Christmas Bells (25 page)

“My vocation isn't about power and authority,” said Ryan, taken aback by his brother's vehemence. “It's about a life of service.”

Liam barked an ironic laugh. “You forget that I've known you all my life. You're the guy who wouldn't think twice before checking an opponent into the boards if the ref was looking the other way. You used to cheat at Monopoly. I know you, and I know you aren't any holier than anyone else.”

“I wasn't called to the priesthood because I was holy. I was called to
become
holier. We all are, whether our vocation is the priesthood or married life or something else.”

“I just don't get it.” Liam sat back in his chair and studied him, his expression bewildered—and to Ryan's astonishment, deeply pained. “How can you, of all people, shut yourself away in your church? How can you turn your back upon the world instead of engaging in real life, where you could make a difference?”

For a moment Ryan could only stare at him, speechless. “Liam, believe me, I've never been more engaged in real life.”

“Maybe that's what you think, sheltered as you are.”

“Sheltered?” Ryan shook his head, incredulous. “Listen, Liam. You couldn't be more wrong.”

In reply, Liam pushed back his chair and stood, frowning.

“Liam, come visit me at St. Margaret's.”

“Are you kidding? I know where I'm not wanted.”

“Don't say that. Let me show you around, give you a better idea of what I do. Maybe then you'll understand—”

“I'll never understand you,” said Liam angrily, looking suddenly as if he might weep. “I'll never understand the choices you've made.”

He stormed from the room, and a few moments later, Ryan heard him telling his children in a falsely cheerful voice that they should kiss their grandparents goodbye, because it was time to go.

It had been a heated, ugly argument to be sure, but had it been their worst? Alone in the sacristy, Ryan played the scene over again in his mind, wishing he had handled it differently. Upon reflection, he realized that he and Liam had not spoken or exchanged a single email since Thanksgiving, but they had not been in daily contact since high school, and Ryan had thought nothing of it.

Evidently he should have. He prayed that he had not become aware too late.

•   •   •

By midafternoon, snow was falling in thick, downy flakes upon St. Margaret's, just as Sister Winifred and the
Boston Globe
had predicted. Gene was busy tinkering with the furnace, so Ryan pulled on his black peacoat and favorite Bruins cap and headed outside to clear the stairs and sidewalks before the children arrived for choir practice.

He was sweeping snow from the front landing when Lucas, the accompanist, walked past on his way to the side entrance. He carried two cups of coffee, his bag was slung over his chest, and he was muttering angrily to himself. “Get over it,” Ryan heard him say. It was practically a shout.

“Get over what?” he called.

Lucas glanced around wildly for a moment before spotting him at the top of the stairs. He hesitated before saying, chagrined, “You know.”

“Oh, that.” Ryan nodded and continued sweeping. He knew he probably should stay out of it unless Lucas asked for advice, but he could not resist adding, “You should ask her out.”

“Are you kidding? Less than two months ago she broke up with her fiancé.”

“Which means she's single.”

“It's too soon.”

“I think I would've heard if there was an official mourning period.”

“Sophia doesn't think of me as anything more than a friend.”

“Only because you've never given her reason to think of you as anything else.”

Lucas's expression revealed that the remark had hit home. “Father,” he replied, not unkindly, “no offense, but I'm a little skeptical about taking romantic advice from a priest.”

Ryan acknowledged that he made a fair point, and since he couldn't do anything else to ease the younger man's heartache, he invited him in through the front entrance to save him a bit of a walk in the cold.

Lucas was always the first to arrive, and Sophia, the choir director and unwitting object of his affection, usually followed soon after, but Ryan had finished clearing snow from the front of the church and had moved on to the side without seeing her. A few singers arrived and greeted him cheerfully as they passed on their way indoors, and still there was no sign of her.

Not long before rehearsal was scheduled to begin, a familiar car pulled into the narrow parking lot and a mother and two children he knew well climbed out. “Hi, Father Ryan,” Alex called, waving as they crossed the lot. “Nice hat. The Bruins are gonna crush the Penguins tomorrow.”

“You'd better believe it,” Ryan said, grinning, but when he caught sight of Laurie he felt his heart clench with apprehension. “Hey, Laurie,” he said carefully, mindful of Charlotte's watchful gaze. “How's everything going?”

“Oh, everything's fine.” Her smile was too bright, falsely cheerful for the children's sake. “The usual.”

He thought he knew what that meant, but he had to ask. “Have you heard from Jason?”

“Oh, sure. We hear from him all the time, don't we, kids?” Laurie turned to Alex and Charlotte, nodding to prompt the response she sought. Charlotte stared deliberately at her boots and shrugged, but Alex nodded happily back. “But you know how it is. The Internet over there is always breaking down, and it takes forever to get online again, but as soon as it's fixed, we're going to get to chat with him again.”

“I get to talk with him first,” said Alex. “Mom promised. I want to make a rocket for the science fair and I have to ask Dad some stuff.”

“That's wise,” Ryan said, nodding seriously. “I've heard about you and rockets. It's best to consult with an expert first.” To Laurie, he added, “Please let me know if there's anything I can do.”

“Thank you, Ryan. I will.”

“And tell Jason Merry Christmas from me when you speak with him,” Ryan said.

“Of course.” Laurie offered a wan smile, looking as if she wished she could say more—and maybe she would later, when the children could not overhear. She placed her hands on her children's backs and guided them toward the door.

Ryan finished clearing the walk, greeting children and parents and babysitters as they arrived for choir rehearsal, chatting briefly with one mother about her daughter's upcoming first communion, conferring quietly with another about her father's longtime battle with cancer. He took prayer requests, referred one
young father to the parish food pantry, and offered a kind word to everyone, because it never hurt, and for all he knew, it might be just the thing to help someone get through a difficult day.

The arrivals tapered off, and by the time Ryan finished the sidewalk, he had been alone with his thoughts for quite a while. He returned inside, but just as he took off his coat and hat, Lucas appeared at the top of the stairs. “Have you seen Sophia?”

Ryan tried to hide his amusement. “You're worried she might have gotten stuck in a snowdrift somewhere between here and school?”

Lucas shrugged. “You never know.”

“You stay here and start rehearsal,” said Ryan, pulling on his coat. “I'll keep watch for Sophia.”

“Thanks, Father.”

Ryan tugged on his hat and waved Lucas back into the church. Turning, he opened the door and stepped outside—and narrowly avoided colliding with the missing choir director. “There you are,” he said, catching the door as it swung shut. “Lucas was getting worried, so he sent me out to search for you.”

Shivering, Sophia quickly stepped into the warmth of the stairwell. “I'm not late, am I? I should've taken the bus.”

“No, you're right on time, but you're usually early, and that was cause enough for worry.” A tightness in her expression told him that something weighed heavily on her mind. Thinking that she might benefit from confiding in a friend, he added, “Lucas cares about you, you know.”

Sophia laughed and shrugged out of her coat. “He just doesn't want to be left alone with that pack of wild hooligans.”

“That's not fair,” said Ryan, smiling. “Not to the kids and not to Lucas. He's great with them and you know it. He's leading them in warm-ups as we speak.”

Sophia's quick intake of breath revealed that she was even later than she thought. “Thanks, Father.” She stamped her boots
on the mat, draped her coat over her arm, and hurried up the staircase and through the doorway into the nave.

Ryan wiped his feet, removed his coat and hat, and followed after, wondering what he could do to encourage Sophia and Lucas to have a long-overdue conversation about their feelings for each other. He couldn't do much, he concluded ruefully, not without being overbearing and intrusive. There were some matters of the heart people had to figure out on their own.

When he entered the church, the children were singing “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” a beautiful, poignant arrangement of the familiar carol he had never heard until Sophia and Lucas began teaching it to the children. Smiling to hear Alex hit every note of his solo with sweet perfection, he did not realize Sister Winifred had joined him until she spoke almost at his elbow. “It's painful to be the one not chosen,” she murmured sympathetically, her gaze on the choir director and the accompanist who watched her, surely believing himself unobserved, his yearning and resignation plainly visible in his face, evident in every note he played. “Even when you acknowledge, deep down, that the choice was the right one, it hurts to think that the one you love prefers someone else.” She smiled and patted his arm. “Call your mother tomorrow. Tell her everything will be all right. And then call your brother and see that you make it so.”

“I will,” said Ryan slowly, staring at her, wondering. “I will.”

September–December 1863

Mosby's Raiders proved maddeningly elusive, and in his letters home Charley's mood oscillated between proud resolve and fuming exasperation. The hottest summer in memory seared and exhausted the First Massachusetts Cavalry as they chased phantoms through the woods and fields of Virginia, their horses' hooves churning up clouds of choking dust as they rode. Once verdant meadows turned brown and brittle beneath the unrelenting sun, and with grazing limited the horses grew thin and tired. At night, bands of rebels stealthily crossed the Union picket lines to capture a sutler's wagon or to cut down an unsuspecting sentry before vanishing without a trace, keeping the federal soldiers constantly on edge.

From late August to the middle of September, the regiment bivouacked at Waterloo and Orleans, to the rear of Plum Run, setting up pickets along the creek and sending frequent patrols into Flint Hill. Though the heat lingered, Charley reported, the weather was otherwise delightful, the scenery beautiful, and food plentiful, although foraging soldiers tempted by farmhouses too
far from the road often found themselves betrayed by resentful Confederate sympathizers and captured or killed by partisan rangers.

Autumn brought relief from the enervating heat and humidity but not from danger. On September 13, General George Meade sent the army across the Rappahannock, the cavalry taking the advance. While the Second Massachusetts crossed the Rixeyville Ford, Charley and the First engaged General Lee's cavalry near Culpepper, eventually forcing them down to the Rapidan River, but not before the rebel troops dug in and made a stand. “Here our regiment was ordered up to support a battery,” Charley wrote a few days later. “The shot and shell were flying over our heads, by this time pretty lively, and the first thing I knew I saw a 12 lb shot coming bounding along it made two jumps in front of us and then went zip close by my leg and hit Sergeant Reed, my quartermaster sergeant below the knee taking his leg off, he was the next man to me.”

Shaking, heart pounding, Henry put the letter aside and went out to the garden, but his awareness of his son's narrow escape followed him. He sat on a bench, planted his hands on his knees, and took deep breaths to steady his nerves, forcing the horrifying, all-too-vivid images from his mind's eye. The unfortunate sergeant had been the next man to Charley. The difference between survival and life-shattering injury had been a matter of only a few inches, a minuscule alteration to the angle of the cannon.

Before long, curiosity and concern for his son overcame his dread, and he returned to his study and the letter. For weeks the family had wondered anxiously where Charley was and what he was doing. The papers reported that the entire army was in motion, which seemed unlikely, but they offered little specific news of the First Massachusetts Cavalry. Charley's letters, as alarming or vague as they could sometimes be, were a far better source of
information—and they assured Henry that, at least on the day his son had written them, he had been safe and unharmed.

As the rebel shot had flown thick and fast over their heads, Charley's letter continued, the men had not shown much courage at first, ducking and flinching whenever any shells burst near them. Even so, they did not falter but stuck to the task, driving the rebels back all afternoon and into the evening. The next day the First Massachusetts Cavalry was in the advance, and Charley had charge of his company. “We met the rebs at Cedar Mt. but they retired to the Rapidan,” he wrote, his haphazard grammar and spelling revealing the lingering thrill of danger survived. “There we got into it as thick as I ever want to. They had seen pieces of artillery playing into us (the 1st Mass 1st R. I. and 6th Ohio) we had to manoeuvre under this fire it was not over jolly. Our squadron dashed across a field where we were peppered finely but we got behind a hill where they could not hit us. Our men were sent out to skirmish and one regiment of rebs charged them but were driven back by our men they try to frighten our boys by yelling and howling but it is no go.”

Charley and his men dug in behind a fence, where they stayed up all night under arms. The next morning they were at last relieved, having had nothing to eat for more than twenty-four hours. As they had been in the saddle nearly all of that time, their horses were dreadfully spent as well.

“I had several narrow escapes being covered with dirt from shells several times,” Charley reflected somberly, “one bursting so close to my face as to make me feel the blast of hot air but thank God none of our officers are hurt. I don't know yet how many men are killed. They may talk about the gaiety of a soldiers life but it strikes me as pretty earnest work when shells are ripping and tearing your men to pieces.”

The First was resting that day while the remainder of the brigade engaged the enemy, hoping to provoke them into revealing
their strength. “I shall write again and more fully as soon as I get a chance,” Charley promised. “Don't be anxious. God bless you all at home.”

Henry choked out a laugh. “‘Don't be anxious'?” he echoed, a second laugh escaping his throat as a sob. “What a cold and stoic father I would be if I were not anxious!”

When he had composed himself, he read aloud selected excerpts to Alice, Edith, and Anne, but let Ernest read the letter in its entirety. Ernest should know what horrors awaited him should he decide to enroll at West Point and follow his brother into war.

“My Dear Charley,” Henry wrote in reply a few days later. “Your letter of the 16th relieved our minds; and we are very thankful that you are safe, and have escaped thus far, without harm, from so many dangers, and so much exposure. I cannot help wishing, that you were still acting as Adjutant, but perhaps you know best. You do not tell me how your health and strength hold out; nor whether you have coats and blankets enough. You must guard against chills in the cold nights.” Then, since he knew his eldest son would tolerate only so much fatherly advice, he shared the news from home, hoping that fond reminders of family and friends would hearten his young soldier.

The weeks passed in an exchange of letters between Craigie House and the regiment's encampment, in work and in the sweeter distraction of playful moments with his daughters, in prayer and in anxious reflection. Henry frequently sent parcels of supplies to the front—beaver gloves and silk handkerchiefs, cigars and brandy for medicinal purposes, seed cakes and gingersnaps, tinned bologna and syrup—but more than one shipment mysteriously vanished along the way until Henry, thoroughly exasperated, learned to circumvent would-be thieves by sending Charley's packages directly to the regimental sutler in Washington, an honest and reliable fellow who could be trusted to carry them safely to their intended recipient.

Letters, at least, traveled fairly reliably through the mails, and helped raise the morale of the young cavalryman in the field and his anxious family back home. Charley told of early-morning skirmishes, of foraging patrols, of nuisance raids intended to provoke a more significant confrontation between the two armies, which seemed almost permanently fixed along the Rappahannock and the Rapidan. He seemed eager to move, to exchange tedium and discomfort for action, but beneath his son's yearning for battle and glory, Henry discerned an emerging maturity forged in the kiln of hardship and danger. After weeks of sleeping through the night in the saddle, awaiting the alarm of a rebel raid; of days when water, hardtack, and a bit of salt pork were his only sustenance; of exposure to the deafening roar of artillery and rifle fire, the chilling wail of the rebel yell, and the gruesome sight of dead and wounded men, Charley had become a reliable patrol leader, an adept skirmisher. Experience had spoiled his boyhood fancies of the glamour and glory of war, all flashing sabers and wind-tossed banners and gallant cavalry charges, but it had not lessened his enthusiasm for military life or his commitment to the Union.

For all his worry, for all his longtime pacifism, for all his regret that Charley had enlisted without permission, Henry found himself increasingly proud of him.

•   •   •

In the first week of October, President Lincoln had issued a Proclamation of Thanksgiving, noting that despite the destruction of war, the year 1863 had been bountiful, with fruitful fields, steady industry, widening national borders, increasing population, and plenteous mines. Even in the midst of a civil war of unprecedented magnitude and severity, peace had been preserved with foreign nations, order had been maintained everywhere except the theater of war, and laws had been made,
respected, and obeyed. It seemed fit and proper, the president declared, that these blessings “should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”

Massachusetts had long celebrated Thanksgiving as a state holiday, and Henry approved of the president's wish to unite the country in a national day of gratitude and prayer on one particular, common date. He decided to mark the occasion with a feast at Craigie House, and he invited his brother-in-law Tom Appleton, and Harriott Appleton, Fanny's widowed stepmother, to celebrate with him and the children.

Thanksgiving Day dawned with heartening news from Tennessee, where General Ulysses S. Grant had broken the Confederate siege of Chattanooga with decisive victories at Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge.

“It will not be long now until the war is over and Charley will come home,” Mrs. Appleton said as the family lingered at the table, warmed by the company and the fire and renewed hope for victory, peace, and reunion.

Henry wanted to agree, but the war had already dragged on more than two and a half years, and despite General Grant's victories in the west, he could not foresee an end to it anytime soon. “Let us drink to the health of all the lieutenants in the Army of the Potomac,” he proposed, raising his glass.

The others lifted their glasses and joined him in the toast, their voices solemn and prayerful, ever mindful of the absent loved ones whose presence would have made their holiday complete, of the empty places at other families' tables, North and
South alike, the empty arms of grieving wives and mothers, the empty hopes of bereft fathers and children.

The next day, Henry wrote a short letter to Charley, to wish him well as always, to describe their Thanksgiving feast and to say how much they had longed to have him among them. He sent off the letter and turned his thoughts again to his work; he had begun to have his translation of Dante put in type, in order to have a clear copy to work upon while making his notes. On Saturday he hoped for a letter from Charley, but the only news from the front he received that day came via the papers, which announced that the Army of the Potomac was advancing on General Lee's position at Mine Run.

Three days later, on the first of December, Henry had just sat down to supper with his children when he was summoned to the door to receive a telegram. A sudden hush fell over the dining room. The last time he had received a telegram, a thunderous knock upon the front door had awakened the household at midnight and Henry had learned of the death of the good and generous Reverend Richardson, who had so kindly taken Charley into his home the previous summer while he was stricken with camp fever.

But this was not the middle of the night, and Henry would not have his children learn to jump in fear at every knock upon the door. “You may begin without me, children,” he said calmly as he pushed back his chair and rose. Edith and Annie happily complied, but Ernest and Alice exchanged guarded looks across the table.

Henry hurried to the front door. “Who sent it?” he asked as he took the folded paper from the messenger.

“I don't know, sir,” the lad replied. “I only carry them. Another fellow takes them off the wire.”

Henry knew that, just as he knew he was delaying the inevitable. It could be news from Washington, he thought, Sumner
announcing some bold new measure passed by the Senate, or better yet, arrangements for a long-overdue visit. It could be word from his publishers, news about the recently published
Tales of a Wayside Inn
or an editorial note about the forthcoming Dante. Nevertheless, he steeled himself and opened the telegram.

The first glance told him that it had indeed come from Washington; the second, that it was not from his friend Sumner but from the Department of War: “Our dispatches state that Lieut Longfellow of First Mass Cavalry was severly wounded in the Face at Mount Hope Church on Friday Nov 27th. No chance of any wounded being sent in at present.”

A strange, distant roaring filled his ears, and as he stood staring at the slip of paper, he felt his vision going gray around the edges, his hands and feet going tingling and numb as if from too lengthy exposure to cold.