and when the war began Mrs. Baxter had announced that no good rebel woman should bear the name of the British queen. So she asked her friends to call her Patsy, because somebody had told her that this was George Washington’s pet name for Martha.

Burton gave Elise the spyglass. “Oh dear, there are more and more of them!” exclaimed Elise, all a-flutter with pleasurable tremors. “Isn’t this amazing? I do think we were wise to stay in town. Everybody is going to be asking us about this for years to come. Tessie, maybe I could eat just a little sausage, and some hominy, be sure it’s hot—Celia come up to the attic after breakfast and get a really good look—”

Celia said, “Yes ma’am,” and fled downstairs.

All day long the king’s men were plainly to be seen, but they gave no trouble. Directed by Sir Henry Clinton, they minded their business. This business was the bridging of Wappoo Creek, a stream that flowed into the Ashley River on the side away from town. The high windows were crowded with women and children and old men, watching. Every man strong enough to be useful had work to do on the defenses. Burton, in charge of sandbagging some buildings on King Street, was out all day.

He was out all day every day, while the redcoats slowly moved their wagons across the bridge they had built. They kept moving up the far bank of the Ashley, and as they went, here and there they built a platform and dragged a cannon to stand on it. On the Charleston side of the river the rebels threw up earthworks and placed cannon of their own. With Elise and Elise’s friends, Celia watched from the attic windows. It was gruesome, it made her flesh creep, and yet it was fascinating and she could not make herself stop watching.

The redcoats had appeared first on Tuesday, the seventh of March. The following Sunday morning while Celia was dressing for church she heard a boom that shook the air. She had just put on her petticoat and was about to tie the strings at the waistband; at the sound she stopped and stood poker-stiff, listening. After the boom came a rumble, and in the midst of the rumble she heard another boom. The noise was like thunder and yet different. It was not, in fact, like any other noise Celia had ever heard. The boom came a third time, and the rumble behind it, and this time she knew what it must be. They were firing those guns on the river. The battle for Charleston had begun.

Snatching up her dressing-gown she rushed out into the hall. Three or four housemaids had dropped their tasks and were there too, squealing and shaking with fright, while a small colored boy clung to his mother and begged her not to let the British eat him up.

Celia went to the attic. Burton had left the house early and she did not know where Elise was, probably looking through the spyglass at her own bedroom window. But Celia did not need the spyglass to see that during the night the British had set up cannon on the far bank of the river just across from the end of Tradd Street. These were the guns they were firing, while the rebels on the earthwork at that end of Tradd Street were shooting back. Between the guns the river was half hidden by puffs of smoke, but after peering through squinted eyes Celia observed that most of the British cannonballs were splashing into the water. Not one of them had come past the great earthwork into town. Most of the population of Charleston seemed to be running about the streets, but nobody was getting hurt. And while she stood and watched, the firing slackened.

The smoke began to clear. It seemed that the British were not really trying to hit anything. They just wanted to announce that they were here. And the rebel guns, rumbling in reply, were merely answering, “We’re here too.”

Now it seemed that the guns had stopped for good. As she watched the smoke blowing away Celia spoke aloud to herself. “That was a battle. That will be something to tell my grandchildren.” But she had a sense of disappointment. She had thought a battle would be more impressive than this.

A
FTER THAT SUNDAY THERE
was more firing every day. The cannon would boom for an hour or two, then get quiet, then after a while they would start again. On both sides it had a sound of bravado. The British went on setting up guns on their bank of the river, the Americans on theirs. Neither side was strong enough yet to make a real attack; Celia wondered why they fired at all.

After four or five days she asked Jimmy how much longer they were going on like this. Jimmy had come by the house not long after breakfast, dusty and unshaven and hungry, saying he had a few minutes to spare and would Celia scrape up some leftovers in the kitchen? She brought him a snack of cheese and cornbread, and he gobbled gratefully.

In answer to her questions he said the firing was not useless. The watchman in the top of St. Michael’s had reported that the Americans were doing considerable damage to the British positions but because of the great earthworks they were receiving very little harm to their own. In the meantime they went on strengthening their defenses. The chief watchman in the steeple was Mr. Peter Timothy, who had been for years editor of the
Gazette.
He was a trained observer and you could trust what he said.

Celia nodded impatiently. “Yes, Jimmy, yes. But they won’t keep firing like this, off and on! What’s going to
happen
?”

Jimmy rubbed his fist over his stubbly chin. “Sweetheart, I can’t talk about that.”

A few minutes later he hurried away. When she had taken the tray out to the kitchen Celia paused at the foot of the back staircase. From above her she could hear the voices of Elise and half a dozen others, chattering as they passed around the spyglass. The attic here, standing as it did on top of a three-story house, provided one of the best vantage points in the neighborhood, and women were always dropping in to look at the redcoats. Celia was welcome to join them, but just now she did not want to. She felt uneasy. Not because Jimmy could not answer her questions, this she could understand. But though Jimmy spoke cheerfully he did not look well. He was not merely tired, he was tense—Jimmy who was usually so loose-jointed that it was restful to look at him.

Celia went up to the sewing room and took out the cravat. This cravat occupied not only her hands but her mind, for she was edging it with double-antique drawnwork and this meant she had to count threads every time she put in her needle.

The wind blew in from the garden. It was a west wind, satiny on her cheeks, and now the flowers were blooming so thickly that even here on the third floor she thought she could smell them. When she was tired sewing she intended to go down and pull up some weeds. Unlike Elise she could not bear to sit in the house all day.

She heard the garden gate bang, and the wind brought in a mighty tune.

“Plant on my grave a weeping willow tree,

A tree that sobs by night and day (Sad stuff),

And that weeping willow tree will be weeping over me

When you’ve dried up and blown away

(Puff, puff).”

It was Luke’s voice and Luke’s brand of nonsense and it brought her a sense of refreshment. He was going around toward the back. Leaving her workbasket on the table Celia ran down-stairs and out by the back door. Luke was striding past the vegetable garden, toward the stable. As he stopped to pull up some carrots he saw her, and waited.