Candle in the Darkness - Lynn N. Austin [81]
“Yes . . . What is it, Ruby?”
She held out her hand, offering me something. “These here laudanum pills always help you mama when she upset.”
They were also what had killed her. Tears filled my eyes at this reminder of my own weakness. I recalled my last night at Hilltop and my aunt and uncle’s worried whispers that I would turn out to be just like my mother.
Ruby set the container of pills down on my dresser, then hurried away. As I stared at the medicine in the gathering twilight, a faint booming sounded in the distance. I recognized the sound. I’d heard it during two nights of celebration. Cannon fire.
The Pawnee.
Terror rose up inside me until I thought I might suffocate. The war was only beginning, but I knew that I couldn’t live with such overwhelming fear every day until it ended. I saw only two choices. I could turn to the pills as my mother had, or I could turn to God, as Eli did. “As the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters . . .” The laudanum was certainly a quicker solution, but Eli’s peace was genuine, enduring. I picked up the tin of pills and hurled it across the room into the darkness, unwilling to end up like my mother. Then I fell to my knees beside my bed.
“Oh, God, I can’t live like this,” I prayed. “The city is defenseless. I’m helpless. I can’t protect the people I love. Help me trust you, God. Help me believe that you love Charles as much as I do, that you’ll always do what’s best for him. I want to trust you, Lord, but it’s so hard. So very hard. Please help me. Please help me pray ‘Thy will be done.’ Help me to really mean it, Lord.”
Eli was right; God didn’t instantly reward me with a bushel basket of faith. But by the time I whispered “Amen,” I felt strong enough to get through this night without my mother’s laudanum. I would probably have to pray this way every day, perhaps several times each day, but that was the only way to face this war—one day at a time. “. . . as the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress . . .” I would have to look to God to teach me daily lessons of faith, just as Tessie had trusted me to teach her.
By the time Tessie returned with a bowl of Esther’s chicken soup and some hot biscuits, the cannon had stopped sounding in the distance. My knees were no longer trembling.
“What you doing sitting here in the dark?” Tessie scolded. She set down the tray to light a lamp. “You come on and sit down over here, honey. Try and eat a little something.” It surprised me to discover that I could do it, that the spoon didn’t shake in my hand.
I prayed for a long time before I fell asleep that night, and as I did, I realized that I had always been utterly dependent on God for every breath I took, every breath Charles took. Why had it taken a crisis like the Pawnee to make me see it, to drive me to my knees?
I fell asleep reciting a verse from the psalms that Eli had made Grady and me learn years ago to ward off our nightmares: “ ‘I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, Lord, only makest me dwell in safety.’ ”
———
Charles arrived the next morning just as Tessie finished helping me dress. I ran down the stairs and into his arms. “Charles! You’re safe!”
He surprised me by lifting me up and whirling me around two times before setting my feet on the floor again. It was something Jonathan might have done. Charles’ fine Sunday clothes looked disheveled and stained, but he was smiling.
“Yes, aside from spending a cold night on the hard ground, I’m safe.”
“I heard cannon fire last night, just as it was growing dark.Was it the Pawnee?”
Charles laughed out loud. “No, that was our own artillery.We were testing it. There never was any warship steaming up the James River.”
“What?”
“It was all just a wild rumor. The Pawnee left Norfolk, but it’s probably halfway to Washington by now.”
“Oh, Charles. All that fuss and worry for nothing?”
He laughed again. “I guess so.”
Esther walked into the foyer with my breakfast tray just then, on her way upstairs