A Reluctant Belle

by Beth White

  “I’m not denying or confirming anything—to you!” Joelle said. “But I will address my betrothed, since he insists on confronting me in front of outside parties. The only thing I’m sorry about is that my disquisition in church last Sunday seems to have resulted in a retaliatory attack on my friends’ and students’ church. I can hardly believe that the inhabitants of our community are vindictive enough to have engaged in that evil, evil deed.”

  Sophronia put her hands on her hips. “We know you went to a fancy boarding school, Joelle, but can you try not to talk as if you swallowed a dictionary?”

  Joelle sighed. “Ignorance on your part, Sophronia, does not constitute pretentiousness on my part.” She propped her hands on her hips. “I swear, Gil, can’t you say what you want to say without hiding behind a couple of women?” Ignoring the gasps behind her, she stared at her fiancé, eyeball-to-eyeball. “I’ll try not to humiliate you in public again, but if you want to marry someone who will never disagree with you, you’ve got the wrong girl. It is true that my sisters and I started a business to feed ourselves and others. But you knew that before you asked me to marry you—at least before the last time you asked! I’m sorry if that offends you, but you shouldn’t have assumed I’d abandon my sisters in our venture. Lastly, of course we open our hotel to anyone who wants to stay here! How else can we practice hospitality, as the Bible tells us over and over to do?”

  Gil straightened, rigid as a scarecrow on a pole. “I notice you did not deny the original charge. Did you or did you not write this disgusting article?”

  “Disgusting? I beg you to explain to me what is disgusting about teaching people to read and write, so that they may participate in and contribute to a society that has, for the bulk of their lives, demanded everything of them and returned nothing!” Hurt past restraint, Joelle snatched the newspaper out of his hand. “Yes, I wrote it! I penned every blessed word, I’m proud of it, and I won’t take it back!”

  “You are T. M. Hanson,” Gil clarified.

  “That is my pseudonym.” She could add that Mr. McCanless had been the one to insist on the pen name, but she had agreed to it. It was her own responsibility. “I took it on because I was afraid you and other people would react this way to my unvarnished beliefs.”

  Gil’s face was now dead white. “You are not the woman I thought you were.”

  “I tried to tell you that,” she said in as reasonable a tone as she could manage. “You just wouldn’t listen.”

  “But you are so beautiful,” he said helplessly.

  She stared at him for a moment or two, before laughter bubbled. “My mama always said, ‘Pretty is as pretty does.’”

  “Your mother was a godly woman,” Mrs. Whitmore said. “She would have been horrified to have seen you come to this.”

  “Don’t.” Joelle wheeled on her, all amusement vanquished. “Don’t you tell me what my mama would have said or felt about me. She loved me and my sisters and was proud of each of us, no matter what.” When Mrs. Whitmore huffed but for once held her peace, Joelle turned back to Gil. “Gil, I’m going to let you off the hook. Right now. We are not a good match—you know it and I know it. I truly hope you find someone who will love you the way you ought to be loved.” She fluttered her fingers as if shooing away a bird. “You’re free now.”

  Gil shifted his feet, clearly uncomfortable with his freedom. “You’re never going to find anyone to marry you now.”

  “Thank you for your concern,” she said dryly, “but I’m not so sure marriage would be good for me anyway. Or that I would be good for any man. As it turns out, I’m pretty fond of doing things my way, and God gave me the gift of communicating things in writing. If I can’t do that and be married too . . . well, I’d rather be pleasing to him and go his way.”

  He stared at her, a flash of something that looked like envy in his eyes. It quickly hardened into resentment. “Even Schuyler Beaumont won’t take you when he finds out you’re dead-set on making the government pay for Negro education. He’s joined the local Klan, and you know they’re targeting those people you love so much.”

  If Schuyler had met Lemuel Frye six months earlier, he probably would have dismissed the man as a fringe-element lunatic. But when the skinny, stoop-shouldered man in the center of the room rose and removed his dilapidated straw hat, Schuyler realized he had rarely, if ever, been so glad to see someone.

  Of course Levi would put Frye right here in Shake Rag, hiding in plain sight.

  The schoolteacher’s face and hands had been darkened with walnut juice, or some other dying agent, and the hat had covered his thin, straight brown hair—a simple but effective disguise. “You’re Riggins’s friend who came to visit the jail before the trial and offered to send food,” he said. “You were in the courtroom and met Riggins and me after the shooting.”

  Schuyler nodded. “I remember you insisted on bringing your wife.” He looked around.

  A light-skinned young woman, seated on the pew next to Frye, stood with her chin up. “I’m Georgia Frye.”

  Schuyler blinked. There was no mistaking this woman’s full lips, broad nostrils, and coarse black hair. It explained a lot. And nothing. Questions burst in his brain, but this somewhat public forum was not the place to voice them.

  Reverend Boykin seemed to have the same thought. “Maybe we should disband the general meeting for now,” he said with quiet authority. “Everyone go home for a meal, and we’ll gather again when there is news.” As the congregation dispersed, the preacher took Schuyler by the elbow. “You will come to my home, along with the Fryes and the Lawrences.” It wasn’t a request.

  Schuyler followed the minister as he gathered his wife and leadership cohort, and they all walked the short distance to a small, tidy cabin next to the church. Seated with the others around the Boykins’ dining table over a simple supper of cornbread and buttermilk, Schuyler couldn’t hide his interest in the mixed-race couple, an anomaly in the modern South. He knew of plantation owners who had relationships with their female slaves, some who fathered and acknowledged children, but none who lived in open marriage.

  Catching Schuyler’s eye across the table, Georgia Frye acknowledged his obvious curiosity. “You’re wondering how this happened.”

  Feeling his face heat, he shrugged. “I admire your courage. Your life can’t have been easy.”

  “A life of ease is overvalued,” Frye said. “We have been blessed in many more important ways. My life partner is a woman of grace, beauty, and godliness.”

  Schuyler thought of his turbulent anti-courtship of Joelle. “Well said. I pray I’ll one day be able to say the same. Would you mind telling me how you met and married?”

  “I grew up in Connecticut as the son of a Congregational minister.” Frye exchanged glances with his wife. “Georgia, as you might expect, was a slave before the war, in the home of a family in Tennessee. Because she was the mistress’s personal maid, and I had been hired as the children’s private tutor, we came into almost daily contact. When I realized Georgia was absorbing my lessons and practicing on her own, I began to find ways to teach her as well. It wasn’t long before nature took its course and we fell in love.” His fists atop the table clenched, whitening the knuckles. “The question of slavery suddenly became very personal.”

  Georgia touched her husband’s hand. “Before we could act on our feelings, the war started. Lemuel began to think of returning to New England and enlisting in the Union cause. He wanted me to escape and go with him, but I was afraid to leave my family—”

  “So we secretly married, and I stayed on. Chattanooga fell out of Confederate hands, into Union control, but life on the plantation remained much the same. Georgia continued to serve Mrs. Maney—”

  “Wait.” Schuyler recognized that name. It had come up in Colonel Daughtry’s war record. “General Maney’s home outside Chattanooga? There was an incident there, something to do with Union sympathizers attacking and ransacking?”

  “How do you know about that?�
� Frye’s eyes narrowed. “It’s not common knowledge.”

  “A Confederate veteran from Tupelo served in the Chickamauga campaign. He was involved in retaliation against the men who raided the Maney plantation. Let’s just say I’m somewhat familiar with what happened. Go on. Were you both present during that raid?”

  But Frye seemed to have reconsidered trusting Schuyler with the remainder of his story. “What is your relationship with this Confederate veteran?”

  “He built the plantation I now own and run as a hotel, along with his daughters. He’s dead, and I don’t hold any admiration for him, if that’s what you’re wondering.” Schuyler glanced at Mose. “Tell him, Mose.”

  “The Colonel died a broken old man, Mr. Frye,” Mose said, packing tobacco into his pipe for a smoke. “You got nothing to worry about there. And Mr. Schuyler here, he a good man you can trust.”

  Frye’s eyes bored into Schuyler’s, much like the preacher’s had earlier. After a moment his fists relaxed, one turning to clasp his wife’s hand. “We were there during that raid, but I hid my wife in my room and defended it against the invaders with my pistol. I shot and injured two of them, I believe. They left in search of easier prey.”

  By this time, Schuyler’s opinion of the “meek” schoolteacher had undergone several revisions. “I imagine so,” he said with considerable respect. “Did you both stay to the end of the war?”

  Frye shook his head. “I convinced Georgia we’d be safer in Chattanooga, now under Union control, and managed to get there without getting caught by Rebel patrols. Unfortunately, acceptance of our marriage was not what we hoped. I couldn’t find a teaching position right away, so we sought refuge in a Negro contraband camp, where at least we were fed and housed.”

  “It was a tent city,” Georgia said softly, shuddering.

  “But you were free,” her husband reminded her, “and we could live together as husband and wife.” Frye’s gaze turned to Schuyler, challenging him to object. “We found like-minded Northern friends from the American Missionary Association, who assisted in establishing a school and gave Georgia and me a purpose. We were both teachers there, sharing what we had and receiving so much more in return.”

  “So far all this makes sense,” Schuyler said. “But how did you land in Tuscaloosa, and why have you been so specifically targeted by white conservatives?”

  “When the war ended, the Freedmen’s Bureau hired us as itinerate supervisory teachers. We traveled between Chattanooga, Memphis, Oxford, and Tuscaloosa, making sure federal funds from the war department were distributed to the schools there. We saw much good done, especially at first. Former slaves were hungry to learn—rightly understanding that the ability to read and write would prevent them from being cheated in business transactions, contracts, and courts of law. Many good people, needing employment and wanting to help, took on teaching positions in the face of sometimes frustrating and undersupplied circumstances.” Frye’s lips tightened. “But within a couple of years, graft began to rear its ugly head. All that ‘free money’ floating around, with little way to control its equitable dispersal. Also, white conservatives, as you mentioned, increasingly resist being taxed for the benefit of those they view as leeches.” He sighed. “I don’t know what else we could have done, but it was a recipe for disaster.”

  “We should have stayed with the church,” Georgia said quietly. “A government bureau cannot force generosity.”

  Frye lifted his shoulders. “We’ve argued this up one side and down the other. What’s done is done.” He looked at Schuyler. “This is the point at which I met your father. Are you familiar with a quasi-secret organization called the Union League?”

  Schuyler winced. “I’ve never been particularly politically aware. I assume it’s a liberal group?”

  “Not at first, though that’s where the power eventually went. Wealthy Northerners began by raising money for Lincoln’s war initiatives, then continued to be active after peace came, even in the South. It flourished in Alabama, particularly in Mobile.”

  Schuyler sat bolt upright. “Are you telling me my father was a secret liberal?”

  Frye smiled. “I doubt he would have called himself such, but he certainly resisted extreme elements of the conservative party who were willing to split the nation wide open to prove their point. I met him two years ago at a Union League meeting in Montgomery. Despite the difference in our ages and his rather lackadaisical attitude toward faith, we found much on which to agree, and I immensely enjoyed our discussions on constitutional law.”

  “Constitutional law?” Schuyler stared at the young schoolteacher’s stained face, searching the intelligent brown eyes behind the rimless glasses. This man had been engaged in serious conversations with his father, while he himself had been throwing away large sums of money in the alehouses and pool halls of Oxford. Almost he could not bear to meet Frye’s gaze. But there was compassion and generosity there, as well as understanding. As Frye had already said, what was done was done.

  “Yes, we enjoyed discussing our Founding Fathers’ intent for state and federal rights,” Frye said. “But another spot of common ground was our mutual acquaintance with Senator Alonzo Maney.”

  “Senator? You mean the general from Tennessee? The same one you and your wife worked for?”

  Frye nodded. “When Tennessee was readmitted to the union in 1866, Maney ran for state senate and from there was sent to the US Senate. He was only in Washington long enough to finish out the seat left vacant during the war, then returned to reopen his law practice in Chattanooga.” The teacher’s thin face became carefully blank. “Your father, still being well connected in the old Confederate web, came into possession of information potentially damaging to Maney’s reputation as a lawyer and politician—information that my Georgia had first uncovered during her service to Mrs. Maney. I believe that is what led to your father’s assassination, as well as my wife and me being hunted like animals by the Ku Klux Klan.”

  Schuyler struggled to breathe. “Can you prove that?”

  twenty-one

  GIL WAS GONE, taking the dragonesses with him. Good riddance.

  “What was that all about?” Aurora asked as Joelle regained her seat in one of the decorative wrought iron chairs that Nathan had designed for the pagoda. “Why didn’t you invite them to stay for lemonade?”

  “I thought about it,” Joelle said, adjusting the floral seat cushion, “but that seemed an excess of civility under the circumstances.” She’d simply ignored Gil’s dig about Schuyler—Ku Klux Klan? Really?—and let them meander back to their carriage, or broomsticks, or however they’d conveyed themselves from town.

  “What circumstances?” Aurora never could leave anything alone.

  Joelle looked at her sister, considering ignoring her as well. Finally she sighed. “The fact that I just gave Gil the heave-ho and mortally insulted Mrs. Whitmore rather killed the convivial atmosphere. And don’t tell me not to use my whole vocabulary,” she added when Aurora looked irritated. “I’m tired of pretending to be stupid.”

  “No one’s asking you to—”

  “What is ‘heave-ho’?” demanded Delfina. “I want to use this Americanism.”

  “I don’t recommend it, since it’s vulgar,” Aurora said. “My sister’s usage of language tends to revert to hyperbole when she’s fatigued or provoked—or both.” She made a face at Joelle. “See, I can use big words too!”

  Selah put a hand on Aurora’s wrist to forestall the incipient argument. “Joelle, what are you talking about? You didn’t just end your engagement in the middle of a lawn party. Did you?”

  Joelle shrugged. “Actually, I did. It was every bit as accidental as the proposal.”

  “Well, to be fair,” Aurora said, “he proposed on purpose. It was your acceptance that—”

  “Pete!” Selah frowned. “That is quite enough.” When Aurora subsided, pouting, Selah returned her concerned gaze to Joelle. “Are you all right?”

  Joelle thought about t
hat for a moment. She smiled. “Yes. I feel lighter than a raft of feathers. It’s Gil you should worry about. I’m afraid he’s not very happy with me at the moment. But I’m sure he’ll get over it.”

  That last might have sounded slightly doubtful, for gentle ThomasAnne let out a whimper. “Oh, the poor dear boy! He must be brokenhearted!”

  “You’re the one who recommended I jilt him! Anyway, I would say rather that he’s angry. According to him, I’m not the woman he thought I was.”

  “You’ve been trying to tell him that for years,” said the irrepressible Aurora.

  “I know. It’s beyond frustrating that he should suddenly put on injured airs and accuse me of deception. Well, I suppose there might be a modicum of truth to that.” Joelle cast a warning look at Selah, who already knew what she was about to say. “He found out I’ve been writing for the newspaper under a male pseudonym.”

  Flat silence greeted that bombshell.

  “What is ‘pseudonym’?” Delfina asked plaintively.

  ThomasAnne began to bleat unintelligible objections behind her handkerchief.

  Aurora started to giggle.

  “Explain, please,” Selah said calmly.

  “Well, I only mention it since Mrs. Whitmore is likely to tell everyone in town. Here is what happened. I had to earn money for the books and supplies I needed for the school. The only skill I have is writing. So I wrote. And Mr. McCanless said that my articles, which were somewhat political, wouldn’t sell papers under my name. So at first I did it anonymously, but then people began to demand the identity of the author, so he suggested a male pseudonym—for my protection, he said.” She looked at Delfina. “A pseudonym is like a stage name for actors and singers. ‘Pseudo’ meaning ‘false,’ and ‘nym’ meaning ‘name.’”