“And so, Micah and Emma, never forget as you journey along life’s road together, that your love was born out of obedience to the command of Christ to love one another, and thus may you look to that command likewise to perfect your own love as husband and wife.”
He stopped and glanced around at all the rest of us, then again to Micah and Emma.
“Do you, Micah Duff,” he began, “take this woman to be your wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do you part, according to God’s holy ordinance?”
“Yes, I do,” replied Micah.
“Do you, Emma Tolan,” he said, turning to Emma, “take this man to be your wedded husband . . .”
As he said the vow to Emma, I could not help but think back to the first day Katie and I had seen Emma in the barn, frightened and hysterical out of her wits with William on the way.
“Da missus . . . she’s gwine scold me again! I’m done fer now!” I could still hear her frightened and scatterbrained voice in my memory like it was yesterday. “Please, missus . . . don’t hurt me! I’m sorry I done took yer bread. I know I ain’t got no right ter be here, but I din’t hab no place ter go, an’ dey’s after me an’ I’m feared. It hurts fearsome bad. Please, missus . . . please help me!”
How could the calm, radiant, peaceful, grown-up young lady beside me possibly be the same person?
“. . . to have and to hold from this day forward. . . .” Reverend Hall was saying.
Seeing Emma standing beside me was like watching a flower blossom. Just look at her! I thought.
Was this what God wanted to do with us all? Were we all, in God’s eyes, like Emma had seemed to us at first? Was God tenderly and patiently trying to draw the real person out of us, like Micah had drawn the real person out of Emma that he saw so clearly but that she couldn’t even see herself?
Was God’s business in life doing that same thing with us—trying to help us blossom as the human flowers He saw in His mind when He created us?
Was He doing that, even now, with me?
What a wonderful thought, that God saw more wonderful things, and more wonderful potential, in me than I could imagine. And that He was working to make the flower that was me—Mayme Daniels!—blossom in beautiful ways that I couldn’t see right now, but that He could see and that He would bring out from inside me one day.
Again, Reverend Hall’s voice came back into my hearing as he finished speaking to Emma.
“. . . for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do you part, according to God’s holy ordinance?”
“I do,” said Emma.
“Inasmuch as you, Micah, and you, Emma, have declared before God and these witnesses your wish to be united in marriage, and have pledged love and fidelity each to the other, I now pronounce you man and wife.—Ladies and gentlemen, may I have the honor to present to you Mr. and Mrs. Micah Duff!”
Everybody gathered around Micah and Emma with hugs and handshakes and congratulations, and even a few kisses. But by then I was feeling like Emma was a pretty lucky girl, and so I was looking around the room for Jeremiah. I went up to him and our eyes met, and I think we were probably thinking the same thing. He put his arm around me and we stood there together a little off to the side while everyone else bustled around Micah and Emma.
Meanwhile, Josepha hurried to the kitchen to continue preparations for the great wedding feast we had planned.
FAREWELL
37
The trip to Charlotte the day after the wedding was festive and exciting. We had to take two wagons to fit everybody in. Mr. Thurston’s boy came over to milk the cows while we were gone.
Just before we left, I saw Emma standing out in front of William’s grave with the new headstone on it. This time she didn’t stay long. After one final cry and quiet good-bye, she turned and walked to where the rest of us were waiting in the two wagons. She would never forget her son. But she was ready to leave the place where she had given him birth and where his earthly body would stay behind after she was gone. From now on she would carry William in her heart.
Emma was ready to begin her new life as Mrs. Micah Duff.
Fifteen minutes later we were on the road. This time we took blankets because we knew we’d never find a hotel that would put up a mixed group like us for the night! Papa and Uncle Ward paid for Micah and Emma to stay in a colored hotel. All the rest of us slept outside the city. Then we met them again the next morning to take them to the train station. There we saw Micah and Emma off on their life together and their trip west on the new railroad.
Even before we reached the station, it began to get quiet amongst us. The good-byes were getting close and we knew it would be hard.
Micah bought tickets for Atlanta. From there they would make their way over the next several days to Omaha. After that they would be bound for California and Oregon!
We were all gathered around on the platform making small talk and pretending to be happy when we weren’t. But pretty soon the station clock showed that the time was getting close.
At last Emma walked up to my papa and looked him straight in the eyes.
“Thank you, Mister Templeton,” she said.
I could see that Papa was fighting tears as he smiled back at her. He took her in his arms and gave her a great fatherly embrace.
“You be good, little girl!” he said in a husky voice.
“I will, Mister Templeton. I will.”
“You turned out to be a mighty fine girl. You and me, we both had some growing up to do when we first came to Rosewood, didn’t we?”
“I reckon you’s right, Mister Templeton,” smiled Emma.
“I’m proud of you, Emma.”
“Thank you,” she said in a whisper.
She stepped back as Papa released her, then gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. Then she turned to Uncle Ward.
“Mister Ward,” she said, “I’m so glad you come ter Rosewood when you did. We all owe everythin’ ter you. An’ thank you for what you said ter me before da wedding. I won’t neber forgit it.”
Uncle Ward mumbled something, wiped at his eyes, and also gave her a hug.
She and Josepha embraced. Even Josepha was choked up, which wasn’t like her at all.
At last she turned to Katie and me. There was a great lump in my throat. I glanced away as she and Katie embraced.
“Remember when I thought you wuz da mistress an’ kept callin’ you Missus, Miz Katie?” said Emma with a smile. “I cudn’t hab imagined dat a white girl cud care about someone like me. I’ll never forgit you. You opened yer home ter me. But mostly you let me be yer frien’. Thank you, Miz Katie.”
Katie was sobbing by now and hugged Emma but could hardly manage to say a word.
At last she turned to me and smiled. My eyes filled with tears.
“Oh, Emma!” I said and rushed toward her. We held each other for a few bittersweet seconds.
“Mayme,” she whispered, “you an’ Miz Katie saved my life. I owe you everything. You’ll always be da best frien’ I’ll eber have.”
“Emma . . . I love you.”
“An’ I love you, Mayme. Thank you. I’ll never forgit you.”
She stepped back. We all tried to draw in deep breaths, but it was hard. I went to Jeremiah’s side. He took my hand and squeezed it.
Now it was Micah’s turn. One by one he said a few words to each of us, hugged us, then turned to Jeremiah. They embraced and spoke for several seconds, but I couldn’t hear what passed between them and Jeremiah never told me. When they stepped apart, Jeremiah sniffed and rubbed at his eyes. Micah shook Henry’s hand. Henry was weeping like all the rest of the women, and I knew he felt no shame to let his emotions show.
Finally Micah turned to the two Daniels men. He shook their hands with such a look of respect and affection. I knew he had come to think of them, as did Emma, l
ike either of them could have been the father he had never known.
“You get to Oregon, son,” said my papa, “and you build a place, and you make this lady happy. And you keep in touch with us, you hear? Maybe one day we’ll come out there and visit you!”
Emma and Micah turned to board the train. Papa stepped forward and handed Micah an envelope. Micah took it with an expression of question, then opened it. Inside were six new fifty-dollar bills.
I don’t think I’d ever seen Micah Duff speechless until that moment. He looked back and forth between Papa and Uncle Ward in disbelief.
“But . . . but, Mr. Daniels,” he said, “there’s . . . this is three hundred dollars!”
“That’s right, son. That might not be enough to build you a whole house, but it ought to get you started.”
“We want you to have it as our wedding gift to the two of you,” said Uncle Ward.
“You’re family, don’t forget that,” said my papa. “Besides, Emma’s picked a lot of Rosewood cotton, haven’t you, Emma?” he added, throwing Emma a wink.
“Dat I hab, Mister Templeton!”
“So you take that money, Mr. and Mrs. Micah Duff, and you have a good life!”
Swallowing hard, and blinking back his tears, Micah now embraced Papa and then Uncle Ward. “I don’t know how to thank you,” he said.
“Look, son,” said Papa, “the happiness in Emma’s eyes is thanks enough.”
“All aboard!” called the conductor behind us.
Emma climbed onto the step, cast one last look at us all, and smiled. She was radiant in her new traveling dress and hat. She even looked like the lady she had become!
Then she stepped inside and Micah followed.
They were in the last car of the train, the colored car, and a minute later Emma appeared at one of the windows, waving and talking at us from inside.
A couple minutes later the train started to move. We walked slowly along the platform beside it, and followed as long as we could next to their window, everyone waving and yelling and talking at once. But it began to pick up speed as it left the station, and finally the caboose sped past us.
Still we stood there on the platform waving as the train disappeared from sight.
“Good-bye, Emma . . .” I whispered. “Good-bye!”
And then they were gone.
EPILOGUE
THE CLANDESTINE MEN’S VIGILANTE CLUB KNOWN as the Ku Klux Klan had spread throughout the South, dedicated to the preservation of white supremacy, Southern tradition, and exacting retribution on whites who embraced the new order . . . and on blacks who did not know their place.
The Klan had begun in 1865, primarily at first to intimidate potential black voters on behalf of Democratic candidates and to keep that party in power. But quickly its rituals and organization throughout all the Southern states turned it into a secretive force of terror and death. It was often led by the most stalwart male citizens of every community—doctors, lawyers, businessmen, farmers, and even politicians. Securing the Democratic vote soon became a lesser objective beside the cruel tactics of intimidation and violence. Everything the Klan did was aimed at keeping blacks in their place.
The Klan was not the only such vigilante group that roved the counties of the South, tormenting and killing “uppity niggers,” but it was the most powerful. With its members clad in white sheets and hoods, and the hooves of their horses padded, the very thought of the silent night riders awoke dread and terror.
The Klan’s weapons of choice were three: the gun, the torch, and the rope.
In the North Carolina communities of Greens Crossing and Oakwood, some twenty miles north of Charlotte, there were perhaps twenty of the local citizenry, including several of the more prominent among them, who had been initiated into the mysteries of the Klan. Their mischief thus far had produced no deaths, though not for lack of trying. That fact, however, seemed likely about to change.
On this particular day in the fall of the year 1869, they had decided to change their tactics. They would strike in broad daylight, in full view of the entire town, in order to teach a lesson none in the community would soon forget—to the black man they had known for years but who was now walking a little too high and mighty for their tastes, and to the white man who employed him.
The burning torches in their hands as they rode were not for the purpose of illumination as they might have been had this raid been planned, like most, for the middle of the night.
They intended to put the fire to another use.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
* * *
CALIFORNIAN MICHAEL PHILLIPS BEGAN HIS DISTINGUISHED writing career in the 1970s. He came to widespread public attention in the early 1980s for his efforts to reacquaint the public with Victorian novelist George MacDonald. Phillips is recognized as the man most responsible for the current worldwide renaissance of interest in the once-forgotten Scotsman. After partnering with Bethany House Publishers in redacting and republishing the works of MacDonald, Phillips embarked on his own career in fiction, and it is primarily as a novelist that he is now known. His critically acclaimed books have been translated into eight foreign languages, have appeared on numerous bestseller lists, and have sold more than six million copies. Phillips is today considered by many as the heir apparent to the very MacDonald legacy he has worked so hard to promote in our time. Phillips is the author of the widely read biography of George MacDonald, George MacDonald, Scotland’s Beloved Storyteller. Phillips is also the publisher of the magazine Leben, a periodical dedicated to bold thinking Christianity and the legacy of George MacDonald. Phillips and his wife, Judy, alternate their time between their home in Eureka, California, and Scotland, where they are attempting to increase awareness of MacDonald’s work.
Books by Michael Phillips
* * *
Is Jesus Coming Back As Soon As We Think?
Destiny Junction • Kings Crossroads
Make Me Like Jesus • God, A Good Father
Jesus, An Obedient Son
Best Friends for Life (with Judy Phillips)
George MacDonald, Scotland’s Beloved Storyteller
A Rift in Time • Hidden in Time
Legend of the Celtic Stone • An Ancient Strife
Your Life in Christ (George MacDonald)
The Truth in Jesus (George MacDonald)
AMERICAN DREAMS
Dream of Freedom • Dream of Life
Dream of Love
THE SECRET OF THE ROSE
The Eleventh Hour • A Rose Remembered
Escape to Freedom • Dawn of Liberty
THE SECRETS OF HEATHERSLEIGH HALL
Wild Grows the Heather in Devon
Wayward Winds
Heathersleigh Homecoming
A New Dawn Over Devon
SHENANDOAH SISTERS
Angels Watching Over Me
A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton
The Color of Your Skin Ain’t the Color of Your Heart
Together Is All We Need
CAROLINA COUSINS
A Perilous Proposal • The Soldier’s Lady
Never Too Late • Miss Katie’s Rosewood
The Soldier's Lady Page 23
