Kary, Elizabeth (50 page)

"But,
Hayes, I can't let her do this. I don't think she is fit for hospital work,
much less caring for prisoners. And Father will be livid when he finds
out."

"Look
at it this way, Leigh," Hayes advised. "She didn't try to hinder you
when you wanted to work in the hospitals at the beginning of the war, and I'm
sure you remember that there were those who didn't think you would be able to
stand the rigors of military nursing. Give Althea a chance to prove herself. If
the prisons are too much for her, she will find some other way to help."

Hayes
set his newspaper aside and crossed the room to where his wife sat. Gently he
smoothed away the worry line that had formed between her brows, then bent to
kiss the spot.

"I
love you, Hayes," she whispered.

"You
could say that a hundred times a day, and I would never get tired of hearing
it," he whispered back as he pulled Leigh to her feet and guided her toward
their bedroom.

On
the following Thursday afternoon, Althea Pennington returned from her first
visit to the Gratiot Street Prison. Leigh met her in the foyer filled with
questions, but Althea, white to the lips, brushed past her and ran directly to
her room, where she was violently ill in the chamber pot. Later Leigh sat at
her mother's bedside, holding a cool cloth to her head as tears slid down
across Althea's temples and into her hair.

"I
hope this makes you realize, Mother, what a mistake it was to volunteer to
visit the Confederate prisons," Leigh admonished her. "You must write
a note tomorrow and tell Mrs. Washburn that you are no longer able to work with
her and her committee."

Althea's
soft brown eyes seemed immense in her pale face. "I will do nothing of the
kind, Leigh," her mother answered in a voice that was low but remarkably
steady. "Today only proved that what we few Confederate women are trying
to do is vitally important to those miserable wretches in jail. We are all the
hope they have, and I intend to be with those women on Tuesday when they visit
another of those—those snake pits."

Leigh
had argued with her mother, but Althea had been adamant about her visits to the
Confederate prisoners. In the weeks to come, Althea continued to go to the
jails and returned home each time to be sick and retire to her bed.

Christmas
came and went with a quiet celebration with Felicity and Bran and gifts and
messages from Hayes's family asking the two of them to visit. But with Horace
still away with the Quartermaster Corps, Leigh could not bring herself to leave
her mother.

Delia
and Nathan came to stay for a few days late in January, and because things at
the shipyard were slow, Hayes traveled back to Cairo with them, then on to
where the ironclads were stationed along the river north of Vicksburg. Since
autumn Union troops had been concentrating their efforts on either capturing or
bypassing the commanding city on the bluffs, for with the fall of that
Confederate stronghold and the fortifications at Port Hudson would come Union
control of the Mississippi valley, uniting Farragut's fleet and Bank's troops
from New Orleans with Porter's flotilla and Grant's army from the north.
Meanwhile, in the eastern theater of the war, command of the Army was swapped between
equally ineffective generals as if it were a prize in some children's game.

One
evening while Hayes was away, Leigh went up to her mother's bedroom to see if
she was recovering from a particularly trying day of visiting the prisons. An
untouched dinner tray sat at the bedside, and as Althea lay back against a bank
of pillows, she seemed particularly pale and worn.

"Mother,
I wish you would reconsider what you have been doing these past months,"
Leigh chided her. "You're wearing yourself out with these visits. I
haven't insisted that you stop going to the prisons before this because I
thought you would eventually be able to steel yourself against the things you
see, but each time you come home more shaken than the last."

Althea's
eyelids dropped in acknowledgment of her daughter's
words.
"But how do you do that, Leigh? How do you steel yourself against the
things you see? Those poor men need so much more than we can give them, and
their gratitude for even simple kindnesses is a difficult thing to bear. You
work with sick and wounded men every day, Leigh. You have seen the same kind of
things that upset me so. How are you able to go on?"

"You
learn to harden your heart."

"Not
harden your heart, surely," Althea protested.

Leigh
paused, considering her answer more carefully. She did not want to delve too
deeply into the defenses she had erected to enable her to accept the things she
saw. Even for her the line between pity and duty was finely drawn. To think too
much about how she did what was necessary might destroy the fragile balance,
the tenuous grip she held on her emotions. She had done what she must to
survive, but her mother, seeking to find her own way to accept the horrors of
war, deserved a truthful answer.

"No,
you don't harden your heart exactly," she admitted. "For every death
I've witnessed, for every young man I've seen maimed, I've grieved. But I've
never let that grief interfere with what the other men need. Those who are
struggling to survive are the ones I think about, not the ones who have gone
beyond my ability to help."

Althea
saw the fire flare in her daughter's eyes and understood both the difficulty of
the admission and the strength of her determination.

"But
why do so many men die," she asked fretfully, "not in battle, but
later, in the prisons and even in the best hospitals?"

Men
did die the way her mother said, many more after they had received treatment
than before. They burned up with fevers no one could name, were wasted by
dysentery and virulent coughs that echoed through the wards at night. Their
flesh putrefied and stank until the poison circulating in their blood claimed
their lives. Since the first days of the war, much had been learned about
treating wounded men, and Leigh had developed a few ideas of her own about the
importance of cleanliness, good food, and rest. But whatever medical advances
had been made by having a chance to test new ideas and theories, they had not
learned enough. Dear God, not nearly enough!

"Why
do they die, Leigh?" her mother repeated.

"I
don't know," Leigh replied, an odd inflection in her voice. "It's not
as if I were a doctor."

By
noon the next day, Althea had become one of the casualties of the war. When
Leigh arrived home from the hospital, her mother was delirious and unable to
keep anything down. Hayes's return at the end of the week found Althea no
better. By then Leigh was worn to a vacant-eyed wraith by the constant demands
of being at her mother's bedside. After that they took turns sitting with
Althea, but the older woman hovered near death for days before showing any
signs of improvement.

The
night Althea took a turn for the better, Hayes carried Leigh to their room in
spite of her ineffective resistance and mewed protests. She had been sleeping
in snatches on the fainting couch at the foot of her mother's bed since Althea
had fallen ill, and he was determined that Leigh would see to her own needs now
that the older woman was out of danger. Buttoning the neck of her nightgown,
Hayes kissed Leigh quickly, then tucked her beneath the covers, murmuring
admonitions and assurances. That it had taken less than a minute for her eyes
to close proved how close to exhaustion she had been, and it was only after
three days of enforced rest and the unstinting attentions of a doting husband
that Leigh was allowed into her mother's room again.

"Leigh,"
Althea murmured when Leigh reappeared in the sickroom, "when I'm well
enough I want to go home, home to Louisiana."

"Mother,
you don't mean that," Leigh had whispered soothingly, stroking her
mother's hair. "You've been ill, and you'll see things differently when
you get your strength back."

"No,
Leigh, promise me. I'm tired of living here, away from my own people."

Leigh
heard the pain in her mother's tone and could surmise the cause. She had wired
her father several times during Althea's illness, but Horace had been unable to
come to see his wife. Though Leigh understood the demands made on men by a
country at war, she found it difficult to forgive her father for not being with
Althea when she needed him.

Horace
Pennington's visit in March and his demands that his wife remain in St. Louis
for the duration of the war made no impression on Althea. Nor did her
determination to return to the Mattingly plantation wane during her long, slow
convalescence. Finally, Leigh discussed the problem of her mother's future with
Hayes.

"Do
you think we should side with Father and prevent her from going south?"
she asked as she and her husband lay curled together in bed.

He
was silent as he considered his answer. "I think once she's strong enough,
she may undertake the journey on her own. And that will have two results."

"Which
are?"

"That
you will never be sure she has arrived at your uncle's plantation, and that you
will be estranged from her forever."

"You
sound as if you want her to go," Leigh accused.

"I
want what's best for both of you. She needs to get away, to prove herself, to
think." His voice was gentle. "Because the area around New Orleans is
occupied by Union troops, we can be relatively sure that she'll be safe and getting
enough to eat. She won't like living under Yankee rule, but it won't be much
different than being here in St. Louis. And you, Leigh, need to stop protecting
her."

Leigh
considered his argument, recognizing the truth in what he said. Still, the
projected change in her life threatened Leigh.

"You
needn't be afraid for Althea," Hayes continued softly, "or for
yourself."

As
always her husband's perceptiveness startled Leigh, and she turned her face
into the curve of his throat, nestling close.

"Can
we take her south?" she asked after a time.

"As
far as Tuscumbia Bend above Vicksburg, at least. She'll have to travel overland
for a ways unless Vicksburg falls."

"That
hardly seems likely, does it?"

"No."
Hayes's voice had a deep, troubled timbre.

"Perhaps
one of my uncles can come to meet us and escort Mother to the plantation. I'll
write tomorrow to see what arrangements we can make. And she'll need a pass to
get through the lines."

Hayes
nodded. "Are you planning to ask Major Crawford for one?" he teased,
his momentary seriousness past.

"Good
grief, no! I'll never ask that man for another thing as long as I live!"
Leigh declared, then giggled at her own venom.

He
hugged her close and brushed a kiss across her temple. "I'll take care of
getting the pass, if you like."

"I
surely would!" she whispered back, turning to offer him a kiss as his
reward. "And thank you, Hayes."

"It's
all right, love. You know I'd do anything in the world to make you happy."

***

April 14, 1863
—
Near
Vicksburg, Mississippi

Leigh
set the tea service down on the table beside the bed in one of the more
luxurious cabins on the promenade deck of the
Barbara Dean
and poured a
cupful of the strong brew for her mother. Dressed in a becoming ice-blue
morning gown, the woman propped up on a bank of pillows did not seem like one
who was recovering from a life-threatening illness. Color bloomed bright in her
cheeks, and her eyes sparkled with the excitement of the trip she was
undertaking. She was thinner than she had been, and she did seem to tire more
easily, but even Leigh was forced to admit that Althea was well enough to make
the trip to Louisiana.

"Leigh,
dear, I don't know why you insist on treating me like an invalid when I am
perfectly willing to take tea in the sitting room," the older woman
admonished her daughter.

"It's
pointless to tax your strength unduly, Mother," Leigh countered.
"Besides, here we can catch the breeze off the river and enjoy the
scenery." The warm, wet spring had brought the greenery out in lush
profusion, and the redbuds and dogwood provided splashes of frivolity along the
forested banks of the Mississippi.

Althea
took the cup of tea and sipped it appreciatively. "Oh, Leigh, I am going
to miss you," she said unexpectedly.

All
the conversations they'd had about Althea's trip to Louisiana had begun and
ended with Leigh fruitlessly arguing to change her mother's mind and the older
woman remaining steadfast in her determination to leave St. Louis. There had
been no appeals to play on the emotions, no personal declarations to color
their discussions, not until now. To admit any semblance of regret would have
weakened Althea's argument, and it had never been Leigh's way to reveal her
feelings. But now with the move all but a fact, Althea seemed to be determined
to say what needed to be said.

Leigh's
eyes clouded with tears at her mother's admission. "Oh, Mother, if only
you'd stay," she began.