Anything But Civil

by Anna Loan-Wilsey

  I found a seat opposite him and flipped over to a blank page on my tablet. As he folded the paper and set it on top of the stack, he pointed to a headline, SHOPLIFTER STRIKES ST. LOUIS STORE, MAKES OFF WITH HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS’ WORTH OF GOODS. “Not my idea of getting into the Christmas spirit, eh, Hattie?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Anyway, I received news this afternoon. Philippa has decided not to join me here in Galena for Christmas. She wants to stay in Richmond with the grandchildren.” I was crushed, first Miss Lucy gets sick and Miss Lizzie cancels, and now this.

  When Sir Arthur had hired me directly from my disastrous assignment in Eureka Springs, I was elated to accept in part because I hated spending Christmas alone. I was looking forward to a jolly holiday with Sir Arthur’s large and boisterous family. Lady Philippa was a wonderful hostess, but with only a few days before Christmas I’d begun to wonder when his family would arrive. Finch and Ida had prepared all the rooms, but they’d remained empty. I’d wanted to ask Sir Arthur when we should expect Lady Philippa, but it was not my place to ask. Now I had my answer. Christmas wasn’t going to be festive after all.

  “I had suspected as much when she wrote of her ambivalence in her previous letter. So I decided to invite some old friends of mine for the holidays,” Sir Arthur said, holding up two letters, “and they have both accepted.” Suddenly things didn’t look so bleak after all. “But that will mean more work for the staff, preparing for the holidays, decorating, trimming the tree, that sort of thing. Philippa usually takes care of all that. I want you to do it, Hattie.”

  “Sir?” I wasn’t a hostess. I’d spent the last eleven years of my life alone on Christmas and the seven years before that it was only my father and me. I didn’t know the first thing about preparing for a proper holiday. “I’ve never done anything like this.”

  “I want you to oversee everything, Hattie. Coordinate the menus with Mrs. Monday and work with Finch in arranging for the guests. And I want you to supervise all of the holiday preparations, the tree, the greenery, the ribbons and bows, whatever you want. All of my decorations are in Richmond with Philippa, so you’ll have to either buy or make what you need. And since Philippa usually buys the staff’s presents for Boxing Day, I’ll need you to do that too.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “Though I’m concerned I won’t have time to do everything properly.” My subtle hint was as far as I could question Sir Arthur.

  “You’ll have Finch, Harvey, Mrs. Monday, and the maid to help you. Besides, I have proofreading I need to do in the next few days, which should free you up to attend to these extra responsibilities. I can count on you, can’t I, Hattie?”

  I was elated about enjoying such an elaborate Christmas but overwhelmed by the fact that I had to plan it all. Just another challenge, I told myself.

  “Of course, sir,” I said.

  “Good,” Sir Arthur said. I poised my pencil to paper again. “Lieutenant Triggs and his wife, Priscilla, are due to arrive any minute now. You remember the lieutenant, don’t you, Hattie? He acted as our guide and liaison in Kansas City.”

  I did remember Lieutenant Morgan Triggs. I’d only been working for Sir Arthur for four days when he insisted I accompany him to the Westport battlefield site he was researching. Lieutenant Morgan Triggs was the man who volunteered to escort us and answer any questions Sir Arthur might have. For three days, the two men trampled every inch of what remained of the battlefield discussing every nuance of strategy while I, straggling along behind them, diligently recorded every word they said. Once, while taking notes, I tripped over a fieldstone and fell sprawling on the ground at Lieutenant Triggs’s feet. He helped me to rise. I thanked him, brushed myself off, and continued taking Sir Arthur’s dictation without comment.

  “Now that’s loyalty,” the lieutenant said to Sir Arthur, pointing over his shoulder at me with his thumb. “I’ve seen a pack of bloodhounds during a hunt less diligent and steadfast than your Miss Davish.” Sir Arthur stopped in his tracks and gestured to the field around them.

  “You were in the infantry, Twenty-Ninth Missouri Volunteers, if I recall right,” Sir Arthur said. The lieutenant nodded. “Isn’t that what you soldiers did every day of the war?”

  “I’d never thought of it like that,” Morgan Triggs said.

  “Loyalty,” Sir Arthur had said. “That’s what this war was all about, loyalty to your country, to your principles, to your commanding officer, to your God.” He had turned to face me then, as I’d finished recording his last words. “That’s what I expect from you, Miss Davish. Nothing less than complete loyalty. Give me that, girl, and I can open doors you never knew existed.”

  I’d been too dumbfounded at the time to capture the words on paper, but I’ve never forgotten them.

  “We kept up a correspondence and I’ve enjoyed a hunt with the lieutenant several times since,” Sir Arthur said. “John Baines and his wife will be arriving Monday morning, from Chicago. I don’t know the exact time.” I oddly knew nothing about the acquaintance between John Baines and Sir Arthur. But with Sir Arthur, one learns to stifle one’s curiosity. It was a lesson I’d learned from him long ago that has served me well in my profession. Except in Eureka Springs, of course. I’d allowed my curiosity free rein there. Even now I marveled at the thought.

  What was I thinking?

  “I’ll look it up, sir,” I said.

  “Good, now as to the menu, I had Mrs. Monday start a proper pudding several days ago, but I also want a goose, not a turkey, a goose. And I want wassail punch for Christmas Eve and Christmas cake, with extra walnuts, for Christmas Day tea.”

  “Would you also like mince pies, sir?” I said.

  “Yes, I would.” He sent a ring of smoke into the air. “I knew I could count on you, Hattie.”

  The clock struck half past five and the doorbell rang almost simultaneously.

  “He’s right on time,” Sir Arthur said. “I knew I liked that fellow.”

  “Welcome to my home away from home,” Sir Arthur said as William Finch helped Lieutenant Morgan Triggs off with his coat. Lieutenant Triggs was a small man, only a few inches taller than me, but muscular under his well-fitted suit. He was in his mid-fifties, with salt-and-pepper hair. He had a round, clean-shaven face that made the scar that crossed his right eyebrow and stretched to the corner of his ear all the more prominent. Although soft-spoken, he had a friendly openness to his demeanor that made him excellent company for Sir Arthur. Lieutenant Triggs had treated me with respect and I’d liked him for it.

  Sir Arthur took Mrs. Triggs’s hand, then shook the lieutenant’s. “Glad you could make it, Triggs. How was the train ride? You remember Hattie, don’t you?”

  “Ah, Miss Davish,” the lieutenant said. “Sir Arthur’s pen-wielding Galahad! I’m glad to know Sir Arthur had the brains to hire you back again.” He turned to the woman beside him and put his hand against her back. “May I introduce my wife, Priscilla? You know Sir Arthur, but I don’t think you’ve ever met Miss Davish, have you, darling?”

  “No,” Priscilla Triggs said softly. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Davish.”

  Priscilla Triggs was a short, slightly built woman, who seemed dwarfed by everyone around her. She wore a dark purple dress of plain material, embellished with only a trim of beads, and an older purple and black full crown lace bonnet, which she seemed reluctant to take off. Her hair was still dark red and she had pale, freckled skin. Yet Mrs. Triggs seemed older than she was, which was probably late forties. She stood with a slight stoop to her shoulder and had sad eyes that she raised with visible effort. She stood in stark contrast next to her vibrant husband.

  “Please to meet you, ma’am,” I said.

  “When Sir Arthur was in Missouri, Miss Davish here was his right hand,” Lieutenant Triggs explained. “And his left!”

  “She probably knows as much about the battles of Westport as you or I do now, Morgan,” Sir Arthur added.

  “I wouldn’t doubt it. Priscilla,
you should see her fingers fly over that typewriter of hers, like the rapid fire of the enemy line.”

  “You’re Sir Arthur’s secretary then, Miss Davish?” Mrs. Triggs said.

  “Yes, ma’am. I assisted when he was writing an article on the battles of Westport. That’s when I met your husband.”

  As the men exchanged pleasantries, I watched Mrs. Triggs. Her eyes were cast down during the entire conversation.

  “Shall I show them to their rooms so they may freshen up before dinner, sir?” William Finch suggested after several minutes of us standing in the hall. Sir Arthur was already discussing his newest project with Lieutenant Triggs and, as usual, had forgotten all about his guests’ comfort.

  “Of course, of course. I’ll meet you in the library when you’re ready.”

  “If it’s all the same to you, Sir Arthur, I’m in no need of a break. After hours on the train, I’m like a private who’s been flicking weevils into the fire just for something to do. I’m intrigued by your new book and would relish some stimulating conversation.” Sir Arthur’s eyes lit up. I could see why they had continued their friendship. “If that’s all right with you, darling?” Lieutenant Triggs said to his wife.

  “Yes, but I think I will lie down.”

  “Hattie, see to anything Mrs. Triggs may need,” Sir Arthur said as the lieutenant kissed his wife on the cheek. The two men began their conversation where they’d left off and walked toward the library, us women completely forgotten. William picked up Mrs. Triggs’s suitcases and bag.

  “If you’d follow me, ma’am.”

  “I’d like a glass of water before I go up, if you don’t mind,” Mrs. Triggs said. William dropped the bags with a thud.

  “One moment, please.” William disappeared down the hall. Mrs. Triggs gave me a pained smile, then walked over to the Albert Bierstadt painting Forest Stream hanging on the wall. She studied the large, tumbled moss-covered boulders beside the still pool in silence for several moments.

  “Oh, how I envy you, Miss Davish,” she said, without turning around.

  I was taken by surprise and didn’t know what to say. I waited for her to say more, but she didn’t. William returned with the glass of water. She turned, drank the entire contents of the glass without taking a breath, and then handed it back to the butler.

  “Thank you,” she said, grabbing my arm and pulling me toward her. I stiffened at her familiarity. She leaned into me and said, “I know we’ll get along just fine, Miss Davish. Morgan has nothing but praise for you.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” I said. William and I exchanged puzzled glances.

  “Oh, do call me Priscilla,” she said. “And I’ll call you Hattie.” She squeezed my arm to punctuate our new acquaintance.

  “If you’d follow me now, ma’am,” William said. We started up the staircase. Priscilla walked beside me, with her hand on my arm, almost as if climbing the stairs took too much effort and she needed my support. We approached her room in silence. William opened the door, showed her in, and set up her suitcases.

  “The maid can assist you in unpacking if you’d like,” the butler said. “Dinner will be served at seven. If that will be all, ma’am?”

  “Yes, thank you,” Mrs. Triggs said.

  “Is there anything you need, Mrs. Triggs, I mean Priscilla?” I said. I resented Sir Arthur offering my services first as hostess, now as a housekeeper or maid, but both my loyalty to him and the familiarity this woman imposed upon me compelled me to inquire.

  “No, it’s too late for me, Hattie,” she said, pulling the drape back from the window. A delivery wagon laden down with pine trees piled several feet high rumbled past in the street below. “It’s just too late.” I glanced at the clock on the mantel. It was only half past five.

  What does she mean by that? I wondered as I slipped out the door and hastily closed it behind me.

  CHAPTER 5

  “It was the greatest adventure of our lives,” a man with only one leg and a long, flowing white beard said. Every head in the room, with the exception of mine and Sir Arthur’s, nodded in solemn agreement.

  “I’ll never forget the time I got up to water the trees in the middle of a moonless night,” the one-legged man said. “Just as I finished up and turned around, I bumped right into a rebel, I did. Must of been a scout or something. Well, I be damned if I didn’t pull up my britches and run as fast as I could go. I looked back once, trying not to get shot, and wouldn’t you know, the damn reb was running the other way!” He slapped his one knee and let out a loud guffaw, spreading laughter through the room.

  What was Sir Arthur thinking, bringing me here? I wondered.

  When Sir Arthur, Lieutenant Morgan Triggs, and I had arrived at the monthly meeting of the #502 Edward D. Kittoe Post of the Grand Army of the Republic, otherwise known as the G.A.R., heads weren’t nodding, but beards were wagging and eyes were raised. Women were not allowed at the meetings and my presence set the men, mostly feeble old men, into passionate complaints. But Sir Arthur had been asked to attend as a special guest, and with General Starrett’s assurances, for he was the Senior Vice Commander of the post, I was allowed to stay and take notes as long as I sat in the shadowed corner and didn’t speak. As the one-legged man’s tale attested, the men quickly forgot I was in the room at all. At least most of the men. In an attempt to shield myself from the coarse men, I vainly buried myself in my shorthand. It didn’t work.

  “Who can forget the ‘horizontal entertainment’? ” another man added, chuckling.

  Horizontal entertainment? I wondered as several men shouted, “Hear, hear!”

  One of the men, with a scruffy gray mustache and several moles on his cheek, looked directly at me and winked. I dropped my gaze, tugged my hat down as far as it would go, and pressed my back against the wall. A moth landed on my tablet, methodically searching the paper for food. When I shooed it away, the man with the moles was still staring at me. I didn’t look up again.

  After taking roll call, which I had dutifully captured in my notebook, the Post Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Issac Holbrook, a tall, elderly man with thick white hair that protruded from his head and ran in various directions, read the minutes of the last meeting, including a description of the “sham battle” the men put on for the town. He then reminded everybody of the “Great Men of Galena” house tour scheduled for tomorrow that was organized by the G.A.R. specifically for Sir Arthur, though everyone was invited to attend. Then General Starrett officially introduced Sir Arthur, who in turn introduced his guest, Lieutenant Triggs. The general had allowed Sir Arthur a few minutes to speak to the group. Sir Arthur described his purpose for moving to Galena and then asked if anyone was willing to tell their impression of the war. Contrary to his normal dominating personality, Sir Arthur never passed on the chance to live vicariously through men who had actually fought in the war.

  “We had to walk fifteen to twenty miles a day, share our short rations of rancid bacon and hardtack with the worms, use our rifle butts to crush coffee beans, sleep out in the rain with only our coats to cover us, and yet we enjoyed ourselves capitally,” the old one-legged, bearded soldier said.

  “Damn near got myself killed three times over,” another said, “but I’d have to agree with Rufus here. I had one hell of a time!” Unlike the other veterans, Lieutenant Triggs did not smile nor did he nod his head in response.

  “But you were at war,” Sir Arthur said. “How could you describe your experiences with such joy?”

  “I didn’t say it weren’t hell, Mr. Englishman,” the old soldier named Rufus replied. “A man’s not supposed to see his own leg tossed onto a pile of severed limbs like so much refuse or whittle away his hours between battles betting on how long a tick can crawl on a man before it bites him. No, it was war all right but if you’ve never lived through it, you have no idea what we here are talking about.” Sir Arthur flinched. The old soldier didn’t realize it, but he cut right to Sir Arthur’s one known vulnerability. He would’ve given his t
itle and lands for a chance to experience the war as these men had.

  “There’s a pride in it, sir,” a small, round-faced, spectacled man said in response to Sir Arthur’s open expression of bewilderment, suspicion, and hurt pride. “I know you are interested mostly in the big men that came from here, like General Grant or Dr. Kittoe, but for us ordinary folk, who never traveled more than twenty miles from home before the war, there’s a pride and a sense of importance in being a part of beating the rebs and keeping this country together.” A preponderance of head wagging followed.

  “Yeah, we Union men stuck together, fought together, and lots of us died together. But those of us who lived, we can hold our heads up higher than before because we did what was right.”

  “Unlike those Southern-loving rich folk!” one man cried.

  “Or those lousy Southern-loving copperheads,” someone else added.

  “I’d heard a certain segment of Galena society had ties to the South, especially those relying on the Mississippi River trade,” Sir Arthur said. “But I didn’t know there were copperheads.”

  I’d learned about the Copperhead Movement while helping Sir Arthur with his first book. A Northern faction of the Democratic Party, they were called by President Lincoln “the fire in the rear” and by their enemies who hoped to stigmatize them like venomous snakes “copperheads.” Among other things, they believed the Union could never be restored by war and demanded peace at any cost. To undermine the war effort they were known to fight the draft, encourage desertion, talk of helping rebel prisoners of war escape, and take money from the Confederacy. Even unsuccessful efforts to organize violent resistance occurred. When the Union suffered losses, the movement had strong support. After Sherman’s victory in Atlanta, support for the movement waned and some movement leaders were tried for treason. Copperheads in Galena could’ve split the town apart.

  “It sounds like living in Galena during the war was . . . complicated,” Sir Arthur said, in what I took to be a vast understatement.