Just Jane

by William Lavender

  She nodded, no longer trusting herself to speak.

  “Don’t forget me. I won’t forget you.” He kissed her hand lightly, then let it go and strode rapidly toward the gate.

  Jane watched until Omar had closed the gate behind him and the sound of his galloping horse’s hooves had died away in the distance. Then, feeling numb, she started slowly back to the house. Others would be leaving soon, of course. As Robert had so rightly said, the party was over. Jane wanted desperately to be alone, but her good manners would not permit that. Putting on her most gracious demeanor, she went back inside to attend to her social duties.

  After all, she was supposed to be the guest of honor today.

  Light was failing in the west when at last she escaped to her room and found merciful solitude. As seen from her window, the deserted garden, its flowery abundance softened by lengthening shadows, was especially beautiful—but she was in no mood to appreciate beauty. She was thinking of the gentle schoolmaster, and things he had said that she knew would haunt her forever.

  “May God keep you safe till we meet again,” he said. “Till we meet again”—his very words. “Don’t forget me. I won’t forget you,” he said. Lovely words, words full of promise. But promises given in haste, and on the brink of chaos and upheaval that may last for years, can have no real meaning. “We are aliens in a foreign land, trying to find our way,” he had once said. That had meaning. That was true. Now one of the aliens had found his way back to the land of his birth, where he belongs. While the other—

  Made dizzy by a sudden wave of despair, Jane sank down on her bed. The other wishes she had never left England. . .

  PART II

  Interlude 1776–1778

  Chapter 12

  Even the most stouthearted Patriots knew that declaring independence for the American colonies did not make it so. Rather than an accomplished fact, independence was a thing to be worked for, fought for, died for, if need be. In South Carolina, the thunderclap of news from Philadelphia produced no immediate change in people’s lives. Jane, resigned to the prospect of living most of the time at Rosewall, patiently settled in and worked hard at learning all she could about this tumultuous place called America. Unfortunately, the plantation’s remote location made it difficult to hear of events beyond its borders. Information from the North took months to wind along the rutted roads into the South Carolina backcountry. Oddly enough, it was mostly through Brandon that occasional bits of secondhand news arrived.

  Brandon so passionately disapproved of his father’s decision to align himself with the Patriots that he had left home and moved in with friends in Charlestown. After that, he came often to Rosewall, never failing within minutes of arriving to renew his pledge of undying love to Jane. Gradually, she grew fonder of Brandon. Not for one moment did she believe his ardent declarations of love. But she could easily see that he himself believed them, and she found his sincerity, coupled with his boyish, impetuous manner, quite charming. So did the other women in the household—not only Clarissa, but Mrs. Morley and Cuba as well. Only the solemn Omar was immune to Brandon’s charm—but then Omar was not one to be readily charmed by anyone.

  During his visits to Rosewall, Brandon always spent hours talking war with Robert. After the unsuccessful attack on Charlestown in June 1776, the British had not returned, which disappointed them both. For his part, Brandon burned with military zeal, craving a spot in the British cavalry. Robert advised him to be patient, certain that each of them would get his chance to serve their king. Clarissa seldom joined these discussions, and Jane was expected to stay out of them. But at the risk of incurring Robert’s disfavor, Jane always managed to hover nearby, her sharp ears picking words out of the air. In this way, she kept herself reasonably well informed.

  She learned that the Continental Congress had named the new nation the United States of America. Robert and Brandon scorned this outrageous rebel insolence and laughed over the British Redcoats’ easy occupation of the important port of New York. But the rebels continued to nip at the British soldiers’ heels. It seemed that the Americans’ Continental Army Commander, a Virginia planter named George Washington, was somehow able to keep his inexperienced troops just out of reach of the vastly stronger British. “They say he’s a stodgy old farmer pretending to be a military leader,” Brandon reported, failing to notice that it was mainly the astonishing leadership qualities of that “stodgy old farmer” that were keeping the rebellion alive.

  In the fall of that year—1776—Robert moved the family back to the city and the newly refurbished Legare Street house, saying they would now resume their former custom of dividing their time between Rosewall and Charlestown. But despite Clarissa’s entreaties that he soften his attitude, he still refused to have any further contact with the Ainsleys.

  By December, Clarissa’s patience was exhausted. “You may stick to your stubborn principles all you like, Robert. But it’s Christmas, and Jane and I wish to visit Arthur and Harriet. You needn’t join us.”

  They found Arthur genial as usual, but distracted by worry, and Harriet grieving about her absent son. “He comes to see his mother now and then,” Arthur told the visitors. “But only when he’s sure I’m not at home.”

  Feeling the sadness that now filled this once-cheery house, Jane and Clarissa visited the Ainsleys often after that. Jane hoped that Robert might eventually allow her to visit Hugh again, as well. But any mention of his name brought her a stinging rebuke. Hugh and Lydia were not fit company for a loyal British subject, she was told. The cabinetmaker’s shop was off-limits.

  A favorite diversion of Jane’s when in Charlestown was to go with Harriet and Clarissa to visit Harriet’s elderly mother at Goose Creek, a small community about twenty miles from Charlestown on the main route to the north. And because it was a relatively short and easy journey by carriage, Jane often took Mrs. Morley along on these excursions.

  One of the finer houses at Goose Creek was a stately Georgian mansion set among ancient oaks. Known locally as the Dudley house, it was the family home of Harriet Ainsley, born Harriet Dudley. Once it had been the seat of a prosperous plantation, but now only Harriet’s widowed mother, frail of body and growing dim in her mind, still lived there. Attended only by her personal maid and by her physician, Dr. Jeffers, a neighbor and longtime family friend, Grandmother Dudley seldom left her small upstairs apartment.

  Ordinarily, old Mrs. Dudley cared nothing for company, so it was a surprise to everyone that from their very first meeting, she and Mrs. Morley responded warmly to each other. Jane was especially delighted to see the two elderly women sitting together, chatting contentedly as if they had known each other all their lives. It seemed to her that Mrs. Morley felt more at home in the Dudley house than she had anywhere else since crossing the ocean.

  It was on one of these visits the following summer that Mrs. Dudley proposed that her new friend come to live with her. Mrs. Morley hesitated only briefly. On one hand, the thought of parting with Jane distressed her. On the other, she had never felt quite comfortable at the Legare Street house, and she hated the isolation of life at Rosewall. Besides, as she said to Jane, poor Mrs. Dudley was plainly in great need of a companion her own age.

  And so, Jane thought with a smile, are you, my beloved old friend.

  So it was done. Mrs. Morley’s few possessions were brought to Goose Creek, and one day she and Jane hugged each other good-bye in the front garden of the Dudley house. Jane nodded patiently while being reminded of everything she should and should not do. As her carriage pulled away, she felt a little sad but oddly excited as well. She would still see Mrs. Morley on visits to Goose Creek. But for the first time in her life, Jane felt that—in a way, at least—she was finally on her own.

  Months went by with maddeningly little news from the North. At last, in the fall, word came that Philadelphia had become the second large American city to fall to the British. The rebel leaders who had their headquarters there fled to nearby York, Pennsylvania. But just
as Robert and Brandon were slapping each other on the back over this, they heard the Americans had captured five thousand British troops at Saratoga, New York. In early 1778, the Americans achieved another crucial success: England’s age-old enemy, France, joined the American side. Fearing a blockade of Philadelphia by the French navy, the Redcoats fled, and the American government returned to its capital city amid wild celebration.

  Thus the war dragged on, Surging back and forth across the northern colonies until subsiding at last into a stalemate. And all the while, people in the South watched and waited, wondering when the clouds of war would move down to darken their Southern skies.

  During this period, Jane had the feeling that she was living through a kind of stalemate herself—an interlude in which the most notable developments were within herself. In the summer of 1778, two years after arriving in America, she was sixteen, her slight girl’s body now fully transformed with the contours of a young woman. Her creamy skin, shining dark hair, and lustrous gray eyes, all enhanced by her kind and gracious nature, earned her a reputation as something of a beauty. But for all her blessings, she found that life as the ward of Robert Prentice was far from ideal.

  He was concerned for her safety—that she understood, and appreciated—but his tight rein on her movements had grown wearisome. When at Rosewall, she was never allowed to venture outside the plantation walls unescorted. In Charlestown, she could take walks alone, and this gave her a pleasant sense of freedom, however brief. But she could see the Ainsleys only if accompanied by Clarissa. She was still strictly forbidden to go near Hugh’s. In her mind, a personal rebellion was quietly growing—and as it grew, so did the prospect of an eventual clash with her domineering uncle.

  Friction between them developed on another point as well. Jane had made friends with Omar and Cuba, a fact that greatly displeased Robert. “Familiarity between ourselves and the servants is bad for discipline,” he told Jane. She could not understand this. She liked Omar and Cuba, was intensely curious about them, and could not see any “discipline” problem. She obeyed Robert’s rules when he was at home, confining her conversations with the servants to times when he was not.

  Bothered by the idea that with enough money one could actually buy and sell other people, Jane badly wanted to know how Omar and Cuba came to their present life. They gradually began to trust her, and spoke freely.

  Omar had been brought on a slave ship from West Africa, where he had attended an Arab-run school before being sold to slave traders. Cuba came from the Caribbean island for which she was named, where she was born the property of a Spanish slave trader. She dimly remembered her mother, who had died young. Omar recalled no parents. After several previous owners and hardships they would not discuss, both had been purchased by Robert Prentice in the Charlestown slave market. Jane often had seen shackled men, women, and children there being traded like cattle, an image that horrified her. Omar had been sullen and unruly when first brought to Rosewall, but he changed dramatically when Cuba arrived a year later. Marriage between slaves was not recognized by law, but they lived together as man and wife.

  “I settle him down good,” Cuba said with a smile. And Jane noticed that Omar obeyed his wife more readily than he did his white master.

  Jane’s future marriage was another sensitive topic at Rosewall. Although other eligible young men competed for her attention, Robert soon decided that the only suitor worthy of Jane’s hand would be Brandon. He and Clarissa spoke fondly of a lovely wedding at Rosewall, between the two handsomest young people in all of South Carolina. And the more they dreamed of this wedding, the more certain Jane became that it would never happen.

  By now Brandon himself was rarely seen. Itching to help suppress the rebellion, he had volunteered to serve in an American cavalry company loyal to the British. Robert constantly praised his heroism. Once Jane ventured to wonder aloud if Brandon was really acting on well-thought-out principles, or merely out of boyish enthusiasm for military adventure. But this so angered Robert that she was careful never to mention the subject again.

  All the while, Jane tried hard to banish all memories of a gende schoolmaster from her mind, but they would not leave her. Sometimes when her uncle was away and the great house at Rosewall was quiet, she climbed the narrow stairs to the third-floor observatory. There, removed from the world, she would read awhile from Robert’s books of poetry, then stand at a window and look north toward the hazy blue-green horizon. Somewhere out there lay Pennsylvania. What was it like? Was he surviving in these dangerous times? Though far away now, his face remained clear in her mind. And a few of his parting words lingered still in her ears: “I won’t forget you.” Pretty words, she thought. Pretty words, like a line from a sad song. But best not taken too seriously.

  One stormy afternoon, Jane sat at a small desk in her room, gazing pensively into the flickering flames in her fireplace. Finally, she took up her pen to write.

  Rosewall

  24 November 1778

  Dear Mr. Cordwyn,

  I remember you told your students to read and to write constantly, saying these not only develop our minds but also help us sort out thoughts and feelings. Recalling that good advice, I now pursue both goals, reading as much as I can and writing

  to you this modest communication, hoping it finds you well. News reaches us here haphazardly, but it’s clear that for those in the North, war has been very much present for some time. How much longer can we escape its ravages? Meanwhile, I wonder if you are safe.

  I am about three inches taller now, but you would have no trouble recognizing your most eager student. I think often of our last meeting, here at Rosewall, when you said you were leaving. You spoke some pleasant words, and there were things I wanted to tell you, too. How much I missed your school. How important it was to me to have known you. That it was the happiest time of my life, and how sorry I was that it had ended so soon. Instead, I stood there dumb as an ox. What must you have thought of me?

  How I wish that it could be as you said, that we might meet again someday. I would speak to you boldly, and tell you many things that are buried deep in my heart. Perhaps then you would see me not as a child, not as a former student, but as a woman. But forgive me, I do not mean to go on about what cannot be.

  I remain always your devoted friend,

  Jane Prentice

  Like a teacher judging a student’s work, she read over the letter with a critical eye. Almost no information here, she thought. And that wish near the end sounds like the aimless prattle of a daydreamer. Besides, you shouldn’t tell wishes, or they won’t come true. But that’s all right—no one will ever see this, anyway.

  She crossed the room and dropped the letter, and her daydream, into the fire.

  PART III

  War Clouds Move South 1778–1780

  Chapter 13

  If Jane could have seen all the way to Pennsylvania that November night, her gaze might have fallen on Simon Cordwyn, making his way past mud puddles along a crowded Philadelphia street. She might have seen him stop beneath a hanging sign reading GRIMSBY’S TAVERN and push open the heavy oak door. He threaded his way through a smoky room full of boisterous drinkers and bustling serving girls to a rear corner, where a bearded, rough-looking man sat nursing a glass of rum.

  “Mr. Murphy?” Simon inquired. The man at the table nodded. “I’m Simon Cordwyn, Jack Herndon’s brother-in-law.”

  Murphy gestured toward the chair opposite him, and Simon sat down. A serving girl approached, but Simon waved her away. He was not there for drinking but for business. And the conversation that followed would have sent Jane reeling in disbelief.

  After looking around to make sure he was not being observed, Simon slid a scrap of paper across the table. The man called Murphy scanned it, mumbling to himself as he read.

  “Two hundred yards Irish woolen. Three hundred and fifty pair heavy cotton stockings. Good. A hundred pounds coffee. Thirty barrels potatoes. Excellent.” He glanced up at Simon. “In fairly
good condition?”

  “I couldn’t say. Jack collected these goods and left them at his store, meaning to deliver them when he returned from his current expedition. Since he hasn’t returned, my sister asked me to deliver them in his stead. Which I am doing strictly as a favor to her.”

  “A fine woman, Mrs. Herndon.”

  Simon ignored the attempt at flattery. “Just how picky are General Washington and his starving men, anyway? Another winter like Valley Forge, and he’ll have no army left.”

  Murphy smiled as he folded the slip of paper and put it in his pocket. “Surely, Mr. Cordwyn, you aren’t only doing your sister a favor. Surely, you are acting out of firm belief in the cause of American independence.”

  “I believe in the rightness of it. But I also believe we should be working for it peaceably, not through war.”

  “You’re an idealist, sir. Unhappily, we must live in the real world.”

  Simon grew annoyed. “And what in this real world has happened to Jack?”

  “We have no news of him yet, unfortunately.”

  “He’s been gone too long. My sister’s very worried.”