climbed the stairs like an old man as the hall clock tolled three.
43
At Belvedere, Brett continued to fight her own daily war with loneliness.
One consolation: Billy's letters sounded more cheerful. His old unit, Engineer Company A, had returned to Washington and was quartered on the grounds of the federal arsenal along with two of the three new volunteer companies congressionally approved in August — B from Maine and C from Massachusetts.
Billy still maintained a starchy pride in belonging to 'the old company.' But he wrote that most of the regulars accepted the new recruits and were attempting to make them overnight experts in every skill from pontoniering to road building.
The newly constituted Battalion of Engineers incorporated the old cadre of corps regulars, and was now attached to McClellan's Army of the Potomac and commanded by Captain James Duane, '48, an officer Billy respected. In order to stay with the battalion, Billy's friend Lije Farmer had been required to resign as captain of volunteers and take a regular army commission as a first lieutenant.
Brett was happy her husband was back where he wanted to be. With winter bringing military hibernation, she hoped he would be relatively inactive and thus out of danger for several months. She wondered about chances for a leave. She missed him so; there was many a night when she slept only an hour or two.
She helped around the house as much as she could, but that still left great stretches of empty time. Constance had gone back to Washington to be with George. The strange, ill-tempered colored man, Brown, was there, too, gathering more strays. Virgilia had won a place among Miss Dix's nurses and wouldn't be returning. Brett was by herself, moody and lonesome.
One steel-colored December day, she bundled up, walked to the gate of Hazard's, then up the hill to Brown's building. She found two of the children, a boy and a girl, studying at a board with Mr. Czorna, the Hungarian. His wife was stirring soup at the stove. Brett greeted each of them.
'Morning, madam,' the gray-haired woman replied, deferential but not especially friendly. Each had an accent: Mrs. Czorna's heavily European, Brett's heavily Southern. Brett knew the couple didn't trust her — not exactly a novelty in Lehigh Station.
She started to say something else but noticed a child in the adjoining room. Sitting on a cot beside the partition dividing the area, the little coppery girl stared at her hands with her head bowed.
'Is the child ill, Mrs. Czorna?'
'Not sick, not that kind of ill. Before he go, Mr. Brown bought her a turtle in a store. Two nights ago, when we had the snow, the turtle crawled out the window and froze. She won't let me take it and bury it. She won't eat, she won't speak or laugh — I miss her laugh. It warms this place. I don't know what to do.'
Touched by the sight of the forlorn figure in the other room, Brett followed her impulse and spoke. 'May I try something?'
'Go ahead.' The statement, the shrug, said a Carolina plantation girl didn't seem the right person to deal with a runaway black child. It was a familiar canard.
'Her name's Rosalie, isn't it?'
'That's right.'
Brett walked to the dormitory and sat down beside the little girl, who didn't move. In the open palm at which the child was staring lay the dead turtle, on its back — not smelling good at all.
'Rosalie? May I take your turtle and give him a warm place to rest?'
The child stared at Brett, nothing in her eyes. She shook her head.
'Please let me, Rosalie. He deserves to be warm and snug while he sleeps. It's cold in here. Can't you feel it? Come help me outside. Then we'll go to my house for some cookies and cocoa. You can see the big mama cat who had kittens last week.'
She folded her hands, waiting. The child stared at her. Slowly, Brett reached out to grasp the turtle. Rosalie glanced down but didn't say or do anything. After Brett found the child's coat, she asked Mrs. Czorna for a large spoon, and they went out behind the whitewashed building. Brett knelt and used the spoon to chisel a hole in the wintry ground. She wrapped the turtle in a clean rag, laid him away, and replaced the soil carefully. She looked up to see Rosalie crying, emotion shaking loose at last in silent heaving sobs, then audible ones.
'Oh, you poor child. Come here.'
She stretched out her arms. The little girl ran to her. While the sharp wind blew, Brett held the trembling body. She stroked Rosalie's hair and, with a small start, made a discovery. In her years of helping on the plantation, she had picked up bundled black babies or held the hands of older children many a time, yet always stopped shy of the ultimate giving — an embrace.
Had she been guided by some unexpressed belief that Negroes were somehow unfit for a white woman to touch? She didn't know, but this moment in the gray morning jarred her to awareness. Rosalie felt no different from any other child hurting.
Brett hugged her tight and felt the little girl's hands slip around her neck and then the cold wetness of her cheek pressing hers for warmth.
44
Aunt Belle Nin died on the tenth of October. She had been sinking for days, the victim of what the Mains' doctor termed a poison in the blood. She was alert to the end, smoking a cob pipe that Jane packed for her and commenting on dreams that had shown her scenes of the afterlife. 'I don't feel bad about going, except for one reason,' she said through the smoke. 'I'll probably meet my two husbands on the other side, and I could do without that. I'm leaving a better world than I was born into — the light of the day of jubilo will be breaking next year or soon after. I know it in my heart.'
'So do I,' said Jane. They had agreed for a long time that if war came, the South would fail and fall. Now freedom was a scent on the wind, like that of rain before a heat spell broke. Aunt Belle took several more puffs, smiled at her niece, handed her the pipe, and closed her eyes.
Madeline readily consented that Aunt Belle be buried at Mont Royal the next day — the same day a fire swept Charleston. There was scorched earth for blocks, six hundred buildings lost, billions of dollars' worth of property. Black arsonists were blamed. The news reached Mont Royal the evening after the funeral; a courier galloping to the Ashley plantation warned of possible uprising.
While the courier was speaking to Madeline and Meek, Jane was walking alone in the cool moonlight by the river. A creak of boards at the head of the dock alarmed her. Cuffey was always watching her these days, and the moment she turned and saw the dark, threatening silhouette of a man, she thought he had followed her. She stood motionless, filled with fear.
'Just me, Miss Jane.'
'Oh, Andy. Hello.' She relaxed, pulling at her shawl. The early winter moon lit his face as he turned his head slightly, approaching in a cautious, shy way.
'Wanted to say how much your aunt's passing grieved me. Didn't think it was my place to speak to you at the burial.'
'Thank you, Andy.' To her surprise, Jane found herself gazing at him slightly longer than politeness dictated. She had recently grown much more aware of him.
'Like to sit down a minute? Visit?' he asked. 'Don't get much of a chance to see you, working all day —'
'Aren't you chilly? You have nothing but that shirt.'
