BEST
OF
FRIENDS
Alison James
PRELUDE
i. Lewis, Eliza,
George
1856
His eyes are an intense blue: the blue, so he has been told, of
He is thin, wears the epaulettes of a captain. He would be horrified to think of himself as transparent.
Tartan hoop skirts and figured muslin brush against knife-edge pressed blue serge; palms sweat, bosoms heave deliciously. The watchful eye might catch a flash of ankles. There is no shortage of watchful eyes, in this crowded room full of movement. It is slender ankles that are in short supply, in this Army post, it could be anywhere in the country, it doesn’t really matter where. A scratch band produces music. It is composed of whoever can play an instrument: officers, enlisted men – fiddles, a flute, an accordion – no-one is fussy. So long as it carries them along, they are willing to be delighted. Everyone here is eager to enjoy themselves.
The couple he watches: a woman, no longer in the first bloom of youth, nor especially pretty – her face is slightly too strong for that, her brow too high. Her gown of pale green taffeta is a little behind the style, but it sets off the charming flush in her cheeks as she waltzes in the arms of her husband. He is superb in his full-dress uniform, a whirl of brass buttons and gold epaulettes, the sweat-stains under the arms no more apparent than everyone else’s: a strikingly handsome man. They make a charming pair, gyrating over the bare uneven floorboards among all the other officers and wives and daughters.
The room is hung with boughs of evergreen and garlands of vine with glossy berries on. The light is soft, golden.
The thin man stands against the wall under a wreath of bittersweet-vine. When the dance dissolves, the handsome couple make their way towards him. He holds out a glass of lemonade punch to each of them, which he has secured before the press of dancers crowd around the punch-bowl: a gesture both simple and eloquent.
He has not taken his eyes off them dancing together for the past hour.
The husband says something to him, laughing, and holds out his wife’s hand. The thin man shakes his head, smiling, but a refusal nonetheless.
He always refuses.
The post commander comes up to claim the woman in green, and they all exchange bows and pleasantries before she dances away on his august arm. The husband and the friend who will not dance begin to talk and laugh together. The husband puts his arm around his friend’s shoulder and leads him away to join a group of officers.
The thin captain’s eyes are bright in the candle- and lamp-lit ballroom.
Over the Colonel’s shoulder, the woman’s gaze finds him every now and then, when he is not aware of it. The Colonel finds her rosy cheeks entrancing, so much so that he almost forgets his boots pinch and his dress britches are uncomfortably tight around the waist.
The assembled company dance until late. It is well past midnight when they begin to drift off toward their quarters. The band put their instruments away. The enlisted men in charge of the refreshments drain the last of the punch.
The husband can barely wait for his wife to step from her pale green rustling gown. Dancing always arouses his passion for her, more even than usual. He particularly enjoys the thrill of possession he feels when watching her dance with other men, imagining their response to her hair, her perfume. She has born him two children. She is aware of the glitter in his eyes even while her back is turned to him. He is confident of his reception, as always.
In the bedroom of the commanding officer’s house, the Colonel turns to his menopausal wife with a hopeful expression, thinking of the flushed cheeks of the woman in green and how he would like to deepen that flush. The Colonel’s wife sighs and assents. The Colonel is a very happy man. Something about Mrs. H— gets his blood up. His wife is surprised at his energetic and gasping need for her.
She wonders when he will act his age and run out of lustful inclination. She suffers from various complaints and is thankful that at least she need no longer fear pregnancy: since her husband first turned to her as a second lieutenant in ’27 she has conceived eleven times and born six children. The youngest is back East in boarding school. She has accompanied the Colonel on this posting chiefly so that he will not be tempted to perform this act with anyone else, if he must do it at all. She does not remove her nightgown.
In the bachelor quarters the thin officer lies awake and stares at the ceiling. It is a long time until dawn.
In the conflict which is to come, which looms even now below the horizon like a bloody sunrise, the infernal, some say inevitable creation of the politicians, both of the younger men will become general officers.
The thin captain will command a brigade.
His friend the husband will command an entire division.
To their mutual horror and bewilderment, they will no longer be on the same side.
ii. Lewis
1863
The thin captain is thinner still now. His shoulders stooped, he peers at the clapboard homes. He has left his men setting-up camp. The name of the town made him tremble. He has not yet fully recovered from his wound: he is not strong, and in this state emotion often gets the better of him.
He wears a grey uniform with stars on the collar and gilt lace on the sleeves, one of them pinned-up. He is looking for a modest house with green shutters and a picket fence. Although he has never been there, it is the home of almost all he has ever loved.
Surely he cannot be far, now? George described it so many times, the first
at
I don’t know, he had replied. Maybe.
I miss my sister. He had not
meant to admit it, but something about
this open, friendly
It ain’t so grand of a place, said George, they don’t
come from money, my folks – but we didn’t find fault with it. Moved to
Sure, said Lewis, thinking of his family home in
They were innocent, then; they took one another for granted. Once, they danced and chatted and laughed as if nothing would ever change. A few years ago: a lifetime ago. Riding slowly down the leafy June lane he thinks of them now, the way they were then; finds George’s name on his lips.
It is the third year of the war, and he is heartily sick of seeing his boys die. Duty and honor require, however, that he go on: and so he does.
He is alone, which may be foolish for a man of his rank in enemy territory; he has left his aides behind in the camp, since this is a personal errand – a very personal one indeed.
Who would have thought it would come to this?
Will he recognize it?
Will she be there?
He has heard that she is, but in these times nothing is certain and news is staler than old mackerel.
God, what can he say to her?
He sits upright with an effort, straightens his shoulders. She may be outside, and he would not wish her first sight of him after all this time to find him slumping.
The rest will be shocking enough. Not to mention this uniform.
She has never seen him in it.
The enemy; he is the enemy.
The lane smells of rain in the dust and wet leaves.
He wrote to his sister, a couple of days ago:
On the March, June 1863
Sis,
Pretty fine Yankee paper don’t you think! The boys are
in fits of delight as we captured it along with plenty of fine wheat flour and
a couple hundred cases of sardines — rather like the loaves and the
fishes! How would the good Lord have
contrived to divide twelve cans of peaches between an entire brigade? – for the
task defeated me, without His divine assistance. We had to draw lots. We are
all tired of wormy corn meal. I no longer have the toothache, which is
something to be grateful for.
We passed a field of corn today in silk &
tassel. The light caught it just so, all silver-gilt, I wished I had the time
to paint it. I felt foolish, to respond with such emotion to so ordinary a
thing. Only it seemed quite extra-ordinary, just then. I sat my horse awhile
there, took the time to encourage the boys along. I am sure they were too footsore
to see the beauty of it, our ‘foot-cavalry’, my green boys in all the promise
of their manhood. O we were mauled at Chancellorsville, Sis, you must know that
by now, brilliant victory or no; we cannot afford too many more like it, &
a hollow one it was, since it has cost us Tom Jackson. I prayed God, as they
went by, that they shd. live to fulfill that promise; knowing full well that
many wd. not.
I cannot say much to you of our direction — but
it may be after all this time, that I shall have the opportunity to see E.
again. There’s a fine place for my pen to give me away with a splatter,
betraying to you the real subject of this letter.
There is a possibility, that she still resides
in the town where George was raised. We are to pass not far from there. I am so
agitated you would have to laugh, if you could see me: like a child, saying forever, Mama, are we
there yet? Can we go there? Mama, please? — How foolish! Here I am, past forty,
broken and stiff, feeling like a complete schoolboy.
O Suzy, my heart is overflowing. I do not know,
what to do. I think I shall go to her, if I can.
Perhaps she will hate me, after everything that
has happened. She cd. well blame me, and my kind, for all the wrongs that have
been – all the heartbreak.
I must see her again. Sis, you understand, don’t
you? Even if I never see her after this, I cannot come so close and fail to
have the courage to look her up.
The boy will be eight, now. I shd. like to see him
again, too.
I shd. so very much like to talk with her, one
more time, Suzy — to hear the sound of her voice wh. has been in my ears all
this time, in the sighing of every wind:
to see the familiar dear expressions move across her face like the
shadows of clouds across the hills.
The sky was so very beautiful before the sun
set, tonight.
Wish me luck in finding her, Sis!
He has asked a neighbor: yes, she lives there still, the house past the bend, the fence painted green to match the shutters. Reckon there’s a yellow rose out in front. He ignores the narrowed eyes, the frank curiosity. They might well stare at this uniform.
So close — ah, god.
Will she hate him?
How can she not?
Ò
…it begins
George
& Lewis
1840 – 1846
A February night in an attic room in that drafty old citadel, that comfortless incubator of future officers. The halls smell of cold stone, like a cathedral. Lewis Armstrong has been coughing since they retired two hours ago.
“Dammit, Lew, cain’t you let a fellow sleep?”
There is a gasp from the other bed. If there were light in the room to see by, his lips would likely be grey, thinks his friend.
“Look, I’m sorry, all right?” George adds, his conscience stricken, “I know you cain’t help it. Only dang it all, ain’t you goin’ to let up till mornin’?”
“Reckon – not,” croaks Lewis.
George Hamilton turns-over inside the warm nest of his covers, then flings them back and sits up, lets his feet make contact with the cold floor. “Damn, but it’s as cold as dead nuns in here,” he says.
“I know it,” says Armstrong, before another fit of coughing takes him.
God forbid his lungs are touched, thinks Hamilton; it’ll be the end of him – and me, too, if I ketched it. “Hey, take it easy, old man,” he says, “I’m coming over to help.”
Lewis gasps.
George pulls his nightshirt down over his young-man’s helpless wanting, a state he spends half his nights in, and wills it away. He goes to sit on his friend’s bed with a cup of water. The mattress is narrow, so there is little room for him even though Armstrong is skinny. It seems even harder and lumpier than his own. He recalls that he arrived first and chose the better bed. For a moment he is almost sorry. “C’mon,” he says, reaching behind Armstrong to help him rise, “Sit up. I got you. You’re goin’ to cough this one up and then settle down and get some rest, all right?” He does not add: and let me get a little, too.
“Sure,” gasps his friend, “ – thanks.”
“Don’t thank me,” grins George, happy to share the truth in a cheerful moment if he can do so without reproach: “it’s chiefly for my benefit, y’know.”
“I figured,” wheezes Armstrong, struggling to sit.
The water won’t be much good to him, George realizes: he can’t hardly breathe at all. He sets it down, helps swing his friend’s legs out of bed and puts an arm round his shoulders as they sit side-by-side. “Now, give it all you got, you hear?” he says encouragingly. “I got you, so you ain’t about to fall over. Just cough it up.”
“Yes – ” gasps Lewis.
He does so, loudly, horribly. In the middle it seems he would stop if he could, but the fit is on him and even though he can barely get his breath the barks keep coming, each one harsher than the last till he sways.
“I got you,” says George again. “Come on, might be a gold watch… ”
Armstrong, it seems, is almost choking. George slaps him on the back, between the shoulder-blades. The sputum lodged in his throat loosens with each whack till he draws air into his lungs in a desperate wheeze.
Silently, George Hamilton passes him a rag to spit into.
He does, and the coughing subsides. Lewis Armstrong sits gasping and tries to breathe normally once more.
George gives his shoulders a rough, reassuring squeeze before letting him go. “Done?”
“I think so,” murmurs Lewis. “Sorry.”
“Forget sorry,” says George, not unkindly, “just cut it out now, y’hear?”
“Sure thing,” says Lewis.
“All right, then,” grins George in the dark. His grin is so infectious you can hear it in his voice: there is a warm tone to it, as if it were a note from a golden bugle. “Now go back to sleep, will you?”
“I’ll try,” says Lewis.
“You better,” says George, climbing back into his own bed – but not before he has pulled the covers back up under his friend’s chin and tucked them in.
He hates sick-rooms: but a fellow can hardly let his room-mate cough himself to death, can he.
A year later, Lewis Armstrong is almost ‘found’ for breaking a dinner-plate over the head of the lad opposite him at dinner. He is not usually known for his hasty temper, and the incident causes quite a stir. What could the provocation have been? If an officer cannot keep his temper, is he fit to lead men? The Superintendent comes within a whisker of sending him down; but an interview with each of them separately and the testimony of a pair of witnesses changes his mind.
The Superintendent sits at his desk – it is a massive thing, carved from the oak of a captured British Navy ship from the War of 1812 – and stares out of the stone-mullioned windows into the bleak sky.
A note from George Hamilton lies before him. It would require a great deal of courage to write such a thing. Hamilton does not beg for mercy for his friend, but requests the Superintendent with all respect to acquaint himself fully with the two cadets and all the circumstances before taking action: a bold suggestion coming from a cadet, as if his commander might not be counted on to do so without such importuning.
The Superintendent takes up the note one more time, summons Hamilton to him also. He watches the young man for a long time before speaking. Hamilton stands perfectly still, straight, sure of himself: not a hair out of place, not a wrinkle in his uniform. He is handsome; what’s more, he has that indefinable quality that gets the men to pay attention to him. Of the three of them, he will make the finest officer, thinks the Superintendent, if he learns to temper his rashness. Young Armstrong will make the second-best: normally he is thoughtful, intuitive, swift in understanding. Why he broke the dish only he knows: he will not repeat the insult, not even to save himself. He stood half an hour ago where Hamilton stands now, staring squarely before him, expressing his regrets for disturbing the peace of the dining-room. The Superintendent dismissed Armstrong without revealing his decision.
The third – the breakee, as it were – is a troublemaker and a bully, a sly creature with a chip on his shoulder and a way of insulting others in so veiled a fashion as to get away with it.
Hamilton does not speak until he is spoken-to, of course; but he knows from asking the other witnesses that the Superintendent has found out the truth, and this confidence is expressed in every line of his catlike body.
“You had the temerity to address a letter to me, sir,” says the Superintendent at last.
“Yes, sir,” says Hamilton.
“Why?”
“Loyalty, sir,” says Hamilton, “and the desire to see justice done.”
“And what if those were not one and the same thing?”
“Then I should not have written, sir,” says Hamilton crisply.
“You are friends with Armstrong.”
“Sir.”
“Enough to risk your career in taking-up this matter with me?”
Hamilton does not hesitate: “Sir,” he repeats, in the same tone as before.
“Did you think I should not administer justice, sir?” asks the Superintendent.
“I wished to be sure you were in possession of all the facts, sir,” says Hamilton staunchly, “without my having the chance to speak.”
“Have you anything else to say to me, sir?” asks the Superintendent, hiding a smile successfully behind the stern demeanor of decades.
“No, sir,” says Hamilton, “I said it in my letter, sir. All I had to say. I have every confidence in your judgment. Sir.”
“Mighty good of you,” says the Superintendent. “You are dismissed,”
Hamilton salutes as crisply as he spoke, and leaves the room.
Thoughtfully, the Superintendent pours himself a large whisky, settles back in the leather armchair by his fire and stares into the flames. Of all the chilly rooms, this one is the least inhospitable.
It will be interesting to see what comes of these young men. Two of them may yet be a credit to their country: he certainly hopes so.
He finishes the whisky, and returns to his desk to call them back one at a time for his decision.
Armstrong stays, with a dire warning about his temper.
Hamilton is told coldly never to insult a senior officer with the suggestion that he will not do his duty in as thorough and impartial a manner as possible.
The troublemaker is told that another incident will cost him his career.
It was about Armstrong’s sister, the off-color remark, apparently – at least, according to those that heard part of it. The Superintendent’s distaste for so low a blow is what decided him. He wonders if the witnesses are partial to Armstrong: as far as he knows, the lad does not have an enemy in the entire establishment.
Well, that spoke for itself; and they would hardly lie. If they did, they must know full well he would see it.
The superintendent allows his eyes to narrow in dismissing the troublemaker. There is no doubt whatever that he means what he says.
“God, Lew, that was a close one,” says George.
Lewis shrugs.
“You came within a hair’s-breadth, I swear to god!”
“It was worth it,” says Lewis, without bravado. “He deserved it.”
They each remember the wretched Purlie sitting with the gravy dripping down his nose, and burst out laughing.
George slaps Lewis across the shoulders. He is elated, exultant; a little wild. “I’m going into town,” he says, “ – time we lost our cherries, Lew!”
“No,” says Lewis, flushing deeply.
“C’mon,” says George, on the tide of his own enthusiasm, “I can’t stand it any longer!”
He rises; Lewis puts out a hand. There is something in his blue eyes that stops George in his tracks. “I thought you had a girl,” says Lewis, “back in Cincinnati?”
“I do,” George admits, “but what does that have to do with anything?”
“Everything,” says Lewis, “ – doesn’t it? How can you ask her to marry you if you consort with prostitutes?”
“Damn!” cries George, “when I need a moralizing prig instead of a friend I’ll know where to come!”
Lewis blinks. “Not to mention the clap,” he says.
George glares at him.
“You know I’m right,” says Lewis.
George leaves, slams the door behind him.
Lewis never asks where he has gone; George never tells.
They pass out, George near the head of his class and Lewis in the lower part: but not so low as to disgrace himself.
George goes off to Cincinnati, and returns with wedding plans. Lewis cannot help but admire his determination, his dispatch. But will this new arrangement break-up their friendship?
Well, time will tell: and nothing may be taken for granted. Lewis determines not to let on, by so much as one reproach, if he finds himself persona non grata in the household that is about to be formed. George must have his space, and his bride must feel free to make her own friends; although Lewis hopes he will still be welcome, from time to time: he would miss George too dearly for words if they barely saw one another.
George has confided in him that he cannot stand himself a second longer if he doesn’t take a wife. He cuffs Lewis affectionately and begs his understanding.
God, yes, says Lewis, wondering where the woman is that will stir him to a similar emotion.
* * *
He is summoned to meet his friend’s fiancée; dresses with extra care, cuts himself shaving.
Well, it is not him she is here to see, anyway, he consoles himself.
She is a guest at the Colonel’s, till the wedding; Lewis finds himself sweating upon the doorstep. He is shown in, and George meets him in the hallway, sweeps him into the Colonel’s parlour. Wait, Lewis wants to cry, I’m not ready yet: I haven’t thought what to say – George, don’t be in such a hurry, I —
She is sitting by the window, dressed in pale-green. Her head is bent, her brown hair coiled round it becomingly. She looks up when they enter; stands at once.
“Well, old man,” says George, “here she is. Lizzie, may I present my good friend Lewis Armstrong?”
Lewis sees a young woman of middling height with a tall brow and uncompromising eyebrows. She looks straight at him, smiling shyly, faintly; acknowledges his bow with a slight nod.
“Lew, this is my intended bride, Miss Eliza Bassett. My Lizzie.” The double possessive does not escape either of them. George is beaming.
“I am honored to make your acquaintance,” says Lewis, his eyes shining, his sincerity equally so.
She blushes. In all his stories, George has failed to mention his friend’s soft Virginia accent. I should have realized, she thinks.
“Now you’ve met,” declares George in satisfaction, “the two people on the face of the earth most dear to me! This calls for a toast, I believe!”
Lewis smiles as shyly as Eliza. Each of them is summing-up their first impressions of the other, these two people that care for George Hamilton so dearly.
She sees a young man with high color on his cheekbones and a fair complexion, brown hair and dreamy eyes. He seems serious, specially beside the irrepressible George, who (it appears) has enough energy and fizz for both of them. She warms to his diffidence; it makes her own a little easier to endure. If he were another life-and-soul-of-the-party, as George is, she feared that she might never get a word in edgeways as long as they were in the same room together; but he is not. His adam’s-apple bobs up-and-down in his throat and he says, “I have long wanted to meet you, Miss Bassett. George talks of nothing else whenever he comes back from leave. I understand you have two brothers?”
She is minutes into talking about them before she realizes he has steered her past being tongue-tied at meeting him, this bosom-friend of her fiancé’s about whom she has heard so much that her mouth was dry at the very thought of being introduced to him.
How did he do it?
He asked her a question about something most dear to her, she realizes. One she could hardly fail to answer, with passion and enthusiasm; with ease.
And it was no happy accident, either; not from the kind depths in those dark-blue eyes as George goes to the buffet behind them to pour everyone a glass of champagne. He pops the cork loudly, and when Eliza starts Lewis puts out his hand instinctively for a moment before withdrawing it.
She recovers, flushes again. “Heavens, George, you frightened me,” she says softly, to cover her confusion.
George makes some swift quip about her being better off not joining the artillery, then, Lizzie dear.
His friend catches her eye for a second and shakes his head with a look of long-suffering amusement. We who love George put up with his thoughtless ways, don’t we, it said.
So Lewis Armstrong intended to put her at her ease, then; saw she was shy of meeting him, and gave her his full attention with grace while George did the dramatic thing. And noticed when she flinched. I wonder if this is to be a pattern? she muses. The champagne is overflowing and George is laughing and trying to contain it with a napkin. Lewis goes swiftly to his aid with another, and the glasses are poured.
They work as a team, she observes: Lewis didn’t wait to be asked, he just saw what was needed and provided it. George didn’t even notice.
I was afraid I wouldn’t like him.
Yes, there might have been some jealousy there also.
But not now; not faced with the reality of him, this sweetheart of a young man that is to be their Best Man, and in whom all George’s confidence reposes. I shall have to find him someone nice, she thinks, so we can all have dinners together. She draws him out over the champagne, this quiet soul, by reversing his tactics and asking him about his sister.
George observes in amusement. She’s made short work of old Lew, he thinks, trooper that she is. Ought to have known she’d rise to the occasion. Spirit, that’s what she’s got.
God, I can’t wait to f–k her. Lord forgive me, but I can’t. I’ll burst, I know I will – if I’d had to wait any longer I might not have made it. Thank God she said yes, and her father too; thank God twice-over that she’s here, that it’s so soon.
And then there will be no more ladies-of-the-night; only my wife.
Thank God for that.
He is a decent soul, at heart.
George wakes upon his wedding-day three months later with the sense of mounting excitement he has only previously known before maneuvers. He shaves, finding satisfaction in his reflection; dresses with further approval as the clothes go on one by one and turn him from the hasty half-naked young man he feels himself to be into the polished and brightly-buttoned officer he aspires to, wants to believe he is. His sword completes the picture: he takes one last turn in the cheval-glass before going downstairs to find Lew in the library.
Lew has done him proud – he is tidier than George has ever seen him. He refuses a glass of something stronger than coffee, and smiles at George. Well, he says, look at you.
George smiles back.
There is something about our reflection in the eyes of those that care for us that so far surpasses a mirror it is like the force of the sun beside the faint moon. George feels it now.
“Ready?” asks Lew, still smiling.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” says George.
“You’re a lucky dog, you know that, don’t you?” says Lew, quietly. “Good thing you met her first, old man. Fortunate for you.”
“Yep,” says George.
He will repeat this remark of his friend’s to Eliza later, as they sit together at the wedding-breakfast, expecting her to find it as touching as she does: he passes it on as a compliment to her.
“Oh,” she says, her eyes seeking-out its author.
“Hey,” says George, “you just married me, remember? At the altar? Flowers, the minister, you know, rings: the whole thing?”
“Oh, I know,” she said. “But it was a very dear thing to say, if he meant it.”
“He never says anything he don’t mean,” says George. “Have another of these thingumbobs – these bacon whatsits – quenelles – they’re mighty good!”
“No, thank you,” she says, “I’m not hungry – not just now.”
He gives her a look. “Are you scared?” he whispers, louder than she is comfortable with.
Should she lie? No; she does not like to do that. “A bit,” she confesses in a whisper. “I’ve come so far, and – it’s all going to be so new —!” It is the first time they have discussed it at all.
“You’ll like it,” says George stoutly, flushing, “once you get used to it: I’ll guarantee you.”
She smiles at him. So sure of himself, always. “I’m sure I will,” she says softly.
From across the room she notices Lewis Armstrong’s gaze on them both. It is lit with such affection that a lump rises in her throat. She gives him a little wave and he returns it with the slightest of bows, as well as a raising of the eyebrows.
George is fortunate indeed to have a friend that loves him so, she thinks.
The white roses of her bouquet give off their sweetness from the table before her. George raises his glass to her in a private toast; his eyes are over-bright.
After the meal there is dancing. The bridal pair take the floor, and she wonders if her new husband will burst from exultation, or if it only looks that way. She is glad she did not have more than a glass or two of champagne, since it is hard enough to keep her head in all the whirl. She is conscious of the edge she stands on at this moment, the end of her girlhood. Tomorrow she will be altogether a wife. And the room is full of people who are thinking the same thing, of course, which in itself is so intimidating she feels her heart lurch.
After a couple of dances, in which George leads with vigor and barely treads on her toes at all, he wheels her to the corner where his friend and best man stands watching them still, with a strange, tender expression that gives Eliza goosebumps. “Here, Lew,” he says, “ – you stood up for me – now it’s your turn to stand up with Lizzie!” and with this generous pronouncement he hands her off to Lewis Armstrong, who is clearly taken-aback; but who (equally clearly) would not dream of hesitating – not with all eyes upon them, as they are.
He takes her from George: they twirl back into the group.
He holds himself away from her, she notices, not steering her close in the circle of his steely arm as George always does but rather suggesting a direction for them both, making the barest slight contact with her fingertips, her waist. How respectful he is, she thinks: what lovely manners. She bites her lip, looking up at him, so conscious of all that is to be tonight, and sees his gaze bent on her, filled with kindness and understanding.
In these past few weeks since she has got to know him, she has developed a great affection for this young man, so considerate, so reticent. George laughs when their conversations take a serious turn, as they often do. He brings out the best in George, she sees that too. George has a tendency to be scattered, superficial; Lewis’s influence is like a fresnel lens to a lighthouse-beam. George is calmer, deeper, more reflective when in the company of his friend, his sparkle more profound. Lewis makes thoughtful conversation; his remarks often invite his friend to look again, look further, find what is vital and illuminate it with all his spirit, not just his easy bonhomie. That is the essence of friendship, isn’t it, she thinks – to call us out to be more deeply ourselves? What a gift. She loves the George who is revealed thus, better even than the one she knew in Cincinnati.
“Please,” she says to Lewis as they dance, “don’t think you are losing a friend today, sir. Only gaining one, I hope!”
“You are very kind,” he says, blinking.
“You are like brothers, aren’t you,” she smiles.
“It feels that way sometimes, yes,” he says, looking over at George with such fondness her heart settles for a moment and she forgets to worry. “We are very close – but I hope you have not felt excluded!”
“Oh, no!” she cries, “quite the opposite – you have made me so welcome! As if – may I hope – to be a sister?”
“I should be honored,” he says. He must be thirsty from all the dancing: he is hoarse.
They dance without further conversation till the music stops. He is an accomplished dancer, the kind whose partner may lose all her self-consciousness and enjoy herself. As the strains draw to a close he brings her back to George, who has been watching them with his chin up almost as if he gave birth to them. The pride of possession lights his handsome face: his friend, his wife – a man blessed indeed. Just before he relinquishes her, Lewis says: “I do hope and pray with all my heart that you will be happy together, Eliza – I have no doubt of it!”
“Thank you,” she says, hearing his sincerity in his husky tone.
He restores her to the bosom of her beaming bridegroom; bows, excuses himself.
He has not trodden upon her toes at all. She feels calmer, restored to herself a little, not quite so nervous of all that is to come: his gift to her.
George snatches her back up, sweeps her off onto the floor again. He is a picture of self-satisfaction. She is conscious of his hand at her waist: can feel its heat through her clothing, even.
Anxious again, her eyes find their friend, sipping champagne-punch by the wall. He puts the glass down and takes another from the table beside him: drains it, almost desperately. He is staring up at the chandelier and his eyes are wide, dark. This must be a strange day for him, too, seeing his friend move onward into a different life that will have less time for their friendship in it, from now on. She hopes she was able to reassure him about not taking George from him.
Her new husband’s breath also smells of liquor; he did not waste the time she was dancing with Lewis, then. She supposes they learned to drink this heavily at the Point: she hopes it is not a habit. She has not seen Lewis drink like that before; usually, he refuses. But this is a wedding.
“By God, Lizzie, you are a sight for sore eyes,” says George, triumphantly. His fingers tighten, leaving her in little doubt what he is thinking. She hopes she will manage gracefully, all that is to come.
The wedding-night is a shock to her.
She is a plucky soul, however, and weathers it with courage, keeping her emotions to herself. There is something vulnerable about George in his desire: as if he needs her to accept him.
She does so.
His kisses have always been hot and eager. She ought not to be surprised to find the rest of him no less so, she tells herself.
She has never been undressed with anyone before, let alone a bridegroom. She keeps her nightgown on, clutching it at first and then taking George in her arms since she has little choice in the matter, and she might as well be kind: he seems beside himself, it would be cold not to do so.
He is grateful for her understanding; he is not at all sure he could have found words to tell her what he wanted, needed. He finishes with an exclamation and pulls away in relief and satisfaction. The tarts he has had might be more experienced, but she is after all the girl of his dreams, and now he has had her.
He can hardly wait for the next time.
That is why they call it a honeymoon, after all, isn’t it!
God, she thinks to herself, is that it? So quick, so excruciatingly painful, so undignified, and then with a grunt it’s over? Isn’t he going to tell me he loves me?
He is embarrassed, she realizes.
He doesn’t know what to say.
“Dear George,” she whispers, trying the words now that she is a wife.
“Goodnight, then,” he says, hoarsely, before falling asleep.
She stands beside him watching the thunder of Niagara, that week, and he takes her hand in his and squeezes it.
She squeezes back shyly, looks up at his bright face for a moment and down again. She used to meet his gaze squarely, and she is sure she will do so again once she becomes used to being married: but for these few days she is overwhelmed, unsure of herself and this splendid young man she has always thought she was in love with – the reality of him.
The hurtling water leaves her breathless, somehow.
“No need to be shy,” he says, “not now we’re married!”
“No, of course not,” she says, blushing.
He drops a line to Lew from the hotel: I recommend the state of matrimony, old
man – recommend it highly. You should
try it some time. Thanks for standing-up
for me. See you soon.
When they return, the little house is decorated with colored bunting and the rooms all freshly-painted. Eliza had been a little aghast at their shabbiness when she first saw them before the wedding, but had not wanted to make a fuss: perhaps all married-quarters were so dingy.
Well, they were, normally: but not those belonging to the best friend of Lewis Armstrong.
Who shrugs, when they thank him. He got a few of the men, he says, on their off-time; the whitewash wasn’t much, he’d charged it at the commissary. He hopes she likes the mint-green he’d picked for the woodwork, inside. It had been dark-brown, but he’d seen her wearing a lot of green, and her best tablecloth was green too…
There is green paint in his hair, at the back.
She loves it: the gloomy rooms are transformed.
George grins. Old Lew, he says, damn! Ain’t he something?
She has to agree: yes, he is.
The way he had watched her as she stepped from the carriage and saw it: followed them inside, a few steps behind, as if he were holding his breath; the relief in his face as hers filled with joy.
It was not George he was watching; not then.
She sews curtains to match, a cream brocade with dark-green acanthus-leaves, and gives her first dinner-party.
He is the guest-of-honor, of course. Also, the only guest: she wishes to start small and safely, and spread the wings of her ambition thereafter. She looks through her modest trousseau and finds a wine-red gown with creamy lace at the bosom: one of the few she owns that is not green or white. She does not own very many gowns. Then she remembers all Lewis Armstrong’s labors and his care to please her, including his noticing that she favors green; and exchanges it for a Nile-green-and-cream stripe with a blushingly generous décolleté; pins a cameo brooch to keep a fichu in place in front in the middle, and her modesty with it. She looks in the glass, quickly, straightening her hair: the effect is soft, pretty, the cameo eye-catching, especially in the position she has it pinned. She is not as curvaceous as some of her friends, but it shows-off what slender figure she has – she wants to do George proud, not appear a drab little dowd from the West. Hoping she has succeeded, she adds a creamy shawl over her bare shoulders and goes to greet her guest.
Lewis arrives with fresh scratches on his hands and a posy of late roses in them, the thorns picked-off. His clothes are clean but look slept-in, somehow; his face is eager.
He was afraid, she realizes: afraid he wouldn’t be welcome.
She greets him with all the warmth she owns.
George glows.
The dinner is a modest success: the first of too many to count, of every quality that may be imagined, that they are to share in the coming years. George sits back in satisfaction and congratulates his wife.
Lewis toasts the two of them, his eyes shining with feeling.
George accepts, and kisses his bride’s hand with a loud smacking of the lips.
Lewis blinks, and drains his glass.
I never could carry a tune, says George, stifling a belch: here, Lew, you sing! Look, we got that piano you mentioned down in that old store, hauled it over here – didn’t pay but a song for it. It’s a little chipped, but the keys are fine.
Oh, says Eliza sitting-down, someone’s had it tuned!
Lewis shuffles. Ain’t no point, elseways, is there, he mumbles.
Why didn’t I think of that! cries George.
I don’t know, George, why didn’t you? smiles Lewis, taking his place behind Eliza and bending forward to light the candles on either side with one he has brought from a side-table in the dining-room. He holds his other hand underneath to be sure he does not drip hot wax on Eliza or her new instrument, for which she is grateful.
Damn, Lew, says George, you think of everything! What would I do without you?
I have no idea, Lewis murmurs, but you’d manage, I expect.
I’m not so sure about that, says George. Play something, Lizzie! He rests his hand on her bare shoulder in an easy, possessive gesture: she is acutely aware of it.
So is Lewis.
Eliza forbears to point-out she has as yet no music, and picks-out an old ballad by ear: one of her favorites.
I know that, says Lew, it’s the raggle-taggle-gypsies, ain’t it?
Yes, she says.
They sing those old ones in the mountains, he says, all up and down the Appalachians.
Do you know the words? she asks – I can’t play and sing at the same time, not without practicing! It’s all I can do to play!
Come on, Lew, says George.
Lewis takes-up the chorus, softly: Oh, what care I for my goose-feather-bed
With the sheet turned-down so bravely-oh!
For tonight I shall sleep in the cold open field,
Along with the raggle-taggle-gypsies-oh!
Eliza shivers. It is a mournful song, and a tale of running-away: the heroine leaves her new-wedded lord to go with the raggle-taggle-gypsies. She did not choose it on purpose, only that its plaintive melody was the first thing that came to her hesitant fingers. She looks up at them over her shoulder uncertainly.
George has stopped staring down her bosom and has lifted his hand; he is gazing off somewhere, fidgeting with a piece of fringe from the cloth that covers the stained piano-lid.
Lewis smiles. The old ones are the best ones, ain’t they, he says.
* * *
She feels as if she is playing at keeping-house, as she did when she was a little girl. George seems to be very happy with his new domestic arrangements. One morning he is leaving the house; finds her on her knees polishing the brass fire-dogs, and chides her: lord, Lizzie, that’s what orderlies are for! Give them to me, I’ll have them back in an hour as bright as Phoebus!
She is flustered, rises unsteadily to her feet. He catches her, flashes that grin of his. My, but you look mighty fetching with them roses in your cheeks, Lizzie, he says. He keeps hold of her hand, smiling at her differently, almost shyly now. She smiles back. His nostrils flare; he fumbles urgently with his britches...
He is almost late reporting for duty.
How pathetically easy it is to keep him happy, she thinks – he is like a little boy, sometimes, except with a man’s ways. She wonders if she will ever feel like one of those wives she sees, brimming-over with self-confidence, their full skirts sweeping behind them as they glide up and down the streets, their whalebone-corseted cantilevered bosoms so magnificent. She still feels like a girl pretending to be a woman, in some ways; wonders if she is alone in this.
But they are officers, she reminds herself, for all they behave like children in their hasty speech, their ready laughter – of course they are men, not boys.
Sometimes.
A large package arrives for her: sheet music, from a dealer’s shop in Richmond. I asked my sister to pick out some nice pieces for you, says Lewis, stopping by to explain: I hope you don’t mind? – just to get you started? I had them send the catalogue, you should get what you want, of course!
Richmond, she says, I have never been there: is it a big place?
Yes, he says, plenty big – and very elegant: you’d like it.
She wonders if his family keep servants. Slaves. Does she dare ask? The South seems like a foreign place to her Northern imagination: sultry, full of field-hands toiling and muddy bayous starred with white egrets. She has never been south of Baltimore in her life.
George leaves the room for something, and she takes the opportunity to inquire very quietly. I was just wondering, she says, I – I don’t even know how to ask, but if we are to be friends, you won’t take offence, I hope?
Offence? Never! he says; what, Eliza?
Do you – does your family have – Virginia’s a slave state, isn’t it, so – have you – ?
He sighs, shifts in his chair.
She wishes she had not asked him.
His eyes are hot, bright. Not of my own, he says, lord, no. It’s not – something I care for. We did, of course, in the family, why – everyone did, if you came from – well, a generation ago, it was – we had a cook and a driver, my father set them free them in his will. And Maisie, my sister’s – uh – servant: she went with Suzy, when she was married – I guess she’s… I mean, they treat her like – but yes, she’s… plenty still do… his voice trails off. We played together, as children, he says, flushing. I taught her to read and write – you’re not supposed to do that. But I did.
His discomfort is so evident she reaches-out, takes his hand briefly in reassurance.
He recoils, withdrawing it from hers sharply, then apologizes for having done so. He is so self-conscious she wishes the ground would swallow her up.
She does not mention it again for a very long time. Not till they have reached that place in their friendship where there is no subject that may not be spoken-of.
Well, almost none.
Lewis
West Point
1840 – 45
He has straight
brows, a tender mouth; prefers French to
artillery, and drawing above all. The
cartography master thinks he is a gifted cadet;
the drill instructor, a dreamer with two left feet. Neither of them is entirely mistaken.
He chews the end of his pencil, thinks fondly of his home, of blackberry-tea and johnny-cakes, of his own room, and especially of his beloved sister Suzy. He writes quickly and from the heart, taking little time to compose his sentences; only looking up in between to think what to tell next.
In place of his room-mate’s brilliance, he has determination: a dogged quality recognized by the Congressman who recommended him for this position, a final favor owed the lad’s late and hapless father.
“You’ll do –– harrumph –– eh, sir? You won't disgrace me, now, will you?”
That gentle mouth set straight and firm, the reply moving the jaded politician by its simple honesty: “I hope not, sir.”
He had frowned at the boy, wanting something more definite: “Is that all you have to say for yourself, sir? Hm?”
“I shall do my best, sir,” the lad had replied, quietly but with a straight look he had seen all too rarely since he entered politics. “On that I give you my word of honor.”
“Do you! Do you, indeed. Very well, then. I shall put your name forward – it’s late in the game, but I have some influence, I like to think – you’d better get to your studies, sir, I daresay.”
And so, weeks later, here he sits in a freezing garret in that extraordinary windswept eagle’s-nest of military talent and future campaigns, conquests, glory, and bloody, wholesale slaughter, West Point.
West Point,
N.Y. 1840
Suzy —
My
first week survived, & I have made a friend!
We share a
room — at first I thought him arrogant, since he arrived before me & had
already staked his claim to the better of the beds, the top drawer for his
linen, &c. &c. — but he is a capital fellow when you get to know him a
little better. I must have laughed more in this seven days than in the last
year! — quite an achievement considering the harsh regimen & many pressures
of life here. You wd. not credit wh. insignificant infractions may lead to a
demerit. My friend is very nice & fastidious in his dress, but I shall have
to pay more attention to mine if I am not to pay for it! I shall be tip-toeing
until I get the hang of it.
I have not
known too many Yankees up till now & was all set to make allowances for
their inferior manners & generally impatient, mechanical & uncultured
ways: well George certainly is
impatient, tho’ as I said, a sight more smartly turned-out than I; a little
boastful perhaps, tho’ he has plenty to boast about & I believe is nervous,
underneath it — still, you can’t help but like him, his face is like a sunny
day at home (excepting when he is in a fit, when it is more like an anvil
thundercloud) & I believe he genuinely likes me, wh. is a great blessing in
the hostile atmosphere wh. surrounds us “plebes” until we prove ourselves. The
upper-class-men behave as if they had been endowed with deity, which is far from
being the case.
The studies
promise to be rigorous in the extreme, some of the staff who are to teach us
seem very dry & tyrannical, others — sadly, far fewer — endowed with the
capacity to endear themselves & communicate knowledge at the same time. An object lesson not ostensibly on the
curriculum, but one wh. may be taken to heart.
I am very
glad for those extra French classes I took under M. Geoffroy, for many of the
military texts & works on fortifications, engineering &c. in the
library here are in that language & we are expected to study them, wh. will
be a struggle for some. George promises assistance with the engineering
calculations & mathematical formulae, if I will lend a hand with his
French, wh. is rudimentary.
I cannot tell
you how it bolsters the spirit & nourishes the heart in the face of
hardship, to think that already I have a friend. It makes the days ahead seem
bearable.
This is a
desolate, forbidding kind of place, as I wrote you on my arrival last week — a
windswept plain above the Hudson surrounded by beetling crags wh. o’erlook our
efforts sternly, I cd. fancy them to be frowning in their somber purple aspect,
except at dawn when they appear silver-rose or the palest violet & do not
seem so threatening, shimmering rather than looming. How they must wonder at
these ant-like creatures swarming at their feet, sometimes in disorder,
sometimes unaccountably in drill formation; at the barking of orders, the
salutes fired that ring off their imperturbable & ancient granite faces
& resound across the river, to the shrill accompaniment of steam-boat
whistles, daring to disturb their long slumber!
Speaking of
windswept, our quarters here cd. not be more Spartan, they cd. use your gifted
touch to fix them up more comfortably but this is our first taste of the rigors
of military life & they do not want us to think it soft, we had better just
get used to it!
I have
acquired a troublesome cough — George complains it keeps him up at night — I
hope it don’t worsen. When I sit on the edge of my cot in the darkness fighting
for breath he mutters, ‘come on, cough it up old fellow, it might be a gold
watch!’ — wh. is oddly comforting, I
guess the old ones truly are the best ones, for he surely means to be kind.
Last night when it was very bad he got out of bed to fetch me water, & then
thumped my back: there is a kind heart
in him, under all his bluster.
My new friend
is from a little town in Penn., he has attended school in Philadelphia where he
has influential connexions including a politician or two, wh. is a very useful
thing to have up one’s sleeve. He is brilliant at the work here & a good
study, he seems to catch on with little effort. We are opposites in many ways
but so much the better, for we have nothing to compete over, thus: I am more than willing to cede him the stage,
wh. he occupies to perfection, being entertaining & quite a genius, while I
being of a quieter nature as you know am content to take care of organizing wh.
little comforts are to be had & provide an eager audience & a sympathetic
ear.
He is also
extremely well-looking, a florid complexion marred only by a crop of pimples
slightly larger than my own, velvet brown eyes & very white teeth. If there
were any young ladies here they wd. all be instantly in love with him. If he
does not graduate near the head of our class I shall be surprised.
Did I tell
you his name? I guess I didn’t. It is Hamilton, George Hamilton. No relation,
tho’, he says, to Alexander. Too bad.
O Suzy you
wd. be shocked to see what amuses some of the fellows here. They find
inordinate mirth in belching loudly at meals — wh. are a frightful scramble
& poor, grey fare when at last we get it, hardly worth eating. It is a good
thing I have always liked to chew on the lumps in my porridge, for there is no
shortage of them here, in fact it is all lumps except for the burnt
portions wh. even I cannot find palatable.
I have one
request, therefore: for pity’s sake,
send whatever you can in the way of creature comforts & delicacies, we are
utterly starved for good things! Specially sweet. Can you & Maisie &
Cook manage a hamper? O please, pretty please? (Be sure to send only things
that will stand to be bounced & jounced & trounced within an inch of
their lives, & pack all with twice as much sawdust as you wd think necessary!)
I do not
believe I have yet finished growing, & am at a loss to see how I ever
shall, on wh. they give us here! A generation of stunted officers? Surely such
cannot be their intention. But the fare barely keeps body & soul together.
Starved for food. A little less starved for affection. Years to go: this is but the beginning. O Suzy!!!
Write me
soon, I’m lonesome & homesick for news of you, George has already rec’d 3
letters & I have had none. I do intend to do you proud & repay the
confidence of my friends in recommending me to this high honor: do not take too much notice of the
complaints, & above all do not pass them on!
My regards to
all at home & love to you, as warm as a brother’s can be — from yr. “plebe”
bro. Lewis A. Armstrong.
* * *
Four, almost five years on: the mouth is firmer now, its tenderness surrendered to self-discipline and the necessity of appearing officer-like at all times. It has taken on a straight, habitual set; only a lingering thoughtfulness in the eyes betrays to the observer that this particular officer may possess at least as much sensibility as courage, though he is short of neither: far from it.
He has graduated in the bottom one-third of his class, far below his gifted friend, due in part to a lack of attention to the mathematics of trajectories and explosive charges; but there is that in him which his instructors note, seeing an officer in whose care they would unhesitatingly place their best men: he is diligent, conscientious, fair; will command loyalty without question, because he will earn it; will deserve it with every action, every thought, every breath. He is dutiful; takes his responsibilities gravely. He laughs rarely, unlike George – but when he does it is with a swift joy that pierces.
He looks hungry.
Taking up his pen, he dips it in the inkwell rather more thoughtfully than usual. A certain self-consciousness has stolen over him: what to say? Will he seem foolish to his sister, to write what is in his heart? But to have no-one in whom he can confide is gnawing at him – since this cannot be told to George, ever. And Suzy has always understood. He sighs, gives a little shrug; with a wry expression, he dips it again and puts the nib to the paper.
Rochester,
N.Y.
July
11 1845
Dear Sis,
You
have been asking me for this good while what is wrong with all the ladies of my
acquaintance, since they leave my heart so untouched. I have wondered myself,
from time to time! I now know the answer:
they are not Miss E.B.
Suzy she is
not exactly pretty — to my mind this suggests a decorative, frivolous quality
quite foreign to her — but she has a straightforward gravity wh. I did not
realize was lacking in others, until I recognized it in her.
How tired I
am of primping, pouting, posing misses! There is a sweet directness to her wh.
I must forever admire. She has the gift of stillness, of repose.
I would say,
I think I have met the one woman I have ever thought I should like to
marry: except that she is George
Hamilton’s intended bride.
She is from
Cincinnati. They have known one another for ever. He has often mentioned her —
but I had not met her, till now.
He is so very
proud of her — for good reason! — and they intend on tying the knot as soon as
may be arranged. I am to stand up for him.
If it were
anybody else she were promised to I think I should try, at least, to press my
suit and ask her to reconsider; but it is clear that she and George are very
much in love so I congratulate and wish them every happiness. I will not set
myself up as his rival, Sis; besides which, the matter is long decided. I dare
say I shall get used to it, in time.
They do make
the finest couple. I hope he appreciates what a unique treasure he has got in
his darling bride. Her qualities are most uncommon.
Don’t sigh
for me Suzy, you always wanted proof that my heart was not impenetrable &
now you have it. C’est la vie, honey. You may well suspect I could only care
for someone whose affections are engaged elsewhere, to avoid any real danger of
taking so grave a plunge as matrimony. And perhaps you would be right. I don’t
think so, though, since as I’ve said, if she were not set to marry George I
would go after her like nothing I have ever pursued in my life up till now.
I’ll write
you again to tell you about the wedding. The rest of my news — not much — will
have to wait till another time. I hope you are quite well. Dear Sis, how
precious it is to have a heart at home to whom I can open mine!
Kiss the
little ones for me. How different they will look, next time I see you all! Miss Rachel quite the doting mother to her
darling dollies –? Or is she still the tearaway? And young Master Josiah will
have a whole mouth full of teeth, I guess, at this rate. Are you rubbing brandy
on his gums? Does Maisie make up gripe water with dill? Does he keep you up,
nights? Say hello to the servants, and a special howdy to M. I’m writing to
thank her for the gloves – if she can’t read my scribble please help out!
Your
affectionate brother,
L.
* * *
He lifts his head from his arms, where he fell asleep in the small hours still sitting at his desk. He winces. The last boyish curves have dropped from his thin face, since West Point; it is pared to essence, a narrow line running each side from cheek to jaw, eyes still deep but perhaps less revealing than they once were – except in the company of those he cares for, when he flushes like a virgin (he is), and his face then is as much of an open book as it ever was.
There is a picture before his eyes that he cannot bear to think of, nor to stop imagining. The two of them together, man and wife —
He feels the ghost of her waist still in the curve of his arm.
The empty bottle stands on his desk like an exclamation-point; he sets it down on the floor, not wanting its accusation. His hair is disheveled, his face shuttered –– not merely bleary from alcohol and lack of sleep, but obscured inwardly, as a window smeared with fingermarks. He picks up his pen; holds it as if it is heavy –– as if he is weary. He is, but not of writing. He is weary of feeling, wonders when he will be granted the mercy of numbness: not the kind to be had from the neck of a bottle, but true surcease, to be released from the wrecking tide of emotion. If he knew the answer, he would probably kill himself now to get it over with; but mercifully – for there is mercy in ignorance, at least – he does not know, and thinks he will recover in a while, a month or two, a year perhaps.
But he is more loyal than that; fortunately, he cannot even guess at the extent of his loyalty, nor how it will be tested, in the years to come. All he knows now is that he hurts; and as ever when in pain, he turns to the one place whose solace has never yet failed him: Suzy, of course – Suzy, as always.
Philadelphia,
Penn.
October
2nd 1845
Dearest Sis,
Forgive the scrawl.
Well they are married off now. Gone on honeymoon to Niagara Falls. Sorry I did
not write sooner but I have had the worst hangover of my life. No, dear, it’s
not my habit and I shall not so indulge again. The temporary oblivion was not
worth the agonies of coming to!
What mixed
emotions were churning in my breast as we all stood before the altar! Sis you
know I count George my dearest friend on earth:
we have been through much together at the Point, and our loyalty is of a
kind wh. one might hope to find in a lifetime — had we had a brother, perhaps,
I should have found it there, but who can say? perhaps not — oh Sis, how fine
he looked in his full-dress blues, upright and proud with E. on his arm. They
spoke their vows quite clearly — no modest mumbling here, both sounded entirely
sure of themselves — and exchanged such a look of passion I had to look away
for a moment; but Suzy I do, I do wish them every happiness together and my
heart was overflowing with a love & pride wh. had nothing to do with
jealousy or possessiveness as they greeted their wedding guests & then
stood up together. You never saw a finer pair in your life Sis.
You probably
want the details of the bride’s costume wh. I cannot be much help in
describing, since the technical terms are outside my sphere of competence — an
organdie is all one with a bombazine to me, I fear, which puts me more in mind
of artillery than anything! – so I’ll sketch them for you. She wore something
rustling of an oyster color, quite simple — it caught the light so I imagine
silk. She carried white roses, there’s another detail for you. She has simple
tastes.
I do not
intend ever to reveal my private feelings for E. so kindly dear Sis let this be
the last time either of us refers to it. Thank you for being my ‘listening
ear’, as you have always been. I know my confidences are safe with you.
I fear, now I look at this drawing, that I’m
unequal to the task I have set myself. I cannot do them justice. George is
standing ramrod straight, you can see that, but her face hasn’t come out right.
Her eyebrows are straight and thick –
did I tell you that? — not in today’s more ‘delicate’ style but I like them the
better for that — and she has a very direct way of speaking, wh. might lead you
for all of five minutes to think she had no sense of humor; until a flash of
perfectly dry wit reveals itself, not directed cruelly at any body but at the
absurdity of life! – a capacity, so rare alas! to see the ridiculous in every
thing. Why do most folks find it so hard to laugh at themselves, Suzy? The Dear knows it’s all we can do, sometimes!
Your
loving brother,
L.
* * *
There have been changes, upheavals. They have transferred South, are about to be posted further still if hostilities break out in Mexico. For now, they are in the barracks at the New Orleans post.
He has been ill, is only recently recovered enough from his fever to write; but he must, draws the sheets of paper and pen to him with an urgency that makes him clumsy. A letter from home lies open beside him, its scrawl pitiful to behold. His head aches. Outside in the parade-ground square the men are being drilled, he hears the barked orders and the footsteps all in time, falling as one.
He pours himself a glass of lemonade, adds a generous measure of rum to it; takes out a calotype picture of his sister and her little family. They look stiffly out of the shiny surface, dressed in their best clothes, not loud and bright like parrots as he remembers them, but frozen onto this small rectangular plate: a stillness all the more pointed, now.
The father looks stern, mustachioed; the mother plump and upholstered in satin with buttons and ruffles like a piece of furniture. She has put on weight, in her contentment. The children stare soberly out at him.
He sets the picture down beside the letter on his desk, runs his hand through his hair a couple of times; sighs deeply, and sets his shoulders: this is a letter he would give anything, all he possesses, his life even, not to be writing. But he must; love requires it – and so he does, straightforwardly, almost without lifting his pen from the paper once he has started, except to renew the ink upon the nib.
Between sentences occasionally he stares up at the ceiling, then returns to the task he has set himself.
When it is done he sands it, shakes and folds and seals the paper, takes it down to the guardpost for the next collection. Returning to his spartan room, he lies flat on his back with his hands under his head and lies without moving for a long time.
After a while his thoughts turn in spite of himself to his own concerns: he wonders what he will say to Eliza the next time he sees her. He turns his head bitterly to one side, looks at the pattern thrown upon the wall by the louvered window-blinds; remembers her hand upon his brow the other day, the coolness of it in his fever, the smell of her beside him, the hallucinations of his illness and what happened next.
He is fragile from his illness and this devastating news still, and now on top of that he is so mortified he wishes he was dead.
The smell of roasting coffee drifts up to him.
A knock sounds; he sits up, cries ‘come’ almost as crisply as usual. It is Eliza, come to refill his lemonade. “You’ve drunk it all?” she asks, fussing over him like a mother hen – “ – that’s good. You must drink, you know, to keep getting better.”
He thanks her; she looks at him sharply. There is more distressing him here than the awkward events of last time they saw one another, she is sure of it. “What? Lewis, what’s wrong?”
He shows her the picture of the little family, and tells
her his news.
New
Orleans,
April
1846
My darling
sister, oh Suzy of my heart, honey,
Your
news destroys me — to lose both, both,
my little niece and nephew, the sum of your treasure in this world: I cannot
believe it. Your letter is in my hand and my poor dull brain simply refuses to
accept that it can be so. You all were so well just a short while ago when last
you wrote, not a suspicion of an illness. Scarlet fever, you say —- it must
have been acute, so sudden, both of them to be stricken so.
My heart goes out
to you, honey. I wish I could bear it for you as you have shouldered my sorrows
since we were children. How hard it is to remember that we are but lent to one
another in this life, subject to the
intervention of a mysterious Providence Who disposes of us, not as we will, but
as He wills.
Oh Suzy how I
wish I could be with you, to do whatever little I could to sustain you in this
crushing affliction. I know these words are but poor comfort. Darling, your
loss is my loss, as close as we are you know honey, what tears at your heart
must tear at mine also.
My prayers are with
you both; God’s grace is a hard thing for us to understand but I know and trust
that it is constantly poured on you whether or not you are sensible of it. Oh
my little Rachel and Josiah. What a treasure-trove of memories. Such pride and joy. Amid the lost
hopes this must sustain you, that they were lent to us at all, to know the
blessed love of children.
I’ll write
again tomorrow honey, look for a letter from me every day, even if I can think
of nothing new to say I want you to know that my love is with you. Forgive my
poor faltering pen that cannot find the words. May you find the strength to go
on in such little offerings from those who hold you most dearly when your own
hope is gone, chief among whom must ever be
Your
devoted and grieving brother Lewis.
Swiftly, before leaving, his friend’s wife kisses his brow. When she has gone, he puts his head in his hands for a moment or two; then straightens his shoulders, pours another glass of lemonade, empties the bottle of rum into it – there is not much left – and tastes the sharp sweetness of Eliza’s gift, first sipping, then gulping. There is a level of thirst in him that is quenched by it; another that cries out, and he has nothing with which to slake it.
Eliza
New Orleans
1846
It was the most extraordinary thing. It just was.
Should I begin with the bare facts? There’s so much, the threads weave in and out. I keep thinking of things I ought to mention. I don’t know where to start.
I still wonder why. Any of it; all of it. Why men fight. Why things fell out the way they did. What it achieved. Is anything worth that much?
Well, I have to start somewhere: so let me begin with the two of them. It’s as good a place as anywhere, and better than most.
What a pair they were, chalk and cheese, two halves of a Chinese-puzzle – right and left bookends. As soon as I met Lewis, I saw why George prized him so. He was everything George was not, while being perfectly happy to step back and observe, rather than compete with his friend for the limelight.
I was afraid I would be an awkward addition to this already-tight friendship, put it out-of-balance – or as George would say, off-kilter. But never once, not for a second, did they let me feel that; at least, not as a bride. On the contrary: both George and his friend extended themselves to make it very clear I was the new crown in their social sphere, and all set to be the queen bee of the junior officers in the post, if I wished it.
I did not: I am a reticent person by nature, and I was happy to cede that position to the wives who had more seniority than I. But George & company let me know they regarded our cramped parlour as the most scintillating, our charades as the most entertaining, our evenings the wittiest, our society the most pleasant. No bride could have asked for a warmer cheering-section than mine. My social successes were warmly praised; my small disasters became the subject of gentle joking in the moment, to make quite clear to me that no-one took a collapsed soufflé or a burned sauce as gravely as I did – and then were as generously forgotten, before I should be altogether mortified.
Gently, they poked fun at my nervousness.
Jokes were even made, that what was referred to as gravy in most households went by the name ‘gravely’ in ours. I believe that one started with Lewis. Their eyes twinkled at me. I gained in confidence, learned to laugh with them.
Other friends came and went, but Lewis was a semi-regular fixture. George wished it so; insisted Lewis stop by if we had not seen him for a few days, as if he wanted to refresh himself at the well of his friend’s calmer spirit. George loved to sparkle. Lewis reflected that back at him, with his shy half-smile and thoughtful observations. George liked to talk; Lewis liked to listen. George remarked if you had new shoes, and complimented you cheerily on the color, offered to send for another pair in scarlet: Lewis noticed if your slippers pinched and you were trying not to limp.
I quickly forgot my initial uncertainty, and settled-down to military life with increasing enjoyment. No-one could have received a warmer welcome: nobody could have got more help and advice in coping with the rigid structure that was so new to me – recognizing the senior officers’ ranks so as to greet them correctly; knowing when to return an enlisted man’s friendly overture, and when to smile faintly and move on in silence. There was so much to learn; but they set themselves to the task of helping me get comfortable with all that was expected of me now.
George could be an impatient teacher; I sometimes became flustered when he tried to explain things to me. He would throw his hands up and say Lizzie, I despair of you!
Lewis took pains to elucidate. He never called me Lizzie: that name was for George’s use alone. At first he called me Mrs. Hamilton, and then when that quickly became too cumbersome, we both begged him to abandon his endearing Virginia formality and call me Eliza, which he did – although with his own manner of pronouncing it, of course, just the natural way he said it: Ee-lah-zah.
I had barely uncrated my wedding-dishes and settled into our pretty green-and-white quarters when I had to pack them all up again. Great excitement was spreading throughout the entire army community at the news that the increasing instability along the Mexican border might lead to a violent stand-off, even an expedition of force. I must say I sat down rather suddenly when I heard it quite casually from George’s lips, and clapped my hand to my mouth. I had not reckoned on becoming a widow so young.
He was pleased as punch, of course, had expected me to be just as thrilled as he was: after all, we were married – whatever he felt, I must surely share and see it his way.
Lewis fetched me a glass of tea, while George explained. This, he let me know, was what they had trained-for, studied-for, drilled-for. This was their chance at glory.
Here Eliza, said Lewis, drink this. Get your breath. There’ll be time to explain all of that in a minute, George: she’s turned pale, look. Give her a second to get used to the idea. She’s mighty fond of you, old man, I doubt she’s too keen to see you go!
I swiftly accepted the situation, of course: what choice did I have? I had signed on to be an officer’s wife, I had fallen for George in his dashing uniform and gilt epaulettes, and now my bluff was being called.
I played the hand I was dealt. Cheerfully, I got ready to wave them off with every appearance of insouciance. We waited for orders: as soon as the transports were prepared, they were to be off.
* * *
How young we all were then: heavens! I was twenty-two, and they twenty-six, both of them. It was in New Orleans, right before they embarked for Mexico – the standoff had erupted and General Taylor was calling for reinforcements.
Lewis had taken a fever, on the way.
It was at George’s insistence that I went to him that day, a sultry afternoon building toward rain; although it was still sunny as George and I crossed the parade-ground together and mounted the wide outdoor staircase up to the iron balconies which ran the length of the quarters. I see it as clearly as if it were yesterday: purple bougainvillea in the yellow light, and Lewis’s room darkened, bare, the shutters closed.
If I just close my eyes, I am there again.
‘I bet a visit from you’ll do him the world of good,’ says George outside the doorway. ‘He’s been asking for you, you know. He thinks a lot of you, Lizzie.’
I glance at him. His face is as open and direct as always.
Lewis is moving restlessly in the narrow bed, turning from side to side in the shadows. I think I hear my name mumbled, but I am not sure.
‘George, I think we should come back,’ I say.
George prods me forward: ‘No, go on!’
‘Lewis,’ I say quietly, not wanting to wake him if he is sleeping. He does not respond to me directly; instead he moans softly; says, ‘oh, sweetheart; oh, sweetheart,’ in falling tones, like a disappointed child.
I look back at George. I do not think he has heard. He has half an eye outside, on a squad of men forming up in the square. ‘Don’t be shy,’ he urges, ‘ – he’ll be real pleased to see you!’
I walk over to the bed. Entering the room seems a violation; there is an electricity here, like that of the gathering rain. The bedstead is an iron frame, painted white, flaking. Lewis’s breathing is fast and shallow. ‘Lewis, my dear,’ I say, sitting beside him. I brush a lock of hair from his half-closed eyes, which do not open. His features are soft and blurry. ‘Lewis..?’
‘Oh, sweetheart,’ he murmurs again. He must be dreaming now, for sure. I stroke his hair and cheeks as his head twists on the pillow. I am trying to wake him, I guess, but I do not want to be rough, so my fingers are tentative, gentle. Feeling odd, I look back over my shoulder at George. I don’t want him to be here, to see this. Lewis seems too vulnerable. George appears oblivious: he is cleaning his nails, standing outside in the light, looking out over the balcony, involved in the drill below. His spurs jingle as he shifts his weight. He would just walk right in and shake Lewis awake, if he were me; presumes that is what I will do. But I don’t, I can’t bring myself to. I’m not so brusque, so abrupt. I move with the diffidence of an intruder.
Here in the dim light, in another world, a world of his own, Lewis turns his face into my open palm, so that his mouth brushes across it in a sweep. His lips are soft beside the scrape of his moustache and three-days’ beard. I say his name again twice, sotto voce, to call him back from wherever his fevered dreams have taken him. He arches his back, gasping. My voice and touch take dramatic effect now, one I surely do not intend. He stiffens and cries out sharply: ‘O! O! I love you so!’ His head and shoulders jerk up from the pillow into mid-air, and he is shuddering, gulping for air as if he has just run a race.
I catch him in my arms to stop him from falling back, and as I do so his eyes start open.
His humiliation could not be more complete. I watch his expression change from bewilderment and confusion to distress as he collects his wits and recognizes me; understands what has just happened. I would give anything I have not to be there; to have spared him this. I do not know which of us is more embarrassed.
‘Oh, no,’ he says.
I do not think George realizes what is going on, though usually he doesn’t miss much; and at Lewis’s cry he has detached himself from the balcony and is standing in the doorway. I am glad it is dark in the room. Lewis is beside himself with mortification: his dream and my reality have collided, and I am here, witness, and he has nowhere to go. Outside it is still sunny, but in here the storm has broken. It even smells of rain.
My heart hurts for him. I let him gently back down onto the pillows. ‘It’s all right,’ I say, softly, significantly. ‘Lewis, it’s all right.’ I avert my eyes from the spreading wet patch which darkens the coarse Army sheet.
‘Hey, old man,’ comes George’s cheerful voice as subtly as a reveille from the open doorway. ‘What about this for a surprise, then?’
He cannot have spoken a truer word in his life, though not as he intends it. It would almost be amusing, if it were not for Lewis’s stricken expression. I murmur again – it’s all I can think of to say – ‘It’s all right, my dear!’
Lewis looks up at me for one bitter moment, then closes his eyes and turns away.
‘I’ll get you some fresh water,’ I say, and besides the jug I also take a towel from the washstand, which is beyond his reach; dab his face, and leave it there on the pillow for him.
‘I’ll go!’ cries George, helpful as usual, and plucks the jug from my hand, thus robbing me of my errand.
I walk to the window instead, across the room from the door, and pull down the fly-blown shade half-way to keep out the brightness while I open the shutters. The smells of the street crowd into the room: orange-blossom, roasting coffee with chicory, rotting refuse, jasmine, the water – mingling with the scent of cut grass and rainwater that is already here, and overwhelming it.
I keep my back turned to him for as long as I can, until George returns from the pump with a fresh pitcher of cold water. The pitcher is white earthenware: it says in blue, U.S.
Lewis coughs and splutters, gulping from the enameled cup. ‘Steady, old fellow!’ says George. Some of the water spills. Now the crumpled sheets are wet in several places. Lewis slumps back on the pillow, drained in body; even more so, I think, in spirit.
‘George,’ I say quietly, ‘why don’t you go on. Wait for me in the courtyard.’ Sickrooms have never been George’s forte. He obliges, shaking Lewis’s hand heartily and whistling down the stairs.
I bend to kiss Lewis on the forehead. I am shy of doing so, but not to do so seems worse. I want to be especially kind, to show him I don’t mind, that I’m not shocked or offended; that I understand. The same thing happens to George, too, especially when I am unwell or menstruating, though George is always rather ashamed and pretends that it hasn’t; it’s not something we discuss. But I have come to realize that young men cannot help it, sometimes. ‘I’ll come back later,’ I tell Lewis, ‘when you’re more awake.’ I don’t know whether to maintain the fiction that nothing has happened, or to acknowledge it and reassure him. And I am not sure; perhaps I have an over-active imagination. But I don’t think so. Not the way it all happened, his face, all of it.
‘Hush,’ I say. ‘Don’t try to talk now. You’re still feverish, my dear.’
He cannot look at me. I must do something; I can’t leave him like this.
‘Lewis,’ I say, ‘look at me – please... ’
His eyes are wells of misery, the pupils fully expanded. I kiss him on the brow once more, and as he closes his eyes, on both eyelids. He shivers. His skin is hot. I have never felt this tenderly toward George; nothing in our lives together has called forth this blossoming admixture of emotions. George is the most straightforward of souls. I am beginning to think that I am not. ‘Don’t feel badly,’ I say. ‘I think she’s very lucky, whoever she is. I wish... ’ but no; stop there, Eliza. You don’t want to hear yourself say what you were about to say. ‘It’s all right, truly,’ I whisper one last time; and leave.
Later George tells me cryptically, a-propos of nothing in particular, ‘Lizzie – what a dear you are!’
I look at him for explanation.
‘Nothing flusters you, does it,’ he says. ‘Coolness under fire. You’d make a first-rate soldier, my dear. Poor old Lew. I guess it was my fault; I’m sorry.’ Then he changes the subject.
That night he is particularly ardent, as if counting his blessings. I try not to let my thoughts stray from his diligent thrusting to the bitter-salt taste of Lewis’s sweat, and the other fragrance, so different from George’s sharp lime-blossom pungency: the scent of a June meadow and rain. It seems disloyal to George, who is claiming me at this very moment in his customary manly silence, punctuated at moments of extreme satisfaction by the occasional staccato grunt; but I cannot help it. Lewis’s falling whisper echoes in my head like the sound of the sea in a whorled shell: ‘oh, sweetheart... ’ The cadence of his broken voice moves me inexpressibly; and the passionate declaration wrung from him: ‘oh, I love you so!’
I wonder who he meant.
I am jealous of her, whoever she is: his lonely dream seems infinitely more tender than anything in my experience. In George’s arms, I am strangely stirred; for a moment I feel like crying.
Is this what George meant when he wrote, all those years later, ‘an affection whose sisterly nature I have had no reason to doubt... but a deep and steady regard nonetheless’ ?
Perhaps so.
As I said, he didn’t miss much. At the time, perhaps less than I did.
I remember afterwards, a few days later, when poor Lewis had had the bad news from his sister: George didn’t know what to say to him, then. But he went to see him, sat a long time with him, talking about nothing-in-particular. He knew how fond Lewis was; after all, he had watched his friend write to Suzy come hell or high water ever since they first roomed together.
George never knew what to say when feelings brought a lump to the throat: it was the only time he was ever halting in his speech. He even said as much afterwards, coming home to dinner straight from visiting Lewis: ‘Lizzie, I felt a darn fool – tongue-tied – hell of a thing! Poor woman! He was mighty set on those children — he’s beside himself, y’know – on top of that fever – it’ll set him back, I’m sure.’
‘Yes,’ I said, hardly able to imagine such a loss and praying that I would never know it. How little I knew then. Bad news takes us thus, if we are honest – oh, how sorry we are: and then Heaven forefend, let it come no closer than this, is our fervent prayer, no matter how caring we may be also; the heart is selfish, in the last analysis.
But that was then, and we had so little idea…
We felt deeply for him – of course we did. We cared for Lewis, and he was devoted to Susannah Caton. We had hoped to meet the family one day: the kindly older husband in business in Richmond, the promising niece and nephew Lewis spoke of with shining eyes. Often over the dinner-table one or the other of us would ask Lewis for news of them – it was an easy way to be entertained for ten minutes. They had grown this much, the little girl played with her dollies: there were teeth to be noted, their appearance, loss and replacement, and how the little boy did with the lead-soldiers Lewis had painted for him… he ought to have children of his own, we said when he was not there, he had such a love for them.
Of course, we also had high hopes for a family of our own, not that we mentioned anything so vulgar at dinner. But that was assumed, then: you would marry, there would be children. Of course Lewis ought to do the same! And of course ours would come, in due course, or we prayed they should. We took such things for granted: marriage, family...
Well, we shall ask him to be godfather when we — began George, and went red; shan’t we?
Of course, I said, heavens! yes. Such a dear friend; of course – who else? No-one could be more true, more trustworthy.
George smiled, wiped the grease from his chin with his napkin.
He had that self-satisfied look that let me know he was more than ready for another attempt to bring about that happy event… after all, they were about to ship-out for some time. I stood, cleared-away the dishes, preparing myself. What George lacked in subtlety he more than made up for in vigor. I wondered how it might feel to be wooed, not expected to receive a husband and be grateful for the compliment of his desire.
I wondered if it would ever occur to him to call me anything more tender then ‘Lizzie, dear.’ But George was a man of action, above all; you couldn’t fault him for failing to be other than he was. He was not a sentimental man; words like ‘sweetheart’ were hardly his stock-in-trade. He was jovial, direct. And I was so very fortunate: he loved me unquestioningly, with all his heart; he was a loyal and ardent husband, the kind any woman ought to be grateful for.
I was careful with the plates. It was my prized wedding-service: we certainly could not have afforded another set. There was as usual nothing left on George’s plate; he always had a hearty appetite. I had found my meat tough, hoped the butcher had indeed supplied beef and not some old horse. I had had to remove pieces of gristle from my mouth discreetly and put them on the side of the plate. George seemed not to have noticed. He was never a complainer. I was glad Lewis had not joined us: it was not one of my better dinners. He would have been embarrassed, not known what to do with the worst bits; swallowed them anyway, so as not to give offence.
You get to know someone’s ways, when you spend all that time together.
It never occurred to me to suppose he knew ours just as intimately.
George
...lies on a narrow camp-bed in a stifling tent outside Resaca de la Palma, Mexico, exhausted and flea-bitten, listening to his friend’s troubled breathing.
It is 1846, still early in the campaign.
George tries to understand why he still feels moved to the same degree of white-hot need when he is so far from his wife, alone save for the soft sound of Lewis’s breathing, asleep beside him. Once again it is just as it was in the old days at the Point, back when George could tell himself that marriage to the girl Eliza with the brown hair and grey eyes and well-turned figure would satisfy these feelings, would make them licit and permit their open expression. Would take away the shameful need to relieve them alone and in private, lying still and listening to his friend’s every movement, waiting for the sound of a half-voiced sigh that would bring his own secretive motions to their summit, break him open and bring shameful, scalding release.
It is because she is far away, he reasons, and he is a physical man, not one to tolerate frustration. Eliza is a good wife to him, does not refuse him. His relations with her keep this need at bay; he has not felt it so extremely since he left West Point – till now, when he misses her and it is unbearable.
No woman could ever appreciate the closeness that develops between comrades-in-arms, between men who have fought together, he believes. He knows Lewis as he could never know his wife: women are alien, unfathomable – they are for admiration, for possession, for honor.
For pride.
George is very proud of his wife; of her accomplishments, her elegance, her breeding and style. Sometimes he feels like a little boy with her, as if she sees through him. But she is always gracious, never shrill.
Other men envy him –– as well they might: an occasion for deep gratification.
Eliza remains a mystery to him. He is grateful for her acquiescence to his desires: she is generous and accommodating, despite being unable to comprehend (no woman could) the frantic nature of a man’s need for physical release. Marriage puts a respectable face on it, contains it. A married man can live at peace with himself. He considers an understanding wife to be essential – wonders how Lewis does without. He loves her, he is sure of it; he thanks God he has her. Here, without her to turn to, he does not know what to do with himself.
Lewis is dreaming again: one of the aching dreams of his beloved opening her arms to him that haunts and taunts and wrings the very soul from him. His sighs break, crack, turn to whimpers. Occasionally a fragment of her name may be heard.
George holds his breath, moved to an agony of arousal not eighteen inches away. The flea-bites madden him. If he moves to scratch them he knows he will touch himself. He blinks fiercely and swallows. His hands remain at his sides through an iron effort of will, until Lewis shudders and twitches. George can control himself no longer, and explodes into his own grasp in a scalding burst almost simultaneously with his friend.
He wonders often about this moment, as the years unfold. Is his arousal intensified by the thought of his best friend’s plight? Recalling it will prove one of his strongest triggers to desire. Thinking of it when plunging into Eliza, he always bursts immediately into climax.
Does it mean so much to him, to have what someone else wants?
How can he live with himself, knowing how his friend feels?
It is all far too tangled to understand, he thinks: the secrets we never ask or share – the keys to our souls.
He says nothing: what could he possibly say?
Lewis
Mexico
1847
He begins, swiftly:
Puebla, Mexico
On Active Service,
June, 1847
Sis —
His eyes dance. He is at his happiest, observing new things and telling them. He has forsaken the stifling glare of the tent for the shade of a small and spindly tree, spiny but adorned with crimson flowers like splashes of blood, against which he props his back and scrawls quickly on a lap-desk. Heaven only knows when Suzy will get it, but he is happy writing her, pleased to answer her letter on this baking, dusty day between marches.
George emerges from the tent, dusts-off his knees, grins at him: Lewis waves back cheerfully.
Life is good.
— In receipt of
yours of last month. I hope you received my last wh. I sent you but a few days
ago with details of our campaign. I labored over the descriptions of the
actions to give you an idea of things here.
In answer to
you, then, Yes, dear, I know you naturally have wishes for my future. As for my
‘needs’ as you so candidly put it, I cannot think they would be served — or anyone
made happy — by my entering into a marriage with some decent woman who wd. have
every right to expect from me the passion which is already engaged elsewhere,
and has been for so long now that it is less a habit than simply a part of my
soul. Even if I were willing to take second best for myself — which I am not —
how could I in all conscience and honor offer it?
No, Suzy,
thank you; I know you have only my interests at heart: but you must let me be the judge of what is
best for me, honey.
As for your
concern that I shall lead a lonely life, consider, Sis: the Army is a fine career for those who have
no dear domestic hearth to repair to:
no-one to answer to, for my wounds; I have the mess, my orderly,
pleasant quarters – usually – and plenty to occupy me at all times; my meals
found; for lack of a family why I have the welfare of the men, which will
consume as much devotion as I am willing to allow it: I confess to feeling quite fatherly toward
them sometimes, at the ripe old age of twenty-seven.
Plus I have
the friendship and esteem of the two souls I most care for in all the world,
not counting you my dear — so you see I may think myself fortunate indeed!
Enough of
serious things! Let me know, if you don’t get my last about our actions here.
I’ll re-write it for you. I could be facetious, and say, let me know if you
don’t receive this one also! The boys laugh at these poor jokes, you know, a
chuckle is good for several miles more marching.
O Suzy I wish
you cd. have seen the flock of quail that settled in our encampment this
morning, most of them I’m sorry to say taken by our soldiers. I am enjoying how
different everything is here from back home! We are in a remarkable place for
wild creatures just now, sung to sleep by innumerable frogs and crickets &
all manner of chirping, croaking, & whirring!
I observed
the women of the village at their washing, wh. they beat upon stones in the
stream. The poor people simply hang the garments over prickly-pear bushes to
dry — how they can bear to wear them after I can’t imagine, for I shd. hate to
have my drawers full of those tiny invisible spines!!
The markets
here are crowded with people from the hills, with the most striking
features: the descendants of Incas. They
carry their loads by a strap across their forehead like human mules. The
Celebration of Corpus Christi day brought many folk out into the streets in
their best costumes. I will try to sketch you some, if I have time. My Spanish
is improving enough to ask, now.
’til next
time, dearest Sis, and thank you for your love and concern.
your
affectionate, L.
* * *
This next time he thinks a long while before setting pen to paper. He puts his hands together and rubs his index fingers on the bridge of his nose, as if deciding something: whether to tell? How to? Should he be ashamed?
The night is sultry, and outside in the street people are still out and making sounds that float up to him: laughter, drunken shouting, ladies protesting insincerely and a group of musicians playing guitars and a plaintive little pipe. A world he has never been part of, till recently; a world still foreign to him, but there are lines of a new knowledge in his face, and his eyes are deeper than ever, now – there is a drowsy quality to them, sensuous, that has only recently appeared there for the first time. He has lost something, too: an awkwardness? That untouched, almost painful aloofness? This new confidence has taken its place, an ease, one would almost say a worldliness.
There is still pain in the depths of his smile.
Mexico
City,
October
1847
Dear Sis —
Look! I barely pick
up the pen & realize I am blushing:
but I have decided on telling you, so I shall.
Since you
have always concerned yourself with the state of my heart, I might as well
mention that I have made the acquaintance of a charming and gracious widow not
far from here. We understand each other very well.
Now before
you tut-tut over us my dear, figure: she sighs for her husband, who is no more,
and I for you-know-who; so no-one is receiving short change here, only offering
a kind of tender consolation I guess. Well my dear you were perfectly correct
in your assumption that my inexperience in these matters was total: but that is no longer the case. Well!! That word will have to say a great deal wh. I
can or will not.
Yes honey I
see why you wished for me to have the comfort of an affectionate embrace from
time to time, tho’ I imagine you had something more matrimonial in mind. It is
indeed a vital thing, whose want brings much anguish. How it would be, if both
parties were in love with each other, I can only imagine. No, I do not intend
to offer her marriage: nor does she wish
it, I believe.
Not a word of
this Sis to any one: I tell you only
because I have never kept secrets from you, and should feel wrong, doing so now
— and I know, for you’ve told me, that you lie awake nights worrying about me.
Worry no more, then, dear. I may – at
that very moment of your dear sisterly concern – be in the sweet company of the
lovely Señora V., to whom I shall forever be indebted for her gracious
kindness.
Are you
shocked? You would get on famously, if you met her, you know, at least, if you
spoke any Spanish or she any English! She is not tall but generously made, with
flashing black eyes that in repose have a sadness I actually prefer to her
‘company’ face.
No, I am not
in love, nor is she; we are friends, I should say. What we may share in private
is an extension of that friendship. You know, I would not want to use any body,
as I have expressed to you before; and the idea of paying some unfortunate soul
for a one-sided satisfaction repels me — so it suits me just fine, to have her
close her eyes and make believe I am her late lamented Joaquin – and as for me,
I have my own thoughts also. We have grown quite fond of each other, in a
tender fashion tinged with compassion. I shall miss her sadly, I think, when we
move on.
Chastity
seemed easier to embrace, when it was the sum of my experience.
I hope you
won’t be offended by this, Sis. I like to tell you all that counts with me, not
just the parts I might boast of to the world. When we were younger I always
liked to be ‘right’ with you. You see me as I am, all of me, and for that I am
so very thankful. As I get older there will be more scrapes than ever to share,
I fear — !
Your
affectionate – and troublesome – brother
L.
Socorro
Churubusco, Mexico
1847
the teniente said. ‘Socorro. What a beautiful thing to name a person.’ His blue Yanqui uniform was powdered with dust from the road. His Spanish was courtly, careful. He rolled the ‘r’, a thing most of them found impossible. Then he frowned: ‘Socorro, what’s wrong?’
It was the kindness. Kindness has always undone me. It’s my secret. Few people have discovered it. The priest upon whose doorstep I was left, no doubt in horror and then pity choosing such a name, help, it means, an appropriate entreaty – or offering – from Our Lady of Mercy; Father Miguel of the dusty robe and sunburned head, the huge callused hands of a peasant, unwrapping my rags and his lion’s heart quailing at the sight of my misshaped body – Father Miguel treated me kindly, and was rewarded for it by a loyalty which burns in me like piñon and juniper.
Not from me will anyone learn how Father used to sigh, late at night, over the pictures of that statue – look, Socorro, there’s genius, see the marble, can you believe a man could shape a stone so, it’s David, look, I’ve never been to Italy, no, little one, never left Mexico, muchacha, but you should come with me one day, we’ll travel on a boat, we’ll see the ceiling this man painted on the Sistine Chapel in Rome, the colors, dear God, this Michelangelo, truly an angel, Socorro, no?
And his lips would quiver, my dear padre, the only father I ever knew, and I would imagine us setting out together on his big white mule, over the mountains toward the rising sun, my haunches bruised from the crude saddle but my heart shrilling like a cicada: away, away, we’re going away..! We never did.
Not from my lips will anyone hear of the pain like cactus spines in his face as he watched the acolyte with the face of an angel, fourteen-year-old Ramon Todos Santos Garcia, thinking himself unobserved, staring, starving in a dusty corner behind the screen, his hand moving violently under his robe, his lip bitten white. I know how to repay kindness.
Where was I? Kindness, that was it, as little as I’ve received, you become hawk-eyed for it, the least crumb is a feast to people like me. Like blind Pablo straining to hear his grand-daughter’s voice, her footsteps, sitting outside his casita all day, every day, the sun falling uselessly on the milky globes of his eyes. He once told me he loved to sit out in the rain: then he could hear the shapes of things, the hollow tiles of the roof singing, the drops falling on the leaves of the fig-tree, the gutters roaring. It took the rain to delineate his landscape; the rest of the time he sat in emptiness. Kindness is like that for me.
We’re grateful for the rain, here: it doesn’t come often. Sometimes the maize shrivels before harvest, like my body. The bones of the mountains stand revealed, unclothed in soft grass or trees: bare rock, raw and unforgiving, only the light to take pity and turn their harshness to violet and lavender and pigeon-wing grey.
I once watched him paint them, the teniente I mean, I couldn’t believe how the tint went from the blueing ranges into his eyes and came out through his brush onto the paper. I thought God must do the same thing from hour to hour until dusk fell and the bats came out. Whenever I passed with an armful of laundry or a pitcher of water I stole a glance. His face was inward, not shuttered exactly but intently purposeful, looking from the horizon to his paintbox and down to the dazzling wet white paper. He could have been praying, except for his open eyes.
That was before the Señora seduced him. I can’t really blame her. What a challenge! He walked around with an ache you could feel just from standing near him, and he didn’t even know it. Luminously virginal, this thin dark-haired Lieutenant – teniente – of the Army of Los Estados Unidos, the gentlest representative of an occupying force you could ever imagine. I know.
I listen at keyholes, that’s how I know; my life has been lived emptying the chamberpots of the Señora and preparing her food, mending her linen and changing her sheets. There’s not much I don’t know. The padre loved old books, they were his weakness: whenever he traveled over the Sierra to see the bishop he would return with saddlebags of someone else’s books, with someone else’s name or coat of arms in the front, from the library of some hidalgo, with the spots and must of their previous life between the pages, even dead butterflies or dried flowers, and the dealer’s price penciled in the back. Second-hand, the padre used to say: nothing wrong with that.
Second-hand, like my clothes and the food on my plate and my life. Someone else’s leavings. So you understand about the keyhole.
He didn’t know what to do, the teniente. I could tell. I’ve watched plenty of them who did, or thought they did; you can’t fake that sort of innocence. He was totally taken by surprise. The officers clustered round my Señora like bees to honey, no, to some musky perfumed huge-petalled flower. There was something desperate about her, a dark red hibiscus in a hedge of pink oleander. They gathered in the evenings, she held musical soirees and fed them: delicacies I’d labored over all day in that kiln of a kitchen, so she could dispense them graciously – goat-cheese and sweet red peppers seared in the fire, wrapped and fried in individual tiny tortillas. Slices of mango and papaya, avocado and banana, my cracked fingers smarting from the lime-juice, arranging them so neatly on a large oval platter with basket-work edges. What company, after the stifling society in our town! Their voices rose like starlings in the courtyard. They all wanted to get her between the sheets.
I don’t think he did. That’s why she went after him. Pursuit she was used to, it was old hat to her. I was her maid even before she married and was widowed and miscarried her child. I joined her household as her personal maid when I was eleven, after padre Miguel died.
Her wide black eyes would melt you. She never lacked for admirers. Her family married her off at fourteen, quickly, while the bloom was still on her, fearful of all those hot young hands all over the town desperate to rub it off.
Now to be fair, she adored her husband. He was a little man, older than her by quite a bit, and he used to give it to her every night. When she got her period he would hang around with a hang-dog expression, you’d think he didn’t know how to do it for himself like poor Father Miguel, waiting till the last of her rags were clean and folded up and put away in her chest for next time (my job, of course) – then he’d go in to her as if he’d been on an ocean voyage for six months, out of sight of land and the moss between a woman’s legs.
He’d gobble her like a dog, too. I saw him once on his knees, begging her to let him. There, there, she said afterwards: there, there. Outside their door I put my hand in my wet crack and rubbed it up and down till the hungry wolf inside me stopped howling.
I could tell you every splinter, every crack in that door, the panels carved into birds and flowers, a long split through the heart of a lily: when they were inside going at it the light burned out like a fiery streak in the dark old wood beside the glimmering whitewashed wall, with the handforged hinge and latch; the noises coming through the key-hole: grunts, squeaks, her little yips like a puppy, her husband’s entreaties, and, later, his farts – her giggles – and his snores.
My poor Señora. When they told her he was dead, found already stiffening in a welter of his own bloody excrement in an inn-room between here and the coast, gone just like that, poor man, all alone on a business trip with no-one to tend him or even to close his eyes – when she heard that she had hysterics. A funny little man, her senior by two decades, balding, but she genuinely loved him. She shrieked and collapsed and lay screaming on the floor, her arms and legs flailing about like the idiot in my village who had fits.
I called the coachman to help pick her up. She kept thrashing around. Her shoe hit me in the mouth and cut my lip. Together we carried her to her room. ‘Go away,’ she raged. ‘Leave me alone! My life is finished. Over! Ah, God, blessed Virgin, take me too, take me! Take me!’
No wonder she lost the child, with all that carrying-on. Not a thought did she give it. Calm yourself, Señora, I begged her, think of the child, por favor, eat a little, don’t tire yourself out so. She drummed her fists and howled till she was hoarse. When the pain doubled her over she had no voice left to cry out. It slipped out in a little gush of dark blood, the poor tiny unformed thing, may God bless its little immortal soul. I held it in my hand for a while. It was the saddest thing I ever saw. Why couldn’t that be me, I asked God. Why did You take that life and spare mine, that should have been aborted? I wrapped it in a handkerchief and buried it under the jasmine-bush in the courtyard. I did that at night, so no-one would see me say a prayer over it, unbaptised as it was. I said the same prayer poor Father Miguel used for himself, after he had lost his self-control: Miserere, Domine – Lord, have mercy. He always said it with such depth of feeling, that’s why it sticks in my mind. The Mass on Sunday was a grand celebration, a spectacle, a public sacrament, holy and filled with awe. This – those two words, Miserere Domine, Have mercy, Lord, – this was private, humble, agonized. I know if I were the Lord God which one I’d listen to.
So my Señora and I watched the next few years go by, the neighbors’ children grow up like colts, and then the war came, the Yanquis clattering down the Calle Real and occupying the citadel. Our troops fought like tigers, but their officers were fools. Anybody could see that. Their idea of glory was exposure and risk, the heroic gesture, the hopeless stand. They got it. The cannier Yanquis saved their bravery for the inconspicuous times when it really counts, and overwhelmed them. So much for heroism.
It doesn’t take long for an occupying garrison to become part of the social fabric. That may seem hard to believe, but life has to go on; people meet at the well or the pump, soldiers have to eat, farmers have to sell their vegetables, whores have a living to make, respectable ladies their position to keep up. When those dashing blue uniforms are gracing the salon of one’s social rival, their wearers dancing with her daughters and paying clumsy heartfelt compliments in tortured Spanish, blushing and tongue-tied, it’s not long before almost every house in town opens its doors.
My Señora enjoyed being popular. Who wouldn’t? There was a Major with splendid mustachioes who came out of her bedroom buttoning himself. I was more surprised than shocked. He returned two or three times, but she sent him away after that. I know why. He was only good for five minutes at the most. Then he’d say ‘Gracias’ in an execrable accent and pull his pants back on. I could see her face: don’t thank me, you idiot, you dolt – return the favor! Are you cruel or ignorant? I could have told him: kiss her a little at least, I could have said; where do you think you are, in a whorehouse? I’m almost surprised he didn’t leave money.
Afterwards her face was sadder than ever. My poor Señora. Her virtue traded for a carnal act, a hurried and loveless one. Pobrecita!
So I could hardly blame her for setting her sights on the teniente. Ah, he was different. Shy, to begin with, though his Spanish was already superior to most of them; and not after her for that. He liked talking to her. She took it on herself to correct his mistakes, and he learned very quickly.
Oh, and whenever I happened to pass by he smiled, and gave me a little nod. If I brought wine and lemonade mixed in a pitcher he would say ‘Gracias, Señorita.’ My Señora looked bemused when he did that, taking notice of me as if I were a human being, but she clearly enjoyed what she thought of as his democratic eccentricities, another one being not trying to seduce her, and they became friends.
It was one of those afternoons that he brought his little wooden box of paints over and stood on the balcony upstairs, spilling the light straight out of the sky onto his page. My Señora was busy with some artistic creation of her own, she liked to decorate china plates with piles of fruit or gaudy bouquets of flowers and that sort of thing, so they worked companionably side by side together. I brought little cakes, sweet almond pastries flavored with orange-rind and rosewater; and lemonade. As I passed each time his picture drew my eyes like a magnet. I had never seen anyone do anything like it. When I returned to clear away the plates, hoping there might be at least a broken pastry left over for me to eat before bed-time, my Señora had gone down to the courtyard. I could have fetched whatever it was she wanted, but I suspect she liked to think of herself down there, how she would look viewed from above, the deep cleft between her breasts with a flower tucked casually into it, wandering among the bright pots of blooms, snipping one here and there. She did make a charming picture. Perhaps she hoped he’d paint it.
He didn’t, though. He wet another piece of paper and did the same view over again, the same mountains fading into the distance, only this time with the new rose hues which the setting sun had washed them in. I stared, transfixed. He worked so fast: a dab here, a long line there, and the suggestions of the hills became the hills themselves, leaping right up off the page at you. Then he picked up a sketchbook and pencil, and looked across at me. I was holding the empty jug. His eyes moved up and down rapidly, from me to the paper, and the pencil flew in his hand. He was looking at me, but our eyes didn’t meet. I was looking down and flushing. I wondered if he was drawing the hump on my back.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘Mira. Sus manos.’ He used the polite form of you to me, as if I were a lady. My breath stalled in my throat. He held the book out to me. There on the page were my hands, my hands, with the strong square thumbs and big knuckles, holding the empty pitcher. Just my hands. They looked beautiful, as if the simple act of holding gave them purpose, shape, dignity. Then he smiled at me. ‘Con permiso?’ he said.
‘Si,’ I replied, ‘como no?’
‘Me llamo Luis,’ he said: ‘my name is Lewis. Lewis Armstrong. What’s yours? I want to title the drawing, your hands, the hands of – ’
‘Socorro,’ I said.
‘Socorro,’ he repeated. You’d think I had said something profound. Some gentle thing moved in his eyes: something sad. Not pity. ‘Socorro, eh? What a beautiful thing to name a person. Help. Succour. Socorro.’ He mused out loud, half to me, half to himself. ‘Encantado, Señorita Socorro – I’m enchanted to meet you.’
I said nothing. I didn’t know what to say.
He looked sideways at me, a crease between his eyebrows, the sketchbook still in his outstretched hands: ‘Socorro, what’s wrong?’
‘Con permiso,’ I whispered, and turned, and fled.
It wasn’t long after that that she made her move. I answered her bell and she was sitting beside him, with her hand on his arm. They were alone together. The electricity from that touch crackled in the room. Her knee pressed against his through layers of organdie and U.S. Army wool. ‘Tell me more about her,’ my Señora was saying as I entered. ‘Ah. Socorro. Some orchate. And a little plate of candy.’ Sweets were her weakness, specially sugared almonds. I knew then that she was going to get something sweeter than anything that ever came out of my kitchen. I could tell that soon she wouldn’t be able to keep her hands off him. I wondered how he would cope with that.
I was right. I could have told her. Not so fast, I would have said, look at him: he’s stretched as taut as a guitar string. She drew him into her bedroom and closed the door. I crept outside and waited; counted. In less time than it takes to undress, he cried out.
I heard her comfort him, tell him not to worry, that it was all right.
He stayed all night.
I didn’t stay to listen.
Back in my room I sucked on a sugared almond and asked God why He gave me life.
They were lovers for about a month all told, I suppose. Once he was over the initial shock of it all he was candidly straightforward about the purpose of his visits. In my village people who were having an affair used to hide and sneak off, making sure of not being seen together. No-one was ever fooled. He didn’t do that. She still held her parties, she loved the buzz of conversation; she lived for the moments she was the center of attention. She invited just enough other women to be sure the American officers would come. She didn’t sleep with anyone else at that time, though.
Sometimes she would ask me to change the sheets in the middle of the day. I don’t know how he was able to get away from his post, but he would, for an hour, and then I had it to do all over again, the stale sheets from last night’s visit and now another armful. I took them down to the kitchen and buried my face in the dampness and smelled him.
Once he came up behind me while I was struggling to hang the sheets over the line in the back of the courtyard, next to the cistern. I am not tall; if the Lord had seen fit to make my back straight I would have come up to his chin. Crooked, I hardly reached the third button on his uniform. He took the wet sheet out of my hands – it was dazzling in the noon sunlight and it slapped his face as he stretched it above his head. He laughed.
‘I make extra work for you, Socorro,’ he said.
‘I don’t mind,’ I said.
‘What can I do, to show my appreciation?’
‘You already have, teniente,’ I said, and drew myself up to my full height. The washing-line was two strands of rope twisted together. We pulled the sheet through in little tugs, a row of white rabbit-ears all along the line. I held the clean edge up off the ground. It went much faster, with two. When it was in place, he fetched the prop and set it upright. The washing billowed in the breeze like sails on one of those ships the padre and I never took.
‘Don’t give me money,’ I said quickly, in case he was thinking of it. ‘Please.’
He shook his head.
‘Please,’ I said again.
‘Luis!’ came the Señora’s voice across the courtyard. He touched my arm.
‘Gracias,’ he said. ‘Muchas gracias, Socorro.’ And he carried my empty basket back across the sun-baked red earth, his long strides covering twice the ground each of mine did.
He went upstairs to take leave of her. He was so young and carefree, he used to take the stairs two at a time as often as not. I heard their voices laughing. They were good friends, as well as everything else. She relaxed, in his company: stopped trying to be entertaining and bright, and became herself, with those dancing eyes and sad mouth in the same face.
The teniente knocked at the doorway of the kitchen, on his way out. I was making tortillas; the sweat ran down my face and stung my eyes. My blouse clung to me, stained also with sweat in the armpits.
‘Señorita Socorro...?’ he said.
I wiped my hands on my skirt. The maize dough was sticky. He stood awkwardly, his weight on one leg, holding something out to me. ‘Para usted,’ he said. ‘Las manos de Socorro.’
It was the drawing of my hands holding the pitcher. A line of writing looped underneath them. I didn’t tell him I couldn’t read. The hands said it all, anyway. His look was earnest. He didn’t move his eyes from my face until I met his gaze; then he smiled. I took the sheet from him with trembling hands. It was the first gift I had ever received. Cast-offs I have been given, and left-over food, and an unwanted half-drowned kitten, once, when I lived with padre Miguel. All the food I have ever cooked has been for others to sit down to before myself. I cannot remember a time when I did not work, even standing on a stool in the kitchen beside the padre’s housekeeper.
And now, this: and, as if it were not enough already, more than I had ever received in my life, he bowed to me, as if I were the Señora, or someone even grander; and he lifted my hand, and kissed it, right there on the scarred red knuckles.
‘Adios,’ he said.
I don’t remember making the tortillas, after that. Some machine moved my arms and legs, to get the job done. I didn’t eat anything, either. I had the runs all night. I told you, kindness undoes me.
Not long after that, his regiment moved on. The Señora pined and pouted. I wondered if her monthly flow would come as usual, after all that urgent coupling, but it did. She was more bad-tempered even than usual, but I felt sorry for her, so I put up with it without bearing a grudge. Six weeks or so went by. She still entertained the American officers, but she went to her bed alone.
She couldn’t settle to anything. The singing of the canaries in their cage on the wall of the courtyard drove her to distraction, and she opened the door one day in a fit of exasperation and turned them loose. I hoped they knew how to fend for themselves. She began several of her exotic flower-paintings, but threw her brushes down in pique. One made a stain on her favorite white skirt which no amount of scrubbing and soaking would get out.
After her next flow had come and gone, and mine also, she paced the shaded walk inside the row of bougainvillaea-garlanded pillars, past the pots of morning-glory and geraniums and aloe, muttering to herself. Then she called for me: ‘I’m going to Isabela’s. It’s time for a change. I haven’t seen my sister in an eternity. Pack my bags for a long visit, Socorro.’
Her sister had married into a wealthy old family, a caballero with a large hacienda in the country, across the mountains on the coastal plain. It was wetter there, they had groves of citrus orchards and green fields and water in the riverbeds all year round. ‘You needn’t come, Socorro,’ she threw over her shoulder; ‘they have plenty of servants at my sister’s place. You’d be superfluous. Why don’t you give this place a good spring-cleaning instead, and make preserves, and catch up with all the mending – hem up some new sheets and towels.’
‘Si, Señora,’ I said. I knew she didn’t want to bring something as ugly as me to that grand hacienda. I would detract from her consequence, rather than add to it: something to be ashamed of, an admission that she couldn’t afford better. So be it. I ironed all her blusas, goffered the frills, put layers of tissue between the scented dresses and sachets of lavender and lemon verbena and rosemary. I put bags of fragrant wood-shavings and dried orange-peel into her shoes. What tiny feet she had! Her kid leather slippers looked like a child’s, white, black, scarlet, all in a row. The trunk was filled and I watched the coachman load it, groaning; strap it down, and drive her off down the thick floury dust of the Calle Real.
For a week I was my own mistress. I rose when I pleased, sometimes after dawn. I had propped his drawing up on the little shelf in my room, beside padre Miguel’s worn wooden crucifix. I lay in bed and stared at them, my two greatest treasures in all the world.
I never thought he would come back. That adios, that bow, I thought, would have to last me. I prepared simple food for myself, raw fruit and pozole and black beans. Sometimes for breakfast I had a fresh egg. I bathed in the Señora’s tin hip-bath. I cleaned out the entire house, top to bottom, and polished all the furniture with beeswax, all without interruption. It was heaven.
It was the evening of the eighth day when he rode up. The church clock in the plaza grande was striking seven. I heard his horse nicker as he tied it at the gate. ‘Inez?’ he called.
I had to tell him she was not at home. His clothes were white with dust, stained, worn. I think she had done something to him, making him want her with her soft arms and languid moans. He looked unhappier now than when he first started coming, before she got him into her bed. He was counting on seeing her, I thought, he needs a woman now and he has ridden all the way here and the Señora isn’t home. ‘Come in,’ I said. ‘Eat. Drink. Sit.’
He assented, to my pleasure and surprise, and sat in the kitchen with me and shared my plain dinner. ‘It’s not what I make for the Señora ...’ I apologized.
‘It’s good,’ he said with his mouth full. ‘Really. Simple. It’s good.’ He mopped all around the bowl with his tortilla like a native, sopping up every last fragrant drop of gravy. It grew dark: bats fluttered around the jasmine and lemon bushes in the courtyard. I heard their squeaks. We ate fruit together, companionably. He asked me about my life: I told him about padre Miguel, what a good man he was, his love of books and art – his weakness I kept to myself, I told you, I know what loyalty is – and how kind, in the confessional.
‘Ah, that,’ he said. ‘I’ve often wondered, how it would be to be Catholic and go to confession.’
‘It’s like a new day,’ I told him, ‘a fresh start, feeling forgiven. But you, surely, such a good man, with your talents, your honor, your kindness, you have little to ask forgiveness for?’
‘Well, I’m a professional killer, you know,’ he said, and that shocked both of us. ‘I have mens’ lives on my conscience.’
‘You can’t help that,’ I said. ‘They try to kill you, don’t they?’
‘Well, perhaps. And – ’
‘Si?’ I asked.
‘And covetousness,’ he said. ‘Envy. That’s a mortal sin, isn’t it?’
‘Padre Miguel would ask if you’re truly penitent,’ I told him.
He stared into the courtyard for a long time.
‘You came all this way to make love to the Señora, didn’t you,’ I said into the insect-loud, warm, throbbing evening.
He shrugged and smiled: ‘C’est la vie.’
‘I’m sorry?’ I said.
‘Life,’ he said. ‘La vida. It’s life.’
‘I’m here,’ I said.
He looked at me, at my thick black hair scented with rosemary, and upturned nose and pleading eyes.
‘Oh, Socorro,’ he said. His voice was infinitely sad.
‘Please?’ I said. ‘Not for you. For me.’ I didn’t tell him I’d never so much as been kissed.
Something in the way he held himself loosened. ‘It wouldn’t be kind,’ he said, ‘but thank you, Socorro, I’m – deeply honored; thank you.’
‘It is I who would be honored,’ I said. ‘And – it would be the kindest thing you ever did.’ He knew the ring of truth when he heard it. ‘I don’t mind,’ I added, ‘you wish it wasn’t me. I know I’m ugly.’
He smiled then and shook his head. ‘Hush,’ he said, nothing else, no excuses, and I knew then that I would get my wish. His need recognized mine and said yes for him.
He took me by the hand and led me upstairs. I brought a candle, in a tin holder. Hot wax spilled on my shaking fingers. I thought we would go to the Señora’s room, but he passed it. ‘That wouldn’t be fair to her,’ he said. ‘Not in her bed. Where’s your bed, Socorro?’
I led him up to my room under the sloping eaves. He had to stoop, standing inside it. He bent further, and kissed me. He tasted of fresh mango. His arms encircled me; his hands caressed the small of my back. I went rigid.
‘So thin,’ he said. ‘Like a bird. Are you afraid of me, Socorro?’
I shook my head. I felt his fingers through my cotton blusa. I wore no corset; nothing would fit my crooked back. He tilted my chin up. ‘You have the face of a flower, Socorro,’ he said.
My Señora’s breasts were plump and generous, with dainty little nipples: I had watched him pay homage to them, through the door. I thought perhaps he didn’t get much mothering, as a boy. I know how that feels; I didn’t get any. Sometimes I’ve wished to be held and rocked against a soft ample bosom. Not one like mine; I wished mine were shapely, like the Señora’s. My breasts have always been small, meagre, barely a handful: but as if to make up, the tips are full and round, or they were then, the size and shape of hen’s eggs, rosy brown, silken, untouched: you could see them quiver with each heartbeat.
When I lifted up my blusa and offered them to him, he drew breath. I was only the second woman he had ever seen, I think. He probably never even guessed what different shapes and sizes we come in. Oh, I wanted him to be pleased: to have something to give him, in return for his courtesy to me. Thank you, God, for my poor body; it was good enough for him then. It was good enough.
Oh, sweet Jesus, his camote looked so big up close; it was stiff: for a man to be in that state makes him so vulnerable, I thought. I truly believe that if I had been afraid in that moment and said, ‘no,’ he would have stopped, even then. He had that gentleness to him.
I didn’t say ‘no.’
When the time came he frowned, looked from me to the bed, and began to fold up his uniform.
‘What are you doing?’ I said.
‘Trying to make it comfortable for you,’ he replied, and laid the folded clothes on the hard narrow mattress on the right, where my back was hollow, leaving a place between them and the pillow for the curved part of my spine. Then he lifted me and laid me down there, and that was how I lost my virginity.
Afterwards, when he saw the blood, he was shocked. Someone more experienced would have been able to tell, I think, but his need was urgent and it never occurred to him. ‘You should have told me, Socorro, you didn’t say – God, why didn’t you? I didn’t have to do this to you – ’
‘Because you wouldn’t have,’ I answered, and his
shoulders sagged a moment, before he nodded.
‘Esta bien,’ I said, ‘Esta muy bien, mi teniente.’
Then he made me make all the sounds I had heard my Señora make behind her closed door, until I thought I would die. Where he had opened me burned; the stinging was like chile salsa, intensifying everything. When the starving wolf was satisfied, I wept. He held me. ‘Hush,’ he said.
I clung to him: ‘You don’t know – ’ I sobbed.
‘Perhaps I do,’ he whispered, and held me even closer, stroking my hair. Our bodies fitted against each other in the narrow bed like nuts in a pod. He was stiff again, from the things he had done to please me. This brought me out of myself. I explored his skin with my fingertips, the way he had touched me: a peregrina, a pilgrim, a traveller coming into a land of streams and orchards.
‘Oh, God,’ he said in English; ‘oh, honey!’
‘What?’
‘Miel. Sweet. You are sweet, Socorro.’
‘Again,’ I said. ‘Here. Now. Again.’
He refused: ‘It would hurt you – I couldn’t...’
‘Then like this?’ I said, and began to make love to him with my hands, las manos de Socorro.
Oh, how dear he was. It was a joy. Blessed Mother of God, he let me. I was afraid of hurting him, at first, but love made my fingers wise. How beautifully he was made. I wanted to cry, just looking at him. I thought of a fruit in its skin.
‘I never saw a man spill,’ I told him.
‘You’re about to..!’ he said. ‘Oh, honey – !’
Warm, it was warm, drops of buttermilk spraying on me. I was lying on my side, close beside him: it was like when you break a necklace, pearls cascading in an arc across my left breast. His throes jolted my little bed.
Then for a moment afterwards I thought he was going to cry. He was biting his lip, until he couldn’t get enough breath that way and opened his mouth to take a couple of deep gasps: then again it was mm – mm – mm – !
‘Teniente, are you all right?’ I asked him.
‘Si,’ he said, with a lopsided smile that twisted my heart, ‘si.’
He was going to dry me with his shirt. ‘No,’ I said quickly, and used my hair.
When I did that he took my face in his hand, his thumb under my jaw, and looked at me: really looked, long and hard. His eyes were of a color you almost never see here, a deep blue like the sky above the mountains when the first stars are coming out. He looked; he saw.
There was such compassion in his face: not for my crooked back, or because I was no more than a servant. ‘My God,’ he said, ‘you love me, don’t you.’
I nodded.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Please forgive me, Socorro. I had no idea – I mean – I should have known, I should have seen – I don’t know what to say!’
‘Does it make so much of a difference?’ I asked.
He smiled that smile again: ‘Well, doesn’t it?’
‘La vida,’ I told him, ‘that’s just life. Teniente, don’t be sorry for me. I knew what I was doing. It’s not your fault, you’ve done nothing except be yourself. Your sweet self. Nada mas. Only don’t be sorry for me.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not. Love is a gift, that’s all; whenever – however. We don’t choose it, right? It chooses us. I – I’m grateful. And – not worthy.’
‘Si,’ I replied, ‘you are, mi teniente, mi amor. And it’s all right.’
For reply he kissed my nose and then my mouth. This time he tasted of me.
‘What did you write on my picture?’ I asked him.
‘To Socorro of the beautiful hands,’ he said. ‘Little did I know – !’
‘Oh, no,’ I said. ‘They’re not beautiful like the Señora’s. They’re rough, look, they’re red, I cut them all the time when I’m working –’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s what makes them beautiful. Even before you... you made love to me with them. Just as your hands. Their honesty. Their work. They’re your hands, the hands of Socorro, who works, who carries, who makes things.’
I wanted him to talk to me like that for ever. ‘Will you sing to me?’ I asked him. I don’t know how I dared to ask for anything more, not after what I had received; but I did. I so loved to hear him sing with the Señora, teaching her Yanqui songs and learning her Spanish ones.
Softly, he sang me a lullaby. He said it was about horses, of different colors, all the pretty little horses. ‘My big sister used to sing me this,’ he said. ‘When I was afraid, in the night.’ His voice sounded like hot, sweet coffee tastes in the morning. Then he kissed me on both eyelids and both nipples and both hands, and tucked the cover up around me, and blew out the candle, and left.
All the next day it smarted between my legs. I didn’t wash the dried blood away. It clung there, like pieces of beetle wing-case. I didn’t wash my hair, either. I wore it in a long braid, pulled over my shoulder and tucked into the front of my blusa. I kept catching my breath, and my stomach would flutter and turn upside-down, remembering how carefully he kept his weight off me; the way he would be still and kiss me, right in the middle of everything; and, later, my harvest of opals, of moondrops, now hidden in my hair.
I didn’t want the smarting ever to stop.
The canaries came back to the courtyard: I fed them wheat and millet, and they sang in the morning-glory vines. He returned once more, not to claim me again but to say good-bye. He gave me one of his pictures, the kind with colors on it out of the little box. He had made it especially for me. It was of the mountains, washed in all the flame-rose tints of sunrise. On the left, in the distance, a figure rode away on horseback, waving. On the right, a little closer, another hung out sheets to dry – they were white, the brightest part of the picture – and waved back. The figures had no details. They didn’t need to.
‘You didn’t write on it this time,’ I said.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I wanted the picture to speak. So you wouldn’t need to ask someone to read the words.’
‘I don’t need a picture to remember you by,’ I said, ‘but thank you.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I know.’
‘I won’t tell her,’ I said. ‘She wouldn’t understand.’
‘No,’ he said. Then he tilted his head sideways, and held open his arms; and when I came into them he held me so tightly I thought my ribs would crack and I would die of what I was feeling. He kissed the top of my head.
And then, just like in the picture, he rode off waving.
So now you know about the first and last time a man ever held me tenderly in his arms in bed – or out of it, for that matter. Later, I was raped; so I was always glad my first time was with him.
I’ve often wondered what became of him; and what it was he said when he spilled. It sounded like a name, but not my Señora’s: ‘La – i – za.’
Or something like that. English, not Spanish.
I’m good at keeping secrets.
Oh Padre Miguel, and you, teniente Luis, who were kind to me, I want you to know: they could take me and torture me and burn me at the stake; I’ll never tell.
Vaya con Dios, wherever you are, my Yanqui teniente, mi amor, mi corazón – I call him that when I pray for the Blessed Virgin’s intercession for him, and light a candle: it must come to a thousand candles, all the years it’s been, to light the way for his precious soul. Sometimes I sit and watch the wax burn all the way down to a misshapen stub, like me, and thank the Lord for sending me someone to see that I, too, have a flame. Que le vaya bién, mi querido teniente Luis, I whisper; it’s a habit now, not that I deceive myself that he ever belonged to me, not as such. Only I to him, given and received; which was enough.
A cat caught the canaries, first the female, then the male when he came looking for her. My Señora remarried twice, older men, silver-haired and mild. So she got the gentleness, at least, between the sheets, that she once had with the teniente; if not the passion.
We left the house with the courtyard and the crack through the lily in the bedroom door and the little fetus buried under the white, perfumed jasmine.
After she died, when I could have had any of her things, I took one thing only: his portrait from all those years ago, an early photograph, a calotype in a tin frame, that he sent her at her request from Mexico City. It spent many years at the bottom of her trousseau drawer, wrapped in the baptismal gown of the child she never bore.
I know she looked at it sometimes, though. The things in the drawer would be subtly rearranged, not quite the same. I knew because I used to look at it, too.
Later there was an earthquake and the house fell in
on top of itself, a heap of rubble.
Still, whenever I pass it I see the sheets flying from the line,
brilliant and flapping, and the teniente laughing as he fought the wind to get them up
there. Ai, ai, ai.
Eliza
New Orleans,
1848
When they got back from Mexico, George was as brown as a nut and Lewis was rail-thin. George mentioned the dysentery once or twice; Lewis looked away, clearly wishing he was not speaking quite so bluntly.
‘But I want to know how it was for you,’ I cried. I remember that: the wanting to know, not just hear the bits they thought suitable for telling.
George grinned. ‘Hot,’ he said, ‘damned hot, and sweaty – and musket-balls and bits of rock flyin’ past you like angry bees, an’ too many nights in an airless tent: and stars like you never saw.’
‘God, yes,’ said Lewis, ‘ – the stars.’ The air must be clearer, down there where it was so dry, not like here in New Orleans. Though of course there was no aurora borealis, he added, which he had seen once when it dipped South to West Point – did George remember that night?
‘I was drunk,’ said George, ‘as I recall.’
‘Well, yes, you were,’ said Lewis, ‘though I hadn’t seen fit to mention that.’
They laughed.
‘You saw the Northern Lights, at West Point? I never saw it,’ I said, ‘oh! how I wished I had: what was it like?’
‘Glorious,’ said George, ‘can’t begin to describe it.’
Lewis must have seen my crestfallen look. ‘A wall of fire,’ he said, ‘picture that – no, a curtain – hanging in the air, and then it ripples in folds, great folds of cold green sparks – you gasp, you rub your eyes — ’
‘Well, I was doing plenty of that,’ grinned George. ‘Thought it was the drink, till I saw you doing the same thing.’
‘And the stars in Mexico?’ I prompted them.
Lewis waited for George to tell me. We were having dinner, just the three of us: they had been back less than a week, and it was almost the first time I had seen Lewis since all of it. He had a limp and a surprised look to him; held himself differently. He did not stand close to me.
His fingers still trembled when I passed him the bread, though.
George shook his head. ‘You ask the dangdest questions,’ he said: ‘stars are stars, Lizzie, I can’t rightly describe ’em – sorry I mentioned it.’ He looked to Lewis for help again. ‘Didn’t paint ’em, did you, Lew?’ he asked.
‘No,’ said Lewis, ‘I’d need black paper and a brush of white fire… they don’t do that in watercolors. But – just when you couldn’t stand to scratch all those itches another second, and your bowels were ready for another revolution, begging your pardon – ’ (he blushed here) ‘ – and the dinner was setting in your stomach all queasy, and the boys were footsore from the broken stones all along the march, why, you’d look up – it would go dark quickly there, one minute it was sunset and then bang! there wasn’t hardly no light at all, you couldn’t see the mountain-range, nor the cactus not ten feet from you, an’ Venus’d be hanging like a big old lamp right over the tent – and then suddenly, you could see where the mountains were again because they were inky black in a sea of silver sparkles… ’
George smiled at me triumphantly. ‘There,’ he said, ‘I knew he’d tell it right.’
Lewis looked down, pushed the food around his plate. George was the one that talked about dysentery, but Lewis had lost more weight. He looked all skin and bone, just now, freshly back. He had already excused himself once this evening, leaving the room very swiftly indeed.
I had tried hard with the dinner, with some assistance from our orderly. It was a special and martial receipt: I had read of the triumph of Napoleon’s chef the night he could find only a chicken, tomatoes, onions and cream and created the dish his general was pleased to name after their latest victory, Chicken Marengo. Since we were still in New Orleans, I had served it over rice: it looked pretty mounded on the white serving plate with its rim of navy-blue. I had even shredded the chicken from the bones, since George otherwise was in the habit of making a terrible mess of his uniform-cuffs whenever I served whole jointed pieces in a sauce. He was as slapdash with a knife-and-fork as he was when carrying a tune. I thought it was delicious; Lewis saw me looking, and reassured me that it was: most delightful, truly, he said, very tasty, he wished he had more appetite….
‘I understand,’ I told him, ‘don’t worry.’
‘Thank you,’ he said.
Lord, how it must have shamed him to appear so weak before us.
But not so much he would turn down my invitation, not with George pressing him too.
George pushed back his empty plate with every evidence of satisfaction. ‘God, Lizzie, I have missed your dinners!’ he said. ‘No amount of them tortillas an’ stews we was served in Mexico can take the place of sitting at your own table with your own wife, ain’t that so, Lew?’
‘Well, I guess I wouldn’t know about that,’ said Lewis slowly, ‘but it is – uncommon home-like, to be sitting here again, Eliza.’
‘That’s what I meant,’ said George.
I had missed them both: it was the first time I had had to wait and hope all was well. I had spent the time at home in Ohio, only returning to New Orleans when they were expected back. I hoped for a posting closer to home, but most of all I hoped we would all be able to stay together: it meant so much to George.
Lewis started to tell me about the time George had had to take a mule up into the mountains, because his horse baulked at the narrow vertiginous path. There were vultures soaring below, added George with a grin. But I made it up and down in one piece, and got the surveying done… we brought a whole division over that pass, the next day!
This was more than they had told me while they were gone, of course. No-one tells of danger when they are in it. George had written me, efficient reports of their progress and his thoughts on the campaign. Lewis had dropped a line after he was wounded, with details of George and news of his wellbeing, for which I was so very grateful; in that one letter I had learned more of their experience than all George’s brisk and workmanlike dispatches. Knowing how often he wrote to his sister, I wished I might read those thoughtful pages too. I had replied, told him I hoped his heel would mend quickly, and how much I appreciated the news of them both.
As I said, he still had a limp when they got back: it took several months to leave, returned when he was tired.
George hadn’t a scratch on him – he was lucky that way.
I brought-out the apple-charlotte. Lewis had chased the chicken around his plate, but he seemed to manage that better. It was easier to digest, I realized.
George watched him eat almost as closely as I did. He did it with little sideways glances that were meant to be discreet.
They started to reminisce about prickly-pear and little brown birds, the morning a flock of quail strayed into the camp. George grinned, went from one thought to the next like a waterbug skimming. Lewis said less; but when he did it went below the surface, was a comment on what had happened, not merely a reference to it. He looked at me shyly from time to time. It had been almost two years.
I wondered about all they didn’t say. George had mentioned something regarding Lewis and a widow, though he would not be drawn any further.
I hoped she was kind to him. Was he a virgin, still?
Shame on me for even thinking of such things.
But was he? The way he was freshly diffident with me, I couldn’t tell.
* * *
Soon after that, we were posted to Charleston.
Dances, dinners, quiet evenings at home: we had so many. We played checkers, backgammon, dominoes; the loser of the first game would sit-out the second. Sometimes we entertained ourselves reading-aloud; my favorite times were when we chose plays and each took-on several parts. We over-acted to the hilt, of course, George twirling his mustachios villainously and Lewis trying to keep a straight face for his part. I sighed and played the delicate heroine; I liked the thoughtful ones the best, Portia being far my dearest role. Lady Macbeth I embarked on with gusto also; as I recall, we divided up the three weird sisters between us. Lord, how we laughed and wiped our eyes and went on.
There was an afternoon in Charleston – I can’t remember the season – but it must have been spring, now I come to think of it, I had the windows flung wide-open and the sea-breeze came in and the scent of jasmine clung to it from the bush by the wall… so little a thing, so insignificant: a splinter.
A splinter, a sliver, a sharp small barbed scrap of wood that had gotten embedded in the heel of Lewis’s hand, a couple of days before. Some weathered old fence, he said; he had taken-off his gauntlet to make some adjustment in a bridle and the trooper’s horse had startled, his hand had got jammed up against the rotten old timber – not that it mattered how, really; it was in deep, that was the thing. Deep as splinters go, that is.
George took one look at it when they met on the parade-ground that day and sent him to me. The doctor on the post at that time had about as steady a hand as an aspen-leaf: he drank like a fish, was drunk before most folks were even out of their beds in the morning, and stayed that way till after they had got back into bed at night. He was a disgrace; but he went back a long way with the camp-commander, and he managed to conceal his deficiencies behind his desk, handing out prescriptions for purges with every evidence of sobriety – you just hoped you didn’t need surgery.
“Truly, ’Liza, it ain’t nothing, I rubbed it down with spirits already: it’ll work itself out,” said Lewis, keeping the hand down at his side.
“I know better than to argue with George,” I said, “and I thought you did, too — I’m surprised at you! Come along, sit down and put it palm-up on this table and let me see.” I opened the shutter fully to let the light penetrate the room, and drew up a chair. The dining-room table was round, and I sat at nine o-clock with the window behind me and he sat at five and I drew his arm across the table towards me.
His fingers were longer than George’s, the knuckles pronounced; though they had similar calluses. The splinter was an ugly blue streak in a swollen bed of flesh. I had my tweezers wrapped in linen, and a needle; I got up again and fetched the spectacles my grandmother used sometimes for close embroidery, that were still tucked into the workbasket I had inherited from her. They were easier than a magnifying-glass, since they stayed on my nose and did not have to be held. I hardly cared if I looked like an old woman in them.
My knee touched his under the table and he started.
“Give it to me,” I said, ignoring his startle, and spread-out the fingers so the light fell on it. I could see the whorls in his fingertips, the lines across his palm. I had half an idea of playing with them and announcing he was all set for a long life and seventeen children, but a look at his face made me think better of it. You would have thought the ordeal he faced was worse than a court-martial, if you went by his frown.
He sighed, stared out of the window behind me. We had a view clear across the harbor, if you peered between the other buildings: a distant shimmer of blue appeared when you had the angle right. You could see Fort Sumter.
I began to probe. It took a good deal of care and many minutes with my needle and tweezers. I didn’t want to hurt him, which of course only prolongs the trial. He was well used to greater pain than this, though, so he sat perfectly still and let me work.
My head was bent over his arm and my hair was inches from his face. I felt him breathing.
He said nothing: neither did I.
When you are a wife, you know how a man breathes when he is overcome by the proximity of a woman. I recognized it.
It was slow at first and then slower still; not smooth any more. My face was bent down and his turned away, but you can’t hide your breathing: it’s not possible.
He tried, though.
The splinter was nothing compared with the torment he went through just sitting close beside me with his hand in mine.
We were both trapped by the situation. Oh, I could have said I was sorry and couldn’t get it out, but that didn’t occur to me then. So I teased and pushed with the point of my needle, smelt the languid jasmine and the soap he had shaved with, the leather of his boots; held his fingers still to keep them from trembling.
After an eternity I was able to get hold of the end of the splinter with my tweezers, as deeply as it had broken-off in his flesh, and draw it out. Then I still had to press out the rusty serum and pus behind it, wipe off the bead of blood; rub the wound with spirits and stanch it all with a small wad of clean linen. So it was perhaps twenty minutes altogether, from start to finish. This, forced upon a man who did not allow himself to touch me when he could help it.
His head was tipped back in the chair: when I was done he let it drop and rubbed his face with his good hand. “God,” he said, “all that for a splinter.” It was easier to accept the suggestion it was the probing that had hurt him, so I colluded with his poor little fiction by saying I was sorry I had had to cause him so much pain.
He stayed sitting at the table for a good long while, while I made us a pot of tea. Being a military man, he at least knew enough to keep a position of cover. When I peeked in from the kitchen, he had his elbows propped and his head in his hands.
I made a lot of noise before coming back with the tea-tray. It was silver-plated, a wedding-gift from some of their classmates. My rose-pink cups and saucers were starting to decline in numbers, having weathered a few journeys packed in straw in wooden tea-chests, and the survivors had chips here and there, so I had to find two that did not – it allowed for plenty of crockery-sounds to let him know I was on my way back. He was sitting up brightly, started to make conversation about the weather.
I am not a tease by nature: I never cared to flirt, not even when I was a young woman in a crowd of lads, at a party or a picnic. I had seen other girls do it, trawl a helpless gaze with slow deliberate glances, lift up the skirt to show a slender ankle and more when climbing-into a carriage; allow their fingertips to linger in a man’s hand when he has kissed them from politeness; trawl more than an admiring gaze, if they are especially cruel. I had learned from George that a man does not like to have his spirits aroused unless he has every chance of releasing those feelings; so I considered all brands of coquetry to be a low pursuit, by women who should know better.
Now I was the tease. I had not meant to be; but he could not get away, had to sit there and fight off every feeling that overwhelmed him.
And then drink tea and talk to me as if he was not half-crawling out of his skin with longing. He did so, of course, with those lovely manners he had. Only his eyes betrayed him with their wide pupils, and a slight raggedness left in his breath that would not quite return to his control.
Yes, I agreed, it looked set fair for several days: it should bring-on the seedlings. We discussed the shapes of clouds and what they portended, till George came home.
All for the sake of a splinter.
I left them talking, cleared-away the tea-things. I knew that I had hurt him. The sliver might have pierced his flesh and left behind a superficial wound, but what impaled him was my own self bent over his hand, his fingers in mine, helpless to withdraw, while my every touch brought him to the sharpest craving for more touching than this. By the time I was done, I felt as if the splinter had transferred itself to my own heart.
They were laughing about something, and George cuffed Lewis on the side of the head. I splashed my face and dried it and went back in to them.
They had started to reminisce about Mexico again.
* * *
I often wondered about all that had happened in Mexico, that they never told me about. I presumed George had been faithful; he seemed perfectly able to look me in the eye afterwards. And he was the soul of honor, there never lived a man more perfectly loyal to his word than George.
Lewis had taken no vows, though, so if he had sought solace for his loneliness there were no promises to break…
But not in all those years of ours together was he ever so indiscreet as to mention his private life, that side of him that ached and found so little comfort.
Was he ashamed of it?
Perhaps.
Eliza
Charleston, South Carolina
1850
It was Kitty Arnett that started it. Back in Charleston, not long after they got back from the Mexican War. George and Lewis and Harry Arnett had been called the Holy Trinity at West Point; they still saw one another just about every day. We were all very close.
Whether she intended to be malicious, I will never know. She could be a little mean-spirited, sometimes. She liked to stir things up; she became bored very easily.
Well, whatever the reason, she saw fit to pass on to me a little bit of gossip.
So casually, Eliza dear, over tea and ratafia cookies, her wrist flopping: La! So strait-laced as he would have us think… who would ever have suspected it, my dear! Lewis Armstrong, not so saintly after all! And she whispered the rest, although there was no-one else in the room…
I kept a calm face, of course: it is a habitual cover of mine, when I am shocked, not to show it. Well, I said, if it is so, I should think it was his business and none of ours.
You would spring to his defense, she smiled with a little catty look, I should have thought how tight you were, you and him and George. He can do no wrong in any of your eyes, can he. Well, his business – of course, indeed, forget she ever mentioned it, then.. and she shook her blond ringlets and ate her cake.
After she left I thought, not for the first time I confess, what a foolish woman she could be sometimes.
Still, the damage was done: like a brown canker seen in an apple after you have bitten it, and there is a bitterness in your mouth and you wonder if it was the worm you just tasted… I kept wondering if it could be true, and if it was not, why did she say she had seen it; and if it was, why had Lewis never mentioned anything of the kind to us?
She had heard it on very good authority, she had told me, that he kept a mistress; that they had a little child together, and indeed she had seen him walking with her and playing with the child in the park; and that he paid the rent on the rooms where they lived, down by the harbor.
I did not wish to believe lies about so dear a friend. I let it be, till I was in that part of the town myself. I had been to the dressmaker’s, was coming back with a basket on my arm.
Across a small park, between railings and through the hanging yellow plumes of a laburnum-tree, I saw our friend with a child on his shoulders. I remember it had sores on its face. He was speaking with a woman in an ugly hat, tied with a ribbon of a shrieking purple no respectable woman would wear; it matched her gown. The child kicked its legs and he gave it a ride up and down the little patch of green in the middle of the park. It crowed. It looked to be about two or three years old.
He was deep in conversation with them, and didn’t see me. I didn’t hide; but I didn’t wave, either. After a minute I walked on.
On my way home, the hill seemed steeper than usual. There was bile in my throat. I had not wanted to believe it of him: but my own eyes could hardly be lying to me. Worst of all, I heard his voice behind me, half-way home: “Eliza! Wait, let me carry that for you… ”
I made some excuse, thanked him, begged him to pass me: I was walking very slowly today, I said, I was sure he ought to be getting back.
No, he said, not if I wished an escort!
No, thank you, I said.
He looked at me in surprise and then said “of course,” and made that little bow of his, begged my pardon, took leave of me.
I was hurt on two counts, I suppose; and disappointed also. Hurt and disappointed that he would conduct himself in so ungentlemanlike a fashion; and hurt that he must be so ashamed of it as to have concealed it from us, his closest friends.
Unless George knew, and was protecting me from such a distasteful thing? One never knew, with George. He could be blunt one minute and then gallant the next, depending on how things struck him. He tended to treat me as if I were too good for some things, and not worthy of others. I mean, he would make a big fuss over keeping my toes out of a puddle, but expect his dinner upon the table whether or not I had a megrim. He shifted in his seat when the talk turned to politics or some army matter, asked me if I should not like to withdraw while they lit up their cigars. If I wanted to talk politics, I had to find Lewis.
So was talk of a mistress beneath me, up on my pedestal? Had my husband decided I was better-off not knowing and his precious friend’s reputation unsullied, in our house? A brief affair was one thing, I thought, I could understand such a thing even if I did not condone it. But a long-term liaison – an illegitimate child, when he could have given it a name — ? A permanent arrangement, a woman of easy virtue, ruined and kept like a chattel?
I dropped a hint or two, like little baited hooks, and caught nothing: not so much as a flicker of a bite. Perhaps George didn’t know, then. I couldn’t help looking at Lewis differently, next time we were together, of course; I am not so good an actress as that, not where I am used to wearing my heart on my sleeve and speaking without reserve.
I tried not to let it affect my manner toward him, but it struck me as so sordid and unworthy that I am sure I must have been cold.
Of course, I could simply have taken him aside and asked him; but that felt like prying, if he had not seen fit to tell us – accusatory, too. If he did not think it any of our business that he maintained an establishment of shame, why should I mention it? I felt a sense of moral outrage, of loathing for such conduct. I could not understand why he would do such a thing. There were many girls who would have had him in a flash, if he had asked them – to be his bride, that is. So why a mistress? Why fornication, in place of sacrament?
Men, I thought: I shall never understand them. What it is about that part of them, that leads them into such foolishness and disgrace? We women don’t behave like that: it takes a man to ruin a woman, to seduce her – we don’t go about insisting on satisfying that thing between our legs for its own sake, without regard to the consequences, the way men do. I felt grateful I was not born a man.
Oddly enough, it was George who took the next step in the whole distasteful little affair. He was not one to interfere, usually. He liked to step back and let any men of his that had a quarrel settle it bare-knuckled; he had great faith in Providence to work out most things without meddling, as he put it. Meddling was one thing, however, and his friend was another, as I was to learn: where his loyalties were concerned, he had a passionate sense of justice.
We had spent a pleasant evening alone by the fire, me reading out-loud – we were working our way through one of Scott’s novels, a chapter a night – he polishing some complicated piece of surveying equipment with a green baize cloth: he could not bear to be idle. “I was surprised Lew didn’t come to hear the next part,” he said, “I thought he was enjoying the story.”
“I suppose he must be busy elsewhere,” I said.
George turned his spaniel-brown eyes on me. “No,” he said, “he’s avoiding you, Lizzie.”
“Oh,” I said, my heart thumping unaccountably. “Goodness! I hope not! I can’t think why… ”
“I told him the same thing,” said George heartily, “ – told him it must be in his imagination. Seems to think he’s offended you somehow.”
“Oh,” I said, not knowing what else to say. The thought that they had been discussing me seemed suddenly most upsetting. And it was true: Lewis was too sensitive not to have noticed my slightly cooler manner, the restraint in my voice, this last week. Although I didn’t think he would have said anything.
He hadn’t: “I asked him point-blank why we hadn’t seen him, these few days, Lizzie,” said George, his brow furrowed. “He didn’t want to say anything, but I wormed it out of him in the end. About you. Thinking he’s not welcome, for some reason.”
“Well,” I said in a brittle little voice that I despised even as it came out of my throat, “I can’t think what gave him that idea.”
George set down his instrument. He didn’t often call me on anything. He respected my world, the sphere of house and guests and all that went on under our roof; as I mentioned, he had enough confidence not to need to meddle. But this time he did. “Well, Lizzie,” he said slowly, “I reckon if you spoke to him in that same tone of voice you just used to me, I’d be thinking there was something the matter, too.”
I looked away. I was caught, now. Between repeating a squalid little piece of gossip about his friend; about Lewis’s reputation as a gentleman, no less.
— Or else lying to my husband, and him knowing it.
God, what to do? “I really – it – well, yes, there is something,” I said, “I can’t pretend there isn’t. But it’s not – anything I want to talk about, George.” Oh, no: had I given him the impression that Lewis had somehow insulted me personally, or behaved in any way inappropriately toward me? “It’s nothing directly to do with me,” I added hastily, before the thundercloud could gather any more darkly across his brow.
“Hm,” he said. “Well, that’s mighty awkward, ain’t it.”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Reckon you’d better put it straight, if you’re not wanting my interference, then,” he said.
I bowed my head, knowing he was right.
“He begged me not to mention it,” said George. “Said whatever it was, he hoped you’d pardon him and things’d be all right again… told me I wasn’t to make a fuss.”
“No,” I said. He wouldn’t want a fuss made, would he. Not Lewis; and specially not if he had a guilty conscience about so wretched a thing as this – fearing perhaps that I had got wind of it, that I despised him for it.
Which, god help me, I had; I did.
Realizing I must have seen him, that day.
He must be heartsick.
Well, it was not going to go away. Specially not now George was involved. “I hope I can trust you, then,” he said, “to put things straight, Lizzie? He’s mighty hurt, I would say, though he’d be damned if he’d say so. But it just ain’t like you, to be so unfriendly…. Or so dishonest, damn it.” There: he had spoken all his mind. He was upset with himself for swearing in front of me; muttered a brusque apology. Though it was the charge of dishonesty I minded, far more than the strong language that accompanied it.
He was right, though, and his words were sharp but not unfair. It was not like me to be so evasive; it was unworthy of me. Why is it that whenever we intend to do well by protecting someone from something, we mire ourselves more deeply than ever? I had meant to protect Lewis from the unpleasant fact that I knew about his mistress, his little bastard child, his double-life, his betrayal of his honor – for so I saw it, then, when all was so clear to me and I knew so well how other people ought to conduct themselves. Instead I had been inhospitable, and so still given the game away.
I was angry with him all over again, then, for putting me in that position.
Still, I sent him a short note, over to his
quarters. “Dear Lewis,” I said, “you
are not mistaken, and there is something we should perhaps put right between
us. I beg your pardon for my lack of
candor and hospitality. Perhaps you
would be so kind as to take tea with me today?
Hoping you will grant me this opportunity to discuss
matters — Eliza.”
God, it was a cold little thing.
He came, at precisely three o’clock. There is no such thing as a vague invitation, to a military man.
I never saw him so unsure of himself, not till that day he turned-up on my doorstep dressed in grey. And yet his eyes were perfectly clear – he was bewildered, not guilty-looking at all. He had come to hear what it was I had been treating him so shabbily over, to make amends if he could; to find out in what way he could have given offence, and not known it.
I poured the tea and passed him his cup-and-saucer. It rattled as he took it from me. “I am sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean for this to cause a fuss – George got wind of it… I truly have no idea, how I may have offended you, Eliza, but I am sure you had rather not discuss it, or else you would have, would you not?”
He was perfectly right there. But sores fester: we have to deal with them. I said as much.
“Please tell me, then,” he said, looking at me so guilelessly, “what have I done, that so displeased you, Eliza? Was it something I have said? If it was, then you must believe it was inadvertent!”
What struck me was the power I had to hurt him: the value he placed on my good opinion. “I didn’t want to believe it,” I told him, “till I saw it with my own eyes — but I know about your mistress, Lewis.”
The tea spilled from his cup into the saucer. “You what?” he spluttered.
“I saw you,” I said baldly, “in that little park. With her, and your child. I am sorry, I know it’s none of my business, if you didn’t choose to tell us – but you should have thought it couldn’t stay a secret, Lewis!”
“Dear God,” he said, “is that what you think?”
This was not the response I expected. “Well, what else am I supposed to think?” I asked him. “People are saying you pay her rent!”
“Oh, are they,” he said. He did not deny it.
“Well, do you?”
He looked at me. I can see him now, that cup-and-saucer balanced on his knee, that absolute hurt in his eyes. “I wish – I wish you had asked me, Eliza,” he said, “instead of thinking – what you’ve been thinking.”
“You didn’t answer me,” I said, feeling worse than ever.
“Yes,” he said, “yes, I help to pay her rent. Her name is Miriam. Miriam Goulaitis. But you are mistaken, about the rest of it, Eliza: it’s not my child. Nor is she my mistress.”
My head was in a whirl. “Then why do you go to see her! Pay her rent – ? Make it look to all the world as if you do – as if she is?”
“I – I suppose I had thought my friends knew me better than that,” he said. His voice shook. “ – or that they would ask — !”
I stood up, set down my cup with a crash. The view out of the window was a blur: I felt such a fool. “I didn’t want to embarrass you,” I whispered.
“Oh,” he said. It was as close to a reproach as I ever heard him utter, to me.
I waited for him to say more, but he did not.
“I see that it is I that ought to beg your pardon,” I said. My voice was stiff with shame, I am sure.
“No,” he said, “ – no, please – not so long as you don’t go on thinking that about me… that I would do such a thing, and keep quiet about it!”
“Why haven’t you ever mentioned her, if it’s all above-board?” I asked him.
“It’s someone else’s secret,” he said, “not mine. Or – confidence.”
I went to kneel at his feet. I felt so wretched. “I am so sorry,” I said. “So deeply sorry, Lew – that I didn’t have enough faith in you just to ask you… ”
He shook his head. “I understand,” he said. “I suppose you didn’t want to humiliate me. But – then – why would you believe me now?”
“Believe you!” I said. “Believe you! Why ever wouldn’t I believe you, if you tell me it’s so?”
His face cleared. “You do, then,” he said softly. The cup and saucer gave away his tremor, till he couldn’t stand it and picked up the cup, drank his tea.
“Of course,” I said. “I jumped to conclusions… it was unworthy – I beg your pardon, most humbly!”
“Ah, no,” he said, “that’s not necessary… just so we’re – on an even keel again – just so — ” He trailed-off, didn’t finish the sentence.
“What?”
“Just so I’m welcome in your home,” he said, “you and George – I don’t think I could bear it, otherwise… ”
I squeezed his hand. “Is it someone I know?” I said, “whose confidence you are keeping?”
He looked at me sadly, as if trying to decide how much to say. Clearly, he wanted me to know, to understand. I waited for him to speak. “There aren’t above two men I would do such a thing for,” he said at last, “ – get involved like that. So deeply. Mixed-up in the middle. Try to do right by the woman. And it ain’t George. And that is all I am going to say, and more than I ought.”
My god, I realized, then it could only be Harry! Harry Arnett! The third member of the Holy Trinity: the debonair husband of catty Kitty herself.
Dear lord, what poetic justice – Kitty, in all innocence, spitefully tarring Lewis with having fathered her own husband’s by-blow! It was innocence, surely – she would never have wished to draw attention to the woman’s existence, had she known. But she saw the opportunity to spread a little scandal, and she could not resist it.
Unlike Lewis, who knew exactly what was going-on, more than he wished to know I was sure, since it put his friend in so wretched a light. And said nothing, till I accused him. Had still not said who the man was.
Miriam: Lewis even knew her last name. An immigrant, then. Greek, perhaps? She had that olive darkness to her, a passionate face as far as I had been able to see. “Does he still — ?” I asked.
“I oughtn’t to say,” said Lewis, “but if she had any other support I shouldn’t have interfered. She came to me last year, after – well, she has no further contact with the child’s father.”
“Doesn’t that place a strain upon your friendship?” I asked. I was careful not to mention Harry’s name, of course, and so was he.
“He’s furious,” said Lewis. “Wants the whole thing to go away. I tell him I won’t countenance it. We have had bitter words, yes.”
I put my head in my hands.
“Please,” he said, “Eliza, please — !”
“I have behaved dreadfully,” I said. “Towards you.”
“No,” he protested, “no, not at all — you wanted to spare me what you thought was a guilty secret, I see that, I do –!”
“But I believed it of you,” I said.
He made no answer to that. There was none to make.
And then George came home. He looked from one of us to the other, first in consternation and then relief as he saw we had been addressing the problem, whatever it was. “Well,” he said in his bluff way, “ – worked it out, have we? Amends made, misunderstandings corrected?”
“Yes,” I said, “it was indeed a misunderstanding. On my part. A very great one. I have begged Lewis’s pardon, my dear, most humbly.”
“Well, that’s all right, then,” said George, “isn’t it? I’m glad it was nothing worse!”
Lewis smiled faintly into his cup.
And he never asked, George — never. He just trusted the two of us to work it out. He must have been curious, but he respected our wish not to speak of it. The next few times at dinner, he would look anxiously at one or the other of us when he thought he could do so discreetly, just to reassure himself that all was well in his universe. Of course, discreet in George’s book was blatant by most standards, since he was not a subtle or underhanded person, so if we intercepted such a look we smiled down at our plate to let him know all was well.
Lewis asked me if I would like to meet Miriam, the next time I visited my dressmaker. I thanked him, begged for an introduction. The child’s name was Alexander: Miss Goulaitis was half-Greek, half Jewess. No wonder she had so exotic a look to her! She was of a respectable merchant family in New York, I discovered, and while Harry was still at West Point he had given her every indication of wishing to marry her. It was the first any of us had heard of it, of course. This she confided to me while Lewis was showing the ships in the harbor to Alexander. They had been engaged, or so she thought, when the boys went off to Mexico: Alexander was conceived at that time.
I knew Harry had married Kitty not long after George and I wed, and thus he was not even free to make such a promise. Still, apparently he had sent money home to New York for her, still mentioning nothing of his changed circumstances.
She had followed him here to Charleston, when the regiment returned, expecting to be wed – a little late in the scheme of things, perhaps, but everyone forgives a soldier going off to war.
Only to find that there was already a Mrs. Arnett, and that Harry wanted nothing to do with her.
“Blackmail, he call,” she whispered, “I ask him money for live and he say damned blackmail. Tell me go home my family.”
“Why haven’t you?” I asked.
“They ashamed of me,” she said. “And I ashamed, too. Now they know there not be any marriage. Would kill my father, what everybody say.”
“Why haven’t you gone to his wife?” I asked her, “or the colonel?”
“I ruin his career,” she said sadly. “Still not help Alexander, I think.”
So she had gone to Harry’s friend instead.
A few months afterwards Lewis mentioned to me that he had been able to persuade Harry to make a lump-sum settlement on poor Miriam and her bastard son. He had come into some money, and Lewis had gone to see him privately and refused to leave his office until he told him whether he was going to grant Miriam an annuity, or have Lewis go to the colonel– and help Miriam set in motion a claim for some kind of legal recompense. She had gone back to New York, he added.
“Do you think you acted as a friend?” I asked him. I was still trying to understand this business about honor and the code of conduct by which a gentleman lives. I thought if your friend sinned and made a mistake, loyalty might bring you to overlook it, not hold his feet to the fire.
“I know him to be a better man than that,” said Lewis softly. “He was conducting himself in a way that wasn’t worthy of him, Eliza – I couldn’t let him get away with it, not in all conscience!”
“Do you suppose he’s grateful?” I asked him, unfairly perhaps.
“I doubt it,” said Lewis. “But I can look him in the eye.”
Yes: I saw it, then. To have nothing on one’s own conscience, with which to reproach oneself – nothing one ought to have done or said, but forbore in the name of friendship even when it should have been done. To have believed one’s friend fully capable of being their best and truest self, and reminding them who they were when they failed.
I had thought Lewis gentle.
He was: but within he was steel also, when it came to matters of conscience.
Friendship signified more to him than easy times and blind allegiance.
To George also, since he never asked what had come between us and been resolved – although he must have been dying to know.
I wondered if I ought to have such secrets from my husband, but I decided that the confidence was not mine alone to share. And George, who could have put me on the spot by asking me, chose never to do so.
We finished the Scott novel the same month we started it. George had brought Lewis up-to-date on all he had missed, so that the next evening we were all together they both begged me to go on from where I had left off the night before.
Ivanhoe, it was. I imagined George recounting the plight of poor Rowena, the dastardly villain, the dashing Lord Ivanhoe… wondered what the enlisted men would have made of it, had any of them overheard such a conversation.
Ivanhoe: such high drama between the pages; how tame our lives seemed, by comparison – ordinary and humdrum, an Army post, the round of duty and orders and hard work.
Lord! said George, slapping his thigh, those were the days, eh, Lew? No shortage of glory back then! Nothing so tedious as this, eh? No fame without a good fight…
Mexico, said Lewis with a smile, have you forgotten so soon, George? The boredom in-between, the toil and travail, the hardships – and the men we lost? Buena Vista, Churubusco, Chapultepec …
Yes, but that’s the only way, said George, those times were so – alive, compared with this!
I bit my lip.
Lewis, I saw, motioned to my face with his head for George to see.
“Oh,” said George, catching-on, “hey, not that this ain’t paradise, Lizzie – if only it was a bit more exciting… don’t mean to disparage married life, lord! so I didn’t!”
“I know that,” I said, closing the book and standing-up to put it away.
George looked sheepish.
Lewis looked away, let us exchange that private look that married couples do sometimes: I’m sorry. It’s all right.
Later, between the sheets, George tried to make it up to me. “I wouldn’t change places with any man alive,” he said hoarsely, approaching me for his welcome.
I gave it, of course.
Lewis
Charleston, South Carolina
1851
Almost
four years back from Mexico, and much further toil and duty behind him; and it
shows. Scores of letters have skipped
from his pen to Suzy, filled with so many adventures and tales, most of them
gay and lighthearted, some few thoughtful and contemplative – it is, after all, his nature – and, on occasion, when he can no longer keep
it to himself, one such as this one that lies folded on his desk, written but
not yet sealed, while he lies upon his cot and stares with red-rimmed eyes up
at the shrinking warped boards in the ceiling of his quarters. Under his head, his pillow feels most
unpleasant: it is damp. At last his eyes close in spite of himself,
and sleep delivers him for these few hours until his duty offers itself the
next morning, and he may embrace it once again, find meaning and solace in the
performance of it.
Charleston,
S.C.
June
9th 1851
Sis —
I
almost gave myself away tonight, after all this time — at a concert of all
places! — we had got up a show, all the fellows & wives, for our own
amusement, & she – yes, there is still only one she, Mrs. George Hamilton –
sang Greensleeves, and then one of her new ‘old’ pieces by this German fellow
Bach, oh Sis it would move a stone: Bist
du bei mir, it translates, So long as thou art with me, I shall go in joy
and peace to my rest; with thy hand’s clasp and the steady gaze of thine eyes,
thus should I die — or something like that —
I was standing at the back of the hall and I guess my feelings must have
been written all over my face, for she caught sight of me and faltered!
I thought I shd. burst into tears on the spot;
or turn tail and run — but obviously cd. do neither, so I bit the inside of my
cheek instead — it is real sore now! — and she finished very prettily.
I cd. have
withstood any amt. of merely sentimental tunes & such stuff, you
understand, and do so, regularly, as I am pretty well inured by now & it is
little hardship to school my features to indifference — but this song slipped
right in under my guard, it had such a different quality, so direct and
poignant, I swear it was playing directly upon my heart’s poor strings. How is
it that music has the power to unlock our most private, buried bosom secrets,
gaining entrance immediately where reason can find no admission?
When I saw
her afterwards, I did not know wh. to say, but confessed to being moved by the
words (wh. was true) and to thinking of our Mother (wh. was also true). She
took my face in her hands and kissed my forehead. There were tears in her eyes.
I do not know why – I can only imagine, for she has a tender heart. I dare say
not above several dozen people saw! – so that makes it a pretty harmless kiss.
George threw his arm about my shoulder and we laughed every thing off.
I confess I
came back to my room and have been pretty well wetting my pillow. Suzy there
are times — I suspect, at this point,
that she must know, she must; but wh. is there to be said? And so we go on as
before.
Did I ever
write you that I shd. get used to it, in time? I do, for months on end, it
seems, and then sth. like this happens and it is like the opening of an old
wound, right to the quick once more.
Well that’s a
little melodramatic I suppose. By the way, Sis, have I ever told you how much I
appreciate it that you have stopped trying to give me advice on the subject? I
know you must be burning to, and don’t:
bless you!
I have had
the earache for a week & more. Perhaps that explains much of the above.
I promise a
happier letter next time, with your proper allotment of regular news. So long
honey, from
Your
foolish brother,L.
* * *
Pale winter sunlight shafts into the room where he sits writing. It is chilly and he must break off now and then to blow on his fingers, but otherwise his pen fairly skips over the page:
Charleston,
S.C.
December
20th 1852
Suzy dear,
First to your
latest. How happy I am to hear that you have once more the tenderest hopes for
the future. I know Maisie will be tending to you and making sure you don’t lift
a finger, and your job will be to keep your feet up on that embroidered ottoman
from dawn to dusk: you must take the
greatest care of yourself honey, if I were there I should rub your feet and
bring you juleps and nourishing possets, read to you and entertain you all day
— Caleb would be quite out of countenance, but between us we should not let you
stir.
Later when
things are established and Spring is come I know well how you love to walk, and
your health will surely benefit from such moderate exercise but I pray you
dearest Sis, after the disappointments you have suffered, listen to the advice
of Dr Greaves, no matter how you chafe to be your active self, and cosset my
sister for now. Let others do for you what you have never stinted to do for
them.
My news is
more mundane, but a buzz here nonetheless — we are to be posted to Texas, Fort
Belknap to be precise; it will be my first time out there. I hear they eat there much as we did in Mexico
— if so, I shall be content. George may get his promotion at last, you know he
has been working on the shore defences here. His assignment out there will
include a lot of surveying and drawing of improved maps. He has not told me,
but I suspect he and E. cherish hopes not dissimilar to yours. She has been
keeping to her room in the mornings, and directing me in much of the gardening
work now winter is here — last year she would not allow anyone else to set foot
in the little plot! If it is indeed so I am glad for them: truly. I know she has long wished for it to be so,
and George also.
I shall
continue lieutenant of Troop ‘E’, as before, our entire regiment removes from
here next month so I guess our successors will inherit my digging and the
potatoes! We have a new Colonel, Col. Beere, who thinks the boys wd. look just
dandy on matched mounts, brown for one
company, black for another, a bay and a gray also if there are enough such.
Now this is a
fine idea when forming up the troops from scratch; but we are already well
established, and naturally the boys are reluctant to give up their own animals,
which they have become most affectionately attached, to be scattered all over
the western frontier, in order to satisfy such a piece of vanity. This is also
my private opinion, but I know you will keep it to yourself. With the arduous
long rail & steamboat journey ahead & the rigors of an overland march
on top, the creatures would surely benefit from the comforting presence of
their own accustomed familiar trooper; they would be less nervous and inclined
to panic and fret thus. It might save some from destruction.
I shall make
the same point privately to the Col., much good may it do me but I cannot
remain silent when I see such folly. If he declines, well, it won’t be the
first time I’ve followed the orders of a fool, and I fear it won’t be the last.
So long
honey, if I’m to speak for the men on this matter I must collect my thoughts and find a way to
present it without seeming to call his judgment into question. I shall have my
work cut out not to appear insubordinate. Ha Ha! He is a touchy piece of work
with a short fuse, as we say. Wish me luck. Meantime we are not to leave ’til
next month, as I said, so your letters will still find me here.
I hope you
have received the Christmas box I sent you by carrier a little while ago. I
found some sugared plums for Maisie just like we used to give her when I was
but a child, so I sent them for the sake of those happy memories, plus a few
little surprises for my darling sister and her good husband. Write soon and
tell me how you are coming along honey, I shall be anxious about you ‘til I
hear, since your welfare is always of the first concern to
yr.
affec. bro. Lewis
P.S. Re-reading
yours before sealing this I see you asked specifically for details of my health
so herewith a summary report:
item — cough no
longer troublesome.
item— blister on
left heel much improved. New blister on right heel, I guess from favoring left
foot!
item — some
recurrence of my old trouble from Mexico, wh. I believe like malaria is a
malady that once contracted one never completely loses. Not so incapacitating
as last time, not bad enough for sick call and no blood, merely incommodious
and threatening to my dignity! If I have to take another dose of calomel I
swear I shall turn green, I shd. much prefer Maisie’s tonic, what’s in it now,
blackberry and chinquapin? Wish I had some. Hint. One poor fellow in my Company
has had it very bad all summer and fall,
his fundament is so badly ulcerated the Dr. had no choice but to cauterize it.
I think he shd. have been sent home a long time ago but perhaps he was too weak
to travel. I have visited him daily and he is in great agony — I pray it will
not come to that with me. Oh Suzy don’t take that too seriously, it’s not
likely: my parts are whole and sound,
only the bowels intemperate.
item — nothing more
to report.
My dearest love,
L.
* * *
The air in Texas is arid, shimmering; the fort an odd scattering of stone buildings and log structures, along with the native jacal style of upright posts covered with adobe. There are a few trees, where men and horses like to gather; otherwise, there is little shade to be found in this sun-scorched place. Eliza loves it, though; in the spring she got up at dawn to walk among the drifts of bluebonnets.
Today, though, it is high summer; and he has somewhat of the air of a man struck by lightning. On entering his quarters, he goes first to his washbasin and ewer, pours water left unused from the morning when he was not here, and splashes his face. It has been an extraordinarily long and agonizing day; but it is over now, and his heart is full to overflowing.
He takes off his sweat-soaked wool jacket, pulls down his suspender-straps, and sits heavily at his desk in his shirtsleeves. His orderly has left a lamp burning low. By its light, unable to go to bed till he has emptied himself of some of this tide of emotion, he smoothes a fresh sheet of paper – how they tend to curl in the heat, here – opens his inkwell, and dips his pen:
Fort
Belknap, Texas
July
1853
Sis —
Thank
God, thank God, my darling has been safely delivered of the precious life she
carried — a little daughter.
The memories of our
treasured Josiah and Rachel crowd in on me, as I’m sure they must you, and I
hope and pray with all my heart that you will have an easy time of it with your
confinement, dearest Sis, which by the time this reaches you may well be
accomplished.
Suzy I was
not present when you were brought to bed of our little darlings now in Heaven,
and while I was anxious for news of you I heard only after the fact; so I had
but little idea of the emotion to be conquered when a woman one cherishes is in
the very jaws of danger, on the other side of a door, and one must wait out the
long hours without news, without encouragement. I thought I should die, whether
or not she did, but thanks be to God she came through it like a heroine
— I came in to see them at George’s invitation, but a short time after the
child was delivered. My darling looked tired beyond measure, her eyes were
ringed with fatigue and her color was wan, but her every feature bespoke
triumph and contentment.
For certain,
honey, if men had all that to do they would have found a way to make it easier,
or else the human race would have dwindled out. I think it must take more
courage to face what you face, knowing there can be no certain outcome but
great travail and danger, than to go into battle from wh. most of us escape
unscathed. My admiration and tender love for you can only increase with this
new knowledge.
O Sis her
little fingers, the babe, her tiny nails like those rosy transparent shells we
used to hunt for down in the Gulf — she is perfect, she looks just like her
mamma even down to the straight dark eyebrows. It’s no use — my heart is doubly
captive, now.
George is as
proud of himself as you cd. imagine, tho’ his part in the whole proceedings was
hardly one to boast of by comparison with his wife’s, but he keeps slapping his
thigh or my shoulder in fits of delight. He did not seem half so concerned as I
during the long day and a half: hearing
her moan, he’d say She’s a trooper, Lew, she’s a regular trooper, till I feared
I should punch him if he said it one more time as I passed between my various
duties with my heart stuck up in my throat — but he has never been one to wear his
heart on his sleeve, if you will pardon these hearts all over the place save in
their rightful one! — my good friend keeps all his deepest sentiments to
himself and I know this was but his way of allaying his own fears for his
precious wife and child.
So she is a
mother at last. I know she longed for it to be so. What tendernesses and joy
she has to look forward to.
Write me soon
Suzy, I’m starved for news of you & of
home, imagining all sorts of things. It’s more than I can take, having
both the women I love above all in the same case at one time. If you’re not up
to writing, give Caleb a poke and have him drop me a line or two just to know
you are safe and well honey.
Weather
execrably hot here. Two troopers from my Co. fell out yesterday with
heat-stroke. I have to make sure the boys are getting enough to drink, we are
all sweating like pigs. It’s hard to replenish the buckets of fluid we sweat I
swear. Uniforms stink and have salty tide-marks! Hope it is milder in Richmond,
where you know you will ever find the affections if not the actual presence of
yr.
bro. Lewis.
Eliza
Fort Belknap, Texas
1854
Texas, then. We have reached that part, and I cannot avoid it any longer.
At the time I am thinking of, George and Lewis and I were stationed at Fort Belknap, situated on a fork of the Brazos river where springs above the riverbank afforded water. It was the anchor of a chain of forts that stretched from the Red River to the Rio Grande. Texas was not as it is now; the roads were few and dusty, the life extremely hard. Still, we officers’ wives liked to accompany our husbands on their postings when we could, since the life was so much livelier than staying behind back East, and we had far rather be with them than not.
George and Lewis were still officially lieutenants then, although they held higher brevet rank from the Mexican war – the honor without the pay, in brief. In those days an officer could spend his entire career in the Regular Army, and never be promoted beyond lieutenant. When I look at some of the civilians – I was going to say asses, but civilians will do – who later wound up Generals of Volunteers in the War, I confess I should like to spit, sometimes. Some of them turned out splendidly, I don’t mean to tar them all with the same brush; but others...! Generals! When these good, competent officers labored their lives to make captain …
Well, George was brevet major, a topographical engineer attached to the Second Corps, which was spread across the entire South-West, a rank he didn’t reach in full for ten years after they first bestowed it on him in Mexico; Lewis was brevet captain, and lieutenant of a cavalry troop under the same command, having received his brevet a few months later, also for gallantry, after his wounding at the storming of Chapultepec. The Mexican War of 1846-8 had brought the abler junior officers to the attention of their superiors; many of them who served then, whether obscurely or with distinction, became household names afterwards. At the time, though, prospects in the Army were of hard and dreary service, long privations, far from fame or notice – and no-one expected any different, of course.
There are accounts elsewhere of Churubusco and Buena Vista: I will not trouble to retell them. A curious reader will find Lewis and George appearing in the military histories, alongside their fellow lieutenants Longstreet and Pickett, Jackson and McClellan, storming impossible citadels and moving artillery pieces where mules could barely pick their way. Many of them were brevetted two or even three times for gallantry. George’s letters of the time mentioned his fellow engineer, Capt. Robert Lee, with great admiration. They were plagued by fleas and dysentery, as I mentioned – Lewis and George took turns nursing each other through the worst bouts, to which George said being under fire was preferable, though with his love of the dramatic this may be an exaggeration: possibly not, however; George had a particularly sparkling brilliance which came to him in battle, a sense of all his faculties at their full stretch – and he loathed bodily weakness.
They came back more or less covered in glory. The United States was the larger by a great deal of valuable territory, rightly or wrongly; it wasn’t in question then. Afterwards, stationed in the West and Southwest, George and I were able to spend a great deal of time together, and we saw plenty of Harry and Kitty, and our other friends; and of Lewis, of course. Our table often was crowded with all of them for dinner, and standing-room by the piano was a commodity in short supply.
Fort Belknap, then. It was May, but extremely hot: 92 degrees in the shade. George had been recalled to Washington for some weeks on assignment.
I will tell this next part quickly. If it seems bald, I am sorry. There are limits to the things I am willing to re-live.
During George’s absence our first child, a daughter, contracted typhoid fever. Its course was swift and cruel. At first I prayed for her fretful, endless crying to stop. It did: within seventy-two hours she was dead. She was not yet a year old. She died in my arms about four in the morning. I was prostrated, having contracted the illness also: too weak to do anything but put her back in her crib and collapse in nausea onto my bed. George had been sent for, naturally. I turned my face to the wall and wished for death.
Dawn came. The house was so still that the loudest sound was the buzzing of a fly caught behind the drawn yellow shade of my room. The troops were out on maneuvers that morning and the fort was lifeless. My baby lay in her crib; no-one had come yet to lay her out.
A horse, galloping; boots on the veranda. I heard my maid’s voice briefly, raised in protest: and his, quietly insistent. And he came up to me, taking the stairs two at a time, having ridden all night from an outpost fifty miles away, as soon as the news of our illness reached him.
Lewis, that is.
There was no place for constraint in that stifling room of sickness and loss. I was wretched, as I have said, drenched with sweat and reeking of vomit, my hair tangled and glued to my cheek. He knelt beside my bed and took my face in his hands. How gentle he was. I remember that, because he rarely touched me. His expression asked the question he struggled to frame: ‘’Liza — O, Eliza — the baby?’
‘Look at her, Lew,’ I said. ‘You’d think she was just sleeping...!’
I clung to him. He held me as tenderly as any woman could: as my own mother might have. ‘Oh my darling,’ he said, ‘I am so very sorry.’
I thought all those tears were shed a long time ago. Well, well.
I was shaking violently from the fever, and my head felt as though an axe was buried in it. No-one who has not had typhoid fever can imagine what it is like.
I wept. Then I vomited in his lap, all over his uniform coat. Then I wept again, until oblivion claimed me. When I came to, he was sitting in his shirtsleeves, sponging my face.
When I slept once more he took charge. It was none too soon. Ice was not to be procured at any price anywhere in the state of Texas, in ninety-degree weather.
He arranged with the joiner for a coffin the right size. Such a small one; he didn’t even need a cart to bring it back. I think of him, walking down the dusty street in the hot afternoon, with the sharp edges of that little wooden box in his arms, digging into his ribs. Meanwhile the wife of one of the enlisted men, a local woman who spoke only Spanish, performed the usual necessities. Somewhere she found one of the baby’s nightgowns that was not soiled. Lewis made all the arrangements for the funeral to be held the next day. There were few officers’ wives at the fort, at that time, and those there were had no wish to contract the illness; some of them already had. The rest fled. I can’t say I blame them. They probably wouldn’t have been of much use, anyway.
Later he carried me down the stairs to see her laid out on the table where we had all eaten a hundred dinners together. I was hardly as light as a feather then, either. It was far from romantic. He was no more than ordinarily strong, and I was a dead weight; pretty soon he was breathing hard, trying to go slowly and carefully so as not to jolt my poor head. I was clammy, shaking, wondering if I was going to throw up on him again. That room: such happy times, up till now! It was whitewashed adobe, with beams across the ceiling and a red-tiled hearth. The stairs had no railing; they ascended in a solid mass from a corner of the room to the upper floor. Lace curtains from back East filtered the light from the small, square windows.
She was adrift in a sea of flowers. Not the hothouse kind: you could not get lilies and tuberoses out there — he had sent a detail from his company out into the meadow to gather them, black-eyed Susans, Queen Anne’s Lace, Indian blanket and gayfeather, rock roses and wild phlox.
He set me down in the rocking-chair where I used to nurse her. I was relieved to have made it all the way without succumbing to my rising nausea. I took a few moments, to steady myself.
‘Will you bring her to me?’ I asked him.
He lifted her from her creamy bower, in which I recognized my curtains; as tenderly as if she might yet wake, he laid her in my arms.
I was so weak from my illness that I could barely support her little head on my arm. My hand shook. I felt my elbow lifted and a pillow put under there for it to rest on. I looked up at him. His face was naked: it wore the expression of a man who must watch the one he loves most in the world suffering an agony he is powerless to remit.
Her eyes were closed. The lids looked like little seed-pods, stained violet. Her face was the color of tallow, pinched from the rigors of her illness. I touched her fingers. They were curled and felt as cold as a bird’s claw. Her hair curled also, like twists of embroidery silk. That reminded me: ‘Lew, do you recall where I keep my sewing?’ I asked him.
He nodded and went to the little bureau in the corner where my embroidery hoops were stored. Kneeling before it, he asked what it was that I wanted.
‘My little scissors. And a length of silk floss.’
He brought them to me.
‘Hold her,’ I asked him. He did so. I cut a little piece of her dark hair – a single curl; and tied it off with the thread, which was crimson, as I recall. Then I kissed her waxy cheek.
He set her down again in the middle of that riot of God’s creation.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
He shook his head, saying nothing.
I was not well enough to attend her funeral. It was Lewis who read the twenty-third psalm for her, at my request.
George was expected to return from Washington within a few days. We sent word out to meet him, with the news.
I wanted to see no-one. Conversation was too painful, and I was still extremely weak. Lewis requested, and was granted, temporary release from his duties. (I was a favorite of the colonel, which no doubt helped.) He simply sat with me, so that I should not be alone. I can still hear his quiet voice reading to me now and then, from the Psalms or from my other favorite, Pilgrim’s Progress.
My maid did what she could, but she spoke little English and I was too ill to be able to communicate in a foreign tongue. When I needed something I whispered it to Lewis, and he would either do it himself, or translate for me. I was past shame; and there could have been no-one on Earth with whom I should be safer from insult.
I don’t know when he slept. I would wake to find him keeping weary vigil in the upright chair beside my bed; except the time I opened my eyes and he was on his knees.
Something else comes to mind, from that time. I might as well tell it: not much point in trying to save any blushes, now. It was the afternoon of her funeral. Lewis had brought me wet towels for my face. I laid them instead over my nightgown upon my aching breasts, where the need was greater; she had not yet been weaned. Some men might have affected not to notice my predicament, out of some false sense of delicacy. Not so Lewis. He left the room and returned with a whole sheet, wetted and wrung out, as a cold compress to ease me. He did this with a straightforwardness that precluded embarrassment. I do not mean that he was unmoved; only that my need came before any humiliating pretensions at modesty. That may seem foolish: but we were brought up differently, then. Certain body parts existed in a conspiracy of unmentionability. They might be admired; but not, in polite company, acknowledged.
I see, now that I have said this much, that sparing me unhappy memories does not do justice to Lewis. There is, after all, a little more to tell.
I was not myself. Those fevered hours in the middle of the night in Texas seemed outside Time. I could not keep from whimpering with the pain from my breasts: they throbbed, flushed like pomegranates under my nightgown, hot and hard with unwanted milk.
That’s just how it was. All that water’s long under the bridge, for better or worse: too late to change anything now. His gaze on me, then: picture it, dark with compassion in the pale blur of his face. Hours thus, saying little or nothing – there was nothing to say – only sponging my face from time to time, watching me suffer, until it became more than he could bear.
‘If only George were here,’ he said at last. His mouth quivered. ‘At least he could...!’ He left the sentence unfinished: looked at me directly, biting his lip. I did not take his meaning; not then. George hated sick-rooms. I couldn’t think of anything George would do for me that Lewis had not already done, and more; so I shook my head vaguely and closed my eyes. I heard him draw breath: it sounded oddly shaky. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I should not have spoken.’
I heard the scrape of his chair on the floor as he rose, excusing himself; a bump downstairs, where he knocked against a piece of furniture. And then, from the courtyard, complaining squeals from the pump, roughly used. I felt at a loss. Was something wrong? Was it my fault? Had he found it too unpleasant to go on, sitting with an invalid all that time? Crawling out of bed, I went to the window. I could barely stand: I had to hold tight to the sill.
I was reminded of some fantastic figure from the ballet. Alone in the deserted square as if on a stage, the moonlight mother-of-pearl on his shoulders, he was stripped to the waist, his head bent under the stream. I heard him gasp for breath, spluttering and choking. After a while he stood: for a few moments longer the twisting silver arc splashed. It spilled down his belly and loins; slowed to a trickle; stopped.
He put his head in his hands. His whole body shook. Watching him, I went back in my mind over that puzzling exchange before he left. It was only then that I realized what he had meant. That trembling mouth. My aching, unsuckled breasts. My cheeks burned. All the useless milk surged sharply; painfully. His mention of George had confused me – for it certainly would never have occurred to him.
Oh! I shall never forget the sound of his weeping as he stood lone and dripping in the eerie moonlight: a quite inhuman sound, a single harsh plaintive note repeated like the call of a bird out of the vast empty plains – the sound, if ever there could be such a thing, of a breaking heart.
And I knew then that, as delicately as he had put it, it had been an offer.
I cried myself to sleep. Those nights were still fevered: the hours passed in a blur of suffering, waking, tossing; half-hallucinatory, wretched. When I woke my sheets were drenched with milk: I had dreamed that I said ‘yes.’ The sleep that came afterwards was deep and dreamless.
In the morning, before my maid came, he brought me coffee and sweet dried figs; watched with pleasure as I ate all of them and asked for more. ‘I am so very glad,’ he said, ‘to see you better, Eliza!’ The torments of the night might have racked two other people entirely, for all either of us revealed.
Perhaps it was just as well, so: I suppose, even had there been no harm in it, even if it wouldn’t have been so very wrong, that it would have made things still more complicated between us afterwards. Things have a way of becoming tangled up, of hurting others when no hurt is intended. It was probably for the best, the way it was. That way, when he asked me all those years later if he had ever behaved toward me in a way that was not strictly honorable, I could truthfully answer that he had not. More importantly, perhaps, so could he. For he was on his honor with me: trusted to behave with decorum – decency, if you will – even when to do so meant to conquer every human feeling. But on that one occasion, in the middle of the night, love had won over honor – he would have sacrificed his conscience for my sake. That was a piece of knowledge I carried in my heart like a shard of glass from that time onward; as I knew also that I should still have had to say No, not on my own account, for I was surely desperate enough, but on his. I don’t think I would have had the strength to say it more than once.
After his success with the figs he procured a scrambled egg and fresh, hot tortillas. I told him manna could not have been more welcome to the Israelites. I managed to eat most of it. We talked that morning of my baby, her pretty ways, the shape of her hands; how she loved to be sung to; her favorite songs; the way her hair curled like George’s.
‘Her eyes were just like yours, though,’ he said. ‘The same grey. She always looked like she was thinking so hard about something!’
It was so very sweet to call her thus to mind: another kind of manna in the wilderness. I told him how I liked to imagine her in heaven, upon the lap of Our Lord, Who said, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me!’ It was foolishness – I don’t really believe for a moment that we can comprehend the Afterlife so literally, if at all – but harmless, tender foolishness. ‘I can just see her little hand tugging at His beard,’ I told him, ‘like she always did with the colonel!’
‘Then He couldn’t help but plant a kiss in that starfish palm of hers...!’ he answered, ‘to make her giggle, you know!’ – and I could almost hear that bubbling silver laughter as he spoke. Such a little kindness, to let a person ramble on about the one they have lost. Such a rare one. It is hard, to be in the presence of loss and not flinch. But that was Lewis: his instincts were no less sure than they were delicate. Grateful and moved, I found my gaze following the tender shape of his mouth. When I realized what I was doing I shut my eyes and lay back on my pillow. I felt ashamed and confused. My dream was shockingly fresh in my memory. How could all of this become so tangled up with my grief? I could not, must not wish for anything so unthinkable; so impossible. In some obscure way I felt also that I was using his kindness for me. ‘Will you read to me, Lewis?’ I asked. I chose Pilgrim’s Progress as a counterpoint to my troubled thoughts. It worked, more or less. I was firm with myself. I had to be.
There: I have been completely candid. I have withheld nothing out of shame or embarrassment.
What’s the fuss about, when nothing happened? Oh, but that’s the most poignant thing of all: how nearly, how very nearly it did. And how I wished that it might have. Sometimes the things that do not happen are as important as those that do: God knows they reveal no less.
George returned not long afterwards, dusty, exhausted, his eyes red-rimmed. He did not weep – at least, not in front of me; although he squeezed my hand until I thought it must be crushed. Much later Lewis told me that George had wept with him, where I should not see and be distressed. Oh, George.
We left her there, in Texas, where she had lived her short life.
George did not like to speak of her afterwards. A year later little George was born, and I had my hands, if not my aching heart, full once more.
Some time after George’s christening, when we had left Texas, Lewis gave me a little journal, the kind with blank pages one writes memoranda in. Between the pages were pressed all those gay flower petals, red and purple, pink and gold.
‘I thought you should have this,’ he said.
That was all.
I realize I have not yet spoken of my feelings for him. I am not sure what to say, just now. There are many different kinds of love, after all. Not all of them begin with fireworks, or blossom into courtship.
Lewis
Fort Belknap, Texas
1854
This is the watershed.
He is shaking.
He is unshaven.
He does not have the wherewithal to start telling Suzy even, except to cry out this grief onto the poor paper – how is it to bear so much pain?
When his sister receives this, she will know from the writing, before even opening it, that he is beside himself over something –– but as long as he is safe and well enough to write, she can still open it calmly, wondering what on earth could make his hand tremble so.
Writing it, he groans without knowing that he is doing so. Afterwards, for a little while, he falls asleep with his head on his friends’ dining-table; the sleep of absolute exhaustion. His clothes smell of vomit –– he has not changed them in three days. There has been no time, no opportunity.
Upstairs comes the sound of a woman moaning. He is awake at once, stumbling from his chair; goes to her. It would never occur to him to do otherwise. Soon, as he knows from many repetitions of this experience, she will be overtaken by helpless retching, and she will need him. It is his destiny, the twisted answer to all his prayers, to be of service to her thus, now. He embraces it.
Ft.
Belknap, Texas
May
1854
Sis she has
lost her child ——
I do not need to
tell you who I mean — o Suzy it wd break your heart — she is ill herself — it
is typhoid fever — I am half out of my mind, fearing for her life also — George
is not here, he has gone off to Washington & we buried the little babe
yesterday — I do what I can but what comfort can anyone offer to a mother who
has lost her little one? She is resigned
to it now I believe and quite brave. O Suzy how flat and dull her voice was
when she repeated, The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.
I wish I
could do more!
The babe was
such a lovely little thing Suzy, you know I wrote you of her bewitching ways —
just starting to laugh, how she would gaze at you and break into a smile — she
had half the garrison twisted round her little finger — when I called for
volunteers for a detail to gather flowers, thinking the men might find it
unsoldierly work, not a one but stepped forward — I guess many of them have
little ones at home — oh Suzy, I can hardly bear to watch my darling in such
pain, it tears my heart so, but I sit with her, for company — it’s all I can
do.
She is
sleeping just now, so I snatch a moment to write you. I thought I knew what it
was to pray, but I realize now that I knew nothing of the kind.
I cannot
think, how George will receive all this when he returns. He was so proud of his
little daughter — he could make her crow with laughter like no-one else — you
know what it is to lose a child, dear Sis, how I hate to remind you — but I
know, your heart will go out to her.
No more now — only I had to write this —
Suzy dear, pray for her, for them, for us —
Oh
God, Suzy—
— L.
He watches his beloved toss and turn, as he has watched her for the past three nights. This is the fourth. She sleeps little: he, less. The hours pass in a succession of acts, repeated in different combinations till they coalesce seamlessly in memory: the first two nights she would wake with a sudden shudder and turn her head aside. Dozing in the hard chair beside her bed, he woke each time with her first gasp, spread a fresh rag under her cheek to catch the bitter trickle. Then fresh cold water, or cool chamomile tea –– he must hold the cup steady, her hands tremble too much to do so herself; his other arm firm behind her shoulders, supporting her so that she can sip without choking.
Her skin burns through the thin nightgown, which clings to her.
He brings her sheets, wetted and wrung-out, and tries not to look at her as he lays them gently across her breasts. She flinches. The child died on Sunday night. This is Thursday. She is beside herself.
He notes the deepening bruises that ring her eyes, the changing texture of her skin. Tiny creases fret it, a network across her face and brow. She looks twenty years older than a week ago, tangled, disheveled; how can it be that she looks more beautiful to him than ever? Perhaps because she has never appeared more precious.
She has not wept for her dead child again since the first moment of telling him. This concerns him, but he does not know what to do. He fears for her sanity. She stares blankly for long periods of time, her eyes unfocused, as if nothing in the world were worth the trouble of looking at. During the days she manages to sit up a little on pillows. He reads to her, psalms and proverbs, the Pauline epistles, some of the gospel parables – or from Pilgrim’s Progress, as she requests. She listens with closed eyes, so that he can never be quite sure when she is sleeping; but if he stops and she is awake, she will murmur, “go on –– please, go on – ”
The other ladies of the fort have fled to the eastern outpost fifty miles away as soon as the sickness showed itself; there is no-one but him to do this for her. She would have stayed, he thinks, if it were them that needed help; but he cannot find it in himself to be sorry that this task falls to him. He is grateful for their cowardice, since it has offered up this gift to him, of being needed as she has never needed anyone in her life until now. She speaks little Spanish, and her maid less English – to leave her so helpless is not an option he considers. What is proper hardly matters in the face of this; and of all the men in the world, surely he is the most to be trusted, with his best friend’s wife, is he not?
George would expect it of him, he is sure of that, to do all he can in his absence.
She submits to being washed by the woman – he leaves the room – but the only company she will tolerate is his. “Stay with me,” she begs in a cracked voice, “stay with me?”
When she sleeps he stares at her; sometimes he falls to his knees in prayer, whispering brokenly to a God he is no longer sure of. Most of his prayers consist of the word ‘please’, repeated until he chokes on it.
Once, following with his eyes every lock and tangle of her hair spilling over the pillow – a sight he never thought to see and now cannot stop calumniating himself for ever wishing to, since this agony must be the context – he snatches up a pencil and paper from the desk and sketches her thus, asleep. In his head a voice says, “if you lose her –– at least you’ll have something to remember her by…” –– as if he could ever forget this.
Their intimacy is profoundly disturbing to him, used as he is to avoiding all physical contact with her for fear of his body’s betrayal. Yet caring for her thus comes so naturally to him that he wonders whether he was born for these few days of devotion, which crown like precious stones a lifetime pointless by comparison. Nothing he has ever done matters beside this. He would give his life for hers in a moment; but God does not offer that choice, so he does the best he can.
Her plight moves him in every way he is capable of being moved. His throat constricts, his skin crawls, his hands tremble, he aches. Sometimes he rubs his eyes roughly in a gesture of self-loathing and despair, until he sees stars and his eyeballs hurt. In the past, dreams have relieved the longing when nothing else could; but the luxury of sleep is denied him, and so he suffers in a private hell of shame.
The third night, when she whimpered every time she stirred, he could think of nothing else. He swallowed, tried not to stare at her swollen nipples as he replaced the cold compress with extreme gentleness for the twentieth time. He wished himself a thousand miles away, or better yet, never born. If George does not come home soon, he thought then –– what? That he will take a husband’s privilege to himself, is what; open up her nightgown like a thief in the night, and put his mouth to her breast. The thought made something inside him turn upside-down. It could not be un-thought.
She murmurs, and he bends forward for the thousandth time, dabs the beads of sweat from her face with a cool damp rag.
Another day comes and goes.
The next evening, he half-offers; she half-refuses – or did she? He drives himself half-insane wondering if she had understood his delicate question: “If only George were here…” he had said, “at least he could – ” –– she had turned her head, shaken it. But in answer to what? He should have been more forthright, but he feared offending her, needed her to sanction the subject, to go any further with it — which she did not. He cannot bring himself to ask again.
And so it is night, the fourth night since it happened, and he is punch-drunk from lack of sleep. She has kept down everything today, would be improved if it were not for her agony since that little nursling mouth turned to clay. He wakes to the sound of her voice, low and flat, more lifeless than he has ever heard it: “Oh, God help me,” is what he thinks she said.
“Oh, Eliza,” he whispers, and bites his lip to stop his mouth from trembling.
“I can’t go on,” she says.
“Honey, please, you have to try, don’t give up –– ” –– he is afraid she will gutter and extinguish like a candle in a draught.
“I can’t,” she replies bitterly.
His hand finds hers amongst the sheets and closes over it. “Please, dear God,” he prays aloud, not knowing what else to do, “have mercy on this thy creation, on this woman, this mother –– oh please, have mercy on thy servant Eliza, keep her from suffering so, dear Lord –– please, please – oh God, please – ”
She turns her face from him. What use is prayer?
It is the worst moment of his life.
Tears burn like sand under his eyelids. The breath stops dead in his throat. How can he continue refusing to be the instrument sent in answer to his own prayer?
The room is utterly still. Into that silence comes the knowledge that God only helps those who help themselves; that human acts are the workings of divine grace; that she needs him, and there is no-one else here; that he will do it.
One thing more he can spare her: the full awareness of this humiliation. Perhaps he can take the edge off the shame for her, still? Then he will simply offer himself by beginning, and if she wishes it she may permit it; and if she does not wish it she may stop him. But he will have relieved her of having to answer him yes or no.
He gets to his feet, finds a glass, pours brandy into it – she is less than his weight and not so used to liquor, so he measures far less than he would use for himself to achieve insensibility – and for good measure, adds a drop of laudanum. He does not intend to leave her insensible, but only lulled enough to get past her misery and let him.
Is this dishonest? He does not mean it so. No; it is for her sake, not his, that he offers it. He will not be able to be free of this memory for the rest of his life; it will haunt him, drive him to distraction, be present before his eyes every night from now until he dies. There is no getting around that, and he knows himself well enough to know how it will be. He will manage to live with it, and with her and George.
But perhaps for her it will be gentler, hazy, this way. He hopes so. He imagines meeting her gaze from now on, with this between them, and it is almost too much for him. But she needs him now; he must let the future take care of itself.
He caresses her cheek; she stirs and sighs.
“’Liza,” he says, “you know there’s only one way to help you, don’t you.”
She turns dreamy eyes on him, says his name.
“You can stop me, if you want,” he says, his voice cracking.
She sighs again; gives a low moan; reaches out and touches his mustache with her fingertips. Her thumb grazes his mouth. “You would — do that?” she whispers.
“I would do anything for you, Eliza,” he says.
She trembles.
“I got some brandy for you,” he says, “ — take the edge off. I thought — it’d be better for you, this way.”
She takes it from his hand and he lifts her to drink the heady, bitter draught. She does so without protest. He prays it will bring her that semi-forgetfulness that is the kindest gift of liquor to those in pain.
He lets her back down on the pillows, waits till her breathing is slow and steady.
“All right, then,” he says. He makes a short silent prayer asking for forgiveness, and pulls at the ribbon of her nightgown.
She whimpers.
“Hush, honey,” he whispers, and she does.
He puts his mouth there.
When she feels it she cries out, then cradles his head to her.
So she wants this from him, then.
He gives it to her.
Drenching him in thin blue streams of milk, that fill his mouth and spray all over his face and hair – he had not expected it to be sweet – she sobs, then howls: “my baby – my baby – my ba-a – a – by!”
His heart almost turns inside-out, hearing this. Racked with weeping, she pulls him to her and will not let him stop even though he is beside himself. He probably could not have done so, anyway.
Nine years of hopeless longing. Three thousand days and nights when his flesh cried out for such an intimacy. He trembles, burning with need and shame. He can no more stem this tide than he could Niagara. Yet he tries: pulls back from her, gasping, before he is utterly dishonored. His body is shrieking now; his throat constricts, he can hardly breathe. His heart stalls in this moment when all is not yet lost –– when he tries to salvage his soul. And then it passes, in the space of a heartbeat: her sobs turn to cries –– she pulls his face to her again, wanting his mouth, needing it; clutches at his fingers to make them close once more tenderly upon her milk-filled breast.
He goes on, because he must. He gives her all he has to give, even though it is more than he can bear, and the price is his soul.
And so comes the moment of his drowning in her arms, racked and jolting, his heart crying-out in pain that he has defiled even this now, that there is no honor left, never was. Overcome, choking as her milk spurts, so does he.
It breaks him altogether.
He is no better than an adulterer, then, at heart; this act has lost all integrity. His intentions mean nothing, in the face of this shame. There are no illusions left. For this, he has come to her?
Yes.
But does not stop, though each moment flays him, until she sighs, her sobs turned to softer moans and whimpers and then to easy slow breaths and her grip on his head finally loosens and instead she strokes his hair until she falls asleep with his head still cradled to her breast.
His clothes stick to him. He hates himself. The tears come now, as scalding and unstoppable as his seed. Spent utterly, weary beyond endurance, he cries himself to sleep in her arms.
He wakes lying beside her still on the bed. There is a little color in her cheeks; her breathing is easier. The sheets and her nightgown are still damp, but they can be changed later. For now, she is resting.
He vows to himself that from now until his dying day, he will put this behind him and keep it there.
He closes his eyes, knowing he can no more do that than will himself not to breathe. Still, no look or word of his will ever betray what has passed here.
He rises quietly, so as not to wake her, and goes to find something to tempt her to eat.
She does not mention what has passed: is it possible she does not remember?
If so, he prays to god she never will.
* * *
George returns.
He keeps his devastation from his wife, so as not to upset her further; instead he sits late at his desk poring over all the spread-out maps, his head on his arms. When Lewis goes to him and lays a hand upon his back, he breaks into dry sobs. Being George, and ashamed of such weakness, he keeps his face hidden.
Lewis stands beside him, grasping his shoulder, till he is done; fetches him a cold wet rag and a generous shot of liquor.
They do not speak; for now, they do not need to.
Weeks pass.
There comes a day of blue skies and little fleecy clouds like sheep, a fine day for a picnic. It is glorious, despite being late in the season, and mild enough to enjoy sitting out-of-doors around a blue checkered cloth spread in the meadow.
Half a dozen officers and a handful of wives sit and laugh, exchange pleasantries and stories each of them has heard before. The ladies’ dresses are sadly outmoded and dust-stained; they are discussing the latest styles, and how they are to conjure them out of the stray bolts of odd fabric that have fetched up here in Texas like snags along a river, presumably because nobody else would have them. There is a particular pea-green fustian that has been sitting in Mrs. Miller’s cupboard for fully a year; every time she takes it out, she finds she simply cannot face it, my dears! What about petticoats and drawers, then? – comes a suggestion from mousy Mrs. Standish. But it’s too good for underwear! – if only it were not quite such a bilious shade… perhaps Mrs. O’Dowd, with her Irish complexion…? But Mrs. O’Dowd will have none of it, she flaps her bony hands in panic at the idea that it is about to be foisted on her, and her expected to make something of it and appear in public therein – so the subject languishes, and they turn to their luncheon. The food is simple but tastes far better out-of-doors than it ever has in.
When Eliza leaves the group, his eyes do not leave her. She stumbles toward the eucalyptus trees and her husband, intent upon his conversation, ham and bread in hand, does not notice.
Lewis gets up, follows her.
She is holding onto the tree-trunk, with its scaling strips of bark and aromatic pungency. “Are you unwell?” he asks her softly.
“No,” she lies, “I just – couldn’t look at the food, all of a sudden.”
“What do you mean? ’Liza, you’re not coming down with something all over again, are you? Tell me you’re not sick to your stomach?”
“Lewis, please leave me alone – ?”
“You know I can’t do that…”
She can’t deny it, since she is clearly nauseous, gasping and swallowing. He holds out his handkerchief and she takes it, presses it to her mouth. His eyes do not leave her face. After a while she recovers, grateful for not having thrown up at his feet. The dread in his eyes makes her want to reassure him: she tells him why she is feeling this way, it’s only natural –– nothing to be concerned about… and he takes her meaning, his eyes widen in shock and disbelief, and she is startled by what happens next, for he balls his hands into fists; makes some kind of a strangled cry in his throat, God, no! please! –– and then suddenly he punches the tree, wildly, viciously, till she grabs his hand. The knuckles are bloody. She wraps his handkerchief around them, failing to meet his eyes.
“Lewis –– ”
“No,” he says, the word falling, broken in two.
“Yes,” she says. “Lewis, you must understand –– please? Forgive him –– we are all he has.”
“He won’t have you if he doesn’t look out,” says Lewis, his face so filled with hurt she cannot bear to look at it. “Look at you – still weak – you cain’t hardly walk more’n a few yards without stopping to git your breath – you ain’t eating – Jesus Christ! What is he thinking of? ’Liza, dear sweet God, E-liza –– !!!”
“It’s all right,” she says, knowing that it isn’t; that he is right, that she is still weak and this new strain upon her may well kill her. But what choice does she have?
Or he, for that matter?
* * *
His lamp smokes. Absent-mindedly he turns down the wick, adjusts the chimney. It smells of cheap oil. Once again the army has been sold short, inferior goods at prices equivalent to grand theft. This oil has come all the way from New Orleans by train and mule-cart, and it stinks. His quarters are quiet, stifling. The hand of solitaire comes out, but there is no pleasure in it. He picks up the cards, shuffles them; lays out another hand, while his mind absents itself on a bitter and weary detachment.
His knuckles hurt.
She can’t be with child again; she can’t be! Not so soon. Not yet. Why, as he told her, her cheeks are still transparent from her illness, she can’t walk more than a few steps without pausing to catch her breath; she hardly eats. What could George have been thinking of? Oh, God. Please, dear God, keep her safe. On first hearing the news he was seized with rage, followed by nausea; had stumbled away from her and fallen to his knees, stuffing the bloody handkerchief against his own mouth. Now, hours and a bottle and a half later, the taste will not leave. Mechanically he moves a black ten to a red jack, an ace up to the top. Inside him something is twisting itself into knots of suffering. Two of clubs on top of the ace. He is afraid that if he puts the cards down and goes outside, he will meet George and kill him with his bare hands. Three to two. Lucky in cards, unlucky in love. True enough. He needs sexual release, and a good cry. Neither comes his way.
Gentlemen and officers don’t do those things.
Twenty-three hands of solitaire. Eleven of them played all the way out. His cheek rests on the last hand, not yet finished, barely begun actually, where he slumped when the drink and the late hour finally delivered him from wakefulness. His fingers twitch as he dreams, much as an old dog chases down coons, behind his eyelids, beside the fire.
In the dream the woman at the botanica is giving him that long, frank stare. They both know what it means. So far he has not responded. Now, dreaming, he does. ‘Cuando…?’ she asks: ‘when?’
He stares at the bunches of dried herbs behind her. ‘I want no child,’ he says in reply. A nameless particular pain coils alongside his gut as he thinks about untimely conceptions.
‘I’m a midwife,’ she replies, ‘I know about these things. Don’t concern yourself. A little sponge soaked with quinine in there, that’s all it takes.’ Her face is strong, has Indian lines, the high cheekbones and slash of a mouth. Her eyes are bold, find his.
Why doesn’t George know that, he thinks. Damn it, a few weeks with Inez all those years ago, and even I knew that. George ought to know, damn him. ‘Tonight, then,’ he tells her. ‘And…’ ‘si?’ ‘Nothing.’ Yes, there was something, she saw it in him, heard it. What, then? ‘…wash your hair with rosemary?’ he says, ‘por favor – ’
‘Como no?’
So he will not pretend to himself that this is anything more than a substitute for Eliza, for whom his flesh cries out and his heart faints. But he asks the woman to come to his bed, anyway, in the dream, with her hair smelling like Eliza’s.
He does not know her name.
Then the dream shifts and he is sitting at his friends’ table, and the woman from the botanica is going to come to him later and there is no thought in him of any joy with her except need and shame and a sense of loss; and it is evening, dinner-time, and Eliza has just put down a plate of fruit: custard apples. There are three of them, of course, as there are always three of everything, grey-green lumps on the least chipped of her favorite dishes, the pink and gold service from her wedding, dwindling survivors of army mule-trains, ambulances, heavy-handed orderlies and a hundred and one other calamities.
He is fond of custard apples. He looks from the shell-pink dish to her mouth as she eats a spoonful of hers, notes that her lips have not yet regained the color they had before her illness; wonders for the first time today, though it is at least a daily musing, by now completely automatic, how she would taste if ever he were to kiss her. When they were both young, a lifetime ago, he imagined crushed wild strawberries, claret cup, elderflower cordial, mountain honey. Now her mouth is paler, sadder in repose, and his has shut itself to a firm line so as not to betray his thoughts so very many times that lines of pain define its margin. He and she have both drunk from sorrow’s cup, watched long parched and hopeless nights, tasted bitterness –– they are tougher, drier creatures than they used to be. Theirs is no longer the heedless bounty of summer fruit to be crammed into the mouth, but rather the sweet-tart flesh of last year’s apples come through winter’s frost, dry as wine with its sharp edge – or perhaps something plain, necessary: tea, bread. Water. This thought occupies a fraction of a second, long enough for him to flush and look down, which she notices.
“Why, Lewis,” she smiles, rescuing him, “you seem in good spirits tonight. Did you get a letter from your sister, when the mail came today?”
“Three,” he is going to say, but George’s cheerful tones override his: “I heard he has a mistress,” says George, archly. “That ought to put some color in his cheeks, all right.”
Lewis chokes on the food in his mouth. He cannot swallow it: the custard-apple pulp has assumed the proportion and texture of a ball of horse-droppings. He feels Eliza’s eyes on him in a kind of tender and amused curiosity. It’s not fair, he wants to say, I haven’t even slept with her yet, and then he sees himself, asking one woman to take the place of another, a woman whose name he does not even know –– sees how pathetic is his racking need to bury his face in rosemary-scented hair and pretend; and his cheeks burn with the shameful knowledge as if he is already guilty of it. In that anguish he spits out between clenched teeth, “why, George, have our doings behind the closed doors of our bedrooms become dinner-table gossip now? For if they have, you’re not the only one present with opinions on the subject, you know!” – and thus the quarrel is begun, for in the face of George’s bluster and demand to know just what he means by that, sir, he tells his friend exactly what he thinks of him, in particular what he thinks of the impregnation of a frail and invalid wife within weeks of the loss of their child: for God’s sake, George, he rages, what in hell were you thinking of? Not her, that’s clear enough, my God, to risk your wife’s life for your own miserable satisfaction, couldn’t you have waited? Used something? Stopped short of the act that conceived this child? I shouldn't serve my wife so, I swear to God, if I had the blessings you have I’d cherish them, not throw them away for the sake of a moment’s lust…
“And what in hell would you know about marriage?” thunders George, and Lewis roars back in his face, “Not much, I’ll admit, but it seems a hell of a lot more than you know about continence!”
In the torture of his dream his fears are realized one by one: Eliza is trying to take George’s arm to quiet him, and George is shaking her off, and she is starting to cry, looking from one of them to the other in absolute horror and desolation, and Lewis thinks, it’s over, it’s all over now, we shall never be friends in the same way again; I have lost both of them, in two minutes – less – all gone, all gone forever, nothing can mend this, not now!
But George has not finished, he must defend himself from Lewis’s last riposte, and so now he is yelling, “and you, you god-damned fornicator, how dare you tell me how to behave toward my own wife when all you want is to nail her to the bed and screw the living daylights out of her yourself? How dare you? Admit it, on your honor as a gentlemen, you’re jealous, you want her for yourself, that’s all you’ve ever wanted – isn’t it? Isn’t it!”
So on his honor as a gentleman – whatever that means, but it surely must include not lying – Lewis hangs his head, mumbles, “yes.” And adds, a moment later, “so what if I do?”
There is a snarling sound as George launches himself straight at Lewis’s face, butting him in the nose, and then the two of them are at each others’ throats in deadly earnest, and Eliza is pulling at them, and if Lewis does not beat George off with his fists, George will kill him. George is throttling him, and the only thing left to do is to put his own hands around George’s neck and squeeze…
He cries aloud, and jerks bolt upright in the chair where he has been sleeping hunched over the desk, the tipped empty glass and the cards. His breath rips in his throat as if he were, in fact, about to be throttled; his hands beat at the desk, the air, flail before him for a second before he registers that there is no angry George, no murderous attack, nothing but his own room, empty, as usual: his desk and chair and the empty night. Nothing irrevocable said that can neither be denied nor forgiven.
And no nameless woman coming to him with the scent of rosemary in her hair, either.
He gulps a pint of stale water, hauls himself to bed.
Further sleep eludes him; he is far too distressed by the dream to relax into its kind oblivion. An hour passes. Lying there, George’s face keeps coming before him, hurt and bewildered as he saw it when George arrived home to the news of his dead child; and his heart twists to imagine that face haunted by the loss of a wife, and blaming itself – however correctly. Dear God, there’s always enough blame to go around, he thinks. Oh but George, how could you?
Because George is spiritually frail, and seeks comfort in physical things, comes the answer. Always has. That’s how he gets, when crushed with grief: plunging into activity, grasping at the pure energy of the life-force whose presence demands all one’s attention, leaving none over for sighs and regrets. George takes refuge in the moment; in the intensity of the moment, in the heat of his physicality he loses himself and the grief of our mortality. If it should happen – and at that thought not merely his heart but his very bowels are wrung with anguish – God forbid, if his worst fears are realized and that happens, George is going to need him: not to judge, but to succour, comfort, help him find his way out the other side of despair. They will have to help each other. God knows they will need each other, then. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, he thinks dully, what are thy rod and thy staff but the knowledge of the surety of Grace? And where are we to find grace, on this earth, if not among those whom we love, and that love us?
I must even
forgive him this, then, he
thinks, not because he is my friend but because I am his. As he forgives me my flaws – and god knows I
have them, more than he guesses. I wish
he hadn’t done it, but there it is. I
can only be there to care for them both.
That’s all I can do: I can’t undo
what’s been done. What’s the point in
hating George for it?
He turns over in bed, turns his pillow also so that the cool side is uppermost, imagines it fragrant with rosemary; comforts himself with vague thoughts of a different kind of pillow – her lap, perhaps, in that white batiste frock, or… or… the unexpected sweetness of her milk… no, not that, don’t start to think of that, don’t, don’t, don’t ––––
The mercy of sleep is a long time coming.
And somehow, in reality, the harsh words remain unsaid, the quarrel never ignites. Against most of the laws of human nature, this peculiar three-faced devotion triumphs – devotion, or call it love, if you will. Each putting the other two first, themselves last. Exposure, accusation, rage remain the stuff of nightmares. Each of the sailors in this precarious and precious barque of their friendship tends to it as though their very survival depends on it. Each chooses time after time to repair its strained fabric with trust and care and kindness, and not to point in blame at the sprung timbers, the worn places in the sails that each of them knows to be there. Nor for that matter do they dwell in fear on the wild force of the tides which rock them, the rip and suck and vortices of passion that await, the midnight wrecking-shoals of despair, the looming rocks of jealousy and destruction.
For each of them thinks, also, that the others feel the same; would still rather ride out the storm with this crew, in this frail vessel, than any other; could not conceive of casting any one of them out of it, this boat, their boat, this regard, this love that each of them bears for the other two. The wind that bears them forward through the turning unpredictable years, filling their sails that are woven not of canvas but of a thousand acts of decency – the wind that carries them sometimes seems to him nothing less than the breath of Grace itself.