Christmas Bells

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  Jason had kept up his commitment with the Massachusetts National Guard, assuming it would mean a couple of weekends a month training and the rare local deployment in case of a natural disaster. He enjoyed the camaraderie and was proud of his service, but when word came that his unit was going to be deployed to Afghanistan, he was thunderstruck.

  Laurie was staggered and angry—and terrified that Jason’s position supervising a behind-the-lines machine shop would prove far more dangerous than he said. She had scarcely come to terms with that when he was assigned—only temporarily, he was assured—to a forward operating base, still relatively safe behind barbed wire and concrete barriers, but less so than the other.

  When Jason missed his first video chat, she blamed technical difficulties. Then came the phone call from his superior officer, and the foreboding news that a transport had broken down while returning from an intelligence mission, and that Jason had volunteered to go with the team to fix it, knowing that he could do it better and more swiftly than anyone. On their return to base, one of the trucks in the convoy had hit a roadside bomb, and insurgents had attacked. Most of the soldiers escaped with only minor cuts and bruises, but some were killed, and Jason had gone missing.

  That was what in her terror and anger Laurie could not understand. How could they lose track of a soldier? Laurie’s imagination ran wild with terrifying possibilities—all manner of terrible fates that she absolutely must not allow the children to contemplate.

  Tears filled her eyes as she listened to the choir, as she listened to her children sing so beautifully, so innocently, untouched by the grief and terror that clutched her and squeezed with an icy grip. She would protect them from worry as long as she could. If she held out long enough, perhaps good news would come. Perhaps she would learn that it had all been a terrible misunderstanding, that Jason had been found, safe and well, and that she had spared the children needless worry. And if the news was not good, then at least she had delayed the inevitable blow—

  “God is not dead, nor does He sleep.”

  Startled from her reverie, Laurie turned in the direction of Sister Winifred’s voice. “What? What did you say?”

  “From the carol.” Sister Winifred indicated the choir with a nod. “It’s not scripture, of course, but poetry, and nonetheless true. God is listening, my dear. He knows your troubles and he hears your prayers.”

  Laurie fought back tears. “Sometimes I wonder.”

  “I suppose we all do, sometimes.” The elderly nun’s wrinkled features curved in a compassionate smile. “Everything’s going to be all right, my dear. Have faith.”

  Laurie pressed her lips together to hold back a sob. Ryan must have told her about Jason, or the nun had overheard them speaking. Laurie had sobbed out her worries to the sympathetic priest on more than one occasion, for the burden of her secret had proven too much to carry alone. She had told Ryan what she could not bear to tell the children, her friends, her family. “Thank you,” she managed to say. “You’re very kind.”

  “Oh, that’s not mere kindness.” Sister Winifred paused and tilted her head as if listening intently, and then she nodded. “And I know for a fact that Charlotte wrote every word of her Christmas story. I don’t think you ever would have doubted that, but it’s nice to know for certain, isn’t it?”

  Bewildered, Laurie nodded. “Yes,” she murmured, fighting back tears. “It’s best to know.”

  Except when the truth would break her heart, her children’s hearts. She would put herself between her children and the devastating truth until the last possible moment. Only when all hope was proven futile would she capitulate—then, and not one hour before.

  CHAPTER TEN

  January 1862–March 1863

  The days passed in dull monotony. The effort of accepting calls from Cambridge neighbors and acquaintances passing through Boston exhausted Henry, and it was more difficult still to focus his thoughts enough to write to friends afar like Sumner. And yet it pained him not to write, to shut himself away in Craigie House with the children and pretend the outside world had passed away with his beloved wife. Fanny would not have wanted him to become a recluse, and he knew he would inevitably fail as a father if he isolated himself. So he forced himself to write letters, to see friends, to attend to household business with what fortitude and patience he could muster, heavy in heart and head.

  He felt himself adrift upon bitter waters, and as the winter passed, he struggled to drop an anchor, to chart a course. Poetry eluded him, his spirits too overwhelmed and crushed to sustain any spark of inspiration. Each day upon waking he found himself daunted by the task of building up again his shattered life, the remnants of which crumbled like sand between his fingers whenever he tried to grasp it.

  Since words would not flow from his pen except by force, he sought escape in other poets’ verse. The beautiful musicality of the great Italian works drew him, freeing him from his anguish for brief, blessed interludes of complete absorption. In late February, stirred by a memory of how he and Fanny, when first they met in Switzerland, had found solace from their separate griefs by translating poems of the German romantics, Henry translated the beautiful Canto XXV of Dante’s Paradiso.

  Unexpectedly pleased with the result, and struck by how unfamiliar the sensation of pleasure had become, Henry invited a few friends for dinner one evening, and afterward, he read aloud his translation. To his relief, his friends did not shower him with fulsome praise out of sheer thankfulness that he was taking an interest in literature again, but rather expressed sincere approval for his efforts and offered suggestions for alternative interpretations of the Italian here and there.

  “I’ve contemplated translating all of Dante’s The Divine Comedy into English,” Henry confided. “I’ve long admired Dante, as you know. I included his work in many of the classes I taught at Harvard, and although I’m no longer a professor, introducing Americans to great works of European literature is still a sort of mission for me.”

  “The Divine Comedy is essential to the literary canon,” mused his friend James Russell Howell. “A fresh translation is long overdue.”

  The others agreed that Henry was just the man to undertake the task. More gratifyingly still, no one pressed him to admit that he did not feel equal to the creation of any original work, and that he desperately needed some engrossing distraction from his heart’s desolation. No words he could frame could adequately describe the ceaseless agony of his life. How his heart continued to beat he knew not, and sometimes he did indeed feel as if he were dying. The earth seemed to sink beneath him, and if it were not that the children held him fast, he should lose his grasp on life altogether, it had all become so shadowy and insubstantial.

  The steady labor of translation gave shape to his days, offered him purpose, distraction. As his work progressed, once a week, several learned friends would meet at Craigie House to hear Henry read aloud from whatever canto he had recently completed, following along with the original Italian text and offering critiques and suggestions. Afterward, they would adjourn to the dining room for supper—oysters, carved cold turkey, venison, or duck, accompanied by excellent wine from Henry’s esteemed cellars. The gatherings often lasted into the early hours of the morning, but eventually his companions departed for their own homes, and although Henry knew the children slept soundly upstairs, in those quiet moonlight hours, his solitude oppressed him.

  • • •

  As Henry immersed himself in Dante’s Divine Comedy, the war that most authorities had predicted would be over in nine months entered its second year.

  “I’ll be eighteen in June,” Charley reminded his father one afternoon as spring approached. “The Union needs good, steady men in the ranks.”

  “The Union may search elsewhere for them.”

  Charley frowned. “Massachusetts needs to fill her quota of recruits. When I come of age, I want to enlist, and I’d like to have your b
lessing.”

  “I cannot give it to you.” Unable to bear the stark disappointment in his eldest son’s eyes, Henry turned away and busied himself sorting papers on his desk. “Think of your brother and your sisters.” Think of me, he added silently. “This house has seen enough grief and mourning. You’re too young to know what it means to risk your life.”

  “I’d have to be a fool not to understand what serving my country means, what sacrifice may be required of me,” said Charley. “I read the names of the killed and missing in the papers. I’ve seen the wounded soldiers suffering in hospitals, and I’ve seen the veterans too maimed to fight again. At this very moment, men younger than myself are marching on battlefields—”

  “Young men who don’t have your prospects,” Henry interrupted. “You haven’t yet completed your studies at Harvard.”

  Charley shook his head, impatient. “I’m not interested in my studies at Harvard, or in any position you might have the Appletons arrange for me. It is because I have such prospects, that I’ve enjoyed such privilege, that I should fight for my country. Everything I have I owe to you, to your accomplishments, to your genius. I want to earn my own position of honor and respect, not inherit it.”

  For a moment, Henry was struck speechless. Always before Charley had spoken of enlisting because he sought adventure, because he was eager to prove himself daring and heroic. He had never spoken of duty.

  “You could not join the army even if I gave you my blessing,” Henry said when he found his voice, gesturing to his son’s maimed left hand. When he was but eleven years old, Charley had shot off his left thumb when his hunting rifle misfired. Henry never would have imagined he would one day be thankful for that accident.

  “I can hold a gun. You know that.”

  “Well enough to hunt quail, perhaps, but not well enough to join the infantry on the battlefield, where enemies would be firing upon you and your fumbling would endanger not only yourself but your fellow soldiers.”

  Charley set his jaw, stubborn. “There must be some honorable way I can serve. I’m an excellent sailor. I could join the navy.”

  “You’re a fine yachtsman. That does not make you fit to confront Confederate frigates or privateers.” Henry rose and shook his head, signifying that the discussion was over. “No, son. We’ve known too much tragedy in this household for you to expose yourself to mortal danger unnecessarily.”

  “How can you call my service unnecessary?” Charley countered. “The Union needs every able man. You support the Union and President Lincoln. How can you ask me to sit idly at home when my friends are marching off to fight a war you’ve said the Union absolutely must win?”

  “You shall not enlist,” Henry insisted, wishing he had a better answer, one that would persuade his son to be content to sit out the war at home, one that did not ring with hypocrisy and fear.

  • • •

  Henry’s admonitions did nothing to quell Charley’s restlessness. With each passing day Henry became more anxious, knowing that he had only until Charley’s eighteenth birthday, when Henry would no longer have the power to forbid it, to convince his son that he should not enlist.

  Quietly, he made inquiries with reliable acquaintances, and in early March, his efforts bore fruit when Charley was presented with opportunity to see something of the war without being drawn into it. Charley’s friend William Fay invited him along on an excursion aboard a supply vessel bound for Ship Island in the Gulf of Mexico twelve miles off the coast of Mississippi, the staging ground for the anticipated Union assault upon New Orleans. Upon their arrival at the barrier island, Charley and the rest of the crew would live in the soldiers’ camp while their ship was unloaded. Henry hoped the journey would allow his son to experience the adventure of war without the danger, and perhaps a taste of the hardships and deprivations soldiers endured, far from the glamour of parades and parties, would be enough to dissuade him from joining their ranks.

  On March 6, Henry saw Charley off in Boston. His heart constricted as he shook his eldest child’s hand, heartily wished him Godspeed, and watched from the pier as his son boarded the Parliament, his bag slung upon his back, his smile broad and proud, his eyes bright with excitement. “I’ll write to you as often as I can,” he called to his father, waving.

  Henry was too overcome with misgivings to reply, but he managed to smile and wave his hat as the ship set off, carrying his boy far from home.

  True to his word, Charley wrote often. His vivid, amusing descriptions of the ocean journey, the lively crew, the chronic inefficiencies of the military, and a few rare glimpses of “Johnny Reb” entertained and enthralled his siblings but did little to relieve Henry’s worries. From Ship Island, which turned out to be little more than a wind-battered, sand fly–infested, disease-ridden sandbar, Charley wrote of meeting the wife of their commanding general, Massachusetts’s own Benjamin Butler, “in her little ten foot house which is furnished with rebel furniture captured on its way to New Orleans.” The floor was covered with sand, Charley wrote, the air thick with flies, “and there Mrs. B. sits in her glory and black silk dress languidly fanning herself and making rather flat remarks.”

  Perhaps it was because Charley saw so few ladies on his adventure that he was especially observant of those he did meet. In a letter written April 10, the staccato lines of his pen revealed his delight when he and some of his shipmates “were introduced to a real live woman and it was very pleasant to see one after a month’s voyage. I feel half in love with her although she is married, as she is very pretty and only nineteen. Her history is this: She enlisted as a private in the 15 Maine with her husband and she was not discovered until she had nearly got here. When they did find her out they made her put on her own clothes and took her to the cabin where she is now staying.”

  “A lady soldier,” Alice exclaimed as Henry read the letter aloud. “I never knew there could be such a creature.”

  “There wasn’t for long,” Ernest pointed out. “She’s already in a dress again.”

  “What will become of her, I wonder?” piped up Edith. “Will they send her home to Maine or keep her on the island as a punishment?”

  “If the Fifteenth Maine is encamped on Ship Island,” mused Alice, “I suppose she would rather stay there to be near her husband, despite the dirt and disease and sand flies.”

  Quickly Henry cleared his throat and resumed reading Charley’s letter rather than let his daughters dwell too long on the romantic notion of a devoted wife turned lady soldier. He had enough to worry about keeping Charley and Ernest out of the army than to fear for his daughters too. To his dismay, it was evident that rather than giving Charley his fill of the military life, the adventure had only whetted his appetite, and Ernest’s too.

  At the end of May, Charley returned home, more determined than ever to enlist in the army as soon as he wore down his father’s resistance or turned eighteen, whichever came first. Determined to leave him no opportunity, Henry decided to take him and Ernest to see Niagara Falls, leaving the little girls at Craigie House in the care of his sister Anne. The journey was pleasant, the scenery sublime, and it offered Henry great relief that Charley spent his birthday sketching the falls with his brother and several charming young ladies rather than signing away three years of his life—and possibly his life itself—to the army. And yet Henry suffered pangs of grief, for the inspiring panorama reminded him constantly of his European travels with Fanny, and he found himself often thinking how she would have enjoyed the magnificent rush and crash of the falls. He missed his sweet daughters so intensely that the sight of another little girl holding her father’s hand as they strolled along a forest path moved him to tears. He was all too glad to return home with his sons, and soon thereafter, determined to forestall Charley’s enlistment, he quickly arranged for Charley and his friend William Fay to embark upon a European tour, which Henry fervently hoped would outlast the war.

  He wa
s thankful an ocean separated Charley from the war when tales of fresh horrors from the battlefield filled the newspapers. He could not deny—as his eldest son knew he could not—that the war must be fought and won, not only to preserve the Union but to destroy slavery once and for all throughout the land. The Civil War was not a revolution, as the rebels boasted, but a Catilinarian conspiracy, a plot devised by disaffected aristocrats to overthrow the legitimate government. It pit slavery against freedom, the strong, freshening north wind against the southern pestilence. One day while walking in Boston, Henry observed on display in a jeweler’s window a slave collar of iron, with an iron tongue as large as a spoon to cram into the slave’s mouth. Every drop of blood in his veins quivered at the sight. The world forgot, or never knew, what slavery truly was, if it could turn away from such cruelty, indifferent to the plight of millions of suffering men, women, and children throughout the benighted South.

  But Charley was far removed from the struggle, and all of Henry’s children were safe, well, and enduring the unspeakable loss of their beloved mother bravely, and that comforted him, gave him courage. On one beautiful day not long after he had shuddered in horror at the sight of the slave collar, he sat in his study attending to his correspondence while his daughters flitted about like blithe little birds, preparing to celebrate the birthday of one of their dolls. When Edith presented him with the program, neatly written and illustrated in her own hand, Henry marveled at how beautiful their childhood world was, so instinctively alive, so illuminated with imagination. Although his heart remained desolate, aching and bleeding from its fatal wound, he could yet find tender consolation in his children’s happiness and pleasure.

  But he could not resign himself to the one request Charley insisted would gratify him most.

  Charley returned from his European tour with the war seeming no nearer its conclusion and his determination to serve stronger than ever. Stalling for time, Henry took the children to the family summer retreat in Nahant, and when swimming, boating, and lazier indulgences did not distract Charley, Henry tried to appease him with vague suggestions of other ways he might serve his country nobly. At the end of August, he wrote to his brother Alexander that despite his best efforts, Charley was still eager for the war. “I wish you would make him assistant on the Coast Survey, to keep him quiet,” Henry wrote, adding the last phrase in confidence, for although Charley had endorsed the request, he could not know Henry’s foremost impetus or all would be undone. “I will pay his salary.”