Roses

by Leila Meacham

  Besides, she was going back to enough emotional turmoil. Everything had fallen apart at Somerset. As she’d feared, Miles had relaxed the landowner image he’d disputed so long with their father, and with predictable results. In March, sick for news of the plantation because Miles had included precious little about Somerset in his infrequent correspondence, she’d written to Len. The overseer had replied by return mail and, in a laborious script written with a lead pencil she pictured often touched to his tongue, related as respectfully as his chagrin would allow the sorry state of affairs at Somerset.

  Horror-stricken, Mary had visualized the situation. To prove that a laissez-faire treatment of the tenants would result in greater benefits for all, Miles had ordered Len to put away his quota book, frown, and imaginary whip and go fishing. The tenants did not need overseeing, he was informed. Each man would work according to his own dictates. They had families to feed, land to look after, cotton to grow. They would do it and more besides. Len would see the results at settlement time. Give a man his dignity and a freer hand to govern himself and his energies would know no bounds.

  Consequently, Len reported, the tenants who didn’t mind less for themselves and their families had slacked off. They’d bale fewer acres this year, taking in mind what they’d lose to the boll weevil. Mister Miles’s handling of matters didn’t seem to be working, and maybe Miss Mary needed to come home and have a talk with her brother.

  Mary was all but weeping by the time she’d finished Len’s letter. “Damn Miles!” she’d cried, pacing about her room. She had known this would happen. Without Len brandishing his “imaginary whip,” which was nothing more than the constant supervision of the tenants, production was bound to drop. With money needed for seeds, fertilizer, equipment, maintenance, and repair, there would hardly be enough to meet the mortgage. “Damn him! Damn him! Damn him!” she wailed, of a mind to pack right then to have it out with her brother. He had no right to indulge his socialistic leanings at the expense of the plantation!

  She had decided to pack her bags, when a letter arrived from Beatrice Warwick.

  In her blunt style, Beatrice wrote that she had learned from Miles that Mary was not fitting in well at Bellington Hall. In that case, if she knew anything about their spirited Mary Lamb, she suspected that Mary would be planning to come home before the term ended. Beatrice was writing to advise her against it. Her mother’s situation had not improved. She saw only Miles and Sassie and Toby Turner, their handyman. She had shut out everyone else, including her. The house was dark and shuttered, and no one went calling there anymore. In her opinion, Houston Avenue was no place for Mary at this time. Her presence would add to Miles’s burdens and hinder her mother’s recovery. Time to adjust to the terms of the will, which were now widely known and discussed, was all that Mary could give Darla for the present.

  Mary read the letter in despair and anger. It was unheard of for a member of one of the families to interfere in the personal business of the other two unless asked. Miles must have asked. He had painted a terrible picture of her rebellion at Bellington, and out of concern for her best friend, Beatrice had agreed to write the letter.

  Heavy of heart, Mary had folded the letter and decided that she had no choice but to wait out the year at Bellington and pray for the best concerning her mother and Somerset. Cotton prices were soaring right now owing to the demands of the war in Europe. Their profits would offset Miles’s idiocy for the time being, and she would be home before the next planting season.

  Then several other blows fell. In April, the United States declared war against Germany. Congress passed the Selective Service Act mandating that all able-bodied men from eighteen to forty-five register for compulsory military service. Mary, fearing the worst, held her breath. Sure enough, Len Deeter was among the first in town to receive a draft notice. Who would be left in the county to replace him?

  Then, to add horror to horror, she received a letter from Miles on the first of June informing her that he and Percy and Ollie had enlisted in the army and would be reporting to officers’ training camp in Georgia in July. Her first thought was the question of how Miles could serve as trustee of Somerset when he was an ocean removed from Howbutker. Her second was to realize that Miles could be killed or maimed and the same might be true for Percy and Ollie. In shock, devastated, and furious, she had wept. How could Abel DuMont and the Warwicks permit such stupidity? As only sons, the boys could have argued for deferments based on their indispensable duties at home, Miles especially since his family was dependent on him. How could he go off and leave their mother? How could he do this to his little sister? She had to get home and talk him out of this insanity.

  “You’re all packed, I see.”

  The crisp observation came from Elizabeth Peabody, headmistress of the school. She stood in the open doorway, pince-nez in place, clipboard affixed to her arm.

  “Yes, I am,” Mary said, surprised. She had not expected to be cleared for departure by Miss Peabody herself. The housemother or her student assistants, of which her roommate, Lucy Gentry, was one, had seen to the discharging of the other girls on the floor, and now that Mary was the last in the dormitory to leave, there was no lack of personnel available for the task. It was typical of Miss Peabody’s mean-spiritedness not to send Lucy. She has come for one last shot at me, Mary thought, deliberately turning from the woman to pull on the jacket of her traveling suit.

  “How many pieces of luggage?”

  “Four.”

  Elizabeth Peabody marked something on the clipboard with quick, precise strokes. After entering the room, she darted a critical eye about the stripped beds and walls, the open, emptied drawers and cupboards.

  “Have you checked thoroughly to make sure you’ve not forgotten anything? The school is not responsible for items left behind once a student has officially departed the campus.”

  “I’ve left nothing behind, Miss Peabody.”

  Miss Peabody’s focus swung to Mary, and the agate eyes behind the pince-nez flashed. There was dislike in the gaze, which Mary met with the cool indifference that had set her apart from the other students from the beginning. “You can be sure of that,” the headmistress said. “I don’t think we’ve ever graduated a student who contributed and gained so little from the school.”

  Mary thought over the statement and said with her composed smile, “Well, now, that’s not true, Miss Peabody. I learned that the sentence you just spoke contains perfect parallel structure.”

  “You are impossible.” The headmistress’s hand tightened perceptibly on the pencil. “An impossible, willful, selfish girl.”

  “In your eyes, perhaps.”

  “I’ve learned to trust my eyes, miss, and they see in you a young woman who will live to regret the decision she has made.”

  “I doubt it, Miss Peabody.”

  The headmistress was referring to her refusal to become one-half of the famous pairs Bellington Hall was noted for matching. Early on, Mary had discovered that many parents sent their daughters to the school to seek suitable husbands among the rich brothers, cousins, youngish uncles, and even widower fathers of classmates. The man Mary had refused was Richard Bentwood, a wealthy textile manufacturer from Charleston and the brother of one of the few girls of whom Mary had grown fond. “Since Amanda will have one more year here,” she offered, “perhaps you’ll have greater success in introducing her brother to someone far more suitable for him than I.”

  “Mr. Bentwood does not need my services in introducing him to suitable women, Miss Toliver. You can be assured that they abound in his social circles, whereas you are not likely to meet another Richard Bentwood in yours.”

  Mary turned away to pin on a floppy-brimmed hat before Miss Peabody could see that her shot had hit home. The headmistress was right in a way, though Percy and Ollie and Emmitt Waithe’s son, Charles, could measure up to any man, including Richard Bentwood. The problem was, none of those boys were for her, and she had wondered, when she turned down Richard�
��s marriage proposal, where and when she would ever meet his like again. He had been correct for her in every way but the one that mattered. He would have expected her to turn Somerset over to a land manager when they married, in order to live with him in Charleston. That was unthinkable, of course, but the night they had parted forever, she’d experienced an unfamiliar panic. What if no one came along who could stir her blood like Richard? What if there was no one in her future whom she would want to marry and have father her children?

  To her relief, Mary heard the porter pick up her luggage in the hall, but the headmistress was not yet through with her. As Mary pulled on her gloves, she continued. “I understand that the lusty heirs of your ruling families will be going to war. Let us hope that fate will be kind and spare them to perpetuate their lines. However, from what I have read of the trench warfare in Europe, there is reason to doubt its beneficence. Should the young men be lost”—the headmistress touched her cheek in feigned horror—“there will not be much of a pool from which to make a choice, will there?”

  Mary felt herself grow pale. The images that had haunted her since hearing of the boys’ enlistment flashed through her mind. She saw their bodies lying in pools of blood on some godforsaken battlefield, Miles sprawled like a scarecrow, Percy’s blond head forever still, the light eternally snuffed from Ollie’s twinkling eyes.

  She opened her handbag, a small beaded affair with a tortoiseshell frame, one of her last purchases from the DuMont Department Store. “Here is the key to my room,” Mary said without a trace of regret. “That should do it, Miss Peabody. I have a train to catch.”

  Mary expected to be called back as she sailed from the room. It would be so like the witch to conjure up some reason to detain her—a fee not paid, a trumped-up damage charge, a lost book. Apparently, the headmistress was as happy to be rid of her as she of Bellington Hall, and she fled unassailed down the hall to the stairwell and freedom.

  At the bottom of the stairs, she found Samuel, the porter, waiting for her. He greeted her with a gold-toothed grin. “I knowed you be anxious to leave, Miss Mary. A cab, it be on the way. How long it be since you been home?”

  “Too long, Samuel.” She handed him a nickel tip with a grateful smile. “Have you seen Miss Lucy?”

  “She be up the Hill. Went that way ’bout twenty minutes ago.”

  “The Hill?” Mary cried. “Why would she go now, of all times?” The Hill was the campus post office, so called because it sat on a rise of land a good trek away. Lucy never received mail of her own but insisted on accompanying Mary when she checked her box in case there should be news of Percy.

  A horse-drawn cab rattled through the wide wrought-iron gates. “Here be your ride, Miss Mary,” Samuel announced, and thoughts of Lucy blew away like the dust beneath the coach’s wheels.

  “Thank goodness!” Mary exclaimed.

  Samuel had loaded her luggage and was about to help her into the two-seater cab when a familiar voice called, “Mary! Mary! Samuel, stop that cab!”

  “It’s Miss Lucy,” Samuel said unnecessarily.

  Mary sighed. “I’m afraid so.”

  She watched the petite figure run toward her, holding up the full skirt of her outmoded dress, and felt the nick of annoyance followed by the flash of guilt often associated with Lucy Gentry—annoyance because the girl had attached herself like a leech since the first day she’d arrived at Bellington Hall, and guilt because she was the only schoolmate besides Amanda who had been friendly toward her. Aggravated, she faced the girl. “Why did you choose to go to the post office when you know I have a train to catch?”

  “To get this.” Lucy waved an envelope before Mary’s face. “Go ahead and get in. I’m coming with you. Samuel, call Mr. Jacobson and have the milk truck swing by the station to pick me up, will you?”

  “Miss Peabody goin’ to have yo’ hide,” Samuel warned.

  “Who gives a damn,” Lucy said, pushing Mary into the coach and gathering her skirts to clamber in behind her.

  With ill grace, Mary made space for her voluminous-skirted roommate. “What is that?” she asked, indicating the envelope.

  Dramatically, Lucy withdrew a folded letter. “What you have here is my acceptance for employment. You are looking at the new freshman French teacher at Mary Hardin-Baylor in Belton, Texas.”

  Mary caught her inner lip between her teeth to keep from betraying her chagrin. Secretly, she’d hoped Lucy would not get the position. Belton was only a half day’s train ride from Howbutker, and she would become a nuisance. Weekends, while Mary was busy restoring order to Somerset and seeing after her mother, Lucy would expect to be put up at Houston Avenue. Mary would feel differently if her roommate visited out of fondness for her, but they both knew that was not the case. Lucy suffered from a ridiculous, insane crush on Percy, inspired by the one time they had met. Mary was her link to Percy, and Mary Hardin-Baylor was a means to Warwick Hall.

  “I don’t understand,” Mary said. “Why do you want the job now that Percy will be leaving for the army? Hasn’t Miss Peabody offered you a better-paying position here?”

  “What more convenient place to wait out Percy’s return?” Excitement lit Lucy’s summer blue eyes. “This way, I’ll be close to Houston Avenue. I’ll get to see him when the army lets him come home for a few days between the fighting. You will have me down, won’t you… when he comes home on leave?” She batted her stiff, straight lashes that followed the circular line of her lids like a doll’s.

  The presumption of the girl! Mary thought, struggling to hide her annoyance. What made her think Percy would want to see her? “Lucy, the boys are going to France. I doubt very seriously if any of them will be sent home, over the ocean, for a few days’ leave. They may be gone until the war ends.”

  Lucy thrust out her lower lip and stuffed the letter back into its envelope. “Well, it doesn’t matter. I can still come for visits and walk down the street to his house and blow kisses that will find their way into his room, his bed…”

  “Oh, Lucy…”

  “Don’t take that moaning tone to me, Mary Toliver. Those are the kinds of things that will bring him back. I know they will!” Lucy’s small, dimpled hands clenched, and the porcelain purity of her complexion became mottled with the heat of her intensity. “I’m going to confession every day and light a candle for his safe return as well. I will say fifty Hail Marys every night and give a tenth of my salary to the church so that the priest will say a special mass for Percy—and for your brother and Ollie DuMont, too, of course.”

  Mary coughed delicately into her handkerchief. Lucy was a Catholic, another strike against her hopes to win Percy. The Warwicks were staunch Methodists and Jeremy a thirty-third-degree Mason. Mary doubted whether the family’s well-known tolerance toward all creeds, races, and religions stretched to their only son marrying a Catholic.

  “As soon as I finish up here,” Lucy went on, “I’ll make a trip to Belton to find a place to live. Then from there…” She arched a brow at Mary. “Perhaps my dear friend will invite me to spend a week or so for the purpose of seeing you-know-who.”

  Mary shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I don’t mean to thwart your plans, Lucy, but I have no idea what Mother is like now, and what with Miles leaving, and the harvest to get in…”

  Lucy’s pleased expression became that of a rebellious child. “Harvest isn’t until August.”

  “Which will give me barely enough time as it is to do the thousand and one things that have to be done—and undone, if I know Miles.” Inwardly, Mary sighed. Lucy was well aware of her distress over the mismanagement of Somerset. “There simply will be no time to entertain you.”

  “Then how am I to see Percy before he leaves?” she demanded. “I certainly wouldn’t expect Mrs. Warwick to invite me. The family will be busy getting him ready for war duty and spending as much time with him as possible.”

  Why can’t you have the same consideration for my family? Mary felt like shouting. It was an example of Luc
y’s insensitivity, a basic disregard for the delicacy of a situation, that added to the many reasons Percy would never be interested in her.

  “I won’t be a bother to you, Mary, honest.” Lucy’s blue eyes flooded with appeal. “You won’t have to go the itsy-bitsiest step out of the way for me.”

  “Because you’ll be busy throwing kisses at Warwick Hall, is that it?” Mary grinned, relenting as always. On reconsideration, maybe more contact with Percy would be a good thing. Percy was nothing if not honest. When he saw Lucy’s infatuation (and who could miss it?), he’d snip it at its root. He’d never go off to war leaving her to think he returned her affections.

  Feeling better, Mary patted her roommate’s hand. “I’ll probably be glad of your company. Let us know when you’re coming, and I’ll have someone meet you at the station.” Reading her friend’s hopeful expression, she added, “No, Lucy, I cannot promise it will be Percy.”

  Chapter Nine

  Settled on the train at last, Mary waved good-bye to Lucy waiting on the platform for the milk truck, her face fixed forlornly on Mary’s window until the train curved and cut her from view. Mary removed her hat and tiredly expelled her breath. Lucy Gentry wore her out.

  She had still not recovered from the shocking scene two nights before when Lucy learned of Percy joining the army. That evening when she asked if there had been a letter “from home,” a presumption that never failed to grate, Mary had handed over Miles’s letter and waited for the roof to fall in. It might as well have. As anticipated, Lucy wept and railed, screamed and cursed at the top of her lungs, sending books flying, clothes scattering, and her little stuffed bear out a window. Mary had never witnessed such grief and rage or heard such language. Every girl on the floor had come running, as had the housemother, who kept repeating, “I declare!” as they all watched Lucy shadowboxing the demons that possessed her, fighting off any who tried to calm her.

  Mary had stayed out of her way, and at long last, Lucy had slipped to the floor in a corner of their room and buried her tear-streaked face in her arms. The girls who had gathered began to leave, and Mary quietly assured the housemother that she, too, should go back to bed. Lucy would be fine. She’d received some devastating news, and this was simply her way of handling it.