Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  Eventually, reluctantly, Ulysses conceded, but he refused to keep their engagement secret indefinitely. He would write to Colonel Dent upon his arrival at Camp Salubrity, after Julia had prepared him. “When I want something from my Papa, I can usually get it,” Julia said, clasping Ulysses’s hands in hers. “But it may take time. We both must practice patience.”

  Out of sight of everyone, they kissed to seal their agreement, and again Ulysses took his class ring from his finger and held it out to her. “Will you accept this now?”

  She nodded, and when he slipped the ring upon her finger she knew she would wear it every day until he replaced it with a blessed band of gold.

  Chapter Two

  MAY 1844–AUGUST 1848

  Julia missed Ulysses terribly, but she occupied her lonely hours with the daunting task of preparing Papa for news of their engagement. After she confided her secret to her sisters, they gladly volunteered to help her by singing Ulys’s praises whenever Papa was sure to overhear.

  One Sunday morning as the family rode to church, a fallen tree reminded Nell of the time a neighbor’s elderly servant had dropped his axe while cutting firewood alone in the forest. He had severed an artery in his foot and would have died if Ulys and Julia had not chanced upon him while out riding. While Julia had frozen in horror, Ulysses had swiftly dismounted and used his coat to bind the man’s wound, saving his life.

  “He’s a steady man in a crisis,” said Mamma.

  But Papa shook his head. “On that occasion he performed just as you’d expect a soldier to, but he isn’t a man of substance.”

  “How could you say such a thing?” Julia protested.

  “Grant’s too quiet for a man of almost twenty-two. He keeps his views too much to himself. You’re never sure where he stands on the matters of the day.”

  “Nonsense,” Julia declared. “He thinks before he speaks, a quality I admire. Would you prefer that he blurt out every idle thought?”

  “No, I suppose I wouldn’t.” Grudgingly Papa added, “For a soldier, he might make a fine farmer someday.”

  Julia knew then that bringing her father around would take time and patience—but before she could warn Ulysses of her slow progress, he wrote to her father to ask for her hand.

  Papa came roaring from his study into the parlor, crumpled the letter, and tossed it onto the table around which the Dent women were gathered. “Julia, you shall not marry Grant. You’re too young, and he’s too poor. He hasn’t anything to give you.”

  “He has everything I want,” she retorted hotly. “He’s a good man, and kind, and he loves me.” She turned to her mother. “You’ve said he shows great promise, that he’ll make his mark someday.”

  “Yes,” Mamma acknowledged, regarding Papa levelly. “I believe he will.”

  Papa kept his stormy gaze fixed upon Julia. “The roving military life is not for you. A soldier can’t settle anywhere. Grant will drag you from one distant, desolate army post to another, likely hundreds of miles from home. You don’t even like to go as far as St. Louis without your mother or your sisters.” He shook his head, his thick eyebrows knitting. “No, daughter, I can’t agree to let you choose such a difficult life when you don’t understand what you’re choosing.”

  Julia swiftly rose, her hands balled into fists at her sides. “I will marry Lieutenant Grant,” she choked out, “if I have to wait ten years to receive your blessing.”

  • • •

  When Julia called for her, Jule set her pile of mending aside and hurried upstairs. She found Julia pacing in her bedchamber, pale and trembling with unspent anger. “I’m going riding,” she said, gesturing vaguely to the window, clasping a hand to her brow and fighting back tears.

  Jule nodded and quickly helped her change. “Something wrong, Miss Julia?” she ventured as she accompanied her downstairs and outside.

  “It’s Papa.” Julia strode along with such swift purpose that Jule had to leap every few steps to keep up. “He’s so stubborn, so unreasonable! He insists that Ulys is unsuitable for me, but I know we’re perfectly suited for each other. I know that as certainly as I know anything.”

  “Your papa will come around,” said Jule as they approached the corral. “He always gives you your own way in the end.”

  “Not always.” At the gate, Julia halted and clutched Jule’s arm. “I won’t break off my engagement. I won’t. I can’t.”

  At that moment Gabriel emerged from the stable leading Papa’s stallion by the halter. His face broke into a broad grin of surprise and pleasure when his eyes met Jule’s, but an expressionless mask slid in place when his gaze shifted to Julia. When she instructed him to saddle her favorite mare, he nodded and disappeared into the stable again. Soon Julia was speeding off into the forest, with no mention of when she might return.

  Gabriel crossed the muddy stable yard and joined Jule on the far side, resting his hands on the corral fence between them, his skin barely touching hers but sending a frisson of warmth through her nonetheless. His shoulders were broad and strong, his hands calloused but gentle. On nights when his muscles ached badly enough to chase away sleep, Jule rubbed a liniment of her own concoction into his skin until the pain eased—although he sometimes ruefully complained that her touch relieved one kind of suffering and kindled another.

  “Trouble at the big house?” he asked.

  Jule nodded. “Same old thing. Miss Julia’s pining for her soldier. Defying her papa—and she’s not by nature the defying kind.” The corral smelled of horses and manure and overturned soil and fresh sweat, a scent that she had come to love, for it was Gabriel’s too. “I feel sorry for her. I know how she feels.”

  “You? No, you don’t.”

  “Who knows better than me what she’s going through?”

  “The man you love is right here.” He spread his hands and smiled, wistful. “Ready to marry you soon as you say.”

  Sharply she retorted, “Slaves can’t marry.”

  “Not within the law, maybe.” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the fence, his foot on the lowest rail. “But before God, we could. We’d be husband and wife as true as the old master and missus.”

  Jule hesitated. Gabriel had made the same point many times before, and with each argument, she felt her resistance wavering. No one knew scripture better than Gabriel, not even the missus, not even the yellow-bearded white minister who came by White Haven once a month to preach to the slaves about obedience and submission and the rewards awaiting faithful servants in heaven. A Quaker lady had secretly given Gabriel the Bible he kept hidden beneath his pallet in the hayloft, and his vast store of memorized verses had helped him learn to read it. Gabriel wanted to be a minister, and he wanted to be free, and he wanted to marry Jule—but although she loved him, she could not become his wife.

  “We can’t get married,” she told him vehemently, beseechingly, but she knew from the set of his jaw and the fondness in his eyes that she would not persuade him. “We don’t know how much longer we got to be together. Soon as Miss Julia marry, she’ll leave White Haven and take me with her.”

  “Then we ought to make the most of the time we got.”

  He reached across the fence and touched her shoulder, and after a moment’s hesitation, she moved closer until his arm held her in a half embrace across the wooden fence. With his other hand he gently traced a line from the tiny scar at her temple nearly hidden beneath her cap—the remnant of a childhood accident, a treacherous leap between moss-covered boulders while playing with Julia along the slippery banks of the Gravois—down the curve of her cheek to her chin. She wanted him to kiss her, but she held perfectly still rather than lift her face to meet his. They never knew who might be watching, who might be upset or alarmed or offended by the sight of two slaves happy in each other.

  She took a deep breath and stepped away. “If we married, it wouldn’t make any difference to
the old master. If I knew we wouldn’t be parted—”

  “Not even the old master and missus knew that on their wedding day,” said Gabriel. “No man and woman do. Miss Julia and her lieutenant don’t know. I say we get married and be married as long as we can. Ain’t a few happy years better than none?”

  All the warnings she remembered from childhood came rushing in—Annie’s, that she should be vigilant so heartbreak wouldn’t catch her by surprise, Dinah’s that she should count her blessings and be grateful that Miss Julia liked her and would never beat or starve or sell her. “It could be so much worse,” Dinah still told her from time to time, lowering her voice and glancing over her shoulder before telling her of a runaway torn to pieces by a slave catcher’s dogs near Florissant, or of a girl younger than Jule who had already unwillingly borne her master two light-skinned babies the master’s furious wife had immediately sold off to the far-distant South. And memories of Hannah, the poor slave woman beaten to death by an army officer, haunted her still.

  “You’re right,” she told Gabriel, her heart cinching painfully as she turned away. “You’re right, but you’re wrong too.”

  She felt his gaze lingering upon her as she hurried back to the big house to await Julia’s return.

  • • •

  Papa did not forbid Julia and Ulys to exchange letters, and Ulys wrote often—plainspoken, factual accounts of soldiering on the Texas border appropriate to read aloud to the family, and often a second, smaller, more tender note meant for Julia’s eyes alone.

  Then came autumn and a bitterly fought presidential election from which the Democratic candidate, James K. Polk, emerged victorious, much to Papa’s satisfaction. On the first day of March 1845, outgoing president John Tyler signed a congressional resolution to annex Texas, and in his inaugural address three days later, President Polk spoke of expanding the United States and “extending the dominions of peace.”

  Texas would join the nation as a slave state, and war with Mexico was imminent.

  Ulys, their cousin James Longstreet, and the rest of the Fourth Infantry expected to march into Texas at once, but when their orders were not immediately forthcoming, Ulys secured a brief leave of absence to visit White Haven. He hoped to marry Julia during his five-day respite in Missouri, but at the very least he was determined to receive her father’s blessing for the marriage before he left for Mexico.

  Julia told no one of Ulys’s impending visit, nor did she know when he might arrive. Every day she looked for him—and one morning when the family was gathered on the piazza, she saw him coming up the road on a superb dapple gray, so handsome and dashing in a splendid new uniform that the sight of him took her breath away.

  After dismounting, Ulys touched Julia’s hand in passing as he greeted her parents respectfully and asked for a private word with Papa. As Mamma led the two men inside, Julia and Nell quickly crouched on the piazza beneath the parlor window, where they could eavesdrop unobserved.

  In the parlor, Ulys promptly got to the reason for his unexpected visit. “Mr. Dent,” he began, while Julia closed her eyes and savored his voice, so dear, so long unheard, so badly missed. “I want to marry Miss Julia.”

  For a long, excruciating moment, there was only silence within.

  “Lieutenant Grant,” Papa eventually replied, “I don’t believe the roving life my daughter would have to lead as a soldier’s wife would suit her at all.”

  “If that’s the only objection, I’ll resign my commission,” Ulys replied. “I’ve been preparing for a career as a professor of mathematics, and both West Point and a college in Hillsboro, Ohio, have assured me that I’ll be given full consideration.”

  “I think it best you stick to your present occupation,” Papa said. “My reluctance has nothing to do with you personally, you understand. If it were Nell you wanted, I’d make no objection, but my Julia is entirely unfit for such a life.”

  “I don’t want Nell,” said Ulys bluntly. “I want Julia. I will make her happy, sir, and if the military life doesn’t suit her, then I’ll leave it.”

  Julia’s heart pounded as silence dragged on. Nell gave her hand an encouraging squeeze.

  “If that’s how you feel,” Papa finally said, “I suppose it’ll have to be Julia.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Now, hold on. Julia’s still very young. I agree that you may continue to correspond while you’re apart. In a year or two, if you haven’t changed your minds, then you’ll have my blessing to marry.”

  Beneath the window, Julia and Nell embraced, muffling exclamations of delight.

  Afterward, Ulys returned outside to the piazza, caught Julia up in his embrace, and kissed her. “I didn’t expect your father to give his consent so quickly,” he said, smiling down upon her, his eyes shining with love and happiness.

  But Julia knew it was too soon to celebrate. “He’s only granted us a cease-fire, Ulys. We haven’t yet won the war.”

  • • •

  Julia and Ulys enjoyed a few glorious days at White Haven, riding over meadows fragrant with late spring flowers, strolling along the creek, and dreaming aloud about their future as husband and wife. Never had the breezes felt more gentle and sweet, never had the locust trees and jasmine vines bloomed more beautifully—but Ulys’s impending departure cast a shadow over the idyllic scenes. Ulys was leaving her again, and this time, he was heading off to war.

  After his departure, the lonely days without him stretched into weeks, which Julia resolved to fill wisely. She started a quilt, hemmed linens for their marriage bed, and watched Mamma carefully to learn how she ran a household and managed the servants. Letters from Ulys came with almost every post, and she savored every line, reading aloud bits about the war and camp life to the family, but saving the words of love for herself alone. Her brother Frederick and cousin James were in Ulys’s brigade now, and sometimes he sent news of them too.

  The weeks stretched into months. As the nights grew longer, the winds colder, White Haven sank into a contemplative autumn stillness. With so many soldiers away at war, there were no more dances at Jefferson Barracks, and when winter blew in blustery and gray, the Dents moved to their home in St. Louis. Their city residence, a town house on the corner of Fourth and Cerre Streets near Sacred Heart Convent and the French Market, seemed narrow and cramped compared to the generous expanses of White Haven, but the city’s conveniences compensated for that, and the rigors of winter were easier to bear.

  The months stretched into years.

  Ulys wrote that Julia would scarcely recognize him, so bronzed and hardened and aged had he become beneath the Mexican sun, though his love for her remained unaltered by time and distance. He gently chided her for not writing more often—“My Julia writes such sweet letters, when she does write”—and she tried to keep pace with him, but with her poor vision, writing for any length of time left her with terrible headaches. She wished she could have Jule see the pages for her, but of course that would never do.

  One spring day Ulys wrote to Julia using a captured Mexican drum as a desk. When she read his matter-of-fact acknowledgment that a shell had nearly claimed his life a few hours before, Julia felt faint, almost too ill to read on. “There is no great sport in having bullets flying about one in every direction,” Ulys told her, “but I find they have less horror when among them than in anticipation.” He wrote often of his longing for peace, and Julia replied to tell him how much she wished they had married before he had left for Mexico. “I would willingly share your tent,” she declared, “or your prison, should you be taken prisoner.”

  Then came the Battle of Molino del Rey and the terse, dreadful report that Frederick had been wounded.

  Terribly afraid, the Dent family frantically sought news of his condition, but it was not until three days later that Ulys’s reassuring letter arrived, written only hours after the fight. Frederick had been struck in the thigh by
a musket ball as he charged an enemy gun, but Ulys had been nearby to tend his wounds, and he was expected to recover completely. Ulys was so incapable of boasting of himself that they learned not from him but from Frederick and cousin James that Ulys had almost certainly saved Frederick from bleeding to death. Afterward, Frederick and Ulys were both promoted to brevet captain—and Papa suddenly found himself unable to disparage Ulys with the same enthusiasm as before.

  Ulys’s letters began to speak more confidently of an end to the war, and finally, in February 1848, commissioners from both countries signed a treaty of peace. But still Ulys could not come home. “It is scarcely supportable for me to be separated from you so long my Dearest Julia,” Ulys wrote.

  At long last his regiment left Mexico for New Orleans, and finally Ulys was granted a leave of absence. A week later he arrived in St. Louis, swept Julia into his arms, kissed her, and declared that they must be married at once. “Will your father raise any objection?”

  “No, certainly not.” She had not seen her darling Ulys in more than three years, and she was breathless with joy and astonishment and something akin to shyness. The tall, strong, weathered captain who had come to marry her was both a stranger and her most beloved. And yet he was the same man, tested and tempered but still her own Ulys. “Papa left all that behind after you saved Frederick’s life.”

  Ulys kissed her swiftly, fully on the mouth. “You can’t possibly know how happy you make me,” he declared. “First I have to go home to Ohio, but I can be back by the fifteenth or twentieth of August.”

  “You’re going away again?”

  “Not for long.” He took her hands in his and raised them to his lips. “I want to see my parents and invite my family to the wedding. I’d like them to be with us on the day you make me the happiest man in the world.”