Wild, Beautiful, and Free(55)

Mr. Colchester pulled away from him, glanced at us, then threw open the doors and headed for his study. “Damn it, Eshton, what’s this fight about then?” The colonel followed him, and they were gone.

Missus Livingston closed the doors behind them and, evidently determined to calm the unsettled energy in the room, began discussing how the running of the house might change. Economies might be necessary. There might be times when our normal processes would be in disarray. I admired her words, but I didn’t think them necessary. Missus Livingston ran a well-ordered house with no frivolity in how she managed expenses. If ever a place was prepared for the uncertain vagaries of a war, this was it. I assumed I would continue my teaching as always until directed to do otherwise.

But I will admit, with the conflict now underway and an uncertain future forced upon the entire population of the Union, I thought only of two people in it: Mr. Colchester and his future bride.

For the party did gather again at Fortitude. I suspected it was at the behest of Belinda Chamberlain, for she seemed to be justifying merriment at every given turn.

“Who knows when we may meet like this again? I say tonight let us enjoy ourselves while we can, and let it be a kind of prayer that the next time I welcome you here, it will be to toast the victory of our Union soldiers!”

She raised a glass to the exclamations of “Hear! Hear!” I wondered if I was the only one to notice that she had as good as named herself mistress of the house—that she would be the one to welcome them at the end of the fighting. Perhaps she felt bold enough to do it because Mr. Colchester wasn’t in the room. I had called him out myself to alert him to Mr. Mason’s arrival from the factory. He had seemed agitated and eager to speak to Mr. Colchester. I remained in the room only long enough to observe how his visitors would weather his departure. After Miss Chamberlain’s splendid toast and without Mr. Colchester to provide the bridge between the men and ladies, the room split. The men circled with their cigars around the hearth to discuss the insurrection. The women sat on the sofas and focused solely on Miss Chamberlain, nodding vigorously to whatever certainties she laid out for them.

In my imagination she conspired with them to make whatever final maneuvers were needed to secure her engagement with Mr. Colchester. I took issue with her seeming to have her prize already won. When she laughed, I felt she belittled him. When she smiled sweetly, she took him for granted, assuming he was like other men who could be played upon this way.

I lingered in the hall. Mr. Colchester had to return that way, and I wanted the opportunity to speak with him about his plans for joining the fight. When he didn’t appear, I moved in the direction of his study, near the front wing of the mansion. He might have left with his foreman and gone to the factory. But I heard raised voices—impatient, even angry voices. I recognized Mr. Colchester’s tones, though I couldn’t make out the words. There was Mr. Mason, too, and—a woman’s voice. It was Founder. She spoke fast, with sharp, punctuated diction, as though she were delivering blows with her speech. I flinched as though I were on the receiving end.

I feared the door would open at any moment. I fled.

In the privacy of my room I drank a glass of water to settle my nerves so I could sit quietly and think about what I’d heard. Mr. Colchester had disagreed with Mr. Mason on some matter before—I’d witnessed it. And if it weren’t for Founder’s presence, I would have thought this argument between the men was a similar disagreement. But why was Founder upset? What did she have to do with their business?





Chapter 11


I began having dreams of a strange infant. I didn’t realize at first that it was the same child. I couldn’t see its features clearly, but I knew it was a small child by the way it pulled at me and by its weight when I held it. When it pulled at me, it was insistent, angry. When I held it, it cried continually, and I felt faint with exhaustion because I’d carried it a long way and had more to walk with it still. In one of the dreams I discerned it was a boy—he wore tiny breeches and stood wading in water. I was trying to coax him to come away because I feared he would drown, but he only grinned at me with a child’s careless joy.

Aunt Nancy Lynne used to say it was bad luck to dream of a baby. She’d had such dreams before her son had been sold away from her and the night when Missus had taken her money. I don’t know if I believed in bad or good luck, but I do think that anything that comes out of us—dreams, words, looks—has its foundation in something rooted inside of us. Nothing comes out of nowhere. I figured this child was some remnant of my past. Maybe it was Fanny’s child coming to tell me about his mother. Or he wanted me to remember her. The child could be some aspect of me, come to tell me about myself. In none of these dreams did I take joy in the child. He scared me, and I was fearful for him.

I had dreamed of the child for one week running and was thinking about him as I left the schoolhouse one afternoon in early May. I was making my way down the street when the door of Templeton’s house flew open and a heavyset colored woman came running down the steps. She seemed excited, and she rushed to me, crying out, “That’s her! That’s her! I’d know that child anywhere!”

She threw her arms around me, nearly knocking me to the street. I was stunned. I didn’t know her, nor could I, held tight in her embrace, see the face of my happy captor. Finally she pulled away and held me at arm’s length. She examined me up and down. When I looked at her, I saw a puzzle, a face that seemed familiar and yet had been manipulated in some way or transformed into something strange by time. She must have read my confusion, because she said, “Do you know me, chérie? Do you remember?”