Her white raiment was glowing even brighter until I could scarcely look at it.
“Of course I am Alice, and my home is The Hermitage.”
“Then what are you doing here in this cemetery?” I asked more boldly, but she ignored my question.
“Did you come to help me?”
“That depends. What would you like for me to do?”
“I want you to help me find my ring. I’ve been looking for it ever so long.”
“I’m not sure I can do that. Your brother threw it away, you know.”
“How could he do something so wicked? Where is it?”
While she talked, her dress became so bright that I had to turn my eyes away. A cloud of mist came rolling up from the river and enveloped us. As we entered the cloud, for the first time I was afraid.
“If I ever see Allard Flagg, I will surely tell him . . . ,” she was saying, and her voice faded. When the cloud finally passed, the girl was gone, and so was the moon. I heard the angry rumble of thunder in the distance, the prelude to a coming storm.
For the first time in my life, I found myself trembling violently. My eyes had been exposed to such brilliant light that they were not readjusting well, and the darkness of the cemetery was overwhelming.
What had happened to the practical, down-to-earth engineer whom I had always considered myself to be? Without my flashlight, how would I find the gate? Suddenly, I heard a metallic clang, and I realized that someone had closed the gate noisily. Was I imagining that I heard the rattle of a chain securing it? Had a night watchman locked me in?
In my haste to get out, I stumbled over a footstone and barely managed to keep from falling. I stretched my arm out in front of me for some protection, and my fingers rested on a clammy marble face. Whether the face was that of an angel or Christ, I was not sure, for I didn’t leave my hand there long enough to find out. Finally, I managed to make my way to the gate. I reached for the latch automatically and when I did, I discovered that I could have walked right through it. Instead of being closed, the gate was ajar. What about the sound I had just heard? Hadn’t I been careful to latch it behind me? Yes, I was certain I had.
Reilly Burns has become a believer, I thought to myself as I drove down Highway 17 north toward Myrtle Beach. That night I lay on the bed in my motel room, hands clasped behind my head. I thought for a long, long time of a girl named Alice whom I would never see again—at least not on this earth.
The Hermitage is on the National Register of Historic Places and located in the Murrells Inlet Historic District, United States Highway 17 Business, Murrells Inlet, SC 29576.
A DRUM FOR THE DEAD
BERKELEY HUNDRED, CHARLES CITY, VIRGINIA
Berkeley Plantation is on Highway 5 in Charles City, Virginia.
When I first saw him, the master of Berkeley was out picking up limbs that the wind’s hands had stripped from ancient oaks. With his eighty-two years, Malcolm Jamieson stood like one of the oaks, aged but sturdy. Beneath his shock of white hair, the blue wells of his eyes gazed out with humor and kindness.
No Virginian he, but from energetic Yankee stock, Malcolm Jamieson, through both physical labor and imagination, wrested this gem of an early colonial plantation from the years of neglect following the Civil War.
In a very real sense, Berkeley is the home of all Americans, for it is the birthplace of a signer of the Declaration of Independence and the ancestral home of two presidents. Over the past three-and-a-half centuries, this single plantation has seen more historic firsts than any other English-speaking settlement in America.
By the spring of 1622, just as the Virginia settlement was gaining strength, the inhabitants of Berkeley met with sudden and violent death during an Indian uprising. The Indians simultaneously invaded plantations all over the colony, seeking to annihilate the English intruders. At Berkeley they succeeded; the original plantation never fully recovered from the massacre although it changed hands several times during the next seventy years.
The Harrison family acquired Berkeley in 1691. The history of this family and American politics blend together here like the sweeping green lawn and fields running down to the banks of the James River. One descendant, Benjamin Harrison V, grew up to sign the Declaration of Independence. His good friend George Washington was often entertained at Berkeley. In fact, every one of America’s first ten presidents enjoyed the plantation’s hospitality. Two of these presidents came from the Harrison family—one was William Henry and the other, his grandson.
By the nineteenth century financial reverses had caused the Harrison family to lose its hold on Berkeley, and then Virginia was torn by the Civil War. General McClellan’s Federal troops occupied Berkeley after retreating from their siege of Richmond. On the grounds and fields surrounding this once proud manor house, the Union Army of the Potomac encamped, 140,000 strong, receiving supplies from U.S. Navy gunboats anchored in the Potomac River.
During that hot August of 1864 at Berkeley, a man named General Daniel Butterfield composed a haunting bugle melody. The name of it was “Taps.” It was a melody that would soon drift out through the darkness into camps all over the world.
As Jamieson walked about picking up limbs on a warm autumn day in 1987, he thought about Berkeley’s history. A panorama of scenes went through his mind leading from the past to the present, peopled by characters whom, in a sense, he had come to know intimately.
It was on that day in 1987 that a white Oldsmobile station wagon rolled up to Berkeley and a family from Richmond, whom we shall call the Larrimores, began the plantation tour. Julie Larrimore was more patient than her brother. Randy, not content
