Candle in the Darkness - Lynn N. Austin [33]
“Caroline has recovered from the measles,” he told her. “But I think you’d better take her home.”
I wept as I watched the servants pack my clothes, along with the bird’s nest and the butterfly’s wings and all the other treasures I’d collected with Jonathan. Uncle William would accompany me to Richmond tomorrow. I was sorry to go, yet I knew I couldn’t bear to stay. Slave Row wasn’t visible from the big house, but that didn’t stop me from thinking about it.
Later that night, I awoke to the sound of voices in the next room. My aunt and uncle had left their bedroom door ajar, and I could hear them talking as they prepared for bed.
“Do you suppose her hysteria could have been caused by her fever?” Aunt Anne asked. “She seemed fine the first few weeks she spent with us. A little skittish, perhaps, but she didn’t cry like this.”
My uncle’s boots dropped to the floor, one after the other. “Her mother’s the same way, Anne. Goes from one extreme to the other. She has terrible crying spells. It’s a real shame, but it looks like the daughter is turning out to be the same way.”
The thought of being just like my mother started my tears falling all over again.
“Poor George must certainly have his hands full with two of them like this,” my aunt said. “I had only one of them and I was at my wits’ end. Has he considered an asylum?”
“Heavens, no! George nearly took my head off when I suggested it.” The bed creaked as one of them climbed into it. “No, my foolish brother wanted to marry that woman—the belle of all Richmond. I tried to warn him that she was high-strung, but he just had to have her. Now he’s living with that mistake.”
“Jonathan asked me if he could go to Richmond with you tomorrow,” my aunt said after a moment.
“No. I already told him that he couldn’t.” The shaft of light from their doorway vanished as one of them snuffed out the light. “Caroline is a beautiful girl, Anne, in spite of her moodiness. She has a hypnotic quality about her—a vulnerability—that attracts foolish young boys like Jonathan. From now on, I don’t want him anywhere near her.”
I heard the haunting song of the slaves the next morning for the last time. As we drove past them laboring in the fields, I looked away.
Chapter Six
Richmond, October 1856
Back in Richmond, my life quickly returned to its old routine. I couldn’t forget everything I’d experienced, but I managed to push most of it from my mind, packing away my disquieting thoughts and my grief like the dolls and other toys I’d outgrown. For the next two years, my mother’s condition seemed to slowly improve. She spent more and more time downstairs in the drawing room instead of in her bedroom, and she even entertained guests for dinner once in a while. One afternoon when I came home from school, Ruby called me to my mother’s sitting room.
Mother was smiling, and her curtains and shutters were open, but she couldn’t seem to be still. She flitted restlessly around the small room, her hoop skirts swirling, her nervous hands picking up first one object, then another, quickly discarding them again.
“I have some wonderful news I want to discuss with you, Caroline. In private.” Her voice had that frenzied breathlessness I’d grown to dread. “Ladies don’t talk about such things in polite company, you know.”
“What things?”
“You must tell no one, Caroline, but I’m finally expecting another child. I waited to tell you until the doctor was certain I was past the danger point. He says the baby is strong and healthy, and I’m not likely to lose it. But just to be sure, I must stay in confinement for the remainder of my time. I’m not even allowed to go to church.”
I tried to act pleased, but the news terrified me. I recalled the terrible grief I’d felt after the babies died at Hilltop, and I worried about what would happen to my mother if her baby died. I tried to pray, putting all my worry into Jesus’ hands, as Eli had taught me, but the worry and fear grew and swelled inside me even as the baby grew inside my mother.